Net neutrality isn't about preventing different tiers of service either. It's about preventing businesses from colluding to distort the market with bribes and kickbacks by slowing and blocking competing business.
To me the bare minimum short of Net Neutrality would be requirements, like those imposed on Tobacco advertising, that Verizon FiOS and Comcast really suck for sites they choose to black ball. Something like making them display their connection speeds to other networks and which content is on those other networks on every single advertisement. Then people could really know what they were getting. Because right now I pay for something like 25M/25M and sometimes I get that and sometimes I don't. It depends on the site. So what I really want to know as a customer is what are the differences between Verizon FiOS and Comcast in their actual delivery times, not just what they say they are selling me.
If I can't rely on these companies to do their best not to screw me over depending on with whom I want to communicate, then I want to know exactly how they are screwing me over and not delivering on their promised speeds.
On the Western Values issue. I don't think the problem is that we are imposing our values on others. I think the problem is that we aren't even adequately promoting those values here at home. We end up calling for Democracy and Freedom in the rest of the world and then sending arms to whichever dictator and despot is the most willing to brutally suppress any groups that might threaten our foreign policy. Even when those groups are moderate groups simply looking for a more equitable system of government in their own country. And our foreign policy is based not on the spread of freedom and democracy around the world, but based on securing foreign trade and foreign resources for very short term and short sighted economic purposes. If we truly believe that more representative systems of government and more freedom and liberty should be the goal for a more prosperous, equitable and free world, then we should act accordingly. I believe the ideas of liberty and democracy are ideas worth spreading and supporting.
I didn't say I had any trouble with the Internet, just with Netflix. Did you try Netflix on Tuesday evening? Also, from your name it appears you are in Oregon and I am in Massachusetts.
Exactly, "Linux on the Desktop" is called Chrome or Android and the "desktop" is wherever we are instead of a jumble of wires connected to a monitor. Desktops are a shrinking niche market.
Otherwise Ubuntu or the like are great for desktops and laptops. Better than Windows in many respects. I haven't had problems like in the past for half a decade or more.
You forgot the most important reason. They are trying to degrade a competitor's service in order to promote their own. Both Comcast and Verizon compete directly with Netflix. Last night I was able to watch Verizon channels on my tablet just fine, but Netflix wasn't working at all.
Funny.... My Netflix was actually throttled pretty badly last night by Verizon and I was wondering what Netflix did to piss off Verizon. Now I guess I have the answer.
The "Here I am" message is insufficient for coordinating between vehicles. And as I mentioned localization using GPS, even differential GPS, is not reliable enough or fail safe enough for collision avoidance.... Because some percentage of the time cars will be giving you bogus location messages.
At some point message protocols for coordinating actions between vehicles does make sense. In addition to highway drafting, vehicles could use some protocol to more efficiently merge or change lanes. I just don't see transmitting absolute position and velocity being something good to base a system around.
Autonomous vehicles need to be allowed to get established without V2V. As they are doing now. Don't hobble them by making them rely on a poorly conceived notion.
Getting to a fail safe V2V for Here I Am messages is a very steep and expensive curve compared to a camera and proximity sensor based system which would be more closely following Moore's law.
I think the V2V proposal should be scrapped altogether. It would take decades to implement, be very expensive (at hundreds of dollars per car) and it won't actually make cars safer compared with relatively simpler collision avoidance using cameras and other relatively cheap proximity sensors that don't rely on everyone else having functioning V2V systems in their car.
Autonomous cars have cameras and other fail safe sensors they can rely on. GPS is for navigational way points and route planning. Just getting a signal from another car that it is at a certain position is not a sufficient replacement for actually seeing that car with a camera. In all cases I would program that car to trust the camera and distrust the V2V and if it didn't have a camera then the car should stop as safely as it can and not continue to try and drive automatically. GPS is better for navigational way points where precision on the scale of feet and inches is not as important. For collision avoidance in close proximity you want to rely on sensors.
Also how is it that L3 can deliver the data to Verizon, but Verizon is just somehow incapable of passing it along to their customers? The answer is that it is not a techn
the concept of peering traffic "parity" does not apply to local ISPs connecting to backbone providers.
It always has before.
And Verizon is a backbone provider in their own right, not just a local ISP.
Again I am not sure why I am feeding a troll, but you seem to be in a gang of trolls. So sure... if we were talking about L3 sending data to Verizon that Verizon then had to ship across its own backbone then you would have a point. But in this case L3 is acting as the long haul backbone provider and all Verizon has to do is deliver the packets to the local customers that requested the data. Verizon is already charging its customers for the bandwidth, the only issue here is that they are choosing to not to deliver on that promise in order to try and shake down Netflix and by extension Verizons own customers for more money. This is a fraudulent business practice pure and simple. Enron would be proud.
Netflix has the ability to fix it, though... If their software would tell all the clients to upload random junk to some random Netflix servers (preferably UDP, so the server doesn't even have to really exist), even when idle and not watching videos, they could move Level3's ratios back to even up/down distribution, and really punish the local ISPs who claim they want even up/down peering, at the same time.
Yes, okay. That is a funny thought experiment, but Verizon isn't actually confused about the fact that as a local ISP Verizon customers are the ones actually requesting netflix video so the concept of peering traffic "parity" does not apply to local ISPs connecting to backbone providers.
Traffic "parity" is only relevant when you are talking about backbone Internet providers providing alternative routes in order to help make the Internet routing more robust. Basically an I'll scratch your back and you scratch my back mutually beneficial scenario where having two equal backbone Internet partners is more robust than having just one route over a long haul network. So for instance having a peering agreement with a company that has a wire from LA to Boston so that if your LA to Boston wire goes down, then your traffic can still get through.
But when you are talking about last-mile customers who are the ones initiating the requests for content, then peering is not about traffic parity, it is about providing your customers with the bandwidth to the content they want. As long as L3 is willing to provide adequate bandwidth connections to Verizon's networks in the local metropolitan areas, then they are fulfilling their end of the bargain as a backbone provider peering with a local ISP.
Sure, if L3 was just saying they were going to dump all the Internet Traffic destined for the East Coast in LA and Verizon could deal with getting it across the country, then that wouldn't fly. But as far as I know L3 is ready willing and able to send all the traffic across the country and put it as geographically close to the Verizon customers who are requesting the content as Verizon will allow. But it is Verizon simply saying they won't allow L3 to increase the bandwidth to Verizon Customers until Verizon gets a bigger cut of the action.
So, Verizon would have plenty of transit capacity if it was spread more evenly across all the peering Verizon has.
Transit capacity is irrelevant. L3 is a backbone Internet provider. They have plenty of bandwidth to get all the packets to Verizon's networks in the areas Verizon serves. Verizon is just unwilling to provide their own Verizon customers with the bandwidth they require to access the content they want.
I understand just fine. That's why I know better than most that what you are saying is a load of complete and utter crap deserving of contempt.
Data coming from level 3 is being requested by Verizon Customers. Verizon isn't acting as a transit network unless they want to, so peering is just about getting Verizon customers the data they are requesting. Level 3 would gladly peer with Verizon in every metropolitan area in which they operate at very high speeds. Verizon is choosing not to.
Or let me be clear. That is a load of horeshit technobabble meant to obfuscate and mislead. Level 3 was pretty clear the other day when they offered to spend a few thousand dollars to upgrade their links to Verizon. Level 3 is a backbone Internet provider. There is no reason that any link between it and another network should remain saturated if both sides are acting in good faith to serve their respective customers, especially when L3 was willing to pay the costs to upgrade Verizon's own equipement to handle more traffic which it shouldn't have had to do because it is Verizon's customers who are requesting and already paying for the content in the first place.
Verizon is choosing to not upgrade its connections to shake down Netflix, and thus pass those costs on to Verizon customers. Period.
More like "Payola" than anything else. You subscibe to their service and then they are shaking down the content providers for bribes in order to give them higher speeds to you, while they are telling you that you are getting a certain speed and lying about the reasons why you are not getting content at the speeds you are paying for. Seems like the anology of radio stations taking bribes to feature certain content without informing the consumers of that relationship is most appropriate.
a serious competitive disadvantage to entities like Comcast
Oh no imagine what we would lose if Comcast and Verizon had to compete with real fiber service providers... all that bandwidth which now goes to aimlessly broadcast things like Golf TV or five hundred niche channels that make the companies more money than allowing you to do what it is you actually would want to do with the bandwidth.
Often this is called a "Monopoly" by the ill informed, but it's anything but that.
Was with you up until that point. Maybe when these "burdens" in return for a franchise were conceived they were considered onerous, but now with regulatory capture they really do result in local monopolies and are often in effect exclusive of competition. And basically all the companies have to do is pick and choose which communities they serve and then the burden is something like providing the local schools and the Town with free connections and maybe they will throw in some money for a local access cable tv station where the local politicians get to give some friends, family and their kids air time on local tv. All that "burden" is just passed along to the local subscribers as either extra fees or built into the cost of the service.
Hey we need to accomplish A Mission, what are all the ways we have done something like that before?
blah blah blah mission X, Y, Z blah blah blah.
Great! Some of those were great successes. Now let's brainstorm a completely new way of doing something like this that nobody has every thought of before....
So.... NASA isn't good at perfecting technology, making it efficient and cost effective because that is iterative and evolutionary, but if you need to dream up a new way to land on Mars or do a one-off science experiment, then they have the brain boxes to do it.
Personally I'd rather see NASA funding other people and institutions doing much of the science and setting some higher level requirements for systems and missions and seeing what different companies can come up with to meet those requirements. And then if it turns out that two cheap 50 ton launch vehicles are better than a 100 ton launch vehicle that costs ten or twenty times as much and another decade to develop, then adapt the mission requirements and assemble in orbit or figure something else out. Be nimble and adapt to what the technology makes possible, don't just dream about the impossible like it is some grudge match or some academic thesis where you have to be "original" to a fault.
They don't care about customers. Not making a profit is a ruse that many companies pull to avoid tax and be creative with accounting.
Bingo! I was looking to see if anyone else made this comment. As long as Amazon isn't just adding fat to the organization, but is actually reinvesting in growth which will otherwise be profitable, then not making a taxable profit is the best thing an American company could do with its money. Especially if they expect corporate tax relief in the future.
Nonsense. Read your Marx. Communism and Socialism don't even remotely resemble one another. The only reason people get them confused is that Communism, as defined by Marx, was the ideal human goal and has never actually existed.
Yes go read Marx. Marx described a transition to communism in which there would be a dictatorship of the proletariat... which in effect is still a dictatorship. So, technically you are correct in that the end-goal of communism was an idealistic society based on free-will and free-participation, but in order to get to that promised land Marx also described what was in effect a brutal transition period where force would be used in order to level the playing field and bring production up to levels that would eliminate scarcity. Laudable end goals in some respects, but terrible means which did in effect play out in countries claiming to be communist... countries which ended up stagnating in what was supposed to be the transition state of repressive dictatorship because they never got past scarcity of resources and because it is human nature for some people to want to hang on to power over others when they are given that power. Giving communism a pass simply by saying that the end goals justify the means is not realistic. Maybe those countries weren't in an end-state communist society, but some of them were at least initially following the Marx playbook for a transition to one.
In other threads I have been arguing along those lines in defense of libertarianism, which if implemented gradually and as something to be striven for in degree and not absolute or immediate, then I argue that moving towards libertarianism can lead to a more prosperous and freer society.
But communism doesn't call for a gradual change towards a communist society and doesn't really allow for a peaceful transition. It just says step 1 dictatorship of the proletariat (which in practical terms means the proletariat chooses representatives to act as dictators on their behalf), step 2 dictatorship declares end to need for dictatorship after redistribution of wealth and re-education of population and end of scarcity, step 3 communist utopia. Getting stuck at step 1 seems like it is always going to be the most likely outcome of that plan.
Compare that with Socialism and libertarianism which in practice can be implemented in more of a matter of degree of moving towards those respective value systems since they don't prescribe a means of transition. Where communism envisions a transition period of dictatorship which is fundamentally unlike the end state of a communist society that is envisioned.
Do libertarians believe that something other than physical force can be coercion? Historically and currently, it appears that individuals who can exert some form of coercion, economic, physical, or other, frequently will.
The issue of economic coercion is a tough one to reconcile. Because not all trades of goods and services are really free exchanges and could be considered more akin to physical force when one party is holding the other person's life or livelihood in the balance. I think there is a good argument to be made that someone not acting in good faith in the market, creating a monopoly on some essential good and service and then hording it and withholding it is an act of force in the similar way to the way that an embargo or trade sanction could be considered an act of war. In that way I think the government has a legitimate role to play in ensuring a well functioning free market with competition. So I fully support antitrust laws and it is one area where I wish the government were more active in breaking up (or otherwise restricting when a break-up is not desirable) large companies which are exercising monopolies in essential goods and services.
But the there has to be some clear relationship to physical harm for economic "coercion" to be regulated and prohibited by the government. Simply offering someone a really high salary could be considered economic coercion, but as long as there is a plentiful job market and there is no other threat associated with that offer, then that is a willing transaction. The essential part of evaluating whether a market is free is whether the participants are willingly engaged in commerce. So, for instance I disagree with laws and regulators that tell individual farmers what they can and cannot grow on their land, but I see a legitimate role for government to try and keep large corporations from buying up too large a percentage of land so that they restrict production in order to raise prices.
But in that example the government should be focused on the return to a free market with competition rather than just shrugging and accepting the monopoly and using it as an opportunity to expand its own powers to regulate that market. Essentially using the growth of monopoly as a symbiotic excuse to grow government oversight and control rather than honestly seeking to restore more balanced free market conditions. I think that is where we are now. Government agencies are allowing corporations to grow too big and using those unhealthy market conditions to justify expanding their own powers rather than honestly trying to address the core problem of loss of competition in the marketplace. Put simply instead of creating barriers to entry for small businesses, government regulation should be focused on creating a steeper curve for the largest businesses.
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Net neutrality isn't about preventing different tiers of service either. It's about preventing businesses from colluding to distort the market with bribes and kickbacks by slowing and blocking competing business.
To me the bare minimum short of Net Neutrality would be requirements, like those imposed on Tobacco advertising, that Verizon FiOS and Comcast really suck for sites they choose to black ball. Something like making them display their connection speeds to other networks and which content is on those other networks on every single advertisement. Then people could really know what they were getting. Because right now I pay for something like 25M/25M and sometimes I get that and sometimes I don't. It depends on the site. So what I really want to know as a customer is what are the differences between Verizon FiOS and Comcast in their actual delivery times, not just what they say they are selling me.
If I can't rely on these companies to do their best not to screw me over depending on with whom I want to communicate, then I want to know exactly how they are screwing me over and not delivering on their promised speeds.
On the Western Values issue. I don't think the problem is that we are imposing our values on others. I think the problem is that we aren't even adequately promoting those values here at home. We end up calling for Democracy and Freedom in the rest of the world and then sending arms to whichever dictator and despot is the most willing to brutally suppress any groups that might threaten our foreign policy. Even when those groups are moderate groups simply looking for a more equitable system of government in their own country. And our foreign policy is based not on the spread of freedom and democracy around the world, but based on securing foreign trade and foreign resources for very short term and short sighted economic purposes. If we truly believe that more representative systems of government and more freedom and liberty should be the goal for a more prosperous, equitable and free world, then we should act accordingly. I believe the ideas of liberty and democracy are ideas worth spreading and supporting.
I didn't say I had any trouble with the Internet, just with Netflix. Did you try Netflix on Tuesday evening? Also, from your name it appears you are in Oregon and I am in Massachusetts.
Exactly, "Linux on the Desktop" is called Chrome or Android and the "desktop" is wherever we are instead of a jumble of wires connected to a monitor. Desktops are a shrinking niche market. Otherwise Ubuntu or the like are great for desktops and laptops. Better than Windows in many respects. I haven't had problems like in the past for half a decade or more.
You forgot the most important reason. They are trying to degrade a competitor's service in order to promote their own. Both Comcast and Verizon compete directly with Netflix. Last night I was able to watch Verizon channels on my tablet just fine, but Netflix wasn't working at all.
Funny.... My Netflix was actually throttled pretty badly last night by Verizon and I was wondering what Netflix did to piss off Verizon. Now I guess I have the answer.
The "Here I am" message is insufficient for coordinating between vehicles. And as I mentioned localization using GPS, even differential GPS, is not reliable enough or fail safe enough for collision avoidance. ... Because some percentage of the time cars will be giving you bogus location messages.
At some point message protocols for coordinating actions between vehicles does make sense. In addition to highway drafting, vehicles could use some protocol to more efficiently merge or change lanes. I just don't see transmitting absolute position and velocity being something good to base a system around.
Autonomous vehicles need to be allowed to get established without V2V. As they are doing now. Don't hobble them by making them rely on a poorly conceived notion.
Getting to a fail safe V2V for Here I Am messages is a very steep and expensive curve compared to a camera and proximity sensor based system which would be more closely following Moore's law.
I think the V2V proposal should be scrapped altogether. It would take decades to implement, be very expensive (at hundreds of dollars per car) and it won't actually make cars safer compared with relatively simpler collision avoidance using cameras and other relatively cheap proximity sensors that don't rely on everyone else having functioning V2V systems in their car.
Autonomous cars have cameras and other fail safe sensors they can rely on. GPS is for navigational way points and route planning. Just getting a signal from another car that it is at a certain position is not a sufficient replacement for actually seeing that car with a camera. In all cases I would program that car to trust the camera and distrust the V2V and if it didn't have a camera then the car should stop as safely as it can and not continue to try and drive automatically. GPS is better for navigational way points where precision on the scale of feet and inches is not as important. For collision avoidance in close proximity you want to rely on sensors.
Not a technical decision, but greed driven decision.
Also how is it that L3 can deliver the data to Verizon, but Verizon is just somehow incapable of passing it along to their customers? The answer is that it is not a techn
It always has before.
And Verizon is a backbone provider in their own right, not just a local ISP.
Again I am not sure why I am feeding a troll, but you seem to be in a gang of trolls. So sure... if we were talking about L3 sending data to Verizon that Verizon then had to ship across its own backbone then you would have a point. But in this case L3 is acting as the long haul backbone provider and all Verizon has to do is deliver the packets to the local customers that requested the data. Verizon is already charging its customers for the bandwidth, the only issue here is that they are choosing to not to deliver on that promise in order to try and shake down Netflix and by extension Verizons own customers for more money. This is a fraudulent business practice pure and simple. Enron would be proud.
Netflix has the ability to fix it, though... If their software would tell all the clients to upload random junk to some random Netflix servers (preferably UDP, so the server doesn't even have to really exist), even when idle and not watching videos, they could move Level3's ratios back to even up/down distribution, and really punish the local ISPs who claim they want even up/down peering, at the same time.
Yes, okay. That is a funny thought experiment, but Verizon isn't actually confused about the fact that as a local ISP Verizon customers are the ones actually requesting netflix video so the concept of peering traffic "parity" does not apply to local ISPs connecting to backbone providers.
Naturally, Level3 is all in a huff about Verizon trying to fuck with their revenue stream.
And naturally Verizon customers are all in a huff about Verizon trying to charge them twice for bandwidth they aren't receiving.
traffic parity with Verizon
Traffic "parity" is only relevant when you are talking about backbone Internet providers providing alternative routes in order to help make the Internet routing more robust. Basically an I'll scratch your back and you scratch my back mutually beneficial scenario where having two equal backbone Internet partners is more robust than having just one route over a long haul network. So for instance having a peering agreement with a company that has a wire from LA to Boston so that if your LA to Boston wire goes down, then your traffic can still get through.
But when you are talking about last-mile customers who are the ones initiating the requests for content, then peering is not about traffic parity, it is about providing your customers with the bandwidth to the content they want. As long as L3 is willing to provide adequate bandwidth connections to Verizon's networks in the local metropolitan areas, then they are fulfilling their end of the bargain as a backbone provider peering with a local ISP.
Sure, if L3 was just saying they were going to dump all the Internet Traffic destined for the East Coast in LA and Verizon could deal with getting it across the country, then that wouldn't fly. But as far as I know L3 is ready willing and able to send all the traffic across the country and put it as geographically close to the Verizon customers who are requesting the content as Verizon will allow. But it is Verizon simply saying they won't allow L3 to increase the bandwidth to Verizon Customers until Verizon gets a bigger cut of the action.
So, Verizon would have plenty of transit capacity if it was spread more evenly across all the peering Verizon has.
Transit capacity is irrelevant. L3 is a backbone Internet provider. They have plenty of bandwidth to get all the packets to Verizon's networks in the areas Verizon serves. Verizon is just unwilling to provide their own Verizon customers with the bandwidth they require to access the content they want.
I understand just fine. That's why I know better than most that what you are saying is a load of complete and utter crap deserving of contempt. Data coming from level 3 is being requested by Verizon Customers. Verizon isn't acting as a transit network unless they want to, so peering is just about getting Verizon customers the data they are requesting. Level 3 would gladly peer with Verizon in every metropolitan area in which they operate at very high speeds. Verizon is choosing not to.
and (who knows) pending upgrade.
I bet Verizon knows. ;) Pending an upgrade....Ya right, more like pending a nice fat check from Netlfix or L3
That is a load of horseshit!
Or let me be clear. That is a load of horeshit technobabble meant to obfuscate and mislead. Level 3 was pretty clear the other day when they offered to spend a few thousand dollars to upgrade their links to Verizon. Level 3 is a backbone Internet provider. There is no reason that any link between it and another network should remain saturated if both sides are acting in good faith to serve their respective customers, especially when L3 was willing to pay the costs to upgrade Verizon's own equipement to handle more traffic which it shouldn't have had to do because it is Verizon's customers who are requesting and already paying for the content in the first place.
Verizon is choosing to not upgrade its connections to shake down Netflix, and thus pass those costs on to Verizon customers. Period.
More like "Payola" than anything else. You subscibe to their service and then they are shaking down the content providers for bribes in order to give them higher speeds to you, while they are telling you that you are getting a certain speed and lying about the reasons why you are not getting content at the speeds you are paying for. Seems like the anology of radio stations taking bribes to feature certain content without informing the consumers of that relationship is most appropriate.
a serious competitive disadvantage to entities like Comcast
Oh no imagine what we would lose if Comcast and Verizon had to compete with real fiber service providers... all that bandwidth which now goes to aimlessly broadcast things like Golf TV or five hundred niche channels that make the companies more money than allowing you to do what it is you actually would want to do with the bandwidth.
Often this is called a "Monopoly" by the ill informed, but it's anything but that.
Was with you up until that point. Maybe when these "burdens" in return for a franchise were conceived they were considered onerous, but now with regulatory capture they really do result in local monopolies and are often in effect exclusive of competition. And basically all the companies have to do is pick and choose which communities they serve and then the burden is something like providing the local schools and the Town with free connections and maybe they will throw in some money for a local access cable tv station where the local politicians get to give some friends, family and their kids air time on local tv. All that "burden" is just passed along to the local subscribers as either extra fees or built into the cost of the service.
Hey we need to accomplish A Mission, what are all the ways we have done something like that before? blah blah blah mission X, Y, Z blah blah blah. Great! Some of those were great successes. Now let's brainstorm a completely new way of doing something like this that nobody has every thought of before....
So.... NASA isn't good at perfecting technology, making it efficient and cost effective because that is iterative and evolutionary, but if you need to dream up a new way to land on Mars or do a one-off science experiment, then they have the brain boxes to do it.
Personally I'd rather see NASA funding other people and institutions doing much of the science and setting some higher level requirements for systems and missions and seeing what different companies can come up with to meet those requirements. And then if it turns out that two cheap 50 ton launch vehicles are better than a 100 ton launch vehicle that costs ten or twenty times as much and another decade to develop, then adapt the mission requirements and assemble in orbit or figure something else out. Be nimble and adapt to what the technology makes possible, don't just dream about the impossible like it is some grudge match or some academic thesis where you have to be "original" to a fault.
They don't care about customers. Not making a profit is a ruse that many companies pull to avoid tax and be creative with accounting.
Bingo! I was looking to see if anyone else made this comment. As long as Amazon isn't just adding fat to the organization, but is actually reinvesting in growth which will otherwise be profitable, then not making a taxable profit is the best thing an American company could do with its money. Especially if they expect corporate tax relief in the future.
Nonsense. Read your Marx. Communism and Socialism don't even remotely resemble one another. The only reason people get them confused is that Communism, as defined by Marx, was the ideal human goal and has never actually existed.
Yes go read Marx. Marx described a transition to communism in which there would be a dictatorship of the proletariat... which in effect is still a dictatorship. So, technically you are correct in that the end-goal of communism was an idealistic society based on free-will and free-participation, but in order to get to that promised land Marx also described what was in effect a brutal transition period where force would be used in order to level the playing field and bring production up to levels that would eliminate scarcity. Laudable end goals in some respects, but terrible means which did in effect play out in countries claiming to be communist... countries which ended up stagnating in what was supposed to be the transition state of repressive dictatorship because they never got past scarcity of resources and because it is human nature for some people to want to hang on to power over others when they are given that power. Giving communism a pass simply by saying that the end goals justify the means is not realistic. Maybe those countries weren't in an end-state communist society, but some of them were at least initially following the Marx playbook for a transition to one.
In other threads I have been arguing along those lines in defense of libertarianism, which if implemented gradually and as something to be striven for in degree and not absolute or immediate, then I argue that moving towards libertarianism can lead to a more prosperous and freer society.
But communism doesn't call for a gradual change towards a communist society and doesn't really allow for a peaceful transition. It just says step 1 dictatorship of the proletariat (which in practical terms means the proletariat chooses representatives to act as dictators on their behalf), step 2 dictatorship declares end to need for dictatorship after redistribution of wealth and re-education of population and end of scarcity, step 3 communist utopia. Getting stuck at step 1 seems like it is always going to be the most likely outcome of that plan.
Compare that with Socialism and libertarianism which in practice can be implemented in more of a matter of degree of moving towards those respective value systems since they don't prescribe a means of transition. Where communism envisions a transition period of dictatorship which is fundamentally unlike the end state of a communist society that is envisioned.
Do libertarians believe that something other than physical force can be coercion? Historically and currently, it appears that individuals who can exert some form of coercion, economic, physical, or other, frequently will.
The issue of economic coercion is a tough one to reconcile. Because not all trades of goods and services are really free exchanges and could be considered more akin to physical force when one party is holding the other person's life or livelihood in the balance. I think there is a good argument to be made that someone not acting in good faith in the market, creating a monopoly on some essential good and service and then hording it and withholding it is an act of force in the similar way to the way that an embargo or trade sanction could be considered an act of war. In that way I think the government has a legitimate role to play in ensuring a well functioning free market with competition. So I fully support antitrust laws and it is one area where I wish the government were more active in breaking up (or otherwise restricting when a break-up is not desirable) large companies which are exercising monopolies in essential goods and services.
But the there has to be some clear relationship to physical harm for economic "coercion" to be regulated and prohibited by the government. Simply offering someone a really high salary could be considered economic coercion, but as long as there is a plentiful job market and there is no other threat associated with that offer, then that is a willing transaction. The essential part of evaluating whether a market is free is whether the participants are willingly engaged in commerce. So, for instance I disagree with laws and regulators that tell individual farmers what they can and cannot grow on their land, but I see a legitimate role for government to try and keep large corporations from buying up too large a percentage of land so that they restrict production in order to raise prices.
But in that example the government should be focused on the return to a free market with competition rather than just shrugging and accepting the monopoly and using it as an opportunity to expand its own powers to regulate that market. Essentially using the growth of monopoly as a symbiotic excuse to grow government oversight and control rather than honestly seeking to restore more balanced free market conditions. I think that is where we are now. Government agencies are allowing corporations to grow too big and using those unhealthy market conditions to justify expanding their own powers rather than honestly trying to address the core problem of loss of competition in the marketplace. Put simply instead of creating barriers to entry for small businesses, government regulation should be focused on creating a steeper curve for the largest businesses.