Capitalism is just a word, which has nothing to do with the political system. It's not capitalism that turned into this authoritarian system, it's literally the fact that various former KGB and mafia bosses got together and used all sorts of violence in order to prevent any competition in the political arena. Khodorkovskiy is in jail not because of 'capitalism', he is in jail because a criminal is at the helm of the government and he put him there.
Here is an example of 'carousel' - the people are instructed that they will be voting in 16 different schools (these are the same people), they are explicitly told who to vote for (United Russia obviously) and how to behave, which tables to approach, what to say to any authorities if they are questioned, etc.
The guy who shot this video asked if it makes sense to join the Party and he is told: obviously if you join it, you get material benefits, money whatever.
Then the video shows scenes of this same guy voting in multiple locations, by 5:30 it says: I voted 12 times already, almost done.
United Russia is a mafia party, literally, it's full of mafia bosses, it's a criminal syndicate that took over the country and destroyed the democracy in its infancy, plunged the country into the age of corruption.
Of-course it doesn't help that Russia has too many people that are made dependent upon the government for survival, that's how a criminal party takes hold and doesn't let go - the bosses literally gather people in the meetings and tell them that they will dole out money based on voting participation and the voting outcome, they also want people to prove their voting record (illegally obviously), the votes are bought and voters are intimidated.
US and the rest should take notice - once most of your businesses are just a few large ones, and the small/medium sized businesses disappear and are constantly under pressure to pay huge 'fines'/bribes to local 'politicians' and often the businesses are destroyed - illegally taken over with police force from their owners and just handed over to local mafia/United Russia party bosses, then you build a huge dependent class of people, who don't have jobs, they can't have jobs because the largest (oil/gas/metal/wood/whatever raw material) companies only need so many workers and the service sector is all monopolized.
Without a thriving middle class (and I mean BUSINESS class) the economy only allows 3 classes of people: bottom dolers, top mafia bosses and owners and monopolists in every business sector, very few monopolists that run every business.
Then you the country can't get out of this predicament - the people are poor and they don't know how NOT to be poor anymore, their only way of living depends on being fully subsidized by the government and they can't afford any change of government and any instability carries a promise of hunger.
Of-course Russia still has some protesters from the middle class and students, but right now it seems to be irrelevant, the special forces there don't hesitate to apply massive amounts of damage to the protesters. Beating somebody and even killing them is really not a big deal - people who live off the dole are really just insects in a system like that.
That's why you don't want socialism or communism or totalitarianism or dictatorship or any kind. You want many independent individual capable of taking care of themselves and by proxy of the economy by doing creative stuff, providing products and jobs and investment opportunities. But a large number of people like that not only improve the economy, but they are too independent to be held in shackles of oppression, they don't want a large parasite mafia class above them taking everything from them and deciding for them what kind of a country they will live in.
- Well I don't 'take it' and clearly most people do not. Most people don't own Apple products.
Software for video game consoles.
- and so what? I don't understand what this has to do with anything. People own multiple platforms by the way, Apple is just one product out of thousands.
And tens of millions of people rode horses daily.
- and some people still ride horses today. But are you telling me that a horse beats a truck?
1. Your point about this one piece of hardware is strange at least, nobody forces people to use Apple software and clearly there are choices to use that software that exists for Apple hardware or not to use it. What software are you talking about?
2. Tens of millions of people use PCs around the world, I doubt the market of tens of millions is so irrelevant that there will be nobody trying to cater to it.
So market 'limiting' choices is a problem for the users who buy 'market limiting' systems?
I am not one of them, but maybe the majority of the users decided that this is what they need for the moment - 'walled gardens'? If this is their decision, they have to live with it.
If there is still a sizable enough user base of those, who like I prefer to do their computing on traditional PCs, then there will be PCs.
The only real barriers to entry are created by the government, everything else is just an opportunity.
This is logical conclusion of any government - complete take over all powers and destruction of all liberties. Not that there were huge number of liberties in Syria to begin with, but it's the same trend with all governments.
Then they are obviously doing it wrong. All of the contractors I know would not take permanent positions, they all prefer contracts. From 96 to 2001 I was working on a salary, but I was getting my bachelor, so that was convenient. From 2001 to 09 I was contracting and for the last 2 years I've been building my own product line. The people I know who were on contracts are still doing contracting, never switching to permanent positions even though permanent positions are easier to find.
You don't need to cover all scenarios. You only need to state that the purpose of the document is to shackle the government by the law that is created by the people in order to achieve a union, which is only possible by agreeing upon a government system that shackles the government.
You need to shackle the government and to prevent it from going above the authorization that the people gave it.
Maybe the problem is that the law applies too far in time, that the people from the past set the law for the people in the future, but if you follow that route and you continuously change the law, you destroy the economy and society with all this instability.
So the question becomes can the people of ONE generation set the basic PRINCIPLES of the government in a way that will be agreeable with the people of the future generations, and what to do in case where SOME people do not wish to have the law apply to them?
What about the fact that there are people who do not like the principles set for them?
If the principle of the founders of a government is individual freedom and then later on some people find this inconvenient, should they be forced by the system to follow the law as it stands without attempting to change it?
What about the people who do not want the law changed?
So democracy then, right? Voting for politicians who are given the power to change the law. But if the law changes away from the first principles of individual freedoms, then it is clearly changing towards LESS individual freedoms, not more.
Realize that if a government is set up with the maximum prohibitions against stepping over individual freedoms, then ANY law that changes the original law decreases the individual freedoms, it does not increase it.
The real question is: does democracy work? I don't see it working. The US founders didn't see it working, so they were certain that there will be attempts to change the law of the government and to break the Constitution, that's why there is a complex gov't structure.
The reasons are clear: democracy allows MAJORITY of people to STEAL FROM or otherwise ABUSE minority.
That's how the US tax code works. That's how the US regulations work today passed by all these unelected departments and offices. That's how the Federal reserve works. That's the IRS and income taxes. Everything that moves money from some people's pockets to other people's pockets, it's all about diminishing the individual freedoms and theft and abuse of government power.
Who benefits and who loses is not that relevant, what is relevant is that the system breaks, the economy suffers and then the society falls apart and there may be even wars and mass murder and hunger and suffering.
The real problem is allowing the people to change the law from a set of rules that enforce maximum individual freedoms, because any change leads to minimizing those freedoms and there final result is always totalitarian - authoritarian government, based on whatever ideology (communism or socialism or fascism or just dictatorship, it doesn't matter).
Once you are on the path of allowing the law of maximum individual freedoms to be changed, you are going the wrong way.
It's really about Krugman's idea that if the bail out or stimulus isn't working, it means you aren't doing enough of it. That's what the basic principle of the failed Keynesian ideology is - counterfeit more money.
Of-course money is not pieces of paper, it's productive output of individuals, and that's the only thing that allows individuals to have purchasing power, because if you strip the economy of all the fluff and go back to basics, it's simply about barter: you grow some potatoes and corn and the other guy mines some iron ore and the other guy makes metal tools, they exchange with each other bartering.
Money is there to make exchange, accounting and store of value simpler than a pure barter system allows.
If you simply print the money and use it to 'buy' something, that is just stealing productive output of other people without producing anything in return. That's what FIAT money and counterfeit money allows people to do - to hide the fact that they didn't produce anything of value and are stealing products from others.
That's the fundamental problem with government's ability to issue debt and setting up a semi-private institution that is allowed to counterfeit money (clearly by going beyond and above the Constitutional authorization with all this printing of bills of credit).
Government is destroying the economy by stealing the money, and thus by destroying the investment capital and savings of people. If you can't overproduce and under-consume and have your money NOT stolen from you, you can't invest. You can't invest, you can't create more products and you lose your purchasing power.
The real rootkit is the authority to pass any new laws. If a gov't can pass a new law, it can then eventually usurp the power and go above and beyond its original authorization. All the laws that are needed should be only based around the most basic principles: protecting individual freedoms, property, enforcing the contract and the criminal law and protecting the borders.
you are not a real libertarian if your life's circumstances end up changing your opinion (opinions can change, that's a valid thing, but not based on your own predicament, then it's not an idea at all for you, it's just a thing of convenience.)
I don't understand the fascination with the full time employment.
Contracts and own businesses, that's the way to do it, not to work full time for somebody, that's just throwing yourself at the mercy of the political/economic wind.
This is the real problem - 'interpreting' the Constitution.
There should be no such thing, no 'interpreting', because this is used to justify anything, any power grab, any expansion of gov't power, any kind of thing that gov't wants.
You know it's true, they interpret Bibles the way they want to fit in any new technological advancement and same becomes a problem with the Constitution. It's not supposed to be interpreted, it's supposed to be followed. It's the law.
It's not the Constitution that needs interpretation (and I am not saying the document is perfect, far from it, it is not making it explicit that it shouldn't be interpreted for example).
The law that applies to the private citizens is not interpreted - you kill somebody - there is no 'interpretation' of the law. The question is only of your guilt.
It should be same with the Constitution - gov't takes over some power, the question is only the amount of guilt that should be allocated, not whether it was permitted by the Constitution that this power was supposed to be taken over.
There is a larger question here as well - should gov't even be allowed to pass NEW laws at all? I don't think so.
If the physics laws were changing all the time (F=MA today, some time from today it's F=2MA, some time later it's F=A; E=MC2, E=MC, E=C, E=4C; Today Hydrogen has this mass, tomorrow it's half that.) There would be no stars, no planets, no life in that unstable system.
Same with society and economy and gov't. Gov't sets the basic laws and then society and economy work around those laws. Change the laws and economy/society now must change how it works to accommodate the change of laws. Do too much of this and enough times and you destroy the economy and society.
That's what you have now - destruction of economy and society by gov't.
This was caused by various loose 'interpretations' of the Constitution (at first), and now it's just blatant disregard to the Constitution, which is LAW that gov't is supposed to abide by.
This car is interesting but it was aimed at the wrong consumer. US consumer cannot afford this vehicle, because US consumer is subsidized (especially now with the Government Motors), and all the various loans, that make it too cheap for the US consumer, who can't really afford the new cars buy them with government guaranteed loans.
The company should have moved the idea to China and started there and aimed at the local Chinese market. I think they were going with a more or less correct idea in terms of the product, but they were not doing it at the right time and definitely not aiming it at the right clients.
More gov't intervention. Sure, Google is a large company, but it's not a monopolist in search.
Besides, it's up to the market to decide whether a company grows or not, whether it's profitable or not. Clearly the market likes Google and the company shouldn't be punished by government, because it's clear that gov't is always wrong in every case of business meddling.
Some people think this is not about corruption? Of-course this is all about corruption, it's all about special interests using gov't to promote their interests. At least Switzerland is doing the right thing with not bothering people about their downloading of whatever.
I wouldn't be concerned about any environment at all if the threat to me is from a gov't. I would only be concerned with my secrets. Environment is not even in the distant back of my mind when I want to hide my secrets from a gov't.
There is a business opportunity for better shredders, the kind that would pulverize the paper or better just burn it.
A shredder with a vortex or a burner inside.
Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting technical challenge that this was done, but if you want to keep your paper out of government's hands you shouldn't be just shredding the paper.
note that the entire history of Unix is permeated with history of lawyer intervention and lawsuits, all thanks to the copyright and patent laws that exist because of government and that are enforced by government agencies and courts. This is just one more reason to abolish all patents and copyrights.
The issue is of-course not with the employers or employees, it's with the fact that government meddles with the market and gets in the way of people negotiating their own contracts.
Government has a function - border security, protection of individual rights, criminal and contract law.
But gov't shouldn't be allowed to get between parties signing a contract.
Well, the obvious fallacy there is that the cost of a public monopoly is less than regulatory costs.
The regulatory costs include everything that puts people to jails, so you have ask yourself a question: why is the federal government is able to go above the original intent of the States that ratified the Constitution and can dictate that for example people must be put to jail for possession or even sale of drugs?
So things like that actually must be included into the costs of regulations and the total cost to the economy, and that's going to be hell of a project to try and calculate every way in which the government hurts the economy and society with all of what it does that puts people into prisons.
Slashdot Mirror
Capitalism is just a word, which has nothing to do with the political system. It's not capitalism that turned into this authoritarian system, it's literally the fact that various former KGB and mafia bosses got together and used all sorts of violence in order to prevent any competition in the political arena. Khodorkovskiy is in jail not because of 'capitalism', he is in jail because a criminal is at the helm of the government and he put him there.
Here is an example of 'carousel' - the people are instructed that they will be voting in 16 different schools (these are the same people), they are explicitly told who to vote for (United Russia obviously) and how to behave, which tables to approach, what to say to any authorities if they are questioned, etc.
The guy who shot this video asked if it makes sense to join the Party and he is told: obviously if you join it, you get material benefits, money whatever.
Then the video shows scenes of this same guy voting in multiple locations, by 5:30 it says: I voted 12 times already, almost done.
United Russia is a mafia party, literally, it's full of mafia bosses, it's a criminal syndicate that took over the country and destroyed the democracy in its infancy, plunged the country into the age of corruption.
Of-course it doesn't help that Russia has too many people that are made dependent upon the government for survival, that's how a criminal party takes hold and doesn't let go - the bosses literally gather people in the meetings and tell them that they will dole out money based on voting participation and the voting outcome, they also want people to prove their voting record (illegally obviously), the votes are bought and voters are intimidated.
US and the rest should take notice - once most of your businesses are just a few large ones, and the small/medium sized businesses disappear and are constantly under pressure to pay huge 'fines'/bribes to local 'politicians' and often the businesses are destroyed - illegally taken over with police force from their owners and just handed over to local mafia/United Russia party bosses, then you build a huge dependent class of people, who don't have jobs, they can't have jobs because the largest (oil/gas/metal/wood/whatever raw material) companies only need so many workers and the service sector is all monopolized.
Without a thriving middle class (and I mean BUSINESS class) the economy only allows 3 classes of people: bottom dolers, top mafia bosses and owners and monopolists in every business sector, very few monopolists that run every business.
Then you the country can't get out of this predicament - the people are poor and they don't know how NOT to be poor anymore, their only way of living depends on being fully subsidized by the government and they can't afford any change of government and any instability carries a promise of hunger.
Of-course Russia still has some protesters from the middle class and students, but right now it seems to be irrelevant, the special forces there don't hesitate to apply massive amounts of damage to the protesters. Beating somebody and even killing them is really not a big deal - people who live off the dole are really just insects in a system like that.
That's why you don't want socialism or communism or totalitarianism or dictatorship or any kind. You want many independent individual capable of taking care of themselves and by proxy of the economy by doing creative stuff, providing products and jobs and investment opportunities. But a large number of people like that not only improve the economy, but they are too independent to be held in shackles of oppression, they don't want a large parasite mafia class above them taking everything from them and deciding for them what kind of a country they will live in.
Take it or leave it.
- Well I don't 'take it' and clearly most people do not. Most people don't own Apple products.
Software for video game consoles.
- and so what? I don't understand what this has to do with anything. People own multiple platforms by the way, Apple is just one product out of thousands.
And tens of millions of people rode horses daily.
- and some people still ride horses today. But are you telling me that a horse beats a truck?
1. Your point about this one piece of hardware is strange at least, nobody forces people to use Apple software and clearly there are choices to use that software that exists for Apple hardware or not to use it. What software are you talking about?
2. Tens of millions of people use PCs around the world, I doubt the market of tens of millions is so irrelevant that there will be nobody trying to cater to it.
So market 'limiting' choices is a problem for the users who buy 'market limiting' systems?
I am not one of them, but maybe the majority of the users decided that this is what they need for the moment - 'walled gardens'? If this is their decision, they have to live with it.
If there is still a sizable enough user base of those, who like I prefer to do their computing on traditional PCs, then there will be PCs.
The only real barriers to entry are created by the government, everything else is just an opportunity.
This is logical conclusion of any government - complete take over all powers and destruction of all liberties. Not that there were huge number of liberties in Syria to begin with, but it's the same trend with all governments.
Then they are obviously doing it wrong. All of the contractors I know would not take permanent positions, they all prefer contracts. From 96 to 2001 I was working on a salary, but I was getting my bachelor, so that was convenient. From 2001 to 09 I was contracting and for the last 2 years I've been building my own product line. The people I know who were on contracts are still doing contracting, never switching to permanent positions even though permanent positions are easier to find.
Who says everybody must run a large business?
Don't you know hundreds of contractors that prefer contracting to any type of 'permanent' employment?
I don't know, just a bit below yours?
What do you mean? Microsoft has a totally ZANY marketing team!
Think about their xlozy product names: zune, bing.... bob. It's inxane!
You don't need to cover all scenarios. You only need to state that the purpose of the document is to shackle the government by the law that is created by the people in order to achieve a union, which is only possible by agreeing upon a government system that shackles the government.
You need to shackle the government and to prevent it from going above the authorization that the people gave it.
Maybe the problem is that the law applies too far in time, that the people from the past set the law for the people in the future, but if you follow that route and you continuously change the law, you destroy the economy and society with all this instability.
So the question becomes can the people of ONE generation set the basic PRINCIPLES of the government in a way that will be agreeable with the people of the future generations, and what to do in case where SOME people do not wish to have the law apply to them?
What about the fact that there are people who do not like the principles set for them?
If the principle of the founders of a government is individual freedom and then later on some people find this inconvenient, should they be forced by the system to follow the law as it stands without attempting to change it?
What about the people who do not want the law changed?
So democracy then, right? Voting for politicians who are given the power to change the law. But if the law changes away from the first principles of individual freedoms, then it is clearly changing towards LESS individual freedoms, not more.
Realize that if a government is set up with the maximum prohibitions against stepping over individual freedoms, then ANY law that changes the original law decreases the individual freedoms, it does not increase it.
The real question is: does democracy work? I don't see it working. The US founders didn't see it working, so they were certain that there will be attempts to change the law of the government and to break the Constitution, that's why there is a complex gov't structure.
The reasons are clear: democracy allows MAJORITY of people to STEAL FROM or otherwise ABUSE minority.
That's how the US tax code works. That's how the US regulations work today passed by all these unelected departments and offices. That's how the Federal reserve works. That's the IRS and income taxes. Everything that moves money from some people's pockets to other people's pockets, it's all about diminishing the individual freedoms and theft and abuse of government power.
Who benefits and who loses is not that relevant, what is relevant is that the system breaks, the economy suffers and then the society falls apart and there may be even wars and mass murder and hunger and suffering.
The real problem is allowing the people to change the law from a set of rules that enforce maximum individual freedoms, because any change leads to minimizing those freedoms and there final result is always totalitarian - authoritarian government, based on whatever ideology (communism or socialism or fascism or just dictatorship, it doesn't matter).
Once you are on the path of allowing the law of maximum individual freedoms to be changed, you are going the wrong way.
You place people into forts?
Anyway, as I said - you want to be like a dust ball, thrown in the wind, be my guest.
I have a journal entry on this: How much is enough for a Keynesian?
It's really about Krugman's idea that if the bail out or stimulus isn't working, it means you aren't doing enough of it. That's what the basic principle of the failed Keynesian ideology is - counterfeit more money.
Of-course money is not pieces of paper, it's productive output of individuals, and that's the only thing that allows individuals to have purchasing power, because if you strip the economy of all the fluff and go back to basics, it's simply about barter: you grow some potatoes and corn and the other guy mines some iron ore and the other guy makes metal tools, they exchange with each other bartering.
Money is there to make exchange, accounting and store of value simpler than a pure barter system allows.
If you simply print the money and use it to 'buy' something, that is just stealing productive output of other people without producing anything in return. That's what FIAT money and counterfeit money allows people to do - to hide the fact that they didn't produce anything of value and are stealing products from others.
That's the fundamental problem with government's ability to issue debt and setting up a semi-private institution that is allowed to counterfeit money (clearly by going beyond and above the Constitutional authorization with all this printing of bills of credit).
Government is destroying the economy by stealing the money, and thus by destroying the investment capital and savings of people. If you can't overproduce and under-consume and have your money NOT stolen from you, you can't invest. You can't invest, you can't create more products and you lose your purchasing power.
If government is doing it to the economy, then the investment capital leaves to other economies (nations). That is where the previous comment on the issue of whether government should ever be allowed to pass new laws comes into play.
What are you 'dunning' people for? How many people did Jobs dunn I wonder?
The real rootkit is the authority to pass any new laws. If a gov't can pass a new law, it can then eventually usurp the power and go above and beyond its original authorization. All the laws that are needed should be only based around the most basic principles: protecting individual freedoms, property, enforcing the contract and the criminal law and protecting the borders.
you are not a real libertarian if your life's circumstances end up changing your opinion (opinions can change, that's a valid thing, but not based on your own predicament, then it's not an idea at all for you, it's just a thing of convenience.)
I don't understand the fascination with the full time employment.
Contracts and own businesses, that's the way to do it, not to work full time for somebody, that's just throwing yourself at the mercy of the political/economic wind.
This is the real problem - 'interpreting' the Constitution.
There should be no such thing, no 'interpreting', because this is used to justify anything, any power grab, any expansion of gov't power, any kind of thing that gov't wants.
You know it's true, they interpret Bibles the way they want to fit in any new technological advancement and same becomes a problem with the Constitution. It's not supposed to be interpreted, it's supposed to be followed. It's the law.
It's not the Constitution that needs interpretation (and I am not saying the document is perfect, far from it, it is not making it explicit that it shouldn't be interpreted for example).
The law that applies to the private citizens is not interpreted - you kill somebody - there is no 'interpretation' of the law. The question is only of your guilt.
It should be same with the Constitution - gov't takes over some power, the question is only the amount of guilt that should be allocated, not whether it was permitted by the Constitution that this power was supposed to be taken over.
There is a larger question here as well - should gov't even be allowed to pass NEW laws at all? I don't think so.
If the physics laws were changing all the time (F=MA today, some time from today it's F=2MA, some time later it's F=A; E=MC2, E=MC, E=C, E=4C; Today Hydrogen has this mass, tomorrow it's half that.) There would be no stars, no planets, no life in that unstable system.
Same with society and economy and gov't. Gov't sets the basic laws and then society and economy work around those laws. Change the laws and economy/society now must change how it works to accommodate the change of laws. Do too much of this and enough times and you destroy the economy and society.
That's what you have now - destruction of economy and society by gov't.
This was caused by various loose 'interpretations' of the Constitution (at first), and now it's just blatant disregard to the Constitution, which is LAW that gov't is supposed to abide by.
This is your fundamental problem.
This car is interesting but it was aimed at the wrong consumer. US consumer cannot afford this vehicle, because US consumer is subsidized (especially now with the Government Motors), and all the various loans, that make it too cheap for the US consumer, who can't really afford the new cars buy them with government guaranteed loans.
The company should have moved the idea to China and started there and aimed at the local Chinese market. I think they were going with a more or less correct idea in terms of the product, but they were not doing it at the right time and definitely not aiming it at the right clients.
More gov't intervention. Sure, Google is a large company, but it's not a monopolist in search.
Besides, it's up to the market to decide whether a company grows or not, whether it's profitable or not. Clearly the market likes Google and the company shouldn't be punished by government, because it's clear that gov't is always wrong in every case of business meddling.
Some people think this is not about corruption? Of-course this is all about corruption, it's all about special interests using gov't to promote their interests. At least Switzerland is doing the right thing with not bothering people about their downloading of whatever.
Switzerland is the sanest country in Europe.
I wouldn't be concerned about any environment at all if the threat to me is from a gov't. I would only be concerned with my secrets. Environment is not even in the distant back of my mind when I want to hide my secrets from a gov't.
There is a business opportunity for better shredders, the kind that would pulverize the paper or better just burn it.
A shredder with a vortex or a burner inside.
Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting technical challenge that this was done, but if you want to keep your paper out of government's hands you shouldn't be just shredding the paper.
note that the entire history of Unix is permeated with history of lawyer intervention and lawsuits, all thanks to the copyright and patent laws that exist because of government and that are enforced by government agencies and courts. This is just one more reason to abolish all patents and copyrights.
I wrote earlier that Marx didn't understand economics at all and was wrong on it. It's still true.
The issue is of-course not with the employers or employees, it's with the fact that government meddles with the market and gets in the way of people negotiating their own contracts.
Government has a function - border security, protection of individual rights, criminal and contract law.
But gov't shouldn't be allowed to get between parties signing a contract.
Well, the obvious fallacy there is that the cost of a public monopoly is less than regulatory costs.
The regulatory costs include everything that puts people to jails, so you have ask yourself a question: why is the federal government is able to go above the original intent of the States that ratified the Constitution and can dictate that for example people must be put to jail for possession or even sale of drugs?
So things like that actually must be included into the costs of regulations and the total cost to the economy, and that's going to be hell of a project to try and calculate every way in which the government hurts the economy and society with all of what it does that puts people into prisons.