I don't know what you mean. I don't remember Thomas Paine trying to silence people he disagreed with or to send them belligerent "warnings" by damaging their property.
What does breaking up destructive public sector unions have to do with Internet access? It is the unions that are trying to block things, state government in particular, not the governor.
Instead, they'll do what they did for the Iraq War protests. Paint the protesters as lazy slackers with nothing better to do, and ignore them.
Except they mostly were lazy slackers with nothing better to do. Have you ever been to an anti-war protest? I have, and in San Francisco too. There might have been one or two serious people among the mass of stoned hippies, pathetically naive students protesting because protesting is cool, radical idiots with Mao t-shirts and "Kill Bush" posters and a variety of far left "american socialist communist worker peoples whatever" banners. Not exactly a picture of responsible taxpayers. Image is everything, don't you know that?
Or the Obamacare bill, rammed through a procedural loophole in the middle of the night, during a brief period where Dems were accidentally in control of both houses and the presidency (not because they had mandate to make this kind of huge changes but due to unpopularity of the previous president) and voted in by congressmen who by their own admission did not read it.
Major bills should not be passed without some bipartisan support. Otherwise we are just waiting for Republicans to chance upon an opportunity to undo everything Democrats have done, and round we go again.
Not only are Anonymous tactics morally repulsive (you cannot advocate openness and free speech while staying hidden and engaging in selective censorship) but they don't work. This Westboro "church" is a tiny (just one family I believe) group of fringe fanatics that everybody laughs at. Rather than silencing them, Anonymous is just giving them free publicity they don't deserve.
It is an article of their faith that the free market is always more innovative than the government.
It is not an article of faith, it is evidently true, not only by simple use of reason (which is clouded by your irrational collectivist instincts) but by experience in every society in history. Compare every country where the economy is centrally planned with every country where there is free market (economic liberty plus rule of law). Now, saying that "no government program has ever done anything good for the economy" is disingenuous on your part. Nobody really claims that, just that in vast majority of the cases government intervention has not done anything good and that in most of those cases it has actively done harm (e.g. housing subsidies, farming subsidies, minimum wage laws, drug prohibition, variety of pro-union laws, etc etc)
If user input is not cleaned up before being used in a query, attacker can possibly execute some arbitrary SQL on your db. For example userName is passed in from the login form. Script uses it in a query:
SELECT * FROM customers WHERE name = '{$userName}'
Say if you pass in this as your username: \''; DROP TABLE customers; The query becomes:
SELECT * FROM customers WHERE name = ''; DROP TABLE customers;
or passing is ' OR 1=1; will find a match when there isn't one etc
That would be down to the differences in financial regulation. It is smarter for Google to start with US and get the system working within the largest market then add countries one by one, than to try to setup a system to handle every single country in one go. It was same with Paypal, they started with US only and now they handle 100+ countries.
Google would love it if the whole world is using its payment system. The problem is laws (esp. financial regulation), lack of law enforcement and corruption in a lot of countries, not Google. Some countries are just more trouble than they are worth.
Increasing spending (mostly on defense) while cutting taxes is called starving the beast, that was a strategy for Republicans under Reagan. It didn't really work though.
You want to talk about cutting spending for real, there is a plan for that: http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/ It can't be talked about because it touches the sacred cows of Social Security and Medicare, and without them there can't be any meaningful cuts.
Umm, someone needs to start reading news more. It's been canceled today by the Republican controlled house. Obama wanted to cancel it before, just like Dubya did, but couldn't do it while Democrats were in charge in congress. Defending this program purely because it provides jobs in his state is definitely a stain on Boehner's credentials as a fiscally conservative guy (though he wants to be seen as one) but it's a victory for Tea Party and true conservative Republicans.
There are other religions that have a problem with people who leave it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy#Countries The Christian churches have been and would be the same when and where they can get away with it.
The problem is that in the US, today, only the Church of Scientology seems to be getting away with this kind of abuse of its former members just for leaving the church, so it is appropriate to expose and criticize it.
True but the OP suggests that you have to be insane or hopelessly gullible to even consider that Assange might really be guilty so what you said applies to him even more.
When discrimination is very common, then you need some legislation to prevent it.
How does that legislation come about? If the discrimination against some group is so widespread that they do not even have a cafe they can go to, then who will vote in politicians that want to pass laws against it?
Just as a quick example that takes place today, farm subsidies [wikipedia.org]. Or the government can require certain concessions in order for me to obtain grant money that I need to stay competitive with rivals, who are also getting the grant money.
That is physical force. How does the government get the money it pays out in subsidies and grants? Please say that taxes are voluntary, you'll be in good company: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6q0slMhDw8
He doesn't stomp out direct and equal competitors. The two collude until they either merge, or one gains enough of an edge to buy out or quash the other. It is utter hogwash that this doesn't happen. As to what he does to smaller companies, to continue our specific example: Microsoft's mergers and acquisitions. That was usually the easier course, but they could also just Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish. And hell, by historical metrics, Microsoft wasn't even that bad as far as monopolistic companies go.
You are again confused about what force means.He cannot buy out competition by force, only if the money he offers for their business is a good deal for them. He cannot stop new competition from emerging, hell if he is buying competition out all over the place that alone is an incentive to start a competing company - there is a big check coming in. Even Bill Gates will pretty soon run out of money if he had to buy out everybody.
Again you give overly broad statistics and then willfully interpret them to support your stance...
Talking about industrial revolution:
In the words of Nobel Prize winning Robert E. Lucas, Jr., "For the first time in history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary people have begun to undergo sustained growth.... Nothing remotely like this economic behavior has happened before.
In the words of Nobel prize winning economist F.A. Hayek:the industrial revolution portrayed by the pessimists is the âoeone supreme myth which more than any other has served to discredit the economic system to which we owe our modern day civilization (capitalism)â
In the words of Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman: "Industrial Revolution saw a net decline in child labor, rather than an increase."
Also, please present to me this "good evidence" of government programs directly caused 100 million deaths with best intentions in mind.
The great leap forward, the famines in USSR, China, Cambodia, North Korea etc directly caused by agricultural collectivization, immeasurable and unnecessary hunger, poverty and every kind of suffering in India which despite being democratic embraced centrally planned economy until recently etc etc. All those were done with intentions of improving the conditions of people and had the opposite effects.
Please provide reading material that proves that government planning of the economy works better than the free marke
I just did, and you promptly ignored them completely
No, Hong Kong is NOT an example of how central planning works better than free market. Just the opposite, it is an example of success of the free market: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH06M_nYWAw Some public housing doesn't change that. I never said that Hong Kong was completely free economically, only mostly free, in fact more so than any other country.
I'm going to basically ignore all of that last drivel for the same reasons I didn't get want to get into it in the first place, but there is an important point to be made here. The entire history of human civilization revolves around the recognition that "a" and "b" are the same thing...
The problem is that Rand convolutes physical violence and economic coercion when she talks about the government controlling you, but then turns around and only addresses physical violence when it comes to what we can do to each other. She's changed the definition of "force" mid-argument, and you've fallen for it wholesale.
You are right in that I don't understand what do you mean by "economic coercion when.. the government is controlling you" as opposed to physical force. What is this economic coercion by the government that does not involve force? How can coercion of any kind not involve physical force?
You can't really pick an example from within our controlled economy and have it say anything about a laissez faire system. If all regulation today were dropped, Bill's corporation could stomp out products competing with his, and then they could control how you or anyone else interacts with a computer.
You need to be more specific. By what mechanism can he stomp out products competing with his? How does he stop rival corporations and rival billionaires from competing with him and how does he force customers to buy his products as opposed to the competition's products? The evidence is that even without anti-trust laws, the free market does not tend to concentrate anything like that sort of power in the hands of a one or few people and even when it does in a particular market, it does not last for long.
The awesome thing about your chart is that it is not descriptive at all of the quality of life for the bottom quintile of income earners during the same time period. That graph could look like that even if the poorest people got twice as poor, provided the people at the top made enough more money.
The chart was just one example. For some perspective, in 1600s life expectancy in England was about 35 years which hasn't improved much for centuries prior to industrial revolution. The % of children who died before the age of 5 in London went from something like 75% to 30% in only a few decades. Population: http://apworldhistorywiki.wikispaces.com/file/view/worldpopulationgrowth2%5B1%5D.gif All charts about the period look the same. Why do you think people moved in huge numbers from countryside into the cities to take factory jobs unless it meant a better life and a chance for all four or five children to survive instead of just one as or two was the norm before.
I'll be sure to let the factory workers dying over at Foxconn and the slaves in Immokalee, Florida picking the tomatos for you to eat that being beaten, locked in a van any time they were not working, and charged $5 to bath with a bucket and a hose that while their rights might have been abused, I have it on good authority that it was not "gross" abuse.
This is hardly worth replying to. People will sometimes abuse other people, free market or not. This abuse happened in as you say "controlled" economy, so how does that present any evidence in your favor? On the other hand, I have good evidence that government actions (with best intentions in mind) have directly caused over 100 million deaths in the last century through disastrous effects of the central planing of the economy.
But hey, I could provide you reading material all day that contradicts what you've been taught by revisionists about how previous free market experiments have worked, and I'm sure you'll just outright ignore them because that's not how you know it was.
Please provide reading material that proves that government planning of the economy works better than the free market, I need a good laugh.
I didn't go into the moral connotations she some how attached to her economic theory because they are preposterous. Without mora
That is Germany. Other major EU countries are further behind. Portugal and Greece, the most heavily regulated "old" EU countries according to the Economic Freedom Index are also the poorest and if they weren't regularly bailed out by the rest of EU would have dropped out of the ranks of developing countries by now. Portugal is very close to dropping from a developed to a developing nation in the HDI rankings. Their workers must be really happy with all that regulation that protects their jobs and pensions against that pesky reality, right?
I actually formed my opinion of Rand by (wait for it) reading her work.
I am glad to hear that, although it is unfortunate that you didn't understand it.
neglects to address what we are supposed to do when corporations, in the vacuum of power created by a government that does not participate in the economy, are powerful enough to enact that same force
Her entire point is that the government's duty (the only moral duty) is to prevent initiation of force by anybody against anybody else, and here you are arguing that without government, someone (corporations) will be able to use force against someone (I guess individuals?). She agrees! Laissez faire capitalism is not anarchy. Itn fact it cannot exist without the rule of law, which means government.
money is just a big abstraction for the power to make people do things, which Rand loathes so much
This is completely wrong. Bill Gates has billions of dollars. In a society where there is rule of law and the government monopolizes physical force, can he make you do whatever he wants? How?
When you give the economy free reign, you move first to industrial revolution-era abuse of the lower class, and then eventually into hereditary dictatorship (or feudalism)
You can draw a chart exactly like that for every aspect of the standard of living, life expectancy, child mortality, income, education etc. By today's standards worker conditions during the industrial revolution were bad. But, and this is very important: they were enormously better than the conditions that preceded the industrial revolution. In fact, short of invention of agriculture, industrial revolution improved the life of ordinary people more than anything else in the history of human race. If that is what you call abuse, then your expectations are unrealistic. Note that this huge improvement in people's lives was accomplished entirely by private sector with government in England wisely staying mostly out of the way, something that current governments could learn from.
If you don't let your government participate in the government in any way, eventually the private sector will amass enough power that it can tell the government no
So, this the problem you have with laissez-faire capitalism. The purpose of the government, as you see it, is to regulate private sector in order to make sure no company gets too rich and too powerful to overpower the government? Because if it does, it is going to disregard the laws, courts and police and use force against individual citizens (by forming a private army?). You seem to believe this to be so self evident, that the onus is on anyone who disagrees to demonstrate why this wouldn't happen.
I think this is nuts. Every example so far known of gross abuse of individual citizens' rights has come from the only place where it can realistically come from: unrestrained government. Every example of countries approaching something like laissez-faire capitalism (Britain in 18th century - industrial revolution, Hong Kong in the 20th, US in the 19th century) has been a huge success. None of them have led to companies building armies and overruling governments.
P.S. I just replied to the points you made. I didn't go into the real point of Ayn Rand's philosophy which is the moral underpinnings of all this, immorality of all initiation of physical force.
And of course, unlike all other Ayn Rand critics, you are able to back up your statement with some evidence, right? Or are you, like most of them, basing your negative opinion of her on the vague notion you overheard somewhere that she is in favor of 'selfishness' which, without reading or understanding any of her work, is enough for you to classify her as a horrible person? I am willing to bet $1000 that it is the latter and that you cannot come with a persuasive argument why she is a "travesty of an economist and philosopher". Please prove me wrong if you can.
People who create jobs do not create more jobs because they have extra money, they tend to keep that money instead. Taking from the super rich and spending money that ends up being paid to the lower classes can and will improve economies because they spend that money right away again.
Someone needs to brush up on their economics. Can you tell me what exactly do you mean when you say that the rich "keep" the money instead of creating jobs (i.e. investing)? Do they "keep" it under a mattress? Do you think that money in the bank is sitting there collecting dust? It is all invested back into the economy one way or another.
How long can this ropeway be if you are pulling the entire length of the cable around. Ski lift is one thing but they are talking about transporting goods between cities. I thought the idea is that each little cart has its own motor and the cable is fixed but I guess I might be wrong. If you are pulling the entire miles long cable around at some point presumably that outweighs the advantage of not having to take the engine with you, which is only a small percentage of the train weight. Also, this seems like a high maintenance system with tons of moving parts and prone to outages due to weather etc. It's ugly too. Funny how every time you hear some centuries old technology being resurrected (modern steam engines, airships, wind powered ships etc) it doesn't really catch on, probably because there were pretty good reasons it was abandoned in the first place.
There are similarities in the regimes but the demonstrators are different. Tienanmen protest were genuine calls for more democracy. It is still an open question who is really behind the Egypt protests. I hope someone more familiar with politics in Egypt can correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know the Muslim Brotherhood is by far and away the largest political force after the ruling party. In the last election that they were allowed to participate in, the Mubarak's leftist party was first (can't remember the numbers but say 200 seats), Muslim Brotherhood was second with about 80, and the first party that had some resemblance to a western style liberal democratic party had something like 5.
And extending the same idea, everyone benefits from the existence of the Internet, therefore people who don't have access to it should also pay a share of your ISP bill, right? Not everyone benefits from the road system equally. People who drive more benefit more personally and also cause more damage to the roads and they should pay more for the maintenance. The gas tax that we have now is one way to do it but its imperfect. The most fair way to finance roads is to pay by the mile traveled with the weight of the vehicle factored in, which is pretty much what the tolls do. The only problem with tolls is the practicality, the delays they cause etc but it seems like technology can fix that.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know what you mean. I don't remember Thomas Paine trying to silence people he disagreed with or to send them belligerent "warnings" by damaging their property.
What does breaking up destructive public sector unions have to do with Internet access? It is the unions that are trying to block things, state government in particular, not the governor.
Instead, they'll do what they did for the Iraq War protests. Paint the protesters as lazy slackers with nothing better to do, and ignore them.
Except they mostly were lazy slackers with nothing better to do. Have you ever been to an anti-war protest? I have, and in San Francisco too. There might have been one or two serious people among the mass of stoned hippies, pathetically naive students protesting because protesting is cool, radical idiots with Mao t-shirts and "Kill Bush" posters and a variety of far left "american socialist communist worker peoples whatever" banners. Not exactly a picture of responsible taxpayers. Image is everything, don't you know that?
Or the Obamacare bill, rammed through a procedural loophole in the middle of the night, during a brief period where Dems were accidentally in control of both houses and the presidency (not because they had mandate to make this kind of huge changes but due to unpopularity of the previous president) and voted in by congressmen who by their own admission did not read it.
Major bills should not be passed without some bipartisan support. Otherwise we are just waiting for Republicans to chance upon an opportunity to undo everything Democrats have done, and round we go again.
Not only are Anonymous tactics morally repulsive (you cannot advocate openness and free speech while staying hidden and engaging in selective censorship) but they don't work. This Westboro "church" is a tiny (just one family I believe) group of fringe fanatics that everybody laughs at. Rather than silencing them, Anonymous is just giving them free publicity they don't deserve.
It is not an article of faith, it is evidently true, not only by simple use of reason (which is clouded by your irrational collectivist instincts) but by experience in every society in history. Compare every country where the economy is centrally planned with every country where there is free market (economic liberty plus rule of law). Now, saying that "no government program has ever done anything good for the economy" is disingenuous on your part. Nobody really claims that, just that in vast majority of the cases government intervention has not done anything good and that in most of those cases it has actively done harm (e.g. housing subsidies, farming subsidies, minimum wage laws, drug prohibition, variety of pro-union laws, etc etc)
It will pass in the Senate too, it's just a matter of time. You do realize that Republicans are all but certain to have the Senate majority next year?
If user input is not cleaned up before being used in a query, attacker can possibly execute some arbitrary SQL on your db. For example userName is passed in from the login form. Script uses it in a query:
SELECT * FROM customers WHERE name = '{$userName}'
Say if you pass in this as your username: \''; DROP TABLE customers; The query becomes:
SELECT * FROM customers WHERE name = ''; DROP TABLE customers;
or passing is ' OR 1=1; will find a match when there isn't one etc
That would be down to the differences in financial regulation. It is smarter for Google to start with US and get the system working within the largest market then add countries one by one, than to try to setup a system to handle every single country in one go. It was same with Paypal, they started with US only and now they handle 100+ countries.
Google would love it if the whole world is using its payment system. The problem is laws (esp. financial regulation), lack of law enforcement and corruption in a lot of countries, not Google. Some countries are just more trouble than they are worth.
Increasing spending (mostly on defense) while cutting taxes is called starving the beast, that was a strategy for Republicans under Reagan. It didn't really work though.
You want to talk about cutting spending for real, there is a plan for that: http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/ It can't be talked about because it touches the sacred cows of Social Security and Medicare, and without them there can't be any meaningful cuts.
Umm, someone needs to start reading news more. It's been canceled today by the Republican controlled house. Obama wanted to cancel it before, just like Dubya did, but couldn't do it while Democrats were in charge in congress. Defending this program purely because it provides jobs in his state is definitely a stain on Boehner's credentials as a fiscally conservative guy (though he wants to be seen as one) but it's a victory for Tea Party and true conservative Republicans.
There are other religions that have a problem with people who leave it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy#Countries The Christian churches have been and would be the same when and where they can get away with it.
The problem is that in the US, today, only the Church of Scientology seems to be getting away with this kind of abuse of its former members just for leaving the church, so it is appropriate to expose and criticize it.
True but the OP suggests that you have to be insane or hopelessly gullible to even consider that Assange might really be guilty so what you said applies to him even more.
When discrimination is very common, then you need some legislation to prevent it.
How does that legislation come about? If the discrimination against some group is so widespread that they do not even have a cafe they can go to, then who will vote in politicians that want to pass laws against it?
That is physical force. How does the government get the money it pays out in subsidies and grants? Please say that taxes are voluntary, you'll be in good company: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6q0slMhDw8
You are again confused about what force means.He cannot buy out competition by force, only if the money he offers for their business is a good deal for them. He cannot stop new competition from emerging, hell if he is buying competition out all over the place that alone is an incentive to start a competing company - there is a big check coming in. Even Bill Gates will pretty soon run out of money if he had to buy out everybody.
Talking about industrial revolution:
In the words of Nobel Prize winning Robert E. Lucas, Jr., "For the first time in history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary people have begun to undergo sustained growth. ... Nothing remotely like this economic behavior has happened before.
In the words of Nobel prize winning economist F.A. Hayek :the industrial revolution portrayed by the pessimists is the âoeone supreme myth which more than any other has served to discredit the economic system to which we owe our modern day civilization (capitalism)â
In the words of Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman: "Industrial Revolution saw a net decline in child labor, rather than an increase."
The great leap forward, the famines in USSR, China, Cambodia, North Korea etc directly caused by agricultural collectivization, immeasurable and unnecessary hunger, poverty and every kind of suffering in India which despite being democratic embraced centrally planned economy until recently etc etc. All those were done with intentions of improving the conditions of people and had the opposite effects.
No, Hong Kong is NOT an example of how central planning works better than free market. Just the opposite, it is an example of success of the free market: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH06M_nYWAw Some public housing doesn't change that. I never said that Hong Kong was completely free economically, only mostly free, in fact more so than any other country.
They are not. The key
You are right in that I don't understand what do you mean by "economic coercion when .. the government is controlling you" as opposed to physical force. What is this economic coercion by the government that does not involve force? How can coercion of any kind not involve physical force?
You need to be more specific. By what mechanism can he stomp out products competing with his? How does he stop rival corporations and rival billionaires from competing with him and how does he force customers to buy his products as opposed to the competition's products? The evidence is that even without anti-trust laws, the free market does not tend to concentrate anything like that sort of power in the hands of a one or few people and even when it does in a particular market, it does not last for long.
The chart was just one example. For some perspective, in 1600s life expectancy in England was about 35 years which hasn't improved much for centuries prior to industrial revolution. The % of children who died before the age of 5 in London went from something like 75% to 30% in only a few decades. Population: http://apworldhistorywiki.wikispaces.com/file/view/worldpopulationgrowth2%5B1%5D.gif All charts about the period look the same. Why do you think people moved in huge numbers from countryside into the cities to take factory jobs unless it meant a better life and a chance for all four or five children to survive instead of just one as or two was the norm before.
This is hardly worth replying to. People will sometimes abuse other people, free market or not. This abuse happened in as you say "controlled" economy, so how does that present any evidence in your favor? On the other hand, I have good evidence that government actions (with best intentions in mind) have directly caused over 100 million deaths in the last century through disastrous effects of the central planing of the economy.
Please provide reading material that proves that government planning of the economy works better than the free market, I need a good laugh.
Germany manage to be extremely worker-friendly and still lead the US in exports
Germany leads US in exports (barely) because of geography. That same Germany trails US badly in per capita purchasing power adjusted GDP (US: 47K, Germany: 35K): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
It also trails USA badly in the UN's leading living standard indicator, the HDI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HDI#Very_high_human_development_.28developed_countries.29
That is Germany. Other major EU countries are further behind. Portugal and Greece, the most heavily regulated "old" EU countries according to the Economic Freedom Index are also the poorest and if they weren't regularly bailed out by the rest of EU would have dropped out of the ranks of developing countries by now. Portugal is very close to dropping from a developed to a developing nation in the HDI rankings. Their workers must be really happy with all that regulation that protects their jobs and pensions against that pesky reality, right?
I am glad to hear that, although it is unfortunate that you didn't understand it.
And this is how I know you didn't understand it. You are in agreement with her when you think you are arguing against her: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/anarchism.html
Her entire point is that the government's duty (the only moral duty) is to prevent initiation of force by anybody against anybody else, and here you are arguing that without government, someone (corporations) will be able to use force against someone (I guess individuals?). She agrees! Laissez faire capitalism is not anarchy. Itn fact it cannot exist without the rule of law, which means government.
This is completely wrong. Bill Gates has billions of dollars. In a society where there is rule of law and the government monopolizes physical force, can he make you do whatever he wants? How?
Industrial revolution era abuse of lower classes? Is this how they were abused: http://images.tdaxp.com/tdaxp_upload/real_income_per_person_in_england_md.jpg
You can draw a chart exactly like that for every aspect of the standard of living, life expectancy, child mortality, income, education etc. By today's standards worker conditions during the industrial revolution were bad. But, and this is very important: they were enormously better than the conditions that preceded the industrial revolution. In fact, short of invention of agriculture, industrial revolution improved the life of ordinary people more than anything else in the history of human race. If that is what you call abuse, then your expectations are unrealistic. Note that this huge improvement in people's lives was accomplished entirely by private sector with government in England wisely staying mostly out of the way, something that current governments could learn from.
So, this the problem you have with laissez-faire capitalism. The purpose of the government, as you see it, is to regulate private sector in order to make sure no company gets too rich and too powerful to overpower the government? Because if it does, it is going to disregard the laws, courts and police and use force against individual citizens (by forming a private army?). You seem to believe this to be so self evident, that the onus is on anyone who disagrees to demonstrate why this wouldn't happen.
I think this is nuts. Every example so far known of gross abuse of individual citizens' rights has come from the only place where it can realistically come from: unrestrained government. Every example of countries approaching something like laissez-faire capitalism (Britain in 18th century - industrial revolution, Hong Kong in the 20th, US in the 19th century) has been a huge success. None of them have led to companies building armies and overruling governments.
P.S. I just replied to the points you made. I didn't go into the real point of Ayn Rand's philosophy which is the moral underpinnings of all this, immorality of all initiation of physical force.
and a travesty of an economist and philosopher.
And of course, unlike all other Ayn Rand critics, you are able to back up your statement with some evidence, right? Or are you, like most of them, basing your negative opinion of her on the vague notion you overheard somewhere that she is in favor of 'selfishness' which, without reading or understanding any of her work, is enough for you to classify her as a horrible person? I am willing to bet $1000 that it is the latter and that you cannot come with a persuasive argument why she is a "travesty of an economist and philosopher". Please prove me wrong if you can.
People who create jobs do not create more jobs because they have extra money, they tend to keep that money instead. Taking from the super rich and spending money that ends up being paid to the lower classes can and will improve economies because they spend that money right away again.
Someone needs to brush up on their economics. Can you tell me what exactly do you mean when you say that the rich "keep" the money instead of creating jobs (i.e. investing)? Do they "keep" it under a mattress? Do you think that money in the bank is sitting there collecting dust? It is all invested back into the economy one way or another.
It makes a lot of sense. They already have old idiots, now they have young idiots. Advertiser's dream audience.
How long can this ropeway be if you are pulling the entire length of the cable around. Ski lift is one thing but they are talking about transporting goods between cities. I thought the idea is that each little cart has its own motor and the cable is fixed but I guess I might be wrong. If you are pulling the entire miles long cable around at some point presumably that outweighs the advantage of not having to take the engine with you, which is only a small percentage of the train weight. Also, this seems like a high maintenance system with tons of moving parts and prone to outages due to weather etc. It's ugly too. Funny how every time you hear some centuries old technology being resurrected (modern steam engines, airships, wind powered ships etc) it doesn't really catch on, probably because there were pretty good reasons it was abandoned in the first place.
There are similarities in the regimes but the demonstrators are different. Tienanmen protest were genuine calls for more democracy. It is still an open question who is really behind the Egypt protests. I hope someone more familiar with politics in Egypt can correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know the Muslim Brotherhood is by far and away the largest political force after the ruling party. In the last election that they were allowed to participate in, the Mubarak's leftist party was first (can't remember the numbers but say 200 seats), Muslim Brotherhood was second with about 80, and the first party that had some resemblance to a western style liberal democratic party had something like 5.
And extending the same idea, everyone benefits from the existence of the Internet, therefore people who don't have access to it should also pay a share of your ISP bill, right? Not everyone benefits from the road system equally. People who drive more benefit more personally and also cause more damage to the roads and they should pay more for the maintenance. The gas tax that we have now is one way to do it but its imperfect. The most fair way to finance roads is to pay by the mile traveled with the weight of the vehicle factored in, which is pretty much what the tolls do. The only problem with tolls is the practicality, the delays they cause etc but it seems like technology can fix that.