You're right, I reread it, and I must have blurred my eyes a bit. Thanks:)
And if someone made a competing machine that was better, faster, and cheaper, do you think people would re-sign into a stringent contract with these guys?
Not my fault that you signed a faulty agreement. Think twice before your greed gets the best of you. Don't go crying to the daddy-state when you want out of a bad deal you signed into. Contracts are binding, and contracts do not create monopolies. Accepting a BAD contract just give a company more power over the person who signed it.
Haha. Ok. Trade agreements have destroyed the ability for small companies to compete internationally. The best way for anyone to make money is to be able to make trades with people and companies in any country, with no embargoes, tariffs, or subsidies. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen, because governments all over the world intervene and screw over people in order to help the businesses that donate the most to campaigns...
Making a product "more technological" is not the only form of innovation. Maybe REDUCING features in order to reduce the price is innovation. Maybe marketing the product in a certain market is innovation. Maybe co-oping with other markets (XM radio in Chryslers or whatever) is innovating. Innovate means "to introduce somethign for the first time." That could mean introducing a fast do-it-all computer for $100, that would be innovative. Or, you could try to sell a fast do-it-all computer that did MORE than everything the average consumer needs, and sell it for $2000. That would be innovating. But if it doesn't sell, and you cut out a few programs, a few hardware peripherals, and sell it for $100, is it deinnovating now?
Look at the drug companies. When a new drug idea comes out, they spend $20 MILLION to test it. Many of these drugs FAIL. So they continue to test more. Vicodin costs $0.50 a pill to sell, and only $0.005 to make, because you are paying for them to INNOVATE in other ways. How many innovating FAILURES has Intel NEVER told the public about? The cost of the product includes their R&D, and all their failures, but if they make one innovation and 50 failures, we're still ahead.
Now, if there is NO competition at all, then the company doesn't need to innovate. Regulate an industry, and innovation dies. Companies now make less money, spend more time tied up in red tape, and may even be profit capped. What's the incentive to innovate? Why bother with R&D?
In the free market, innovation means you may serendipitidly (sp?) invent something that makes you billions. But you need to spend a lot of R&D time in order to find that item before your competition does.
How the hell is baseball a monopoly? PEOPLE WANT TO GO TO THE GAMES. Players get paid a lot because they are damn good, and consumers want to see GOOD players, not XFL morons who can't play like the pros.
*shakes head* I don't understand where all these "monopoly" finger-pointers are getting their information... Get government out of baseball too. If they want to charge $5000 a seat, LET THEM. See if baseball becomes a game only to be viewed by the rich. Guess what? THERE IS NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO GO TO BASEBALL GAMES. If it costs too much, don't go. They still sell out the seats...
YOU HAVE THE OPTION to design your own bread. Do that. If bread manufacturers solely want to support MicroToast (because they make a great product at a great value) then its their perogative. Its YOUR duty to make a better product, and convince toast makers AND consumers you make a better product.
It seems like no one here understands that Intel and M$ and the other so called "monopolies" have not prevented anyone from being a competitors. GO OUT AND COMPETE. Stop working in your cubicles downloading pr0n, and go out there and compete. Stop asking the daddy-state to help you out of your quandry about hating "big business" because some inventors had the balls to go out there and take a chance.
Stop overclocking your 3 year old generic motherboard, and maybe you won't blue screen or have problems. I blame the hardware manufacturers for writing bad drivers before I blame M$ for writing bad software. Its bloated, but it runs fast enough and stable enough for me. I haven't lost a project or work time in probably 6 years since 95 came out.
One of my companies maintains about 600 computers within 15 different organizations, all running different, badly written software. We get maybe 1 call a month about a BSOD, and even that's overstating it...
I don't understand why anyone else didn't make a machine that could compete with theirs?
The realities are that they had between 75% and 85% of the market BECAUSE THEIR PRODUCT WAS BETTER. Mises Institute actually mentions them in a decent "Barriers to Entry" article that denounces most of the "monopolistic practices" that the government has put down in error, in this article.
Another article that briefly talks about how many "monopolies" fell apart on their own even before government lawsuits ran their course. It's obvious that the reason some of these companies exist is because they make a damn good product at a damn good price. Exclusionary practices are a farce -- people who are too lazy to compete are usually the complainers. It's easy to complain, especially if you don't have the brain cells needed to comprehend competing rather than complaing.
That's how the free market works: products that are ready for primetime, products that consumers wants, products that offer a price point, will sell.
Products that are before their time, or cost too much, or don't perform any differently than others (in the consumers' eyes) will not sell.
What happened to Itanium? The average consumer is very happy with a P2 even today, thank you very much, and probably doesn't need more. Why do we need to see the Itanium succeed in order to prove that the free market works?
I claim this is proof that the free market works because in 1999, the FTC was seriously considering hurting Intel, and what in the end hurts Intel, causes them to innovate, and causes them to make their products inexpensive is COMPETITION from AMD, not regulation from the FTC. Duh.
Why should M$ open their code? If you want open code, make a similiar product, create your own interface, and then market it. Get a loan. Start a corporation. And market, market, market. Do you think Krispy Kreme releases it's recipe for donuts? Why should M$ give away its trade secrets? That's not a monopolistic practice...
How is Microsoft a monopoly? They have competitors (many MANY competitors), they aren't mandated by law to be the only source for their software, and people buy it at a price that is reasonable, its performance is considered reasonable (or better) to most consumers, and it does the job people want it to do.
If Microsoft made programs that were overpriced, and they didn't allow competition, and the government forced you to buy their product, then it would be a monopoly. All Microsoft is is another large corporation that is having its day (or its decade). Just wait another decade and we'll see if they'll be around. How many times did liberals like yourself cry wolf in the past 60 years, and the government ALMOST got involved, but the "monopoly" collapsed on its own?
I don't believe M$ is a monopoly. The only monopolies we've had historically are ones where the government either mandated a private corporation (telcom, energy, etc), or the government subsidized one corporation and tariffed, penalized, or regulated its competition (Standard Oil, etc).
Microsoft has many MANY MANY competitors -- the varieties of Unix, the Apple O/S's, etc. The fact of the matter is, the market and the businesses and the consumers PREFER Microsoft's products. I've tried for years to find a product that runs better, faster, and is easier to use than Office, and I have yet to find one. Netscape over IE? Netscape was a P.O.S., on ANY OS I ran it under.
If your competitors make crappy products, its their own fault. Eventually, M$ WILL HAVE THEIR DAY. They will get hurt, just like Chrysler did without Government intervention, just like many others. Look at MS Network, what a (billion dollar) failure that was.
OTOH M$ keeps the Computer Consulting industry in business. If everything ran well, do you think the industry many of you is in would be as healthy? Thank God for Nimda I say! Job security for geeks.
And to think, even as recently as a year or two ago, Intel was being called a monopoly by the FTC and anti-capitalist socialist greens.
If this isn't proof that all "big businesses" can be affected by smaller ones, and to let consumers make and break businesses, rather than regulations, I don't know what is...
Innovation IS CRITICAL to progress. Consumers also want a good product at a price they can afford. While I personally haven't had much luck with AMD products, I know a lot of people who have, and I commend AMD on doing something by themselves that many socialist (democrat) Americans wanted the government to do -- make Intel realize they're not the only fish in the sea.
Then support capitalism. "Open Source" and beerware won't work unless there is commercial and profitable incentive for it to work.
Someone needs to figure out how to make the people happy AND make a profit. This communistic ideal is never going to work properly if you want these companies to last... Making a game is not a "group study," its a tough, 60 hour a week, full-time job. And people need to get paid.
Maybe we need "Open Source Money Pools" where you can vote what kind of game you want. I'm sure that'll happen.
Regulation will solve it? Licensing will solve it?
Come on. How about considering the option that the person responsible for the teenager should be held liable to the full extent of the law.
Don't make cigarette shops card a teenager, don't make internet cafes card a teenager, don't make ANY commercial or private individual become a watchdog for the government or a parents -- because that's how we've become a nanny state.
Parents are lazy because they feel they don't need to parent anymore. Instead of watching TV with their kids, they can set their V-chip to "Rated G" and forget about it. Instead of browsing the web with their kids, they can install software, in hopes it will work 100%. Instead of finding out why their kids weren't home by 10, and grounding them for a month or three, they can hope the government will regulate a coffee house, arcade, net cafe, whatever. Instead of searching their teen's jackets and drawers looking for drugs or cigarettes, they can rely on the nanny state.
I say get rid of all regulations like these, and lets finally force parents to do the job they are responsible for: parenting.
FYI: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is a story about how bad big business got when government gave big business handouts -- not when the market was deregulated. Get your facts straight.
Secondly, unemployment insurance IS cheaper than government insurance -- and is made better, too. Government likes you unemployed, that's why we have so many aweful nanny state programs. But private unemployment insurers would have a reason to get you back to work... By helping you find another job.
I am so sick of liberals who think big government works. The facts are that the U.S. grew more during the deregulated era than we have during the regulated new deal era we've been living in. Or have you forgotten about the $30 trillion in debt our governemnt, individuals, and corporations now harbor?
Number one, if you're working in illegal working conditions, you are taking a chance -- you agreed to work there. Secondly, if our employer's weren't FORCED by the government to pay for unemployment (and in some cases workman's comp), you could take out your own policy, picking what you felt you needed, rather than getting forced into your company's plan.
Money doesn't "talk" in capitalism -- very little of the U.S. is capitalized anyway, due to government's regulations, interventions, embargos, tariffs, and subsidies. End all that, and let the consumer decide. Heck, end limited corporate liability statutes, and you know product quality as well as consumer respect will go up...
This here is a key example of why "democracy" doesn't work. The United States is NOT a democracy, its a republic. Any country that attempts to base its laws on "democracy" will ALWAYS end up socialized.
The main problem with democracy is that it allows a crazy majority to infringe on the rights of a sane minority -- as has been happening in the U.S. in growing amounts since 1913. In the beginning, the democratic system says "lets help those who can't fend for themselves." When government gives a handout to 2 or 3, those closest in financial ability to the 2 or 3 will ask, and eventually it will be 4 or 5. Go long enough, and even the rich want a hand out.
A democracy is a BAD IDEA. Australia has now made illegal something that infringes on NO ONE's rights -- basically another law that criminalizes NON-VIOLENT activity. Why bother?
Make people not responsible for their actions, and they'll be less responsible. As time goes on, they'll look to big government as the daddy-state that it is -- to pay for their health care, their retirements, their children's educations, their unemployment, etc.
I'm a libertarian (beyond even just the civil libertarian moniker). And I do believe that if you post to a website that guarantees anonymity, you should be offered the ability to air your grievances in an anonymous fashion.
OTOH, if you're fired, and you use the corporate network to send out 3500 e-mails, that IS trespass, no matter how you look at it.
We have to address these issues the same was as if you had posted an article in a newspaper (or a classified ad?).
If its slanderous or libelous, there SHOULD be warranted repercussions against the "poster." But if the poster can back up his information with fact (or if its an opinion, parody, or other 1st Amendment protected speech), I don't see how anyone has a right to prevent it.
I am up in the air about the whole "right to know" who posted an article. It doesn't make sense to me where in the Constitution it gives anyone the right to know who is passing out information... I do believe we are protected to say anything we want to as long as we aren't libelous or slanderous, and even in those situations I think the speaker has been infringed more than anyone else with these excessive 1st Amendment infringing laws.
Remember, the Bill of Rights doesn't give ANYONE a single right -- it prohibits the Government from taking away these rights. It should have been called the Bill of Prohibitions.
And that's what it is. A MESS. A mess created by a government illegally getting itself involved where it shouldn't have.
There should be no regulation by the government in any of this. Copyright constitutionally extends 7+7 years, that's it. All other laws extending it were unconstitutional per the 9th or 10th amendments.
An artist's ability to protect his artform for up to 14 years is fine. If someone finds a way to break their "protection scheme" they should not be punished -- the free market lets them try again with another scheme to prevent "breaking the code."
This is all a mess creating strictly by our government's being bribed by big music and film industry to "protect them" so they don't have to spend the R&D to protect themselves.
It would have been easy, in fact, SIMPLE for the music industry to make their own propriertary listening devices -- give them away even. Then surcharge the music format, an uncopyable format at that. Easy enough. Instead, us taxpayers have to pay for all this government spending and waste trying to protect copyright that was supposed to be protected by the authors.
If someone copies a CD, they should be held liable, not the manufacturer of the hardware, software, or media used to copy that material. End of story.
Get government out of copyright management issues -- vote libertarian.
We have no free-trade, and we have no globalization. Not truly free at least, as it should be.
What is wrong if private business-cities want to pollute themselves? People won't want to live there, no one will want to work there, and the land (which is owned privately) will be next to useless and worthless. Not a good investment of a company's dollar. You think a corporation will make a major investment only to have the land worthless in 5-10 years?
As for labor and environmental laws: THEY DON'T WORK. Why isn't it a mexican's right to work for less money than the unions ask for here? Businesses left because they found people who worked harder for less money: that's called a standard employer-employee contract. The unions and excessiev labor laws killed our industry because of big government intervention. The U.S. is far worse off now than we were in the 50s before we added excessive labor laws: look at how many people in the U.S. today live on credit cards and THINK they're better off than their parents 50 years ago.
As for PCBs in Alabama leaking into other water streams, if land or water is owned by a private owner rather than the government, that land owner will have ever reason to sue the polluter before the problem gets worse. Right now pollution goes unhindered because its basically licensed by the government, and people can't protect their property because they can't sue what's licensed and allowed by the government.
This is why its important to have independent testing agencies (a la the Underwriter's Laboratories) whom corporations can hire to test their outputs and pollution measurements. If the corporation wants these independent lab's seal of approval, they need to meet it. If people want to purchase goods from those without a seal of approval, its their desire. I think most people would rather look for the seal (like one does for the UL seal or the Kosher seal or whatever seal you may look for) and say "These guys are clean, and care."
I also believe that corporations should not have limited liability. This is a problem. Limited Liability corporate safety totally unconstitutional, and I am trying to convince more libertarians as such. If corporate owners were fully liable for their companies, corporations would NEVER get as big as they do (at least in our country). And this would decrease the sprawl and power of "big business" as well.
Re:Libertarian Politics Fails Here
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Monsanto and PCBs
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· Score: 2
This is absolutely untrue to the fullest. Read my reply here to see why the libertarian environment angle is the BEST solution to preventing environmental disasters. Do you really think Monsanto would get away without anyone finding out? NO. What they knew is that they were heavily in bed with the local, state, and federal government, and would get away with a basic fine or possibly a long-term clean up solution that would be subsidized by the tax-payers.
I can't believe the Greens believe that the government guilty for the Love Canal incident as well as the government guilty for the worst polluted sites on America (check our national forests and ex-military bases) could help us. What helps us is giving back the small landowner the full power to sue for any damages caused to their land or air by a huge corporation -- something you can't do because some pollution is fully acceptable under our "environmental protection" laws.
One libertarian's perspective
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Monsanto and PCBs
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Please note that this is my personal opinion, but as a libertarian, its heavily set on punishing those responsible for hurting another person or persons.
First of all, you must understand that the majority of environmental damage is caused by government regulations, subsidies, intervention or on land owned by the government and leased to a corporation. A great website that speaks about free-market environmentalism is www.perc.org.
A libertarian knows that Monsanto doesn't care so much BECAUSE they're so heavily in bed with the government -- and our government can subsidize or "free up" environmental rules for any corporation they want to, because we've given them the power to.
In a libertarian society, the federal government would have ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL over environmental regulations -- people would be free to pollute as they please. But here is the restriction in a free society: if you pollute your own land, that land will now be useless for you, and have absolutely no value for you in the future. In a free-market society, government won't own land, so you can't lease it only to treat it badly and move on. Secondly, if you pollute your own land, and the pollution crosses over to someone else's property, airspace, or drinking water, YOU WILL BE LIABLE. Bar none.
Today, the government lets the polluters pollute, and really just keeps the big pro-earth groups happy with thousands upon thousands of regulations that have loopholes for government's greatest supporters. Get government out of this mess: the environment is not what you want to protect, you want to protect private property.
If you're worried that pollution done now might contaminate someone's property 100 years down the road, I can see where a little government intervention on a local level is necessary -- ON A LOCAL LEVEL. Let the city or county government enact rules as to what corporations or individuals can do now. If a corporation wants to, they can always move to a city that lets them do what they want to do (and the people of that city they move to made the decision to live there and accept it).
I know, its not a perfect answer -- BUT ITS FAR FAR BETTER than what we have now.
I tend to agree -- IF you only have 2 or 3 child actors. But I do believe that Ender's Game shows a need to have a slew of primary or secondary actors -- and there really aren't that many child actors that are children with the ability to portray adult mindsets as they do in Ender's Game.
How many child actors are just that -- children on and off the screen?
Shadow of the Hegemon is a parallax-type novel, but the rest of the four books in the Bean series are not. OSC was planning on letting other authors "field" stories about all the main characters, and I believe eventually such will happen, whether or not its OSC.
As for movie-making material, I've always thought the only real way to do the movie well would be CGI -- the ability to do zero-G "Battle Room" type-effects is possible, but would be much easier to do and portray through CGI than compositing live action actors.
I still don't think you can find enough actors who are young enough (4 or 5 in Bean's case, 5 o 6 in Ender's case) to truly bring out the "youth" factor in Ender's Game.
Speaker for the Dead and the rest of the Ender Quartet won't make it as movies. The books reside more in the mind of the characters than in actual vocalizations and physical contact -- very hard to convert to a screenplan. Ender's Game is probably as difficult, but at least I can visualize a movie.
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You're right, I reread it, and I must have blurred my eyes a bit. Thanks :)
And if someone made a competing machine that was better, faster, and cheaper, do you think people would re-sign into a stringent contract with these guys?
Not my fault that you signed a faulty agreement. Think twice before your greed gets the best of you. Don't go crying to the daddy-state when you want out of a bad deal you signed into. Contracts are binding, and contracts do not create monopolies. Accepting a BAD contract just give a company more power over the person who signed it.
Haha. Ok. Trade agreements have destroyed the ability for small companies to compete internationally. The best way for anyone to make money is to be able to make trades with people and companies in any country, with no embargoes, tariffs, or subsidies. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen, because governments all over the world intervene and screw over people in order to help the businesses that donate the most to campaigns...
Making a product "more technological" is not the only form of innovation. Maybe REDUCING features in order to reduce the price is innovation. Maybe marketing the product in a certain market is innovation. Maybe co-oping with other markets (XM radio in Chryslers or whatever) is innovating. Innovate means "to introduce somethign for the first time." That could mean introducing a fast do-it-all computer for $100, that would be innovative. Or, you could try to sell a fast do-it-all computer that did MORE than everything the average consumer needs, and sell it for $2000. That would be innovating. But if it doesn't sell, and you cut out a few programs, a few hardware peripherals, and sell it for $100, is it deinnovating now?
Look at the drug companies. When a new drug idea comes out, they spend $20 MILLION to test it. Many of these drugs FAIL. So they continue to test more. Vicodin costs $0.50 a pill to sell, and only $0.005 to make, because you are paying for them to INNOVATE in other ways. How many innovating FAILURES has Intel NEVER told the public about? The cost of the product includes their R&D, and all their failures, but if they make one innovation and 50 failures, we're still ahead.
Now, if there is NO competition at all, then the company doesn't need to innovate. Regulate an industry, and innovation dies. Companies now make less money, spend more time tied up in red tape, and may even be profit capped. What's the incentive to innovate? Why bother with R&D?
In the free market, innovation means you may serendipitidly (sp?) invent something that makes you billions. But you need to spend a lot of R&D time in order to find that item before your competition does.
How the hell is baseball a monopoly? PEOPLE WANT TO GO TO THE GAMES. Players get paid a lot because they are damn good, and consumers want to see GOOD players, not XFL morons who can't play like the pros.
*shakes head* I don't understand where all these "monopoly" finger-pointers are getting their information... Get government out of baseball too. If they want to charge $5000 a seat, LET THEM. See if baseball becomes a game only to be viewed by the rich. Guess what? THERE IS NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO GO TO BASEBALL GAMES. If it costs too much, don't go. They still sell out the seats...
*shakes head*
YOU HAVE THE OPTION to design your own bread. Do that. If bread manufacturers solely want to support MicroToast (because they make a great product at a great value) then its their perogative. Its YOUR duty to make a better product, and convince toast makers AND consumers you make a better product.
It seems like no one here understands that Intel and M$ and the other so called "monopolies" have not prevented anyone from being a competitors. GO OUT AND COMPETE. Stop working in your cubicles downloading pr0n, and go out there and compete. Stop asking the daddy-state to help you out of your quandry about hating "big business" because some inventors had the balls to go out there and take a chance.
BR
Benedict: libertarians don't believe in copyright extending past 7+7 years... It's the liberals who want copyright to last longer...
Benedict, all the analytical skills of someone who went through public education. My Chia Pet at least has the sense to understand its mental limits.
Stop overclocking your 3 year old generic motherboard, and maybe you won't blue screen or have problems. I blame the hardware manufacturers for writing bad drivers before I blame M$ for writing bad software. Its bloated, but it runs fast enough and stable enough for me. I haven't lost a project or work time in probably 6 years since 95 came out.
One of my companies maintains about 600 computers within 15 different organizations, all running different, badly written software. We get maybe 1 call a month about a BSOD, and even that's overstating it...
I don't understand why anyone else didn't make a machine that could compete with theirs?
The realities are that they had between 75% and 85% of the market BECAUSE THEIR PRODUCT WAS BETTER. Mises Institute actually mentions them in a decent "Barriers to Entry" article that denounces most of the "monopolistic practices" that the government has put down in error, in this article.
Another article that briefly talks about how many "monopolies" fell apart on their own even before government lawsuits ran their course. It's obvious that the reason some of these companies exist is because they make a damn good product at a damn good price. Exclusionary practices are a farce -- people who are too lazy to compete are usually the complainers. It's easy to complain, especially if you don't have the brain cells needed to comprehend competing rather than complaing.
That's how the free market works: products that are ready for primetime, products that consumers wants, products that offer a price point, will sell.
Products that are before their time, or cost too much, or don't perform any differently than others (in the consumers' eyes) will not sell.
What happened to Itanium? The average consumer is very happy with a P2 even today, thank you very much, and probably doesn't need more. Why do we need to see the Itanium succeed in order to prove that the free market works?
I claim this is proof that the free market works because in 1999, the FTC was seriously considering hurting Intel, and what in the end hurts Intel, causes them to innovate, and causes them to make their products inexpensive is COMPETITION from AMD, not regulation from the FTC. Duh.
QED...
So go and make a corporation, and get some investments, and invent, boy!
No one is stopping you. No one will stop you.
Why should M$ open their code? If you want open code, make a similiar product, create your own interface, and then market it. Get a loan. Start a corporation. And market, market, market. Do you think Krispy Kreme releases it's recipe for donuts? Why should M$ give away its trade secrets? That's not a monopolistic practice...
How is Microsoft a monopoly? They have competitors (many MANY competitors), they aren't mandated by law to be the only source for their software, and people buy it at a price that is reasonable, its performance is considered reasonable (or better) to most consumers, and it does the job people want it to do.
If Microsoft made programs that were overpriced, and they didn't allow competition, and the government forced you to buy their product, then it would be a monopoly. All Microsoft is is another large corporation that is having its day (or its decade). Just wait another decade and we'll see if they'll be around. How many times did liberals like yourself cry wolf in the past 60 years, and the government ALMOST got involved, but the "monopoly" collapsed on its own?
I don't believe M$ is a monopoly. The only monopolies we've had historically are ones where the government either mandated a private corporation (telcom, energy, etc), or the government subsidized one corporation and tariffed, penalized, or regulated its competition (Standard Oil, etc).
Microsoft has many MANY MANY competitors -- the varieties of Unix, the Apple O/S's, etc. The fact of the matter is, the market and the businesses and the consumers PREFER Microsoft's products. I've tried for years to find a product that runs better, faster, and is easier to use than Office, and I have yet to find one. Netscape over IE? Netscape was a P.O.S., on ANY OS I ran it under.
If your competitors make crappy products, its their own fault. Eventually, M$ WILL HAVE THEIR DAY. They will get hurt, just like Chrysler did without Government intervention, just like many others. Look at MS Network, what a (billion dollar) failure that was.
OTOH M$ keeps the Computer Consulting industry in business. If everything ran well, do you think the industry many of you is in would be as healthy? Thank God for Nimda I say! Job security for geeks.
And to think, even as recently as a year or two ago, Intel was being called a monopoly by the FTC and anti-capitalist socialist greens.
If this isn't proof that all "big businesses" can be affected by smaller ones, and to let consumers make and break businesses, rather than regulations, I don't know what is...
Innovation IS CRITICAL to progress. Consumers also want a good product at a price they can afford. While I personally haven't had much luck with AMD products, I know a lot of people who have, and I commend AMD on doing something by themselves that many socialist (democrat) Americans wanted the government to do -- make Intel realize they're not the only fish in the sea.
Then support capitalism. "Open Source" and beerware won't work unless there is commercial and profitable incentive for it to work.
Someone needs to figure out how to make the people happy AND make a profit. This communistic ideal is never going to work properly if you want these companies to last... Making a game is not a "group study," its a tough, 60 hour a week, full-time job. And people need to get paid.
Maybe we need "Open Source Money Pools" where you can vote what kind of game you want. I'm sure that'll happen.
Regulation will solve it? Licensing will solve it?
Come on. How about considering the option that the person responsible for the teenager should be held liable to the full extent of the law.
Don't make cigarette shops card a teenager, don't make internet cafes card a teenager, don't make ANY commercial or private individual become a watchdog for the government or a parents -- because that's how we've become a nanny state.
Parents are lazy because they feel they don't need to parent anymore. Instead of watching TV with their kids, they can set their V-chip to "Rated G" and forget about it. Instead of browsing the web with their kids, they can install software, in hopes it will work 100%. Instead of finding out why their kids weren't home by 10, and grounding them for a month or three, they can hope the government will regulate a coffee house, arcade, net cafe, whatever. Instead of searching their teen's jackets and drawers looking for drugs or cigarettes, they can rely on the nanny state.
I say get rid of all regulations like these, and lets finally force parents to do the job they are responsible for: parenting.
FYI: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is a story about how bad big business got when government gave big business handouts -- not when the market was deregulated. Get your facts straight.
Secondly, unemployment insurance IS cheaper than government insurance -- and is made better, too. Government likes you unemployed, that's why we have so many aweful nanny state programs. But private unemployment insurers would have a reason to get you back to work... By helping you find another job.
I am so sick of liberals who think big government works. The facts are that the U.S. grew more during the deregulated era than we have during the regulated new deal era we've been living in. Or have you forgotten about the $30 trillion in debt our governemnt, individuals, and corporations now harbor?
Number one, if you're working in illegal working conditions, you are taking a chance -- you agreed to work there. Secondly, if our employer's weren't FORCED by the government to pay for unemployment (and in some cases workman's comp), you could take out your own policy, picking what you felt you needed, rather than getting forced into your company's plan.
Money doesn't "talk" in capitalism -- very little of the U.S. is capitalized anyway, due to government's regulations, interventions, embargos, tariffs, and subsidies. End all that, and let the consumer decide. Heck, end limited corporate liability statutes, and you know product quality as well as consumer respect will go up...
This here is a key example of why "democracy" doesn't work. The United States is NOT a democracy, its a republic. Any country that attempts to base its laws on "democracy" will ALWAYS end up socialized.
The main problem with democracy is that it allows a crazy majority to infringe on the rights of a sane minority -- as has been happening in the U.S. in growing amounts since 1913. In the beginning, the democratic system says "lets help those who can't fend for themselves." When government gives a handout to 2 or 3, those closest in financial ability to the 2 or 3 will ask, and eventually it will be 4 or 5. Go long enough, and even the rich want a hand out.
A democracy is a BAD IDEA. Australia has now made illegal something that infringes on NO ONE's rights -- basically another law that criminalizes NON-VIOLENT activity. Why bother?
Make people not responsible for their actions, and they'll be less responsible. As time goes on, they'll look to big government as the daddy-state that it is -- to pay for their health care, their retirements, their children's educations, their unemployment, etc.
Oh, wait. We're already there...
I'm a libertarian (beyond even just the civil libertarian moniker). And I do believe that if you post to a website that guarantees anonymity, you should be offered the ability to air your grievances in an anonymous fashion.
OTOH, if you're fired, and you use the corporate network to send out 3500 e-mails, that IS trespass, no matter how you look at it.
We have to address these issues the same was as if you had posted an article in a newspaper (or a classified ad?).
If its slanderous or libelous, there SHOULD be warranted repercussions against the "poster." But if the poster can back up his information with fact (or if its an opinion, parody, or other 1st Amendment protected speech), I don't see how anyone has a right to prevent it.
I am up in the air about the whole "right to know" who posted an article. It doesn't make sense to me where in the Constitution it gives anyone the right to know who is passing out information... I do believe we are protected to say anything we want to as long as we aren't libelous or slanderous, and even in those situations I think the speaker has been infringed more than anyone else with these excessive 1st Amendment infringing laws.
Remember, the Bill of Rights doesn't give ANYONE a single right -- it prohibits the Government from taking away these rights. It should have been called the Bill of Prohibitions.
And that's what it is. A MESS. A mess created by a government illegally getting itself involved where it shouldn't have.
There should be no regulation by the government in any of this. Copyright constitutionally extends 7+7 years, that's it. All other laws extending it were unconstitutional per the 9th or 10th amendments.
An artist's ability to protect his artform for up to 14 years is fine. If someone finds a way to break their "protection scheme" they should not be punished -- the free market lets them try again with another scheme to prevent "breaking the code."
This is all a mess creating strictly by our government's being bribed by big music and film industry to "protect them" so they don't have to spend the R&D to protect themselves.
It would have been easy, in fact, SIMPLE for the music industry to make their own propriertary listening devices -- give them away even. Then surcharge the music format, an uncopyable format at that. Easy enough. Instead, us taxpayers have to pay for all this government spending and waste trying to protect copyright that was supposed to be protected by the authors.
If someone copies a CD, they should be held liable, not the manufacturer of the hardware, software, or media used to copy that material. End of story.
Get government out of copyright management issues -- vote libertarian.
We have no free-trade, and we have no globalization. Not truly free at least, as it should be.
What is wrong if private business-cities want to pollute themselves? People won't want to live there, no one will want to work there, and the land (which is owned privately) will be next to useless and worthless. Not a good investment of a company's dollar. You think a corporation will make a major investment only to have the land worthless in 5-10 years?
As for labor and environmental laws: THEY DON'T WORK. Why isn't it a mexican's right to work for less money than the unions ask for here? Businesses left because they found people who worked harder for less money: that's called a standard employer-employee contract. The unions and excessiev labor laws killed our industry because of big government intervention. The U.S. is far worse off now than we were in the 50s before we added excessive labor laws: look at how many people in the U.S. today live on credit cards and THINK they're better off than their parents 50 years ago.
As for PCBs in Alabama leaking into other water streams, if land or water is owned by a private owner rather than the government, that land owner will have ever reason to sue the polluter before the problem gets worse. Right now pollution goes unhindered because its basically licensed by the government, and people can't protect their property because they can't sue what's licensed and allowed by the government.
This is why its important to have independent testing agencies (a la the Underwriter's Laboratories) whom corporations can hire to test their outputs and pollution measurements. If the corporation wants these independent lab's seal of approval, they need to meet it. If people want to purchase goods from those without a seal of approval, its their desire. I think most people would rather look for the seal (like one does for the UL seal or the Kosher seal or whatever seal you may look for) and say "These guys are clean, and care."
I also believe that corporations should not have limited liability. This is a problem. Limited Liability corporate safety totally unconstitutional, and I am trying to convince more libertarians as such. If corporate owners were fully liable for their companies, corporations would NEVER get as big as they do (at least in our country). And this would decrease the sprawl and power of "big business" as well.
This is absolutely untrue to the fullest. Read my reply here to see why the libertarian environment angle is the BEST solution to preventing environmental disasters. Do you really think Monsanto would get away without anyone finding out? NO. What they knew is that they were heavily in bed with the local, state, and federal government, and would get away with a basic fine or possibly a long-term clean up solution that would be subsidized by the tax-payers.
I can't believe the Greens believe that the government guilty for the Love Canal incident as well as the government guilty for the worst polluted sites on America (check our national forests and ex-military bases) could help us. What helps us is giving back the small landowner the full power to sue for any damages caused to their land or air by a huge corporation -- something you can't do because some pollution is fully acceptable under our "environmental protection" laws.
Please note that this is my personal opinion, but as a libertarian, its heavily set on punishing those responsible for hurting another person or persons.
First of all, you must understand that the majority of environmental damage is caused by government regulations, subsidies, intervention or on land owned by the government and leased to a corporation. A great website that speaks about free-market environmentalism is www.perc.org.
A libertarian knows that Monsanto doesn't care so much BECAUSE they're so heavily in bed with the government -- and our government can subsidize or "free up" environmental rules for any corporation they want to, because we've given them the power to.
In a libertarian society, the federal government would have ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL over environmental regulations -- people would be free to pollute as they please. But here is the restriction in a free society: if you pollute your own land, that land will now be useless for you, and have absolutely no value for you in the future. In a free-market society, government won't own land, so you can't lease it only to treat it badly and move on. Secondly, if you pollute your own land, and the pollution crosses over to someone else's property, airspace, or drinking water, YOU WILL BE LIABLE. Bar none.
Today, the government lets the polluters pollute, and really just keeps the big pro-earth groups happy with thousands upon thousands of regulations that have loopholes for government's greatest supporters. Get government out of this mess: the environment is not what you want to protect, you want to protect private property.
If you're worried that pollution done now might contaminate someone's property 100 years down the road, I can see where a little government intervention on a local level is necessary -- ON A LOCAL LEVEL. Let the city or county government enact rules as to what corporations or individuals can do now. If a corporation wants to, they can always move to a city that lets them do what they want to do (and the people of that city they move to made the decision to live there and accept it).
I know, its not a perfect answer -- BUT ITS FAR FAR BETTER than what we have now.
I tend to agree -- IF you only have 2 or 3 child actors. But I do believe that Ender's Game shows a need to have a slew of primary or secondary actors -- and there really aren't that many child actors that are children with the ability to portray adult mindsets as they do in Ender's Game.
How many child actors are just that -- children on and off the screen?
Shadow of the Hegemon is a parallax-type novel, but the rest of the four books in the Bean series are not. OSC was planning on letting other authors "field" stories about all the main characters, and I believe eventually such will happen, whether or not its OSC.
As for movie-making material, I've always thought the only real way to do the movie well would be CGI -- the ability to do zero-G "Battle Room" type-effects is possible, but would be much easier to do and portray through CGI than compositing live action actors.
I still don't think you can find enough actors who are young enough (4 or 5 in Bean's case, 5 o 6 in Ender's case) to truly bring out the "youth" factor in Ender's Game.
Speaker for the Dead and the rest of the Ender Quartet won't make it as movies. The books reside more in the mind of the characters than in actual vocalizations and physical contact -- very hard to convert to a screenplan. Ender's Game is probably as difficult, but at least I can visualize a movie.