Oh yes, because what person -doesn't- want to spend hours slaving over a hack to let them do... pretty much the same thing you could have done on a Wii or modded 360. A hacked Wii can play just about every console up to PlayStation and doesn't play PS1 games very well. But wait... The PS3 plays them by default. Oh what about a Cell-based PS2 emulator? Well, Sony themselves tried that and ended up giving up. So where does that leave you? N64? (though I think there was a port for an N64 hacked Wii emulator but never tried it to see if it ran full speed or not...), Dreamcast? Gamecube? (But the Wii can play Gamecube games natively...).
As for a media center, the PS3 already does some of that and really for the price of a PS3 and the labor it would take to do this, you could buy a nice HTPC setup.
Look, there is no reason for anyone beyond saying "Look! I have a hacked PS3!" to really even bother trying to hack it.
There are always ways to make money though even though people can get your content for free. Look at webcomics, videos like Homestar Runner, etc. if you are truly -good- at what you do, you can always make money because your fans will support you.
Yes, with no scarcity there is no reason to pay for all the crap coming from hollywood with generic plots, sub-par acting, etc. but if you are truly good at what you do, you are almost always successful.
Just about every artist or product "killed" by piracy wasn't very good to begin with.
Just because it isn't cracked yet doesn't mean its uncrackable. I think with the PS3 there just isn't any motivation to hack it. Its expensive if you break it, Cell is a pain to code for, and really has no use when compared to a Wii or even 360.
If there is no motivation, no one will crack it. Just like I can make Super Crappy Game 8000 with DRM built in but if no one buys my game or wants to crack it the DRM remains uncracked.
Really, what is there to do on a cracked PS3 that can't be done on a 360 or Wii aside from things that use the Cell Processor which only really does obscure mathematical calculations very well.
This makes no sense, you are trying to make digital copies behave like analog copies and creating artificial scarcity that is needless.
I can see no good coming out of this. The only "good" forms of DRM are similar to those in the Google Market on Android, it keeps track of payments so you can always retrieve back your programs.
Yeah, because it was in the west that life expectancies actually hit a point where you could be pretty sure you'd survive past 40 and be a grandparent and the idea of being a great grandparent wasn't out of the question. In other countries its commonplace to marry at 16 or earlier and start a family. In America and related countries (which I'm assuming you mean Europe and the westernized countries of Asia) waiting until your mid twenties or later to get married and start a family is pretty typical.
Because in western culture its not typical to get married early, there is a time where teenagers have a time to really decide what they want to do with their life and yes, some of it may involve -gasp- risk taking, but the entire mentality is born out of the fact that life expectancies have increased dramatically.
I'm sure in all of the other countries there are reckless kids but because they are poor they start families earlier, take more risky jobs, etc. and so its not considered to be "risky" when it really involves a high mortality rate.
In many other countries in the present and in the past, it used to be that you could die from pretty typical stuff like an infection, common illnesses, etc. since we've conquered most of that in the west with the exception of things like cancer, of course car accidents are going to be the leading cause of death because what else would a western teenager die from? We've thankfully ended the tyrannical practice of having a non-volunteer army so kids aren't being killed in wars, cured the vast majority of sicknesses, need to use very little hard labor for the vast majority of things, etc. so the common causes of death in other countries don't exist in the west for teenagers.
Um, no, kids were still reckless. Its just before the '50s cars were prohibitively expensive for kids to get so kids generally weren't driving. They just generally were reckless in other ways like with farm machinery, going out and getting themselves killed in wars, etc.
Not having a car is going to make it hard to be reckless with a car, but it sure didn't cut down on recklessness.
We'd need tons upon tons of nuclear weapons to practically do that though. Earth has an atmosphere where mars does not, evaporating water doesn't go into nothingness but rather back into the atmosphere. Sure if you nuclear-ly fuse H2O into heavier elements it could work, but its way more bombs than would ever be practical to use.
That's not libertarianism, it's decentralisation and promotion of democracy. Why do you expect this to result in state governments which represent the interests of the individual rather than, say, the governments typical of the states of the European Union?
Because when the ratio between the people to representative is low, it makes it a whole lot easier to vote out bad representatives and easier to contact them or even run for office. Its pretty hard to convince an entire state that a candidate is a terrible or great match unless you have a lot of money, its pretty easy to tell a medium to small sized town that a candidate is a terrible or great match. In a statewide election, a single neighborhood doesn't matter, however, in a district or county wide election they suddenly gain a whole lot more importance. Representatives are more apt to act on the wishes of those who they are representing if they are representing a small population when compared to a huge population.
And for the EU, due to proportional representation, there are a lot more people who have their voices heard, at least in part, than the system of the US. When the third, fourth and fifth largest parties of the USA don't even have a single member in federal government, something is broken.
A little revolution's always nice, but who fills that power vacuum? If you're really asking for "the people" to, then we once again don't have libertarianism but local democracy. Otherwise you're back to a system of lobbyists and special interests campaigning for government power, i.e. corporate welfare, but (as back in C19) no-one engaging from the other side of the ring on the national or social welfare platform (whether they really care for you or not is irrelevant - that's the stick they beat with).
No one does because its not a power vacuum. The right for me to live my life how I feel like it should only be filled through me. What "power vacuum" is there? My life is my own to live, the government doesn't have the right to tell me how to live it and I refuse to support corporations who tell me how to live my life.
No, the fact that drugs are prohibited it prevents people from being able to know what is exactly in them. I know when I drink a beer I'm not going to be poisoned from it because it is legal. If I get sick from drinking a beer due to impurities in it, I sue the manufacturer of the beer. On the other hand, because drugs are illegal, unscrupulous dealers add in toxic products to "cut" their drugs. Many times it is these toxic products that are the real dangers to drugs, not the drugs themselves. Furthermore the "war" on drugs make research on human effects nearly impossible, meaning poorer medical treatment.
Mix this with the fact that because it isn't legitimate, those selling the drugs must go into hiding and thus spend their money on people who commit true crimes such as theft because walking into Best Buy and buying a new HDTV would look suspicious, so its easier to buy one that was stolen.
And saying that suddenly everyone is going to stop using drugs is utopian and unreasonable, because despite all the money we've wasted on it, drugs are still readily available for those who want them.
Say I want mobile phone service, but I don't like the cartel (Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile, all of which raise their rates in unison). Third parties can't enter the market because the government is protecting the public from force (invasion of RF spectrum allocated to one of the incumbent companies).
Then go with one of the many other phone companies like Cricket or MetroPCS or the like. As for the RF problem, there are lots and lots of unused frequencies that will eventually have uses.
Say I want Internet service, but I don't like Verizon or Comcast. Third parties can't enter the market because the government is protecting the public from force (burying cables).
But such things are for practical purposes infinite. Anyone who wishes to bury cables on public ground for use for ISPs should be able to after paying a fee for the labor it takes for the city and for compensating owners of the property who agree to have the cables buried on their property. The government should simply take a fee and let whoever needs to bury cables on public property so long as they receive compensation, if they damage other cables, they should be sued by the other companies who own the cables and the violated company receives compensation.
I seem to remember reading that under some libertarian formulations, roads would become private land. Numerous toll highways already are outsourced.
Yes, and you'd get better service and better roads, more sane speed limits, etc. because if say Highway A which goes to the same destination of Highway B has better facilities, Highway A will get more profit.
I really fail to see how this is too relevant. Any buried cables would still be the property of the companies who buried them and would, for a time have the same terms as licensed by the city in regards to the rest about the cables.
Who would maintain this tangible standard? Gold reserves can't easily expand alongside an expanding population.
The government would and would pay the dollar-holders gold if requested. Gold/Silver/Platinum would also be allowed as alternate currencies. For example, le
According to the NSA we have no rights, confessions are best gotten by torture, oh and we are attacked by terrorists every 4.8 seconds if we would close illegal prisons and give all US citizens basic rights and conform to various international treaties.
Does it -need- to be done though? We could also implement VNC running through WINE piping output through a serial port being encoded by an Arduno and then sent back upside down which is in turn flipped over by a BASIC script. That doesn't mean that it is always a good idea to do things a weird way when native apps usually work better.
You're missing the parent's point. If government is weak, who is going to stop government becoming an arm of corporations?
The people do. By restoring power to the state/local governments, you make elections that count and it has accountability. The Federal government has 535 representatives/senators in the legislative branch to, in essence, serve 300 million people. State governments for example, like, say the 132 member Tennessee legislator only has to serve a little over 6 million. State governments give a lot more power to the people.
By removing lots of powers from "big government" (the federal government) you put more power in the hands of the people. And you get even more power if you limit the power of that government.
Corporations and governments are kept in check because they're two mafias in a power battle. Everyone at the top is inevitably corrupt, so the best we can hope for is that they all fight each other and no-one ends up too strong. Take away this battle and you're a decade away from totalitarianism.
It is the government though that allows them both to be mafias. Conservatism aims to reduce the government and increase the corporations giving totalitarianism. Modern liberalism aims to reduce the corporations while increasing the government, giving totalitarianism. Libertarianism aims to reduce both sides by taking away special benefits granted by the government to corporations that were making them not responsible to the people, and taking away powers of the government that were making the government not responsible to the people.
Because with the reduction in special protections for corporations with the return of smaller government will mean that its a lot more accessible for an individual to sue a corporation, get a civil trial by jury, and get money out of it. So rather than the government simply collecting fines from corporations who fail to maintain standards, the victims of corporate neglect and abuse can collect the money with no cap on damages.
One of these powers reserved to Congress is the power to create copyrights and patents.
Yes, it has the power to, it is not a constitutional requirement to.
The Congress shall have Power.... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Congress has the power to declare war on Canada also, but that doesn't mean they have to.
A company engaged in nationwide interstate commerce has far more money for legal representation than you will ever have.
So? The only reason why money for legal representation makes a difference is because we live in an age dominated by corporate interests from republicans and democrats. If we had a Libertarian government, the laws would be a lot more cut and dry.
Sure, you could choose not to use the local electric power company, but then you would have to join the Plain People. How does libertarianism handle the natural monopoly characteristic of a public utility?
Most of the time they are not natural monopolies, but rather government-granted monopolies. If you look at most of the electrical/water companies you see that they are not natural monopolies but rather monopolies granted special protection.
Can you give examples of programs under the current Republicratic U.S. government that do not have at least a side effect of protecting citizens from force and fraud?
Federal Assault Weapons Ban (expired recently, but still a good example), The "War" On Drugs, DMCA, etc. And those are just the ones I can think of off my head, I'm sure if I dug into the congressional records I'd find a lot more.
...protects us from force against our energy supply.
That works for companies that don't hold a monopoly on a product considered to form part of the essential standard of living in an industrialized country. Say I want telephone service, but I don't like Verizon or Comcast. Third parties can't enter the market because the government is protecting the public from force (invasion of non-subscribers' land to pull cable to reach subscribers' land).
Yes they can, you mean companies like AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and a whole host of other cell phone providers? Plus what about VoIP?
And even the government not allowing all possible competitors to use public land while allowing a select few should be banned. And that has nothing to do with force/fraud.
Do you know who creates the money supply in the United States? The government has (in a libertarian fashion) outsourced this function to a consortium of twelve private banks called Federal Reserve, which is as federal as FedEx.
What the hell are you talking about? Almost every libertarian believes that ending the federal reserve and returning our money to be fixed on a tangible standard to be the first step to financial sanity.
corporations are beholden to shareholders. government is accountable to you. so why do you want to remove the only thing that protects you, and replace it with an entity that is not beholden to you at all, not even in theory?
But it is beholden to you and me. How does a corporation stay in business? It needs money and a lot of it in order to stay in business. Corporations must make money in order to stay in business. On the other hand, a very unpopular law can remain in effect close to forever, especially if there is unpopular and victimless. Look at prohibition, it remained in the books for 13 years despite massive repercussions and general unpopularity.
If I don't like a corporation, I don't support them. But I can't legally not support the US government if I don't like it. Even a massive corporation with people still buying some of its products will close down under-performing sectors. Look at Sony, they no longer have BetaMax but Sony is still in business. Because no one likes or buys BetaMax tapes, they closed them down.
of course, it doesn't always work out that the government is accountable to you: corruption of our civil servants and our legislators, by corporations, make them serve corporate interests instead of ours. THAT'S the crime you need to fight, not government itself
And that is fought by in the Libertarian party. The vast majority of the corruption can be eliminated by reducing government powers. When the government no longer has the power to give out corporate welfare, it is illegal for them to hand out billions to corporations. Libertarians believe that the government should focus on force and fraud and that the government should not be allowed to expand to a point where it can hand out bonuses, bailouts and the like to corporations.
why don't you work on making government live up to its, shall i say for the sake of this audience, the originalist constutional purpose, of serving us, and stop working at destroying the only thing we have protecting us from corporate domination?
Please tell me of "corporate domination" that was not caused by, in part, by the government expanding its power beyond force and fraud. The vast majority of "corporate domination" if not all of it is caused by the government giving handouts to companies such as free land for railroad companies.
I'd much rather have "corporate domination" than government domination because corporate domination is unsustainable unless everyone agrees to it and doesn't compete with them. No one throws me in jail if I choose not to subscribe to the New York Times, buy Microsoft PCs, or buy a Wii, but if I choose not to pay my taxes I do.
because right now, you are a fool: the sum total of all of your beliefs and all of your efforts serves to empower corporations, who will commit all of the crimes you see big government committing, and many more. of course, this is not what you want. the tragedy is that you do not see that the real world effects of your beliefs is to give us that: corporate domination
No, it leads to lower taxes, more freedom, and more choice in what you spend your money on. Corporations will be checked because if they commit force or fraud they will be sued. See it is the government that decides that corporations shouldn't have to pay all their damages, just look at BP.
my hope is that fools like you can be educated as to this simple fact, before some future hell of corporatocracy, created by your efforts, does not serve as the educational lesson on why we need a strong central government to hold corporate power in check
Of course! Because we all know that if we don't invade Iraq, trample all over freedom of speech, put censorship in libraries, enforce the PATRIOT act, add in more victimless crimes, spend more money than needed, keep a fiat currency, keep an unsustainable Social Security syst
wow, this is an awesome form of libertarianism. so, dear libertarian, who is going to enforce this liability? answer: some form of centralized government bureaucracy... oops, we destroyed them
Hm, perhaps you should actually read the party platform.
We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.
If a corporation uses force or fraud, it is regulated. The majority of libertarians oppose a centralized government bureaucracy but support state governments to do the majority of enforcement of the laws like how the constitution was written. A small federal government making sure that state laws agree with the US constitution, and a few other duties expressed in the constitution.
libertarians don't understand that when you weaken the government, there is only one power left in the room: corporations. at that point, nothing stops them from corrupting and controlling every remaining government function you hold dear
But there is. I have the power to A) Sue (remember, the government still exists to prevent force and fraud) B) Not choose to use the corporation C) Form my own company (remember, with reductions in government powers comes the reduction of Copyright/Patents)
All these three rights are pretty much absent from anything that the government does. Yes, you can sue the government in some cases, but your chances of winning are slim. If I decide to not support my government I get thrown in jail for not paying my taxes. And I'm unable to choose not to use government services in most cases and not pay taxes. For example, if I choose to send my children to private school in most cases, I still have to pay taxes that go to public schools even though I'm not using the facilities. If I choose to not subscribe to a magazine, the magazine company can't charge me for not receiving a magazine.
libertarians have plenty of things to hate in government. what they should do is work at REFORMING government, not destroying it
They do want to reform it. They want to reform it to a smaller government that respects its citizens rights. Libertarian != anarchist. We simply believe, like many of the founding fathers, that the government has two and only two roles, protect their citizens from force (things like murder, rape, invasion, theft, etc) and fraud (food poisoning, unsafe drugs, misleading contracts, etc). In no way are they "destroying" government, they are simply reforming it to a more constitutional, more free, smaller, government. Does that mean that you have to cut some "functions" that our ever-present government has? Yes. Does that mean government is destroyed, absolutely not.
reality: you get THE SAME LIST OF ABUSES, plus A WHOLE BUNCH OF NEW ONES, SOME FAR WORSE, being committed by corporations. that really is the truth. please recognize that
No you don't. With government if I don't like what they do, I have no legal choice to not support them. If I oppose imperialistic wars like the war in Iraq, I can't legally decide not to pay my taxes. On the other hand, if I don't like a certain company, say I don't like Apple, I choose not to buy iPods, iPads, Macs, etc. and Apple is deprived of the money they could have gotten from me and thus suffers a bit. If Apple pisses off enough customers, they start to lose money and go bankrupt. They can't borrow money infinitely or create money out of nothing like the US government believes they can.
you NEED big government to hold the corporations in check. but to the extent that big government is entwined with corporations, WORK TO REMOVE THAT CORRUPTION. don't work to remove the only thing holding corporate power in check!
attempting to make libertarianism work in reality results in domination of society by corporations. corporations who can do no wrong (while they do plenty wrong)
You are confusing libertarianism with Republican conservatism. If you really look at Libertarianism, you'd see that corporations would lose a lot of the protections of assets and greater liability and fewer government handouts.
But really, look at all the truly wealthy people throughout history. Henry Ford had average parents and started as an apprentice and later became an engineer. All Cornelius Vanderbilt got was a $100 loan from his parents and he paid it back plus $1,000. Andrew Carnegie's parents were so poor they had to borrow money to immigrate to the US. Etc.
Some people got wealthy because their parents were wealthy, but that wealth comes from somewhere and generally for those successful in business it wasn't that their parents were related to Henry VII's second cousin. There aren't very many people throughout history that are rich because their parents were rich. The vast majority of wealthy people did it though saving, taking risks, and being good at their first few jobs.
popular dissent and outrage during times of strife and disaster.
See, that isn't going to happen anytime soon because the US which is seen as the leader of "the west" has so much debt to China. And to the Chinese, they think that America's crisis wasn't because of regulation (which it was) but rather as a failure of "capitalism" which the US actively suppresses.
When you control the media, you can control everyone in a 1984-esque dictatorship, you can play with numbers and make China seem like its improving and the west seem like it is in decline.
Don't you get it, we had exactly that for several hundred years and those were the results. you can't just say "Well they did it wrong" and claim it will work if we try it again, that's no different than claiming communism didn't work because "Well they did it wrong".
no we did not we had -some- free market economics but nowhere near enough, its a bit like trying to run Ubuntu on a 386 and 16 MB of RAM and claiming Ubuntu is broken, no you just didn't have the requirements. For a free economy to work there are a few requirements that the US does not have or did not have at some point in its history.
A) Money based on some sort of standard. This is needed to keep down the rising costs associated with inflation and to allow for international trade. Paper money eventually goes back to its intrinsic value -- Zero.
B) Equal protection for everyone under the law. This didn't happen until the end of the Jim Crow laws in the 1960s.
C) Unrestricted trade with other countries. Private citizens along with corporations should be able to trade with people in other countries just like people in the country they currently reside in. Similarly travel between countries should not be restricted.
D) A government that protects only against fraud and force as those are the only legitimate purposes of government.
utterly made up nonsense like people just magically leaving their jobs with no consequences
Of course there are consequences, you find a different job and work there. Heck, I've left a job or two because of low pay and bad work conditions, you become unemployed for a short while and find a different job. It isn't too difficult. You search the classifieds, find a short term job work there to survive and then set out on a plan to find a better job.
standard oil "[keeping] the price of oil down" being a "very good thing because it helped the other businesses".
Standard Oil needed to keep prices low to keep up its near monopoly, because of this it helped fuel things like the automobile revolution because oil was suddenly very affordable for the ordinary person. Imagine if Oil was just $10 or $5 a barrel, think of how low prices of goods would be, how affordable it would be to take vacations, etc.
No its anyone who has sane budget and doesn't believe they have a sense of entitlement to everything. The vast majority of people could build up enough wealth within a couple of years if they wouldn't spend all their money on trivial things. When I worked at a store clerk I got to see what people spent their money on, in general the "wealthy" people spent their money on off-brand food, little to no booze, etc. the "poor" people who paid in food stamps usually paid for their "food" in food stamps while buying lottery tickets, large cases of booze, and generally other expensive stuff.
If you want to get ahead you have to stop buying HDTVs, new cell phones, expensive laptops, booze, and other expensive stuff and -save- that money to invest or open up a business. Look at the successful people in history, the vast majority of them started with low paying jobs and saved, invested or otherwise gained capital to take risks.
Standard oil wasn't too abusive, and one could even argue that because it kept the price of oil down it was a very good thing because it helped the other businesses. Plus, no one was banned from competing with them at all or anything.
As for the the fire, the women should have simply refused to work there, but again, you can blame the government for not establishing legal rights for women at the time (the 19th amendment wouldn't be ratified for several years after the fire.
As for the labor strikes, they should have simply quit or kept their job. If you look at them it was the government who increased violence by putting down the strikes. So they more or less reinforce my point.
No, the wealth would spread around to anyone who was willing to take a risk and was successful. Almost every single corrupt company has been caused by the government. All regulations do is make companies create ways of getting around it and hoarding wealth. It makes a whole lot more sense in the free market to spend your profit investing and expanding your company thus creating new jobs and technology, however, such things could get your company labeled a "monopoly" and broken up, so its a lot more profitable then for them to hoard cash and then spend it later.
Look at the railroad companies, had The US government not gave them tons of land if they would expand westward, we would have had competition, not monopolies. Look at any technology "monopoly" they wouldn't have had it had it not been for large government spending buying their product and pointless patents and abusive copyright that the government should have abolished long ago.
Heck, even look at BP where the government interfered in the free market and artificially capped their liability at $75 million, and because of this artificial interference we had the BP oil spill because in the profit/loss ratio it made sense to be careless because you could easily take the $75 million hit.
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Oh yes, because what person -doesn't- want to spend hours slaving over a hack to let them do... pretty much the same thing you could have done on a Wii or modded 360. A hacked Wii can play just about every console up to PlayStation and doesn't play PS1 games very well. But wait... The PS3 plays them by default. Oh what about a Cell-based PS2 emulator? Well, Sony themselves tried that and ended up giving up. So where does that leave you? N64? (though I think there was a port for an N64 hacked Wii emulator but never tried it to see if it ran full speed or not...), Dreamcast? Gamecube? (But the Wii can play Gamecube games natively...).
As for a media center, the PS3 already does some of that and really for the price of a PS3 and the labor it would take to do this, you could buy a nice HTPC setup.
Look, there is no reason for anyone beyond saying "Look! I have a hacked PS3!" to really even bother trying to hack it.
There are always ways to make money though even though people can get your content for free. Look at webcomics, videos like Homestar Runner, etc. if you are truly -good- at what you do, you can always make money because your fans will support you.
Yes, with no scarcity there is no reason to pay for all the crap coming from hollywood with generic plots, sub-par acting, etc. but if you are truly good at what you do, you are almost always successful.
Just about every artist or product "killed" by piracy wasn't very good to begin with.
Just because it isn't cracked yet doesn't mean its uncrackable. I think with the PS3 there just isn't any motivation to hack it. Its expensive if you break it, Cell is a pain to code for, and really has no use when compared to a Wii or even 360.
If there is no motivation, no one will crack it. Just like I can make Super Crappy Game 8000 with DRM built in but if no one buys my game or wants to crack it the DRM remains uncracked.
Really, what is there to do on a cracked PS3 that can't be done on a 360 or Wii aside from things that use the Cell Processor which only really does obscure mathematical calculations very well.
This makes no sense, you are trying to make digital copies behave like analog copies and creating artificial scarcity that is needless.
I can see no good coming out of this. The only "good" forms of DRM are similar to those in the Google Market on Android, it keeps track of payments so you can always retrieve back your programs.
Ok, now seriously, what do you think the chances of trolls just voting down average people are? Pretty high.
In all honesty, isn't the entire point of ChatRoulette just to troll people?
Yeah, because it was in the west that life expectancies actually hit a point where you could be pretty sure you'd survive past 40 and be a grandparent and the idea of being a great grandparent wasn't out of the question. In other countries its commonplace to marry at 16 or earlier and start a family. In America and related countries (which I'm assuming you mean Europe and the westernized countries of Asia) waiting until your mid twenties or later to get married and start a family is pretty typical.
Because in western culture its not typical to get married early, there is a time where teenagers have a time to really decide what they want to do with their life and yes, some of it may involve -gasp- risk taking, but the entire mentality is born out of the fact that life expectancies have increased dramatically.
I'm sure in all of the other countries there are reckless kids but because they are poor they start families earlier, take more risky jobs, etc. and so its not considered to be "risky" when it really involves a high mortality rate.
In many other countries in the present and in the past, it used to be that you could die from pretty typical stuff like an infection, common illnesses, etc. since we've conquered most of that in the west with the exception of things like cancer, of course car accidents are going to be the leading cause of death because what else would a western teenager die from? We've thankfully ended the tyrannical practice of having a non-volunteer army so kids aren't being killed in wars, cured the vast majority of sicknesses, need to use very little hard labor for the vast majority of things, etc. so the common causes of death in other countries don't exist in the west for teenagers.
Um, no, kids were still reckless. Its just before the '50s cars were prohibitively expensive for kids to get so kids generally weren't driving. They just generally were reckless in other ways like with farm machinery, going out and getting themselves killed in wars, etc.
Not having a car is going to make it hard to be reckless with a car, but it sure didn't cut down on recklessness.
No, the Guitar Hero Soundtrack... I don't think I want to be near anyone who is listening to "Through the fire and the flames" and driving.
We'd need tons upon tons of nuclear weapons to practically do that though. Earth has an atmosphere where mars does not, evaporating water doesn't go into nothingness but rather back into the atmosphere. Sure if you nuclear-ly fuse H2O into heavier elements it could work, but its way more bombs than would ever be practical to use.
That's not libertarianism, it's decentralisation and promotion of democracy. Why do you expect this to result in state governments which represent the interests of the individual rather than, say, the governments typical of the states of the European Union?
Because when the ratio between the people to representative is low, it makes it a whole lot easier to vote out bad representatives and easier to contact them or even run for office. Its pretty hard to convince an entire state that a candidate is a terrible or great match unless you have a lot of money, its pretty easy to tell a medium to small sized town that a candidate is a terrible or great match. In a statewide election, a single neighborhood doesn't matter, however, in a district or county wide election they suddenly gain a whole lot more importance. Representatives are more apt to act on the wishes of those who they are representing if they are representing a small population when compared to a huge population.
And for the EU, due to proportional representation, there are a lot more people who have their voices heard, at least in part, than the system of the US. When the third, fourth and fifth largest parties of the USA don't even have a single member in federal government, something is broken.
A little revolution's always nice, but who fills that power vacuum? If you're really asking for "the people" to, then we once again don't have libertarianism but local democracy. Otherwise you're back to a system of lobbyists and special interests campaigning for government power, i.e. corporate welfare, but (as back in C19) no-one engaging from the other side of the ring on the national or social welfare platform (whether they really care for you or not is irrelevant - that's the stick they beat with).
No one does because its not a power vacuum. The right for me to live my life how I feel like it should only be filled through me. What "power vacuum" is there? My life is my own to live, the government doesn't have the right to tell me how to live it and I refuse to support corporations who tell me how to live my life.
To protect private citizens from force caused by other private citizens.
Look at the "Assault" weapon bans, that thing banned http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:.22_LR.jpg in some guns while allowing people to use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Munit02.jpg . All an "assault" weapon was, is the look of the gun. It is a bit like banning Mustangs because they "look fast" all the while allowing cars that can go 200 MPH.
To protect people from "fraud (unsafe drugs)".
No, the fact that drugs are prohibited it prevents people from being able to know what is exactly in them. I know when I drink a beer I'm not going to be poisoned from it because it is legal. If I get sick from drinking a beer due to impurities in it, I sue the manufacturer of the beer. On the other hand, because drugs are illegal, unscrupulous dealers add in toxic products to "cut" their drugs. Many times it is these toxic products that are the real dangers to drugs, not the drugs themselves. Furthermore the "war" on drugs make research on human effects nearly impossible, meaning poorer medical treatment.
Mix this with the fact that because it isn't legitimate, those selling the drugs must go into hiding and thus spend their money on people who commit true crimes such as theft because walking into Best Buy and buying a new HDTV would look suspicious, so its easier to buy one that was stolen.
And saying that suddenly everyone is going to stop using drugs is utopian and unreasonable, because despite all the money we've wasted on it, drugs are still readily available for those who want them.
Say I want mobile phone service, but I don't like the cartel (Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile, all of which raise their rates in unison). Third parties can't enter the market because the government is protecting the public from force (invasion of RF spectrum allocated to one of the incumbent companies).
Then go with one of the many other phone companies like Cricket or MetroPCS or the like. As for the RF problem, there are lots and lots of unused frequencies that will eventually have uses.
Say I want Internet service, but I don't like Verizon or Comcast. Third parties can't enter the market because the government is protecting the public from force (burying cables).
But such things are for practical purposes infinite. Anyone who wishes to bury cables on public ground for use for ISPs should be able to after paying a fee for the labor it takes for the city and for compensating owners of the property who agree to have the cables buried on their property. The government should simply take a fee and let whoever needs to bury cables on public property so long as they receive compensation, if they damage other cables, they should be sued by the other companies who own the cables and the violated company receives compensation.
I seem to remember reading that under some libertarian formulations, roads would become private land. Numerous toll highways already are outsourced.
Yes, and you'd get better service and better roads, more sane speed limits, etc. because if say Highway A which goes to the same destination of Highway B has better facilities, Highway A will get more profit.
I really fail to see how this is too relevant. Any buried cables would still be the property of the companies who buried them and would, for a time have the same terms as licensed by the city in regards to the rest about the cables.
Who would maintain this tangible standard? Gold reserves can't easily expand alongside an expanding population.
The government would and would pay the dollar-holders gold if requested. Gold/Silver/Platinum would also be allowed as alternate currencies. For example, le
According to the NSA we have no rights, confessions are best gotten by torture, oh and we are attacked by terrorists every 4.8 seconds if we would close illegal prisons and give all US citizens basic rights and conform to various international treaties.
Does it -need- to be done though? We could also implement VNC running through WINE piping output through a serial port being encoded by an Arduno and then sent back upside down which is in turn flipped over by a BASIC script. That doesn't mean that it is always a good idea to do things a weird way when native apps usually work better.
You're missing the parent's point. If government is weak, who is going to stop government becoming an arm of corporations?
The people do. By restoring power to the state/local governments, you make elections that count and it has accountability. The Federal government has 535 representatives/senators in the legislative branch to, in essence, serve 300 million people. State governments for example, like, say the 132 member Tennessee legislator only has to serve a little over 6 million. State governments give a lot more power to the people.
By removing lots of powers from "big government" (the federal government) you put more power in the hands of the people. And you get even more power if you limit the power of that government.
Corporations and governments are kept in check because they're two mafias in a power battle. Everyone at the top is inevitably corrupt, so the best we can hope for is that they all fight each other and no-one ends up too strong. Take away this battle and you're a decade away from totalitarianism.
It is the government though that allows them both to be mafias. Conservatism aims to reduce the government and increase the corporations giving totalitarianism. Modern liberalism aims to reduce the corporations while increasing the government, giving totalitarianism. Libertarianism aims to reduce both sides by taking away special benefits granted by the government to corporations that were making them not responsible to the people, and taking away powers of the government that were making the government not responsible to the people.
Because with the reduction in special protections for corporations with the return of smaller government will mean that its a lot more accessible for an individual to sue a corporation, get a civil trial by jury, and get money out of it. So rather than the government simply collecting fines from corporations who fail to maintain standards, the victims of corporate neglect and abuse can collect the money with no cap on damages.
One of these powers reserved to Congress is the power to create copyrights and patents.
Yes, it has the power to, it is not a constitutional requirement to.
The Congress shall have Power.... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Congress has the power to declare war on Canada also, but that doesn't mean they have to.
A company engaged in nationwide interstate commerce has far more money for legal representation than you will ever have.
So? The only reason why money for legal representation makes a difference is because we live in an age dominated by corporate interests from republicans and democrats. If we had a Libertarian government, the laws would be a lot more cut and dry.
Sure, you could choose not to use the local electric power company, but then you would have to join the Plain People. How does libertarianism handle the natural monopoly characteristic of a public utility?
Most of the time they are not natural monopolies, but rather government-granted monopolies. If you look at most of the electrical/water companies you see that they are not natural monopolies but rather monopolies granted special protection.
Can you give examples of programs under the current Republicratic U.S. government that do not have at least a side effect of protecting citizens from force and fraud?
Federal Assault Weapons Ban (expired recently, but still a good example), The "War" On Drugs, DMCA, etc. And those are just the ones I can think of off my head, I'm sure if I dug into the congressional records I'd find a lot more.
According to http://www.eia.doe.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_where and other sources, Iraq isn't even a major supplier of US oil.
That works for companies that don't hold a monopoly on a product considered to form part of the essential standard of living in an industrialized country. Say I want telephone service, but I don't like Verizon or Comcast. Third parties can't enter the market because the government is protecting the public from force (invasion of non-subscribers' land to pull cable to reach subscribers' land).
Yes they can, you mean companies like AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and a whole host of other cell phone providers? Plus what about VoIP?
And even the government not allowing all possible competitors to use public land while allowing a select few should be banned. And that has nothing to do with force/fraud.
Do you know who creates the money supply in the United States? The government has (in a libertarian fashion) outsourced this function to a consortium of twelve private banks called Federal Reserve, which is as federal as FedEx.
What the hell are you talking about? Almost every libertarian believes that ending the federal reserve and returning our money to be fixed on a tangible standard to be the first step to financial sanity.
corporations are beholden to shareholders. government is accountable to you. so why do you want to remove the only thing that protects you, and replace it with an entity that is not beholden to you at all, not even in theory?
But it is beholden to you and me. How does a corporation stay in business? It needs money and a lot of it in order to stay in business. Corporations must make money in order to stay in business. On the other hand, a very unpopular law can remain in effect close to forever, especially if there is unpopular and victimless. Look at prohibition, it remained in the books for 13 years despite massive repercussions and general unpopularity.
If I don't like a corporation, I don't support them. But I can't legally not support the US government if I don't like it. Even a massive corporation with people still buying some of its products will close down under-performing sectors. Look at Sony, they no longer have BetaMax but Sony is still in business. Because no one likes or buys BetaMax tapes, they closed them down.
of course, it doesn't always work out that the government is accountable to you: corruption of our civil servants and our legislators, by corporations, make them serve corporate interests instead of ours. THAT'S the crime you need to fight, not government itself
And that is fought by in the Libertarian party. The vast majority of the corruption can be eliminated by reducing government powers. When the government no longer has the power to give out corporate welfare, it is illegal for them to hand out billions to corporations. Libertarians believe that the government should focus on force and fraud and that the government should not be allowed to expand to a point where it can hand out bonuses, bailouts and the like to corporations.
why don't you work on making government live up to its, shall i say for the sake of this audience, the originalist constutional purpose, of serving us, and stop working at destroying the only thing we have protecting us from corporate domination?
Please tell me of "corporate domination" that was not caused by, in part, by the government expanding its power beyond force and fraud. The vast majority of "corporate domination" if not all of it is caused by the government giving handouts to companies such as free land for railroad companies.
I'd much rather have "corporate domination" than government domination because corporate domination is unsustainable unless everyone agrees to it and doesn't compete with them. No one throws me in jail if I choose not to subscribe to the New York Times, buy Microsoft PCs, or buy a Wii, but if I choose not to pay my taxes I do.
because right now, you are a fool: the sum total of all of your beliefs and all of your efforts serves to empower corporations, who will commit all of the crimes you see big government committing, and many more. of course, this is not what you want. the tragedy is that you do not see that the real world effects of your beliefs is to give us that: corporate domination
No, it leads to lower taxes, more freedom, and more choice in what you spend your money on. Corporations will be checked because if they commit force or fraud they will be sued. See it is the government that decides that corporations shouldn't have to pay all their damages, just look at BP.
my hope is that fools like you can be educated as to this simple fact, before some future hell of corporatocracy, created by your efforts, does not serve as the educational lesson on why we need a strong central government to hold corporate power in check
Of course! Because we all know that if we don't invade Iraq, trample all over freedom of speech, put censorship in libraries, enforce the PATRIOT act, add in more victimless crimes, spend more money than needed, keep a fiat currency, keep an unsustainable Social Security syst
wow, this is an awesome form of libertarianism. so, dear libertarian, who is going to enforce this liability? answer: some form of centralized government bureaucracy... oops, we destroyed them
Hm, perhaps you should actually read the party platform.
We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.
If a corporation uses force or fraud, it is regulated. The majority of libertarians oppose a centralized government bureaucracy but support state governments to do the majority of enforcement of the laws like how the constitution was written. A small federal government making sure that state laws agree with the US constitution, and a few other duties expressed in the constitution.
libertarians don't understand that when you weaken the government, there is only one power left in the room: corporations. at that point, nothing stops them from corrupting and controlling every remaining government function you hold dear
But there is. I have the power to A) Sue (remember, the government still exists to prevent force and fraud) B) Not choose to use the corporation C) Form my own company (remember, with reductions in government powers comes the reduction of Copyright/Patents)
All these three rights are pretty much absent from anything that the government does. Yes, you can sue the government in some cases, but your chances of winning are slim. If I decide to not support my government I get thrown in jail for not paying my taxes. And I'm unable to choose not to use government services in most cases and not pay taxes. For example, if I choose to send my children to private school in most cases, I still have to pay taxes that go to public schools even though I'm not using the facilities. If I choose to not subscribe to a magazine, the magazine company can't charge me for not receiving a magazine.
libertarians have plenty of things to hate in government. what they should do is work at REFORMING government, not destroying it
They do want to reform it. They want to reform it to a smaller government that respects its citizens rights. Libertarian != anarchist. We simply believe, like many of the founding fathers, that the government has two and only two roles, protect their citizens from force (things like murder, rape, invasion, theft, etc) and fraud (food poisoning, unsafe drugs, misleading contracts, etc). In no way are they "destroying" government, they are simply reforming it to a more constitutional, more free, smaller, government. Does that mean that you have to cut some "functions" that our ever-present government has? Yes. Does that mean government is destroyed, absolutely not.
reality: you get THE SAME LIST OF ABUSES, plus A WHOLE BUNCH OF NEW ONES, SOME FAR WORSE, being committed by corporations. that really is the truth. please recognize that
No you don't. With government if I don't like what they do, I have no legal choice to not support them. If I oppose imperialistic wars like the war in Iraq, I can't legally decide not to pay my taxes. On the other hand, if I don't like a certain company, say I don't like Apple, I choose not to buy iPods, iPads, Macs, etc. and Apple is deprived of the money they could have gotten from me and thus suffers a bit. If Apple pisses off enough customers, they start to lose money and go bankrupt. They can't borrow money infinitely or create money out of nothing like the US government believes they can.
you NEED big government to hold the corporations in check. but to the extent that big government is entwined with corporations, WORK TO REMOVE THAT CORRUPTION. don't work to remove the only thing holding corporate power in check!
You
attempting to make libertarianism work in reality results in domination of society by corporations. corporations who can do no wrong (while they do plenty wrong)
You are confusing libertarianism with Republican conservatism. If you really look at Libertarianism, you'd see that corporations would lose a lot of the protections of assets and greater liability and fewer government handouts.
And how did their parents get rich?
But really, look at all the truly wealthy people throughout history. Henry Ford had average parents and started as an apprentice and later became an engineer. All Cornelius Vanderbilt got was a $100 loan from his parents and he paid it back plus $1,000. Andrew Carnegie's parents were so poor they had to borrow money to immigrate to the US. Etc.
Some people got wealthy because their parents were wealthy, but that wealth comes from somewhere and generally for those successful in business it wasn't that their parents were related to Henry VII's second cousin. There aren't very many people throughout history that are rich because their parents were rich. The vast majority of wealthy people did it though saving, taking risks, and being good at their first few jobs.
popular dissent and outrage during times of strife and disaster.
See, that isn't going to happen anytime soon because the US which is seen as the leader of "the west" has so much debt to China. And to the Chinese, they think that America's crisis wasn't because of regulation (which it was) but rather as a failure of "capitalism" which the US actively suppresses.
When you control the media, you can control everyone in a 1984-esque dictatorship, you can play with numbers and make China seem like its improving and the west seem like it is in decline.
Don't you get it, we had exactly that for several hundred years and those were the results. you can't just say "Well they did it wrong" and claim it will work if we try it again, that's no different than claiming communism didn't work because "Well they did it wrong".
no we did not we had -some- free market economics but nowhere near enough, its a bit like trying to run Ubuntu on a 386 and 16 MB of RAM and claiming Ubuntu is broken, no you just didn't have the requirements. For a free economy to work there are a few requirements that the US does not have or did not have at some point in its history.
A) Money based on some sort of standard. This is needed to keep down the rising costs associated with inflation and to allow for international trade. Paper money eventually goes back to its intrinsic value -- Zero.
B) Equal protection for everyone under the law. This didn't happen until the end of the Jim Crow laws in the 1960s.
C) Unrestricted trade with other countries. Private citizens along with corporations should be able to trade with people in other countries just like people in the country they currently reside in. Similarly travel between countries should not be restricted.
D) A government that protects only against fraud and force as those are the only legitimate purposes of government.
utterly made up nonsense like people just magically leaving their jobs with no consequences
Of course there are consequences, you find a different job and work there. Heck, I've left a job or two because of low pay and bad work conditions, you become unemployed for a short while and find a different job. It isn't too difficult. You search the classifieds, find a short term job work there to survive and then set out on a plan to find a better job.
standard oil "[keeping] the price of oil down" being a "very good thing because it helped the other businesses".
Standard Oil needed to keep prices low to keep up its near monopoly, because of this it helped fuel things like the automobile revolution because oil was suddenly very affordable for the ordinary person. Imagine if Oil was just $10 or $5 a barrel, think of how low prices of goods would be, how affordable it would be to take vacations, etc.
No its anyone who has sane budget and doesn't believe they have a sense of entitlement to everything. The vast majority of people could build up enough wealth within a couple of years if they wouldn't spend all their money on trivial things. When I worked at a store clerk I got to see what people spent their money on, in general the "wealthy" people spent their money on off-brand food, little to no booze, etc. the "poor" people who paid in food stamps usually paid for their "food" in food stamps while buying lottery tickets, large cases of booze, and generally other expensive stuff.
If you want to get ahead you have to stop buying HDTVs, new cell phones, expensive laptops, booze, and other expensive stuff and -save- that money to invest or open up a business. Look at the successful people in history, the vast majority of them started with low paying jobs and saved, invested or otherwise gained capital to take risks.
Standard oil wasn't too abusive, and one could even argue that because it kept the price of oil down it was a very good thing because it helped the other businesses. Plus, no one was banned from competing with them at all or anything.
As for the the fire, the women should have simply refused to work there, but again, you can blame the government for not establishing legal rights for women at the time (the 19th amendment wouldn't be ratified for several years after the fire.
As for the labor strikes, they should have simply quit or kept their job. If you look at them it was the government who increased violence by putting down the strikes. So they more or less reinforce my point.
No, the wealth would spread around to anyone who was willing to take a risk and was successful. Almost every single corrupt company has been caused by the government. All regulations do is make companies create ways of getting around it and hoarding wealth. It makes a whole lot more sense in the free market to spend your profit investing and expanding your company thus creating new jobs and technology, however, such things could get your company labeled a "monopoly" and broken up, so its a lot more profitable then for them to hoard cash and then spend it later.
Look at the railroad companies, had The US government not gave them tons of land if they would expand westward, we would have had competition, not monopolies. Look at any technology "monopoly" they wouldn't have had it had it not been for large government spending buying their product and pointless patents and abusive copyright that the government should have abolished long ago.
Heck, even look at BP where the government interfered in the free market and artificially capped their liability at $75 million, and because of this artificial interference we had the BP oil spill because in the profit/loss ratio it made sense to be careless because you could easily take the $75 million hit.