"If you rah, rah the hackers and then look forward to filing lawsuits against the company that got hacked then you must also be in favor in catching the people who perpetrated this crime and dealing with them in the legal system."
The "people who perpetrated this crime" were the banks that did not adequately protect their customer's information.
Other than that little difference, I agree with you.
"I thought capitalism was supposed to be that perfect system that harnessed that greed and turned it into prosperity for all? Looks like it's missed a bit."
No. Capitalism is about voluntary exchange of goods (with money being just one of those goods), in which both parties benefit.
As the other responder mentioned: you bought eggs voluntarily. Implicit in that interaction is that to you the cost of that $1.28 ("cost" being whatever it took for you to get it), is worth less than the dozen eggs. To the egg seller (who produces eggs in bulk so her cost is low), that $1.28 is worth more than the eggs. Everybody is happy.
And this is where many people fall down in their understanding. Nowhere in that exchange is there any room for "greed". Greed implies one party taking advantage of another, usually via some form of coercion. Coercion includes things like monopoly, in which the consumer has no choice, and government regulation, in which the consumer has no choice.
In a free capitalist market, greedy players go out of business, because word gets around and nobody wants to trade. End of story.
"In addition to anti-trust, anti-fraud is required at a minimum. Even Libertarians agree that government has a legitimate role there."
I had the wrong impression. It appears that we are actually on the same channel here.
Yes, of course, anti-fraud is also necessary. That is a legitimate role of government.
"Wall Street certainly was more regulated in the '80s and '90s than in the 2000's"
This is where I must differ, however. Wall Street was NEVER "more regulated" before 2008 (let's ignore afterward for now). The number of laws and regulations was FAR larger than in the 80s and 90s.
The difference, as I have already stated, is that those regulations were irresponsible. Glass-Steagall, for example, might have been overrated but it definitely had relevance and should not have been repealed. Frank introduced (and got passed) regulations that forced Freddie and Fannie to assume high-risk loans, which they almost certainly would not have done otherwise. Etc. The government was directly behind many of the policies that led up to the 2008 crash.
"The answer though is to rationalize the regulations, not eliminate them"
I agree. I would argue that the amount of regulation could be VASTLY reduced (leading to more free market), as long as the regulations that do exist are rational and responsible. Something that is pretty hard to say today. Although -- not trying to be a grammar Nazi here -- I think you meant "make rational", rather than "rationalize". At least in American English, "to rationalize" means "to mentally devise a fictitious justification". Our government already does far too much rationalizing.
"I would argue that entities must NEVER be permitted to get too big to fail or too big to punish."
"The best you can say is that Capitalism when practiced by humans is an abject failure, due to the complete inability of its self-correcting factors ("invisible hand" via competition and intelligent actors) to have any effect."
This is simply incorrect. It has been the best economic system so far devised; when it was actually practiced, it led to the greatest economy in the entire world, even though that economy encompassed only a small fraction of the world population.
Sorry, but you are wrong. The more we have deviated from free-market capitalism, the worse off we have been. This has been a steady, and undeniable trend. Read your history.
Capitalism has been no "failure". On the contrary: what has failed is government attempts to "control" it. And then they use those failures as an excuse to exert even more control.
Smith, Adam. "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" (1776)
If you hunt around a bit, you can find a downloadable.pdf.
"Everything that happened before America's trust busting era would suggest otherwise."
Again, you need to read Smith. Even he recognized that antitrust laws would be necessary. He stated as much in plain English. In 1776. Free-market capitalism requires antitrust law.
"There's a huge gap between what you want capitalism to be and what it actually has been and currently is."
No, the gap occurs because you don't understand that what currently is, is not "capitalism". You are pointing to cancer and saying that's how the whole body works. That's not a valid viewpoint.
"Heck, we haven't even had a purely capitalist economy in the USA for over a century... "
We haven't ever had a "purely" capitalist economy, if you want to nitpick. But it started out as mostly capitalist.
"... and the capitalists still manage to crater the economy every few decades."
And that's where you are wrong. The people who have done that haven't been, and aren't, "capitalists".
Read Smith. Learn about what you are talking about.
"Where there is no oversight of the market, choice inevitably evaporates."
No responsible parties are advocating "no oversight" of the market. You should read Adam Smith. Even he recognized, way back then, that a reasonable body of antitrust law would be necessary to keep people playing within a real capitalist system.
So there is no great revelation here. Anybody who is seriously talking about Adam Smith free-market capitalism has to accept that there must be SOME regulation. But responsible regulation is not willy-nilly, as it is today; it is limited to antitrust concerns.
"We have banking regulation because the lack of it caused people to be wiped out in the great crash of '29."
Absolute bollocks. Government intervention, in concert with Fed policy, CAUSED the crash of '29. The economists who were saying so were completely correct about what would happen (it WAS predicted)... government and other "interventionist" economists continued to say the economy was FINE... up to Irving Fischer's famous declaration that the economy had never been healthier, the very day before the big crash.
"Things went OK for quite a while, then those regulations got rolled back and here we are with another crash."
Once again, it wasn't lack of regulation that caused the crash. Wall Street had never been more heavily regulated! It was IRRESPONSIBLE regulation, not lack of regulation, that caused it.
If you want a real culprit, who without any doubt contributed greatly to the crash, you need look no further than Barney Frank.
But no... I am not prepared to debate that on Slashdot. There have been whole books written about it.
"It's easy enough to say "in a Communist system, everyone is valued equally,"
Not so easy anymore, because after 100 years or so of theory, we've never seen anything even close to an actual Communist system. It has never once existed.
Agreed, it makes for interesting philosophical discussion, but that is as far as it will ever go. As Marx pointed out: Socialism is a necessary stepping-stone along the "evolutionary" way to Communism.
However, as history clearly shows, once a society adopts Socialism, with its strong central government, those in power have invariably (so far in history) been unwilling to give up that power, under any circumstances. Further yet, a Socialist government is vastly more easily corrupted than a roughly democratic form, in which the politicians are at least theoretically answerable to The People.
"With the insights from both, perhaps a political system can be devised that accomplishes the goals of the ideal system, while accommodating the pitfalls of the real implementation."
Not if society has to go through one in order to get to the other. Much like evolution via genetic mutation: you will never get from point A to point B, if the intermediate steps are always fatal.
It is nothing of the sort. As Adam Smith defined capitalism (although he didn't use that exact word; it was coined later as a general name for his concepts), greed has no part in it whatever.
Free-market capitalism (again, Adam Smith and what most people mean when they say "capitalism", since in fact he defined it), has to do with voluntary exchange of goods. It is possible for people in a truly free market to be greedy, but their business will suffer as a result. If people feel ripped off, they cease to do business. That's what voluntary means.
True, sustained greed cannot come about without government collusion. When there are controls and regulation, and people no longer have a choice. That is when monopoly, oligopoly, and corporate greed can breed.
And just to be clear: this wasn't even your typical, hackable, "security vulnerability". This flaw allowed ANYBODY who knew about it, with no programming skill whatever, to get name, account number, address, and telephone for anybody's bank account.
"Simple, when they have requirements on password length or character sets, then they're not hashing or encrypting passwords. Then you sue them for negligence, inform the media that instead of the story, "Up next: What common product under your sink could be killing your babies?", they should run, "Up next: Find out why banks are sharing your account passwords with thousands of people.", before they have a word from their sponsor. "
I've tried it. Doesn't work.
My (then) bank had a huge security hole in their online banking. I contacted the bank several times, and even went to the main branch in person, to show people what the problem was. I talked to their own programmers. They all agreed "This is a huge problem and we need to deal with it right away."
Did they? No. And after multiple contacts over multiple months, I finally decided to go to the media with my story. Guess what? The news media wanted nothing to do with it.
No... sorry. You are assuming they are reasonable people. They aren't. This is the only way they'll pay attention.
"Score against banks - a bit of a headache, some minor bad P.R., a temporary drop in share price maybe. Don't worry, it'll come back up when the next scandal pushes this one off of people's memories."
Not really. This publicly humiliates their "security" measures. In many cases, they are probably breaking Federal security laws. If I were among those affected, I would try to start or join a class action suit.
"Score against the people they're standing up for (the public) - millions of lives ruined as their credit goes to pot, countless hours and days of effort spent to try and recover, thousands of dollars of extra interest payments now their credit score has been dropped down, potential bankruptcies and divorces and split households from the stress..."
Again, not really. Would you honestly rather have had somebody discover all this in secret, and run off with all the money they could finagle out of it? And not be discovered for months or years later?
Or would you rather have it public, so that The People know about it and can take action against it?
No, you are quite wrong. This WAS the right thing to do.
"Wake up people, we live in a corporate run society, we are losing freedom in the false name of capitalism, we are losing our humanity to money." [emphasis added]
At least you do say "false". But I would prefer that you leave "capitalism" out of it. The people that are doing aren't calling it "capitalism", and at least in that sense they are more correct than their detractors.
Capitalism has nothing to do with this. Greed, corruption, monopol, and cronyism are not part of capitalism. Not even close. In fact, real capitalism cannot exist in an atmosphere that is so rife with these things.
"And will you still be supporting their actions when you find your own personal bank details on that list? "
Damned straight I would. That would give me direct evidence that my bank was not properly protecting my money, and give me very good motivation to start (or join) a lawsuit.
If the banks' security is shit, it's good to know about it. Better it be public than found by some criminal organization that will just steal it all and disappear.
I know. My point was that it was not the topic under discussion.
Look up the AR-7. It was first manufactured by Armalite as an Air Force survival rifle, shooting.22 Hornet. It went under the ejection seats in the survival kits that were supplied to pilots flying over enemy territory. (The.22 Hornet deserves respect. With care and stealth it can bring down big game.)
Later, it was sold to Charter Arms for civilian production, using.22 LR. Semi-auto, 9-round clip, collapsible, floats if dropped in water.
The original and the Charter Arms AR-7 had an aluminum barrel with a steel sleeve. The whole thing weighed 2 lb. (which, along with foam in the buttstock, helped it to float). Great little pack gun.
Then, with lagging sales, the AR-7 design was bought up by Henry of New York. Henry made a cheaper version: instead of aluminum, the barrel was nylon, with the same steel sleeve. (This sounds like a bad thing, but actually the Armalite and Charter Arms versions were prone to bending, if for example you sat on the barrel. The nylon was not as "strong", per se, but it tended to snap back rather than permanently bend.)
Henry took some other shortcuts, such as not bothering to fill the stock with foam, and relying on trapped air for the floatation. (Meaning, in effect, it might float for a few minutes but not forever.)
Anyway, it's an interesting tale about a largely-plastic barrel. My understanding is that Charter Arms got the rights back (for whatever reason) and are making the aluminum-steel barrel again.
Like... committing murders that cannot be traced back to you!
"Gee, officer, I guess somebody had the same code on their remote. Or maybe it was radio interference from a passing Google Streetmapper. I sure didn't mean for the car to pull forward from its parking space to squash that old lady. By they way... why is she carrying that Uzi?"
Correct. The question isn't so much "Which one is better?", but more like "Which one is less bad?"
But even that is false dichotomy. Paul is out of the running but there is always Gary Johnson.
(People, please don't reply with that "wasted vote" garbage. If you don't vote for who you want to win, then who you want will never win. That's a "self-fulfilling prophecy". Politics is not like gambling. In gambling, you vote for what you think will win. In politics, you vote for who you want to win. If you don't, you're doing it wrong.)
Slashdot Mirror
"If you rah, rah the hackers and then look forward to filing lawsuits against the company that got hacked then you must also be in favor in catching the people who perpetrated this crime and dealing with them in the legal system."
The "people who perpetrated this crime" were the banks that did not adequately protect their customer's information.
Other than that little difference, I agree with you.
"Release a hack that shows ANY personal info should be a felony."
You are part of the problem.
Do you not realize, that it was lack of security on the part of the banks that allowed this to happen?
A lack that in many cases, was probably illegal?
By your logic, anybody who points out in public that your wallet is about to fall out of your pocket should be prosecuted.
"I thought capitalism was supposed to be that perfect system that harnessed that greed and turned it into prosperity for all? Looks like it's missed a bit."
No. Capitalism is about voluntary exchange of goods (with money being just one of those goods), in which both parties benefit.
As the other responder mentioned: you bought eggs voluntarily. Implicit in that interaction is that to you the cost of that $1.28 ("cost" being whatever it took for you to get it), is worth less than the dozen eggs. To the egg seller (who produces eggs in bulk so her cost is low), that $1.28 is worth more than the eggs. Everybody is happy.
And this is where many people fall down in their understanding. Nowhere in that exchange is there any room for "greed". Greed implies one party taking advantage of another, usually via some form of coercion. Coercion includes things like monopoly, in which the consumer has no choice, and government regulation, in which the consumer has no choice.
In a free capitalist market, greedy players go out of business, because word gets around and nobody wants to trade. End of story.
"In addition to anti-trust, anti-fraud is required at a minimum. Even Libertarians agree that government has a legitimate role there."
I had the wrong impression. It appears that we are actually on the same channel here.
Yes, of course, anti-fraud is also necessary. That is a legitimate role of government.
"Wall Street certainly was more regulated in the '80s and '90s than in the 2000's"
This is where I must differ, however. Wall Street was NEVER "more regulated" before 2008 (let's ignore afterward for now). The number of laws and regulations was FAR larger than in the 80s and 90s.
The difference, as I have already stated, is that those regulations were irresponsible. Glass-Steagall, for example, might have been overrated but it definitely had relevance and should not have been repealed. Frank introduced (and got passed) regulations that forced Freddie and Fannie to assume high-risk loans, which they almost certainly would not have done otherwise. Etc. The government was directly behind many of the policies that led up to the 2008 crash.
"The answer though is to rationalize the regulations, not eliminate them"
I agree. I would argue that the amount of regulation could be VASTLY reduced (leading to more free market), as long as the regulations that do exist are rational and responsible. Something that is pretty hard to say today. Although -- not trying to be a grammar Nazi here -- I think you meant "make rational", rather than "rationalize". At least in American English, "to rationalize" means "to mentally devise a fictitious justification". Our government already does far too much rationalizing.
"I would argue that entities must NEVER be permitted to get too big to fail or too big to punish."
I'm right with you there.
"The best you can say is that Capitalism when practiced by humans is an abject failure, due to the complete inability of its self-correcting factors ("invisible hand" via competition and intelligent actors) to have any effect."
This is simply incorrect. It has been the best economic system so far devised; when it was actually practiced, it led to the greatest economy in the entire world, even though that economy encompassed only a small fraction of the world population.
Sorry, but you are wrong. The more we have deviated from free-market capitalism, the worse off we have been. This has been a steady, and undeniable trend. Read your history.
Capitalism has been no "failure". On the contrary: what has failed is government attempts to "control" it. And then they use those failures as an excuse to exert even more control.
"[Citation Required]"
Smith, Adam. "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" (1776)
.pdf.
If you hunt around a bit, you can find a downloadable
"Everything that happened before America's trust busting era would suggest otherwise."
Again, you need to read Smith. Even he recognized that antitrust laws would be necessary. He stated as much in plain English. In 1776. Free-market capitalism requires antitrust law.
"There's a huge gap between what you want capitalism to be and what it actually has been and currently is."
No, the gap occurs because you don't understand that what currently is, is not "capitalism". You are pointing to cancer and saying that's how the whole body works. That's not a valid viewpoint.
"Heck, we haven't even had a purely capitalist economy in the USA for over a century... "
We haven't ever had a "purely" capitalist economy, if you want to nitpick. But it started out as mostly capitalist.
"... and the capitalists still manage to crater the economy every few decades."
And that's where you are wrong. The people who have done that haven't been, and aren't, "capitalists".
Read Smith. Learn about what you are talking about.
"Where there is no oversight of the market, choice inevitably evaporates."
No responsible parties are advocating "no oversight" of the market. You should read Adam Smith. Even he recognized, way back then, that a reasonable body of antitrust law would be necessary to keep people playing within a real capitalist system.
So there is no great revelation here. Anybody who is seriously talking about Adam Smith free-market capitalism has to accept that there must be SOME regulation. But responsible regulation is not willy-nilly, as it is today; it is limited to antitrust concerns.
"We have banking regulation because the lack of it caused people to be wiped out in the great crash of '29."
Absolute bollocks. Government intervention, in concert with Fed policy, CAUSED the crash of '29. The economists who were saying so were completely correct about what would happen (it WAS predicted)... government and other "interventionist" economists continued to say the economy was FINE... up to Irving Fischer's famous declaration that the economy had never been healthier, the very day before the big crash.
"Things went OK for quite a while, then those regulations got rolled back and here we are with another crash."
Once again, it wasn't lack of regulation that caused the crash. Wall Street had never been more heavily regulated! It was IRRESPONSIBLE regulation, not lack of regulation, that caused it.
If you want a real culprit, who without any doubt contributed greatly to the crash, you need look no further than Barney Frank.
But no... I am not prepared to debate that on Slashdot. There have been whole books written about it.
"It's easy enough to say "in a Communist system, everyone is valued equally,"
Not so easy anymore, because after 100 years or so of theory, we've never seen anything even close to an actual Communist system. It has never once existed.
Agreed, it makes for interesting philosophical discussion, but that is as far as it will ever go. As Marx pointed out: Socialism is a necessary stepping-stone along the "evolutionary" way to Communism.
However, as history clearly shows, once a society adopts Socialism, with its strong central government, those in power have invariably (so far in history) been unwilling to give up that power, under any circumstances. Further yet, a Socialist government is vastly more easily corrupted than a roughly democratic form, in which the politicians are at least theoretically answerable to The People.
"With the insights from both, perhaps a political system can be devised that accomplishes the goals of the ideal system, while accommodating the pitfalls of the real implementation."
Not if society has to go through one in order to get to the other. Much like evolution via genetic mutation: you will never get from point A to point B, if the intermediate steps are always fatal.
"Ahem, greed is central to capitalism."
It is nothing of the sort. As Adam Smith defined capitalism (although he didn't use that exact word; it was coined later as a general name for his concepts), greed has no part in it whatever.
Free-market capitalism (again, Adam Smith and what most people mean when they say "capitalism", since in fact he defined it), has to do with voluntary exchange of goods. It is possible for people in a truly free market to be greedy, but their business will suffer as a result. If people feel ripped off, they cease to do business. That's what voluntary means.
True, sustained greed cannot come about without government collusion. When there are controls and regulation, and people no longer have a choice. That is when monopoly, oligopoly, and corporate greed can breed.
And that's not capitalism.
"European or English Common Law?"
Haha. Pardon me. English of course. Once in a while American obtuseness does rub off, even on me.
And just to be clear: this wasn't even your typical, hackable, "security vulnerability". This flaw allowed ANYBODY who knew about it, with no programming skill whatever, to get name, account number, address, and telephone for anybody's bank account.
"Simple, when they have requirements on password length or character sets, then they're not hashing or encrypting passwords. Then you sue them for negligence, inform the media that instead of the story, "Up next: What common product under your sink could be killing your babies?", they should run, "Up next: Find out why banks are sharing your account passwords with thousands of people.", before they have a word from their sponsor. "
I've tried it. Doesn't work.
My (then) bank had a huge security hole in their online banking. I contacted the bank several times, and even went to the main branch in person, to show people what the problem was. I talked to their own programmers. They all agreed "This is a huge problem and we need to deal with it right away."
Did they? No. And after multiple contacts over multiple months, I finally decided to go to the media with my story. Guess what? The news media wanted nothing to do with it.
No... sorry. You are assuming they are reasonable people. They aren't. This is the only way they'll pay attention.
"This is the critical point: American jurisprudence is designed to be reactive, not proactive."
Yes, it certainly is. It inherited that (as did many other countries) from European Common Law. It's not like that's unique or even unusual.
Arguably, that's the way it should be, in a society that promotes freedom over government control.
"As long as human beings are involved, all the typical vices attributed to greed occur, and Capitalism is no different."
Thank you for proving my point: it has nothing to do with capitalism, per se. That's what I stated, that's what you just stated.
"It can be done without putting peoples money at jeopardy."
Really? And how would you do that, such that people really paid attention and it wasn't buried in a 1-inch news story on page 7?
I eagerly await learning about this brilliant plan.
"They can rot in hell for all i care."
Um, I could be wrong, but I believe GP was being sarcastic, and that those are the very people to whom he was referring.
"Score against banks - a bit of a headache, some minor bad P.R., a temporary drop in share price maybe. Don't worry, it'll come back up when the next scandal pushes this one off of people's memories."
Not really. This publicly humiliates their "security" measures. In many cases, they are probably breaking Federal security laws. If I were among those affected, I would try to start or join a class action suit.
"Score against the people they're standing up for (the public) - millions of lives ruined as their credit goes to pot, countless hours and days of effort spent to try and recover, thousands of dollars of extra interest payments now their credit score has been dropped down, potential bankruptcies and divorces and split households from the stress..."
Again, not really. Would you honestly rather have had somebody discover all this in secret, and run off with all the money they could finagle out of it? And not be discovered for months or years later?
Or would you rather have it public, so that The People know about it and can take action against it?
No, you are quite wrong. This WAS the right thing to do.
" Like the bailouts the Banks and politicians win and the consumers lose."
I think most of us realized this 4 years ago.
"Wake up people, we live in a corporate run society, we are losing freedom in the false name of capitalism, we are losing our humanity to money." [emphasis added]
At least you do say "false". But I would prefer that you leave "capitalism" out of it. The people that are doing aren't calling it "capitalism", and at least in that sense they are more correct than their detractors.
Capitalism has nothing to do with this. Greed, corruption, monopol, and cronyism are not part of capitalism. Not even close. In fact, real capitalism cannot exist in an atmosphere that is so rife with these things.
"What [why?] do people wait to file a class action to protest against bad security in banks ?"
They haven't. It is discussed a lot here on /., for example, and it was brought up in the Wall Street protests. We just haven't been listened to.
But in order to actually file a suit (something they are liable to pay attention to), one must show that there have been damages.
"And will you still be supporting their actions when you find your own personal bank details on that list? "
Damned straight I would. That would give me direct evidence that my bank was not properly protecting my money, and give me very good motivation to start (or join) a lawsuit.
If the banks' security is shit, it's good to know about it. Better it be public than found by some criminal organization that will just steal it all and disappear.
I know. My point was that it was not the topic under discussion.
.22 Hornet. It went under the ejection seats in the survival kits that were supplied to pilots flying over enemy territory. (The .22 Hornet deserves respect. With care and stealth it can bring down big game.)
.22 LR. Semi-auto, 9-round clip, collapsible, floats if dropped in water.
Look up the AR-7. It was first manufactured by Armalite as an Air Force survival rifle, shooting
Later, it was sold to Charter Arms for civilian production, using
The original and the Charter Arms AR-7 had an aluminum barrel with a steel sleeve. The whole thing weighed 2 lb. (which, along with foam in the buttstock, helped it to float). Great little pack gun.
Then, with lagging sales, the AR-7 design was bought up by Henry of New York. Henry made a cheaper version: instead of aluminum, the barrel was nylon, with the same steel sleeve. (This sounds like a bad thing, but actually the Armalite and Charter Arms versions were prone to bending, if for example you sat on the barrel. The nylon was not as "strong", per se, but it tended to snap back rather than permanently bend.)
Henry took some other shortcuts, such as not bothering to fill the stock with foam, and relying on trapped air for the floatation. (Meaning, in effect, it might float for a few minutes but not forever.)
Anyway, it's an interesting tale about a largely-plastic barrel. My understanding is that Charter Arms got the rights back (for whatever reason) and are making the aluminum-steel barrel again.
Like... committing murders that cannot be traced back to you!
"Gee, officer, I guess somebody had the same code on their remote. Or maybe it was radio interference from a passing Google Streetmapper. I sure didn't mean for the car to pull forward from its parking space to squash that old lady. By they way... why is she carrying that Uzi?"
"Either way, the people lose."
Correct. The question isn't so much "Which one is better?", but more like "Which one is less bad?"
But even that is false dichotomy. Paul is out of the running but there is always Gary Johnson.
(People, please don't reply with that "wasted vote" garbage. If you don't vote for who you want to win, then who you want will never win. That's a "self-fulfilling prophecy". Politics is not like gambling. In gambling, you vote for what you think will win. In politics, you vote for who you want to win. If you don't, you're doing it wrong.)
"Mutation and lots and lots and lots of trial and error, frequently with unpleasant consequences for the errors..."
Nobody said evolution was free.
But at the same time, then, thank Grid for the elder fathers. Without them we probably wouldn't evolve.