first private company that dominated a previously free market was?
- nice oxymoron. Government by definition is not a 'free market' system, it is a coercive system, where those in power command and control those without the power.
That is why USA was a very successful country in 19th century up to the WWI basically, because it was the freest country in the world, it truly was, as government was insignificant, and that what freedom is - insignificant government.
Of-course it was created artificially, this system where government was insignificant, it wasn't a spontaneous system, like what monarchies are - spontaneous system arising out of struggle for power among many various tribal leaders.
They dominated everyone else because there were no rules.
- yes, and that is what CONSTITUTION is - law above government. You think you just discovered America with this stuff or something? You completely misunderstand the history of the country. America is the ANSWER to the system that is built upon tribalism and slavery - monarchies.
If Darwinism is a much fairer system, then how come you can have apex predators?
- Darwinism is a much fairer system than one you have right now, where there are in fact 'apex predators', who do you think Blythe Masters, Henry Paulson, Lloyd C. Blankfein are? They are your 'apex predators', and they are here right now, within the system that you have - lawless system, where there is no law above the government, because the Constitution, the LAW above the government has been abandoned and it's likely you cheered every time when that happened.
Did you cheer for the Federal reserve? SS? Medicare? EI? Minimum wage? Anything that has 'civil liberties' in it? EPA, HUD, FDA, FHA, dep't of education, energy, commerce, agriculture, interior, FBI? Well, then you are cheering the destruction of the law above the government, because none of those things are Constitutional.
You are calling me an idiot while preaching that nature is not a hippy commune, completely oblivious to what I have written in this very thread previously: I do not expect people to play nice I DO NOT PLAY NICE.
The only way to ensure EQUALITY UNDER LAW is to ensure that government firstly is not above the law, and once you cheer for anything that is above the law, you are cheering against equality under the law, and that's the only thing that matters.
Those 'apex predators' are above the law for a reason - you have removed the law.
Under free market system in USA in 19th century the prices were falling.
That is all I need to say to show that your point is completely invalid. Under a monopoly system, prices do not fall, they don't have to. In fact under a monopoly system prices always rise, and monopoly system is always created and maintained by government.
There is no monopoly in free market, economy of scale, even if it is at one point the ONLY player in the market is NOT a monopoly. It means it's the most efficient way for the market to get the products/services in that industry at that point in time. Nobody is standing with GUNS, forcing licenses, laws, taxes, barriers to entry, regulations, providing bail outs, free fake money, stimulus, etc. Everything that gov't does leads to rising nominal prices. The market still fights this by controlling the real value of things, so prices in real money adjust (thus oil is very cheap in terms of gold for example). The gov't creates monopolies, fixes prices and all it does is that it decreases freedoms, decreases quality, decreases choices, increases prices. It also creates underground economy of-course and eventually pushes the economy towards recession and then depression, and that's what you have.
Darwinism is a much better, much fairer system than what you have now - tyranny.
- I don't understand the question. Money always exists as long as people overproduce and underconsume of what they overproduce. The difference IS money.
Of-course the best money is free market money, and free market is known to use gold as the store of value, unit of account and means of exchange.
Of-course paper currencies are tried over and over and they always fail and economies always return to something valuable eventually, because you can't have a rising economy with fake money, only a falling economy.
Was there people who controlled more money than others?
- I don't understand the question. There are always people with more money than others. I have more money than many people, and many more people have more money than I do.
I work for my money - I overproduce and I underconsume and the difference is what I save and then I reinvest (my business) or store it (gold). Should everybody have the same money in your ideal world? What would that mean?
So if I work a bit more than some other guy and I produce a bit more than some other guy I am going to have a bigger difference between what I produce and consume than some other guy. What is your solution? I know the socialist solution - steal from me and give it to the other guy, make me his slave. Well, I don't like socialism for a good reason, I am anti-slavery, I like freedom.
Were there people who became crime lords and manipulated trade?
- I don't understand the question. Are there criminals under ALL circumstances and under all systems? Are people rewarded more under free market system for being a useful producer rather than under a more totalitarian system, where production is not the key, but theft (currency counterfeiting) is used instead?
There are no free markets that do not end up with someone becoming more powerful than others.
- this is not a conclusion that follows from any of your questions.
There are people who become more powerful than others under totalitarian regimes, under so called socialist regimes, under communist or fascist regimes, under those regimes some people become much more powerful than others.
Under free market there is only a democratic way to become more powerful - approval of market.
Under gov't systm it's not about approval of market at all, it's about your elite telling you: these people will be your rulers and will be your monopolists, and the rest are just a 'mass'.
First: I don't need to go as far back as tree climbing ancestors, I can point out the 1870 to 1913 time period, when USA became the economic engine of the world, people coming to USA for the least government control, for the most freedom. What do you think 'land of opportunity' means? Lots of government?
There were no regulations of business, no income, payroll, corporate taxes, no such thing as fake money printed by a quasi gov't agency. Not even a real standing army.
The truth is that there are no monopolies in the Free Market, only economies of scale, and they exist only as long as they are near the sweet spot - the most value for the least price. Once there is space to provide more value for the same money or same value for a smaller price or even better - a better quality product for even a cheaper price, either that very economy of scale will provide it or it will face competition.
We KNOW it is true, since over the 19th century prices were FALLING all the time. Even today, where there is more competition and less ability for gov't to meddle, prices fall. All the innovation coming out of high tech industries and even oil, that's right - oil is a high tech industry. The prices are falling.
Now, in case of oil the prices are not falling as fast as in other industries, but they are falling. But that's why in nominal dollar values prices seem to rise, while in other high tech industries prices fall even in nominal values, but in real terms - gold, the prices are falling across the board where there is innovation and less gov't intervention.
As to 'merchants playing nice' - I never said they will and I wouldn't myself play nice.
BUT that's the POINT of the LAW above the government - Constitution. And the only reason that merchants (and not actually merchants, it started with bankers), were able to bend the rules and to go above and beyond what the Constitution allowed was people NOT GIVING A SHIT about the rule of law above the government - Constitution.
But that's alright, this experiment has failed, but it lasted a pretty good stretch of time, we have learned something about it and if we bother to build a better, freer society at some point (2.0), we'll have something to look at and compare our ideas to.
The next gov't for a Free society must be very explicitly prohibited from meddling with business and infrastructure and from having a standing army and from printing money. Very explicitly prohibited, with real penalties attached to that concept.
Merchants cannot pass laws unless the population is willing to allow them to pass whatever laws, it's with the approval (silent or explicit) of the voters that politicians are in power who will not stay limited by the rule of law above the government. The people deserve the government they have, they are either complacent or they provide approval, because they are just as greedy as those specific 'merchants', who want to affect the law.
Indeed, once somebody messes with the law above the government and creates preferential conditions for himself, everybody has to attempt and do so, otherwise they will get crushed. The people, OTOH, are just too happy to vote for politicians who will promise to give them something by taking it away from others, well, that's how the government becomes lawless. That's how society becomes lawless.
It is completely wrong to allow gov't to maintain monopolies and to stifle the Free Market, it's wrong morally and it's wrong practically. You are NOT controlling a government monopoly. You are NOT in control of government monopolies, no matter how much you want to believe it.
You are not in control of their parties, you are not in control of the gov't contractors, you are not in control of the Fed, you are not in control of the banks, military, whatever. You think you are in control of those gov't monopolies?
You have NO POWER to control them.
In the free market you do have power, there are no monopolies in the free market in the first place, it's a huge lie. There are economies of scale, but no monopolies. Monopolies have to be protected by the government, economies of scale are only on top as long as people keep buying from them.
But keep dreaming that are in control of something, NOW, when the government is completely LAWLESS - it doesn't live by the rule of law, the Constitution.
Keep dreaming that you can control that, which is lawless.
The only idiot here is that, who believe he can control the lawless government.
Government is the only power that can create and maintain monopolies.
Markets produce economies of scale and none of them are monopolies. An economy of scale can seem like a monopoly until a way to minimise costs is found and an opportunity for more profit is created and there is a new entry into the market.
Yesterday's so called 'monopolies' disappear and new companies appear.
Government on the other hand does not allow a company to disappear regardless of what market wants. It doesn't matter if technology changes if there is a way to make more profit by moving in a different direction, a government protected monopoly is protected with regulations, taxes, fake free money, etc.
Finally: an economy of scale that can seem like a monopoly IS voted for by the market, which means it is providing the most value for the lowest price, so in case of free market, the consumer wins when economies of scale are created.
With government this is not the case at all, the people are forced to use the only game in town if they would completely go with a different product based on new technologies, whatever new cost cutting measures.
Government is the force that ensures prices stay up and go higher.
Public land is not owned by people, it's owned by nobody, that's the real definition.
Public land is constantly being used by corporations, who are paying license fees to mine on it, do whatever on it, where do you see public getting the benefit of this? The public ends up 'owning' this wrecked land, while the company didn't have to pay for anything actually except the straight business of mining, but nothing that had to do with actually acquiring real rights to mining on that land, nothing that had to do with legal liability, environmental liability, nothing.
Why is that? Because again, by definition, public land is owned by 'public', which means by nobody. There is no owner, the gov't is not an owner, the gov't is just a system that is used to steal resources from 'the public' that supposedly 'owns' that land.
The public would be much better served if the land was sold off at an auction, the real price was established and liability and costs weren't socialised.
As to 'Grand Canyons', etc., same thing. Of-course it's less of a problem if nobody is mining there, but they can still DUMP stuff there. There is a big issue of maintenance, and why exactly should the public be paying for maintaining things like canyons and forests, etc?
If it's so important that a canyon stays a canyon for others to come and see, there are always zoning laws that are set by local governments, not FEDERAL government. There are State and municipal and other types of regional governments, federal gov't has nothing to do with this.
Lastly: all that we have seen throughout the history is that the government is just a tool to steal, nothing else. Not protect any society or any environment. Who I am - doesn't matter. What matters is that I am right.
There should be no public land, that is all there is to it. There is no ownership of public land, it's by the definition without an owner, thus it is abused, and when a public property is abused by a corporation, it's all about socialising costs and corrupting the gov't and causing maximum amount of damage to that so called 'public property'.
At the very minimum no public property should be allowed to be used for private purposes by any business, ideally of-course public would own no property collectively at all.
Individuals are against unrestrained growth of government because a growing government is a growing tyranny. Individuals agree on the role of the government (at least in USA it was individuals who got together and formed the federal gov't) and they put limits on what the gov't can do.
Clearly it didn't work out to prevent the growth, so some new methods will have to be devised, it's not like we have the perfect solutions to prevent government from growing, on the contrary, our solutions are very imperfect, which is why government can get out of the limits imposed upon it originally and grow in a cancerous manner to consume and devour the individuals and the entire private sector.
People should only care about themselves, this is the best thing we can hope for, and they should be taking responsibility for themselves and they should be prevented from using the force of government to get subsidies from those, who do better, because that's what destroys the economy. Everybody should grow up and accept it, but more importantly, we have to set up the next form of government in a way that would make it ever harder for people with those ideas to break out of the limits imposed upon them when the gov't is set up.
Who are you talking to, don't you have a site to run?
That's right, government doesn't participate in market, and it's not an irrelevant argument, it means government cannot price things in any meaningful way, that's the reason it should not be in any business, including business of "leasing out land" for any purpose, because it cannot know what the appropriate price for that lease is.
Also gov't should not be subsidising any business, that's why it shouldn't be removing liability and responsibility, and limiting liability to, I don't know, say 75 million USD per oil spill incident, such as was observed in case of BP deep drilling disaster, is the reason why gov't shouldn't be doing it. The moral hazard that is created by such limitation of liability allows private businesses to socialise the costs.
Government cannot 'steal' land from people to sell it. Either it is public land, and then no business can be allowed to mine on it (of-course I am against any public land on a principle), or it is to be mined and then it cannot remain public land, it must be sold off so that the public gets proper payment for it on an open auction, which is the only way to decide what the actual price/value of that property is, the public gets paid and the private owner can mine on that land. Since the public gets paid, it can use the money to ensure that no public land is polluted, and that's the correct way to fund such a project.
As to gov't getting money (good/bad) - gov't getting any money is bad, because it grows the gov't. In case when gov't supposedly 'owns' public property, getting rid of those assets at fair market values is good, as long as that money is not wasted, but more importantly it's good because there wouldn't be any limited liability, no moral hazard and no public bail outs. Well, of-course that shouldn't happen in any case.
Lastly: you can't even parse what you are reading, is the time-cube capsule that foggy? The point of using the funds received from the auctioning off the assets is not to 'clean up the mess' but it is to control the situation and in case there is pollution to force the private company to bear responsibility.
In fact it should be the private company who is forced to clean up the mess, should this mess transfer from their private property to any public property. Of-course if the pollution is transferred to other private properties, it is between the owners, not between an owner and the public.
You need to check your blood pressure, it seems to be overflowing.
Funny though, they have what, over half a billion of accounts? I don't know if that's half a billion people of-course, maybe most of the accounts are dead or maybe not, but if they have even 1/10th of accounts that are real then actually they could easily claim they have a 'mandate from the people', can't they? Sounds ridiculous for now, but just wait until Sugarburger comes out declaring he is now the new world's dear leader.
What's up with all these laws, that are getting passed and the people who are directly or indirectly responsible for passing them are all promising not to use the new powers they acquire?
Why don't they just own up to the truth - there is no reason to pass these privacy and freedom destroying laws if you have no reason to use them, you pass them because you are intending to use them (or you are intending for them to be used, even if it is not you directly who is going to use them).
When is it going to stop exactly and why would it stop?
I said, government shouldn't actually own any so called 'public land', but if it owns it, it must protect it, otherwise what kind of a 'public land' is it, that it is not protected by the public and is given out to private companies to mine on as they wish and do with it as they wish? That's is a subsidy, socialising of costs, that is something that could force Smith to roll over in his grave.
Yes? And why would that suddenly happen just because the govt didn't own the lands? The "holy hand of the free market" would touch their hearts and make them immune to corruption?
- can't you read? I didn't say that would just 'automatically happen', I proposed something - that government is supposed to take care of property it supposedly 'owns'.
So when somebody pollutes and this pollution crosses to the 'public property', government would be liable to protect it but also would have the resources to do so, because these resources would come from the auctions of those pieces of 'public land' that would be sold on the market.
How did you read it that it was going to happen 'automatically', I do not know.
I have never doubted the fervor of your beliefs or principles, but I drank the Ayn Rand Kool Aid for 15 years. Then I decided to get over it.
- yeah, well I just read her books this year, I even put my take on them on this very site. Yet I have had my principles for my entire life, pretty much never was a socialist at all, maybe that's because I was born in a former 'communist' country many decades ago.
My principles do not come out of somebody else's thinking, I could have written those books she wrote all on my own (not the same stories, but the same principles).
I've just decided that it's completely soulless and without any form of empathy.
- yeah, well you have never lived in a really soulless country and I have, and that was it.
AFAIC it is soulless and without empathy and without principles to believe in government and government domination over individuals for the 'good of the collective'. There is no such thing AFAIC as the 'good of the collective'. It's a bunch of nonsense to control the simple-minded while robbing the economy.
. And I just don't see pure capitalism providing the solutions that
- I don't know what 'pure capitalism' is, but I understand free market.
It doesn't matter to me how the free market structures its economy, the only thing that matters is the freedom of the individual to decide how to live his life, and as long as he is not hurting other people, he must have his freedom, especially freedom not to be dragged in by the 'collective' and to be forced to work as a slave of the collective.
The more I've watched economics since I gave up on believing the 'libertarian-capitalist' stuff, I'm convinced that a lot of the assumptions of these models is completely wrong. It's like when physicist assume a perfectly spherical cow. It makes the math easy, but it's not accurate.
- the only economics that exists is free market economics, everything else is not actually economics, everything else is tyranny and dictatorship and destruction of economics.
You can watch the video in my sig, it's a good start.
So when you could see some train wrecks coming (like Greenspan telling people to borrow against their homes because it's "free money") it's hard to believe people who so fervently believe the Free Market Will Fix.
- and your argument that the free market is not working is the chairman of the federal reserve system saying: here is free money?
There you go, you have no clue what economics is, you have no clue what free market is, you have no clue what the federal reserve is, you don't know what money is.
Bernanke denied that the Fed was inflating the housing bubble even while he was actively doing so and declaring that his goal is to maintain house and stock values. The Fed even had a fake commission to "study" the reasons for the housing bubble, which came out with the conclusion that more government is needed.
Why was it fake? Because it never asked for participation of the peoplewho actually actively predicted the bubble and have placed their bets against it and made a ton of money. How did they do it, are they much smarter than the Fed? Well, maybe they are, maybe the Fed is just lying, but that commission was fake and took 20 million to conduct, while all they had to do was buy a 20 dollar
- Oh, so you are telling me that the corporate profits come out of thin air, that people are not participating in this bargain deal, getting this stuff cheaply?
Many towns had to be abandoned over industrial pollution and yet I constantly hear it's government regulations that cause the problems.
- yes, it is government that is causing the problem in nearly all cases where mining is involved. Whose land is it?
The gov't holds this so called 'public land', well then how come corporations can mine on it? So it's the government that allows the corporations to mine on land that is held public. Same with oil drilling and the 75 Million USD liability cap on deep water drilling.
This IS a government created problem, because government holds this land and allows companies to come and to mine on it without actually participating in a market of any kind. The gov't sells licenses to their preferred companies and takes away liability and responsibility.
What should be done instead, government shouldn't be allowed to own any property, and definitely government shouldn't be holding property where anybody is allowed to mine on it at all.
Whatever land that gov't holds in 'public' possession where somebody wants to mine or do any business, this land has to be auctioned off.
What do you think would happen then?
First of all the land would be sold in small chunks, because nobody could afford to buy it outright. So it would be sold in small pieces to separate buyers, and they would own that property. They could mine it themselves, but many would lease it to be mined.
So this would not be a public problem anymore, the gov't would collect huge amounts of revenue from these auctions. Selling piece by piece for example, not allowing any mining on gov't 'owned' land, this could control the mining industry much more effectively than whatever gov't is doing right now, and this would bring more revenue to the gov't as well, though that is a bad thing of-course, but if that money was actually immediately earmarked for purposes of controlling any pollution running off such lands and making sure that if pollution spreads from those private lands to the public lands, responsibility would be immediately assigned.
There is an entire slew of reasons why in fact these are government created problems, and most of them have to do with corruption and moral hazards of removing liability and reducing costs of mining by completely removing the real market prices from the market, because government cannot ever discover REAL value and pricing of anything, because it never has to compete with any private entity bidding for the rights of ownership.
Space exploration doesn't make poor people richer **TODAY** either.
Why should anybody take a long term outlook today if the government is ever more willing to destroy savings and investment by keeping interest rates on long term bonds as low as interest rates on 6 month short term debt?
By the way, which one of poor people is willing to spend his own money on this?
That's pretty basic economics and even physics stuff.
The more of a resource there is, the more it will be used.
The more of some form of a resource or energy or a product there is and the lower the barriers of using it are, the more of it will be used, always driving the usage up and as a result using 100% of it.
Usage increases until 100% of a resource is used up. Is that really such a new idea?
In economics of-course it's tied to a cost of using something - the less pricey something is the more it will be used. You can look at it from every perspective, from free money by the fed, welfare, EI, SS, Medicare or food-stamps to other concepts like youtube accounts. Nearly everybody has got one, the only thing that limits usage there is laziness.
I could summarise it this way: usage expands to occupy all of the available resources and the limits around usage are set by the price (or other type of expenditure, like energy expenditure) of using them.
- no, we do not know that because we do not have enough EXPERIENCE with having actual free societies, we have had very few of them so far, and it seems that we are increasing the magnitude of the experiments with every new one that we start.
So my contention is that the next free society that is built (USA is done) will last longer than USA will have more barriers against destructive forces that try to overrun the free society to steal its wealth.
That's why socialism was invented as the long term answer.
- actually socialism has a much SHORTER life span than the USA free society had, socialism is crashing all around us and hopefully within our lifetimes we will see many of these socialist states disappear altogether.
They have 2 ways to go, unfortunately one way is towards more tyranny and less freedoms, but the second way is towards more freedoms and less tyranny, and I am encouraged to see that various places, including Scandinavia are moving in the right direction (slowly but surely).
So if this holds water and people abroad follow these news, they can also start their own interesting cases of litigation, where it goes even beyond computer languages.
How about Hebrew? There are about 8 million people around the world who speak it and it's quite artificial. I am not sure that his descendants will go as far as declare copyright (didn't Tolkien's relatives do just that), but the possibility would be there.
Could it mean that 8 million around the world, and specifically 5 million in Israel would be on a hook for royalty payments? After all, many of them speak it on everyday basis.
Slashdot Mirror
first private company that dominated a previously free market was?
- nice oxymoron. Government by definition is not a 'free market' system, it is a coercive system, where those in power command and control those without the power.
That is why USA was a very successful country in 19th century up to the WWI basically, because it was the freest country in the world, it truly was, as government was insignificant, and that what freedom is - insignificant government.
Of-course it was created artificially, this system where government was insignificant, it wasn't a spontaneous system, like what monarchies are - spontaneous system arising out of struggle for power among many various tribal leaders.
They dominated everyone else because there were no rules.
- yes, and that is what CONSTITUTION is - law above government. You think you just discovered America with this stuff or something? You completely misunderstand the history of the country. America is the ANSWER to the system that is built upon tribalism and slavery - monarchies.
If Darwinism is a much fairer system, then how come you can have apex predators?
- Darwinism is a much fairer system than one you have right now, where there are in fact 'apex predators', who do you think Blythe Masters, Henry Paulson, Lloyd C. Blankfein are? They are your 'apex predators', and they are here right now, within the system that you have - lawless system, where there is no law above the government, because the Constitution, the LAW above the government has been abandoned and it's likely you cheered every time when that happened.
Did you cheer for the Federal reserve? SS? Medicare? EI? Minimum wage? Anything that has 'civil liberties' in it? EPA, HUD, FDA, FHA, dep't of education, energy, commerce, agriculture, interior, FBI? Well, then you are cheering the destruction of the law above the government, because none of those things are Constitutional.
You are calling me an idiot while preaching that nature is not a hippy commune, completely oblivious to what I have written in this very thread previously: I do not expect people to play nice I DO NOT PLAY NICE.
The only way to ensure EQUALITY UNDER LAW is to ensure that government firstly is not above the law, and once you cheer for anything that is above the law, you are cheering against equality under the law, and that's the only thing that matters.
Those 'apex predators' are above the law for a reason - you have removed the law.
Under free market system in USA in 19th century the prices were falling.
That is all I need to say to show that your point is completely invalid. Under a monopoly system, prices do not fall, they don't have to. In fact under a monopoly system prices always rise, and monopoly system is always created and maintained by government.
There is no monopoly in free market, economy of scale, even if it is at one point the ONLY player in the market is NOT a monopoly. It means it's the most efficient way for the market to get the products/services in that industry at that point in time. Nobody is standing with GUNS, forcing licenses, laws, taxes, barriers to entry, regulations, providing bail outs, free fake money, stimulus, etc. Everything that gov't does leads to rising nominal prices. The market still fights this by controlling the real value of things, so prices in real money adjust (thus oil is very cheap in terms of gold for example). The gov't creates monopolies, fixes prices and all it does is that it decreases freedoms, decreases quality, decreases choices, increases prices. It also creates underground economy of-course and eventually pushes the economy towards recession and then depression, and that's what you have.
Darwinism is a much better, much fairer system than what you have now - tyranny.
There is no such thing as a 'natural monopoly'.
Was there money?
- I don't understand the question. Money always exists as long as people overproduce and underconsume of what they overproduce. The difference IS money.
Of-course the best money is free market money, and free market is known to use gold as the store of value, unit of account and means of exchange.
Of-course paper currencies are tried over and over and they always fail and economies always return to something valuable eventually, because you can't have a rising economy with fake money, only a falling economy.
Was there people who controlled more money than others?
- I don't understand the question. There are always people with more money than others. I have more money than many people, and many more people have more money than I do.
I work for my money - I overproduce and I underconsume and the difference is what I save and then I reinvest (my business) or store it (gold). Should everybody have the same money in your ideal world? What would that mean?
So if I work a bit more than some other guy and I produce a bit more than some other guy I am going to have a bigger difference between what I produce and consume than some other guy. What is your solution? I know the socialist solution - steal from me and give it to the other guy, make me his slave. Well, I don't like socialism for a good reason, I am anti-slavery, I like freedom.
Were there people who became crime lords and manipulated trade?
- I don't understand the question. Are there criminals under ALL circumstances and under all systems? Are people rewarded more under free market system for being a useful producer rather than under a more totalitarian system, where production is not the key, but theft (currency counterfeiting) is used instead?
There are no free markets that do not end up with someone becoming more powerful than others.
- this is not a conclusion that follows from any of your questions.
There are people who become more powerful than others under totalitarian regimes, under so called socialist regimes, under communist or fascist regimes, under those regimes some people become much more powerful than others.
Under free market there is only a democratic way to become more powerful - approval of market.
Under gov't systm it's not about approval of market at all, it's about your elite telling you: these people will be your rulers and will be your monopolists, and the rest are just a 'mass'.
First: I don't need to go as far back as tree climbing ancestors, I can point out the 1870 to 1913 time period, when USA became the economic engine of the world, people coming to USA for the least government control, for the most freedom. What do you think 'land of opportunity' means? Lots of government?
There were no regulations of business, no income, payroll, corporate taxes, no such thing as fake money printed by a quasi gov't agency. Not even a real standing army.
The truth is that there are no monopolies in the Free Market, only economies of scale, and they exist only as long as they are near the sweet spot - the most value for the least price. Once there is space to provide more value for the same money or same value for a smaller price or even better - a better quality product for even a cheaper price, either that very economy of scale will provide it or it will face competition.
We KNOW it is true, since over the 19th century prices were FALLING all the time. Even today, where there is more competition and less ability for gov't to meddle, prices fall. All the innovation coming out of high tech industries and even oil, that's right - oil is a high tech industry. The prices are falling.
Now, in case of oil the prices are not falling as fast as in other industries, but they are falling. But that's why in nominal dollar values prices seem to rise, while in other high tech industries prices fall even in nominal values, but in real terms - gold, the prices are falling across the board where there is innovation and less gov't intervention.
As to 'merchants playing nice' - I never said they will and I wouldn't myself play nice.
BUT that's the POINT of the LAW above the government - Constitution. And the only reason that merchants (and not actually merchants, it started with bankers), were able to bend the rules and to go above and beyond what the Constitution allowed was people NOT GIVING A SHIT about the rule of law above the government - Constitution.
But that's alright, this experiment has failed, but it lasted a pretty good stretch of time, we have learned something about it and if we bother to build a better, freer society at some point (2.0), we'll have something to look at and compare our ideas to.
The next gov't for a Free society must be very explicitly prohibited from meddling with business and infrastructure and from having a standing army and from printing money. Very explicitly prohibited, with real penalties attached to that concept.
Freedom and Internet but no Privacy?
Can't have freedom without privacy.
Freedom and Privacy but no Internet?
Sure, that's possible.
Internet and Privacy but no Freedom?
That's possible, but unlikely. If you have no freedom, how do you ensure privacy?
Merchants cannot pass laws unless the population is willing to allow them to pass whatever laws, it's with the approval (silent or explicit) of the voters that politicians are in power who will not stay limited by the rule of law above the government. The people deserve the government they have, they are either complacent or they provide approval, because they are just as greedy as those specific 'merchants', who want to affect the law.
Indeed, once somebody messes with the law above the government and creates preferential conditions for himself, everybody has to attempt and do so, otherwise they will get crushed. The people, OTOH, are just too happy to vote for politicians who will promise to give them something by taking it away from others, well, that's how the government becomes lawless. That's how society becomes lawless.
It is completely wrong to allow gov't to maintain monopolies and to stifle the Free Market, it's wrong morally and it's wrong practically. You are NOT controlling a government monopoly. You are NOT in control of government monopolies, no matter how much you want to believe it.
You are not in control of their parties, you are not in control of the gov't contractors, you are not in control of the Fed, you are not in control of the banks, military, whatever. You think you are in control of those gov't monopolies?
You have NO POWER to control them.
In the free market you do have power, there are no monopolies in the free market in the first place, it's a huge lie. There are economies of scale, but no monopolies. Monopolies have to be protected by the government, economies of scale are only on top as long as people keep buying from them.
But keep dreaming that are in control of something, NOW, when the government is completely LAWLESS - it doesn't live by the rule of law, the Constitution.
Keep dreaming that you can control that, which is lawless.
The only idiot here is that, who believe he can control the lawless government.
Without government force there is no monopoly.
Government is the only power that can create and maintain monopolies.
Markets produce economies of scale and none of them are monopolies. An economy of scale can seem like a monopoly until a way to minimise costs is found and an opportunity for more profit is created and there is a new entry into the market.
Yesterday's so called 'monopolies' disappear and new companies appear.
Government on the other hand does not allow a company to disappear regardless of what market wants. It doesn't matter if technology changes if there is a way to make more profit by moving in a different direction, a government protected monopoly is protected with regulations, taxes, fake free money, etc.
Finally: an economy of scale that can seem like a monopoly IS voted for by the market, which means it is providing the most value for the lowest price, so in case of free market, the consumer wins when economies of scale are created.
With government this is not the case at all, the people are forced to use the only game in town if they would completely go with a different product based on new technologies, whatever new cost cutting measures.
Government is the force that ensures prices stay up and go higher.
Economies of scale ensure that prices go down.
But you already knew that.
Easy peasy.
50 babies? I wonder if they have their livers with some fava beans and a nice Chianti?
Either you're an exceedingly skilled troll, or really are an asshole. Either way, I don't care.
- false choice.
The only thing that matters in this is the fact that I am correct.
Public land is not owned by people, it's owned by nobody, that's the real definition.
Public land is constantly being used by corporations, who are paying license fees to mine on it, do whatever on it, where do you see public getting the benefit of this? The public ends up 'owning' this wrecked land, while the company didn't have to pay for anything actually except the straight business of mining, but nothing that had to do with actually acquiring real rights to mining on that land, nothing that had to do with legal liability, environmental liability, nothing.
Why is that? Because again, by definition, public land is owned by 'public', which means by nobody. There is no owner, the gov't is not an owner, the gov't is just a system that is used to steal resources from 'the public' that supposedly 'owns' that land.
The public would be much better served if the land was sold off at an auction, the real price was established and liability and costs weren't socialised.
As to 'Grand Canyons', etc., same thing. Of-course it's less of a problem if nobody is mining there, but they can still DUMP stuff there. There is a big issue of maintenance, and why exactly should the public be paying for maintaining things like canyons and forests, etc?
If it's so important that a canyon stays a canyon for others to come and see, there are always zoning laws that are set by local governments, not FEDERAL government. There are State and municipal and other types of regional governments, federal gov't has nothing to do with this.
Lastly: all that we have seen throughout the history is that the government is just a tool to steal, nothing else. Not protect any society or any environment. Who I am - doesn't matter. What matters is that I am right.
There should be no public land, that is all there is to it. There is no ownership of public land, it's by the definition without an owner, thus it is abused, and when a public property is abused by a corporation, it's all about socialising costs and corrupting the gov't and causing maximum amount of damage to that so called 'public property'.
At the very minimum no public property should be allowed to be used for private purposes by any business, ideally of-course public would own no property collectively at all.
Individuals are against unrestrained growth of government because a growing government is a growing tyranny. Individuals agree on the role of the government (at least in USA it was individuals who got together and formed the federal gov't) and they put limits on what the gov't can do.
Clearly it didn't work out to prevent the growth, so some new methods will have to be devised, it's not like we have the perfect solutions to prevent government from growing, on the contrary, our solutions are very imperfect, which is why government can get out of the limits imposed upon it originally and grow in a cancerous manner to consume and devour the individuals and the entire private sector.
People should only care about themselves, this is the best thing we can hope for, and they should be taking responsibility for themselves and they should be prevented from using the force of government to get subsidies from those, who do better, because that's what destroys the economy. Everybody should grow up and accept it, but more importantly, we have to set up the next form of government in a way that would make it ever harder for people with those ideas to break out of the limits imposed upon them when the gov't is set up.
Who are you talking to, don't you have a site to run?
That's right, government doesn't participate in market, and it's not an irrelevant argument, it means government cannot price things in any meaningful way, that's the reason it should not be in any business, including business of "leasing out land" for any purpose, because it cannot know what the appropriate price for that lease is.
Also gov't should not be subsidising any business, that's why it shouldn't be removing liability and responsibility, and limiting liability to, I don't know, say 75 million USD per oil spill incident, such as was observed in case of BP deep drilling disaster, is the reason why gov't shouldn't be doing it. The moral hazard that is created by such limitation of liability allows private businesses to socialise the costs.
Government cannot 'steal' land from people to sell it. Either it is public land, and then no business can be allowed to mine on it (of-course I am against any public land on a principle), or it is to be mined and then it cannot remain public land, it must be sold off so that the public gets proper payment for it on an open auction, which is the only way to decide what the actual price/value of that property is, the public gets paid and the private owner can mine on that land. Since the public gets paid, it can use the money to ensure that no public land is polluted, and that's the correct way to fund such a project.
As to gov't getting money (good/bad) - gov't getting any money is bad, because it grows the gov't. In case when gov't supposedly 'owns' public property, getting rid of those assets at fair market values is good, as long as that money is not wasted, but more importantly it's good because there wouldn't be any limited liability, no moral hazard and no public bail outs. Well, of-course that shouldn't happen in any case.
Lastly: you can't even parse what you are reading, is the time-cube capsule that foggy? The point of using the funds received from the auctioning off the assets is not to 'clean up the mess' but it is to control the situation and in case there is pollution to force the private company to bear responsibility.
In fact it should be the private company who is forced to clean up the mess, should this mess transfer from their private property to any public property. Of-course if the pollution is transferred to other private properties, it is between the owners, not between an owner and the public.
You need to check your blood pressure, it seems to be overflowing.
Funny though, they have what, over half a billion of accounts? I don't know if that's half a billion people of-course, maybe most of the accounts are dead or maybe not, but if they have even 1/10th of accounts that are real then actually they could easily claim they have a 'mandate from the people', can't they? Sounds ridiculous for now, but just wait until Sugarburger comes out declaring he is now the new world's dear leader.
NDAA - Obama signed a statement saying he won't use the indefinite detention part of it.
What's up with all these laws, that are getting passed and the people who are directly or indirectly responsible for passing them are all promising not to use the new powers they acquire?
Why don't they just own up to the truth - there is no reason to pass these privacy and freedom destroying laws if you have no reason to use them, you pass them because you are intending to use them (or you are intending for them to be used, even if it is not you directly who is going to use them).
When is it going to stop exactly and why would it stop?
I said, government shouldn't actually own any so called 'public land', but if it owns it, it must protect it, otherwise what kind of a 'public land' is it, that it is not protected by the public and is given out to private companies to mine on as they wish and do with it as they wish? That's is a subsidy, socialising of costs, that is something that could force Smith to roll over in his grave.
Yes? And why would that suddenly happen just because the govt didn't own the lands? The "holy hand of the free market" would touch their hearts and make them immune to corruption?
- can't you read? I didn't say that would just 'automatically happen', I proposed something - that government is supposed to take care of property it supposedly 'owns'.
So when somebody pollutes and this pollution crosses to the 'public property', government would be liable to protect it but also would have the resources to do so, because these resources would come from the auctions of those pieces of 'public land' that would be sold on the market.
How did you read it that it was going to happen 'automatically', I do not know.
I have never doubted the fervor of your beliefs or principles, but I drank the Ayn Rand Kool Aid for 15 years. Then I decided to get over it.
- yeah, well I just read her books this year, I even put my take on them on this very site. Yet I have had my principles for my entire life, pretty much never was a socialist at all, maybe that's because I was born in a former 'communist' country many decades ago.
My principles do not come out of somebody else's thinking, I could have written those books she wrote all on my own (not the same stories, but the same principles).
I've just decided that it's completely soulless and without any form of empathy.
- yeah, well you have never lived in a really soulless country and I have, and that was it.
AFAIC it is soulless and without empathy and without principles to believe in government and government domination over individuals for the 'good of the collective'. There is no such thing AFAIC as the 'good of the collective'. It's a bunch of nonsense to control the simple-minded while robbing the economy.
. And I just don't see pure capitalism providing the solutions that
- I don't know what 'pure capitalism' is, but I understand free market.
It doesn't matter to me how the free market structures its economy, the only thing that matters is the freedom of the individual to decide how to live his life, and as long as he is not hurting other people, he must have his freedom, especially freedom not to be dragged in by the 'collective' and to be forced to work as a slave of the collective.
The more I've watched economics since I gave up on believing the 'libertarian-capitalist' stuff, I'm convinced that a lot of the assumptions of these models is completely wrong. It's like when physicist assume a perfectly spherical cow. It makes the math easy, but it's not accurate.
- the only economics that exists is free market economics, everything else is not actually economics, everything else is tyranny and dictatorship and destruction of economics.
You can watch the video in my sig, it's a good start.
So when you could see some train wrecks coming (like Greenspan telling people to borrow against their homes because it's "free money") it's hard to believe people who so fervently believe the Free Market Will Fix.
- and your argument that the free market is not working is the chairman of the federal reserve system saying: here is free money?
There you go, you have no clue what economics is, you have no clue what free market is, you have no clue what the federal reserve is, you don't know what money is.
Bernanke denied that the Fed was inflating the housing bubble even while he was actively doing so and declaring that his goal is to maintain house and stock values. The Fed even had a fake commission to "study" the reasons for the housing bubble, which came out with the conclusion that more government is needed.
Why was it fake? Because it never asked for participation of the people who actually actively predicted the bubble and have placed their bets against it and made a ton of money. How did they do it, are they much smarter than the Fed? Well, maybe they are, maybe the Fed is just lying, but that commission was fake and took 20 million to conduct, while all they had to do was buy a 20 dollar
Corporate profits always come first.
- Oh, so you are telling me that the corporate profits come out of thin air, that people are not participating in this bargain deal, getting this stuff cheaply?
Many towns had to be abandoned over industrial pollution and yet I constantly hear it's government regulations that cause the problems.
- yes, it is government that is causing the problem in nearly all cases where mining is involved. Whose land is it?
The gov't holds this so called 'public land', well then how come corporations can mine on it? So it's the government that allows the corporations to mine on land that is held public. Same with oil drilling and the 75 Million USD liability cap on deep water drilling.
This IS a government created problem, because government holds this land and allows companies to come and to mine on it without actually participating in a market of any kind. The gov't sells licenses to their preferred companies and takes away liability and responsibility.
What should be done instead, government shouldn't be allowed to own any property, and definitely government shouldn't be holding property where anybody is allowed to mine on it at all.
Whatever land that gov't holds in 'public' possession where somebody wants to mine or do any business, this land has to be auctioned off.
What do you think would happen then?
First of all the land would be sold in small chunks, because nobody could afford to buy it outright. So it would be sold in small pieces to separate buyers, and they would own that property. They could mine it themselves, but many would lease it to be mined.
So this would not be a public problem anymore, the gov't would collect huge amounts of revenue from these auctions. Selling piece by piece for example, not allowing any mining on gov't 'owned' land, this could control the mining industry much more effectively than whatever gov't is doing right now, and this would bring more revenue to the gov't as well, though that is a bad thing of-course, but if that money was actually immediately earmarked for purposes of controlling any pollution running off such lands and making sure that if pollution spreads from those private lands to the public lands, responsibility would be immediately assigned.
There is an entire slew of reasons why in fact these are government created problems, and most of them have to do with corruption and moral hazards of removing liability and reducing costs of mining by completely removing the real market prices from the market, because government cannot ever discover REAL value and pricing of anything, because it never has to compete with any private entity bidding for the rights of ownership.
Space exploration doesn't make poor people richer **TODAY** either.
Why should anybody take a long term outlook today if the government is ever more willing to destroy savings and investment by keeping interest rates on long term bonds as low as interest rates on 6 month short term debt?
By the way, which one of poor people is willing to spend his own money on this?
Lastly, there are in fact some rich people, who are weirdly enough thinking about a very very long term space exploration.
That's pretty basic economics and even physics stuff.
The more of a resource there is, the more it will be used.
The more of some form of a resource or energy or a product there is and the lower the barriers of using it are, the more of it will be used, always driving the usage up and as a result using 100% of it.
Usage increases until 100% of a resource is used up. Is that really such a new idea?
In economics of-course it's tied to a cost of using something - the less pricey something is the more it will be used. You can look at it from every perspective, from free money by the fed, welfare, EI, SS, Medicare or food-stamps to other concepts like youtube accounts. Nearly everybody has got one, the only thing that limits usage there is laziness.
I could summarise it this way: usage expands to occupy all of the available resources and the limits around usage are set by the price (or other type of expenditure, like energy expenditure) of using them.
Free society only works in short term.
- no, we do not know that because we do not have enough EXPERIENCE with having actual free societies, we have had very few of them so far, and it seems that we are increasing the magnitude of the experiments with every new one that we start.
So my contention is that the next free society that is built (USA is done) will last longer than USA will have more barriers against destructive forces that try to overrun the free society to steal its wealth.
That's why socialism was invented as the long term answer.
- actually socialism has a much SHORTER life span than the USA free society had, socialism is crashing all around us and hopefully within our lifetimes we will see many of these socialist states disappear altogether.
They have 2 ways to go, unfortunately one way is towards more tyranny and less freedoms, but the second way is towards more freedoms and less tyranny, and I am encouraged to see that various places, including Scandinavia are moving in the right direction (slowly but surely).
So if this holds water and people abroad follow these news, they can also start their own interesting cases of litigation, where it goes even beyond computer languages.
How about Hebrew? There are about 8 million people around the world who speak it and it's quite artificial. I am not sure that his descendants will go as far as declare copyright (didn't Tolkien's relatives do just that), but the possibility would be there.
Could it mean that 8 million around the world, and specifically 5 million in Israel would be on a hook for royalty payments? After all, many of them speak it on everyday basis.