Because in 2006 AT&T's CEO opened his mouth and basically stated he wanted to hold his customers hostage from Google in exchange for more money. He plainly stated that he wanted to charge both his direct customers AND people who were incidentally coming across the lines. It was made plainly obvious that corporations can and would abuse their services and their customers for the sake of making a profit, especially when they had a monopoly position in areas.
so, 3-4 years later... what's happened because of this talk?
A bunch of regional monopolies serve as the only reasonably modern gateway to the most important technology of the late 20th/early 21st century, and they're more than willing to destroy what makes it unique.
in some cases, there's a monopoly on high speed internet. that's not really a monopoly though, because there's other alternatives.
The carriers should be forcibly struck blind. They've already been caught fucking with connections, and are more than willing to host and affect their networks (and customers) with conflicts of interest that serve only themselves.
and again, this won't have any real affect, besides making it harder for someone else to get into the industry, with more red tape. and more requirements.
Look up health indicators for 50 years ago and now if you want. You can say it's technology but it's just as much Medicare. As for "what any socialised system could bring", why don't you look around the world, and see the far better health indicators from places like almost totally taxation-funded healthcare like Britain to those in the middle like France, to semi-private systems like Germany or Switzerland or Spain. All have far better indicators than the US is likely to achieve in its current broken private model.
UK has plenty of problems. Communism took 70 years in russia to fall apart, it won't happen over night. But personally, i'd rather avoid the collapse of a country/medical system all together. Right, medicare/medicaid have done such wonders, along with all the other stupid regulations we have. Our government makes the current system we have, seem desirable, through things like tax credits for employers, but not if you choose to get your own. Through things like outlawing insurance purchased across state lines. Our government, that you love so dearly, has set this system up. Did you see the problems we have today, 50 years ago? no. were medical cost expensive? no.
Also, I didn't call for socialism, just for the government to provide regulation, defence, infrastructure, and back research and development, education and healthcare.
That's like saying I don't want to drink a beer, I'll have a light beer instead. Regulation is just a smaller form of socialism, as socialism is government control/ownership.
You ignored my point about the fact that you wouldn't be bitching here without the kind of government you want. A small army would not have gotten us the Internet, small government research would not have gotten us Berners-Lee and the Web, and you wouldn't have a cable at your house were it not for giant government subsidies to American telcos. Which point exactly are you arguing? Because if you are you're wrong.
Right, the government is responsible for everything? Because i'm accessing this page through the government.. oh wait. Yes, there's some local government involved in the cabling and such of the internet (good or bad, it's again to small for me to care about at this point). And i never said i wanted a small army, i want a strong defense. That's probably the one thing the federal government really should be doing.
It's a measure of degree, you know.
No it's not, planned economies have failed over and over, free ones, have succeeded over and over. China is now letting free markets inch in, little by little, and they're having success with that. Hong Kong is a great example, very little government, went from a poor place to a fairly rich place in a generation. The us has had largely unregulated markets, and look at how we dominated the world? Now we have medicare/medicaid, social security, ect. and we're going to feel the pinch of all this very soon. jsut wait til the chinese stop financing our spending. We'll be in a world of shit real fast, thanks to people like you.
you're again, bringing up military, which i have repeated stated that I think the federal government should have. and of course it should be organized, but the federal government should not be organizing anything it deems fit. It's stupid, it will fail. and history again, will show that centralized planning doesn't work, but people like you will sit here and think you know better than anyone else, on what the economy needs. ANd i can say that, because that's all the happens is some bureaucrat sits in some office and comes up with these regulations, and that's no different than you doing it.
Why is it that, the largely unregulated internet has gone on in mainstream for over a decade now, with no major problems, and we want to heap on regulations. Why? what's so wrong with the internet as it currently stands that you think needs protection? verizon banned 4chan, which is such an important website, and that got a lot of attention. and you're worried about what?
To me this is just more of the same, perhaps, well intended regulations, that will end up making things worse for everyone, including the proponents of net neutrality. It's doing fine, so let's heap on redtape! hurrah! i wonder if wikipedia would have took off, if there was a lot of regulation in place? or youtube? maybe they would, but if you think about all the steps that this will eventually require, and the lawyers, and the general mess that will come because of this, we will miss out on things that might have been. And what happens when the, 'think of the children' type get into regulating the internet (which they will)? they will be relentless. and they will eventually force some stupid crap down through the usual think of the children bullshit that/. loathes so much. the road to hell is paved with good intentions. and this is just another one of those well intended pieces of legislation that will end up costing us a lot more than it prevented.
What has the X-prize done so far? It hasn't even put people into space, or at most for a few minutes.
Well, its obviously so easy a caveman could do it. I mean.. yeah. what do you expect?
It also happens to piggyback on about 60 years of government-funded theoretical and practical research, starting with the Germans and British in the war, and the intense US-USSR space race after that. As usual, states pay for ground-breaking research and private industry comes in afterwards and cleans up the profits.
military spending is one of the things that the government should be doing so, i'm ok with that.
The rest of your post is just cliches, not practical arguments. Your life expectancy in an anarchic state might be 40 years on average, though less has been common.
What power doesn't corrupt or something? it's cliche, and it's true. And i've stated, that the libertarian position (and mine) is not for anarchy, so i dunno wtf you rpoint is.
After that many of you call for the smallest possible government, forgetting that it is impossible to have decent defence, universal education, research and development, and good infrastructure and universal healthcare (not that America really has that) without a strong central government.
You are just wrong. socialism has failed time and time again. Yet what thrives? free markets. people pursuing profits. we had better (in relative terms) healthcare in the US 50 years ago. Why? because we didn't have the government involved. was it perfect? no, but the system was superior than what we have today, and what any socialized system could bring. Our healthcare quality has gone up, with new technology and such, but that's inspite of, not because of government.
Or to put it more bluntly, with the kind of government you want, you wouldn't be bitching here, because there wouldn't be an Internet, a World Wide Web, and the cables that take them to your dwelling,
how you got modded up is amazing. But i dunno, let's see, military funded the internet, true. and military is one of the things the government should be doing. (whether as an extent they should be doing nasa, i'm not sure but that's small stuff).. And private companies bring me the internet. The kind of government i want, got us all this crap we enjoy so much. You think the government would have provided these nice computers we have? OK. go see france's attempt at computers circa like 1980. Maybe there's a legitmate reason for government to invest in some infrastructure. But, again that's so friggin small of an investment, it doesn't require central government.
Anyways, centralized planning does not work. cliche or not. Perhaps you have experience with that, at your own company even. How much does bureaucracy get in the way? Does your company succeed because of that bureaucracy, or in spite of it?
Idiot. The voters control the government. If you feel the government is taking your freedoms, blame yourself and other voters, not the goverment. And don't give me the 'but they're all bought by lobyists!' crap. Nobody is forcing you to vote for politicians who don't promise to refuse all 'gifts'.
yep, that's how the theory goes.. but it never seems to work out that way. We'll fix it by voting. rarely works. And i do blame the voters. we could put a stop to this shit, but we don't. which kidn of goes back to my point about the government being limited in teh first place.
As a libertarian, i wish that we could have a serious conversation about NASA being a waste of money. But with military spending, social security, healthcare.. it's just so small relative to those things..
How is private industry a bad thing? right, it's really a good thing.
Private industry on its own wouldn't touch space with a barge-pole, not now and not in the next thousand years.
x prize.
My dear libertarian friend, please realise that government isn't evil, it's a necessity and basically a good thing. Without it we'd have anarchy -- like Somalia. Nobody wants to see levels of control like in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, but that's why we work to make it better, not to get rid of it.
power corrupts. The power of the government grows constantly, and are we better for it? no. We lose freedoms, small as they are, they add up. The government is a necessary evil, which is why our founders put fairly strict controls on it. Of which, we no longer pay attention to, and that's the biggest source of so many of our problems. But don't worry, most think like you, and soon enough we'll all be suffering the consequences of the expansion of government. Ignoring how grossly inefficient it is.
yah, the private banks do so well at giving us a future.
they actually do. own a house? maybe some buisness loans?
the recent failures, were because, the government was giving out free money (read low interest rates). And not all banks failed btw. some did, and we should have let them fail. But low interest rates are like giving a gambler free money, likely, he'll gamble bigger risks than he can afford, hardly a shock when he comes back broke.
i live in the US, and i feel pretty safe walking down just about any street too. Granted, I wouldn't if i was in compton or gary indiana, but gun laws, wouldn't make a difference in those places anyways.
Turns out that when guns are outlawed, outlaws don't need them either.
There's probably some truth to that, but who loves gun laws? the outlaws of course. a lot less of a worry to mug someone if they won't pull out a gun and shoot you. Of course, the statistics say that gun control laws don't work as well. See Switzerland. (Not that i advocate mandatory gun ownership either).
Yeah, corporations would never favor their traffic over independent web sites, or gaming, or bittorrent, or any other non-corporate usage of the internet. (/heavy sarcasm)
and it's such a huge huge problem right now, with all this unregulated internet. (/heavier sarcasm)
A personal attack. Unsurprising.
telling someone he's way off base in a slightly sarcastic way, is quite the personal attack. (/more sarcasm)
That's what they profess to believe, yes. And there are some that seem to truly believe that, such as Ron Paul. However, most the so-called 'libertarians' I've run into have been closet Republicans.
well this could be true, but then they really wouldn't be libertarians anyways.
Without a doubt. If you want to be free from liability, then you should give up certain rights. No person or entity should have full rights with no liability. That's how we've gotten into our current culture of corruption. Corporations have no conscience and no personal responsibility or liability. If they make a 'mistake' that hurts people or our society and yet makes them money, you can bet they will make that 'mistake' over and over again as long as it is making them money.
I don't think corporations should be free from liability. But i think you over estimate the effect letting a corporation speak freely, is going to have.
Where's the monopoly in technology, wheres' teh monopoly in food? where's the monopoly in clothing? ect. ect. Oh wait the monopolies i do have to deal with all have one thing in common. the government.
Or you could write letter to the president and your representatives telling them that net neutrality means that all traffic is dealt with neutrally, and that they would be violating our rights by assuming all bit-torrent traffic is illegal. And you could write to editors at various publications in hopes of raising awareness. And you could contribute to the EFF. And you could even run for office or support those candidates who support your point of view. And you could start a grass-roots organization.
Or we could just leave the government out of it. Alll these threats against our freedoms, are largely unfounded, and the internet has been apart of our culture for over a decade now.
I can't guarantee that all or even any of these things will in and of themselves change things, but despite what closet Republicans (who call themselves Libertarians) would have you believe, you are not helpless. Our founding fathers created the best government in the world, and despite the Right's best efforts to destroy it by doing things such as ruling that corporations have the right to free speech, you can still make it work for you, but you have to put in some kind of effort.
WTF are you smoking??? libertarians believe in the power of the individual. and giving corporations the right to speak freely is wrong?? lol
The libertarian ideal, is that people can do what they want, as long as they don't interfer with other's rights to do the same. That does not mean you get exactly what you want in every possible situation. But that does lead to it happening far more than government regulation. I mean, look at everything around you, do you think it was the government that made those things possible? Or was it mostly motivation of greedy profit driven businesses? By a wide margin it's private people pursuing a profit that fills your needs and wants the best and at the best price.
Or maybe you have an alternative that I haven't heard of?
No. free trade is what gets blamed. the problem is pretty simple, it's the federal reserve with easy credit. And then congress decides to bailout companies 'to big to fail' which is just taking money from the successful and giving it to those who are failing. Quite the moral hazard.
The best way for you, to keep the economy running, is to be a capitalist anyways. free trade is a very healthy thing. Unfortunately most governments like to get in the way (including our own)
What did our mother's tell us? If the other executives are jumping off of a bridge, will you?
offtopic, but I always hated this line. and if my mom had ever told it to me, my response would have been something along the lines of, "well i'd certainly analyze the situation, and if everyone's jumping off a cliff, there's probably a good reason for doing so, so I'd say there's a good chance i would"
You can call me an idiot in as many ways as you want, if it makes you feel better go for it. And i've never argued that he could do magical things to make our lives better. I have stated, that he could do some of the things he claimed he would do, and you claim it takes a lot of time (which it will to enact the changes). But it doesn't take much time to start those processes.
Considering he had campaigned on 'change' and no real change has happened or has been started, I think i'm quite justified in my unhappiness with him as president. And we really don't need to watch and see what will happen to other countries, history can tell us plenty about what will happen here, the dollar crisis is coming.
You really do not begin to understand the problems facing your country. Nobody can wave a magic wand and fix it instantly or even within a year.
I think i understand them quite fine. And you can certainly do many of the thigns i pointed out within a year, and you can certainly start fixing other things that will take longer. He's done almost nothing.
As you have realised most of the policies are the same, but you have not realised that there is no magic wand to implement new ones instantly either.
No magic required. Like i said, he could have started on many things by now. Only thing he's done is try to rush a poorly thought out medical bill, whether you want socialized medicine or not, you would want it to be thought out, at the least.
America's crash is happening now if you look around at all the people on food stamps and other problems. It could get worse but you are definitely in a rut that will take effort to climb out of.
I don't understand what you keep implying? I know the crash is happening, and I think it will get a lot worse. And at the least, will last many more years.
Replacing Obama with McCain tomorrow will not fix it. Replacing Obama with Palin would probably result in a Kleptocracy similar to what happened in Russia not long after the USSR fell apart.
I don't advocate replacing him with either of them, i advocate replacing him with ron paul, or atleast someone who understand the economy. For the last several years, we have had fed chairmans who are, at the least, incompetent. And have caused a lot of the problems we currently have in our economy. Of course, not only them, but the presidents, and the congress.
being in office for 1/4 of his tenure isn't long enough? being behind massive bailouts isn't enough? keeping some of his campaign promises, such as giving people hte chance to read any bills before signing them? how about the iraq war, that'd we'd be out in months? Yes, bush fucked up a lot of stuff, but obama is actively continuing the bush policies, for the most part. What's OBama's response to the christmas bomber? more loss civil liberties. Gee, where does that sound familar?
America's crash is coming, and there's no single person to blame, but there's a lot of people who've contributed more than others (Obama, Bush, Greenspan, Bernanke). Though,you could put the blame on the American citizen.
hahaha yeah. I've looked up the word a few times, and i think i get what it means. But i'm for treating big and small businesses the same. so i'm hardly playing favorites. and subsidies are bad, but that doesn't mean we need to make it worse (even though i'm not sure of any subsidies cell phone companies get, i'm sure there are some).
But you go ahead and continue to be against capitalism, and tell me how well that works out. Here's a hint, it doesn't.
You are such an ignorant twit I don`t even know where to begin. You want to get rid of all regulations? Ok then, no more FDA to protect you from poisoned foods. No more American Medical Association to make sure you don`t get fooled into buying a quack doctor`s services. No more zoning laws, minimal building construction standards, water quality requirements, phone line uptime requirements, electricity production standards, etc. etc.
I love it, begin with an insult.
by all means, get rid of the FDA which causes far more problems than it prevents. 15 years to get a drug out that saves thousands a lives/ that means for the past 15 years it has cost 15 * thousands of lives, thanks to the FDA. AMA is a private organization, which is fine. zoning laws are local and i'm not really talking about them. Who would drink water if it was bad, same with everything else you listed. You think that we don't have problems with these things because of regulations? Hahaha and you call me juvenile? I've explained my thoughts on everything, and you keep insulting me. No, it's not black and white, and the free market isn't perfect. But it is far superior.
hahahha I love it, you tell me to jump off a cliff because i express a view point contrary to your own and think i'm oppressive??? Our most productive times were when we had these 'ignorant' ideas as you describe.
police and fire are legitimate jobs the government should be doing. owning parks.. a lot of parks are unclean and even dangerous. And the parks aren't (usually) open after night, so you can't even use them when you want. But owning a park isn't even hard.
So you want government provided internet? What does government provide, that it does well? I mean, the best cases, are where government subsizes things, and those are even more expensive. You really won't get a better option from government, for much of any length of time.
Slashdot Mirror
Because in 2006 AT&T's CEO opened his mouth and basically stated he wanted to hold his customers hostage from Google in exchange for more money. He plainly stated that he wanted to charge both his direct customers AND people who were incidentally coming across the lines. It was made plainly obvious that corporations can and would abuse their services and their customers for the sake of making a profit, especially when they had a monopoly position in areas.
so, 3-4 years later... what's happened because of this talk?
A bunch of regional monopolies serve as the only reasonably modern gateway to the most important technology of the late 20th/early 21st century, and they're more than willing to destroy what makes it unique.
in some cases, there's a monopoly on high speed internet. that's not really a monopoly though, because there's other alternatives.
The carriers should be forcibly struck blind. They've already been caught fucking with connections, and are more than willing to host and affect their networks (and customers) with conflicts of interest that serve only themselves.
and again, this won't have any real affect, besides making it harder for someone else to get into the industry, with more red tape. and more requirements.
Look up health indicators for 50 years ago and now if you want. You can say it's technology but it's just as much Medicare. As for "what any socialised system could bring", why don't you look around the world, and see the far better health indicators from places like almost totally taxation-funded healthcare like Britain to those in the middle like France, to semi-private systems like Germany or Switzerland or Spain. All have far better indicators than the US is likely to achieve in its current broken private model.
UK has plenty of problems. Communism took 70 years in russia to fall apart, it won't happen over night. But personally, i'd rather avoid the collapse of a country/medical system all together. Right, medicare/medicaid have done such wonders, along with all the other stupid regulations we have. Our government makes the current system we have, seem desirable, through things like tax credits for employers, but not if you choose to get your own. Through things like outlawing insurance purchased across state lines. Our government, that you love so dearly, has set this system up. Did you see the problems we have today, 50 years ago? no. were medical cost expensive? no.
Also, I didn't call for socialism, just for the government to provide regulation, defence, infrastructure, and back research and development, education and healthcare.
That's like saying I don't want to drink a beer, I'll have a light beer instead. Regulation is just a smaller form of socialism, as socialism is government control/ownership.
You ignored my point about the fact that you wouldn't be bitching here without the kind of government you want. A small army would not have gotten us the Internet, small government research would not have gotten us Berners-Lee and the Web, and you wouldn't have a cable at your house were it not for giant government subsidies to American telcos. Which point exactly are you arguing? Because if you are you're wrong.
Right, the government is responsible for everything? Because i'm accessing this page through the government.. oh wait. Yes, there's some local government involved in the cabling and such of the internet (good or bad, it's again to small for me to care about at this point). And i never said i wanted a small army, i want a strong defense. That's probably the one thing the federal government really should be doing.
It's a measure of degree, you know.
No it's not, planned economies have failed over and over, free ones, have succeeded over and over. China is now letting free markets inch in, little by little, and they're having success with that. Hong Kong is a great example, very little government, went from a poor place to a fairly rich place in a generation. The us has had largely unregulated markets, and look at how we dominated the world? Now we have medicare/medicaid, social security, ect. and we're going to feel the pinch of all this very soon. jsut wait til the chinese stop financing our spending. We'll be in a world of shit real fast, thanks to people like you.
you're again, bringing up military, which i have repeated stated that I think the federal government should have. and of course it should be organized, but the federal government should not be organizing anything it deems fit. It's stupid, it will fail. and history again, will show that centralized planning doesn't work, but people like you will sit here and think you know better than anyone else, on what the economy needs. ANd i can say that, because that's all the happens is some bureaucrat sits in some office and comes up with these regulations, and that's no different than you doing it.
I have a simple question: Why?
Why is it that, the largely unregulated internet has gone on in mainstream for over a decade now, with no major problems, and we want to heap on regulations. Why? what's so wrong with the internet as it currently stands that you think needs protection? verizon banned 4chan, which is such an important website, and that got a lot of attention. and you're worried about what?
To me this is just more of the same, perhaps, well intended regulations, that will end up making things worse for everyone, including the proponents of net neutrality. It's doing fine, so let's heap on redtape! hurrah! i wonder if wikipedia would have took off, if there was a lot of regulation in place? or youtube? maybe they would, but if you think about all the steps that this will eventually require, and the lawyers, and the general mess that will come because of this, we will miss out on things that might have been. And what happens when the, 'think of the children' type get into regulating the internet (which they will)? they will be relentless. and they will eventually force some stupid crap down through the usual think of the children bullshit that /. loathes so much. the road to hell is paved with good intentions. and this is just another one of those well intended pieces of legislation that will end up costing us a lot more than it prevented.
What has the X-prize done so far? It hasn't even put people into space, or at most for a few minutes.
Well, its obviously so easy a caveman could do it. I mean.. yeah. what do you expect?
It also happens to piggyback on about 60 years of government-funded theoretical and practical research, starting with the Germans and British in the war, and the intense US-USSR space race after that. As usual, states pay for ground-breaking research and private industry comes in afterwards and cleans up the profits.
military spending is one of the things that the government should be doing so, i'm ok with that.
The rest of your post is just cliches, not practical arguments. Your life expectancy in an anarchic state might be 40 years on average, though less has been common.
What power doesn't corrupt or something? it's cliche, and it's true. And i've stated, that the libertarian position (and mine) is not for anarchy, so i dunno wtf you rpoint is.
After that many of you call for the smallest possible government, forgetting that it is impossible to have decent defence, universal education, research and development, and good infrastructure and universal healthcare (not that America really has that) without a strong central government.
You are just wrong. socialism has failed time and time again. Yet what thrives? free markets. people pursuing profits. we had better (in relative terms) healthcare in the US 50 years ago. Why? because we didn't have the government involved. was it perfect? no, but the system was superior than what we have today, and what any socialized system could bring. Our healthcare quality has gone up, with new technology and such, but that's inspite of, not because of government.
Or to put it more bluntly, with the kind of government you want, you wouldn't be bitching here, because there wouldn't be an Internet, a World Wide Web, and the cables that take them to your dwelling,
how you got modded up is amazing. But i dunno, let's see, military funded the internet, true. and military is one of the things the government should be doing. (whether as an extent they should be doing nasa, i'm not sure but that's small stuff).. And private companies bring me the internet. The kind of government i want, got us all this crap we enjoy so much. You think the government would have provided these nice computers we have? OK. go see france's attempt at computers circa like 1980. Maybe there's a legitmate reason for government to invest in some infrastructure. But, again that's so friggin small of an investment, it doesn't require central government.
Anyways, centralized planning does not work. cliche or not. Perhaps you have experience with that, at your own company even. How much does bureaucracy get in the way? Does your company succeed because of that bureaucracy, or in spite of it?
Idiot. The voters control the government. If you feel the government is taking your freedoms, blame yourself and other voters, not the goverment. And don't give me the 'but they're all bought by lobyists!' crap. Nobody is forcing you to vote for politicians who don't promise to refuse all 'gifts'.
yep, that's how the theory goes.. but it never seems to work out that way. We'll fix it by voting. rarely works. And i do blame the voters. we could put a stop to this shit, but we don't. which kidn of goes back to my point about the government being limited in teh first place.
As a libertarian, i wish that we could have a serious conversation about NASA being a waste of money. But with military spending, social security, healthcare.. it's just so small relative to those things..
How is private industry a bad thing? right, it's really a good thing.
Private industry on its own wouldn't touch space with a barge-pole, not now and not in the next thousand years.
x prize.
My dear libertarian friend, please realise that government isn't evil, it's a necessity and basically a good thing. Without it we'd have anarchy -- like Somalia. Nobody wants to see levels of control like in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, but that's why we work to make it better, not to get rid of it.
power corrupts. The power of the government grows constantly, and are we better for it? no. We lose freedoms, small as they are, they add up. The government is a necessary evil, which is why our founders put fairly strict controls on it. Of which, we no longer pay attention to, and that's the biggest source of so many of our problems. But don't worry, most think like you, and soon enough we'll all be suffering the consequences of the expansion of government. Ignoring how grossly inefficient it is.
yah, the private banks do so well at giving us a future.
they actually do. own a house? maybe some buisness loans?
the recent failures, were because, the government was giving out free money (read low interest rates). And not all banks failed btw. some did, and we should have let them fail. But low interest rates are like giving a gambler free money, likely, he'll gamble bigger risks than he can afford, hardly a shock when he comes back broke.
lol..
i live in the US, and i feel pretty safe walking down just about any street too. Granted, I wouldn't if i was in compton or gary indiana, but gun laws, wouldn't make a difference in those places anyways.
Turns out that when guns are outlawed, outlaws don't need them either.
There's probably some truth to that, but who loves gun laws? the outlaws of course. a lot less of a worry to mug someone if they won't pull out a gun and shoot you. Of course, the statistics say that gun control laws don't work as well. See Switzerland. (Not that i advocate mandatory gun ownership either).
Yeah, corporations would never favor their traffic over independent web sites, or gaming, or bittorrent, or any other non-corporate usage of the internet. (/heavy sarcasm)
and it's such a huge huge problem right now, with all this unregulated internet.
(/heavier sarcasm)
A personal attack. Unsurprising.
telling someone he's way off base in a slightly sarcastic way, is quite the personal attack. (/more sarcasm)
That's what they profess to believe, yes. And there are some that seem to truly believe that, such as Ron Paul. However, most the so-called 'libertarians' I've run into have been closet Republicans.
well this could be true, but then they really wouldn't be libertarians anyways.
Without a doubt. If you want to be free from liability, then you should give up certain rights. No person or entity should have full rights with no liability. That's how we've gotten into our current culture of corruption. Corporations have no conscience and no personal responsibility or liability. If they make a 'mistake' that hurts people or our society and yet makes them money, you can bet they will make that 'mistake' over and over again as long as it is making them money.
I don't think corporations should be free from liability. But i think you over estimate the effect letting a corporation speak freely, is going to have.
Where's the monopoly in technology, wheres' teh monopoly in food? where's the monopoly in clothing? ect. ect. Oh wait the monopolies i do have to deal with all have one thing in common. the government.
Or you could write letter to the president and your representatives telling them that net neutrality means that all traffic is dealt with neutrally, and that they would be violating our rights by assuming all bit-torrent traffic is illegal. And you could write to editors at various publications in hopes of raising awareness. And you could contribute to the EFF. And you could even run for office or support those candidates who support your point of view. And you could start a grass-roots organization.
Or we could just leave the government out of it. Alll these threats against our freedoms, are largely unfounded, and the internet has been apart of our culture for over a decade now.
I can't guarantee that all or even any of these things will in and of themselves change things, but despite what closet Republicans (who call themselves Libertarians) would have you believe, you are not helpless. Our founding fathers created the best government in the world, and despite the Right's best efforts to destroy it by doing things such as ruling that corporations have the right to free speech, you can still make it work for you, but you have to put in some kind of effort.
WTF are you smoking??? libertarians believe in the power of the individual. and giving corporations the right to speak freely is wrong?? lol
The libertarian ideal, is that people can do what they want, as long as they don't interfer with other's rights to do the same. That does not mean you get exactly what you want in every possible situation. But that does lead to it happening far more than government regulation. I mean, look at everything around you, do you think it was the government that made those things possible? Or was it mostly motivation of greedy profit driven businesses? By a wide margin it's private people pursuing a profit that fills your needs and wants the best and at the best price.
Or maybe you have an alternative that I haven't heard of?
No. free trade is what gets blamed. the problem is pretty simple, it's the federal reserve with easy credit. And then congress decides to bailout companies 'to big to fail' which is just taking money from the successful and giving it to those who are failing. Quite the moral hazard.
The best way for you, to keep the economy running, is to be a capitalist anyways. free trade is a very healthy thing. Unfortunately most governments like to get in the way (including our own)
What did our mother's tell us? If the other executives are jumping off of a bridge, will you?
offtopic, but I always hated this line. and if my mom had ever told it to me, my response would have been something along the lines of, "well i'd certainly analyze the situation, and if everyone's jumping off a cliff, there's probably a good reason for doing so, so I'd say there's a good chance i would"
You can call me an idiot in as many ways as you want, if it makes you feel better go for it. And i've never argued that he could do magical things to make our lives better. I have stated, that he could do some of the things he claimed he would do, and you claim it takes a lot of time (which it will to enact the changes). But it doesn't take much time to start those processes.
Not really. People around here, love big government, when they _think_ it benefits them. Net neutrality, heatlh care, regulations, ect.
Considering he had campaigned on 'change' and no real change has happened or has been started, I think i'm quite justified in my unhappiness with him as president. And we really don't need to watch and see what will happen to other countries, history can tell us plenty about what will happen here, the dollar crisis is coming.
You really do not begin to understand the problems facing your country. Nobody can wave a magic wand and fix it instantly or even within a year.
I think i understand them quite fine. And you can certainly do many of the thigns i pointed out within a year, and you can certainly start fixing other things that will take longer. He's done almost nothing.
As you have realised most of the policies are the same, but you have not realised that there is no magic wand to implement new ones instantly either.
No magic required. Like i said, he could have started on many things by now. Only thing he's done is try to rush a poorly thought out medical bill, whether you want socialized medicine or not, you would want it to be thought out, at the least.
America's crash is happening now if you look around at all the people on food stamps and other problems. It could get worse but you are definitely in a rut that will take effort to climb out of.
I don't understand what you keep implying? I know the crash is happening, and I think it will get a lot worse. And at the least, will last many more years.
Replacing Obama with McCain tomorrow will not fix it. Replacing Obama with Palin would probably result in a Kleptocracy similar to what happened in Russia not long after the USSR fell apart.
I don't advocate replacing him with either of them, i advocate replacing him with ron paul, or atleast someone who understand the economy. For the last several years, we have had fed chairmans who are, at the least, incompetent. And have caused a lot of the problems we currently have in our economy. Of course, not only them, but the presidents, and the congress.
being in office for 1/4 of his tenure isn't long enough? being behind massive bailouts isn't enough? keeping some of his campaign promises, such as giving people hte chance to read any bills before signing them? how about the iraq war, that'd we'd be out in months? Yes, bush fucked up a lot of stuff, but obama is actively continuing the bush policies, for the most part. What's OBama's response to the christmas bomber? more loss civil liberties. Gee, where does that sound familar?
America's crash is coming, and there's no single person to blame, but there's a lot of people who've contributed more than others (Obama, Bush, Greenspan, Bernanke). Though,you could put the blame on the American citizen.
hahaha yeah. I've looked up the word a few times, and i think i get what it means. But i'm for treating big and small businesses the same. so i'm hardly playing favorites. and subsidies are bad, but that doesn't mean we need to make it worse (even though i'm not sure of any subsidies cell phone companies get, i'm sure there are some).
But you go ahead and continue to be against capitalism, and tell me how well that works out. Here's a hint, it doesn't.
You are such an ignorant twit I don`t even know where to begin. You want to get rid of all regulations? Ok then, no more FDA to protect you from poisoned foods. No more American Medical Association to make sure you don`t get fooled into buying a quack doctor`s services. No more zoning laws, minimal building construction standards, water quality requirements, phone line uptime requirements, electricity production standards, etc. etc.
I love it, begin with an insult.
by all means, get rid of the FDA which causes far more problems than it prevents. 15 years to get a drug out that saves thousands a lives/ that means for the past 15 years it has cost 15 * thousands of lives, thanks to the FDA. AMA is a private organization, which is fine. zoning laws are local and i'm not really talking about them. Who would drink water if it was bad, same with everything else you listed. You think that we don't have problems with these things because of regulations? Hahaha and you call me juvenile? I've explained my thoughts on everything, and you keep insulting me. No, it's not black and white, and the free market isn't perfect. But it is far superior.
hahahha I love it, you tell me to jump off a cliff because i express a view point contrary to your own and think i'm oppressive??? Our most productive times were when we had these 'ignorant' ideas as you describe.
police and fire are legitimate jobs the government should be doing. owning parks.. a lot of parks are unclean and even dangerous. And the parks aren't (usually) open after night, so you can't even use them when you want. But owning a park isn't even hard.
So you want government provided internet? What does government provide, that it does well? I mean, the best cases, are where government subsizes things, and those are even more expensive. You really won't get a better option from government, for much of any length of time.