No, it's a money making opportunity for the hundreds of people who own roads.
- you got it.
Each of them will want to make sure you don't disrupt heir primary business, but they'll each have their own rules about it.
- good, so you work around their requirements and you shouldn't disrupt their primary business. That makes sense.
If it is THE owner of the road or roads, then the market has already failed.
- right, that's what's happening now.
And by rents out, I mean HE owns the property and allows others to hunt on it in exchange for rent.
- excellent, why the heck would he object to some extra income if the property is already used as rental property to generate income? It's nonsensical.
As for building another plant, it was difficult enough to ram one plant past the NIMBYs, now you want them dotting the countryside?
- private property, private business. NIMBYs are getting power from government intervention, lobbying and bribing in the first place.
There were improvements in the 19th century, not a one of them related to a non-government inspection industry.
- so what? As I said it takes time for a society in transit to get somewhere, and they were in plenty transit, moving from agrarian economy to industrial, and in the meanwhile getting better and better and feeding people what apparently was mostly safe food, and inventing the little gizmos to keep the food safer and safer. Market was working, then gov't came out as it usually does with a power-grub idea.
The FDA for example came in to existence after a notable incident where a cough elixir was produced with dietheline glycol as the base and children died. Before that, there was nothing to prevent even the most obviously unsafe practice (it was a known poison at the time but the company couldn't be bothered to check).
- yes, and in 19th century people tried using mercury to treat syphilis.
It is not government intervention that is needed, it is increase in science, and increase in science comes from demand of more engineering, and demand for more engineering comes out of industrialization of manufacturing processes. Government is just an observer and an abuser of this. Your favorite FDA wouldn't even regulate fructose, even though it is shown to be the cause of obesity and other medical problems similar to alcoholism, but regulating interferes with subsidizing corn farmers, and gov't can't have that.
And why would he have to explain himself in court?
- that would be the question posed by the users of the road if they decided to. No, I am against gov't intervening into private matters. Justice system is not legislation, it's a service to allow people to deal with each other.
His property - his right, that's true. However an argument CAN be made that the businesses and private properties were built based on specifics of the road prices.
But your argument will be this: there will be something terrible about a privately owned property, it will make your life terrible.
You know what? There is something terrible about PUBLIC property that is making lives of plenty of people terrible every day NOW. Constant construction due to government collusion with construction companies, that rebuild the same part of the road year to year, traffic, inability to build more roads to cover demand, insufficient parking, all of this is a problem today.
But NOT the park, NOT the roads, NOT the public buildings, etc.
- there is no need for any such thing.
I understand you have stuck in this world of today, with the laws of today, it's OK, there is no need to argue, your way is already the way that is happening in your part of the world now, so why are you arguing?
You claimed that failures to negotiate a mutually beneficial use of the land wasn't a problem because the lines mostly run along the roads. The only way that alleviates anything is if somehow there is a single authority that controls access to that space. That implies a monopoly, either by government (but you would ban that) or through a failure of the market (which you would ban intervention to fix).
- why do I have to chew through every word as if it's so really difficult to understand? Roads are already property that are there to make money, so private roads are there to have cars on them, it's not like it's that healthy to LIVE on a road anyway, it's a money making opportunity for the road owner, it wouldn't be against their reasons to own the road. The power lines over roads only make all the sense in the world for private owners, they don't actually LIVE on a road.
Nobody can or should make anybody allow them pass something they don't want to have through their private property, but there is always a way to negotiate if the price is right anyway.
Out competed in what? Perhaps they rent out the land for hunting.
- so they 'rent' out, they are not the owners. The question is why would an owner prevent a power line going through some part of their property if they benefit from it financially? And if they do, they eventually lose ability to compete.
The people beyond the property will suffer, but the (possibly absentee) land owner will not. In fact, if his refusal kills industry and drives employers away, he will get cheap labor to maintain his property.
- the value of any property like that, that is not used by anybody would go down, it is not even a fact that there would be people left there to 'service' his property.
More importantly, if one individual causes such headaches, then another individual can take it upon himself to build a new power generating plant closer to the properties that require this power. Again, more power production capacity is a good thing.
Or, people will move away and he gets the opportunity to buy up land on the cheap
- and so would anybody else. I don't see what your problem is there. In a Free Market anybody with can buy whatever is for sale and if the bet is that once the property is bought it will be then developed and will cost more, well, it's a risk. It's always a risk. Maybe it will go up but maybe not. Risk is what gov't tries to remove from credit lending and it's part of the reason for the financial collapse together with almost free interest rates on money and no real production or gold value behind that money, as well as collusion that creates monopolies that are big enough to profit from a massive job movement to areas with lower labor costs.
I asked since the various government agencies that do the inspections were all formed because nobody was doing that job before. That is, NOBODY was in the market for the service.
- if there is a demand for a service, service will form. In the times of 19th century there was plenty of development by the market, by the way, that lead to great improvement of food quality. This includes refrigeration and canning food for example. I'd say that Free Market did more to provide city folks with better diets and food than the government regulation did, and eventually if this became a necessity there could be certification companies formed.
Rich lawyers and coupons for everyone? That IS the usual result of class action suits these days.
- with gov't providing at most 2-3 services, it should be able to do a better job at them, otherwise what the hell is the point?
It's amazing, every second story on/. is about how the government is trying to take away more and more Liberties and Freedoms that are intrinsic to the people and even those that are granted by amendments in a more specific way and I argue that this is what is wrong with the governments but over and over people fight me on this here, completely missing the point that they are less Free with every bill that the government passes, they are staring right at it and cannot see it, I do not understand this, but I understand that if even on/. this is the general attitude, then in the rest of the population this has to be even more pronounced, so basically nothing will change, people want to be controlled and punished and ruled by tyrants. People have decided this is what they need, it's sad.
YOU don't expect me to be charged for walking, but you aren't the property owner either. There's nothing to stop the behavior.
- well sure there is. Again, it is about private choice. As to 'what would stop behavior' - in society we do rely on trust much more than you seem to admit. We trust people not to abuse us excessively and normally it works. Response to any price gouging can be a Class Action Lawsuit, however if costs are fair than everything else is about private choices. You choose your house and community and city and state etc. You have to pay attention to what you are choosing.
The Sun pass works because there is exactly ONE entity collecting tolls. Imagine if there are dozens, some of whom object to the 'Sun pass corporation' and so don't honor the Sun pass.
- so what, how is that different from any other situation where there are multiple suppliers? So you pay some tolls with cash, however if this becomes too much of a hassle, you choose the road so that it is the most convenient route for you to take, possibly you account for the convenience of using one or two passes on the road.
Sun pass is really no different from a credit card, and most stores accept most credit cards. Sure there are stores that don't accept AMEX or MC or Visa, but most accept all of those and cash. I really do not find this to be such a problem as you do, IN FACT, now I believe that system would be even better than I originally thought specifically because there could be a number of providers competing for business. Sun pass, Moon pass, Sky pass, whatever.
Again, I believe you are mistaken as to the costs that would be applied to roads. Nobody is interested in paying $20 for 500 feet, it would be rather unfortunate decision on the part of that road owner, he'd have to explain himself in court, but as a result of this the Free Market would have to provide many more roads and ways to cross space than what is available right now.
I am completely on the opposite spectrum from you on this I believe, so I don't see a point going at it again and again.
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Was the private garbage collector responsible for cleaning up the public spaces as well (and so factoring that into your bill) or was it providing a bit less service for a bit less money?
- private collector actually charged LESS THAN THE CITY AND CLEANED THE DRIVEWAY. I honestly didn't even expect that, but to think about it, of-course, the city could charge union wages and all the fees and then there is probably some subsidy coming from somewhere else, basically government is the biggest scam ever implemented and people have bought into it.
I note that when you get to the part about the sanitation workers damaging the competition's vehicles you decry the lack of government intervention. Shouldn't they have been hiring a private police force?
- in the current system it's illegal to have your own police force, armed and all, so you are being facetious here. The point is that under the existing rules the cops were on the side of the city's union workers and did not uphold the law - yet another reason to despise the government.
You don't get to invoke free use of public spaces when you're against the existence of such spaces. The roads would be private property wouldn't they?
- but I never said anything about FREE use of private spaces. I am against all publicly owned 'common' property completely and for all cases, so how can you accuse me of asking for free use of it? I don't understand.
You seem to have a low estimate of the number of tinfoil hat wearing private property owners who are 'sure' the wires carry harmful radiation. Or the number of greedy property owners who are all too well aware of how much it will cost to bypass their property.
- Good, they will be out-competed by others. If there is not a single way to pass electrical lines through their properties, either there would be a new electrical plant built on some private property beyond those, who oppose it, or there would be no electrical capacity in that area.
A win-win. Why is it a win-win? Because that are will quickly learn that jobs will move away and property values will diminish because there are no jobs left. Without use of electricity modern technology cannot be used almost in all cases, so those without electricity will be left behind, they will basically choose to be left out of the profitable competition. So market works. Eventually they will have either to accept electrical wiring around them, or they will find themselves pretty much isolated and without work, out-competed in every sense of the word.
The computer hardware market is subject to the regulation that I maintain is necessary and you claim destroys the functioning of the free market.
- computer hardware should not be subject to any regulation by any gov't, and in reality it is pretty much a non-issue. If you are talking about FCC regulations on interference, this is a private matter of the market and it is efficiency of the equipment and its use of energy. Voting with money will do fine unless you want to own equipment that doesn't let you receive your phone calls etc. However I never said that computer industry is a PERFECT example, but I did say that it is highly competitive despite the government interference and you cannot deny gigantic fall in prices over time for better hardware than it used to be.
Government just cannot boast any such achievements, oh, it can push the prices down, but it does so with laws and violence and only destroys more than it creates in the process (I am talking about price or wage fixing etc.)
Since Lasic uses medical devices, it's FAR more regulated than even the computer hardware market.
- again, I didn't say it was perfect. I said it was good example because government is not providing the moral hazard and guarantees, basically government is not paying for this. When government (Nixon actually) got into private health care (it was supposedly to make sure there are no uninsured people anymore, there were about 10-15% uninsured at the time) insurance was insurance. People paid for most procedures out of pocket and prices were very low. You could see a doctor for 5 bucks. The insurance cost $25 for a family of 4 people for 1 year with $500 deductible covering up to $50K, which was 2.5 times more than necessary to cover 1 year of cancer treatment at the time (it was $20K/year) and the most expensive hospital stay for one day was $110. Nixon destroyed the entire idea of insurance, now people expect their 'insurance' pay for every single doctor visit, so obviously it's not actually insurance. Because the money is paid from insurance and from gov't, the health providers were able to push prices up much faster than inflation, the entire industry became rigged and you know what, there still are 10-15% uninsured people. So the gov't didn't even achieve the goal they set and they destroyed a working system by pushing the prices so high.
Do you pay every time you enter a mall? It's private space you know, but you don't have to pay every time, you are only expected to pay if you buy something.
Same exact thing with roads and all other property that can be accessed by public. I don't expect you to have to pay anything if you are walking there, but if you are driving, at some point there will be a toll booth, and today it makes most sense to own some sort of an electronic pass, I used them in Miami, Florida, I think it's called 'Sun path' or something like that, it works.
And again, with competition there is more choice and in fact infrastructure would be maintained and updated better and more often unlike what is happening now, when most of the infrastructure is monopolized and subsidized and you have no choice from who to buy the services.
I was in Toronto when there was a month long city strike and garbage wasn't collected. So immediately some people started working collecting the garbage, I bough services from a private provider who for the same price! did a much better job than the city, in fact they even swept the ground after they picked up the garbage.
Do you know what ended up happening? The city's unionized workers started ganging up on the private garbage collectors and broke their trucks, even physically attacked the people and cops wouldn't do anything about it either.
I know one thing: you let any structure take control of anything and you lose all control, and gov't is the ultimate structure to take away your control and make you pay for it, because during that strike there was no services provided by the city, we were trying to sell 2 houses and couldn't because we couldn't fill out certain papers, that city has monopoly on and at the end nobody was getting any refunds for their property taxes even though there was no service provided.
When a private company does that shit you can have some recourse, with the gov't doing it good luck getting justice.
The cost of all of the negotiations would probably exceed the bribe. Plus all it would 5take is one negotiation falling through to render the rest moot.
- why? I don't see a reason for this, especially given that most of the lines go alongside with roads. But even where they have to go through farms/fields etc., they would represent a direct income stream for the land owners and that's where competition would come in handy in a perfect way. Competition, you know, what USA and many other countries do not have in power distribution, which is the reason the power infrastructure is aging and failing.
The object I take away from this is that corrupt government officials should go directly to jail.
- agree.
Format wars are considered harmful. "the market" has proven to be nothing more than a clash of the titans with the consumer squashed under foot every time.
- well that's one point of view. I do not consider it harmful in any meaningful way anymore than having multiple GNU/Linux distros is harmful. More choice is better than less choice. Interoperability is a different question. Without government to maintain artificial ideas such as copyrights and patents this wouldn't even be a problem the way it is now.
So you have your standard and your competitor has his. Fine. You go ahead and fight, while the third party implements both in one device. Problem solved.
But it can't be solved if the gov't is there to punish the third party. The 'format wars' are harmful specifically because there is gov't involvement into the issue, which poisons everything and prevents market from working.
I have never seen a market that works as well as you expect them to work.
- I can provide many examples. In fact computer hardware is one such example, it's not perfect, but realize just how much cheaper it is to buy 1000 GB hard drive space today than it was 20 years ago, yes, Free Market causes price reduction (or deflation, whatever you want to call it). Government never does it. Here is another example: Lasic laser eye surgery. Prices are going down, quality is going up, why is that? Because there is so much competition and no government involvement and guarantees to pay for any of it.
There is no need for regulation by government, regulation only adds unnecessary costs and kills competition.
Some people say: what about food control? Well, are you telling me that I cannot open my own private food inspection agency and provide certification and that I will be less efficient at it than any gov't could and that I couldn't make a good business out of it if gov't wasn't there destroying competition?
- which is helped by free market that develops ideas for new communications systems, I usually have a derisive view of Twitter or Facebook or iPhones, but there you go (this is just one example).
opportunity
- exactly. Without liberty there is no opportunity. If you force everybody into one system that uses gov't violence to persuade people into one mode of behavior, you have taken away opportunity. One example of that is USSR, where opportunity was very low because gov't controlled every aspect of life so much.
justice
- one of 2 things I believe that a gov't should be providing: Justice system to resolve criminal and contract conflicts and minimum military to protect your liberties and life from foreign threats.
reasonable working conditions
- which have improved via industrialization by increasing the efficiencies and automation. You cannot argue against industrialization and capitalism if you care about having 'reasonable' working conditions, because you do not have to work as a subsistence farmer, being able to feed pretty much only yourself in the process.
many of the things unions fight for or laws ensure are also worthwhile for quality of life
- unions, if organized privately within some specific segment of market and if not preventing others from working in that same segment without being part of that very union, I have no problem with. They will either survive if they are reasonable, or they will cause the labor market imbalance that will move the work away and they will lose power, which is what competition is about and it is a good thing. Any overwhelming force within the market that is not dictated by the individual choices of market participants but by any sort of external power struggle is destructive to the competitiveness within the market and reduces market efficiency.
Market systems both typically require considerable government support (enabling laws for corporations and specifics of laws on liability, commerce, and contracts, as examples) and have a very complex relationship to whatever kinds of efficiencies we're interested in.
- only 2 things are required from a government as I said: minimum military to protect your liberties from invasion and a working justice system. I argued plenty of times that any other intrusion onto markets by government threat of violence will eventually lead to market destruction, and the velocity of destruction is related to the scale of intrusion.
I think it's worth paying the cost to society, generally, for the things unions have fought.
- it's your opinion, and again, if you are interested in your private union it does not change anything for me, I don't mind, as long as you do not end up colluding with gov't forces that project threat violence to modify market behavior.
Likewise, I think it's worth paying whatever costs their are to society for useful regulation, social programmes, and the like.
- 'whatever costs' will end up in market destruction. I completely disagree with market destruction and I have and will continue moving away from any place that tries to impose those kinds of standards upon me and the market around me. I am not interested in 'paying whatever costs'. I was born in the USSR and I have seen what the ultimate costs end up being. No thanks, no thanks at all.
I'm curious about your use of the term special treatment
- I defined it in the link earlier by proposing an amendment that would prevent it. Special treatment means any collusion with government to achieve any special status at all, any preferential treatment. I am against legislating any regulations, subsidies, income taxes of any kind, tre
Your facts don't lead to the conclusion you assert - you're still equating quality of life with material goods (and I believe that you're misattributing to capitalism what should be attributed to science).
- quality of life has plenty to do with material goods, such as access to food, to sanitation, to clothes, to energy, to transportation, to communications systems, to medical providers. Without these the quality of life is low, but you can't even argue with me about this point with a straight face, you are arguing for unionized work, which is the entire point - getting a bunch of money in a more 'special interest' kind of way.
Science without capitalism stays on the level of curiosity, if you didn't notice, science in itself is only useful to the scientists, who derive pleasure from discovering the 'truths' about the world. It is industrialization that provides the means to take science and apply it to increase quality of life.
Also, why should we accept your ideas about the proper role of government?
- I am proposing my ideas, you don't have to subscribe to any of them. I am not even arguing with you about your ideas of having unions, I am only arguing against you colluding with government to get special preferential treatment, whether you are a union or a corporation etc.
note, I am not for Bush administration in any way, I am just showing how gov't is responsible for the moral hazard created by Freddie/Fannie in this case.
Also I wanted to add something, which I had said in various other comments, but forgot in my response to you, that the banks were lending risk free (gov't guaranteed) mortgages to all sort of people who weren't going to pay back (banks knew they weren't going to pay back, that's who for example Goldman could package deals it factually knew were going to go bust and then bet against those deals) but where did the banks get all that money?
The Fed gave them the money. It was basically interest free money, something on the order of 1%-0%. The Fed gave the banks FREE MONEY while removing risk from lending the money out.
Think about this before you accuse Wall street of being the devil. Sure, they took advantage of this situation, but seriously, only a brain dead idiot wouldn't. This is the Government in action for you.
The observation is that 19th century has increased quality of life of people in industrial countries, as they were able to move away from agrarian economies towards industrial economies as a byproduct of capitalist system, which allowed use of capital and labor to increase production capacity and efficiency and eventually increased everybody's quality of life, this observation is objective, it's not subjective.
In the beginning of 19th century, in the USA people were using outhouses, they didn't have running water in their homes, they didn't have machinery that helped them, the food was much more expensive, they clothes were more expensive, etc.
By the end of 19th century people had in house sanitary amenities, clean water, the food was much less expensive and much more accessible, so was clothing, people had sewing machines and washing machines, this is an objective observation and government only had to do with it this: it was there to protect individual liberties of people, not to take away their rights and not to provide special privileges to special interests.
Sure, trademarks. I would expect that privately people could have trademarks that had nothing to do with any government regulations and then they could settle the issues in court, so again, I am for a working Justice system.
Yes, Edison would have to negotiate with private land owners. No, I don't see this any different than what he had to do except it would be more honest, no bribes, just paying for that use of land.
Roads must be private.
Again, any issue with communication compatibility, etc., it's all part of the working market.
NOTHING is worth losing our working market, no amount of convenience. I am on the same level with RMS here, he doesn't allow a single transgression against Free Software, I don't believe in a single transgression against Free Market.
I have to ask , if you think anything that gets in the way of profit is a problem, how do you feel about wall street?
- I didn't say profit, I said progress. I hope you do not confuse the terms. Progress in my view is what raises quality of life of society in total, so far only industrialization through capitalist system was able to bring up the quality of life dramatically for all people in the world and any protectionist ideas, any special interests, any collusion with government power and threat of violence stands in the way of that progress. Profit is a private matter and getting profit is what pushes progress forward, I have nothing against profit, I am all for it.
As to the wall street, I must say that they are people, like anybody else, was I there I would have gone for the largest profit possible as well, it would be really really stupid not to. However understand that from the point view of a libertarian like myself I dread the government involvement into Free Market, which is what became the reason for the economic collapse. Ability of people to collude with the government is what destroys Free Market. I argued a number of times here that government must be modified so that it can never help any special interests in any way and thus would stay out of economy and will not create any moral hazards, monopolies, subsidized businesses. Will not be able to fund any occupations and wars, rather than doing what it's function is supposed to be: protection of liberties of the citizens, providing just enough military to prevent an invasion and maintaining a working Justice system.
Derivative trading was completely untouched by government regulation or even monitoring until a single company defaulted....and almost brought the cards down the first time. However that was avoided by the government stepping in and telling those who had lost money in derivatives what they had to do.
- this is where you and I are on completely different planes of thought. I arguedthismanytimes on/. and elsewhere (and in my journal).
The government has no business regulating any enterprise at all. Of-course once it poisons the well, it then becomes necessary to 'regulate', so as an example the Glass-Steagall that was implemented after the FDIC was introduced was a regulation to negate the original poison of FDIC.
Whenever a government creates a moral hazard, it then becomes necessary to control the market so that moral hazard is not abused. Obviously the moral hazard should not have been created in the first place. So by insuring the banks with FDIC, government created a moral hazard, which allowed the banks not to care earning trust of their customers and allowed the customers not to care where they keep their money. You see, people in USA spend more time choosing which toaster they will buy than thinking where they'll keep their money. Many countries do not insure bank deposits, and those countries did better in the mortgage bubble crash because their banks had to behave in a more responsible manner.
There is nothing that government does that is needed to be done for the market to work, but it does it for political reasons, government officials want to stay in power, they want to continue their careers in government and they collude with private interests while they work in government because once they are done being politicians, they exit the government positions and enter private businesses, which they helped previously, they are guaranteed huge compensati
I like progress, but in what direction? I hope not the directions you define. Like anyone, I prefer progress towards my values, and productive efficiency is not something I think is a great way to measure societies (unless among many other factors).
- Progress for me is increase of quality of life of all people. The only way to achieve this is to have total competition unencumbered by ability to become a special interest that colludes with a government. If you have your own private union I honestly do not care, power to you, just do not impose your ideas on me through a threat of violence by government power.
Saying "I am a XXXX" is not likely to convince anyone in a discussion.
- I agree. I should have brought an example of conversations I used to have here, my point is not that I am libertarian, I stand corrected, my point is that I believe that libertarian view is the most correct even from point of view of fairness, because it increases everybody's quality of life and nobody's special interests are above others.
So they bring out a new machine to cut hair, it's a box with a hole in it, you stick your head inside and it cuts the hair. Somebody asked a question: -But everyone's head is different.
It's not even best for society or industry as a whole. There is no way to argue that point, I am completely libertarian and totally pro Free Market and against any sort of collusion by any forces, including gov't and corporate that prevent competition.
Competition is the key, anything that stands on its way stands on the way of progress and progress is what society (and industries) really need. You just have to have a long term outlook.
what are you talking about? I contracted in Canada for 10 years non-stop, before it I did 5 years of permanent, would never go back, and right now contracting in Europe, and as I was on a contract here I was still contracting back in Toronto. If needed I can do contracts wherever, but I prefer the places that pay the most.
The benefit of all is better served by standing together.
- I disagree on your definition of what it means to be 'better served'.
As a contractor I am not interested in any unions at all, I prefer to keep my contracts and negotiations private, I am not looking for benefits, only for the biggest hourly rate, and especially I am not interested in seniority, so what the heck would a union provide me with?
You are absolutely correct, I am firmlyagainstpatentsand copyrights though I produce plenty of stuff myself that is copyrighted obviously, I am still totally against those things and will vote against them every time.
Are you sure? It would take 200 negotiations just to get cable or power run in my neighborhood (without eminent domain each property owner is sovereign over their property) alone IF they could negotiate with everyone between the neighborhood and their plant.
As to property rights, read this, apparently the problem for Edison was that he needed to run the cables through 'common property', he had to bribe officials in some cities to get the permits etc. So if there was no common property, which is my other argument that gov't shouldn't own any assets at all, because it is a terrible owner, a non-owner really, then Edison would be able to negotiate with actual real owners. I argue that such catastrophes as BP oil spill could have been prevented if the ocean was not a 'common resource' but was divided into properties and owned privately.
My point is that gov't owning anything is a bad idea, all property should be private, that's all, and for this purpose it's easier to reach agreement between private owners than going through all bureaucracies and governments and regulations etc.
-- De Beers is a major market player, big enough to be de-facto monopoly, as to MS, it enjoys various gov't protections, it couldn't have grown to its size without copyright and patent laws enacted by gov't, but it also benefited greatly from working with IBM, which also enjoyed many gov't protections and exclusive contracts and other perks, such as working with fascist gov'ts of other times on exclusive contracts, and from the very inception, IBM had an exclusive gov't contract to count census data.
--
I know my views are seen as extreme/radical etc., so I am not expecting consensus, but I am presenting my point of view and the case that US economy is dying because specifically of gov't intervention into economy.
You DO know that without an exercise of imminent domain, there could be no electrical of phone wires right?
- not true, that's royalties and it has to be included in the cost of running the business.
You might also consider that Adam Smith was rather certain that a completely unregulated market would inevitably become a monopoly or an oligarchy.
- except that in the 19 century this didn't appear to be a problem, event he Standard Oil was no longer a monopoly by the time it was broken up into pieces, but what we DO KNOW with 100% CERTAINTY is that gov't creates and maintains monopolies left right and center and it destroys all kinds of competition in the process.
Probably the only real monopoly of the 20 century that wasn't helped by any gov't is De Beers cartel.
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basically when I see that the prevailing attitude in society is similar to what you are describing I do the last thing I can, I vote with my feet.
No, it's a money making opportunity for the hundreds of people who own roads.
- you got it.
Each of them will want to make sure you don't disrupt heir primary business, but they'll each have their own rules about it.
- good, so you work around their requirements and you shouldn't disrupt their primary business. That makes sense.
If it is THE owner of the road or roads, then the market has already failed.
- right, that's what's happening now.
And by rents out, I mean HE owns the property and allows others to hunt on it in exchange for rent.
- excellent, why the heck would he object to some extra income if the property is already used as rental property to generate income? It's nonsensical.
As for building another plant, it was difficult enough to ram one plant past the NIMBYs, now you want them dotting the countryside?
- private property, private business. NIMBYs are getting power from government intervention, lobbying and bribing in the first place.
There were improvements in the 19th century, not a one of them related to a non-government inspection industry.
- so what? As I said it takes time for a society in transit to get somewhere, and they were in plenty transit, moving from agrarian economy to industrial, and in the meanwhile getting better and better and feeding people what apparently was mostly safe food, and inventing the little gizmos to keep the food safer and safer. Market was working, then gov't came out as it usually does with a power-grub idea.
The FDA for example came in to existence after a notable incident where a cough elixir was produced with dietheline glycol as the base and children died. Before that, there was nothing to prevent even the most obviously unsafe practice (it was a known poison at the time but the company couldn't be bothered to check).
- yes, and in 19th century people tried using mercury to treat syphilis.
It is not government intervention that is needed, it is increase in science, and increase in science comes from demand of more engineering, and demand for more engineering comes out of industrialization of manufacturing processes. Government is just an observer and an abuser of this. Your favorite FDA wouldn't even regulate fructose, even though it is shown to be the cause of obesity and other medical problems similar to alcoholism, but regulating interferes with subsidizing corn farmers, and gov't can't have that.
I think arguing now makes no further sense.
And why would he have to explain himself in court?
- that would be the question posed by the users of the road if they decided to. No, I am against gov't intervening into private matters. Justice system is not legislation, it's a service to allow people to deal with each other.
His property - his right, that's true. However an argument CAN be made that the businesses and private properties were built based on specifics of the road prices.
But your argument will be this: there will be something terrible about a privately owned property, it will make your life terrible.
You know what? There is something terrible about PUBLIC property that is making lives of plenty of people terrible every day NOW. Constant construction due to government collusion with construction companies, that rebuild the same part of the road year to year, traffic, inability to build more roads to cover demand, insufficient parking, all of this is a problem today.
But NOT the park, NOT the roads, NOT the public buildings, etc.
- there is no need for any such thing.
I understand you have stuck in this world of today, with the laws of today, it's OK, there is no need to argue, your way is already the way that is happening in your part of the world now, so why are you arguing?
You claimed that failures to negotiate a mutually beneficial use of the land wasn't a problem because the lines mostly run along the roads. The only way that alleviates anything is if somehow there is a single authority that controls access to that space. That implies a monopoly, either by government (but you would ban that) or through a failure of the market (which you would ban intervention to fix).
- why do I have to chew through every word as if it's so really difficult to understand? Roads are already property that are there to make money, so private roads are there to have cars on them, it's not like it's that healthy to LIVE on a road anyway, it's a money making opportunity for the road owner, it wouldn't be against their reasons to own the road. The power lines over roads only make all the sense in the world for private owners, they don't actually LIVE on a road.
Nobody can or should make anybody allow them pass something they don't want to have through their private property, but there is always a way to negotiate if the price is right anyway.
Out competed in what? Perhaps they rent out the land for hunting.
- so they 'rent' out, they are not the owners. The question is why would an owner prevent a power line going through some part of their property if they benefit from it financially? And if they do, they eventually lose ability to compete.
The people beyond the property will suffer, but the (possibly absentee) land owner will not. In fact, if his refusal kills industry and drives employers away, he will get cheap labor to maintain his property.
- the value of any property like that, that is not used by anybody would go down, it is not even a fact that there would be people left there to 'service' his property.
More importantly, if one individual causes such headaches, then another individual can take it upon himself to build a new power generating plant closer to the properties that require this power. Again, more power production capacity is a good thing.
Or, people will move away and he gets the opportunity to buy up land on the cheap
- and so would anybody else. I don't see what your problem is there. In a Free Market anybody with can buy whatever is for sale and if the bet is that once the property is bought it will be then developed and will cost more, well, it's a risk. It's always a risk. Maybe it will go up but maybe not. Risk is what gov't tries to remove from credit lending and it's part of the reason for the financial collapse together with almost free interest rates on money and no real production or gold value behind that money, as well as collusion that creates monopolies that are big enough to profit from a massive job movement to areas with lower labor costs.
I asked since the various government agencies that do the inspections were all formed because nobody was doing that job before. That is, NOBODY was in the market for the service.
- if there is a demand for a service, service will form. In the times of 19th century there was plenty of development by the market, by the way, that lead to great improvement of food quality. This includes refrigeration and canning food for example. I'd say that Free Market did more to provide city folks with better diets and food than the government regulation did, and eventually if this became a necessity there could be certification companies formed.
Rich lawyers and coupons for everyone? That IS the usual result of class action suits these days.
- with gov't providing at most 2-3 services, it should be able to do a better job at them, otherwise what the hell is the point?
It's amazing, every second story on /. is about how the government is trying to take away more and more Liberties and Freedoms that are intrinsic to the people and even those that are granted by amendments in a more specific way and I argue that this is what is wrong with the governments but over and over people fight me on this here, completely missing the point that they are less Free with every bill that the government passes, they are staring right at it and cannot see it, I do not understand this, but I understand that if even on /. this is the general attitude, then in the rest of the population this has to be even more pronounced, so basically nothing will change, people want to be controlled and punished and ruled by tyrants. People have decided this is what they need, it's sad.
YOU don't expect me to be charged for walking, but you aren't the property owner either. There's nothing to stop the behavior.
- well sure there is. Again, it is about private choice. As to 'what would stop behavior' - in society we do rely on trust much more than you seem to admit. We trust people not to abuse us excessively and normally it works. Response to any price gouging can be a Class Action Lawsuit, however if costs are fair than everything else is about private choices. You choose your house and community and city and state etc. You have to pay attention to what you are choosing.
The Sun pass works because there is exactly ONE entity collecting tolls. Imagine if there are dozens, some of whom object to the 'Sun pass corporation' and so don't honor the Sun pass.
- so what, how is that different from any other situation where there are multiple suppliers? So you pay some tolls with cash, however if this becomes too much of a hassle, you choose the road so that it is the most convenient route for you to take, possibly you account for the convenience of using one or two passes on the road.
Sun pass is really no different from a credit card, and most stores accept most credit cards. Sure there are stores that don't accept AMEX or MC or Visa, but most accept all of those and cash. I really do not find this to be such a problem as you do, IN FACT, now I believe that system would be even better than I originally thought specifically because there could be a number of providers competing for business. Sun pass, Moon pass, Sky pass, whatever.
Again, I believe you are mistaken as to the costs that would be applied to roads. Nobody is interested in paying $20 for 500 feet, it would be rather unfortunate decision on the part of that road owner, he'd have to explain himself in court, but as a result of this the Free Market would have to provide many more roads and ways to cross space than what is available right now.
I am completely on the opposite spectrum from you on this I believe, so I don't see a point going at it again and again.
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Was the private garbage collector responsible for cleaning up the public spaces as well (and so factoring that into your bill) or was it providing a bit less service for a bit less money?
- private collector actually charged LESS THAN THE CITY AND CLEANED THE DRIVEWAY. I honestly didn't even expect that, but to think about it, of-course, the city could charge union wages and all the fees and then there is probably some subsidy coming from somewhere else, basically government is the biggest scam ever implemented and people have bought into it.
I note that when you get to the part about the sanitation workers damaging the competition's vehicles you decry the lack of government intervention. Shouldn't they have been hiring a private police force?
- in the current system it's illegal to have your own police force, armed and all, so you are being facetious here. The point is that under the existing rules the cops were on the side of the city's union workers and did not uphold the law - yet another reason to despise the government.
You don't get to invoke free use of public spaces when you're against the existence of such spaces. The roads would be private property wouldn't they?
- but I never said anything about FREE use of private spaces. I am against all publicly owned 'common' property completely and for all cases, so how can you accuse me of asking for free use of it? I don't understand.
You seem to have a low estimate of the number of tinfoil hat wearing private property owners who are 'sure' the wires carry harmful radiation. Or the number of greedy property owners who are all too well aware of how much it will cost to bypass their property.
- Good, they will be out-competed by others. If there is not a single way to pass electrical lines through their properties, either there would be a new electrical plant built on some private property beyond those, who oppose it, or there would be no electrical capacity in that area.
A win-win. Why is it a win-win? Because that are will quickly learn that jobs will move away and property values will diminish because there are no jobs left. Without use of electricity modern technology cannot be used almost in all cases, so those without electricity will be left behind, they will basically choose to be left out of the profitable competition. So market works. Eventually they will have either to accept electrical wiring around them, or they will find themselves pretty much isolated and without work, out-competed in every sense of the word.
The computer hardware market is subject to the regulation that I maintain is necessary and you claim destroys the functioning of the free market.
- computer hardware should not be subject to any regulation by any gov't, and in reality it is pretty much a non-issue. If you are talking about FCC regulations on interference, this is a private matter of the market and it is efficiency of the equipment and its use of energy. Voting with money will do fine unless you want to own equipment that doesn't let you receive your phone calls etc. However I never said that computer industry is a PERFECT example, but I did say that it is highly competitive despite the government interference and you cannot deny gigantic fall in prices over time for better hardware than it used to be.
Government just cannot boast any such achievements, oh, it can push the prices down, but it does so with laws and violence and only destroys more than it creates in the process (I am talking about price or wage fixing etc.)
Since Lasic uses medical devices, it's FAR more regulated than even the computer hardware market.
- again, I didn't say it was perfect. I said it was good example because government is not providing the moral hazard and guarantees, basically government is not paying for this. When government (Nixon actually) got into private health care (it was supposedly to make sure there are no uninsured people anymore, there were about 10-15% uninsured at the time) insurance was insurance. People paid for most procedures out of pocket and prices were very low. You could see a doctor for 5 bucks. The insurance cost $25 for a family of 4 people for 1 year with $500 deductible covering up to $50K, which was 2.5 times more than necessary to cover 1 year of cancer treatment at the time (it was $20K/year) and the most expensive hospital stay for one day was $110. Nixon destroyed the entire idea of insurance, now people expect their 'insurance' pay for every single doctor visit, so obviously it's not actually insurance. Because the money is paid from insurance and from gov't, the health providers were able to push prices up much faster than inflation, the entire industry became rigged and you know what, there still are 10-15% uninsured people. So the gov't didn't even achieve the goal they set and they destroyed a working system by pushing the prices so high.
As for food control, who exactly will
Just remembered that you asked about roads.
Do you pay every time you enter a mall? It's private space you know, but you don't have to pay every time, you are only expected to pay if you buy something.
Same exact thing with roads and all other property that can be accessed by public. I don't expect you to have to pay anything if you are walking there, but if you are driving, at some point there will be a toll booth, and today it makes most sense to own some sort of an electronic pass, I used them in Miami, Florida, I think it's called 'Sun path' or something like that, it works.
And again, with competition there is more choice and in fact infrastructure would be maintained and updated better and more often unlike what is happening now, when most of the infrastructure is monopolized and subsidized and you have no choice from who to buy the services.
I was in Toronto when there was a month long city strike and garbage wasn't collected. So immediately some people started working collecting the garbage, I bough services from a private provider who for the same price! did a much better job than the city, in fact they even swept the ground after they picked up the garbage.
Do you know what ended up happening? The city's unionized workers started ganging up on the private garbage collectors and broke their trucks, even physically attacked the people and cops wouldn't do anything about it either.
I know one thing: you let any structure take control of anything and you lose all control, and gov't is the ultimate structure to take away your control and make you pay for it, because during that strike there was no services provided by the city, we were trying to sell 2 houses and couldn't because we couldn't fill out certain papers, that city has monopoly on and at the end nobody was getting any refunds for their property taxes even though there was no service provided.
When a private company does that shit you can have some recourse, with the gov't doing it good luck getting justice.
The cost of all of the negotiations would probably exceed the bribe. Plus all it would 5take is one negotiation falling through to render the rest moot.
- why? I don't see a reason for this, especially given that most of the lines go alongside with roads. But even where they have to go through farms/fields etc., they would represent a direct income stream for the land owners and that's where competition would come in handy in a perfect way. Competition, you know, what USA and many other countries do not have in power distribution, which is the reason the power infrastructure is aging and failing.
The object I take away from this is that corrupt government officials should go directly to jail.
- agree.
Format wars are considered harmful. "the market" has proven to be nothing more than a clash of the titans with the consumer squashed under foot every time.
- well that's one point of view. I do not consider it harmful in any meaningful way anymore than having multiple GNU/Linux distros is harmful. More choice is better than less choice. Interoperability is a different question. Without government to maintain artificial ideas such as copyrights and patents this wouldn't even be a problem the way it is now.
So you have your standard and your competitor has his. Fine. You go ahead and fight, while the third party implements both in one device. Problem solved.
But it can't be solved if the gov't is there to punish the third party. The 'format wars' are harmful specifically because there is gov't involvement into the issue, which poisons everything and prevents market from working.
I have never seen a market that works as well as you expect them to work.
- I can provide many examples. In fact computer hardware is one such example, it's not perfect, but realize just how much cheaper it is to buy 1000 GB hard drive space today than it was 20 years ago, yes, Free Market causes price reduction (or deflation, whatever you want to call it). Government never does it. Here is another example: Lasic laser eye surgery. Prices are going down, quality is going up, why is that? Because there is so much competition and no government involvement and guarantees to pay for any of it.
There is no need for regulation by government, regulation only adds unnecessary costs and kills competition.
Some people say: what about food control? Well, are you telling me that I cannot open my own private food inspection agency and provide certification and that I will be less efficient at it than any gov't could and that I couldn't make a good business out of it if gov't wasn't there destroying competition?
Social ties
- which is helped by free market that develops ideas for new communications systems, I usually have a derisive view of Twitter or Facebook or iPhones, but there you go (this is just one example).
opportunity
- exactly. Without liberty there is no opportunity. If you force everybody into one system that uses gov't violence to persuade people into one mode of behavior, you have taken away opportunity. One example of that is USSR, where opportunity was very low because gov't controlled every aspect of life so much.
justice
- one of 2 things I believe that a gov't should be providing: Justice system to resolve criminal and contract conflicts and minimum military to protect your liberties and life from foreign threats.
reasonable working conditions
- which have improved via industrialization by increasing the efficiencies and automation. You cannot argue against industrialization and capitalism if you care about having 'reasonable' working conditions, because you do not have to work as a subsistence farmer, being able to feed pretty much only yourself in the process.
many of the things unions fight for or laws ensure are also worthwhile for quality of life
- unions, if organized privately within some specific segment of market and if not preventing others from working in that same segment without being part of that very union, I have no problem with. They will either survive if they are reasonable, or they will cause the labor market imbalance that will move the work away and they will lose power, which is what competition is about and it is a good thing. Any overwhelming force within the market that is not dictated by the individual choices of market participants but by any sort of external power struggle is destructive to the competitiveness within the market and reduces market efficiency.
Market systems both typically require considerable government support (enabling laws for corporations and specifics of laws on liability, commerce, and contracts, as examples) and have a very complex relationship to whatever kinds of efficiencies we're interested in.
- only 2 things are required from a government as I said: minimum military to protect your liberties from invasion and a working justice system. I argued plenty of times that any other intrusion onto markets by government threat of violence will eventually lead to market destruction, and the velocity of destruction is related to the scale of intrusion.
I think it's worth paying the cost to society, generally, for the things unions have fought.
- it's your opinion, and again, if you are interested in your private union it does not change anything for me, I don't mind, as long as you do not end up colluding with gov't forces that project threat violence to modify market behavior.
Likewise, I think it's worth paying whatever costs their are to society for useful regulation, social programmes, and the like.
- 'whatever costs' will end up in market destruction. I completely disagree with market destruction and I have and will continue moving away from any place that tries to impose those kinds of standards upon me and the market around me. I am not interested in 'paying whatever costs'. I was born in the USSR and I have seen what the ultimate costs end up being. No thanks, no thanks at all.
I'm curious about your use of the term special treatment
- I defined it in the link earlier by proposing an amendment that would prevent it. Special treatment means any collusion with government to achieve any special status at all, any preferential treatment. I am against legislating any regulations, subsidies, income taxes of any kind, tre
well yeah, that's if you want to kill all the aliens we may end up meeting
you just proved his point for him
Your facts don't lead to the conclusion you assert - you're still equating quality of life with material goods (and I believe that you're misattributing to capitalism what should be attributed to science).
- quality of life has plenty to do with material goods, such as access to food, to sanitation, to clothes, to energy, to transportation, to communications systems, to medical providers. Without these the quality of life is low, but you can't even argue with me about this point with a straight face, you are arguing for unionized work, which is the entire point - getting a bunch of money in a more 'special interest' kind of way.
Science without capitalism stays on the level of curiosity, if you didn't notice, science in itself is only useful to the scientists, who derive pleasure from discovering the 'truths' about the world. It is industrialization that provides the means to take science and apply it to increase quality of life.
Also, why should we accept your ideas about the proper role of government?
- I am proposing my ideas, you don't have to subscribe to any of them. I am not even arguing with you about your ideas of having unions, I am only arguing against you colluding with government to get special preferential treatment, whether you are a union or a corporation etc.
Decided to find a few examples on this Freddie/Fannie situation, just to give a feeling for it.
Here you go, videos on how a few of these things went down
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63siCHvuGFg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC88oox9TBo
note, I am not for Bush administration in any way, I am just showing how gov't is responsible for the moral hazard created by Freddie/Fannie in this case.
Also I wanted to add something, which I had said in various other comments, but forgot in my response to you, that the banks were lending risk free (gov't guaranteed) mortgages to all sort of people who weren't going to pay back (banks knew they weren't going to pay back, that's who for example Goldman could package deals it factually knew were going to go bust and then bet against those deals) but where did the banks get all that money?
The Fed gave them the money. It was basically interest free money, something on the order of 1%-0%. The Fed gave the banks FREE MONEY while removing risk from lending the money out.
Think about this before you accuse Wall street of being the devil. Sure, they took advantage of this situation, but seriously, only a brain dead idiot wouldn't. This is the Government in action for you.
The observation is that 19th century has increased quality of life of people in industrial countries, as they were able to move away from agrarian economies towards industrial economies as a byproduct of capitalist system, which allowed use of capital and labor to increase production capacity and efficiency and eventually increased everybody's quality of life, this observation is objective, it's not subjective.
In the beginning of 19th century, in the USA people were using outhouses, they didn't have running water in their homes, they didn't have machinery that helped them, the food was much more expensive, they clothes were more expensive, etc.
By the end of 19th century people had in house sanitary amenities, clean water, the food was much less expensive and much more accessible, so was clothing, people had sewing machines and washing machines, this is an objective observation and government only had to do with it this: it was there to protect individual liberties of people, not to take away their rights and not to provide special privileges to special interests.
Sure, trademarks. I would expect that privately people could have trademarks that had nothing to do with any government regulations and then they could settle the issues in court, so again, I am for a working Justice system.
Yes, Edison would have to negotiate with private land owners. No, I don't see this any different than what he had to do except it would be more honest, no bribes, just paying for that use of land.
Roads must be private.
Again, any issue with communication compatibility, etc., it's all part of the working market.
NOTHING is worth losing our working market, no amount of convenience. I am on the same level with RMS here, he doesn't allow a single transgression against Free Software, I don't believe in a single transgression against Free Market.
I have to ask , if you think anything that gets in the way of profit is a problem, how do you feel about wall street?
- I didn't say profit, I said progress. I hope you do not confuse the terms. Progress in my view is what raises quality of life of society in total, so far only industrialization through capitalist system was able to bring up the quality of life dramatically for all people in the world and any protectionist ideas, any special interests, any collusion with government power and threat of violence stands in the way of that progress. Profit is a private matter and getting profit is what pushes progress forward, I have nothing against profit, I am all for it.
As to the wall street, I must say that they are people, like anybody else, was I there I would have gone for the largest profit possible as well, it would be really really stupid not to. However understand that from the point view of a libertarian like myself I dread the government involvement into Free Market, which is what became the reason for the economic collapse. Ability of people to collude with the government is what destroys Free Market. I argued a number of times here that government must be modified so that it can never help any special interests in any way and thus would stay out of economy and will not create any moral hazards, monopolies, subsidized businesses. Will not be able to fund any occupations and wars, rather than doing what it's function is supposed to be: protection of liberties of the citizens, providing just enough military to prevent an invasion and maintaining a working Justice system.
Derivative trading was completely untouched by government regulation or even monitoring until a single company defaulted....and almost brought the cards down the first time. However that was avoided by the government stepping in and telling those who had lost money in derivatives what they had to do.
- this is where you and I are on completely different planes of thought. I argued this many times on /. and elsewhere (and in my journal).
The government has no business regulating any enterprise at all. Of-course once it poisons the well, it then becomes necessary to 'regulate', so as an example the Glass-Steagall that was implemented after the FDIC was introduced was a regulation to negate the original poison of FDIC.
Whenever a government creates a moral hazard, it then becomes necessary to control the market so that moral hazard is not abused. Obviously the moral hazard should not have been created in the first place. So by insuring the banks with FDIC, government created a moral hazard, which allowed the banks not to care earning trust of their customers and allowed the customers not to care where they keep their money. You see, people in USA spend more time choosing which toaster they will buy than thinking where they'll keep their money. Many countries do not insure bank deposits, and those countries did better in the mortgage bubble crash because their banks had to behave in a more responsible manner.
There is nothing that government does that is needed to be done for the market to work, but it does it for political reasons, government officials want to stay in power, they want to continue their careers in government and they collude with private interests while they work in government because once they are done being politicians, they exit the government positions and enter private businesses, which they
helped previously, they are guaranteed huge compensati
I like progress, but in what direction? I hope not the directions you define. Like anyone, I prefer progress towards my values, and productive efficiency is not something I think is a great way to measure societies (unless among many other factors).
- Progress for me is increase of quality of life of all people. The only way to achieve this is to have total competition unencumbered by ability to become a special interest that colludes with a government. If you have your own private union I honestly do not care, power to you, just do not impose your ideas on me through a threat of violence by government power.
Saying "I am a XXXX" is not likely to convince anyone in a discussion.
- I agree. I should have brought an example of conversations I used to have here, my point is not that I am libertarian, I stand corrected, my point is that I believe that libertarian view is the most correct even from point of view of fairness, because it increases everybody's quality of life and nobody's special interests are above others.
Just remembered an old joke:
So they bring out a new machine to cut hair, it's a box with a hole in it, you stick your head inside and it cuts the hair.
Somebody asked a question: -But everyone's head is different.
The answer was this: -Only for the first time.
It's not even best for society or industry as a whole. There is no way to argue that point, I am completely libertarian and totally pro Free Market and against any sort of collusion by any forces, including gov't and corporate that prevent competition.
Competition is the key, anything that stands on its way stands on the way of progress and progress is what society (and industries) really need. You just have to have a long term outlook.
what are you talking about? I contracted in Canada for 10 years non-stop, before it I did 5 years of permanent, would never go back, and right now contracting in Europe, and as I was on a contract here I was still contracting back in Toronto. If needed I can do contracts wherever, but I prefer the places that pay the most.
The benefit of all is better served by standing together.
- I disagree on your definition of what it means to be 'better served'.
As a contractor I am not interested in any unions at all, I prefer to keep my contracts and negotiations private, I am not looking for benefits, only for the biggest hourly rate, and especially I am not interested in seniority, so what the heck would a union provide me with?
You are absolutely correct, I am firmly against patents and copyrights though I produce plenty of stuff myself that is copyrighted obviously, I am still totally against those things and will vote against them every time.
Are you sure? It would take 200 negotiations just to get cable or power run in my neighborhood (without eminent domain each property owner is sovereign over their property) alone IF they could negotiate with everyone between the neighborhood and their plant.
As to property rights, read this, apparently the problem for Edison was that he needed to run the cables through 'common property', he had to bribe officials in some cities to get the permits etc. So if there was no common property, which is my other argument that gov't shouldn't own any assets at all, because it is a terrible owner, a non-owner really, then Edison would be able to negotiate with actual real owners. I argue that such catastrophes as BP oil spill could have been prevented if the ocean was not a 'common resource' but was divided into properties and owned privately.
I argued about this point on /. extensively and in multiple threads and stories, same argument over and over it's suffices to say it's not a new concept, I am tired of this argument.
My point is that gov't owning anything is a bad idea, all property should be private, that's all, and for this purpose it's easier to reach agreement between private owners than going through all bureaucracies and governments and regulations etc.
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De Beers is a major market player, big enough to be de-facto monopoly, as to MS, it enjoys various gov't protections, it couldn't have grown to its size without copyright and patent laws enacted by gov't, but it also benefited greatly from working with IBM, which also enjoyed many gov't protections and exclusive contracts and other perks, such as working with fascist gov'ts of other times on exclusive contracts, and from the very inception, IBM had an exclusive gov't contract to count census data.
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I know my views are seen as extreme/radical etc., so I am not expecting consensus, but I am presenting my point of view and the case that US economy is dying because specifically of gov't intervention into economy.
You DO know that without an exercise of imminent domain, there could be no electrical of phone wires right?
- not true, that's royalties and it has to be included in the cost of running the business.
You might also consider that Adam Smith was rather certain that a completely unregulated market would inevitably become a monopoly or an oligarchy.
- except that in the 19 century this didn't appear to be a problem, event he Standard Oil was no longer a monopoly by the time it was broken up into pieces, but what we DO KNOW with 100% CERTAINTY is that gov't creates and maintains monopolies left right and center and it destroys all kinds of competition in the process.
Probably the only real monopoly of the 20 century that wasn't helped by any gov't is De Beers cartel.