If you are an anarcho-capitalist, that sounds almost like a Libertarian. In which case, you may want to check out The Free State Project - and move to New Hampshire.
I used to consider myself Libertarian but the Libertarian Party proved to me that they're all about power in politics and libertarians in office are easily corrupted. Now I vote very differently and for different reasons.
I believe the right actions for someone are not to vote or change government but to make real changes in their own lives -- be a beacon. In my church, I don't throw money around (although I do tithe between 20-50% of my income) but I spend time with people. I believe church is helping a guy fix his car or helping an old lady shovel her drive or helping a neighbor kid learn math. That is how I make a difference, not by voting or paying a charity to do work I should do.
I'm a big fan of the mesh networking idea, and I believe fully that the biggest problem with getting more bandwidth out there is the FCC. I wish they would vacate the airwaves and let the free market use the airwaves for moving more information as it is needed (a la carte style).
I convert all my paper money into gold and silver immediately upon receiving it. I use gold and silver to purchase almost 30% of my goods right now, and I hope to make it 50% by year's end. You'd be amazed at the amount of local business owners who will take gold and silver at a HUGE discount over retail, I even found 2 gas station owners who will let me buy unleaded with gold and silver (at spot price).
For banking, I don't. I DO have a paypal account, and I also have a green dot debit card that I only fill with dollars if I need to buy something online. I am currently looking into investing in a bank that performs ALL transactions in grains of gold that the depositor owns -- converting to and from dollars on the fly at the current buy price of gold or silver.
It is not easy living this way, but it is VERY profitable. Because I transfer all my dollars into hard money right away (except for paying the basic utilities), I am very controlled in spending. I cut my salary almost 50% over 5 years but I am wealthier today than I have ever been in terms of security and ability to do what I want to do rather than what I have to do. I posted about it at my gold investment forum.
I still have employees who expect dollars, but they get their share before I pay my dividend. I've found some possible tax loopholes that help getting paid directly in gold or silver, but I am still in the process of verifying it with the IRS, so I am paying full tax on the true value rather than the US Mint value.
The way I like to call Anarcho-capitalism is "Life a la carte." I'm always surprised that people here want Cable TV channels a la carte and they want software a la carte, too, but they're happy accepting pre-packaged government services.
I live a fairly anarcho-capitalist lifestyle. I don't use American dollars for the majority of my income and purchases, I don't have credit cards, bank accounts, mortgages or federally funded income. I attempt to perform as much of my "welfare" through my church and a few charities that I directly volunteer with.
For the taxes I pay (more out of legal necessity), I find as many loopholes as possible for making sure I'm paying as little as possible.
The main road in my village is private and funded entirely by the residents through recommended donations rather than taxation. I am investigating buying land to open up a co-op village rather than an incorporated one, but the State works against me every time I bring up the idea. In the long run I'll still do it if I find enough people interested in a property-tax and public-school free village, no matter the Federal law.
I won't move out of the U.S., but I will make life more difficult for those who love the State. Rather than working to decrease the size of government in your household, you should fully support every program that you want: the best fall of the State is when it has made too many promises to too many people and collapses on its own.
Off the top of my head, I had 3 issues that I was anti-Clinton on. When he ran for office the first time, I was in high school (Hilary went to my high school as a teen), so I sort of supported him being the Progressive that I was.
The three research issues I had the biggest problems with wer:
1. Clinton openly accepted and continued promoting the 1992 Food Pyramid -- a food pyramid of diabetes and heart disease research now shows. We health nuts tried getting it overturned, but the administration wouldn't hear anything about a safer one. ADM wins one here.
2. Clinton expanded the War on Drugs -- even though scientific research shows that some of the drugs that were illegal had medical uses. Drug research companies win here.
3. The DMCA was a Clinton bill that prevents reverse engineering and other research into software. Strike one for the large companies working on DRM and other anti-research schemes.
There are others, but I am not at home or at the office so I can't look them up. He's promotion of many false sciences are no different than Bush's, even if they might be polarized.
I'm anarcho-capitalist, so I firmly believe that no government is the best form of government that can exist. That being said, I am more against Federal and State governments taking charge for providing services for people, since it is much harder to vote with my feet and exit the bad services (and their costs).
Yet I also believe that individuals do have a right to select a government within small groups. San Fran is a large city, but I wouldn't live there myself. I think that if the citizens of a town really want to finance this boondoggle (it isn't being provided freely by Earthlink and Google right?), let them do it.
I wouldn't live in a town with free WiFi. I live in a TINY village 1 hour from Milwaukee and Chicago each. We have 3 cheap WiFi providers in the area (very cheap), we have DSL and we have Cable, and now we have 2 more wired providers who are testing the waters. I see no reason to give free access on the taxpayer's backs.
I do share my WiFi access point with my neighbors (only one would be considered "not middle class.") as long as they give me their MAC address to filter in. I see no reason why San Fran should be any different -- if you want the poor to have access, pay for your own access and give them access to your router or AP.
This story has a "both sides of the coin" situation to me, and one HUGE reason why I absolutely despise government financing and control of research. To say the Bush Administration is the problem is to ignore the reality of government -- it is seemingly all powerful, very corrupt, very easily manipulated if you have the cash, and never thinking about its citizens as individuals, just as voting groups.
Clinton was no better, no matter what the Progressives might say. This is the reason guys like this run for office -- to change the climate of thinking in the US and in the World. When it comes to public opinion, you may win on occasion when the big guys pick your side, you may lose on occasion. But when it comes to reality, you'll always lose -- the politicians will never do things the way you want them to, and they usually have hidden reasons for doing what they do.
If this doesn't help prove the case for withdrawing federal funding of research (and arts and dozens of other areas) to better allow researchers to publicize evidence for their beliefs, I can't think of what will.
There is no federal mandate for financing science or art or anythink of the sort, and the reason for it was so that the science and the art wouldn't be corrupted by opinion or political control.
Maybe it is just my experiences, then, because I keep a very close track of local businesses to me and I see very few failures. In the next few years we'll see many failures more because of economic destruction of the dollar coupled with extreme paternalism for some key markets.
The very fact that you've had 20 businesses tells me that for one reason or another (unless they were sold off and are still in operation) most of them were NOT successful.
My first business was a candy wholesaling business. It made very good money for 3-4 years at which time I outgrew it. I passed it on to a kid younger than me who ran it successfully for another 3-4 years (as far as I know) and then he outgrew it. My second business was in the BBS market, and we were wildly successful. I ran it up until the first ISPs opened up, at which point I sold it for a great profit and moved on. Another business I ran that I closed up was a 3D video studio which made money, but I didn't have my heart in it. I sold it to the remaining partners who then sold it a few years later for a nice profit. Last year I was involved in 7 different businesses, 1 of which failed miserably due to bad paperwork (which I take the blame on because I hired bad accountants and auditors). Of the other 6, I gave 3 away to the top employees, I sold 1, and I am down to 1 business which I am phasing out of over the next 12-18 months. I've been working 19 years, it is time for a nice hiatus of travel, writing and a review of what is to come for the other 50% of my life probably remaining.
A good businessman knows when his customers don't need him anymore -- don't throw good money at something that is ready to be sold off to someone else. My two biggest failures were due to my own irresponsibilities in not maintaining the cash flow and paperwork correctly. Yet those failures were HUGE experiences, and one of those failures netted me a possible book deal in writing about it, so I'll probably recoup the US$50k or so that I lost (even though I profited more than that over the 3-4 years I had the business).
The biggest failures I see are restaurants and boutiques -- everything else I pay attention to is very solid, although the dotcoms will force many entrepreneurs out.
Ah, here I can agree, then. Yet are 100% of people going to college to learn a technical trade? If they are, our country is in a world of hurt.
I'd say if 30% of students were in a tech trade, college is very important. It wasn't for me or any of my employees (not one) or even most of my competitors (most making 6-figures+ salaries) that I deal with, but maybe I'm in a weird market. Out of about 200 people I know in my industries, I'd say maybe 20 said college was worth their time, including most of my employees and business partners.
So if 70% are in non-tech trades, is college a necessity? Can't they go and work a lower-salary job in their industry, learn the trade, and be ahead? I'd think so. In fact, I know so, because I've helped many 16-18 year old workers move on to owning their own business. It is part of entrepreneurship, to mentor to the next generation and get them competing with you. I welcome anyone who is still deciding on college to come to my market and I'll put them to work immediately and teach them how to run a business. I know dozens of others like me in the Midwest, too.
I'm confused -- why is someone forced to buy from Dell or Compaq or Reseller X? There are NUMEROUS companies online and in brick-and-mortar retail who will sell you the parts to build your own, and if you want, they'll assemble them without Windows. I know 2 local resellers who don't even sell Windows at all as an option, and they don't sell any pre-built systems except for a few Linux boxes.
If you buy from Dell, the expectation is you'll be buying Windows. If Dell is contractually precluded from selling non-Windows PCs, they did so in order to save money somewhere in the chain. Nothing prevents you from going to any of the various white-box merchants and building your own.
I don't see the anti-competition side, still. Microsoft is enforcing their contracts as agreed by the customer who signed them, right? Are we saying that those contracts should be invalid because consumers are too lazy to research their options?
Believe it or not, another reason to go to university is academia, not so you can make a pile of cash.
Academia and cash go hand in hand. Cash is nothing something ethereal or complex, money is merely a store of your time-worked to be redeemed to save you time in the future.
If you work X hours, you work so that you can save X+5 or X*2 hours in the future. Say you mow a lawn and receive 50 units of time stored. You save this time wisely, and later you realize that rather than hiring your own theater group to perform for you, you redeem 500 units of time stored for someone else's time to build a TV and make a TV show.
Money is not complicated, and that time-saved today could mean you can redeem that time for more learning later. Academia is swapping the time-saved that you have in order to have someone help you learn a topic with their time -- I find that I can better learn myself on my own time rather than giving up my time-saved for someone else's time.
Assuming your $150k mark is correct, you're suggesting a 17-19 year old would be able to get that amount over a 4 year period for their own business? I highly doubt it. Secondly, not everyone is cut out to run a business, even a small one. Personally, I don't think I'd be able to do it. More importantly, it doesn't really interest me.
You're right, there. The $150K is more than tuition costs, it is a number based on my experience from friends who graduated from higher-end universities, and I based it on the additional cost my average friend had above what they'd pay if they were in the business world. I do consider some of that to be partying and lifestyle costs, too, which a new business owner tends not to spend on as they're working hard to build their future rather than wasting it on beer, CDs and drugs:)
I got a job paying $50k out of college (which required a degree). I was able to live at home for 2 years after graduation paying for my share of the utilities and a small rent to my mom (~200/month). In those 2 years, I was able to pay back the roughly $30-35k in low interest school loans I had accrued in college. My investment has already paid for itself. College was quite worthwhile to me, not to mention I like to learn.
And I'd say that maybe 50% of the people in college today should stick with it, just not in a huge expensive university if they're looking to get a $50k a year job. $50k a year is good income, I'm not knocking you, but to spend $20k a year at a high end college for a $50k job seems counterintuitive to me. State or community colleges offer similar first-2-year educations for well less (even though they are subsidized by taxpayers which I am against), and you can finalize your education at the high end college if you wish. It just seems that people are piling on too many student loans for little return -- I have numerous friends who are in their 30s and still paying their debt for college off and never getting ahead finance-wise.
Likewise, you could go into the trades after high school and probably do about as well as I have. But to suggest college isn't worthwhile to most people, isn't accurate.
Here's my problem: the State makes it too easy for people to go to college and build up college debt. This over-demand causes tuitions to go up, and brings to the market MORE people in a given field which tends to lower salaries as the over-supply of graduates is available. It also reduces the supply of people who would likely have done just as good in a laboring position or a trade position, which seems to "mess up" the free market's needs.
In the long run, this leads our country to gross inefficiencies and an imbalance of people who NEED these high paying jobs which are quickly disappearing as they have no support structure beneath it. I've seeing MANY of my old clients hurting because the brain-labor costs are so high, but they can't find people to do the manual-labor in their market. In the short run, I think "we" will do fine as a nation, but I foresee many problems in the coming decade or two, and in the long run I blame it on over-educating people without offering them a market reason for getting that education.
If you were in Mainland Europe, the "agreements" your customers had signed would not be worth the paper they were printed upon: anti-competitive practices are well and truly illegal, and damn right too.
How is it anti-competitive if I offer the customer a savings on a product that they want? I don't ask others not to compete with me, I just worked out a long term agreement with someone to get the product they want at a price they want.
If an employee works for me, I also make them sign a non-compete in exchange for a much higher income. If they don't want to sign with me, they can go make 50% of the money with some company that doesn't care.
Anti-competition comes only out of licensing by the state and excessive regulations causing high-barriers to entry. Anti-competition does not come from companies forcing themselves into the consumers' homes. Microsoft has definitely taken advantage of government regulations (copyrights, patents, DCMA etc) so they're not clean in my mind, but I see nothing anti-competitive about getting people to agree to certain terms so you can plan your budget and growth.
Is signing a cell phone contract for 2 years to get a free phone anti-competitive? Is signing a satellite TV contract for 2 years to get $1500 in free hardware anti-competitive? You made the decision.
So then where do you get the technical experts to support businesses, or do you propose everyone sell collectable socks to each other over the internet?
The best experts come directly out of the business world themselves -- they've grown by climbing the ladder. Since America has switched from an entrepreneur-based business culture to an MBA-driven one in the past 20 years, I believe you can show that American businesses are the worst run -- micromanaged, overbudgeted, underperforming and inefficient. The more I research business opportunities in the US versus other countries, the more I see why I travel as much as I do -- there is MUCH more money to be made elsewhere, and in less time.
Isn't Oxford heavily subsidized by British taxpayers? I heard Cambridge is about £7000 a year for Cambridge, so I think you're correct, but I'm surprised it is this cheap. Then again, I don't know if there is government subsidy in either case, which means the cost to the taxpayer is much higher.
With some applications that we've provided to our customers (that they pay for), we've given them significant discounts if they sign a 2 year agreement to solely use our software and not switch to anyone else's. Most customers are very happy with the software, and they've happily signed the contract. This lets us budget for the support side of things.
Is it wrong for Microsoft to tell their customers the same, if the customers are willing to accept the contract in order to get better pricing or service or whatever it is they get?
It seems to me that if someone accepts a contract or an agreement, there shouldn't be a problem. If people didn't love Microsoft products so much, the free market of competition would replace Windows and Office with whatever better preferred product is out there.
I'm no MS fanboy by any means, but I am a businessman and an entrepreneur, and I don't see the problem. If you don't like their policies, don't buy their products. If you want a better deal, consider the expectations that come with any agreement or contract to secure that pricing.
Sure, because all businesses succeed (hint: less than 1 in 10 do).
That's a myth fact, to be honest. The "10" number is based on businesses that were never set up in the first place, maybe because people went in without actual knowledge of what a business needs to succeed. In my experience, the number is closer to 6 in 10 if not more. Take out restaurants and boutiques and the number is even higher. I've had 2 failures out of about 20 that I ran in my entire life, so I feel I'm ahead.
Or because it's easy to get financing for a business plan when you're 18 -- don't forget that student loans and other financial aid are pretty much guaranteed.
Guaranteed financing is why education is so expensive -- high demand for education with low supply, and lots of people go when they shouldn't. I have only borrowed ONCE for a business. I came from a poor family, too.
You can start a business for less than US$20,000 right now. That means working very hard for 6-12 months (2-3 jobs if needed). If you want a safety nest egg, work hard for 12-18 months and save every dollar, live in a smaller residence, and focus on building clients.
That "education" you speak of so disparagingly is what gives us a workforce that innovates, that has the knowledge necessary for complex jobs... like in the fields medicine (practice or research, you pick), or engineering, etc.
That's funny because I've worked with medical research companies (two large ones in Lake County, Illinois) and I'm amazed at how many research doctors are foreigners with foreign educations. On top of that, I travel the world at least 2-3 times a year, and I see more innovation outside of this country than I do here. I'm not sure education has helped this country, and with the way our trade power is falling lately, I think we tricked people in the world far too long on the idea that we're smarter or more efficient or more civilized than others.
will not judge you for your thoughts, but I feel that education is necessary to be more productive.
I graduated in the bottom 8% of my high school in Illinois and never went to college. At 32 I feel I am more than 5 times more productive than most people in my various business markets (and my billable rate confirms that). I don't know that education teaches you productivity -- hard work and seeing value for your work makes you more productive IF there is a market for enhanced productivity.
but to be more productive education always has a positive effect.
I'm not sure how. Many of my college educated employees with expensive educations (still paying those loans, too) have the lowest skills in basic tasks (spelling, grammar, math, and personality). I'm surprised how often I had to train them on something that is normally earned from experience in the field. What exactly do people learn in college, it seems its 80% liberal arts that aren't even accurate sometimes.
Yes you pay for it, but if there were no education, then how would you even approach these people ?
I built my network of clients through hard work -- I billed myself out at a very low rate early on (fixed rate work actually). As I learned (my education was paid for on the job by the client basically), I became a better tool to be used by others. When I did a good job, I would ask for references and referrals -- which I always received. As I hit my maximum billable hours, I brought on other non-college employees that I eventually made partners and spun off their own businesses over time. My network is vast, and my network is composed of people who want to be efficient and know that their work lives exist because they save other people time and money.
People in a college come from all over the world to study and exchange ideas...
And I've seen it all the time in the business world -- MBAs with no business knowledge, Doctorate degreed engineers demanding more salaries than they'd produce for their employers, etc.
I'm not saying college is bad, I just believe that about 60% of students in college today are putting themselves behind. Why work from 21 to 65 when you can work extra hard from 16 to 45 and be ahead 20 years earlier?
The RIAA gives good advice for a bad reason. How much is high end college nowadays? $150,000 for 4-5 years plus 4-5 years of your most productive part of your life lost to "education?" Go and invest that $150,000 in your own business and you'll be much happier (and successful).
I'm still confused why people continue to vote for politicians who support the copyright laws -- progressive and Jacobins both. Will the voters out there explain to me how they can vote when their conscience tells them that they're damaging (hundreds of?) thousands of lives in the process?
Actually all my dollar figures are converted to gold ounces for me automatically. Check out this GreaseMonkey script at my gold investment site. Very cool stuff.
It seems like we've seen a drop in slashdot numbers in the past few months. I've also seen drops at the local stores and at the local restaurants. Are people starting to have their debt catch up with them, decreasing their available time spent online or doing things they like to do? Or is there really some odd social network change going on?
My blogs have seen a decent increase in traffic over the 4-5 months I've been writing them. When they were e-mail newsletters (opt-in only), I had about 8000 readers, most of which have NOT returned to my blogs on a daily basis. As more people learn how to use RSS feeds properly, though, I'm starting to see more feedburner access than ever before (about a 400% increase in 3 months).
I'm amazed at the amount of traffic that is generated in short time with very little promotion, but I am also amazed at the blogs I read daily. The quality of many of them on my regular feed list is second-to-none! In fact, I can't even read the news anymore since it is all canned newswire feeds it seems. I just did this search at news.google.com and if the link is valid for others, it shows pages and pages of the exact same article at dozens of news papers. Boring.
Do people really prefer to be preached to as a choir from people with their same opinions? If so, will tomorrow's news networks serve only a la carte instead of packaged news as previous models had?
That's something that surprises me, actually: slashdot regulars here want a la carte cable channels, a la carte news, and a la carte lifestyles, but most prefer pre-packaged politicians. If we could just change that last part to being a la carte, I'd say we'd see the best social network change.
and your "HIV/AIDS" T-shirt should both help to scare off muggers.
Seriously, though, the handheld GPS > the PDA with GPS. My PDA with GPS could never handle the elements.
When I've done long hikes, I actually carried an old car inflatable tube tire and a mini CO2 canister. You can inflate the tube in an instant (about 12 inflations per 6 pack of CO2 cartridges) and float down the river. I'm lazy.
The CO2 cartridges also come in handy if you want to cool down, just remove the inflation adapter and am at your chest -- instant cool down.
I always bring along an extra few pairs of socks, too, they can get pretty grotty if you forget extra sets. And lots of protein and fat packed bacon is my friend on long hikes.
As an aside, care to share what service you're using?
I don't use any service -- I buy bullion and coins. I usually buy them at or below the spot price since I spend a lot of time coming the obituaries to find estate sales. I don't trust e-gold nor would I ever exchange my metal for a receipt. Remember, the US dollar was once backed by gold and/or silver -- the physical notes were just IOUs from the bank for the gold you had on deposit. Those pesky bankers loved Clay/Hamilton/Lincoln's idea of a central bank, so they gave up their customers' trust in exchange for power of the currency. When the dollar was tied to gold (1 ounce of gold was worth 20 IOUs or $20), the prices in the markets were very stable. From 1800 to 1912 the dollar barely lost 5% (except during the War between States when Lincoln abandoned the 100% reserve). From 1913 to 2006 the dollar has lost over 96% because of government inflationary printing.
But what about investments such as stocks, bonds or mutal funds? Do you use such vehicles for storing and growing your wealth? If not, how do you grow your money?
I own my own businesses which generally return 25-30% on my investment as a dividend annually. I don't believe in stocks and bonds as I don't see many real profits paid from owning the shares -- most people profit by selling their sucker stock to the next sucker. I've been trending the stock market versus the loss of the value of the dollar, and since 1913 the stock market has only gone up about 500% versus the cost of living: not a very good return. Plus, money that you keep in dollar form (bank, credit card, etc) has a VERY high depreciation rate that I call "Dada's Law of Junk": if you have US$100 in your pocket, you'll likely spend it on junk that is worthless in short time.
My savings in gold and silver are very secure, and they've been relatively stable in the past 5 years. Even if gold and silver took a 30% dive, I am way ahead of where I'd be if I kept more liquid paper currency around.
For example, in every 5 year period over its history, both the S&P 500 (and other broad-based indexes of the market) have grown a minimum of 10% APR for that 5 year period. At that rate, money doubles every 7 years. You're certainly not going to get that level of growth from gold--or any other commodity. While you can certainly leverage them and make huge profits, you can wipe yourself out just as fast!
Actually this fact is more myth created by the stock brokerage market. Many stocks, when samples at random times, don't hold their value well against the declining dollar once you factor in two-way commissions, income taxes and M3 money supply inflation factors. I did a random sampling of 70 periods in the past 60 years and more than 60% of them were losers taking those factors into consideration. About 30% broke even barely, and then 10% made money. Not a good streak.
How would anarcho-capitalism prevent the consolidation of a segment of the marketplace into a monopoly, preventing other competitors from existing and allowing the monopoly to then set prices at whatever level they choose without impunity?
I haven't but I promise I'll pick it up on my next book adventure. I've reviewed Standard Oil now for years and from what I can tell from reading newspaper articles at the time as well as various political pundits of the modern era, Standard Oil was already being beaten by competition by the time government stepped in. Standard Oil did MANY good things for consumers, they reduced the price of shale oil nearly 80% if my memory serves me right. It was the other oil companies that were made because all the money they threw at government for protectionism took too long to take effect. If you e-mail me I'll e-mail you a link to another side of the SO story -- I'm in the car now so I can't look it up.
How do you see anarcho-capitalism preventing this? Particularly in the oil business: while you can make copies of Windows XP for near $0, you can't exa
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If you are an anarcho-capitalist, that sounds almost like a Libertarian. In which case, you may want to check out The Free State Project - and move to New Hampshire.
I used to consider myself Libertarian but the Libertarian Party proved to me that they're all about power in politics and libertarians in office are easily corrupted. Now I vote very differently and for different reasons.
I believe the right actions for someone are not to vote or change government but to make real changes in their own lives -- be a beacon. In my church, I don't throw money around (although I do tithe between 20-50% of my income) but I spend time with people. I believe church is helping a guy fix his car or helping an old lady shovel her drive or helping a neighbor kid learn math. That is how I make a difference, not by voting or paying a charity to do work I should do.
I'm a big fan of the mesh networking idea, and I believe fully that the biggest problem with getting more bandwidth out there is the FCC. I wish they would vacate the airwaves and let the free market use the airwaves for moving more information as it is needed (a la carte style).
I convert all my paper money into gold and silver immediately upon receiving it. I use gold and silver to purchase almost 30% of my goods right now, and I hope to make it 50% by year's end. You'd be amazed at the amount of local business owners who will take gold and silver at a HUGE discount over retail, I even found 2 gas station owners who will let me buy unleaded with gold and silver (at spot price).
For banking, I don't. I DO have a paypal account, and I also have a green dot debit card that I only fill with dollars if I need to buy something online. I am currently looking into investing in a bank that performs ALL transactions in grains of gold that the depositor owns -- converting to and from dollars on the fly at the current buy price of gold or silver.
It is not easy living this way, but it is VERY profitable. Because I transfer all my dollars into hard money right away (except for paying the basic utilities), I am very controlled in spending. I cut my salary almost 50% over 5 years but I am wealthier today than I have ever been in terms of security and ability to do what I want to do rather than what I have to do. I posted about it at my gold investment forum.
I still have employees who expect dollars, but they get their share before I pay my dividend. I've found some possible tax loopholes that help getting paid directly in gold or silver, but I am still in the process of verifying it with the IRS, so I am paying full tax on the true value rather than the US Mint value.
The way I like to call Anarcho-capitalism is "Life a la carte." I'm always surprised that people here want Cable TV channels a la carte and they want software a la carte, too, but they're happy accepting pre-packaged government services.
I live a fairly anarcho-capitalist lifestyle. I don't use American dollars for the majority of my income and purchases, I don't have credit cards, bank accounts, mortgages or federally funded income. I attempt to perform as much of my "welfare" through my church and a few charities that I directly volunteer with.
For the taxes I pay (more out of legal necessity), I find as many loopholes as possible for making sure I'm paying as little as possible.
The main road in my village is private and funded entirely by the residents through recommended donations rather than taxation. I am investigating buying land to open up a co-op village rather than an incorporated one, but the State works against me every time I bring up the idea. In the long run I'll still do it if I find enough people interested in a property-tax and public-school free village, no matter the Federal law.
I won't move out of the U.S., but I will make life more difficult for those who love the State. Rather than working to decrease the size of government in your household, you should fully support every program that you want: the best fall of the State is when it has made too many promises to too many people and collapses on its own.
Off the top of my head, I had 3 issues that I was anti-Clinton on. When he ran for office the first time, I was in high school (Hilary went to my high school as a teen), so I sort of supported him being the Progressive that I was.
The three research issues I had the biggest problems with wer:
1. Clinton openly accepted and continued promoting the 1992 Food Pyramid -- a food pyramid of diabetes and heart disease research now shows. We health nuts tried getting it overturned, but the administration wouldn't hear anything about a safer one. ADM wins one here.
2. Clinton expanded the War on Drugs -- even though scientific research shows that some of the drugs that were illegal had medical uses. Drug research companies win here.
3. The DMCA was a Clinton bill that prevents reverse engineering and other research into software. Strike one for the large companies working on DRM and other anti-research schemes.
There are others, but I am not at home or at the office so I can't look them up. He's promotion of many false sciences are no different than Bush's, even if they might be polarized.
I agree, but with some thoughts.
I'm anarcho-capitalist, so I firmly believe that no government is the best form of government that can exist. That being said, I am more against Federal and State governments taking charge for providing services for people, since it is much harder to vote with my feet and exit the bad services (and their costs).
Yet I also believe that individuals do have a right to select a government within small groups. San Fran is a large city, but I wouldn't live there myself. I think that if the citizens of a town really want to finance this boondoggle (it isn't being provided freely by Earthlink and Google right?), let them do it.
I wouldn't live in a town with free WiFi. I live in a TINY village 1 hour from Milwaukee and Chicago each. We have 3 cheap WiFi providers in the area (very cheap), we have DSL and we have Cable, and now we have 2 more wired providers who are testing the waters. I see no reason to give free access on the taxpayer's backs.
I do share my WiFi access point with my neighbors (only one would be considered "not middle class.") as long as they give me their MAC address to filter in. I see no reason why San Fran should be any different -- if you want the poor to have access, pay for your own access and give them access to your router or AP.
This story has a "both sides of the coin" situation to me, and one HUGE reason why I absolutely despise government financing and control of research. To say the Bush Administration is the problem is to ignore the reality of government -- it is seemingly all powerful, very corrupt, very easily manipulated if you have the cash, and never thinking about its citizens as individuals, just as voting groups.
Clinton was no better, no matter what the Progressives might say. This is the reason guys like this run for office -- to change the climate of thinking in the US and in the World. When it comes to public opinion, you may win on occasion when the big guys pick your side, you may lose on occasion. But when it comes to reality, you'll always lose -- the politicians will never do things the way you want them to, and they usually have hidden reasons for doing what they do.
If this doesn't help prove the case for withdrawing federal funding of research (and arts and dozens of other areas) to better allow researchers to publicize evidence for their beliefs, I can't think of what will.
There is no federal mandate for financing science or art or anythink of the sort, and the reason for it was so that the science and the art wouldn't be corrupted by opinion or political control.
But it's a far cry from normal.
Maybe it is just my experiences, then, because I keep a very close track of local businesses to me and I see very few failures. In the next few years we'll see many failures more because of economic destruction of the dollar coupled with extreme paternalism for some key markets.
The very fact that you've had 20 businesses tells me that for one reason or another (unless they were sold off and are still in operation) most of them were NOT successful.
My first business was a candy wholesaling business. It made very good money for 3-4 years at which time I outgrew it. I passed it on to a kid younger than me who ran it successfully for another 3-4 years (as far as I know) and then he outgrew it. My second business was in the BBS market, and we were wildly successful. I ran it up until the first ISPs opened up, at which point I sold it for a great profit and moved on. Another business I ran that I closed up was a 3D video studio which made money, but I didn't have my heart in it. I sold it to the remaining partners who then sold it a few years later for a nice profit. Last year I was involved in 7 different businesses, 1 of which failed miserably due to bad paperwork (which I take the blame on because I hired bad accountants and auditors). Of the other 6, I gave 3 away to the top employees, I sold 1, and I am down to 1 business which I am phasing out of over the next 12-18 months. I've been working 19 years, it is time for a nice hiatus of travel, writing and a review of what is to come for the other 50% of my life probably remaining.
A good businessman knows when his customers don't need him anymore -- don't throw good money at something that is ready to be sold off to someone else. My two biggest failures were due to my own irresponsibilities in not maintaining the cash flow and paperwork correctly. Yet those failures were HUGE experiences, and one of those failures netted me a possible book deal in writing about it, so I'll probably recoup the US$50k or so that I lost (even though I profited more than that over the 3-4 years I had the business).
The biggest failures I see are restaurants and boutiques -- everything else I pay attention to is very solid, although the dotcoms will force many entrepreneurs out.
Ah, here I can agree, then. Yet are 100% of people going to college to learn a technical trade? If they are, our country is in a world of hurt.
I'd say if 30% of students were in a tech trade, college is very important. It wasn't for me or any of my employees (not one) or even most of my competitors (most making 6-figures+ salaries) that I deal with, but maybe I'm in a weird market. Out of about 200 people I know in my industries, I'd say maybe 20 said college was worth their time, including most of my employees and business partners.
So if 70% are in non-tech trades, is college a necessity? Can't they go and work a lower-salary job in their industry, learn the trade, and be ahead? I'd think so. In fact, I know so, because I've helped many 16-18 year old workers move on to owning their own business. It is part of entrepreneurship, to mentor to the next generation and get them competing with you. I welcome anyone who is still deciding on college to come to my market and I'll put them to work immediately and teach them how to run a business. I know dozens of others like me in the Midwest, too.
I hope you're not serious.
"Less than 1 in 10 business succeed":
10 businesses - 1 success = 9 failures (90% failure rate)
"I've had 2 out of 20 businesses fail":
20 businesses - 2 failures = 18 successes (10% failure rate)
I'm confused -- why is someone forced to buy from Dell or Compaq or Reseller X? There are NUMEROUS companies online and in brick-and-mortar retail who will sell you the parts to build your own, and if you want, they'll assemble them without Windows. I know 2 local resellers who don't even sell Windows at all as an option, and they don't sell any pre-built systems except for a few Linux boxes.
If you buy from Dell, the expectation is you'll be buying Windows. If Dell is contractually precluded from selling non-Windows PCs, they did so in order to save money somewhere in the chain. Nothing prevents you from going to any of the various white-box merchants and building your own.
I don't see the anti-competition side, still. Microsoft is enforcing their contracts as agreed by the customer who signed them, right? Are we saying that those contracts should be invalid because consumers are too lazy to research their options?
Believe it or not, another reason to go to university is academia, not so you can make a pile of cash.
Academia and cash go hand in hand. Cash is nothing something ethereal or complex, money is merely a store of your time-worked to be redeemed to save you time in the future.
If you work X hours, you work so that you can save X+5 or X*2 hours in the future. Say you mow a lawn and receive 50 units of time stored. You save this time wisely, and later you realize that rather than hiring your own theater group to perform for you, you redeem 500 units of time stored for someone else's time to build a TV and make a TV show.
Money is not complicated, and that time-saved today could mean you can redeem that time for more learning later. Academia is swapping the time-saved that you have in order to have someone help you learn a topic with their time -- I find that I can better learn myself on my own time rather than giving up my time-saved for someone else's time.
Assuming your $150k mark is correct, you're suggesting a 17-19 year old would be able to get that amount over a 4 year period for their own business? I highly doubt it. Secondly, not everyone is cut out to run a business, even a small one. Personally, I don't think I'd be able to do it. More importantly, it doesn't really interest me.
:)
You're right, there. The $150K is more than tuition costs, it is a number based on my experience from friends who graduated from higher-end universities, and I based it on the additional cost my average friend had above what they'd pay if they were in the business world. I do consider some of that to be partying and lifestyle costs, too, which a new business owner tends not to spend on as they're working hard to build their future rather than wasting it on beer, CDs and drugs
I got a job paying $50k out of college (which required a degree). I was able to live at home for 2 years after graduation paying for my share of the utilities and a small rent to my mom (~200/month). In those 2 years, I was able to pay back the roughly $30-35k in low interest school loans I had accrued in college. My investment has already paid for itself. College was quite worthwhile to me, not to mention I like to learn.
And I'd say that maybe 50% of the people in college today should stick with it, just not in a huge expensive university if they're looking to get a $50k a year job. $50k a year is good income, I'm not knocking you, but to spend $20k a year at a high end college for a $50k job seems counterintuitive to me. State or community colleges offer similar first-2-year educations for well less (even though they are subsidized by taxpayers which I am against), and you can finalize your education at the high end college if you wish. It just seems that people are piling on too many student loans for little return -- I have numerous friends who are in their 30s and still paying their debt for college off and never getting ahead finance-wise.
Likewise, you could go into the trades after high school and probably do about as well as I have. But to suggest college isn't worthwhile to most people, isn't accurate.
Here's my problem: the State makes it too easy for people to go to college and build up college debt. This over-demand causes tuitions to go up, and brings to the market MORE people in a given field which tends to lower salaries as the over-supply of graduates is available. It also reduces the supply of people who would likely have done just as good in a laboring position or a trade position, which seems to "mess up" the free market's needs.
In the long run, this leads our country to gross inefficiencies and an imbalance of people who NEED these high paying jobs which are quickly disappearing as they have no support structure beneath it. I've seeing MANY of my old clients hurting because the brain-labor costs are so high, but they can't find people to do the manual-labor in their market. In the short run, I think "we" will do fine as a nation, but I foresee many problems in the coming decade or two, and in the long run I blame it on over-educating people without offering them a market reason for getting that education.
If you were in Mainland Europe, the "agreements" your customers had signed would not be worth the paper they were printed upon: anti-competitive practices are well and truly illegal, and damn right too.
How is it anti-competitive if I offer the customer a savings on a product that they want? I don't ask others not to compete with me, I just worked out a long term agreement with someone to get the product they want at a price they want.
If an employee works for me, I also make them sign a non-compete in exchange for a much higher income. If they don't want to sign with me, they can go make 50% of the money with some company that doesn't care.
Anti-competition comes only out of licensing by the state and excessive regulations causing high-barriers to entry. Anti-competition does not come from companies forcing themselves into the consumers' homes. Microsoft has definitely taken advantage of government regulations (copyrights, patents, DCMA etc) so they're not clean in my mind, but I see nothing anti-competitive about getting people to agree to certain terms so you can plan your budget and growth.
Is signing a cell phone contract for 2 years to get a free phone anti-competitive? Is signing a satellite TV contract for 2 years to get $1500 in free hardware anti-competitive? You made the decision.
So then where do you get the technical experts to support businesses, or do you propose everyone sell collectable socks to each other over the internet?
The best experts come directly out of the business world themselves -- they've grown by climbing the ladder. Since America has switched from an entrepreneur-based business culture to an MBA-driven one in the past 20 years, I believe you can show that American businesses are the worst run -- micromanaged, overbudgeted, underperforming and inefficient. The more I research business opportunities in the US versus other countries, the more I see why I travel as much as I do -- there is MUCH more money to be made elsewhere, and in less time.
Isn't Oxford heavily subsidized by British taxpayers? I heard Cambridge is about £7000 a year for Cambridge, so I think you're correct, but I'm surprised it is this cheap. Then again, I don't know if there is government subsidy in either case, which means the cost to the taxpayer is much higher.
With some applications that we've provided to our customers (that they pay for), we've given them significant discounts if they sign a 2 year agreement to solely use our software and not switch to anyone else's. Most customers are very happy with the software, and they've happily signed the contract. This lets us budget for the support side of things.
Is it wrong for Microsoft to tell their customers the same, if the customers are willing to accept the contract in order to get better pricing or service or whatever it is they get?
It seems to me that if someone accepts a contract or an agreement, there shouldn't be a problem. If people didn't love Microsoft products so much, the free market of competition would replace Windows and Office with whatever better preferred product is out there.
I'm no MS fanboy by any means, but I am a businessman and an entrepreneur, and I don't see the problem. If you don't like their policies, don't buy their products. If you want a better deal, consider the expectations that come with any agreement or contract to secure that pricing.
Funny you should say that. This is how I vote.
Sure, because all businesses succeed (hint: less than 1 in 10 do).
That's a myth fact, to be honest. The "10" number is based on businesses that were never set up in the first place, maybe because people went in without actual knowledge of what a business needs to succeed. In my experience, the number is closer to 6 in 10 if not more. Take out restaurants and boutiques and the number is even higher. I've had 2 failures out of about 20 that I ran in my entire life, so I feel I'm ahead.
Or because it's easy to get financing for a business plan when you're 18 -- don't forget that student loans and other financial aid are pretty much guaranteed.
Guaranteed financing is why education is so expensive -- high demand for education with low supply, and lots of people go when they shouldn't. I have only borrowed ONCE for a business. I came from a poor family, too.
You can start a business for less than US$20,000 right now. That means working very hard for 6-12 months (2-3 jobs if needed). If you want a safety nest egg, work hard for 12-18 months and save every dollar, live in a smaller residence, and focus on building clients.
That "education" you speak of so disparagingly is what gives us a workforce that innovates, that has the knowledge necessary for complex jobs... like in the fields medicine (practice or research, you pick), or engineering, etc.
That's funny because I've worked with medical research companies (two large ones in Lake County, Illinois) and I'm amazed at how many research doctors are foreigners with foreign educations. On top of that, I travel the world at least 2-3 times a year, and I see more innovation outside of this country than I do here. I'm not sure education has helped this country, and with the way our trade power is falling lately, I think we tricked people in the world far too long on the idea that we're smarter or more efficient or more civilized than others.
I am in total disagreement here.
:)
I welcome and enjoy disagreements
will not judge you for your thoughts, but I feel that education is necessary to be more productive.
I graduated in the bottom 8% of my high school in Illinois and never went to college. At 32 I feel I am more than 5 times more productive than most people in my various business markets (and my billable rate confirms that). I don't know that education teaches you productivity -- hard work and seeing value for your work makes you more productive IF there is a market for enhanced productivity.
but to be more productive education always has a positive effect.
I'm not sure how. Many of my college educated employees with expensive educations (still paying those loans, too) have the lowest skills in basic tasks (spelling, grammar, math, and personality). I'm surprised how often I had to train them on something that is normally earned from experience in the field. What exactly do people learn in college, it seems its 80% liberal arts that aren't even accurate sometimes.
Yes you pay for it, but if there were no education, then how would you even approach these people ?
I built my network of clients through hard work -- I billed myself out at a very low rate early on (fixed rate work actually). As I learned (my education was paid for on the job by the client basically), I became a better tool to be used by others. When I did a good job, I would ask for references and referrals -- which I always received. As I hit my maximum billable hours, I brought on other non-college employees that I eventually made partners and spun off their own businesses over time. My network is vast, and my network is composed of people who want to be efficient and know that their work lives exist because they save other people time and money.
People in a college come from all over the world to study and exchange ideas...
And I've seen it all the time in the business world -- MBAs with no business knowledge, Doctorate degreed engineers demanding more salaries than they'd produce for their employers, etc.
I'm not saying college is bad, I just believe that about 60% of students in college today are putting themselves behind. Why work from 21 to 65 when you can work extra hard from 16 to 45 and be ahead 20 years earlier?
The RIAA gives good advice for a bad reason. How much is high end college nowadays? $150,000 for 4-5 years plus 4-5 years of your most productive part of your life lost to "education?" Go and invest that $150,000 in your own business and you'll be much happier (and successful).
I'm still confused why people continue to vote for politicians who support the copyright laws -- progressive and Jacobins both. Will the voters out there explain to me how they can vote when their conscience tells them that they're damaging (hundreds of?) thousands of lives in the process?
Actually all my dollar figures are converted to gold ounces for me automatically. Check out this GreaseMonkey script at my gold investment site. Very cool stuff.
It seems like we've seen a drop in slashdot numbers in the past few months. I've also seen drops at the local stores and at the local restaurants. Are people starting to have their debt catch up with them, decreasing their available time spent online or doing things they like to do? Or is there really some odd social network change going on?
My blogs have seen a decent increase in traffic over the 4-5 months I've been writing them. When they were e-mail newsletters (opt-in only), I had about 8000 readers, most of which have NOT returned to my blogs on a daily basis. As more people learn how to use RSS feeds properly, though, I'm starting to see more feedburner access than ever before (about a 400% increase in 3 months).
I'm amazed at the amount of traffic that is generated in short time with very little promotion, but I am also amazed at the blogs I read daily. The quality of many of them on my regular feed list is second-to-none! In fact, I can't even read the news anymore since it is all canned newswire feeds it seems. I just did this search at news.google.com and if the link is valid for others, it shows pages and pages of the exact same article at dozens of news papers. Boring.
Do people really prefer to be preached to as a choir from people with their same opinions? If so, will tomorrow's news networks serve only a la carte instead of packaged news as previous models had?
That's something that surprises me, actually: slashdot regulars here want a la carte cable channels, a la carte news, and a la carte lifestyles, but most prefer pre-packaged politicians. If we could just change that last part to being a la carte, I'd say we'd see the best social network change.
Awesome P3AT! I didn't realize it was that small or that cheap (0.341 gold ounces). Definitely something to look into.
and your "HIV/AIDS" T-shirt should both help to scare off muggers.
Seriously, though, the handheld GPS > the PDA with GPS. My PDA with GPS could never handle the elements.
When I've done long hikes, I actually carried an old car inflatable tube tire and a mini CO2 canister. You can inflate the tube in an instant (about 12 inflations per 6 pack of CO2 cartridges) and float down the river. I'm lazy.
The CO2 cartridges also come in handy if you want to cool down, just remove the inflation adapter and am at your chest -- instant cool down.
I always bring along an extra few pairs of socks, too, they can get pretty grotty if you forget extra sets. And lots of protein and fat packed bacon is my friend on long hikes.
As an aside, care to share what service you're using?
I don't use any service -- I buy bullion and coins. I usually buy them at or below the spot price since I spend a lot of time coming the obituaries to find estate sales. I don't trust e-gold nor would I ever exchange my metal for a receipt. Remember, the US dollar was once backed by gold and/or silver -- the physical notes were just IOUs from the bank for the gold you had on deposit. Those pesky bankers loved Clay/Hamilton/Lincoln's idea of a central bank, so they gave up their customers' trust in exchange for power of the currency. When the dollar was tied to gold (1 ounce of gold was worth 20 IOUs or $20), the prices in the markets were very stable. From 1800 to 1912 the dollar barely lost 5% (except during the War between States when Lincoln abandoned the 100% reserve). From 1913 to 2006 the dollar has lost over 96% because of government inflationary printing.
But what about investments such as stocks, bonds or mutal funds? Do you use such vehicles for storing and growing your wealth? If not, how do you grow your money?
I own my own businesses which generally return 25-30% on my investment as a dividend annually. I don't believe in stocks and bonds as I don't see many real profits paid from owning the shares -- most people profit by selling their sucker stock to the next sucker. I've been trending the stock market versus the loss of the value of the dollar, and since 1913 the stock market has only gone up about 500% versus the cost of living: not a very good return. Plus, money that you keep in dollar form (bank, credit card, etc) has a VERY high depreciation rate that I call "Dada's Law of Junk": if you have US$100 in your pocket, you'll likely spend it on junk that is worthless in short time.
My savings in gold and silver are very secure, and they've been relatively stable in the past 5 years. Even if gold and silver took a 30% dive, I am way ahead of where I'd be if I kept more liquid paper currency around.
For example, in every 5 year period over its history, both the S&P 500 (and other broad-based indexes of the market) have grown a minimum of 10% APR for that 5 year period. At that rate, money doubles every 7 years. You're certainly not going to get that level of growth from gold--or any other commodity. While you can certainly leverage them and make huge profits, you can wipe yourself out just as fast!
Actually this fact is more myth created by the stock brokerage market. Many stocks, when samples at random times, don't hold their value well against the declining dollar once you factor in two-way commissions, income taxes and M3 money supply inflation factors. I did a random sampling of 70 periods in the past 60 years and more than 60% of them were losers taking those factors into consideration. About 30% broke even barely, and then 10% made money. Not a good streak.
How would anarcho-capitalism prevent the consolidation of a segment of the marketplace into a monopoly, preventing other competitors from existing and allowing the monopoly to then set prices at whatever level they choose without impunity?
I haven't but I promise I'll pick it up on my next book adventure. I've reviewed Standard Oil now for years and from what I can tell from reading newspaper articles at the time as well as various political pundits of the modern era, Standard Oil was already being beaten by competition by the time government stepped in. Standard Oil did MANY good things for consumers, they reduced the price of shale oil nearly 80% if my memory serves me right. It was the other oil companies that were made because all the money they threw at government for protectionism took too long to take effect. If you e-mail me I'll e-mail you a link to another side of the SO story -- I'm in the car now so I can't look it up.
How do you see anarcho-capitalism preventing this? Particularly in the oil business: while you can make copies of Windows XP for near $0, you can't exa