Now, let me ask you, would you like it if I came and lived in your house without paying you, and followed my own rules (including, say, peeing in the sink) while there? No? But I never agreed to follow your rules! But that's exactly what people like you that vote for the Federal Government are doing. You don't respect private property. That's why we have private property in the first place, precisely to prevent people from forcing you to live how you don't want to live as long as you are living peacefully.
Don't assume that I simply don't understand the libertarian point of view. I do. I don't agree with it. I think it is selfish and poorly thought out. No, it's selfish to force people to do as you demand without their voluntary consent. Voluntary consent is established through free market trade, whether for profit or through non-profit charitable institutions. In fact, that the only way society exists to the extent it does in the first place. Why would you ever object to creationism being mandated policy or educators being restricted to religiously certified Christian instructors if a majority wants that?
Quit pretending you are benevolent, tolerant, and peaceful. Your words and actions show you to be the opposite.
Such a huge premium wouldn't attract new companies wishing to profit? More companies in the same market doesn't cause competition to increase? Increased competition doesn't cause prices to fall? Repeat the cycle some times and you'll reach the correct offer vs. demand price for electricity. Not only that, but power delivery would likely be much more decentralized. It's State interference that has resulted in a system of tentacle power lines hooked to monopoly power delivery corporations like Commonwealth Edison (and of course the contributing competition restricting patents). Why couldn't power be purchased the same way as batteries, the same way as computer power supplies? You could order online the bulk amount of power you need or just go shopping for power cells or recharged power cells the same way you purchase gas from a gas station. That's more what a free market in energy system would look like. You could also generate your own surplus power from solar cells, etc. And as the cost is much more directly observed it might even have beneficial environmental side effects, reducing waste and pollution. You could certainly even have competing delivery/install businesses that hook up recharged power cells to the outside of your home monthly. Now that would be true competition severing the regulated power line tentacles. Then you have massive cost savings from eliminating an irrelevant expensive to maintain line system for power delivery. Solar would directly compete with wind would directly compete with oil, coal, and natural gas, would directly compete with nuclear in charging standardized bulk size power generator cells. Differing energy sources would just charge cell batteries to power your home energy needs. Hell, even riding an exercise bike could add additional charge to cells, or you could hook up mini cell rechargers to your automobile wheels to recycle energy power use.
Well there's my Presidential platform on future energy policy, advocating a free market competitive solution to provide energy at the cheapest supply and demand means possible.
It's federal government interference in the free market that prevents competition in the first place. Remove that interference, in the specific realm of artificial information scarcity through the means of patents and copyright, and you and everyone else is free to code any and all forms of operating system functions in whatever manner you wish. Result: massive increase in the quality of operating systems and massive decrease in the cost of operating systems. Basically imagine a balkanziation of the letters of the alphabet where you need to license to use each letter of the alphabet from a different party to create words and sentences; that's government interference in the free market through patents and copyrights.
Monopolies are created by government interference. You use a lot of loaded words. Two consenting adults should be allowed to trade with each other at whatever terms they voluntarily agree upon. The result of trade is increased wealth; that which is received is valued more than that which is given away in exchange. That's the only reason trade ever occurs, whether it's trade of dollars for food, apples for oranges, or labor for dollars.
It's completely absurd to spout
The whole concept of free market and state level regulation is ridiculous and will only further the 'boom or bust' economic trends in the US. It's completely absurd for you to walk into a grocery store and tell other shoppers what they will purchase for themselves and for yourself. Everytime you buy something, everytime you make a choice, that's a free market action.
And yes, there's legitimate debate to be had about what should be done at the state versus federal level. But that doesn't mean that there aren't good practical reasons for some things to be done at the federal level. Sure, but don't pretend you aren't using the threat of violence to force people to obey the majority whims. The Democratic Party can drop their pretension of being for tolerance and diversity. It's no coincidence the Federal Government has taken over the old mafia activities, from the numbers game to shake downs to confiscation to protection racket bribery. Who do people think they are to force themselves into their neighbors' wallets? Certainly not gentlemen and gentlewomen, certainly not "civilized" persons wishing to promote the existence of society, certainly not tolerant, certainly not neighborly, and certainly not promotive of general economic prosperity.
Nah. Thanks to the "borrow and spend" philosophy followed by the GOP since Reagan, that money comes out of the pockets of future generations. It's a combination of forcing people to pay for stuff they are by definition not voluntarily willing to buy in a free market. By definition this makes society net poorer than it otherwise would be. Just like if we voted to force you to buy all of Rush Limbaugh's reading material and memorabilia even though you personally didn't want to you would by definition be immediately poorer than if you were free to spend your money the way you yourself chose. This never makes society better off. In fact, in a strict economic analysis sense, it's absolutely no different then violent liquor store thuggery robbery. Such behavior does not promote economic prosperity; in fact, it causes society to be net poorer. Why should other people tell you and force you to live your life to their standards? And then leftists hypocritically object to such things as creationism being taught in public schools without realizing it's another form of the exact same intolerant violence they wholeheartedly embrace when it suits their own proselytizing agendas.
What we are left with is a division of artificial political interest groups seeking to rob more from others than is robbed from themselves. Resources are squandered and wasted in inefficient bureaucracies looking out for their own pension retirement benefits. And it just constantly grows, taxing more, writing ever expanding laws and regulations, stifling the very freedom which made this nation great and prosperous in the first place. It's time for the nation to heal with a live and let live philosophy of Libertarian tolerance.
At least when such violence is restricted to the State level there are more laboratory policy vote with your feet options.
Ron Paul's most basic views on economics are flatly incorrect in ways that are trivially easy to verify.
Examples:
Ron Paul has claimed that going back to the gold standard will fix a large variety of economic woes. Two things he has said the gold standard will resolve I can think of now are inflation and he's said that it will "smooth" the boom-and-bust cycle of the economy. If printing fiat paper currency was "good for the economy" then everybody printing and using xerox machines to duplicate fiat paper currency would be "good for the economy". QED. Demanding through violence that the free market assign value to printed pieces of paper is exactly as absurd as demanding through violence that strangers assign value to pieces of sand. Only a fool lacking even the most basic understanding of economic principles would believe such behavior cures economic woes.
Fiat money isn't perfect, but it's a necessary evil. It's what made our massive economic growth in the later half of the 20th century possible. This belief is demonstrably false. Trade only ever occurs because that which is received is valued more than that which is given away in exchange. Hence, all free market exchange creates instantaneous profit for both parties to a trade. They are better off because of trade; if they were not better off because of trade they would not do the trade in the first place! It doesn't matter what the objects of trade are: apples for oranges, dollars for food, or labor for credit promises. All action itself, such as getting up out of bed and deciding to engage in productive work, only occurs because all action aims at going to a state of lesser dissatisfaction from a state of greater dissatisfaction.
It's completely naive and ignorant to believe "economic growth" has occurred if you double the supply of currency from 50 billion units to 100 billion units. That's precisely why world poverty cannot be solved by turning every one dollar bill into a one thousand dollar bill. But such is the ignorance knee jerk reactionary empty platitudes spouted by those lacking the economic education which Ron Paul possesses. The Federal Reserve is just a criminal "legalized" counterfeiting enterprise which robs the savings wealth of unknowing citizens. To believe otherwise is the height of Emperor's Cloths foolishness. The record of mass inflation of the money supply is plain to behold.
They watched all the debates. They heard what all the candidates had to say. They researched all the candidates positions. They voted, and all the other candidates' supporters had the same chance to vote at the same time, overwhelmingly in favor of Ron Paul having won the debates as *EVIDENCED* by the immediate poll results following each of the debates. Those who actually watched the debates and cared enough about what was said to text a vote or check a box on a website, as opposed to these being fed regurgitated second hand spun media propaganda, voted Ron Paul as the best Republican candidate.
The tide is turning. The credibility damage suffered en masse by the various old broadcast media outlets has never been higher in a shorter period of time. The internet will become more and more a valuable truly free market source of information distribution in the future, and as the magic 8-ball would say, as evidenced by the numerous dismissals of positive support as "spam", all signs point to Ron Paul.
Has a grass roots effort ever exposed more systemic corruption in the political system of the USA in shorter a time? The effort has already been a galvanizing success. From reporting other primary candidates dumping bought stacks of straw poll tickets, to the blatant media censorship and favoritism, to the biased propaganda agenda selected questions that differ per candidate, to the differing time allotments at so called "debates" (really, I think we will see in the future same question, same time limit, with shut off microphones at expiration), the groundwork has been set for radical positive change in the future. It portends extremely well for the future. How far Ron Paul goes in this primary process is just bonus icing on the cake. And how many slashdot readers and posters will be voting for Ron Paul in the Super Tuesday primaries tomorrow. I'll be one of them in Illinois tomorrow. Go *ME*!
The free market is solely about voluntary mutually beneficially free trade. That's it. Everything contrary to voluntary free trade is political violence. It's just like consensual sex. Sex is *either* consensual *or* it's rape. Socialists are against consensual sex, they are against freedom, as they are against voluntary consensual exchange. This by definition causes poverty, causes society to be net less wealthier in absolutely ever instance. By definition if someone is not willing to voluntarily trade their services or goods away, forcing them to do so creates poverty. Everyone gets richer from every voluntary trade. That which is received is valued MORE than that which is given away in exchange. Otherwise the trade would never occur because one person would be better off not trading.
Slowly but surely, the internet is making headway in debunking the propaganda lies and myths perpetuated for the last century by big government tycoons.
"Pure capitalism" is exhibited every single time you voluntarily trade, whether you buy groceries, see a movie, get a job, quit a job, choose a spouse, order out for food, make a post to the internet, decide not to make a post to the iternet, etc. etc.. And you take yourself seriously and believe your claims credible that all these instances of free trade "cause the poor to get poorer and lead society to crumble into fist fights"? Quite the contrary. They are the entire basis for the existence of society in the first place.
But he became rich at the direct expense of the rest of society precisely because of violently eliminated competition from copyright and patent protectionism. All the money Gates made pales in comparison to all the wealth lost from lower quality operating systems at higher prices (and all the rest of the trickle effects through every other industry). Even if Gates and Microsoft gave 100% of every penny they ever made back to charity, that would not begin to make up for the damage caused in the forms of lesser technological innovation and numerous other poverty reducing side effects from the unrestricted flow and use of knowledge which has been lost due to his greed manifested through political government interference. And Gates personally has been a strong advocate for stronger violently enforced imaginary property protection.
Oh puuhhhhllleeeeaaaasseee. If Education Administrators were held to the same standards as Wall Street mutual fund managers they would probably be assessed a trillion dollars in penalty fines. These public education administrative people have looted and pillaged the education funds of American children. What's the management costs for a mutual fund, 1% 5%? What's the management costs for a public school, 70%, 80%? The whole public school system is the biggest mafia-esque looting skimming system ever derived. It puts even government socialist health care program bureaucratic mismanagement profiteering for their own personal retirement pension funds to shame.
In the era of the internet is time to fire 99.9% of all the teachers and all the administrators for at least 80% of the educational material. The absolute 0.1% best of teachers can have their classroom instruction simultaneously viewed by 100% of the children online. There need be a 0% failure rate. You don't advance until you get it right. Just like a wiki, methodology and assistance from voluntary posts, video and audio instruction, can exponentially continually outperform the dinosaur brick and mortar school building. Teachers, including your mom, don't give a shit about where their paychecks are looted from, nor do they care about efficiency and quality the way for profit bottom line free market capitalist companies do. The public school system is just typical socialist inefficient wasteful government interference. Freeing information through the abolition of copyright and patent will free education, greatly benefiting society.
The "scientific method", statistical data testing in drug trials is a voluntary pooling of "money", a voluntary pooling of commonly owned valuable informational scientific wealth. And there's plenty more precisely where that came from, as all knowledge is learned precisely by "going to school" to learn exactly by copying, either factual information or thought processes methodologies. There are all sorts of donation drives, such as 10k walks for breast cancer funding. Such charitable drives for all sorts of ailments are far from a mere drop in the bucket. But true, government corporate welfare subsidies of pharmaceutical companies is certainly not voluntary, but coercive pay off looting.
The only reason it's not more significant than it already is is because intellectual property protection locks out competition and increases the costs of the resources required to undertake research and development, from the whole completely wasteful non-productive hiring of patent lawyers and all the other sundry diversions dancing around disparate IP entails. So less competition, less people devoting time and energy to problems, higher costs, means less technological innovation occurs than would be the case in the absence of artificial monopoly IP protectionism. And of course all sorts of combination remixes of previous separately "owned" (by mere unnatural violent force) are hindered.
That would do more than anything to eliminate world poverty as everyone in the world has equal access to the world's wealth of information from pharmaceutical recipes to operating systems.
In our capitalist society, those with the money invest in ideas to produce works that give a return. If these works can be freely copied, and if the cost of copying is very low, then investors won't invest. It's that simple. So you would need a different model to come up with the capital to create the works. So propose one. Hopefully it isn't this communist/socialist drivel that is being driven out of the world and is being replaced by capitalism. Anybody who wants something accomplished will just invest their own time and resources to accomplish their goals, whether it's typing a post on a forum, and investing in a pooled fund to find a cure for Alzheimers. The only communists/socialist drivel is copyright and patent violent monopoly enforcement in the free market. Words are ideas, same as any other idea, yet you don't call people "communists/socialists" for copying and using words that were created by others. Do you consider yourself a "communist/socialist" merely by repeating the words "communist/socialist"? You fail.
IP is already de facto dead in the digital age. Nothing can be viewed or heard unless it's by definition COPIED first. Attempting to enforce that is just creating a legal minefield on the internet. And those with the most resources to lose, will lose the most.
People need to stop being suckers and undervaluing their own creative works, such as posts on the internet. If you can't compete with free then take up another line of work.
A great universal healthcare system would reward hospitals who successfully improve efficiency without impacting quality, but and acceptable universal healthcare system will not worsen efficiency and provide affordable healthcare to poorer americans, What a bunch of bull shit. Government interference in the health care market screwing things up is used as an excuse for total socialist control of peoples' health care choices.
Government "management" (violently enforced) doesn't lead to "efficiency" or "quality".
You fucks have brought about the situation where lawyers make more than doctors for much less work. Guess those babyboomers will be hiring lawyers on nurses to operate on them as they age, as that's where the factory degrees are being mass produced churned out.
Universal healthcare, or health insurance in general isn't about making healthcare cheaper, but rather about making the people with Jaguars subsidize the inherently high cost of healthcare for those with Kias. Exactly, you people are violent thugs. You uses the same propaganda words the Nazi socialists used to disguise their violence. "Management", "Subsidize", etc. Health care costs are high because there aren't any restraints on spending, over 10 million illegal aliens flood emergency rooms for free health care. The solution is to get government out of health care, and let markets work.
Wrong, you violent bitch thug. Trade only occurs when that which is received is valued more than that which is given away in exchange. No matter for what purpose you violently force transfer of goods and services, you by definition cause poverty, cause society to be net less materially wealthy. If socialist health care made people better off wealthier, it would be voluntarily funded, dumbass.
The reason health care is a mess is precisely because of government interference with the free market. Government gives tax advantages to businesses to buy insurance for employees. There is hardly any price competition whatsoever. There's no incentive at all for people paying $10 co pays for pharmaceuticals to purchase their prescriptions at the Costco pharmacy for $59 instead of at the Walgreens pharmacy for $129. And those perverted non-competitive hidden prices are all throughout the health care system.
But please, STFU about your spew of "benefit to society" when you are a COMPLETE MORON who hasn't the first clue regarding economics.
Nah, it's just time to regulate, restrict, cap, and price fix lawyer hourly rates. Say $50 an hour. They've abused the system creating thousands and thousands of complicated laws to make the populace dependent upon lawyers. This mass of laws and lawyer fees is in violation of the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual fines. So, just pass a law that limits their hourly rate to no more than $50 per hour, or about what their DUMB paralegals earn (lawyers don't have talent or skills, except reading comprehension and purposefully creating obfuscation in the laws). And pass massive penalties for lawyers that overcharge; prison, civil forfeiture, revoke the immunity of lawyers losing their homes from legal disputes, etc.
The lawyers declared WAR on the rest of society. They are sitting on their dumb, lazy, fat asses doing wholly unproductive work, living the high life while leaching like parasites off of productive society. The number of lawyers graduating per year is out of control, the amount of money lawyers are siphoning off of society is out of control. So it's time to figuratively BOMB the legal WELFARE profession back to the stone age.
"Causing computer output to purposely be false for, but not limited to, the purpose of obtaining money, property, or services for oneself or another by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises." That's good. Here's how you can make it even more expensive for Comcast to defend. Bring a civil class action suit AND bring 50 separate State suits AND an additional Federal suit. This is the Eliot Spitzer way which leads to money and political advancement. Let Comcast pay out of their own pockets for networking every school in the country out of settlement dollars akin to the tobacco companies settlements.
Hell, bring separate suits for separate issues too. Maybe we can tack on some Spam Act penalties, interstate commerce violations. And let's not forget, Comcast SENIOR MANAGEMENT is subject to FEDERAL IMPRISONMENT along with civil forfeiture penalties under Sarbanes-Oxley.
And then when Comcast loses these lawsuits, bring share holder class action lawsuits alleging negligence.
DO YOU HEAR US COMCAST?! Don't mess with free speech, unless you want to go down the same way the RIAA and MPAA are gonna go down.
P.S. When you release your P.R. statement addressing this issue, like AT&T did for censoring concerts it was sponsoring, for shits and giggles it'd be nice if you drop some names of those you fired in your legal and management departments.
Here's how: any content WHATSOEVER must be copied to be DISPLAYED by others. Any web page, any files, which are viewed on the internet, are COPIED, are SHARED. This saves energy of physical delivery, provides economies of scale, reduces costs, is environmentally friendly. This is the same for radio, the same for television, the same for internet files, the same for talking on a telephone, the same for all broadcast media whatsoever. That way you don't have land fills full of cds and dvds for every television show, every radio broadcast, every software program. If you are filling out web page forms for on-line shopping you are sending and receiving information; that is no different than bittorrent.
Comcast is censoring data they do not own. Comcast is depriving consumers of services paid for. Copyright has nothing to do with it. All files, both copyrighted and non-copyrighted must be COPIED to be seen and heard by those accessing the internet. There's no difference if you click on a web page or if you bitttorent files.
xiv. run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers; VoiP is "file sharing". Comcast offers VoiP service. You aren't viewing any internet content AT ALL, EXCEPT BY COPYING SHARED FILES! You don't physically travel through the "inter-tubes" to look at someone's webpage. If somebody puts some content freely available on a webpage for free download, they are INSTRUCTING that content to be COPIED and displayed by visitors.
Comcast's "prohibited services" are nothing but unenforceable bunk. And they also forgot to say "Simon says...".
Not to mention, Comcast is actively soliciting and offering their own proprietary VoiP service.
If this is effecting services offered by the likes of Vonage, this might qualify as SABOTAGE, and be risking nine digit number lawsuit penalties (that's hundreds of millions of dollars). You can almost smell all the lawyers scrambling to get class action certification. This has the "Big Payday Bonanza" (TM) of 2008 written all over it.
Wow, that whole page reminded me of the officers drug convention in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Know your dope fiend. You will not be able to see his eyes because of tea shades, but his knuckles will be white from inner tension and his pants will be crusted with semen from constantly jacking off when he can't find a rape victim.
You MUST make a copy of the source code in order to view anything in the first place - perhaps they misundertand how web browsers work. You must make a copy of everything which exists in order to SEE it with your EYES. Else how could two people look at the same thing at the same time? How could two people hear the same sound at the same time? Images and sounds are copies as they are processed by the brain. Memory is a copy. If you recall, you are copying a copy. You can recall something today. Forget about it. Then recall it again tomorrow. As those are distinct instances of recall, those are distinct copies.
So if you remember listening to a song at a specific place and time and also remember listening to that same song at another separate specific place and time, you have two different copies of that song being played, IN YOUR MIND.:D
As another commenter pointed out, most of those people, if the only way to get it was to pay for it, probably would choose not to have it rather than pay for it And if those who could allow scarcity of intellectual wealth to be less than it otherwise would be would choose instead to prefer that those individuals who are not willing to pay not have the songs, that says something about the character of those artists; greedy, evil, wishing the world a poorer place with greater scracity.
I can't wait until intellectual non-property protectionism is more officially and not just as de facto repealed so that all artists can have a big fat red "PWNED" stamped across their fantasies of "lost" compensation.
And don't forget to donate money to every post you ever read on the internet. Or are these hypocrites just going to conveniently pretend posts aren't "intellectual work"?
It's quite evident Radiohead has already voluntarily received far far more than they *deserve* for the work they did with this release. Really? A few songs are worth 10 million dollars?! And Radiohead didn't copy any words invented by others in any of their lyrics? They didn't copy musical theory, notes, chords, progressions, use of instruments, etc. in their music? They never studied other musical artists? They never learned to play music by copying others who were first to play music?
P.S. This post is worth $25 per read. Please submit payment to the Anonymous Coward Scholarship Rate-Up Fund.
If you don't have a significance or error to go with your result then you have no idea if your result is ball park, dead on, or just plain wrong. Statistics does not establish the validity of statistics. Don't assume some scientific fields, including mathematics, don't necessarily have some fundamental epistemological errors in some foundational concepts. I know the field of economics was corrupted by such a slight error (with massive error consequences) of omission in regards to monetary theory. Short answer: the interjection of "money" was used as equivalent to a mathematical = sign, while epistemologically correct trade is always strict greater than > and less than The mathematical approach is never inappropriate when your objective is to establish fact. Then statistics is not mathematics. Nor can your statement be proved mathematically. Nor would the fact that subjective value is increased by trade ever be proven by pure mathematics (and mathematicians are just as guilty as the economists of the last century for the mistakes in monetary theory, I would even guess some of those economists consulted mathematicians and mathematicians are the ones ultimately responsible for the errors in monetary theory). Mathematics would fail spitting out "syntax error", claiming something is both greater and less than another thing. That's one divided by zero undefined garbage, from a mathematical perspective. Do we really believe the 75% (or whatever) of college professors churning out plug and plays for sure statistical papers are advancing knowledge? I doubt it, for the vast majority of cases.
In your haste to read way more into what I wrote than was there, you allowed your emotions to lead you to confusing the technology employed vs. the intentions and motivations of the users. See the post elsewhere in this thread, but basically, it's a documented fact that many many more people go to filesharing systems to download rather than upload -- and greed and/or personal interest is at the heart of that. People don't upload as much as they download because of FEAR of being punished for file sharing. It wouldn't surprise me that in a copyright free environment the vast majority of P2P users would also simultaneously be uploaders; at a minimum, the proportion that uploads would be significantly higher than it is now. People would find it cool that someone else enjoys the same content as they themselves enjoy. Sharing content files would be no different than water cooler talk about media events, such as sports, movies, news, television shows.
So no, I would argue that FEAR is at the heart of the fact that many more people go to filesharing systems to download rather than upload.
Lemme guess, you fancy yourself a freedom fighter, don't you? I'm not a frontline in the trenches uploader if that's what you mean. But yes, I'm out there outlining defensive and offensive strategies to further the abolition of intellectual non-"property". Though "generalissimo" has a nice ring to it.:D I'm fascinated by the economic and epistemological implications of the debate. I think were in the middle of vast historical torrents of change. Any moral, philosophical, epistemological, or economic basis or justification for intellectual non-"property" is being washed away by quickly improving scientific analysis and deduction. And I'm a huge contributor there, making sure participants in the debate can avail themselves to these techniques of analysis.
But "greed" really is immaterial to the analysis from a strict economic perspective. All action is aimed at going from a state of greater dissatisfaction to a state of lesser dissatisfaction. Action only occurs because people are in a state of dissatisfaction. There'd be no reason to act otherwise. All action whatsoever is "greed", aimed at getting to a state of lesser dissatisfaction.
And yes, people do greedily share too because they enjoy others enjoying what they themselves enjoy, especially when non scarcity cost is relatively minimal. The incentives to share are multi-faceted. People freely share their thoughts on forums like this, out of strict greed, whether to prove points, derail troll, or "altruistically" advance the knowledge of others. The act of writing and choosing to post shows at the time the post was made, that action not only increased subjective wealth for the poster, but was the most effective increase of subjective wealth available for the poster at that time, given their non-omniscient knowledge and momentary optional choice possibilities.
There's a desire behind every action, including posting, including reading posts. And people also may greedily not want to share a secluded spot on a tropical beach. People may want to have "in" cliques where they don't want just anyone else enjoying what they enjoy. And others may greedily want to over-saturate the market with some content to greedily deprive some clique of derived status from relatively rare enjoyment of some content. And still others may greedily compete to prevent the content of others being heard rather than their own content heard. The motives can span the entire spectrum of motivation, but all of them are inherently "greedy".
Slashdot Mirror
Quit pretending you are benevolent, tolerant, and peaceful. Your words and actions show you to be the opposite.
Well there's my Presidential platform on future energy policy, advocating a free market competitive solution to provide energy at the cheapest supply and demand means possible.
Monopolies are created by government interference. You use a lot of loaded words. Two consenting adults should be allowed to trade with each other at whatever terms they voluntarily agree upon. The result of trade is increased wealth; that which is received is valued more than that which is given away in exchange. That's the only reason trade ever occurs, whether it's trade of dollars for food, apples for oranges, or labor for dollars.
It's completely absurd to spout The whole concept of free market and state level regulation is ridiculous and will only further the 'boom or bust' economic trends in the US. It's completely absurd for you to walk into a grocery store and tell other shoppers what they will purchase for themselves and for yourself. Everytime you buy something, everytime you make a choice, that's a free market action.
What we are left with is a division of artificial political interest groups seeking to rob more from others than is robbed from themselves. Resources are squandered and wasted in inefficient bureaucracies looking out for their own pension retirement benefits. And it just constantly grows, taxing more, writing ever expanding laws and regulations, stifling the very freedom which made this nation great and prosperous in the first place. It's time for the nation to heal with a live and let live philosophy of Libertarian tolerance.
At least when such violence is restricted to the State level there are more laboratory policy vote with your feet options.
Examples:
Ron Paul has claimed that going back to the gold standard will fix a large variety of economic woes. Two things he has said the gold standard will resolve I can think of now are inflation and he's said that it will "smooth" the boom-and-bust cycle of the economy. If printing fiat paper currency was "good for the economy" then everybody printing and using xerox machines to duplicate fiat paper currency would be "good for the economy". QED. Demanding through violence that the free market assign value to printed pieces of paper is exactly as absurd as demanding through violence that strangers assign value to pieces of sand. Only a fool lacking even the most basic understanding of economic principles would believe such behavior cures economic woes.
It's completely naive and ignorant to believe "economic growth" has occurred if you double the supply of currency from 50 billion units to 100 billion units. That's precisely why world poverty cannot be solved by turning every one dollar bill into a one thousand dollar bill. But such is the ignorance knee jerk reactionary empty platitudes spouted by those lacking the economic education which Ron Paul possesses. The Federal Reserve is just a criminal "legalized" counterfeiting enterprise which robs the savings wealth of unknowing citizens. To believe otherwise is the height of Emperor's Cloths foolishness. The record of mass inflation of the money supply is plain to behold.
They watched all the debates. They heard what all the candidates had to say. They researched all the candidates positions. They voted, and all the other candidates' supporters had the same chance to vote at the same time, overwhelmingly in favor of Ron Paul having won the debates as *EVIDENCED* by the immediate poll results following each of the debates. Those who actually watched the debates and cared enough about what was said to text a vote or check a box on a website, as opposed to these being fed regurgitated second hand spun media propaganda, voted Ron Paul as the best Republican candidate.
The tide is turning. The credibility damage suffered en masse by the various old broadcast media outlets has never been higher in a shorter period of time. The internet will become more and more a valuable truly free market source of information distribution in the future, and as the magic 8-ball would say, as evidenced by the numerous dismissals of positive support as "spam", all signs point to Ron Paul.
Has a grass roots effort ever exposed more systemic corruption in the political system of the USA in shorter a time? The effort has already been a galvanizing success. From reporting other primary candidates dumping bought stacks of straw poll tickets, to the blatant media censorship and favoritism, to the biased propaganda agenda selected questions that differ per candidate, to the differing time allotments at so called "debates" (really, I think we will see in the future same question, same time limit, with shut off microphones at expiration), the groundwork has been set for radical positive change in the future. It portends extremely well for the future. How far Ron Paul goes in this primary process is just bonus icing on the cake. And how many slashdot readers and posters will be voting for Ron Paul in the Super Tuesday primaries tomorrow. I'll be one of them in Illinois tomorrow. Go *ME*!
The free market is solely about voluntary mutually beneficially free trade. That's it. Everything contrary to voluntary free trade is political violence. It's just like consensual sex. Sex is *either* consensual *or* it's rape. Socialists are against consensual sex, they are against freedom, as they are against voluntary consensual exchange. This by definition causes poverty, causes society to be net less wealthier in absolutely ever instance. By definition if someone is not willing to voluntarily trade their services or goods away, forcing them to do so creates poverty. Everyone gets richer from every voluntary trade. That which is received is valued MORE than that which is given away in exchange. Otherwise the trade would never occur because one person would be better off not trading.
Slowly but surely, the internet is making headway in debunking the propaganda lies and myths perpetuated for the last century by big government tycoons.
"Pure capitalism" is exhibited every single time you voluntarily trade, whether you buy groceries, see a movie, get a job, quit a job, choose a spouse, order out for food, make a post to the internet, decide not to make a post to the iternet, etc. etc.. And you take yourself seriously and believe your claims credible that all these instances of free trade "cause the poor to get poorer and lead society to crumble into fist fights"? Quite the contrary. They are the entire basis for the existence of society in the first place.
But he became rich at the direct expense of the rest of society precisely because of violently eliminated competition from copyright and patent protectionism. All the money Gates made pales in comparison to all the wealth lost from lower quality operating systems at higher prices (and all the rest of the trickle effects through every other industry). Even if Gates and Microsoft gave 100% of every penny they ever made back to charity, that would not begin to make up for the damage caused in the forms of lesser technological innovation and numerous other poverty reducing side effects from the unrestricted flow and use of knowledge which has been lost due to his greed manifested through political government interference. And Gates personally has been a strong advocate for stronger violently enforced imaginary property protection.
Oh puuhhhhllleeeeaaaasseee. If Education Administrators were held to the same standards as Wall Street mutual fund managers they would probably be assessed a trillion dollars in penalty fines. These public education administrative people have looted and pillaged the education funds of American children. What's the management costs for a mutual fund, 1% 5%? What's the management costs for a public school, 70%, 80%? The whole public school system is the biggest mafia-esque looting skimming system ever derived. It puts even government socialist health care program bureaucratic mismanagement profiteering for their own personal retirement pension funds to shame. In the era of the internet is time to fire 99.9% of all the teachers and all the administrators for at least 80% of the educational material. The absolute 0.1% best of teachers can have their classroom instruction simultaneously viewed by 100% of the children online. There need be a 0% failure rate. You don't advance until you get it right. Just like a wiki, methodology and assistance from voluntary posts, video and audio instruction, can exponentially continually outperform the dinosaur brick and mortar school building. Teachers, including your mom, don't give a shit about where their paychecks are looted from, nor do they care about efficiency and quality the way for profit bottom line free market capitalist companies do. The public school system is just typical socialist inefficient wasteful government interference. Freeing information through the abolition of copyright and patent will free education, greatly benefiting society.
The "scientific method", statistical data testing in drug trials is a voluntary pooling of "money", a voluntary pooling of commonly owned valuable informational scientific wealth. And there's plenty more precisely where that came from, as all knowledge is learned precisely by "going to school" to learn exactly by copying, either factual information or thought processes methodologies. There are all sorts of donation drives, such as 10k walks for breast cancer funding. Such charitable drives for all sorts of ailments are far from a mere drop in the bucket. But true, government corporate welfare subsidies of pharmaceutical companies is certainly not voluntary, but coercive pay off looting.
The only reason it's not more significant than it already is is because intellectual property protection locks out competition and increases the costs of the resources required to undertake research and development, from the whole completely wasteful non-productive hiring of patent lawyers and all the other sundry diversions dancing around disparate IP entails. So less competition, less people devoting time and energy to problems, higher costs, means less technological innovation occurs than would be the case in the absence of artificial monopoly IP protectionism. And of course all sorts of combination remixes of previous separately "owned" (by mere unnatural violent force) are hindered.
That would do more than anything to eliminate world poverty as everyone in the world has equal access to the world's wealth of information from pharmaceutical recipes to operating systems.
IP is already de facto dead in the digital age. Nothing can be viewed or heard unless it's by definition COPIED first. Attempting to enforce that is just creating a legal minefield on the internet. And those with the most resources to lose, will lose the most.
People need to stop being suckers and undervaluing their own creative works, such as posts on the internet. If you can't compete with free then take up another line of work.
Government "management" (violently enforced) doesn't lead to "efficiency" or "quality".
You fucks have brought about the situation where lawyers make more than doctors for much less work. Guess those babyboomers will be hiring lawyers on nurses to operate on them as they age, as that's where the factory degrees are being mass produced churned out. Universal healthcare, or health insurance in general isn't about making healthcare cheaper, but rather about making the people with Jaguars subsidize the inherently high cost of healthcare for those with Kias. Exactly, you people are violent thugs. You uses the same propaganda words the Nazi socialists used to disguise their violence. "Management", "Subsidize", etc. Health care costs are high because there aren't any restraints on spending, over 10 million illegal aliens flood emergency rooms for free health care. The solution is to get government out of health care, and let markets work.
Wrong, you violent bitch thug. Trade only occurs when that which is received is valued more than that which is given away in exchange. No matter for what purpose you violently force transfer of goods and services, you by definition cause poverty, cause society to be net less materially wealthy. If socialist health care made people better off wealthier, it would be voluntarily funded, dumbass.
The reason health care is a mess is precisely because of government interference with the free market. Government gives tax advantages to businesses to buy insurance for employees. There is hardly any price competition whatsoever. There's no incentive at all for people paying $10 co pays for pharmaceuticals to purchase their prescriptions at the Costco pharmacy for $59 instead of at the Walgreens pharmacy for $129. And those perverted non-competitive hidden prices are all throughout the health care system.
But please, STFU about your spew of "benefit to society" when you are a COMPLETE MORON who hasn't the first clue regarding economics.
Nah, it's just time to regulate, restrict, cap, and price fix lawyer hourly rates. Say $50 an hour. They've abused the system creating thousands and thousands of complicated laws to make the populace dependent upon lawyers. This mass of laws and lawyer fees is in violation of the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual fines. So, just pass a law that limits their hourly rate to no more than $50 per hour, or about what their DUMB paralegals earn (lawyers don't have talent or skills, except reading comprehension and purposefully creating obfuscation in the laws). And pass massive penalties for lawyers that overcharge; prison, civil forfeiture, revoke the immunity of lawyers losing their homes from legal disputes, etc.
The lawyers declared WAR on the rest of society. They are sitting on their dumb, lazy, fat asses doing wholly unproductive work, living the high life while leaching like parasites off of productive society. The number of lawyers graduating per year is out of control, the amount of money lawyers are siphoning off of society is out of control. So it's time to figuratively BOMB the legal WELFARE profession back to the stone age.
Hell, bring separate suits for separate issues too. Maybe we can tack on some Spam Act penalties, interstate commerce violations. And let's not forget, Comcast SENIOR MANAGEMENT is subject to FEDERAL IMPRISONMENT along with civil forfeiture penalties under Sarbanes-Oxley.
And then when Comcast loses these lawsuits, bring share holder class action lawsuits alleging negligence.
DO YOU HEAR US COMCAST?! Don't mess with free speech, unless you want to go down the same way the RIAA and MPAA are gonna go down.
P.S. When you release your P.R. statement addressing this issue, like AT&T did for censoring concerts it was sponsoring, for shits and giggles it'd be nice if you drop some names of those you fired in your legal and management departments.
Here's how: any content WHATSOEVER must be copied to be DISPLAYED by others. Any web page, any files, which are viewed on the internet, are COPIED, are SHARED. This saves energy of physical delivery, provides economies of scale, reduces costs, is environmentally friendly. This is the same for radio, the same for television, the same for internet files, the same for talking on a telephone, the same for all broadcast media whatsoever. That way you don't have land fills full of cds and dvds for every television show, every radio broadcast, every software program. If you are filling out web page forms for on-line shopping you are sending and receiving information; that is no different than bittorrent.
Comcast is censoring data they do not own. Comcast is depriving consumers of services paid for. Copyright has nothing to do with it. All files, both copyrighted and non-copyrighted must be COPIED to be seen and heard by those accessing the internet. There's no difference if you click on a web page or if you bitttorent files.
Comcast's "prohibited services" are nothing but unenforceable bunk. And they also forgot to say "Simon says
Not to mention, Comcast is actively soliciting and offering their own proprietary VoiP service.
If this is effecting services offered by the likes of Vonage, this might qualify as SABOTAGE, and be risking nine digit number lawsuit penalties (that's hundreds of millions of dollars). You can almost smell all the lawyers scrambling to get class action certification. This has the "Big Payday Bonanza" (TM) of 2008 written all over it.
Time to dump those Comcast shares.
So if you remember listening to a song at a specific place and time and also remember listening to that same song at another separate specific place and time, you have two different copies of that song being played, IN YOUR MIND.
I can't wait until intellectual non-property protectionism is more officially and not just as de facto repealed so that all artists can have a big fat red "PWNED" stamped across their fantasies of "lost" compensation.
And don't forget to donate money to every post you ever read on the internet. Or are these hypocrites just going to conveniently pretend posts aren't "intellectual work"?
It's quite evident Radiohead has already voluntarily received far far more than they *deserve* for the work they did with this release. Really? A few songs are worth 10 million dollars?! And Radiohead didn't copy any words invented by others in any of their lyrics? They didn't copy musical theory, notes, chords, progressions, use of instruments, etc. in their music? They never studied other musical artists? They never learned to play music by copying others who were first to play music?
P.S. This post is worth $25 per read. Please submit payment to the Anonymous Coward Scholarship Rate-Up Fund.
So no, I would argue that FEAR is at the heart of the fact that many more people go to filesharing systems to download rather than upload. Lemme guess, you fancy yourself a freedom fighter, don't you? I'm not a frontline in the trenches uploader if that's what you mean. But yes, I'm out there outlining defensive and offensive strategies to further the abolition of intellectual non-"property". Though "generalissimo" has a nice ring to it.
But "greed" really is immaterial to the analysis from a strict economic perspective. All action is aimed at going from a state of greater dissatisfaction to a state of lesser dissatisfaction. Action only occurs because people are in a state of dissatisfaction. There'd be no reason to act otherwise. All action whatsoever is "greed", aimed at getting to a state of lesser dissatisfaction.
http://www.mises.org/resources/3250
And yes, people do greedily share too because they enjoy others enjoying what they themselves enjoy, especially when non scarcity cost is relatively minimal. The incentives to share are multi-faceted. People freely share their thoughts on forums like this, out of strict greed, whether to prove points, derail troll, or "altruistically" advance the knowledge of others. The act of writing and choosing to post shows at the time the post was made, that action not only increased subjective wealth for the poster, but was the most effective increase of subjective wealth available for the poster at that time, given their non-omniscient knowledge and momentary optional choice possibilities.
There's a desire behind every action, including posting, including reading posts. And people also may greedily not want to share a secluded spot on a tropical beach. People may want to have "in" cliques where they don't want just anyone else enjoying what they enjoy. And others may greedily want to over-saturate the market with some content to greedily deprive some clique of derived status from relatively rare enjoyment of some content. And still others may greedily compete to prevent the content of others being heard rather than their own content heard. The motives can span the entire spectrum of motivation, but all of them are inherently "greedy".