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Hmm, I think it is time to bone up on the literature as central control leads to nothing but discoordination:

The Fatal Conceit
Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth

republic

More info would be good - any other prominent techs saying this?

This is not exactly new one, but I read a pretty reasonable article about the effect of James Watt's patents (steam engine) on the industrial revolution - basically how it was delayed by a few decades.

That was 18th century, things moved slower then. Now-a-days within our 5 year obsolescence cycle things completely moved out of whack of course.

Someone figured out how to make the phone actually work with an internal antenna.

Except portable radios have had internal antennas since the 1970s and least and they worked. Except Economists say copyright and patent laws are killing innovation; hurting economy. Study: Free Markets Superior to Patent Monopolies.

Falcon

This was a government fire department, which is quite different from a privatized fire department. Equating the two and using this incident to argue against the libertarian viewpoint is intellectually dishonest. This is not an example of a failure of the free market or privately provided services because the services were provided (or not provided) by government in this case. This has nothing to do with privatization.

I recommend reading this article for a better description of this:

http://blog.mises.org/14158/did-the-free-market-burn-down-the-house/

Hitler WAS a socialist* (and a fascist as well, you're correct). The German name of the Nazi Party translates to "National Socialist German Workers' Party". However, he detested communism, which is where most people get the idea that he also hated socialism. Socialism != Communism.

Hmm, apparently Firefox's spellcheck doesn't know that 'Obama' is a word. You'd think they'd update their dictionary.

Source: http://mises.org/daily/1937

Given that the printing press at the FED is in overdrive, it is very likely that the dollar will accelerate its decline in the next few years. Every dollar printed, does not create purchasing power, it simply dilutes the purchasing power of all the existing dollars out there.

Why do you link to BASE but not M1 or M2? M2, in particular, is a better representation of the money supply, and if you look at M2, you'd see that it doesn't look so ridiculous (although there is high growth). BASE is going up very fast to offset the reduction from the non-BASE parts of the money supply...

The FED purposely stopped publishing the M3, so they are hiding much of the non-BASE parts of the money supply.

If you want, go with the True Money Supply as invented by Rothbard, which takes into account demand deposits and avoids double counts that the M3 does. You are right it is not quite as dramatic, but it is still telling. The BASE is what the FED produces essentially, at some point the fractional reserve will kick in and you will see the corresponding inflation of M3 and TMS.

One more thing:

Because as the dollar continues to lose value against gold at roughly 20% in the last 5 years (actually more like 10 years but that is not displayed on that web site), anyone getting 1.75% interest on a CD or 2.5% on a T-bill is an idiot.

Sure, until the gold bubble bursts. A CD or a T-bill has a lot less risk than gold.

They have been talking about the gold bubble since it was at 400, it is not even close to its peak in 1980 at $2000 adjusted for inflation. When people start saying gold can never go down just like they did with houses, that is when I will believe there is a bubble.

Quite to the contrary, T-bill are artificially expensive, propped up by a FED printing money to buy them, and chinese and japanese governments obsessed with buying them. But our deficit and obligations are just as bad or worse than Greece's. You want a bubble? we are living it, the T-bill bubble is the mother of all bubbles. Once it bursts, expect higher taxes (government can not borrow, so it must confiscate) and high inflation (government can not borrow, so it must print money). This incidentally is very bullish for gold.

Get this book if you want an entry level on how the economy works.

Buying from a vending machine is great for people like me. Getting gold from a dealer is a pain, they have high premiums, and you have to pay for shipping. A vending machine would hopefully eliminate some of the premium being paid for shipping and handling, as well as allow me to go locally.

The Forbes article that first (AFAIK) broke the story at a national level. Not a happy-day sort of read.

President Obama's Father's Socialism

An article on Cloward-Piven Strategy

Another Cloward-Piven article

Those ought to explain why he could easily send money from the government to anywhere without caring about the plight of the people he's sending money to: He wants to weaken America. The fastest way to do that is to weaken our economy further by spending massive amounts of what we don't have to spend and by getting massive amounts of people to believe they are Entitled to "free money".

Remember - as intelligent and nice as President Obama is, he drew his dreams and values from his father. While that's commendable, his father regarded America as a country whose wealth was drawn from the rest of the world' poor. President Obama's father also felt it was appropriate to drain America's wealth so it could be redistributed entirely to the poor - not just a "little equalization".

And those dreams and thoughts are what drive our President.

Full Disclosure - I didn't vote for him, and I'm an Independent.

No, we need IP laws and the lack of them will bring innovation to a standstill.

You have it all wrong: for example James Watt brought the development of the steam machine to a standstill using his patents, and only after these patents expired, innovation could continue:

Once Watt's patents were secured and production started, a substantial portion of his energy was devoted to fending off rival inventors. In 1782, Watt secured an additional patent, made "necessary in consequence of ... having been so unfairly anticipated, by [Matthew] Wasborough in the crank motion"... . More dramatically, in the 1790s, when the superior Hornblower engine was put into production, Boulton and Watt went after him with the full force of the legal system.

...

After the expiration of Watt's patents, not only was there an explosion in the production and efficiency of engines, but steam power came into its own as the driving force of the Industrial Revolution. Over a thirty year period steam engines were modified and improved as crucial innovations such as the steam train, the steamboat and the steam jenny came into wide usage. The key innovation was the high-pressure steam engine — development of which had been blocked by Watt's strategic use of his patent. Many new improvements to the steam engine, such as those of William Bull, Richard Trevithick, and Arthur Woolf, became available by 1804: although developed earlier these innovations were kept idle until the Boulton and Watt patent expired. None of these innovators wished to incur the same fate as Jonathan Hornblower.

Both the Nazis and Japanese were preoccupied with economic issues; specifically the acquistion of raw materials such as oil and metals. The economic blockade of Germany in WW 1 had severe effects on both the military and the civilian population. The German and Japanese military plans were focussed on the control and exploitation of oil resources - among other things, this was a major motivation of the German military campaigns in the southern part of the front with the Soviet Union. Of course, when you believe that your people are superior to others, it is very easy to rationalize wars of aggression aimed at seizing economic assets. This observation certainly applies to both the German and Japanese regimes of the time. It is instructive to read the "The Vampire Economy" a description of the Nazi efforts to create the basis of a war economy prior to the actual outbreak of hostilities ( http://mises.org/books/vampireeconomy.pdf ).

Except the US has something called the Constitution, which limits the range on which people can choose, and the defense of real property is an end on itself, and therefore can't be repelled, while IP is merely a mechanism to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", and not a right on itself.
Therefore, if we can democratically agree that IP laws aren't "promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts" (the real purpose), we can ban them.

And I'm glad you talk about the right to real property, because that right is violated by intellectual property laws.

Since someone will no doubt reply asking for a citation, here is an article which describes in some detail how patents on early steam engines delayed the industrial revolution in Britain until after they had expired.

Replying to you not from disagreement but as an opportunity to bring up another source with a bit of a different point of view.

Others have suggested that the very existence of patents is what allowed artisans to start making money on ideas instead of property (which was owned by the aristocrats). Patents, in this scenario, actually allowed for the Industrial Revolution to happen. The history of how the concepts of patents and the legal language around them is interesting indeed and even in the early years had characters who also tried to abuse the system.

Personally, I believe they are necessary to reward inventors. Many of the problems are related to how you define an invention, not patents on their own (IMHO). Of course, nothing is without problems, but for constructed "things" patents work quite well and seam a good balanced of time of ownership with publication for the common good.

Sorry no link, but "The Most Powerful Idea in the World" by William Rosen discusses how patents are one of many parts that enabled the Industrial Revolution as he also explores the history of the steam engine.

Since someone will no doubt reply asking for a citation, here is an article which describes in some detail how patents on early steam engines delayed the industrial revolution in Britain until after they had expired. It also describes how the James Watt attempted to get patent terms extended several times. He did get the original patent term extended to over 30 years, and tried to get them extended even longer. Sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?

The problem isn't exactly "running out of money"; banks are generally happy to conjure up more. The problem is that Federal Reserve Notes are history's greatest Ponzi scheme, and the gig is just about up.

Soldiers as well as defense contractors like to be paid in something of worth, preferably that can be carried without a wheelbarrow. And without them, who is going to loot whom?

Nice try, but it does not follow that because some activity (like building roads) is done by government today, that it was always so, or that there is no other way for it to happen. Read and learn: A Future of Private Roads and Highways

-jcr

I was under the impression that monetary contraction is widely regarded as one of the factors that contributed to the Great Depression, and that Roosevelt's New Deal (which certainly increased government spending), as the Wikipedia article on the Great Depression so neatly puts it, "either caused or accelerated the recovery".

That's the general wisdom accepted by the mainstream economists who were telling us "don't worry, everything's fine!" right up until the world's economy collapsed.

The fed contracting the money supply (central control) was a huge mistake, and definitely a factor. But the main reason it was a problem was that shop keepers couldn't afford to immediately drop prices, and workers couldn't deal with the inevitable wage cuts. Not to mention that all those bank loans didn't magically deflate at the same time.

If you're really curious, check out Murray Rothbard. There's a link on that page to a PDF of _America's Great Depression_ (really, Slashdot? No <u> tags?). Mainstream economists don't have much respect for the Austrian school, but they're the ones who warned us what was coming. (Full Disclaimer: I haven't found the time to read it yet. It's just one on the subject that my friends keep telling me I absolutely must read Immediately...well, right after Hayek's _The Road to Serfdom_).

Many current economists are saying that the currently biggest threat we face, economically, is deflation.

Those are the mainstream economists again. The ones who are telling us heavy inflation (which they consider a good thing) isn't happening, when one of the biggest risks we're really running (according to the Austrians) is hyperinflation. The academic types who sit around on college campuses, pulling new formula out of thin air because, hey, that makes economics look like a hard science. The ones who don't suffer any real consequences when they inevitably blow it.

So it would seem to me that if there is anything we should do to control economic development at this point, it is actually increasing the amount of money in circulation,

As I understand it, we've pretty much doubled it in the past year. Admittedly, the different ways economists have of describing how much money's in circulation make my head spin.

and even printing more money is currently a viable way of doing that.

I think that probably depends on your definition of viable. From many points of view, that's pretty much the definition of "inflation."

The good news is that it looks like we will all soon know how different policies work out: as far as I can tell, current US policy is to keep stimulating the economy by pumping money into it, whereas many countries in the European Union are introducing budget cuts to reduce government debt. We'll see how these opposite policies effect their respective economies.

That really is the way to find out. Except that the EU's tied all their wagons together. Ours is the biggest one, leading the train. If any of us go off the cliff, we're pretty much all going.

Then again, economics really isn't a hard science (no matter what most economists try to pretend). So we should get analysts from all the different schools who'll look back after the dust settles and rationalize whatever happens in a way that "proves" they were right all along.

<shrug> (For anyone who's curious about other "alternative" economists who have a history of making correct predictions, check out Gary North. He's a bit of a religious nut, but he has an excellent track record).

And free market doesn't "stand for" anything, it's simply an economic optimization tool society uses to benefit its members, and couldn't exist without a strong state enforcing rules for its participants.

This is of course an opinion, and not a fact.

but I guess free market fundamentalists aren't any better than other fundamentalists in learning from observation, so now our economy is in the gutter too.

First of all, how could you be so naive to think that what we currently have -- or did have, under anti-free-market GWB and all of his predecessors, liberal and "conservative" -- here in the USA is a "free market"? You are placing blame on a system that does not exist. The MSM, GOP, and Dems like to throw the term around as if what we have or did have was a "free market" (so they can shift the blame away from themselves, of course... "see, see what the evil free market did? now let us have more control so we can fix the problem!") but that's completely false.

Secondly, if you had actually been paying attention to the people who actually advocate a truly free market and who subscribe to the Austrian "School" of economic thought, then you wouldn't have made such a dumb statement, as for years prior to the downfall, these people, people like Peter Schiff (just to name one of many, many others) were warning that the government's interventionist policies were creating a bubble that would eventually lead to a crash.

Check out Mises.org for more information regarding truly free market economics.

From http://mises.org/daily/3801

The lawyer then went on,
These very simpIe guidelines
You can rely upon:
You're gouging on your prices if
You charge more than the rest.
But it's unfair competition
If you think you can charge less.

A second point that we would make
To help avoid confusion:
Don't try to charge the same amount:
That would be collusion!
You must compete. But not too much,
For if you do, you see,
Then the market would be yours
And that's monopoly!"

Africa is full of statist nations. If you are talking about Somalia, it's really only bad for outsiders, and when Ethiopia or the UN sends in strongmen to attempt to usurp local power.

http://mises.org/daily/2066

How can there possibly be "not enough money"?!? If there is a shortage of money, that means that prices are too low, causing a surplus of goods i.e. a shortage of money. And currently, there is no such situation. There is no such thing as "[not] enough money". Everyone wants more money. It is also true that any amount of money works: the number on the money is meaningless. The money fairy could wave the money wand and double all the numbers on money overnight, and nothing would change, except the exchange ratios/prices would double. When problems happen is when you inflate the money supply, by introducing money into one sector, especially investment banking, loans, etc - this distorts demand, distorts production, and distorts supply of one sector at the expense of another. If trillions of dollars were infused into the economy then by definition inflation has already happened. If prices go up or not is irrelevant -- Can you think why this might be? Hint: It has to do with opportunity cost.

To understand what I mean by distorting capital structures, please read my original link. Interest rates are the price of time, it is how much people are willing to pay for things now as opposed to things later. I.e. I am willing to pay 5%/year more to get a car now, rather than saving my money and getting a car 8 years from now. When you change these interest rates, you engage in price fixing (since a price is an exchange ratio, this includes interest rates), and what does basic economics teach about price fixing? What effects does it cause? You can answer that I think.

Wow you actually fell for that? We know know the stimulus wasn't too small because of common sense logic. Every dollar that government spends must necessarily take away from other productive capacity - every dollar government spends must necessarily be taxes, either directly, through inflation, or through borrowing (borrowing takes away from private investment, where else does the money come from?). Also consider that the boom we were in wasn't a good thing, it was unsustainable and distorting capital structures. The problem isn't that we aren't spending enough currently, it is that were were spending too much previously (for instance, warmongering, a 1% Fed Funds rate for years following 2001, a form of price fixing... Econ 101, what does price fixing cause?). The fix is a recession, where we pay off debts, where prices drop back down to to sane levels, and where we repair our capital structure to something more in line with what the public wants and less in line of what the government wants (like housing for everyone that Bush, Barney Frank, and Chris Dodd alike all wanted so badly).

Now before you mindlessly react by saying "Algorithms cannot be patented", read this.

How about: "Algorithms should not be patentable". Actually, even "normal" patents may hurt innovation if the patent holder decides that fending off rival inventors is more important then innovating by himself.

I read a great book called "The Discovery of Freedom" by Rose Wilder Lane (Little House on the Prairie). It examines the attempts at freedom through history. The First was the Moses leading the Jews to Freedom and the founding of Israel. The second was Mohammed who again wrestled control away from the churches/government and taught people to be free which lead to a spectacular civilization that lasted though the European Dark Ages. Ever wonder why the Renaissance happened in Italy and not Britain? Because they were very close and interacted with the Muslim civilization. The third was the founding of the US. It looks like our attempt at freedom will not last as long as the Muslims. It is only with freedom and liberty does civilization thrive. This book shows that freedom is not the norm. The norm is dictators, theocracy, and poverty. This looks like where we are headed. It seems people get comfortable with the luxuries freedom provides and they forget how fragile it is. People think there will always be computers and movies but history shows that once people abandon freedom and reason it is easy to slip back into the normal state of humanity which is abject poverty. http://mises.org/books/discovery.pdf

Are you saying no one should own anything?

Of course not, but note that copyright monopolies are formally incompatible with physical property law. If you're in favour of copyright monopolies, you're against physical property ownership. You may not realise it. You may refuse to acknowledge it. But it's true. Anyone who supports copyright monopolies is not a free-market capitalist.

http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf

The ONLY reason healthcare costs are spiraling out of control is because we have now had more than 100 years of practicing fascism in the field.

Read this before modding me troll.

science has... enumerated and identified... more than 13,600 diagnoses — 13,600 different ways our bodies can fail. And for each one we've discovered beneficial remedies... But those remedies now include more than six thousand drugs and four thousand medical and surgical procedures.

It's too bad that Western medicine doesn't have a comprehensive guiding philosophy. Imagine if they taught principles like these in M.D. schools:

• The body must be properly nourished, and must be able to assimilate nutrients from food and the environment.
• The body must be able to evacuate waste products from the system. The organs of elimination are the skin, the lungs, the kidneys/bladder, and the large intestine/colon. If any of these systems are compromised, problems will result.
• The body's structure must support the functionality of the body's organ systems.
• The activities of mind have a major influence on the body's state.
• The body has electrical properties which must be balanced for optimal health

Western medicine plays whac-a-mole with the body's symptoms - a pill for high blood pressure, a pill for acid reflux, a pill for high cholesterol, ad infinitum - while health practitioners guided by superior philosophies (there are many) try to distill down to the fundamental reasons for a given body's dysfunction.

The brand of medicine represented by this commencement address is defective because medical education was hijacked by the Carnegie Foundation (who represented the drug trusts). My favorite articles on this bit of history are 100 Years of Medical Robbery and the followup, Real Medical Freedom. "How The Cost-Plus System Evolved" (pt 1, pt 2, pt 3) is also well-written.

US Healthcare needs guiding principles: nothing more, nothing less.

science has... enumerated and identified... more than 13,600 diagnoses — 13,600 different ways our bodies can fail. And for each one we've discovered beneficial remedies... But those remedies now include more than six thousand drugs and four thousand medical and surgical procedures.

It's too bad that Western medicine doesn't have a comprehensive guiding philosophy. Imagine if they taught principles like these in M.D. schools:

• The body must be properly nourished, and must be able to assimilate nutrients from food and the environment.
• The body must be able to evacuate waste products from the system. The organs of elimination are the skin, the lungs, the kidneys/bladder, and the large intestine/colon. If any of these systems are compromised, problems will result.
• The body's structure must support the functionality of the body's organ systems.
• The activities of mind have a major influence on the body's state.
• The body has electrical properties which must be balanced for optimal health

Western medicine plays whac-a-mole with the body's symptoms - a pill for high blood pressure, a pill for acid reflux, a pill for high cholesterol, ad infinitum - while health practitioners guided by superior philosophies (there are many) try to distill down to the fundamental reasons for a given body's dysfunction.

The brand of medicine represented by this commencement address is defective because medical education was hijacked by the Carnegie Foundation (who represented the drug trusts). My favorite articles on this bit of history are 100 Years of Medical Robbery and the followup, Real Medical Freedom. "How The Cost-Plus System Evolved" (pt 1, pt 2, pt 3) is also well-written.

US Healthcare needs guiding principles: nothing more, nothing less.

The government has (in a libertarian fashion) outsourced this function to a consortium of twelve private banks called Federal Reserve

What? You must be really mistaken about libertarianism. The very existence of the Fed is completely un-libertarian. I suggest you read Murray Rothbard's What Has Government Done To Our Money? or The Case Against the Fed.

The government has (in a libertarian fashion) outsourced this function to a consortium of twelve private banks called Federal Reserve

What? You must be really mistaken about libertarianism. The very existence of the Fed is completely un-libertarian. I suggest you read Murray Rothbard's What Has Government Done To Our Money? or The Case Against the Fed.

The basic assumption is that patents encourage innovation. I've met a couple of inventors. They weren't primarily motivated by getting a patent. They just wanted to see if it, whatever it is, would work. Inventors don't like doing patent searches, much less paying someone else to do them. They like to tinker.

I suppose someday, we'll read in the news that patents have a great social cost than benefit.

There are plenty of midwives still practicing, and for much less than the cost of a hospital.

Consider that medical care in this country has been marching down the road to fascism for a hundred years, and we are nearing the end point where the entire system falls apart.

The building of skyscrapers is a great tool to predict real estate bubbles. When interest rates are artificially low people are able to buy things on credit much cheaper than if the interest rate was at it's natural level. Since most people buy housing based on monthly payment vs what would rent cost the lower rates cause prices to rise quickly. When that happens it looks like land is becoming more expensive so economic calculations can justify building a skyscraper which is a way to pack more area into less land. Recessions/Depressions seem to follow record setting skyscrapers. Empire State/ Chrysler building finished in the 1930's. World Trade Center/Sears tower 1970's Dubai's many towers/ Shanghai Towers 2000's. http://mises.org/daily/3038

The first person broadcasting on a specific frequency in a specific area has the right to do so. Anybody who comes after that and interferes has to adjust the frequency they broadcast on or stop broadcasting.

There would have to be court actions to resolve disputes

I know this is slashdot but if you had read the article I linked to you would have read where it said the courts were resolving the issue:
"For when interference on the same channel began to occur, the injured party took the airwave aggressors into court, and the courts were beginning to bring order out of the chaos by very successfully applying the common law theory of property rights--in very many ways similar to the libertarian theory--to this new technological area. In short, the courts were beginning to assign property rights in the airwaves to their 'homesteading' users."

If someone were to start broadcasting in an area on a frequency someone else was already broadcasting on the first person was able to sue those who were interfering and win the right to continue while those interfering had to stop.

or an agency could be created to manage the spectrum and license parts of the spectrum to people to radiate, the licensing fees would go towards the cost of managing the spectrum.

So only those with large bank accounts were able to broadcast? There is no need for the artificial limit to who can broadcast. There is no spectrum scarcity, The End of Spectrum Scarcity. There actually was no scarcity when licenses were first required and with improvements in electronics more and more broadcasters were able to broadcast.

• The Case For Liberal Spectrum Licenses: A T Economic Perspective[pdf]
• Questioning the Scarcity of the Spectrum: The Structure of a Spectrum Revolution
• Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922 (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology)
• Optimal Abolition of FCC Spectrum Allocation[pdf]
  "Property Rights for Spectrum Markets"
  "Market allocation of radio spectrum was the policy recommendation of Coase (1959). Yet scholars who rst attempted to formulate the enabling mechanism of property rights in frequencies (Coase, Meckling, and Minasian, 1963; Levin, 1968; DeVany, Eckert, Meyers, O'Hara, and Scott, 1969; Minasian 1975) met with limited success. Experience illuminating how such markets would function was scarce. Today, however, data on spectrum rights regimes abound. One body of evidence comes from the U.S. experience with liberal licenses for cellular networks; another from countries that have adopted more general spectrum property regimes."
• The Wireless Craze, the Unlimited Bandwidth Myth, the Spectrum Auction Faux Pas, and the Punchline to Ronald Coase's "Big Joke": An Essay on Airwave Allocation Policy

The FCC needs to be redefined with a much clearer scope

No, the FCC needs to be abolished. It exists only to keep the mass media the mass media reducing competition. Put another way, it's centralized planning with the attending command and control mechanisms. There is no other reason for it to exist.

Falcon

No, the correct way to do this is to abolish the FCC and allow the airwaves to be homesteaded.

Falcon

So how exactly are spectrum conflicts resolved, the guy with the biggest amp wins(mine goes to 11). There would have to be court actions to resolve disputes, or an agency could be created to manage the spectrum and license parts of the spectrum to people to radiate, the licensing fees would go towards the cost of managing the spectrum. The FCC needs to be redefined with a much clearer scope the ambiguity has lead to a power grab that blew up in their face. The reason FCC vs Comcast was overturned is because the FCC essentially created a law and tried to enforce it anyone with a half a brain can figure out why this is a bad idea. If Net Neutrality is going to happen congress has to write a law.

in fact, any student of economic history knows that corporatism, monopolies, oligopolies are greater threats to capitalism than socialism or communism ever could be

the libertarian naivete that a free market of equals is a natural balance and that governments can only interfere in that is nonsense

Where did you get your education so that you know more about economics than Dr Milton Freidman who won the Nobel Prize in Economics?

the truth is that some players in the free market grow and begin to use their heft to suppress smaller players.

Maybe but that happens in other markets too, such as the mixed economy we have now. The large telecos and cablecos got the way they are not in a free market but because governments gave them monopolies. Nearly every large business got there with government assistance.

the way to fight that is to have a government with strong regulatory powers to enforce equality amongst 800 pound gorillas and tiny players. you want to be taxed to do this

No, the way to end it, the 800lb gorilla beating up the tiny players, is by allowing a free market not by granting monopolies.

you want the "bureaucracy" that does this

Again no, a free market needs no bureaucracy. At it needs are the courts. Before first the Federal Radio Commission then it's replacement the Federal Communications Commission licensed the airwaves courts used common law to allow people to homestead the airwaves.

insomuch as the government is merely a tool of the big time players is the extent which corporate dollars warp and infect and corrupt the government that is supposed to regulate them

That is precisely why the airwaves were licensed. Big broadcasters had trouble with the courts siding with those who started broadcasting on a given frequency in specific areas so they went to congress passing out money to buy congressional votes requiring licensing. They had the money to buy licenses while the neighborhood kids didn't. Oh, boo hoo the broadcasters claimed the airwaves were a scarcity, it wasn't true then and it's even less true today.

in other words, if you are a true believer in capitalism, you will lose your libertarian naivete and insist on a strong regulatory government to keep the marketplace healthy

Again no, it's precisely the opposite. The government created the problems we have today and more government won't solve it. What will solve it is a freer market, no government granted monopolies.

and you will recognize the greatest threat to capitalism is not the government, it is corporations and their corruption OF government

Which is why you want less government not more, the more government the more power corporations have. Say I, or you or someone else, runs a small lawn care and landscaping business in town. An 800lb gorilla comes to town but doesn't want to compeat with the local businesses, what is it going to do? Ah, "we've pay off the local government to require testing and licensing, that will reduce the competition."

Falcon

The only possible recourse (and a far better one I think) would be perusing them for fraud: They are offering Internet access, which implies unfiltered access, where packets are not modified by the ISP (but they may be prioritized or even dropped for network reasons, that's how IP and TCP was engineered).

No, another recourse is to have competition. Because of the limits on how many cables or fiber can be laid down in an area, the only way to have competition in land-line services is by separating ownership of the infrastructure from the services it can deliver. The owner of the infrastructure would have to allow any and all of those who wanted to provide a service to do so as long as they have the capability. Now, wireless doesn't have those problems. Discounting licensing of the airwaves, which I personally believe should be stopped and instead allow people to homestead radio/TV frequencies, any number of people or organizations could setup transceivers for wireless broadband.

Falcon

The correct way to do this is to give the FCC the authority

No, the correct way to do this is to abolish the FCC and allow the airwaves to be homesteaded.

Falcon

Which would make it satire rather than parody.

And so, you would support considering such political mockery intellectual property theft? I'd say, GP found an excellent example of why political speech should be exempt from all free speech restrictions — including copyright claims.

(Ironically, the author of the (in)famous "Hope" poster is a thief (and a liar) himself :-)

True but you can't get the same impact.
The best example I could find are these 2:

http://mises.org/images4/ObamaProgress.jpg
http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/7/2008/05/340x_obama-progress-poster.jpg

Could the message be conveyed as simply and as clearly and achieve the same resonance otherwise?

this:
http://mises.org/images4/ObamaProgress.jpg

Which is certainly a derivative of this:
http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/7/2008/05/340x_obama-progress-poster.jpg

and would not be protected because it's about the subject of the original rather than the original.

It certainly carries a very valid message.

That just strikes me as stifling since it effectively blocks the creation of satires which resonate with or which people associate with what you want to respond to.

It's a lot easier to set up a wireless internet base station than you might think.

I did say that's where wireless comes in, that it's easy to "erect tower transceivers and offer wireless access." To go on I also said "That is they could if the FCC didn't interfere." Fact is is the airwaves are licensed because large broadcasters wanted to limit their competition. Before the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), which became the FCC, started licensing radio frequencies people were allowed to homestead the airwaves. Courts even were ruling the first person to broadcast on specific frequencies in specific areas had the right to broadcast on that frequency without interference, ie if someone else came along and started to broadcast and interfered with someone who already was broadcasting they had to stop the interference.

In short, it costs a ridiculous amount of money to bring bandwidth to consumers that are only going to be paying $30/m or $60/m. It's surprisingly hard to make ends meet.

That is the primary reason you don't see a lot more competition.

No, the reason you don't see competition is because the incumbents were given monopolies. Even if I had a trillion dollars I could not just go and lay copper or fiber anywhere I wanted, I do not have the ability to use the Right of Way or easement.

Falcon

Read this.

I can see ambiguous situations though where many people are collectively guilty through a chain of events that led unknowingly to harm. In that situation the collective/corporation is to blame for the damage and not the individuals.

I agree that such situations may exist. Unforeseeable and accidental harm is a tricky subject. However, this applies equally well to issues of diffuse responsibility outside of any formal organization, so I don't see it as a particular problem of corporations. The existence of a formal organization may make it easier to define the group responsible, but then again it may simply be misleading: there could be members who did not contribute to the harm, or there could be others outside the organization who did contribute.

Does intent to harm matter at all?

When harm is done, there are two kinds of consequences to consider: restitution and retribution.

Restitution applies regardless of intent; even in the case of purest accident, if you harm someone you must "make them whole". In my opinion, if one refuses to make full restitution then the remaining harm should be considered deliberate, regardless of any previous intent.

Retribution only applies in cases of deliberate harm, and is based on the principle of estoppel: if one person harms another deliberately and without proportional provocation then their actions speak for themselves, preventing them from arguing that this harm was right then but wrong now. If what they did is right—according to them, since this is properly a subjective matterthen doing the same to them in punishment must also be right; if they instead argue that what they did is wrong then they admit that they deserve punishment. If they attack universality by arguing that right and wrong differ from person to person, or place to place, or time to time, then their opponent can make an identical argument to justify their punishment. In short, once cannot claim protection from a particular action after denying said protection to others. (See Punishment and Proportionality: The Estoppel Approach by N. Stephen Kinsella for a more complete treatment of this position.)

All of this hinges on the presence of intent, however: one cannot justify a deliberate response to accidental harm on the basis that the response is equivalent to the original act, as the circumstances differ. Provided restitution is made, unintentional harm does not invite retribution.

http://blog.mises.org/7257/a-world-without-nasa/

Just to add to what zogger said I would suggest reading about the Forgotten Depression of 1920 http://mises.org/daily/3788. And how America got out of a very similar problem before.

If you have people voting from their graves, you might have a bigger problem then where the district line is drawn?

or am i missing something?

Yes in Chicago, many dead people are registered and vote "Mayor Daley of Chicago "found" tens of thousands of dead people to "vote" for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election," .

But if it helps for you to have a "medical establishment" bogeyman out there...

I think this point (which was brought up several times in this post) is the core of the matter.

Here is an article about how the Medical Establishment was formed: 100 years of Medical Robery

The followup article is also very good: Real Medical Freedom

Wikipedia's article on the Flexner Report is also helpful, particularly the section on the report's consequences. Note that almost all small medical schools that were not affiliated with a university closed in the early 20th century. From the article: *The Report is now remembered because it succeeded in creating a single model of medical education, characterized by a philosophy that has largely survived to the present day" (emphasis added).

To summarize, the only way to become a Medical Doctor is to go to one of the Medical Cartel's medical schools. The Cartel teaches its doctors to think and act in a certain way - not because it's the most effective way to help patients, but because they need salesmen to push the use of their products (patent drugs, patented medical equipment, etc).

A few doctors break out of the mold. For example, Andrew Weil, M.D., has some passages in Spontaneous Healing about the weakness of the training he received at Harvard Medical School. I'm not a big fan of Dr. Weil's books/etc, but he does have some good points.

HTH, HAND.

But if it helps for you to have a "medical establishment" bogeyman out there...

I think this point (which was brought up several times in this post) is the core of the matter.

Here is an article about how the Medical Establishment was formed: 100 years of Medical Robery

The followup article is also very good: Real Medical Freedom

Wikipedia's article on the Flexner Report is also helpful, particularly the section on the report's consequences. Note that almost all small medical schools that were not affiliated with a university closed in the early 20th century. From the article: *The Report is now remembered because it succeeded in creating a single model of medical education, characterized by a philosophy that has largely survived to the present day" (emphasis added).

To summarize, the only way to become a Medical Doctor is to go to one of the Medical Cartel's medical schools. The Cartel teaches its doctors to think and act in a certain way - not because it's the most effective way to help patients, but because they need salesmen to push the use of their products (patent drugs, patented medical equipment, etc).

A few doctors break out of the mold. For example, Andrew Weil, M.D., has some passages in Spontaneous Healing about the weakness of the training he received at Harvard Medical School. I'm not a big fan of Dr. Weil's books/etc, but he does have some good points.

HTH, HAND.

yep, very fitting story for one of today's Mises.org articles dealing with that very subject: "Contra Watermelons"

The problem is the lack of doctors.

This was the intended result of actions taken by the medical-industrial complex.

One consequence of the Flexner Report (1910) was the closure of most "substandard" medical schools. State medical boards were established in the late 1800's, and before long the medical monopoly shut down any medial school that wasn't affiliated with a university.

By 1965 there was much hand-wringing about a doctor shortage.

Today the problem with medicine is not one of insurance, but lack of imagination. My disabled father-in-law came to visit recently, and brought a bag of pills with him. I believe he'd be better off with some proper nutrition (no soda, no white bread, no candy, more vegetables, more protein, etc) than drugs to manage the condition, but his doctors don't know any better because they were indoctrinated in a pharmaceutical-based approach to medicine.

These two articles should be required reading for anyone who wants to discuss health care today:

100 years of Medical Robery
Real Medical Freedom

There are options for achieving better results, but the debate doesn't talk about them.

The problem is the lack of doctors.

This was the intended result of actions taken by the medical-industrial complex.

One consequence of the Flexner Report (1910) was the closure of most "substandard" medical schools. State medical boards were established in the late 1800's, and before long the medical monopoly shut down any medial school that wasn't affiliated with a university.

By 1965 there was much hand-wringing about a doctor shortage.

Today the problem with medicine is not one of insurance, but lack of imagination. My disabled father-in-law came to visit recently, and brought a bag of pills with him. I believe he'd be better off with some proper nutrition (no soda, no white bread, no candy, more vegetables, more protein, etc) than drugs to manage the condition, but his doctors don't know any better because they were indoctrinated in a pharmaceutical-based approach to medicine.

These two articles should be required reading for anyone who wants to discuss health care today:

100 years of Medical Robery
Real Medical Freedom

There are options for achieving better results, but the debate doesn't talk about them.