You are quite possibly one of the most callous people I have ever conversed with. Not that that's wrong or bad, but I think you are missing out on one of the greatest feelings a human can have: empathy.
Go ahead and tell all the victims of the tsunami or hurricane katrina about the lessons they need to learn from their experience. Not all suffering has a purpose. In any case, the God you describe is not something I would ever worship.
Natural disasters may now be partially alleviated through choices that civilizations made, but this was not the case for most of our history, and is not always the case now. So how do you explain that in the majority of cases, natural disasters represent an evil for which there is no corresponding action of will?
In any case, the phrase "worse than it should have been" gives the game away. Even making the best possible choices, there would be suffering. An all loving, all knowing, all powerful God could easily take away all suffering that is not directly caused by free will, yet He does not. Therefore, He must not be all loving, all knowing, and all powerful.
If God is all powerful, he could create free will that was free of the possibility of evil. For instance, free will is now free of the possibility of flavenfurgen (a meaningless concept I just made up.) You can't choose to commit flavenfurgen. Yet even without this choice, you have free will. An all powerful God could create a free will that could not conceive of, let alone choose evil. To state otherwise is to admit that God is not all powerful.
Just because you cannot conceive of how this could be does not mean that an omniscient God could not conceive of it or do it.
Someone please mod this "insightful" as opposed to funny (which it also is.) Does anyone doubt that this is pretty much how it happened?
Comedian Bill Hicks had the most insightful proposal for marketing types:
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers, Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously.
No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke"... there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags! "Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!
"Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web! "Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market - look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar..." How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you?"
It's called "Rent Seeking" behavior, and it's one of those little problems with the free market (along with monopolies themselves, the inequality of access to information, externalities, and many other issues) that libertarians and conservative economists like to sweep under the rug.
If you are a libertarian or conservative economist, I suggest sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting "The Free Market is GOD!" until the problem goes away.
Harder than what was originally thought to be hard, namely logical thought. Things like chess are relatively easy compared to the problems of, say, walking in a natural environment or recognizing spoken words. The things that we find easy are hard to program, where as the things that we find hard such as logic, mathematics, or chess are easier. There is still nothing man made that is as good as a human at recognizing another human face.
Making a genuine chatting AI is hard, but a human finds chatting very easy. Making an AI that can ask questions about a patient's symptoms and recommend effective courses of treatment is much easier than making an AI that can argue the merits the latest pop band, yet a human requires years of study to make a correct diagnosis while any fourteen year old girl can discuss pop music for hours without raising a mental sweat.
Ask him. It's pretty ridiculous. I imagine Microsoft will go after the major vendors, trying to get them to stop selling MS IP. They might go after the specific developers who infringed on their IP for damages. It's a long shot, but they could even go after major customers, enjoining them from using Linux without paying MS some kind of licensing fee.
I kinda expected people to be able to figure out that when I said "Sue Linux" that was shorthand for "Sue all the major vendors of Linux and possibly the developers and customers too."
Take some acid and have a conversation about the "levels" of reality to understand what I mean. Been there, done that, wrote the best selling novel explaining it all. I was alluding to the issue of qualia in my previous post, even using the color red in my example. I have priveleged access to my qualia, I know what red looks like for me, but not for you. I was trying to explain the philosophical implications of AI and the issue of qualia in a single paragraph, excuse me if I skipped some details.
What he is stating is business as usual, not newsworthy. There is no reason to state such a fact unless you are trying to discourage people from using Linux without the expense of actually filing a lawsuit. If Microsoft wants to file suit, that would be newsworthy, and not FUD. Simply restating general business practices such as "We sue people that infringe on our IP," or "Product X may infringe on our IP," serves no purpose but to scare away potential Linux users.
I can see no reason for Balmer to make this statement except to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Linux. Can you imagine some other reason for him to state such a thing? Yes, we are calling his motives into question.
You see, his arguments aren't wrong. Microsoft could sue Linux. That isn't the issue. The issue is, why even talk about it rather than simply doing it? Balmer's motives are the issue, so it is completely legitimate to posit that his motives are to spread FUD. Doing so counters his assumed motives and puts the ball back in his court.
Not FUD? Then sue. Won't sue? Then it's FUD.
Without an actual lawsuit, there is nothing for potential linux users to fear. We are not trying to counter his arguments, we can't. Microsoft could perfectly well sue Linux. We are trying to counter his unstated goals by countering the fears he brings up. If they wanted to sue, they would have.
It's FUD until they actually sue. Then we can worry about winning the argument that Linux infringes on Microsoft IP. Until then, we will simply say, don't listen to him, he's full of FUD.
Cuckoos and cowbirds can, in a pinch, replicate without parasitizing another birds nest. Viruses are snippets of RNA in a protein coating that, simply put, do nothing outside of a cell. Vast difference here.
Intelligent animals are orders of magnitude more complex than viruses. In some theories, if there was a supercomputer powerful enough to simulate all the atoms in your body, it would be conscious. Others invoke quantum uncertainty to explain consciousness, and unless the computer were some sort of quantum computer, they say it would not accurately simulate consciousness. Others claim that we don't even know what consciousness is, or why the color red looks red. These people would claim that even though a computer simulation might be perfectly accurate, it wouldn't in fact be conscious or have the same sorts of internal experiences that conscious entities have. It might even claim to have the same internal sensations we do, however, although I can program a computer to state "I feel depressed," that doesn't mean it feels the same way I do when I'm depressed.
In short, to answer your question honestly, we don't yet know.
FUD is a good acronym: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. What other term would you use to express the concept? It isn't name calling, it's simply stating what they are doing. If they want to sue, sue. There is no reason beyond spreading FUD to announce that "We might sue."
The article isn't misguided, Balmer is. Precisely because he is spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt rather than, say, useful information about the merits of his product and how it has better features than Linux. Therefore, claiming that Balmer is spreading FUD doesn't distract from pointing out why he is wrong, it IS why he is wrong.
I'm now thinking that perhaps you didn't know what the acronym stood for and took it as some kind of insult. It's the only way to explain your lack of comprehension as to why the term is accurate. That or you are some kind of Microsoft sock puppet who is deliberately spreading FUD about FUD.
I wish more christians were like you and actually, you know, followed the teachings of Christ. I have known a few of these sorts of christians in my life, people who quietly lived their faith and were happy to share it if asked, but who never used their faith as a pedastal to put themselves above others.
If Christ's teachings really have value, you don't need to preach. Live your life well and people will ask you "How is it that you are so happy and fulfilled? How did you come to be such a good person?" Then you can tell them.
If you aren't happy and fulfilled, if you are mean, bitter or judgemental, I could care less what religion or philosophy you follow. It obviously isn't doing you any good, why would I want to know about it?
I love Tropico, but the only government you can implement is communism. All housing and factories are owned by the government. All medicine and education are socialized. You determine where everything is built and when it is torn down. You decide whether to hold elections or not, and whether or not to cheat in them. Your decision is only whether to implement a tyranical or benevolent form of communism. But I still absolutely love the game.
You have to understand, Libertarians believe that the free market will fix everything, and that all evil comes from government coercion. They will twist themselves into pretzels in order to uphold those points. Therefore, there is no way they could ever admit the utility of something government enforced like trademarks. They would have to throw out their entire philosophy. Try talking with them about monopolies and externalities and you will see the kind of "nyah nyah nyah nyah I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" craziness this engenders. It's as if they have invented an entire new language where you can't even express the idea of government doing something useful.
It makes arguing with them rather pointless, so I generally don't even try anymore.
I always look for the "cpt kangarooski"(tm) brand posts. Quality legal information at a reasonable price, you can't go wrong with a "cpt kangarooski"(tm) post!
Was that the Larry Niven short story where he talked about the problems Superman would have trying to mate with human women? Like his involuntary orgasmic muscle spasms ripping her apart? Or his super sperm blasting right through her and flying through the air until they run out of energy and randomly impregnate women in a six block radius? That was hilarious. It was in the same book as an essay on the implications of different kinds of teleportation, invaluable to SF RPG game masters contemplating using that kind of tech, if I remember correctly.
I read that book as a kid, and it taught me the lesson that, in any kind of speculative fiction, you have to really think through the implications of the things you are introducing in order for your work to be internally consistent.
I think we know how the people in power would like them to rule. Those in power are doing everything they can to destroy democracy and the free market and install a fundamentalist oligarchy in their place. However, you never know with supreme court justices. They are appointed for life after all, so theoretically they are free to rule based on their conscience. Hopefully they weren't appointed simply because someone has some really nasty dirt on them that can be used to ensure their cooperation.
From previous discussions with Libertarians, I knew this would happen. You people (especially the ones that read mises) just redefine words to suit you. "Monopoly" and "Natural monopoly" have defined meanings in standard economic theory and discourse. Libertarians who reject standard economic theory have redefined the terminology of econommics to suit their theories. So monopolies are always coercive entities empowered by governments. Never mind the standard definitions. By your definitions, you are completely right. By the definition 99% of the world uses for the words, you are wrong. Can you understand that this makes discussing things with you difficult?
If you started reading more about economics from sources other than mises, you might come to realize that the standard definitions make sense and have utility. For instance, what is the term you use for a situation where, due to economies of scale, the first or largest player in a market has such an overwhelming cost advantage that it makes it more efficient for them to be the sole supplier of that market? Does mises even have a term for such a situation? Because the rest of us do, it's called a natural monopoloy and it isn't always a bad thing. It is a situation where the efficiency of the free market can break down, so special handling of the situation is necessary. Of course, if your whole theory is predicated on the idea that the efficiency of the market can never break down, then the very definition of this word is anathema to you.
Unless you can admit that in some situations, for instance where there is an imbalance of information, where there are many externalities, or where there is a natural monopoly, the efficiency of the free market breaks down. Standard economic theory has to address these issues as it is put into practice and people recognize that they exist. Libertarian economics, unfettered by any practical experience with the real world, doesn't even have to admit that such situations exists, and thus, for seakers of truth and understanding in the universe, it becomes a joke.
You are missing my point. Natural monopolies exist. No matter if government runs them or a private company runs them, there can be only one road to your house. There can be only one sewage line. These are monopolies. I fully understand the concept of contestable markets, and realize that competition can place downward price forces even on monopoly entities. If the monopoly that runs sewers is too expensive, people will start using chemical toilets. If the toll roads are too expensive, people will fly helicopters or telecommute. This does not negate the fact that these things are monopolies. Don't be so quick to think you have refuted an argument you refuse to even understand due to ideological blinders.
There is no such thing as a "natural" monopoly. Roads are a natural monopoly. How can you have more than one road in the same place? Sewers. Are you honestly telling me multiple companies are all going to lay sewage pipes so that you can choose which one to hook your toilets up to? These examples are indisputable proof of the existence of natural monopolies, but arguably many other things, even those you mention, are also natural monopolies.
The free market is okay for some things, but it simply isn't the most efficient way of getting some things done. Do you think it would be more efficient for dozens of companies to all run electrical and telephone wires to your home so you can choose which one to buy? Would free market fire companies really protect the community efficiently? If you don't buy fire protection, your home burns, endangering others homes as well. Anything more efficiently run as a monopoly is a natural monopoly.
I can tell from your sig that you are a Libertarian, and Libertarian dogma says that anything and everything can be most efficiently decided by the free market. Back here in the real world, real people have noticed that it simply doesn't work that way and moved on to other ideas.
Have you noticed that there are no Libertarian nations or states anywhere in the world? Every other political philosophy has managed something. Even if it turns into a trainwreck, at least they put their principles into practice. Since Libertarians never actually put what they preach into practice, they can always claim that they have the perfect ideology. If only everyone else would just listen to them and do things their way...
Genes can code for societal behavior, too. If I help 3 of my close relatives breed, I have just passed on my genes even if I don't breed myself. Look at ants and bees. Most of them never breed. If genes only code for selfish behavior, how'd that happen?
Cooperative societies are more successfull than purely competative ones. According to recent economic research, most people value fairness and justice over personal gain. This is because cooperation is a more efficient strategy. Placing a high value on personal selfishness and greed is counter-productive. It encourages people who by nature might be cooperative to be selfish, harming all of society.
You can try to get the rest of us to agree with your "greed is good" theory, but most people won't. We like cooperation. We value justice and fairness over greed and selfishness. We think people who are selfish and greedy suck, and we see no reason to cooperate with people like that and give them the benefits of our cooperative society. Greedy people should go live by themselves and be entirely self sufficent without being a drain on the rest of us.
The 19th century called, it wants its failed theory of social darwinism back.
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You are quite possibly one of the most callous people I have ever conversed with. Not that that's wrong or bad, but I think you are missing out on one of the greatest feelings a human can have: empathy.
Go ahead and tell all the victims of the tsunami or hurricane katrina about the lessons they need to learn from their experience. Not all suffering has a purpose. In any case, the God you describe is not something I would ever worship.
Natural disasters may now be partially alleviated through choices that civilizations made, but this was not the case for most of our history, and is not always the case now. So how do you explain that in the majority of cases, natural disasters represent an evil for which there is no corresponding action of will?
In any case, the phrase "worse than it should have been" gives the game away. Even making the best possible choices, there would be suffering. An all loving, all knowing, all powerful God could easily take away all suffering that is not directly caused by free will, yet He does not. Therefore, He must not be all loving, all knowing, and all powerful.
If God is all powerful, he could create free will that was free of the possibility of evil. For instance, free will is now free of the possibility of flavenfurgen (a meaningless concept I just made up.) You can't choose to commit flavenfurgen. Yet even without this choice, you have free will. An all powerful God could create a free will that could not conceive of, let alone choose evil. To state otherwise is to admit that God is not all powerful.
Just because you cannot conceive of how this could be does not mean that an omniscient God could not conceive of it or do it.
Someone please mod this "insightful" as opposed to funny (which it also is.) Does anyone doubt that this is pretty much how it happened?
Comedian Bill Hicks had the most insightful proposal for marketing types:
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers, Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously.
No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke"... there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags! "Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!
"Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web! "Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market - look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar..." How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you?"
It's called "Rent Seeking" behavior, and it's one of those little problems with the free market (along with monopolies themselves, the inequality of access to information, externalities, and many other issues) that libertarians and conservative economists like to sweep under the rug.
If you are a libertarian or conservative economist, I suggest sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting "The Free Market is GOD!" until the problem goes away.
The only difference is whether they really are after you or not...
Harder than what was originally thought to be hard, namely logical thought. Things like chess are relatively easy compared to the problems of, say, walking in a natural environment or recognizing spoken words. The things that we find easy are hard to program, where as the things that we find hard such as logic, mathematics, or chess are easier. There is still nothing man made that is as good as a human at recognizing another human face.
Making a genuine chatting AI is hard, but a human finds chatting very easy. Making an AI that can ask questions about a patient's symptoms and recommend effective courses of treatment is much easier than making an AI that can argue the merits the latest pop band, yet a human requires years of study to make a correct diagnosis while any fourteen year old girl can discuss pop music for hours without raising a mental sweat.
Does that make my meaning somewhat clearer?
Ask him. It's pretty ridiculous. I imagine Microsoft will go after the major vendors, trying to get them to stop selling MS IP. They might go after the specific developers who infringed on their IP for damages. It's a long shot, but they could even go after major customers, enjoining them from using Linux without paying MS some kind of licensing fee.
I kinda expected people to be able to figure out that when I said "Sue Linux" that was shorthand for "Sue all the major vendors of Linux and possibly the developers and customers too."
Take some acid and have a conversation about the "levels" of reality to understand what I mean.
Been there, done that, wrote the best selling novel explaining it all. I was alluding to the issue of qualia in my previous post, even using the color red in my example. I have priveleged access to my qualia, I know what red looks like for me, but not for you. I was trying to explain the philosophical implications of AI and the issue of qualia in a single paragraph, excuse me if I skipped some details.
As we have learned over the past 30 years of AI research, in some ways that is harder.
What he is stating is business as usual, not newsworthy. There is no reason to state such a fact unless you are trying to discourage people from using Linux without the expense of actually filing a lawsuit. If Microsoft wants to file suit, that would be newsworthy, and not FUD. Simply restating general business practices such as "We sue people that infringe on our IP," or "Product X may infringe on our IP," serves no purpose but to scare away potential Linux users.
I can see no reason for Balmer to make this statement except to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Linux. Can you imagine some other reason for him to state such a thing? Yes, we are calling his motives into question.
You see, his arguments aren't wrong. Microsoft could sue Linux. That isn't the issue. The issue is, why even talk about it rather than simply doing it? Balmer's motives are the issue, so it is completely legitimate to posit that his motives are to spread FUD. Doing so counters his assumed motives and puts the ball back in his court.
Not FUD? Then sue. Won't sue? Then it's FUD.
Without an actual lawsuit, there is nothing for potential linux users to fear. We are not trying to counter his arguments, we can't. Microsoft could perfectly well sue Linux. We are trying to counter his unstated goals by countering the fears he brings up. If they wanted to sue, they would have.
It's FUD until they actually sue. Then we can worry about winning the argument that Linux infringes on Microsoft IP. Until then, we will simply say, don't listen to him, he's full of FUD.
Cuckoos and cowbirds can, in a pinch, replicate without parasitizing another birds nest. Viruses are snippets of RNA in a protein coating that, simply put, do nothing outside of a cell. Vast difference here.
Intelligent animals are orders of magnitude more complex than viruses. In some theories, if there was a supercomputer powerful enough to simulate all the atoms in your body, it would be conscious. Others invoke quantum uncertainty to explain consciousness, and unless the computer were some sort of quantum computer, they say it would not accurately simulate consciousness. Others claim that we don't even know what consciousness is, or why the color red looks red. These people would claim that even though a computer simulation might be perfectly accurate, it wouldn't in fact be conscious or have the same sorts of internal experiences that conscious entities have. It might even claim to have the same internal sensations we do, however, although I can program a computer to state "I feel depressed," that doesn't mean it feels the same way I do when I'm depressed.
In short, to answer your question honestly, we don't yet know.
FUD is a good acronym: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. What other term would you use to express the concept? It isn't name calling, it's simply stating what they are doing. If they want to sue, sue. There is no reason beyond spreading FUD to announce that "We might sue."
The article isn't misguided, Balmer is. Precisely because he is spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt rather than, say, useful information about the merits of his product and how it has better features than Linux. Therefore, claiming that Balmer is spreading FUD doesn't distract from pointing out why he is wrong, it IS why he is wrong.
I'm now thinking that perhaps you didn't know what the acronym stood for and took it as some kind of insult. It's the only way to explain your lack of comprehension as to why the term is accurate. That or you are some kind of Microsoft sock puppet who is deliberately spreading FUD about FUD.
I wish more christians were like you and actually, you know, followed the teachings of Christ. I have known a few of these sorts of christians in my life, people who quietly lived their faith and were happy to share it if asked, but who never used their faith as a pedastal to put themselves above others.
If Christ's teachings really have value, you don't need to preach. Live your life well and people will ask you "How is it that you are so happy and fulfilled? How did you come to be such a good person?" Then you can tell them.
If you aren't happy and fulfilled, if you are mean, bitter or judgemental, I could care less what religion or philosophy you follow. It obviously isn't doing you any good, why would I want to know about it?
I love Tropico, but the only government you can implement is communism. All housing and factories are owned by the government. All medicine and education are socialized. You determine where everything is built and when it is torn down. You decide whether to hold elections or not, and whether or not to cheat in them. Your decision is only whether to implement a tyranical or benevolent form of communism. But I still absolutely love the game.
You have to understand, Libertarians believe that the free market will fix everything, and that all evil comes from government coercion. They will twist themselves into pretzels in order to uphold those points. Therefore, there is no way they could ever admit the utility of something government enforced like trademarks. They would have to throw out their entire philosophy. Try talking with them about monopolies and externalities and you will see the kind of "nyah nyah nyah nyah I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" craziness this engenders. It's as if they have invented an entire new language where you can't even express the idea of government doing something useful.
It makes arguing with them rather pointless, so I generally don't even try anymore.
I always look for the "cpt kangarooski"(tm) brand posts. Quality legal information at a reasonable price, you can't go wrong with a "cpt kangarooski"(tm) post!
Was that the Larry Niven short story where he talked about the problems Superman would have trying to mate with human women? Like his involuntary orgasmic muscle spasms ripping her apart? Or his super sperm blasting right through her and flying through the air until they run out of energy and randomly impregnate women in a six block radius? That was hilarious. It was in the same book as an essay on the implications of different kinds of teleportation, invaluable to SF RPG game masters contemplating using that kind of tech, if I remember correctly.
I read that book as a kid, and it taught me the lesson that, in any kind of speculative fiction, you have to really think through the implications of the things you are introducing in order for your work to be internally consistent.
Solar powered roombas. With even smaller roombas on them...
I think we know how the people in power would like them to rule. Those in power are doing everything they can to destroy democracy and the free market and install a fundamentalist oligarchy in their place. However, you never know with supreme court justices. They are appointed for life after all, so theoretically they are free to rule based on their conscience. Hopefully they weren't appointed simply because someone has some really nasty dirt on them that can be used to ensure their cooperation.
From previous discussions with Libertarians, I knew this would happen. You people (especially the ones that read mises) just redefine words to suit you. "Monopoly" and "Natural monopoly" have defined meanings in standard economic theory and discourse. Libertarians who reject standard economic theory have redefined the terminology of econommics to suit their theories. So monopolies are always coercive entities empowered by governments. Never mind the standard definitions. By your definitions, you are completely right. By the definition 99% of the world uses for the words, you are wrong. Can you understand that this makes discussing things with you difficult?
If you started reading more about economics from sources other than mises, you might come to realize that the standard definitions make sense and have utility. For instance, what is the term you use for a situation where, due to economies of scale, the first or largest player in a market has such an overwhelming cost advantage that it makes it more efficient for them to be the sole supplier of that market? Does mises even have a term for such a situation? Because the rest of us do, it's called a natural monopoloy and it isn't always a bad thing. It is a situation where the efficiency of the free market can break down, so special handling of the situation is necessary. Of course, if your whole theory is predicated on the idea that the efficiency of the market can never break down, then the very definition of this word is anathema to you.
Unless you can admit that in some situations, for instance where there is an imbalance of information, where there are many externalities, or where there is a natural monopoly, the efficiency of the free market breaks down. Standard economic theory has to address these issues as it is put into practice and people recognize that they exist. Libertarian economics, unfettered by any practical experience with the real world, doesn't even have to admit that such situations exists, and thus, for seakers of truth and understanding in the universe, it becomes a joke.
You are missing my point. Natural monopolies exist. No matter if government runs them or a private company runs them, there can be only one road to your house. There can be only one sewage line. These are monopolies. I fully understand the concept of contestable markets, and realize that competition can place downward price forces even on monopoly entities. If the monopoly that runs sewers is too expensive, people will start using chemical toilets. If the toll roads are too expensive, people will fly helicopters or telecommute. This does not negate the fact that these things are monopolies. Don't be so quick to think you have refuted an argument you refuse to even understand due to ideological blinders.
There is no such thing as a "natural" monopoly.
Roads are a natural monopoly. How can you have more than one road in the same place? Sewers. Are you honestly telling me multiple companies are all going to lay sewage pipes so that you can choose which one to hook your toilets up to? These examples are indisputable proof of the existence of natural monopolies, but arguably many other things, even those you mention, are also natural monopolies.
The free market is okay for some things, but it simply isn't the most efficient way of getting some things done. Do you think it would be more efficient for dozens of companies to all run electrical and telephone wires to your home so you can choose which one to buy? Would free market fire companies really protect the community efficiently? If you don't buy fire protection, your home burns, endangering others homes as well. Anything more efficiently run as a monopoly is a natural monopoly.
I can tell from your sig that you are a Libertarian, and Libertarian dogma says that anything and everything can be most efficiently decided by the free market. Back here in the real world, real people have noticed that it simply doesn't work that way and moved on to other ideas.
Have you noticed that there are no Libertarian nations or states anywhere in the world? Every other political philosophy has managed something. Even if it turns into a trainwreck, at least they put their principles into practice. Since Libertarians never actually put what they preach into practice, they can always claim that they have the perfect ideology. If only everyone else would just listen to them and do things their way...
Genes can code for societal behavior, too. If I help 3 of my close relatives breed, I have just passed on my genes even if I don't breed myself. Look at ants and bees. Most of them never breed. If genes only code for selfish behavior, how'd that happen?
Cooperative societies are more successfull than purely competative ones. According to recent economic research, most people value fairness and justice over personal gain. This is because cooperation is a more efficient strategy. Placing a high value on personal selfishness and greed is counter-productive. It encourages people who by nature might be cooperative to be selfish, harming all of society.
You can try to get the rest of us to agree with your "greed is good" theory, but most people won't. We like cooperation. We value justice and fairness over greed and selfishness. We think people who are selfish and greedy suck, and we see no reason to cooperate with people like that and give them the benefits of our cooperative society. Greedy people should go live by themselves and be entirely self sufficent without being a drain on the rest of us.
The 19th century called, it wants its failed theory of social darwinism back.