Slashdot Mirror
Is the Government Scaring Web Businesses Out of the US?
suraj.sun sends this quote from an article at Techdirt:
"The federal government has been paying lip service to the idea that it wants to encourage new businesses and startups in the U.S. And this is truly important to the economy, as studies have shown that almost all of the net job growth in this country is coming from internet startups. ... With the JotForm situation unfolding, where the U.S. government shut down an entire website with no notice or explanation, people are beginning to recognize that the U.S is not safe for internet startups. Lots of folks have been passing around [a] rather reasonable list of activities for U.S.-based websites."
Perhaps there is too much politics on /., but this topic is highly relevant to a large portion of the user base here who own/operate web businesses, so I think your rant is misplaced.
weinersmith
If you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to fear. Just make sure you follow the law.
Deleted
It's not US government shutting down US sites.
It is US government shutting down all other sites, so that users around world end up having to use US based 'service providers'.
That and "intellectual property" are the only 2 things that can keep US economy afloat for bit longer.
And they're betting big on it.
The ars technica article has some useful background: arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/02/secret-service-asks-for-shutdown-of-legit-website-over-user-content-godaddy-complies.ars
Sounds like a good reason to leave GoDaddy, IMO.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
we stand on guard ....for theee...the usa has hollywood ram you so badly that it causes none to do any business there OH good one.
NOW we can add copyrights kill business.....
do you trust a US based web hosting company after recent events?
Godaddy and Jotform.com comes to mind
http://it.slashdot.org/story/12/02/16/231212/jotformcom-gets-shut-down-sopa-style
The US government, under pressure from the entertainment industry is doing it. Companies like godaddy are making things worse.
Is slashdot scaring away developers with more political submissions? Remember when there used to be a Developer section instead of all this political BS?
Are you trying to make a point? Do you not remember that Slashdot has always had technology related political articles going way back? Do you remember when Slashdot had all those articles in the 90s about the Microsoft trials about their monopoly?
Can you explain to me why we're posting with rhetorical questions?
Is this some sort of method of attracting attention?
I don't know. Awe shit! Did I just blow the rhetorical question there here?
It's rather fuckin moot to try to plan ten years ahead when the laws change to being more and more draconian and unconstitutional every couple days/weeks.
This is full spectrum disruption. Who dare run a music blog when the lables don't even know what the current law is? Who dare hire employees when health-insurance, and tax is unstable and unpredictable, with a monetary system that is unregulated and corrupt to the fuckin core? Who dare take a loan in this depression/inflation enviornment? Who wants to pay for video bandwidth, when streaming a video is now a felony?
Who suffers? ebay, paypal, amazon, domain sellers, hosting, isp's, software developers, bloggers, bands, labels, video production, video promotion. You want real people to discuss fixes, better get rid of all this fascist, war on terrorism, cyberwar propaganda psychopathic bullshit.
Put hosting in countries where the RIAA hides its money from the tax man, Switzerland, Luxumbourg, etc... Being a bully to a country that has dirt on you is a line they won't cross. I think.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
"Is slashdot scaring away developers with more political submissions? Remember when there used to be a Developer section instead of all this political BS? I swear YRO has ruined this site."
Politics is about resource allocation. Much of computing design is about resource allocation, too. So they are more connected than you might think at first.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Considering that being a failure in one section means at most getting laughed at by fellow developers, while the other could get you prison time and/or financial ruin, I'd say, you should set your priorities straight.
I keep seeing various statistics about where all (or some percentage of) the "net new jobs" come from, but I'm not sure I understand what it means. Are they just saying "Internet startups (or whatever) added 100 more jobs than they lost, and the economy as a whole added 100 more jobs than it lost, so all the gain came from internet startups"? That doesn't seem like a legitimate claim (any number of other categories could have had the same net job gain, as long as enough jobs were lost from at least one other category...)
What we're actually seeing is the open source community maturing. Since Slashdot was one of the first major gathering points for open source advocates, we're seeing this maturation happen here first.
While open source software had its roots in the political upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, the number of true old-timers ("neckbeards", if you will) pales in comparison to the younger generation who really made open source software take off. I'm talking about the Linuses and the Alan Coxes and now even those open source advocates born after 1990.
These younger people are finally seeing how important politics is in any movement. They're now seeing that the technology is one part of the pie, but playing the political game is another big chunk. You're damn right that politics is becoming more important to these people!
Technology is so intertwined with politics these days that you can't unwind them. You get them both, and you need to learn to enjoy it this way.
At this rate data, information and knowledge will be the new thing to smuggle. But there doesn't seem to be a "border"... yet. We will all be the mules. Like anything good they will try and cut it off. Who will be the 21st century's Pablo Escobar?
The sky is still blue. Water is still wet, and fire still burns.
Does anyone know what the fuck happened to ompldr.org?
Did they get busted or just run out of money? No FBI/DHS/ page or anything, because DNS is busted too.
It went *poof* and there's nothing I can find anywhere about it.
TIA.
--
BMO
This "political BS" effects the livelihoods of many of the people that read /..
Honestly, I come here to read stories like this more than anything, because lord knows that the Mainstream Media doesn't give a fuck about covering this shit. We didn't even hear a peep about SOPA in the media until the fucking boycotts, months after it was making waves through the tech sites.
Companies will always try to invest as little as necessary to keep their revenue high. For most companies, the best of all changes would be exactly none. ANY change means having to adapt to it, and adapting costs money.
Now that the last of the big corps has caught on that it's cheaper to buy laws than to change strategies, the "new" (ok, not soooo new, but think of it in terms of magnitude) way to increase or at least keep revenues high is not to adapt, innovate and improve past the competition, the strategy is to buy laws to eliminate the competition.
And the biggest competition for big (and hence wealthy, and thus able to buy said laws) companies is "the internet". Face it, few of the big ol' ones really benefited from the internet's success. New competition arose and they have an edge. Faster to respond, easier to use for their customers, there's just very little big old ones can do against that directly.
So what they can do is change the rules of the game.
Changing those rules, though, means that the power stays in the hands of old companies and new startups get squashed, not by superior products or better service, but simply by the monetary power to change the rules.
And that's pretty much anathema to capitalism, folks. What we're getting here is the worst kind of socialism. Remember why the USSR fell? Outdated production means that were artificially kept alive while the rest of the world passed them, which made them completely uncompetitive on the global market.
Welcome to the future USSA.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, economics is about resource allocation. Politics is about compelling others to serve your interests.
It's the Scumbag corporations that are greedy ass hats that refuse to share the pile of money out there.
Want a target, target the MPAA,RIAA and every company that sues others over software patents. They are the real enemies of the State.
Because they are the ones that bribe the Congress men an women to fight for evil things like SOPA. ANY congressman that supported SOPA is proof that they are on the bribe payroll.
Work hard to vote out anyone that ever touched that evil thing, and make it clear that any future support of anti-freedom laws will also be met with swift opposition.
Wait, this is the USA... All the populace does is watch TV and moo....
Mooooooo..
... through arguing over resource allocation. According to "Conceptual Guerilla", mainstream economics is just mainly a mythological cover story to justify elites:
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
Example:
http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/
"The authors of this appeal are deeply concerned that more than three years since the outbreak of the financial and macroeconomic crisis that highlighted the pitfalls, limitations, dangers and responsibilities of main-stream thought in economics, finance and management, the quasi-monopolistic position of such thought within the academic world nevertheless remains largely unchallenged. This situation reflects the institutional power that the unconditional proponents of main-stream thought continue to exert on university teaching and research. This domination, propagated by the so-called top universities, dates back at least a quarter of a century and is effectively global. However, the very fact that this paradigm persists despite the current crisis, highlights the extent of its power and the dangerousness of its dogmatic character. Teachers and researchers, the signatories of the appeal, assert that this situation restricts the fecundity of research and teaching in economics, finance and management, diverting them as it does from issues critical to society."
Other ways to look at economics:
http://debunkingeconomics.com/
And also the similarly named:
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Rest-Us-Debunking-Science/dp/1595581014
"Why do contemporary economists consider food subsidies in starving countries, rent control in rich cities, and health insurance everywhere "inefficient"? Why do they feel that corporate executives deserve no less than their multimillion-dollar "compensation" packages and workers no more than their meager wages? Here is a lively and accessible debunking of the two elements that make economics the "science" of the rich: the definition of what is efficient and the theory of how wages are determined. The first is used to justify the cruelest policies, the second grand larceny. Filled with lively examples--from food riots in Indonesia to eminent domain in Connecticut and everyone from Adam Smith to Jeremy Bentham to Larry Summers--Economics for the Rest of Us shows how today's dominant economic theories evolved, how they explicitly favor the rich over the poor, and why they're not the only or best options. Written for anyone with an interest in understanding contemporary economic thinking--and why it is dead wrong--Economics for the Rest of Us offers a foundation for a fundamentally more just economic system."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
not all of the Govt is scaring web business away.........just the part of it that carries out the laws according to its interpretation.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
people are beginning to recognize that the U.S is not safe
It's not just on the internet anymore...
Of course the US governments attitude to websites is going to have an affect on the confidence of website operators to be able to locate there and may make many look at other countries to host it instead. The prosecution of the web site owners for the actions of their users, which they cannot control, most stop, as well as the PIPA and SOPA nonsense, and the country needs to implement full Network Nuetrality. That is a recipe for creating a truly pro-consumer, pro-jobs environment that is also good for website operators.
The fact is that the GOP pretty much is an enemy of freedom, and has for years been the paid agent of the large media corporations which seems to want to trample over free speech turn the webpage in to a one way TV MTV equivalent. Another concerning thing is the fact that the conservatives are regressives and often driven by extreme theocratic tendancies, ready to force their religious ideas and moralities on others and trample over freedom of speech as a result.The high levels of income inequality that the GOP has caused through our low taxes on the wealthy has also been detrimental to other businesses, by draining money out of the pockets of the middle class, and shrinking the middle class significantly. if we really wanted to live in a country that was healthy we would restore the millionaire tax bracket to what it was in the 50s and 60s and elect liberals to office that will respect our freedoms, are not religious whackjobs, who will eliminate ridiculous laws that conservatives try to pass that lead to censorship and try to force the government into deciding what is "indecent", the government has no right to decide such a thing and things which are indecent cannot be censored, but we have social conservatives in the GOP who are basically totalitarian theocrats who would like to destroy free speech and force their religious moralities on everyone. We dont need a bigoted, theocratic religious whackjob religious nutjobs banning harmless and consensual activities such as pornography and other harmless, indecent things.
There needs to be a internet bill of rights that would also ban any censorship, that would prohibit ISPs or government from storing any information on traffic that can be used to monitor individual users such as source and destination IPs and so on, would stop ISPs from discriminating against certain traffic and so on. The fear based tactic they so often used exploits anxieties, and obscure the fact that any action or policy is not justifiable to prevent crime, such as survellience, tracking and monitoring without warrant are unacceptable in a free society and these things cannot be justified in order to prevent crime. If we allow these activities we open the door as well to their abuse by corporations and governments, they are perfect tools for trying to keep track of people who have unpopular views and opinons, and use that information against them. The less right to privacy people have, the less safe they are.
Many large corporations , such as the major record labels, have interests opposite that of small businesses and common people. Their goal is to maintain and consolidate wealth and that means hoarding and consolidating wealthy by suppressing the wages of other workers and using their control over large parts of the money to basically consolidate wealthy. We need common, average people to have a lot of money in their pocket and to avoid having certain corporations dominating much of that, through suppression of wages, thus crowding out small businesses as well as impoversiing common workers. The policies that the wealthy elite hate the most, a high income and corporate tax on the wealthy, is exactly what the country needs to put more money back into average peoples pockets and to give workers more power such as through unions, all things that will give common people more spending power, money to buy things other than to shop at wal mart. The attacks on unions and the demands for more tax cuts for the rich are ultimately unhealthy, they allow a few corporations t
Dude, the days when slashdot was read attentively by developers and other IT decision-makers is long past (just don't tell that to InfoWorld, which still pays a premium to astroturf here).
This is a tech-and-gadget flavored Newser.com, with open-source stories replacing the celebrity bits ("Linux instead of Lohan!"). Wired Magazine was exclusive and tech-elite when it started as well, and now it's all "Green Energy" and Rolex ads.
The word "geek" has lost all meaning; one need only note all the slick sales-and-marketing suits now smugly referring to themselves as "movie geeks."
Language changes. Media evolves. And writers and media-owners gotta pay the bills somehow...
the beacon of hope, equality, liberty, women and kid saver, democracy imposer, so and so... reached this stage.
not sure what is in store in other countries now.
Competition over scarce resources isn't just the founding principle of capitalism, it is the founding principle of life.
If you want something, you have to compete against others who also want it. And if you get it, that means that someone else does not.
There are a few exceptions...like air....but political power is definitely *not* such an exception. Wealth is the same thing.
So of course those who have it are fighting to keep it, and of course they are striking the best balance they can between what seems most likely to work and what they are most likely to be able to get away with. They have every incentive to do this, just as you have every incentive to knock them down and take from them as much of their wealth and power as you can.
Sit and whine about how evil they are for wanting the same thing as you, or jump into the fight, it's your choice.
And here I was, thinking that maybe it's worth moving my two UK-based SaaS businesses to the US, since I am a US citizen (well, there's also the weather difference)..
One of the main reasons I opted for the ISP I'm using for my business is not the fact that they're cheaper (it's only $10/month difference), but the fact that SaskTel hosts their data center in Florida, and the one I'm using is hosted in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
I don't want my business anywhere near US regulation and control without oversight and intervention by Canadian authorities. The US has been proving to be insanely jackbootish about their approach to the internet for the past 2-5 years, and I simply do NOT want to take the chance of having them interfere with my business.
Or rather, I don't want US media companies interfering with my business. They don't do proper checks before issuing their takedown requests, and were I in the US, I'd be effectively subject to domain seizure and content takedowns without due process and the chance to defend myself. That is an UNACCEPTABLE BUSINESS RISK when it is so easy to avoid.
Worse, the US dollar is in such a sorry state that I will not be accepting payments in greenbacks. I want to be paid in a stable currency that I don't have to pay exchange rates on in order to spend -- namely Canadian dollars. For years I've had to pay extra to convert my Canadian currency to US dollars to pay for goods and services ordered out of the US. The shoe is on the other foot now.
Even if I work a contract in the US for a US company, I'll either be paid in Canadian dollars or charging a 5% premium for the hassle of converting US currency to Canadian dollars (it's a 2-3% bank fee as well, so 5% isn't as much as you might think.) Add in the fact that all foreign payments get held by the bank for 30 days, and the resulting lost opportunity cost of having my money tied up and inaccessible, and I find I really don't have much interest in business south of the border at all right now.
Besides, if I have to travel to service a customer, I may as well visit somewhere I've never been before, preferably China, Australia, New Zealand, or Germany. (I've just always wanted to see those countries some day. I've already spent about 12 years living and working in the US, so I've seen the US. I want to see someplace different next.)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
To the tech business owners I know the so-called "Buffet Rule" (kind of a second bite at the alternative minimum tax apple) is far more frightening than any specific takedown action.
Or other Scandinavian countries.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Is the USA screwing with any websites that host only original content?
Isn't Sweden that is prosecuting Assange on behalve of its American masters? Or went after the pirate bay which wasn't breaking its own local laws on behalve of its Amercan masters?
At least Americans can vote out their leaders, Swedes can only vote for which puppet is stuck on the hand.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I don't know. Awe shit! Did I just blow the rhetorical question there here?
That's "aww, shit" -- unless, of course, you just looked into the toilet and are indeed in awe of what you beheld there.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
Are the exorbitant prices charged for US software also an attempt at fostering business in America??? (Adobe CS5 is double the price in many places abroad and there are ridiculous mark up prices on steam games purchased outside of the states-originally mark up was thought to be due to the currency exchange-but found to be false once America's dollar went to s#it)
We'll never make it.......oh! we made it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWf3iJjqYCM&list=FL7kKrE4eTs17mQl7eyvJIOg
I had a site shut down, when I get back on my feet, I'm going to take it to Canada... this is NOT as easy as moving the server!
As I plan my recovery, I'm learning that it isn't enough to just move your server over there. You've got to actually *be* Canadian if you don't want your site taken down. (sure, you could lie about it, make it appear to be from Canada or Panama or wherever, but if you're in business, this is hardly a viable option.. they'll find out you're really a US citizen) for me, this means finding a very trusted Canadian to "take over" for awhile, until I can collect enough material to prove myself worthy of Canadian citizenship.
From what I've studied, the problem is the lobbyist influences. Startups do NOT donate money to campaigns, most of them will never donate to campaigns because most start-ups fail. If you want to make it in the US, you have to have enough money to hire lobbyists that are more powerful than competitors lobbyists. It really is that simple.
For most of us, the plutocratic system of government is irrelevant, but if your small niche business threatens the established companies who are running the country, AND they notice you (or your industry), you can expect them to run you out.
Ultimately, we can look forward to these same lobbyists pushing OTHER countries around, much as the US already does for the oil lobby. It'll be interesting to hear them justify a war with Panama or Canada, it'd be nice if the citizens wised up to the game before then, but I'm not holding my breath.
Slashdot is enduring as the best technology oriented hive-mind on the whole Internet. Insights you get here are often rare and unparalleled. I bet lots of new devs and also industry veterans still around.
>I swear YRO has ruined this site.
Hello,
I am reading Slashdot since 1999 and I do agree.
When in late 2001 the Bush administration continued the work of terrorists by terrorizing freedom-loving americans with all kinds of online and offline securities, Slashdot became political and I deeply disliked that.
I used to visit this place here many times a day and even cared to be logged in before I comment.
Today even 4chan is more relevant to my interests.
When Dennis Ritchie died Slashdot was 3 days late to report that. 4chan already had a sticky thread with more them 4000 comments of old and young nerds expressing their grief.
I don't mind nerd related politics. But you all know that Slashdot has attracted moderators in the last 10 years that are 100% sensation, politics, plugs and just plain BS.
I visit this site only once a week now.
The U.S. isn't safe for ANY kind of business. The government we have now is so anti-business, a person would be a fool to start one. They will either shut you down, tax you to death, or put so many nit-picking requirements on you that you'll have to go under.
Folks, Santorum can be avoided if you observe basic hygiene!
I don't think the problem is that there is too much politics, it's that there is too little technical content.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This "political BS" effects the livelihoods of many of the people that read /..
Honestly, I come here to read stories like this more than anything, because lord knows that the Mainstream Media doesn't give a fuck about covering this shit. We didn't even hear a peep about SOPA in the media until the fucking boycotts, months after it was making waves through the tech sites.
set up an RSS feed for techdirt, Mike gives it all the coverage you could wish for
USA is very dangerous to start ANY business, not just a web business. With all of the taxes, regulations, inflation caused by counterfeiting operation at the Fed and the government banks. The confiscation of private property that was clearly displayed in GM and Chrysler case and just a couple of months ago with MF Global - where cooperation between financial institution (JP Morgan) and government agencies allowed for customer funds to be stolen, in fact gold bars with serial numbers assigned to specific holders of account at MF Global (which is basically an insurance company for farmers - future trading is used to insure against uncertainty of future crop prices) went "MISSING" and nobody is being held accountable for it and apparently everybody is aware that JP Morgan and the feds have agreed on something, which is pretty damning - the bankruptcy court was instructed to run the bankruptcy as if MF Global was an 'investment' company, which makes their counter-parties to be first in line to receive collateral, while actually MF Global wasn't an investment company, it was an insurance company, and under those conditions it would have been the CLIENTS who would be first in line to get their money out.
But this is just an example why it is dangerous to deal in USA now, other things are of-course all of the regulations, all of the executive branch departments acting as if they are the Congress and as if they can pass laws, the fact that US courts are on the side of the government in all of this.
Again, it's not just about web businesses. Don't forget, as Steve Jobs told Obama - those jobs, they are not coming back.
You can't handle the truth.
Who hosts Wikileaks? It would seem to me they would be target #1 for the feds and so resistant to random (or malevolent) acts of bureaucracy. It's actually quite an endorsement.
i don't really agree with you, but what i do understand is that in any society where the rich receive too large a share of the wealth, fairness finds a way to reassert itself, by any means possible, including new ideology
conservatives: favoring the rich destroys people's faith in the idea that the system is fair. when that is destroyed, the society is eventually headed towards revolution, as they do not believe their interests are represented by their government
fairness should be the most important thing to your ideology. if it is not, if your ideology is cruel, then you are laying the foundation for the destruction of your society
no to universal healthcare? no to equal access to a good education? ok
then you shall reap what you sow
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
From what I've seen with the newer UIDs, talking about a web form is as technical as you could reasonably expect to go. Anything more complex, you're in spells and incantations land.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It all makes sense as soon as you drop the fantasy that Obama wants to help the United States.
Don't Bogart that joint, my friend.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'd like to see the tech community make an effort to reverse-engineer politician's thinking process. It's clearly different from that of a normal person.
Two Bitcoin exchanges have cited or hinted at regulatory pressure as part of their reasons for shutting down. ExchangeBitcoins (exchb) was rumored to have been shut down due to government pressure though that is not their official statement. Tradehill http://www.businessweek.com/technology/bitcoin-exchange-shuttered-nerds-rattled-02172012.html While the primary exchange has avoided troubles so far as it is based in Japan. Right now mtgox.com does 15 million a month in volume of which it takes 1%. I think the US will be scaring all kinds of businesses away that would have generated additional economic activity. I suggest that MTGOX start using a non .com domin name......
I am facing this "problem" of soon having to choose if I will locate my new company avoiding USA or not. Business will be 100% legal, but the US web-policies appear very unfrindly. Recently I've been thinking (most positively) about using only EU investors, EU-site, EU-domain but it may be hard to avoid all e.g. Visa / Paypal / Mastercard connections to USA. Maybe it's worth it maybe not. But for me the news topic is true, The US Government is Scaring Web Businesses Out of the US - or at least it's doing it's best in keeping me away.
I found the article you pointed to at the Conceptual Guerilla to be an interesting piece at a site devoted to cutting edge progressive thought and politics. I think I've found a companion piece of similar gravitas over at The People's Cube.
Of course no web article is going to cover material like this in any real depth. Anyone wishing to explore related themes may want to consider some of the following books by prominent African American economist Thomas Sowell:
Marxism: Philosophy and economics
Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles
Affirmative Action around the World: An Empirical Study
Race and Culture: A World View
Intellectuals and Society
Basic Economics 4th Ed: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy
Economic Facts and Fallacies: Second Edition
The Housing Boom and Bust, Revised Edition
Black Rednecks and White Liberals
Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays by Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell will never have the following of a Chomsky, but then he doesn't have Chomsky's genocide denier problem. (Cambodian genocide)
Politics vs. Economics - Short-term decisions have long-term effects
Evil-Man Economics
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Memorable quotes for
Looker (1981)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/quotes [imdb.com]
âoeJohn Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, thatâ(TM)s power. â
âoeThe United States has itâ(TM)s own propaganda, but itâ(TM)s very effective because people donâ(TM)t realize that itâ(TM)s propaganda. And itâ(TM)s subtle, but itâ(TM)s actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but itâ(TM)s funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, itâ(TM)s funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesnâ(TM)t necessarily mean it really serves peopleâ(TM)s thinking â" it can stupify and make not very good things happen.â
â" Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000417/bio [imdb.com]
âoeWeâ(TM)ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.â â" William Casey, CIA Director
âoeItâ(TM)s only logical to assume that conspiracies are everywhere, because thatâ(TM)s what people do. They conspire. If you canâ(TM)t get the message, get the man.â â" Mel Gibson
[1967] Jim Garrison Interview âoeIn a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you canâ(TM)t spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You canâ(TM)t look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they wonâ(TM)t be there. We wonâ(TM)t build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. Weâ(TM)re not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isnâ(TM)t the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same. Iâ(TM)ve learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion, which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the citizen exists for the state and where raw power justifies any and every immoral act. Iâ(TM)ve always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Governmentâ(TM)s basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But Iâ(TM)ve come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long once said, âoeFascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.â Iâ(TM)m afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.â
Here in Canada they want the no warrant thing too.
So what to do?
Do I put the servers at the ISP? Where some clueless script kiddie with a USB stick, a cop badge and a batmobile can come in unannounced, wreck the whole thing, then oooops, ssshhhhh, sneak the fuck out and tell no one. Me not knowing until the phone rings off the hook with client's lawyers spouting the most dreaded words "Contract Cancellation" and "Business Interruption"? If there is not just a hole in the racks where the servers used to be?
Or do I keep the servers in the house with the wife and kids and the dogs and the goldfish where some trigger happy kid with a cop badge and an mp5 can shoot them all?
What if I am out of town, doing something, like, I don't know, earning a living? Are they going to start harassing friends, familiy and ciients looking for me? Spreading fear and lies? Ruining lives and reputations?
How does one deal with this? What's the plan for zero downtime operations in a no knock, no warrant police state? What are the hardware and software requirements? What OS is best? Jesus, where's all the cash going to come from? How do I admin this from the secret prison that they don't have to tell anyone about?
Who's gonna pay my bills, alimony, taxes, rent when I am in prision, and the cashflow from the businesses stop because they broke them all?
Hey spooks. I'm gonna say it here, real plain, so you don't need to bother stealing and/or wreaking my servers and my businesses.
HARPER IS AN ASSHOLE.
There is nothing fair about majority vote using government violence as a proxy to steal money from individuals who are more successful than others.
Also there is nothing fair about some individuals gaming the system by buying access to politicians, who then steal and sell power of government violence.
Both of the above are wrong, that's why your argument is nonsense.
Under a system where government is actively prohibited from stealing from anybody to give to anybody else under any and all circumstances, the freedom of everybody who is not being stolen from is maximised, and the market increases the wealth of all people by allowing some to make it big by inventing and bringing to the market products that make ALL people wealthier.
That's why Steve Jobs and his wealth usually was not bemoaned by people - because everybody got WEALTHIER off Steve Jobs, who himself got extraordinary wealthy.
Of-course Marxists like you, are happy to use any amount of collective government violence to ensure that the wealth is "distributed equally", which means unproductively from people who CREATE wealth, to those who WANT it. Thus eventually you descend into totalitarianism and dictatorship, and you call THAT justice.
No. Justice is about freedom. The only justice is FREEDOM. It's freedom to do what you can as you can do it without hurting others (that's the only main condition), and in the process of helping yourself you help others not as an intention, but as a consequence of your actions.
Nobody can become rich and wealthy without either:
1. Theft based on power of government force.
2. Creation of wealth by selling products to people that they are voluntarily willing to buy and pay enough that there is a profit premium in it.
There is nothing just about "universal" healthcare or any other government forced "universal" thing, because it will create poverty and will bring about totalitarian regime and there is nothing just about such a regime, and I should know I was born in a system like that, and you'll find out, you apparently want to go there.
You can't handle the truth.
I'd like to see the tech community make an effort to reverse-engineer politician's thinking process. It's clearly different from that of a normal person.
"Fear is the lock and laughter the key..." - Suite Judy Blue Eyes
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
If the value of something depends on government action, or governmental granted monopolies, then don't talk about it being unfair for the government to "steal" it. Unless you enjoy looking like a hypocrit.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That should be a lesson that US authorities can reach out and touch you no matter where you are. Granted, they may have been breaking some laws. But the emphasis here is on may. Sites have been shut down prior to a court verdict.
You want a system that features redundancy (multiple hosting sites, distributed between several jurisdictions) and untraceability (feed content through encrypted TOR pipes). Once some sites have been located and their owners identified (and inevitably some will) you'll need to have the ownership of those sites hidden behind some shell corporations. Likewise, you'll have to hide your income source within a different corporate structure. By all means, pay your taxes. But avoid the extravagant lifestyle and braggadocio of Dotcom. The ideal lifestyle to adopt would be that of fictional character Johnathan Higgins. Just a lowly caretaker of some other rich guy's* mansions and yachts. But make sure you pay the taxes on those as well.
*A fictional Saudi Prince would be a good choice. F*ck with him and the US risks losing its middle east ally. A Chinese businessman/Communist party operative would be better. F*ck with him and have all your loans called in.
Have gnu, will travel.
Which registrars take the position contractually that the domain is the property of the registrant and will not be taken down without a court order? Find a registrar that doesn't have "sole discretion" language like this, from Network Solutions: We may terminate this Agreement or any part of the Network Solutions services at any time in the event you breach any obligation hereunder, fail to respond within ten (10) calendar days to an inquiry from us concerning the accuracy or completeness of the information referred to in Section 4 of this Agreement, if we determine in our sole discretion that you have violated the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy ... or for any other reason in Network Solutions' sole discretion upon written
notice to you.
Other failing registrars with "sole discretion" terms include NameKing, Register.com, Name.com, DomainIt, GoDaddy, eNom, Backslap, PairNIC, Best Registrar, Havaname LLC, DomainName, Tucows, Melborne IT...
Explain your comment, I can't understand what you are replying to.
You can't handle the truth.
It all makes sense as soon as you drop the fantasy that any president wants to help the United States.
Fixed that for you.
I'd far rather pay a predictable first world tax rate and not have my business constantly mired in software patent troll cases and other expensive 'IP' nonsense than pay low taxes and have a completely unpredictable and potentially business-destroying IP environment. But that's just me.
This is quite biased, I don't know why it is a 5...
If the wealthy and Wall Street can truly dominate the political process, why is Mitt Romney losing to Santorum? Why was Newt Gingrich able to temporarily make a good showing in spite of much of the elite hating him? (Newt has LOTS of enemies) What about Ron Paul and his good fund raising abilities? Would eliminating 3/4 the top 1%'s wealth prevent them from spending a billion dollars on a major election every four years?
Maybe the Republicans oppose Net Neutrality, because they think the government will screw it up. Think Sarbanes Oxley is beneficial? Think Fannie Mae was beneficial? Maybe CEOs make lots of money because boards of directors are stupid, and shareholders don't know how to run their property. The Koch brothers might agree.
Ouch. Selection bias much?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Since most material wealth is now created through machines that need fairly little maintenance, and most intellectual wealth has historically been created as a labor of love by voluntary community interactions and in any case we now have so much of it, your whole point is obsolete (if it was ever really true). See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit
Also, remember that most land is "owned" by people who got it through some chain that eventually arrives at either finders-keepers or might-makes-right policies. Even Manhattan Island, the literal bedrock of US capitalism, was essentially purchased from people who did not own it in any sense (a neighboring tribe who probably though the whole thing a good joke). A logical system of saying who gets the fruits of the land is problematical when there really is not a-priori reasonable way to say that some people are more privileged to have access to the land for mining, farming, recreation, or whatever.
See also:
"Marxism of the Right"
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
there are plenty of people who are poor in this world through their own character failures
there are plenty of people who are rich because of hard work
but you seem unable to understand why some are rich: not because of hard work. but through a power structure that rewards them for doing nothing but knowing the right people
and some are poor even though they have the right character, but they exist in a society that is structured in such a way they have no avenue to better themselves
and, more ominously, why some are rich and some are poor is more and more because of the latter reasons than the former reasons
where you fail in your ideology is that the world is not the cold war world anymore. you have a perception in your judgments of a society that seems fix on 1962 in a certain place that does exist anymore. your thinking is antiquated
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Slashdot used to be a lot better back around the dotcom days. Now there's way too much tinfoil conspiracy shit and suddenly all haters switched to hating Apple instead of Microsoft which leads me to believe most of them just hated Microsoft because they were successful not because their tech sucked (which it did) since Apple comes out with well designed unix based products and these guys whine about it. I don't wanna hear that shit. Also "Free Software" jumped the shark with GPL3 so the open source fanboi shit is a lot less compelling too. Oh and also these days there seem to be less "science minded" posters since every climate change article has a bunch of anti-science nuts talking about how melting ice caps and evolution aren't happening...
Then again you were probably trolling in which case, IHBT.
According to Douglas, the true purpose of production is consumption, and production must serve the genuine, freely expressed interests of consumers. Each citizen is to have a beneficial, not direct, inheritance in the communal capital conferred by complete and dynamic access to the fruits of industry assured by the National Dividend and Compensated Price.
- this is pretty sick stuff, truly remarkably ridiculously insane.
This destroys the very idea of private property and just like the ideas that created the place where I was born (USSR), it requires people to negate their most basic instincts of ownership of things that they create.
As to land owners, etc., if the land owner isn't efficient with his property, he'll be generating a loss, not a profit, and eventually either will sell the land himself to somebody (or to more than one person) who will find ways to generate profit there or there will eventually be a bankruptcy and the outcome will be arranged in a similar manner, just without too much participation from the original owner.
We can't have a society at all where everybody expects to be taken care of by some magic of 'past social credit', somebody has to do the actual work of creating the stuff, whatever it means, and it really means organising land labour and capital in the most efficient manner to give the market something that will be profitable enough to keep the lights on.
Product requirements are changing as new tech comes out and old companies disappear and new ones are created, and there is constant movement in wealth generation, but it's not static as you suggest. Companies are eaten up, broken up, restructured, reassembled all the time, just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it's not happening.
And my last point - there is no reason for some people to work to give something to somebody for free at all.
We do not TRADE with people because it's fun, we trade with them because of comparative advantage. Thus if you make a good product, you find that somebody needs it, you are going to try and build as many of these as you can, and this overproduction allows you to consume things you did not create.
Building things just so that you can give them to somebody simply because they exist - it's vomit inducing.
You can't handle the truth.
My thinking is not antiquated, your thinking is antiquated, it's all rotten to the core and it is what is destroying the economies of Europe and US right now, whether you understand it or not.
The only way to fix the problem of overall poverty is to allow markets to work it out, that's what Chinese are mostly doing - allowing capital to come in and create whatever it creates thus improving people's circumstance.
The people can either be left alone and let the market create all the things that they need and set all the prices, and market eventually finds the equilibrium, prices go down so that majority of people can afford everything they need and even most of what they want. Or you can try and enforce some weird notion of 'fairness' (which I completely disagree with you on, I don't believe for a second that robbing anybody to give anybody else anything is fair, so all the Robin Hood stories to me are completely anathema) and you can observe everybody being miserable and only people in government sitting sort of nice, warm and fed on top of that giant shit pyramid.
You can't handle the truth.
"Entre le fort et le faible, entre le riche et le pauvre, entre le maître et le serviteur, câ(TM)est la liberté qui opprime et la loi qui affranchit."
The only justice is that which is defined by society, generally in the form of laws. We give men rights (they are not inherent) so that we may more fairly structure our societies; the rights of society are paramount. What you advocate is totalitarianism in the form of monarchy; the ultimate expression of your philosophy is one man who owns the whole world. Concentration of wealth *diminishes* its utility, even your anarcho-capitalist textbooks should teach you that.
Of-course Marxists like you, are happy to use any amount of collective government violence to ensure that the wealth is "distributed equally", which means unproductively from people who CREATE wealth, to those who WANT it. Thus eventually you descend into totalitarianism and dictatorship, and you call THAT justice.
There has to be some logical step between "equal distribution of wealth" and "dictatorship". I think you need to be a little more explicit in step two. Or just y'know, admit that you're scarred by personal experiences and you're trying to rationalize what is inherently an emotional argument that has nothing to do with the real world. There is no useful pure philosophy, in attempting to argue for one you're revealing yourself as a nutcase (and harming your cause).
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Libertarians seem to forget that there are all kinds of predators, only some of whom leverage government corruption. People suck, regardless of the political system they live under.
- it doesn't matter. Of-course some become rich simply because they robbed a bank for example, but that's not what is normally done, mostly people try to become rich through work - trying to run a business. Of-course if they have government force on their side they can simply create a regulation that forces people to "buy" their product - that's a tax, that's theft. An example would be this entire Obamacare with a mandate fiasco.
You can't handle the truth.
I wish his actions didn't lend credence to your paranoia. I'll agree that that is not an unlikely outcome, but I really doubt that that's his intention. I believe his intentions are more short range and less idealistic.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Namecoin is based on bitcoin. http://dot-bit.org/Main_Page
you have this odd, bizarre belief that natural market forces create wealth distribution is somehow fair
and more bizarrely, you believe government, rather than the reality of a rotten institution that does the deeds of those with the money, is somehow an evil tool that steals from the middle class to do the bidding of poor people with low character who don't deserve anything
your understanding of the world and how power and money actually works is completely nonsensical
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This "political BS" effects the livelihoods of many of the people that read /..
s/effects/affects
Your point may be taken better if it made any sense.
Let's start with nonsense:
Concentration of wealth *diminishes* its utility, even your anarcho-capitalist textbooks should teach you that.
- pure nonsense. Utility of wealth held by owners of companies, how is the utility of wealth diminished if the company is owned by people and the overall wealth of company is growing because the market buys the products the company is producing?
So Apple shares are going up in value, that's some increase in wealth that investors see.
Apple products are bought all over the world - that's the wealth that the Apple customers are see.
Apple products are built by all these people that are hired - that's the wages, and thus improvement in workers' circumstance that these workers see.
Even the tax men see the benefits, as they get more and more taxes out of Apple, its workers and owners and customers (yes, there are various tariffs, import and sales taxes in the world).
The money that one wealthy owner of Apple stock is being recycled in the economy, allowing Apple and other businesses to grow beyond what existed previously, and as long as this money isn't taken out of the investment pool and is not spent by the wealthy owner of that stock, that's the money that grows the economy (and that's why taxing work is almost the worst thing that gov't can do beyond destroying money and starting wars).
There has to be some logical step between "equal distribution of wealth" and "dictatorship".
- there is no miracle, like in your cartoon. Unfortunately there is no miracle - as gov't force is used to steal from some and give to others, this is only used by gov't as a pretence, not to create 'equality of income' but to steal income to grow government power. And equality of income in itself is completely undesirable and counter-productive, because we try to work more and create things that don't exist so that we can become WEALTHIER than the others, otherwise there is no point in running businesses.
But as government steals more work (money) from those who earn it and gives some of it to those who want it (and thus vote for that government), the true consequence emerges - government grows much beyond what it otherwise would have been. That is the problem USA and Europe are facing today - the governments are much beyond what their respective societies can afford and they have destroyed the productivity of the nation by stealing from some who earn, to give to others who want.
As government is growing, so everything it does. Growth of government = growth of power and force that government uses and growth itself allows more force to be used, and this force is used to make government grow more.
All growth of government force leads to destruction of individual freedoms and the final eventual outcome is always dictatorial, and I can throw names around, like that of Plato, who understood even 2K years back something that is not obvious to you.
You can't handle the truth.
you have this odd, bizarre belief that natural market forces create wealth distribution is somehow fair
- of-course.
that's because I completely reject your version of 'fair' - take from somebody who has and give it to somebody who does not simply because one of them is suffering more. I denounce and reject this type of social entropy, it does not work and it is absolutely unfair, unproductive and dictatorial in nature. How can any amount of violence be fair?
You are defining something as FAIR and you are using VIOLENCE to define it. You want 'fair'? How about you examine your premises first and realise that what you want is violence against the individual, and individual is always above the collective, because there is no reason to have the collective, the entire human population can burn in acidic fiery hell if it defines use of violence as fairness.
and more bizarrely, you believe government, rather than the reality of a rotten institution that does the deeds of those with the money, is somehow an evil tool that steals from the middle class to do the bidding of poor people with low character who don't deserve anything
- ha ha ha, naive.
The government is always a force of evil, that uses the pretence of 'helping the poor', does it by stealing from those who actually work and rewards with it those who are parasitic enough, that they are part of the government trough system. The poor are used as coinage, pawns.
But it's funny, you think there is MORALITY in stealing from some to give to others to equalise their suffering. But how do you measure suffering? If some are fed and clothed because the government system is providing to them while stealing from those who actually work, and have to suffer in fact, through all the nonsense that the system sets in front of them, then even by your definition this cannot work. You can't measure suffering.
You take the edge cases and build your entire system on it. You take the top 0.001% who can STEAL money from people by using government force, then you take the bottom 20% or so who are in worst conditions out of the entire population, and then you say: because there are these people, at the bottom, somebody else must pay for them. But you think you are going to use government to take from the top 0.001%?
No. You are going to steal from the middle, from everybody who actually works and produces and suffers while working and producing. You won't TOUCH those who are on top, you can't, it is absolutely impossible.
You will never help those on the bottom by doing any of it, but you will worsen the situation for the middle, and it's the middle that makes the machine go, and then the machine breaks (one manifestation was the thirties, one was the seventies, one was the nineties and one started around 2008) and then what? You think you can tax your way out of the broken machine?
No, you can push and push all the people, until majority have nothing and some simply escape somewhere else (and that's principally what happened in 1917 to 1923 in Russia as well, and it's been happening for a few decades on a slower scale in US and Europe, because it wasn't an immediate bloody revolution, but it was a slower process of continuous deterioration.)
your understanding of the world and how power and money actually works is completely nonsensical
- oh well, if you established that much, you don't need to reply to me.
You can't handle the truth.
if a society does not function fairly, the lessons of history are clear: revolution
it is a shame that societies often have to go through violent, bloody revolution, rather than merely make rules to make wealth distribution more fair, simply because of the existence of blind ignorant fools such as yourself
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You read whatever I wrote and decided to reply and again with the same nonsense?
There is a character in one of Bulgacov's books, the book's name is "Heart of a Dog", you are pretty much Sharikov, because that's his main thesis: "take away everything and divide it equally".
Do you know who suffers most in bloody revolutions, by the way? You think it's the (often former) elite? Hmmm.
You can't handle the truth.
"We can't have a society at all where everybody expects to be taken care of by some magic of 'past social credit', somebody has to do the actual work of creating the stuff, whatever it means, and it really means organising land labour and capital in the most efficient manner to give the market something that will be profitable enough to keep the lights on."
Tell that to Linus Torvalds and all the Debian GNU/Linux maintainers. Kids should tell that to their parents and adopters too. There are many ways of organizing how things get done based on what values we want to celebrate.
How much "work" does it take to tell robots what to do?
"PR2 Fetches Sandwich from Subway"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIYRQC2iBp0
The authoritarian USSR you knew is history, and the quasi-authoritarian USA is going much the same way.
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/
There were zero net new jobs created in the USA in 2000-2010 while population grew and the GDP went up by 30% or so.
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/#comments
People can deny it and fight it all they want. Probably the best they'll accomplish to protect and obsolete old order is wipe out humanity -- I hope we do better than that.
Also, comparative advantage does not apply when there is local unemployment. Who is the "you" you are referring to in trade anyway? The people without jobs who are at the edge economically and socially in the USA? So much of what people think they know about even mainstream economics is bunk. See also, for just one example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_toil
"The paradox of toil is the economic hypothesis that total employment will shrink if everybody wants to work more when "the short-term nominal interest rate is zero and there are deflationary pressures and output contraction".[1] The idea is that total employment will fall when wages, and therefore consumption, are pushed down by the simultaneous efforts of everyone to work more in situations where interest rates are against the zero bound so that rates cannot drop more to increase demand for goods. This is a limited example of the fallacy of composition.[1] where assuming that the increase in production that normally occurs when total labor increases applies in all situations. Put simply, when a recessionary economy is up against the zero bound, having more people seeking work - at lower wages if necessary - can actually reduce the number of jobs due to reduced demand from lower wages."
There are at least four fundamental complementary ways to arrange most work that needs to be done:
* Volunteerism through a gift economy (Wikipedia, Linux, Freecycle)
* Through the exchange market, but softened by transfer payments like a "basic income" (or a more fragmented system like in the USA with social security, public school supports, welfare, unemployment insurance, etc.)
* By local subsistence through advanced technology like 3D printers, personal robotics, solar panels, and similar DIY stuff
* By democratic participatory resource based planning at all levels.
The fact is, neither the USSR nor the USA was talking about "socialism" when they either celebrated it or maligned it. Western Europe is a better example of what "socialism" means. See Chomsky here to see more about the truth about the USSR and the USA and how they played against each other:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-4Hv9pDicA
Lots of alternatives:
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Tell that to Linus Torvalds and all the Debian GNU/Linux maintainers. Kids should tell that to their parents and adopters too. There are many ways of organizing how things get done based on what values we want to celebrate.
- ARE you telling me that the is GOVERNMENT force standing behind them, with machine guns, ready to fire?
No, wait, what is the point you are trying to make? Either you are predicating your ideology on government power and violence or you are talking about voluntary exchange of some sort, and I have nothing about voluntary exchanges of any kind for any purpose at any time.
So what is your argument about, do you want government to FORCE people into your paradise or are you talking about voluntary participation?
You can't handle the truth.
Much?? We've been biased against newbs since the 90s, were you born yesterday or something?
i am not required to hold your hand and give you the intellectual charity necessary to lead you out of your current state of colossal blindness in a merry manner. i'm not your father
i merely need to point out the big and obvious falsehoods you so blithely miss in your flawed antediluvian thinking
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We need to push back whether they have a D or an R after their names; whether their name is George W. Bush or Barack H. Obama.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
And how are you going to develop, Mr. Coward, if you have no computer?
I'd be happy to ignore all the political BS. If it didn't so often result in a figurative gun being shoved into my face along with an order to stop doing what I'm doing. (ignore the figurative gun, you get a literal gun: that's politics) Or same said gun being pointed at my ISP, or suppliers of the equipment I use, etc.
Taxes are not violence, and people who disagree with you are not "Marxists". Also, "freedom" isn't just a buzzword to use as a cudgel against things you don't like.
Seem to me that the most likely outcome of a startup in the US, is that their will sued out of existance the minute they start to make money or take a bite of one of the big guys cake
So many letters and still nothing at all is addressed. Where is your admission that your entire premise is wrong because you rely on measuring people's level of suffering and you want to equalise that?
Where is your admission that what you call fairness is based upon violence?
I completely obliterated your argument
Your double speak nonsense equates violence and fairness.
Your lack of understanding leads you to believe you can base equality on measuring the suffering.
Your arguments are based on your desire to use violence in order to impose your idea of fairness in fact without even asking the people whether they want your version of 'fairness' to be imposed in their name.
As I said, you are Sharikov, there are no ifs and buts about it. Do you play a balalaika?
You can't handle the truth.
The reason Switzerland is a good place for hosting is because the Swiss government has some idea of what due process is all about. Remember when Wikileaks moved to wikileaks.ch? No place is perfect, but the government here screws up a lot less than in many other countries...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I don't know Viktor Sayenko. Or are you Igor Suprunyuck?
(for those rational folks reading along in this thread who don' tunderstand the point: there is no point. how else does one deal with a crackpot on the intarwebs who only understands a subject matter within the framework of their own internal delusional references?)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Same thing again.
You are defining violence as fairness.
You are defining theft as morality.
You are promoting social entropy because your definition of fairness requires spreading of suffering across the collective and
you are denying the freedoms of an individual to promote an ant farm as some top form of virtue.
The FUNNY thing is it's all falling apart right now, all crumbling around the world because it was all based on your completely debunked ideas and you are clinging to them and calling for a bloody revolution (your version of goodness) in order to promote your ideas of what is moral, good, fair. All of it completely is based on violence.
You said it yourself at some point - you reap what you sow. It is happening right now. You are getting what you've been cultivating.
You can't handle the truth.
Taxes are not violence
- oh good. So when you stop filing your tax forms at the end of the year (or whenever you do it), there won't be violence. No IRS, no police will be coming to get you.
Did anybody notify Wesley Snipes?
people who disagree with you are not "Marxists"
- I agree. Only Marxists are Marxists, and the one I am chatting with in this thread above is somebody I know is a Marxist.
Also, "freedom" isn't just a buzzword to use as a cudgel against things you don't like
- freedom is the issue, isn't it? It's means ability to go about your business without being harassed by government.
You can't handle the truth.
I am doing none of those things. I am calling you a Dnepropetrovsk maniac.
Which is completely unfair and groundless of me.
In exactly the same way what you write above about what I stand for is unfair and groundless.
But it makes sense in your mind to say these ridiculous things about what I am saying to you, because you've stopped thinking and being rational on the subject, and have gone right to full-blown delusion on the subject.
So, in a way, you are a Dnepropetrovsk maniac. But not a maniac in a way those two "Dnepropetrovsk maniacs" are, that would be unfair: you are just a harmless intarweb crackpot.
It's just too bad your mode of thinking is being used to justify so much economic injustice in this world by others with real power, and that so many maniacs like yourself are so ready to accept the thinking, without any rational analysis.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"I'd like to see the tech community make an effort to reverse-engineer politician's thinking process."
There is no need to reverse engineer any politician, because ALL of them have the overriding goal which is to get or remain in office. In so-called democratic countries this means getting enough money together to market themselves to the electorate. In dictatorial countries, such as Syria, it involves police and military force. All governments on earth, without a single exception want to have control over those governed. There is nothing any government fears more than losing control over its subjects (citizens?).
Traditionally over the centuries this control has in large measure involved controlling the information that those being controlled were allowed to know. When the printing press was invented, many of those in power, such as the Catholic Church at that time, opposed the proliferation of these new means of spreading information and knowledge. Human nature never changes. The Internet and related computer technologies have made the spread of information available to almost everybody, much to the chagrin of the power elite in whatever country they may happen to be. Expect those who are now in power to fight tooth and nail everywhere, not just in the United States, to try desperately to curtail the free flow of information to and among those they wish to control. The media companies in Hollywood and elsewhere are part of the governing elite using copyright laws as an excuse to curtail the free movement of information.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Much?? We've been biased against newbs since the 90s, were you born yesterday or something?
I'm sure you meant to ask if he was new here.
Well, I may be 'Dnepropetrovsk maniac', I don't know, I have only been in Zaporizhzhya never in Dnepropetrovsk, but who knows what that means. NOT that it matters here at all.
In exactly the same way what you write above about what I stand for is unfair and groundless.
I disagree. Everything I wrote here is correct, it's the only way to understand your ideology, because you are clearly trying to weasel out of defining your own position on what FAIR means.
Well I see your position better than you do, you define fairness as amount of violence needed to take away fruits of labour from some to give them to somebody else, and you are going to determine how to do that based on some form of measurement, and you are going to measure suffering - misery, there is nothing else to measure.
Again, those who you think you are speaking for, the 'suffering', the 'miserable', did you ASK THEM if they are willing to spill blood? Because if they are willing, are you sure you want to stand here and protect them this much, are they worse your effort?
Do you like being the 'hero' of the miserable?
How do you define 'miserable', how do you measure who is more miserable - somebody who is on a government dole vs somebody who works 12 maybe 14 hour days to run their business?
And I absolutely don't care about the fact that there are edge cases - some people didn't "deserve" to be wealthy, some people are poor for no fault of their own, it doesn't matter. The ones who always end up suffering are not those edge cases, it's the MAJORITY of the people who end up falling down from hunger on the streets and being shot at by whatever 'Red Army' that comes into their village to 'collectivise' them.
You define theft and violence as fairness.
You define misery as virtue and morality.
You set the standard for "needs" based on some level of misery that you believe you can measure.
You want to set the collective above the individual, completely missing the point that there is no way to run the collective, because it is all separate individuals.
Do you love people? You find yourself often thinking about helping the poor? How much violence are you willing to apply to reach your goals? You need to read some Dostoyevsky, I suggest the Karamazov Brothers, it suits you.
You can't handle the truth.
oh, and it's "worth your effort" obviously, not "worse".
But the question remains. How much blood are you, yourself willing to spill?
How do you define what's fair, and why do you believe you can? Why do you think you can measure people's suffering and redistribute the fruits of their work based on that measurement?
Why do you like violence so much? Do you think of yourself as of a national hero that will help the poor?
Why do you base your morality on theft and your fairness on violence?
Do you think people should be helped regardless of their own ideas on the matter?
Anyway, I am sure it's not something you like to define actually, answers to all those questions, because my next question would be more specific, like: how much tax is enough, percentage wise, etc.
To you, it will never be enough, because this is not the stuff that turns poor people into wealthy or even into middle class, not taxes, not government, not any type of redistribution. You can only redistribute down, towards poverty.
You can't handle the truth.
position A: exists only in your head
position B: exists in reality
position B is what i elucidate. position A is what you attack
i have nothing to do with position A. you have not spoken to anything about position B
therefore, you have not spoken to anything about who i am and what i stand for, you are merely having an argument with a bogeymen that only exists inside your head. a bogeyman i do not resemble and having nothing to do with, despite your illusionary beliefs we are one and the same person. this is a flaw in cognition and perception on your part
please make note of this, and why i am not having a discussion with you: not because i don't want to, but because it is impossible. because i am not part of the conversation anymore, you have cut me out of it
someday i hope to have a rational discussion with you. today is not that day
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What is FAIR. Are you ABLE to define your own position or not? What is your position on fairness?
How is using government enforcement (read - threat of violence) a fair position to take away and redistribute from some to others?
How is it wrong to describe your position, as position of violence? You ARE after all, talking about government enforcement of fairness, and still, you only defined fairness in very vague terms, something about 'equality'.
So if you are talking about equality and defining it as fairness by use of government force, and I am calling this on you and you are absolutely not even trying to DEFINE what FAIR means to you, then I don't see a reason to believe that you are correct, and that 'position A' and 'position B' are at all at odds. They are the same position.
Define fairness and explain how you are going to use government force to create equality?
You can't handle the truth.
Have you read what I wrote outlining four potentially interwoven possibilities? Why do you create a "false choice" between two extremes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
"A false dilemma (also called false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy, fallacy of false choice, black-and-white thinking, or the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses) is a type of logical fallacy that involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are additional options (sometimes shades of grey between the extremes). For example, "It wasn't medicine that cured Ms. X, so it must have been a miracle.""
See also:
"Marxism of the Right"
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
We have lots of options. The question is what sort of society do we want to live in together?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Just you and an ever-increasing number of other entrepreneurs.
We have lots of options. The question is what sort of society do we want to live in together?
- I am straight out telling you, I am uninterested in any society that believes that using government force to distribute anything from anybody to anybody is acceptable. I don't need to read your lists, it's very simple - government force, yes or no?
You can't handle the truth.
"How is using government enforcement (read - threat of violence) a fair position to take away and redistribute from some to others?"
to counteract the natural accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, backed up with their own violent means of force. this is what government is in some places in the world
in a democratic country, where the government is supposed to represent the will of the people, the people are empowered to make sure that such accumulation is counteracted, so that the people remain in charge
your criticism seems to stem from a world without any force of violence. this is an imaginary place. a place without government is a place of total violence: warlords
what modern civilized government represents is the use of violent force according to policies and procedures. in a democratic country, these policies and procedures are dictated by the people. for example: how the police and military operate. this idea that there need be no military or no police is an absurdity that has no understanding of human nature
democratic government is just implied force and violence according to policies and procedures. take away the democratic government, and what do you get? you still get implied force and violence, but without any policies and procedures, just the will of the guy currently in control of the largest pile of money
people who think like you see the force and violence of government and criticize it from an imaginary world where no violence exists. violence always exists. so if you are a wise person, you criticize HOW the implied threat of force is structured in society, not the mindless criticism that it shouldn't exist at all. of course the threat of violence should not exist. but it always will exist. so we move beyond this question that is only intriguing to children and simpletons, and we begin to ask the mature question: ok, if violence exists, from what quarter does it come, for what reason? in anarchy, it is from any quarter, for any reason. in a democratic society, it is according to rules agreed upon by the people
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Doesn't have to be the elite who suffer. In Russia, it was the landowners. They were thrown in gulags in Siberia.
I am a big fan of capitalism. I think communism is a response to excesses, and the world is moving towards that. I recently watched a programme called Panorama on the BBC. The program was looking at the plight of the poor in the USA. The indignity of American citizens having to queue up in the small hours of the morning to get a chance to see a doctor who will work for free was shocking. And that is to a guy who is from Zimbabwe. The wealthiest country in the world, and people live in tents and its OK?!
Once the poor have nothing to lose, they will start a revolution. They will make the tea partiers and the occupiers look like a walk in the park. Do you know the reason that the west has seen a long sustained period of peace? It's because everyone had something to lose if the peace was broken. Once people feel like they don't have a stake in America, and believe me, many people now don't, they will make life hard for everyone else.
to counteract the natural accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, backed up with their own violent means of force. this is what government is in some places in the world
in a democratic country, where the government is supposed to represent the will of the people, the people are empowered to make sure that such accumulation is counteracted, so that the people remain in charge
- We have a breakthrough. Thus you are against 'natural accumulation of wealth in hands of some'. Thus in reality, as I said, it doesn't matter to you how some people go about becoming wealthier than others, as long as there is a mobocracy that can take away from them based on some idea of what is 'fair', which you still did not define.
BUT you just said: it is FAIR to use government threat of violence to steal from those, who have (and I SUPPOSE you mean to give to those who do not.)
your criticism seems to stem from a world without any force of violence. this is an imaginary place. a place without government is a place of total violence: warlords
- and USA was the first country ever that created a government system that was not actually based on nobility and was exactly AGAINST your idea that you are proposing here. USA was NOT created with an income tax, there was an attempt by the way, but it failed, because States wouldn't ratify it.
people who think like you see the force and violence of government and criticize it from an imaginary world where no violence exists.
- oh. An imaginary world, where people came together and signed a contract and in it there was no government violence against people, it was a contract that created a weak federal government, but of-course it managed to steal all of the powers that it was not specifically granted and never had any authority to have.
violence always exists. so if you are a wise person, you criticize HOW the implied threat of force is structured in society, not the mindless criticism that it shouldn't exist at all.
- yes, and people did see the violence that government inherently is and thus they created a contract stating that this violence must be limited to very small number of items. Yet eventually the government found a way to crack all the limits, and now we are presented with the result, and you are welcoming it.
if violence exists, from what quarter does it come, for what reason? in anarchy, it is from any quarter, for any reason. in a democratic society, it is according to rules agreed upon by the people
- and since USA was not created a Democracy but it was created a Republic (if you can keep it) and you are proving unable to keep it, you are going to get the violence that you think is authorised to the government somehow (and it is not, it's the exact opposite of what is authorised to the government), but you are going to get it.
POTUS killing people he believes to be 'bad'. Jailing civilians with military force and denying them the rule of law and justice, because he believes he is a king.
You had a Republic and you had pretty much in the history of the country that 'dream' and you couldn't keep it and now you are arguing for all that violence that is NOT authorised to your government.
But that is exactly why the government was able to steal all that unauthorised power - because of people like you, that believe that it is NOT good that violence is NOT used in order to steal from some and then redistribute to others.
It's ironic that you are going to see something else coming out of it - that violence, that you prefer, it's coming around, coming back, it's going hit you right back. All that violence that was bottled and chained and that you managed to allow to escape the chains because you wanted it - you are going to get it.
I don't have a purpose for you any longer, you have proven the exact positions that I was showing you have, and you can't deny them as you have just confirmed them.
You can't handle the truth.
Please define what you mean by "government", and please define what you mean by "force".
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
you don't have a very good understanding of how wealth accumulates. if there were no government, money and power would naturally flow to the hands of a few. without government. do you understand this?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Government - top officials, legislators, bureaucrats, technocrats, justices in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state based on whatever system of state organisation, be it elections of any type or a dictatorship, a monarchy.
Government force - using whatever passes for 'executive branch' of government to achieve goals of administering legislation and laws that are prescribed by the government system, and using private or state police or military force to coerce people to behave in whatever manner prescribed by the legislators, judiciaries and other members of government.
But you knew that, and I believe that the only reason you are asking me to restate the obvious here is because you cannot escape it, but admit, that you are interested in coercing people by government force into doing something they are unlikely to do on their own at their own will.
You can't handle the truth.
I don't care, do you not understand?
I want wealth to flow how it flows without government coercion, is this clear?
I also know that free people, free of government force, create a better society than people that are living in chains.
I also know that restraining government is the only way to keep individuals free.
I also know that out of 37 wealthiest people in USA, 27 were born before 1850 and only 3 were born in 20th century - Gates, Buffet and Walton.
I also know that the second half of 19th century (after the war) produced a much bigger qualitative and quantitative jump in quality of life and wealth of society than all of 20th century. Comparing what people had before civil war and what they acquired by about the beginning of the WWI, and then comparing what people had past WWII and what they have now, the quantity and quality of what they had acquired in a very much freer society is incomparably higher.
But again to my point - I do NOT begrudge others their wealth. I do begrudge their willingness to steal by using government force, and I do everything I can to not allow them this opportunity.
You are going to get what you are preaching - that violence that you want to apply is coming back to you, multiplied by a huge margin. You are going to have it, the dollar is going to collapse, the economy will be destroyed and then you'll have your socialism.
You can't handle the truth.
"I want wealth to flow how it flows without government coercion, is this clear?"
wealth that flows without any government involvement naturally accumulates into the hands of a few
so you have a society of a few billionaires, and 95% are in poverty
that's the world you want. a world ripe for violent revolution, by the way
just so you understand how your ideology plays out in the real world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Wrong - there was no revolution in USA, there was one in Russia.
USA was a free country and then it sold out its freedoms, no revolution, just constant growth of government power and destruction of liberties. USA produced enormous amounts of wealth while it was free and now it's going to have a major crisis and emergency, that it is bankrupt because it decided to give up on freedoms.
Russia was not a free country, it was always a feudal society and there was no Constitution, individuals were not free. Revolution was an attempt at getting some freedoms, however misguided, it was an attempt to remove the power from the hands of the tsar and feudals and into the hand of the people. The tsar signed his own death warrant with the way he conducted the Japanese war of 1905 but even then, most of the country was NOT with the revolutionaries, that's why tens of millions were killed at their hands.
Just that so you understand the real world.
You can't handle the truth.
True, this place seems to have picked up a lot of "cargo cult" types that love technology but have an absolute loathing for the science and mathmatics involved. That and the obvious paid PR guys (cut and paste long first post with a PR agenda etc) has almost driven me away.
right, and the usa is becoming like feudal russia, as more wealth and power accumulates into the hands of the few, as we remove regulations on the flow of money. we need to tax the rich harder in order to move back towards a more fair society. otherwise, we are headed to a world where our democracy is a sham and everything is controlled by a 5% few with 90% of society's wealth
and i don't understand how or why you think the example of feudal russia is anything but an example of exactly what i am talking about:
"wealth that flows without any government involvement naturally accumulates into the hands of a few
so you have a society of a few billionaires, and 95% are in poverty
a world ripe for violent revolution"
aka, russia before the russian revolution. are you not clear on that or any other example from history? the french revolution, the arab spring last year... what are you missing?
without a strong central government that reallocates wealth away from a wealthy few, you get societies that will revolt, because these are unfair societies. the "government" becomes "whatever the rich few want"
what exactly do you not understand here about the simple and obvious lessons of history?
just so we are absolutely clear, you do not agree with these words in quotes?
"wealth that flows without any government involvement naturally accumulates into the hands of a few
so you have a society of a few billionaires, and 95% are in poverty
a world ripe for violent revolution"
just to be absolutely clear: you do not agree with those words in quotes?
how did you get so blind?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you are not a citizen or resident of the country that shuts down the service that you are a customer of then you are of little or no consequece to the legal system there. If you are so far away that you can't easily arrange a face to face meeting with a lawyer that can do something in the justice system where the service is hosted it's going to be difficult, time consuming and expensive to get anything done at all and even then you may still be ignored as a non-citizen.
So it's not just a US only problem.
I looked into hosting for low volume FTP traffic some years ago and the best option at the time was a virtual machine from Linode in Texas instead of in my own country. Then I heard that some of the first data likely to be hosted there was old Russian seismic data collected in Afganistan (bought by a US company and then processed in Australia), and then some datacentre raids and confiscations hit the news. It's a slim chance that some wanker acting out of imagined patriotism would notice a bunch of suspicious filenames and the stuff would be confiscated and given to a competitor of the US based client and there would be little I could do about it other than lose a client and spend shitloads on international legal hassles. It just was not worth a small saving for the potential legal hassles even if it was a remote chance.
right, and the usa is becoming like feudal russia, as more wealth and power accumulates into the hands of the few, as we remove regulations on the flow of money. we need to tax the rich harder in order to move back towards a more fair society. otherwise, we are headed to a world where our democracy is a sham and everything is controlled by a 5% few with 90% of society's wealth
- I knew you were going to fall into that, I have a simple response:
USA has sold out its freedoms and because of that, after 100 years of BIG GOVERNMENT it now is at the stage where there is GOVERNMENT CREATED wealth disparity that BOTHERS people because this wealth disparity was created by government via inflation and not by market forces via productive allocation of resources, and your entire premise, that somehow what is happening right now can be fixed with MORE government is idiotic.
More government - is how you got to this point, and if you are going to compare USA of today and Russia of 1917, then you may have a little bit of a point, that USA today and Russia of 1917 both were unproductive and both suffered from the same problem - gigantic warmongering and inflating government that is destroying the free market.
and i don't understand how or why you think the example of feudal russia is anything but an example of exactly what i am talking about:
so you have a society of a few billionaires, and 95% are in poverty
- and that's your problem, you can't understand simple things, that wealth that is created as part of productivity in the market is not a problem, it's never a problem.
Whose problem is it that Jobs had all this money? He MADE it, he CREATED the money, because he created the productivity that didn't exist before he created it. It didn't exist on this planet - all these Macs and iPods/pads/phones didn't exist in nature or in our stores and homes.
He created the wealth.
Russian government, like any other nobility based government came out of warmongers who were better at killing and manipulating others, not out of increasing productive output and not out of making other people wealthy by giving them products and even amazingly enough creating jobs.
So the billionaires that Russia had and those that USA has that came out of the crisis better off because the Fed printed all that cash and gave it to them - yeah. YOU CREATED THEM WITH BIG GOVERNMENT.
You are never going to solve your problems until majority of population stops going alone with idiotic ideology you are displaying. Your problem is - you've been duped for too long by the very big government that you are protecting.
without a strong central government that reallocates wealth away from a wealthy few, you get societies that will revolt, because these are unfair societies. the "government" becomes "whatever the rich few want"
- this is idiotic to the n'th degree, all of the examples, Egypt, France, Russia whatever - MONARCHIES and TOTALITARIAN REGIMES.
In fact original US revolution did happen - against King George. A KING. Biggest fucking government you can have. A dictator. A fucking monarch. You have your new monarch right now - killing people on a whim. You want it?
You want your big government? You have it.
You have your big government, you have your big fucking amazing monstrosity you wanted, good luck with it.
You can't handle the truth.
wealth accumulates into the hands of the few. naturally. no government involvement needed
you don't understand this
so you're an idiot
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Name a modern country without taxes. I assume you use the road; how do you think that stuff gets paid for? And no, if you don't pay your taxes there will not be violence against you. You will pay fines and/or go to jail. The only way you'd see violence is if you instigated it. I get so tired of these idiotic libertarian arguments. You live in this society, pay your share like everyone else and stop being a fucking crybaby. You aren't an island.
May because these days there's less tech and more patents/intellectual-property...
Not that there's not a lot of cool stuff that people seem to work on, but a lot of it seems to get sliced off at the knees because of the toxic legal environment...
rather than merely make rules to make wealth distribution more fair
Sorry, but what's unfair about "you keep what you earn"? Redistributing wealth is purely about rewarding those who fail at the cost of those who succeeded. To put it in terms a geek / nerd would be more familiar with, lets use grades in school as an example. You bust your ass studying (or maybe you're naturally gifted in the subject and you just get it) and you get all A's in a class - according to your definition of "fairness", you'd be forced to take a lower grade (say a C) and other students who were lazy or just dumb would be lifted up to a C, even though they didn't earn it.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
The wealthiest country in the world, and people live in tents and its OK?!
Because they CHOSE to. They chose to make bad decisions in life. They chose to not stay in school, they chose to do drugs, they chose not to save money in case of unemployment, etc.
Once people feel like they don't have a stake in America, and believe me, many people now don't, they will make life hard for everyone else.
That's true, but it's not the people you think. It's the "evil" people in the US who actually work and pay taxes who are getting more and more pissed off because they're treated as less than human and viewed by politicians as only existing to provide more tax revenue for the politicians to provide to leeches. They're rapidly realizing now that almost 50% of the country pays no federal income taxes that their opinion means nothing and that, unless things are changes and more people are required to pay federal income taxes, the country will soon be ruled by those who pay nothing and continually vote themselves more benefits paid for with higher taxes on the shrinking number of taxpayers.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
False. Money accumulates in the hands of those who work hard for it or steal it. Even in situations where there is no government interference, theft isn't as prevalent because enough people have more sense than you and realize that he (or she) who earned it gets to keep it. But of course you don't actually believe the shit you're selling - you simply believe that you'll benefit from stealing from the "evil" successful people, thus you promote it. However, if someone advocated YOUR money being stolen to give to people who were less successful than you, you'd be posting about how unfair it is.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
1. In USA federal income taxes are illegal and collected illegally, I explained already.
2. In USA there are 9 States that have no income tax.
3. As to the rest of the world, there are countries without income tax or where income tax is very low and can be avoided, I have a company registered in Cyprus
Andorra
The Bahamas
Cyprus
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Mauritius
Monaco
Panama
San Marino
Seychelles
Switzerland
Then there are other places where income taxes can be avoided
Bermuda
British Virgin Islands
Campione d'Italia
Cayman Islands
The Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey
City of London
The Isle of Man
Jebel Ali Free Zone
Labuan
Netherlands Antilles
Turks and Caicos Islands
Of-course there is Delaware.
As to roads and everything else - it's not even close how little money is spent on these, and since money is fungible paying ANY tax (sales, import, any excise) suffices to maintain those, besides, I prefer private roads myself.
And yes - going to jail IS VIOLENCE, having cops raid you IS VIOLENCE.
Violence is not just shooting you, it's an threat to shoot you as well.
You can't handle the truth.
You are a schmuck. You don't care about people. You don't care about any actual problems. You don't give a shit about the economy. Your complain is that in free market there are people who make more money than others and that it is bad in itself, and that's a perfectly fine Marxist idiocy to hold for ideology. But the practical application of your idiotic ideology is that you are going to have all of your people go hungry and die on the streets and kill each other and themselves in a civil war. You think USA had a bad civil war in 19 century? 600K dead. Russia had near 2 million people just die in battles and being slaughtered, never mind all the deaths from hunger and disease, that killed 10 times as many people. That was people fighting and dying because some believed in things similar to yours.
The top richest people mostly left the country, tsar and his family were killed, nearly all military officers were killed in all the battles, millions of children died from hunger and disease.
You want equality - you are going to get your equality. You should really enjoy it when it comes and you are awash in it.
You can't handle the truth.
Is a condo association a type of "government"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association
"The fastest growing form of housing in the United States today is common-interest developments (CIDs), a category that includes planned-unit developments of single-family homes, condominiums, and cooperative apartments.[1] Since 1964, homeowner associations have become increasingly common in the USA. The Community Associations Institute trade association estimated that HOAs governed 24.8 million American homes and 62 million residents in 2010.[2]"
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
All this SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, censorship, surveillance and service provider liability stuff is making a lot of businesses make sure they have nothing to do with the US, and avoiding US by all means.
A lot of our customers most important choosing criterias is that we are not US based, and servers are not in US.
We also dropped US servers almost completely, only 2 remain to be removed very soon.
US servers were also a lot more expensive to operate due to all the regulation, and paperwork related in pleasing MAFIAA.
We are just a tiny sample, but i hear from a lot of fellow enterpreneurs avoiding US as well.
Kindergarten kids chose that?
People laid off during the downturn chose that?
If you think one in 6 Americans chose poverty, then you are seriously deluded. Your country has a problem. The rich have commandeered all the resources of the country, and realistically, those 50 million people have to work for them or not work at all. They do not have land (they were born without it), they do not have access to the means of production, and they do not have capital, or access to capital to be able to work themselves out of the mess they are in. Even access to education, the key tool by which the poor could lift themselves out of poverty, is now dependent on money. So basically, they have no realistic hope of competing with the haves.
The American economy is now dominated by super large corporations and there is no way for most small businesses to compete.Yes, a few thousands out of the 50 million may be able to pick themselves out of
I don't think anyone is advocating getting rid of capitalism, but its excesses must surely be tempered. There are many examples of countries that are fantastically wealthy, and yet seem to have a much better balance between wealth and poverty than the USA. Countries were pretty much no one can be bankrupted by medical bills, where access to quality education is based on ability and hard work, rather than whether or not an 18 year old can afford it. America seems to believe it is OK to punish children for the sins of their parents.
Our appetite for technical content (of substance) has increased while its rate of accrual has decreased, mostly because we are all sitting here commenting on tech sites instead of creating technical content.
Does anyone know why the fuck I keep writing my username at the end of my posts, even though it's clearly stated above them?
Am I ignorant or just plain retarded? No reason for doing this, but I just keep doing it.
My common sense went *poof* and there's nothing I can do about it.
TIA.
--
BMO
i care about all of these things, and i know that unfair wealth distribution, because my country's government has been hijacked by financial interests, has caused these problems. your problem is you think government is the source of these problems. the government has been reduced to a puppet, controlled by strings by corporate and well-financed interests, who had regulations removed ever since the era of reagan, bringing us to the terrible 2008 situation
look at canada: how and why did it weather the financial storm? a strong solid central government that rebuffed financial interests to relax regulations in sectors that bubbled in the usa
the source of the problem is CORPORATIONS. not GOVERNMENT. the solution is to FIX government, not DESTROY it
further reductions in regulations will result in further degradation of the economy. know your history fool
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Today the Web. Tomorrow the Cloud. This problem has lots of room to grow.
Much?? We've been biased against newbs since the 90s, were you born yesterday or something?
Sacrificing my mods for this, but like you really remember the 90s Jr.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I was a wee sprout myself back then, gramps, but I do remember a little bit. I remember slashdot radio.
Oh hell yes they are. I can tell you that I know of at least one software app company that is NOT going to sell into the US or other markets where there's a credible risk of being sued over software or "process" patents. I think a US based company electing to not sell into the US market is about as basic a definition of "discouraging innovation " and "scaring companies away" as you can think of.
Bitcoin rewards early adopters greatly if there is a large pool of later adopters buying a thing of no apparent value. In other cases that thing is called a "ponzi" or sometimes a pyramid scheme. In each scam there is some feature to make the overvalued item attractive in some way to the targets.
Bitcoin is a textbook ponzi scheme aimed at defrauding people that are interested in fast computers and encryption.
Thank goddnes we have govenmants with enough brains to ignore the utter stupidity you have propounded in this thread. Are you just Naive or strupid I wonder?
It is quite plain to see that unregulated capitalism results in most of the money ending up in the hands of an undeserving few.
What a dick.
take from somebody who has
Your reasoning is circular. Ownership, by definition, is the right to control something. You're claiming that because somebody controls something then they have the right to control something. That doesn't make much sense and you need to think more deeply about what ownership is and is not. "Ownership" by itself is not an ethical justification for anything, just a description of an allocation of control.
nah don't pick on the poor guy. fortran was all he had
Much of computing design is about resource allocation, too.
yeah, overallocation of resources... omg! computing design and politics ARE the same!
I was a wee sprout myself back then, gramps, but I do remember a little bit. I remember slashdot radio.
Ah, back when it still used vacuum tubes........ those were the days eh?
-jon
Brilliant. Exactly. Waiter.. whatever this man is drinking!
Revolutions rarely make things better. Often not even for the successful revolutionaries.
Somebody once said "Revolutionaries are dead men on furlogh." They'd better realize this, because even if they win, they're likely to lose. Revolutionaries NEVER live up to their pre-revolution promises. Often they can't. But disappointed people who have seen that revolution is possible, and who already feel their situation is nearly as bad as it can get are hard to control. Being reasonable is not an option. And after a revolution you can be guaranteed that most of the populace will be disappointed. Either they supported the old government, or they were relying on the pre-revolution promises.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
We have lots of options. The question is what sort of society do we want to live in together?
- I am straight out telling you, I am uninterested in any society that believes that using government force to distribute anything from anybody to anybody is acceptable. I don't need to read your lists, it's very simple - government force, yes or no?
I can shorten that for you. "I am uninterested in any society." Violence, or threat of violence, exists. Whether you have a self-declared Warlord or an elected President \ Prime Minister in control is your range of choices at this point unless you choose to entirely wall yourself off from the world... at which point, you'll need your own threat of violence to keep someone else from breaking in and taking it from you. Small communes can exist peacefully in some senses, but often only due to the conditions created by the surrounding society... the violence of which is kept in check by threat of violence from a benevolent and generally benign government.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.