But for the sake of curiosity, tell me how the alignment is somehow perfect in a socialist system and yet flawed in a capitalist system.
In a capitalist system, the government has to absorb the cost of the externalities. It then has to figure out some method of charging those costs to the people who generate them. This method is never going to be perfect, and will likely oscilate between charging too little and too much. In a socialist system, the externalities are still absorbed by the government, but the government also generates the externalities. So there is no need to invent a system to try to push the full cost for the externalities onto their generators.
This point was actually all I was trying to say. I tend to be more capitalist with progressive taxation and a strong floor than socialist. The major exception I have comes from planned obselecence and externality production. So, I really do enjoy trying to figure out how those can be brought into a more capitalisitic society. The whole optimization arguemnt seemed like a sidetrack to me.
Tell me what superior font of knowledge informs socialist systems that eludes capitalists
None
Tell me how the government can generate the same efficiency outcome as a system driven by the profit motive when not motivated by profit...How does socialism generate the same optimization as millions of actors seeking out maximum private profit at once?
This part of your argument irks me because "millions of actors" using market forces is not antithetical or even incompatible with socialism. It is incompatible with some versions of socialism. But not Market Socialism. The defining characteristic of socialism is that government owns the capital.
Frankly, as you start delving further and further into any economic theory, they all look the same in their extremes. A totalitarian communist government and the debt-slavery under a monopoly where debtors are denied the vote, freedom of travel, etc. are fairly equivalent. It's like those examples of mathematical games where combining two losing strategies randomly leads to a winning one.
If you are willing to force people to give up scarcity with government power, that works. It also solves scarcity in the housing market. After all, there are more than enough houses in the US. And since people are only home 1/2 the time, with proper scheduling, we could double that number. The average American only watches like 3 hours of TV a day, so we can cut 7/8ths of the waste there.
I don't want to imply that property rights are sacred. But this concept that secrets are not real property is a sham. Nothing survives that. If I can force you to give me the info to duplicate the key to your house (a six digit code and lock type, I believe) your home is essential unguardable. If one knows enough about someone else they can totally clean them out. Just because one case is an individual and the other a corporation is a meaningless distinction.
So a one time raise of 5% beats a one time bonus of 10%. An annual raise of 5% beats an annual bonus of 10%. Now if it was a choice between a one time raise and an annual bonus, things would be different.
I agree with you that N 5% raises is better than N 10% raises. But I believe that it was a choice between a one time raise and an annual bonus. How I interperted it, the guy shows up at a job interview and they offered him X with an annual mandatory bonus of 10%, and he said, "I would rather not have the bonus and just 1.05X". Which is clearly an inferior position in the United States, but may not be in other countries where bonus taxes are at a different rate.
I don't think they care, but generally, how are Hawaiian shirts perceived on the mainland?
As Homer Simpson once said, "only two kinds of men wear Hawaiian shirts, gay guys and big fat party animals."
I think one thing that the article pointed out is that most Hawaiian shirts are oversized. The pattern usually can be seen as casual, or some designers make (what to my mind are) Hawaiian shirts that are nice but not dressy. I think it is billowing shirts is what makes people think poorly of them.
Even without bringing taxation into account, 5% raise is far better than a 10% bonus
10% > 5%. I assume that the 10% bonus was a minimum annual one, not a one time bonus, in which case it would depend on how long you wanted to work there.
Artificial scarcity, which includes all intellectual property law, is about destroying wealth so you can force people to work like slaves and fight over the scraps
To call it artifical scarcity is hardly fair. While that may have some validity for copyright, in patent cases the alternative would be to make the process a trade secret. Because the information there has real wealth generating possibilities, patents instead reflect a contract that the government signs on your behalf. The company gets the elimination of the risk that someone will concurrently discover the process in the next 17/21 (I don't know which) years, and the government gets the elimination of the risk that it will not become readily apparent, thus allowing competition in the field.
So, I suppose, what I am trying to say is that while copyrights require distribution, and thus the scarcity is artifical, patents do not. Hence, one form of scarcity is exchanged for another. Just like all economic agreements.
Statements made about patents may not apply to software patents.
Then let me say this loudly and clearly -- your children are YOUR responsibility, not society's. Get them out of everyone else's face.
My friend has invited over a bunch of people for a party. Some have kids, some do not. So the e-mail says it is expressly not a kid-friendly house. Of course, some idiots bring kids, and then act shocked that people are cursing, drinking, participating in all manner of vices.
Look, if a babysitter is so expensive, then either don't have kids or don't go to parties.
They only want to certify ISPs that (claim to) block porn. Not force* everyone to use them.
*Of course, all (both of the) broadband ISPs will either be certified or not. I imagine, in Utah, it will be worth the business to become certified. So I suppose you can always get some awesome dial-up porno.
. I think that I have articulated a pretty solid argument against the general notion of socialism as a means to allocate goods.
You have articulated an argument against government dictating allocation. However, that is only one varient of socialism. Market socialisms, which uses market prices to inform production decisions, also exist. That is why it is a strawman.
How is it evil for profits to be concentrated in the hands of owners of capital but just for them to be concentrated in the hands of the government?
Because the government inherits the responsibility of cleaning it up. They both get the profits and the costs of pollution. Your example of the Clean Air Act was a good example of the government taking corrective action to move those costs back where they belong. However, all such action will be imperfect. In a socialist society, the alignment is automatic and perfect, as opposed to constantly in flux.
To punish the company, maybe a larger sum, but lawsuits aren't supposed to happen so people can get rich.
There are two kinds of damages (at least). One is damages to make the person whole again (compensate the artist for his work.) These can either be based on the demonstrated damage or on a statutory assumption.
The other is punitive damages, designed to punish the company. These are the "overblown" judgemnents you refer to, because a billion-dollar company will not change its ways cheaply. In part because so few people will successfully sue, the damages for each case must be far higher than actual damages. That money is given to the person suing because they are kinda doing the job of the state by punishing the company, and also because the risks of doing so are quite high.
Just to illustrate that you statement says absolutely nothing.
My point was actually that each person matures at different speeds. That, and that parents are probably a better judge of their child's maturity in this regard than the child itself is.
Because it would be oh so horrible and the baby jesus would cry if they kissed or god forbid, had sex? I'm sorry to tell you this but your arbitrary moral standards don't apply to everyone.
Several things about this statement. If you concide that the moral codes are arbitrary, then who the hell are you to critique his choice. However, he is the father of his daughter, and in a position to try to instill his moral code. It's a perk.
But the other issue you have is you assume it is religiously motivated. He may think 16 is just too young. I have no religious objection to premarital sex, but if someone tried to have sex with my 16 year old daughter (assuming I had one)... well, anything I can put there will just sound like a lame attempt to be a badass, regardless of what I say. The point is that 16 may be too immature. Hell, I wish now that I had waited a few years to have sex and I'm a guy. Of course, back then I hopped to it as quick as I could. It kinda colored my relationships with women for a while.
The last thing wrong with your annoyance is that this is the foundation of trust. There is a predictable reaction to an action that the child takes. That's a GoodThing. X gets them in trouble, Y does not.
Your entire view of socialism is a strawman, because socialism has many implementations and you attack only one. Socialism also includes many competing companies in each field, so long as the ownership of those stocks is in government hands. It includes councils voting on what to produce and what level to set the prices. Just as "democracy" means different things in the US, Russia, France and the UK, socialism has similar differences.
Some versions of socialism avoid the issues you bring up, and hence, it is a strawman.
The last point you make seems to miss the source of my critique. I do not claim that socialism is better at determining the cost of negative side effect X. In fact, in my first post, I say that in the case that is unknown, both capitalism and socialism have huge issues. My point is, suppose a magic fairy told you the cost of X was Y. In a capitalistic society, because some of the cost is externalizable (see parent analysis), the cost paid is some Z, Z < Y. The difference between Z and Y (call it E) is borne by society. In capitalism, the companies owners only need assume cost Z plus the same percentage of cost E as their proportion of society. In socialism, since society is the owner, they assume the full cost of E (they are 100% of society). Hence, in socialism, the total cost is Z + E, or Y.
Did they run around suing everyone that just happened to own a dubbing deck ?
If by that you mean a stereo with two tape decks, one of which can record off the other, than yes. They claimed that its mere existence was evidence of intent to violate their copyright. They tried to prevent the marketing of the devices. The Supreme Court eventually reigned them in. IANAL, and may have blurred in part of the story of VCRs.
Why would I want Java on a device that has specialty hardware? Why not a language that just works. Why would I want a movie that can fucking crash. It's content. And the movies that tried to use custom Java failed in the PS3 and other players.
Bluray uses Java, so the menus and scripting can be more more advanced than that of HDDVD
Bullshit thrice over.
The Java menus broke when they came out, even on the PS3, so that was a nonstarter (in the future it may work, but they don't now.)
It's a damn movie, I don't want content that can crash (see above).
The original DVD format had assembly. It had registers. You could (and I have seen individuals) do far more amazing things with menus than studios did. The studios didn't use all that power because it was already overkill.
but if you need to decide between two (seemingly equal) players, and you're told that one of them can hold more data, which are you going to choose?
The one that costs less? The one that has the content you want to watch? The one that also plays PS3 games? Neither, becuase you're not happy pushing shittons (metric, not imperial) of money down the throat of content producers?
Collusion only works for as long as the people are willing to fund it. If not enough people buy Blu-Ray gear to justify the costs going into it, it eventually dies. If something freer, easier, and cheaper comes along (pick at least two)
I know this is true in theory, but hell, even communism works in theory. Capitalism holds itself to work in practice as well as theory. In practice, can you point to one example where collusion failed and a pick-2 solution arose? I can point to several where the government interveined, but not where the market forces did so.
And after they're 18, you don't get regular phone calls or visits, nor talks about their lives. You'll have denied them privacy for as long as it was legally possible for you to force that upon them, and the pendulum will swing back in full force, reacting to your actions with equal force in the opposite direction.
Bullshit.
If you're open about it, then the idea that there is automatic resentment is just bullshit. Seven-year-olds shouldn't get unresticted and expecially not unmonitored access to the internet. Should the kid be able to keep a private journal, sure. Electronically? Maybe, I don't know about that. Should the parents know who the kid is e-mailing, hell yes. Should the parent read e-mails to the friends, once they have been identified? Well, that's where you get into trust issues. When the kid is seven, yes. When the kid is sixteen, probably not.
My only objection is a seven-year-old should not get used to typing real information into a computer. A favorite book title, or the word 'computer', or something else vague. I understand a first name is pretty non-identifying, but I would rather my daughter type only lies into her computer than only truth (at least until she started to understand the difference between public and private.)
Slashdot Mirror
In a capitalist system, the government has to absorb the cost of the externalities. It then has to figure out some method of charging those costs to the people who generate them. This method is never going to be perfect, and will likely oscilate between charging too little and too much. In a socialist system, the externalities are still absorbed by the government, but the government also generates the externalities. So there is no need to invent a system to try to push the full cost for the externalities onto their generators.
This point was actually all I was trying to say. I tend to be more capitalist with progressive taxation and a strong floor than socialist. The major exception I have comes from planned obselecence and externality production. So, I really do enjoy trying to figure out how those can be brought into a more capitalisitic society. The whole optimization arguemnt seemed like a sidetrack to me.
None
This part of your argument irks me because "millions of actors" using market forces is not antithetical or even incompatible with socialism. It is incompatible with some versions of socialism. But not Market Socialism. The defining characteristic of socialism is that government owns the capital.
Frankly, as you start delving further and further into any economic theory, they all look the same in their extremes. A totalitarian communist government and the debt-slavery under a monopoly where debtors are denied the vote, freedom of travel, etc. are fairly equivalent. It's like those examples of mathematical games where combining two losing strategies randomly leads to a winning one.
If you are willing to force people to give up scarcity with government power, that works. It also solves scarcity in the housing market. After all, there are more than enough houses in the US. And since people are only home 1/2 the time, with proper scheduling, we could double that number. The average American only watches like 3 hours of TV a day, so we can cut 7/8ths of the waste there.
I don't want to imply that property rights are sacred. But this concept that secrets are not real property is a sham. Nothing survives that. If I can force you to give me the info to duplicate the key to your house (a six digit code and lock type, I believe) your home is essential unguardable. If one knows enough about someone else they can totally clean them out. Just because one case is an individual and the other a corporation is a meaningless distinction.
I agree with you that N 5% raises is better than N 10% bonuses
I will someday learn to preview before posting.
Accounting practices let the costs be recognized differently. IANAA, but this is what I was told.
I agree with you that N 5% raises is better than N 10% raises. But I believe that it was a choice between a one time raise and an annual bonus. How I interperted it, the guy shows up at a job interview and they offered him X with an annual mandatory bonus of 10%, and he said, "I would rather not have the bonus and just 1.05X". Which is clearly an inferior position in the United States, but may not be in other countries where bonus taxes are at a different rate.
As Homer Simpson once said, "only two kinds of men wear Hawaiian shirts, gay guys and big fat party animals."
I think one thing that the article pointed out is that most Hawaiian shirts are oversized. The pattern usually can be seen as casual, or some designers make (what to my mind are) Hawaiian shirts that are nice but not dressy. I think it is billowing shirts is what makes people think poorly of them.
10% > 5%. I assume that the 10% bonus was a minimum annual one, not a one time bonus, in which case it would depend on how long you wanted to work there.
To call it artifical scarcity is hardly fair. While that may have some validity for copyright, in patent cases the alternative would be to make the process a trade secret. Because the information there has real wealth generating possibilities, patents instead reflect a contract that the government signs on your behalf. The company gets the elimination of the risk that someone will concurrently discover the process in the next 17/21 (I don't know which) years, and the government gets the elimination of the risk that it will not become readily apparent, thus allowing competition in the field.
So, I suppose, what I am trying to say is that while copyrights require distribution, and thus the scarcity is artifical, patents do not. Hence, one form of scarcity is exchanged for another. Just like all economic agreements.
Statements made about patents may not apply to software patents.
My friend has invited over a bunch of people for a party. Some have kids, some do not. So the e-mail says it is expressly not a kid-friendly house. Of course, some idiots bring kids, and then act shocked that people are cursing, drinking, participating in all manner of vices.
Look, if a babysitter is so expensive, then either don't have kids or don't go to parties.
They only want to certify ISPs that (claim to) block porn. Not force* everyone to use them.
*Of course, all (both of the) broadband ISPs will either be certified or not. I imagine, in Utah, it will be worth the business to become certified. So I suppose you can always get some awesome dial-up porno.
I've never heard of that software before. How does subconsciously compare to AdBlock?
You have articulated an argument against government dictating allocation. However, that is only one varient of socialism. Market socialisms, which uses market prices to inform production decisions, also exist. That is why it is a strawman.
Because the government inherits the responsibility of cleaning it up. They both get the profits and the costs of pollution. Your example of the Clean Air Act was a good example of the government taking corrective action to move those costs back where they belong. However, all such action will be imperfect. In a socialist society, the alignment is automatic and perfect, as opposed to constantly in flux.
There are two kinds of damages (at least). One is damages to make the person whole again (compensate the artist for his work.) These can either be based on the demonstrated damage or on a statutory assumption.
The other is punitive damages, designed to punish the company. These are the "overblown" judgemnents you refer to, because a billion-dollar company will not change its ways cheaply. In part because so few people will successfully sue, the damages for each case must be far higher than actual damages. That money is given to the person suing because they are kinda doing the job of the state by punishing the company, and also because the risks of doing so are quite high.
My point was actually that each person matures at different speeds. That, and that parents are probably a better judge of their child's maturity in this regard than the child itself is.
Several things about this statement. If you concide that the moral codes are arbitrary, then who the hell are you to critique his choice. However, he is the father of his daughter, and in a position to try to instill his moral code. It's a perk.
But the other issue you have is you assume it is religiously motivated. He may think 16 is just too young. I have no religious objection to premarital sex, but if someone tried to have sex with my 16 year old daughter (assuming I had one)... well, anything I can put there will just sound like a lame attempt to be a badass, regardless of what I say. The point is that 16 may be too immature. Hell, I wish now that I had waited a few years to have sex and I'm a guy. Of course, back then I hopped to it as quick as I could. It kinda colored my relationships with women for a while.
The last thing wrong with your annoyance is that this is the foundation of trust. There is a predictable reaction to an action that the child takes. That's a GoodThing. X gets them in trouble, Y does not.
Your entire view of socialism is a strawman, because socialism has many implementations and you attack only one. Socialism also includes many competing companies in each field, so long as the ownership of those stocks is in government hands. It includes councils voting on what to produce and what level to set the prices. Just as "democracy" means different things in the US, Russia, France and the UK, socialism has similar differences.
Some versions of socialism avoid the issues you bring up, and hence, it is a strawman.
The last point you make seems to miss the source of my critique. I do not claim that socialism is better at determining the cost of negative side effect X. In fact, in my first post, I say that in the case that is unknown, both capitalism and socialism have huge issues. My point is, suppose a magic fairy told you the cost of X was Y. In a capitalistic society, because some of the cost is externalizable (see parent analysis), the cost paid is some Z, Z < Y. The difference between Z and Y (call it E) is borne by society. In capitalism, the companies owners only need assume cost Z plus the same percentage of cost E as their proportion of society. In socialism, since society is the owner, they assume the full cost of E (they are 100% of society). Hence, in socialism, the total cost is Z + E, or Y.
If by that you mean a stereo with two tape decks, one of which can record off the other, than yes. They claimed that its mere existence was evidence of intent to violate their copyright. They tried to prevent the marketing of the devices. The Supreme Court eventually reigned them in. IANAL, and may have blurred in part of the story of VCRs.
Why would I want Java on a device that has specialty hardware? Why not a language that just works. Why would I want a movie that can fucking crash. It's content. And the movies that tried to use custom Java failed in the PS3 and other players.
Bullshit thrice over.
The one that costs less? The one that has the content you want to watch? The one that also plays PS3 games? Neither, becuase you're not happy pushing shittons (metric, not imperial) of money down the throat of content producers?
I know this is true in theory, but hell, even communism works in theory. Capitalism holds itself to work in practice as well as theory. In practice, can you point to one example where collusion failed and a pick-2 solution arose? I can point to several where the government interveined, but not where the market forces did so.
So that is why the Hindenburg didn't use Helium.
Bullshit.
If you're open about it, then the idea that there is automatic resentment is just bullshit. Seven-year-olds shouldn't get unresticted and expecially not unmonitored access to the internet. Should the kid be able to keep a private journal, sure. Electronically? Maybe, I don't know about that. Should the parents know who the kid is e-mailing, hell yes. Should the parent read e-mails to the friends, once they have been identified? Well, that's where you get into trust issues. When the kid is seven, yes. When the kid is sixteen, probably not.
My only objection is a seven-year-old should not get used to typing real information into a computer. A favorite book title, or the word 'computer', or something else vague. I understand a first name is pretty non-identifying, but I would rather my daughter type only lies into her computer than only truth (at least until she started to understand the difference between public and private.)