And thats just fine. But without the public systems, large numbers of children, perhaps the majority of them, would not be able to go to school at all.
In places like Hong Kong that had no publically funded schools for the longest time, realities like that never turned out to be true. Also, what the hell are you saying - would you promote robbing banks at gunpoint to for paying for childrens education too?
And please, don't parrot the "public schools suck" meme at me.
OK. I won't but I know for a fact the my parents were paying $2500/yr to send me to a good college prep boarding school while those kids in gettho high LA up 20 minutes north, were costing the state about $3000/yr per student to run.
SS isn't a retirement plan. Its retirment INSURANCE.
When you coerce people to participate in an "investment" scheme that they don't want to - it called a "racket" and it's a fellony in all 50 states for a reason. When you pay the interest from new participants "contributions", that's called a "pnozi" scheeme, and is universally shunned by any competent investment advisor. What kind of loonacy causes people to think that when the government does these things - that all of a sudden the consequences aren't important?
Compared to the rest of health care in the US, its almost sane.
There's a city of 50,000 healthcare professionals in rochester minnesota that is better known as the "Mayo Clinic" - the whole opperation is effectively supported by Canadian's seeking health care. Gee golly, why would people with such "nice" free health care do that?
The military is far and away the biggest US expense....
Well it isn't, but still, the purpose of government is to protect freedoms, not to protect freebies. Get it?
No, it's not an arbitrary group of individuals -- it is the all-inclusive group of individuals.
I hope you realise that there are billions of people in "society" who probably think they can use your money better than you can. Do you really want to go there?
Also, what were you talking about before? The US had a thriving private interstate industry before the interstate commerce act - which immedaitely killed it. Where do you think the idea for an interstate highway system came from?
C'mon, total taxes can exceed over 50%, the govt prints up and loans money like it's doomsday... and you can't guess what an economic freedom is?. With all due respect, it is you that needs to start reading up because by your own admission you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Quit attributing improvements to government that were bound to happen anyhow and did often happen inspite of them.
Also, I don't recall saying that women shouldn't work, or people shouldn't be educated. - C'mon, you know better than that too.
Look, the simple fact is that they are pushing these things to make up for lost freedoms. I'm calling bullshit, respect our freedoms first and let the rest follow on it's own.
*No roads
*No police protection
*No fire departments
*No primary or secondary education.....
No, you are wrong. You should have said Without the taxpayers there would be; It is they who we owe for all the good things in society, it is they who are owed respect of the income THEY EARNED, and who need to be empowered not the other way arround. Government owes us bigtime and it is disengenuious to presume that the people owe government anything. There are an infinite number of nice things you can do when someone else if flipping the bill, but success in the world doesn't cone from freebies, it comes from freedoms. Everybody can promise freebies at someone elses expense, but freedoms is now the government earns their keep. Waste in government spending is an irrelavent issue when the governmnt is limited in what economic freedoms they can take from people to begin with. How big does government half to become before people like you get it?
Sorry to add to your troubbles, but if you think that's bad, just wait about 6 months. You will find out about how the government takes awy economic freedom by forcing people to use a banking system that effectively prints up and loans out money. It leads to unhealthy levels of debt and bankruptcy on one side, and high inflation on the other side. Housing is about to crash, and consumer savings are at zero - speaking of thinking - anybody who understands the implications of that better start buying precious metals like it's doomsday right now - cause it almost will be.
Actually, to me it proves it. While everyone was brow beating me to learn my spelling and grammer in grade school, I blew it off and started to teach my self how to program this new device they had out called a computer. I was the first kid in my school and neighborhood to have one. Do I make a spelling error or grammer error every once in a while? sure. But IMHO, in terms of accomplishments and success I tihkn I've blowen away my peers inspite of all those teachers who wrote me off as a failure.
Could you name few of those freedoms for each point....
How about bilking the tax payers over 6K per head for public schools at a rate that is twice as high as the average private school with half the results?
Really, does this matter? IMHO, society puts too much focus on education level and not enough on freedom and independent thinking.
For example, is used to be that people could run successfull businesses without a high school degree, but then the government took away some economic freedoms, and when people had troubble making it - they said that's because you should have a highschool education.
Then they took away some more economic freedoms and people had troubble making it, so they said both you and your spouse should work.
Then they took away some more economic freedoms and people had troubble making it, so they said well you should go into debt to buy a home and a car.
Then they took away some more economic freedoms and people had troubble making it, so they said well you should put your retirement money into tax free IRA's and sighn up for tax free employer sponsered health plans.
Then they took away some more economic freedoms and people had troubble making it, so they said well you should get a college education and go into debt to pay for it.
So, IMHO, while education is important, society is pushing it as an end in itself when all it really is - is a hoop that distracts us from what really matters. Freedom is an end in itself, rationality is an end in itself, education is a consequence of these not an ends.
The theory that we've all been taught is that copyrights are "intellectual
property" [1] rights that protect creators, and give them an incentive to make
creative works that provide personal and public benefit. The truth is that
property rights exist to allocate finite resources, not to artificially
choke supply for the sake of incentive. Rather than protection, or a free
market property, copyrights are more like a regulation that micromanages how
people can use information. In practice, they are dangerous to rely on and
lock out more opportunity then they promote.
History has shown that just protection of property rights leads to strong
incentives, but coercion of incentive does not necessarily lead to just
property rights. Simply because an institution calls something a property
right, doesn't mean that it is. If, for example, an industry used the
government to artificially restrict the natural supply of food and called
shares of that monopoly a "property right", it would be very easy to see
how the artificial distortion of markets would not only cause opportunity
loss, but harm to society. Copyrights are a way for some industries to
use government to artificially restrict the natural supply of information
and force the market to center around information control rather than
service value. That causes opportunity loss, harm to society, and a burden
of enforcement that is too heavy to bear in the information age.
Normally copyright concerns would not be so eminent as they have been
effectively used for hundreds of years without failure. However, things are
different this time and faith in the copyright system is rather dangerous.
Just as the industrial revolution forced the commoditisation of the labor
market and the ugly death of the plantation system. The information age is
forcing the commoditisation of information and the ugly death of the
copyright system. It is not a coincidence that the speculative stock market
crash around 1857, regarding industrial technology is very similar to the
speculative stock market crash in 2001 regarding information technology. It
is not a coincidence that the slavery issue created a raging debate about
artificial "property rights" as copyrights have today. It is not a
coincidence the disproportional prosperity of the plantation system then and
the disproportional prosperity of the copyright industries today (That is,
unless one thinks hollywood is underpaid). Things like the harsh
punishments for merely teaching a person of color to read, vs copyright
crimes having punishments worse than rape today. These are all symptoms of
drastically changing markets and entrenched dying industries trying to
prevent change. As for those industries that thought that the entire purpose
and meaning of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the
cotton-gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit - they
were deadly wrong in spite of all the money and intellect behind them. Those
industries today whom believe that the entire purpose and meaning of the
information age is to leverage inventions like the Internet to expand the
influence of copyright controls for vast growth and profit, well?
Well, over the next several years, the copyright system will not only be
changed, it will become effectively dead. All industries that center on
them will change or die a protracted death, and all institutions that rely
on a proprietary information infrastructure will be stuck in the mud as
they suffer numerous opportunity costs. The information age is doing for
information services what the industrial revolution did for production.
However, the copyright system doesn't center around the supply and demand
of service, but an artificial supply restrictions on information that
services bring about. Over the coming years as information becomes
commoditized and service value becomes more important than the content
value, there will be trillions of dollars worth of pressure to kill the
copyright system. In fact, it's already starting. Publis
Most companies get defensive patents not to " defending our right to profit from our patents", but to have something to countersue with if they get sued, or to have something to get into cross-licensing agreements to avoid even more lawsuits. Truth is, patents are a real pain - and if it wasn't for defensive purposes, most companies wouldn't bother.
So in truth, people are forced into the system even if they think patnets are evil. (Which I do)
It doesn't seem unusual to have a foreigner holding so many patents. Of the top 10 living patent holders on the 1997 list, eight were from other countries. Six were Germans, and two were Japanese. The only two Americans were flower guy Weder and oil industry researcher Hartley Owen.
The point is that no matter how much royalities the USA gets from the rest of the world, the rest of the world is still 20 times bigger than the USA. I think when push comes to shove, the US insistence of coercing patents is a very evil idea and will one day come back to haunt us in a very painfull and violent way.
The economic fundamentals are far worse today than in the 80's when gold went to $850/oz. - which is $2000-$4000/oz today adjusted for inflation.
If gold gets and stays over $530, then it starts to act as a competitive option to the dollar as a defacto international trade currency. That would cause the remonitization of gold which would cause a massive decline in the dollar, a nuclear explosion in the gold market, and a super-nova in the silver market.
There are fundamental reasons why gold went from 420 only a few months ago to 510 as of the other day. The risks of the dollar going the way of confederate money have been suverely understated. This is not the time to be betting against precious metals.
Why is the parent a troll, especially when it's true?
Haven't you herd. Anything that de-God's Microsoft is a troll, or overrated, or flame bait. Let's just say that unlike the rest of us, some companies have the money to hire a staff to collect karma points, submit, and post BS pro-M$ propaganda all day long on the more visited blog sites. Slashdot should seriously consider a +1 anti-microsoft mod and a -1 pro-microsoft mod.
The reality is that the US economy is so overwhelmed with debt, it's teetering on the edge of a cliff, and the reality is that China is still communist - which means strong growth could lead to political instability which has no political outlet. They're only mistake is inventing in software rather than commodities and precious metals. IMHO, Microsoft would be doing their investors a favor if they got out of the software business, and into the commodities business.
Nobody would say that the all the great wealth produced by the plantation system was proof that slavery was ok, or that it is economically benificial - now would they?
I'm preparing for the market surprise by holding gold-as-money, downsizing my house significantly so I have no mortgage, and traveling more (which helps me gauge the realities of the market, not what the media and the government report).
WOW! that's exactly what I'm doing. (well, I'm not traveling, but have been planning an exit strategy just in case... probably Chile). It's almost sureal, people are doing their christmas shopping and whatnot like there is nothing wrong. Slashdotters routinely act like the big economic moves aren't even in the picture. I don't think people have any idea what they're in for. Americans have never experienced 3rd world like conditions in over 150 years - it's going to be a real shocker. They'll probably elect Hillary - God help us.
Well, this is actually a repost from a week or so back, but it seems like not so many have read it.....
The theory that we've all been taught is that copyrights are "intellectual
property" rights that protect creators, and give them an incentive to make
creative works that provide personal and public benefit. The truth is that
property rights exist to allocate finite resources, not to artificially
choke supply for the sake of incentive. Rather than protection, or a free
market property, copyrights are more like a regulation that micromanages how
people can use information. In practice, they are dangerous to rely on and
lock out more opportunity then they promote.
History has shown that just protection of property rights leads to strong
incentives, but coercion of incentive does not necessarily lead to just
property rights. Simply because an institution calls something a property
right, doesn't mean that it is. If, for example, an industry used the
government to artificially restrict the natural supply of food and called
shares of that monopoly a "property right", it would be very easy to see
how the artificial distortion of markets would not only cause opportunity
loss, but harm to society. Copyrights are a way for some industries to
use government to artificially restrict the natural supply of information
and force the market to center around information control rather than
service value. That causes opportunity loss, harm to society, and a burden
of enforcement that is too heavy to bear in the information age.
Normally copyright concerns would not be so eminent as they have been
effectively used for hundreds of years without failure. However, things are
different this time and faith in the copyright system is rather dangerous.
Just as the industrial revolution forced the commoditisation of the labor
market and the ugly death of the plantation system. The information age is
forcing the commoditisation of information and the ugly death of the
copyright system. It is not a coincidence that the speculative stock market
crash around 1857, regarding industrial technology is very similar to the
speculative stock market crash in 2001 regarding information technology. It
is not a coincidence that the slavery issue created a raging debate about
artificial "property rights" as copyrights have today. It is not a
coincidence the disproportional prosperity of the plantation system then and
the disproportional prosperity of the copyright industries today (That is,
unless one thinks hollywood is underpaid). Things like the harsh
punishments for merely teaching a person of color to read, vs copyright
crimes having punishments worse than rape today. These are all symptoms of
drastically changing markets and entrenched dying industries trying to
prevent change. As for those industries that thought that the entire purpose
and meaning of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the
cotton-gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit - they
were deadly wrong in spite of all the money and intellect behind them. Those
industries today whom believe that the entire purpose and meaning of the
information age is to leverage inventions like the Internet to expand the
influence of copyright controls for vast growth and profit, well?
Well, over the next several years, the copyright system will not only be
changed, it will become effectively dead. All industries that center on
them will change or die a protracted death, and all institutions that rely
on a proprietary information infrastructure will be stuck in the mud as
they suffer numerous opportunity costs. The information age is doing for
information services what the industrial revolution did for production.
However, the copyright system doesn't center around the supply and demand
of service, but an artificial supply restrictions on information that
services bring about. Over the coming years as information becomes
commoditized and service value becomes more important than the content
val
You see, the UK, and especially the US are starting to realise that they have way too much debt for all that stuff they bought on credit from overseas, in their housing markets, in their bond markets, and in their industries. In fact, in economic circles bankers talk about the fall of the dollar as if it was pre-destined (which it is).
The deal is that they have this wet dream that they are going to be able to export their "intellectual property" abroad, to make up for all these economic imbalances - and bring them unlimited growth and profit.
I think they are going to be in for a very very rude supprise.
Actually, that's the best outcome. The worst outcome would be massive political conflicts that internally rip the company to shreds. I wouldn't be supprised if there wasn't massive internal conflict already.
Sony's hardware division isn't going to appreciate having their revenues being choked off for the sake of it's media division. Eventually, all their competitors are going to be competing to have less and less restrictive content controlls on their hardware.
Does anyone else find it weird that just a few years ago, big mergers were all the rage and "synergy" was the magic buzzword in corporate America and on Wall Street. So why are so many companies now rushing to get unhitched? Also, is this outbreak of corporate divorces good for shareholders, or should I sell my stocks now?
This is because many large orginisations assumed that the entire purpose and meaning of the information age was to use inventions like the internet to leverage their copyright holdings for unlimited growth and profit. History is repeating itself really....
Dursing the 1850's there were many industries who assumed that the entire purpose and meaning of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gin to expand their slave plantations for unlimited growth and profit. At first, the industrialists were a close and tight nit family with the plantationists, but soon it became apparent that the mobile labor force that was needed by the industrialists was the anti-christ of the plantation system and the forces that drove them appart were greater than the ones that bound them together.
The same is true today, the tech industries benefit from the unrestricted flow of content, wehere the media industries benefit from total controll over it. They are completely incompatable paradigms and the forces that are driving them apart are greater than the ones holding them together. All I can say, is get ready for all freakin hell to break loose.
One of the reasons I've always used linux boxes instead of router devices, is because when something isn't right - it's rather easy to log on to the Linux box and run utilities to try and find out what's going on. It also allows allows more flexability on things like source based routing, custom DHCP, custom firewall/masquerading rules, load balancing, and traffic shaping.
This changes the rules, and is very exciting - I can alreay anticipate a whole new generation of hacks coming out that add everything from spam filtering to DNS servers.
I disagree with you about the currency. While people trust that a currency will be a store of value, they tend to hold it, collect it, and store it. It is only when that trust is betrayed that they start to dump it, which is usually pretty quick to cause a snowball effect.
Currently, the dollar is the world defacto currency, and countries keep a lot of them ( and bonds) on hand in case they need them. But if the dollar starts to loose value quickly, and a few countries start to dump it, then pretty soon everyone will start to dump it and you'll have an immediate inflation problem.
how come we saw prices go through the roof and never any actual shortages?
That's the whole point. Prices going thru the roof stop shortages, and make sure that anyone who has gas to offer makes it a prioirty to get it where it's needed. If prices were just average, why would anyone make it a priority to sell gas there as compaired to anywhere else. Shortages happen in marxist markets, prices happen in free markets.
Let me ask you this. If we have enough electricity already for the demands on 364 days of the year, who is going to build a new plant? If you do, you'll have to sell electricity below market to keep your plant running all the time, or else you'll only sell power 1 day a year.
Answer: anybody who can make a profit. If there selling electricity at $2 per unit, and the cost to manufacture is $1 per unit. Then even if they have enough electricity to offer 7/24 all year round - somebody will build a plant just to get that margin. If that extra electricity is desperately needed, it's value will show up in the price of electricity - if it's not, then it's no big deal and the price is communicating that a plant isn't that high of a priority in peoples budgets.
In spite of some of the corruption, price is a form of communication, not a way for greedy people to screw the poor. The poor are doing a good enough of a job screwing themselves. In fact, many people who want more money will lower prices to get more volume of sales just as easially as they would raise prices to get more profit for unit. In fact, many wealthy people don't want the poor people to be poor, what they want is a larger higher end market. They would love to have the profits from higher prices, rather then the typical ignorance fed shortages. They would love to have the profits from higher volume and more trade, rather than choked off and regulated trade that gives nothing to nobody.
Seriously, if you were running out of water, would you really want to be waiting arround for the government to give you your ration. Or would you want the option of bidding up the price a little to convince that guy from antartica to stick an iceberg on a boat and send it your way. The guy isn't your slave, he isn't a charity, you gotta do something to make it worth it for him?
In all fairness, Canada has a more stable currency than the dollar, and unlike the US it has not scheduled itself an appointment to fall off a hyperinflationary debt cliff. The US has way to much debt, and way too much loose money. Canada can back up their currency with its vast natural resources, the US only has "the good faith of the federal government" - God help the USA.
Unfortnuately, Canada has it's own set of problems. First off, it's sales taxes reak economic havoc, and it's wildly popularized social programs don't work well. Large numbers of Canadian businessmen do business in the US and not in Canada - and they do it for a reason. There are massive and large numbers of Canadians that buy in the US and use the US health care system - and they do that for a reason too.
Also, the HUGE problem.... the US economy getting ready to fall off a hyperinflationary debt cliff. I'm seriouus, really, it's true - look at all the debt, look at what the gov't has done to the money supply. They say the US economy is more efficient now, but really a more efficient economy has more extreme reactions to bad monitary policy, not less extreme ones.
Anyhow, my point is that for better or worse Canada's economy is linked to the US economy so when things go to hell here, they will almost certainly go to hell there too - even if Canada has less debt and more resources to back up it's currency, it's won't matter much when 85% of it's commerce self implodes.
Slashdot Mirror
And thats just fine. But without the public systems, large numbers of children, perhaps the majority of them, would not be able to go to school at all.
In places like Hong Kong that had no publically funded schools for the longest time, realities like that never turned out to be true. Also, what the hell are you saying - would you promote robbing banks at gunpoint to for paying for childrens education too?
And please, don't parrot the "public schools suck" meme at me.
OK. I won't but I know for a fact the my parents were paying $2500/yr to send me to a good college prep boarding school while those kids in gettho high LA up 20 minutes north, were costing the state about $3000/yr per student to run.
SS isn't a retirement plan. Its retirment INSURANCE.
When you coerce people to participate in an "investment" scheme that they don't want to - it called a "racket" and it's a fellony in all 50 states for a reason. When you pay the interest from new participants "contributions", that's called a "pnozi" scheeme, and is universally shunned by any competent investment advisor. What kind of loonacy causes people to think that when the government does these things - that all of a sudden the consequences aren't important?
Compared to the rest of health care in the US, its almost sane.
There's a city of 50,000 healthcare professionals in rochester minnesota that is better known as the "Mayo Clinic" - the whole opperation is effectively supported by Canadian's seeking health care. Gee golly, why would people with such "nice" free health care do that?
The military is far and away the biggest US expense....
Well it isn't, but still, the purpose of government is to protect freedoms, not to protect freebies. Get it?
No, it's not an arbitrary group of individuals -- it is the all-inclusive group of individuals.
I hope you realise that there are billions of people in "society" who probably think they can use your money better than you can. Do you really want to go there?
Also, what were you talking about before? The US had a thriving private interstate industry before the interstate commerce act - which immedaitely killed it. Where do you think the idea for an interstate highway system came from?
What the hell is an 'economic freedom'?
C'mon, total taxes can exceed over 50%, the govt prints up and loans money like it's doomsday ... and you can't guess what an economic freedom is?. With all due respect, it is you that needs to start reading up because by your own admission you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Quit attributing improvements to government that were bound to happen anyhow and did often happen inspite of them.
Also, I don't recall saying that women shouldn't work, or people shouldn't be educated. - C'mon, you know better than that too.
Look, the simple fact is that they are pushing these things to make up for lost freedoms. I'm calling bullshit, respect our freedoms first and let the rest follow on it's own.
*No roads
*No police protection
*No fire departments
*No primary or secondary education
No, you are wrong. You should have said Without the taxpayers there would be; It is they who we owe for all the good things in society, it is they who are owed respect of the income THEY EARNED, and who need to be empowered not the other way arround. Government owes us bigtime and it is disengenuious to presume that the people owe government anything. There are an infinite number of nice things you can do when someone else if flipping the bill, but success in the world doesn't cone from freebies, it comes from freedoms. Everybody can promise freebies at someone elses expense, but freedoms is now the government earns their keep. Waste in government spending is an irrelavent issue when the governmnt is limited in what economic freedoms they can take from people to begin with. How big does government half to become before people like you get it?
Sorry to add to your troubbles, but if you think that's bad, just wait about 6 months. You will find out about how the government takes awy economic freedom by forcing people to use a banking system that effectively prints up and loans out money. It leads to unhealthy levels of debt and bankruptcy on one side, and high inflation on the other side. Housing is about to crash, and consumer savings are at zero - speaking of thinking - anybody who understands the implications of that better start buying precious metals like it's doomsday right now - cause it almost will be.
Actually, to me it proves it. While everyone was brow beating me to learn my spelling and grammer in grade school, I blew it off and started to teach my self how to program this new device they had out called a computer. I was the first kid in my school and neighborhood to have one. Do I make a spelling error or grammer error every once in a while? sure. But IMHO, in terms of accomplishments and success I tihkn I've blowen away my peers inspite of all those teachers who wrote me off as a failure.
Could you name few of those freedoms for each point. ...
How about bilking the tax payers over 6K per head for public schools at a rate that is twice as high as the average private school with half the results?
Really, does this matter? IMHO, society puts too much focus on education level and not enough on freedom and independent thinking.
For example, is used to be that people could run successfull businesses without a high school degree, but then the government took away some economic freedoms, and when people had troubble making it - they said that's because you should have a highschool education.
Then they took away some more economic freedoms and people had troubble making it, so they said both you and your spouse should work.
Then they took away some more economic freedoms and people had troubble making it, so they said well you should go into debt to buy a home and a car.
Then they took away some more economic freedoms and people had troubble making it, so they said well you should put your retirement money into tax free IRA's and sighn up for tax free employer sponsered health plans.
Then they took away some more economic freedoms and people had troubble making it, so they said well you should get a college education and go into debt to pay for it.
So, IMHO, while education is important, society is pushing it as an end in itself when all it really is - is a hoop that distracts us from what really matters. Freedom is an end in itself, rationality is an end in itself, education is a consequence of these not an ends.
The theory that we've all been taught is that copyrights are "intellectual property" [1] rights that protect creators, and give them an incentive to make creative works that provide personal and public benefit. The truth is that property rights exist to allocate finite resources, not to artificially choke supply for the sake of incentive. Rather than protection, or a free market property, copyrights are more like a regulation that micromanages how people can use information. In practice, they are dangerous to rely on and lock out more opportunity then they promote.
History has shown that just protection of property rights leads to strong incentives, but coercion of incentive does not necessarily lead to just property rights. Simply because an institution calls something a property right, doesn't mean that it is. If, for example, an industry used the government to artificially restrict the natural supply of food and called shares of that monopoly a "property right", it would be very easy to see how the artificial distortion of markets would not only cause opportunity loss, but harm to society. Copyrights are a way for some industries to use government to artificially restrict the natural supply of information and force the market to center around information control rather than service value. That causes opportunity loss, harm to society, and a burden of enforcement that is too heavy to bear in the information age.
Normally copyright concerns would not be so eminent as they have been effectively used for hundreds of years without failure. However, things are different this time and faith in the copyright system is rather dangerous. Just as the industrial revolution forced the commoditisation of the labor market and the ugly death of the plantation system. The information age is forcing the commoditisation of information and the ugly death of the copyright system. It is not a coincidence that the speculative stock market crash around 1857, regarding industrial technology is very similar to the speculative stock market crash in 2001 regarding information technology. It is not a coincidence that the slavery issue created a raging debate about artificial "property rights" as copyrights have today. It is not a coincidence the disproportional prosperity of the plantation system then and the disproportional prosperity of the copyright industries today (That is, unless one thinks hollywood is underpaid). Things like the harsh punishments for merely teaching a person of color to read, vs copyright crimes having punishments worse than rape today. These are all symptoms of drastically changing markets and entrenched dying industries trying to prevent change. As for those industries that thought that the entire purpose and meaning of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton-gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit - they were deadly wrong in spite of all the money and intellect behind them. Those industries today whom believe that the entire purpose and meaning of the information age is to leverage inventions like the Internet to expand the influence of copyright controls for vast growth and profit, well?
Well, over the next several years, the copyright system will not only be changed, it will become effectively dead. All industries that center on them will change or die a protracted death, and all institutions that rely on a proprietary information infrastructure will be stuck in the mud as they suffer numerous opportunity costs. The information age is doing for information services what the industrial revolution did for production. However, the copyright system doesn't center around the supply and demand of service, but an artificial supply restrictions on information that services bring about. Over the coming years as information becomes commoditized and service value becomes more important than the content value, there will be trillions of dollars worth of pressure to kill the copyright system. In fact, it's already starting. Publis
Most companies get defensive patents not to " defending our right to profit from our patents", but to have something to countersue with if they get sued, or to have something to get into cross-licensing agreements to avoid even more lawsuits. Truth is, patents are a real pain - and if it wasn't for defensive purposes, most companies wouldn't bother.
So in truth, people are forced into the system even if they think patnets are evil. (Which I do)
essay: A Violent Protest Against Patents
From TFA:
It doesn't seem unusual to have a foreigner holding so many patents. Of the top 10 living patent holders on the 1997 list, eight were from other countries. Six were Germans, and two were Japanese. The only two Americans were flower guy Weder and oil industry researcher Hartley Owen.
The point is that no matter how much royalities the USA gets from the rest of the world, the rest of the world is still 20 times bigger than the USA. I think when push comes to shove, the US insistence of coercing patents is a very evil idea and will one day come back to haunt us in a very painfull and violent way.
essay:A Violent Protest Against Patents
The economic fundamentals are far worse today than in the 80's when gold went to $850/oz. - which is $2000-$4000/oz today adjusted for inflation.
If gold gets and stays over $530, then it starts to act as a competitive option to the dollar as a defacto international trade currency. That would cause the remonitization of gold which would cause a massive decline in the dollar, a nuclear explosion in the gold market, and a super-nova in the silver market.
There are fundamental reasons why gold went from 420 only a few months ago to 510 as of the other day. The risks of the dollar going the way of confederate money have been suverely understated. This is not the time to be betting against precious metals.
Why is the parent a troll, especially when it's true?
Haven't you herd. Anything that de-God's Microsoft is a troll, or overrated, or flame bait. Let's just say that unlike the rest of us, some companies have the money to hire a staff to collect karma points, submit, and post BS pro-M$ propaganda all day long on the more visited blog sites. Slashdot should seriously consider a +1 anti-microsoft mod and a -1 pro-microsoft mod.
The reality is that the US economy is so overwhelmed with debt, it's teetering on the edge of a cliff, and the reality is that China is still communist - which means strong growth could lead to political instability which has no political outlet. They're only mistake is inventing in software rather than commodities and precious metals. IMHO, Microsoft would be doing their investors a favor if they got out of the software business, and into the commodities business.
Well if you don't believe in your $, can I have it?
Well, if you believe the $ is better than gold money, can I have the your gold? :)
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168820&cid =14072468
Nobody would say that the all the great wealth produced by the plantation system was proof that slavery was ok, or that it is economically benificial - now would they?
I'm preparing for the market surprise by holding gold-as-money, downsizing my house significantly so I have no mortgage, and traveling more (which helps me gauge the realities of the market, not what the media and the government report).
WOW! that's exactly what I'm doing. (well, I'm not traveling, but have been planning an exit strategy just in case ... probably Chile). It's almost sureal, people are doing their christmas shopping and whatnot like there is nothing wrong. Slashdotters routinely act like the big economic moves aren't even in the picture. I don't think people have any idea what they're in for. Americans have never experienced 3rd world like conditions in over 150 years - it's going to be a real shocker. They'll probably elect Hillary - God help us.
Well, this is actually a repost from a week or so back, but it seems like not so many have read it .....
The theory that we've all been taught is that copyrights are "intellectual property" rights that protect creators, and give them an incentive to make creative works that provide personal and public benefit. The truth is that property rights exist to allocate finite resources, not to artificially choke supply for the sake of incentive. Rather than protection, or a free market property, copyrights are more like a regulation that micromanages how people can use information. In practice, they are dangerous to rely on and lock out more opportunity then they promote.
History has shown that just protection of property rights leads to strong incentives, but coercion of incentive does not necessarily lead to just property rights. Simply because an institution calls something a property right, doesn't mean that it is. If, for example, an industry used the government to artificially restrict the natural supply of food and called shares of that monopoly a "property right", it would be very easy to see how the artificial distortion of markets would not only cause opportunity loss, but harm to society. Copyrights are a way for some industries to use government to artificially restrict the natural supply of information and force the market to center around information control rather than service value. That causes opportunity loss, harm to society, and a burden of enforcement that is too heavy to bear in the information age.
Normally copyright concerns would not be so eminent as they have been effectively used for hundreds of years without failure. However, things are different this time and faith in the copyright system is rather dangerous. Just as the industrial revolution forced the commoditisation of the labor market and the ugly death of the plantation system. The information age is forcing the commoditisation of information and the ugly death of the copyright system. It is not a coincidence that the speculative stock market crash around 1857, regarding industrial technology is very similar to the speculative stock market crash in 2001 regarding information technology. It is not a coincidence that the slavery issue created a raging debate about artificial "property rights" as copyrights have today. It is not a coincidence the disproportional prosperity of the plantation system then and the disproportional prosperity of the copyright industries today (That is, unless one thinks hollywood is underpaid). Things like the harsh punishments for merely teaching a person of color to read, vs copyright crimes having punishments worse than rape today. These are all symptoms of drastically changing markets and entrenched dying industries trying to prevent change. As for those industries that thought that the entire purpose and meaning of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton-gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit - they were deadly wrong in spite of all the money and intellect behind them. Those industries today whom believe that the entire purpose and meaning of the information age is to leverage inventions like the Internet to expand the influence of copyright controls for vast growth and profit, well?
Well, over the next several years, the copyright system will not only be changed, it will become effectively dead. All industries that center on them will change or die a protracted death, and all institutions that rely on a proprietary information infrastructure will be stuck in the mud as they suffer numerous opportunity costs. The information age is doing for information services what the industrial revolution did for production. However, the copyright system doesn't center around the supply and demand of service, but an artificial supply restrictions on information that services bring about. Over the coming years as information becomes commoditized and service value becomes more important than the content val
You see, the UK, and especially the US are starting to realise that they have way too much debt for all that stuff they bought on credit from overseas, in their housing markets, in their bond markets, and in their industries. In fact, in economic circles bankers talk about the fall of the dollar as if it was pre-destined (which it is).
The deal is that they have this wet dream that they are going to be able to export their "intellectual property" abroad, to make up for all these economic imbalances - and bring them unlimited growth and profit.
I think they are going to be in for a very very rude supprise.
Actually, that's the best outcome. The worst outcome would be massive political conflicts that internally rip the company to shreds. I wouldn't be supprised if there wasn't massive internal conflict already.
Sony's hardware division isn't going to appreciate having their revenues being choked off for the sake of it's media division. Eventually, all their competitors are going to be competing to have less and less restrictive content controlls on their hardware.
Does anyone else find it weird that just a few years ago, big mergers were all the rage and "synergy" was the magic buzzword in corporate America and on Wall Street. So why are so many companies now rushing to get unhitched? Also, is this outbreak of corporate divorces good for shareholders, or should I sell my stocks now?
This is because many large orginisations assumed that the entire purpose and meaning of the information age was to use inventions like the internet to leverage their copyright holdings for unlimited growth and profit. History is repeating itself really ....
Dursing the 1850's there were many industries who assumed that the entire purpose and meaning of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gin to expand their slave plantations for unlimited growth and profit. At first, the industrialists were a close and tight nit family with the plantationists, but soon it became apparent that the mobile labor force that was needed by the industrialists was the anti-christ of the plantation system and the forces that drove them appart were greater than the ones that bound them together.
The same is true today, the tech industries benefit from the unrestricted flow of content, wehere the media industries benefit from total controll over it. They are completely incompatable paradigms and the forces that are driving them apart are greater than the ones holding them together. All I can say, is get ready for all freakin hell to break loose.
One of the reasons I've always used linux boxes instead of router devices, is because when something isn't right - it's rather easy to log on to the Linux box and run utilities to try and find out what's going on. It also allows allows more flexability on things like source based routing, custom DHCP, custom firewall/masquerading rules, load balancing, and traffic shaping.
This changes the rules, and is very exciting - I can alreay anticipate a whole new generation of hacks coming out that add everything from spam filtering to DNS servers.
I disagree with you about the currency. While people trust that a currency will be a store of value, they tend to hold it, collect it, and store it. It is only when that trust is betrayed that they start to dump it, which is usually pretty quick to cause a snowball effect.
Currently, the dollar is the world defacto currency, and countries keep a lot of them ( and bonds) on hand in case they need them. But if the dollar starts to loose value quickly, and a few countries start to dump it, then pretty soon everyone will start to dump it and you'll have an immediate inflation problem.
how come we saw prices go through the roof and never any actual shortages?
That's the whole point. Prices going thru the roof stop shortages, and make sure that anyone who has gas to offer makes it a prioirty to get it where it's needed. If prices were just average, why would anyone make it a priority to sell gas there as compaired to anywhere else. Shortages happen in marxist markets, prices happen in free markets.
Let me ask you this. If we have enough electricity already for the demands on 364 days of the year, who is going to build a new plant? If you do, you'll have to sell electricity below market to keep your plant running all the time, or else you'll only sell power 1 day a year.
Answer: anybody who can make a profit. If there selling electricity at $2 per unit, and the cost to manufacture is $1 per unit. Then even if they have enough electricity to offer 7/24 all year round - somebody will build a plant just to get that margin. If that extra electricity is desperately needed, it's value will show up in the price of electricity - if it's not, then it's no big deal and the price is communicating that a plant isn't that high of a priority in peoples budgets.
In spite of some of the corruption, price is a form of communication, not a way for greedy people to screw the poor. The poor are doing a good enough of a job screwing themselves. In fact, many people who want more money will lower prices to get more volume of sales just as easially as they would raise prices to get more profit for unit. In fact, many wealthy people don't want the poor people to be poor, what they want is a larger higher end market. They would love to have the profits from higher prices, rather then the typical ignorance fed shortages. They would love to have the profits from higher volume and more trade, rather than choked off and regulated trade that gives nothing to nobody.
Seriously, if you were running out of water, would you really want to be waiting arround for the government to give you your ration. Or would you want the option of bidding up the price a little to convince that guy from antartica to stick an iceberg on a boat and send it your way. The guy isn't your slave, he isn't a charity, you gotta do something to make it worth it for him?
In all fairness, Canada has a more stable currency than the dollar, and unlike the US it has not scheduled itself an appointment to fall off a hyperinflationary debt cliff. The US has way to much debt, and way too much loose money. Canada can back up their currency with its vast natural resources, the US only has "the good faith of the federal government" - God help the USA.
.... the US economy getting ready to fall off a hyperinflationary debt cliff. I'm seriouus, really, it's true - look at all the debt, look at what the gov't has done to the money supply. They say the US economy is more efficient now, but really a more efficient economy has more extreme reactions to bad monitary policy, not less extreme ones.
Unfortnuately, Canada has it's own set of problems. First off, it's sales taxes reak economic havoc, and it's wildly popularized social programs don't work well. Large numbers of Canadian businessmen do business in the US and not in Canada - and they do it for a reason. There are massive and large numbers of Canadians that buy in the US and use the US health care system - and they do that for a reason too.
Also, the HUGE problem
Anyhow, my point is that for better or worse Canada's economy is linked to the US economy so when things go to hell here, they will almost certainly go to hell there too - even if Canada has less debt and more resources to back up it's currency, it's won't matter much when 85% of it's commerce self implodes.