But then everyone else in your field has the same systems. So long competitive advantage. Sure, you can find other areas to get a competitive advantage but why would you throw away one complete area? And if you can't get a competitive advantage from software then why should I, as a CEO, bother to spend anything other than the bare minimum at maintaining it?
It may be easier to hire bug-fixes but then you just threw away all of that economy of scale that shrink wrapped used to have. And you have to give your competitors (who didn't pay for it) that same bug-fix.
Who is going to pay for service for a computer game? Who is going to pay for service for a stupid little utility like WinAmp? Look at how few people register for shareware. I'd imagine even fewer would get "service contracts" for those apps. Or what about "finished" apps? Something like, say, cp? And what would the transaction cost of a service contract compared to the service contract itself be like?
When people start talking about using service to pay salaries I can't help but wonder why they never actually do anything but wave it around like a banner.
The reason that free software has gotten so far is because of the GPL, LGPL, BSD, XConsortium licenses
GPL - funded by MIT BSD - funded by UC Berkley XConsortium - funded by the commercial members of the X consortium.
When I look at the above I am hard pressed to conclude that free software is anything other than a huge welfare project that refuses to show gratitude to the commercial interests that spawned it. Talk about the biting the hand that feeds you. Free software has gotten so far for the same reason that rich, spoiled kids like Bill Gates get so far... they sponge off their rich parents and don't face the same obstacles and pressures that your average company does.
Actually, in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People the author does talk about his own life. His son breaking up with a girlfriend, a ride on a subway, spending time with his wife in Hawaii, etc, etc.
I haven't read the Seven Minute Manager, but the One Minute Manager was a parable and as such I wouldn't expect it to have anything about the authors.
In that case, then, many blacks should not have to pay taxes at all.
If they were born here then their parents exercised their power of custody and made them US citizens, thereby entering them into the social contract. Last time I checked the US government wasn't preventing people from emigrating and renouncing their citizenship. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't understand what you're point is.
The reason you don't live somewhere else isn't because you don't have enough money. I could move just about anywhere in the world for a few hundred bucks. If you don't have a few hundred bucks around I suggest you sell your car and computer and then you can buy a plane ticket to paradise. Besides, how many times a week do you eat out? Go to a movie? Buy a book or computer game? Sorry if I find it hard to take your claims about moving elsewhere seriously....
I can't help but wonder, if you are really so upset with the amount you pay versus the amount of benefits you receive why haven't you left? Or is it that there is nowhere else in the world that gets you a better ROI? Perhaps you just want a free lunch? You want everything the US provides but don't want to have to pay for it?
I'm sure Ayn Rand would be proud of socialistic tendencies like that.
By your definition of "consent," I would be consenting to EVERYTHING which is policy and/or occurs in the country.
No, all I said is that you have consented to abide by the terms of the contract the USA offers you. I didn't say a single thing about what those terms were. It seems like you are reading more into what I wrote than what I wrote. Luckily for you (and me:-) the USA doesn't require you to agree with every policy it has when you consent to the "social" contract. Among the fairly minimal terms the USA requires you to abide by is taxation.
You are still here, thus you consent to the social contract, one of whose terms is taxation. Thus you have consented to taxation.
I just love this talk about philosophical "contracts".
I don't know about you but I'm talking about an economic contract. Philosophical would be more like "I have a right to own land" or "I have a right to freedom of speech".
So you're saying, that Jews who where living in Germany during the Nazi era had to accept the Holocaust because they entered into a contract with the Nazi government by living there at the time?
First off, most of the Jews who died in the Holocaust were from Poland. In fact, most of the people who died in the Holocaust (considering that almost half of them weren't Jewish, I think you do a disservice to those who died in the Holocaust by ignoring the non-Jews) were from Poland. The Polish citizens most certainly were not in any kind of contract with the German nation.
As for Jews in Germany, I really don't know enough to say but my initial thoughts on the matter would be: they didn't have to accept the Holocaust. But by the time most of them realized the reality and magnitude of what was happening they were no longer able to terminate their contract. At that point it had stopped being voluntary (now, if they had been able to leave the death camps whenever they wanted to but chose not to I'd have to say it was their fault...however that wasn't the case). I would probably argue that there was no (as you say) "social" contract between Germany and its Jews.
Also, it isn't like he has any choice, sure he can leave the US, but he will be taxed no matter where he goes.
Yes, he can emigrate, just as you could buy a different car even though your favorite company doesn't produce cars which let you travel at the speed of sound and get 2000 mpg. Even if nobody produces exactly what you want, you can choose any car the market produces or you create yourself.
There are roughly 200 nations to which you could emigrate. They are the product of an anarcho-capitalist free market: there is no over-government dictating to those sovereign nations.
Indeed, the only difference between the anarchy of nations and libertopia is that anarcho-capitalists are wishing for a smaller granularity. These nations have found that it is most cost-efficient to defend themselves territorially.
If any other market provided 200 choices, libertarians would declare that the sacred workings of the market blessed whatever choices were offered. The point is that choices do exist: it's up to libertarians to show that there is something wrong with the market of nations in a way they would accept being applied to markets within nations.
Libertaria is a combination of values that just doesn't exist: the government equivalent of a really posh residence for very little money. You can find nations which have much lower taxes, etc.: just don't expect them to be first class.
And the reason these combinations don't exist is probably simple: the free market of government services essentially guarantees that there is no such thing as the free lunch libertarians want. It's not competitive.
If you thought I was saying that if you were born into something you had to shut up and accept then either I wasn't clear or you are dilerately misunderstanding what I wrote.
The original claim was that there was no consent involved in taxation; that it is "coerced" from you. That is not that case. By living in a country you "consent" to be taxed. You can disagree about how much you should be taxed, how the tax money should be spent, and so on. But you can't claim there is no consent involved.
Maybe if the US government abducted your parents from their homeland and then closed its borders and refused to let you leave...then you claim there was a lack of consent and that you were being coerced. However, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that isn't the case for you.
I'm not positive but I was under the impression people were talking about some kind of sales tax for the internet. Amazon wouldn't pay that tax.
As I understand it, the omission of an internet sales tax is supported because "we should want the most rapid possible expansion of e-commerce". But I'm not sure why that is the case.
On a superficial analysis it would seem more likely to destroy jobs than create them. How many jobs would be lost if all of the Barnes and Nobles, Borders, Waldenbooks, etc, were closed down and replaced by online only offerings? I'm not sure, but it seems like these destroy jobs rather than create them. And if they don't create jobs what is the reason for wanting more of them? Prestige? So you can say America has the biggest e-commerce dick in the world?
Umm...you most certainly have consented. Living in the country is consent...in the same way that e.g. entering (some) restaurants means consenting to buy at least $15 worth of food. When you were born (and a minor) your parents entered you into a contract with the United States of America. When you came of age, and didn't leave the country, you continued that contract.
Your continued presence in this country is continued consent. In the same way that if you don't like AT&T you can go to Sprint, if you don't like the particular implicit contract in America you can always try some other country. There are, what, 200+ countries in the world?
How do you expect to survive in a libertarian utopia when you don't even want to abide by the contracts you enter?
Marrying a supermodel? Ummmm, no.
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Just curious how many supermodels you've met and conversed with that you feel you can say that they are bimbos? I notice from your homepage that you have lived most of your life in Virginia. Last time I checked that wasn't really a mecca for supermodels.
In my personal experience, the one whole supermodel that I met in real life was nice enough and didn't come across as a bimbo. How many have you met? Or are you just being a prejudiced bigot who stereotypes people they've never met? Mmm...watch our for those sour grapes.
Absence of proof does not equal proof of absence. Until a court decides one way or the other it's not really decided. And even then, courts change their minds.
Make that - the joy of protecting yourself
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I would suggest that evil breeds bureaucracy; if everyone were trustworthy, there'd be no need for lawyers (the creators of bureaucracy)- or gov't, for that matter. Consider this..
What an interestingly narrow minded view of government you have.
Last time I checked stuff like disaster relief, coast guard rescue operations, and humanitarian aid didn't have much to do with trustworthiness. Isn't there a quote about how only criminals think the world is made up of laws?
I agree, sidewalk.com rocks. I haven't found anything that does everything for me that this site does. Maybe it's a good thing MS runs it...anyone else might have shut it down by now.
Interesting that this same "baggage" failed to sustain socialism in most of the world. In the end it all came down to money. Why should I expect it is going to be different with linux?
(Didn't all the hippies in the 60s/70s think they were changing the world too? Right up until they decided to sell out and join the materialistic 80s at any rate.)
But for our situation we only need one architecture for the target and one architecture for the host. I don't recall that Linus was cross compiling linux to Alphas on Day 1. It doesn't have to be optimal for what we are talking about here either. Linus was writing something for fun to learn about x86s (IIRC). Why would he need an optimal compiler for that?
But for our situation we only need one architecture for the target and one architecture for the host. I don't recall that Linus was cross compiling linux to Alphas on Day 1. It doesn't have to be optimal for what we are talking about here either. Linus was writing something for fun to learn about x86s (IIRC). Why would be need an optimal compiler for that?
why not acknowledge that most of the software is GPL'd and openly acknowledge other's contributions in the name?
Because the name isn't the right place to acknowledge contributions. Have you even gone to a movie named after the lead cinematographer? The only time you see director's names in titles is as marketing propaganda. Having GNU in your name is hardly good marketing.
Maybe we should rename it Locke/America or Smith/America. After all, why is the country named after some Spaniard? Don't those enlightenment philosopher types have an intellectual stake in equality and natural rights of men. And what about those economists and their capitalism?
Why waste your time on political bullshit? Shut up and write some code that we _need_, not code so you can justify creating your own non-FSF distribution.
Ummm...why does the FSF waste their time on political bullshit? Tell them to "shut up and write code that we need", not code so they can justify creating their non-proprietary distribution.
Like the world really needed Yet Another TAR, or C compiler, or C debugger.
Bell Labs has done a lot for us all (or do you think Linux would exist if they hadn't come up with C and unix?), should we name it BellLinux?
"Linux" to me means the software that I use most. That is apache, vim, X11, ppp, lynx/netscape, xv, gimp, python, perl, and various compilers that have nothing to do with gcc. Which of those did the FSF write?
10% code, but more than 10% motivation ?
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Why do people assume that if the FSF didn't exist nothing else would have filled its place? I remember growing up in the PC world and there was plenty of "free" software and not a single person knew who the hell the FSF was.
Doesn't the FSF claim that one of the reasons software patents are bad is because of the high probability of independent discovery of ideas in the software field? Why do they think no one else would have come up with the free software idea if they hadn't?
GPL'd code does have a single, specific owner -- whoever holds the copyright for it. If it didn't have a single, specific owner then isn't that the definition of public domain?
I thought you could have more than one kind of license for any given piece of software (e.g. end user licenses and site licenses, doesn't perl do something similar)?
In that case, can I release my code under the GPL and under some more commercial friendly license? What happens to code contributions at that point? Can you have two licenses whose terms are totally at odds with one another? Does all code get merged into the code base or you have a branch for the two licenses? Would a contributor have to prove that they agreed to the GPL and not the other license?
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But then everyone else in your field has the same systems. So long competitive advantage. Sure, you can find other areas to get a competitive advantage but why would you throw away one complete area? And if you can't get a competitive advantage from software then why should I, as a CEO, bother to spend anything other than the bare minimum at maintaining it?
It may be easier to hire bug-fixes but then you just threw away all of that economy of scale that shrink wrapped used to have. And you have to give your competitors (who didn't pay for it) that same bug-fix.
Who is going to pay for service for a computer game? Who is going to pay for service for a stupid little utility like WinAmp? Look at how few people register for shareware. I'd imagine even fewer would get "service contracts" for those apps. Or what about "finished" apps? Something like, say, cp? And what would the transaction cost of a service contract compared to the service contract itself be like?
When people start talking about using service to pay salaries I can't help but wonder why they never actually do anything but wave it around like a banner.
The reason that free software has gotten so far is because of the GPL, LGPL, BSD, XConsortium licenses
... they sponge off their rich parents and don't face the same obstacles and pressures that your average company does.
GPL - funded by MIT
BSD - funded by UC Berkley
XConsortium - funded by the commercial members of the X consortium.
When I look at the above I am hard pressed to conclude that free software is anything other than a huge welfare project that refuses to show gratitude to the commercial interests that spawned it. Talk about the biting the hand that feeds you. Free software has gotten so far for the same reason that rich, spoiled kids like Bill Gates get so far
Maybe we should call it MIT/GNU emacs?
Actually, in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People the author does talk about his own life. His son breaking up with a girlfriend, a ride on a subway, spending time with his wife in Hawaii, etc, etc.
I haven't read the Seven Minute Manager, but the One Minute Manager was a parable and as such I wouldn't expect it to have anything about the authors.
In that case, then, many blacks should not have to pay taxes at all.
If they were born here then their parents exercised their power of custody and made them US citizens, thereby entering them into the social contract. Last time I checked the US government wasn't preventing people from emigrating and renouncing their citizenship. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't understand what you're point is.
The reason you don't live somewhere else isn't because you don't have enough money. I could move just about anywhere in the world for a few hundred bucks. If you don't have a few hundred bucks around I suggest you sell your car and computer and then you can buy a plane ticket to paradise. Besides, how many times a week do you eat out? Go to a movie? Buy a book or computer game? Sorry if I find it hard to take your claims about moving elsewhere seriously....
I can't help but wonder, if you are really so upset with the amount you pay versus the amount of benefits you receive why haven't you left? Or is it that there is nowhere else in the world that gets you a better ROI? Perhaps you just want a free lunch? You want everything the US provides but don't want to have to pay for it?
I'm sure Ayn Rand would be proud of socialistic tendencies like that.
By your definition of "consent," I would be consenting to EVERYTHING which is policy and/or occurs in the country.
:-) the USA doesn't require you to agree with every policy it has when you consent to the "social" contract. Among the fairly minimal terms the USA requires you to abide by is taxation.
No, all I said is that you have consented to abide by the terms of the contract the USA offers you. I didn't say a single thing about what those terms were. It seems like you are reading more into what I wrote than what I wrote. Luckily for you (and me
You are still here, thus you consent to the social contract, one of whose terms is taxation. Thus you have consented to taxation.
I just love this talk about philosophical "contracts".
I don't know about you but I'm talking about an economic contract. Philosophical would be more like "I have a right to own land" or "I have a right to freedom of speech".
So you're saying, that Jews who where living in Germany during the Nazi era had to accept the Holocaust because they entered into a contract with the Nazi government by living there at the time?
First off, most of the Jews who died in the Holocaust were from Poland. In fact, most of the people who died in the Holocaust (considering that almost half of them weren't Jewish, I think you do a disservice to those who died in the Holocaust by ignoring the non-Jews) were from Poland. The Polish citizens most certainly were not in any kind of contract with the German nation.
As for Jews in Germany, I really don't know enough to say but my initial thoughts on the matter would be: they didn't have to accept the Holocaust. But by the time most of them realized the reality and magnitude of what was happening they were no longer able to terminate their contract. At that point it had stopped being voluntary (now, if they had been able to leave the death camps whenever they wanted to but chose not to I'd have to say it was their fault...however that wasn't the case). I would probably argue that there was no (as you say) "social" contract between Germany and its Jews.
Also, it isn't like he has any choice, sure he can leave the US, but he will be taxed no matter where he goes.
Yes, he can emigrate, just as you could buy a different car even though your favorite company doesn't produce cars which let you travel at the speed of sound and get 2000 mpg. Even if nobody produces exactly what you want, you can choose any car the market produces or you create yourself.
There are roughly 200 nations to which you could emigrate. They are the product of an anarcho-capitalist free market: there is no over-government dictating to those sovereign nations.
Indeed, the only difference between the anarchy of nations and libertopia is that anarcho-capitalists are wishing for a smaller granularity. These nations have found that it is most cost-efficient to defend themselves territorially.
If any other market provided 200 choices, libertarians would declare that the sacred workings of the market blessed whatever choices were offered. The point is that choices do exist: it's up to libertarians to show that there is something wrong with the market of nations in a way they would accept being applied to markets within nations.
Libertaria is a combination of values that just doesn't exist: the government equivalent of a really posh residence for very little money. You can find nations which have much lower taxes, etc.: just don't expect them to be first class.
And the reason these combinations don't exist is probably simple: the free market of government services essentially guarantees that there is no such thing as the free lunch libertarians want. It's not competitive.
If you thought I was saying that if you were born into something you had to shut up and accept then either I wasn't clear or you are dilerately misunderstanding what I wrote.
The original claim was that there was no consent involved in taxation; that it is "coerced" from you. That is not that case. By living in a country you "consent" to be taxed. You can disagree about how much you should be taxed, how the tax money should be spent, and so on. But you can't claim there is no consent involved.
Maybe if the US government abducted your parents from their homeland and then closed its borders and refused to let you leave...then you claim there was a lack of consent and that you were being coerced. However, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that isn't the case for you.
I'm not positive but I was under the impression people were talking about some kind of sales tax for the internet. Amazon wouldn't pay that tax.
As I understand it, the omission of an internet sales tax is supported because "we should want the most rapid possible expansion of e-commerce". But I'm not sure why that is the case.
On a superficial analysis it would seem more likely to destroy jobs than create them. How many jobs would be lost if all of the Barnes and Nobles, Borders, Waldenbooks, etc, were closed down and replaced by online only offerings? I'm not sure, but it seems like these destroy jobs rather than create them. And if they don't create jobs what is the reason for wanting more of them? Prestige? So you can say America has the biggest e-commerce dick in the world?
has been taken away from me without my consent.
Umm...you most certainly have consented. Living in the country is consent...in the same way that e.g. entering (some) restaurants means consenting to buy at least $15 worth of food. When you were born (and a minor) your parents entered you into a contract with the United States of America. When you came of age, and didn't leave the country, you continued that contract.
Your continued presence in this country is continued consent. In the same way that if you don't like AT&T you can go to Sprint, if you don't like the particular implicit contract in America you can always try some other country. There are, what, 200+ countries in the world?
How do you expect to survive in a libertarian utopia when you don't even want to abide by the contracts you enter?
Just curious how many supermodels you've met and conversed with that you feel you can say that they are bimbos? I notice from your homepage that you have lived most of your life in Virginia. Last time I checked that wasn't really a mecca for supermodels.
In my personal experience, the one whole supermodel that I met in real life was nice enough and didn't come across as a bimbo. How many have you met? Or are you just being a prejudiced bigot who stereotypes people they've never met? Mmm...watch our for those sour grapes.
Absence of proof does not equal proof of absence. Until a court decides one way or the other it's not really decided. And even then, courts change their minds.
I would suggest that evil breeds bureaucracy; if everyone were trustworthy, there'd be no need for lawyers (the creators of bureaucracy)- or gov't, for that matter. Consider this..
What an interestingly narrow minded view of government you have.
Last time I checked stuff like disaster relief, coast guard rescue operations, and humanitarian aid didn't have much to do with trustworthiness. Isn't there a quote about how only criminals think the world is made up of laws?
I agree, sidewalk.com rocks. I haven't found anything that does everything for me that this site does. Maybe it's a good thing MS runs it...anyone else might have shut it down by now.
It is that "baggage" that will sustain Linux.
Interesting that this same "baggage" failed to sustain socialism in most of the world. In the end it all came down to money. Why should I expect it is going to be different with linux?
(Didn't all the hippies in the 60s/70s think they were changing the world too? Right up until they decided to sell out and join the materialistic 80s at any rate.)
My bad :-). If I had remembered Amerigo's last name I probably would have clued into his being Italian.
But for our situation we only need one architecture for the target and one architecture for the host. I don't recall that Linus was cross compiling linux to Alphas on Day 1. It doesn't have to be optimal for what we are talking about here either. Linus was writing something for fun to learn about x86s (IIRC). Why would he need an optimal compiler for that?
But for our situation we only need one architecture for the target and one architecture for the host. I don't recall that Linus was cross compiling linux to Alphas on Day 1. It doesn't have to be optimal for what we are talking about here either. Linus was writing something for fun to learn about x86s (IIRC). Why would be need an optimal compiler for that?
Without gcc, where would we be?
Without an IDE driver for linux where would we be? Oh wait, that's right. When they discovered one didn't exist they just wrote it.
If gcc hadn't existed someone would have wrote a C compiler. Didn't/doesn't minix come with its own (non-gcc) compiler anyway?
why not acknowledge that most of the software is GPL'd and openly acknowledge other's contributions in the name?
Because the name isn't the right place to acknowledge contributions. Have you even gone to a movie named after the lead cinematographer? The only time you see director's names in titles is as marketing propaganda. Having GNU in your name is hardly good marketing.
Maybe we should rename it Locke/America or Smith/America. After all, why is the country named after some Spaniard? Don't those enlightenment philosopher types have an intellectual stake in equality and natural rights of men. And what about those economists and their capitalism?
Why waste your time on political bullshit? Shut up and write some code that we _need_, not code so you can justify creating your own non-FSF distribution.
Ummm...why does the FSF waste their time on political bullshit? Tell them to "shut up and write code that we need", not code so they can justify creating their non-proprietary distribution.
Like the world really needed Yet Another TAR, or C compiler, or C debugger.
Bell Labs has done a lot for us all (or do you think Linux would exist if they hadn't come up with C and unix?), should we name it BellLinux?
"Linux" to me means the software that I use most. That is apache, vim, X11, ppp, lynx/netscape, xv, gimp, python, perl, and various compilers that have nothing to do with gcc. Which of those did the FSF write?
Why do people assume that if the FSF didn't exist nothing else would have filled its place? I remember growing up in the PC world and there was plenty of "free" software and not a single person knew who the hell the FSF was.
Doesn't the FSF claim that one of the reasons software patents are bad is because of the high probability of independent discovery of ideas in the software field? Why do they think no one else would have come up with the free software idea if they hadn't?
GPL'd code does have a single, specific owner -- whoever holds the copyright for it. If it didn't have a single, specific owner then isn't that the definition of public domain?
I thought you could have more than one kind of license for any given piece of software (e.g. end user licenses and site licenses, doesn't perl do something similar)?
In that case, can I release my code under the GPL and under some more commercial friendly license? What happens to code contributions at that point? Can you have two licenses whose terms are totally at odds with one another? Does all code get merged into the code base or you have a branch for the two licenses? Would a contributor have to prove that they agreed to the GPL and not the other license?