Domain: paulbirch.net
Stories and comments across the archive that link to paulbirch.net.
Comments · 7
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Re:In other news
At risk of sounding too reductionist, they're more similar than you might think.
Speech is expression of information.
Money is expression of information. (scroll to part 3) -
Re:I bid $10 for "eat out of a dumpster".
An indifference vote is a technique I have invented for making decisions in which many persons have a legitimate interest. -- Paul Birch
Your "vote" would be invalid. Do you really think that the other people in the system would pay you $10 to not eat out of a dumpster? The entire system is really set up around the assumption that participants have a legitimate interest in the result of the vote. Your "gaming the system" is just you not really having an interest in the result, so the assumptions are broken.
In other words, you can go eat out of the dumpster, we're going to Chili's (or whatever). :) -
I think this has a nameThat sounds remarkably similar to the indifference vote that Paul Birch likes to promote. You bid for your preferred option until the money you allocated toward it would make you indifferent, and if you don't get your way, you are paid that much (instead of paying that much). If you do get your way, you pay your bid. I makes you, in essence, indifferent to the outcome. His example:
Let's try a simple example.
... You and your friends want to go to a restaurant. But which one? The Peking Duck or the Spaghetti Italiano? Charles prefers Chinese, but you're a bit strapped for cash and Italian's cheaper. You bid 50p. Charles goes 60p. The girls join in. Amy is on a diet and bids 50p for the Duck, but Beth is always hungry and bids 70p for the Spaghetti; the score is now £1.20 for Italian, £1.10 for Chinese. Amy looks at Charles, who goes up 11p to 71p. You decide to bid another 2p. Charles shakes his head. Amy reluctantly adds another 2p for Chinese herself. The final bids are £1.22 for Italian, £1.23 for Chinese. So off you all trot to the Peking Duck. Amy and Charles fork out 52p and 71p respectively; Beth gets 70p and you get 52p. Amy and Charles get the fancier but less fattening fare they wanted; you get enough money to cover the higher prices, and Beth gets enough for a larger helping. The waitress gets the penny left over. -
Related
Paul Birch has published (in the Journal of the British interplanetary Society) a way to "quickly" terraform all of Mars quickly. (Don't get too mad at me if that article has long since become obsolete.)
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Re:Where are those anti-trust advocates now?
A market economy where the government's only function is to protect the individual rights of its citizen and nothing else is the best form of governance. This is the only way to bring about the greatest innovations, in the shortest time. This brings about fastest progress and hence benefits all the members of such a society the most.
In other words, Anarcho-Capitalism. If it's such a great idea, why not just shout it out in the first place? Possibly because anarcho-capitalism has already been refuted?
A democracy neither ensures that citizen are given only individual rights, nor that they are ensured. Also democracies allow inferior candidates to become presidents. And even worse, allows them to make spurious laws, and even more spurious laws setting back Amreican and human progress by many years.
Ironically, I'm 99.9% certain that you wrote this statement from a democratically governed state, and 95% sure that it's the United States. In the links you cherry-picked, you apparently you choose to willfully ignore the Constitutional amendments (Bill of Rights, 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, and the 19th Amendments) that expanded the rights of United States residents (not just citizens) to levels unprecidented in human history. Without child labor laws, you may not have had the opportunity to pick up the education and time to write your arguments. Without the laws enacted after the great depression
You are absolutely right that democracy does sometime depress individual rights and choices, nor does it alway ensure indvidiual rights, and it allows people to make bad laws -- because it all involved human people making decisions, and humans will make mistakes. Yet Anarcho capitalism gives people even *more* freedom to make mistakes, and relies even more heavily on individual choices on governance. Your implicitly assume that under Anarcho-Capitalism everyone will magically make the correct decisions, yet you undercut that very argument by showing how dumb people can be.
Wrong. In a market economy there can never be a monopoly "by definition". There can only be very very good competitors who have deservedly got a very high proportion of market
Okay, time for a mirror argument: "Wrong. In an unfettered market economy, monopolies inevitably occur. Furthermore, since being mean, unethical, and a cheater makes a market entity more efficient, there can only be mean, unethical competitors who have lied, cheated and stolen to undiservedly get and maintain a very high proportion of the market."
Do you think if Microsoft prices its Windows software at 2000$, that any customer would still not get Ubuntu on their machines?
Uh, yes. Have you been to your local Fry's/Best Buy/Circuit City lately? Microsoft office currently retails for ~$350.00, and Windows XP Professional costs ~$200.00. That's no $2000, but $500.00 is significantly more than what Ubuntu's retail price is (free). I have yet to see a mass migration to Ubuntu, so I fail to see where you are making a significant argument.
Furthermore, I reject your implicit assumption that all markets behave like the software market (low initial resources and capital required). There are numerous markets (water, electricity) that lend themselves to natural monopolies. ...Or should we rather give the sprinters (even if there is only one) to run full steam ahead towards the ribbon, and let other people who are cannot compete in sprinting with Olympic sprinters, to do whatever they can do best.
Absolutely. Which is why we don't have a rule to allow the person who wins the shot-put event to get a head-start in the 100-meter dash. Through bundling and other market advantages monopolies gain a similar unfair advantage that ultimately stymies comp -
Terraforming Venus quickly
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Terraforming Venus quickly