Yes, I hear there's a lot of private support for poverty! So, what happened to the war on that?
The State at every level in the US is the biggest producer of poverty. No State mandate, regulation or program has helped more people than it harmed, so why do we even bother with new programs?
What does "center-seeking" mean? There is no "center" between being a Statist and being Anarcho-capitalist. Either you think freedom requires the State or it doesn't. There is no "center" there.
My reasons why the State shouldn't exist is proven every day -- just spend a day at your local courthouse, take note of every law that is violated, and think about what the person did that directly harmed a specific individual with that action. I do this about 3 times a year, and so far the best day for the State is when 9 out of 600 cases had to do with a specific crime against an individual's property, body or tool. 591 cases were "The People against ABC" and ABC didn't do anything that hurt anyone directly. This was on their best day!
I'd rather live in a world where those 9 people who were hurt are still hurt, maybe 27 people even, than in a world where 591 people go to jail or lose in court because of the State's desire for more power and money and the control of the expansion of both power and money.
So true. I used to use the word "government" which is derived from the Latin gubernare -- to restrain, restrict, control the action or behavior of. Just like a "governor" in your car restricts the speed at which you can drive, a government is there to restrict your actions.
I can see the reason behind using government to maintain physical property lines and to punish those who harm the property of another (land, body, or tools). I don't see why government is needed to protect a person's actions or opportunities -- when we try to use government for this reason, we end up with what we have today -- tyranny.
Bearing in mind that we call such free marketeers "pirates" and "terrorists" and toruture and shoot them.
For now. Give it 5-10 years and there will be more than enough anonymity devices to protect anything the State considers deviant thought or action.
Thank you for your patronage and enjoy your Soviet style "free market." We couldn't do it without you.
The difference between the Soviet Union and today is that the USSR had no Internet, technology worldwide wasn't very advanced and the ability to communicate beyond 7 miles of your home was either too costly or too slow. All of these things have changed thanks to the free market entrepreneurship that continues to advance technology and the Internet.
The problem with what you suggest is that eventually physical violence will be necessary in order for individuals to exercise their rights.
So it would seem, but I don't think that is true. In the old days, the State had their local enforces: people who spied on others for the State. Today, the State seems to rely more and more on technology. As many of us geeks know, logs are very hard to maintain. Even with NSA-level search algorithms and routines, it is likely that the State will only try to watch over more and more, and eventually it will be ineffective except against the few that the State already is watching directly. Even the US' own internal spy agency is more targetted to watching political enemies than common people. Most common people that smoke pot do so without much concern. Most common people who own unregistered weapons also do so without fear. This means that the State doesn't work, and we can only hope that the blackhats will continuously find ways around the restrictions and regulations.
So far, freedom is winning in more circles than the media will let on. In my area there are already groups that barter and trade in bullion rather than in fiat paper currency. There are already a few private restaurants, almost a dozen farmers who sell better quality and lower priced produce and dairy than the grocery store, hundreds of day laborers that you can hire for a few dollars an hour (hit up any Home Depot in the morning), and the like. There is likely no way for the State to enforce even 1% of its laws -- they're only bound to use them against specific enemies. Don't be that enemy.
Who is the real enemy of the State? Any individual or group which attempts to create a competition cartel that competes directly with the State's income. Just look at any war on "_subject_" and you'll see that it is always about the State being in control of the distribution or manufacturing of some product or service.
The State has only one intention in mind: create criminals. Nothing the State does can be considered otherwise. This means that people will suffer when some non-violent act is considered criminal. Look at drug laws: they don't work, but they're a great way for the State to expand its income. The same is true of any action that is non-violent in nature (drugs, prostitution, home schooling, gambling, selling, buying, etc).
When the State decides to censor people, it comes in two ways: direct censorship ("You can't talk about subject A") and indirect censorship ("You can't talk about subject B that someone else already talked about"). Subject A is the type of censorship that China and now India are doing. Subject B covers copyright and patents -- both are censorships against words and actions a person wants to perform with his own time, on his own property, using his own body and tools.
There is only one reason for either type of censorship: to protect the interests of an elite individual or group. Subject B censorship (copyright and patents) protects distribution cartels -- the few who control the distribution of content or specific items. Subject A censorship (direct prevention of talking about a certain subject) protects the State itself -- giving major power that is usually used against "enemies" of the State. Both States are corrupt -- if you go to jail because of a corrupt system, there is little that can be done to protect your interests.
We'll hear cries for our own State to work against the States that are censoring others, even though the State we live in is no better. I guess the best defense for my black-market support around censorship is that some eggs will break in order to make the best omelet. Some people will go to jail or will just disappear -- these are those who are directly harmed by the State. Yet millions more will be given more freedoms in whatever the free/black market provides to get around the restrictions and regulations. Over time, this will make us more free in the shadow of the State -- eventually technology will get to the point that no restrictions will be possible on anything the State does. This is a _good_ thing and it is why I consider the "Internet" the most anarcho-capitalist society in existence.
Do I want to be the one to disappear in a cell (or a ditch)? Absolutely not. I was recently in China, and everyone there already has good ways around the State. The government can pretend that their censorship is working, but most Westerners are completely ignorant of the reason behind censorship by China (and India, where I also just visited for almost a month) -- jailing political opponents. The censorship has nothing to do with real topics or anonymous groups -- it is just another tool for the State to get rid of their opponents. It is no different that the "Watch your neighbor" tactics of the USSR, and the US decades ago.
For some, it seems odd that a radical anarcho-capitalist would support ANY State action, especially censorship. There is usually only one anti-State camp: the people who want to dismiss the State through some means (voting, bloody revolution, non-violent revolution, black market lifestyle, etc). I don't see ANY way to get rid of the State and any of its forms of coercion (including censorship) through any of the previous means. Every time a right is taken away by a State, every time the State steals from you in the form of taxation and every time the State decides it can help large groups, it does so at very little cost to the individual. You and I won't do anything to prevent US$1 a year from being taken from us, or some fringe right that we don't really see heling our existence. Yet when you combine all those little US$1 fees taken from each individual in the US, someone is earning billions. That person will work extra hard to protect that income, but the millions won't work extra hard to fight a US$1 fee annually. The same is true with rights -- most people won't worry about their basic rights because they feel mostly free. When 10 million people are harmed by an infringement, 290 million residents aren't. Why should they care about 0.3% of the population?
The reason I support State censorship of all media is the same reason why I support the State in all of its madness: the more they do to harm us, the more the free market will provide means for entrepreneurs to find new ways around the madness.
Many of the towns near me have increased their sales tax: up to 9% in some towns! The free market provided loopholes around sales tax for years, and the Internet is the ultimate form of working around the local madness. I don't buy very much locally anymore, and I get to save a huge amount that the State would usually get. It makes me laugh when the local politicians argue about what they're losing to the web. They stole from me, now I get to take it back.
Many of the towns near me are starting to create smoke free "public places" which exist within private property. You can't smoke in restaurants, bars, nightclubs, anywhere. The free market is opening up amazing private property venues for me -- I've already visited 4 private dinner clubs -- the houses of famous and strong chefs in the region who gave up their jobs in order to provide exceptional meals to private consumers. They don't charge a fee, they ask for a donation. For US$50, I can get an amazing meal that gets around most of the regulations of the restaurant-restrictions placed. I can smoke, the chef can cook foods in ways that restaurants often can't, and I pay less than 1/3rd of the usual fee. Some dinner clubs include great wine, and the service is top notch. The chef doesn't worry about income taxes or permits or paying off the local zoning authority and health agency -- and I have yet to hear of anyone getting sick or the like. Good for me, good for the chef, bad for the State.
Let the State censor all of us -- it will only give entrepreneurs more reason to find anonymous replacements of the publicly regulated web. Give it time and who knows what will happen. If every device will be State-required to have some sort of "control" mechanism or DRM or who-knows-what, someone will develop a private hive network on our cell phones or PDAs or old hardware. As long as the State restricts, the market will find ways to provide.
The State: let it grow, let it restrain, let it fail to provide and let the imbeciles that support it think they're doing good for others. I've already found my ways to ignore it in 70% of my life. Eventually I'll extend that more, and not be concerned with what the mad majority wants to do this year that will harm people for generations.
Why does political affiliation always have to fall to one of 2-4 labels (Dem, Rep, Grn, Lib)? Most people registered a Democrat don't align themselves with the Democratic Party platform and definitely don't act the way one would if they wanted a democracy. Most Republicans don't align themselves with the Republican Party platform and surely don't act the way one would if the wanted to live in a republic. I'm definitely not a libertarian -- the libertarians overall are still far too Statist for me. Anarcho-Capitalist may be closer to libertarian than to democrat or republicanism, but it isn't really political. Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians all think that letting everyone vote to use force against other people will make society better. Anarcho-capitalists believe one can only vote by making voluntary actions - trade, work, rest, speech - that do not directly physically harm another person or their physical property.
Here is one area that is very difficult to win the anarcho-capitalist debate on -- the cartelization of this particular market in this particular industry sounds very insidious and hard to compete with without the government intervening and bringing the hammer down.
Most people believe that memory manufacturing is a VERY expensive business. This is true in terms of overall numbers (billions), but it is false in terms of actual products required on the market. Memory is used in much more than just computers (cars, microwaves, cell phones, digital cameras, DVD players, etc), and it is a huge market, possibly a trillion dollar one coming soon. When you have a big market, a big demand and a low supply of manufacturers, it doesn't take much to raise the billions needed to enter a market where there is obvious collusion. 1 million Americans risking US$3000 in a market that you can prove is selling at a overwhelming profit is not a big risk -- and many people were aware of the over-priced memory market back in the 90s.
Yet I think the debate is won by the free marketeers when you realize that one of the biggest reasons for the cartelization in this case is patent and copyright law. Memory chips are heavily burdened by patents, and many of those patents are cross licensed by those in the cartel. This smacks of government-paternalism and is one reason why patents generally help the cartels and the State rather than the inventor. The cartel:inventor ratio in terms of who is helped by patents is very very high (more cartels are helped than individual inventors).
I believe the government is wrong for starting class-action lawsuits. We all know that few companies are hurt by class-action lawsuits, and even fewer "victims" are helped. The lawyers (who are the biggest supporters of the expanding State) win the most! Why don't we roll back before the cartel-State collusion and see what the real cause of this problem is? The biggest barrier to the market is NOT money -- stop thinking that! No matter what the financial cost is, if there is a profit to be made, people will invest. I don't care if it is quadrillions that are needed, as long as it is profitable (and cartels can always be beaten in price), people will risk money. The real barrier is the State -- no one can raise enough "force" to overcome the force of government patents and copyrights.
If a company decides to "waste" energy, isn't it still in their best interest to set their own level of energy use? Only the company knows what their input costs have to be to be profitable -- if the item they sell/make allows the wasting of energy, the company knows best. There are too many different options when purchasing equipment to fully understand why an energy-waster might still be economically better for a given company at a given time in a given situation.
Yet we have to roll back just a little bit to understand WHY Congress would make this unconstitutional decision -- consider who benefits. The energy producers and distributors are incredibly over-regulated in terms of wholesale and retail costs and requirements. In a relatively free market, energy costs go up if demand exceeds supply. This is a natural and VERY good thing -- it requires that people throttle back their usage to return demand below supply and lower prices. This free market feature doesn't happen well in a regulated market, especially one that has an artificially high barrier to entry because of local, state and federal regulation. Don't lie to the people here and say it is expensive to get into the energy market -- it isn't. I know of local farmers that are providing their neighbors with alternative energies off of wind and solar installations on their farms, but the governments have fined them repeatedly for violating the forced monopoly of Commonwealth Edison.
Until energy is deregulated significantly on the wholesale, retail and production side, nothing will matter. Energy is already artificially expensive because retail and wholesale competition is not available in the great majority of markets. When every end of the energy industry sees significant regulation reduction, we'll be able to truly judge what is best for our specific needs (corporate or personal). Until then, Congress will just continue to throw more unconstitutional laws on top of unconstitutional laws.
Standard Oil was not a monopoly. Rockefeller reduced prices for consumers for years and years and years. Before the government even had a chance to take SO apart, competition did. Check the facts.
Better yet, read up here:
The Gates-Rockefeller Myth: The efficiencies of economies of scale and vertical integration caused the price of refined petroleum to fall from over 30 cents per gallon in 1869 to 10 cents by 1874, and to 5.9 cents in 1897. During the same period Rockefeller reduced his average costs from 3 cents to 0.29 cents per gallon.
This is bad? How? Because competition was too inept and inefficient to give consumers better prices and more product? Come on, bring some facts to the Standard Oil "monopoly" myth.
The U.S. Supreme Court declared in its 1911 decision breaking up the company: "Much has been said in favor of the objects of the Standard Oil Trust, and what it has accomplished. It may be true that it has improved the quality and cheapened the costs of petroleum and its products to the consumer."
Standard Oil was finally broken apart in 1911. Mary Ruwart wrote a huge section of her book about the facts of the SO situation. In 1900, Standard Oil had a 90% share of the oil market based on being the most efficient and active producer. By 1911, Standard Oil had fallen to 65% because competitors found new oil wells in Texas and Oklahoma and were able to match Standard Oil's efficiencies in production and distribution. The anti-trust case hadn't even been settled by this point -- proof to me that the case wasn't needed.
Before the Standard Oil breakup, they were providing cheap oil to poor and sub-poor people who couldn't afford oil before SO was able to produce it so cheaply.
Every time I bring up examples of how monopolies just don't exist naturally (without government subsidies or preferential treatment), people bring up Standard Oil and only SO. They never bring up any other examples because there are none and the SO example is faulty -- they were not a monopoly, they were just efficient for a few decades.
I remember over the years how a bunch of the regular mods used to mod me down as troll when I defended Intel against the "they're a monopoly!" posts. For the newbs here, Intel in the past was right up there with Microsoft now, IBM in the 90s, GM in the 80s, etc. Intel wasn't a monopoly, they were just a very aggressive company with a great marketing system, great support, great products and happy customers. As I said many times (I wish I could dial back to quote my old posts), Intel's future would be as shortlived as IBMs was, as Atari's was, as GM's was -- there is no need to start screaming anti-trust! anti-trust! when a company you don't like seems like they'll never fall. I said Intel would have its down days, just as I say today that someone will beat Microsoft fair and square some day, too.
Here are some posts that I recall people talking about Intel being a "bad monopoly," looking back in recent slashdot times:
Of course, some people will defend their "Intel is a monopoly" belief by saying they're not really a monopoly, they just engage in anti-competitive practices. Like what? Lowering prices below market value? That is _good_ for consumers because NO business can sell for a loss forever -- the minute that they raise their prices after they've wiped the competition clean, new competition will turn up the beat them down again. It has to be good prices, good quality hardware and good quality support -- if they want to give items away, let them. The other anti-competitive practice we hear about is how they "force" suppliers to buy bundles or maintain a certain ratio of items sold to branded items bought. Again, this is all acceptable if the contract stipulates these situations -- most suppliers are happy to sign agreements if they know what the customers want.
I'm glad to see these big companies fall because they're all colluding with the various governments to maintain their power through what I consider negative rights -- copyright, patents and ridiculous mandates requiring their products. Some even have defense contracts. They fall because the customer decided -- there are no natural monopolies as long as the customer is given the opportunity to make their decisions. The market will decide the victor, and the victor won't be on top for long.
Maybe that is true if you're attempting arbitrage, which to me is just as lame as clickfraud. Why would you be advertising for mesothelioma unless you're a shyster lawyer or trying fo arbitrage?
Most terms I pay for are in the nickel to the buck range, and again, I set my advertising budget with about 70% of clicks not converting to a sale or an interested customer. The fraud is irrelevant for me and for almost 100% of the people I help in setting up AdWords campaigns.
Congrats on catching the fraudster, though:)
FWIW, I think Google _SHOULD_ be working on click fraud, just not converting AdSense to an affiliate program.
I'm an AdWords advertiser and click-fraud means zero to me -- in fact, I don't care either way. All AdWords-advertised sites make a better profit from AdWords than one can believe -- it works. If even 10% of the clicks are fraud (I _highly_ doubt it), I don't care -- the profit is still better than most advertising campaigns.
I also get a ton of impressions -- most of my ads have a click through rate of under 5%. Considering that 95% of the unclicked ads still form a brand impression, I'm even more satisfied (free advertising, basically).
AdWords advertisers who complain are just idiots. I've run TV, radio, magazine and newspaper ads for years and never had this kind of ROI.
I'm also an AdSense publisher, and I don't see what people bother with fraud. For the few bucks you make an hour trying to defraud the system, you can do a better job selling something online and using AdWords to drive business to you.
Well, when I lend you money I'm giving you time (you will be able to buy that house *now* instead of in an uncertain future). By your own reasonements, since I gave you time, you must owe money to me! If I lend you one grand, I'm giving you a grand that you will return me intact, *and* time that you will need to pay exactly as if I sell you an orange. Its only that the price for that time is not named "price tag" but "interest", just that.
I agree with you 100% -- loans are currently what is driving many economies. On a moral consideration, I believe that the Bible is against buying what you can not afford right now. If I can't afford a home, I shouldn't have left my parents' house until I could. I believe that many people ruins their lives in chase of what they can't afford. I left home early but I bought my first (ghetto) condo at 18. I bought my first house at 21, and I've NEVER had a mortgage. My family was one of the poorest in our neighborhood -- it was through saving and working 3-4 jobs at one time that I saved enough to buy a home and never worry about a mortgage ever again.
I believe that (paraphrased) "To the lender the borrower is a slave." I see very VERY little reason to borrow money. I do believe in a group of people working together to help make a business profitable. Shares over bonds. If someone in my family can't pay their rent or mortgage, they are free to live with me (and be accountable to me for their work actions during that time) right now. If someone at my congregation has problems paying their bills, I'll move them into my spare room tomorrow if they're willing to be accountable to me for their actions. I won't support a drug user (I'll help them kick the habit) or a spendthrift if they're not responsible for their actions. Yet I would never force others to follow my moral beliefs.
You sayeth! If I'm 100.000 times more productive than you how shouldn't I take 100.000 more money? But what can I do with all that money? Well, I can test if I find someone that decides that his time is more productively spent on, say, effectively *labouring* the land than putting fences, so I can pass him part of my time storage (money) in exchange for his land. From now on, he will labour the land peacefully, and I'll do my best so he can labour the most effective way. Of course I'll do, it's my land now!
You are 100% correct -- why not just hire people to maintain your land? From an anarcho-capitalist viewpoint, it IS acceptable. Yet from my moral viewpoint, it is more likely that the individual and his family will do a more efficient job of maintaining their own land that if I pay them to maintain mine. I'm not saying this is fact (although it turns out to be true more often than you realize!), but it makes sense from my experience. Give your kid a car and he'll ruin it more likely than not. Let your kid buy their own car and they'll treat it better, more likely than not. If someone can maintain their own land and own it, why would they work for your to maintain that land, unless what you pay them is more than they get out of their own land? Surely a few wealthy people can own more land than the poor, but in my viewpoint of anarcho-capitalism, the poor can own whereas in a democratic statist system, they rarely own anything and rent forever.
What you seem to forget is that it's exactly the other way around! Since I'm powerful (by whatever means) I am already quite able to piss you off! Sooner or later ten people will decide you exchange their time for your money bribing you. You are there alone, in your "one-man" land. How do you expect to
How can you bribe someone if there is no government-mandated monopoly to exercise force? There is no point in bribing someone if there is no government to bribe! If someone performs a job for an individual more efficiently, then HIRE them -- that isn't bribery. It is definitely NOT the other way around, bribery comes only when there is an unacceptable ability to use force against others. Why
Public unions pay for more unnecessary workers than private companies do -- the DMV is a big example of a TON of waste because public funding pays for all that waste and no one can get fired. The more that are employed, the more will vote for the two parties that control the funding. Simple coercive math is all one needs to see that a privatized driving license program makes MUCH more sense. I'd rather see Allstate providing driver's licenses to those they license than a State that has no idea what the market needs. The State DMV is a "one size fits all" program, a private competitive driving priviledge contract makes more sense all around.
Whenever I'm looking for a good argument, as opposed to getting hit on the head lessons, which is what most conversation here amounts to, you are one of the ones I turn to.:)
I appreciate that. Most people think I am a profit-monger (because of advertising and affiliate links on my blogs), but my favorite form of profit is gaining information, experience and weapons to fuel debate! In fact, I give away nearly 100% of my blog income (from advertising) to the users on my blog forum. So if you're looking to debate some more and get paid for it, pop on over:) I love contrasting viewpoints and we need more regulars.
Now, I'm with you at least part way on working the land giving you a right to it. But you can't really work it by yourself unless you fence it off first.
This is true, to a point. Understand that morally I am against leasing, rents and usury (I'm a Christ follower, so I am against borrowing of any kind when there is interest). I don't believe I can morally force YOU to not lease, rent or pay usury to another, though. In my mind, you can fence off, morally, as much land as you can maintain and protect. If you try to fence off more land than you can maintain and protect, you'll spend more time running around and battling for your land. So will the other guy. This is the basis for war -- someone wants more than they can rightly handle. I think the terms of war from an anarcho-capitalist viewpoint make the most sense: someone would rather risk life than try to work hard themselves.
Remember, there are natural monopolies as well as state sponsored ones, and in a capitalist system, all markets will eventually become monopolistic as money and power concentrate and corporations raise the barriers of entry. It's unavoidable.
Here is where I am forced to disagree. I do think that in a mercantlist system, such as the US, power does concentrate to large entities because of two HUGE problems: #1 the state can and does control licensing (business and skill) which creates artificial barrier to entry, and #2 the state can and does control money. If a poor person wants to save so they or their kids can start a business, they'll lose. Government fiat inflation makes savings worthless (even stock market investments are only up about 500% in 100 years, a terrible return on investment from my free market experience in all my businesses). Government creates power concentrations by offering the largest elite cronies the benefit of either money control ("banking") or fast and cheap access to money before inflation destroys it ("federally granted loans"). If a large company can access new fiat money before it is devalued, they'll win over the little guy who can not access the same money as easily or as quickly. I look at the fraud committed in the past 10 years by government leasing of gold reserves at 1% interest to the powerful elite (see the Chevreux report on the GATA discovered scandal). This is a HUGE collusion between big government and big-government-protected business. In a free market, we have to assume that money is also governed by the free market of supply and demand. This greatly reduces the power of the elite businesses. A huge business has huge bureaucracy even without government requirements -- a small business can often times beat out the large ones. I have restricted the growth of my IT business to 30% maximum a year for the past 18 years. I refused 2 offers to go dotcom, where some of my friends took the money. Those friends are bankrupt and I am still growing strong. I also put my savings into strong money (gold, silver and hard assets) rather than in fiat money or in stock market mumbo jumbo.
What moral right do one group of people have to exclude another group from using land? Did that other group sign a contract saying they wouldn't use it? What happens to the people who don't own any land when all the land is owned?
I wish I was on my laptop now (typing from my PDA at the mome
Corporations control the state, not the other way around. Do away with the state without checking the power of the corporations and you have done nothing.
I agree with the first part, but if you do away with the State-enforcement of the corporations "legal" monopolies, you won't have megacorporations in the vast majority of markets where they exist right now.
Our present problems aren't the fault of a central state, they are a direct failing of the capitalist system, which itself is a natural outgrowth of unfair and unjust property laws. Property is theft, plain and simple: You fence off land and claim it as your own, you are stealing. It was once everybody's land, now it's just yours. How'd that happen?
I don't believe that a fence is enough. If you can make your property better and maintain it, it should be yours. I don't see any possible way for an individual to make more than a few acres better with their own hands. If they hire other people to maintain that property, why would the landworkers do it when they could just stake out their own unmaintained land and "own" it through hard work? Govermments maintain property lines when it could be done in a more voluntary way. There will always be the need to defend yourself in some way, but I believe that defense can be better performed by like-minded people cooperative to defend one another, not through the force of government but through voluntary cooperation.
The capitalist system did not fail -- it was State-mercantlism or State-marketeering that failed. Property is not theft unless government takes from one (or taxes one) to give to another. That is theft.
No one person needs assets worth more than 100 times what the poorest own, nor do they deserve it, nor will it motivate them more than they already are by their inner passions.
I disagree. Money is nothing more than a store of my time that I previously worked for another person. A person only hires me to perform a task or build a product that they can not do themselves in the same amount of time that I would charge them ('money'). If it costs you $50 to plant an orange tree, you'd rather pay me $1 for the orange -- that is $1 of "time" you saved that I now have. I can use that stored time to save ME time by paying someone else to perform a service or build a product.
If I am 100,000x more productive than you are at a given task, why shouldn't I be able to acquire that time savings? By putting caps on items, you decrease the risk people will take because you're destroying the opportunity of reward. This is the failure of socialism -- they think they can put caps on rewards, but they don't put bottom-level limits on risk. The free market offers both, though, without government interference or mandates.
Thank you for agreeing that trade secrets are bad for competition. True, copyright, licencing and certainly patents prevent competition. Which is why the anti-monopoly laws curb their power when they outlive their purpose. But complete deregulation, as you seem to advocate it, is not the solution, it's complete madness. If you take away copyright, you take away any incentive anyone might have to publish. If you take away patents and licencing in general you take away any incentive to innovate. Government is not evil, it's a huge protection and a necessary burden.
I disagree with you. I've written two books (both becoming free e-books) that I never used copyright to protect my creations. I sold them, and I continue to reap profits from their sale. I maintain about a dozen blogs and websites where I repudiate copyright and allow others to take my words intact and use them as their own. As long as the ideas get out there, my income goes up even if no one knows that I wrote the words. I also use my freely distributed words to reinforce my hourly rate, which goes up each and every year well over inflation's rise.
The blogosphere and F/OSS movement both contradict the idea that people will only create if their works are protected. The garage band and pub band industry also rejects the claim. MOST artists care less about protecting their art as long as they are making an income. No record label would take another artist's works and distribute it as their own -- the label would jeopardize their future if they attempted to defraud the public. The Internet protects the original author's ego more than any other distribution scheme in the past.
What gave MS its edge vs. Digital was the deal with PC makers to buy MSDOS for all their PC's, whether they installed it or not. So if a customer wanted DRDOS he had to pay for MSDOS as well.
So? When I sell my labors, I tell my customers that if they want a discount, they better buy what I recommend. If they don't, my rate doubles. Some customers prefer to go direct, so I charge them a higher rate. Microsoft has EVERY right to contract their stipulations -- PC makers had every right to refuse the contract and sell hardware with opposing operating systems. The consumers decided they wanted Microsoft, not DR-DOS. On top of that, the State's enabling of copyright and patents prevented DR-DOS from legally reverse engineering the MS code to sell a competing product. The State restrained trade, not Microsoft.
Deregulation is what gave California its power outages and England it's shortage of tap water.
Lies. Myth. Completely false. Deregulation NEVER happened in California. In both cases, wholesale costs were partially deregulated, but retail costs were not -- and competition was NEVER allowed into the picture. See this article: The Myth of De-Regulation and this article: The Failure of State-Designed Markets In BOTH cases, government is to blame 100%. Why did only California experience these outages when other states are even more free in energy policy? Corrupt politicians and corrupt public policy.
What you need is not deregulation, it's BALANCED regulation. Protect innovation, production, implementation, commerce, etc. until the players become too rapacious and the disadvantages outweigh the benefits. Which why patents have a limited lifespan, btw.
No patent really seems to work, though. Look at cell phones -- almost all of them are nearly identical in how they work, but every phone has a dozen patents pending. None of the patents mean anything to the cartelized players in the game -- they only serve to restrict new players from competing. We'd have a cheaper and higher quality world without patents.
This had nothing to do with the state, it was the deal with the hardware manufacturer(s) (and the fact that the hardware manufacturer had to honour their contract -- are y
I believe I have slapped down your ridiculous ideology-over-economics history of monopolies,
You haven't. If anything, you've proved even more that natural monopolies do not exist without State mandates.
First, you fail to identify what right is removed. One could frame anti-murder laws as taking away a right if you don't define 'right' robustly. A century of constitutional precedent disagrees with your interpretation of the interstate commerce clause but since this is about copyright, that is the portion of this paragraph most laughable.
There is no need for me to constantly re-iterate what I mean by rights. I believe that ALL rights stem from the validity of owning property that you've bettered with your own labor and continue to maintain. This means your land, your tools and your body. You are free to utilize all of these items to your best interest as long as you NEVER harm the same property of others. You can not steal their tools, harm their body or harm their land. If your actions on your land seem to restrict their actions because you do a better job than them, so be it. No one should be able to regulate you on your land unless your actions trespass on the land or property of others in an unwanted way.
Clearly, copyrights are not Unconstitutional but specifically attributed to the federal government under the Constitution.
Copyrights are not intended to protect income but to increase the public works after a short period of time. Current copyrights enforce cartelization, not more public works.
Overlooking the historically and economically fallacious claim that cartels exist because of government sanction, this does not make any sense. For one, many artists (in cinema, theatre, literature, music, etc) would not want their work modified ("hacked") so as to make it more accessable, less offensive or otherwise not their 'vision.' This assumes that without your reviled evil regulation that anyone would pay the original author for such copies.
Really? There is no history or economic fact that says otherwise. Cartels do not exist in a free market because anyone is free to compete. Only government can restrain the entry to a market, which creates cartelization. Name one natural cartel that did not come about because of a free market.
Many artists don't want their work modified? Where did you get these facts? Most artists either want acknowledgement for their art, income for their art or some sort of fanbase. I see no reason why one person can not use their labor and talents and their own time to mimic the work of another. A plumber doesn't want someone looking at his labors and performing the same service in a faster way for less money -- does this mean that the physical movements of the plumber should be protected from competition? A guitar player is no different than a plumber. A oil painter is the same as well -- they just have movements that they want government to only allow them to perform.
This is a drifting into incoherence. The existance of 'cartels' has nothing to do with the lack of resources in the movie maker to fight copyright violators. Indeed, it is one of the few arguments (other than profit) FOR the existance of such groups as they pool resources for such fights (and lobbying )
You don't need legal protections to unify to reduce risk. This is called "incorporating a body of individuals for one purpose." Incorporation. Laws are not needed for people to assembly together for a unified reason.
Some day you'll grow out of this weird Austrian School lockstep phase and you'll look back and laugh at your attempts to (dishonestly?) integrate free information with anti-empirical, obsolete and extreme fringe free market economics that has more to do with a political party's platform than an honest examination of economic systems.
I doubt it. I don't support political change because I am anti-voting and anti-State. I believe that we just need a few more people on
How do corporate secrets keep prices low? They do make a company profitable, but hardly competitive. On the contrary, they keep the competition off the playing field. Why do you think the armaments industry in the states --- sorry, I believe you like to think of it as "defence" industry --- is so darn inefficient? $600 toilet seats and $450 hammers are the funny part, but have a closer look at the JSF story and the disappeared millions in Iraq, it's enlightening reading.
When a corporation has a talent that they can use to provide a service for a customer, it is in their best interest to keep that information secret -- it causes a decrease in the supply of that service which in the SHORT run increases prices. This is where the confusion usually comes from. The problem with trade secrets is that you MUST be able to keep them secret in order to restrain supply and raise prices. In almost every situation, the secret will leak out, whether through reverse engineering, duplication or a better solution being found. Only through competitive forces do these things occur -- government is there to prevent reverse engineering, duplication and in some cases the finding of a better solution. Copyright and patent laws restrict the first two from happening, regulation and licensing restrict the third from happening.
The defense industry is 100% government-created. It would not exist in a free market in any way, shape or form. This is cronyism at its finest.
Microsoft's competitors were vanquished because the playing field wasn't level, not because customers didn't like their products. Either they were beaten by dodgy sales tactics (remember DRDOS?), by incomplete documentation of system calls, by artificially created incompatibility between systems (closed file formats,...). Or they were simply bought over. This has nothing to do with "the invisible hand of the market"; customers voting with their dollars. This is abuse of monopolistic power, pure and simple. And that's what the ruling is about.
I support Microsoft in the DRDOS situation -- no one was forced to buy Microsoft's DOS unless they wanted to. No company should be forced to restrict how they offer their product. In my businesses, I often times ask my customers to sign non-compete agreements when they use my software/labors for a certain price point. Microsoft is free to contractually obligate their customers to do the same. What protected Microsoft's MS-DOS versus DR-DOS was _GOVERNMENT_ restriction on the market -- namely patents and copyright. Without patents and copyright, DR-DOS would have no problem selling a better and cheaper product. Government created the mess, not Microsoft.
Why should Microsoft document system calls in THEIR product? Microsoft was NOT A MONOPOLIST, except where the State gave them that right through copyrights and patents. You're debating your own position there, friend.
Finally, in Europe the judiciary enforcing the law does not benefit in the least from fines. And the legislators are fairly elected. And lobbying^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcorruption is illegal. Fines are therefore in place because on the whole the population stands behind them. Certainly of you'd do a poll amongst Europe's population you wouldn't find many respondents opposed to the ruling! How is this racketeering?
Because it threatens a company and a group of individuals' rights to maintain trade secrets. Market forces are made bad by EU's overbearing pro-monopoly agenda (copyright, patents, regulations and licensing). Customer happiness goes up when competition goes up, but the EU has become one of the most anti-competitive marketplaces and Europe will suffer in the next 5-10 years because of it. Mark my words, the EU is on the verge of doom if they don't deregulate their markets. The US is in a similar situation.
First, the State's anti-freedom IP laws prevent reverse-engineering of Microsoft code. This is why the market can't provide more competition. No company should have to share trade secrets that make them more competitive and keep prices down.
Second, the fines go to the State! This is warlordist racketeering and threat.
Third, competitors complaining were fairly vanquished because consumed are happy with the current market -- the demand for the competitions' products is low.
I think that _most_ of my anarcho-capitalist thoughts (and convictions) comes down to the end game: if a law is to work for an individual (like yourself, or like me), how do we take advantage of the law if someone commits a crime regarding that law? Will the police work on our behalf? Will we be financially responsible to hire a legal team?
When my store was robbed (almost $50,000 gone in one night) and my insurance policy wasn't modified properly (my fault!), the police did NOTHING to track down the robbers. They were too busy radaring speeders that night to patrol my area. What good are they?
When my wife almost died after a glass pan kitchen explosion, she was saved by a private ambulance company -- the public one came 4-5 minutes late, and she'd have been dead from loss of blood. I'm glad I called 3 companies.
I don't see how the law can help me -- I can't afford to fight anyone with power. In a free market, I could fight anyone through competition -- especially if I didn't value my time as much as they did! I could plan on saving for the future because the government wouldn't be destroying my savings and wealth through fiat currency inflation, and I could try my luck at a new industry because I wouldn't have to go through elitist and monopolistic licensing schemes (and my customers would be taking a chance, but might get a huge savings in the process).
Government IS evil, but most people think it works for them. Wait till you need them for some reason, then you get the real picture.
Yet is it proven time and again that quality comes from competition not legally-enforced monopoly.
Where are lines faster -- the grocery store or the DMV?
It is ridiculous to think that the US government has made airlines SAFER. The airlines were "off the hook" BECAUSE of FAA mandates -- the big airlines openly WELCOME FAA mandates because they know it sets an unbearably high (and inefficient and useless) standard that most competitors won't be able to meet.
If an airline is given 100% responsibilities for its future, why would they want an explosion or a crash? If tort were properly returned to a more free-market system, insurance companies would have more reason to be involved in the safety of their customers.
The FAA _is_ guilty of 9/11 as well as flight delays. When Canada privatized their FAA, delays went from one of the worst in the Western world to one of the best, if not THE best. Unions are inefficient, public ones are terrible.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I hear there's a lot of private support for poverty! So, what happened to the war on that?
The State at every level in the US is the biggest producer of poverty. No State mandate, regulation or program has helped more people than it harmed, so why do we even bother with new programs?
What does "center-seeking" mean? There is no "center" between being a Statist and being Anarcho-capitalist. Either you think freedom requires the State or it doesn't. There is no "center" there.
My reasons why the State shouldn't exist is proven every day -- just spend a day at your local courthouse, take note of every law that is violated, and think about what the person did that directly harmed a specific individual with that action. I do this about 3 times a year, and so far the best day for the State is when 9 out of 600 cases had to do with a specific crime against an individual's property, body or tool. 591 cases were "The People against ABC" and ABC didn't do anything that hurt anyone directly. This was on their best day!
I'd rather live in a world where those 9 people who were hurt are still hurt, maybe 27 people even, than in a world where 591 people go to jail or lose in court because of the State's desire for more power and money and the control of the expansion of both power and money.
So true. I used to use the word "government" which is derived from the Latin gubernare -- to restrain, restrict, control the action or behavior of. Just like a "governor" in your car restricts the speed at which you can drive, a government is there to restrict your actions.
I can see the reason behind using government to maintain physical property lines and to punish those who harm the property of another (land, body, or tools). I don't see why government is needed to protect a person's actions or opportunities -- when we try to use government for this reason, we end up with what we have today -- tyranny.
Bearing in mind that we call such free marketeers "pirates" and "terrorists" and toruture and shoot them.
For now. Give it 5-10 years and there will be more than enough anonymity devices to protect anything the State considers deviant thought or action.
Thank you for your patronage and enjoy your Soviet style "free market." We couldn't do it without you.
The difference between the Soviet Union and today is that the USSR had no Internet, technology worldwide wasn't very advanced and the ability to communicate beyond 7 miles of your home was either too costly or too slow. All of these things have changed thanks to the free market entrepreneurship that continues to advance technology and the Internet.
The problem with what you suggest is that eventually physical violence will be necessary in order for individuals to exercise their rights.
So it would seem, but I don't think that is true. In the old days, the State had their local enforces: people who spied on others for the State. Today, the State seems to rely more and more on technology. As many of us geeks know, logs are very hard to maintain. Even with NSA-level search algorithms and routines, it is likely that the State will only try to watch over more and more, and eventually it will be ineffective except against the few that the State already is watching directly. Even the US' own internal spy agency is more targetted to watching political enemies than common people. Most common people that smoke pot do so without much concern. Most common people who own unregistered weapons also do so without fear. This means that the State doesn't work, and we can only hope that the blackhats will continuously find ways around the restrictions and regulations.
So far, freedom is winning in more circles than the media will let on. In my area there are already groups that barter and trade in bullion rather than in fiat paper currency. There are already a few private restaurants, almost a dozen farmers who sell better quality and lower priced produce and dairy than the grocery store, hundreds of day laborers that you can hire for a few dollars an hour (hit up any Home Depot in the morning), and the like. There is likely no way for the State to enforce even 1% of its laws -- they're only bound to use them against specific enemies. Don't be that enemy.
Who is the real enemy of the State? Any individual or group which attempts to create a competition cartel that competes directly with the State's income. Just look at any war on "_subject_" and you'll see that it is always about the State being in control of the distribution or manufacturing of some product or service.
The State has only one intention in mind: create criminals. Nothing the State does can be considered otherwise. This means that people will suffer when some non-violent act is considered criminal. Look at drug laws: they don't work, but they're a great way for the State to expand its income. The same is true of any action that is non-violent in nature (drugs, prostitution, home schooling, gambling, selling, buying, etc).
When the State decides to censor people, it comes in two ways: direct censorship ("You can't talk about subject A") and indirect censorship ("You can't talk about subject B that someone else already talked about"). Subject A is the type of censorship that China and now India are doing. Subject B covers copyright and patents -- both are censorships against words and actions a person wants to perform with his own time, on his own property, using his own body and tools.
There is only one reason for either type of censorship: to protect the interests of an elite individual or group. Subject B censorship (copyright and patents) protects distribution cartels -- the few who control the distribution of content or specific items. Subject A censorship (direct prevention of talking about a certain subject) protects the State itself -- giving major power that is usually used against "enemies" of the State. Both States are corrupt -- if you go to jail because of a corrupt system, there is little that can be done to protect your interests.
We'll hear cries for our own State to work against the States that are censoring others, even though the State we live in is no better. I guess the best defense for my black-market support around censorship is that some eggs will break in order to make the best omelet. Some people will go to jail or will just disappear -- these are those who are directly harmed by the State. Yet millions more will be given more freedoms in whatever the free/black market provides to get around the restrictions and regulations. Over time, this will make us more free in the shadow of the State -- eventually technology will get to the point that no restrictions will be possible on anything the State does. This is a _good_ thing and it is why I consider the "Internet" the most anarcho-capitalist society in existence.
Do I want to be the one to disappear in a cell (or a ditch)? Absolutely not. I was recently in China, and everyone there already has good ways around the State. The government can pretend that their censorship is working, but most Westerners are completely ignorant of the reason behind censorship by China (and India, where I also just visited for almost a month) -- jailing political opponents. The censorship has nothing to do with real topics or anonymous groups -- it is just another tool for the State to get rid of their opponents. It is no different that the "Watch your neighbor" tactics of the USSR, and the US decades ago.
For some, it seems odd that a radical anarcho-capitalist would support ANY State action, especially censorship. There is usually only one anti-State camp: the people who want to dismiss the State through some means (voting, bloody revolution, non-violent revolution, black market lifestyle, etc). I don't see ANY way to get rid of the State and any of its forms of coercion (including censorship) through any of the previous means. Every time a right is taken away by a State, every time the State steals from you in the form of taxation and every time the State decides it can help large groups, it does so at very little cost to the individual. You and I won't do anything to prevent US$1 a year from being taken from us, or some fringe right that we don't really see heling our existence. Yet when you combine all those little US$1 fees taken from each individual in the US, someone is earning billions. That person will work extra hard to protect that income, but the millions won't work extra hard to fight a US$1 fee annually. The same is true with rights -- most people won't worry about their basic rights because they feel mostly free. When 10 million people are harmed by an infringement, 290 million residents aren't. Why should they care about 0.3% of the population?
The reason I support State censorship of all media is the same reason why I support the State in all of its madness: the more they do to harm us, the more the free market will provide means for entrepreneurs to find new ways around the madness.
Many of the towns near me have increased their sales tax: up to 9% in some towns! The free market provided loopholes around sales tax for years, and the Internet is the ultimate form of working around the local madness. I don't buy very much locally anymore, and I get to save a huge amount that the State would usually get. It makes me laugh when the local politicians argue about what they're losing to the web. They stole from me, now I get to take it back.
Many of the towns near me are starting to create smoke free "public places" which exist within private property. You can't smoke in restaurants, bars, nightclubs, anywhere. The free market is opening up amazing private property venues for me -- I've already visited 4 private dinner clubs -- the houses of famous and strong chefs in the region who gave up their jobs in order to provide exceptional meals to private consumers. They don't charge a fee, they ask for a donation. For US$50, I can get an amazing meal that gets around most of the regulations of the restaurant-restrictions placed. I can smoke, the chef can cook foods in ways that restaurants often can't, and I pay less than 1/3rd of the usual fee. Some dinner clubs include great wine, and the service is top notch. The chef doesn't worry about income taxes or permits or paying off the local zoning authority and health agency -- and I have yet to hear of anyone getting sick or the like. Good for me, good for the chef, bad for the State.
Let the State censor all of us -- it will only give entrepreneurs more reason to find anonymous replacements of the publicly regulated web. Give it time and who knows what will happen. If every device will be State-required to have some sort of "control" mechanism or DRM or who-knows-what, someone will develop a private hive network on our cell phones or PDAs or old hardware. As long as the State restricts, the market will find ways to provide.
The State: let it grow, let it restrain, let it fail to provide and let the imbeciles that support it think they're doing good for others. I've already found my ways to ignore it in 70% of my life. Eventually I'll extend that more, and not be concerned with what the mad majority wants to do this year that will harm people for generations.
Why does political affiliation always have to fall to one of 2-4 labels (Dem, Rep, Grn, Lib)? Most people registered a Democrat don't align themselves with the Democratic Party platform and definitely don't act the way one would if they wanted a democracy. Most Republicans don't align themselves with the Republican Party platform and surely don't act the way one would if the wanted to live in a republic. I'm definitely not a libertarian -- the libertarians overall are still far too Statist for me. Anarcho-Capitalist may be closer to libertarian than to democrat or republicanism, but it isn't really political. Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians all think that letting everyone vote to use force against other people will make society better. Anarcho-capitalists believe one can only vote by making voluntary actions - trade, work, rest, speech - that do not directly physically harm another person or their physical property.
Here is one area that is very difficult to win the anarcho-capitalist debate on -- the cartelization of this particular market in this particular industry sounds very insidious and hard to compete with without the government intervening and bringing the hammer down.
Most people believe that memory manufacturing is a VERY expensive business. This is true in terms of overall numbers (billions), but it is false in terms of actual products required on the market. Memory is used in much more than just computers (cars, microwaves, cell phones, digital cameras, DVD players, etc), and it is a huge market, possibly a trillion dollar one coming soon. When you have a big market, a big demand and a low supply of manufacturers, it doesn't take much to raise the billions needed to enter a market where there is obvious collusion. 1 million Americans risking US$3000 in a market that you can prove is selling at a overwhelming profit is not a big risk -- and many people were aware of the over-priced memory market back in the 90s.
Yet I think the debate is won by the free marketeers when you realize that one of the biggest reasons for the cartelization in this case is patent and copyright law. Memory chips are heavily burdened by patents, and many of those patents are cross licensed by those in the cartel. This smacks of government-paternalism and is one reason why patents generally help the cartels and the State rather than the inventor. The cartel:inventor ratio in terms of who is helped by patents is very very high (more cartels are helped than individual inventors).
I believe the government is wrong for starting class-action lawsuits. We all know that few companies are hurt by class-action lawsuits, and even fewer "victims" are helped. The lawyers (who are the biggest supporters of the expanding State) win the most! Why don't we roll back before the cartel-State collusion and see what the real cause of this problem is? The biggest barrier to the market is NOT money -- stop thinking that! No matter what the financial cost is, if there is a profit to be made, people will invest. I don't care if it is quadrillions that are needed, as long as it is profitable (and cartels can always be beaten in price), people will risk money. The real barrier is the State -- no one can raise enough "force" to overcome the force of government patents and copyrights.
If a company decides to "waste" energy, isn't it still in their best interest to set their own level of energy use? Only the company knows what their input costs have to be to be profitable -- if the item they sell/make allows the wasting of energy, the company knows best. There are too many different options when purchasing equipment to fully understand why an energy-waster might still be economically better for a given company at a given time in a given situation.
Yet we have to roll back just a little bit to understand WHY Congress would make this unconstitutional decision -- consider who benefits. The energy producers and distributors are incredibly over-regulated in terms of wholesale and retail costs and requirements. In a relatively free market, energy costs go up if demand exceeds supply. This is a natural and VERY good thing -- it requires that people throttle back their usage to return demand below supply and lower prices. This free market feature doesn't happen well in a regulated market, especially one that has an artificially high barrier to entry because of local, state and federal regulation. Don't lie to the people here and say it is expensive to get into the energy market -- it isn't. I know of local farmers that are providing their neighbors with alternative energies off of wind and solar installations on their farms, but the governments have fined them repeatedly for violating the forced monopoly of Commonwealth Edison.
Until energy is deregulated significantly on the wholesale, retail and production side, nothing will matter. Energy is already artificially expensive because retail and wholesale competition is not available in the great majority of markets. When every end of the energy industry sees significant regulation reduction, we'll be able to truly judge what is best for our specific needs (corporate or personal). Until then, Congress will just continue to throw more unconstitutional laws on top of unconstitutional laws.
Standard Oil was not a monopoly. Rockefeller reduced prices for consumers for years and years and years. Before the government even had a chance to take SO apart, competition did. Check the facts.
Better yet, read up here:
The Gates-Rockefeller Myth:
The efficiencies of economies of scale and vertical integration caused the price of refined petroleum to fall from over 30 cents per gallon in 1869 to 10 cents by 1874, and to 5.9 cents in 1897. During the same period Rockefeller reduced his average costs from 3 cents to 0.29 cents per gallon.
This is bad? How? Because competition was too inept and inefficient to give consumers better prices and more product? Come on, bring some facts to the Standard Oil "monopoly" myth.
We also see here:
Privileged Producers:
The U.S. Supreme Court declared in its 1911 decision breaking up the company: "Much has been said in favor of the objects of the Standard Oil Trust, and what it has accomplished. It may be true that it has improved the quality and cheapened the costs of petroleum and its products to the consumer."
Standard Oil was finally broken apart in 1911. Mary Ruwart wrote a huge section of her book about the facts of the SO situation. In 1900, Standard Oil had a 90% share of the oil market based on being the most efficient and active producer. By 1911, Standard Oil had fallen to 65% because competitors found new oil wells in Texas and Oklahoma and were able to match Standard Oil's efficiencies in production and distribution. The anti-trust case hadn't even been settled by this point -- proof to me that the case wasn't needed.
Before the Standard Oil breakup, they were providing cheap oil to poor and sub-poor people who couldn't afford oil before SO was able to produce it so cheaply.
Every time I bring up examples of how monopolies just don't exist naturally (without government subsidies or preferential treatment), people bring up Standard Oil and only SO. They never bring up any other examples because there are none and the SO example is faulty -- they were not a monopoly, they were just efficient for a few decades.
I remember over the years how a bunch of the regular mods used to mod me down as troll when I defended Intel against the "they're a monopoly!" posts. For the newbs here, Intel in the past was right up there with Microsoft now, IBM in the 90s, GM in the 80s, etc. Intel wasn't a monopoly, they were just a very aggressive company with a great marketing system, great support, great products and happy customers. As I said many times (I wish I could dial back to quote my old posts), Intel's future would be as shortlived as IBMs was, as Atari's was, as GM's was -- there is no need to start screaming anti-trust! anti-trust! when a company you don't like seems like they'll never fall. I said Intel would have its down days, just as I say today that someone will beat Microsoft fair and square some day, too.
Here are some posts that I recall people talking about Intel being a "bad monopoly," looking back in recent slashdot times:
Timeline Set for Intel/AMD Antitrust Trial
Intel and Skype Exclude AMD
AMD Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against Intel
Japanese Government Raids Intel Tokyo Offices
AMD Alleges Intel Compilers Create Slower AMD Code
Of course, some people will defend their "Intel is a monopoly" belief by saying they're not really a monopoly, they just engage in anti-competitive practices. Like what? Lowering prices below market value? That is _good_ for consumers because NO business can sell for a loss forever -- the minute that they raise their prices after they've wiped the competition clean, new competition will turn up the beat them down again. It has to be good prices, good quality hardware and good quality support -- if they want to give items away, let them. The other anti-competitive practice we hear about is how they "force" suppliers to buy bundles or maintain a certain ratio of items sold to branded items bought. Again, this is all acceptable if the contract stipulates these situations -- most suppliers are happy to sign agreements if they know what the customers want.
I'm glad to see these big companies fall because they're all colluding with the various governments to maintain their power through what I consider negative rights -- copyright, patents and ridiculous mandates requiring their products. Some even have defense contracts. They fall because the customer decided -- there are no natural monopolies as long as the customer is given the opportunity to make their decisions. The market will decide the victor, and the victor won't be on top for long.
Maybe that is true if you're attempting arbitrage, which to me is just as lame as clickfraud. Why would you be advertising for mesothelioma unless you're a shyster lawyer or trying fo arbitrage?
:)
Most terms I pay for are in the nickel to the buck range, and again, I set my advertising budget with about 70% of clicks not converting to a sale or an interested customer. The fraud is irrelevant for me and for almost 100% of the people I help in setting up AdWords campaigns.
Congrats on catching the fraudster, though
FWIW, I think Google _SHOULD_ be working on click fraud, just not converting AdSense to an affiliate program.
I'm an AdWords advertiser and click-fraud means zero to me -- in fact, I don't care either way. All AdWords-advertised sites make a better profit from AdWords than one can believe -- it works. If even 10% of the clicks are fraud (I _highly_ doubt it), I don't care -- the profit is still better than most advertising campaigns.
I also get a ton of impressions -- most of my ads have a click through rate of under 5%. Considering that 95% of the unclicked ads still form a brand impression, I'm even more satisfied (free advertising, basically).
AdWords advertisers who complain are just idiots. I've run TV, radio, magazine and newspaper ads for years and never had this kind of ROI.
I'm also an AdSense publisher, and I don't see what people bother with fraud. For the few bucks you make an hour trying to defraud the system, you can do a better job selling something online and using AdWords to drive business to you.
Well, when I lend you money I'm giving you time (you will be able to buy that house *now* instead of in an uncertain future). By your own reasonements, since I gave you time, you must owe money to me! If I lend you one grand, I'm giving you a grand that you will return me intact, *and* time that you will need to pay exactly as if I sell you an orange. Its only that the price for that time is not named "price tag" but "interest", just that.
I agree with you 100% -- loans are currently what is driving many economies. On a moral consideration, I believe that the Bible is against buying what you can not afford right now. If I can't afford a home, I shouldn't have left my parents' house until I could. I believe that many people ruins their lives in chase of what they can't afford. I left home early but I bought my first (ghetto) condo at 18. I bought my first house at 21, and I've NEVER had a mortgage. My family was one of the poorest in our neighborhood -- it was through saving and working 3-4 jobs at one time that I saved enough to buy a home and never worry about a mortgage ever again.
I believe that (paraphrased) "To the lender the borrower is a slave." I see very VERY little reason to borrow money. I do believe in a group of people working together to help make a business profitable. Shares over bonds. If someone in my family can't pay their rent or mortgage, they are free to live with me (and be accountable to me for their work actions during that time) right now. If someone at my congregation has problems paying their bills, I'll move them into my spare room tomorrow if they're willing to be accountable to me for their actions. I won't support a drug user (I'll help them kick the habit) or a spendthrift if they're not responsible for their actions. Yet I would never force others to follow my moral beliefs.
You sayeth! If I'm 100.000 times more productive than you how shouldn't I take 100.000 more money? But what can I do with all that money? Well, I can test if I find someone that decides that his time is more productively spent on, say, effectively *labouring* the land than putting fences, so I can pass him part of my time storage (money) in exchange for his land. From now on, he will labour the land peacefully, and I'll do my best so he can labour the most effective way. Of course I'll do, it's my land now!
You are 100% correct -- why not just hire people to maintain your land? From an anarcho-capitalist viewpoint, it IS acceptable. Yet from my moral viewpoint, it is more likely that the individual and his family will do a more efficient job of maintaining their own land that if I pay them to maintain mine. I'm not saying this is fact (although it turns out to be true more often than you realize!), but it makes sense from my experience. Give your kid a car and he'll ruin it more likely than not. Let your kid buy their own car and they'll treat it better, more likely than not. If someone can maintain their own land and own it, why would they work for your to maintain that land, unless what you pay them is more than they get out of their own land? Surely a few wealthy people can own more land than the poor, but in my viewpoint of anarcho-capitalism, the poor can own whereas in a democratic statist system, they rarely own anything and rent forever.
What you seem to forget is that it's exactly the other way around! Since I'm powerful (by whatever means) I am already quite able to piss you off! Sooner or later ten people will decide you exchange their time for your money bribing you. You are there alone, in your "one-man" land. How do you expect to
How can you bribe someone if there is no government-mandated monopoly to exercise force? There is no point in bribing someone if there is no government to bribe! If someone performs a job for an individual more efficiently, then HIRE them -- that isn't bribery. It is definitely NOT the other way around, bribery comes only when there is an unacceptable ability to use force against others. Why
Public unions pay for more unnecessary workers than private companies do -- the DMV is a big example of a TON of waste because public funding pays for all that waste and no one can get fired. The more that are employed, the more will vote for the two parties that control the funding. Simple coercive math is all one needs to see that a privatized driving license program makes MUCH more sense. I'd rather see Allstate providing driver's licenses to those they license than a State that has no idea what the market needs. The State DMV is a "one size fits all" program, a private competitive driving priviledge contract makes more sense all around.
Whenever I'm looking for a good argument, as opposed to getting hit on the head lessons, which is what most conversation here amounts to, you are one of the ones I turn to. :)
:) I love contrasting viewpoints and we need more regulars.
I appreciate that. Most people think I am a profit-monger (because of advertising and affiliate links on my blogs), but my favorite form of profit is gaining information, experience and weapons to fuel debate! In fact, I give away nearly 100% of my blog income (from advertising) to the users on my blog forum. So if you're looking to debate some more and get paid for it, pop on over
Now, I'm with you at least part way on working the land giving you a right to it. But you can't really work it by yourself unless you fence it off first.
This is true, to a point. Understand that morally I am against leasing, rents and usury (I'm a Christ follower, so I am against borrowing of any kind when there is interest). I don't believe I can morally force YOU to not lease, rent or pay usury to another, though. In my mind, you can fence off, morally, as much land as you can maintain and protect. If you try to fence off more land than you can maintain and protect, you'll spend more time running around and battling for your land. So will the other guy. This is the basis for war -- someone wants more than they can rightly handle. I think the terms of war from an anarcho-capitalist viewpoint make the most sense: someone would rather risk life than try to work hard themselves.
Remember, there are natural monopolies as well as state sponsored ones, and in a capitalist system, all markets will eventually become monopolistic as money and power concentrate and corporations raise the barriers of entry. It's unavoidable.
Here is where I am forced to disagree. I do think that in a mercantlist system, such as the US, power does concentrate to large entities because of two HUGE problems: #1 the state can and does control licensing (business and skill) which creates artificial barrier to entry, and #2 the state can and does control money. If a poor person wants to save so they or their kids can start a business, they'll lose. Government fiat inflation makes savings worthless (even stock market investments are only up about 500% in 100 years, a terrible return on investment from my free market experience in all my businesses). Government creates power concentrations by offering the largest elite cronies the benefit of either money control ("banking") or fast and cheap access to money before inflation destroys it ("federally granted loans"). If a large company can access new fiat money before it is devalued, they'll win over the little guy who can not access the same money as easily or as quickly. I look at the fraud committed in the past 10 years by government leasing of gold reserves at 1% interest to the powerful elite (see the Chevreux report on the GATA discovered scandal). This is a HUGE collusion between big government and big-government-protected business. In a free market, we have to assume that money is also governed by the free market of supply and demand. This greatly reduces the power of the elite businesses. A huge business has huge bureaucracy even without government requirements -- a small business can often times beat out the large ones. I have restricted the growth of my IT business to 30% maximum a year for the past 18 years. I refused 2 offers to go dotcom, where some of my friends took the money. Those friends are bankrupt and I am still growing strong. I also put my savings into strong money (gold, silver and hard assets) rather than in fiat money or in stock market mumbo jumbo.
What moral right do one group of people have to exclude another group from using land? Did that other group sign a contract saying they wouldn't use it? What happens to the people who don't own any land when all the land is owned?
I wish I was on my laptop now (typing from my PDA at the mome
Corporations control the state, not the other way around. Do away with the state without checking the power of the corporations and you have done nothing.
I agree with the first part, but if you do away with the State-enforcement of the corporations "legal" monopolies, you won't have megacorporations in the vast majority of markets where they exist right now.
Our present problems aren't the fault of a central state, they are a direct failing of the capitalist system, which itself is a natural outgrowth of unfair and unjust property laws. Property is theft, plain and simple: You fence off land and claim it as your own, you are stealing. It was once everybody's land, now it's just yours. How'd that happen?
I don't believe that a fence is enough. If you can make your property better and maintain it, it should be yours. I don't see any possible way for an individual to make more than a few acres better with their own hands. If they hire other people to maintain that property, why would the landworkers do it when they could just stake out their own unmaintained land and "own" it through hard work? Govermments maintain property lines when it could be done in a more voluntary way. There will always be the need to defend yourself in some way, but I believe that defense can be better performed by like-minded people cooperative to defend one another, not through the force of government but through voluntary cooperation.
The capitalist system did not fail -- it was State-mercantlism or State-marketeering that failed. Property is not theft unless government takes from one (or taxes one) to give to another. That is theft.
No one person needs assets worth more than 100 times what the poorest own, nor do they deserve it, nor will it motivate them more than they already are by their inner passions.
I disagree. Money is nothing more than a store of my time that I previously worked for another person. A person only hires me to perform a task or build a product that they can not do themselves in the same amount of time that I would charge them ('money'). If it costs you $50 to plant an orange tree, you'd rather pay me $1 for the orange -- that is $1 of "time" you saved that I now have. I can use that stored time to save ME time by paying someone else to perform a service or build a product.
If I am 100,000x more productive than you are at a given task, why shouldn't I be able to acquire that time savings? By putting caps on items, you decrease the risk people will take because you're destroying the opportunity of reward. This is the failure of socialism -- they think they can put caps on rewards, but they don't put bottom-level limits on risk. The free market offers both, though, without government interference or mandates.
Thank you for agreeing that trade secrets are bad for competition. True, copyright, licencing and certainly patents prevent competition. Which is why the anti-monopoly laws curb their power when they outlive their purpose. But complete deregulation, as you seem to advocate it, is not the solution, it's complete madness. If you take away copyright, you take away any incentive anyone might have to publish. If you take away patents and licencing in general you take away any incentive to innovate. Government is not evil, it's a huge protection and a necessary burden.
I disagree with you. I've written two books (both becoming free e-books) that I never used copyright to protect my creations. I sold them, and I continue to reap profits from their sale. I maintain about a dozen blogs and websites where I repudiate copyright and allow others to take my words intact and use them as their own. As long as the ideas get out there, my income goes up even if no one knows that I wrote the words. I also use my freely distributed words to reinforce my hourly rate, which goes up each and every year well over inflation's rise.
The blogosphere and F/OSS movement both contradict the idea that people will only create if their works are protected. The garage band and pub band industry also rejects the claim. MOST artists care less about protecting their art as long as they are making an income. No record label would take another artist's works and distribute it as their own -- the label would jeopardize their future if they attempted to defraud the public. The Internet protects the original author's ego more than any other distribution scheme in the past.
What gave MS its edge vs. Digital was the deal with PC makers to buy MSDOS for all their PC's, whether they installed it or not. So if a customer wanted DRDOS he had to pay for MSDOS as well.
So? When I sell my labors, I tell my customers that if they want a discount, they better buy what I recommend. If they don't, my rate doubles. Some customers prefer to go direct, so I charge them a higher rate. Microsoft has EVERY right to contract their stipulations -- PC makers had every right to refuse the contract and sell hardware with opposing operating systems. The consumers decided they wanted Microsoft, not DR-DOS. On top of that, the State's enabling of copyright and patents prevented DR-DOS from legally reverse engineering the MS code to sell a competing product. The State restrained trade, not Microsoft.
Deregulation is what gave California its power outages and England it's shortage of tap water.
Lies. Myth. Completely false. Deregulation NEVER happened in California. In both cases, wholesale costs were partially deregulated, but retail costs were not -- and competition was NEVER allowed into the picture. See this article: The Myth of De-Regulation and this article: The Failure of State-Designed Markets In BOTH cases, government is to blame 100%. Why did only California experience these outages when other states are even more free in energy policy? Corrupt politicians and corrupt public policy.
What you need is not deregulation, it's BALANCED regulation. Protect innovation, production, implementation, commerce, etc. until the players become too rapacious and the disadvantages outweigh the benefits. Which why patents have a limited lifespan, btw.
No patent really seems to work, though. Look at cell phones -- almost all of them are nearly identical in how they work, but every phone has a dozen patents pending. None of the patents mean anything to the cartelized players in the game -- they only serve to restrict new players from competing. We'd have a cheaper and higher quality world without patents.
This had nothing to do with the state, it was the deal with the hardware manufacturer(s) (and the fact that the hardware manufacturer had to honour their contract -- are y
I believe I have slapped down your ridiculous ideology-over-economics history of monopolies,
You haven't. If anything, you've proved even more that natural monopolies do not exist without State mandates.
First, you fail to identify what right is removed. One could frame anti-murder laws as taking away a right if you don't define 'right' robustly. A century of constitutional precedent disagrees with your interpretation of the interstate commerce clause but since this is about copyright, that is the portion of this paragraph most laughable.
There is no need for me to constantly re-iterate what I mean by rights. I believe that ALL rights stem from the validity of owning property that you've bettered with your own labor and continue to maintain. This means your land, your tools and your body. You are free to utilize all of these items to your best interest as long as you NEVER harm the same property of others. You can not steal their tools, harm their body or harm their land. If your actions on your land seem to restrict their actions because you do a better job than them, so be it. No one should be able to regulate you on your land unless your actions trespass on the land or property of others in an unwanted way.
Clearly, copyrights are not Unconstitutional but specifically attributed to the federal government under the Constitution.
Copyrights are not intended to protect income but to increase the public works after a short period of time. Current copyrights enforce cartelization, not more public works.
Overlooking the historically and economically fallacious claim that cartels exist because of government sanction, this does not make any sense. For one, many artists (in cinema, theatre, literature, music, etc) would not want their work modified ("hacked") so as to make it more accessable, less offensive or otherwise not their 'vision.' This assumes that without your reviled evil regulation that anyone would pay the original author for such copies.
Really? There is no history or economic fact that says otherwise. Cartels do not exist in a free market because anyone is free to compete. Only government can restrain the entry to a market, which creates cartelization. Name one natural cartel that did not come about because of a free market.
Many artists don't want their work modified? Where did you get these facts? Most artists either want acknowledgement for their art, income for their art or some sort of fanbase. I see no reason why one person can not use their labor and talents and their own time to mimic the work of another. A plumber doesn't want someone looking at his labors and performing the same service in a faster way for less money -- does this mean that the physical movements of the plumber should be protected from competition? A guitar player is no different than a plumber. A oil painter is the same as well -- they just have movements that they want government to only allow them to perform.
This is a drifting into incoherence. The existance of 'cartels' has nothing to do with the lack of resources in the movie maker to fight copyright violators. Indeed, it is one of the few arguments (other than profit) FOR the existance of such groups as they pool resources for such fights (and lobbying )
You don't need legal protections to unify to reduce risk. This is called "incorporating a body of individuals for one purpose." Incorporation. Laws are not needed for people to assembly together for a unified reason.
Some day you'll grow out of this weird Austrian School lockstep phase and you'll look back and laugh at your attempts to (dishonestly?) integrate free information with anti-empirical, obsolete and extreme fringe free market economics that has more to do with a political party's platform than an honest examination of economic systems.
I doubt it. I don't support political change because I am anti-voting and anti-State. I believe that we just need a few more people on
How do corporate secrets keep prices low? They do make a company profitable, but hardly competitive. On the contrary, they keep the competition off the playing field. Why do you think the armaments industry in the states --- sorry, I believe you like to think of it as "defence" industry --- is so darn inefficient? $600 toilet seats and $450 hammers are the funny part, but have a closer look at the JSF story and the disappeared millions in Iraq, it's enlightening reading.
...). Or they were simply bought over. This has nothing to do with "the invisible hand of the market"; customers voting with their dollars. This is abuse of monopolistic power, pure and simple. And that's what the ruling is about.
When a corporation has a talent that they can use to provide a service for a customer, it is in their best interest to keep that information secret -- it causes a decrease in the supply of that service which in the SHORT run increases prices. This is where the confusion usually comes from. The problem with trade secrets is that you MUST be able to keep them secret in order to restrain supply and raise prices. In almost every situation, the secret will leak out, whether through reverse engineering, duplication or a better solution being found. Only through competitive forces do these things occur -- government is there to prevent reverse engineering, duplication and in some cases the finding of a better solution. Copyright and patent laws restrict the first two from happening, regulation and licensing restrict the third from happening.
The defense industry is 100% government-created. It would not exist in a free market in any way, shape or form. This is cronyism at its finest.
Microsoft's competitors were vanquished because the playing field wasn't level, not because customers didn't like their products. Either they were beaten by dodgy sales tactics (remember DRDOS?), by incomplete documentation of system calls, by artificially created incompatibility between systems (closed file formats,
I support Microsoft in the DRDOS situation -- no one was forced to buy Microsoft's DOS unless they wanted to. No company should be forced to restrict how they offer their product. In my businesses, I often times ask my customers to sign non-compete agreements when they use my software/labors for a certain price point. Microsoft is free to contractually obligate their customers to do the same. What protected Microsoft's MS-DOS versus DR-DOS was _GOVERNMENT_ restriction on the market -- namely patents and copyright. Without patents and copyright, DR-DOS would have no problem selling a better and cheaper product. Government created the mess, not Microsoft.
Why should Microsoft document system calls in THEIR product? Microsoft was NOT A MONOPOLIST, except where the State gave them that right through copyrights and patents. You're debating your own position there, friend.
Finally, in Europe the judiciary enforcing the law does not benefit in the least from fines. And the legislators are fairly elected. And lobbying^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcorruption is illegal. Fines are therefore in place because on the whole the population stands behind them. Certainly of you'd do a poll amongst Europe's population you wouldn't find many respondents opposed to the ruling! How is this racketeering?
Because it threatens a company and a group of individuals' rights to maintain trade secrets. Market forces are made bad by EU's overbearing pro-monopoly agenda (copyright, patents, regulations and licensing). Customer happiness goes up when competition goes up, but the EU has become one of the most anti-competitive marketplaces and Europe will suffer in the next 5-10 years because of it. Mark my words, the EU is on the verge of doom if they don't deregulate their markets. The US is in a similar situation.
You have it backwards.
The mad majority decided to give most of their individual and State's rights away to a central authority.
The central authority now wields excessive and unconstitutional power.
Of course powerful people will buy that power.
Regulating lobbying (speech ) and finance (express) is only more unconstitutional; how about strongly curbing federal power. Say by 90-95%?
Microsoft should ignore these imbeciles.
First, the State's anti-freedom IP laws prevent reverse-engineering of Microsoft code. This is why the market can't provide more competition. No company should have to share trade secrets that make them more competitive and keep prices down.
Second, the fines go to the State! This is warlordist racketeering and threat.
Third, competitors complaining were fairly vanquished because consumed are happy with the current market -- the demand for the competitions' products is low.
Duh.
I appreciate it!
I think that _most_ of my anarcho-capitalist thoughts (and convictions) comes down to the end game: if a law is to work for an individual (like yourself, or like me), how do we take advantage of the law if someone commits a crime regarding that law? Will the police work on our behalf? Will we be financially responsible to hire a legal team?
When my store was robbed (almost $50,000 gone in one night) and my insurance policy wasn't modified properly (my fault!), the police did NOTHING to track down the robbers. They were too busy radaring speeders that night to patrol my area. What good are they?
When my wife almost died after a glass pan kitchen explosion, she was saved by a private ambulance company -- the public one came 4-5 minutes late, and she'd have been dead from loss of blood. I'm glad I called 3 companies.
I don't see how the law can help me -- I can't afford to fight anyone with power. In a free market, I could fight anyone through competition -- especially if I didn't value my time as much as they did! I could plan on saving for the future because the government wouldn't be destroying my savings and wealth through fiat currency inflation, and I could try my luck at a new industry because I wouldn't have to go through elitist and monopolistic licensing schemes (and my customers would be taking a chance, but might get a huge savings in the process).
Government IS evil, but most people think it works for them. Wait till you need them for some reason, then you get the real picture.
Yet is it proven time and again that quality comes from competition not legally-enforced monopoly.
Where are lines faster -- the grocery store or the DMV?
It is ridiculous to think that the US government has made airlines SAFER. The airlines were "off the hook" BECAUSE of FAA mandates -- the big airlines openly WELCOME FAA mandates because they know it sets an unbearably high (and inefficient and useless) standard that most competitors won't be able to meet.
If an airline is given 100% responsibilities for its future, why would they want an explosion or a crash? If tort were properly returned to a more free-market system, insurance companies would have more reason to be involved in the safety of their customers.
The FAA _is_ guilty of 9/11 as well as flight delays. When Canada privatized their FAA, delays went from one of the worst in the Western world to one of the best, if not THE best. Unions are inefficient, public ones are terrible.