Unless you are the one pretending that 'country was founded by saints', then I don't know who is saying that.
James Madison:
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
Nobody says that USA was founded by saints. Personally I would not have ratified the Constitution that did not recognise all people as equals. However USA was founded on some principles in the first place (and by the way, limiting suffrage to land owners was one of those principles, and I completely agree with it, land owners were the ones paying taxes, but today it cannot be limited just to land owners, but it must be limited at the most to the people who are paying taxes)
People who are not paying taxes but instead are living off of a subsidy shouldn't be allowed to vote, that's my position. But that's a side issue.
We have here Bradley Manning, the man stands alone against the tyrannical oppressive regime, that clearly does NOT protect and defend the Constitution, it does NOT stand for actual individual rights, instead it abuses them.
The man must not be punished even though he broke the literal law! He must not be punished, unless as a society your stance is: we don't care what is done in our name and our principles be damned, if you just go against the literal law, you should be punished in the most crazy manner, so that any such transgressions by anybody else in the future are prevented at the root.
Without such law breaking we could in principle still have some actual remnants of slavery in a society, and now we do, the individuals are the slaves to be punished by the collective. Bradley Manning is an individual and the collective is collectively punishing him for being one and to ensure that others stay as the collective and never have any individual thoughts of their own.
However, he's also a fucking traitor and deserves the punishment which is coming to him
- I suppose he is a 'traitor' in the same way that an SS soldier would have been in Nazi units designed to burn people alive in concentration camps, for releasing the real information about the atrocities for all the public to find out.
USA government kills civilian children on daily basis with bombs, that's part of the information released by Manning. I don't give a shit what the literal legality is of what he did, he is not a traitor, the US government is the traitor of the principles that the country was founded upon.
USA government, every single fucker in it that knew and authorised that knows and authorises murder of people on daily basis should be rotting in jail, Manning is a normal person that became part of a completely corrupt, oppressive, ridiculously blood thirsty system and he did not stand for it. By releasing this information he notifies the public what atrocities are done in their name under the pretence of 'protecting the Constitution', while in reality completely abandoning the Constitution and destroying every principle that the USA Republic was founded upon.
PARIS â" Syria, China, Iran, Bahrain and Vietnam are flagrantly spying online, media watchdog RSF said Tuesday, urging controls on the export of Internet surveillance tools to regimes clamping down on dissent. A new report entitled "Enemies of the Internet" also singled out five companies -- Gamma, Trovicor, Hacking Team, Amesys and Blue Coat -- that it branded "digital era mercenaries," who were helping oppressive governments.....
RSF called for a ban on the sale of surveillance hardware and software to countries that flout basic fundamental rights and crack down on any opposition.
"The private sector cannot be expected to police itself. Legislators must intervene," it said.
"The European Union and the United States have already banned the export of surveillance technology to Iran and Syria. This praiseworthy initiative should not be an isolated one."
So the conclusion is that 'private sector cannot police itself and legislator must intervene', when in reality it is legislators that legislate that such tools must be used to control the population in the first place?
This passes for logic nowadays?
First of all: private sector only fulfils a demand and it doesn't matter if the demand is generated by individuals and markets or governments, it will be fulfilled, because there is money in it.
Secondly: the problem is created by governments, how is it going to be solved by governments? In fact it will be private sector that will solve this problem by providing solutions that will help individuals on the web to be safe from the solutions that governments acquire (possibly from other individuals in the private sector, but that's not even relevant. Governments pay for weapons, any type of weapons, this includes Internet spying technology. A government can hire people from the private sector to work on a nuclear weapon or on an Internet spying system.
Saying that the problem of governments legislating spying is with the private sector is.... I have many words for it, none of them are well suited for a civil company like that found on/. (now that was a poor attempt at humour).
Would your solution be to just let the "free market" decide which laws are passed by allowing corporations to bid for legislative votes?
- can you explain your train of thought, how do you read my comments and come to this conclusion about my ideas?
If you care, my proposal is to remove power from government, allow the government only to do what is explicitly authorised to it to do, amend the Constitution to prevent any type of 'interpretation' of the law. If a law as it is in the Constitution is not clear, then amend the Constitution to make it clear but the government must not be allowed to legislate beyond what is written in the document. Actually take into account the context, in which the law in the document was written, so there cannot be just a battle of the lawyers (who can figure out how to read the law in the most literal way while completely abolishing the actual meaning behind it.
The system has failed because the government has all the power that it was never meant to have. My solution is to prevent that more effectively, prevent politicians from "helping" people.
Again: prevent politicians from helping people. There should be no legislation passed to help people.
The government is supposed to protect and defend the Constitution, not people, the document, the Law. There cannot be legislation aimed at 'lessening suffering' of anybody under any circumstances, that's not what government should be doing at all. That's the job of the individuals in the market to solve - figure out how to make money by providing all the necessary products and services that would lessen people's suffering.
Government must be prevented from pretending to be a charity, government must be prevented from interfering with any business, it must not be allowed to tax actual income or property itself, government must be limited to the funding that it can collect to the 2 specific types of taxes that were explicitly defined (apportioned direct tax or uniform excise, sale, duty, import).
My point is that there cannot be a government that will not be taken over by special interests if the government makes it a point meddling with people to help any special interests.
Employees are special interests. Minorities are special interests. Women are special interests. Children are special interests. Disabled are special interests. The sick are special interests. The old are special interests. Any business that wants anything from gov't is a special interest.
Government must be very explicitly prohibited from acting for the benefit of any special interest, even from promising to act for the benefit of any special interest.
There cannot be a special interest right, such a concept creates entitlements for the special interests and obligations for everybody else, and that's what I am talking about - this is the theft of individual freedoms, this is what creates the lobbying, the bribing, all of its forms.
If central government should exist at all (and I am against all central governments on a principle), then it must have a limited role, it must protect the Law, it must protect the borders from invasion, it must protect property rights and contract law and possibly enforce criminal code.
That's all that the government must be authorised to do and all other functions must not even be authorised.
AFAIC there shouldn't even be any legislative process, the government must not be able to change the law easily. There should be limits to the way laws are created or changed, every law should have an expiry date. Government shouldn't be allowed to print money obviously, it shouldn't be allowed to set interest rates, prices, wages, it shouldn't be allowed to engage in currency or trade wars!
Government should not be allowed to manipulate the markets, it should not be allowed to participate in markets. My solutions is to have a government that does not do anything except a very limited number of things: protection
1. Define 'right direction'. Basically anything you can come up with, there will be a huge number of people that will not care or vehemently disagree.
2. Are you seriously implying that government has a long term outlook while businesses do not? It's not even 2 years now that the politicians start their quest of the next election cycle. Of-course inheritance taxes pretty much destroyed the long term prospects for private companies while government created inflation prevents people from thinking in the long term completely in a more general way.
Weasel words? Irrational? What is power, go ahead, define it in your 'rational' non-weasel way, please.
Power is to force an individual to do what he does not otherwise want to do and to force him, the gov't has legal power, it's predicated upon the promise and threat of violence.
You are calling me irrational, not even my definition, me personally. That in itself is already highly suspect and puts your entire comment into very questionable light.
. Their bribing politicians with contributions is one one part of that. Reducing the power of government will not reduce the power of corporations at all, it'll actually increase it. And thus would be counter productive.
- what do you mean when you say power? Because when I say power, I mean legal power to force an individual to do things that the individual does not want to do. Power is backed by force of violence. The State is predicated on violence, in fact by definition State is a system of violence.
Consent of the governed gives the government its authority and I don't believe that the governed are interested to give the authority all of the powers that authorities have today, the governed are complaining, they are unhappy. However they are lulled to sleep by the promise of a free lunch but of-course to deliver that promise the State must engage in unprecedented amount of explicit violence against a number of people (they are a minority) but actually currency war is violence as well and so everybody who holds USD denominated assets (including dollars and bonds) are being violently attacked by the State, which is stealing their savings and investment capital, reducing their real earning and purchasing power.
Compared to that what can a private institution do that has no legal means to engage in such acts? Sure, a private institution can fight another private institution for a larger market share, but there is at the minimum the criminal code that is (at least in theory) supposed to stop a private institution from committing actual violent acts.
The gov't is supposed to protect private property, contract law and probably enforce the criminal code. If those necessary functions are implemented, then any amount of power that a private corporation holds is irrelevant. They will have the power not to be bound by stifling rules and regulations that are designed to create monopolies and extract money from them by the political system, but they can't actually hurt people if the private property rights, contracts and criminal code is enforced.
Correct, and as usual the intent was different from what is implemented now. The intent was for the federal gov't to increase competition between States, not to create monopolies. To do it, federal gov't was supposed to prevent individual States from setting rules that would for example require re-licensing of businesses and different professionals from one state to another. However that's exactly what is happening. They even have licenses for taxis and moving companies, never mind professionals like commodity traders or doctors or lawyers or engineers or builders, etc.
However that's what the point was - to prevent States from each requiring a different license for every type of situation. The power that Congress had was to regulate the act of interstate commerce but not to regulate a company itself!
Once the gov't got a way to tax and regulate companies and not the act of trade itself, that's it, it was over and the SCOTUS didn't stop it at all, it helped the power, didn't contain it.
SCOTUS has given up on its role, which is to stop the gov't from passing laws that are contrary to the Constitution. I touched on the ACA decision, showing how the law is bent to make it look 'Constitutional' and even how eventually the lower courts will take it further, by inevitably mis-understanding the ruling by SCOTUS and will ensure that eventually ACA will be enforced in a way that is not even deemed Constitutional by that ruling itself.
That's the same thing that happened for all other cases, including income tax (which doesn't even exist as a law for individuals, the amendment to the Constitution required that SCOTUS would eventually clarify how the law is supposed to be used and enforced and in the process SCOTUS clarified that 'income tax' is actually a 'profit tax' and as such it can only apply to corporations and not to individuals). But the lower courts have enforced the non-existing law based on the wrong reading of the SCOTUS decisions and I think it is done deliberately.
Congress passes an unconstitutional law, SCOTUS finds reasons to justify the law as marginally Constitutional for some special case scenario, the lower courts then themselves apply and interpret the ruling in a much broader, completely incorrect manner and that's it, now you have what they like to call 'precedent'.
The entire problem with precedent is that regardless of how it was established, now they say they must follow it! Amazing, isn't it? But that's a really clever hack of the political system.
Oh please, that's naive nonsense. You really believe that by making it illegal to take bribes there will be no bribes? It's illegal to take bribes in most parts of the world and the bribes never stop.
In USA the bribes are taken to a different level with so much gov't rules and regulations and taxes and offices, that it is just impossible at all to make something illegal in the first place and even if you made it illegal the money would find way. You really think you can stop the money?
No, you can only choke the power of the ruling class, if they are not allowed to take away your freedom and offer it to the highest bidders, then they can't sell anything.
Wag the dog.. Business sets the rules.. Government enforces them...
- not without complicity of the mob. It doesn't happen without implicit and explicit support of the mob who really want their free bread and circuses and are absolutely willing to give up actual freedoms in exchange for a promise of some discrimination against somebody else, as long as they get some of the spoils.
Vast majority of business interests are not represented in gov't, only the close friends of politicians, people that the political system turns into monopolies are really in the position to set the rules. But they can't do that in a system that does not give the politicians all this power and the mob gives the power.
- orly? USA was built in that time period. The debts (mostly private) were all paid out as the country became largest manufacturer in the world in that time period. In that time period basically all major cities were built around manufacturing and shipping hubs, the infrastructure was built privately. The 'booms and busts' of the time happened exactly around every incident of gov't meddling with the economy, and of-course the Civil War didn't help matters. And yet, including the War and all the problems, by the beginning of 20th century USA became largest manufacturer, exporter and creditor nation in the world (and it achieved it in even less than that time period, and before it was really just an afterthought to European nations, a large debtor as well).
In that time period millions of people got access to ever cheaper food, clothing, medical help, inventions and innovations were done in USA, people came from all around the world to work there because they saw it as the real land of opportunity specifically because there was no government intervention (especially compared to their home countries).
The banking problems were minor compared to the total disaster that is at hand today, with all the banks being zombies, walking dead, artificially propped up by fake Fed credit. The money of the time was real and gaining in value and prices were going down while more goods were coming on line that never even existed before.
AFAIC comparatively speaking 19th century USA created more wealth and the actual real middle class than 20th century USA (don't get me started on the current century) and all of that was done with much higher 'income inequality' than we see anywhere in the world today, proving that people are really only limited to how much they can produce, save and invest by the political system, not by market itself. The billionaires of today are children compared to the billionaires (taking inflation into account) of the 19th century and everybody's well being and standard of living was actually rising.
Definitely, Al Gore benefited from his political connections many times. Current TV would not have become profitable for him in that sale if he wasn't Gore and didn't have all these political connections (you can't just start a media company and really expect all those networks and channels and carriers to give you access). His fortune became larger also as a result of the 529 Million USD loan (political connections) that gov't gave Fisker car company, and they moved production to Finland, manufacturing gas guzzling (climate change, ha?) luxury 90,000USD cars (man of the people).
oh, and it's a very interesting case. Current TV got all this access to various networks, you think that's a coincidence? You think you can start a media company and just get access to various networks and distributors? The entire concept was predicated on the Gore's persona, his ties to the government. He is a perfect example of the problem that he himself talks about.
Money in politics? How did Gore become partial owner of Fisker , a "car company" that just happened to get 529Billion USD subsidy (a loan) and ended up building luxury (90K Fisker Karma) sedans in Finland? Never mind the hypocrisy of this 'climate change' warrior, profiting from a gov't loan, given to a company that outsourced to another country manufacturing of a expensive luxury gas guzzler (20m/gallon)
The flow of money into the U.S. political system, he argued, and the need by politicians to fundraise has led to special interests gaining undue power.
âoeOur democracy has been hacked,â Gore told his audience, referring to the U.S. Constitution as âoeour operating system.â While thereâ(TM)s never been a âoegolden ageâ of American Democracy, he added, the perils emerging today are new. âoeIf a Congressman or Senator has to spend five hours a day begging special interests or rich people for money,â he said, theyâ(TM)ll be more concerned about how what theyâ(TM)re saying will appeal to those interestsâ"rather than their constituents.
Special interests are inevitable in a system that allows politicians to set the rules for businesses and individuals in the first place. The politicians are the ones that hacked the Constitution, they hacked the Law. They figured out how to remove the chains that were placed upon the government to bind it, to provide it with only limited powers (article 1, section 8). Once the politicians found the way (it was easy once the Republic became wealthy enough due to all the business that thrived under the mostly free market system in the first 124 years of the Republic), just promise the people something for nothing and they will vote for you and will let you do whatever you want to the Law. The politicians turned the Republic into a democracy by promising a bunch of stuff to be given out as subsidies and it was popular, because the promise was to make only a minority of people to pay for it (discrimination against a minority based on different levels of income).
So the more power that the government stole from the people by promising them free stuff, the more lucrative it became for politicians to keep power and the more competitive the field of politics became because it brought with it much more power than it was ever designed to give to the politicians.
Politicians are today's Rock Stars, they live better than the rest of the public, they get all this respect for some reason, they get the best deals on everything (trust me, companies like large banks, credit card companies, even phone companies have lists of 'higher class' people to provide a much better service and not to bug in case they break the rules, and these lists include politicians and their various friends).
It's lucrative to be a politician, and so it is very competitive and it gives so much power that wasn't meant to be there, that's why there is all this money pouring in - those are bribes to leave people alone in many cases.
The first stage weighs comparatively very little after it has been used because all the fuel is gone. So adding just a bit of extra fuel to land the now much lighter stage is not much of an expense,
- except to launch that fuel it takes more fuel, any amount of fuel that needs to be launched to a certain height requires the same amount of fuel to launch it. So if you have to use say 20% of the fuel capacity of the launcher to bring the rocket down this way, then you have to add another 20% to launch that fuel. However you can't add 20% to launch that fuel, you have to not use 20%.
All of a sudden 40% of fuel is used to raise the first stage of the rocket up and down and you are only using 60% of the first stage capacity launch your cargo. So at 60% capacity gone, you have to add the difference to the second stage of the vehicle or you have to design a much bigger rocket (at least 20% bigger) to do the same job as a much smaller rocket was doing.
I don't know when his rockets will be going to the Moon and landing there, but if he doesn't get his business off the ground first by becoming very efficient here, then it's just another experiment without any chance of success in the long term. I think figuring out the way to produce the rockets as cheap as at all possible is the most important thing in the beginning. Cost of going up is the real reason there is so little business in space, USA (and USSR) Moon programs were colossally expensive, figuring out a way to make extremely cheap rockets that can launch plenty of cargo into space should be the primary goal.
I am not a rocket expert but this is not a question to rocket experts, this is an economics question. Taking up fuel instead of cargo and using fuel to bring back the launch vehicle safely as opposed to parachuting the launch vehicle (or its engines, the most complex part) and launching more useful cargo into orbit.
The question is about cost of production of a rocket and cost of fuel and cost of unit of cargo per launch, not about difficulty of a controlled descent. Assuming it's perfectly easy to do a controlled descent (which is probably much more difficult to do from a much higher altitude than a few dozen meters above Earth, given that the rocket also needs to reorient itself and maneuver a much longer distance down to the surface) then the question is: how much cargo are you not taking up because you are taking up a huge amount of fuel to do this controlled descent, so it's not just a question of cost of fuel, it's a calculation of cost of launch of unit of cargo and cost of launch in total, etc.
One thing I don't have to be a rocket scientist to know is that if you do this, you are not being very efficient with your rocket, you are using huge amount of fuel just to haul fuel, you are not launching as much cargo as you can. You are launching and landing fuel. Then why not launch more cargo and a parachute to land some of the launch vehicle and instead work on manufacturing the rocket cheaper, more efficiently with a manufacturing conveyor line, with robots, with fewer people?
Why not use the money to improve efficiency of manufacturing of the rocket?
Musk wants to be in this business end to end, he wants to manufacture rockets and launch them and do everything. I don't need to be a rocket scientist to know for sure that he will not be as efficient at all of these as he can be at just some of it, that's why we have complex supply chains and specialisation.
Maybe he wants to be a total solution, but that would be Apple of space, not Linux of space so to speak. How about concentrating on the manufacturing side, creating the production process that is the most efficient and the cheapest and then mass producing launch vehicles for all who want to launch and operate them?
No, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to look at the overall business model.
Well yes, exactly, what is the real cost and why concentrate on carefully bringing down stages of a rocket if instead he can be bringing up more cargo?
What is more important, to get the tube back down very slowly without damaging it (and burning up a huge amount of fuel while doing it and obviously making the entire flight much less efficient) or putting more cargo into orbit?
I think he can achieve partial reusability by bringing down the rocket on parachutes (or at least the engines, which are probably the most intricate and expensive part) while using all the fuel in the rocket for its actual purpose - launch cargo.
As to finding efficiencies, that's where he should shine as opposed to a government operation, that's why it's better that Ford builds cars rather than US government. Ford will figure out the how to produce more cars in a shorter time for less money, that's where Musk really should be outdoing all the governments - figuring out the manufacturing conveyor line, investing into tools and robots that would automate and speed up production of rockets.
Oh, and I did read that Musk said that cost of fuel is 0.3% of cost of the entire vehicle (launch or building it, it's not clear from TFA), but then the real efficiency should come from making production of the rocket cheaper, using the profits from launches to increase production efficiency. Reuse the engines if you can parachute them to Earth safely and grow production capacity to a level, where the rocket is cheap to construct.
That's where the real gains in efficiency can be implemented - make a factory that produces as many rockets per year as Honda produces cars per day, so this requires building a conveyor line for rocket parts and assembly. Reuse everything possible, but don't try to take up fuel to make the descent back to Earth to be just a reverse of ascent, that's a waste of flight capacity.
I see people discussing the video, but where is it? Here are a few screen shots of the rocket, it's not obvious that this rocket went up and down, however even if it does, I don't think it means that the rocket is reusable completely, but if it can get up and get back to Earth safely before it reaches certain height in case if something goes wrong with the launch, that's a big deal. However what can go wrong with a launch that would allow the rocket to be so well controlled and balanced that it's not tipping over and blowing up in the first place? Why bring down a rocket if it is in normal operation this way? Is it theoretically possible for a launch vehicle to make it all the way to orbit and back? Probably, but it's extremely inefficient! It's a circus trick, by the time the rocket is up in space, it has no fuel left, that's why multistage parts are jettisoned in the first place, the only valuable parts in them for the launch was the fuel and it gets burned up completely for the rocket to get to space.
Musk can achieve partial reusability, with the engines parachuting to earth and being reused, that already would be great, having a rocket that can go to space as a single stage and all the way back means it has to lift huge amount of fuel into space, not burn it all up and then use the remaining fuel to get back to earth in an inefficient manner (not just fall back but slowly descent on a column of fire) and that's crazy expensive and inefficient! If you can lift enough fuel into space to do that trick, you shouldn't be lifting fuel, you should be lifting useful cargo.
I know what you are saying, but you are not part of their revenue stream and so when the try to figure out how to stay afloat they will think much less of what to do about clients like you rather than about people who would subscribe or somehow support their model.
It's really not magic, they are not USA government, they cannot print dollars and wait for the inevitable inflation to destroy the currency, they have to have revenue, they have to cover their expenses and they have to have some profit (otherwise there is no incentive for the investment to be tied up in that business). So the question for them is how to design a business model that would give them that revenue and profit.
It is possible that they could do it by offering some material for free (and people that would otherwise completely ignore their site would read some of their material, this way at least their brand would be more recognised) and some material would only be offered to the subscribers (like I said, a site can offer a printed version of the magazine or maybe it can have some other merchandise).
Maybe they can have ads that are part of the on-line material, embedded in such a way that for an ad-blocker it would be impossible to distinguish that there is an ad within the material.
It's possible to have an article with an ad on it that is not text for example, but that is an image. So they could convert some text into an image, embed some ads into that image and serve that to people who otherwise wouldn't read their site if it was behind a pay wall.
It's possible to do all sorts of things, like use Flash to serve text mixed with ads (I would not read articles that way, but who knows, make it interesting enough material and I may once in a while).
It's possible to offer more to people who subscribe. Again, as I said, from TFA it is not clear whether their entire user base stays the same and more and more people are using ad-blockers or whether their user base is growing and the percentage of ad-blocking users is growing faster. But if their user base is growing, then maybe they don't really have as much of a problem.
OTOH it is also possible that many of these sites will have to consolidate one day and have some form of pay wall and some material without it, but they would have to have one large site with many sites behind them.
This is the cable model, where you get dozens of channels bundled together while in reality you are only interested in 3 of them, but you are paying a subscription fee basically. But if they did this, I would suggest not charging a flat fee but actually allowing people to pick their poison and only pay for the part they are interested in, while being able to read some free material from other parts, so at least they'd know what else is out there.
If the number of the users is not growing itself (which is not obvious from TFA) but only the percentage of users that use ad-blockers is growing, then don't you have to admit at some point that you have to change the business model and possibly try to charge a subscription fee? But in order to retain clients then you have to provide them with something actually tangible for their money. I have never heard of their site (I basically don't play video games, so I don't know much about the site), but I suppose they don't send out physical magazine or anything like that, it's a pure on-line business. But they have to figure out either how to go around the ad-blocking software or they have to figure out another way to get revenue, and maybe they should offer a subscription and bundle something extra with it (like an actual physical copy of their articles if anybody is interested)?
However I suspect that many sites facing the same problem will just shut down, since their model is purely ad based and technologically they can't really win, so it's their business model that will have to adapt or die out.
Ubuntu was a simple choice to recommend for businesses between 2010 and 2012, but now I recommend Mint (Mate normally). That's all I have to say on this issue, Gnome 3 and then Unity have killed 'classic' Ubuntu distributions for me (even though Mint itself is based off of Ubuntu). I tried xubuntu for a few months, but it has various problems itself, so I had to stop with that.
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Unless you are the one pretending that 'country was founded by saints', then I don't know who is saying that.
James Madison:
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
Nobody says that USA was founded by saints. Personally I would not have ratified the Constitution that did not recognise all people as equals. However USA was founded on some principles in the first place (and by the way, limiting suffrage to land owners was one of those principles, and I completely agree with it, land owners were the ones paying taxes, but today it cannot be limited just to land owners, but it must be limited at the most to the people who are paying taxes)
People who are not paying taxes but instead are living off of a subsidy shouldn't be allowed to vote, that's my position. But that's a side issue.
We have here Bradley Manning, the man stands alone against the tyrannical oppressive regime, that clearly does NOT protect and defend the Constitution, it does NOT stand for actual individual rights, instead it abuses them.
The man must not be punished even though he broke the literal law! He must not be punished, unless as a society your stance is: we don't care what is done in our name and our principles be damned, if you just go against the literal law, you should be punished in the most crazy manner, so that any such transgressions by anybody else in the future are prevented at the root.
Without such law breaking we could in principle still have some actual remnants of slavery in a society, and now we do, the individuals are the slaves to be punished by the collective. Bradley Manning is an individual and the collective is collectively punishing him for being one and to ensure that others stay as the collective and never have any individual thoughts of their own.
However, he's also a fucking traitor and deserves the punishment which is coming to him
- I suppose he is a 'traitor' in the same way that an SS soldier would have been in Nazi units designed to burn people alive in concentration camps, for releasing the real information about the atrocities for all the public to find out.
USA government kills civilian children on daily basis with bombs, that's part of the information released by Manning. I don't give a shit what the literal legality is of what he did, he is not a traitor, the US government is the traitor of the principles that the country was founded upon.
USA government, every single fucker in it that knew and authorised that knows and authorises murder of people on daily basis should be rotting in jail, Manning is a normal person that became part of a completely corrupt, oppressive, ridiculously blood thirsty system and he did not stand for it. By releasing this information he notifies the public what atrocities are done in their name under the pretence of 'protecting the Constitution', while in reality completely abandoning the Constitution and destroying every principle that the USA Republic was founded upon.
PARIS â" Syria, China, Iran, Bahrain and Vietnam are flagrantly spying online, media watchdog RSF said Tuesday, urging controls on the export of Internet surveillance tools to regimes clamping down on dissent. ....
A new report entitled "Enemies of the Internet" also singled out five companies -- Gamma, Trovicor, Hacking Team, Amesys and Blue Coat -- that it branded "digital era mercenaries," who were helping oppressive governments.
RSF called for a ban on the sale of surveillance hardware and software to countries that flout basic fundamental rights and crack down on any opposition.
"The private sector cannot be expected to police itself. Legislators must intervene," it said.
"The European Union and the United States have already banned the export of surveillance technology to Iran and Syria. This praiseworthy initiative should not be an isolated one."
So the conclusion is that 'private sector cannot police itself and legislator must intervene', when in reality it is legislators that legislate that such tools must be used to control the population in the first place?
This passes for logic nowadays?
First of all: private sector only fulfils a demand and it doesn't matter if the demand is generated by individuals and markets or governments, it will be fulfilled, because there is money in it.
Secondly: the problem is created by governments, how is it going to be solved by governments? In fact it will be private sector that will solve this problem by providing solutions that will help individuals on the web to be safe from the solutions that governments acquire (possibly from other individuals in the private sector, but that's not even relevant. Governments pay for weapons, any type of weapons, this includes Internet spying technology. A government can hire people from the private sector to work on a nuclear weapon or on an Internet spying system.
Saying that the problem of governments legislating spying is with the private sector is.... I have many words for it, none of them are well suited for a civil company like that found on /. (now that was a poor attempt at humour).
Would your solution be to just let the "free market" decide which laws are passed by allowing corporations to bid for legislative votes?
- can you explain your train of thought, how do you read my comments and come to this conclusion about my ideas?
If you care, my proposal is to remove power from government, allow the government only to do what is explicitly authorised to it to do, amend the Constitution to prevent any type of 'interpretation' of the law. If a law as it is in the Constitution is not clear, then amend the Constitution to make it clear but the government must not be allowed to legislate beyond what is written in the document. Actually take into account the context, in which the law in the document was written, so there cannot be just a battle of the lawyers (who can figure out how to read the law in the most literal way while completely abolishing the actual meaning behind it.
The system has failed because the government has all the power that it was never meant to have. My solution is to prevent that more effectively, prevent politicians from "helping" people.
Again: prevent politicians from helping people. There should be no legislation passed to help people.
The government is supposed to protect and defend the Constitution, not people, the document, the Law. There cannot be legislation aimed at 'lessening suffering' of anybody under any circumstances, that's not what government should be doing at all. That's the job of the individuals in the market to solve - figure out how to make money by providing all the necessary products and services that would lessen people's suffering.
Government must be prevented from pretending to be a charity, government must be prevented from interfering with any business, it must not be allowed to tax actual income or property itself, government must be limited to the funding that it can collect to the 2 specific types of taxes that were explicitly defined (apportioned direct tax or uniform excise, sale, duty, import).
My point is that there cannot be a government that will not be taken over by special interests if the government makes it a point meddling with people to help any special interests.
Employees are special interests.
Minorities are special interests.
Women are special interests.
Children are special interests.
Disabled are special interests.
The sick are special interests.
The old are special interests.
Any business that wants anything from gov't is a special interest.
Government must be very explicitly prohibited from acting for the benefit of any special interest, even from promising to act for the benefit of any special interest.
There cannot be a special interest right, such a concept creates entitlements for the special interests and obligations for everybody else, and that's what I am talking about - this is the theft of individual freedoms, this is what creates the lobbying, the bribing, all of its forms.
If central government should exist at all (and I am against all central governments on a principle), then it must have a limited role, it must protect the Law, it must protect the borders from invasion, it must protect property rights and contract law and possibly enforce criminal code.
That's all that the government must be authorised to do and all other functions must not even be authorised.
AFAIC there shouldn't even be any legislative process, the government must not be able to change the law easily. There should be limits to the way laws are created or changed, every law should have an expiry date. Government shouldn't be allowed to print money obviously, it shouldn't be allowed to set interest rates, prices, wages, it shouldn't be allowed to engage in currency or trade wars!
Government should not be allowed to manipulate the markets, it should not be allowed to participate in markets. My solutions is to have a government that does not do anything except a very limited number of things: protection
1. Define 'right direction'. Basically anything you can come up with, there will be a huge number of people that will not care or vehemently disagree.
2. Are you seriously implying that government has a long term outlook while businesses do not? It's not even 2 years now that the politicians start their quest of the next election cycle. Of-course inheritance taxes pretty much destroyed the long term prospects for private companies while government created inflation prevents people from thinking in the long term completely in a more general way.
Weasel words? Irrational? What is power, go ahead, define it in your 'rational' non-weasel way, please.
Power is to force an individual to do what he does not otherwise want to do and to force him, the gov't has legal power, it's predicated upon the promise and threat of violence.
You are calling me irrational, not even my definition, me personally. That in itself is already highly suspect and puts your entire comment into very questionable light.
Have you tried building a parachute to land 25 tons?
- I haven't, however military sometimes parachutes tanks and other vehicles from planes and some of them are more than 25 tons.
. Their bribing politicians with contributions is one one part of that. Reducing the power of government will not reduce the power of corporations at all, it'll actually increase it. And thus would be counter productive.
- what do you mean when you say power? Because when I say power, I mean legal power to force an individual to do things that the individual does not want to do. Power is backed by force of violence. The State is predicated on violence, in fact by definition State is a system of violence.
Consent of the governed gives the government its authority and I don't believe that the governed are interested to give the authority all of the powers that authorities have today, the governed are complaining, they are unhappy. However they are lulled to sleep by the promise of a free lunch but of-course to deliver that promise the State must engage in unprecedented amount of explicit violence against a number of people (they are a minority) but actually currency war is violence as well and so everybody who holds USD denominated assets (including dollars and bonds) are being violently attacked by the State, which is stealing their savings and investment capital, reducing their real earning and purchasing power.
Compared to that what can a private institution do that has no legal means to engage in such acts? Sure, a private institution can fight another private institution for a larger market share, but there is at the minimum the criminal code that is (at least in theory) supposed to stop a private institution from committing actual violent acts.
The gov't is supposed to protect private property, contract law and probably enforce the criminal code. If those necessary functions are implemented, then any amount of power that a private corporation holds is irrelevant. They will have the power not to be bound by stifling rules and regulations that are designed to create monopolies and extract money from them by the political system, but they can't actually hurt people if the private property rights, contracts and criminal code is enforced.
Correct, and as usual the intent was different from what is implemented now. The intent was for the federal gov't to increase competition between States, not to create monopolies. To do it, federal gov't was supposed to prevent individual States from setting rules that would for example require re-licensing of businesses and different professionals from one state to another. However that's exactly what is happening. They even have licenses for taxis and moving companies, never mind professionals like commodity traders or doctors or lawyers or engineers or builders, etc.
However that's what the point was - to prevent States from each requiring a different license for every type of situation. The power that Congress had was to regulate the act of interstate commerce but not to regulate a company itself!
Once the gov't got a way to tax and regulate companies and not the act of trade itself, that's it, it was over and the SCOTUS didn't stop it at all, it helped the power, didn't contain it.
AFAIC 'interpreting the Constitution' really means breaking the law, nothing else. (the reasons are in that JE)
SCOTUS has given up on its role, which is to stop the gov't from passing laws that are contrary to the Constitution. I touched on the ACA decision, showing how the law is bent to make it look 'Constitutional' and even how eventually the lower courts will take it further, by inevitably mis-understanding the ruling by SCOTUS and will ensure that eventually ACA will be enforced in a way that is not even deemed Constitutional by that ruling itself.
That's the same thing that happened for all other cases, including income tax (which doesn't even exist as a law for individuals, the amendment to the Constitution required that SCOTUS would eventually clarify how the law is supposed to be used and enforced and in the process SCOTUS clarified that 'income tax' is actually a 'profit tax' and as such it can only apply to corporations and not to individuals). But the lower courts have enforced the non-existing law based on the wrong reading of the SCOTUS decisions and I think it is done deliberately.
Congress passes an unconstitutional law, SCOTUS finds reasons to justify the law as marginally Constitutional for some special case scenario, the lower courts then themselves apply and interpret the ruling in a much broader, completely incorrect manner and that's it, now you have what they like to call 'precedent'.
The entire problem with precedent is that regardless of how it was established, now they say they must follow it! Amazing, isn't it? But that's a really clever hack of the political system.
Oh please, that's naive nonsense. You really believe that by making it illegal to take bribes there will be no bribes? It's illegal to take bribes in most parts of the world and the bribes never stop.
In USA the bribes are taken to a different level with so much gov't rules and regulations and taxes and offices, that it is just impossible at all to make something illegal in the first place and even if you made it illegal the money would find way. You really think you can stop the money?
No, you can only choke the power of the ruling class, if they are not allowed to take away your freedom and offer it to the highest bidders, then they can't sell anything.
Wag the dog.. Business sets the rules.. Government enforces them...
- not without complicity of the mob. It doesn't happen without implicit and explicit support of the mob who really want their free bread and circuses and are absolutely willing to give up actual freedoms in exchange for a promise of some discrimination against somebody else, as long as they get some of the spoils.
Vast majority of business interests are not represented in gov't, only the close friends of politicians, people that the political system turns into monopolies are really in the position to set the rules. But they can't do that in a system that does not give the politicians all this power and the mob gives the power.
Business really didn't thrive.
- orly? USA was built in that time period. The debts (mostly private) were all paid out as the country became largest manufacturer in the world in that time period. In that time period basically all major cities were built around manufacturing and shipping hubs, the infrastructure was built privately. The 'booms and busts' of the time happened exactly around every incident of gov't meddling with the economy, and of-course the Civil War didn't help matters. And yet, including the War and all the problems, by the beginning of 20th century USA became largest manufacturer, exporter and creditor nation in the world (and it achieved it in even less than that time period, and before it was really just an afterthought to European nations, a large debtor as well).
In that time period millions of people got access to ever cheaper food, clothing, medical help, inventions and innovations were done in USA, people came from all around the world to work there because they saw it as the real land of opportunity specifically because there was no government intervention (especially compared to their home countries).
The banking problems were minor compared to the total disaster that is at hand today, with all the banks being zombies, walking dead, artificially propped up by fake Fed credit. The money of the time was real and gaining in value and prices were going down while more goods were coming on line that never even existed before.
AFAIC comparatively speaking 19th century USA created more wealth and the actual real middle class than 20th century USA (don't get me started on the current century) and all of that was done with much higher 'income inequality' than we see anywhere in the world today, proving that people are really only limited to how much they can produce, save and invest by the political system, not by market itself. The billionaires of today are children compared to the billionaires (taking inflation into account) of the 19th century and everybody's well being and standard of living was actually rising.
Definitely, Al Gore benefited from his political connections many times. Current TV would not have become profitable for him in that sale if he wasn't Gore and didn't have all these political connections (you can't just start a media company and really expect all those networks and channels and carriers to give you access). His fortune became larger also as a result of the 529 Million USD loan (political connections) that gov't gave Fisker car company, and they moved production to Finland, manufacturing gas guzzling (climate change, ha?) luxury 90,000USD cars (man of the people).
oh, and it's a very interesting case. Current TV got all this access to various networks, you think that's a coincidence? You think you can start a media company and just get access to various networks and distributors? The entire concept was predicated on the Gore's persona, his ties to the government. He is a perfect example of the problem that he himself talks about.
Money in politics? How did Gore become partial owner of Fisker , a "car company" that just happened to get 529Billion USD subsidy (a loan) and ended up building luxury (90K Fisker Karma) sedans in Finland? Never mind the hypocrisy of this 'climate change' warrior, profiting from a gov't loan, given to a company that outsourced to another country manufacturing of a expensive luxury gas guzzler (20m/gallon)
Hey, hypocrisy is thick with this one.
The flow of money into the U.S. political system, he argued, and the need by politicians to fundraise has led to special interests gaining undue power.
âoeOur democracy has been hacked,â Gore told his audience, referring to the U.S. Constitution as âoeour operating system.â While thereâ(TM)s never been a âoegolden ageâ of American Democracy, he added, the perils emerging today are new. âoeIf a Congressman or Senator has to spend five hours a day begging special interests or rich people for money,â he said, theyâ(TM)ll be more concerned about how what theyâ(TM)re saying will appeal to those interestsâ"rather than their constituents.
Special interests are inevitable in a system that allows politicians to set the rules for businesses and individuals in the first place. The politicians are the ones that hacked the Constitution, they hacked the Law. They figured out how to remove the chains that were placed upon the government to bind it, to provide it with only limited powers (article 1, section 8). Once the politicians found the way (it was easy once the Republic became wealthy enough due to all the business that thrived under the mostly free market system in the first 124 years of the Republic), just promise the people something for nothing and they will vote for you and will let you do whatever you want to the Law. The politicians turned the Republic into a democracy by promising a bunch of stuff to be given out as subsidies and it was popular, because the promise was to make only a minority of people to pay for it (discrimination against a minority based on different levels of income).
So the more power that the government stole from the people by promising them free stuff, the more lucrative it became for politicians to keep power and the more competitive the field of politics became because it brought with it much more power than it was ever designed to give to the politicians.
Politicians are today's Rock Stars, they live better than the rest of the public, they get all this respect for some reason, they get the best deals on everything (trust me, companies like large banks, credit card companies, even phone companies have lists of 'higher class' people to provide a much better service and not to bug in case they break the rules, and these lists include politicians and their various friends).
It's lucrative to be a politician, and so it is very competitive and it gives so much power that wasn't meant to be there, that's why there is all this money pouring in - those are bribes to leave people alone in many cases.
The first stage weighs comparatively very little after it has been used because all the fuel is gone. So adding just a bit of extra fuel to land the now much lighter stage is not much of an expense,
- except to launch that fuel it takes more fuel, any amount of fuel that needs to be launched to a certain height requires the same amount of fuel to launch it. So if you have to use say 20% of the fuel capacity of the launcher to bring the rocket down this way, then you have to add another 20% to launch that fuel. However you can't add 20% to launch that fuel, you have to not use 20%.
All of a sudden 40% of fuel is used to raise the first stage of the rocket up and down and you are only using 60% of the first stage capacity launch your cargo. So at 60% capacity gone, you have to add the difference to the second stage of the vehicle or you have to design a much bigger rocket (at least 20% bigger) to do the same job as a much smaller rocket was doing.
I don't know when his rockets will be going to the Moon and landing there, but if he doesn't get his business off the ground first by becoming very efficient here, then it's just another experiment without any chance of success in the long term. I think figuring out the way to produce the rockets as cheap as at all possible is the most important thing in the beginning. Cost of going up is the real reason there is so little business in space, USA (and USSR) Moon programs were colossally expensive, figuring out a way to make extremely cheap rockets that can launch plenty of cargo into space should be the primary goal.
I am not a rocket expert but this is not a question to rocket experts, this is an economics question. Taking up fuel instead of cargo and using fuel to bring back the launch vehicle safely as opposed to parachuting the launch vehicle (or its engines, the most complex part) and launching more useful cargo into orbit.
The question is about cost of production of a rocket and cost of fuel and cost of unit of cargo per launch, not about difficulty of a controlled descent. Assuming it's perfectly easy to do a controlled descent (which is probably much more difficult to do from a much higher altitude than a few dozen meters above Earth, given that the rocket also needs to reorient itself and maneuver a much longer distance down to the surface) then the question is: how much cargo are you not taking up because you are taking up a huge amount of fuel to do this controlled descent, so it's not just a question of cost of fuel, it's a calculation of cost of launch of unit of cargo and cost of launch in total, etc.
One thing I don't have to be a rocket scientist to know is that if you do this, you are not being very efficient with your rocket, you are using huge amount of fuel just to haul fuel, you are not launching as much cargo as you can. You are launching and landing fuel. Then why not launch more cargo and a parachute to land some of the launch vehicle and instead work on manufacturing the rocket cheaper, more efficiently with a manufacturing conveyor line, with robots, with fewer people?
Why not use the money to improve efficiency of manufacturing of the rocket?
Musk wants to be in this business end to end, he wants to manufacture rockets and launch them and do everything. I don't need to be a rocket scientist to know for sure that he will not be as efficient at all of these as he can be at just some of it, that's why we have complex supply chains and specialisation.
Maybe he wants to be a total solution, but that would be Apple of space, not Linux of space so to speak. How about concentrating on the manufacturing side, creating the production process that is the most efficient and the cheapest and then mass producing launch vehicles for all who want to launch and operate them?
No, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to look at the overall business model.
Well yes, exactly, what is the real cost and why concentrate on carefully bringing down stages of a rocket if instead he can be bringing up more cargo?
What is more important, to get the tube back down very slowly without damaging it (and burning up a huge amount of fuel while doing it and obviously making the entire flight much less efficient) or putting more cargo into orbit?
I think he can achieve partial reusability by bringing down the rocket on parachutes (or at least the engines, which are probably the most intricate and expensive part) while using all the fuel in the rocket for its actual purpose - launch cargo.
As to finding efficiencies, that's where he should shine as opposed to a government operation, that's why it's better that Ford builds cars rather than US government. Ford will figure out the how to produce more cars in a shorter time for less money, that's where Musk really should be outdoing all the governments - figuring out the manufacturing conveyor line, investing into tools and robots that would automate and speed up production of rockets.
Oh, and I did read that Musk said that cost of fuel is 0.3% of cost of the entire vehicle (launch or building it, it's not clear from TFA), but then the real efficiency should come from making production of the rocket cheaper, using the profits from launches to increase production efficiency. Reuse the engines if you can parachute them to Earth safely and grow production capacity to a level, where the rocket is cheap to construct.
That's where the real gains in efficiency can be implemented - make a factory that produces as many rockets per year as Honda produces cars per day, so this requires building a conveyor line for rocket parts and assembly. Reuse everything possible, but don't try to take up fuel to make the descent back to Earth to be just a reverse of ascent, that's a waste of flight capacity.
I see people discussing the video, but where is it? Here are a few screen shots of the rocket, it's not obvious that this rocket went up and down, however even if it does, I don't think it means that the rocket is reusable completely, but if it can get up and get back to Earth safely before it reaches certain height in case if something goes wrong with the launch, that's a big deal. However what can go wrong with a launch that would allow the rocket to be so well controlled and balanced that it's not tipping over and blowing up in the first place? Why bring down a rocket if it is in normal operation this way? Is it theoretically possible for a launch vehicle to make it all the way to orbit and back? Probably, but it's extremely inefficient! It's a circus trick, by the time the rocket is up in space, it has no fuel left, that's why multistage parts are jettisoned in the first place, the only valuable parts in them for the launch was the fuel and it gets burned up completely for the rocket to get to space.
Musk can achieve partial reusability, with the engines parachuting to earth and being reused, that already would be great, having a rocket that can go to space as a single stage and all the way back means it has to lift huge amount of fuel into space, not burn it all up and then use the remaining fuel to get back to earth in an inefficient manner (not just fall back but slowly descent on a column of fire) and that's crazy expensive and inefficient! If you can lift enough fuel into space to do that trick, you shouldn't be lifting fuel, you should be lifting useful cargo.
I know what you are saying, but you are not part of their revenue stream and so when the try to figure out how to stay afloat they will think much less of what to do about clients like you rather than about people who would subscribe or somehow support their model.
It's really not magic, they are not USA government, they cannot print dollars and wait for the inevitable inflation to destroy the currency, they have to have revenue, they have to cover their expenses and they have to have some profit (otherwise there is no incentive for the investment to be tied up in that business). So the question for them is how to design a business model that would give them that revenue and profit.
It is possible that they could do it by offering some material for free (and people that would otherwise completely ignore their site would read some of their material, this way at least their brand would be more recognised) and some material would only be offered to the subscribers (like I said, a site can offer a printed version of the magazine or maybe it can have some other merchandise).
Maybe they can have ads that are part of the on-line material, embedded in such a way that for an ad-blocker it would be impossible to distinguish that there is an ad within the material.
It's possible to have an article with an ad on it that is not text for example, but that is an image. So they could convert some text into an image, embed some ads into that image and serve that to people who otherwise wouldn't read their site if it was behind a pay wall.
It's possible to do all sorts of things, like use Flash to serve text mixed with ads (I would not read articles that way, but who knows, make it interesting enough material and I may once in a while).
It's possible to offer more to people who subscribe. Again, as I said, from TFA it is not clear whether their entire user base stays the same and more and more people are using ad-blockers or whether their user base is growing and the percentage of ad-blocking users is growing faster. But if their user base is growing, then maybe they don't really have as much of a problem.
OTOH it is also possible that many of these sites will have to consolidate one day and have some form of pay wall and some material without it, but they would have to have one large site with many sites behind them.
This is the cable model, where you get dozens of channels bundled together while in reality you are only interested in 3 of them, but you are paying a subscription fee basically. But if they did this, I would suggest not charging a flat fee but actually allowing people to pick their poison and only pay for the part they are interested in, while being able to read some free material from other parts, so at least they'd know what else is out there.
If the number of the users is not growing itself (which is not obvious from TFA) but only the percentage of users that use ad-blockers is growing, then don't you have to admit at some point that you have to change the business model and possibly try to charge a subscription fee? But in order to retain clients then you have to provide them with something actually tangible for their money. I have never heard of their site (I basically don't play video games, so I don't know much about the site), but I suppose they don't send out physical magazine or anything like that, it's a pure on-line business. But they have to figure out either how to go around the ad-blocking software or they have to figure out another way to get revenue, and maybe they should offer a subscription and bundle something extra with it (like an actual physical copy of their articles if anybody is interested)?
However I suspect that many sites facing the same problem will just shut down, since their model is purely ad based and technologically they can't really win, so it's their business model that will have to adapt or die out.
I often have trouble picking my wife out of a crowd
- then what's the difference? Just grab any one of them and go.
Ubuntu was a simple choice to recommend for businesses between 2010 and 2012, but now I recommend Mint (Mate normally). That's all I have to say on this issue, Gnome 3 and then Unity have killed 'classic' Ubuntu distributions for me (even though Mint itself is based off of Ubuntu). I tried xubuntu for a few months, but it has various problems itself, so I had to stop with that.