Yes, there is market failure, you have just moved it further back up the chain. It's a question of who watches the watchmen. If you rely on another agent to balance information for you, how do you know which agent to trust? You have another level of imbalance of information, and you need another agent to tell you which agent to choose, and so on.
This fact, and not any lack of demand, is what has kept this solution from being adopted. Once again, libertarianism presents simple solutions to complex problems, and when those simple solutions fail, explains it all away by claiming people don't want the solutions.
As always with libertarians, it is the individuals that make up the market system, not the system itself that always fails. It must be nice to advocate for an economic system that has never been put into practice. You can always claim that, were it done and done right, it would work.
That's news you can use! Thanks Zonk, and thanks for the oh-so-accurate headline. Come on, the only news here is that HP is so late to the game when almost every other big player has offered both options for years.
The utility of the bells-and-whistles part is not debatable: it doesn't exist. It's just for show and everyone knows that. However, there are some very nice features which do add utility. IMHO, the most utilitarian parts of Beryl/Compiz are the switchers. You've got the desktop cube, the circle switcher, and the show desktop thingy which shows you a small preview of every open application. That I find useful.
You can actually do window backgrounds, font treatments, and colors. With certain applications anyway. There just hasn't been much of that which has made it public in any major distro. It's also not something you could cobble together using something like Beryl/Compiz. You'd need to do that in Gnome/KDE and the applications would need to be rewritten to take advantage of the new features.
Looking back over history, it is pretty clear to me the vast costs that society pays when markets are unregulated. Do you have any evidence that the market is less fallible?
I've come down hard on free market libertarian types in the past, but that has just been counterproductive. I'm now trying to figure out a way to build a socialist construct within a completely free market framework in a fair and non-coercive way. I'm interested in any ideas that anyone has about better and non-coercive ways of maintaining the efficiency of a truly free market.
If socialism is really better for humanity, as I believe it is, then it must be able to succede within a non-coercive framework. The free market is such a framework, as long as it remains free. A non-free market is just as coercive as any other form of tyranny. Thus issues of market failures and their solutions interest me greatly.
The imbalance of information problem isn't about the fact that an individual needs perfect information to participate successfully. You can read the paper mentioned for the real reasons that this form of market failure is a problem, but I'll try to summarize.
Sellers of used cars have more information about the true value of their car than buyers do. Therefore, buyers must assume that the car is of lesser value than the seller states. As a group, they will offer less than a fair value for the car. This drives some of the more honest sellers who were telling the truth about the value of their car out of the market. This raises the proportion of dishonest to honest sellers, so buyers are even more likely to undervalue the car, perpetuating the cycle.
It is a systemic problem, not an individual problem regarding idiots getting screwed over.
Try Beryl/Compiz. Makes the GUI as flashy and pretty as you like and your machine can handle. MUCH nicer and FAR more configurable than OS X. Currently only works with Nvidia and Intel graphics adapters, AFAIK.
The standard thinking is that, because of the existence of market failures such as externalities, natural monopolies, and imbalance of information (the issue at hand), the free market paradoxically needs some regulation in order to remain free.
Libertarians are the group most vehemently against this concept, but I have never heard a single one of them coherently explain how exactly the free market will remain free without regulation. Their arguments seem to boil down to "LALALALA I can't hear you! There's no such thing as market failure, the market is infallible!"
If you have a better argument as to why market failures aren't a problem, or a better solution than regulation if you think they are, I'd love to hear it.
I was thinking about the Burger King Big Fish sandwich, which is bigger than McDonald's Fishwich. Turns out it's only 630 Calories, and what I was really remembering was the chicken sandwiches, which do have a tad over 700 Calories.
We don't have a single Jack-in-the-Box in Albuquerque, more's the pity. We do have Carl's Junior, which is a nice second choice if you're really in the mood for an instant heart attack. Hehe, seen Mike Judge's Idiocracy yet? Carl's Junior's slogan of the future is "Fuck you, I'm eating!"
Nah, from what I've seen, many people here are smart, produce quite a bit of value, and do not condone piracy. Don't underestimate the slashdot crowd just because of a childish few.
The danger with letting things like Sleeping Beauty stay perpetually in copyright is that everything is inspired by something else, everything is in essence a derivative work. Therefore, if copyright is perpetual, eventually new works must cease.
As society grants the artificial monopoly, it is for society to decide what is in society's best interest, and that is limited copyright. Sorry, it isn't about you, the creator. If you don't like it, try releasing your intellectual works someplace where society doesn't have your back and see how much money you make.
Most people aren't that creative, so you'll have a hard time convincing them that perpetual copyright is in their interest. The people who's support you need in order to have any kind of copyright at all aren't going to figuratively slit their own throats by giving it to you forever.
The thing is, equating copyright infringement to theft clouds the issue and makes creating a coherent and workable system of copyright and patents nearly impossible. Intellectual works are not physical property. They are non-exclusionary. We need a system of artificial monopoly precisely for these reasons.
Equating copyright infringement to theft, and copyright and patent to physical property naturally leads to the idea that the authors of works have an inherent, inalienable and perpetual right to them, which leads to very bad problems with the system. Remember, it was not set up to make people rich, it was set up to encourage innovation. Treating copyright and patents like real property leads to a system that stifles innovation.
As I mentioned in another post, claiming that copyright infringement is theft is like claiming vandalism is theft. Both cause you to lose money or property, so they both must be theft, right? Uhhh, no.
Claiming that copyright infringement is theft ignores the non-exclusionary nature of intellectual works and the fact that all forms of intellectual property rights are monopolies granted by the government for a reason, and that reason is not to make the rights holder rich. That is incidental. Calling it theft clouds the issue when we need clear thinking to create a system of copyright and patents that actually works.
That, in a nutshell, is why I bristle just as much when someone claims that infringement is theft as when someone says it is right or moral.
You have not been listening to me. You have your own preconceptions that are obviously clouding your reading comprehension. I have stated, over and over in this thread, that copyright infringement is unethical. I have an analogy that works: claiming that copyright infringement is theft is like claiming that slashing your car tires is theft. You lose out, right? So it's theft, right? No, it's VANDALISM, which is also immoral and wrong, and causes loss of money or property. NOT THEFT, get it? Theft is not the only crime that causes you to lose money. Sheesh.
Knee jerking much? I admit in a later post the hamburger analogy is flawed, and I say that piracy is still wrong, so we are on the same page. No one is saying you should be forced to program at gunpoint and give away all your work.
Why do you have to make it something it's not? I am not depriving them of my money. Who knows if I would have bought it rather than pirate it? Again, by that logic, anytime you decide not to buy something you are stealing.
It's not equivalent to buying stolen property because it isn't property, no matter the propaganda campaign to relabel the stuff "intellectual property." It's non-exclusionary, giving me a copy does not mean you have any less, so it is fundamentally different from other forms of property. That's the whole reason we need to create an artificial monopoly in first place.
It's immoral and wrong, and possibly a crime, but I reiterate: it is not stealing. Let it go.
Damn straight. A Fillet-o-Fish needs cheese. I love 'em, but they are the worst thing for you on McDonald's menu. 700+ Calories for a tiny sandwich, wow.
Stealing is depriving someone of something. When you copy something, you are not depriving the owner of their copy. You are depriving them of YOUR money. Like I am depriving McDonald's of MY money when I make my own burger. Copyright infringement IS NOT THEFT. It is a crime here, and a civil matter in other countries, but it IS NOT THEFT. I'm not depriving them of anything that was theirs to begin with. Why is that so hard to understand? It does not need to be theft in order to be wrong.
The McDonald's analogy was not the most apt, I'll admit, but under the law, and by any sane definition, copyright infringement is not theft. You can say the sky is green, but that does not make it so. I would love to know how you classify it as theft when no legal system in the world does so.
It is copyright infringement. Depriving someone of YOUR money is not a crime on its own. By your logic, if I make a burger at home, I'm stealing from McDonald's. It is up to each country to decide whether copyright infringement is a civil matter, a criminal matter, or not a problem at all. Also, you have absolutely no proof that any Chinese have pirated Vista, you are just assuming and libeling a whole country. Maybe they don't want Vista because it SUCKS, hmm, you ever think of that smart boy?
So we should never try to do anything to make the world a better place, because it will always backfire in the end? That's gotta be the worst defense of the status quo I've ever heard.
What's your plan, just let industry fuck with citizens however they like?
Modern economic & games theory research seems to show that most people are more reliably motivated by notions of fairness and reciprocity than pure self interest or profit. Google "economic research fairness reciprocity" or look up games theory at wikipedia.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, there is market failure, you have just moved it further back up the chain. It's a question of who watches the watchmen. If you rely on another agent to balance information for you, how do you know which agent to trust? You have another level of imbalance of information, and you need another agent to tell you which agent to choose, and so on.
This fact, and not any lack of demand, is what has kept this solution from being adopted. Once again, libertarianism presents simple solutions to complex problems, and when those simple solutions fail, explains it all away by claiming people don't want the solutions.
As always with libertarians, it is the individuals that make up the market system, not the system itself that always fails. It must be nice to advocate for an economic system that has never been put into practice. You can always claim that, were it done and done right, it would work.
What exactly do you think behavior is? Actions, nothing more, nothing less.
That's news you can use! Thanks Zonk, and thanks for the oh-so-accurate headline. Come on, the only news here is that HP is so late to the game when almost every other big player has offered both options for years.
The utility of the bells-and-whistles part is not debatable: it doesn't exist. It's just for show and everyone knows that. However, there are some very nice features which do add utility. IMHO, the most utilitarian parts of Beryl/Compiz are the switchers. You've got the desktop cube, the circle switcher, and the show desktop thingy which shows you a small preview of every open application. That I find useful.
You can actually do window backgrounds, font treatments, and colors. With certain applications anyway. There just hasn't been much of that which has made it public in any major distro. It's also not something you could cobble together using something like Beryl/Compiz. You'd need to do that in Gnome/KDE and the applications would need to be rewritten to take advantage of the new features.
One should consider the writings at the Mises Institute a type of loss-leader. Like the free crack-rock the nice man in the park wants to give you.
Looking back over history, it is pretty clear to me the vast costs that society pays when markets are unregulated. Do you have any evidence that the market is less fallible?
I've come down hard on free market libertarian types in the past, but that has just been counterproductive. I'm now trying to figure out a way to build a socialist construct within a completely free market framework in a fair and non-coercive way. I'm interested in any ideas that anyone has about better and non-coercive ways of maintaining the efficiency of a truly free market.
If socialism is really better for humanity, as I believe it is, then it must be able to succede within a non-coercive framework. The free market is such a framework, as long as it remains free. A non-free market is just as coercive as any other form of tyranny. Thus issues of market failures and their solutions interest me greatly.
The imbalance of information problem isn't about the fact that an individual needs perfect information to participate successfully. You can read the paper mentioned for the real reasons that this form of market failure is a problem, but I'll try to summarize.
Sellers of used cars have more information about the true value of their car than buyers do. Therefore, buyers must assume that the car is of lesser value than the seller states. As a group, they will offer less than a fair value for the car. This drives some of the more honest sellers who were telling the truth about the value of their car out of the market. This raises the proportion of dishonest to honest sellers, so buyers are even more likely to undervalue the car, perpetuating the cycle.
It is a systemic problem, not an individual problem regarding idiots getting screwed over.
Try Beryl/Compiz. Makes the GUI as flashy and pretty as you like and your machine can handle. MUCH nicer and FAR more configurable than OS X. Currently only works with Nvidia and Intel graphics adapters, AFAIK.
The standard thinking is that, because of the existence of market failures such as externalities, natural monopolies, and imbalance of information (the issue at hand), the free market paradoxically needs some regulation in order to remain free.
Libertarians are the group most vehemently against this concept, but I have never heard a single one of them coherently explain how exactly the free market will remain free without regulation. Their arguments seem to boil down to "LALALALA I can't hear you! There's no such thing as market failure, the market is infallible!"
If you have a better argument as to why market failures aren't a problem, or a better solution than regulation if you think they are, I'd love to hear it.
I was thinking about the Burger King Big Fish sandwich, which is bigger than McDonald's Fishwich. Turns out it's only 630 Calories, and what I was really remembering was the chicken sandwiches, which do have a tad over 700 Calories.
We don't have a single Jack-in-the-Box in Albuquerque, more's the pity. We do have Carl's Junior, which is a nice second choice if you're really in the mood for an instant heart attack. Hehe, seen Mike Judge's Idiocracy yet? Carl's Junior's slogan of the future is "Fuck you, I'm eating!"
Whoah. You know, maybe I eat too much fast food.
Nah, from what I've seen, many people here are smart, produce quite a bit of value, and do not condone piracy. Don't underestimate the slashdot crowd just because of a childish few.
The danger with letting things like Sleeping Beauty stay perpetually in copyright is that everything is inspired by something else, everything is in essence a derivative work. Therefore, if copyright is perpetual, eventually new works must cease.
As society grants the artificial monopoly, it is for society to decide what is in society's best interest, and that is limited copyright. Sorry, it isn't about you, the creator. If you don't like it, try releasing your intellectual works someplace where society doesn't have your back and see how much money you make.
Most people aren't that creative, so you'll have a hard time convincing them that perpetual copyright is in their interest. The people who's support you need in order to have any kind of copyright at all aren't going to figuratively slit their own throats by giving it to you forever.
The thing is, equating copyright infringement to theft clouds the issue and makes creating a coherent and workable system of copyright and patents nearly impossible. Intellectual works are not physical property. They are non-exclusionary. We need a system of artificial monopoly precisely for these reasons.
Equating copyright infringement to theft, and copyright and patent to physical property naturally leads to the idea that the authors of works have an inherent, inalienable and perpetual right to them, which leads to very bad problems with the system. Remember, it was not set up to make people rich, it was set up to encourage innovation. Treating copyright and patents like real property leads to a system that stifles innovation.
As I mentioned in another post, claiming that copyright infringement is theft is like claiming vandalism is theft. Both cause you to lose money or property, so they both must be theft, right? Uhhh, no.
Claiming that copyright infringement is theft ignores the non-exclusionary nature of intellectual works and the fact that all forms of intellectual property rights are monopolies granted by the government for a reason, and that reason is not to make the rights holder rich. That is incidental. Calling it theft clouds the issue when we need clear thinking to create a system of copyright and patents that actually works.
That, in a nutshell, is why I bristle just as much when someone claims that infringement is theft as when someone says it is right or moral.
You have not been listening to me. You have your own preconceptions that are obviously clouding your reading comprehension. I have stated, over and over in this thread, that copyright infringement is unethical. I have an analogy that works: claiming that copyright infringement is theft is like claiming that slashing your car tires is theft. You lose out, right? So it's theft, right? No, it's VANDALISM, which is also immoral and wrong, and causes loss of money or property. NOT THEFT, get it? Theft is not the only crime that causes you to lose money. Sheesh.
Knee jerking much? I admit in a later post the hamburger analogy is flawed, and I say that piracy is still wrong, so we are on the same page. No one is saying you should be forced to program at gunpoint and give away all your work.
Why do you have to make it something it's not? I am not depriving them of my money. Who knows if I would have bought it rather than pirate it? Again, by that logic, anytime you decide not to buy something you are stealing.
It's not equivalent to buying stolen property because it isn't property, no matter the propaganda campaign to relabel the stuff "intellectual property." It's non-exclusionary, giving me a copy does not mean you have any less, so it is fundamentally different from other forms of property. That's the whole reason we need to create an artificial monopoly in first place.
It's immoral and wrong, and possibly a crime, but I reiterate: it is not stealing. Let it go.
Damn straight. A Fillet-o-Fish needs cheese. I love 'em, but they are the worst thing for you on McDonald's menu. 700+ Calories for a tiny sandwich, wow.
Buddy, they call it secret sauce for a reason. Better get a good lawyer!
Stealing is depriving someone of something. When you copy something, you are not depriving the owner of their copy. You are depriving them of YOUR money. Like I am depriving McDonald's of MY money when I make my own burger. Copyright infringement IS NOT THEFT. It is a crime here, and a civil matter in other countries, but it IS NOT THEFT. I'm not depriving them of anything that was theirs to begin with. Why is that so hard to understand? It does not need to be theft in order to be wrong.
The McDonald's analogy was not the most apt, I'll admit, but under the law, and by any sane definition, copyright infringement is not theft. You can say the sky is green, but that does not make it so. I would love to know how you classify it as theft when no legal system in the world does so.
It is copyright infringement. Depriving someone of YOUR money is not a crime on its own. By your logic, if I make a burger at home, I'm stealing from McDonald's. It is up to each country to decide whether copyright infringement is a civil matter, a criminal matter, or not a problem at all. Also, you have absolutely no proof that any Chinese have pirated Vista, you are just assuming and libeling a whole country. Maybe they don't want Vista because it SUCKS, hmm, you ever think of that smart boy?
So we should never try to do anything to make the world a better place, because it will always backfire in the end? That's gotta be the worst defense of the status quo I've ever heard.
What's your plan, just let industry fuck with citizens however they like?
I actually agree with you. I was just being a smart-ass.
So, the Apache Foundation is a for profit business now?
Modern economic & games theory research seems to show that most people are more reliably motivated by notions of fairness and reciprocity than pure self interest or profit. Google "economic research fairness reciprocity" or look up games theory at wikipedia.
I suggest "Tinyflaccid" as an alternative nickname for Microsoft. It's one I'm sure the Tinyflaccid fanboys can empathize with.