Anarcho-capitalism is one of those beguiling ideologies that looks great on paper, but it useless in practice.
For the last 6 years I have lived as an anarchocapitalist (I recently went to the Social Security office to ask for a refund, 50 people all laughed in unison). I try very hard to avoid anything the State "provided" for me, but of course there are some things one can't avoid.
a) information is not equally available to all
This is a myth about anarchocapitalism. Every side of a trade must believe that they're getting something out of the trade -- there is no allotment for information having to be known by all. This is why I don't trust stock markets and banking industries -- I know they know more than I do, so I avoid them.
b) information does not distribute equally among all
It doesn't need to -- if I need information about a product, I can pay someone else who has studied it. If I can't figure out what I need to know, I don't acquire that product.
c) people do not make rational decisions (look up the research on non-transitivity of consumer preferences),
Maybe not in specific situations, but over time they do. If a guy buys a keyboard that doesn't work, he won't buy that brand again -- until that brand offers a better product. So he makes one mistake, but learns from that mistake.
They will give you a very different perspective on the market that you trust so implicitly.
Actually, I'm aware and well read on the Fields Institute, and I don't think that MathSci applies to market forces. The dynamics of the market are too complex to plot mathematically -- but I can figure out a market direction without looking at equations. I lost a very profitable business in 2005 because I didn't listen to what the market needed. One of my other businesses tripled in profit because I fed the market what it wanted.
Anarchocapitalism is NOT social darwinism -- it is everyone taking responsibility for their actions and cooperating while mutually profiting.
Was it feasible up to 1990? No. But with the Internet, we see anarchocapitalism growing in areas never before seen. We can now easily moderate transactions instantly (a la eBay feedback) and we can review products, services and even people instantly, too. I see less and less need for "transparency" through the law when we have the ability to learn all we need to know through the sharing of information we're already doing.
I think it does -- I look at markets which are unencumbered by regulations and restrictions and monopoly grants (look at the PC business and the clothing industry). We see falling prices, until tariffs and regulations are added, which then causes manufacturers to find loopholes so they can lower prices to compete.
Neither the minority or the majority have the right to screw us all over.
Yet that is what government does -- the majority tells the individual how to act/think/respond.
Now if any one store stops selling aerosols and the others don't, and Y X the free market swings the other way and hurts stores that don't ban aerosols.
Because the consumers wanted aerosols. If aerosols are bad, then other consumer watchdog groups must warn about them so consumers can make informed decisions to protect their futures. If they don't want change, then they either don't care about the future or they don't believe there is a problem. The free market provides in either situation.
Now if any one store stops selling aerosols and the others don't, and Y X the free market swings the other way and hurts stores that don't ban aerosols.
Mega-retailers comes out of over-regulation. High gas prices, too. Both are part of the problem of big government.
That's why we have the big bad government around to protect minority interests even if everyone else wants to go screw up the world.
Except the minority interests are not protected -- only those who can control government are protected (usually the big corporations). Laws may SEEM to protect the little guy, but 10-20 years later we find the big guys are the ones that profit and the little guy is long forgotten.
GM foods are easy to dismiss in a free market: stop buying them. Convince others to do the same. The market will choose a winner and a loser, or two winners. I look at Whole Foods (which exists WITHOUT using legal devices to mandate their product) and I see success without the law. Hey! That's a free market success.
I'm in the IT business and I tend to agree with the ideas in this article but I don't necessarily agree with the negative connotations.
My company primarily consults with large corporations in the contracting and engineering fields (internationally). We don't offer any advice for what brand of hardware to buy, for what software to run, or for what employees should and shouldn't know. What we do offer is advice in how the company can become more profitable, more efficient, or both.
Your average home PC owner does not look at a computer as a way to make more profit or save more time -- generally speaking. I firmly believe that the average home PC user sees the PC as a form of entertainment, just like a VCR or DVD player. As such, the ability for manufacturers to offer value added options or set a realistic upgrade/replacement path is significantly reduced. My own family wonders why PCs from 5 years ago are no longer usable but their 10 year old VCR still ticks.
Beyond even the value added options and replacement path, you also have residual output costs such as customer service and even warranty costs. Many of my customers have warranties on their hardware, but their in-house IT division will work on replacing failed hardware (and their own cost!) and repair software flaws, rather than calling the supplier. The employee that uses the failed PC is back to work faster this way, so more money is saved than spent. The home PC user, on the other hand, is more likely to call Dell or Gateway, and when they do, they're losing their heads over what may be a user error.
We tried for 2 years to offer services to the home users. I will never go that way again. The minute a customer asks me for home PC advice, I send them to Best Buy and the Geek Squad. I have 3 customers who "force" us to service their home PCs, but we charge the US$300 per hour -- no joke. The only way for me to profit is to charge them in advance for the "warranty" issues that we have to pay for.
Finally, the home PC user is much more price conscious than the corporate IT buyer. It is easier to sell a corporate buyer on the return-on-investment figures than it is to tell a home user that buying a better printer will mean cheaper ink, or that buying a better scanner will save them hours over the lifetime based on speed and quality issues alone.
There is nothing wrong with avoiding sales to a specific group -- especially the home user. When you go into business, you focus on not the number of sales you can get, or the gross profit from all those sales as a total figure. You look at all input costs, output costs and stability of the customer base. The home user offers the worst ratio of all 3 of these business variables. The article ends with the key: Alienware is aimed mainly at gamers, eMachines at bargain hunters. Gamers, who shop around online for the rock bottom price, offering the retailer almost no profit. Bargain hunters, who do the same. Both who demand top level service for rock bottom prices.
Which of course ignores those people who are too poor to move away from nuclear plants,
You're assuming that is it unsafe to live near one, which it isn't. In fact. I used to own a paintball field across the street from one of the biggest plants in the Midwest, and the cancer rates in that region are lower than the national average.
Can I sell a $5 car that explodes if it so much as lightly taps a stationary object?
If you manufacture such a car, and a car dealer buys and sells it, neither will be in business for very long -- the free market provides for this.
Last I checked, the laws protecting intangibles like copyright and patent were much more popular among capitalists, such as yourself.
No, socialists and mercantilists love these laws. Capitalists HATE these laws -- a capitalism is merely another word for mutually-profitable cooperation. Don't confuse capitalism for mercantilism.
I'd like to pay you a visit some night with an automatic weapon. Is your wife hot? If so, I may take her captive and have some fun with her before I sell her to a Japanese businessman to take back overseas.
223 W. Erie, 7th floor, Chicago, IL.
Come visit, with a weapon. I guarantee they won't find you. I've defending one of my retail stores twice with a weapon. I only wish the thief took the time to threaten me rather than run off. My wife is hot, and she also has an impeccable aim. She took down a guy 3 times her size at a party who was violating her space. The right to self defense is inherent - God-given if you believe that term.
How do you expect all these property rights you keep going on about to work without laws?
I hate to break this to you, but that's the general motivation behind most "greenies"--the desire for a higher quality environment.
I have not found this to be true. Free market advocates (I hate to use the term libertarians) such as the CEO of Whole Foods do it the correct way. Those who want to use political force do it the wrong way.
I donate to PERC.ORG -- a market environmental group. They work hard to convince by offering the evidence that I need. The environmental nazis seem to just cry about the falling sky or the depleting ozono or something that I just don't see evidence for.
Considering my currency is safe, my land is paid for, I only have to work 10-15 hours per week earning more than 4 times the average income and I get to travel for pleasure about 1/10th of the year -- very well, thank you very much.
including John Nash
The Nobel prize committee supports socialist positions, so I'd rather not trust it. I read authors like Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, and Bovard. William Hamilton's writings I have read, and I disagree with them completely. Mises and Hayek convinced me of it in more recent works -- such as Hayek's works against socialism.
But if it can't, it's because of free market winner-take-all looking-out-for-number-one avaricious snots like yourself.
Actually, in a free market, the best outcome is born out of mutual profit through cooperation -- not dog eat dog. My biggest successes came out of trading my skills for income when my customer made a profit from the trade. This is the free market.
It's generally considered bad form to tell a professional you know more than he does. I think you owe the biologist an apology.
Quote where I said this.
I don't know the biologist from Adam, and I never said I knew more. I have a different premise for my beliefs, and the scientists that I am friends with admit that even they know other scientists who research in order to justify a belief or an end result. I don't trust any research without it being found to be true by others who I do trust. Generally speaking, the best scientific discovering have an impact in the market -- results that can be sold for a profit. Other discovering that can not be sold for a profit are not ready for society, and may never be. Their hidden costs outweight the results of their use.
Part of the problem is that pollen from the genetically altered foods you want, pollutes the fields growing the foods that most people want.
Free market solution provided for: pollution is trespass, trespass violates your property rights.
Another part of the problem is that genetically altered foods are not labeled, since agribusiness giants bought enough legislators to make the law say that while GM crops are different enough from ordinary crops to deserve patents, they are at the same time so similar to ordinary crops that they need not be labeled.
Free market solution provided for: tell your grocer you want more labels on foods. Get friends and family to do the same. Grocer will either buy labeled foods or lose your business.
If you want your GM crops, grow them under bio-hazard controls so they don't contaminate real food, and label them so people know what they're getting. Failure to do the first is pollution; failure to do the second is fraud.
Both problems solved by free market solutions -- not the use of force. Regulations created these problems, they didn't solve them.
Great freaking zork. You must be a lawyer: your declaration that nuclear power plants have no responsibility to ensure that they don't release radiation is monstrous prima facie. Your claim that corporations have every right in the world to dump toxic waste in your neighbor's backyard because somebody is willing to pay them to do so is about as indecent as I have ever seen on slashdot.
No, you just have spent zero time researching my opinions -- while I have spent years researching yours to find them false. I'm an anarchocapitalist and we have a solution about nuclear waste and toxic waste: if it enters my land, it is trespass, and the trespasser violated my property rights. Also, I can protect myself by not living near a toxic waste manufacturer or a nuclear power plant. I can buy enough property to protect myself that way, as well.
Monsanto is a cruel and ruthless beast: haven't you been paying attention to the world you claim to be traveling? They have no right to sue farmer B just because farmer A couldn't keep his pollen to himself.
You're right -- anyone who voting for the government that allowed them to sue in this way is responsible. Monsanto merely took advantage of the law that socialists so admire. I am against these laws 100% -- in my "perfect world" Monsanto was the violator as they trespassed on another person's land.
I want to pay somebody for a product that does nothing more than create laws to control you. Now sit down, shut up, and accept that whenever this provider appears you have no right to whine about it.
I don't believe in laws, as they are the use of force against an unwilling party. Your desire to create laws only ends up controlling you.
I can see that your emotion has taken you over. Once you understand what property rights are, you understand that you are the only one responsible for what you buy, what you ingest and what you allow on your land and in your body. I want that freedom, but as long as you continue to regulate corporations, you will continue to lose rights to them and the government. Complete deregulation will give you MORE choice for safer foods -- not less.
Considering DDT saved millions of lives, and the removal of it has likely killed hundreds of millions, I don't really consider the negative effects of DDT to be worse than not using it.
The environmental groups are no friend of freedom, the poor or those who want to be responsible for their own lives. They are merely political manipulators looking for the utopia socialist world that none of us would willingly accept.
Bring back DDT, save billions of the next few decades.
You need to get out more. And open your eyes. You are living in poverty while surrounded by riches.
I travel almost 90 days a year on average -- including visiting almost every continent at least once every 3-4 years. I meet with elite and poor people, every day. Don't tell me what I need to do.
Companies selling GM seeds have a responsibility to ensure that their product does no harm to bystanders.
No, they don't. Manufacturers have ZERO responsibility to do anything more than create a product that their customers are willing to pay for. Customers have the responsibility to investigate what they are buying. Normally we have retailers who stock the product quality/price ratio we want. My grocery story sells a ton of hydrogenated food (the most dangerous food product) -- nearly 60% of the shelves have harmful products. They they're busy every day. They are responsible to offer the customer what they want.
Unless Monstanto et al can guarantee that the modified genes will not get loose and hybridize with wildtype plants in adjacent fields they are introducing harmful genes into the environment for their own benefit.
Are you this obtuse? Monsanto has to sell you what you want -- if you want those guarantees, don't buy a product that doesn't meet them. If enough farmers say no, Monsanto goes under. I guess farmers aren't saying no.
This is evil: doing willful harm to others for personal gain.
This is good: consumers buy products from the grocery stores in massive quantities. Grocery stores by from farmers. Farmers buy seed to meet those needs. Seed manufacturers make new seed varieties.
If you want non-GM foods, there are thousands of grocery stores for you. Go shop there. Problem solved!
Yeah...it would be terrible if the U.S. implemented some strange system where people and smaller corporations could be sued into bankruptcy by larger corporations over intellectual property and patent disputes...
I am anti-patent and anti-intellectual property. I don't believe you should be able to protect a thought or an opinion, only a specific physical product. Once you sell that specific product, the new owner can disassemble and copy it to their heart's (and pocketbook's) content.
I disagree - the problem is BOTH greedy corporations AND greedy politicians, but in "my" government (Canada) politicians have much less power than the U.S. system (we got us some new fangled legal papers about politicky men too) but corporations have just as much influence whether they are in Canada, Europe or America.
I completely disagree with this. Corporations don't hold ANY control except when they are given specific powers of force by government. Canada has some of the worst anti-freedom laws: these laws are completely manipulated by large groups (unions, corporations, military, etc). Corporations have ZERO influence if the politician has zero power. Congress was meant to meet for just a few weeks a year in the US, now its a permanent job.
You just...completely...lost me. I like to blame governments, and I like to blame corporations, but never have I confused the two.
Corporations became powerful because government was allowed to grow out of control in terms of power to abuse. If you have a strictly limited government, you won't have super powerful corporations -- competition prevents that. The problem is that government is allowed to offer monopoly powers, and the corporations take advantage of that.
To return to the topic of GM foods, I think they should be heavily regulated by the government and used responsibly by corporations to make a reasonable profit doing something productive, helpful and neccesary for the world (you know - fill a niche, not make a profit by creating a solution, then influencing governments to create a problem).
Actually, making a profit is the ONLY way you know you are helping people properly. Profit means you are offering someone a product they want at a price they want, so both parties are gaining something. Government does with it does without a profit -- so one party (the taxpayer usually) is losing out on the trade.
Less regulation = safer, cheaper products. More regulation = monopolistic corporations that can take advantage.
I look at the least regulated industries, and after a short period of rocky product quality (even unsafe) the competitiveness of the market creates the safest cheapest products. This is what consumers want.
Holy crap, dada21, you are a corporation brainwashed cog! Oh well, all hail the almighty dollar!
Heh.
I am an anti-corporation businessman who believes that corporations are shills for avoiding personal responsibility. Most anarchocapitalists, like me, avoid supporting any corporation's right to exist.
If you consider that the average college graduate in the US is brainwashed into supported Keynesian economic theories, I'm sure you'd realize that I'm not brainwashed -- I study the true effects of economic manipulations, and see the end results.
I do not support the dollar -- I have nearly 98% of my currency in the only true store of wealth: gold and silver. The rest of my currency is tied up in inventory in my businesses (hard assets) and non-appreciating real estate (not the housing market).
1) I can 100% trust the motives of the people carrying out the research and field tests
Why would you trust the motives of the researchers working for your supplier? If you're interested in independent research, pay for it. Consumers are free to organize research companies to look into products. We already have numerous consumer groups that do this. Many are political, so I don't support them, but there are a few that seem very independent from politics and corruption.
2) That it is not used as a way of locking poor farmers into a product supplied by a foreign owned mega-corp
Poor farmers? Myth.
3) That some SERIOUS long-term testing is done in the lab so we can be 99.99% sure that releasing GM organisms into the food chain is not going to fuck up the food chain.
Again, get involved with non-political consumer testing groups to find out if this is the case. We don't have many of these groups because the market (consumers) does not want them.
4) The industry goes along with public demand to label food as GM, leaving the ultimate deicision in the hands of the public.
Public demand is gauged by what consumers want to spend in order to get a given product feature. If the public truly wants GM food labels, they'll stop buying foods without the labels. I don't see that happening, so why should the industry provide something that less than 1/2% of the population wants to pay for?
Your ideas seem decent until you realize that the rest of the population just doesn't care -- hence the industry doesn't have to do anything. A portion of the industry IS meeting your needs, so go shop at your local co-op or Whole Foods and leave the rest of us alone to make our own decisions.
If you had it your way, you'd use government to force me to change my mind. I'm the opposite -- I prefer to convince rather than coerce.
And by the way, I wish to be the only scientist to say there is a danger in the attitude of Monsanto. But if you search a little, and look at all the links that have been posted here, you may learn a lot of things.
I read the link -- and some sublinks beneath it. All I see is Monsanto taking advantage of the rules you allowed your government to create into law. In a free market, Monsanto would never have gotten this power and control. If you read my previous posts, you'd see I am again patents and IP -- part of the abuse of the little farmer. I'm again subsidies and farming labor regulations -- again part of the abuse of the little farmer. I'm against every government manipulation of the industry (look into the restriction on farming peanuts for scary tactics) that causes the industry to have to use megacorporations that have taken advantage of the law YOU wanted (if you ever voted even once for an elected official, that is).
I'm no fan of Monsanto or ADM -- but I don't blame them for taking advantage of the reckless laws your government put into force.
These megacorporations don't commit crimes, they take advantage of the unlimited power of the central government. In the US we had a Constitution to limit our federal government from being manipulated by the wealthy -- that Constitution was destroyed by the common man, and this allows these big companies to perform these dastardly deeds.
The only way to stop it is to disband the federal government completely and rebuild it with MUCH less power -- you can't fix it through fines and lawsuits, as the problem has nothing to do with greedy corporations: it has to do with greedy politicians with unlimited power -- both democrat and republican.
You really think these companies do it to feed the poor ?
Of course not -- I don't believe anyone ever does anything out of the kindness of their heart. I have yet to meet a person (even the diehard communists I know) who don't do everything out of self sufficiency and personal profit.
Actually, they do it to put some IP in their seeds, and then prevent farmers to reuse their seeds the next year.
That's their product. Farmers don't need to buy it.
This has nothing to do with socialism or idealism, there are very rational and scientific reasons to think there are real dangers.
I'm not so sure -- I see lower prices for food all over the world. I see people who used to work half their hours to afford food now work a tenth of their labor hours for it. The population is growing, the cost of living in most areas goes up (housing, transportation, heating, and electricity all going up) but food costs stay constant.
Biologist or not, it doesn't mean you're a good one. A good scientist understands that the progress of humanity came from self-reliance and cooperation for profit, not from doing what is good for man. We'll constantly take a few steps forward AND a few steps backward -- I know we have crop products that are harmful. Yet that is the wonder of the free market: we learn from our mistakes even when we don't want to make changes.
From TFA: "Unlike the researchers I am not surprised by this. If you apply herbicide to plants which is lethal, eventually a resistant survivor will turn up."
Evolution within a species occurs when a great crisis happens: the particular survivor with the resistant genetics to the herbicide will breed with those genes intact. I don't believe that there was any cross-pollination or contamination from the genetically modified foods -- all I see is rhetoric that makes that assumption.
I'm really getting sick of the greenie environmentalists. A few decades ago they were crying about how we'd have no food to feed the overpopulated earth (Malthusians). Then they were crying about how the world will freeze from global cooling. Then they were concerned that Florida was be flooded by global warming. Then we would die from mega-viruses created out of medical research. Now we're dying from genetically modified foods that are feeding millions of starving people (who happen to be starving because of the socialist government they live under, not because of lack of opportunities).
I fully support genetically modified foods and the continued promotion of such foods not only to feed the poor, but to offer us a more stable yield and a less expensive standard of living. My other half prefers organic food, and it definitely hits her pocket book (about 400% more expensive). She's no greenie, though, she just prefers natural foods.
I don't break my "tools" on purpose -- I take great care with the majority of what I own.
Portable communication devices are not built to last. When you're in a cubicle, maybe they last forever. When you're on the run, constantly, things get beaten on. I've cracked PDA screens, fumbled a laptop out of my hand onto a platform 10 feet below, broken electronics dropping phones in the snow and generally watched low build-quality items not hold up to the rigors of my daily business.
Do I like seeing these devices fall apart? No. Lucky for me, I make sure that I have a decent agreement with my cell provider and my laptop supplier -- I always get a replacement cheaply or even freely. Do enough business with people and they'll back their products up.
I only broke a phone once out of spite and anger -- and it deserved it. All the others are just not up to par, yet.
Communication and information is key to my business and my billing rate. I am also very abusive of equipment, plus I like the latest and greatest IF it makes me more efficient.
I go through 2 laptops per year, and I generally go through about 3 PDAs. After 3-5 months of use, they're not really functional:)
I find constant reasoning to get new phones, PDAs and laptops -- battery life being just one part (actually, reduced power consumption). With T-Mobile supporting EDGE now, GPRS was old news. Bluetooth tethering is very important -- as in the ability to hold up to my abuse.
USB charging ports on cell phones is my favorite "gadget" for the past year. I'm not sure if they existed in 2004, but I have 3 different phones in my household that use USB charging ports, and it is a Godsend for my desk.
The other "true" gadget that I really appreciate is the iPod. I don't use it, but it surpassed the WAF (wife acceptance factor) enough that I literally saved about 50 square feet of wall space by dumping all our CDs permanently, and saved 3 units of shelf space in the entertainment center as the CD changers are gone.
People have asked me (many times, in fact) if I advocate open armed revolution. I do not. I believe Lincoln prevented a peaceful secession, and I believe that won't happen either.
The only real long term solution to tyranny is to just let it drive itself into the ground, and to attempt to live as freely as you can. It isn't easy making it through the day avoiding taking advantage of what the State has provided (through robbery and coercion), but I try. Set an example, and wait. It may not happen in my lifetime, but I can at least set a good example for those who want freedom over tyranny.
If there is armed or peaceful revolt, I won't move. I'll continue to live my life as freely as possible and avoid those who want violence -- I don't advocate violence for any reason. I don't use US dollars anymore except for direct transactions (not as stores of wealth). I don't support stock markets, banking institutions and other support structures used to enslave the citizen base. You'd be surprised how much less stressed you can be when you don't have to worry about affording your future as you do every day -- by living as free as possible.
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Anarcho-capitalism is one of those beguiling ideologies that looks great on paper, but it useless in practice.
For the last 6 years I have lived as an anarchocapitalist (I recently went to the Social Security office to ask for a refund, 50 people all laughed in unison). I try very hard to avoid anything the State "provided" for me, but of course there are some things one can't avoid.
a) information is not equally available to all
This is a myth about anarchocapitalism. Every side of a trade must believe that they're getting something out of the trade -- there is no allotment for information having to be known by all. This is why I don't trust stock markets and banking industries -- I know they know more than I do, so I avoid them.
b) information does not distribute equally among all
It doesn't need to -- if I need information about a product, I can pay someone else who has studied it. If I can't figure out what I need to know, I don't acquire that product.
c) people do not make rational decisions (look up the research on non-transitivity of consumer preferences),
Maybe not in specific situations, but over time they do. If a guy buys a keyboard that doesn't work, he won't buy that brand again -- until that brand offers a better product. So he makes one mistake, but learns from that mistake.
They will give you a very different perspective on the market that you trust so implicitly.
Actually, I'm aware and well read on the Fields Institute, and I don't think that MathSci applies to market forces. The dynamics of the market are too complex to plot mathematically -- but I can figure out a market direction without looking at equations. I lost a very profitable business in 2005 because I didn't listen to what the market needed. One of my other businesses tripled in profit because I fed the market what it wanted.
Anarchocapitalism is NOT social darwinism -- it is everyone taking responsibility for their actions and cooperating while mutually profiting.
Was it feasible up to 1990? No. But with the Internet, we see anarchocapitalism growing in areas never before seen. We can now easily moderate transactions instantly (a la eBay feedback) and we can review products, services and even people instantly, too. I see less and less need for "transparency" through the law when we have the ability to learn all we need to know through the sharing of information we're already doing.
I appreciate that -- it is very difficult to set standards through hard work and responsibility over just doing the bare minimum to meet the law.
:)
Added you as a friend, a rare occurence these days
Free market doesn't always work.
I think it does -- I look at markets which are unencumbered by regulations and restrictions and monopoly grants (look at the PC business and the clothing industry). We see falling prices, until tariffs and regulations are added, which then causes manufacturers to find loopholes so they can lower prices to compete.
Neither the minority or the majority have the right to screw us all over.
Yet that is what government does -- the majority tells the individual how to act/think/respond.
Now if any one store stops selling aerosols and the others don't, and Y X the free market swings the other way and hurts stores that don't ban aerosols.
Because the consumers wanted aerosols. If aerosols are bad, then other consumer watchdog groups must warn about them so consumers can make informed decisions to protect their futures. If they don't want change, then they either don't care about the future or they don't believe there is a problem. The free market provides in either situation.
Now if any one store stops selling aerosols and the others don't, and Y X the free market swings the other way and hurts stores that don't ban aerosols.
Mega-retailers comes out of over-regulation. High gas prices, too. Both are part of the problem of big government.
That's why we have the big bad government around to protect minority interests even if everyone else wants to go screw up the world.
Except the minority interests are not protected -- only those who can control government are protected (usually the big corporations). Laws may SEEM to protect the little guy, but 10-20 years later we find the big guys are the ones that profit and the little guy is long forgotten.
GM foods are easy to dismiss in a free market: stop buying them. Convince others to do the same. The market will choose a winner and a loser, or two winners. I look at Whole Foods (which exists WITHOUT using legal devices to mandate their product) and I see success without the law. Hey! That's a free market success.
I'm in the IT business and I tend to agree with the ideas in this article but I don't necessarily agree with the negative connotations.
My company primarily consults with large corporations in the contracting and engineering fields (internationally). We don't offer any advice for what brand of hardware to buy, for what software to run, or for what employees should and shouldn't know. What we do offer is advice in how the company can become more profitable, more efficient, or both.
Your average home PC owner does not look at a computer as a way to make more profit or save more time -- generally speaking. I firmly believe that the average home PC user sees the PC as a form of entertainment, just like a VCR or DVD player. As such, the ability for manufacturers to offer value added options or set a realistic upgrade/replacement path is significantly reduced. My own family wonders why PCs from 5 years ago are no longer usable but their 10 year old VCR still ticks.
Beyond even the value added options and replacement path, you also have residual output costs such as customer service and even warranty costs. Many of my customers have warranties on their hardware, but their in-house IT division will work on replacing failed hardware (and their own cost!) and repair software flaws, rather than calling the supplier. The employee that uses the failed PC is back to work faster this way, so more money is saved than spent. The home PC user, on the other hand, is more likely to call Dell or Gateway, and when they do, they're losing their heads over what may be a user error.
We tried for 2 years to offer services to the home users. I will never go that way again. The minute a customer asks me for home PC advice, I send them to Best Buy and the Geek Squad. I have 3 customers who "force" us to service their home PCs, but we charge the US$300 per hour -- no joke. The only way for me to profit is to charge them in advance for the "warranty" issues that we have to pay for.
Finally, the home PC user is much more price conscious than the corporate IT buyer. It is easier to sell a corporate buyer on the return-on-investment figures than it is to tell a home user that buying a better printer will mean cheaper ink, or that buying a better scanner will save them hours over the lifetime based on speed and quality issues alone.
There is nothing wrong with avoiding sales to a specific group -- especially the home user. When you go into business, you focus on not the number of sales you can get, or the gross profit from all those sales as a total figure. You look at all input costs, output costs and stability of the customer base. The home user offers the worst ratio of all 3 of these business variables. The article ends with the key: Alienware is aimed mainly at gamers, eMachines at bargain hunters. Gamers, who shop around online for the rock bottom price, offering the retailer almost no profit. Bargain hunters, who do the same. Both who demand top level service for rock bottom prices.
Thanks for supporting my opinion that no one does anything except for personal profit.
Feeling good is a profit incentive -- just not a financial one.
Giving to charity makes you feel good.
Giving to the sick makes you feel good.
Q.E.D.
Which of course ignores those people who are too poor to move away from nuclear plants,
You're assuming that is it unsafe to live near one, which it isn't. In fact. I used to own a paintball field across the street from one of the biggest plants in the Midwest, and the cancer rates in that region are lower than the national average.
Can I sell a $5 car that explodes if it so much as lightly taps a stationary object?
If you manufacture such a car, and a car dealer buys and sells it, neither will be in business for very long -- the free market provides for this.
Last I checked, the laws protecting intangibles like copyright and patent were much more popular among capitalists, such as yourself.
No, socialists and mercantilists love these laws. Capitalists HATE these laws -- a capitalism is merely another word for mutually-profitable cooperation. Don't confuse capitalism for mercantilism.
I'd like to pay you a visit some night with an automatic weapon. Is your wife hot? If so, I may take her captive and have some fun with her before I sell her to a Japanese businessman to take back overseas.
223 W. Erie, 7th floor, Chicago, IL.
Come visit, with a weapon. I guarantee they won't find you. I've defending one of my retail stores twice with a weapon. I only wish the thief took the time to threaten me rather than run off. My wife is hot, and she also has an impeccable aim. She took down a guy 3 times her size at a party who was violating her space. The right to self defense is inherent - God-given if you believe that term.
How do you expect all these property rights you keep going on about to work without laws?
Mutual cooperation. Read Mises.
I hate to break this to you, but that's the general motivation behind most "greenies"--the desire for a higher quality environment.
I have not found this to be true. Free market advocates (I hate to use the term libertarians) such as the CEO of Whole Foods do it the correct way. Those who want to use political force do it the wrong way.
I donate to PERC.ORG -- a market environmental group. They work hard to convince by offering the evidence that I need. The environmental nazis seem to just cry about the falling sky or the depleting ozono or something that I just don't see evidence for.
How's that market going for you?
Considering my currency is safe, my land is paid for, I only have to work 10-15 hours per week earning more than 4 times the average income and I get to travel for pleasure about 1/10th of the year -- very well, thank you very much.
including John Nash
The Nobel prize committee supports socialist positions, so I'd rather not trust it. I read authors like Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, and Bovard. William Hamilton's writings I have read, and I disagree with them completely. Mises and Hayek convinced me of it in more recent works -- such as Hayek's works against socialism.
But if it can't, it's because of free market winner-take-all looking-out-for-number-one avaricious snots like yourself.
Actually, in a free market, the best outcome is born out of mutual profit through cooperation -- not dog eat dog. My biggest successes came out of trading my skills for income when my customer made a profit from the trade. This is the free market.
It's generally considered bad form to tell a professional you know more than he does. I think you owe the biologist an apology.
Quote where I said this.
I don't know the biologist from Adam, and I never said I knew more. I have a different premise for my beliefs, and the scientists that I am friends with admit that even they know other scientists who research in order to justify a belief or an end result. I don't trust any research without it being found to be true by others who I do trust. Generally speaking, the best scientific discovering have an impact in the market -- results that can be sold for a profit. Other discovering that can not be sold for a profit are not ready for society, and may never be. Their hidden costs outweight the results of their use.
Monsanto has been a death sentence.
No, Monsanto only followed the law that the citizens wanted in place. The government enacted the death sentence based on what the democracy voted for.
Don't blame Monsanto for what democracy caused.
Part of the problem is that pollen from the genetically altered foods you want, pollutes the fields growing the foods that most people want.
Free market solution provided for: pollution is trespass, trespass violates your property rights.
Another part of the problem is that genetically altered foods are not labeled, since agribusiness giants bought enough legislators to make the law say that while GM crops are different enough from ordinary crops to deserve patents, they are at the same time so similar to ordinary crops that they need not be labeled.
Free market solution provided for: tell your grocer you want more labels on foods. Get friends and family to do the same. Grocer will either buy labeled foods or lose your business.
If you want your GM crops, grow them under bio-hazard controls so they don't contaminate real food, and label them so people know what they're getting. Failure to do the first is pollution; failure to do the second is fraud.
Both problems solved by free market solutions -- not the use of force. Regulations created these problems, they didn't solve them.
Great freaking zork. You must be a lawyer: your declaration that nuclear power plants have no responsibility to ensure that they don't release radiation is monstrous prima facie. Your claim that corporations have every right in the world to dump toxic waste in your neighbor's backyard because somebody is willing to pay them to do so is about as indecent as I have ever seen on slashdot.
No, you just have spent zero time researching my opinions -- while I have spent years researching yours to find them false. I'm an anarchocapitalist and we have a solution about nuclear waste and toxic waste: if it enters my land, it is trespass, and the trespasser violated my property rights. Also, I can protect myself by not living near a toxic waste manufacturer or a nuclear power plant. I can buy enough property to protect myself that way, as well.
Monsanto is a cruel and ruthless beast: haven't you been paying attention to the world you claim to be traveling? They have no right to sue farmer B just because farmer A couldn't keep his pollen to himself.
You're right -- anyone who voting for the government that allowed them to sue in this way is responsible. Monsanto merely took advantage of the law that socialists so admire. I am against these laws 100% -- in my "perfect world" Monsanto was the violator as they trespassed on another person's land.
I want to pay somebody for a product that does nothing more than create laws to control you. Now sit down, shut up, and accept that whenever this provider appears you have no right to whine about it.
I don't believe in laws, as they are the use of force against an unwilling party. Your desire to create laws only ends up controlling you.
I can see that your emotion has taken you over. Once you understand what property rights are, you understand that you are the only one responsible for what you buy, what you ingest and what you allow on your land and in your body. I want that freedom, but as long as you continue to regulate corporations, you will continue to lose rights to them and the government. Complete deregulation will give you MORE choice for safer foods -- not less.
Considering DDT saved millions of lives, and the removal of it has likely killed hundreds of millions, I don't really consider the negative effects of DDT to be worse than not using it.
The environmental groups are no friend of freedom, the poor or those who want to be responsible for their own lives. They are merely political manipulators looking for the utopia socialist world that none of us would willingly accept.
Bring back DDT, save billions of the next few decades.
You need to get out more. And open your eyes. You are living in poverty while surrounded by riches.
I travel almost 90 days a year on average -- including visiting almost every continent at least once every 3-4 years. I meet with elite and poor people, every day. Don't tell me what I need to do.
Companies selling GM seeds have a responsibility to ensure that their product does no harm to bystanders.
No, they don't. Manufacturers have ZERO responsibility to do anything more than create a product that their customers are willing to pay for. Customers have the responsibility to investigate what they are buying. Normally we have retailers who stock the product quality/price ratio we want. My grocery story sells a ton of hydrogenated food (the most dangerous food product) -- nearly 60% of the shelves have harmful products. They they're busy every day. They are responsible to offer the customer what they want.
Unless Monstanto et al can guarantee that the modified genes will not get loose and hybridize with wildtype plants in adjacent fields they are introducing harmful genes into the environment for their own benefit.
Are you this obtuse? Monsanto has to sell you what you want -- if you want those guarantees, don't buy a product that doesn't meet them. If enough farmers say no, Monsanto goes under. I guess farmers aren't saying no.
This is evil: doing willful harm to others for personal gain.
This is good: consumers buy products from the grocery stores in massive quantities. Grocery stores by from farmers. Farmers buy seed to meet those needs. Seed manufacturers make new seed varieties.
If you want non-GM foods, there are thousands of grocery stores for you. Go shop there. Problem solved!
Don't create laws to control me. Leave me alone.
Yeah...it would be terrible if the U.S. implemented some strange system where people and smaller corporations could be sued into bankruptcy by larger corporations over intellectual property and patent disputes...
I am anti-patent and anti-intellectual property. I don't believe you should be able to protect a thought or an opinion, only a specific physical product. Once you sell that specific product, the new owner can disassemble and copy it to their heart's (and pocketbook's) content.
I disagree - the problem is BOTH greedy corporations AND greedy politicians, but in "my" government (Canada) politicians have much less power than the U.S. system (we got us some new fangled legal papers about politicky men too) but corporations have just as much influence whether they are in Canada, Europe or America.
I completely disagree with this. Corporations don't hold ANY control except when they are given specific powers of force by government. Canada has some of the worst anti-freedom laws: these laws are completely manipulated by large groups (unions, corporations, military, etc). Corporations have ZERO influence if the politician has zero power. Congress was meant to meet for just a few weeks a year in the US, now its a permanent job.
You just...completely...lost me. I like to blame governments, and I like to blame corporations, but never have I confused the two.
Corporations became powerful because government was allowed to grow out of control in terms of power to abuse. If you have a strictly limited government, you won't have super powerful corporations -- competition prevents that. The problem is that government is allowed to offer monopoly powers, and the corporations take advantage of that.
To return to the topic of GM foods, I think they should be heavily regulated by the government and used responsibly by corporations to make a reasonable profit doing something productive, helpful and neccesary for the world (you know - fill a niche, not make a profit by creating a solution, then influencing governments to create a problem).
Actually, making a profit is the ONLY way you know you are helping people properly. Profit means you are offering someone a product they want at a price they want, so both parties are gaining something. Government does with it does without a profit -- so one party (the taxpayer usually) is losing out on the trade.
Less regulation = safer, cheaper products. More regulation = monopolistic corporations that can take advantage.
I look at the least regulated industries, and after a short period of rocky product quality (even unsafe) the competitiveness of the market creates the safest cheapest products. This is what consumers want.
Holy crap, dada21, you are a corporation brainwashed cog! Oh well, all hail the almighty dollar!
Heh.
I am an anti-corporation businessman who believes that corporations are shills for avoiding personal responsibility. Most anarchocapitalists, like me, avoid supporting any corporation's right to exist.
If you consider that the average college graduate in the US is brainwashed into supported Keynesian economic theories, I'm sure you'd realize that I'm not brainwashed -- I study the true effects of economic manipulations, and see the end results.
I do not support the dollar -- I have nearly 98% of my currency in the only true store of wealth: gold and silver. The rest of my currency is tied up in inventory in my businesses (hard assets) and non-appreciating real estate (not the housing market).
1) I can 100% trust the motives of the people carrying out the research and field tests
Why would you trust the motives of the researchers working for your supplier? If you're interested in independent research, pay for it. Consumers are free to organize research companies to look into products. We already have numerous consumer groups that do this. Many are political, so I don't support them, but there are a few that seem very independent from politics and corruption.
2) That it is not used as a way of locking poor farmers into a product supplied by a foreign owned mega-corp
Poor farmers? Myth.
3) That some SERIOUS long-term testing is done in the lab so we can be 99.99% sure that releasing GM organisms into the food chain is not going to fuck up the food chain.
Again, get involved with non-political consumer testing groups to find out if this is the case. We don't have many of these groups because the market (consumers) does not want them.
4) The industry goes along with public demand to label food as GM, leaving the ultimate deicision in the hands of the public.
Public demand is gauged by what consumers want to spend in order to get a given product feature. If the public truly wants GM food labels, they'll stop buying foods without the labels. I don't see that happening, so why should the industry provide something that less than 1/2% of the population wants to pay for?
Your ideas seem decent until you realize that the rest of the population just doesn't care -- hence the industry doesn't have to do anything. A portion of the industry IS meeting your needs, so go shop at your local co-op or Whole Foods and leave the rest of us alone to make our own decisions.
If you had it your way, you'd use government to force me to change my mind. I'm the opposite -- I prefer to convince rather than coerce.
And by the way, I wish to be the only scientist to say there is a danger in the attitude of Monsanto. But if you search a little, and look at all the links that have been posted here, you may learn a lot of things.
I read the link -- and some sublinks beneath it. All I see is Monsanto taking advantage of the rules you allowed your government to create into law. In a free market, Monsanto would never have gotten this power and control. If you read my previous posts, you'd see I am again patents and IP -- part of the abuse of the little farmer. I'm again subsidies and farming labor regulations -- again part of the abuse of the little farmer. I'm against every government manipulation of the industry (look into the restriction on farming peanuts for scary tactics) that causes the industry to have to use megacorporations that have taken advantage of the law YOU wanted (if you ever voted even once for an elected official, that is).
I'm no fan of Monsanto or ADM -- but I don't blame them for taking advantage of the reckless laws your government put into force.
These megacorporations don't commit crimes, they take advantage of the unlimited power of the central government. In the US we had a Constitution to limit our federal government from being manipulated by the wealthy -- that Constitution was destroyed by the common man, and this allows these big companies to perform these dastardly deeds.
The only way to stop it is to disband the federal government completely and rebuild it with MUCH less power -- you can't fix it through fines and lawsuits, as the problem has nothing to do with greedy corporations: it has to do with greedy politicians with unlimited power -- both democrat and republican.
You really think these companies do it to feed the poor ?
Of course not -- I don't believe anyone ever does anything out of the kindness of their heart. I have yet to meet a person (even the diehard communists I know) who don't do everything out of self sufficiency and personal profit.
Actually, they do it to put some IP in their seeds, and then prevent farmers to reuse their seeds the next year.
That's their product. Farmers don't need to buy it.
This has nothing to do with socialism or idealism, there are very rational and scientific reasons to think there are real dangers.
I'm not so sure -- I see lower prices for food all over the world. I see people who used to work half their hours to afford food now work a tenth of their labor hours for it. The population is growing, the cost of living in most areas goes up (housing, transportation, heating, and electricity all going up) but food costs stay constant.
Biologist or not, it doesn't mean you're a good one. A good scientist understands that the progress of humanity came from self-reliance and cooperation for profit, not from doing what is good for man. We'll constantly take a few steps forward AND a few steps backward -- I know we have crop products that are harmful. Yet that is the wonder of the free market: we learn from our mistakes even when we don't want to make changes.
From TFA: "Unlike the researchers I am not surprised by this. If you apply herbicide to plants which is lethal, eventually a resistant survivor will turn up."
Evolution within a species occurs when a great crisis happens: the particular survivor with the resistant genetics to the herbicide will breed with those genes intact. I don't believe that there was any cross-pollination or contamination from the genetically modified foods -- all I see is rhetoric that makes that assumption.
I'm really getting sick of the greenie environmentalists. A few decades ago they were crying about how we'd have no food to feed the overpopulated earth (Malthusians). Then they were crying about how the world will freeze from global cooling. Then they were concerned that Florida was be flooded by global warming. Then we would die from mega-viruses created out of medical research. Now we're dying from genetically modified foods that are feeding millions of starving people (who happen to be starving because of the socialist government they live under, not because of lack of opportunities).
I fully support genetically modified foods and the continued promotion of such foods not only to feed the poor, but to offer us a more stable yield and a less expensive standard of living. My other half prefers organic food, and it definitely hits her pocket book (about 400% more expensive). She's no greenie, though, she just prefers natural foods.
Breaking things is not big, and it's not clever.
I don't break my "tools" on purpose -- I take great care with the majority of what I own.
Portable communication devices are not built to last. When you're in a cubicle, maybe they last forever. When you're on the run, constantly, things get beaten on. I've cracked PDA screens, fumbled a laptop out of my hand onto a platform 10 feet below, broken electronics dropping phones in the snow and generally watched low build-quality items not hold up to the rigors of my daily business.
Do I like seeing these devices fall apart? No. Lucky for me, I make sure that I have a decent agreement with my cell provider and my laptop supplier -- I always get a replacement cheaply or even freely. Do enough business with people and they'll back their products up.
I only broke a phone once out of spite and anger -- and it deserved it. All the others are just not up to par, yet.
Why do you need 2-3 extra cell phones per year?
:)
Communication and information is key to my business and my billing rate. I am also very abusive of equipment, plus I like the latest and greatest IF it makes me more efficient.
I go through 2 laptops per year, and I generally go through about 3 PDAs. After 3-5 months of use, they're not really functional
I find constant reasoning to get new phones, PDAs and laptops -- battery life being just one part (actually, reduced power consumption). With T-Mobile supporting EDGE now, GPRS was old news. Bluetooth tethering is very important -- as in the ability to hold up to my abuse.
Already have both :) I've found that the cheap car->USB adapters don't seem universal, though. Very odd.
I buy 2-3 different cell phones per year, and I believe I had my first one in 2004, but it wasn't until 2005 that everyone I knew had one.
USB charging ports on cell phones is my favorite "gadget" for the past year. I'm not sure if they existed in 2004, but I have 3 different phones in my household that use USB charging ports, and it is a Godsend for my desk.
The other "true" gadget that I really appreciate is the iPod. I don't use it, but it surpassed the WAF (wife acceptance factor) enough that I literally saved about 50 square feet of wall space by dumping all our CDs permanently, and saved 3 units of shelf space in the entertainment center as the CD changers are gone.
People have asked me (many times, in fact) if I advocate open armed revolution. I do not. I believe Lincoln prevented a peaceful secession, and I believe that won't happen either.
The only real long term solution to tyranny is to just let it drive itself into the ground, and to attempt to live as freely as you can. It isn't easy making it through the day avoiding taking advantage of what the State has provided (through robbery and coercion), but I try. Set an example, and wait. It may not happen in my lifetime, but I can at least set a good example for those who want freedom over tyranny.
If there is armed or peaceful revolt, I won't move. I'll continue to live my life as freely as possible and avoid those who want violence -- I don't advocate violence for any reason. I don't use US dollars anymore except for direct transactions (not as stores of wealth). I don't support stock markets, banking institutions and other support structures used to enslave the citizen base. You'd be surprised how much less stressed you can be when you don't have to worry about affording your future as you do every day -- by living as free as possible.