>Sticks and stones being wielded by people in order to assault and injure? That act is illegal. Not the sticks and stones themselves, but the act of wielding them in such a way
As is threatening to do so. And the same line works quite well for words actually.
Erm... you need to actually read the thing you quoted. It doesn't say what you think it says. Popper WAS defending things like hate speech laws - on the BASIS that hate movements may respond to rational argument with violence. But while he certainly opposed violent suppression of argument - that was not what the paper or even that paragraph was about.
Popper correctly ascertained that free speech (and all other freedoms) can only be defended if it's somewhat limited - if those who would deny others freedom entirely are prevented, or at least limited, in their ability to push that idea. Because, if you try to answer *their* bad speech with good speech they usually answer you with guns. The only answer then is to bring your own gun - and it's better then if those guns are the government's guns because street-warfare tends to be bad for everybody.
And as Governor Ted Cruz has informed us - he doesn't CARE what the real innocent-conviction rate is, it has no impact on his love for Texa's record setting execution rate. Even if all the people they kill were innocent he wouldn't consider so much as a stay of executions until the problem is solved - because that's the Christian way right ?
The big guys have turned the stock market into a casino - and they are the house and the house always wins. If you win too much - they house kneecaps you.
The same banks who did this (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/money/merrill-lynch-ceo-john-thain-resigns-bank-america-bonus-scandal-article-1.421594) would not go near that ? What an odd place to draw your ethical lines.
Remember that's just the most recent case of a bank stealing millions by defrauding the public or it's own customers - there are 5 or 6 such scandals every year. It's a constant refrain. Last year's dirty list included HSBC. Banks stealing money through fraud is so fucking common it's barely even news anymore. Yet khallow still thinks that regulation is something evil - as opposed to the only weapon (however imperfect) we have that can, slightly, reign in evil.
But when you're Goldman sachs you can create an elaborate tunnel of anonymous shell companies owned by other anonymous shell companies. One of them places the fake orders, another with no discernable connection places the real orders that will profit from the false perception. Both happen in millisecond time frames a few thousand at once - and a fortune in paper money is siphoned off in a classic case of rent-seeking behaviour but none of it can be traced back to you - indeed it's all but impossible to find out, let alone prove, that the two companies which have so colluded even knew of each other's existence - let alone that they are both just legal entities whose money, ultimately, goes to Goldman Sachs.
It's a little harder to hide it so well when you're one dude in a basement.
Historically all those empires fell. Historically - they all do, and might-makes-right ones fall the fastest and the hardest. The longest-lived empires are those who are well enough defended that their neighbours leave them alone - but do NOT engage in conquests but, rather, leave their neighbours alone in turn. That's how the Mayan's managed to build an empire that lasted for 3000 years. Once they consolidated their territory, they stopped. They didn't try to invade and conquer the Aztecs - they just made sure they were well enough secured that the Aztecs wouldn't try to conquer them. 3000 years - that's longer than Christianity is old. That's 3 times what Rome managed. Kahn's Mongol empire lasted barely a century. It was a a lot bigger than Rome and a lot more aggressive - and, as a result, a lot less stable. Spains empire ? If you're being generous maybe 2 centuries - ultimately destroyed by greed more than anything else, but their constant warfare with Britain and the Dutch definitely didn't help while their greed was destroying their currency in a massive case of hyper-inflation. The Royal Navy - they did better, all in all almost 500 years that British empire lasted, it's real end only began in the second half of the 20th century and was slow enough that the motherland was able to extricate itself fairly intact. Along with some bizarre diplomatic arrangements such as Canada being a kingdom but not part of the United Kingdom yet having the same person as a monarch.
In the end though - the more aggressive an empire is, the more short-lived it tends to be.
A very well put summary of the point I was trying to make. Of course Austrian School economics (which libertarians tend to follow) denies market failures exist - which requires denying something we can all see happening but since they reject empiricism this does not sway them.
> Worker salary is a classic example. From the employer's point of view, paying nothing for work would be ideal. But then they don't get any labor and hence, can't compete. What are you ? Braindead ? Managers never pay wages unless the law forces them to. That is literally what slavery is. The US didn't domestically get rid of it properly until FDR for fucks sake and there are STILL factories that operate things like debt-slavery on the down-low. Globally there are more slaves in the world right now then were sold in the entire 200 year existence of the transatlantic slave network - ALL of them in countries with weak or badly-enforced regulations.
>And yes, regulation is a well known way to prevent such things. It also is a well know way to create such situations. But there is no other tool that can prevent it. Spraying a fire extinguisher on an electrical fire can potentially make the fire worse (depending on the type) - by your reasoning we should therefore get rid of fire extinguishers because the occasional misuse of them causing hardship cannot possibly be worth living with for the multitude of lives they save.
>Welcome to Victorian era porn. You do realize there is a difference between fiction and reality right? Personal diaries were not fiction, especially since they never intended anybody else would read it. Now if one or two had done that, you could write it off as fantasies - but when they ALL say the same thing - the only reasonable explanation is that they are telling the truth. Besides which we know from multiple independent sources that the rape-for-discipline was a common practise (and it still is in places like China where regulations are lax), this is not in dispute and no serious historian doubts it. The diaries explain the reasoning of the factory owners, it is not the basis for saying it did it - it is merely their explanation for WHY they did it. The fiction here is your sincere belief that rich people would NOT fuck you in the ass for 1 penny if they can get away with it. Anybody who would skimp on that opportunity does not become rich.
>Except of course, when they aren't. A blanket claim which starts off from very faulty premises is not worth supporting 'Overwhelmingly' implies literally the OPPOSITE of a blanket claim - and if you are denying that most national infrastructure are natural monopolies then that is an extremely extraordinary claim for which I expect to see extraordinary evidence. By definition these things are huge capital investments with low per-customer returns. That's WHY they end up being funded by governments and almost never engaged in by the private sector in the first place.
>And I don't buy your weasel clause My 'weasel clause' is literally the textbook definition of a natural monopoly. Look it up.
>That alone will drop the price of tickets considerably. Only if more than one airline exists - when the market conditions create a natural monoply this does not happen, even if competition does open they invariably go out of business very fast. I live in one of those countries. We have completely open gates (and our airports are all government owned and run with zero restrictions - any airline that passed safety inspections can do business here) - we've had 12 airlines open and go bankrupt over the course of the last 20 years. Ultimately the market keeps shrinking down to the same 3 airlines - all of which are owned by governments (two foreign and one local). The market conditions simply will not allow another airline to stay in business despite the fact that every single one of them was cheaper than any of the other three. It worked very well in Nigeria - where, despite being poor, the market is massive - it didn't work here because the market is both poor and small.
>Yea, yea. Moral relativism. We were not discussing morality so this is an idiotic thing to say. We were discussing economics - which IS a relative thing and anybody who tells you different is trying to con you. Whether or
>Ok, demand then. It's not important. Intent is not important either. Finally, I can't help but notice that I'm not a plant. So all this cooperation for plants that would hypothetically result in a carpet is just not advantageous for me. I imagine you are in a similar situation.
But the same happens to humans all the time, that's the point of the analogy. In industry it creates the "everybody is evil" problem - where anybody who is NOT willing to do evil cannot compete and soon only evildoing companies are left. The worst possible outcome actually becomes the one competition enforces on everybody, as opposed to being eradicated by it. A classic example from the industrial revolution. 19th century, England - standard practise of factory owners is to regularly rape (of the 'fuck me or your fired' variety) female staff as a way of maintaining worker discipline. A great many of those factory owners kept diaries. They all confess to engaging in the practise, all write that they find it abhorent and then proceed to say 'but because others do it, if I do not do it as well then my workers will be less productive, I cannot compete and I'd be out of business". Every one of them blames all the others for being evil and thereby forcing him to be evil as well. That's the human version of it. And the exact same pattern still happens today, less often with sex these days since we have specific laws against that one - but it still happens. Interestingly the fact that rape as a tool of discipline has been virtually eradicated (in the developed world at least) is proof that regulation can counter-act the 'force everybody to be evil' problem. We have nothing else that can.
>My point here is that the "competition is bad" idea is an entirely subjective judgment. But nobody made that argument. Nobody said 'competition is bad'. Strawman. I merely said that competition is not universally good, it's outcomes are not universally ideal. It's not some utopian panacea. It can be good, and it can be evil, which it is depends entirely on the specific context being evaluated. Sometimes competition is good, sometimes it's bad, but you can't assume the former is always true - or even mostly true.
>Another thing which is irrelevant since the earlier poster didn't specify things which were allegedly natural monopolies, but instead made a blanket claim about everything. No, the claim was made about critical national infrastructure. Which, overwhelmingly, ARE natural monopolies which is exactly why they were publicly owned in the first place.
>No, air travel is not a natural monopoly Another strawman. I specifically said it's SOMETIMES one, not always. A natural monopoly is defined as an industry where the initial capital requirements are very high, and the price-per-unit are very low - so that it takes decades to make your investment back and start profiting on it. Since the incomes of the population determine the customer base and the price the market will bare - whether something is a natural monopoly is therefore partly dependent on the spending power of the local population. Air travel sits firmly on the edge where it's open to competition in rich countries and a natural monopoly in poor ones.
There are no universal truths, and no universally good ideas. Competition is a good idea in general, but may not be so in a particlar specific case. Good and bad are contextual, there are NO simple answers and that right there is the critical flaw in libertarian thinking. The belief that there are, or indeed ever could be, simple yet universally applicable answers to anything, let alone something like economics - which is really a mirror of humanity itself in all it's infinite variety.
Now here is the thing you never think about - how is privatisation NOT theft and corruption ? How is it legal ? My taxes paid to build up this infrastructure/service/customer base as it stands. How the hell can government now give away, that which I paid for, to a private company without my consent and without compensating
>Competition is not for the supplier. The plants are not the supplier in that example - they are just competing for access to a resource: sunlight. They didn't evolve to supply anything - plants on land evolved long before anything existed to eat them. That some plants would, much later, evolve a symbiotic relationship with things that eat them (fruit-plants and birds for example) has no bearing on the analogy.
>As it turns, wood was a much more useful innovation for humanity than grass was. Wood evolved more than 200-million years before people did. It's safe to say it's usefulness to us was not a consideration.
>A company's failure is not the same as failure of its infrastructure A vital service is also a form of infrastructure for the purpose of this analogy. >That can always be sold to a more successful competitor In the real world - physical infrastructure requires constant maintenance to remain functional and the first thing a failing company cuts is maintenance, to try and milk the contract for all it's worth and enrich the CEO as much as possible before the failure comes to light. In the real world - after the company fails, more often than not the infrastructure is so worn down nobody will buy it - at least not anybody who intends to do better. The theory works for non-vital infrastructure where *other* infrastructure exists that compete with the infrastructure itself. The Channel-Tunnel is an example of that - the English side was done entirely by private contractors and run by private companies. The first three went bankrupt - it took until number 4 for somebody to figure out a way to profit from running the tunnel. It wasn't a disaster though because the channel was not critical infrastructure - the airports and harbours existed, there are other ways to get from England to France. You actually had to make the channel attractive for people to use it. Everybody with a need to get across the channel could choose from multiple paths and multiple providers. That doesn't work for things which are natural monopolies or where it's simply not feasible to have more than one.
>Then it's not privatization, is it? Now you're arguing definitions - if that is NOT privatization though, then it means all the things us lefties have been saying SHOULD not be privatized are also things which CANNOT be privatized and you lot should stop trying.
>Food supply is the obvious rebuttal here. Food supply may be critical but it is not a natural monopoly and there is no practical reason you can't have two farms. Even so - that one is falling appart. The American agriculture sector is now run entirely by only 4 companies - who mostly collude rather than compete - and there is no such thing as farmers anymore, American farmers have been reduced to share-croppers by effective monopolies in the supply-chain. In the meantime the price of food has grown at several times the inflation rate while the quality of the product has significantly declined and their enormous lobbying power has kept the big food companies from being regulated for polution - making farming now one of the most poluting activities the US engages in - in any SANE system giving antibiotics to livestock that are not suffering from bacterial infections would be simply illegal because it risks unleashing plagues on humanity: literally. In any sane system - farmers would actually own their crops and livestock - they don't, not anymore. The food system is falling appart, exactly because your argument is not true. Even so - the food system was never a candidate to be privatized because it was never a public service.
>Until the company goes bankrupt. Then those airports it had a lock on get sold to its competitors. Airports are an interesting one - they worked fantastically in rich countries. In poorer ones privatization never had an upswing, the prices got high and stayed high for ever. Because in anything but the richest countries air travel is a natural monopoly and the company never goes bankrupt. Whether something is a natural monopoly is partly detemined by the incomes of potential customers.
>Population: 0. (Given the Gay/Lesbian limitation, there will never be natural growth.)
False. Gays and Lesbians have kids all the time - and have been doing so for thousands of years. It's not harder than it is for you to fuck an ugly woman one time. They may not enjoy the babymaking much - but they enjoy the babies. Oh and please define 'natural' - because in modern times sex is hardly a requirement for babies. I have a lesbian friend who has mothered well over 30 children - she's an egg donor, all of them being raised by nice gay and lesbian couples around the world. If anything her, genes will be MORE strongly represented in the next generation than yours. The population may be 0 right now, but you have no grounds for assuming that it will remain that way or that, if it goes up, it will not grow like any other. Though the UN would require at least some population to allow it, any number above zero will do since there's no actual minimum listed anywhere.
>Military: 0. (Obviously) And why is that ? There are plenty of gay and lesbian soldiers in the US military right now - so why could they not establish a military ? I would argue they would likely have more fabulous uniforms though.
>Diplomatic relations: At war with Australia Seems like a pretty solid reason to consider their nationhood. If you can declare war on somebody - you ought to vote to consider them a country, otherwise it's either a civil war or an act of terrorism against another country.
>Buildings: 0. The UN never actually lists that as a requirement
>Primary industry: Stamp collecting. (Although there isn't a post office) That's not actually a problem - people will still be collecting stamps long after there are no post offices anywhere. Stamp collecting has always been an international hobby. Hell, when I dabbled in it in my youth - I had a a very large selection of stamps from countries that no longer exist !
>Capital city: Heaven (beach) No problem there.
>Government: Emperor (in absentia). UN rules require the existence of a government, but makes no requirements about the nature of that government, this will do.
> and still likely not be entirely self-sufficient and independent from Earth To be fair, neither is any country on earth - and it's doubtful any has been since at least the invention of the concept of 'countries'.
Here's the fundamental problem(s) with the libertarian "privatize all the things" approach. Two key things that break the whole thing - things that Hayek overlooked.
1) Competition does not always produce the most efficient outcomes. In fact, it can in the right conditions make the WORST possible outcome the ONLY possible outcome and make it impossible for any innovation to improve that. This is even true in nature with the competition that drives evolution. Richard Dawkins wrote a great article on it. A forest is nothing but a meadow that wastes nearly all it's energy on stilts. One tree taller than the grass - was a compeition winner, when everything copies the winning formula though - everything loses. And no plant can now STOP spening most it's energy on a useless giant trunk because then it gets no sun at all and loses the whole thing.
2) The funamental requirement for market competition to actually work is that companies must be able to fail - completely and utterly. Dead. The problem is - you CANNOT allow critical national infrastructure to fail - because if you do the entire country WILL collapse with it. The entire rest of the economy will collapse as well. No sane government will let the failure of one business destroy their entire economy, plunge them into a depression (which pretty much guarantees not being reelected), starvation and suffering - and probably war. So whenever the companies running such critical national infrastructure do fail - they ALWAYS get bailed out. Not because government likes bailing them out - because NOT bailing them out will meet riots in the street and the end of your country. That's why Bush and Obama both bailed out the banks - you don't think Obama actually WANTED to pay the bankers for fucking up the economy do you ? He did it ONLY because he had no choice - it was that or the complete collapse of American society. This pattern happens over and over. So what privatisation ACTUALLY ends up being is businesses allowed to rake in massive profits from essential infrastructure while the risks remain firmly with the taxpayers. You have to pay, out of pocket, for their profits when it works - and out of your taxes when it doesn't. The people who fuck up never get punished for their fuckups. In that scenario - none of the market theories even *apply* anymore at all. They have varying degrees of reliability in general and heaps of exceptions that libertarians ignore - but the scenario of critical infrastructure privatization is one where a market never will and never can exist and thus they have no application whatsoever. This, indeed, is why historically privatized services for major infrastucture did not get cheaper, or better service - they usually end up just as terribly run but now your ticket costs 3 times more.
And thanks to Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park they are at least vaguely aware that some scientists do field work and rarely enter a lab.
That actual archaeology pretty much never looks like anything Indy gets up to is another matter. Real lost buildings tend to be buried and discovering them is a task mostly done with tiny shovels.
Oh come now, some of the greatest contributions to fields like astronomy in that era came from the Islamic world, and the arab world as a whole has a history of contribution stretching back much further - the antikithera device was almost certainly made by Arabs - they are the only people who conceivably knew how to make clockwork that long ago. And Islamic scholars and inventors were still major contributors to technological and scientific progress until at least the end of the Ottoman empire (that was at the start of world war one).
The pattern didn't really change until after world war 2 in fact - and America carries most of the blame for that, the rest is carried by the former Soviet Union. It was their proxy wars that fully destabilized the region and their puppet dictators that crushed the Islamic world's long history of evidence based research, seperation of religion and science and technological excellence. When you institute theocracy - that's what happens. The British had started the trend in the final phases of colonization between the world wars - but it was America and Russia who finished the job of destroying a 4000 year history of scholarship, science, engineering and sceptic thinking and the worst part is the people who did it didn't even care about the region - there was nothing there they really wanted (it's oil riches were mostly not even discovered yet) - they just cared about one-upping each other through proxy wars around the world. The same thing happened in Africa - one of the things that most hurt post-colonial states was being host to wars between soviet backed and us backed forces fighting the cold war's bloodiest battles for them.
Slashdot Mirror
>Sticks and stones being wielded by people in order to assault and injure? That act is illegal. Not the sticks and stones themselves, but the act of wielding them in such a way
As is threatening to do so. And the same line works quite well for words actually.
Erm... you need to actually read the thing you quoted. It doesn't say what you think it says.
Popper WAS defending things like hate speech laws - on the BASIS that hate movements may respond to rational argument with violence. But while he certainly opposed violent suppression of argument - that was not what the paper or even that paragraph was about.
Popper correctly ascertained that free speech (and all other freedoms) can only be defended if it's somewhat limited - if those who would deny others freedom entirely are prevented, or at least limited, in their ability to push that idea. Because, if you try to answer *their* bad speech with good speech they usually answer you with guns. The only answer then is to bring your own gun - and it's better then if those guns are the government's guns because street-warfare tends to be bad for everybody.
Who ruins a good joke with facts ?
Anyway, I seriously doubt that any judge would deem a bullet from a gun to meet the definition of either 'launch vehicle' or 'payload'.
And as Governor Ted Cruz has informed us - he doesn't CARE what the real innocent-conviction rate is, it has no impact on his love for Texa's record setting execution rate. Even if all the people they kill were innocent he wouldn't consider so much as a stay of executions until the problem is solved - because that's the Christian way right ?
The big guys have turned the stock market into a casino - and they are the house and the house always wins. If you win too much - they house kneecaps you.
>and the banks would not have gone near it
The same banks who did this (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/money/merrill-lynch-ceo-john-thain-resigns-bank-america-bonus-scandal-article-1.421594) would not go near that ? What an odd place to draw your ethical lines.
Remember that's just the most recent case of a bank stealing millions by defrauding the public or it's own customers - there are 5 or 6 such scandals every year. It's a constant refrain. Last year's dirty list included HSBC.
Banks stealing money through fraud is so fucking common it's barely even news anymore. Yet khallow still thinks that regulation is something evil - as opposed to the only weapon (however imperfect) we have that can, slightly, reign in evil.
But when you're Goldman sachs you can create an elaborate tunnel of anonymous shell companies owned by other anonymous shell companies. One of them places the fake orders, another with no discernable connection places the real orders that will profit from the false perception. Both happen in millisecond time frames a few thousand at once - and a fortune in paper money is siphoned off in a classic case of rent-seeking behaviour but none of it can be traced back to you - indeed it's all but impossible to find out, let alone prove, that the two companies which have so colluded even knew of each other's existence - let alone that they are both just legal entities whose money, ultimately, goes to Goldman Sachs.
It's a little harder to hide it so well when you're one dude in a basement.
Historically all those empires fell. Historically - they all do, and might-makes-right ones fall the fastest and the hardest.
The longest-lived empires are those who are well enough defended that their neighbours leave them alone - but do NOT engage in conquests but, rather, leave their neighbours alone in turn.
That's how the Mayan's managed to build an empire that lasted for 3000 years. Once they consolidated their territory, they stopped. They didn't try to invade and conquer the Aztecs - they just made sure they were well enough secured that the Aztecs wouldn't try to conquer them. 3000 years - that's longer than Christianity is old. That's 3 times what Rome managed. Kahn's Mongol empire lasted barely a century. It was a a lot bigger than Rome and a lot more aggressive - and, as a result, a lot less stable. Spains empire ? If you're being generous maybe 2 centuries - ultimately destroyed by greed more than anything else, but their constant warfare with Britain and the Dutch definitely didn't help while their greed was destroying their currency in a massive case of hyper-inflation.
The Royal Navy - they did better, all in all almost 500 years that British empire lasted, it's real end only began in the second half of the 20th century and was slow enough that the motherland was able to extricate itself fairly intact. Along with some bizarre diplomatic arrangements such as Canada being a kingdom but not part of the United Kingdom yet having the same person as a monarch.
In the end though - the more aggressive an empire is, the more short-lived it tends to be.
Even if he misses, he could still be arrested for exporting munitions without a permit...
Not if there's a human being on the barrel end it's not.
He made 40-million in a few months but he couldn't afford bail ? Must be a graduate of Trump university.
(Seriously - his accounts are probably frozen as is common in financial crimes prosecution - but this is not usually allowed to interfere with bail).
A very well put summary of the point I was trying to make.
Of course Austrian School economics (which libertarians tend to follow) denies market failures exist - which requires denying something we can all see happening but since they reject empiricism this does not sway them.
> Worker salary is a classic example. From the employer's point of view, paying nothing for work would be ideal. But then they don't get any labor and hence, can't compete.
What are you ? Braindead ? Managers never pay wages unless the law forces them to. That is literally what slavery is. The US didn't domestically get rid of it properly until FDR for fucks sake and there are STILL factories that operate things like debt-slavery on the down-low. Globally there are more slaves in the world right now then were sold in the entire 200 year existence of the transatlantic slave network - ALL of them in countries with weak or badly-enforced regulations.
>And yes, regulation is a well known way to prevent such things. It also is a well know way to create such situations.
But there is no other tool that can prevent it. Spraying a fire extinguisher on an electrical fire can potentially make the fire worse (depending on the type) - by your reasoning we should therefore get rid of fire extinguishers because the occasional misuse of them causing hardship cannot possibly be worth living with for the multitude of lives they save.
>Welcome to Victorian era porn. You do realize there is a difference between fiction and reality right?
Personal diaries were not fiction, especially since they never intended anybody else would read it. Now if one or two had done that, you could write it off as fantasies - but when they ALL say the same thing - the only reasonable explanation is that they are telling the truth. Besides which we know from multiple independent sources that the rape-for-discipline was a common practise (and it still is in places like China where regulations are lax), this is not in dispute and no serious historian doubts it. The diaries explain the reasoning of the factory owners, it is not the basis for saying it did it - it is merely their explanation for WHY they did it.
The fiction here is your sincere belief that rich people would NOT fuck you in the ass for 1 penny if they can get away with it. Anybody who would skimp on that opportunity does not become rich.
>Except of course, when they aren't. A blanket claim which starts off from very faulty premises is not worth supporting
'Overwhelmingly' implies literally the OPPOSITE of a blanket claim - and if you are denying that most national infrastructure are natural monopolies then that is an extremely extraordinary claim for which I expect to see extraordinary evidence. By definition these things are huge capital investments with low per-customer returns. That's WHY they end up being funded by governments and almost never engaged in by the private sector in the first place.
>And I don't buy your weasel clause
My 'weasel clause' is literally the textbook definition of a natural monopoly. Look it up.
>That alone will drop the price of tickets considerably.
Only if more than one airline exists - when the market conditions create a natural monoply this does not happen, even if competition does open they invariably go out of business very fast. I live in one of those countries. We have completely open gates (and our airports are all government owned and run with zero restrictions - any airline that passed safety inspections can do business here) - we've had 12 airlines open and go bankrupt over the course of the last 20 years. Ultimately the market keeps shrinking down to the same 3 airlines - all of which are owned by governments (two foreign and one local). The market conditions simply will not allow another airline to stay in business despite the fact that every single one of them was cheaper than any of the other three. It worked very well in Nigeria - where, despite being poor, the market is massive - it didn't work here because the market is both poor and small.
>Yea, yea. Moral relativism.
We were not discussing morality so this is an idiotic thing to say. We were discussing economics - which IS a relative thing and anybody who tells you different is trying to con you. Whether or
>Ok, demand then. It's not important. Intent is not important either. Finally, I can't help but notice that I'm not a plant. So all this cooperation for plants that would hypothetically result in a carpet is just not advantageous for me. I imagine you are in a similar situation.
But the same happens to humans all the time, that's the point of the analogy. In industry it creates the "everybody is evil" problem - where anybody who is NOT willing to do evil cannot compete and soon only evildoing companies are left. The worst possible outcome actually becomes the one competition enforces on everybody, as opposed to being eradicated by it. A classic example from the industrial revolution. 19th century, England - standard practise of factory owners is to regularly rape (of the 'fuck me or your fired' variety) female staff as a way of maintaining worker discipline. A great many of those factory owners kept diaries. They all confess to engaging in the practise, all write that they find it abhorent and then proceed to say 'but because others do it, if I do not do it as well then my workers will be less productive, I cannot compete and I'd be out of business". Every one of them blames all the others for being evil and thereby forcing him to be evil as well. That's the human version of it. And the exact same pattern still happens today, less often with sex these days since we have specific laws against that one - but it still happens. Interestingly the fact that rape as a tool of discipline has been virtually eradicated (in the developed world at least) is proof that regulation can counter-act the 'force everybody to be evil' problem. We have nothing else that can.
>My point here is that the "competition is bad" idea is an entirely subjective judgment.
But nobody made that argument. Nobody said 'competition is bad'. Strawman. I merely said that competition is not universally good, it's outcomes are not universally ideal. It's not some utopian panacea. It can be good, and it can be evil, which it is depends entirely on the specific context being evaluated. Sometimes competition is good, sometimes it's bad, but you can't assume the former is always true - or even mostly true.
>Another thing which is irrelevant since the earlier poster didn't specify things which were allegedly natural monopolies, but instead made a blanket claim about everything.
No, the claim was made about critical national infrastructure. Which, overwhelmingly, ARE natural monopolies which is exactly why they were publicly owned in the first place.
>No, air travel is not a natural monopoly
Another strawman. I specifically said it's SOMETIMES one, not always. A natural monopoly is defined as an industry where the initial capital requirements are very high, and the price-per-unit are very low - so that it takes decades to make your investment back and start profiting on it. Since the incomes of the population determine the customer base and the price the market will bare - whether something is a natural monopoly is therefore partly dependent on the spending power of the local population. Air travel sits firmly on the edge where it's open to competition in rich countries and a natural monopoly in poor ones.
There are no universal truths, and no universally good ideas. Competition is a good idea in general, but may not be so in a particlar specific case. Good and bad are contextual, there are NO simple answers and that right there is the critical flaw in libertarian thinking. The belief that there are, or indeed ever could be, simple yet universally applicable answers to anything, let alone something like economics - which is really a mirror of humanity itself in all it's infinite variety.
Now here is the thing you never think about - how is privatisation NOT theft and corruption ? How is it legal ? My taxes paid to build up this infrastructure/service/customer base as it stands. How the hell can government now give away, that which I paid for, to a private company without my consent and without compensating
>Competition is not for the supplier.
The plants are not the supplier in that example - they are just competing for access to a resource: sunlight. They didn't evolve to supply anything - plants on land evolved long before anything existed to eat them. That some plants would, much later, evolve a symbiotic relationship with things that eat them (fruit-plants and birds for example) has no bearing on the analogy.
>As it turns, wood was a much more useful innovation for humanity than grass was.
Wood evolved more than 200-million years before people did. It's safe to say it's usefulness to us was not a consideration.
>A company's failure is not the same as failure of its infrastructure
A vital service is also a form of infrastructure for the purpose of this analogy.
>That can always be sold to a more successful competitor
In the real world - physical infrastructure requires constant maintenance to remain functional and the first thing a failing company cuts is maintenance, to try and milk the contract for all it's worth and enrich the CEO as much as possible before the failure comes to light. In the real world - after the company fails, more often than not the infrastructure is so worn down nobody will buy it - at least not anybody who intends to do better. The theory works for non-vital infrastructure where *other* infrastructure exists that compete with the infrastructure itself. The Channel-Tunnel is an example of that - the English side was done entirely by private contractors and run by private companies. The first three went bankrupt - it took until number 4 for somebody to figure out a way to profit from running the tunnel. It wasn't a disaster though because the channel was not critical infrastructure - the airports and harbours existed, there are other ways to get from England to France. You actually had to make the channel attractive for people to use it. Everybody with a need to get across the channel could choose from multiple paths and multiple providers. That doesn't work for things which are natural monopolies or where it's simply not feasible to have more than one.
>Then it's not privatization, is it?
Now you're arguing definitions - if that is NOT privatization though, then it means all the things us lefties have been saying SHOULD not be privatized are also things which CANNOT be privatized and you lot should stop trying.
>Food supply is the obvious rebuttal here.
Food supply may be critical but it is not a natural monopoly and there is no practical reason you can't have two farms. Even so - that one is falling appart. The American agriculture sector is now run entirely by only 4 companies - who mostly collude rather than compete - and there is no such thing as farmers anymore, American farmers have been reduced to share-croppers by effective monopolies in the supply-chain. In the meantime the price of food has grown at several times the inflation rate while the quality of the product has significantly declined and their enormous lobbying power has kept the big food companies from being regulated for polution - making farming now one of the most poluting activities the US engages in - in any SANE system giving antibiotics to livestock that are not suffering from bacterial infections would be simply illegal because it risks unleashing plagues on humanity: literally. In any sane system - farmers would actually own their crops and livestock - they don't, not anymore. The food system is falling appart, exactly because your argument is not true.
Even so - the food system was never a candidate to be privatized because it was never a public service.
>Until the company goes bankrupt. Then those airports it had a lock on get sold to its competitors.
Airports are an interesting one - they worked fantastically in rich countries. In poorer ones privatization never had an upswing, the prices got high and stayed high for ever. Because in anything but the richest countries air travel is a natural monopoly and the company never goes bankrupt. Whether something is a natural monopoly is partly detemined by the incomes of potential customers.
>Population: 0. (Given the Gay/Lesbian limitation, there will never be natural growth.)
False. Gays and Lesbians have kids all the time - and have been doing so for thousands of years. It's not harder than it is for you to fuck an ugly woman one time. They may not enjoy the babymaking much - but they enjoy the babies.
Oh and please define 'natural' - because in modern times sex is hardly a requirement for babies. I have a lesbian friend who has mothered well over 30 children - she's an egg donor, all of them being raised by nice gay and lesbian couples around the world.
If anything her, genes will be MORE strongly represented in the next generation than yours. The population may be 0 right now, but you have no grounds for assuming that it will remain that way or that, if it goes up, it will not grow like any other. Though the UN would require at least some population to allow it, any number above zero will do since there's no actual minimum listed anywhere.
>Military: 0. (Obviously)
And why is that ? There are plenty of gay and lesbian soldiers in the US military right now - so why could they not establish a military ? I would argue they would likely have more fabulous uniforms though.
>Diplomatic relations: At war with Australia
Seems like a pretty solid reason to consider their nationhood. If you can declare war on somebody - you ought to vote to consider them a country, otherwise it's either a civil war or an act of terrorism against another country.
>Buildings: 0.
The UN never actually lists that as a requirement
>Primary industry: Stamp collecting. (Although there isn't a post office)
That's not actually a problem - people will still be collecting stamps long after there are no post offices anywhere. Stamp collecting has always been an international hobby. Hell, when I dabbled in it in my youth - I had a a very large selection of stamps from countries that no longer exist !
>Capital city: Heaven (beach)
No problem there.
>Government: Emperor (in absentia).
UN rules require the existence of a government, but makes no requirements about the nature of that government, this will do.
> and still likely not be entirely self-sufficient and independent from Earth
To be fair, neither is any country on earth - and it's doubtful any has been since at least the invention of the concept of 'countries'.
Satelites don't count - either natural or constructed, since they don't *share* the orbit of a planet, they orbit AROUND the planet.
Here's the fundamental problem(s) with the libertarian "privatize all the things" approach.
Two key things that break the whole thing - things that Hayek overlooked.
1) Competition does not always produce the most efficient outcomes. In fact, it can in the right conditions make the WORST possible outcome the ONLY possible outcome and make it impossible for any innovation to improve that. This is even true in nature with the competition that drives evolution. Richard Dawkins wrote a great article on it. A forest is nothing but a meadow that wastes nearly all it's energy on stilts. One tree taller than the grass - was a compeition winner, when everything copies the winning formula though - everything loses. And no plant can now STOP spening most it's energy on a useless giant trunk because then it gets no sun at all and loses the whole thing.
2) The funamental requirement for market competition to actually work is that companies must be able to fail - completely and utterly. Dead. The problem is - you CANNOT allow critical national infrastructure to fail - because if you do the entire country WILL collapse with it. The entire rest of the economy will collapse as well. No sane government will let the failure of one business destroy their entire economy, plunge them into a depression (which pretty much guarantees not being reelected), starvation and suffering - and probably war.
So whenever the companies running such critical national infrastructure do fail - they ALWAYS get bailed out. Not because government likes bailing them out - because NOT bailing them out will meet riots in the street and the end of your country. That's why Bush and Obama both bailed out the banks - you don't think Obama actually WANTED to pay the bankers for fucking up the economy do you ? He did it ONLY because he had no choice - it was that or the complete collapse of American society.
This pattern happens over and over. So what privatisation ACTUALLY ends up being is businesses allowed to rake in massive profits from essential infrastructure while the risks remain firmly with the taxpayers. You have to pay, out of pocket, for their profits when it works - and out of your taxes when it doesn't. The people who fuck up never get punished for their fuckups.
In that scenario - none of the market theories even *apply* anymore at all. They have varying degrees of reliability in general and heaps of exceptions that libertarians ignore - but the scenario of critical infrastructure privatization is one where a market never will and never can exist and thus they have no application whatsoever.
This, indeed, is why historically privatized services for major infrastucture did not get cheaper, or better service - they usually end up just as terribly run but now your ticket costs 3 times more.
And the only woman you ever have to see is the one who never rejected you.
And thanks to Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park they are at least vaguely aware that some scientists do field work and rarely enter a lab.
That actual archaeology pretty much never looks like anything Indy gets up to is another matter. Real lost buildings tend to be buried and discovering them is a task mostly done with tiny shovels.
It was dead so I burried it.
Are you sure it was dead ?
It said it wasn't but you know how dem robots can lie...
Oh come now, some of the greatest contributions to fields like astronomy in that era came from the Islamic world, and the arab world as a whole has a history of contribution stretching back much further - the antikithera device was almost certainly made by Arabs - they are the only people who conceivably knew how to make clockwork that long ago. And Islamic scholars and inventors were still major contributors to technological and scientific progress until at least the end of the Ottoman empire (that was at the start of world war one).
The pattern didn't really change until after world war 2 in fact - and America carries most of the blame for that, the rest is carried by the former Soviet Union. It was their proxy wars that fully destabilized the region and their puppet dictators that crushed the Islamic world's long history of evidence based research, seperation of religion and science and technological excellence.
When you institute theocracy - that's what happens. The British had started the trend in the final phases of colonization between the world wars - but it was America and Russia who finished the job of destroying a 4000 year history of scholarship, science, engineering and sceptic thinking and the worst part is the people who did it didn't even care about the region - there was nothing there they really wanted (it's oil riches were mostly not even discovered yet) - they just cared about one-upping each other through proxy wars around the world.
The same thing happened in Africa - one of the things that most hurt post-colonial states was being host to wars between soviet backed and us backed forces fighting the cold war's bloodiest battles for them.
That would be a first then. Historically the Islamic world has been a nett exporter of technological advance to the West.
Considering how large a section of the Islamic world is reliant on oil exports to fund their economies, this seems like an odd choice of thing to do.