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There needs to be a tax on network effects to replace taxes on economic activity.

Libertarians need to think more deeply here. The state of nature is one in which a natural person has de facto rights to fight for his survival — which includes not just his own personal survival but the right to sire and raise children to equally viable adulthood. When I use the word “fight” I mean it: Animals will fight for territorial access for the lives of themselves and their progeny. The Austrian and Lockean schools fail to recognize the situation which arises in nature when an animal is without the means of intergenerational sustenance, and the necessity of aggression in some of those situations. Civilization attempts to ignore this by proclaiming “property rights” as “natural” against “aggression”. This foolishness at the heart of these schools of thought renders them forever vulnerable to collectivists. The way out is trivially obvious: Follow Lysander Spooner’s definition of legitimate government as a mutual insurance company into which men voluntarily invest their natural rights in exchange for shares in and dividends from the company. The premiums paid for property rights take the place of taxes. The dividends (sometimes called "universal basic income" or "citizen's dividends") neutralize collectivism's bureaucratically controlled social welfare. The violation of this simple and obvious paleolibertarian construct sacrifices the bedrock principle of liberty upon which civilization is founded for the high purpose of becoming politically impotent against collectivists. Just look at the Presidental campaigns of Ron Paul and his son Rand.

As for socialists, all they need to do is find out who is responsible for ignoring Martin Luther King Jr’s final advice which was quite congruent with this paleolibertarian notion of natural rights investment being compensated by a race-blind dividend, rather than racial preferences such as affirmative action:

Socialists need to find out who is responsible for ignoring MLK’s advice, given just before his assassination, as a part of his "Poor People's Campaign" that attempted to be inclusive of the white working class. Socialists need to find out who -- and do whatever it takes to neutralize their power — and I mean whatever it takes.

I’d start with the Southern Poverty Law Center as they were an offshoot of the "Poor People's Campaign" and were, after MLK's demise, instrumental in diverting policy away from MLK's race-neutral basic income, and toward waging the war on the white working class's reaction to affirmative action's de facto race-based tax on that demographic group. If Sanders was serious about defeating Trump, he'd take this advice to heart and do it NOW.

An immediate transition to a paleolibertarian mutual insurance company would be too big a leap for existing institutions. An intermediate step would be to replace taxes on economic activity with a tax on the liquidation value of net assets owned by natural persons. This would take the place of Spooner's property insurance premium. By being on "liquidation value", this tax would fall most heavily on network effect profits and would provide the revenue for the unconditional basic income (as the proxy for the dividend payment to members of the mutual insurance company).

This would, by the way, also resolve the old conflict between the gold standard thesis and the central bank fiat antithesis, with a new monetary synthesis.

The liquidation value of legally recognized assets would provide the backing for the money supply. This provides all the counter-cyclical monetary control needed, and can get rid of much if not most of the government's bureaucracies (including much of the military if you follow the Swiss model of national security).

My suggestion for a transition policy, which I set forth in a 1992 paper titled "A Net Asset Tax Based On The Net Present Value Calculation and Market Democracy" was to cease taxing economic activity and, instead, tax net assets beyond bankruptcy protection of home and tools of the trade, and use the funds to pay out an unconditional basic income aka "citizen's dividend", thereby doing away with most of the present functions of government including not only the welfare state but also the need for burdensome regulatory agencies (that are subject to capture). Part of the problem here, of course, is the notion of "citizen" vs "non-citizen", but that is a far lesser problem than massive unemployment and hyper-centralization of net assets.

Quoting from that paper:

The government should tax net assets, in excess of levels typically protected under personal bankruptcy, at a rate equal to the rate of interest on the national debt, thereby eliminating other forms of taxation. Creator-owned intellectual property should be exempt.

...

With the exception of basic functions of government and the pay down of debt, the government budget should be dispersed to citizens as cash, rather than being spent in government programs or even limited in the form of vouchers. This is "market democracy" in which the citizens and their markets, rather than central planning and politics, influence the selection of goods and services to be capitalized and provided.

The subsidies, tax breaks, etc that you're talking about? That's in the US. This is for the entire EU. But if you want to put it in US terms, maybe you should also recognize tax subisides given for oil exploration, oil logistics (keystone pipeline XL anyone?), public health concerns from smog and carbon monoxide, military protection of oil and liquified natural gas trade routes, military campaign to protect oil pipelines (Georgia most recently), cleanup efforts when some idiot decides it's a good idea to drill somewhere that no submersibles can reach, etc. In fact, the actual price of a gallon of oil in the US is somewhere in the range of $16 when all ancillary costs are factored in.

The welfare state should be replaced by just sending out the same amount to each adult citizen' bank account each month.

So, if those two can agree the solution to poverty what's the hold up?

Conservatives hate this because they want to be able to complain about how unfair "taxes" -- which they are if they tax economic activities -- while receiving, for free, the primary service of government.

Liberals hate this because it starts to treat government as a service business and unleashes true paleo-libertarian economics such as that promoted by Henry George and Martin Luther King Jr in his last book (the one that got him assassinated) "Where Do We Go From Here?" because what the paleo-libertarians (and Dr. King) recommend is to treat citizens as owners of the business that maintains the infrastructure of property rights by paying out citizens dividends rather than attempting to deliver social goods through bureaucratic management. Liberals serve the bureaucratic management class -- not the people -- so they oppose this even though their "saint" MLK supports it.

BTW: I find it somewhat interesting, although not too surprising, that /. isn't talking about the Swiss referendum on the unconditional basic income -- which is essentially the citizen's dividend.

Actually there is very little evidence that businesses choose location based on taxes.

Wow, from the "I am closing my eyes to anything I don't like" department. Use Google, your eyes will be opened.

If you want to focus on New York, this is interesting.

You seem to not have read the part of my post where I mention the subsidies, but your point is valid. We can then take the true cost of the electric car and compare it to the true cost of the gas car. This study found the total costs borne by both consumer and taxpayer for every gallon of gasoline burned to be $15.14 in 2007 (if you don't follow the link, they include medical, environmental, and military costs as well). A 2012 study and a 2011 study both found the total cost of dirty coal-fired electricity to be less than 9 cents per kilowatt hour.

Now take your average new compact gasoline car at 28 mpg, and a Nissan LEAF which gets about 3.6 mi/kWh. To go 1000 miles on gas, you burn 35.7 gallons, which equals $540.71 in total societal costs. Now to go those same 1000 miles in the LEAF, on 277.8 kWh of electricity, it costs society $25. The electric car costs just 4.6% of an equivalent gas car when all these factors are taken into account. Over a 100,000 mile life span, the electric car saves $51,571, more than five times the typical production subsidy. The conclusion, then, is that the taxpayer gets an incredible return on investment for electric vehicle subsidies.

If you can find numbers that contradict mine, please post them. I could not find any concrete facts on sites with opposing biases, so I must assume they have motivations other than scientific accuracy.

Nonsense. Economic power is equivalent to political power. Therefore, in order to eliminate concentrated political power we also have to eliminate concentrated economic power. Ergo, libertarian socialism.

Any variety of capitalism is not anarchistic, because in the absence of state power (and for that matter, the presence too) the wealthy elite form a de facto government with no input from the people. My theoretical freedom to do whatever I want doesn't matter a bit if I've had to sell my soul to the company store just to stay alive.

However, I for one would be interested to find out what the true cost of a gallon of gasoline is.

Someone has apparently done some research [1] on this topic. Apparently simply by removing the subsidies for the oil companies and other un-counted costs, the true cost goes up to something like $15/gallon.

[1] http://www.progress.org/gasoline.htm

Good points, and I hope you are right. :-) Still, as in that later link I added in a reply, apathy is a big issue too, that you indirectly raise:
    "Ignorance, Apathy, and Greed"
    http://www.progress.org/fold21.htm
"So, greed, apathy, and ignorance are all related. Greed depends on the absence of sympathy, and it benefits from ignorance about a social problem. Apathy can be reduced if there is less ignorance and less greed. Ignorance is reinforced by apathy, since apathetic folks don't care to obtain the knowledge which would reduce their apathy. Greed exploits the ignorance of the majority who do not have sufficient sympathy to counter the greedy faction. "

And there are also larger "herd" social dynamics of systems, as social pendulums swing back and forth.

But even if you are right, the system still won't work given apathy, ignorance, and greed unless some committed people are out there doing good-for-most-everyone stuff. From:
    "What Social Science Can Tell Us About Social Change"
    http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science.html
"Third, the change agents have to understand a key difference between themselves and other people. Most people are focused on the joys, pleasures, and necessities of their everyday lives, and will not leave these routines unless those routines are disrupted, whereas change agents sacrifice their everyday lives -- family, schooling, career -- to work on social change every waking minute. This means that change agents must be patient for unexpected social circumstances to create disruption, or else find effective ways to disrupt everyday life without alienating those they wish to become supporters of their cause."

Why bother? Well, historically lots of big systems collapse with suffering if just left entropically to meander on their own:
    "Beyond Civilization" book review
    http://www.swans.com/library/art9/mws042.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Civilization

I have to agree with your sentiment. And "Nature Deficit" disorder is part of it, but that does not explain why most kids may not understand what a bootloader is on a computer or whatever if they are indoors a lot around computers. I guess I was lucky to just come in at the edge of things (my first computer was a 6502-based KIM-I, and my first languages were Assembler, Commodore BASIC, and Forth). Still, anyone can run a Virtual Machine on their PC and watch what happens with a simulated computer booting up.

Maybe this is related? :-) From:
"Ignorance, Apathy, and Greed"
http://www.progress.org/fold21.htm
"The causes of social problems exist on many levels. When we ask why social problems such as poverty, unemployment, crime, and war exist, each time we determine a cause, we can ask "why" again, as children often do until they are hushed. Poverty exists because some folks can't find jobs or the jobs pay poorly. But then why is the wage level so low? Because of the tax and land-tenure systems. Why do we have those systems? Because special interests pay to legislate it. Why do special interests get away with it? The voting structure lets them. Why does that structure exist? The voters don't demand to change it. Why not? When we dig down through all the layers to the roots of the causes, we find three fundamental causes of social problems: ignorance, apathy, and greed. The ultimate remedy for social problems therefore must confront all three root causes. It does little good to just run down the street shouting "share the rent!" or "stop war!". Uttering a slogan does no good unless it arouses sympathy."

Here is something related I posted on how my perspective may be different because my mother lived through the German bombing and invasion of Rotterdam and subsequent intentional starvation:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1755090&cid=33264228

Still, there are exceptions with some younger people, like the "open manufacturing" community I am involved in.
http://www.openmanufacturing.net/
Which includes indirectly the RepRap, MakerBot, Maker, etc. scenes:
http://www.makerbot.com/
http://www.makerbot.com/
http://makezine.com/
http://100kgarages.com/

While small, that's an encouraging trend towards DIY and an encouraging hopeful scene.

At the other end of trends, you may find some other links through your local historical societies. I've found that mine is a place where there are people who are interested in how things work (or worked) in various ways (mostly older women in that crowd, but some older men who know a lot about machinery and industry). These are people who know all this sort of stuff:
http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/index.html
My father was a Merchant Mariner for twenty-something years, then a machinist and tool-maker, so I've learned some stuff from watching him.

While I agree with your parallels on the rest of the points, on basic income, while you make a good point, in general, it means something a little different (essentially, it means social security for everyone young or old as a substantial check from the government every month acknowledging their right as a citizen to the fruits of some of the industrial commons, as a formal government program to deal with rich/poor divides, the concentration of wealth, the lack of jobs, etc. in a systematic way still within a capitalist framework).
http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.html

One other link: :-) http://www.progress.org/fold21.htm
"Social reformers must first eliminate their own ignorance to educate themselves to gain knowledge of the basic causes and remedies for social problems, including the economics, politics, and ethics of the problems and solutions. Then when they educate others, they must at the same time invoke their antipathy to the problem and arouse their sympathy with the remedy. When the masses are roused with sympathy and armed with knowledge of the remedy, the few greedy opponents will either be swayed themselves to join the righteous battle, or be overwhelmed by the greater force of the righteous revolution. To remedy social ills, replace ignorance, apathy and greed with knowledge, sympathy, and charity. "

And another link, while I am at it, too:
    "What Social Science Can Tell Us About Social Change"
    http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science.html

Sure farm subsidies and defense spending goes to corporations but food stamps have nothing to do with corporate fascism.

?

If American farms are subsidized by the government, resulting in lower priced goods, then their food is cheaper than the food of other countries.

Did you even read what I wrote before replying? Nowhere did I say American farms are not subsidized, quite the contrary, I said "farm subsidies and defense spending goes to corporations" however the missing praise here is where I also say "but food stamps have nothing to do with corporate fascism." None of what I said, and you quoted, has anything to do with food from other countries.

This subsidization causes a downward pressure on crops pushing American farms to ever further increase yield

You don't know much about economics either do you? Or about farm subsidies. Farm subsidies have nothing to do with "pushing American farms to ever further increase yield". Farmers in the US actually get subsidies for Not farming. Congress has approved conservation subsidies which pay farmers to not cultivate land.

Food stamps inherently lead to overconsumption of food, especially of American produced food.

Where does this come from? Food stamps help people buy food, and they don't care where the food comes from. Because I am disabled and my only income is disability I get food stamps myself, less than $50 a month. Earlier this week I bought some bananas from Ecuador with them. Yesterday I baked stuffed peppers for dinner as well as to freeze, those peppers came from Canada, grown in a hothouse I bet. I sometimes bake with quinoa which is a grain that comes from Bolivia in South America.

None of what I said was anti-capitalist/free market

What is all this "pro-business", "higher taxes", "megacorps", and "Wal-Mart" about then?

Falcon

The US budget is $18.3b for NASA in 2010 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget. and The United States currently pays around $20 billion per year to farmers in direct subsidies as "farm income stabilization"[10][11][12] via U.S. farm bills - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a federal government entity designed to supplement regular oil supplies in the event of disruptions due to military conflict or natural disaster, costs taxpayers an additional $5.7 billion per year. and who knows how many billion on protecting its gas corporations - http://www.progress.org/2003/energy22.htm. Space research is cheap, repays in technology dividends and uplifts people. Subsidies encourage the status quo and defer the inevitable.

So what? Is the judge sitting in the jury deliberations to make sure that you follow his instructions? Are you going to be punished if you find the defendant not-guilty even though a strict reading of the judges instructions would have suggested a guilty verdict?

Why, yes!

California has repeatedly upheld jury instructions to notify the judge if any other jury member "expresses an intention to disregard the law or to decide the case on . . . any . . . improper basis". (Google cache because the original site is hideously slow)

Colorado woman was charged with contempt and fined after refusing to convict. (Later overturned, mind you, but the fact that it had to go that far...)

And I can't find the reference, but I swear I saw an article where a judge in California had actually been monitoring the jury deliberations via video so that they could disqualify any jury member that was not following the judge's instructions.

Why not repeal the subsidies to oil companies? Some direct, some indirect. That would level the playing field, stop skewing the market and then we would see where alts to oil stand in terms of economics. Then a decision on what to do about alt energy and transport will be easier to make.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/3/6/122829/2907

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/vehicle_impacts/cars_pickups_and_suvs/subsidizing-big-oil.html

http://cleantech.com/news/node/554

http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0401-12.htm

http://www.progress.org/2003/energy22.htm

Of course. I don't see how it is relevant to this discussion. I'm not proposing common ownership and neither did Henry George. What was your point?

What did he mean then?

It is just an opinion based on the observation that where there are ample natural resources and not excessive population that poverty only seems to be found where there the land or natural resources is in the hands of a few.

I agree but that's because of those in power and not because of capitalism. For instance the conflict in the Niger Delta is portrayed as over oil. However it stems from the fact that those in power are from a different ethnic group, tribe, than those who live in the Delta. Government is in the hands of one group while the population of the Delta is from another group and the government is giving money to it's own and not the others. Under capitalism much of the money would go to those who live on and own the land.

By the way if we opened the border to Mexico I'm sure that those who chose to come to the States would experience a big improvement in their quality of life. Do you support substantial immigration to the US? I'm convinced that a major root cause of poverty in both the US and Mexico is the fact that a lot of the land is kept out of useful production by owners and that the problem would be reduced or even eliminated if income taxes were replace with land tax.

I support open borders, I believe anyone should be able to live anywhere they want as long as they can afford it. In Mexico, as I have said repeatedly, part of the problem of poverty is because the US government gives big agricultural businesses namely Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill billions of US taxpayer dollars. NAFTA then allows these companies to export corn to Mexico where they can sale the corn for less than Mexican farmers spend to grow corn. If Mexican farmers didn't have to compeat unfairly with US businesses then more could make a living on their farms.

Like you I also oppose income tax, but I would not replace it with a federal property tax, which I believe is unconstitutional anyway. Instead what I'd do is put the government back into the limits put on it by the Constitution of the USA. The Constitution says what and only what the government can do, if it does not say the government has the power to do something then it does not have that power. For instance it grants no power for the FCC, FDA, DOE, HUD, or Education Department. By eliminating all the extraconstitutional agencies, bureaus, and departments, a sales tax and user fees would provide enough money to run the rest of the government, federal government.

Tax Reform Success Stories

I was wondering what was meant by land versus property taxes, it appears that as used in the link, "property" is "improved" land, ie it is being used for an economic gain. So land that's not "improved" even if it provides a valuable service, such as purifying water, will be taxed but if it's bulldozed and built on it won't be taxed. In other words, "Let's pave the world."

Split the property into two separate concepts and re-assess your statements. ...
I think the land and natural resources need to be divvied up differently.

Ever hear of the Tragedy of the Commons?

Of course. I don't see how it is relevant to this discussion. I'm not proposing common ownership and neither did Henry George. What was your point?

Google Henry George for one practical and tested method of doing this.

Wiki's article on him says he was anti Chinese immigrant. Besides newspapers, that's some he shared with William Randolph Hearst. During WWII besides the Japanese Hearst wanted to put the Chinese and all other Asian into internment camps. He pressed his "yellow peril".

An understandable concern. His opposition to bringing in immigrants was similar to some of the opposition to illegal immigration today. I think it is probably true that wages will be pushed down by immigration. Again, I'm not sure how that is relevant to this thread. Are you saying the guy was a jerk so we should reject his ideas? An aside: I think the population of the US has reached a point where further growth will push down quality of life. I'd personally like to see a ZPG policy, either on a state by state basis or for the country as a whole but I accept the fact that ZPG is not a popular idea.

From wiki "George preferred taxing unimproved land value". That misses all the services land offers. For instance wetlands purify water and recharge aquifers. By taxing those lands he'd encourage people to build on that land thus depriving people of fresh water.

A good point. As with any solution to a problem there are corner cases that will require special attention. Where land has special environmental character (wetlands, national or state parks unique habitat etc.) the land should be set aside and taxing it would be a silly case of the government paying itself.

It is the land ownership that **created** the poverty in the first place.

Cite please. Actually land ownership allows people to improve their economic lot in life. Even those immigrants Henry George opposed.

It is just an opinion based on the observation that where there are ample natural resources and not excessive population that poverty only seems to be found where there the land or natural resources is in the hands of a few.

By the way if we opened the border to Mexico I'm sure that those who chose to come to the States would experience a big improvement in their quality of life. Do you support substantial immigration to the US? I'm convinced that a major root cause of poverty in both the US and Mexico is the fact that a lot of the land is kept out of useful production by owners and that the problem would be reduced or even eliminated if income taxes were replace with land tax. Here are some interesting summaries of various "land instead of income or property" taxes: Tax Reform Success Stories

Retailers do not build major roads to facilitate reaching their stores.

True, but the bigger ones certainly have a hand in what gets build where and with what money. Wal-Mart frequently gets involved in legislation and appropriations to get government to pay for roads to/from their shipping centers and retail outlets. For example, the 2005 federal highway bill - "The federal highway bill contains $37 million for widening and extending the road in Bentonville, Arkansas that is the main access point to the headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores Inc." The key is that they don't build the roads themselves. They simply lobby their reps in Congress (and the state legislatures and local boards/councils) to get funds to build and widen highways that are important to their retail and shipping businesses.

A similar story played out in my neck of the woods, when Wal-Mart offered to put forward some funds upfront to get a state/local project going to widen a portion of NH state Rt. 28. This would've improved access to their existing store in Salem, NH, as well as a planned SuperCenter in Derry. Eventually, the plans were put aside after Wal-Mart walked away from the new building plan, but millions in tax dollars and tax incentives to Wal-Mart were on the line due to this highway building project.

I'm not sure about my party because we don't have enough power to have been tested. We are usually on the receiving end of this kind of stuff: http://www.progress.org/2004/debates08.htm together with the libertarians. Generally our folks are arrested for attempting to assert free speech rights. Since the Green Party has non-violence among its Ten Key Values: http://gp.org/tenkey.shtml and many of our activists are women our party is probably better at avoiding police brutality than some, but it is mainly democrats that attempt to deny us our civil rights.

A "natural monopoly" is defined in economics as an industry where the fixed cost of the capital goods is so high that it is not profitable for a second firm to enter and compete. There is a "natural" reason for this industry being a monopoly, namely that the economies of scale require one, rather than several, firms. Small-scale ownership would be less efficient.

More like:

http://www.tutor2u.net/economics/content/topics/mo nopoly/natural_monopoly.htm
http://www.progress.org/fold74.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

I'm not saying that that stuff doesn't happen, but the very nature of the industry leads to oligopoly. And, no, I do not work for any company remotely related to telecom.

Actually, when I read this, I couldn't help but laugh at all of the dumb companies that thought that they could save money by investing in [India]

There is no question that companies are saving (and making) money by investing billions in India. A few VOIP taxes are not going to change that.

[India] is still, essentially, a third world country.

Nobody said otherwise. India is a developing economy. You have a very strange understanding of economics if you think that you cannot make money in a developing economy. Look at the bushfulls of money that have been made in the last 50 years in (e.g.) Korea, Saudi Arabia, Ireland, China, etc.

They should've realized that a few McDonald's and a rudimentary grasp of English doesn't make a country a first world country, (a good place to do business).

Rapidly growing economies are precisely where you go to do business.

I hope the backwater Indian government continues to tax "outsiders" in their own provincial way so that these stupid companies will learn their lessons.

America's backwater government also taxes "outsiders" in a provicial way. Haven't you heard about Bush's protectionism: http://www.progress.org/2003/trade12.htm

I think that India has a LONG way to go before it should be considered as any kind of technological powerhouse, and I think that this is a strong sign that that is true.

India's software industry alone is worth $20 billion. Tata infotech took 23 years to make its first billion and 23 months to make its second. Is that a powerhouse comparable to the American industry? Probably not. Does it matter? India's tech industry is strong, healthy and growing, no matter how much you might wish otherwise. Save your schadenfreude for someone who deserves it. You might want to read this to learn what's really going on in India: http://www.economist.com/business/PrinterFriendly. cfm?story_id=5300960

"Actually I will blame you. If you didn't vote for Kerry, you basically elected Bush."

No he didn't, he voted to attempt to get someone elected OTHER than either Kerry OR Bush.
I agree that third party groups do need to win more local elections, however the current system is a farce when the third party groups AREN'T EVEN ALLOWED TO DEBATE, OR ATTEND AS AN AUDIENCE MEMBER!
http://www.progress.org/2004/debates08.htm
There was even an article here on slashdot about it. Slowly though, the will and ability of the Amercian people to vote for their leadership has been stripped away and is now a sham to make us all feel good, like we had some kind of empowerment, which no longer exist.

Excellent post, good citizen. I direct you (if you've never read him) to the social economics philosopher, Henry George, an individual with an extraordinary grasp of what transpires in society - as applicable today as it was in his time.....

Work hard, millions on welfare are depending on you!

Great idea! I think the government should let the markets decide, and stop subsidizing oil companies.

After all, the market has clearly decided that the big oil companies, with their record-breaking profits, are the appropriate market solution to our energy problems. So why is the government interfering with the market and giving away $7 billion to the oil companies?

If I had to place my ideals under a specific label (though I hate political labels which are often used to avoid thinking about issues), I'd have to say I'm a progressive libertarian.

I'm with Mr. Badnarik 100% on most of his core stances (kudos too for recognizing state's rights in the drug war too). I'm a vehement believer in The Constitution (not that there aren't parts I don't agree with; I'd just prefer we obey it as written OR amend it - not pretend it says something else.) However, I'm curious about your stances on several things.

You state, "The Constitution delegates the power to coin money to Congress. As your president, I'll insist that they discharge that responsibility instead of fobbing the job off on an external entity like the Fed. And I'll veto legislation for any such operation that doesn't meet the true test of money: It is either made of gold or silver, or can be redeemed for a fixed amount of gold or silver."

I take issue with the last sentence.

Money doesn't need to be redeemable for something in finite supply (in fact, as population increases, that's a bad thing) to be stable, it simply needs to be equally hard to earn. Tying the value of a dollar to a consumer price index or, even better, the population might be wiser.

It is also important to note that The Fed is not the external entity coining money. When banks and other lending institutions practice fractional reserve lending, they reduce the value of the dollar. [An explanation of this phenomenon can be found at http://www.progress.org/reform21.htm]

Would you propose or stand behind legislation to eliminate fractional reserve lending?

Centralized government programs have the net effect of making people less personally responsible. I think a lot of resistance to libertarianism comes from the feeling that they want to cut all the safety nets before something (private charity, LVT, whatever) is in place. Regardless, it would be disastrous to move immediately from a society in which the government has taken responsibility away from citizens to one where everyone is fully responsible for himself or herself.

What are your plans for migrating from one model to the other?

New Zealand and Australia are experimenting with LVT while Iceland is experimenting with pollition permits and citizen's dividends. I think there is room to be U.S. to be more progressive and foster more equality while adhering to the basic tenets of libertarianism.

What is your plan for funding government while remaining consistent to core libertarian principles?

Clearly patents and copyrights are government-granted and, therefore privileges but are necessary for a technologically advanced society. It seems that lately things have been getting out of hand leading in part to some of the problems you site as issues (such as the cost of medicine.)

What are your feelings on the current length of intellectual property claims and the veritable "patent mill" that the USPTO has become? How would steer intellectual property back toward the constitutional concept of "for a limited time?"

Tad of a contradiction, no?

Well, no actually, although I see how you read my post. Getting past our corruption is a pre-requisite for a successful anarchist society, hence the dream of such a society holds the implicit faith in mankind's ability to achieve such a state.

1) abolish the state 2) ???? 3) utopia!

I think it's worth taking a little longer to consider anarchist theory in depth before dismissing it - there is a great deal out there. One thing worth mentioning is that anarchism is not 'abolish' the state but more a case of make it redundant. For anarchy in action consider local currencies such as Ithaca Hours or more impressive (to my mind), Calgary dollars and these

I believe there is some grounds to consider our current system of government (I'm in the UK) as promoting corruption, by placing excessive power in the hands of small numbers of people, instead of distributing that responsibility to a wider number, and also by concealing information and the decision making process from the public.

Anyway, I now have work to do. Any answers to questions and objections in reply to this post can probably be found in the links in my original post. Kropotkin will put the case better than I can. ;) You may or may not agree, and the anarchist ideals may or may not be right, but there is definitely a great deal of thought put into it by a lot of very smart people and it's worth at least knowing about it before dismissing it.

Power to the people! ;)

A few large, and largely American, companies that exist to make software near the top of the chain will be the losers if free software takes over. The world's population in general will be the winners - they will pay less and get more, counteracting the tendency for the rich to get richer by further impoverishing the poor. I asert without proof that it's not a zero-sum gain.

And you're correct. It's the flip side of the broken window fallacy, which is the incorrect argument that breaking windows is good for the economy because it provides revenue for repairmen. In this case, free software is the equivalent of unbreakable windows; repairmen may be understandably upset that it lowers their income, but everyone else benefits.

Just look at what Iraq war did to American economy.

Economists call this the "broken window fallacy". If you have to repair damaged things, it gives a short term economic boost - but that's all money spent now that should be invested for the future. If it wasn't a fallacy, any country could simply build a city, blow it up, rebuild it, etc etc until it became wealthy from all that economic activity.

Yes, they need a court order, but the standard for getting one is vastly reduced. Further, combine this with roving wiretaps, and you find that if they have a warrent on a friend of yours, they can tap your phone without an additional warrent, and still be completely legal. This is scary scary stuff.

Murder means work too. Are you willing to die a few years early so detectives, attorneys, and judges can have jobs?

I would really much rather design and build secure network systems than apply bandages to existing hopeless systems. If a system is available that resists viruses (like BSD or Linux), that might be a good place to start...

Oh, wait, I do have that job! And I bet I am having more fun than you. One thing is certain, my employer is not flushing as much money down the toilet as yours.

One day my job will be obsolete, but it will be because of self-healing, learning software, not software that was written 'perfectly.' Until that happens, however, we might spend our time trying to do things properly, and learning from our mistakes.

Nobody would support houses of mud and straw in the Northeast US just to keep a bunch of mud-slathering straw harvesters in jobs every time it rained. My house of stone, concrete, and wood requires maintenance on my part, and it has provided plenty of skilled, high-paying work to the local tradespeople in my city, as well as opportunities for me to learn valuable skills. Because of its construction, it also provides a safe place to sleep and run electrical wiring. But oh, the unemployed mud mixers! But when you think about it, who really wants to mix mud and straw for a living?

As for your economic 'theory,' read this, In short, it says that as an employee of the government, if you are talking about the US, you are advocating the continuous waste of my tax money so that you can remain employed. Please put that on your resume when you are out of work and apply for a job working for me!

Time again to post an article on The Broken Windows fallacy.

I'm sure the reason is that they can convince most voters that it's for employment. Anybody with the slightest understanding of economics will recognize it as an obvious broken window fallacy, but a politician who opposes it will be demagogued as wanting to throw people out of work.

Not to rain on your parade, but unless there is a clearly identifiable return, merely throwing a bucket of money at a public works project is not the most efficient way to jump start the economy.

The economic gain is the good coming down, the goods coming up, and the research gains that translate into value elsewhere, as all space research does. All those mining proposals and other dreams we've given up on become possible again, and that's where the economic value would come from. This is all after the elevator is built, so by "research" I mean the real research we do after we can get to orbit for a reasonable price, not the half-assed research we do now in space, or the research to build it in the first place (though there is some benefit in the material science, it's not much and it'll probably happen with or without an elevator project). I'm not factoring any supposed benefits of building the elevator; I'm not a PhD in economics but I have heard of the broken window fallacy which is enough to scare me off from trying to estimate the benefits of the project itself.

However, alternatives should involve a considered cost / benefit analysis, incorporating and quantifying risk where possible. I would posit that domestic economic stimulus would be much lower risk and have a much more clearly defined benefit than a space elevator.

Well, at 6 billion, even if that's off by a factor of 100 which it may be (although I'd guess that as long as you don't try to force the building of one before the nanotube technology is complete, it would only be off by the more typical 5-10 that such estimates typically are), it's not like the space elevator must pre-empt other, more reasonable and more short-term stimulus. I would want to see it in addition to more rational policies, not in lieu of.

Actually, I'd like to clarify this a bit: letters of marque and reprisal are noted in the Constitution saying the government may issue them. This article references them and explains things decently enough. Unknown to the author's article, the Declaration of Paris was signed by the United States, and in short nullifies our ability to issues letters of marque and reprisal. However, this was all in reference to maritime war law... nothing was noted that could be construed to offer protection, except perhaps against civilian networks.

Plus, if the patent owners are busy, they can put the gene in the freezer for years, and nobody else is allowed to use it, even if it'll help them develop a cure.
Nuts man, the whole system is nuts.

http://www.progress.org/cd24.htm

Alaska has petroleum. That's simply a natural fact. Unlike almost any other industry, an oil company can't just pack up and leave, and find a new home; there's a limited amount of oil in the world, and inevitably some companies will try to harvest oil in Alaska.

Now, in Alaska, the state owns the land the oil companies work on. So as part of the lease agreement, Alaska collects 25% of oil royalties from leasees. There is no danger of companies leaving Alaska as a result, because Alaska's got so much oil; if one company leaves, another will take its place. And companies extracting in Alaska are still tremendously rich, even though they have to give 25% of royalties to the government.

The government of Alaska owns land. Right now, they give all revenue generated from that land to Alaskans; last year, they gave each Alaskan almost $2,000. Alaskans did vote for this, of course; they voted for the program's enactment originally, and against its removal quite recently. You propose giving the money instead to the oil companies extracting in Alaska.

Theoretically the oil companies would lower prices. But those companies are already rolling in much more profit than they in any way need. If they don't lower prices with all the money sitting around now, why would they with the tiny (for them) amount of extra money they'd receive if Alaska collected 0% royalties? In effect, you're saying that the rich oil companies deserve public revenue more than the people themselves do. Not even the Alaska Libertarian Party says that (the AK-LP supports the oil dividend.)

Of course, the Alaska program is different from the program I propose, in the sense that mine would aim to provide much more money to residents. But I don't plan to do that by raising income taxes, or property taxes; both of which I want to eliminate. Rather, I simply want to increase the amount of money generated from public land, maybe collecting 50% or higher royalties from oil and mining companies, and the use of ER spectrum, and similar use. And then, I want to take all that money, and turn it into an endowment; and reinvest most of the interest (paying the rest out Alaska-style), and keep collecting more money, until interest payments alone are more than enough to cover the guaranteed minimum income. It will take a number of decades before nobody is in poverty, but people could still receive (reduced) checks every year, starting as soon as the program is implemented.

In effect, all I'm saying is that public revenue should be stored in a trust fund, and multiplied, until interest is sufficient to lift all people out of poverty, by paying everybody an annual check. To argue otherwise is to say that private oil companies deserve public revenue more than the citizens themselves.

Funny enough, but the same article is on progress.org.

My point is not the software bugs are a good thing. It's that the statement that they cost the economy $60 billion is meaningless.

Money payed to programmers to fix bugs is money that isn't being used more productively somewhere else.

Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas

If you really believe this, please consult a decent economics book immediately, preferably one which discusses the broken window fallacy.

Regarding the US$1.9B number: that much software was released for everyone to use, and lots of people do indeed use it. They will derive utility from it, thus it is an input to the economy.

My issue regarding Liberty is control. MS tends to want to dominate and control markets, I don't trust them to have this one.

Bruce

Exactly. And to expand on a point Perens made, the creation of free software that offers functionality formerly only available with proprietary software is *always* good for the economy. Money that users would have spent on the proprietary software will now be redirected toward more economically efficient alternatives. The arguments espoused by Mundie and Plouffe are just variations on the broken window fallacy.

Mr. Plouffe has demonstrated that he is willing to see everyone else suffer economically in order to prop up his preferred business model. (And I'd really like to know what he means by "We should not allow software to be free"). In this he is no better than the RIAA parasites, and he is an embarrassment to himself and his profession.

Errr no it isn't. This is exactly what happend

Last year $43m was sent...

also from CNN Last paragraph Lots of the Taliban are ex-members of "freedom fighters" including their leader.

It isn't the same as supporting Poland as there you are supporting a country, integral in itself. Here we are talking about various nutters with guns who we happen to like. Lets not kid ourselves that the currently popular "Northern Alliance" are not a bunch of murdering thugs as well.

Fund murderous thugs and eventually you get your reward. Previously they had a common enemy (the USSR), then they had each other, then they had their previous paymasters. Same situation as Iraq.

Too bad that, in most cases, companies don't clean themselves up; they convince local government to establish c o r p o r a t e 'wealthfare' programs that force the public's tax money to foot the bill for whatever maintenance and equipment is needed to reach standards set by environmental regulations.

Now imagine these nations with televisions and video games. You wouldn't need the force. They'd agree to just about anything to see the next episode of "As the World Turns." That's why closing the digital divide is so important.

Capitalism boils down to "This resource (bit of and, mineral vein, idea) is MINE, and government guns will back up that claim". It's very good for those whose claims the state decides to back but, depending on what's being claimed, can tend to suck for everyone else.

No, that's allodialism. Land is not Capital; Capital is not Land.

"This thing that I made is mine!" is Capitalism. So is, "this thing that I paid someone to make for me," and "this thing that my machine made for me."

Allodialism is claiming resources that are simply "out there" and not created by anyone. It's a perversion of Capitalism in which Land (which belongs to nobody) is conflated with Capital (which belongs to whoever paid for it). In your example, the mineral vein is a kind of Land; but the "idea" is a form of Labor, of which Capital is merely the accumulation.

Here are a couple of links to documents that describe the difference between allodialism and capitalism:

• Dan Sullivan on "royal libertarians"
• Fred Foldvary on "left and right wing"