There are a couple of reasons that labour can be cheap oversees. 1) They have a free market and people are voluntarily working for low wages. Their costs of living are lower, precisely because the allow labour prices to be set by the market. Thus they are willing and able to work for less, but it doesn't affect their standards of living because everything costs less. They are able to save and invest in new production. The country's prosperity will gradually expand as more and more consumers goods are produced. 2) they are slaves under the control of a dictator who is forcing them to work for very little or nothing. They cannot own their own property (serfdom or whatever) in order to invest in new production. The government strictly controls the economy and all means of production. 3) something in between the two.
I think #2 and #3 are more common than you think, and that #1 is near-to-completely non-existent. The preferred government type for corporations to work with is fascism, for obvious reasons, and they tend to locate overseas production facilities in states that support their best interests (lockdown of the populace and no civil liberties or right to organize to speak of).
If the overseas production facilities were located in nations with civil liberties and worker's rights, then I'd be all for it, as this method of outsourcing, while it hurts the American economy, would really help developing nations build a strong economy and infrastructure and education would follow.
...The problem here isn't corporations, it's corporate influence on government. Thus the problem is the government. We need to limit the government's ability to interfere with the free market. Not give them more power. The more power government has the more they are able to help their buddies.
I would argue the problem is twofold: convoluted and self-defeating regulation on the part of the government, and the easy money flowing in from big business. I agree that insulation is necessary, and the quickest solution I see is to eliminate PACs and donation bundling, and start registering lobbyists like sex offenders:)
That last bit a little over the top? Then just ban lobbying in D.C. altogether. That won't stop them, of course, but at least our elected reps would be free from immediate influence while they're working.
As for the other aspect:
Regulations hurt because they are always imposed indiscriminately, and often supported by the big corporations and special interests themselves under the guise of limiting competition.
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There's the story of US Senator George McGovern. He was always in favour of strict corporate regulation to protect people, much as you are. He supported many regulations in his career as Senator. When he retired from public life he became the proprietor of a small Connecticut hotel called Stratford Inn. Two and a half years later the hotel was forced to close. This is what he had to say:
"Legislators and government regulators must more carefully consider the economic and management burdens we have been imposing on U.S business. As an innkeeper, I wanted excellent safeguards against a fire. But I was startled to be told that our two-story structure, which had large sliding doors opening from every guest room to all-concrete decks, required us to meet fire regulations more appropriate to the Waldorf-Astoria. A costly automatic sprinkler system and new exit doors were items that helped sink the Stratford Inn - items I was convinced added little to the safety of our guests and employees. And a critical promotional campaign never got off the ground, partly because my manager was forced to concentrate for days at a time on needlessly complicated tax forms for both the IRS and the state of Connecticut. I'm for protecting the health and well-being of both workers and consumers, I'm for a clean environment and economic justice. But I'm convinced we can pursue those
Nope - that's not happening here. I've got DSL and I get what I pay for - i.e. unlimited usage at the bandwidth stated (OK, close to the bandwidth stated).
Not that I'm necessarily opposed to metered usage, as long as it's fair. The $40/mo. I pay is worth about 600 GB to me.
If you tell me I can have an unlimited number of pies for $10, I don't expect to be able to back up a truck and take 10,000 of them.
I would. If someone tells me I can get unlimited [whatever], then that means unlimited. If they just meant it as an advertising gimmick, some freeloaders are going to come along and make them rethink their advertising policies.
I'm not opposed to metering internet connections, as long as prices are reasonable (about $.05-$.07 per GB seems fair). But if my ISP offers me 7 Mb/s for a flat $40 rate, then I'll assume that means I'm free to download about 1820 GB a month (running the connection full-tilt 24/7), or about $.02 a GB. If they didn't plan for people like me, they certainly should have.
I've never seen nor heard of a capped service in the U.S. since the early days of dial-up - even the later days of dial-up were unlimited. Internet service is cheap here, unlimited high speed access for less money than the utilities bill. And I live in the back-end of nowhere.
You can't claim Linux/OSS is a true self-sustaining model.
Sure I can. Right now FOSS is in the minority due to lack of understanding and lack of user savvy. But as more businesses began to realize that FOSS is cheaper to implement (at least from the get-go), more secure and more adaptable to their needs, as the government adopts FOSS as system of greater security, and as schools adopt FOSS as a cheaper and more adaptable learning system, FOSS will slowly begin to dominate the market.
Simply put, capitalist enterprise cannot compete with a product that is open and free over the long term. It cannot be co-opted; it cannot be undercut; it cannot be made profitable; and it cannot be discredited.
As for your argument that FOSS is subsidized by programmers who also generate retail software, this is an overgeneralization. While there's some truth to that claim now, as FOSS continues to permeate the computer industry, eventually those jobs will be replaced with jobs administering and adapting open source programs to suit the needs of a given industry. In other words, programmers will go from being retail software producers to open source maintainers. Yes, there will probably be fewer jobs available in this field.
I'd also like to point out that not all contributors are professional programmers; I'm a programmer, but I don't do it for a living - it's purely a hobby for me. Further, as successive generations become more and more tech savvy (I work with a guy who remembers programming on punch cards - computer literacy is still in its infancy), more contributors will come from the ranks of non-professional programmers.
This will not happen overnight; it will take generations. But eventually, retail software will go the way of the dinosaur. Eventually, programming will cease to become a profession and instead become something that everyone does, much like reading and writing today (this will probably not happen in our lifetimes).
You raise some excellent arguments, and reading through your counterpoints, mostly all that came to mind was "but that's not how things are", which is not really a counterargument when discussing ideology.
However, there are a few points you make that are worth arguing over.
However, as long as there is anticipated demand, entrepreneurs will jump at the chance to profit and will use their own capital, and perhaps borrow some as well, to enter the market and compete.
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The only thing that can prevent that from happening is a monopoly, which is almost always government-granted.
My issues here are both the idea that only a monopoly can discourage competition and that monopolies are government-granted.
Large chain stores have pretty much destroyed small independent retailers and grocers - they simply couldn't compete with the lower prices that came with shipping goods in large bulk. You probably regard this as an overall increase in efficiency and all for the good, but I see it as the destruction of the small-time entrepreneur, who now instead of some measure of independence has to man a check-out aisle for his supplanter.
The thing I always loved about New York City was the complete lack of giant, impersonal national chains. Square footage in the city is at such a premium, and the storefronts so small that the national retail chains can't move supplies in bulk and make profit from it. Sure, everything costs an arm and a leg there, but the pay is commensurate, and the strong sense of independent entrepreneurship is refreshing.
We don't see many monopolies in the U.S. due to anti-monopoly regulation, not because of the impracticality or difficulty of establishing a monopoly. The monopolies that exist do so because they are allowed to exist. If existing regulations were removed, we'd see a bit of cannibalization followed by several new emerging monopolies all over the place.
Every human action is driven towards the improvement of personal conditions. There is no such thing as "true altruism" in the sense that people who decide to live entirely for the benefit of others derive some satisfaction, or relieve some felt uneasiness (it might be the fear of God, for example) and so forth.
That's a pretty open interpretation of profit when it includes such intangible concepts as "satisfaction" and "relief of uneasiness". There are some who offer aid to others out of logic as well - I'm one of those. I suppose you could say I barter with gratitude, but the way I see it, advancing the species as a whole advances myself by definition (no, I'm not an altruist).
And there is such a thing as true altruism - we have many examples of martyrs in our history. Many of them arguably knew (or at least suspected) their end and continued on anyway out of a sense of moral responsibility.
A country's exports pay for it's imports. If a country is not producing something locally it can not purchase anything from abroad. So the sheer fact that products and resources are being purchased from abroad means that things are being produced at home. It can't work any other way.
I wish that were true, but the U.S. is the perfect example of ongoing unbalanced trade deficit. Now, I'll admit that this is almost certainly a direct result of having fiat currency. If indeed it is, then having free trade and a free market without a having a hard currency first is insanely stupid. I suspect we both agree on that point.
In the case of labour, specifically, if a company can get cheaper labour from overseas it has a lower cost of production. This means the products it sells will cost lower. People who buy it's products have more money in their pocket and thus will spend more on domestic production. It is always in everyone's best interest to produce what they can produce most efficiently, and buy everything else at the cheapest they can get it at.
Anyway, back to the relative guilt according to the actions of the victims. If I use an ATM late at night and get robbed, do I deserve to lose my money (I should have known that it was a stupid place and time to use an ATM). Was it a lesser offense to attack and rape the girl in the short skirt in the bad part of town than if the attack had taken place in a better part of town? Once you start assessing the nature of the crime according to how "risky" the behavior of the victims was, you start going down a difficult road.
Well, for starters, I'm not comparing relative guilt in my assertion that nonviolent crimes do not justify incarceration. Just because Madoff tricked his victims into consent doesn't make him less guilty, nor his victims more deserving. My original point of the paragraph you quoted was that the degree of the victim's suffering was, in this case, self-inflicted. In most cases I believe the degree of harm done shouldn't be a determining factor in the type of punishment, but rather that the type of punishment should be determined entirely by nature of the crime committed. The degree of harm done should only be used when considering the degree of sentencing within its specific classification.
Also, you are again comparing crimes that involved force. Obviously (to me, at least), crimes involving force on the part of the perpetrator shouldn't even consider "implied consent" on the part of the victim as a mitigating argument.
There is theft by force (your theoretical knife-wielding robber), theft by stealth (think cat burglar or shoplifter), theft by persuasion (Madoff), and theft of potential (this is where copyright infringement comes in). Each of these situations needs to be considered separately, and I would argue only the first deserves imprisonment, although proven habitual offenses of the second type may warrant lock-up.
Actually, copyright violation is a federal offense, has been for some time. I take it you never bothered to read the FBI Warning statement that appears in commercial VHS and DVD releases. The standard penalty is up to 5 years in prison and/or $250,000 dollar fine for each infraction, so getting only 6 months is actually kind of light.
Also, this wasn't a case of filesharing in the standard P2P sense; this guy uploaded the album to his website (which is really, really stupid).
The reason you see most copyright violation cases as civil issue is because there aren't a lot of people actually trying to turn a serious profit off of it (that is to say, out in the streets hawking black market copies), and the FBI doesn't really care about filesharing.
Ask yourself this, if someone robbed you at knifepoint of the contents of your wallet, but did not actually harm you, is that worse or better than losing your house and all your savings?
As a very obstinate person with little regard for his own safety, I can guarantee you that if someone tried to rob me using a knife, they'd actually have to use it in order to get anything from me. So yes, I'd definitely consider that worse than losing my savings.
But another point I'd like to bring up is: why would a person be at risk of losing their house or savings in the first place? Shouldn't those assets be held separately from high-risk endeavors like investment banking? If these folks who got scammed lost more than a small percentage of their income, then they were morons. I'm not saying they deserved to get bilked, but still, they got screwed because they let greed trump common sense.
The man preyed on people's greed. That's not even close to forcibly separating someone from their property.
I'll commend you on creating the most reasonable sounding pro free market post I've read on Slashdot.
For the most part, I agree with you. We disagree only in two areas: publicly traded corporations and the privatization of certain social institutions (health care, early education, and prison systems mainly). I'm only going to talk about the former in this post.
Public corporations have become so large that no attempt at dissuading them from being a societal harm is effective, and the people who run them are protected from accountability for their actions.
A free market economy works beautifully when you're dealing with small business, worker-owned cooperatives, and small, privately owned corporations. But when the influx of public funding, corporations become too large to stop, and they have no moral compass to guide them. Profit for it's own sake leads to the construction of cartels, artificial scarcity, outsourcing of practically everything (not necessarily a bad thing here, but it is bad from an American-only perspective), and cultivation of a "mindless consumer" outlook (as an aside, am I the only one offended when my elected representatives refer to me as a "consumer" rather than as a "citizen"?). I'm not even going to get into the actual criminal actions that prevent free market activities.
In other words, I'm arguing that - more than the government - publicly traded corporations are a threat to the free market, not a result of it.
So when it comes to regulation of these monstrosities, I argue that they are not legal persons, but manifestations of interstate commerce, and Congress is fully authorized to regulate and control them as much as they'd like. On the other hand, I think the federal government needs to back off from intrastate business completely.
Honestly, I think corporate regulation doesn't go far enough. If it were within my power, I'd eliminate the public stock market altogether.
Oh, and kudos for the End the Fed argument. Maybe some day, the government will wake up and realize that it needs to take back control over its currency. Hopefully before hyperinflation (although, with hyperinflation predictions as early as the end of this year, and no later than 2018, I seriously doubt it).
You'll only pay when/if your country gets repossessed.:)
Yep. At this point it only takes 1 or 2 foreign central banks to decide that investment in the dollar is too risky and cash in their T-bills. That will start a flurry of selling worldwide, and we'll wake up in a country where it costs $100,000 to buy a loaf of bread.
As absurd and unrealistic as that might sound to some, we're really not far off from that. We could always hope that everyone else in the world continues to prop us up for no real reason, but that just seems like denial to me.
Yeah, it's pretty much been my opinion that if you don't want your product freely distributed beyond your control, don't put into any form that could be digitized.
Of course if you know of an alternate way to get software for computers without having to pay the laborers, please share. I'm open to new ideas.
Uhh, there's this newfangled concept called Open Source Software (OSS), don't know if you've heard of it yet. Most contributors to OSS do so without expecting any sort of financial compensation.
The problem in most theft and fraud cases is that the original money or property is no longer available, having been spent or sold.
A person so convicted should return as much as s/he can, and then forced into useful public labor until the remainder of the debt is paid off through garnished wages.
Note that the above is a reasonable compromise to what I really want, which is indentured servitude at the rate of $100 of debt per day. This is a fitting punishment: those who want money for free should have to work without pay.
Misdemeanor, actually. Six months is a jail sentence, not a prison sentence, unless the throw the guy in a federal pen (which they probably will, even though they shouldn't).
People who go to jail are drunk drivers, prostitutes, small-time thieves, and occasionally someone on an assault charge. It's not as bad as it might sound, but it's still a pain in the ass to get locked up for 6 months. At least it won't affect his ability to get a job once he gets out (don't have to report misdemeanors on applications).
Actually, that large glowing ball is sending light in all directions. When said light strikes mass, the mass is energized and heat is produced. Heat doesn't travel through a vacuum.
Once in place and insulated from sunlight and physical contact from the insulator (along with anything else that might generate heat), maintaining a material at superconductivity should be no problem. The hard part is getting it to superconductivity in the first place. I think you'd have to send it out into space already at superconducting temps, wouldn't you?
Hey, thanks for the link. Found it both entertaining and informative.
Also, as someone who registers smack-dab in the center of the left-wing libertarian square, I can completely identify with your sense of disenfranchisement.
The sad thing is, I think if you polled the American populace at large, the majority of us would fall in or near that square.
Grandparent said ratification by majority, which would mean only 26 states would be needed. Easier than a constitutional amendment, which requires 3/4 of the states to ratify it.
Even so, foreign affairs is one issue where the states have no business. Our federal government has two functions: to provide for stable and efficient commerce and transportation (and, I would argue, communication) between states, and to conduct foreign affairs.
Everything else it does is an illegitimate abuse of power, including corporate welfare (bank bailouts, anyone?) and national social programs (the states have the power to institute their own social programs should they wish to - the feds have no business usurping that right).
So no, the federal government shouldn't have to acquire state approval to form treaties with other nations. On the other hand, they should be providing full disclosure of the process, to give the people the ability to protest and lobby against unfavorable treaties - not that it would matter all that much; the U.S. government has a good track record of ignoring its people.
It is very hard to be able to establish a true date on the first marriages although the Old Testament in the Bible does mention a little about marriage as it was considered a family and household affair...there is no mention of a formal exchange of vows or of a preacher or priest being present at this union.
There were Romans who were very wealthy who would sign documents consisting of listing property rights and letting all know that they wanted this union to be legalized and not to be thought of as a common law marriage. Thus this began the official recording of marriages as we do today. Roman men could dissolve the marriage any time as it was a male privilege, not one accorded to females.
In A.D. 527-565 during the rein of Justinian lawyers drew up laws called the Justinian Code and this was a regulation of their daily life including marriage. Up until the time of the Justinian Code just saying you were married was enough.
Until the ninth century marriages were not church involved. Up until the twelfth century there were blessings and prayers during the ceremony and the couple would offer their own prayers. Then priests asked that an agreement be made in their presence. Then religion was added to the ceremony.
What exactly makes you think they don't learn from their parents? Squirrels don't exactly grow up in a vacuum.
Many animals are capable of intelligent reasoning. They may not spend their time pondering Sartre, but they're quite capable of learning from experience, instruction, and example. Many species have shown the ability to make logical inferences.
When dealing with other animals, never attribute to instinct what can be better explained by intelligence. When dealing with humans, the reverse applies.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a couple of reasons that labour can be cheap oversees. 1) They have a free market and people are voluntarily working for low wages. Their costs of living are lower, precisely because the allow labour prices to be set by the market. Thus they are willing and able to work for less, but it doesn't affect their standards of living because everything costs less. They are able to save and invest in new production. The country's prosperity will gradually expand as more and more consumers goods are produced. 2) they are slaves under the control of a dictator who is forcing them to work for very little or nothing. They cannot own their own property (serfdom or whatever) in order to invest in new production. The government strictly controls the economy and all means of production. 3) something in between the two.
I think #2 and #3 are more common than you think, and that #1 is near-to-completely non-existent. The preferred government type for corporations to work with is fascism, for obvious reasons, and they tend to locate overseas production facilities in states that support their best interests (lockdown of the populace and no civil liberties or right to organize to speak of).
If the overseas production facilities were located in nations with civil liberties and worker's rights, then I'd be all for it, as this method of outsourcing, while it hurts the American economy, would really help developing nations build a strong economy and infrastructure and education would follow.
...The problem here isn't corporations, it's corporate influence on government. Thus the problem is the government. We need to limit the government's ability to interfere with the free market. Not give them more power. The more power government has the more they are able to help their buddies.
I would argue the problem is twofold: convoluted and self-defeating regulation on the part of the government, and the easy money flowing in from big business. I agree that insulation is necessary, and the quickest solution I see is to eliminate PACs and donation bundling, and start registering lobbyists like sex offenders :)
That last bit a little over the top? Then just ban lobbying in D.C. altogether. That won't stop them, of course, but at least our elected reps would be free from immediate influence while they're working.
As for the other aspect:
Regulations hurt because they are always imposed indiscriminately, and often supported by the big corporations and special interests themselves under the guise of limiting competition.
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There's the story of US Senator George McGovern. He was always in favour of strict corporate regulation to protect people, much as you are. He supported many regulations in his career as Senator. When he retired from public life he became the proprietor of a small Connecticut hotel called Stratford Inn. Two and a half years later the hotel was forced to close. This is what he had to say:
"Legislators and government regulators must more carefully consider the economic and management burdens we have been imposing on U.S business. As an innkeeper, I wanted excellent safeguards against a fire. But I was startled to be told that our two-story structure, which had large sliding doors opening from every guest room to all-concrete decks, required us to meet fire regulations more appropriate to the Waldorf-Astoria. A costly automatic sprinkler system and new exit doors were items that helped sink the Stratford Inn - items I was convinced added little to the safety of our guests and employees. And a critical promotional campaign never got off the ground, partly because my manager was forced to concentrate for days at a time on needlessly complicated tax forms for both the IRS and the state of Connecticut. I'm for protecting the health and well-being of both workers and consumers, I'm for a clean environment and economic justice. But I'm convinced we can pursue those
Nope - that's not happening here. I've got DSL and I get what I pay for - i.e. unlimited usage at the bandwidth stated (OK, close to the bandwidth stated).
Not that I'm necessarily opposed to metered usage, as long as it's fair. The $40/mo. I pay is worth about 600 GB to me.
If you tell me I can have an unlimited number of pies for $10, I don't expect to be able to back up a truck and take 10,000 of them.
I would. If someone tells me I can get unlimited [whatever], then that means unlimited. If they just meant it as an advertising gimmick, some freeloaders are going to come along and make them rethink their advertising policies.
I'm not opposed to metering internet connections, as long as prices are reasonable (about $.05-$.07 per GB seems fair). But if my ISP offers me 7 Mb/s for a flat $40 rate, then I'll assume that means I'm free to download about 1820 GB a month (running the connection full-tilt 24/7), or about $.02 a GB. If they didn't plan for people like me, they certainly should have.
Really? I just figured it was because fewer people have cable.
I've never seen nor heard of a capped service in the U.S. since the early days of dial-up - even the later days of dial-up were unlimited. Internet service is cheap here, unlimited high speed access for less money than the utilities bill. And I live in the back-end of nowhere.
You can't claim Linux/OSS is a true self-sustaining model.
Sure I can. Right now FOSS is in the minority due to lack of understanding and lack of user savvy. But as more businesses began to realize that FOSS is cheaper to implement (at least from the get-go), more secure and more adaptable to their needs, as the government adopts FOSS as system of greater security, and as schools adopt FOSS as a cheaper and more adaptable learning system, FOSS will slowly begin to dominate the market.
Simply put, capitalist enterprise cannot compete with a product that is open and free over the long term. It cannot be co-opted; it cannot be undercut; it cannot be made profitable; and it cannot be discredited.
As for your argument that FOSS is subsidized by programmers who also generate retail software, this is an overgeneralization. While there's some truth to that claim now, as FOSS continues to permeate the computer industry, eventually those jobs will be replaced with jobs administering and adapting open source programs to suit the needs of a given industry. In other words, programmers will go from being retail software producers to open source maintainers. Yes, there will probably be fewer jobs available in this field.
I'd also like to point out that not all contributors are professional programmers; I'm a programmer, but I don't do it for a living - it's purely a hobby for me. Further, as successive generations become more and more tech savvy (I work with a guy who remembers programming on punch cards - computer literacy is still in its infancy), more contributors will come from the ranks of non-professional programmers.
This will not happen overnight; it will take generations. But eventually, retail software will go the way of the dinosaur. Eventually, programming will cease to become a profession and instead become something that everyone does, much like reading and writing today (this will probably not happen in our lifetimes).
You raise some excellent arguments, and reading through your counterpoints, mostly all that came to mind was "but that's not how things are", which is not really a counterargument when discussing ideology.
However, there are a few points you make that are worth arguing over.
However, as long as there is anticipated demand, entrepreneurs will jump at the chance to profit and will use their own capital, and perhaps borrow some as well, to enter the market and compete.
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The only thing that can prevent that from happening is a monopoly, which is almost always government-granted.
My issues here are both the idea that only a monopoly can discourage competition and that monopolies are government-granted.
Large chain stores have pretty much destroyed small independent retailers and grocers - they simply couldn't compete with the lower prices that came with shipping goods in large bulk. You probably regard this as an overall increase in efficiency and all for the good, but I see it as the destruction of the small-time entrepreneur, who now instead of some measure of independence has to man a check-out aisle for his supplanter.
The thing I always loved about New York City was the complete lack of giant, impersonal national chains. Square footage in the city is at such a premium, and the storefronts so small that the national retail chains can't move supplies in bulk and make profit from it. Sure, everything costs an arm and a leg there, but the pay is commensurate, and the strong sense of independent entrepreneurship is refreshing.
We don't see many monopolies in the U.S. due to anti-monopoly regulation, not because of the impracticality or difficulty of establishing a monopoly. The monopolies that exist do so because they are allowed to exist. If existing regulations were removed, we'd see a bit of cannibalization followed by several new emerging monopolies all over the place.
Every human action is driven towards the improvement of personal conditions. There is no such thing as "true altruism" in the sense that people who decide to live entirely for the benefit of others derive some satisfaction, or relieve some felt uneasiness (it might be the fear of God, for example) and so forth.
That's a pretty open interpretation of profit when it includes such intangible concepts as "satisfaction" and "relief of uneasiness". There are some who offer aid to others out of logic as well - I'm one of those. I suppose you could say I barter with gratitude, but the way I see it, advancing the species as a whole advances myself by definition (no, I'm not an altruist).
And there is such a thing as true altruism - we have many examples of martyrs in our history. Many of them arguably knew (or at least suspected) their end and continued on anyway out of a sense of moral responsibility.
A country's exports pay for it's imports. If a country is not producing something locally it can not purchase anything from abroad. So the sheer fact that products and resources are being purchased from abroad means that things are being produced at home. It can't work any other way.
I wish that were true, but the U.S. is the perfect example of ongoing unbalanced trade deficit. Now, I'll admit that this is almost certainly a direct result of having fiat currency. If indeed it is, then having free trade and a free market without a having a hard currency first is insanely stupid. I suspect we both agree on that point.
In the case of labour, specifically, if a company can get cheaper labour from overseas it has a lower cost of production. This means the products it sells will cost lower. People who buy it's products have more money in their pocket and thus will spend more on domestic production. It is always in everyone's best interest to produce what they can produce most efficiently, and buy everything else at the cheapest they can get it at.
Yes, but wh
Why is the government more serious about protecting industry from the people than protecting the people from industry?
Because industry pays better, of course.
Anyway, back to the relative guilt according to the actions of the victims. If I use an ATM late at night and get robbed, do I deserve to lose my money (I should have known that it was a stupid place and time to use an ATM). Was it a lesser offense to attack and rape the girl in the short skirt in the bad part of town than if the attack had taken place in a better part of town? Once you start assessing the nature of the crime according to how "risky" the behavior of the victims was, you start going down a difficult road.
Well, for starters, I'm not comparing relative guilt in my assertion that nonviolent crimes do not justify incarceration. Just because Madoff tricked his victims into consent doesn't make him less guilty, nor his victims more deserving. My original point of the paragraph you quoted was that the degree of the victim's suffering was, in this case, self-inflicted. In most cases I believe the degree of harm done shouldn't be a determining factor in the type of punishment, but rather that the type of punishment should be determined entirely by nature of the crime committed. The degree of harm done should only be used when considering the degree of sentencing within its specific classification.
Also, you are again comparing crimes that involved force. Obviously (to me, at least), crimes involving force on the part of the perpetrator shouldn't even consider "implied consent" on the part of the victim as a mitigating argument.
There is theft by force (your theoretical knife-wielding robber), theft by stealth (think cat burglar or shoplifter), theft by persuasion (Madoff), and theft of potential (this is where copyright infringement comes in). Each of these situations needs to be considered separately, and I would argue only the first deserves imprisonment, although proven habitual offenses of the second type may warrant lock-up.
Actually, copyright violation is a federal offense, has been for some time. I take it you never bothered to read the FBI Warning statement that appears in commercial VHS and DVD releases. The standard penalty is up to 5 years in prison and/or $250,000 dollar fine for each infraction, so getting only 6 months is actually kind of light.
Also, this wasn't a case of filesharing in the standard P2P sense; this guy uploaded the album to his website (which is really, really stupid).
The reason you see most copyright violation cases as civil issue is because there aren't a lot of people actually trying to turn a serious profit off of it (that is to say, out in the streets hawking black market copies), and the FBI doesn't really care about filesharing.
Ask yourself this, if someone robbed you at knifepoint of the contents of your wallet, but did not actually harm you, is that worse or better than losing your house and all your savings?
As a very obstinate person with little regard for his own safety, I can guarantee you that if someone tried to rob me using a knife, they'd actually have to use it in order to get anything from me. So yes, I'd definitely consider that worse than losing my savings.
But another point I'd like to bring up is: why would a person be at risk of losing their house or savings in the first place? Shouldn't those assets be held separately from high-risk endeavors like investment banking? If these folks who got scammed lost more than a small percentage of their income, then they were morons. I'm not saying they deserved to get bilked, but still, they got screwed because they let greed trump common sense.
The man preyed on people's greed. That's not even close to forcibly separating someone from their property.
I'll commend you on creating the most reasonable sounding pro free market post I've read on Slashdot.
For the most part, I agree with you. We disagree only in two areas: publicly traded corporations and the privatization of certain social institutions (health care, early education, and prison systems mainly). I'm only going to talk about the former in this post.
Public corporations have become so large that no attempt at dissuading them from being a societal harm is effective, and the people who run them are protected from accountability for their actions.
A free market economy works beautifully when you're dealing with small business, worker-owned cooperatives, and small, privately owned corporations. But when the influx of public funding, corporations become too large to stop, and they have no moral compass to guide them. Profit for it's own sake leads to the construction of cartels, artificial scarcity, outsourcing of practically everything (not necessarily a bad thing here, but it is bad from an American-only perspective), and cultivation of a "mindless consumer" outlook (as an aside, am I the only one offended when my elected representatives refer to me as a "consumer" rather than as a "citizen"?). I'm not even going to get into the actual criminal actions that prevent free market activities.
In other words, I'm arguing that - more than the government - publicly traded corporations are a threat to the free market, not a result of it.
So when it comes to regulation of these monstrosities, I argue that they are not legal persons, but manifestations of interstate commerce, and Congress is fully authorized to regulate and control them as much as they'd like. On the other hand, I think the federal government needs to back off from intrastate business completely.
Honestly, I think corporate regulation doesn't go far enough. If it were within my power, I'd eliminate the public stock market altogether.
Oh, and kudos for the End the Fed argument. Maybe some day, the government will wake up and realize that it needs to take back control over its currency. Hopefully before hyperinflation (although, with hyperinflation predictions as early as the end of this year, and no later than 2018, I seriously doubt it).
You'll only pay when/if your country gets repossessed. :)
Yep. At this point it only takes 1 or 2 foreign central banks to decide that investment in the dollar is too risky and cash in their T-bills. That will start a flurry of selling worldwide, and we'll wake up in a country where it costs $100,000 to buy a loaf of bread.
As absurd and unrealistic as that might sound to some, we're really not far off from that. We could always hope that everyone else in the world continues to prop us up for no real reason, but that just seems like denial to me.
Hah! So, so true.
Yeah, it's pretty much been my opinion that if you don't want your product freely distributed beyond your control, don't put into any form that could be digitized.
Of course if you know of an alternate way to get software for computers without having to pay the laborers, please share. I'm open to new ideas.
Uhh, there's this newfangled concept called Open Source Software (OSS), don't know if you've heard of it yet. Most contributors to OSS do so without expecting any sort of financial compensation.
People are also sent to jail as a deterrent.
Yeah, seems to be working really well.
The grandparent has the right idea; non-violent offenses don't call for incarceration. The punishment should fit the crime.
The problem in most theft and fraud cases is that the original money or property is no longer available, having been spent or sold.
A person so convicted should return as much as s/he can, and then forced into useful public labor until the remainder of the debt is paid off through garnished wages.
Note that the above is a reasonable compromise to what I really want, which is indentured servitude at the rate of $100 of debt per day. This is a fitting punishment: those who want money for free should have to work without pay.
Misdemeanor, actually. Six months is a jail sentence, not a prison sentence, unless the throw the guy in a federal pen (which they probably will, even though they shouldn't).
People who go to jail are drunk drivers, prostitutes, small-time thieves, and occasionally someone on an assault charge. It's not as bad as it might sound, but it's still a pain in the ass to get locked up for 6 months. At least it won't affect his ability to get a job once he gets out (don't have to report misdemeanors on applications).
Actually, that large glowing ball is sending light in all directions. When said light strikes mass, the mass is energized and heat is produced. Heat doesn't travel through a vacuum.
Once in place and insulated from sunlight and physical contact from the insulator (along with anything else that might generate heat), maintaining a material at superconductivity should be no problem. The hard part is getting it to superconductivity in the first place. I think you'd have to send it out into space already at superconducting temps, wouldn't you?
Hey, thanks for the link. Found it both entertaining and informative.
Also, as someone who registers smack-dab in the center of the left-wing libertarian square, I can completely identify with your sense of disenfranchisement.
The sad thing is, I think if you polled the American populace at large, the majority of us would fall in or near that square.
Grandparent said ratification by majority, which would mean only 26 states would be needed. Easier than a constitutional amendment, which requires 3/4 of the states to ratify it.
Even so, foreign affairs is one issue where the states have no business. Our federal government has two functions: to provide for stable and efficient commerce and transportation (and, I would argue, communication) between states, and to conduct foreign affairs.
Everything else it does is an illegitimate abuse of power, including corporate welfare (bank bailouts, anyone?) and national social programs (the states have the power to institute their own social programs should they wish to - the feds have no business usurping that right).
So no, the federal government shouldn't have to acquire state approval to form treaties with other nations. On the other hand, they should be providing full disclosure of the process, to give the people the ability to protest and lobby against unfavorable treaties - not that it would matter all that much; the U.S. government has a good track record of ignoring its people.
Let me try a few excerpts from this article:
It is very hard to be able to establish a true date on the first marriages although the Old Testament in the Bible does mention a little about marriage as it was considered a family and household affair...there is no mention of a formal exchange of vows or of a preacher or priest being present at this union.
There were Romans who were very wealthy who would sign documents consisting of listing property rights and letting all know that they wanted this union to be legalized and not to be thought of as a common law marriage. Thus this began the official recording of marriages as we do today. Roman men could dissolve the marriage any time as it was a male privilege, not one accorded to females.
In A.D. 527-565 during the rein of Justinian lawyers drew up laws called the Justinian Code and this was a regulation of their daily life including marriage. Up until the time of the Justinian Code just saying you were married was enough.
Until the ninth century marriages were not church involved. Up until the twelfth century there were blessings and prayers during the ceremony and the couple would offer their own prayers. Then priests asked that an agreement be made in their presence. Then religion was added to the ceremony.
What exactly makes you think they don't learn from their parents? Squirrels don't exactly grow up in a vacuum.
Many animals are capable of intelligent reasoning. They may not spend their time pondering Sartre, but they're quite capable of learning from experience, instruction, and example. Many species have shown the ability to make logical inferences.
When dealing with other animals, never attribute to instinct what can be better explained by intelligence. When dealing with humans, the reverse applies.
Pretty exciting stuff indeed.
Maybe if it had been a bear. Monkeys in general show very strong signs of human-level intelligence. They're pretty much on par with our children.
For those of you reading this who are interested in watching a short video showing just how smart monkeys are, check out this TED piece on Bonobos.