Corporations would not exist without governments; a corporation is not just an agreement between shareholders, it's a bundle of rights that are enforced against the world, by the State. The shareholders enter into the corporate ownership agreement because they know that they'll be protected from personal liability by the actions of the corporation, among other reasons. The only way they can do this is if the State says they can and is willing to back up that statement with the support of the courts and the police if necessary. No government, no corporations. This would NOT work in a society with multiple agencies, because you would just escalate disputes up a level, from the level of various people with disputes (corporate or otherwise) to various people and their respective enforcement systems, with no grand arbitrator. We can see this at work now in International law. A natural human may be sheltered from the consequences of their corporate actions in the US, but can't rely on that protection if they travel to China or Iran or any other nation that doesn't recognize the corporate structure erected by the US government and the Chancery Court in Delaware.
Bitcoin is not a ponzi scheme but it behaves similar to one - the increasing mining difficulty and limited overall amount of coins heavily rewards early adopters (who hoard their bitcoins) if and if only these early adopters can convince the latecomers that bitcoins actually have value (otherwise cashing out becomes hard).
That's not a ponzi scheme, that's a pyramid scheme.
Er, there's a rather large country with lots of open spaces right next door, that someone might consider as a viable option to the US or Europe. You know, Canada, that place where we've weathered the downturn better, are on track (in 2-3 years or so, unless Europe implodes) to eliminate the temporary deficits we ran up to keep our heads above water during the financial crisis and go back to running surpluses, have universal, single payor health care (at half the price per capita of US health care), similar standard of living, stable democracy, and politicians who are saner than the US ones, even if I don't like anything our current government is doing.
Just sayin'.
(We've got our own problems here, no question, but we're in better shape than the US, for the foreseeable future)
Some clauses of the Charter apply to corporations, as well as people. Clause 2b definitely applies to corporations. See Irwin Toy v. Quebec in which a Toy company sought to have laws regulating advertising directed at children under 13 struck for unconstitutionality. 5 Justices of the SCC agreed that "commercial speech" (in this case, advertising from a corporation) was protected. They split on whether the government's regs were justified in a free and democratic society (3-2 in favour of the government). S. 2 of the Charter does not apply exclusively to "persons".
disclaimer: IAAL, but not a constitutional lawyer, and certainly not YOUR lawyer. The above is not advice, and is likely complicated by constitutional law that I'm not fully familiar with.
In Canada, if your claims are sufficiently vague they can be categorized as "mere puffery", i.e. statements that reasonable people know are probably not literally true.
The word "man" is not used in the Canadian Charter of Rights and freedoms. The terms "citizen", "person," "individual" and "everyone" are used. Each of these terms is supposed to be distinguishable from the others (though I'm not sure whether there's a difference between "individual" and "person" or whether that question's been litigated). Freedom of speech in Canada is guaranteed to "everyone" which means that Corporations are included, with limitations.
Not all speech is protected, and there is a strong argument that the particular speech in question amounts to fraud, which is definitely not protected constitutionally, in Canada or the US.
(Posting AC because I'm at work and I don't log into websites from work...)
Dear Rogers, Canada doesn't have Freedom of Speech.
Ahem.
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms... 2. Everyone* has the following fundamental freedoms: (a) freedom of conscience and religion; (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication; (c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and (d) freedom of association.
*It's that word that allows corporations to enjoy these freedoms as well as natural humans.
These freedoms (and all the others) are all modified slightly by clause 1 of the Charter:
1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
Also, there's the fact that no one freedom is given priority over any other freedom, so that my freedom of expression can be over-ridden by your freedom to enjoy "security of the person." Hence the constitutional justification for laws against hate speech.
Well no, actually, I think what bothers people is that the 1% (or really the 0.1%, or maybe the 0.01%) are outsourcing the jobs to poorer people and keeping all the profit generated by such a move for themselves. Personally, I would love to see wages rise in the poorest countries (and worker benefits, employee safety, etc rise with wages), and I would even condone a certain drop in my lifestyle and that of the average Westerner to make that happen, but the people who actually make the outsourcing decisions (and the very rich people who pay them) are not at all interested in making the average Chinese or Indian wealthier. They're only interested in enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else.
It's open to all of us to complain about this (and yes, that includes those people in the very highest income categories, like Stephen King or Warren Buffett), because to varying degrees we all suffer negative consequences because of it. Just because the poorest people have more to complain about, doesn't mean that the rest of us should stop complaining when a tiny minority takes our earned wealth away from us. In fact, if as the top 5% we have more power and can leverage more effective methods than the lower 95% of people, then don't we have an obligation to stand up and complain, and if that doesn't work, march, if we can? For ourselves, but also for those making far less than us?
the higgs field interacts with itself. Or if you prefer, the boson interacts with the field, and the field gives mass to the boson. At least, that's roughly what I took from the article.
No no, that's "free as in beer". They get "free/libre" rooms, with no locks on the doors. The room itself is free, but you have to pay for a support package for as long as you use the room.
As things stand now, probably not. But no doubt the government will modify the laws to carve out an exception. The real question is, would such laws make it past judicial scrutiny? I don't know the answer to that one, but the courts have become more friendly to privacy protection lately, so I'm hopeful.
From the Criminal Code of Canada: Interception of Communications
Marginal note:Interception
184. (1) Every one who, by means of any electro-magnetic, acoustic, mechanical or other device, wilfully intercepts a private communication is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years. Marginal note:Saving provision
(2) Subsection (1) does not apply to (a) a person who has the consent to intercept, express or implied, of the originator of the private communication or of the person intended by the originator thereof to receive it; (b) a person who intercepts a private communication in accordance with an authorization or pursuant to section 184.4 or any person who in good faith aids in any way another person who the aiding person believes on reasonable grounds is acting with an authorization or pursuant to section 184.4; (c) a person engaged in providing a telephone, telegraph or other communication service to the public who intercepts a private communication, (i) if the interception is necessary for the purpose of providing the service, (ii) in the course of service observing or random monitoring necessary for the purpose of mechanical or service quality control checks, or (iii) if the interception is necessary to protect the person’s rights or property directly related to providing the service; (d) an officer or servant of Her Majesty in right of Canada who engages in radio frequency spectrum management, in respect of a private communication intercepted by that officer or servant for the purpose of identifying, isolating or preventing an unauthorized or interfering use of a frequency or of a transmission; or (e) a person, or any person acting on their behalf, in possession or control of a computer system, as defined in subsection 342.1(2), who intercepts a private communication originating from, directed to or transmitting through that computer system, if the interception is reasonably necessary for (i) managing the quality of service of the computer system as it relates to performance factors such as the responsiveness and capacity of the system as well as the integrity and availability of the system and data, or (ii) protecting the computer system against any act that would be an offence under subsection 342.1(1) or 430(1.1). Marginal note:
All your Apple gear has supported IPv6 out of the box for a few years now. I think Windows supports it out of the box, and probably your Android phone too, though I'm less sure about that. Most likely the missing link is your NAT box (unless you have an Apple box, which as I said is IPv6 ready), and your ISP.
I think in this case, given how low the profit margins are, buying up the competitors simply means that you can now sell enough hard drives at absurdly low prices to be able to make a living. If there were real collusion or natural monopoly effects, the prices would be going up from the post-flood levels, not down.
We're talking about profit margins of 6% and 3% respectively here. At those levels, it's absurd to argue that the products are over-priced (unless great heaping piles of profit are being added further down the channel).
Hard drive pricing isn't about collusion, it's about commodification: there's essentially no difference between the products that competitors sell, so they got into a race to the bottom in terms of their profits in the hopes of capturing larger market share. Now each company is backing off a bit and taking a bit more profit, so they can continue doing business at all. Capitalism at work (and properly, for once), more news at eleven. The fact that one company is taking half the margins that the other is taking also tends to show that there's no collusion. If they were colluding, they'd be taking roughly the same profit margin, and it'd be 100%.
Slashdot Mirror
Corporations would not exist without governments; a corporation is not just an agreement between shareholders, it's a bundle of rights that are enforced against the world, by the State. The shareholders enter into the corporate ownership agreement because they know that they'll be protected from personal liability by the actions of the corporation, among other reasons. The only way they can do this is if the State says they can and is willing to back up that statement with the support of the courts and the police if necessary. No government, no corporations. This would NOT work in a society with multiple agencies, because you would just escalate disputes up a level, from the level of various people with disputes (corporate or otherwise) to various people and their respective enforcement systems, with no grand arbitrator. We can see this at work now in International law. A natural human may be sheltered from the consequences of their corporate actions in the US, but can't rely on that protection if they travel to China or Iran or any other nation that doesn't recognize the corporate structure erected by the US government and the Chancery Court in Delaware.
And then the entire mobile phone industry was wiped.
Except Apple.
An MoU isn't (necessarily) a contract. Are there later contracts?
Bitcoin is not a ponzi scheme but it behaves similar to one - the increasing mining difficulty and limited overall amount of coins heavily rewards early adopters (who hoard their bitcoins) if and if only these early adopters can convince the latecomers that bitcoins actually have value (otherwise cashing out becomes hard).
That's not a ponzi scheme, that's a pyramid scheme.
I'm sure it won't be a problem if the submitter is white.
And not start from the bottom of the pile in the first place.
Er, there's a rather large country with lots of open spaces right next door, that someone might consider as a viable option to the US or Europe. You know, Canada, that place where we've weathered the downturn better, are on track (in 2-3 years or so, unless Europe implodes) to eliminate the temporary deficits we ran up to keep our heads above water during the financial crisis and go back to running surpluses, have universal, single payor health care (at half the price per capita of US health care), similar standard of living, stable democracy, and politicians who are saner than the US ones, even if I don't like anything our current government is doing.
Just sayin'.
(We've got our own problems here, no question, but we're in better shape than the US, for the foreseeable future)
Some clauses of the Charter apply to corporations, as well as people. Clause 2b definitely applies to corporations. See Irwin Toy v. Quebec in which a Toy company sought to have laws regulating advertising directed at children under 13 struck for unconstitutionality. 5 Justices of the SCC agreed that "commercial speech" (in this case, advertising from a corporation) was protected. They split on whether the government's regs were justified in a free and democratic society (3-2 in favour of the government). S. 2 of the Charter does not apply exclusively to "persons".
disclaimer: IAAL, but not a constitutional lawyer, and certainly not YOUR lawyer. The above is not advice, and is likely complicated by constitutional law that I'm not fully familiar with.
In Canada, if your claims are sufficiently vague they can be categorized as "mere puffery", i.e. statements that reasonable people know are probably not literally true.
The word "man" is not used in the Canadian Charter of Rights and freedoms. The terms "citizen", "person," "individual" and "everyone" are used. Each of these terms is supposed to be distinguishable from the others (though I'm not sure whether there's a difference between "individual" and "person" or whether that question's been litigated). Freedom of speech in Canada is guaranteed to "everyone" which means that Corporations are included, with limitations.
Not all speech is protected, and there is a strong argument that the particular speech in question amounts to fraud, which is definitely not protected constitutionally, in Canada or the US.
(Posting AC because I'm at work and I don't log into websites from work...)
Dear Rogers, Canada doesn't have Freedom of Speech.
Ahem.
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms ...
2. Everyone* has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.
*It's that word that allows corporations to enjoy these freedoms as well as natural humans.
These freedoms (and all the others) are all modified slightly by clause 1 of the Charter:
1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
Also, there's the fact that no one freedom is given priority over any other freedom, so that my freedom of expression can be over-ridden by your freedom to enjoy "security of the person." Hence the constitutional justification for laws against hate speech.
Indeed. "Oryx and Crake" is another miserable one.
I had this same experience with a lot of Asimov; he just wasn't that great a writer, but it took me years to learn that.
"You are the dead."
I never recovered from that moment.
So when he was governor, did he wear sponsorship patches on his suits?
Well no, actually, I think what bothers people is that the 1% (or really the 0.1%, or maybe the 0.01%) are outsourcing the jobs to poorer people and keeping all the profit generated by such a move for themselves. Personally, I would love to see wages rise in the poorest countries (and worker benefits, employee safety, etc rise with wages), and I would even condone a certain drop in my lifestyle and that of the average Westerner to make that happen, but the people who actually make the outsourcing decisions (and the very rich people who pay them) are not at all interested in making the average Chinese or Indian wealthier. They're only interested in enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else.
It's open to all of us to complain about this (and yes, that includes those people in the very highest income categories, like Stephen King or Warren Buffett), because to varying degrees we all suffer negative consequences because of it. Just because the poorest people have more to complain about, doesn't mean that the rest of us should stop complaining when a tiny minority takes our earned wealth away from us. In fact, if as the top 5% we have more power and can leverage more effective methods than the lower 95% of people, then don't we have an obligation to stand up and complain, and if that doesn't work, march, if we can? For ourselves, but also for those making far less than us?
the higgs field interacts with itself. Or if you prefer, the boson interacts with the field, and the field gives mass to the boson. At least, that's roughly what I took from the article.
No no, that's "free as in beer". They get "free/libre" rooms, with no locks on the doors. The room itself is free, but you have to pay for a support package for as long as you use the room.
Section 184(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada, for one thing.
As things stand now, probably not. But no doubt the government will modify the laws to carve out an exception. The real question is, would such laws make it past judicial scrutiny? I don't know the answer to that one, but the courts have become more friendly to privacy protection lately, so I'm hopeful.
From the Criminal Code of Canada:
Interception of Communications
Marginal note:Interception
184. (1) Every one who, by means of any electro-magnetic, acoustic, mechanical or other device, wilfully intercepts a private communication is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.
Marginal note:Saving provision
(2) Subsection (1) does not apply to
(a) a person who has the consent to intercept, express or implied, of the originator of the private communication or of the person intended by the originator thereof to receive it;
(b) a person who intercepts a private communication in accordance with an authorization or pursuant to section 184.4 or any person who in good faith aids in any way another person who the aiding person believes on reasonable grounds is acting with an authorization or pursuant to section 184.4;
(c) a person engaged in providing a telephone, telegraph or other communication service to the public who intercepts a private communication,
(i) if the interception is necessary for the purpose of providing the service,
(ii) in the course of service observing or random monitoring necessary for the purpose of mechanical or service quality control checks, or
(iii) if the interception is necessary to protect the person’s rights or property directly related to providing the service;
(d) an officer or servant of Her Majesty in right of Canada who engages in radio frequency spectrum management, in respect of a private communication intercepted by that officer or servant for the purpose of identifying, isolating or preventing an unauthorized or interfering use of a frequency or of a transmission; or
(e) a person, or any person acting on their behalf, in possession or control of a computer system, as defined in subsection 342.1(2), who intercepts a private communication originating from, directed to or transmitting through that computer system, if the interception is reasonably necessary for
(i) managing the quality of service of the computer system as it relates to performance factors such as the responsiveness and capacity of the system as well as the integrity and availability of the system and data, or
(ii) protecting the computer system against any act that would be an offence under subsection 342.1(1) or 430(1.1).
Marginal note:
All your Apple gear has supported IPv6 out of the box for a few years now. I think Windows supports it out of the box, and probably your Android phone too, though I'm less sure about that. Most likely the missing link is your NAT box (unless you have an Apple box, which as I said is IPv6 ready), and your ISP.
Careful there, Occam's Razor is a handy tool, but not a logical argument. Occam's Razor can be applied or withheld, but not violated.
I think in this case, given how low the profit margins are, buying up the competitors simply means that you can now sell enough hard drives at absurdly low prices to be able to make a living. If there were real collusion or natural monopoly effects, the prices would be going up from the post-flood levels, not down.
We're talking about profit margins of 6% and 3% respectively here. At those levels, it's absurd to argue that the products are over-priced (unless great heaping piles of profit are being added further down the channel).
Hard drive pricing isn't about collusion, it's about commodification: there's essentially no difference between the products that competitors sell, so they got into a race to the bottom in terms of their profits in the hopes of capturing larger market share. Now each company is backing off a bit and taking a bit more profit, so they can continue doing business at all. Capitalism at work (and properly, for once), more news at eleven. The fact that one company is taking half the margins that the other is taking also tends to show that there's no collusion. If they were colluding, they'd be taking roughly the same profit margin, and it'd be 100%.