I have w510, had it for 5 years, it is time for it to go now, but I want a very similar laptop with better CPU, more RAM and a 2TB NVME PCI SSD. Oh, and a 1920 x 1200 screen and a huge battery.
The Open Source paradigm is that with many eyes all bugs are shallow. But in this case, there are not many eyes, only a few Russian eyes, and those eyes are at least potentially hostile.
- not only these are 'not many eyes', these are very *specific* eyes looking at the code.
The code is not given to just anybody in Russia, it's provided to the government, which hires people specifically to break into systems. This does not reduce security problems, it increases them.
Of-course I believe that NSA, (and by extention CIA, FBI, DHS, etc.) also have seen this code and the same exact problem applies there as well.
Humans did survive in those exact conditions for tens of thousands of years all while moving from one territory to another, lesser known territory. The technology included sticks, stones, bones and skins. I guess that's also technology but it is something that can be actually found in nature around you.
You have 0 arguments, nothing at all. All of my positions are my own, my journal on this site is what, 18 y.o., I have reasoned my positions in it enough, you haven't had an original thought once in your life, that is because you don't actually use thinking for your positions at all.
You don't actually have any arguments. Go ahead, explain here how it is not oppression to use a government system of oppression (agencies, courts, cops, guns, military) money from person A to give that money to person B?
Explain here what is it that makes it different from person B stealing from person A directly? The difference is the legalized bureaucracy 'legally' armed with weapons that acts as the proxy for this robbery.
Actually it would be much more honest if person B simply came to person A with a gun and demanded some money. The way this is done it makes it more 'civilized', as if the principle is different. It's the same exact action, the difference is that the person B does not have to get his or her hands dirty while outsourcing this violence to the State, which is only too happy to oblige.
No, I said that a reasonable society might includes a safety net for its citizens
- completely disagree, I don't see a society that legalizes criminal behaviour by government as reasonable or civilized, I see it as oppressive.
AFAIC oppression is coercion, theft, robbery, kidnapping, murder. That is oppression especially when done by a collectivist system, where the mob 'legalizes' this behaviour (gives power of the mob) to the government system.
That is a reasonable description of what is happening.
However here are your words:
Telling old people that they should just starve to death when they're too old to work seems a lot like oppression to me.
- you just redefined LACK of oppression of person A to provide person B with money taken from person A as oppression of person B.
So in your Orwellian mind *not* stealing is oppression.
You started it, didn't you? You said that NOT giving somebody money is oppression. Don't tell me you don't understand what oppression actually means - coercion by somebody with power against you, coercion, theft, robbery, kidnapping, murder. That's oppression.
*NOT* giving somebody money *STOLEN* from somebody else does not qualify as oppression and yes, everything that governments take away from individuals in form of income or wealth taxes is theft, it's criminal behaviour.
Fascinating. You believe that somebody who lived his or her entire life in a system that wouldn't steal on their behalf that they have to save for themselves (instead of paying income or payroll or wealth taxes of-course), that this is oppression.
However the young people who didn't even live the same length of time yet, who may in fact die before they reach that old age where they would (for some reason) expect others to take care of them, those people can be oppressed by the system to provide the old with... with money they should have saved on their own because the consequences of not saving *should have been clear to them for a long time*.
It is fascinating, you believe that forcefully removing money (which is time, so time of life, time of life it took to make that money) from one group of people and handing it over to another group of people is just fine because otherwise there would be... oppression?
What oppression? If you are old and you didn't save or you lost your savings you believe yourself to be oppressed by somebody young who is not interested in your ass? Get some relatives. Get some friends. Make your case to some private charity or a private person who may help you.
However do not use the power of the guns in the hands of the government to take from others what you wasted yourself and now waste more on your ass.
You feel oppressed that somebody else will *not* be oppressed by the collectivist regime on your behalf? OK, then you are a dumb ass.
That idea is part of what destroyed the very concept of America, the economy of which was built upon the premise of individual freedom from this type of oppression. Everybody should be saving for themselves and nobody should be forced to subsidise anybody else and nobody should be forced to do anything at all by any government actually and obviously all income and wealth related taxes are oppression and theft. Governments are criminal structures that are built to steal, rob, kidnap and murder.
be careful with what you post, you are stepping over the acceptable level of groupthink here with declarations that a business creates a market and creates a product by investing into it with its own money and by supplying it. A business creates a market and then if the product is good enough the consumers buy it, which implies that the economy is driven by supply of something. If there is a supply then the consumer will decide whether to exchange some of that supply for what the consumer produces (the supply of something expressed in a salary, which is exchanged for supply of something else).
The 'bottom end' of the town is the part of the town that benefits from a working free market system much more than the 'top end'. The wealthy didn't need an mp3 player 200 years ago, they could listen to live performances, the poor benefited from industrialization and technological progress relatively more than the wealthy. The poor definitely benefitted from industrialization and real savings that drove it forward more than the wealthy.
Most definitely the poor suffer from this insane inflation (expansion of the money supply that is done not as a natural response of higher productivity but at the hands of the government and of its power grab) while the wealthy benefited or at least suffered much less. Rising prices hurt the poor much more than the wealthy.
The government can make the lives of the poor unbearable while freedom from government actually created the middle class. The government can do so much for the poor, for example it can send them to fight wars that benefit some very well connected wealthy people.
Of course the government is what it is because the poor do care how well the 'top end' of the town lives, as long as it lives visibly better than the majority the popular economics will include confiscation of that wealth and redistribution.
That is why I say this: economics is not supposed to be popular, populism leads to destruction and in reality the poor suffer more than the wealthy during economic destruction. The wealthy can withstand it, they can also leave. The poor may not have those options.
You are 100% correct, I came here to post a similar comment, as always a government comes up with a law and this law as always will interfere with the market and with individual freedoms.
Of-course this is *my opinion* and whenever I voice *my opinions* I get modded as a troll because opinions are not allowed.
Still, again, this is a government that passes a law that creates a barrier to entry and distorts markets. I think the government should only pass laws to limit its own reactions and its own powers, so that when a politician comes out with an idea to ban encryption on the Internet because 'children' and 'terrorism', the government should automatically pass a law that bans that politician and bans all politicians from coming up with laws that have consequences for the Internet or whatever they are trying to limit on that specific day.
Individuals should decide whether to use encryption or not, whether to use services that provide encryption or not, etc., individuals should not be forced either to use encryption or not to use encryption by any government.
In the USA the central bankers are now arguing that their so called '2% inflation target' should be raised to a higher number because in their NSHO the country 'has been suffering from a low interest rate for a while', so they are saying it is OK to have a higher inflation targe for a while to 'even things out'.
A bunch of modern voodoo black magic mambo jambo is being pushed from government propaganda channels, government has no idea what it's doing but of-course we cannot admit this, admitting this would finally mean the realization that government should not be manipulating the economy in the first place.
Inflation that is not driven by any free market forces but that is being imposed upon an economy and the world by the desires of the central bankers and various government branches is a plague and this one has the power to destroy civilizations. Inflation is destruction of the money, it is the expansion of the money supply and under a central planning system it normally comes about by the inability of the system to sustain the high maintenance government that it amassed so now the inflation tax (theft via depreciation of the value of money) is imposed upon all who hold government controlled money and bonds.
USA created so many dollars and bonds not backed by any form of production since the Federal reserve was given the power to monetize government debt that it caused a massive shift of productivity from its own shores elsewhere (especially China, but even Mexico and other countries), who absorbed USA inflation while building up their own productive capacity. USA was losing the productive capacity it built up while it used gold as money and had much smaller government than any other country of a comparable size back in the 19th century. Of-course once the pretence of any form of actual reserve behind the dollar was completely removed in 1971, when Nixon defaulted on the gold dollar the exodus of jobs and productivity accelerated by some enormous factor. This also helped to create the massive disparity between the wealthy and the poor, with the poor suffering disproportionately from the government inflation policy.
Of-course in the West today inflation is mis-characterized as 'rising prices', however the correct definition of inflation is expansion of the money supply. Rising prices may result from that expansion but rising prices are a consequence of inflation, they are not the cause of it.
I think the USA Federal reserve itself has fallen into its own propaganda trap, completely forgetting what inflation actually. The Fed believes it can control the economy via the monetary policy. In reality the Fed can only create more or less inflation and manipulate interest rates to a higher or a lower degree causing more or less damage to the overall economy.
Inflation is not a good thing in the contracting economy and USA is a contracting economy. Deflation is not a bad thing in a contracting economy either, it is correlated with mal-investment failures and restructuring, so it is perceived as bad because people lose their jobs, however deflation also increases the value of savings and lowers prices, thus both reducing the economic impact on people who lose their jobs while increasing the value of the capital that can be used to restart the economy.
The government sees deflation as a scary thing that reduces its nominal GDP, reduces its tax base and most importantly is correlated to lower quality of life through fewer jobs and closing businesses, so the government never wants to allow deflation to work its way through the economy clearing bad debts and reducing the burden of all the mal-investment in the system.
All of these government fears find their way into the 'education' system (propaganda system) that teaches people the wrong lessons in history while destroying their ability to see reality and that's the real problem that we are facing today - a mis-educated population that doesn't understand anything related to economics.
An economically illiterate population is easily manipulated into voting for collectivist regimes that can only cause more damage and eventually.... "Venezuelans Flock To Cryptocoins Amid Spiralling Inlflation"
An economic model is not supposed to be popular, if it is a popular one it means it is one that gives government power, removes power from individuals and all of this is done either for 'the good of the public' or for 'the good of the nation' (socialism/communism vs fascism/nazism), pick your hemlock.
An economic model is supposed to follow sound ideas of money being created by productive work, of people having to exchange the fruits of their labour in a free market where the prices are not dictated but discovered, where production is encouraged and not taxed, savings are encouraged and not taxed, where if you have to tax something it has to be on the consumption side, where interest rates are set by demand and supply in the free market, where money is created by the work of the people rather than on the whim of any government or a pseudo government agency, where prices are not fixed on neither products, nor labour, nor capital, where people are allowed to fail, where failure is not seen as something bad but as something cleansing. Where failure and debt restructured is the preferred way of dealing with failure rather than any form of a subsidy or a prop up by any form of government.
The health of the economy cannot be sacrificed in the name of any form of economic justice, any form of protection, any form of safety, any form of stability, the economy is a living, breathing, constantly changing organism that develops and evolves and survives because it is the best fit organism in the existing environment at any moment in time.
Individuals need to be free to create, to save, to work, to produce and to consume if they choose to consume instead of saving. Individuals make the weather, not collectives, individuals make the choices, not collectives, individuals make purchasing and selling decisions, not collectives, individuals own property and run businesses, not collectives, individuals trade with each other, not collectives.
Individuals do not need any form of protectionism, individuals do not need any form of a 'trade agreement', they just trade voluntarily for their mutual benefit (or at least for what they perceive is their mutual benefit) in the absence of an oppressive regime. Individuals must be allowed to fail, they must be allowed to die trying, they must be free. Individuals build economies, individuals set priorities, individuals make choices. Collectives must not be allowed to stand in the way of individuals.
I know how the world works today. This does not change my views. The mob will always demand theft and redistribution, it will always demand 100% solutions, which is why the government exists and gives us wars, bad money, TSA, terrorism, etc.
Nonsense. Food safety laws, like all other laws are never stopped by existence of working systems, they are implemented because the mob (the masses, the lowest common denominator) does not want to think and to bother, so they demand 100% safety, 100% compliance, 100% of everything. Laws are implemented to cover edge cases and there are *always* edge cases. Laws are *always* unnecessary power grab and they never solve anything, but they do make the mob feel better, because 'something must be done, this is something, ergo this must be done'.
As to the rating agencies, under the existing system and with all of the laws, the rating agencies that exist all except one (Egan Jones) recommended mortgage backed securities (derivatives) as triple A rated debt until the very moment the market crashed.
This happened because the government backed these securities with laws sanding low borrowing standards (FHA, Freddie and Fannie, everyone should have a home, etc) and with insurance promises.
Egan Jones didn't and Egan Jones also rated government bonds as junk and its license to rate government debt was revoked, while all other government supporting agencies lied knowingly.
Sure, the liars are making money... Under the current system *only* the liars are making money.
I completely disagree. An actual free market would be nice right now, where people would make decisions that they are informed upon not based on any government rules, laws and taxes but based on independent testing done by rating agencies, which would make certain foods marginally more expensive than others because they would be tested that way and the brand name of the rating agency would be at stake.
By the way, I agree, there is very little in the way of having an actual free society somewhere in the world today, that's why we are not a civilized people. We have tried and are still trying here and there. USA was a fine attempt, Singapore is an attempt, Switzerland, hell, China is an attempt. It's an attempt but it is not what I really am talking about.
But I do have some reading material that I recommend, Friedrich Hayek and nearly any of his books, try The Road to Serfdom. You can find it here. Mises.org is a good resource if you are interested in history not as it is officially laid out but something different for a change. Peter Schiff is one of two sons of Irwin Schiff, who died a political prisoner in USA a couple of years back, Irwin provided very well thought out reading material of his own, I mean he even put together a kids book on the subject.
There is plenty to think about, don't assume that what you are seeing around you is what should be or what could be or some finalized version of what will be.
I propose that we are not living in a civilized society, we are living in an oppressive regime, where the majority vote elects politicians that are promising to steal the most and to redistribute. Of-course the end result is that the mob doesn't get what it wants but the theft does occur and it allows the government to permanently oppress, steal, rob, wage wars, incriminate people for 'not paying their fair share', etc.etc.
I propose that if you want to have an actual *civilized* society you are going to allow the people to deal with the necessities of life without having a large all encompassing government system to dictate and oppress nearly globally. I propose competition, I propose that some people shouldn't be forced to pay anything for any other people. I propose competition of ideas, where people solve their issues privately.
AFAIC we can build not only roads but everything completely privately, from hospitals and universities to factories and roads and bridges and power grids and communications. Telegraph was not a government invention, nor was the radio, nor was the Internet depending on government as much as people like to believe. The Internet depends on free protocols, sure, but this is not the only way to run it and not paying for products and services is not a concept that the government invented. People donate ideas and time without government interference and they would do more if there weren't taxes, and of-course you are benefiting much more if you are only shelling out 30% than many people who have to shell out much more of their marginal income towards this collectivised system that you like.
You like it because you believe you are getting more out of it than you are putting in. This may be true if taken out of context. Out of context and in the system that we have *today* it seems to you that you are getting more than you are putting in. However so much is stolen by the system from the economy that in reality you are getting screwed and you are not aware of it.
You are getting screwed with the government manipulating the interest rates and creating inflation where there would be none. You are getting screwed where the investments are stolen from people who save and redirected to people who consume what was stolen, thus the innovation doesn't actually happen, the prices are higher than they would be, the products are fewer and they are mostly made somewhere else, so you are also getting screwed because in your system the jobs are really leaving (and many left already) because it is actually easier to leave now than to fight this economic entropy bestowed upon our civilization by the collectivist ideology.
I see private roads and bridges, I see private infrastructure, electrical systems, farming, food processing, transportation, communications, education, health care, entertainment, clothing and sheltering of people as something that people need and thus they create it to satisfy their own demand and hopefully to get filthy rich satisfying the demands of millions and even of billions.
The governments sees this as the opportunity to steal, to gain and retain power, to sell favours, to wage horrible wars and to control people who are living in fear of what the government will come up with tomorrow.
I am not talking about finding efficiencies in this system, I am talking about this system collapsing because the very point of government is to grow at the expense of everything else. Power does not let go of power, it accumulates power and to do so it demands all of the energy of all the participants, willing or otherwise. The energy is not infinite but the desire for power is infinite, thus this always must end in some form of a disaster and it is ending and it is a disaster. I don't hold my breath believing that the end of this system will bring about the age of enlightenment.
The age of people not trying to steal from others by yet another collectivist effort but instead to earn what they keep by working to the best of their ability. I don't hold my breath, thus I plan accordingly and I advise others to plan accordingly as well. So do avoid paying taxes as much as you can, that's for your own benefit.
First of all I am against every form of subsidy, so I am obviously against all subsidies to all industries and to all people, I am against all forms of income and wealth taxes and redistribution.
Now, I think you actually believe you got me somehow? I know, Obama told you so and you read it in Wiki. But lets see what actually happened there.
The Central Pacific and the Union Pacific were building the transcontinental rail line. CP was moving east from Sacramento and UP was moving west from Omaha.
The federal government did what governments do, it stole the money and promoted this railway by providing the rail construction with land grands and low interest loans and direct subsidies. The subsidies varied depending on the difficulty of laying the rail, $16000 was paid out for laying rail over easy terrain, $48000 was paid out for grades, mountains and such. Of-course the Pacific Railroad Act allowed the subsidies for grading to extend as far as 300 miles ahead of the tracks being laid.
So these two companies were supposed to meet, weren't they? Well, they didn't actually just meet, they continued building 250 miles past the point of where they were supposed to meet, with the construction teams separated by a hill here, by a ravine there. 250 miles was an extra year of work it was also quite a bit in subsidies with the money stolen by the government.
The grades were taken instead of plains where possible to get more subsidies, etc. This was not a market driven construction, this was as bad as government gets and it never got any better.
An example of what I am talking about was the Spring Creek Ravine, where the CP constructed a 'big fill' of earth to span their portion of the ravine while UP constructed a wodden trestle across the gulch, which was 85 feet high and 400 feet long, it was flimsy to the point where a reporter suggested that "It will shake the nerves of the stoutest hearts of railroad travelers when they see what a few feet of round timbers and seven-inch spikes are expected to uphold - a train in motion."
The trestle was not supposed to withstand the power of a passenger train, it was a way to transfer money that was stolen by Washington into the hands of UP management.
CP was blasting through Sierra Nevada Mountains, which was a horrible route for the passengers to take but it was profitable.
When Washington DC demanded that the roads linked there was a quite ceremony up at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869.
Of-course due to the poor construction the work had to be done all over again, this was not in your history school texts. Three years after celebrating the rail meeting at Promontory Summit the UP Railroad was bankrupt.
My point stands, the government destroys individual freedoms to transfer wealth to the well connected and you are standing there, cheering for it.
You think you are 'feeding a troll', why are you even bothering to reply to my comments with that type of an ad hominem? What's the point? Here is my journal http://slashdot.org/~roman_mir..., I am sure that if you bother to read it you would find the answer to your question, which is obvious: there shouldn't be such a concept in existence as 'public / government provided services', not one government provided or not one public service, not a single one.
Of-course, it is your position that by the very definition of what you believe anybody who believes in individual freedom instead of oppression and theft based on collectivist power is a fool. I absolutely believe that taxation of income and of wealth by the collectivist power is criminal theft and oppression. I held this opinion as long as I remember myself and that's more than a few decades, so by your definition I am a fool this has no effect on me, you are free to think whatever you want to think, I think you are a fool and you support destruction of individual freedoms while supporting the power of the collectivist state.
Slashdot Mirror
I have w510, had it for 5 years, it is time for it to go now, but I want a very similar laptop with better CPU, more RAM and a 2TB NVME PCI SSD. Oh, and a 1920 x 1200 screen and a huge battery.
The Open Source paradigm is that with many eyes all bugs are shallow. But in this case, there are not many eyes, only a few Russian eyes, and those eyes are at least potentially hostile.
- not only these are 'not many eyes', these are very *specific* eyes looking at the code.
The code is not given to just anybody in Russia, it's provided to the government, which hires people specifically to break into systems. This does not reduce security problems, it increases them.
Of-course I believe that NSA, (and by extention CIA, FBI, DHS, etc.) also have seen this code and the same exact problem applies there as well.
Humans did survive in those exact conditions for tens of thousands of years all while moving from one territory to another, lesser known territory. The technology included sticks, stones, bones and skins. I guess that's also technology but it is something that can be actually found in nature around you.
We already can have Internet capable vibrators, some are even equipped with cameras.
Isn't that great? Very useful if it has a location sensor.... where can a vibrator go?
Electric nose hair trimmers. Electric toilets (Toto and such). Electric screwdrivers. Electric knives.
All of these need to be on the Internet, how have we ever lived before being able to twitt the length of your nose hair...
You have 0 arguments, nothing at all. All of my positions are my own, my journal on this site is what, 18 y.o., I have reasoned my positions in it enough, you haven't had an original thought once in your life, that is because you don't actually use thinking for your positions at all.
You don't actually have any arguments. Go ahead, explain here how it is not oppression to use a government system of oppression (agencies, courts, cops, guns, military) money from person A to give that money to person B?
Explain here what is it that makes it different from person B stealing from person A directly? The difference is the legalized bureaucracy 'legally' armed with weapons that acts as the proxy for this robbery.
Actually it would be much more honest if person B simply came to person A with a gun and demanded some money. The way this is done it makes it more 'civilized', as if the principle is different. It's the same exact action, the difference is that the person B does not have to get his or her hands dirty while outsourcing this violence to the State, which is only too happy to oblige.
No, I said that a reasonable society might includes a safety net for its citizens
- completely disagree, I don't see a society that legalizes criminal behaviour by government as reasonable or civilized, I see it as oppressive.
AFAIC oppression is coercion, theft, robbery, kidnapping, murder. That is oppression especially when done by a collectivist system, where the mob 'legalizes' this behaviour (gives power of the mob) to the government system.
That is a reasonable description of what is happening.
However here are your words:
Telling old people that they should just starve to death when they're too old to work seems a lot like oppression to me.
- you just redefined LACK of oppression of person A to provide person B with money taken from person A as oppression of person B.
So in your Orwellian mind *not* stealing is oppression.
You started it, didn't you? You said that NOT giving somebody money is oppression. Don't tell me you don't understand what oppression actually means - coercion by somebody with power against you, coercion, theft, robbery, kidnapping, murder. That's oppression.
*NOT* giving somebody money *STOLEN* from somebody else does not qualify as oppression and yes, everything that governments take away from individuals in form of income or wealth taxes is theft, it's criminal behaviour.
Fascinating. You believe that somebody who lived his or her entire life in a system that wouldn't steal on their behalf that they have to save for themselves (instead of paying income or payroll or wealth taxes of-course), that this is oppression.
However the young people who didn't even live the same length of time yet, who may in fact die before they reach that old age where they would (for some reason) expect others to take care of them, those people can be oppressed by the system to provide the old with ... with money they should have saved on their own because the consequences of not saving *should have been clear to them for a long time*.
It is fascinating, you believe that forcefully removing money (which is time, so time of life, time of life it took to make that money) from one group of people and handing it over to another group of people is just fine because otherwise there would be ... oppression?
What oppression? If you are old and you didn't save or you lost your savings you believe yourself to be oppressed by somebody young who is not interested in your ass? Get some relatives. Get some friends. Make your case to some private charity or a private person who may help you.
However do not use the power of the guns in the hands of the government to take from others what you wasted yourself and now waste more on your ass.
You feel oppressed that somebody else will *not* be oppressed by the collectivist regime on your behalf? OK, then you are a dumb ass.
And, well, if you consider government gone poof... ain't that worth losing your pension over?
- no. But it's a good reason to celebrate.
That idea is part of what destroyed the very concept of America, the economy of which was built upon the premise of individual freedom from this type of oppression. Everybody should be saving for themselves and nobody should be forced to subsidise anybody else and nobody should be forced to do anything at all by any government actually and obviously all income and wealth related taxes are oppression and theft. Governments are criminal structures that are built to steal, rob, kidnap and murder.
be careful with what you post, you are stepping over the acceptable level of groupthink here with declarations that a business creates a market and creates a product by investing into it with its own money and by supplying it. A business creates a market and then if the product is good enough the consumers buy it, which implies that the economy is driven by supply of something. If there is a supply then the consumer will decide whether to exchange some of that supply for what the consumer produces (the supply of something expressed in a salary, which is exchanged for supply of something else).
Can't have this type of thought crime here.
The 'bottom end' of the town is the part of the town that benefits from a working free market system much more than the 'top end'. The wealthy didn't need an mp3 player 200 years ago, they could listen to live performances, the poor benefited from industrialization and technological progress relatively more than the wealthy. The poor definitely benefitted from industrialization and real savings that drove it forward more than the wealthy.
Most definitely the poor suffer from this insane inflation (expansion of the money supply that is done not as a natural response of higher productivity but at the hands of the government and of its power grab) while the wealthy benefited or at least suffered much less. Rising prices hurt the poor much more than the wealthy.
The government can make the lives of the poor unbearable while freedom from government actually created the middle class. The government can do so much for the poor, for example it can send them to fight wars that benefit some very well connected wealthy people.
Of course the government is what it is because the poor do care how well the 'top end' of the town lives, as long as it lives visibly better than the majority the popular economics will include confiscation of that wealth and redistribution.
That is why I say this: economics is not supposed to be popular, populism leads to destruction and in reality the poor suffer more than the wealthy during economic destruction. The wealthy can withstand it, they can also leave. The poor may not have those options.
You are 100% correct, I came here to post a similar comment, as always a government comes up with a law and this law as always will interfere with the market and with individual freedoms.
Of-course this is *my opinion* and whenever I voice *my opinions* I get modded as a troll because opinions are not allowed.
Still, again, this is a government that passes a law that creates a barrier to entry and distorts markets. I think the government should only pass laws to limit its own reactions and its own powers, so that when a politician comes out with an idea to ban encryption on the Internet because 'children' and 'terrorism', the government should automatically pass a law that bans that politician and bans all politicians from coming up with laws that have consequences for the Internet or whatever they are trying to limit on that specific day.
Individuals should decide whether to use encryption or not, whether to use services that provide encryption or not, etc., individuals should not be forced either to use encryption or not to use encryption by any government.
In the USA the central bankers are now arguing that their so called '2% inflation target' should be raised to a higher number because in their NSHO the country 'has been suffering from a low interest rate for a while', so they are saying it is OK to have a higher inflation targe for a while to 'even things out'.
A bunch of modern voodoo black magic mambo jambo is being pushed from government propaganda channels, government has no idea what it's doing but of-course we cannot admit this, admitting this would finally mean the realization that government should not be manipulating the economy in the first place.
Inflation that is not driven by any free market forces but that is being imposed upon an economy and the world by the desires of the central bankers and various government branches is a plague and this one has the power to destroy civilizations. Inflation is destruction of the money, it is the expansion of the money supply and under a central planning system it normally comes about by the inability of the system to sustain the high maintenance government that it amassed so now the inflation tax (theft via depreciation of the value of money) is imposed upon all who hold government controlled money and bonds.
USA created so many dollars and bonds not backed by any form of production since the Federal reserve was given the power to monetize government debt that it caused a massive shift of productivity from its own shores elsewhere (especially China, but even Mexico and other countries), who absorbed USA inflation while building up their own productive capacity. USA was losing the productive capacity it built up while it used gold as money and had much smaller government than any other country of a comparable size back in the 19th century. Of-course once the pretence of any form of actual reserve behind the dollar was completely removed in 1971, when Nixon defaulted on the gold dollar the exodus of jobs and productivity accelerated by some enormous factor. This also helped to create the massive disparity between the wealthy and the poor, with the poor suffering disproportionately from the government inflation policy.
Of-course in the West today inflation is mis-characterized as 'rising prices', however the correct definition of inflation is expansion of the money supply. Rising prices may result from that expansion but rising prices are a consequence of inflation, they are not the cause of it.
I think the USA Federal reserve itself has fallen into its own propaganda trap, completely forgetting what inflation actually. The Fed believes it can control the economy via the monetary policy. In reality the Fed can only create more or less inflation and manipulate interest rates to a higher or a lower degree causing more or less damage to the overall economy.
Inflation is not a good thing in the contracting economy and USA is a contracting economy. Deflation is not a bad thing in a contracting economy either, it is correlated with mal-investment failures and restructuring, so it is perceived as bad because people lose their jobs, however deflation also increases the value of savings and lowers prices, thus both reducing the economic impact on people who lose their jobs while increasing the value of the capital that can be used to restart the economy.
The government sees deflation as a scary thing that reduces its nominal GDP, reduces its tax base and most importantly is correlated to lower quality of life through fewer jobs and closing businesses, so the government never wants to allow deflation to work its way through the economy clearing bad debts and reducing the burden of all the mal-investment in the system.
All of these government fears find their way into the 'education' system (propaganda system) that teaches people the wrong lessons in history while destroying their ability to see reality and that's the real problem that we are facing today - a mis-educated population that doesn't understand anything related to economics.
An economically illiterate population is easily manipulated into voting for collectivist regimes that can only cause more damage and eventually.... "Venezuelans Flock To Cryptocoins Amid Spiralling Inlflation"
An economic model is not supposed to be popular, if it is a popular one it means it is one that gives government power, removes power from individuals and all of this is done either for 'the good of the public' or for 'the good of the nation' (socialism/communism vs fascism/nazism), pick your hemlock.
An economic model is supposed to follow sound ideas of money being created by productive work, of people having to exchange the fruits of their labour in a free market where the prices are not dictated but discovered, where production is encouraged and not taxed, savings are encouraged and not taxed, where if you have to tax something it has to be on the consumption side, where interest rates are set by demand and supply in the free market, where money is created by the work of the people rather than on the whim of any government or a pseudo government agency, where prices are not fixed on neither products, nor labour, nor capital, where people are allowed to fail, where failure is not seen as something bad but as something cleansing. Where failure and debt restructured is the preferred way of dealing with failure rather than any form of a subsidy or a prop up by any form of government.
The health of the economy cannot be sacrificed in the name of any form of economic justice, any form of protection, any form of safety, any form of stability, the economy is a living, breathing, constantly changing organism that develops and evolves and survives because it is the best fit organism in the existing environment at any moment in time.
Individuals need to be free to create, to save, to work, to produce and to consume if they choose to consume instead of saving. Individuals make the weather, not collectives, individuals make the choices, not collectives, individuals make purchasing and selling decisions, not collectives, individuals own property and run businesses, not collectives, individuals trade with each other, not collectives.
Individuals do not need any form of protectionism, individuals do not need any form of a 'trade agreement', they just trade voluntarily for their mutual benefit (or at least for what they perceive is their mutual benefit) in the absence of an oppressive regime. Individuals must be allowed to fail, they must be allowed to die trying, they must be free. Individuals build economies, individuals set priorities, individuals make choices. Collectives must not be allowed to stand in the way of individuals.
I know how the world works today. This does not change my views. The mob will always demand theft and redistribution, it will always demand 100% solutions, which is why the government exists and gives us wars, bad money, TSA, terrorism, etc.
Nonsense. Food safety laws, like all other laws are never stopped by existence of working systems, they are implemented because the mob (the masses, the lowest common denominator) does not want to think and to bother, so they demand 100% safety, 100% compliance, 100% of everything. Laws are implemented to cover edge cases and there are *always* edge cases. Laws are *always* unnecessary power grab and they never solve anything, but they do make the mob feel better, because 'something must be done, this is something, ergo this must be done'.
As to the rating agencies, under the existing system and with all of the laws, the rating agencies that exist all except one (Egan Jones) recommended mortgage backed securities (derivatives) as triple A rated debt until the very moment the market crashed.
This happened because the government backed these securities with laws sanding low borrowing standards (FHA, Freddie and Fannie, everyone should have a home, etc) and with insurance promises.
Egan Jones didn't and Egan Jones also rated government bonds as junk and its license to rate government debt was revoked, while all other government supporting agencies lied knowingly.
Sure, the liars are making money... Under the current system *only* the liars are making money.
Good. Reducing everything to the lowest common denominator destroys economy, society and civilization.
I completely disagree. An actual free market would be nice right now, where people would make decisions that they are informed upon not based on any government rules, laws and taxes but based on independent testing done by rating agencies, which would make certain foods marginally more expensive than others because they would be tested that way and the brand name of the rating agency would be at stake.
By the way, I agree, there is very little in the way of having an actual free society somewhere in the world today, that's why we are not a civilized people. We have tried and are still trying here and there. USA was a fine attempt, Singapore is an attempt, Switzerland, hell, China is an attempt. It's an attempt but it is not what I really am talking about.
But I do have some reading material that I recommend, Friedrich Hayek and nearly any of his books, try The Road to Serfdom. You can find it here. Mises.org is a good resource if you are interested in history not as it is officially laid out but something different for a change. Peter Schiff is one of two sons of Irwin Schiff, who died a political prisoner in USA a couple of years back, Irwin provided very well thought out reading material of his own, I mean he even put together a kids book on the subject.
There is plenty to think about, don't assume that what you are seeing around you is what should be or what could be or some finalized version of what will be.
I propose that we are not living in a civilized society, we are living in an oppressive regime, where the majority vote elects politicians that are promising to steal the most and to redistribute. Of-course the end result is that the mob doesn't get what it wants but the theft does occur and it allows the government to permanently oppress, steal, rob, wage wars, incriminate people for 'not paying their fair share', etc.etc.
I propose that if you want to have an actual *civilized* society you are going to allow the people to deal with the necessities of life without having a large all encompassing government system to dictate and oppress nearly globally. I propose competition, I propose that some people shouldn't be forced to pay anything for any other people. I propose competition of ideas, where people solve their issues privately.
AFAIC we can build not only roads but everything completely privately, from hospitals and universities to factories and roads and bridges and power grids and communications. Telegraph was not a government invention, nor was the radio, nor was the Internet depending on government as much as people like to believe. The Internet depends on free protocols, sure, but this is not the only way to run it and not paying for products and services is not a concept that the government invented. People donate ideas and time without government interference and they would do more if there weren't taxes, and of-course you are benefiting much more if you are only shelling out 30% than many people who have to shell out much more of their marginal income towards this collectivised system that you like.
You like it because you believe you are getting more out of it than you are putting in. This may be true if taken out of context. Out of context and in the system that we have *today* it seems to you that you are getting more than you are putting in. However so much is stolen by the system from the economy that in reality you are getting screwed and you are not aware of it.
You are getting screwed with the government manipulating the interest rates and creating inflation where there would be none. You are getting screwed where the investments are stolen from people who save and redirected to people who consume what was stolen, thus the innovation doesn't actually happen, the prices are higher than they would be, the products are fewer and they are mostly made somewhere else, so you are also getting screwed because in your system the jobs are really leaving (and many left already) because it is actually easier to leave now than to fight this economic entropy bestowed upon our civilization by the collectivist ideology.
I see private roads and bridges, I see private infrastructure, electrical systems, farming, food processing, transportation, communications, education, health care, entertainment, clothing and sheltering of people as something that people need and thus they create it to satisfy their own demand and hopefully to get filthy rich satisfying the demands of millions and even of billions.
The governments sees this as the opportunity to steal, to gain and retain power, to sell favours, to wage horrible wars and to control people who are living in fear of what the government will come up with tomorrow.
I am not talking about finding efficiencies in this system, I am talking about this system collapsing because the very point of government is to grow at the expense of everything else. Power does not let go of power, it accumulates power and to do so it demands all of the energy of all the participants, willing or otherwise. The energy is not infinite but the desire for power is infinite, thus this always must end in some form of a disaster and it is ending and it is a disaster. I don't hold my breath believing that the end of this system will bring about the age of enlightenment.
The age of people not trying to steal from others by yet another collectivist effort but instead to earn what they keep by working to the best of their ability. I don't hold my breath, thus I plan accordingly and I advise others to plan accordingly as well. So do avoid paying taxes as much as you can, that's for your own benefit.
First of all I am against every form of subsidy, so I am obviously against all subsidies to all industries and to all people, I am against all forms of income and wealth taxes and redistribution.
Now, I think you actually believe you got me somehow? I know, Obama told you so and you read it in Wiki. But lets see what actually happened there.
The Central Pacific and the Union Pacific were building the transcontinental rail line. CP was moving east from Sacramento and UP was moving west from Omaha.
The federal government did what governments do, it stole the money and promoted this railway by providing the rail construction with land grands and low interest loans and direct subsidies. The subsidies varied depending on the difficulty of laying the rail, $16000 was paid out for laying rail over easy terrain, $48000 was paid out for grades, mountains and such. Of-course the Pacific Railroad Act allowed the subsidies for grading to extend as far as 300 miles ahead of the tracks being laid.
So these two companies were supposed to meet, weren't they? Well, they didn't actually just meet, they continued building 250 miles past the point of where they were supposed to meet, with the construction teams separated by a hill here, by a ravine there. 250 miles was an extra year of work it was also quite a bit in subsidies with the money stolen by the government.
The grades were taken instead of plains where possible to get more subsidies, etc. This was not a market driven construction, this was as bad as government gets and it never got any better.
An example of what I am talking about was the Spring Creek Ravine, where the CP constructed a 'big fill' of earth to span their portion of the ravine while UP constructed a wodden trestle across the gulch, which was 85 feet high and 400 feet long, it was flimsy to the point where a reporter suggested that "It will shake the nerves of the stoutest hearts of railroad travelers when they see what a few feet of round timbers and seven-inch spikes are expected to uphold - a train in motion."
The trestle was not supposed to withstand the power of a passenger train, it was a way to transfer money that was stolen by Washington into the hands of UP management.
CP was blasting through Sierra Nevada Mountains, which was a horrible route for the passengers to take but it was profitable.
When Washington DC demanded that the roads linked there was a quite ceremony up at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869.
Of-course due to the poor construction the work had to be done all over again, this was not in your history school texts. Three years after celebrating the rail meeting at Promontory Summit the UP Railroad was bankrupt.
My point stands, the government destroys individual freedoms to transfer wealth to the well connected and you are standing there, cheering for it.
You think you are 'feeding a troll', why are you even bothering to reply to my comments with that type of an ad hominem? What's the point? Here is my journal http://slashdot.org/~roman_mir..., I am sure that if you bother to read it you would find the answer to your question, which is obvious: there shouldn't be such a concept in existence as 'public / government provided services', not one government provided or not one public service, not a single one.
You think I am trolling you, stop replying.
Of-course, it is your position that by the very definition of what you believe anybody who believes in individual freedom instead of oppression and theft based on collectivist power is a fool. I absolutely believe that taxation of income and of wealth by the collectivist power is criminal theft and oppression. I held this opinion as long as I remember myself and that's more than a few decades, so by your definition I am a fool this has no effect on me, you are free to think whatever you want to think, I think you are a fool and you support destruction of individual freedoms while supporting the power of the collectivist state.