Nice of the author to presume that a "government of the People, by the People and for the People" is what we have to expect in the future. This would imply that the future will be any different from the past. And while some candidates may be running on a platform of "change", the rhetoric remains the same. At least for Obama, he's upfront about it; his commercials say "I am my brother's keeper", so we know to expect increased rights violations through regulation and taxation.
What choice is left? Well, there isn't one. Try again in 4 years.
I see a lot of conjecture and hyperbole but not hypocrisy. Different people advocating action in Darfur have different ideas about what to do, and may even have different motivations, but to label the entire "movement" as having these same motivations is ridiculous.
I know how Dr. Paul rates among this crowd, and I myself was a devoted fan, until I found out about his stance on the Darfur genocide and Sudanese divestment. See this thread for the details and an informative discussion.
"Save Darfur has been trying to get China, one of Sudan's largest trading partners, to pressure Sudan's government into stopping the mass killings in Darfur's ongoing civil war."
First, Sudan's north-south civil war is a separate matter from the Darfur genocide. Second, it has not only been Save Darfur, but also the entire UN, that has been trying to pressure China to stop funding the genocide. However, China has refused to budge, and likewise have the powers of the world. The only real progress that has been made is for individual states, universities, and organizations to remove all of their investments in companies that do business with the Sudanese government and indirectly profit from the genocide. Sudanese divestment has influenced many companies to pull out of contracts with Sudan and it is definitely having some effect.
Unfortunately, by sticking electrical tape on the camera, you have invalidated your warranty (by their own definition) and they cannot be held responsible if, say, the device becomes permanently nonfunctional when it notices the channels being changed while the camera detects no motion or light.
Not really. Believe me, newbies do not read warning messages. Especially if they're using Vista, where they become used to clicking Allow a billion times a day, they will not think twice before clicking Yes or OK or Allow or whatever is stopping them.
Given how silently Windows is able to connect to a wireless network, I don't see how this law would last. Computer novices with brand new laptops will just turn them on and start surfing the net without having a clue about what an ISP is, how the internet work, or even how they are connecting to the internet. They know there is this thing called the "internet" and that when they click on the big blue "e", they are accessing the internet. Where do you draw the line between the innocent bystander and the criminal?
"The marginal cost of guaranteeing that everybody can get full speed all of the time is too high"
Nobody is requesting that everyone get full speed all of the time. That's as ridiculous and foundationless as your argument that everyone (ie, as many people as want the service) should get some amount of service all the time. I am only requesting a choice of services. The issue is simply that there is no other choice. If you need high speed internet access for your home or office, you have to go with whatever company has the monopoly in your neighborhood. If that company happens to guarantee different levels of bandwidth all the time, then you are in luck. If not, you have no choice. So there is a demand, but no supply. And no other supplier can come into existence to fulfill this demand. And you have only government restrictions to blame for that.
The issue at its core is government interference in the economy, for which there are moral and practical objections.
"a single user can easily transmit 20 GB of data in a day."
Only if he is freely provided with the bandwidth promised by the ISP. Now are you saying he should not be able to use this bandwidth? There are plenty of legal uses for P2P so your sweeping statements just come across as ridiculous and ignorant.
The problem is simple: the company has made bandwidth promises to more people than it can handle on its lines. This is analogous to an airline promising everyone a seat on a plane in exchange for X dollars, but then when everyone who was promised a seat actually shows up for the flight (*gasp*), the airline kicks off the fat people, and tells everyone else to share seats. Now at this point any reasonable person would demand a refund and go to another airline. The problem in this situation is that there is no other airline. Your only option is to pick up and move to another location. Ask the government how this situation came about.
"The government is created to advance certain goals"
No, the government is created only for the purpose of upholding and defending the rights of its citizens.
"How else do you interpret the words ``general welfare''?"
There are two main views to the general welfare clause, the Madisonian and the Hamiltonian. The Madisonian view is that all spending must be related to one of the enumerated powers; the general welfare clause is not an enumerated power in and of itself. The Hamiltonian view is that spending is an enumerated power and so does not need to be related to one of the other enumerated powers; however, spending must be general in nature and not favor any specific subset of the population. The latter view is more widely held today. In neither case do you find a view allowing for the ability to appropriate a segment of money to a specific segment of the population. Here is specifically what Hamilton said on the subject.
"If abolished those taxes would also be abolished, so general incomes would not rise."
The observed difference would be one less rights violation.
Several of the ones you have listed are actually done by private organizations, or by contract with the government, or are still done by private organizations in regions outside the US, or were historically done by private organizations. In particular are all the safety examples (fire departments, flood insurance, unemployment insurance, drug safety testing, witness protection, etc), for which an individual paid an individual freely paid an insurance company. The insurance company's incentive is to keep the insured healthy and safe so as to avoid having to pay out large sums in the case of an emergency. And because there are multiple competing insurance companies (provided government does not intervene and create a monopoly), the individual is guaranteed a competitive prices, options, and results. Why do you believe a government can do these things better? Why do you believe it is alright to steal others' productivity (aka money) simply because you have this belief that the government can do it better?
You list social security, which is about to die a miserable death and cannot possibly succeed in covering the baby boomers. What's worst of all is that social security simply involves setting aside a portion of your earnings for retirement. But because of how the government works, you are actually giving your money to the currently retired and getting an IOU in return, with the hopes that sometime in the distant future, the government will still be around and able to afford paying you what they said they would. Not only does it make more sense in the long term to have a diversified investment portfolio, to reduce the risk, but you will also get a much larger payoff. Find me a single economist who recommends social security over a diversified portfolio.
"Thus the arguments against such "forced taxation" become much weaker since benefit has accrued."
There is no "argument against" forced taxation. It is a violation of fundamental rights. Your statement is as irrational as saying "arguments against murdering another person or stealing his property become much weaker..." Such a statement is equally nonsensical in the framework of a functioning society.
"There is a strong argument however that the benefits of living and working within the framework of a society that has all sorts of infrastructure and legal protections is measurably of greater value than the "lost" productivity."
Any apparent "benefits" are temporary and only help some at the expense of harming others. Most importantly, though, they violate my rights and the rights of my friends and members of my family, neighborhood, and community. Can you be more specific about what benefits you are referring to, and how the government is able to provide these benefits while private organizations are not?
"but to put those concerns as the same level as human rights is pretty insulting."
What it comes down to is this: in order to live and survive in the US, one must work and get paid for that work an amount of money that he and his employer freely agree upon as the correct compensation for his productivity. This is a fundamental need.
It follows from that need that one must also have an inalienable right to the "sweat of his brow" - a right to the amount of money that he and his employer agree is the correct "conversion factor" to go from N hours of productivity to X dollars. He can then use his X dollars to buy other peoples' products - the results of other peoples' productivity. The economy is simply the free exchange of your hours of labor for others' hours of labor.
Forced taxation is a violation of the inalienable right to your productivity. Voluntary taxation, on the other hand, would not be, nor would be freely donating some percentage of your income to a charity of your choosing, and persuading your friends, family, and community to do the same.
"through taxation or deficit spending" - "Again, a distinction that I care about greatly."
Taxation is simply taking your money at gunpoint now (literally, not metaphorically), while deficit spending is a promise to take your money at gunpoint later (call it an IOU).
In your television ads, you state that you are not like other politicians. How do your political actions differ from those normally held by politicians: namely, increasing budget sizes - whether for the war, healthcare, public schools, or other state-run programs - through taxation or deficit spending; and advancing laws violating human rights - whether through increased regulation of the economy, privacy violations, taxation, etc.
Also, how do your political motivations differ from those that have become the norm in politics? Politicians, acting as the "supply", have increasingly manipulated the economy to service the demand of corrupt companies offering to fund their campaigns - such as by contrived monopolies or selective tax breaks. How do your influences differ from the standard fare?
"without AMD we wouldn't be seeing these releases."
No, without a demand for these advances, competition would exist only to lower prices, but because this demand exists, the competition also includes innovation. If AMD weren't in the running, some other company or companies would be. Hurray for the market being properly represented.
"How else to the politicians intend to persuade you lot to vote?"
I vote in the time-honored tradition of who talks the loudest in the debates. I have no clue what they're talking about, but they couldn't possibly get all that applause unless they had just made some awesome point, could they?
Unfortunately, that one minute of cable science news happens to occur on Fox News, where they present the latest evidence pointing to babies as the source of all terrorism, or the newest findings confirming that the Pyramids were built with the use of dinosaurs.
"On the other hand, certain antitrust rules (precisely the sort that have prevented content carries from being owned or influenced by content providers) are absolutely necessary, as history has very clearly shown."
Can you provide any historical examples of a monopoly unsupported in any way by government regulation that was able to persist? I could see one attempting to spring up, but it could only exist if the market chose not to shift away or was unable to shift away (either by force or by lack of competition, ie indirect force).
"Once monopoly or oligopoly has established itself in a market..."
Please clarify both a) how this could happen in a free market, and b) how it could remain in existence if competition is free to pop up.
"It therefore behooves us to create such minimal regulation as necessary to prevent monopolies, and to break up those that already exist."
You have yet to show that which you use as a foundation for this statement.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice of the author to presume that a "government of the People, by the People and for the People" is what we have to expect in the future. This would imply that the future will be any different from the past. And while some candidates may be running on a platform of "change", the rhetoric remains the same. At least for Obama, he's upfront about it; his commercials say "I am my brother's keeper", so we know to expect increased rights violations through regulation and taxation.
What choice is left? Well, there isn't one. Try again in 4 years.
Is Arthur C. Clarke capable of wiping out all life on Earth? If not, I don't think it would be right to equate him with GRB 080319B.
If they want to, let them. Why stop them from doing what they want with their property?
But... why would they want to?
"I don't understand why you're a "devoted fan" of the rest of the Libertarian platform"
That would be because I'm not.
"he's taking a perfectly consistent position on this issue."
Which principle is violated if the US government selectively avoiding contracts with companies that supply the genocide?
I see a lot of conjecture and hyperbole but not hypocrisy. Different people advocating action in Darfur have different ideas about what to do, and may even have different motivations, but to label the entire "movement" as having these same motivations is ridiculous.
Blame the hippies when it was probably just some regexp newbie webmaster.
I know how Dr. Paul rates among this crowd, and I myself was a devoted fan, until I found out about his stance on the Darfur genocide and Sudanese divestment. See this thread for the details and an informative discussion.
"Save Darfur has been trying to get China, one of Sudan's largest trading partners, to pressure Sudan's government into stopping the mass killings in Darfur's ongoing civil war."
First, Sudan's north-south civil war is a separate matter from the Darfur genocide. Second, it has not only been Save Darfur, but also the entire UN, that has been trying to pressure China to stop funding the genocide. However, China has refused to budge, and likewise have the powers of the world. The only real progress that has been made is for individual states, universities, and organizations to remove all of their investments in companies that do business with the Sudanese government and indirectly profit from the genocide. Sudanese divestment has influenced many companies to pull out of contracts with Sudan and it is definitely having some effect.
For an excellent introduction to China's role in the Darfur genocide, watch Frontline's special for free online.
To see how much your state congressmen are doing to divest contracts from Sudan, see DarfurScores.Org. The Sudan Divestment Task Force has info on which states and organizations are divesting, and which ones are sitting on their hands.
"no major disasters that have lingered in the public consciousness happened on either November 2nd"
You whippersnappers are obviously too young to remember the tidal wave of 1570.
You take your lives for granted.
Unfortunately, by sticking electrical tape on the camera, you have invalidated your warranty (by their own definition) and they cannot be held responsible if, say, the device becomes permanently nonfunctional when it notices the channels being changed while the camera detects no motion or light.
Them's the breaks!
But in US it's the gold standard. Ignorance is all you need to get reelected.
Not really. Believe me, newbies do not read warning messages. Especially if they're using Vista, where they become used to clicking Allow a billion times a day, they will not think twice before clicking Yes or OK or Allow or whatever is stopping them.
Given how silently Windows is able to connect to a wireless network, I don't see how this law would last. Computer novices with brand new laptops will just turn them on and start surfing the net without having a clue about what an ISP is, how the internet work, or even how they are connecting to the internet. They know there is this thing called the "internet" and that when they click on the big blue "e", they are accessing the internet. Where do you draw the line between the innocent bystander and the criminal?
"The marginal cost of guaranteeing that everybody can get full speed all of the time is too high"
Nobody is requesting that everyone get full speed all of the time. That's as ridiculous and foundationless as your argument that everyone (ie, as many people as want the service) should get some amount of service all the time. I am only requesting a choice of services. The issue is simply that there is no other choice. If you need high speed internet access for your home or office, you have to go with whatever company has the monopoly in your neighborhood. If that company happens to guarantee different levels of bandwidth all the time, then you are in luck. If not, you have no choice. So there is a demand, but no supply. And no other supplier can come into existence to fulfill this demand. And you have only government restrictions to blame for that.
The issue at its core is government interference in the economy, for which there are moral and practical objections.
One thing I left out of my airplane analogy is that the airline promised seats to more people than the plane could handle.
"a single user can easily transmit 20 GB of data in a day."
Only if he is freely provided with the bandwidth promised by the ISP. Now are you saying he should not be able to use this bandwidth? There are plenty of legal uses for P2P so your sweeping statements just come across as ridiculous and ignorant.
The problem is simple: the company has made bandwidth promises to more people than it can handle on its lines. This is analogous to an airline promising everyone a seat on a plane in exchange for X dollars, but then when everyone who was promised a seat actually shows up for the flight (*gasp*), the airline kicks off the fat people, and tells everyone else to share seats. Now at this point any reasonable person would demand a refund and go to another airline. The problem in this situation is that there is no other airline. Your only option is to pick up and move to another location. Ask the government how this situation came about.
"The government is created to advance certain goals"
No, the government is created only for the purpose of upholding and defending the rights of its citizens.
"How else do you interpret the words ``general welfare''?"
There are two main views to the general welfare clause, the Madisonian and the Hamiltonian. The Madisonian view is that all spending must be related to one of the enumerated powers; the general welfare clause is not an enumerated power in and of itself. The Hamiltonian view is that spending is an enumerated power and so does not need to be related to one of the other enumerated powers; however, spending must be general in nature and not favor any specific subset of the population. The latter view is more widely held today. In neither case do you find a view allowing for the ability to appropriate a segment of money to a specific segment of the population. Here is specifically what Hamilton said on the subject.
"If abolished those taxes would also be abolished, so general incomes would not rise."
The observed difference would be one less rights violation.
Several of the ones you have listed are actually done by private organizations, or by contract with the government, or are still done by private organizations in regions outside the US, or were historically done by private organizations. In particular are all the safety examples (fire departments, flood insurance, unemployment insurance, drug safety testing, witness protection, etc), for which an individual paid an individual freely paid an insurance company. The insurance company's incentive is to keep the insured healthy and safe so as to avoid having to pay out large sums in the case of an emergency. And because there are multiple competing insurance companies (provided government does not intervene and create a monopoly), the individual is guaranteed a competitive prices, options, and results. Why do you believe a government can do these things better? Why do you believe it is alright to steal others' productivity (aka money) simply because you have this belief that the government can do it better?
You list social security, which is about to die a miserable death and cannot possibly succeed in covering the baby boomers. What's worst of all is that social security simply involves setting aside a portion of your earnings for retirement. But because of how the government works, you are actually giving your money to the currently retired and getting an IOU in return, with the hopes that sometime in the distant future, the government will still be around and able to afford paying you what they said they would. Not only does it make more sense in the long term to have a diversified investment portfolio, to reduce the risk, but you will also get a much larger payoff. Find me a single economist who recommends social security over a diversified portfolio.
"Thus the arguments against such "forced taxation" become much weaker since benefit has accrued."
There is no "argument against" forced taxation. It is a violation of fundamental rights. Your statement is as irrational as saying "arguments against murdering another person or stealing his property become much weaker..." Such a statement is equally nonsensical in the framework of a functioning society.
"There is a strong argument however that the benefits of living and working within the framework of a society that has all sorts of infrastructure and legal protections is measurably of greater value than the "lost" productivity."
Any apparent "benefits" are temporary and only help some at the expense of harming others. Most importantly, though, they violate my rights and the rights of my friends and members of my family, neighborhood, and community. Can you be more specific about what benefits you are referring to, and how the government is able to provide these benefits while private organizations are not?
"but to put those concerns as the same level as human rights is pretty insulting."
What it comes down to is this: in order to live and survive in the US, one must work and get paid for that work an amount of money that he and his employer freely agree upon as the correct compensation for his productivity. This is a fundamental need.
It follows from that need that one must also have an inalienable right to the "sweat of his brow" - a right to the amount of money that he and his employer agree is the correct "conversion factor" to go from N hours of productivity to X dollars. He can then use his X dollars to buy other peoples' products - the results of other peoples' productivity. The economy is simply the free exchange of your hours of labor for others' hours of labor.
Forced taxation is a violation of the inalienable right to your productivity. Voluntary taxation, on the other hand, would not be, nor would be freely donating some percentage of your income to a charity of your choosing, and persuading your friends, family, and community to do the same.
"through taxation or deficit spending" - "Again, a distinction that I care about greatly."
Taxation is simply taking your money at gunpoint now (literally, not metaphorically), while deficit spending is a promise to take your money at gunpoint later (call it an IOU).
In your television ads, you state that you are not like other politicians. How do your political actions differ from those normally held by politicians: namely, increasing budget sizes - whether for the war, healthcare, public schools, or other state-run programs - through taxation or deficit spending; and advancing laws violating human rights - whether through increased regulation of the economy, privacy violations, taxation, etc.
Also, how do your political motivations differ from those that have become the norm in politics? Politicians, acting as the "supply", have increasingly manipulated the economy to service the demand of corrupt companies offering to fund their campaigns - such as by contrived monopolies or selective tax breaks. How do your influences differ from the standard fare?
"without AMD we wouldn't be seeing these releases."
No, without a demand for these advances, competition would exist only to lower prices, but because this demand exists, the competition also includes innovation. If AMD weren't in the running, some other company or companies would be. Hurray for the market being properly represented.
"How else to the politicians intend to persuade you lot to vote?"
I vote in the time-honored tradition of who talks the loudest in the debates. I have no clue what they're talking about, but they couldn't possibly get all that applause unless they had just made some awesome point, could they?
Unfortunately, that one minute of cable science news happens to occur on Fox News, where they present the latest evidence pointing to babies as the source of all terrorism, or the newest findings confirming that the Pyramids were built with the use of dinosaurs.
"On the other hand, certain antitrust rules (precisely the sort that have prevented content carries from being owned or influenced by content providers) are absolutely necessary, as history has very clearly shown."
Can you provide any historical examples of a monopoly unsupported in any way by government regulation that was able to persist? I could see one attempting to spring up, but it could only exist if the market chose not to shift away or was unable to shift away (either by force or by lack of competition, ie indirect force).
"Once monopoly or oligopoly has established itself in a market..."
Please clarify both a) how this could happen in a free market, and b) how it could remain in existence if competition is free to pop up.
"It therefore behooves us to create such minimal regulation as necessary to prevent monopolies, and to break up those that already exist."
You have yet to show that which you use as a foundation for this statement.