"A 6.50 public transportatition ticket can get me to hundreds of interesting places withing a 20 km radius from where I live (and back again), a 6.50 taxi ride can get me... uh, maybe to some place I could easily walk to."
You're just proving the idiocy of the whole system more and more clearly. The reason that your public transportation ticket is so cheap is because they get the rest of the cost through taxation, from you (and everyone else). The difference is that people who do not want to use public transportation are still forced to pay for it or face being jailed or moving out of country.
The taxi cost is probably closer to reality, but another reason it is high is because they have to compete with the monopoly that is public transportation. People that could be customers of the taxi drivers take public transportation because it's cheaper - and it's only cheaper because everyone is forced to pay for it through taxes. If the public transportation didn't exist, more people would use taxis, private buses, etc, and the cost of taking a taxi or bus would likewise go down.
Any service can be made cheaper if you're funding it with money taken by force. Do you value that over your rights and the rights of your friends, family, and neighbors?
"If you make school optional... well, you'll end up with a lot of uneducated people who'll just skip school for some reason or another
Yet another unsupported assertion. If the parents want them to go to school, they will make sure they are actually going. It is not the responsibility for the government to take care of everyone's kids.
"Having a mass of uneducated people... they're less productive and more prone to becoming criminals..."
Yet more unsupported assertions. Your common sense might make you believe such, but that is not evidence.
"Because a private company needs to make its profits from the fares alone."
Why couldn't they get money from advertisements and agreements with other companies? Best of all, in this scenario, the money is all freely given, not taken by force at gunpoint.
"If there are no profits to be made..."
Another unsupported assertion. The way you talk, one would think that there were no such things as taxis, chauffered limos, etc, or that there is some huge monopoly on these services. No profitability, no competition, right? Clearly you're wrong somewhere in your logic.
You've got a lot of nice bullet points there, but have not backed them up with any evidence. How are public schools cheap/free? You pay for it through taxes. What is different about paying the schools directly for their services, other than being forced to pay through taxation?
What evidence do you have that public healthcare increases overall longterm health, and how is the corresponding rights-violation - forcing everyone to give up more of their productivity to the government - justified?
As for public transport... why can't a private company offer the same services? Are you saying it's impossible for a private company to make buses and put them on the roads and fill them with people, or for them to make a subway system? How do you think the subways were built? Not by government workers, but through contracts with private companies. Private industry has been involved in every step of public services, the only difference being that the funding for these public services has been forced out of the people, rather than freely offered by customers in exchange for said services - as a free market should properly operate.
"These sorts of things benefit everyone, including businesses, however no one wants to pay for them because that would involve a reduction in "my" money."
No, nobody wants to pay for them because they're already paying ridiculously high taxes, and can only imagine the corresponding private services costing even more, despite the fact that competition reduces the cost to the customer. There is no competition in the arena of public services.
"This means that things like environmental pollution, outsourcing, and other forms of exploitation are rewarded for their short term benefits as opposed to punished for their long term consequences."
The reason businesses have been forced to be shortsighted is not a matter of simply getting a quick extra buck, but that the market is no longer stable due to increased government manipulation of the economy. Every 2-4 years we get new politicians wanting to increase taxes or deficit spending (e.g. the "tax rebate" checks) to fund random projects that are only done to get them reelected. You also have the Federal Reserve screwing with the economy more and more frequently, causing huge market fluctuations that leave everyone worried about what will happen tomorrow. As another result, fewer and fewer financial companies are willing to offer long-term loans (30-year, 99-year, etc). All of this leaves everyone feeling like they need to see definite profits now rather than potential profits down the road.
"The problem with all of this is that in order to force companies [snip] we need a government..."
No, the original purpose of a government was to uphold and protect the rights of its citizens. What the government has become, however, is a rights-violating machine paid for by corrupt corporations that are promised favorable laws by corrupt politicians.
"So if a capitalist dumps poison in my well because he's too lazy to clean up after his manufacturing process, he's not infringing on my rights? But if the government orders him to stop, it is infringing on his rights?"
Nice false analogy. Of course they're infringing on your rights if they do anything to your property without your permission. And you should take them to court if they do so - they will be punished and you will be compensated. What you should not do is petition the government to violate everyone's rights for the sake of proactivity.
It's a shame there won't be a Marcus Brody role in this one, as the actor died a few years after the Last Crusade. One of the funniest scenes in the trilogy was from this one:
Elsa: It's perfectly obvious where the pages are... he's given them to Marcus Brody.
Henry: Marcus?! You didn't drag poor Marcus along did you? He's not up to the challenge.
Donovan: He sticks out like a sore thumb. We'll find him.
Indy: The hell you will! He's got a two day head start on you, which is more than he needs. Brody's got friends in every town and village from here to the Sudan, he speaks a dozen languages, knows every local custom, he'll blend in, disappear, you'll never see him again. With any luck, he's got the grail already.
(next scene)
(Brody disembarks from the train along with the other passengers, a cross-section of Arabs and Turks.)
Brody: Is there anyone here who speaks English? Or maybe even ancient Greek?
"Capitalism isn't 'evil' - it simply puts money above everything."
This is like spouting "Money is the root of all evil" without bothering to ask what the root of money is. Pure stupidity on your part. Money is simply productivity in paper form. I work and get pieces of paper that say I have been productive, and exchange those pieces of paper for others' productivity.
"The point is - if it wasn't for... it wouldn't have happened."
And you have shown that... how? Maybe whatever you are calling "progress" wouldn't have happened as fast as it has by government manipulation, but with capitalism at least you are not violating everyone's rights in the process.
"and allowing more lines will cause tons of money to magically appear to run new lines?"
Why would it have to magically appear? Plenty of big companies (and local companies) would want to compete with these monopolies to provide what customers actually want.
"it would be impossible to compete when the other guy already has an infrastructure and you have to build one from scratch. and it's not their property. [snip]"
The government should sell off in chunks what it helped build to the highest bidders, and use what money it raises to compensate those that were impacted by the monopoly.
What a joke. Why are their lines the only choice? Because the government will not allow alternative lines to be put down. We wouldn't have this problem if not for government restrictions to what competitors can do.
Requiring them to lease their own property is likewise a mockery of everyone's rights.
That you can't see the obviousness of the problem is another symptom of the growing desire to live under the rule of a nanny-state.
So you're basically saying that because the government does not allow competing lines to exist, then we need further government restrictions on existing lines? How ridiculous! The solution that upholds everyone's rights, rather than make a mockery of them, is to remove restrictions preventing the existence of competing cable lines, and allow competitors to put down their own lines. Then we will finally see the end to idiotic schemes by government-granted monopolies. Until then, go ahead, feel free to demand that the government stop packetshaping. The company will simply find another idiotic scheme to try out, and the cycle will continue. In the meantime, the government will see how much it can restrict large companies, and slowly extend similar restrictions to small companies, and eventually, individual citizens. If you refuse to uphold the rights of large companies, you make a joke of your own rights and the rights of your friends and family.
It's more a mockery of the rights of all your citizens. The company should be free to do whatever idiotic plan it wants, and watch its customer base crumble and disappear in response. The government is basically saying that unless the company can show that some idiotic scheme the company wants to do is actually necessary, then the company should not be allowed to make that bad choice. If they're allowed to do that to big companies, why not to a small company, started by a friend of yours, or your neighbor. And if they can do it to small companies, why not to individuals? This is more of the government telling people what's good for them and preventing them from doing what the government deems unnecessary or bad. The same thing happens with gun rights and smoking in the US.
Note: I have never and would never smoke, have no interest in owning a gun, and agree that packet shaping is idiotic and bad for business. With that said, this is not a good day for the rights of Canadians.
"Everything has a price tag. Everything costs something, and everyone should get something hard for everything he does."
This only makes sense if you ignore why we use money. Money is simply an exchange of productivity. I work, get money, and then use that money to buy others' productivity. Saying "everything has a price tag" simply means that people are only willing to offer up their productivity if they get someone else's in return. That's the sign of a properly functioning market. If you want to donate to these causes, feel free, but don't demand the government forcibly take a larger portion of everyone's productivity (in the form of increased taxes) because you have a pet idea and you want easy access to money.
Your ipod touch is plugged into your car's audio port, and simultaneously is connected wirelessly to your network, where it remains in sync with your server's music share. The server also happens to be running a p2p program where your music is also being shared. However, all you listen to Kimya Dawson, so nobody has downloaded anything yet. It's simply sitting there, shared, but not acquired. So the judge is going to agree with a previous decision saying that infringement of [the distribution right] requires an actual dissemination.
And once again a car analogy comes along to save the day.
That would only be true if my sense of humor was limited to repeating the same random idiotic lines over and over again. Fortunately it is not, so those lines did not even come to mind.
I think you misunderstand how the word "heretics" is used. Heretics can be whoever the Church wants to label as such, for whatever reason, stated or not, they desire.
When heretics try to disperse reading material that the religious deem unsuitable for the public to read, the only choice that comes to mind is to burn and censor.
If the purpose is to somehow stimulate the local economy, I think it would make more sense to help build and expand the underlying infrastructure that would eventually lead to the desire to have top math/science experts in the region. Otherwise they will most likely just move somewhere where they're actually wanted and can be sufficiently compensated. Is there a need for physics experts when the region is severely lacking in agriculture?
Slashdot Mirror
"A 6.50 public transportatition ticket can get me to hundreds of interesting places withing a 20 km radius from where I live (and back again), a 6.50 taxi ride can get me ... uh, maybe to some place I could easily walk to."
You're just proving the idiocy of the whole system more and more clearly. The reason that your public transportation ticket is so cheap is because they get the rest of the cost through taxation, from you (and everyone else). The difference is that people who do not want to use public transportation are still forced to pay for it or face being jailed or moving out of country.
The taxi cost is probably closer to reality, but another reason it is high is because they have to compete with the monopoly that is public transportation. People that could be customers of the taxi drivers take public transportation because it's cheaper - and it's only cheaper because everyone is forced to pay for it through taxes. If the public transportation didn't exist, more people would use taxis, private buses, etc, and the cost of taking a taxi or bus would likewise go down.
Any service can be made cheaper if you're funding it with money taken by force. Do you value that over your rights and the rights of your friends, family, and neighbors?
"If you make school mandatory"
... well, you'll end up with a lot of uneducated people who'll just skip school for some reason or another
Who said to make school mandatory?
"If you make school optional
Yet another unsupported assertion. If the parents want them to go to school, they will make sure they are actually going. It is not the responsibility for the government to take care of everyone's kids.
"Having a mass of uneducated people... they're less productive and more prone to becoming criminals..."
Yet more unsupported assertions. Your common sense might make you believe such, but that is not evidence.
"Because a private company needs to make its profits from the fares alone."
Why couldn't they get money from advertisements and agreements with other companies? Best of all, in this scenario, the money is all freely given, not taken by force at gunpoint.
"If there are no profits to be made..."
Another unsupported assertion. The way you talk, one would think that there were no such things as taxis, chauffered limos, etc, or that there is some huge monopoly on these services. No profitability, no competition, right? Clearly you're wrong somewhere in your logic.
Care to provide an example, as you are the one making the assertion?
You've got a lot of nice bullet points there, but have not backed them up with any evidence. How are public schools cheap/free? You pay for it through taxes. What is different about paying the schools directly for their services, other than being forced to pay through taxation?
What evidence do you have that public healthcare increases overall longterm health, and how is the corresponding rights-violation - forcing everyone to give up more of their productivity to the government - justified?
As for public transport... why can't a private company offer the same services? Are you saying it's impossible for a private company to make buses and put them on the roads and fill them with people, or for them to make a subway system? How do you think the subways were built? Not by government workers, but through contracts with private companies. Private industry has been involved in every step of public services, the only difference being that the funding for these public services has been forced out of the people, rather than freely offered by customers in exchange for said services - as a free market should properly operate.
"These sorts of things benefit everyone, including businesses, however no one wants to pay for them because that would involve a reduction in "my" money."
No, nobody wants to pay for them because they're already paying ridiculously high taxes, and can only imagine the corresponding private services costing even more, despite the fact that competition reduces the cost to the customer. There is no competition in the arena of public services.
"This means that things like environmental pollution, outsourcing, and other forms of exploitation are rewarded for their short term benefits as opposed to punished for their long term consequences."
The reason businesses have been forced to be shortsighted is not a matter of simply getting a quick extra buck, but that the market is no longer stable due to increased government manipulation of the economy. Every 2-4 years we get new politicians wanting to increase taxes or deficit spending (e.g. the "tax rebate" checks) to fund random projects that are only done to get them reelected. You also have the Federal Reserve screwing with the economy more and more frequently, causing huge market fluctuations that leave everyone worried about what will happen tomorrow. As another result, fewer and fewer financial companies are willing to offer long-term loans (30-year, 99-year, etc). All of this leaves everyone feeling like they need to see definite profits now rather than potential profits down the road.
"The problem with all of this is that in order to force companies [snip] we need a government..."
No, the original purpose of a government was to uphold and protect the rights of its citizens. What the government has become, however, is a rights-violating machine paid for by corrupt corporations that are promised favorable laws by corrupt politicians.
"So if a capitalist dumps poison in my well because he's too lazy to clean up after his manufacturing process, he's not infringing on my rights? But if the government orders him to stop, it is infringing on his rights?"
Nice false analogy. Of course they're infringing on your rights if they do anything to your property without your permission. And you should take them to court if they do so - they will be punished and you will be compensated. What you should not do is petition the government to violate everyone's rights for the sake of proactivity.
It's a shame there won't be a Marcus Brody role in this one, as the actor died a few years after the Last Crusade. One of the funniest scenes in the trilogy was from this one:
Elsa: It's perfectly obvious where the pages are... he's given them to Marcus Brody.
Henry: Marcus?! You didn't drag poor Marcus along did you? He's not up to the challenge.
Donovan: He sticks out like a sore thumb. We'll find him.
Indy: The hell you will! He's got a two day head start on you, which is more than he needs. Brody's got friends in every town and village from here to the Sudan, he speaks a dozen languages, knows every local custom, he'll blend in, disappear, you'll never see him again. With any luck, he's got the grail already.
(next scene)
(Brody disembarks from the train along with the other passengers, a cross-section of Arabs and Turks.)
Brody: Is there anyone here who speaks English? Or maybe even ancient Greek?
"Capitalism isn't 'evil' - it simply puts money above everything."
... it wouldn't have happened."
This is like spouting "Money is the root of all evil" without bothering to ask what the root of money is. Pure stupidity on your part. Money is simply productivity in paper form. I work and get pieces of paper that say I have been productive, and exchange those pieces of paper for others' productivity.
"The point is - if it wasn't for
And you have shown that... how? Maybe whatever you are calling "progress" wouldn't have happened as fast as it has by government manipulation, but with capitalism at least you are not violating everyone's rights in the process.
"and allowing more lines will cause tons of money to magically appear to run new lines?"
Why would it have to magically appear? Plenty of big companies (and local companies) would want to compete with these monopolies to provide what customers actually want.
"it would be impossible to compete when the other guy already has an infrastructure and you have to build one from scratch. and it's not their property. [snip]"
The government should sell off in chunks what it helped build to the highest bidders, and use what money it raises to compensate those that were impacted by the monopoly.
You's didn't thinked the summary's quality were as good you had likening?
What a joke. Why are their lines the only choice? Because the government will not allow alternative lines to be put down. We wouldn't have this problem if not for government restrictions to what competitors can do.
Requiring them to lease their own property is likewise a mockery of everyone's rights.
That you can't see the obviousness of the problem is another symptom of the growing desire to live under the rule of a nanny-state.
So you're basically saying that because the government does not allow competing lines to exist, then we need further government restrictions on existing lines? How ridiculous! The solution that upholds everyone's rights, rather than make a mockery of them, is to remove restrictions preventing the existence of competing cable lines, and allow competitors to put down their own lines. Then we will finally see the end to idiotic schemes by government-granted monopolies. Until then, go ahead, feel free to demand that the government stop packetshaping. The company will simply find another idiotic scheme to try out, and the cycle will continue. In the meantime, the government will see how much it can restrict large companies, and slowly extend similar restrictions to small companies, and eventually, individual citizens. If you refuse to uphold the rights of large companies, you make a joke of your own rights and the rights of your friends and family.
It's more a mockery of the rights of all your citizens. The company should be free to do whatever idiotic plan it wants, and watch its customer base crumble and disappear in response. The government is basically saying that unless the company can show that some idiotic scheme the company wants to do is actually necessary, then the company should not be allowed to make that bad choice. If they're allowed to do that to big companies, why not to a small company, started by a friend of yours, or your neighbor. And if they can do it to small companies, why not to individuals? This is more of the government telling people what's good for them and preventing them from doing what the government deems unnecessary or bad. The same thing happens with gun rights and smoking in the US.
Note: I have never and would never smoke, have no interest in owning a gun, and agree that packet shaping is idiotic and bad for business. With that said, this is not a good day for the rights of Canadians.
"Everything has a price tag. Everything costs something, and everyone should get something hard for everything he does."
This only makes sense if you ignore why we use money. Money is simply an exchange of productivity. I work, get money, and then use that money to buy others' productivity. Saying "everything has a price tag" simply means that people are only willing to offer up their productivity if they get someone else's in return. That's the sign of a properly functioning market. If you want to donate to these causes, feel free, but don't demand the government forcibly take a larger portion of everyone's productivity (in the form of increased taxes) because you have a pet idea and you want easy access to money.
"the event horizon of Chuck Norris is infinity."
So you're saying Chuck Norris can't bend light at all. Weakling.
It appears my genius wit is far beyond that of the average slashdot user.
Yes... For me, it was as if millions of wizards cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Your ipod touch is plugged into your car's audio port, and simultaneously is connected wirelessly to your network, where it remains in sync with your server's music share. The server also happens to be running a p2p program where your music is also being shared. However, all you listen to Kimya Dawson, so nobody has downloaded anything yet. It's simply sitting there, shared, but not acquired. So the judge is going to agree with a previous decision saying that infringement of [the distribution right] requires an actual dissemination.
And once again a car analogy comes along to save the day.
That would only be true if my sense of humor was limited to repeating the same random idiotic lines over and over again. Fortunately it is not, so those lines did not even come to mind.
As a man who finds himself occasionally yelling out "INDY!!" in imitation of John Rhys-Davies, all I have to say is...
NOOOOOOOOOO!!!
And apparently you have looked up the wrong word.
You should really be demanding that they be shut down and that your tax dollars be returned to you.
I think you misunderstand how the word "heretics" is used. Heretics can be whoever the Church wants to label as such, for whatever reason, stated or not, they desire.
When heretics try to disperse reading material that the religious deem unsuitable for the public to read, the only choice that comes to mind is to burn and censor.
The center is located in South Africa, but the stated purpose is to find Africa's geniuses. Understand the difference?
If the purpose is to somehow stimulate the local economy, I think it would make more sense to help build and expand the underlying infrastructure that would eventually lead to the desire to have top math/science experts in the region. Otherwise they will most likely just move somewhere where they're actually wanted and can be sufficiently compensated. Is there a need for physics experts when the region is severely lacking in agriculture?