Even better, they could refund taxes to their local taxpayer base and allow them to spend their money on things that each family or households needs...
More money on education? When has that made a bit of difference?
Fjord: I completely agree. I believe kids will always do some aggressive sports, which is why I sell skateboards, high end BMX, and paintball. If one is slow, one of the others will be busy...
The margins in video games are terrible, and video games are outdated too quickly. With most skate and BMX and paintball products, I can keep them on the shelf at full price for almost a year. With video games, I've seen some go on clearance just 3 months later! OUCH.
As a retail store, I generally have more control over how the products change than any single consumer. When people complain about a product, I let the distributor or manufacturer know IMMEDIATELY. If I don't notice a change, I find other retail stores (competitors) and ask them if they're having similar issues, and if they are, ask them to complain as well.
Almost every complaint I've had in the past 6 months has been addressed pretty quick. But I would not complain if I didn't hear it from my customer base.
Blockbuster is doing the right thing in my opinion, but I doubt many of us here have complained to the retail stores about region encoding. Bitching and moaning at slashdot isn't a very good start. Tell Blockbuster (and Wal*Mart and Target and Borders and Tower) that you hate region encoding. Enough people complaining WILL make a difference!
I've even seen end customers bitch to the distributors and manufacturers to no avail, because most retail customers don't buy direct. I'm the customer of the distributor and they do listen.
I was just talking to my partners in a retail store we own about this fear... We provide skateboards, paintball supplies, and BMX equipment -- all mostly outdoor sport.
We've seen sales in these markets slide a bit (of course helped by Internet companies) which I can partially attest to the fact that a lot of our regulars spend much of their afternoons with video game systems rather than going outside.
As each year progresses, I see more and more fat and lethargic kids who have less and less desire to really do anything. I remember my days (I'm 30) of video games back with Atari and Intellivision and Coleco, and they rarely occupied more than an hour an evening, if that. Sleepovers might be all night of video gaming, but those were rare too. We preferred skateboarding or laser tag in the evenings.
My thought the other day was that we'd soon see corporations sponsoring video game teams like my shop sponsors skate, BMX, and paint teams. This article brings that fear to fruition.
Of course, this is what the market wants, so I support the decisions that those people make, even if I disagree with the general movement. I just hate seeing kids en masse dropping any kind of athletic activity because of laziness. New video games ARE cool looking, but nothing woos the young ladies better than extreme sports!
Sure. It is a bit convoluted (as every thing in a free market is, but the fact is that even with huge complexities, the system works great).
If you purchase a Coca Cola can for 50 cents, you're buying maybe 2 cents in aluminum, 2 cents in water, and 1 cent in sugar and flavorings. I am making these figures up, but if you research it (as I have in the past) less than 5 cents of a can of Coca Cola or Pepsi goes to actual materials.
Another nickel is cost of distribution. It doesn't cost much to distribute soda.
20 cents goes to retail store profit. The store makes more, generally, per can than the manufacturer. This is true of almost every retail item imaginable (commodity items), not esoteric items (iPods, etc).
This leaves you with about 20 cents that hasn't gone into material, distribution, or retail end profit. With the 20 cents, the Coca Cola company goes to market their product. Advertising for any commodity is by far the biggest cost. Producing a commercial with average actors is "cheap" but does not bring in as much business as producing a commercial with Britney, Jacko, or whoever the big star is. If Britney drinks it, her fans might drink it. Even if that fan did not buy her music, but instead only heard it on the radio, or stole a copy via the Internet.
Britney makes out. She could sell fewer albums for profit, lose more albums to Internet piracy, and still make the money she wants.
If her albums sales plummet, but her piracy levels sky rocket, she will still be a big expense for commercialization of something (Rolling Stone cover? Pepsi ad? McDonald's happy meal figurine?) that will cost end consumers money, even consumers who just like said product, but not said entertainer.
So lets say last year she made $20 million, half from consumer music sales, half from licensing her music. If consumer music sales drop to $5 million, but her listener base sky rockets because of radio and Internet, she may still be worth $10 million for licensing, maybe even more. Pepsi and Coke may battle for her to be their spokesperson, and even without a gauge of music sales anymore, they can gauge how popular she is through Internet downloads, radio station requests, poster sales, etc.
Her licensing costs will go up. She wants $20 million this year too. CD sales are down, so where does she make it up? Her value won't go down, she is still loved by millions, maybe more now that her music is "free" for some of them.
The free market's law of supply and demand is not disturbed. Not by DMCA, copyright, patent laws, regulatory fees, tariffs, taxes, or any government mechanism. Her value won't change unless the demand for her product changes. If supply goes up and price goes down, she will still find a way to make $20 million by billing it to a group of people who don't really notice that the 2 cents of their Cola can goes to Britney.
So you're saying that the only "good" music is music that you like? This is why socialism fails: it addresses only the needs of the majority, and fails to realize the needs of the minority.
I prefer indie music and power punk over mainsteam pop rock, but I can still find good music. I'm happy to pay $18, even though I know the bands I like only get about $5 of it. I own a music store, I pay around $8 for a CD, and my customers are happy to pay $15 for that same CD. I'm not gouging anyone, and when people complain about the music prices, it is few and far between.
If the majority of this country likes to pay $18 for what I consider "bad" music, it still is a huge incentive to many people to try to offer that music. If someone offers you a hit record in exchange for your soul, few would pass up the offer, even if it meant you'd only end up with 2% of the gross income on the music you have a hand in creating.
Creating music-for-the-masses is a huge risk. Few productions succeed. Paying for the losers means higher prices, and it seems that the masses are fine with that.
What my original post gets at is that you will NEVER stop paying $18 a CD for 10 tracks. Instead, some day (maybe sooner than we realize) we will still subsidize what we consider bad music through increased costs elsewhere.
Before the Internet, the average listener of Britney-like pop paid for that music directly. In the future, with rampant piracy, even slashdotters will pay for Britney pop through higher movie costs, higher costs for consumer goods (because of higher advertising prices to license said "bad" music), and other higher costs. The price to produce this music will shift even more onto the average consumer rather than the people listening to the music.
I would music rather see the Internet music sharing phenomenon go away, so that the people who want to listen to crap will go back to paying for it, instead of my cost of living going up to subsidize music I'll rarely listen to.
Of course, this is why it is important to know what you buy. I refuse to drink Coke anymore (I now drink Diet Rite/RC products or even generic soda) because Coke subsidizes what I consider bad music. I rarely eat at major chain restaurants because they subsidize lifestyles I want to have nothing to do with. It is impossible to know what every product subsidizes, but every little bit of knowledge helps.
If you are drinking a ton of Coke, or eating at McDonald's every day, you're now the one paying for Britney pop for the 14 year old girls.
No matter how much something is regulated (ie copyright), the laws of supply and demand still operate, albeit partially shaken up during the initial regulatory process.
When music is hard to get (low supply) and people want it (demand goes up) the price goes up. Look at live music back in the time of Bach or Beethoven. The average person could not afford it -- so only the rich had the best music. The poor had their "opera houses" that were not very safe and did not sound very good.
When music started to get more accessible (records and then tapes) and cheaper, supply went up, and demand went down, so the price went down.
As music became popularized through more radio productions and later television productions (MTV, etc), the supply went way up, the demand went way up, so the prices stayed consistent. The record labels charged what people were willing to pay. If the people were not willing to pay $18 for a CD, the prices would have come DOWN (supply up, demand down, prices drop).
Now we have the Internet. Supply goes up immensely, and demand to pay $18 a CD goes away. Therefore demand has dropped at that price, so the price has basically dropped. Some people pay $18, some people want it for free. Of course the record labels earn "less" per person per song. But the distribution cycle is so different, therefore you have to really look at the supply and demand issues differently.
If the incentive to produce "good" music goes down (less profit), then "good" music will diminish. As there is less and less "good" music, the supply will go down. Demand for "good" music will go up. People who are taking music for free will have less and less music to take for free. The free market over rides copyright and other bad laws by removing the supply of good music, as the incentive to profit is lost.
This is what will happen over time. Music production houses will find that they can make more money selling their popular tunes to TV commercials, movies soundtracks, nightclubs, and other places. Those songs will eventually be thrown into the virtual "public domain" of the Internet, but the cost to produce the music will be a function of the price of a movie, the cost to enter a nightclub, or the cost of a shampoo or fragrance or whatever it is that uses the song for its background music in a commercial.
You can regulate, you can mandate, you can tax. But you can't run from the rules of supply and demand.
I'm not trying to be right:) I'm just trying to find out what makes the most sense for me, and bang my opinions against those who agree and disagree. I love healthy debates, even Devil's advocate ones.
I'd love to continue this "debate/sharing" session -- here on slashdot, in private e-mail, or on a forum like anti-state.com to try to get further through this topic. It isn't one I've spent much time researching, but it is definitely an important one.
If you're interested in continuing it, drop me an e-mail or reply here!
A corporation is a group of individuals. They are never bad nor good. I own corporations. I deal with corporations. I make sure I don't deal with corporations I believe are not interested in the mutual gain of my corporation as well as theirs.
Why would you go to a corporation you don't have familiarity with? Why wouldn't you go out and reseach past inventors' experiences with a corporation before going and making contact with them about your idea?
Corporations are not bad. People who go into dealings with people they don't know are stupid.
Public safety consideration? I'm sorry, but why do people keeping bringing this up???
Will your doctor prescribe you unsafe medication? Not if he might get sued (although tort law has destroyed a lot of this). Will your insurance company pay for medication that is unsafe? Not if they might get sued (again, tort law used to cover this). Will Walgreens or CVS sell you bad drugs? Not if they might get sued. Will ABC run a drug ad during Friends if its a bad drug?
Now, explain to me why government needs to protect the people from bad drugs.
I've posted in numerous slashdot replies in the past about the whole "interstate commerce" clause in the Constitution.
The "interstate commerce" clause had nothing to do with Congress or the federal government controlling how commerce is to be regulated or mandated or taxed. It strictly allowed Congress powers over any state or individual to make sure that commerce between the states went un-hindered. The founding fathers had realized that in order to promote competition within a state, there had to be the option to purchase an item from a person or entity in another state (or country). Congress was granted the power to make sure that no state could restrict or tax purchases from another state, hindering free trade.
The FDA is a bloated, grotesque organization that only exists today to help political cronies and friends of those in power. It does little to nothing to protect the average person, and has done more damage to people than helped.
It has withheld drugs from those who needed them, prevented doctors from making recommendations (who do you trust more with your health, your doctor or a bureaucrat?), and has created a red-tape system that makes it hard if not impossible to compete with the cartels that have the most power within the organization.
That was not the intent of the founding fathers, and should not be the desired organization for freedom-loving people.
Ahh, but that binding contract would be essentially impossible to write were it not for the patent system.
I hadn't thought of that. But now that I do think about it, I can see many ways that the binding contract would work.
When I want to rent a new commercial property, I enter into a binding contract with the landlord, showing my intent. I allow many "exit clauses" from this contract, but it is binding for all other circumstances. There is no federal law protecting the landlord or myself, other than tort law. Of course, tort itself has been destroyed from its original intentions.
The same is true with an idea. If I have an idea, I can go to two or three entrepreneurs. I can explain the idea in simple terms, and enter into an agreement with the one that is willing to take the risk and give me the most for my idea.
Maybe entrepreneur #1 hates the general idea and won't take the risk. Maybe #2 likes the general idea, but won't take the risk without me telling more. Maybe #3 likes the idea, and will take the risk but will offer me far less money than #2.
My options might be to offer #2 more thoughts on my idea (that is me taking a risk), but we'll create a contract binding him against stealing it. Tort law (if reformed to what it used to cover) would protect me. Or maybe I could go with #3, allowing him to take a bigger risk, but also get a bigger reward.
Patents to me seem silly. Tort law in a proper sense is all we really need.
First, you are correct on the "proving" idea -- I will refrain from using the word "prove" along with "economist." I should have said "proved to me" instead.
As for the pharmaceutical industry, it should be known at part of the high up-front cost is FDA regulation. I believe the FDA is unconstitutional, and could be better created as a free market Underwriter's Laboratory type corporation. Target won't sell a lamp unless its UL tested. Why would drugs be any different?
If a company creates a drug, tests that drug, and brings it to market first, it would also be in its best interest to create contracts with distribution companies that they would not sell a competitors' version for a period of time. This is the best way to protect the interest of the discoverer of said drug.
Making a drug is only the first step. Testing is very important. Target and Walgreens and CVS won't just sell every drug. Your doctor probably won't prescribe a drug unless they know it is safe. If the FDA was knocked out, and patents dissolved, the drug companies would still have many incentives to create new products -- even with the threat of competition more visible.
What is the cost of creating a drug? It is the cost of discovery, the cost of development, the cost of testing, the cost of FDA approval, and the cost of advertising. I wonder how much the last two parts are compared to the first steps.
I wish I could agree with you in accepting that patents help the individual, but in my experience, the process of getting a patent does not seem to make the benefit worth it.
An individual with an idea can't go very far unless they have entrepreneurship as well. If they don't have the drive to promote an idea, what good is the idea? A patent may offer them something to sell to a bigger corporation, much more can be done just by getting together with people who want to promote the idea for their own mutual gain.
If I invented a new idea, and I couldn't distribute it, I would still have the ability to find someone else who can. Entering into a binding contract, we could create a partnership (or corporation). Until that contract is issued, I wouldn't have to explain the idea or the secrets of the idea. A non-disclosure agreement and a binding contract are really all you need to protect the idea (as is obvious from one of the links I posted in my original message).
I believe this article is yet another nail in the coffin of the patent system. It is time to rethink the patent system. Economist Fritz Machlup has proven that patents do not entice corporations to develop new products; in fact, the "short-term advantage a company derives from developing a new product and being the first to put it on the market may be incentive enough."
Patents offer a authoritarian power to destroy competition, increase prices, and skew the relationship between research and creation by scaring off new ideas developed on old ones.
Your first sentence is completely correct. The rest is all wrong, IMHO.
Money itself never has to have value. Trade originally meant two persons exchanging something they have for something more valuable to them. If you have eggs, and I have dirt, I'll give you enough dirt to get eggs that are more valuable to me than the dirt. But you're getting dirt that is more valuable to you than the eggs.
As Rothbard opined in the link I posted, true money has a free market value that allows indirect bartering. It has a value that is ever changing based on each item you use it to "purchase." It may be 1 grain of gold for eggs today, but when eggs get rare, it may be 3 grains of gold for eggs tomorrow. That is the fantastic reason that gold is the ultimate exchange medium -- gold is rarely created and rarely destroyed enough to change the amount of gold available in the world. Even the gold rush itself didn't change the price of gold in the long run: in 1900, one ounce of gold bought you 300 loaves of bread. In the 70's, the same was true. Even today, one ounce of gold can buy you almost 300 loaves of bread. The dollar in 1900 bought you 15 loaves of bread. Today, it buys you about 1.
As money has progressed over the centuries, we have seen over and over again the same situation: money initially is a hard tangible rare asset (such as gold or silver, wood or even wheat). Private organizations take this rare tangible asset, store it, and issue a paper certificate for easier trade between two people. Any one person can bring that paper certificate for immediate withdrawal of the hard asset.
Over time, a government comes along and mandates that their populace use the government's own paper certificate. The government usually regulates all banks. Eventually, the banks are then controlled by a central bank (Federal Reserve Bank). And soon enough, government realizes it can make itself "free" money by printing more certificates than there is tangible assets to redeem.
Down the road, the government says that their money no longer needs to be burdened by the redepemption factor, and the new certificates become actual money, even though they are worthless. The said government prints more and more worthless "money," and by having conned the majority of the population, people believe that the paper certificates have value. In the short run, the paper does have value with other people, but in the long run, the paper "money" always ends up being worthless.
The American dollar may be the world standard today, but at the rate that the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Board has been printing money in the past 60 years, our dollar is worthless. It has devalued over 98% since 1914 when the FRB was created. Before that, our dollar held its value very well since the 1700's. Before 1914, our dollars were privately created and held by real individual banks. Today, our banks are all controlled by central banking. It's a monopoly cartel, not a competitive market.
Usually, when a government starts printing more and more fake money, the currency gets inflated, causing prices to go up. Luckily for the U.S., foreign governments have been taking our fake dollars out of circulation and storing them in their banks -- hiding the true inflationary rate (sometimes as high as 10% a year).
The scare for gold bugs such as myself is that China and other foreign banks may try to redeem those dollars in the near future for gold or euros or another "money" or hard money. Should that happen, nay, when that happens, our dollar will become worthless.
Gold has sky rocketed in recent years. If you actually take the value of gold from 1700 to 1914 versus how many dollars were in circulation, and the same value today, the true price of gold should be around $8000 an ounce, not $400 an ounce!
Electronic currency will be easier to manipulate, inflate, and destroy. I am a firm believer that we should return to a true money system -- a free market system where two persons trade items or services of value.
The most amazing book of all time about money is now available free on the internet. Please go here to read it. It is worth your time, and every last one of you will probably be scared out of your mind. I am, every time I read this "bible of money" by Murray Rothbard.
I can assure you that I (and everyone I know for that matter) have no intention of telling you what to do on your property as long as what you do stays on your property.
Nice try, but wrong. Zoning laws prevent me from doing what I want to do on my property. I can't paint my house pink in many areas. I can't even run a store out of my house in most towns. That's the many telling me what to do. It is wrong.
Then you're advocating that we just give 90% of our power away to corporations, then, right? Well, that's different, then.
No, I'm advocating returning those rights to the people, where they belong.
If I want to put a substance in my body, that is between me and my doctor (if I involve a doctor), not the FDA.
If I want to try to get a loan from a private individual or corporation, I should be do it on my merit, not on what Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac dictate. I am a minority -- if a bank refuses to give me money because of that, it is no one's business. I'll go find another bank or source of money.
If I want to have a rule that no women or left handed people are allowed in my restaurant, it is my property, not yours. If you disagree, open a restaurant open to all (you'll probably do better).
If I want to import or export steel, no one should tariff me or tax me for it.
All of these issues are regulated by government. Go to mises.org for two hours. Read some of the introductory articles. It is minded changing. Try it.
Authoritarian systems fail. They cost too much, they don't offer any sense of freedom to the slaves they capture. Taxation = theft. Conscription = slavery. Enough said.
How many people watch mandatory cable public access? Few. Maybe none on some shows. So basically we pay (in increased cable costs) for information few want. To me that is idiotic. The expense of many for the profit of a few.
As for interference, who says there WILL be interference? If a state runs its own version of the FCC, you can bet that it will be run better than the federal. Even better, why can't there be a free market corporation such as the UL that handles bandwidth? It's crazy to think that there isn't a free market solution. No one has the chance to make one up.
Everything the FCC does is for the benefit of a select few political cronies. Everything. I read the FCC mandates -- all of them. Go check them out at fcc.org and find me one that actually doesn't help some political friend.
Foolish? Corporations are owned by people. Those owners are allowed to look at the books. If the owners aren't, why did they invest? Duh.
The government doesn't allow us to look at any of its secrets. The PATRIOT Act has now cemented that ability. Freedom of Information Act requests go unanswered all the time.
If a corporation you own stock in doesn't give you an answer, you can sell your stock. You can stop buying their product. You can offer a better product at a better value. You can't do that with government mandates and regulations.
It seems to me that it is you, sir, who are foolish. You believe you can't control big business, but you can control government. That is definitely and obviously not the case.
The FCC spends more time infringing on the God-given (inherent) right to free speech than it does on anything else. Our Constitution vehemently restricts Congress from making "any law" that infringes on our inherent right to free speech.
The FCC is the federal government. It can not and should not have any authority to regulate speech. Communications are speech. If the States want to regulate speech, they should run their own seperate FCC type organization. I'd move to a State that didn't regulate it.
The Constitution does offer Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, in Article I, Section 8. But it was never meant to overstep the basic regulation of said commerce. Today, the federal government puts gun laws in the "interstate commerce" area. It regulates toilet sizes because toilets get shipped between States. It even found ways to regulate violence against spouses using "interstate commerce" (which was later struck down as unconstitutional, but it took a while!).
So you're telling me that the satellite providers were squashed by cable? I don't think so. The infrastructure was paid by excessively high prices due to the monopolization. You can roll out individual infrastructure using newer technology for a fraction of the old cable costs. I know, I own a cabling company. The days of doing it Lucent's way are over.
As for water -- no I don't want necessarily two water providers, I just want it privatized and not run by city unions. John Stossel from ABC's 20/20 did a report on it in "Mr Stossel Goes to Washington" which is available on video. He found that in many towns that privatized the water business, they saved money and had a better product. See http://secure.mediaresearch.org/fmp/medianomics/20 01/kd20010131.html for details.
What government does, it does poorly. Private roads are better maintained and last longer and cost less than public roads. Private loans are made to better candidates with the ability to pay that public loans (look at the default rates!). Private schooling offers a more complete education than public schooling at a lower price. Private health care had a better price and better coverage before government enforced mandatory coverage in the HMO Act of 1974.
The list goes on and on.
I am not a utopian, I just want the freedom to be responsible for my own mistakes and successes. I do not want to pay for your mistakes, and I don't want a piece of your successes.
Government does not give you power over your life. It gives you power over my life. I refuse. By God or by Natural Right, you have no power to control me on my property. On your property, you can tell me to shut up. You can take away my guns. You can search my person. But on my property, my rights should never be lessened or withered.
The rich and powerful are usually there because government mandated they be there. I'm not saying get rid of government, I'm saying get rid of 90% of the federal government.
If your State wants to have health care, let them! The Constitution's 9th and 10th Amendments allow the people and the States to decide on issues not enumerated to the federal government. If I disagree with that issue, I can vote with my feet. With the federal government taking over many responsibilities delegated to the State or the people, I can't vote with my feet.
SpaceJunkie: I'll refrain from the ad hominems if it makes my case stand stronger.
As for Linux, Open Software, etc, I'm sure people sling mud within those circles also, but I purposely avoid those conversations. I like Linux as much as the next guy, but I have never found any way for me to pay my bills by supporting the software. The market has picked its current winner. When Linux matures, it will probably offer a better product than Windows, and MS will fall.
In terms of "child labor," it is a fallacy that child labor is bad. In countries that children are abused into labor, those countries are socialist or communist. It is not the labor that is bad, but the government (again!)
Read these amazing articles: http://www.fff.org/freedom/0999f.asp h ttp://www.fff.org/freedom/1099e.asp http://www.mi ses.org/fullstory.asp?control=342 http://www.fff. org/freedom/fd0210d.asp
They show why child labor is, in fact, good. Societies that have governments that mismanage "public money" always create the need for really cheap labor. The U.S. doesn't have high wages because of unions and government, we have high wages because we offer a great service with high quality.
You've been responding with "reasonable" responses, but who are you quoting? Please, throw some links or bibliographical information. If you're just quoting what makes sense, without any backup, I can't just go and believe your side of the issue.
I had a public education, but I was a deficient student (average of a D grade). I aced the SAT and ACTs, and had performed amazingly well on almost every class quiz and test I took, but we aren't graded on knowledge, we're graded on "class participation" and "homework evaluations." If I know the topic, why did I get a D in the Calculus? In my opinion, we can save public education in one simple step: Let teachers teach, and then bring on third party graders. The graders should be free market companies. They can issue tests. You can have the Jones Aptitude Test for Math, and the Peterson Math Qualification Test. Let students and parents decide what tests to take. Let teachers know what they should train students.
In these situations, bad teachers would go away. There is no reason to have the grade structure based on age -- if you know the Calculus at 10, you should be able to take that test. If you're 18 and don't understand Algebra, just don't take that test.
No one will back off of anything. Government intervention makes it difficult for us to fight "bad" corporations because it is difficult or impossible to enter that market.
I believe I can offer a better cable TV service, but I am not allowed to offer it in my neighborhood. I _KNOW_ of companies that can offer better water service to my town, but my city doesn't allow it.
Competition is all you need to throw out the bad companise. Regulation only works to create new monopolies at the expense of everyone.
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Even better, they could refund taxes to their local taxpayer base and allow them to spend their money on things that each family or households needs...
More money on education? When has that made a bit of difference?
Fjord: I completely agree. I believe kids will always do some aggressive sports, which is why I sell skateboards, high end BMX, and paintball. If one is slow, one of the others will be busy...
The margins in video games are terrible, and video games are outdated too quickly. With most skate and BMX and paintball products, I can keep them on the shelf at full price for almost a year. With video games, I've seen some go on clearance just 3 months later! OUCH.
As a retail store, I generally have more control over how the products change than any single consumer. When people complain about a product, I let the distributor or manufacturer know IMMEDIATELY. If I don't notice a change, I find other retail stores (competitors) and ask them if they're having similar issues, and if they are, ask them to complain as well.
Almost every complaint I've had in the past 6 months has been addressed pretty quick. But I would not complain if I didn't hear it from my customer base.
Blockbuster is doing the right thing in my opinion, but I doubt many of us here have complained to the retail stores about region encoding. Bitching and moaning at slashdot isn't a very good start. Tell Blockbuster (and Wal*Mart and Target and Borders and Tower) that you hate region encoding. Enough people complaining WILL make a difference!
I've even seen end customers bitch to the distributors and manufacturers to no avail, because most retail customers don't buy direct. I'm the customer of the distributor and they do listen.
I was just talking to my partners in a retail store we own about this fear... We provide skateboards, paintball supplies, and BMX equipment -- all mostly outdoor sport.
We've seen sales in these markets slide a bit (of course helped by Internet companies) which I can partially attest to the fact that a lot of our regulars spend much of their afternoons with video game systems rather than going outside.
As each year progresses, I see more and more fat and lethargic kids who have less and less desire to really do anything. I remember my days (I'm 30) of video games back with Atari and Intellivision and Coleco, and they rarely occupied more than an hour an evening, if that. Sleepovers might be all night of video gaming, but those were rare too. We preferred skateboarding or laser tag in the evenings.
My thought the other day was that we'd soon see corporations sponsoring video game teams like my shop sponsors skate, BMX, and paint teams. This article brings that fear to fruition.
Of course, this is what the market wants, so I support the decisions that those people make, even if I disagree with the general movement. I just hate seeing kids en masse dropping any kind of athletic activity because of laziness. New video games ARE cool looking, but nothing woos the young ladies better than extreme sports!
Sure. It is a bit convoluted (as every thing in a free market is, but the fact is that even with huge complexities, the system works great).
If you purchase a Coca Cola can for 50 cents, you're buying maybe 2 cents in aluminum, 2 cents in water, and 1 cent in sugar and flavorings. I am making these figures up, but if you research it (as I have in the past) less than 5 cents of a can of Coca Cola or Pepsi goes to actual materials.
Another nickel is cost of distribution. It doesn't cost much to distribute soda.
20 cents goes to retail store profit. The store makes more, generally, per can than the manufacturer. This is true of almost every retail item imaginable (commodity items), not esoteric items (iPods, etc).
This leaves you with about 20 cents that hasn't gone into material, distribution, or retail end profit. With the 20 cents, the Coca Cola company goes to market their product. Advertising for any commodity is by far the biggest cost. Producing a commercial with average actors is "cheap" but does not bring in as much business as producing a commercial with Britney, Jacko, or whoever the big star is. If Britney drinks it, her fans might drink it. Even if that fan did not buy her music, but instead only heard it on the radio, or stole a copy via the Internet.
Britney makes out. She could sell fewer albums for profit, lose more albums to Internet piracy, and still make the money she wants.
If her albums sales plummet, but her piracy levels sky rocket, she will still be a big expense for commercialization of something (Rolling Stone cover? Pepsi ad? McDonald's happy meal figurine?) that will cost end consumers money, even consumers who just like said product, but not said entertainer.
So lets say last year she made $20 million, half from consumer music sales, half from licensing her music. If consumer music sales drop to $5 million, but her listener base sky rockets because of radio and Internet, she may still be worth $10 million for licensing, maybe even more. Pepsi and Coke may battle for her to be their spokesperson, and even without a gauge of music sales anymore, they can gauge how popular she is through Internet downloads, radio station requests, poster sales, etc.
Her licensing costs will go up. She wants $20 million this year too. CD sales are down, so where does she make it up? Her value won't go down, she is still loved by millions, maybe more now that her music is "free" for some of them.
The free market's law of supply and demand is not disturbed. Not by DMCA, copyright, patent laws, regulatory fees, tariffs, taxes, or any government mechanism. Her value won't change unless the demand for her product changes. If supply goes up and price goes down, she will still find a way to make $20 million by billing it to a group of people who don't really notice that the 2 cents of their Cola can goes to Britney.
So you're saying that the only "good" music is music that you like? This is why socialism fails: it addresses only the needs of the majority, and fails to realize the needs of the minority.
I prefer indie music and power punk over mainsteam pop rock, but I can still find good music. I'm happy to pay $18, even though I know the bands I like only get about $5 of it. I own a music store, I pay around $8 for a CD, and my customers are happy to pay $15 for that same CD. I'm not gouging anyone, and when people complain about the music prices, it is few and far between.
If the majority of this country likes to pay $18 for what I consider "bad" music, it still is a huge incentive to many people to try to offer that music. If someone offers you a hit record in exchange for your soul, few would pass up the offer, even if it meant you'd only end up with 2% of the gross income on the music you have a hand in creating.
Creating music-for-the-masses is a huge risk. Few productions succeed. Paying for the losers means higher prices, and it seems that the masses are fine with that.
What my original post gets at is that you will NEVER stop paying $18 a CD for 10 tracks. Instead, some day (maybe sooner than we realize) we will still subsidize what we consider bad music through increased costs elsewhere.
Before the Internet, the average listener of Britney-like pop paid for that music directly. In the future, with rampant piracy, even slashdotters will pay for Britney pop through higher movie costs, higher costs for consumer goods (because of higher advertising prices to license said "bad" music), and other higher costs. The price to produce this music will shift even more onto the average consumer rather than the people listening to the music.
I would music rather see the Internet music sharing phenomenon go away, so that the people who want to listen to crap will go back to paying for it, instead of my cost of living going up to subsidize music I'll rarely listen to.
Of course, this is why it is important to know what you buy. I refuse to drink Coke anymore (I now drink Diet Rite/RC products or even generic soda) because Coke subsidizes what I consider bad music. I rarely eat at major chain restaurants because they subsidize lifestyles I want to have nothing to do with. It is impossible to know what every product subsidizes, but every little bit of knowledge helps.
If you are drinking a ton of Coke, or eating at McDonald's every day, you're now the one paying for Britney pop for the 14 year old girls.
No matter how much something is regulated (ie copyright), the laws of supply and demand still operate, albeit partially shaken up during the initial regulatory process.
When music is hard to get (low supply) and people want it (demand goes up) the price goes up. Look at live music back in the time of Bach or Beethoven. The average person could not afford it -- so only the rich had the best music. The poor had their "opera houses" that were not very safe and did not sound very good.
When music started to get more accessible (records and then tapes) and cheaper, supply went up, and demand went down, so the price went down.
As music became popularized through more radio productions and later television productions (MTV, etc), the supply went way up, the demand went way up, so the prices stayed consistent. The record labels charged what people were willing to pay. If the people were not willing to pay $18 for a CD, the prices would have come DOWN (supply up, demand down, prices drop).
Now we have the Internet. Supply goes up immensely, and demand to pay $18 a CD goes away. Therefore demand has dropped at that price, so the price has basically dropped. Some people pay $18, some people want it for free. Of course the record labels earn "less" per person per song. But the distribution cycle is so different, therefore you have to really look at the supply and demand issues differently.
If the incentive to produce "good" music goes down (less profit), then "good" music will diminish. As there is less and less "good" music, the supply will go down. Demand for "good" music will go up. People who are taking music for free will have less and less music to take for free. The free market over rides copyright and other bad laws by removing the supply of good music, as the incentive to profit is lost.
This is what will happen over time. Music production houses will find that they can make more money selling their popular tunes to TV commercials, movies soundtracks, nightclubs, and other places. Those songs will eventually be thrown into the virtual "public domain" of the Internet, but the cost to produce the music will be a function of the price of a movie, the cost to enter a nightclub, or the cost of a shampoo or fragrance or whatever it is that uses the song for its background music in a commercial.
You can regulate, you can mandate, you can tax. But you can't run from the rules of supply and demand.
I'm not trying to be right :) I'm just trying to find out what makes the most sense for me, and bang my opinions against those who agree and disagree. I love healthy debates, even Devil's advocate ones.
I'd love to continue this "debate/sharing" session -- here on slashdot, in private e-mail, or on a forum like anti-state.com to try to get further through this topic. It isn't one I've spent much time researching, but it is definitely an important one.
If you're interested in continuing it, drop me an e-mail or reply here!
A corporation is a group of individuals. They are never bad nor good. I own corporations. I deal with corporations. I make sure I don't deal with corporations I believe are not interested in the mutual gain of my corporation as well as theirs.
Why would you go to a corporation you don't have familiarity with? Why wouldn't you go out and reseach past inventors' experiences with a corporation before going and making contact with them about your idea?
Corporations are not bad. People who go into dealings with people they don't know are stupid.
Public safety consideration? I'm sorry, but why do people keeping bringing this up???
Will your doctor prescribe you unsafe medication? Not if he might get sued (although tort law has destroyed a lot of this). Will your insurance company pay for medication that is unsafe? Not if they might get sued (again, tort law used to cover this). Will Walgreens or CVS sell you bad drugs? Not if they might get sued. Will ABC run a drug ad during Friends if its a bad drug?
Now, explain to me why government needs to protect the people from bad drugs.
I've posted in numerous slashdot replies in the past about the whole "interstate commerce" clause in the Constitution.
The "interstate commerce" clause had nothing to do with Congress or the federal government controlling how commerce is to be regulated or mandated or taxed. It strictly allowed Congress powers over any state or individual to make sure that commerce between the states went un-hindered. The founding fathers had realized that in order to promote competition within a state, there had to be the option to purchase an item from a person or entity in another state (or country). Congress was granted the power to make sure that no state could restrict or tax purchases from another state, hindering free trade.
The FDA is a bloated, grotesque organization that only exists today to help political cronies and friends of those in power. It does little to nothing to protect the average person, and has done more damage to people than helped.
It has withheld drugs from those who needed them, prevented doctors from making recommendations (who do you trust more with your health, your doctor or a bureaucrat?), and has created a red-tape system that makes it hard if not impossible to compete with the cartels that have the most power within the organization.
That was not the intent of the founding fathers, and should not be the desired organization for freedom-loving people.
Ahh, but that binding contract would be essentially impossible to write were it not for the patent system.
I hadn't thought of that. But now that I do think about it, I can see many ways that the binding contract would work.
When I want to rent a new commercial property, I enter into a binding contract with the landlord, showing my intent. I allow many "exit clauses" from this contract, but it is binding for all other circumstances. There is no federal law protecting the landlord or myself, other than tort law. Of course, tort itself has been destroyed from its original intentions.
The same is true with an idea. If I have an idea, I can go to two or three entrepreneurs. I can explain the idea in simple terms, and enter into an agreement with the one that is willing to take the risk and give me the most for my idea.
Maybe entrepreneur #1 hates the general idea and won't take the risk. Maybe #2 likes the general idea, but won't take the risk without me telling more. Maybe #3 likes the idea, and will take the risk but will offer me far less money than #2.
My options might be to offer #2 more thoughts on my idea (that is me taking a risk), but we'll create a contract binding him against stealing it. Tort law (if reformed to what it used to cover) would protect me. Or maybe I could go with #3, allowing him to take a bigger risk, but also get a bigger reward.
Patents to me seem silly. Tort law in a proper sense is all we really need.
First, you are correct on the "proving" idea -- I will refrain from using the word "prove" along with "economist." I should have said "proved to me" instead.
As for the pharmaceutical industry, it should be known at part of the high up-front cost is FDA regulation. I believe the FDA is unconstitutional, and could be better created as a free market Underwriter's Laboratory type corporation. Target won't sell a lamp unless its UL tested. Why would drugs be any different?
If a company creates a drug, tests that drug, and brings it to market first, it would also be in its best interest to create contracts with distribution companies that they would not sell a competitors' version for a period of time. This is the best way to protect the interest of the discoverer of said drug.
Making a drug is only the first step. Testing is very important. Target and Walgreens and CVS won't just sell every drug. Your doctor probably won't prescribe a drug unless they know it is safe. If the FDA was knocked out, and patents dissolved, the drug companies would still have many incentives to create new products -- even with the threat of competition more visible.
What is the cost of creating a drug? It is the cost of discovery, the cost of development, the cost of testing, the cost of FDA approval, and the cost of advertising. I wonder how much the last two parts are compared to the first steps.
I wish I could agree with you in accepting that patents help the individual, but in my experience, the process of getting a patent does not seem to make the benefit worth it.
An individual with an idea can't go very far unless they have entrepreneurship as well. If they don't have the drive to promote an idea, what good is the idea? A patent may offer them something to sell to a bigger corporation, much more can be done just by getting together with people who want to promote the idea for their own mutual gain.
If I invented a new idea, and I couldn't distribute it, I would still have the ability to find someone else who can. Entering into a binding contract, we could create a partnership (or corporation). Until that contract is issued, I wouldn't have to explain the idea or the secrets of the idea. A non-disclosure agreement and a binding contract are really all you need to protect the idea (as is obvious from one of the links I posted in my original message).
I believe this article is yet another nail in the coffin of the patent system. It is time to rethink the patent system. Economist Fritz Machlup has proven that patents do not entice corporations to develop new products; in fact, the "short-term advantage a company derives from developing a new product and being the first to put it on the market may be incentive enough."
Patents offer a authoritarian power to destroy competition, increase prices, and skew the relationship between research and creation by scaring off new ideas developed on old ones.
Your first sentence is completely correct. The rest is all wrong, IMHO.
Money itself never has to have value. Trade originally meant two persons exchanging something they have for something more valuable to them. If you have eggs, and I have dirt, I'll give you enough dirt to get eggs that are more valuable to me than the dirt. But you're getting dirt that is more valuable to you than the eggs.
As Rothbard opined in the link I posted, true money has a free market value that allows indirect bartering. It has a value that is ever changing based on each item you use it to "purchase." It may be 1 grain of gold for eggs today, but when eggs get rare, it may be 3 grains of gold for eggs tomorrow. That is the fantastic reason that gold is the ultimate exchange medium -- gold is rarely created and rarely destroyed enough to change the amount of gold available in the world. Even the gold rush itself didn't change the price of gold in the long run: in 1900, one ounce of gold bought you 300 loaves of bread. In the 70's, the same was true. Even today, one ounce of gold can buy you almost 300 loaves of bread. The dollar in 1900 bought you 15 loaves of bread. Today, it buys you about 1.
Gold is not abstract -- the dollar is.
As money has progressed over the centuries, we have seen over and over again the same situation: money initially is a hard tangible rare asset (such as gold or silver, wood or even wheat). Private organizations take this rare tangible asset, store it, and issue a paper certificate for easier trade between two people. Any one person can bring that paper certificate for immediate withdrawal of the hard asset.
Over time, a government comes along and mandates that their populace use the government's own paper certificate. The government usually regulates all banks. Eventually, the banks are then controlled by a central bank (Federal Reserve Bank). And soon enough, government realizes it can make itself "free" money by printing more certificates than there is tangible assets to redeem.
Down the road, the government says that their money no longer needs to be burdened by the redepemption factor, and the new certificates become actual money, even though they are worthless. The said government prints more and more worthless "money," and by having conned the majority of the population, people believe that the paper certificates have value. In the short run, the paper does have value with other people, but in the long run, the paper "money" always ends up being worthless.
The American dollar may be the world standard today, but at the rate that the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Board has been printing money in the past 60 years, our dollar is worthless. It has devalued over 98% since 1914 when the FRB was created. Before that, our dollar held its value very well since the 1700's. Before 1914, our dollars were privately created and held by real individual banks. Today, our banks are all controlled by central banking. It's a monopoly cartel, not a competitive market.
Usually, when a government starts printing more and more fake money, the currency gets inflated, causing prices to go up. Luckily for the U.S., foreign governments have been taking our fake dollars out of circulation and storing them in their banks -- hiding the true inflationary rate (sometimes as high as 10% a year).
The scare for gold bugs such as myself is that China and other foreign banks may try to redeem those dollars in the near future for gold or euros or another "money" or hard money. Should that happen, nay, when that happens, our dollar will become worthless.
Gold has sky rocketed in recent years. If you actually take the value of gold from 1700 to 1914 versus how many dollars were in circulation, and the same value today, the true price of gold should be around $8000 an ounce, not $400 an ounce!
Electronic currency will be easier to manipulate, inflate, and destroy. I am a firm believer that we should return to a true money system -- a free market system where two persons trade items or services of value.
The most amazing book of all time about money is now available free on the internet. Please go here to read it. It is worth your time, and every last one of you will probably be scared out of your mind. I am, every time I read this "bible of money" by Murray Rothbard.
I can assure you that I (and everyone I know for that matter) have no intention of telling you what to do on your property as long as what you do stays on your property.
Nice try, but wrong. Zoning laws prevent me from doing what I want to do on my property. I can't paint my house pink in many areas. I can't even run a store out of my house in most towns. That's the many telling me what to do. It is wrong.
Then you're advocating that we just give 90% of our power away to corporations, then, right? Well, that's different, then.
No, I'm advocating returning those rights to the people, where they belong.
If I want to put a substance in my body, that is between me and my doctor (if I involve a doctor), not the FDA.
If I want to try to get a loan from a private individual or corporation, I should be do it on my merit, not on what Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac dictate. I am a minority -- if a bank refuses to give me money because of that, it is no one's business. I'll go find another bank or source of money.
If I want to have a rule that no women or left handed people are allowed in my restaurant, it is my property, not yours. If you disagree, open a restaurant open to all (you'll probably do better).
If I want to import or export steel, no one should tariff me or tax me for it.
All of these issues are regulated by government. Go to mises.org for two hours. Read some of the introductory articles. It is minded changing. Try it.
Authoritarian systems fail. They cost too much, they don't offer any sense of freedom to the slaves they capture. Taxation = theft. Conscription = slavery. Enough said.
How many people watch mandatory cable public access? Few. Maybe none on some shows. So basically we pay (in increased cable costs) for information few want. To me that is idiotic. The expense of many for the profit of a few.
As for interference, who says there WILL be interference? If a state runs its own version of the FCC, you can bet that it will be run better than the federal. Even better, why can't there be a free market corporation such as the UL that handles bandwidth? It's crazy to think that there isn't a free market solution. No one has the chance to make one up.
Everything the FCC does is for the benefit of a select few political cronies. Everything. I read the FCC mandates -- all of them. Go check them out at fcc.org and find me one that actually doesn't help some political friend.
Foolish? Corporations are owned by people. Those owners are allowed to look at the books. If the owners aren't, why did they invest? Duh.
The government doesn't allow us to look at any of its secrets. The PATRIOT Act has now cemented that ability. Freedom of Information Act requests go unanswered all the time.
If a corporation you own stock in doesn't give you an answer, you can sell your stock. You can stop buying their product. You can offer a better product at a better value. You can't do that with government mandates and regulations.
It seems to me that it is you, sir, who are foolish. You believe you can't control big business, but you can control government. That is definitely and obviously not the case.
The FCC spends more time infringing on the God-given (inherent) right to free speech than it does on anything else. Our Constitution vehemently restricts Congress from making "any law" that infringes on our inherent right to free speech.
The FCC is the federal government. It can not and should not have any authority to regulate speech. Communications are speech. If the States want to regulate speech, they should run their own seperate FCC type organization. I'd move to a State that didn't regulate it.
The Constitution does offer Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, in Article I, Section 8. But it was never meant to overstep the basic regulation of said commerce. Today, the federal government puts gun laws in the "interstate commerce" area. It regulates toilet sizes because toilets get shipped between States. It even found ways to regulate violence against spouses using "interstate commerce" (which was later struck down as unconstitutional, but it took a while!).
The FCC is unneeded.
So you're telling me that the satellite providers were squashed by cable? I don't think so. The infrastructure was paid by excessively high prices due to the monopolization. You can roll out individual infrastructure using newer technology for a fraction of the old cable costs. I know, I own a cabling company. The days of doing it Lucent's way are over.
0 01/kd20010131.html for details.
As for water -- no I don't want necessarily two water providers, I just want it privatized and not run by city unions. John Stossel from ABC's 20/20 did a report on it in "Mr Stossel Goes to Washington" which is available on video. He found that in many towns that privatized the water business, they saved money and had a better product. See http://secure.mediaresearch.org/fmp/medianomics/2
What government does, it does poorly. Private roads are better maintained and last longer and cost less than public roads. Private loans are made to better candidates with the ability to pay that public loans (look at the default rates!). Private schooling offers a more complete education than public schooling at a lower price. Private health care had a better price and better coverage before government enforced mandatory coverage in the HMO Act of 1974.
The list goes on and on.
I am not a utopian, I just want the freedom to be responsible for my own mistakes and successes. I do not want to pay for your mistakes, and I don't want a piece of your successes.
Government does not give you power over your life. It gives you power over my life. I refuse. By God or by Natural Right, you have no power to control me on my property. On your property, you can tell me to shut up. You can take away my guns. You can search my person. But on my property, my rights should never be lessened or withered.
The rich and powerful are usually there because government mandated they be there. I'm not saying get rid of government, I'm saying get rid of 90% of the federal government.
If your State wants to have health care, let them! The Constitution's 9th and 10th Amendments allow the people and the States to decide on issues not enumerated to the federal government. If I disagree with that issue, I can vote with my feet. With the federal government taking over many responsibilities delegated to the State or the people, I can't vote with my feet.
SpaceJunkie: I'll refrain from the ad hominems if it makes my case stand stronger.
h ttp://www.fff.org/freedom/1099e.aspi ses.org/fullstory.asp?control=342. org/freedom/fd0210d.asp
As for Linux, Open Software, etc, I'm sure people sling mud within those circles also, but I purposely avoid those conversations. I like Linux as much as the next guy, but I have never found any way for me to pay my bills by supporting the software. The market has picked its current winner. When Linux matures, it will probably offer a better product than Windows, and MS will fall.
In terms of "child labor," it is a fallacy that child labor is bad. In countries that children are abused into labor, those countries are socialist or communist. It is not the labor that is bad, but the government (again!)
Read these amazing articles:
http://www.fff.org/freedom/0999f.asp
http://www.m
http://www.fff
They show why child labor is, in fact, good. Societies that have governments that mismanage "public money" always create the need for really cheap labor. The U.S. doesn't have high wages because of unions and government, we have high wages because we offer a great service with high quality.
You've been responding with "reasonable" responses, but who are you quoting? Please, throw some links or bibliographical information. If you're just quoting what makes sense, without any backup, I can't just go and believe your side of the issue.
I had a public education, but I was a deficient student (average of a D grade). I aced the SAT and ACTs, and had performed amazingly well on almost every class quiz and test I took, but we aren't graded on knowledge, we're graded on "class participation" and "homework evaluations." If I know the topic, why did I get a D in the Calculus? In my opinion, we can save public education in one simple step: Let teachers teach, and then bring on third party graders. The graders should be free market companies. They can issue tests. You can have the Jones Aptitude Test for Math, and the Peterson Math Qualification Test. Let students and parents decide what tests to take. Let teachers know what they should train students.
In these situations, bad teachers would go away. There is no reason to have the grade structure based on age -- if you know the Calculus at 10, you should be able to take that test. If you're 18 and don't understand Algebra, just don't take that test.
Ahh, the free market! IT WORKS.
No one will back off of anything. Government intervention makes it difficult for us to fight "bad" corporations because it is difficult or impossible to enter that market.
I believe I can offer a better cable TV service, but I am not allowed to offer it in my neighborhood. I _KNOW_ of companies that can offer better water service to my town, but my city doesn't allow it.
Competition is all you need to throw out the bad companise. Regulation only works to create new monopolies at the expense of everyone.