Uh, no. Gaming the system is an English language phrase which denotes a negative consequence has in fact been reached through devious means
- well, you put those words out there - 'gaming the system'. The system is already broken, before anybody introduced HFT, because the system does not allow competition in the market, and so gaming it may carry negative consequences in your mind, but AFAIC it is just a consequence of the previous 'gaming' that was going on. As I said: in a free market economy, without gov't meddling, 'gaming' is not a problem. That's right, somebody doing something negative in a free market environment is only part of the overall economy, and they will not be able to destroy the economy in a free market by gaming some part of it, because a free market economy is self correcting, and somebody abusing part of it will not cause a catastrophe, it may cause some damage to some people, but it's always limited, it doesn't propagate throughout the entire market where there is no gov't intervention.
All these things are fictions in their very nature, as is money itself. "fake money" is money that people don't agree to treat as money. All others are REAL including that which issues from the Fed.
- real money is something that is not manipulated by the gov't and it keeps its value, real money is gold, paper is not.
Here is the problem with your thinking. You don't realize that people behave differently depending on what context they're put in.
- false, that's not a problem with me, a market free of gov't meddling is exactly the admission that meddling is counter-productive because gov't cannot see beyond its direct action.
Do you know how many people lose their jobs or end up without jobs and how the economy suffers because of gov't intervention, gov't caused inflation, meddling with the market? Do you know it? Can you understand the unintended consequences? Do you know that every piece of legislation that is created backfires specifically because of the fact that people modify their behaviour?
When taxes are increased in some brackets, less is collected in those brackets, not because the money flow is decreased there, but because people modify their behaviour and the way the money is paid out. People who prefer free markets prefer them specifically because they understand that people modify behaviour as a response to the force applied to them - rules, laws, regulations, taxes, inflation, these are all game changers, they cause people to find ways to avoid this damage.
Internet routes around the damage, same thing with economy - people route around gov't caused damage.
It works that way MORE when there's democratic government and LESS when there is not democractic government, that's what we can say.
- aha, because the voters are so well informed and they care not about their immediate gain but instead they care about long term sustainability, so they don't elect people into office just for promises of free stuff.....
oh wait, that's the exact opposite of the truth. The truth is that democracy leads to tyranny because it gives people ability to exchange their real freedoms for some promises of free bread, circuses and convenience.
Oh, I never read any Rousseau, stop pretending you understand why I think the way I do.
Good so don't go into government . Most of the problems with our government happen when people who don't believe in it go into it.
- no, if I went to gov't I would only go there to take it apart and destroy it, that's why I don't go into it and that's why I won't be allowed to. Most problems with gov't are because people don't understand the principles of governance, and so they allow the gov't to rule them instead of serving them. People want free shit, that's all there is to it, it's not more complex than that. They vote for crooks that promise free shit.
Money supply is what inflates - it expands and contracts. Prices do not expand, they rise, they don't contract, they fall.
This entire conversation is based on propaganda that is pushed by the powers that want to confuse you and prevent you from understanding most basic concepts.
Hm, that's funny, because our universities were decent places where people could become educated beyond the minimum vocational training
- yeah, thanks to the wealth of the private sector, thanks to the growth of private industries. Thanks to free market capitalism.
Universities do not appear out of thin air, they appear when the private sector creates enough wealth and enough complex problems are solved in order to create that wealth, so that productivity of people grows and most people don't have to be farmers and hunters. All this while the manufacturing can benefit and find new efficiencies if the new types of problems are solved and all of this also means that new types of products can be created that couldn't possibly exist prior to all these gains in productivity by the private sector.
There is no need for education and there can be no education if there is no manufacturing and production and engineering.
they need back when states were bothering to adequately fund universities
- you mean steal enough money from the private sector, from individuals, to subsidise these cesspools of socialism and destruction of freedom. Though I see this working in reverse nowadays, more and more students discover that Ron Paul's ideas are much more attractive than any ideas anybody else has in government.
What, you think that the government is to blame because of subsidized loans?
- well, duh! Where do subsidised loans come from? Would a banker in his right mind give a loan to a student who wouldn't be able to repay it with interest?
Not without government guarantees they wouldn't. And of-course this means that the prices for education would be much lower, like they used to be before all this gov't nonsense, before dep't of education, etc., when students could actually pay for their education by taking summer jobs.
The tuition required by private colleges
- it doesn't matter that they are private colleges, the problem is that the MONEY is public. The money that is given out as loans is public money, so the students aren't price sensitive and the schools know it.
the poor can remain shackled by being less educated than the wealthy
- blah blah blah. The poor are created by the government. Capitalism increases wealth in the system, raises everybody's standard of living, lowers prices for education, almost ALL people used to be poor before capitalism, there are much fewer poor people and their poverty is a very relative term, poor compared to others today, wealthy compared to poor 100 years ago. It is individual entrepreneurship that allows people to get out of poverty, not government, and in a wealthy society a 'poor' person survives no matter what, doesn't die from hunger and illness, he has much more opportunities to get out of his predicament.
Keep capitalist approaches where they belong: industry, stock exchanges, banking, etc. Applying capitalist ideas to things like education and health care is just a covert way to establish and cement a rich aristocracy.
- yeah, there was no education system before capitalism, education was kept to a minimum only the rich could afford most of it, the poor could maybe get a class or two in a church or maybe not. Only capitalism allowed health care to become truly universal, because doctors are also trying to make a living, and it is capitalism that produced all of the wealth that allows all of the research in health care, capitalism allowed specialisation of professional doctors and it is capitalism that created the health insurance, by the way, mid 19th century is when the first health insurance plan was developed and sold, and it used to be actual INSURANCE - as in for very expensive, critical situations, and people paid doctors out of pocket. Doctors used to make house calls, they came to people's houses. It stopped with the gov't
That's nonsense. The second-best implementation will always kick the crap out of the best implementation if priced sufficiently lower.
- you maybe 100% right in THIS, but you are 100% wrong in this:
We need copyright and patent law. But it does need to be made more fair.
It's OK if somebody gets crashed because they couldn't understand that instead of going for perfection in product development, they should have gone to the market sooner, maybe with a product that is not as ideal, but it would sell and it would sell for less, because there is less money was spent developing it.
Make some more money over time and improve your product. You are making a mistake equating the best quality product with the best product for THE MARKET. The market doesn't want your best quality product at highest price, it wants a balanced approach, and if you provide this balanced approach, then you are satisfying the market need, and if you can't understand it, you SHOULD LOSE to your competition.
Engineers of digital restrictions management measures do just that.
- and again, you are missing the root cause - they can only rely on this as long as the gov't is on their side. The gov't enforces the copyright and patent laws, and these shouldn't exist, just like any other law that ensures somebody's business model.
If there was no moral hazard of copyright, the DRM would be a self destructive idea in business, because immediately there would be competition from other distribution channels with DRM being removed, capice?
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So what do you expect people who are not entrepreneurs to do between their position being eliminated and an entrepreneur discovering a "something else"?
- it's very simple. First of all, without gov't involvement and income taxes, people would be able to have real savings, something that people have ALWAYS done on this planet - saved for the rainy day, and rainy days happen, hurricanes happen, illness happens, everything happens. People used to save, then gov't came up with brilliant idea of socialism, and confiscated people's incomes and promised free insurance. Guess what, all of this is crashing because it can never work in the long term, my country of origin is a good test case of why this doesn't work.
OTOH without gov't stealing income, ppl could even buy insurance against losing their job, so EI but privately provided only if you decided to buy it, and I expect that insurers would simply pay out a lump sum in case of a job loss, (which, by the way, is what gov't should do - pay out lump sum and allow people to search for work immediately, instead gov't pays monthly, turning it into a paid vacation, so ppl don't search for work until this vacation expires).
By the way, when economy turns into a recession or even a depression, this means that the free market is trying to fix a problem of resource misallocation, and resources are misallocated by gov't, especially by the Federal reserve or other currency counterfeiting operations.
So when a depression hits, the prices go down due to loss of purchasing power, people are fired, companies are restructured, debts are written off, this is good. This is like a normal course of illness, the way it should play out, this lowers costs and prices for goods, and lower prices help people to survive during such times. What do gov'ts do? Ha, they step in with 'bailouts' and 'stimulus' and they buy assets with more fake money and they try to hold prices artificially high, while pushing interest rates artificially low.
Well, low interest rates give markets a wrong signal, the signal is that there are plenty of savings, but that's not true, so market gets this wrong signal - plenty of savings, and instead of saving, the market takes more risks, does more spending. So instead of building up savings and investment capital, the money is squandered on silly things, like consumer goods (especially funny, when these goods are build in other countries).
The point is this - go ahead and figure out the logic that the Federal reserve should keep interest rates low artificially and prop up asset prices, so that actually the value of money goes down, which raises prices in real terms (or like in Japan for the last 20 years - prevents significant price reductions), and how does this help people during recession or depression, when they are already out of jobs? It doesn't help, it hurts them. Yet it's funny, so many ignorant people are for more gov't spending and taxes and borrowing and printing during those years, as if this can help the economy to restructure.
Instead yet another asset bubble is inflated, people still are unemployed, they may feel like the economy is better because they can spend more fake money because they can leverage their house for example, refinance it and use the money to buy more foreign made goods or go to another vacation. All this, while jobs are still leaving, because the interest rate is such, that savings are destr
There is no problem with parasites. You are looking at it from the wrong perspective, neither you, no government it looks like are able to understand a very simple thing: nobody in business should be protected, even when one business steals from another, if the result is a cheaper, better product, then the customers win.
We don't need to care about HOW specifically anybody provides us with goods and services, the people who want to make money will make it their business to ensure that they have the advantage in the market somehow, they will just understand that it is just one more risk of getting into that business, but so what?
People shouldn't care that 2 or 20 businesses are duking it out, the only thing people understand is that from this fight they get better value, that's all.
Government shouldn't be protecting any specific business, any specific person's model to make money. We SHOULD NOT CARE that somebody's idea may or will be replicated.
Now, we MAY want to look at the product we purchase and try and reward those, who come up with the original products and ideas first, it's up to us, but we shouldn't be forced to do it either.
Again, there is nothing special about anybody's business, let them figure it out, they will, if they don't somebody else will.
People do not stop competing just because there is no government protection against borrowing ideas or even specific implementations, quite the opposite is true, people compete more.
Do you know why? Because it's not about inventing something new, it's about coming into the market with the best implementation.
By the way, this is the reason that large companies that are good at building and selling products often have research departments and many do long term research (IBM, Xerox, phone companies, energy companies, auto-companies, builders, manufacturers, chemical companies, medical companies, electronics companies, food companies, etc.etc.), they hire people to do research and they pay them. So if you are good at research and innovations you can do it on your own and sell it to large companies or you can work for a company and do it there.
But you can also try to innovate and bring your own product into the market. There is a way to hold off competition for a while at least - trade secrets. That's what should be used and is used in the market. Trade secrets are great - they provide some time before competition catches on, but they don't crate lawsuit happy environment and they don't prevent people from trying to figure out how to build the same thing differently, which really means they don't prevent all sorts of innovation, they encourage innovation.
Yeah, and thus democracy is a gateway to tyranny. People will absolutely give up their freedoms for a little bit of convenience or some free cheese in a mousetrap, but they can't even understand that they stepped into that mousetrap.
Oh, another crazy guy with genius ideas about breaking businesses, about what companies 'always working' the way he believes.
Absent government there is an actual free market, and in it there are no barriers to entry into the market in any specific industry that are unnatural (laws). There are only natural barriers to entry - lack of savings and investment, lack of ability, lack of knowledge, etc.
Companies do not become monopolies absent government, if they are successful, it's because they are good at providing whatever product or service, and the customers pick them, they become large, their competitors may reduce in size, some may disappear.
Should a company stop being interesting to the customers, should there be a way to reduce costs, reduce prices, become more efficient, competition will arise, again, this only is true for a free market, but in tech we see much freer markets than elsewhere so far.
Google, FB, etc., they are monopolies only when it comes to their own services, they don't prevent you from starting a business that is similar, the government will not prevent you from doing it mostly. But if you can't compete with them, it's because they have a good chunk of the market, and clients who are unwilling to come your way, and it means you can't beat the existing offer.
Can you beat the offer of FB or Google that the services are offered for free?
Actually there is gov't interference. Megaupload could be regarded as Youtube's competitor, the gov't destroyed that company, not to help Google, but to help some media companies, oh well, in the process they killed off a competitor to youtube actually. A competitor who was charging money for premium services even, but a viable competitor, Megaupload had tens or hundreds of millions in revenues.
Human nature is not what you think, human nature is to try and get things for free without paying. So you are using Google's youtube and you probably weren't paying for Megaupload, so Google provided you with a service that you enjoyed and you didn't want to switch.
By the way, this doesn't mean that a company cannot go wrong, of-course it can. A company can go wrong and it can lose its business, where is Polaroid?
A company CAN do wrong, and it's fine as long as gov't doesn't step in with bailouts and creates a huge moral hazard, destroys viable competition this way, causes massive dislocation of resources, etc.
Fuck the law, there shouldn't be that law, the gov't shouldn't be allowed to pass laws that protect any specific business model, any specific business, any specific individual from other individuals in business.
Gov't is the culprit here, sure, there is a law, but it is an unjust law. Copyright and patent laws are unjust and every time anybody is in jury and there is government on one side and an individual on the other side the jury must nullify the law. Yes, the law is broken, no, it shouldn't exist.
Yes this, it is insane to hear people rant against the government (military spending, PATRIOT ACT, SOPA etc) in one breath then say there needs to be more government regulation of stuff in the next.
- yes, it's insane, I have never said in my life that there should be more government in anything, I challenge you to find a comment like that of mine.
Yeah, that's how they hijacked the Republic and destroyed it.
Constitution is a set of laws above the government, there is a specific manner in which it can be amended, so it is possible to change it, but what you are talking about is NOT that, you are talking about seizing powers without amending the contract, and this means the contract is broken.
Right, and the Constitution allows the federal gov't to regulate interstate commerce, this clause is completely hijacked by the power hungry government.
Regulating commerce does not imply regulating business itself (a company). Commerce is an ACT, a business (a company) is an entity that gov't shouldn't be allowed to regulate. An act of trade across state lines is what was authorised to be regulated.
Gov't must not be allowed to create laws, that provide lawyers with incentives to sue private individuals and companies because they don't provide something as specific as handicap spaces. This must be up to the business to decide whether they want to provide handicap spaces, ramps, CC, etc. Gov't distorts the market, causes higher prices for everybody, just because some people need extra accommodations, and this is absolutely wrong.
If you run a business and you want more customers, you'll design your business with handicap facilities in mind, otherwise it must absolutely your choice not to do it.
The disabled in any way will have to be inconvenienced, their priorities are not above priorities of the rest of the population, unfortunately for them they must pay a higher price for a product that is provided to them in a manner convenient to them, we shouldn't be allowing gov't to divert resources and allow lawsuits against businesses just because they don't cater specifically to any particular set of people (and yes, I include any set).
An individual must be able to post a sign on his doors: no blacks allowed or no women or no gays, or whatever he wants.
It is absolutely none of gov't business to meddle. The only thing gov't should be doing in terms of equality is treating all of the people equally itself. Yes, the most important problem for minorities is unequal treatment before the law.
As to a private business not catering to the disabled or to jews or whatever, it's their business and I would like to see if anybody would be stupid enough to do that to their own establishment today.
It costs a lot of moeny and doesn't bring in much additional revenue
- the actual problem is that gov't again steals freedoms from people (businesses).
IT IS possible to add CC to content, it's possible to create a company that would just do that, is it profitable? Well, if it is IMPORTANT TO THE DEAF PEOPLE TO BUY THIS PROGRAMMING, then they would pay.
The rest of the society must not be forced by the government into providing things to people who are not their customers.
Face it, deaf people are NOT customers to musicians, for example.
I go much further - there shouldn't be any gov't involvement into any of this disability stuff, there are no 'disabled people rights', there are no 'women rights', there are no 'gay rights', there are no 'minority rights', there are only individual rights.
Individual rights are always crushed whenever gov't decides to provide a group of people with some specific entitlements, and thus pushes obligations upon other individuals, who are in business, and then the ignorant masses call this 'rights'.
Nonsense, free market doesn't create monopolies, only governments create monopolies, because governments can legislate competitors out of the market, and what you call 'monopolies' in the market are only economies of scale that are successful as long as they provide the products and services that market is willing to buy.
This decision by the judge is another overreach by the government, the gov't shouldn't be allowed even to pass laws that regulate businesses, gov't shouldn't be allowed to force businesses to provide product in any specific way or manner.
If there is a market for deaf people accessing netflix, it will be met. If there is no market (or insufficient market for competition to exist in netflix space) then there wouldn't be competition in that specific market segment.
It doesn't mean that the deaf can't access the data, but it wouldn't be as convenient for them, they'd have to access that data some other way, but so what? Life is not fair, nothing is fair and gov't shouldn't be allowed to mess with that fact, it only destroys competition that way.
If Netflix cannot provide content without CC, then others won't be able to either, so this INCREASES the barrier to entry into that industry, this WILL raise prices and this WILL destroy quality (how many programs will simply disappear because there won't be CC made for them?)
In any case, as per usual, the gov't steals more freedoms, as per usual, majority of the population doesn't understand it.
The real problem with FB IPO was that FB wasn't allowed to trade their stock earlier, they weren't allowed to trade on the open market in 2010, when the prices were still not crazy, and so the gov't "protected" the general public from the "dangers" of buying a stock, whose price is still NOT manipulated by the system. People should be able to offer their stock without having to comply with nonsensical gov't regulations, it's up to the market to do research and buy or avoid a stock, gov't shouldn't be 'protecting' people. The only thing gov't is good at protecting people from is actually being able to build up savings and have meaningful investments, and governments do it with regulations, inflation (money printing), fake interest rates, taxes, etc.
Gaming the system isn't a problem as long as there is a way for other people in the economy to set up competing systems and set their own rules, try and do that today.
With over hundred thousand regulations in banking, finance and investment industries, with things like the Federal reserve with its fake money spigot, fake interest rates, fake insurance by gov't (like FDIC, FHA, SS, Medicare, etc.), misnomers like the Patriot Act (probably the least patriotic piece of legislation in US history), etc.etc., nobody can actually start their own stock exchange and expect to last for more than a day without gov't agents knocking on the doors, taking down servers, confiscating assets, property, shutting down your operation.
Here is the problem with your thinking: you think greed is bad, inherently terrible and humans are irrational, but then immediately you want to give more power to the government by reducing freedoms of individuals (and while corporations are fiction, not real entities, people behind them - the owners, they are real) to use all of their abilities and property to fight the system and get the best outcome in this rigged environment.
So people are irrational and greedy, but government will be rational and selfless for the benefit of all?
I don't think so, I disagree with you, history disagrees with you, there is no example in history where the government with power was not abusing it, and it's always worse for people when it's their government, that abuses power over the people, than any particular individual or company, because individuals and companies do not have legal standing to abuse you and you don't have to deal with them, they can't make a law that you can't escape.
I don't trust government, I don't trust people, I don't trust people in government. I much rather see the same people that I do not trust in free market settings, in private sector, than in any sort of government.
Oh, also note, that you are talking about Citizens United ruling, and AFAIC it's not a problem, it's a correct ruling, because without ability to spend money nobody can challenge the status quo. The system is set to harmonise itself, over time the politicians will all be carbon copies of each other, they will be what the system will expect them to be, and in such environment it is crucial that somebody should be able to use their own resources that they have acquired to break through that ceiling.
People shouldn't be limited in how much money they want to spend ON ANYTHING, so when I say people, I do mean individuals and their businesses.
It's not about the DOOR that should be protected against corruption, it's about the HOUSE that should not be able to corrupt the system.
The house itself, not the door into the house, is where the real corruption takes place. The house itself (government) needs to have the money component removed from it, not the door (elections). The house itself shouldn't be able to steal individual freedoms and sell them, and if they can't do it, then it wouldn't matter at all if somebody spend more than somebody else getting through that door, they wouldn't be able to sell influence and power.
By the way your example doesn't show any real problem.
Both, Joe and Jack are willing participants in the trade, both got their preferred prices, the 0.02 cents was cut out of their trade, but it didn't do anything to hurt them that a little bit more bargaining wouldn't have.
The problem with HFT is not that it does what you describe, it's that there is no free market and so people can't just start their own legal stock exchanges and set their own rules.
We got here through Capitalism... because corporations want power and they can rig the government game in their favor.
- we got here through people always wanting to get something for nothing, and thus they kept electing guys who promised something for nothing. From Theodore Roosevelt and Hoover and FDR all the way to Obama, and everybody in between actually.
Free bread and circuses - people vote for politicians who promise this nonsense, that's how government grows, gets out of the bounds and limitations imposed by the law above gov't - Constitution, that's how gov't corrupts the entire system.
It shouldn't be a surprise that individuals fight back (and I mean businesses, they fight back), they come to politicians with money to buy that power. But politicians were and are stilling that power only so that they could sell it and it's the people who allowed the politicians to steal that power.
Once the power is stolen, it will be sold, there is nothing that can stop that.
Of-course it is a casino. The reason it is a casino though is 'free' money - fake cash (credit) handed out by the Fed to the preferred banks and non-existing interest rates. The real reason for existence of this phenomena is that Nixon defaulted on the dollar in 1971, and since then the money stopped meaning anything.
This default and growth of inflation (money printing) and the resulting growth of gov't and gov't power caused massive outflow of real savings and investments and thus productive capacity to other countries.
Left with only fake money that the world is still willing to take (I wonder for how much longer this will go on, can't be much longer now, the Fed is pretty much out of bullets to keep interest rates down except printing, and thus more and more inflation, which will further diminish desire of people to sell for US dollars), so left only with fake money and no production and a huge gov't apparatus, the sectors that became big are all sectors connected to the government - from banks to military to insurance to energy, and such.
The Wall Street it a giant casino, but it's only a casino because the money is fake and gov't guarantees losses.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no such thing as a 'wage slave'. Everybody is free to attempt their own business or live on charity.
Uh, no. Gaming the system is an English language phrase which denotes a negative consequence has in fact been reached through devious means
- well, you put those words out there - 'gaming the system'. The system is already broken, before anybody introduced HFT, because the system does not allow competition in the market, and so gaming it may carry negative consequences in your mind, but AFAIC it is just a consequence of the previous 'gaming' that was going on. As I said: in a free market economy, without gov't meddling, 'gaming' is not a problem. That's right, somebody doing something negative in a free market environment is only part of the overall economy, and they will not be able to destroy the economy in a free market by gaming some part of it, because a free market economy is self correcting, and somebody abusing part of it will not cause a catastrophe, it may cause some damage to some people, but it's always limited, it doesn't propagate throughout the entire market where there is no gov't intervention.
All these things are fictions in their very nature, as is money itself. "fake money" is money that people don't agree to treat as money. All others are REAL including that which issues from the Fed.
- real money is something that is not manipulated by the gov't and it keeps its value, real money is gold, paper is not.
Here is the problem with your thinking. You don't realize that people behave differently depending on what context they're put in.
- false, that's not a problem with me, a market free of gov't meddling is exactly the admission that meddling is counter-productive because gov't cannot see beyond its direct action.
Do you know how many people lose their jobs or end up without jobs and how the economy suffers because of gov't intervention, gov't caused inflation, meddling with the market? Do you know it? Can you understand the unintended consequences? Do you know that every piece of legislation that is created backfires specifically because of the fact that people modify their behaviour?
When taxes are increased in some brackets, less is collected in those brackets, not because the money flow is decreased there, but because people modify their behaviour and the way the money is paid out. People who prefer free markets prefer them specifically because they understand that people modify behaviour as a response to the force applied to them - rules, laws, regulations, taxes, inflation, these are all game changers, they cause people to find ways to avoid this damage.
Internet routes around the damage, same thing with economy - people route around gov't caused damage.
It works that way MORE when there's democratic government and LESS when there is not democractic government, that's what we can say.
- aha, because the voters are so well informed and they care not about their immediate gain but instead they care about long term sustainability, so they don't elect people into office just for promises of free stuff.....
oh wait, that's the exact opposite of the truth. The truth is that democracy leads to tyranny because it gives people ability to exchange their real freedoms for some promises of free bread, circuses and convenience.
Oh, I never read any Rousseau, stop pretending you understand why I think the way I do.
Good so don't go into government . Most of the problems with our government happen when people who don't believe in it go into it.
- no, if I went to gov't I would only go there to take it apart and destroy it, that's why I don't go into it and that's why I won't be allowed to. Most problems with gov't are because people don't understand the principles of governance, and so they allow the gov't to rule them instead of serving them. People want free shit, that's all there is to it, it's not more complex than that. They vote for crooks that promise free shit.
Th
Prices don't inflate, prices rise and fall.
Money supply is what inflates - it expands and contracts. Prices do not expand, they rise, they don't contract, they fall.
This entire conversation is based on propaganda that is pushed by the powers that want to confuse you and prevent you from understanding most basic concepts.
Hm, that's funny, because our universities were decent places where people could become educated beyond the minimum vocational training
- yeah, thanks to the wealth of the private sector, thanks to the growth of private industries. Thanks to free market capitalism.
Universities do not appear out of thin air, they appear when the private sector creates enough wealth and enough complex problems are solved in order to create that wealth, so that productivity of people grows and most people don't have to be farmers and hunters. All this while the manufacturing can benefit and find new efficiencies if the new types of problems are solved and all of this also means that new types of products can be created that couldn't possibly exist prior to all these gains in productivity by the private sector.
There is no need for education and there can be no education if there is no manufacturing and production and engineering.
they need back when states were bothering to adequately fund universities
- you mean steal enough money from the private sector, from individuals, to subsidise these cesspools of socialism and destruction of freedom. Though I see this working in reverse nowadays, more and more students discover that Ron Paul's ideas are much more attractive than any ideas anybody else has in government.
What, you think that the government is to blame because of subsidized loans?
- well, duh! Where do subsidised loans come from? Would a banker in his right mind give a loan to a student who wouldn't be able to repay it with interest?
Not without government guarantees they wouldn't. And of-course this means that the prices for education would be much lower, like they used to be before all this gov't nonsense, before dep't of education, etc., when students could actually pay for their education by taking summer jobs.
The tuition required by private colleges
- it doesn't matter that they are private colleges, the problem is that the MONEY is public. The money that is given out as loans is public money, so the students aren't price sensitive and the schools know it.
the poor can remain shackled by being less educated than the wealthy
- blah blah blah. The poor are created by the government. Capitalism increases wealth in the system, raises everybody's standard of living, lowers prices for education, almost ALL people used to be poor before capitalism, there are much fewer poor people and their poverty is a very relative term, poor compared to others today, wealthy compared to poor 100 years ago. It is individual entrepreneurship that allows people to get out of poverty, not government, and in a wealthy society a 'poor' person survives no matter what, doesn't die from hunger and illness, he has much more opportunities to get out of his predicament.
Keep capitalist approaches where they belong: industry, stock exchanges, banking, etc. Applying capitalist ideas to things like education and health care is just a covert way to establish and cement a rich aristocracy.
- yeah, there was no education system before capitalism, education was kept to a minimum only the rich could afford most of it, the poor could maybe get a class or two in a church or maybe not. Only capitalism allowed health care to become truly universal, because doctors are also trying to make a living, and it is capitalism that produced all of the wealth that allows all of the research in health care, capitalism allowed specialisation of professional doctors and it is capitalism that created the health insurance, by the way, mid 19th century is when the first health insurance plan was developed and sold, and it used to be actual INSURANCE - as in for very expensive, critical situations, and people paid doctors out of pocket. Doctors used to make house calls, they came to people's houses. It stopped with the gov't
Inflation is expansion of money supply, this does not directly translate into rising prices.
Inflation is about 11-15% per year.
So you don't think he likes porn?
That's nonsense. The second-best implementation will always kick the crap out of the best implementation if priced sufficiently lower.
- you maybe 100% right in THIS, but you are 100% wrong in this:
We need copyright and patent law. But it does need to be made more fair.
It's OK if somebody gets crashed because they couldn't understand that instead of going for perfection in product development, they should have gone to the market sooner, maybe with a product that is not as ideal, but it would sell and it would sell for less, because there is less money was spent developing it.
Make some more money over time and improve your product. You are making a mistake equating the best quality product with the best product for THE MARKET. The market doesn't want your best quality product at highest price, it wants a balanced approach, and if you provide this balanced approach, then you are satisfying the market need, and if you can't understand it, you SHOULD LOSE to your competition.
No, patents and copyrights shouldn't be law.
Engineers of digital restrictions management measures do just that.
- and again, you are missing the root cause - they can only rely on this as long as the gov't is on their side. The gov't enforces the copyright and patent laws, and these shouldn't exist, just like any other law that ensures somebody's business model.
If there was no moral hazard of copyright, the DRM would be a self destructive idea in business, because immediately there would be competition from other distribution channels with DRM being removed, capice?
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So what do you expect people who are not entrepreneurs to do between their position being eliminated and an entrepreneur discovering a "something else"?
- it's very simple. First of all, without gov't involvement and income taxes, people would be able to have real savings, something that people have ALWAYS done on this planet - saved for the rainy day, and rainy days happen, hurricanes happen, illness happens, everything happens. People used to save, then gov't came up with brilliant idea of socialism, and confiscated people's incomes and promised free insurance. Guess what, all of this is crashing because it can never work in the long term, my country of origin is a good test case of why this doesn't work.
OTOH without gov't stealing income, ppl could even buy insurance against losing their job, so EI but privately provided only if you decided to buy it, and I expect that insurers would simply pay out a lump sum in case of a job loss, (which, by the way, is what gov't should do - pay out lump sum and allow people to search for work immediately, instead gov't pays monthly, turning it into a paid vacation, so ppl don't search for work until this vacation expires).
By the way, when economy turns into a recession or even a depression, this means that the free market is trying to fix a problem of resource misallocation, and resources are misallocated by gov't, especially by the Federal reserve or other currency counterfeiting operations.
So when a depression hits, the prices go down due to loss of purchasing power, people are fired, companies are restructured, debts are written off, this is good. This is like a normal course of illness, the way it should play out, this lowers costs and prices for goods, and lower prices help people to survive during such times. What do gov'ts do? Ha, they step in with 'bailouts' and 'stimulus' and they buy assets with more fake money and they try to hold prices artificially high, while pushing interest rates artificially low.
Well, low interest rates give markets a wrong signal, the signal is that there are plenty of savings, but that's not true, so market gets this wrong signal - plenty of savings, and instead of saving, the market takes more risks, does more spending. So instead of building up savings and investment capital, the money is squandered on silly things, like consumer goods (especially funny, when these goods are build in other countries).
The point is this - go ahead and figure out the logic that the Federal reserve should keep interest rates low artificially and prop up asset prices, so that actually the value of money goes down, which raises prices in real terms (or like in Japan for the last 20 years - prevents significant price reductions), and how does this help people during recession or depression, when they are already out of jobs? It doesn't help, it hurts them. Yet it's funny, so many ignorant people are for more gov't spending and taxes and borrowing and printing during those years, as if this can help the economy to restructure.
Instead yet another asset bubble is inflated, people still are unemployed, they may feel like the economy is better because they can spend more fake money because they can leverage their house for example, refinance it and use the money to buy more foreign made goods or go to another vacation. All this, while jobs are still leaving, because the interest rate is such, that savings are destr
There is no problem with parasites. You are looking at it from the wrong perspective, neither you, no government it looks like are able to understand a very simple thing: nobody in business should be protected, even when one business steals from another, if the result is a cheaper, better product, then the customers win.
We don't need to care about HOW specifically anybody provides us with goods and services, the people who want to make money will make it their business to ensure that they have the advantage in the market somehow, they will just understand that it is just one more risk of getting into that business, but so what?
People shouldn't care that 2 or 20 businesses are duking it out, the only thing people understand is that from this fight they get better value, that's all.
Government shouldn't be protecting any specific business, any specific person's model to make money. We SHOULD NOT CARE that somebody's idea may or will be replicated.
Now, we MAY want to look at the product we purchase and try and reward those, who come up with the original products and ideas first, it's up to us, but we shouldn't be forced to do it either.
Again, there is nothing special about anybody's business, let them figure it out, they will, if they don't somebody else will.
People do not stop competing just because there is no government protection against borrowing ideas or even specific implementations, quite the opposite is true, people compete more.
Do you know why? Because it's not about inventing something new, it's about coming into the market with the best implementation.
By the way, this is the reason that large companies that are good at building and selling products often have research departments and many do long term research (IBM, Xerox, phone companies, energy companies, auto-companies, builders, manufacturers, chemical companies, medical companies, electronics companies, food companies, etc.etc.), they hire people to do research and they pay them. So if you are good at research and innovations you can do it on your own and sell it to large companies or you can work for a company and do it there.
But you can also try to innovate and bring your own product into the market. There is a way to hold off competition for a while at least - trade secrets. That's what should be used and is used in the market. Trade secrets are great - they provide some time before competition catches on, but they don't crate lawsuit happy environment and they don't prevent people from trying to figure out how to build the same thing differently, which really means they don't prevent all sorts of innovation, they encourage innovation.
Yeah, and thus democracy is a gateway to tyranny. People will absolutely give up their freedoms for a little bit of convenience or some free cheese in a mousetrap, but they can't even understand that they stepped into that mousetrap.
Oh, another crazy guy with genius ideas about breaking businesses, about what companies 'always working' the way he believes.
Absent government there is an actual free market, and in it there are no barriers to entry into the market in any specific industry that are unnatural (laws). There are only natural barriers to entry - lack of savings and investment, lack of ability, lack of knowledge, etc.
Companies do not become monopolies absent government, if they are successful, it's because they are good at providing whatever product or service, and the customers pick them, they become large, their competitors may reduce in size, some may disappear.
Should a company stop being interesting to the customers, should there be a way to reduce costs, reduce prices, become more efficient, competition will arise, again, this only is true for a free market, but in tech we see much freer markets than elsewhere so far.
Google, FB, etc., they are monopolies only when it comes to their own services, they don't prevent you from starting a business that is similar, the government will not prevent you from doing it mostly. But if you can't compete with them, it's because they have a good chunk of the market, and clients who are unwilling to come your way, and it means you can't beat the existing offer.
Can you beat the offer of FB or Google that the services are offered for free?
Actually there is gov't interference. Megaupload could be regarded as Youtube's competitor, the gov't destroyed that company, not to help Google, but to help some media companies, oh well, in the process they killed off a competitor to youtube actually. A competitor who was charging money for premium services even, but a viable competitor, Megaupload had tens or hundreds of millions in revenues.
Human nature is not what you think, human nature is to try and get things for free without paying. So you are using Google's youtube and you probably weren't paying for Megaupload, so Google provided you with a service that you enjoyed and you didn't want to switch.
By the way, this doesn't mean that a company cannot go wrong, of-course it can. A company can go wrong and it can lose its business, where is Polaroid?
A company CAN do wrong, and it's fine as long as gov't doesn't step in with bailouts and creates a huge moral hazard, destroys viable competition this way, causes massive dislocation of resources, etc.
Fuck the law, there shouldn't be that law, the gov't shouldn't be allowed to pass laws that protect any specific business model, any specific business, any specific individual from other individuals in business.
Gov't is the culprit here, sure, there is a law, but it is an unjust law. Copyright and patent laws are unjust and every time anybody is in jury and there is government on one side and an individual on the other side the jury must nullify the law. Yes, the law is broken, no, it shouldn't exist.
Yes this, it is insane to hear people rant against the government (military spending, PATRIOT ACT, SOPA etc) in one breath then say there needs to be more government regulation of stuff in the next.
- yes, it's insane, I have never said in my life that there should be more government in anything, I challenge you to find a comment like that of mine.
Yeah, that's how they hijacked the Republic and destroyed it.
Constitution is a set of laws above the government, there is a specific manner in which it can be amended, so it is possible to change it, but what you are talking about is NOT that, you are talking about seizing powers without amending the contract, and this means the contract is broken.
The States are free to leave the union.
Right, and the Constitution allows the federal gov't to regulate interstate commerce, this clause is completely hijacked by the power hungry government.
Regulating commerce does not imply regulating business itself (a company). Commerce is an ACT, a business (a company) is an entity that gov't shouldn't be allowed to regulate. An act of trade across state lines is what was authorised to be regulated.
Gov't must not be allowed to create laws, that provide lawyers with incentives to sue private individuals and companies because they don't provide something as specific as handicap spaces. This must be up to the business to decide whether they want to provide handicap spaces, ramps, CC, etc. Gov't distorts the market, causes higher prices for everybody, just because some people need extra accommodations, and this is absolutely wrong.
If you run a business and you want more customers, you'll design your business with handicap facilities in mind, otherwise it must absolutely your choice not to do it.
The disabled in any way will have to be inconvenienced, their priorities are not above priorities of the rest of the population, unfortunately for them they must pay a higher price for a product that is provided to them in a manner convenient to them, we shouldn't be allowing gov't to divert resources and allow lawsuits against businesses just because they don't cater specifically to any particular set of people (and yes, I include any set).
An individual must be able to post a sign on his doors: no blacks allowed or no women or no gays, or whatever he wants.
It is absolutely none of gov't business to meddle. The only thing gov't should be doing in terms of equality is treating all of the people equally itself. Yes, the most important problem for minorities is unequal treatment before the law.
As to a private business not catering to the disabled or to jews or whatever, it's their business and I would like to see if anybody would be stupid enough to do that to their own establishment today.
It costs a lot of moeny and doesn't bring in much additional revenue
- the actual problem is that gov't again steals freedoms from people (businesses).
IT IS possible to add CC to content, it's possible to create a company that would just do that, is it profitable? Well, if it is IMPORTANT TO THE DEAF PEOPLE TO BUY THIS PROGRAMMING, then they would pay.
The rest of the society must not be forced by the government into providing things to people who are not their customers.
Face it, deaf people are NOT customers to musicians, for example.
I go much further - there shouldn't be any gov't involvement into any of this disability stuff, there are no 'disabled people rights', there are no 'women rights', there are no 'gay rights', there are no 'minority rights', there are only individual rights.
Individual rights are always crushed whenever gov't decides to provide a group of people with some specific entitlements, and thus pushes obligations upon other individuals, who are in business, and then the ignorant masses call this 'rights'.
Nonsense, free market doesn't create monopolies, only governments create monopolies, because governments can legislate competitors out of the market, and what you call 'monopolies' in the market are only economies of scale that are successful as long as they provide the products and services that market is willing to buy.
This decision by the judge is another overreach by the government, the gov't shouldn't be allowed even to pass laws that regulate businesses, gov't shouldn't be allowed to force businesses to provide product in any specific way or manner.
If there is a market for deaf people accessing netflix, it will be met. If there is no market (or insufficient market for competition to exist in netflix space) then there wouldn't be competition in that specific market segment.
It doesn't mean that the deaf can't access the data, but it wouldn't be as convenient for them, they'd have to access that data some other way, but so what? Life is not fair, nothing is fair and gov't shouldn't be allowed to mess with that fact, it only destroys competition that way.
If Netflix cannot provide content without CC, then others won't be able to either, so this INCREASES the barrier to entry into that industry, this WILL raise prices and this WILL destroy quality (how many programs will simply disappear because there won't be CC made for them?)
In any case, as per usual, the gov't steals more freedoms, as per usual, majority of the population doesn't understand it.
The real problem with FB IPO was that FB wasn't allowed to trade their stock earlier, they weren't allowed to trade on the open market in 2010, when the prices were still not crazy, and so the gov't "protected" the general public from the "dangers" of buying a stock, whose price is still NOT manipulated by the system. People should be able to offer their stock without having to comply with nonsensical gov't regulations, it's up to the market to do research and buy or avoid a stock, gov't shouldn't be 'protecting' people. The only thing gov't is good at protecting people from is actually being able to build up savings and have meaningful investments, and governments do it with regulations, inflation (money printing), fake interest rates, taxes, etc.
Gaming the system isn't a problem as long as there is a way for other people in the economy to set up competing systems and set their own rules, try and do that today.
With over hundred thousand regulations in banking, finance and investment industries, with things like the Federal reserve with its fake money spigot, fake interest rates, fake insurance by gov't (like FDIC, FHA, SS, Medicare, etc.), misnomers like the Patriot Act (probably the least patriotic piece of legislation in US history), etc.etc., nobody can actually start their own stock exchange and expect to last for more than a day without gov't agents knocking on the doors, taking down servers, confiscating assets, property, shutting down your operation.
Here is the problem with your thinking: you think greed is bad, inherently terrible and humans are irrational, but then immediately you want to give more power to the government by reducing freedoms of individuals (and while corporations are fiction, not real entities, people behind them - the owners, they are real) to use all of their abilities and property to fight the system and get the best outcome in this rigged environment.
So people are irrational and greedy, but government will be rational and selfless for the benefit of all?
I don't think so, I disagree with you, history disagrees with you, there is no example in history where the government with power was not abusing it, and it's always worse for people when it's their government, that abuses power over the people, than any particular individual or company, because individuals and companies do not have legal standing to abuse you and you don't have to deal with them, they can't make a law that you can't escape.
I don't trust government, I don't trust people, I don't trust people in government. I much rather see the same people that I do not trust in free market settings, in private sector, than in any sort of government.
Oh, also note, that you are talking about Citizens United ruling, and AFAIC it's not a problem, it's a correct ruling, because without ability to spend money nobody can challenge the status quo. The system is set to harmonise itself, over time the politicians will all be carbon copies of each other, they will be what the system will expect them to be, and in such environment it is crucial that somebody should be able to use their own resources that they have acquired to break through that ceiling.
People shouldn't be limited in how much money they want to spend ON ANYTHING, so when I say people, I do mean individuals and their businesses.
It's not about the DOOR that should be protected against corruption, it's about the HOUSE that should not be able to corrupt the system.
The house itself, not the door into the house, is where the real corruption takes place. The house itself (government) needs to have the money component removed from it, not the door (elections). The house itself shouldn't be able to steal individual freedoms and sell them, and if they can't do it, then it wouldn't matter at all if somebody spend more than somebody else getting through that door, they wouldn't be able to sell influence and power.
By the way your example doesn't show any real problem.
Both, Joe and Jack are willing participants in the trade, both got their preferred prices, the 0.02 cents was cut out of their trade, but it didn't do anything to hurt them that a little bit more bargaining wouldn't have.
The problem with HFT is not that it does what you describe, it's that there is no free market and so people can't just start their own legal stock exchanges and set their own rules.
The reason as to why companies do not pay dividends but instead stocks are traded only for arbitrage is that the corporate bonds don't have to compete with gov't bonds - the interest rates are artificially low, thank the Fed.
We got here through Capitalism... because corporations want power and they can rig the government game in their favor.
- we got here through people always wanting to get something for nothing, and thus they kept electing guys who promised something for nothing. From Theodore Roosevelt and Hoover and FDR all the way to Obama, and everybody in between actually.
Free bread and circuses - people vote for politicians who promise this nonsense, that's how government grows, gets out of the bounds and limitations imposed by the law above gov't - Constitution, that's how gov't corrupts the entire system.
It shouldn't be a surprise that individuals fight back (and I mean businesses, they fight back), they come to politicians with money to buy that power. But politicians were and are stilling that power only so that they could sell it and it's the people who allowed the politicians to steal that power.
Once the power is stolen, it will be sold, there is nothing that can stop that.
Of-course it is a casino. The reason it is a casino though is 'free' money - fake cash (credit) handed out by the Fed to the preferred banks and non-existing interest rates. The real reason for existence of this phenomena is that Nixon defaulted on the dollar in 1971, and since then the money stopped meaning anything.
This default and growth of inflation (money printing) and the resulting growth of gov't and gov't power caused massive outflow of real savings and investments and thus productive capacity to other countries.
Left with only fake money that the world is still willing to take (I wonder for how much longer this will go on, can't be much longer now, the Fed is pretty much out of bullets to keep interest rates down except printing, and thus more and more inflation, which will further diminish desire of people to sell for US dollars), so left only with fake money and no production and a huge gov't apparatus, the sectors that became big are all sectors connected to the government - from banks to military to insurance to energy, and such.
The Wall Street it a giant casino, but it's only a casino because the money is fake and gov't guarantees losses.
So your 'solution' is to hurt somebody with taxes. Well, at least you are straight forward with the reasons you want to do it.