The CIA World Factbook does not list the percentage of people living under the poverty level in Hong Kong. It doesn't list the percentage of consumption by the highest or lowest 10% of households. Unemployement is listed at 5.5%. With those figures (or suspicious lack of figures) how can you claim that wealth does not concentrate in Hong Kong?
I think the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands was successfully demonstrated by the complete and utter failure of lassez faire capitalism and the rise of the robber barons. But of course, as with most idealists whose ideals have failed, I'm sure you will try to argue that your ideals were simply not followed closely enough.
With enough money, you get a de-facto regulatory process. The market becomes unfree due to unfair barriers to entry being enacted by the biggest players. Look at Microsoft, and how they use their monopoly power to unfair advantage. And no one could argue that Microsfot is a government granted monopoly.
I can not see how you can look at conditions in modern capitalist countries and argue with a straight face that there is no concentration of wealth. I would put it on you to prove your point, because all economic data I've seen say otherwise.
Marx saw the flaw in free market capitalism that would lead to our current corporatocracy. Proudhon saw that Marx's communism would lead to a similar concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. Only a balance between the two seems to work. Socialist Anarchism, it's what the smartest folks have been recommending for over 150 years.
Unfortunately, free markets lead to concentration of wealth. Concentration of wealth leads to concentration of power, which leads to control of the regulatory process. Free markets invariably become unfree because of a runaway feedback loop. At least in democracy we have checks and balances. Where are the checks and balances within a free market that will work to keep it free? there are none.
Re:If a tree falls in the woods, and no one cares.
on
The Death of Privacy
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· Score: 1
Most people would care if they knew. Unfortunately not only don't they know about the dangers, they have many other things to worry about and finding information about this issue isn't a priority. So we actually need those columnists to write those articles so people will realize what's ebing done to them.
Are you honestly saying that if you went up to a bunch of random people on the street and said, "Do you mind if companies buy and sell your private information?" that the majority would say "Sure! Whatever!" ? You must really have a low ability of most people's ability to make rational decisions for themselves. I know it's chic in geek circles to put down the common man as a way to make yourself seem smarter, but this seems ridiculous.
Unfortunately, this kind of lawsuit costs money. And most reputable lawyers would never take such a case on commision. If it happened to enough people, they might work on a class action suit. And you would end up getting $5 as recompense for the thousands you lost, while the lawyers walked away with millions. In your ideal system, it seems, only the rich would be able to afford justice. Is this really what you want?
The free market is a method for mediating power exchange. It is similar to democracy in this respect. It is basically one dollar, one vote rather than one person, one vote. The free market, on its own, lacks the system of checks and balances that a healthy democracy must have. There is no protection against the tyranny of the majority. What's worse, the majority of dollars are controlled by a minority of the people. The more money a person has, the easier it is for them to game the system. They have more say over what is valuable and what isn't, and can therefore make things they own or control more valuable, increasing their wealth and therefore their power. This positive feedback loop is what Marx saw would lead to concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Of course, his proposed system also lacked proper checks and balances and lead to the same end, even quicker.
It sounds like they are going for a MMOND theory, modified modified newtonian dynamics. They admit the presence of dark matter. In fact, they reference another experiment as well as the bullet cluster observations that seems to show that MOND can't account for everything. So to save MOND, they are saying it doesn't have to account for everything. Massive neutrinos migth account for the rest.
Oh, please. I think Libertarians are completely goofy, but this is just too easy. As long as you're a Libertarian who believes in initiation of force to protect intellectual property laws. Of which there are tons. Personally, I don't see how they wrap their heads around that without them exploding, but it works for them.
The problem, of course, is that the GPS broadcasts are a public good, so how do protect that, in order to charge for it? Encryption? If people get their hands on your device, they can break the encryption. It all boils down to giving a government enforced monopoly on using the broadcasts to the people who put the satellites up. Otherwise, the people putting up the satellites could never recoup their initial investments, as anyone could make a receiver and not have to pay the people putting them up.
But as I mentioned, plenty of Libertarians can quite easily wrap their heads around the paradox of enforced ownership of intellectual property. It all comes from a very flexible definition of "initiation of force." Basically, any use of force a libertarian doesn't like is "initiation of force," while anything else is "retaliatory force" which is, of course, justified as YOUR NATURAL RIGHT!
See, in order to troll successfully, you have to have an understanding, nay, even a love for that which you troll. You have to care enough about your subject to actually get inside and find out what makes 'em tick, what are their foibles, paradoxes and hot buttons.
So, any Libertarians out there want to respond to a self proclaimed troll and tell me how you would do it without intellectual property protections? I mean, if you thought protection of real property took a lot of state sponsored violence, imagine how much state sponsored violence is necessary for the protection of imaginary property? Come on, you guys are smart, I mean, it's not like you just memorize your party dogma and can't answer simple questions that fall outside the bounds of official, party sponsored reasoning, is it?
Happy Troll Tuesday!
P.S. As much as I think the vast majority of Libertarians are goofy, I've had conversations with some here who are probably smart enough to figure out how to do this, so even if no one responds, that doesn't mean all libertarians are dogma spouting mouth breathers who couldn't reason their way out of a paper bag. Some would manage to deduce that ripping open the bag was not in fact initiation of force, as the bag was depriving them of their natural right not to be in a paper bag.
Real security is the last thing those in power really want. Put it this way, if you are in the bandage business, would you want to promote a product that reduces the chance of being wounded?
The rich kid who tries to be nice is generally well liked. Especially by the poor kids he buys lunch. The secularist who respects the religious fanatic's right to practice his own religion is generally tolerated, as it means more opportunities to win converts. The people at the top of fanatical movements are genrally rational and in it for the power/money/control/pussy.
Conversely, the rich kid who picks on others is generally despised. The secularist who is fanatical about his secularism is not well liked by other fanatics. This is all so simple, but it contradicts the comfy, we're number one, we have the moral high ground position that Americans like to believe.
Oh, the arrogance! You early adopter's actually want something useful for your money? It's your job as professional consumers to purchase the latest crap, no matter what. The economy is counting on you. The country is counting on you. The fat lazy shareholders who don't want to do an honest days work for their millions are counting on you. The CEO needs a new island in the Bahamas, his daughter needs a new nose and his mistress needs some new tits. So quit your whining, get of your asses, go out and do your job. Step up!
Has anyone read Finnegan's Wake? Or do they all just get about four pages into it, go into seizures and then imagine they've read it when they come to? Maybe that's just me...
That's why I felt the need to put in the disclaimer post. The joke is that the jokes are all so bad. Every IT guy I've ever met (including, unfortunately, myself) has the sense of humor of a twelve year old. And the tact & social graces of an elephant seal.
We have a wiki for technical documents, I once cut and pasted a neat Linux tip I found online, just a one-liner search and replace. I just looked at the command. I should have read it more carefully, because the example he gave was "Say you wanted to change every occurance of 'bitch' in 'Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back' to 'boo-boo kitty fuck,'" Dealing with that screw up was less than fun...
I'm making fun of IT guys notorious juvenile humor and lack of tact with the ladies. I am not seriously suggesting you use these aweful jokes to impress your female co-workers. So don't sue me when you get fired for sexual harassment. Just saying...
Oh yeah, the drive was toast. We took the drive out of the computer, and the case was bowed out in back. When we shook the pieces out of the drive, bits of drive fell out too. And I wasn't exagerating about the bit stuck in the wall. Half an inch, straight into drywall, about ten feet across from his desk!
Hehe, I nearly fell off a ladder while pulling Cat5 through a drop ceiling once, due to an exploding Linux CD. Seems a co-worker wanted to give it a try and bought one of those Linux books with the CD in the back (remember when a Linux distro came on one CD?) You know the books I mean, the nice soft cover books that weigh like five pounds and pretty much gaurantee the CD is going to be at least a little stressed. He had one of those older super-fast CD drives that could rev up to dangerous velocities. Poor guy put in the CD, the drive spun up, and the CD just flew apart, shredding his CD drive and shooting an inch wide wedge of CD out the front, six inches from his nuts, and across the room where it buried itself half an inch in the wall. Sounded like a gunshot. I nearly fell, turned it into a controlled leap and ran into his office. Poor guy was white faced as he showed me just how close he'd come to an involuntary vasectomy.
I suggest breaking the ice with a good joke, like: Q.) What's the definition of a macho man? A.) Someone who shaves his balls with a weed wacker
or for the opposite gender:
Q.) What's the definition of a macho woman? A1.) She suck-starts her Harley. A2.) She kick-starts her vibrator. A3.) She rolls her own tampons.
or my personal favorite, always a hit with a ladies: Q.) How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A.) (preferably delivered interupting the other party) That's not funny!
These jokes are gauranteed to make an impression on the opposite sex.
Sorry for the ad hominems, I didn't mean to insult you. Just your philosophy;). As for the moralizing, that's how I feel, and you are perfectly free to ignore it.
I see now the root of our misunderstanding, and looking back on previous posts I should have caught it earlier. I'm not proposing any top down mandated social structure! That, as you say, is not anarchism. I'm talking about a local, bottom up structure. I would never want to force anyone to adopt my system, that is antithetical to anarchism.
But I don't agree that all such systems of anarchy must include a strict right to own natural resources, and I don't agree that any socialist anarchist system must respect an anarcho-capitalist systems property claims. You have demonstrated no moral imperative whatsoever for our little local anarcho-syndicalist community to respect your little anarcho-capitalist community's property claims. Your argument boils down to the outmoded concept of natural rights, and quite frankly, to naked force. That is a less than compelling argument in my book.
As for your second point, what is to keep a group of people in your anarcho-capitalist world from doing the same thing? You are judging these systems by two completely different sets of criteria, and that is what I find frustrating. In fact, it's garaunteed to happen in your system. People will amass wealth and power and use force to leverage even more wealth and power. It's the natural end-point of your system, just as the natural end-point of communism is dictatorship.
I do not see anarcho capitalism as any kind of natural order. It is not a stable equilibrium, and it does require that everyone subscribe to your notions of property and ownership. It invariably leads to wealth and power concentrating into fewer and fewer hands. It amounts to a tyranny of the strong over the weak, of the haves over the have-nots.
When everything is owned, how do people opt out of your system? Where do they go? Once every piece of land is owned, people who do not own become dependant on the owners for their means of survival, and they must give up their freedom simply to live. Your system is gauranteed to devolve into tyranny.
In contrast, anarcho-syndicalism, not being based on some artifical definition of property and the force necessary to protect that artificial definition is closer to a natural equilibrium. How is mediation of control through democracy less natural than meditation of control through money? Monetary transactions amount to a less fair version of democracy, where certain people have more votes than others. The tyranny of the majority exists in the free market, too. Just as functional democracies have constitutions that protect against that tyranny, markets must have regulations to protect against the same.
Slashdot Mirror
The CIA World Factbook does not list the percentage of people living under the poverty level in Hong Kong. It doesn't list the percentage of consumption by the highest or lowest 10% of households. Unemployement is listed at 5.5%. With those figures (or suspicious lack of figures) how can you claim that wealth does not concentrate in Hong Kong?
I think the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands was successfully demonstrated by the complete and utter failure of lassez faire capitalism and the rise of the robber barons. But of course, as with most idealists whose ideals have failed, I'm sure you will try to argue that your ideals were simply not followed closely enough.
With enough money, you get a de-facto regulatory process. The market becomes unfree due to unfair barriers to entry being enacted by the biggest players. Look at Microsoft, and how they use their monopoly power to unfair advantage. And no one could argue that Microsfot is a government granted monopoly.
I can not see how you can look at conditions in modern capitalist countries and argue with a straight face that there is no concentration of wealth. I would put it on you to prove your point, because all economic data I've seen say otherwise.
Marx saw the flaw in free market capitalism that would lead to our current corporatocracy. Proudhon saw that Marx's communism would lead to a similar concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. Only a balance between the two seems to work. Socialist Anarchism, it's what the smartest folks have been recommending for over 150 years.
Unfortunately, free markets lead to concentration of wealth. Concentration of wealth leads to concentration of power, which leads to control of the regulatory process. Free markets invariably become unfree because of a runaway feedback loop. At least in democracy we have checks and balances. Where are the checks and balances within a free market that will work to keep it free? there are none.
Most people would care if they knew. Unfortunately not only don't they know about the dangers, they have many other things to worry about and finding information about this issue isn't a priority. So we actually need those columnists to write those articles so people will realize what's ebing done to them.
Are you honestly saying that if you went up to a bunch of random people on the street and said, "Do you mind if companies buy and sell your private information?" that the majority would say "Sure! Whatever!" ? You must really have a low ability of most people's ability to make rational decisions for themselves. I know it's chic in geek circles to put down the common man as a way to make yourself seem smarter, but this seems ridiculous.
That's a dictatorship masquerading as communism. Nice try, though.
Unfortunately, this kind of lawsuit costs money. And most reputable lawyers would never take such a case on commision. If it happened to enough people, they might work on a class action suit. And you would end up getting $5 as recompense for the thousands you lost, while the lawyers walked away with millions. In your ideal system, it seems, only the rich would be able to afford justice. Is this really what you want?
The free market is a method for mediating power exchange. It is similar to democracy in this respect. It is basically one dollar, one vote rather than one person, one vote. The free market, on its own, lacks the system of checks and balances that a healthy democracy must have. There is no protection against the tyranny of the majority. What's worse, the majority of dollars are controlled by a minority of the people. The more money a person has, the easier it is for them to game the system. They have more say over what is valuable and what isn't, and can therefore make things they own or control more valuable, increasing their wealth and therefore their power. This positive feedback loop is what Marx saw would lead to concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Of course, his proposed system also lacked proper checks and balances and lead to the same end, even quicker.
Tag it "Rolly Pigpile" and everyone would know who you mean. Wait, no, they'd think that was just a euphamism for CowboyNeal.
From reading the summary, this is my understanding of what these guys are saying, too. Call it modified MOND.
It sounds like they are going for a MMOND theory, modified modified newtonian dynamics. They admit the presence of dark matter. In fact, they reference another experiment as well as the bullet cluster observations that seems to show that MOND can't account for everything. So to save MOND, they are saying it doesn't have to account for everything. Massive neutrinos migth account for the rest.
Oh, please. I think Libertarians are completely goofy, but this is just too easy. As long as you're a Libertarian who believes in initiation of force to protect intellectual property laws. Of which there are tons. Personally, I don't see how they wrap their heads around that without them exploding, but it works for them.
The problem, of course, is that the GPS broadcasts are a public good, so how do protect that, in order to charge for it? Encryption? If people get their hands on your device, they can break the encryption. It all boils down to giving a government enforced monopoly on using the broadcasts to the people who put the satellites up. Otherwise, the people putting up the satellites could never recoup their initial investments, as anyone could make a receiver and not have to pay the people putting them up.
But as I mentioned, plenty of Libertarians can quite easily wrap their heads around the paradox of enforced ownership of intellectual property. It all comes from a very flexible definition of "initiation of force." Basically, any use of force a libertarian doesn't like is "initiation of force," while anything else is "retaliatory force" which is, of course, justified as YOUR NATURAL RIGHT!
See, in order to troll successfully, you have to have an understanding, nay, even a love for that which you troll. You have to care enough about your subject to actually get inside and find out what makes 'em tick, what are their foibles, paradoxes and hot buttons.
So, any Libertarians out there want to respond to a self proclaimed troll and tell me how you would do it without intellectual property protections? I mean, if you thought protection of real property took a lot of state sponsored violence, imagine how much state sponsored violence is necessary for the protection of imaginary property? Come on, you guys are smart, I mean, it's not like you just memorize your party dogma and can't answer simple questions that fall outside the bounds of official, party sponsored reasoning, is it?
Happy Troll Tuesday!
P.S. As much as I think the vast majority of Libertarians are goofy, I've had conversations with some here who are probably smart enough to figure out how to do this, so even if no one responds, that doesn't mean all libertarians are dogma spouting mouth breathers who couldn't reason their way out of a paper bag. Some would manage to deduce that ripping open the bag was not in fact initiation of force, as the bag was depriving them of their natural right not to be in a paper bag.
Real security is the last thing those in power really want. Put it this way, if you are in the bandage business, would you want to promote a product that reduces the chance of being wounded?
Religion for the hard hearted?
The rich kid who tries to be nice is generally well liked. Especially by the poor kids he buys lunch. The secularist who respects the religious fanatic's right to practice his own religion is generally tolerated, as it means more opportunities to win converts. The people at the top of fanatical movements are genrally rational and in it for the power/money/control/pussy.
Conversely, the rich kid who picks on others is generally despised. The secularist who is fanatical about his secularism is not well liked by other fanatics. This is all so simple, but it contradicts the comfy, we're number one, we have the moral high ground position that Americans like to believe.
It's to Pluto we go,
Where you can bet
It's a dwarf planet!
Heigh-ho,
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, heigh-ho!
Of course, the dwarves of Pluto all have names like Freezy, Shivery and Iceful.
Oh, the arrogance! You early adopter's actually want something useful for your money? It's your job as professional consumers to purchase the latest crap, no matter what. The economy is counting on you. The country is counting on you. The fat lazy shareholders who don't want to do an honest days work for their millions are counting on you. The CEO needs a new island in the Bahamas, his daughter needs a new nose and his mistress needs some new tits. So quit your whining, get of your asses, go out and do your job. Step up!
Has anyone read Finnegan's Wake? Or do they all just get about four pages into it, go into seizures and then imagine they've read it when they come to? Maybe that's just me...
In the immortal words of Ralph Wiggum, "Me fail english? That's unpossible!"
That's why I felt the need to put in the disclaimer post. The joke is that the jokes are all so bad. Every IT guy I've ever met (including, unfortunately, myself) has the sense of humor of a twelve year old. And the tact & social graces of an elephant seal.
We have a wiki for technical documents, I once cut and pasted a neat Linux tip I found online, just a one-liner search and replace. I just looked at the command. I should have read it more carefully, because the example he gave was "Say you wanted to change every occurance of 'bitch' in 'Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back' to 'boo-boo kitty fuck,'" Dealing with that screw up was less than fun...
I'm making fun of IT guys notorious juvenile humor and lack of tact with the ladies. I am not seriously suggesting you use these aweful jokes to impress your female co-workers. So don't sue me when you get fired for sexual harassment. Just saying...
Oh yeah, the drive was toast. We took the drive out of the computer, and the case was bowed out in back. When we shook the pieces out of the drive, bits of drive fell out too. And I wasn't exagerating about the bit stuck in the wall. Half an inch, straight into drywall, about ten feet across from his desk!
Hehe, I nearly fell off a ladder while pulling Cat5 through a drop ceiling once, due to an exploding Linux CD. Seems a co-worker wanted to give it a try and bought one of those Linux books with the CD in the back (remember when a Linux distro came on one CD?) You know the books I mean, the nice soft cover books that weigh like five pounds and pretty much gaurantee the CD is going to be at least a little stressed. He had one of those older super-fast CD drives that could rev up to dangerous velocities. Poor guy put in the CD, the drive spun up, and the CD just flew apart, shredding his CD drive and shooting an inch wide wedge of CD out the front, six inches from his nuts, and across the room where it buried itself half an inch in the wall. Sounded like a gunshot. I nearly fell, turned it into a controlled leap and ran into his office. Poor guy was white faced as he showed me just how close he'd come to an involuntary vasectomy.
I suggest breaking the ice with a good joke, like:
Q.) What's the definition of a macho man?
A.) Someone who shaves his balls with a weed wacker
or for the opposite gender:
Q.) What's the definition of a macho woman?
A1.) She suck-starts her Harley.
A2.) She kick-starts her vibrator.
A3.) She rolls her own tampons.
or my personal favorite, always a hit with a ladies:
Q.) How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A.) (preferably delivered interupting the other party) That's not funny!
These jokes are gauranteed to make an impression on the opposite sex.
Sorry for the ad hominems, I didn't mean to insult you. Just your philosophy ;). As for the moralizing, that's how I feel, and you are perfectly free to ignore it.
I see now the root of our misunderstanding, and looking back on previous posts I should have caught it earlier. I'm not proposing any top down mandated social structure! That, as you say, is not anarchism. I'm talking about a local, bottom up structure. I would never want to force anyone to adopt my system, that is antithetical to anarchism.
But I don't agree that all such systems of anarchy must include a strict right to own natural resources, and I don't agree that any socialist anarchist system must respect an anarcho-capitalist systems property claims. You have demonstrated no moral imperative whatsoever for our little local anarcho-syndicalist community to respect your little anarcho-capitalist community's property claims. Your argument boils down to the outmoded concept of natural rights, and quite frankly, to naked force. That is a less than compelling argument in my book.
As for your second point, what is to keep a group of people in your anarcho-capitalist world from doing the same thing? You are judging these systems by two completely different sets of criteria, and that is what I find frustrating. In fact, it's garaunteed to happen in your system. People will amass wealth and power and use force to leverage even more wealth and power. It's the natural end-point of your system, just as the natural end-point of communism is dictatorship.
I do not see anarcho capitalism as any kind of natural order. It is not a stable equilibrium, and it does require that everyone subscribe to your notions of property and ownership. It invariably leads to wealth and power concentrating into fewer and fewer hands. It amounts to a tyranny of the strong over the weak, of the haves over the have-nots.
When everything is owned, how do people opt out of your system? Where do they go? Once every piece of land is owned, people who do not own become dependant on the owners for their means of survival, and they must give up their freedom simply to live. Your system is gauranteed to devolve into tyranny.
In contrast, anarcho-syndicalism, not being based on some artifical definition of property and the force necessary to protect that artificial definition is closer to a natural equilibrium. How is mediation of control through democracy less natural than meditation of control through money? Monetary transactions amount to a less fair version of democracy, where certain people have more votes than others. The tyranny of the majority exists in the free market, too. Just as functional democracies have constitutions that protect against that tyranny, markets must have regulations to protect against the same.