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Oh! Saving is hoarding. Come back when you've learned some real economics.

You have an odd view of society, at least from a European point of view.

- not all of Europe. I rather like Switzerland and its take on things.

In Europe certain things are considered human rights, such as the right to life and to shelter and to water.

- please, define what you mean by 'human rights'?

If the human right in this case means that government cannot prevent an individual from attempting to build himself a better life, attempting to survive by building/acquiring shelter/water, that is one thing.

If by 'human right' you mean government using force and violence to take resources from some people in order to provide entitlements to items, that you think are 'rights' (food/shelter/water), then it's something else entirely.

A right is a protection against government abuse, nothing else, everything else is government abuse. An entitlement system is a system of government abuse and destruction of human rights. Also it doesn't work at all once you run out of people that you can abuse, look at Greece. Who will provide the Greeks with those entitlements if there is nobody left to steal from?

Therefore the water company can't turn your water off, ever.

- nonsense. A water company can shut down and not provide you with water. It can move the water pumps and cleaning facilities out of there and all of a sudden your entitlements are gone. Simpler still, a water company can shut down because it cannot pay energy bills because the people feel they have a 'right' to get water and it cannot be shut off 'ever' even if they stop paying the water bills to the water company.

The only way to maintain such a system of entitlements is to have government enforced monopoly on supply and then ration the supply based on the so called 'rights'. Of-course as all such schemes, this too ends the moment financial troubles start and they start eventually in a system like that, where there are no individual rights, there are plenty of people that feel entitled to be supplied stuff by others and there is a government that enforces this view with the rule of violence.

Similarly, the gas and electricity companies can't turn your supply off in the hope that the freezing weather and the fact that your kids can't do their homework in the dark is sufficient motivation to make you pay up, they have to supply that service while taking other legal action.

- and it is absolutely wrong to destroy individual rights of people (companies are ran by people, so that just we are clear) to turn off the lights this way, they are not property of the state and they are not your private slaves either. Of-course again, in a system like that this collapses eventually and inevitably, the only question is time.

Of-course natural monopolies are a myth, a way for governments to establish monopolies and destroy competition by destroying individual rights of people.

There is no loss of rights for the corporation, because they have none. They are not people, human rights don't apply.

- a corporation is a fiction, every business is ran by people, you are talking about destroying individual rights of people that run companies, don't pretend you don't understand it.

Again, it isn't that dissimilar to the US, where a business cannot refuse to serve people because of their religion, race, gender or sexual orientation.

- yeah, and people should be able to refuse to serve anybody they want for any reason they want.

A person can walk into any business he desires, thus discriminating against all other businesses, no questions asked. Same for people that run businesses, they should be able to discriminate against anybody who wants to use/buy their services. USA is wrong as well, but multiple wrongs don't make a right.

Ultimately, utility monopolies arise from cities' ownership of their roads. The solution is for a city to bury empty conduits when it repairs the roads, and then competing ISPs can blow their wires through those conduits.

The discussion started long ago: Thomas Piketty and Mises’s ‘The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality’

The rest of us believe that telecom is, was, and (for the foreseeable future) always will be a *natural* monopoly

Natural monopoly is a myth. A myth very convenient for and thus perpetuated by the government officials of various levels as it gives them undue power, but a myth nonetheless.

You can't have meaningful competition for building roads and sewers and power grids

Yes, you can. Tokyo has competing subway lines — why can't New York City? Your GPS is likely to show you several options for any route of appreciable lengths — why can't those different roads be privately-owned and compete?

For example, to leave New York you have many options (most of them requiring payment on top of the taxes) — why can't those bridges and tunnels be privately owned and compete with each other? Maybe, their new owners will consider high traffic a profit opportunity, rather than a burdensome nuisance — and seek to attract more drivers by innovation of both toll-collection and road-maintenance... I dunno, it works for supermarkets... Heck, some private (and disgustingly profit-driven) concern may even undertake building a new tunnel (or a bridge)...

it will always be vastly more efficient for a single entity to install and manage that physical data network, at least at the local level

Really? Why not? In the 20ie we had competing telephone companies — each running its own wires to buildings. Today Google is laying down its own fiber — to much rejoicing on this very site — and AT&T is planning its own alternative, despite your claims of it being "inefficient". Various markets have competing coax-cable providers already. The actual cable-laying is just a (small) part of providing Internet service... Though in theory a monopoly ought to be easier — and thus cheaper — to operate (in any market), in practice any benefit is quickly consumed by the inevitable arrogance of such providers and the concomitant drop of quality and rising end-user prices (any wins in the monopoly provider's costs are compensated for by their fattening up the profit-margins).

We should have made this transition decades ago, but for a variety of reasons didn't

Oh, it is not a "variety" of reasons — but a single one: our government followed that myth of "natural monopolies" and granted cable-TV providers monopoly rights in their respective markets. That law was rescinded in the mid-1990ies, but the damage was done...

running the cables is a natural monopoly

Natural monopoly is a myth. A very handy myth for the governments to perpetuate, of course, but a myth nonetheless.

You can't, because economics isn't a science, it's philosophy with a lot of dodgy math, and inherent assumptions, which may or may not hold true.

Awesome... Well, if that's so — and the better way to run things is not only unknown, but unknowable (like the ways and means of a deity), then there is nothing to talk about either and none of the rest of your rant matter any more than does mine.

But, if we can discuss mere beliefs for a second, I'll propose, that our American system is based on belief in freedom. Unlike, say, China or Russia, who may be using Capitalist methods because (they believe) they are more efficient, the US uses (or used) them, because they aren't infringing individual liberties (as much). For example, in USSR not working was a crime , while in the US you are free to stare at your navel all day. And though most people choose to work in the US too, it is their choice, and we tend to view forced employment as slavery...

That our approach also tends to provide for a wealthier society (or so we believe) is just gravy on top.

And if you want to change from Bob to Alice, you have to pay huge sums of money to connect to the different infrastructure

Right, whereas with the current scheme of things, I can not switch at all... I don't think, that's better.

I am saying some things are natural monopolies

Natural monopolies are a myth. Or so someone believes, at least. But it is not merely a belief either — Tokyo has competing subway lines. Why can't New York City have such?

A better question to ask is when was the last time you flipped a light switch but power was out because of a rolling blackout

Never. When my power is out, it is because the government-sanctioned monopoly keeps using the decrepit electric poles to deliver power to my house. The method fails, whenever there is any significant snow — or even strong wind.

If I had a choice, I would've picked a competitor, who'd run their cables underground, but I don't have a choice...

due to energy market manipulation by private parties.

Those were flaws of the privatization process — a one time cost to pay for the earlier mistake of believing the myth of "natural monopolies".

While you can always reach for a pithy quote to support an attitude of mistrust of government by misportraying Adam Smith as calling for the state to stay completely hands off, actually reading the man's work reveals that he too saw a need for some degree of state regulation to avoid problems like monopolies

The quote I offered does not contradict the problems of monopolies. As soon as the mentioned butcher, brewer, or baker become the sole supplier you can pick, the quality goes down and the prices go up.

The man saw the benefits in a more laissez faire system, but he also foresaw pitfalls that have come to plague us today.

Absolutely. The government's goal ought to be to make it possible for the service-providers to compete. Unfortunately, the US government has made a number of errors in this regard, that we are still paying for. By making AT&T the sole telephone-service provider, we shot ourselves in the foot. Then we did it again by creating cable-TV monopolies — though that law is no longer in effect, the incumbents are entrenched enough to block most newcomers. When it came to cellular phones, we got "smarter" and allowed not one, but two companies (initially) to compete in each market — an improvement of sorts, but far from what Adam Smith would've recommended.

We still have monopolies providing public transportation, roads, fresh water and sewer-treatment, electricity and gas to most of the nation — justified by the myth of "natural monopoly". And all of these tend to suck even worse, than the Internet service.

One problem leading to broadband monopoly is city ownership of city roads. What alternative would you recommend? The only one I can think of is burying a few conduits in advance when performing other utility maintenance, and then leasing each individual conduit to an ISP to blow its own fiber or copper.

Hoover after the 1929 crash let the free market work on its own. After 3 years of worsening depression, the people wanted a New Deal.

Between increased inflation, new public works projects, the Federal Farm Board, immigration restrictions, tax increases, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Bacon-Davis Act, the Home Loan Bank System, pressure enacted on the NYSE to block short selling, and various other examples of interference from 1929 to 1932, I don't see how you can possibly say that Hoover "let the free market work on its own". In hindsight the New Deal was really Hoover's creation, not Roosevelt's.

Laisse-faire had been the policy prior to 1929. It's no accident that 1929 is remembered as the start of "The Great Depression", in contrast to previous events such as the depression of 1819, the Panic of 1837, and the depression of 1920-1921. The Great Depression is the first case where the federal government tried to end a depression by decree and regulation and public spending rather than taking the hands-off approach. The result was a disaster, from which they seem to have learned very little.

America's Great Depression

The free market is the problem. It does not care about the General Welfare. The market is quite happy to let poor people suffer. Government is mandated to provide for the vulnerable.

The free market may not operate under a mandate, but it has the effect of improving the general welfare. Government, by contrast, has the mandate, but is incapable of carrying it out. Interference by central planners just makes matters worse. This is a case where principles and pragmatism are in perfect alignment.

The gold dollar was about to put a check on Lyndon Johnson's 'Great Society' crapola, but Nixon defaulted on the gold dollar, crossed the words 'I owe you' from 'I owe you X dollars' from the bank notes and called the little paper previously known as the 'Federal reserve note' into 'dollars'. This is what allowed the government to perpetuate its growth to the gargantuan size it is today and it is what killed USA economy reversing the economic growth in USA and eventually wiping out the economy completely.

As to statistics, some people compile this data, of-course unemployment rate shows some of this but the details of unemployment are much more important than the compiled averages, the poorer segment of society, the black Americans have suffered higher unemployment rate since the programs against poverty started, than ever before. Actually before the minimum wage was introduced in the 1938, unemployment among blacks youth (16-25, formative work years) was lower than among whites by 15%. Actually each 10% increase in minimum wage mandate had a disproportionate decrease in employment upon the minorities, which is counterproductive if the goal is to decrease poverty, of-course it was not, the goal was to turn people into dependants, voting for bigger and bigger government, while growing the said government.

The gold dollar was not allowing the government to carry with that goal and Nixon chose to default on the actual dollar than to abandon big government ideology.

Good step: Offer to eliminate tariffs on solar panels and other things.
Good step: Get behind building LOTS of modern nuclear plants. LOTS.
Good step: Get behind building LOTS of electric cars, and the technology to increase batteries' energy density.

Three great steps!

As to "and other things..." I have always favored a move in the direction of free trade in all things, as Jefferson (not Hamilton) intended. In modern context this involves rolling back tariffs altogether, including ones for which a reciprocal arrangement exists, with the objective of simplifying things in general, and Federal law in particular. Henry George's 1886 treatise Protection or Free Trade remains as relevant and thought-provoking as ever. I agree with other posters who have said that tariffs are a market distortion -- and would add that selective tariffs by technology category (within the classification of power generation) are an even more awful distortion. You're taking the rudder from market forces -- which reflect a combination of necessity and desire -- and placing it into the hands of those who get to decide what is save-de-planet environmental and what is not.

I consider the present worldwide system of tariffs a form of pollution and wasted energy. I believe the only sustainable form of wealth creation is meaningful innovation, not the borderline kind that results from some tech firm beating another to the patent office. I mean something new that can reduce the cost of living by reducing expenses. My chosen (workable) path is to reduce the cost of grid electricity delivered (and remaining hydrocarbons extracted) in North America by harnessing Thorium.

And it so happens that NOT ONE of those politically correct green solutions generates the base load energy necessary to survive a harsh Winter, let alone grow. It really has been two decades of bad road. "Cheaper" Chinese solar panels or wind turbines will not keep us all alive during a continent-wide hard freeze. Until the "Green" parties of the world agree on a some method of generating an incredible amount of energy 24x7 reliably, something that will work, we're screwed.

Suggest plans for it that everyone can support. Leave the death threats at home. ; )

Okay. Remember in all of this... NO PRESSURE!

It's fun to discuss nuclear energy on Slashdot ... sometimes you just have to point things out point by point ... some confuse Weinberg's '300 year best-fit for waste' two fluid design for other single fluid designs ... or using solid fuel Thorium, which is pointless so long as uranium is available ... yes it's full of dangerous glop, but it is useful and happy glop ... yes, I think a LFTR could be developed and built within $4B ... every path to biofuels leads to scorched-earth disaster, Thorium energy gives us the surplus to generate synfuels ... a move to LFTR may be the only way to preserve modern society in the face of disaster (volcanism, Maunder minimum) ...

I fear you are horribly misinformed.

Wrong.

Yes, cutting interest rates helped inflate things big time. No, that wasn't the full extent of the problem.

1) Government cancels Glass Steagall and Interstate Banking Acts allowing massive consolidation of the banking sector which increases risk of catastrophic failure
2) Government pushes the home loan industry to encourage home ownership more broadly and allows higher banking leverage ratios
2) Securitized debt like mortgage backed securities and collateralized debt obligations become popular and banks start selling off all their risk, removing much of the prudence they previously displayed
3) Bond rating agencies operate with a major conflict of interest, the issuers being rated are paying the bills for the rating
4) The Federal reserve lowers interest rates which encourages borrowing
5) As the pool of good debtors begins to dry up banks lower lending standards in order to keep the MBS gravy train rolling
6) Eventually everyone who wants a loan, worthy or not, has one and with the market saturated all it takes is a minor spark to set things ablaze
7) A minor economic wobble starts the ball rolling down hill and it's all over but the screaming

Remember the collapse from the housing bubble burst? Who predicted that?

That wasn't really a question of economics more so outright cheating/lying by the bond rating agencies."

Wrong.

It's time to abolish patents completely.

Ten, twenty years ago we were hearing all about this 'wonder material' .. then suddenly we stopped hearing much at all, and didn't really see applications come to market. Now we know why. It's been all but killed by this patent minefield. Your children someday might have a terminal illness that could have been cured by some graphene-based medical product? Sorry, they must rather die so that the corporations who control these patents and patent lawyers can sit on the tech forcibly preventing anyone else from benefiting from it. We could help green deserts and make new regions of the planet liveable with cheaper desalination? Sorry, that must be killed by patents. Cheaper solar? Kill it. Potential electronics applications? Kill it.

Unless we abolish patents, our children and grandchildren are going to be living in a world that is scarcely more technically advanced than our own is now.

Even patent attorneys are starting to agree that patents are not or are no longer encouraging innovation, are stifling it, and are imposing a great cost burden on us, both financially and in terms of being robbed of our 'jetson's future'.

This is also the reason we've stopped seeing much real innovation or cost reductions in smartphone development: "There Are 250,000 Active Patents That Impact Smartphones; Representing One In Six Active Patents Today"

Study: Patent Trolls Cost Companies $29 Billion Last Year (that's a conservative estimate)

There is no way to "reform" this system. It's non-reformable as it's intrinsically unethical. It should be thrown out entirely.

You forget something pretty important. By requiring doctors and hospitals to serve those who show up, you remove their right to choose whether they want to do that. By removing that choice, you will invariably reduce the incentive for new doctors and hospitals to enter the market. By reducing the incentives for doctors and hospitals to enter the market, you end up with shortages of the supply of healthcare services.

Rather than using emotionally charged language, you might want to look a step beyond the immediately intended consequences of your policies, and see what the long term effects might be. A great place to start is Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson". It's available free.

Here's a link to the PDF. http://mises.org/document/6785...

No, the entire patent system needs to be thrown out. It's not just broken, it's not really ethical to allow forcibly banning second inventors from independently inventing.

Also, it's not an exaggeration to say the patent system is killing people. E.g.:
- http://archive.mises.org/15365/update-patents-kill-compulsory-licenses-and-genzymes-life-saving-drug/
- "Why Aren’t There More Cancer Vaccines? Blame America’s lousy patent system."
- A case to abolish patents - Two authors from the Federal Reserve lay bare the patent myths

Right, because the government did such a fantastic job setting up AT&T that way (PDF, pp 56-58), except it destroyed all competition in that sector for almost hundred years, preventing prices from falling and choices from being created, technology from moving forward, people from having freedoms as well, by the way, not that somebody like you would care.

According to this data from the Brookings institute, more businesses are shutting down than are being created and this is interesting, given the latest fake employment numbers by the government, which boasted that 288,000 jobs were created completely failing to mention that 234,000 of them were not actually created but assumed, because government assumed that new businesses started hiring last month, that's the so called 'birth-death' model. ASSUMED that 81% of the jobs were created, not counted them. That's in the month that saw near 1,000,000 people leaving the labour force, so now the labour participation rate in USA is lowest since 1978. This is on top of the 44+ BILLION USD / month trade deficit.

So now tell me, do you think that new businesses will be created in the USA with more regulations or will there be fewer businesses created (if any)? Do you think that more regulations will cause lower prices given what we know about government created monopolies, such as AT&T, which did by the way have the common carrier title? That was the POINT of creating that gigantic barrier to entry into the telecommunications business, creating that title to prevent competition from entering the field and from lowering prices.

Given what is going on with the USA economy, trade deficits, labour participation rates, basic inflation (money printing), I am wondering how can you not see that anything that you can come up with that government could do in order, supposedly to reduce your costs will only take the costs higher?

It's an interesting dichotomy, you are not looking beyond your nose and you are clearly oblivious to everything, history, economics, politics.

(1) Read Hayek's Choice in Currency .

(2) Charles Koch (not "daddy" Fred C Koch) informed Hayek in a 1973 letter that, since he paid into the US Social Security program for over 10 years, he is technically entitled to benefits. Charles Koch is guilty of stating a fact, possibly as a joke. Hayek is guilty of receiving a letter. It takes very little to give the socialist spin blogosphere an orgasm... With all blogs linking to The Nation article, that has since been removed from their Web-site... Guess they sobered up...

(3) "Moving to US to take advantage"?! Hayek worked and paid taxes all his life. Specific to the US, Hayek taught at the University of Chicago from 1950 to 1962, and later also taught at UCLA in late 60s / early 70s (before that aforementioned letter that you're trying to spin), and he intermittently worked on other things while residing in US and paying US taxes. He was by no means a moocher. He won the Nobel Prize a year later.

(4) There is absolutely zero logic to claims that libertarians are "hypocrites" if they don't reject anything and everything touched by the coercive monopolies of state. Hayek paid taxes / social security all his life - why can't he take back some of what was stolen from him?! Were slaves "hypocrites" for eating their masters' food?! (According to one theory (which presently I don't practice), libertarians should morally commit as much welfare fraud as possible! Was General Washington a "hypocrite" for using captured British cannons against them?!)

(5) "Until?" Neither of the two men you're slandering has significantly changed their positions (not that there's anything wrong with that if you're getting closer to truth).

(6) These "self-serving double-talking soulless punks" have saved millions of lives by intellectually confronting fascism and communism (among other forms of socialism). The Koch Family has saved millions more lives by being among of the world's greatest philanthropists (ex. cancer research).

--libman (old account)

According to the Austrian school of economics, there is no such thing as intrinsic value. This starting from Carl Menger, on his book "The origins of Money" https://mises.org/books/origin...

Naming Hayec (another Austrian economist) and intrinsic value in the same breath is an oxymoron, and actually if you look at Rand Paul's quote, he does not mention intrinsic value either.

Value is subjective, it exists _only_ in the mind of the valuator, and is equal to the marginal utility of the good (how much better off would you be if you got more of the good). For example, the same piece of broccoli would be valued differently by a kid that hates vegetables than a vegetarian who loves them.

Actually, there are many kinds of money if you consider money as a "thing." However, money is a "measurement" used to help determine if trading is equitable for all parties.

Although this book is interesting, I would recommend Ludwig Von Mises, "The theory of Money and Credit" https://mises.org/books/Theory...
for a more well-rounded look at what money actually "is".

Question Suppose you needed a board 3' long for a bookshelf, and the government made the "inch" smaller between the time you measured and the time you decided to purchase the lumber; Would you settle for a shorter board or would you expend more resources for a board that would fit? (This is the problem with fiat money.)

The CPI is manipulated to show little or no inflation and the core CPI

Ah, another tinfoil hat.

The US also exports a ton of inflation via treasuries to other countries which lowers the rate of inflation here.

Sorry, this is logically incoherent. If a foreigner buys US bonds, they have less US cash, leading to lower dollar denominated prices in their markets. Supply and demand. Part of the problem here is misunderstanding that "inflation" means an increase in price levels, regardless of changes in the money supply. Just increasing the money supply is not "inflation" although it may lead to it, again via supply and demand.

This might only work in the short term until banks start raising their interest rates to compensate so any new borrowers get screwed instead.

The problem now is a debt overhang which is hampering growth by depriving banks of profitable lending opportunities, and depriving the private sector of its ability to innovate and invest. After private balance sheets are repaired and full employment is reached, I will begin to favor deflationary policies.

This also only works in the short term until other countries retaliate by debasing their currency as well.

You should look up the Plaza Accord and reverse Plaza Accord.

The only reason anyone ever called this "the most transparent administration in history" is that Barack Obama made that statement. But there never was any reason to believe him.

He's an Alinskyite politician who came up through the Chicago political machine. What about this background would make you expect him to be anything other than a partisan who will say anything to advance his own agenda?

Then when he ran for President, he made vague promises that allowed everyone to project their fondest hopes onto him. The only way to have an 80% approval rating is to not be specific about anything. His greatest accomplishment has been his amazing skill in reading a prepared speech off a TelePrompter.

I no longer believe that government can do very much to help the economy; however, I firmly believe that government does have the power to screw the economy up. I'm not one of the haters who thinks that President Obama wants to screw things up, but still it keeps happening.

Here's a free tip for President Obama: find yourself some economists who actually predicted this recession, and then ask them for their advice on how to fix it. The Keynsian advice is to pump a bunch of money into the economy, borrowed is fine, and that's what this Administration did. But few, if any, of the Keynsian economists predicted the recession.

The economist says there's never a shortage, just a shortage at a given price. E.g., Robert R. Prechter, Jr: "In a free market, shortages are impossible; there is only a price. Rubies and Picassos are scarce, but there's never a shortage of them. You can buy all you want any day of the week. Just pay the price." You can have all you want if you're willing to pay more.

And if I may ask, why would bitcoin being a commodity bolster anyone's ideology? What possible negative implication does the non-commodity status of bitcoin have on which ideology?

Obviously there are all kinds of crazy ideologies out there, but I am just not aware of any that need bitcoin to be more than just a (non-fiat) currency.

Certain radical libertarians, anarcho-capitalists and others subscribe to a theory of money that requires money to have "evolved from private enterprise from the most marketable commodity".

Later in the above linked article: "In short, money is the thing for which all other goods and services are traded. Furthermore, money must emerge as a commodity. An object cannot be used as money unless it already possesses an exchange value based on some other use. The object must have a pre-existing price for it to be accepted as money."

More than a few bitcoin proponents worship this religious dogma. They desperately want bitcoin to succeed because the system pushes many of their ideological happy buttons. But since one of their high priests has ruled that real money must arise from a commodity, bitcoins have to be commodities - or they won't be "real" money.

http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Pau...

Then instead of having the government install "pipes" as in physical media for data communication, have the government install literal pipes. Because utilities' so-called natural monopolies ultimately result from government ownership of roads, city governments have power to take steps to grant utility access more efficiently, as I explained further in this comment. The city would bury conduit, and utility companies would pull their own copper, fiber, or whatever through the conduit. This would start in any neighborhood scheduled for water, sewer, or natural gas maintenance.

The vast majority of government bridges not in disrepair are just new or one of the few recently repaired, though typically only repaired after catastrophe, such as the bridge in the MacArthur Maze that collapsed and the bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed. The government has no solid plan to repair bridges. If the bridges were owned by private companies, then they would likely be maintaining the bridges to keep their insurance policies valid and their source of revenue secure.

I would encourage you to read The Privatization of Roads and Highways by Walter Block. Electronic versions of the book are offered free of charge.

Robert Higgs would even use the F word

The Nazi's were hardcore socialists that very much believed is socialistic ideals. The Nazi's were very zealous about their socialism and enforcing it. They used everything from price and wage controls to verdant support for trains for the masses. Hitler was an adamant anti-capitalist and used this to support his genocide of the jews. Labor unions were replaced by government controlled unions and shops and other business were routinely seized by the state.

You can read some translated propaganda here where the Nazi's explained why they embraced socialism. In their own words:

We are socialists; We are enemies, mortal enemies, of the present-day capitalist economic systemâ¦We are resolved to annihilate this system despite everything.

The Soviets took them seriously enough to form a treaty with the Nazi's in the time leading up to WW2 - something they weren't in the habit of doing with other nations. Industry was effectively owned by the government (even when in name someone else held the title) and German industrial companies were seized as government assets for repatriation at the end of the war.

By way of example Hitler saw the need for a cheap car for the masses and ordered Ferdinand Porsche to design the original beetle to his specifications (Hitlers original sketch is a Google search away). The result was the founding of the Volkswagen (people's car) for the express purpose of building an affordable car for the masses. At the end of the war the English got that bit and almost put Volkswagen out to pasture, leaving it be only because they thought the company was worthless.

http://jerryfisher.hubpages.co...

Strip away all the genocide and war crimes and your left with very socialist ideals.

If Mises counts as a libertarian, he'd say that the problem is that the government has specifically foreclosed a solution to the problem - class action lawsuits on pollution. When written in 1983, the Libertarian Manifesto claimed that class action lawsuits over pollution were impossible to file. I think that's changed since - EPA rules and whatnot - but that's probably the libertarian basis for negotiated pollution rates.

Great, so will the US then also meet EU polution standards? Or does this rule only apply when you like it?

We don't even have a mechanism to deal with this within the US. I live in western New Hampshire, right by the big hydro power plant. Aside from a few automobiles, all of our air pollution comes from elsewhere (and we have lots of trees to absorb pollution so we're probably a net negative for pollution in this area). Yet, when the heat of the summer comes and the midwest cranks up their coal-fired power plants, the smog builds in, our visibility goes to crap, and I'm buying a new set of contact lenses every week (or just switching to glasses if it's bad enough :shudder:). The low visibility hurts our tourism, because there goes the 200-mile views from atop the hilltops, and I'm out-of-pocket for the contacts (and who knows what the long-term damage is).

But just imagine the laughter of the "judge" throwing out our small-claims court cases against each of those coal-burning plants if we try to recover our costs that we incur to ease their expense ratios.

To answer your question - the rules only apply in 'the system' when it privatizes the gains and socializes the costs. The government tells us this is "for the common good". To the GP's point - that's hardly a libertarian approach.

Rent-seeking is just the opposite of free market capitalism. And the only reason these corporations have a monopoly / cartel, is because the government grants them one. This is called corporatism, or maybe even fascism.

If the government didn't intervene in the marketplace these monopolies / cartels wouldn't exist, or if they did, it would be short lived.

Study Austrian economics sometime: http://www.mises.org/

How was this modded "informative" when it fails to give any accurate information ?

If you knew what you were talking about, you wouldn't pretend there was a corner of the tulip market at the time - which there wasn't. Instead there was monetary debasing due to the huge influx of precious metals from the Americas (thanks in no little part to the invention of amalgamation), causing inflation on a massive scale (in about a decade this region's entire money supply grew by half), and a flight of savings to evade this debasement. Tulip bulbs were an asset of choice at that particular time and place because that's the asset that had the most efficient markets (there were lots of trading clubs and even a futures market which opened in 1636) and was thus deemed the most liquid. There were other investment bubbles too, we just remember tulip bulbs best because of how incongruous it sounds to us that a flower bulb may cost more than a house, and also because this asset exhibited the wildest price take-off. The final collapse had nothing to do with the plague, and all to do with the sudden decision of the Amsterdam Bank - Holland's central bank of thence - to cease free coinage and value depositors' accounts by metal weight instead of facial value.

Today the USD and EUR are quickly and massively debasing too, and many investors are trying to avoid the accumulating monetary risk by moving their wealth into another asset. Same causes, same effects, and I fully expect that, shall the monetary risk not realise, BTC valuation will come down towards something more reasonable and in line with its utility as a payment method.

It is also too bad that Slashdot has no private messaging system, which makes it very difficult to continue conversations like this.

It really is too bad we can't grab a beer. I see this conversation moving into monopolies and oligopolies, which I find fascinating. For now, a brief summary will have to do. Basically, the problem with monopolies and oligopolies is that there is *no* way to objectively classify a company as such, save for when the government grants such a status. People like to talk about monopoly prices, etc, but the reality is, there is *no* objective way to determine the objective price. Murray Rothbard has some fascinating insight into this in Man, Economy, and State, which he elaborates on in Power & Market. As far as cartels go, there is indeed no difference between a merger and a cartel so long as the cartel continues to exist. Empirically, though, we know that cartels tend to be short lived; market forces have a tendency of breaking them up. It ultimately all goes back to competition: those members of the cartel who are more efficient get frustrated with essentially propping up the less-efficient and break from the cartel. Even if the balance is even enough, if real price gouging is going on, the same exact thing happens as in a monopoly: new competition enters the market. I realize this is a fundamental point on which we disagree on, though.

Truth be told, there is no economic reason why a firm could not establish itself so strongly in a market with exceptionally high barrier to entry and do exactly what you've talked about; if that were to happen, regulation may be reasonable (although I fear that in countries like the US, regulation would only get passed if it helped the corporation). I would still be very apprehensive of regulation, though, even if corruption could be ruled out. Even if you can somehow deal with all of the problems with defining monopolies, identifying the monopoly price vs the market price, etc (you can't), you still have to reevaluate where things stand as time and technology progresses. One of the great things about the free market is the innovation it brings, which tend to lower prices, thus increasing standard of living. Without a free market price to compare to, one does not know if the current rates of the government-granted monopoly are appropriate or not. This is known as the calculation problem that occurs when there is no free market comparison; it is one of the main reasons the Soviet Union fell on its face in such an epic way.

History tells us that there is nothing "natural" about natural monopolies. Here is a great read, if you're interested: https://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae9_2_3.pdf. It is a bit dated, but the principles remain the same. So, to sum up the summary, while monopolies and oligopolies are theoretically possible, empirical data says not to worry.

Against Intellectual Monopoly
https://mises.org/store/Product2.aspx?ProductId=552&AFID=14

you can't have someone competing directly with a public utility monopoly.

Natural monopoly is a myth. Government-granted utility monopolies reflect the municipal government's failure to efficiently use the space under its roads. Cities should bury conduit and sell real estate inside the conduit at reasonable rates. At that point, cities would renew utility franchises on nonexclusive terms, allowing two power companies just like there are two Internet companies (DSL and cable).

Is Telling the Truth a Crime? It is always available to make a law that makes it a crime - especially when it hurts people in power. Please consider the case of Peter Zenger, a printer in the colonies before the Revolutionary war. One link to info on that is: http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_3.pdf. Here is an excerpt.

When Peter Zenger, a New York printer, was charged with criminal libel for criticizing the royal governor, Zenger wished to argue at his trial that his remarks were true. The court instructed the jury that truth was no defense. Defense counsel Andrew Hamilton, however, urged the jury to reach their own conclusions about this legal issue. They did so, acquitted Zenger, and struck a blow for free speech that was critical to the struggle for independence a few decades later.

The prosecution argued that because his criticisms were true it made his revealing them to be an even more serious crime! Alexander Hamilton, an excellent lawyer and later founding father, defended Zenger and said the law could also be judged by a jury. The law could itself be found to be unjust, or, unjustly applied. Either way, if the jury by it's own conscience found the accused innocent, it was duty-bound not to convict. This sort of thing occurred in England before, in the case of William Penn. It has become known as Jury Nullification and is a right never challenged by any Supreme Court. It is why there is a right to a jury trial. It is so a government cannot rubber-stamp a conviction of someone they do not like. How about you? If you were in a trial where you had disclosed actions by the government violating civil rights causing embarrassment of those in power, wouldn't you want an impartially picked jury making the final decision rather than a judge, appointed by the same government?

So go ahead and say it is illegal . . . . even if the laws that make it illegal have questionable (at best) Constitutional authority. Now perhaps at some point, it will become established law that a person accused of crimes affecting national security will not be afforded a lawyer. And if he is declared innocent by the jury, the government can still keep him in custody. This stuff is already in the NDAA (National Defence Authorization Act). But If it's what you want to do, go with the flow and say what Snowden did is illegal. A lot of government officials say so. It is safe to agree.

Or, Instead, why not do your own research. Don't just believe me or anyone else. Check out the Peter Zenger trial. Like many others, I do not believe Snowden could get a fair trial in this country. The government, after capturing him, would hold him as long as possible before a trial. They would leak all kinds of info to our news sources about bad things he did. And then, only if they could load the jury would they go forward with it. And even if they lost, they would still find a reason to nullify a jury verdict. I hate to say that. But it happens in other countries and I believe it to be the case here that it could happen here also.

The idea of a natural monopoly *sounds* great. But I don't think it holds up under scrutiny. See the myth of the natural monopoly.

Considering what google is doing with fiber, I think the 'natural' monopoly of telcos is as natural as the car dealership problem Tesla is facing in Texas.

If it was truly a scarce resource that one company had monopolized. Then that company should be broken up into competitors and seperated from the businesses that depend on it (so the few companies that control it, don't also own the businesses that depend on it).

Natural monopoly is a myth. A city could bury conduit under its streets and charge a reasonable rate for pulling copper or fiber.

Government can revoke NewsCorp's charter and thus terminate it - lock, stock and barrel.

According to the rules the government can indeed to that. According to the law, not a chance. See Hayek's distinction between rule and law in the political order. NewsCorp, on the other hand, can and does intimidate politicians.

However if you actually read Rothbards writings (he wrote a book), then you will find it relatively empty of insight - he is the kind of person who makes a statement that seems reasonable, and then repeatedly extrapolates it in steps, until it becomes something that is flatly contradicted by observable reality.

At times, this mechanical application also resulted in conclusions that are clearly ridiculou from any sane ethical perspective. His take on the rights of children is a prominent example, where he concludes that "the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children".

This project started 4 years ago and is full of bugs and half ass procedures.

It's another classical example for the Chodorov Principle:

a) Government program A: mammoth welfare system;
b) Problem X caused by program A: rampant fraud;
c) Government program B for trying to solve problem X: mammoth biometric identity system;
d) Problem Y caused by program B: bugs, half ass procedure, political manipulation;
e) Government program C for trying to solve problem Y: throw more money at it, generalize it, make it mandatory hoping it'll start working as intended any time now;
f) Problem Z caused by program C: loss of privacy, identity fraud;
g) Government program D for trying to solve problem Z: ?

The Chodorov Principle reads thus:

"For every social problem A caused by government program X, problem A can be solved by abolishing program X."

Nailed it.

Ulbricht called himself an "agorist". Agorism is a strong form of anarcho-capitalist politics, which believes the if the state were to disappear a peaceful utopia would result. It explicitly rejects the political process as a means to bring about this change. Instead agorists believe in "counter economics", i.e. engaging in illegal activity not in order to benefit from it per se but rather to undermine the state and bring about an agorist world.

Agorists are often inspired by the writings of a guy called Murray Rothbard, and Ulbricht was fond of quoting Rothbard in order to explain why he thought certain ways. Rothbard DID believe in voting as a means to bring about change, and was thus not strictly an agorist. However if you actually read Rothbards writings (he wrote a book), then you will find it relatively empty of insight - he is the kind of person who makes a statement that seems reasonable, and then repeatedly extrapolates it in steps, until it becomes something that is flatly contradicted by observable reality. You can read what he thought about cartels and monopolies for an example of this kind of thinking. He concludes based on a long and twisty argument that cartels are inherently unstable and monopolies aren't a problem (because eventually a competitor will arise ... somehow), which doesn't match how real markets seem to work.

DPR is thus a man who frequently quotes an overly simplistic book of philosophy that provides no evidence for its claims, and uses it to justify a quest to overthrow civilisation via crime in order to established a promised utopia. That description reminds me of another category of criminal that has occupied a lot of attention from western governments in the last decade.

That "gold silk" argument has been used for ages:
* "The In-game Economics of Ultima Online" - http://www.mine-control.com/zack/uoecon/uoecon.html

There are NO amount of gold sinks that can fix an infinite money supply. Your theorycrafting about "wealth" and "fun" is incomplete. Please read:

* Ludwig von Mises Institute "What Has Government Done to our Money?" http://mises.org/books/whathasgovernmentdone.pdf
* Ralph Koster's "Theory of Fun" http://www.theoryoffun.com/theoryoffun.pdf

> They sacrifice economical stability for fun.
Bingo.

If game designers focused on economic stability then _no_ one would play the game! You forgot the _basic_ premise of WHY people play MMOs in the first place: MMO games are all about the illusion of power. To slow down the "rate" of wealth acquisition would cause exactly one thing: drive players to OTHER games where the rate IS higher.

--
Only an idiot gamer thinks "indy" games can't compete with commercial games.

Judging by how every new law seems to have its own set of unintended consequences, I'm skeptical of anybody who would claim to be able to design a system that would be resistant against such biases. Sometimes the only winning move is not to play.

Cf. the Chodorov Principle: "For every social problem A caused by government program X, problem A can be solved by abolishing program X."

Yep.

The most wasteful and expensive parts of the nbn seem to be down already, among them a 3,800km link from darwin to toowomba servicing only 160k people.

I never understood this "we need to put fibre to thousands of km in the middle of nowhere with only a few thousand population" mentality, surely the cities and denser populations provide better cost/benefit.

The leader of the Liberal/National coalition - Tony Abbot - is a truly nasty piece of work. He is an intolerant bigot.

Because he recognizes that behaviours can be influenced by nature and not only nurture? We shouldn't expect everything to always come 50% down the line because people are allowed to choose what they want to do in life. All we can do is try to make things fair to everyone involved and try to eliminate irrelevant criteria being used for problems.

Don't get me wrong, he is a giant douche at times, but a labor world where we give preferential treatment to people for irrelevant things like sex or race can be far worse.

I'm surprised they haven't put forward policies like the UK labour party in regards to selection. It fits their affirmative action stances perfectly (although outright banning males seems to be too blatent for most affirmative action groups).

In regards to infrastructure, yes fibre needs to be deployed, but overbuilding infrastructure just wastes money in the end. Get the low hanging fruit first and then follow it up with growth as the cost/benefit is useful.

Just because we can hook up uluru with fibre, doesn't mean the money to do so couldn't be spent in better ways. The way it is being handled is as a giant prestige project.