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Mmmmmm, then why, when you look at this map:
http://russnelson.com/ny-rail-network-small.jpg
are there so many competing (parallel) railroads? Didn't you just say that infrastructure cost makes competition pretty much impossible?

MMV. My Chordite keyboard caused a neckless pinhead screener to react, shutting down security in Burlington VT and causing me and others to miss my flights. I was completely cooperative even though they're doing an unnecessary job (passengers will kill anybody attempting a hijack, and if the sole goal is to kill, there are many softer targets, e.g. any state fair).

I'll pay $2,000 for one if it had a 10-year replacement warranty.

I'll sell you one of these http://blog.russnelson.com/chordite for $2,000 with a 10-year replacement warranty.

And we can do something about the former,

Haha! You're so funny, Bennet. Do you seriously think that legislation exists to be rational? Laws are rational, but legislation is enacted purely through a political process, which is frequently irrational.

http://blog.russnelson.com/economics/legislation-vs-law.html

Indeed .... I've made a pointer to the Macaulay speech on my blog: http://blog.russnelson.com/economics/macaulay-on-copyright.html

What's the "N" word? Do you mean NIGGER? Or do you mean NOLDEMORT? Why are there words we can't say? Thinking that words intrinsically have power is a pre-scientific idea. It's superstitious.

Copyright is a bargain between producer and consumer, not a right. The producer creates something of interest, and the consumer promises, in return for getting the interesting thing, not to copy it for a period of time. Right now, the producers are demanding that consumers never copy it ever. They're breaking the bargain, so the consumer isn't sticking to his side of the bargain.

http://blog.russnelson.com/economics/a-bargain-not-a-right.html

You pick some really poor countries for your examples. You could still move subsidies down from the federal to state level, except for interstate and national railroads and get more control, while still having enough rich people to tax to help the poor people. The best way to explain my views is to link to my favorite article from my favorite angry libertarian quaker..

How much more fair does that make things, at the cost of a lot of privacy? There are road sensors and other methods of determining which roads are getting used and should get the money. Fuel is consumed relative to vehicle weight and mileage. Also the extra weight of heavy cargo and more passengers is taken into account with fuel consumption. I assume your determining vehicle weight by yearly weighing at inspection stations.

I'd love a company dorm. There is a trailer park in waking distance of my job and that would be the place I would live had I not had cheap rent at the parents. I'd have to live in Suffolk county, but I could easily sell my car at that point. Under your idea of travel being totally wasteful, everyone would end up living in company towns anyway.

Frig. pyblosxom uses HTML as just one presentation. Try this URL:
http://blog.russnelson.com/economics/feature-not-a -bug.html

"I live in Canada, and have to pay sales tax on every online purchase I make, I don't see why Americans think it should be any different."

No, you don't. That's why we think you're cute and adorable and keep you in cold storage to keep you out of trouble.

Yes, you're right about this. I thought the same, as have others.

Note, that I did not post the key to my OTP... although the key is pretty simple to figure out.

Oh, god, what bullshit is this! Choice is not a problem! If choice was really a problem, then somebody would create a Linux distro with no choices. "Sit down, shut up, and run the software we choose". Except, nobody does that because nobody wants that.

The whole "choice is bad" meme is complete and utter nonsense. http://angry-economist.russnelson.com/barry-schwar tz-master-chooser.html

2nd post; oh well. But here's where I predicted that this would happen (May 10th, 2005):
http://angry-economist.russnelson.com/open-source- and-it.html

"patchwork of state laws"??? You morons, that's exactly HOW the United States is *supposed* to work. Look at the name: United States. We're not a single country, we're a union of independent states, each of which has its own government, and its own set of laws. The "patchwork of state laws" is our guarantee against a tyrranical central government. The different state laws allows people to pick and choose between the laws that protect them most and oppress them least. It's a feature, not a bug!.

http://russnelson.com/quadruple.jpg

You mean a little Bluetooth keyboard like my Chordite? It's not in production yet, but I'll make a custom one for anybody who asks politely.
s/ask politely/asks politely and has $200 to spare/.

I might be wrong, but I don't lie. http://blog.russnelson.com/economics/shareholders- or-customers.html

maybe it's just better to wait and see what happens

No. See my letter to my congresscritter.

Free markets don't work for most services.

Tell that to all the railroads that competed with each other. See http://russnelson.com/nyrr . You may try to point out that there are practically no competing lines now. Mostly true, yes. However, that is after 100 years of the ICC and STB. That just makes the parent poster's point that regulations are anti-competitive and favor the politically powerful over the market entrant.

What about a chording bluetooth keyboard .... maybe like the Chordite.

Mea culpa.

Unfortunately, this amendment has been largely shoved aside since 1933 (and some people will say 1861), and the federal government has now became very big and uses its weight a lot.

Yep. The problem is that it's clear that some legislation is necessary, but how do you know what is and what isn't necessary? What produces good results both in the long term and the short term? You have to try the ideas out in a smaller venue. So maybe "free" health care is a good thing? If you want it, move to Minnesota, live there long enough to be eligible, live long, and prosper. Maybe you want to live some place where peaceful citizens cannot own handguns -- only policemen and criminals. They you'd want to love to New York City. Maybe you want to live some place where abortion is illegal? So move out to Kansas or whatever other states make abortion illegal once Paddle vs Swim is overturned.

Our national government's design is a feature, not a bug!
-russ

Um ... the original design of the US (small central government with most laws enacted by states) doesn't exist anymore. That ball stopped rolling a long time ago.
-russ

http://russnelson.com/

Don't forget Russ Nelson, he wears strange hats!

I wonder if this petition has anything to do with this decision? For the uninitiated, Russ wrote on his blog (and since removed it) about corporate black culture, in an article titled "Blacks are Lazy."
Here's the google cache of the withdrawn article.

The people signing the petition are expressing their freedom of speech, as am I.

His "withdrawal" of the article is also lame http://angry-economist.russnelson.com/blacks-are-l azy.html:

Mon, 01 Jan 2001

Withdrawn

I used to have a posting here which made the point that ceretis paritus blacks will work less hard than whites because of the lower salaries caused by racism. It was not well written and I have withdrawn it. I apologize to anybody who thought that the posting itself was racist.

He also backdated the retraction to make it look like this is old news (the article was originally posted earlier this week - February 7th, 2005 (which is a Monday) to January 1st (the supposed date of the "retraction") was a Saturday, not a Monday.

Not very honest. Or do you also object to my calling attention to this further dishonesty and/or stupidity in backdating the retraction, because it interferes with his "freedom of speech"?

--

On February 7th, Russ Nelson (Open Source Initiative president) published an article called "Blacks are lazy", quoted in journal entries here and here.

Please consider signing the online petition asking OSI to remove Russ Nelson.

......like the one that Russ Nelson made in his blog today. Is anyone else concerned that Russ Nelson, the new head of OSI is a racist loose cannon? See this blog entry: http://angry-economist.russnelson.com/blacks-are-l azy.html. I am urging everyone to write to the directors at OSI to reconsider their decision to make him head of this organization. We don't need people like him representing Open Source!

Does anyone know if Russ Nelson (the new head of OSI) is going to be there? I would like to discuss his blog entry with him:

http://angry-economist.russnelson.com/blacks-are-l azy.html

...is anyone else concerned that Russ Nelson, the new head of OSI is a racist loose cannon? See this blog entry: http://angry-economist.russnelson.com/blacks-are-l azy.html. I am urging everyone to write to the directors at OSI to reconsider their decision to make him head of this organization. We don't need people like him representing Open Source!

My biggest problem with esr was that he couldn't seem to keep his OSI work separate from his other opinions about the proper place of women, how to treat homosexuals, etc. I respect his right to have those opinions, but I wish he would tuck them away during his very visible tenure as leader of OSI.

Russ has a fairly extreme view on libertarian economics. ("Extreme" because few people believe there should be no public liability laws -- I'd link but the archives are broken.) Fair enough; I sympathize even if I wouldn't go quite as far as he does.

My big question is: will he manage to keep his personal opinions separate from his OSI work? I do not want to hear any more OSI-related statements alluding to gun control. It's not just unprofessional, it's also a bad idea in that you may alienate people who like open source but dislike Rand.

Does this nelson guy look as retarded as ESR does?

You be the judge

Fanatics like ESR might do good to the cause in the early stages of revolution, but in the longer run, they will always prove to be an annoyance and will be dealt with.

I have {no patience} for idiots who think that they can {hide from spammers} by having their email address removed from public HTML pages. Fortunately, they usually forget that Google is {publishing their "secrets"}.

If this kind of tantrum junkie is the best spokesperson the open source movement can find, they're really in trouble!

You decide

The submissions mentioned Russ's Slashdot Page, but a lot more info about him can be found at his home page and/or his company Crynwr.

We're already making a "ZigBee" module, called the WISAN. $60 Q1, $30 Q100. Four-layer board, plugs into a two-layer board with your circuitry on it.
-russ

Yes, that's a bit of a problem. We're sticking to the IEEE 802.15.4 layers of Zigbee.
-russ

I can't imagine using less than four monitors. Or, rather, when I'm forced to, I find it horrible.
-russ

Sorry, you missed what I was saying on Point 1. If you are against government regulation, then that's a solid stance. If you are for government regulation of X because X should be regulated because it [can kill people|is a non-profit sector|is too expensive for private industry to handle|etc.], that's a solid stance. Being against most governement regulation, without specifying what government regulation is okay, but it is wishy-washy.

Again, you missed what I was saying about Point 2. Internal audits can fail. Having a second level of regulation can catch those failures. How is that bad?

Point 3 is the most complicated point. Each of your bullet points have easy responses, though.

There's an interesting discussion of dividend fraud at the Angry Economist.

If dividends become more common, more fraud will happen. It's the Stainless Steel Rat syndrome.

Unless a company cannot keep any of its profits, an unsustainable model for growth, dividends would not have helped in the Enron situation. The board would have been able to say "We need that cash for [infrastructure|purchasing|etc.] purposes. They knowingly committed fraud. Dividends would have just caused them to commit it a different way.

I say it doesn't make sense to force a company to give dividends. Oracle wouldn't be able to buy PeopleSoft if they had paid out dividends when they were profitable. The board kept the profit to help with growth. When a board doesn't feel it needs that money, it can already give a dividend, just like Microsoft is doing.

Unless your program adds government regulation forcing companies to disburse all, or a set percentage of its profits, as dividends, nothing changes. Of course, you are against such regulation, so, you're at an impasse.

As for taxation, as I said, what the level of taxation of dividends should be is a difficult question. Right now, I believe, it's the same as capital gains, which might be the right place for it.

An investor that counts on a high stock price is an idiot. Stock prices fluctuate. You need to be prepared to lose money. However, people that have been defrauded (such as the employees of Enron that were forced to invest in Enron stock if they wanted to participate in their 401k program), should have a method to get their money back.

If you really believe that dividends can protect you, buy stock that gives dividends.

Corporations will never be responsible to society, regardless of how the give money to their shareholders. The people that run corporations will always be focused on increasing their money, even if it negatively affects society. Because their goals differ from the corporations, corporations will not be responsible without oversite.

Sorry if you feel I'm generalizing, but all your points were very general, so you didn't really give me any specific points to rebut.

But if you're talking about stockholders and employees, I don't see those as necessarily seperate groups either. I'm an employee as well as a stock holder - I hold stock in the company I work for as well as other companies. Becoming a stockholder is a function of deciding to take the risk. Which is to say that anyone can become a stockholder, and can take advantage of a company producing an efficiency.

But even if you don't become a stockholder, I'm not yet convinced that a company producing an efficiency hurts anyone in the long term. In the short term, yes the people who lose their job are hurt. But the longer term benefits to the rest of society eventually offset that hurt.

And this is what we're talking about. Whether or not society as a whole benefits from the creation of an efficiency. I say it does. And I'm not alone.

"In a healthy, flexible economy these adjustments are always taking place. Some industries are expanding while others are shrinking, either absolutely or comparatively. It is necessary that workers and capital transfer from the shrinking to the expanding industries. Some workers are forced to do this because they are laid off."
- Henry Hazlitt

"One implication of free markets is that a company not only can, but should fire every worker possible... the value of the fired employee's job gets returned to society in the form of lower prices for the product he (wasn't helping to) produce... [Also,] when one business fires a worker who is not being productive, another business will go looking for that worker to be productive in their business."
- The Angry Economist

I suspect I could come up with other examples, but I'm only trying to make one point: the creation of an efficiency, even one that results in loss of jobs, is always of long term benefit to society. Yes, in the short term, some people suffer, but even they benefit in the long term.

That sample message page is blocked by our web filter!

The executable is still available in the link listed at the top of the story (eg. it isn't slashdotted at all, no need to bittorrent it).

There are a gazillion ways to be distracted. There's no way we can ban them all. So, instead, the law makes you liable for an accident that you could have prevented. Read my blog entry to see why that's the right thing to do.
-russ

My printer has an Ethernet connection and will fax over the Internet.
-russ

w00t! w00t! You have saved The Angry Economist from having to refute this economic nonsense. Of course, he was being sarcastic, so all we really know about his real message is what it isn't. That's the trouble with using sarcasm -- you're saying what you don't believe in the hopes that somebody will understand what you really believe.
-russ

I'm sorry, but everything worth knowing has already been digitized. If you think it hasn't, why aren't you working on putting it online.
-russ

Not enough astronauts are dying. Fully one-quarter of the people who make it to the top of Everest die. The fact that astronauts don't says that we're not making space travel cheap enough. More at my blog

You would enjoy reading The Angry Economist.
-russ