That is the logical consequence of my beliefs, and why I believe in democratic control of the means of production. You make the claim that the ability of anyone, anywhere in the world to buy access to the means of production will never be limited in a true free market. If I saw this were the case, I would have no problem with private ownership.
What I see is that the free market has failure modes which create a similar problem to the concentration of power in a governmental system. You have runaway feedback loops where those with money have more power to influence the market, tilting the playing field towards them and gaining more money with which to tilt the playing field even further. This leads to concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands. Eventually, people will be born who do not have the means to buy control of their own means of production. Those people will be virtual slaves to those who do own the means of production.
I ask you, what in your system would keep this from happening?
No, we're both right. What he is talking about is fraud, and requires no special laws or regulations outside of laws prohibiting fraud. So he is saying, trademarks need no special regulation, but misusing someone else's mark is the same as saying your product comes from them, and that is a crime under any socioeconomic system I can think of. Special laws for trademarks would of course be regulation, but those laws aren't needed in order for misuse of trademarks to be a crime.
There need be no laws protecting trademarks. Misusing a mark is a simple case of fraud, to be prosecuted by the person defrauded through the use of the false mark, not the person who originated the mark. That is the implication of a pure free market (NOT capitalism, which is an economic system based on the sin of usury.) BTW, I'm not a supporter of an unregulated free market either. Even Adam Smith said that a free market must be regulated to remain free.
It's refreshing to find a libertarian that actually understands the implications of libertarianism. I don't agree with you, being opposed to the private ownership of real property. I support ownership of personal property, but not land or natural resources. There is no justification for you to keep me off of a piece of land, as I was never party to any contract stating I have to keep off.
Without mixing your labor with a resource, you have no justification for ownership. And without a claim to ownership, you have no justification for mixing your labor. Ownership of private property amounts to theft. That is why I'm an anarcho-syndicalist instead of a libertarian.
If we could find some way to guarantee that people who wished to opt out of your private property system could do so, I would have no problem with it. Say, by keeping a reserve of arable land for people who did not wish to participate in your system, so that they had a guaranteed opportunity to support themselves. Otherwise, what is to keep some group from buying up an unreasonable amount of land, in effect making slaves out of those who have no means of support?
Nice to see you're consistent in recognizing the implications of your philosophy. But the idea of trademarks is still regulation, under you're system it would be up to the individual to recognize and take action against those that would defraud with false marks. That is to say, no preemptive policing of trademark laws, in fact no trademark laws at all. It's merely a case of fraud. If someone were defrauded in such a manner, did not have the money to prosecute and could not find a pro-bono lawyer, they would be without recourse.
What rights? Who guaranteed you a right to drive on roads I helped pay for? We paid for those roads, together, and we decide, together, what the rules are. If you don't like it, build your own roads, asshole. And you can't drive with any level of fucking cough syrup in your system, if you are driving erratically you will be pulled over and ticketed, even without a breathalyser test.
You are a selfish child whose political philosophy obviously boils down to "You can't tell me what to do!" However, not being a selfish child myself, I hope you and your loved ones are never hit by a cough syruped driver. I do, however, hope that you grow up and learn to play nice with others.
Thanks, I had always wondered about that sig. I'd even heard of the paradox, long ago, but I didn't remembere who'd come up with the idea. That is WAY more obscure than jokes about gamma ray bursts.
You want to drive on those roads our taxes paid for, you do it by the rules we set through our elected officials. You want those rules changed, you do it through those same officials. Until then, thankfully, if you drive drunk on our roads, we get to retaliate. It's not initiation of force if you are the one breaking the rules. Must suck for you, living in a democracy and not being the dictator of your own little regime, eh? You've got to do what we say if you want to use our infrastructure.
The lowest legal limit I know of is.08. That's enough to impair. Honestly, I think it should be, one strike and lose your license for a year. More than once and you never drive again. Drunk driving is one of the most dangerously irresponsible things anyone can do. I can't understand why anyone would try to defend it.
Sad to say, although I know what a GRB is I had to look up who the heck Charles Stross is. He sounds like my kind of author, but it makes me wonder: are all good sci-fi authors from the UK these days? Iain Banks, Ken McLeod, Stephen Baxter, Peter Hamilton, Ian McDonald: the list goes on and on.
You don't even need to go that far. In fact, if you don't have an attractive teenage daughter you should be all right. If you do, you simply do not let the traveling salesman sleep anywhere on your property. Or so I've heard.
No reputable scientist would ever, and I mean ever defend the view that science can ever tell us The Truth about the universe. The people who would defend that view aren't worth arguing with.
For the sake of analogy, consider the universe to be a clock. We can see the hands move, but we can't open up the clock to see what makes them move. We can come up with all kinds of theories about what's inside the clock that makes the hands move. Those theories might describe the motion of the hands perfectly. They might even actually represent what's going on inside but we'll never know.
But science isn't about truth. It's about usefulness. It doesn't matter if a theory accurately represents underlying reality or not, as long as the theory makes accurate and useful predictions. As an example, people think that Newton's theory of gravity is 'false' and Einstein's is 'true.' Yet in general, engineers do not use Einstein's formula, they use Newton's because it is simpler to calculate and is just as accurate as long as the things under consideration aren't moving at some significant fraction of the speed of light. Newton's theory is less correct, but more useful.
Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Yeah, of course media that have been around a while still pander. Commercial writer sluts like Tom Clancy pander too. I'm not saying old media doesn't pander. But artists in those media at least have some non-pandering art to look back on when deciding whether to pander or, you know, actually make art.
That's almost as hilarious as the New York Daily News headline about the state bailout of the subway system in the 80s: 'Sick Transit's Glorious Monday.'
Wow. You lack basic reading comprehension skills. Reread my post. I said most slashdotters are centrist. I said nothing about myself. If I had to label myself, I'd say I was an anarcho-syndicalist.
The radical left is communism. Are you really implying that you think all slashdotters want to do away with private property? The far left is socialism. Do you think most slashdotters are actually socialists? Slashdotters for the most part, and like most people in IT, are centrists.
Oh, and Hillary won't be nominated for president, everyone knows that her and Obama's campaign are just preludes to the real campaign. It's going to be Edwards and whichever one of the two of them can raise the most money. But whoever is in the White House will still get bitched at on slashdot. Bitching about politics is a geek hobby. Hey, I bitched about Clinton from the moment he took office. He's too right wing for me.
Not all galaxies are moving away from each other. Due to gravity and local variations in density, some are moving towards each other. For instance, andromeda will crash into our galaxy in a billion years or so.
Slashdot Mirror
That is the logical consequence of my beliefs, and why I believe in democratic control of the means of production. You make the claim that the ability of anyone, anywhere in the world to buy access to the means of production will never be limited in a true free market. If I saw this were the case, I would have no problem with private ownership.
What I see is that the free market has failure modes which create a similar problem to the concentration of power in a governmental system. You have runaway feedback loops where those with money have more power to influence the market, tilting the playing field towards them and gaining more money with which to tilt the playing field even further. This leads to concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands. Eventually, people will be born who do not have the means to buy control of their own means of production. Those people will be virtual slaves to those who do own the means of production.
I ask you, what in your system would keep this from happening?
No, we're both right. What he is talking about is fraud, and requires no special laws or regulations outside of laws prohibiting fraud. So he is saying, trademarks need no special regulation, but misusing someone else's mark is the same as saying your product comes from them, and that is a crime under any socioeconomic system I can think of. Special laws for trademarks would of course be regulation, but those laws aren't needed in order for misuse of trademarks to be a crime.
There need be no laws protecting trademarks. Misusing a mark is a simple case of fraud, to be prosecuted by the person defrauded through the use of the false mark, not the person who originated the mark. That is the implication of a pure free market (NOT capitalism, which is an economic system based on the sin of usury.) BTW, I'm not a supporter of an unregulated free market either. Even Adam Smith said that a free market must be regulated to remain free.
It's refreshing to find a libertarian that actually understands the implications of libertarianism. I don't agree with you, being opposed to the private ownership of real property. I support ownership of personal property, but not land or natural resources. There is no justification for you to keep me off of a piece of land, as I was never party to any contract stating I have to keep off.
Without mixing your labor with a resource, you have no justification for ownership. And without a claim to ownership, you have no justification for mixing your labor. Ownership of private property amounts to theft. That is why I'm an anarcho-syndicalist instead of a libertarian.
If we could find some way to guarantee that people who wished to opt out of your private property system could do so, I would have no problem with it. Say, by keeping a reserve of arable land for people who did not wish to participate in your system, so that they had a guaranteed opportunity to support themselves. Otherwise, what is to keep some group from buying up an unreasonable amount of land, in effect making slaves out of those who have no means of support?
Nice to see you're consistent in recognizing the implications of your philosophy. But the idea of trademarks is still regulation, under you're system it would be up to the individual to recognize and take action against those that would defraud with false marks. That is to say, no preemptive policing of trademark laws, in fact no trademark laws at all. It's merely a case of fraud. If someone were defrauded in such a manner, did not have the money to prosecute and could not find a pro-bono lawyer, they would be without recourse.
Patents are regulation. Copyright is regulation. Trademarks are regulation. Welcome to the real world.
What rights? Who guaranteed you a right to drive on roads I helped pay for? We paid for those roads, together, and we decide, together, what the rules are. If you don't like it, build your own roads, asshole. And you can't drive with any level of fucking cough syrup in your system, if you are driving erratically you will be pulled over and ticketed, even without a breathalyser test.
You are a selfish child whose political philosophy obviously boils down to "You can't tell me what to do!" However, not being a selfish child myself, I hope you and your loved ones are never hit by a cough syruped driver. I do, however, hope that you grow up and learn to play nice with others.
Thanks, I had always wondered about that sig. I'd even heard of the paradox, long ago, but I didn't remembere who'd come up with the idea. That is WAY more obscure than jokes about gamma ray bursts.
You want to drive on those roads our taxes paid for, you do it by the rules we set through our elected officials. You want those rules changed, you do it through those same officials. Until then, thankfully, if you drive drunk on our roads, we get to retaliate. It's not initiation of force if you are the one breaking the rules. Must suck for you, living in a democracy and not being the dictator of your own little regime, eh? You've got to do what we say if you want to use our infrastructure.
The lowest legal limit I know of is .08. That's enough to impair. Honestly, I think it should be, one strike and lose your license for a year. More than once and you never drive again. Drunk driving is one of the most dangerously irresponsible things anyone can do. I can't understand why anyone would try to defend it.
What's the cost in this case? Someone is going to have to take a cab home and pick up their car the next day. Boo fucking hoo.
I love Egan. I'll have to check out Watts and Stross.
Sad to say, although I know what a GRB is I had to look up who the heck Charles Stross is. He sounds like my kind of author, but it makes me wonder: are all good sci-fi authors from the UK these days? Iain Banks, Ken McLeod, Stephen Baxter, Peter Hamilton, Ian McDonald: the list goes on and on.
That joke has too high of a Dennis Miller ratio even for Slashdot.
You don't even need to go that far. In fact, if you don't have an attractive teenage daughter you should be all right. If you do, you simply do not let the traveling salesman sleep anywhere on your property. Or so I've heard.
No reputable scientist would ever, and I mean ever defend the view that science can ever tell us The Truth about the universe. The people who would defend that view aren't worth arguing with.
For the sake of analogy, consider the universe to be a clock. We can see the hands move, but we can't open up the clock to see what makes them move. We can come up with all kinds of theories about what's inside the clock that makes the hands move. Those theories might describe the motion of the hands perfectly. They might even actually represent what's going on inside but we'll never know.
But science isn't about truth. It's about usefulness. It doesn't matter if a theory accurately represents underlying reality or not, as long as the theory makes accurate and useful predictions. As an example, people think that Newton's theory of gravity is 'false' and Einstein's is 'true.' Yet in general, engineers do not use Einstein's formula, they use Newton's because it is simpler to calculate and is just as accurate as long as the things under consideration aren't moving at some significant fraction of the speed of light. Newton's theory is less correct, but more useful.
Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Yeah, of course media that have been around a while still pander. Commercial writer sluts like Tom Clancy pander too. I'm not saying old media doesn't pander. But artists in those media at least have some non-pandering art to look back on when deciding whether to pander or, you know, actually make art.
One has to pander when one is new. It takes years before a media is mature enough not to pander.
That's almost as hilarious as the New York Daily News headline about the state bailout of the subway system in the 80s: 'Sick Transit's Glorious Monday.'
Wow. You lack basic reading comprehension skills. Reread my post. I said most slashdotters are centrist. I said nothing about myself. If I had to label myself, I'd say I was an anarcho-syndicalist.
The radical left is communism. Are you really implying that you think all slashdotters want to do away with private property? The far left is socialism. Do you think most slashdotters are actually socialists? Slashdotters for the most part, and like most people in IT, are centrists.
Oh, and Hillary won't be nominated for president, everyone knows that her and Obama's campaign are just preludes to the real campaign. It's going to be Edwards and whichever one of the two of them can raise the most money. But whoever is in the White House will still get bitched at on slashdot. Bitching about politics is a geek hobby. Hey, I bitched about Clinton from the moment he took office. He's too right wing for me.
Not all galaxies are moving away from each other. Due to gravity and local variations in density, some are moving towards each other. For instance, andromeda will crash into our galaxy in a billion years or so.