Yes, but that system cannot be used to track a particular individual's car, whereas this system could (if the car is talking to the traffic light, what other devices is it talking to?).
The question I have is this, what effect does this have on the travel time of the not-connected cars. My expectation is that even if the system did not need to, it would make things worse for cars that are not connected. Either it would be inherent in the system, or the system would be programmed to that affect (maybe not at first, but before long).
It is not that I believe they should not suffer penalties, just that in the case of inappropriate pressure on the part of the politicians the charges being brought against them are too severe.
I don't know about the situation there, but in the U.S., the different formulations that different areas are required to use because of EPA regulations cause unusual pricing situations. I happen to live on the border between two different gasoline formulations. Usually, the more rural area formulated gas is cheaper. However, under certain circumstances and do to transportation issues, the situation will reverse itself.
In BC I could easily see there being a transportation cost that causes gasoline in the east to be as expensive as in the west. I could also imagine it being caused by government mandated formulation differences. Of course, it could also be a result of gasoline retailers taking advantage of people. My bet would be some combination of all three. I worked for as a convenience store manager that sold gas and was owned by a regional gasoline distribution company. There is a sweet spot between maximizing profit per gallon and maximizing volume sold. In the 90s, we had about a $0.05 range on the profit per gallon. Because we were owned by a distribution company, we had a pretty good idea what our competitors were paying for gas. When sales volumes were low and/or our competitors prices were low, we would drop our prices to about $0.02 per gallon above what we paid for it. When sales volumes were high and/or our competitors prices were high, we would raise our price to about $0.05 per gallon above what we paid for it. If we were at $0.02 per gallon above our cost and sales volumes were still low, we would usually raise our price to $0.07 above what we paid for it. The exception to that being when one of our competitors was selling gas below what we knew they could sustain, then we would drop our price to match theirs until they gave up.
Mega corps much prefer the Federal structure because they only have to buy 100 Senators to cover the entire country. Rather than negotiate terms with members of every one of 50 state legislatures, some of whom may have terms that are harder to figure out. Remember it is not as simple as outright buying a politician in most cases. You have to figure out what they want and how to make giving you what you want at least seem like it satisfies their desire for what they want. It is much easier to only have to deal with one set of rules makers than it is to deal with 50 sets. Remember mega corps do business in most, if not all, of the states.
As the federal government has become more powerful relative to the states, corporations have gotten bigger and small companies have found it more difficult to get started.
Right, because we've never seen a situation where the regulations are written so that if Al's Dry Cleaning dumps waste chemicals out the back door the allowable limit is X ppm, but if Uncle Bob's* Dry Cleaning does the the allowable limit is 10x ppm (*where that's the regulator's Uncle Bob). Or where it turns out that the inspectors who determine if a corporation is in compliance used to work for that corporation AND it seems that after working as inspectors for 5 years they go back to work for the corporation at a much higher salary. I'm sorry, I don't see how the libertarian system you postulate is any worse than the one we have.
I am not a libertarian, but our current system is broken and the fix is to move in the direction of libertarianism.
That is a specious argument, since when the country was founded slavery was legal in the majority of states. If our current system had been in place then, it would have been legal in every state because the slave states had sufficient power to get such federal laws enacted. It was exactly what I was talking about that led to the eradication of slavery. The fact of the matter is that the slave states seceeded in part because they knew that in order for slavery to continue as a viable economic system it needed to expand into new geographic areas. If the Civil War had not occurred and the abolitionists had continued to be able to severely limit the ability of slave owners to expand the areas that permitted slavery, it is probable that slavery would have died out as an institution by the 1880s anyway. If it was not for Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, slavery would have died out before the Civil War.
Yes, slaves did allow the benefits of states rights because when they fled their "masters" to free states, they were free (until the federal government started interfering to require free states to allow the capture and return of escaped slaves). States rights did not permit the rise of slavery, states rights permitted a movement to arise which led to the abolition of slavery..
How is a legislature going to fix it in our system? Unless you are going to allow them to write retroactive laws? In our system what recourse do you have if a court has decided that Evil Oil Company did not poison groundwater? How is that not just as much the end of the show in our current system (disregarding the appellate process)?
The legislative process has no more real ability to change things in our system once the courts have ruled against you than they would in the Libertarian system. I believe there are flaws in the libertarian system, but they are no greater than those that exist in our current system. Now, are the flaws in the libertarian system greater than the system that ours was originally designed to be? I believe the answer to that is yes. However, in order to get back to that system we need to move towards the libertarian system. In particular, we need to tighten the limits on government power.
The thing is that when U.S. money was gold coins, it cost more than a dollar to make a dollar coin. That is, the dollar coin contained $1 worth of gold, you then had to pay someone to make the presses that were used to stamp the coins, you had to pay someone to actually run the presses to stamp the coins. There were other costs involved as well. Of course it costs more than a penny to make a penny.
We have had $1 coins in the U.S. since 1971. Almost no one uses them. Of course, it did not help that when they decided to fix the problem of the $1 coin being too heavy and large, they made it similar in size and heft to a quarter.
Actually most states actually have tax tables that define how much tax should be charged at various price points. These are not just conveniences for businesses, they define how the tax rate is rounded.
One of the reasons that companies pitch a fit over the government hiding taxes in the price of goods can be seen with gasoline. It is not as big a deal now as it was (although still significant). Back in the 90s there was a big deal of anger at the oil companies and gasoline retailers when gas prices went to around $1.20 from under $1.00. At the time, gasoline taxes were around $0.18 per gallon federal and around $0.30 per gallon state tax. Gas retailers were making less than $0.10 per gallon before expenses (my recollection is that it was less than $0.05, but I am not positive of that). There were a bunch of politicians who made a big deal about the "greedy oil companies", yet the biggest single share of the cost of a gallon of gas was the taxes.
It's not that the staff in the store couldn't put the price inclusive of tax up; it's only advertising to people in that particular store and it's just a blackboard that they rewrite every day or two anyway.
You are correct, but in more than one state it would be illegal.
And where is the money to administer this system going to come from? Why should Delaware residents (which currently has no sales tax) be forced to pay sales tax? They have chosen to finance their state government without a sales tax, now you want to impose one on them from the federal government for some rather minimal advantages for other states.
And it won't save the consumer money, it will cost the consumer money. At the $0.99 price point adding 7 cents to the cost will take over the point at which keeping the price at $0.99 was worth enough in sales to offset the lower profit margin. That means I may as well raise the price to $1.25 or $1.50 (depending on how price sensitive the item in question is). I worked at a convenience store and we did that. We squeezed our margins as far as we could to keep the price at $0.99, but once we crossed the line to $1.00 the price always jumped to $1.25 if not $1.50 (and when we made that jump other items that we might have kept at $0.99 usually went along).
In some states it is illegal to post the price including the sales tax. So, there are many stores that would like to do so, but they are not allowed to by state law.
Of course, the legislature is, also, a place where the big corporation can buy laws that tell the courts that they should side with the corporation. Or laws that say that no one is to be held accountable if the corporation poisons his well.
In a libertarian system, if the guy loses his court case because of shenanigans, he can turn to the legislature to fix the shenanigans. In our system, if the legislature passes a law saying that the corporation can poison your water, where do you turn?
You seem to be comparing what you expect the "real world" of the libertarian system to the ideal implementation of our system. I do not believe that the libertarian system would be better. However, the U.S. was originally conceived as being a compromise between that and a government that has the power to do whatever it thinks necessary. I think we have moved to far towards the powerful government and would be best served by moving back towards the libertarian model. I would like to see this be a somewhat gradual move, although with very large jumps at the federal level and, perhaps, a slight loosening of what the state governments can legislate (especially in areas where the federal government is pulling back).
One of the original strengths of the U.S. was that the states were able to try varied approaches to most types of government intervention and people could not only vote in the voting booth, but with their feet and their wallets.
However, the OP's argument is that a libertarian legal system would be worse than the current system because it is not less corrupt. The libertarian argument is that there are fewer opportunities for corruption in a libertarian system, therefore the negative impact of corruption would be reduced. Whether or not the libertarian argument is valid is an argument that the OP never made.
When James Randi started out debunking various "psychic" and other frauds he provided a very useful service. These frauds produced a result and said, "I have supernormal abilities, how else could I do this?" The average person watched what they did and could not imagine any way to do it without supernormal abilities. James Randi came along and said, "I have no supernormal abilities and I can do the same thing." When the frauds tried to claim he had supernormal abilities and just didn't know it, Randi showed people how he did it. He then challenged any one claiming psychic powers to perform their feats in a setting where he had ensured that they could not use any of the tricks he knew to accomplish their feat.
The only problem with James Randi (and it is not much of a problem) is that he started saying, "I don't believe in X and you shouldn't either" in areas where X is not so clearly debunked as in the areas where he made his fame. There is nothing wrong with him saying that. The problem is the people who take the position that because James Randi believes it is bunk only those who are gullible could possibly believe it. Or to say it another way, people who use an "appeal to authority" referencing James Randi to dismiss arguments made by those they disagree with.
Then again “skeptics” thought the earth was flat because maps were flat and that is all the proof they needed.
And this is why people are demanding that you give specifics, because you are wrong here. There was never a time in recorded history where a significant fraction of the educated populace thought that the earth was flat (it seems unlikely that even a significant fraction of the uneducated populace thought so either, but there is no way to test that). You have accepted an argument that was made up in an attempt to win a scientific argument with propaganda rather than with facts as true.
The real problem is that we have seen a number of examples of little or un- regulated markets, and nearly every time they cause some problem or another. The most recent example is the banking industry which put is in the current recession.
The reason the invisible hand is invisible is because it doesn't exist.
Except that your "most recent example" is no such thing. The banking industry is a highly regulated industry and was during the time leading up to the crash. As a matter of fact, those regulations were one of the factors that led to the crash.
I'm sorry, but your argument does not logically lead to your conclusion. Your argument is basically, "Why do you think that people would be any less corrupt in a Libertarian society than they are in our society? See, government intervention protects you better than the libertarian theory would." You grant that in the current system those with more financial resources are able to use those resources to avoid suffering the consequences for thies actions. Then you postulate (reasonably) that courts in a libertarian society would be just as corrupt (using the word loosely). Finally you conclude that our current system is better. You start by postulating that a flaw that exists in our current system would also exist in a libertarian system (a reasonable postulate), but then you conclude that our current system is better because of this flaw that would exist in the libertarian system.
And that is what their defense should rely on. If they can make the case that the politicians, whether implicitly or explicitly, threatened either their livelihood or their freedom, or both, then they should be found innocent of the charges.
That is the important question here. Who was actually responsible for making the statement that there was NO RISK. (Emphasis added because that was the nature of the announcement, and the reason for the prosecution). Of course additional questions are, if the public official was the one making that statement, did they lend their tacit support to that statement? And, what threats to their freedom and livelihood did that public official, either explicitly or implicitly, pose (could he have had them fired/jailed/fined) if they did not go along with his announcement?
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But how can they use that system to track a particular car?
Yes, but that system cannot be used to track a particular individual's car, whereas this system could (if the car is talking to the traffic light, what other devices is it talking to?).
The question I have is this, what effect does this have on the travel time of the not-connected cars. My expectation is that even if the system did not need to, it would make things worse for cars that are not connected. Either it would be inherent in the system, or the system would be programmed to that affect (maybe not at first, but before long).
It is not that I believe they should not suffer penalties, just that in the case of inappropriate pressure on the part of the politicians the charges being brought against them are too severe.
I don't know about the situation there, but in the U.S., the different formulations that different areas are required to use because of EPA regulations cause unusual pricing situations. I happen to live on the border between two different gasoline formulations. Usually, the more rural area formulated gas is cheaper. However, under certain circumstances and do to transportation issues, the situation will reverse itself.
In BC I could easily see there being a transportation cost that causes gasoline in the east to be as expensive as in the west. I could also imagine it being caused by government mandated formulation differences. Of course, it could also be a result of gasoline retailers taking advantage of people. My bet would be some combination of all three. I worked for as a convenience store manager that sold gas and was owned by a regional gasoline distribution company. There is a sweet spot between maximizing profit per gallon and maximizing volume sold. In the 90s, we had about a $0.05 range on the profit per gallon. Because we were owned by a distribution company, we had a pretty good idea what our competitors were paying for gas. When sales volumes were low and/or our competitors prices were low, we would drop our prices to about $0.02 per gallon above what we paid for it. When sales volumes were high and/or our competitors prices were high, we would raise our price to about $0.05 per gallon above what we paid for it. If we were at $0.02 per gallon above our cost and sales volumes were still low, we would usually raise our price to $0.07 above what we paid for it. The exception to that being when one of our competitors was selling gas below what we knew they could sustain, then we would drop our price to match theirs until they gave up.
Mega corps much prefer the Federal structure because they only have to buy 100 Senators to cover the entire country. Rather than negotiate terms with members of every one of 50 state legislatures, some of whom may have terms that are harder to figure out. Remember it is not as simple as outright buying a politician in most cases. You have to figure out what they want and how to make giving you what you want at least seem like it satisfies their desire for what they want. It is much easier to only have to deal with one set of rules makers than it is to deal with 50 sets. Remember mega corps do business in most, if not all, of the states.
As the federal government has become more powerful relative to the states, corporations have gotten bigger and small companies have found it more difficult to get started.
Right, because we've never seen a situation where the regulations are written so that if Al's Dry Cleaning dumps waste chemicals out the back door the allowable limit is X ppm, but if Uncle Bob's* Dry Cleaning does the the allowable limit is 10x ppm (*where that's the regulator's Uncle Bob). Or where it turns out that the inspectors who determine if a corporation is in compliance used to work for that corporation AND it seems that after working as inspectors for 5 years they go back to work for the corporation at a much higher salary. I'm sorry, I don't see how the libertarian system you postulate is any worse than the one we have.
I am not a libertarian, but our current system is broken and the fix is to move in the direction of libertarianism.
No, his parents said "What a waste of fucking time."
That is a specious argument, since when the country was founded slavery was legal in the majority of states. If our current system had been in place then, it would have been legal in every state because the slave states had sufficient power to get such federal laws enacted. It was exactly what I was talking about that led to the eradication of slavery. The fact of the matter is that the slave states seceeded in part because they knew that in order for slavery to continue as a viable economic system it needed to expand into new geographic areas. If the Civil War had not occurred and the abolitionists had continued to be able to severely limit the ability of slave owners to expand the areas that permitted slavery, it is probable that slavery would have died out as an institution by the 1880s anyway. If it was not for Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, slavery would have died out before the Civil War.
Yes, slaves did allow the benefits of states rights because when they fled their "masters" to free states, they were free (until the federal government started interfering to require free states to allow the capture and return of escaped slaves). States rights did not permit the rise of slavery, states rights permitted a movement to arise which led to the abolition of slavery..
How is a legislature going to fix it in our system? Unless you are going to allow them to write retroactive laws? In our system what recourse do you have if a court has decided that Evil Oil Company did not poison groundwater? How is that not just as much the end of the show in our current system (disregarding the appellate process)?
The legislative process has no more real ability to change things in our system once the courts have ruled against you than they would in the Libertarian system. I believe there are flaws in the libertarian system, but they are no greater than those that exist in our current system. Now, are the flaws in the libertarian system greater than the system that ours was originally designed to be? I believe the answer to that is yes. However, in order to get back to that system we need to move towards the libertarian system. In particular, we need to tighten the limits on government power.
The thing is that when U.S. money was gold coins, it cost more than a dollar to make a dollar coin. That is, the dollar coin contained $1 worth of gold, you then had to pay someone to make the presses that were used to stamp the coins, you had to pay someone to actually run the presses to stamp the coins. There were other costs involved as well.
Of course it costs more than a penny to make a penny.
We have had $1 coins in the U.S. since 1971. Almost no one uses them. Of course, it did not help that when they decided to fix the problem of the $1 coin being too heavy and large, they made it similar in size and heft to a quarter.
Actually most states actually have tax tables that define how much tax should be charged at various price points. These are not just conveniences for businesses, they define how the tax rate is rounded.
One of the reasons that companies pitch a fit over the government hiding taxes in the price of goods can be seen with gasoline. It is not as big a deal now as it was (although still significant). Back in the 90s there was a big deal of anger at the oil companies and gasoline retailers when gas prices went to around $1.20 from under $1.00. At the time, gasoline taxes were around $0.18 per gallon federal and around $0.30 per gallon state tax. Gas retailers were making less than $0.10 per gallon before expenses (my recollection is that it was less than $0.05, but I am not positive of that). There were a bunch of politicians who made a big deal about the "greedy oil companies", yet the biggest single share of the cost of a gallon of gas was the taxes.
It's not that the staff in the store couldn't put the price inclusive of tax up; it's only advertising to people in that particular store and it's just a blackboard that they rewrite every day or two anyway.
You are correct, but in more than one state it would be illegal.
And where is the money to administer this system going to come from? Why should Delaware residents (which currently has no sales tax) be forced to pay sales tax? They have chosen to finance their state government without a sales tax, now you want to impose one on them from the federal government for some rather minimal advantages for other states.
And it won't save the consumer money, it will cost the consumer money. At the $0.99 price point adding 7 cents to the cost will take over the point at which keeping the price at $0.99 was worth enough in sales to offset the lower profit margin. That means I may as well raise the price to $1.25 or $1.50 (depending on how price sensitive the item in question is). I worked at a convenience store and we did that. We squeezed our margins as far as we could to keep the price at $0.99, but once we crossed the line to $1.00 the price always jumped to $1.25 if not $1.50 (and when we made that jump other items that we might have kept at $0.99 usually went along).
In some states it is illegal to post the price including the sales tax. So, there are many stores that would like to do so, but they are not allowed to by state law.
Of course, the legislature is, also, a place where the big corporation can buy laws that tell the courts that they should side with the corporation. Or laws that say that no one is to be held accountable if the corporation poisons his well.
In a libertarian system, if the guy loses his court case because of shenanigans, he can turn to the legislature to fix the shenanigans. In our system, if the legislature passes a law saying that the corporation can poison your water, where do you turn?
You seem to be comparing what you expect the "real world" of the libertarian system to the ideal implementation of our system. I do not believe that the libertarian system would be better. However, the U.S. was originally conceived as being a compromise between that and a government that has the power to do whatever it thinks necessary. I think we have moved to far towards the powerful government and would be best served by moving back towards the libertarian model. I would like to see this be a somewhat gradual move, although with very large jumps at the federal level and, perhaps, a slight loosening of what the state governments can legislate (especially in areas where the federal government is pulling back).
One of the original strengths of the U.S. was that the states were able to try varied approaches to most types of government intervention and people could not only vote in the voting booth, but with their feet and their wallets.
However, the OP's argument is that a libertarian legal system would be worse than the current system because it is not less corrupt. The libertarian argument is that there are fewer opportunities for corruption in a libertarian system, therefore the negative impact of corruption would be reduced. Whether or not the libertarian argument is valid is an argument that the OP never made.
You're not that well versed with earthquakes are you...
???
When James Randi started out debunking various "psychic" and other frauds he provided a very useful service. These frauds produced a result and said, "I have supernormal abilities, how else could I do this?" The average person watched what they did and could not imagine any way to do it without supernormal abilities. James Randi came along and said, "I have no supernormal abilities and I can do the same thing." When the frauds tried to claim he had supernormal abilities and just didn't know it, Randi showed people how he did it. He then challenged any one claiming psychic powers to perform their feats in a setting where he had ensured that they could not use any of the tricks he knew to accomplish their feat.
The only problem with James Randi (and it is not much of a problem) is that he started saying, "I don't believe in X and you shouldn't either" in areas where X is not so clearly debunked as in the areas where he made his fame. There is nothing wrong with him saying that. The problem is the people who take the position that because James Randi believes it is bunk only those who are gullible could possibly believe it. Or to say it another way, people who use an "appeal to authority" referencing James Randi to dismiss arguments made by those they disagree with.
Then again “skeptics” thought the earth was flat because maps were flat and that is all the proof they needed.
And this is why people are demanding that you give specifics, because you are wrong here. There was never a time in recorded history where a significant fraction of the educated populace thought that the earth was flat (it seems unlikely that even a significant fraction of the uneducated populace thought so either, but there is no way to test that). You have accepted an argument that was made up in an attempt to win a scientific argument with propaganda rather than with facts as true.
The real problem is that we have seen a number of examples of little or un- regulated markets, and nearly every time they cause some problem or another. The most recent example is the banking industry which put is in the current recession. The reason the invisible hand is invisible is because it doesn't exist.
Except that your "most recent example" is no such thing. The banking industry is a highly regulated industry and was during the time leading up to the crash. As a matter of fact, those regulations were one of the factors that led to the crash.
I'm sorry, but your argument does not logically lead to your conclusion. Your argument is basically, "Why do you think that people would be any less corrupt in a Libertarian society than they are in our society? See, government intervention protects you better than the libertarian theory would." You grant that in the current system those with more financial resources are able to use those resources to avoid suffering the consequences for thies actions. Then you postulate (reasonably) that courts in a libertarian society would be just as corrupt (using the word loosely). Finally you conclude that our current system is better. You start by postulating that a flaw that exists in our current system would also exist in a libertarian system (a reasonable postulate), but then you conclude that our current system is better because of this flaw that would exist in the libertarian system.
And that is what their defense should rely on. If they can make the case that the politicians, whether implicitly or explicitly, threatened either their livelihood or their freedom, or both, then they should be found innocent of the charges.
That is the important question here. Who was actually responsible for making the statement that there was NO RISK. (Emphasis added because that was the nature of the announcement, and the reason for the prosecution). Of course additional questions are, if the public official was the one making that statement, did they lend their tacit support to that statement? And, what threats to their freedom and livelihood did that public official, either explicitly or implicitly, pose (could he have had them fired/jailed/fined) if they did not go along with his announcement?