Money makes complete sense when you read Rothbard. It is only after government gets involved that money gets "confusing" yet Rothbard even fixes that confusion.
Stop trying to catch pirates. Charge a fair price for stable software with good tech support and consistent upgrades and patches. Users pay for the support now and in the future. They pay for the official version to protect against viruses and spyware.
I'm anti-copyright so I see how software is worthless based on supply and demand. Companies can't protect the bits, they can only charge for the physical portion and service.
By ending the policing, they can lower their prices, bringing in more users. Data has no value if its infinitely available. It is how you package data and what value added services you provide that have value.
The FDA fails, every day. They fail to certify drugs that might help millions that might haarm a few. They fail to certify drugs in use elsewhere in the world. They fail to check drug company research. They fail to operate efficiently.
End the FDA. Let drug companies form certification boards that compete with doctors groups and consumer advocate groups. I believe if the FDA didn't have so many hoops to jump through, Merck would have released Vioxx with a warning that there might be the chance of death. This could reduce their responsibility while allowing people in need to balance their risks with their doctors.
Merck lied, that's bad. Did they lie to get past the FDA's ridiculous hoops?
Actually, consumer electronics are far more dangerous than drugs.
We're lucky to have the UL and other private safety testers. Ovens, hair dryers, irons, lamps, halogen bulbs and other daily use products could be far more dangerous without private testing.
The FDA should shoulder part of the blame in the Vioxx case. They didn't do their job, did they?
- could you imagine industry regulated (i.e. unregulated) drugs being released on the market.
Yes, I could. The FDA can't be sued. Tort law provides more than enough protection from dangerous companies. Cancer patients would have a choice of competitive cannibis products. Pain sufferers and their doctors could choose from safer opiate-based medicines. Alternative therapies would be available for those with little hope.
There are regular stories in Australia around Christmas time of kids toys imported from China that are taken off the shelves because they are a choking hazard or whatever.
You think Target or Wal*Mart pulls product because of government?
Look at the videotape industry. Most slashdotters would say "Beta versus VHS" but this is a wrong response. You had Beta, VHS, VERA, quadruplex, U-matic, C-format, betacam, M3, S-VHS, DVC, HDC, D5, 8, Hi8, and DVCAM. I probably missed a few.
All that choice led us to what we have today, and continues to lead us to new options. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD might be a hassle for early adopters, but formats MUST continually change, combine, and fall apart over time for consumers to get the best choice in meeting THEIR needs.
...and if you are too poor or stupid to reliably consult a good doctor you just go with the product which "seems to be ok".
Drug marketing is such a huge business that there needs to be solid Government oversight of the products they release.
I think drugs are potentially less dangerous than microwaves, televisions, hair dryers and even computers can be to your health. These items could emit dangerous wavelengths, have explosion potential and can even electrocute the user if designed improperly. Yet we don't have government oversight of the items we use every day. Just like Target won't sell a UL-listed lamp, your doctor/pharmacist wouldn't sell you a drug that hasn't been certified by a trustworthy organization.
I can go to Chinatown and buy a non-UL listed hairdryer, but I won't. I believe you should be able to get uncertified medications as well, you just have to make that decision yourself. The more decisions that government makes for us, the less choice and control we have over our decision making.
takes time to research what the policies of each committee is and then decide if they are pro consumer or just waiting for corporate welfare.
And this is a Good Thing. An educated consumer is the only wise consumer. All you need to do is become educated to which committee body is working in YOUR interest, and buy those products (primarily). When we only have one committee, we don't really know in who's interest that body is working in. I'm hoping you see that the FDA doesn't really work in the citizens' interest (especially with recent discoveries as to what drug companies have done that the FDA was too bureaucratic to discover).
Multiple certification houses give everyone the ability to find certifications that mean the most to them. My other half eats mostly organic foods, and she knows which organic stamps are good (for her) and which are just industry logos meaning nothing. Without these multiple certifiers out there, she'd have to research each and every ITEM she buys, not just look for the logo.
This is an interesting article, and one that shows how multiple standards committees are actually better for consumers than just one.
Intel wasn't able to convince the IEEE to accept their proposal for a standard. The ECMA accepted the standard, but opinions exist (and I agree with them) that the ECMA is more a corporate-shill than a standards committee.
How will this help consumers? By having the IEEE refuse the standard, other manufacturers aren't going to jump on the standard as it isn't widely accepted. Intel is one of the most powerful corporations in the world, yet a standards committee is preventing them from releasing a product that won't help consumers (which could include businesses of course). This will keep the manufacturers returning to the drawing board to try to find a way to convince the IEEE. Yet the ECMA has accepted the product, which means Intel will release it and attempt to gain consumer attention, which could create a de facto standard without IEEE acceptance. Consumer need/desire is met through not just competition between manufacturers but competition between standards committees as well.
I'd love to see something similar to this in replacing our FDA. If the IDDD doesn't think a drug is worthy for consumers, a drug company might go to a manufacturer-run testing body. Your doctor and you could make a decision based on your knowledge of who is backing the drug. Today, the FDA is the only body legalizing certain drugs, and I bet millions of people have died before the red tape was navigated.
As for the UWB idea, it seems that there are numerous competitive technologies, which is part of IEEE's reasoning for refusing the standard. This lets the consumers decide which standard will win out through market forces. Motorola's Freescale doesn't seem any better or worse than Intel's UWB, so I'm sure I'll see both in action in my customer base. The IEEE version may end up being a combination of both technologies.
This is the free market in action, and this is why technology tends to grow in leaps and bounds, whereas heavily regulated markets take years to wade through the red tape, spending billions in the process.
I didn't think about what you call the "counterfeit tax". I'd figured that they released the new style as they old style was brought back and destroyed. It's even worse than I expected if they're releasing the new currency out of proportion to the destruction of old. And I thought the constant addition of currency was bad already!
I've been blogging about this for a few weeks now. Our money supply on the books is US$10 trillion, yet we only have US$600 billion in real bills. Over the past 100 years, we've gone from $100 billion on the books and about $1 billion in real bills to the mess we have today. And people wonder why houses are so expensive and food costs 1000% more than it did 80 years ago.
Quoting my other post:
I read it and I agreed with it 100%. The manipulation of the population through manipulating the currency base is one of the greatest crimes of our generation. Greenspan will likely be awarded for it, when he should be found guilty of counterfeit. Most slashdot readers will not be willing to spend an hour or two reading Rothbard's classic, but I think society would be better as whole if they understood money better. Good posts.
Absolutely. But when you vote for the federal or state government to get involved in taxing me to pay for your kids' educations, it isn't free. You can join the government-funding of schools, but don't force me to do it. I disagree with everything a public school stands for. I am no longer free.
Nope. I choose to tax everybody so everybody have enough money to raise their children, disregarding where they were born or under what surname.
Yet if the parents don't take an interest in their childrens' educations, the childrens' lives won't be any better from having an education or not. The old rule is if you give someone something for free, they will treat it badly. If they pay for it themselves, they will have more interest in following through. If you are a parent and have children, you should consider how you'll raise them and how you'll pay for that. For those who can't afford an education, there has always been ways to get children educated, at least until government decided to intrude.
That really smells even at the end of a ten foot pole. That simply is FALSE on big capital letters.
You must be a teacher or very young. Our literacy and educated rates have fallen as the public education system has grown. Some show that in 1940, whites had a 96% literacy rate while minorities were at 80%. In 1840, 1 out of 579 citizens were illiterate. At the end of the 20th century, National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress say 40 percent of blacks and 17 percent of whites can not read. How much more do we spend on public education, and why is minority illiteracy doubled and white illiteracy quadrupled?
Don't compare graduation rates if the graduates today can't compare to those who left schooling for real jobs 50 or 100 years ago. Graduation != educated. I know, I have to employ the morons that get graduated from public schools today.
If you are a symbol about what can I learn there, no thanks. You are utterly wrong.
We'll have to agree to disagree. You want to force me to pay for your childrens' education. You want to force me to accept your currency that has devalued over 99% in 100 years (my currency has appreciated over 1000% in 100 years versus your currency, and has stayed virtually the same in value over the past 2000 years). You want me to give 50% of my income to your government for all its various powers, which I believe is theft. You want to force my children to join your army to fight your wars. You want to tell me how to build my home. You want to force my business to allow any customer that walks in, even if I don't trust them or like them.
You are completely right, but I think you're missing the point that I can't define money in a few simple lines of text. I linked to Rothbard's (free) book because Rothbard did a great job explaining money.
Money is one thing and only one thing: a third party bartering tool. Of course money only has the value that people attribute to it, but to think that fiat money will HOLD value is to miss the mark completely.
Gold is the best form of money due to the fact that it doesn't degrade, it is nearly impossible to counterfeit, it isn't affected by acids or bases, it can be divided easily and it isn't quickly duplicated or lost. Gold's value over 6 thousand years has held fairly consistently, and in that time every currency is gone or depreciated to near worthlessness. The US dollar depreciated over 99% in 100 years.
Gold doesn't have to be the only form of money, but it is the best one, in my opinion. Inflationary fiat currencies always hurt the poor and middle classes and even hurt the wealthy. Only the wealthiest and most powerful elite truly create wealth out of thin air, by the acceptance of worthless paper currency by the masses.
In times of crises gold has been one of the only ways for people to get food, water and services. In every situation where a government-backed currency has failed, people turned to gold and silver jewelry to barter and trade.
One other aspect you may have missed is the counterfeit tax that government produces that harms us just as much as their other taxes: they print new money. This causes old money (that the average citizen holds) to devalue, causing prices to go up. This new money is available to the wealthiest and most powerful to use first, so we don't see the effect for months or years.
Printing money forces everyone into a higher tax bracket without us realizing it. Printing money creates booms and busts in the stock and housing market. Printing money makes costs rise faster than wages. Printing money causes government's debt to decrease relatively.
The worst thing we're doing as a nation today is devaluing our money.
Without rules, there is still no fair election, because all it means is that people with money will buy political influence
You're equating money with power. This is wrong. The power comes from the governed giving the politician that power. Take away the power and the money disappears. Corporations and individuals want to spend money to influence politicians but not you. Why? Because the politicians have a monopoly on power. The Constitution was to restrict these powers, but you, the voters, decided the restriction weren't important. Money was never part of the equation per the Constitution.
Give every one ONE and ONLY ONE vote, and an equal opportunity to make an informed decision, and THEN you will have a fair system.
No, then you have 2 parties that are almost identical reducing the abilities of the minority decisions from being aired and judged by the populous. Voting is not fair by any means, in fact, we vote for laws that might be considered unfair by 49% of the voters! Voting is force, voting is theft. Fair is taking powers away from the government and giving them back to individuals.
I'm sure the movie producers wanted this rating. It generates news, for sure.
Movie ratings are a great way to use free market provisions to set rules without force. The theaters aren't required to enforce the ratings guidelines, and my local theater actually regularly disregards them based on the values in my specific community.
The whole ban on NC-17 movies seems pretty ridiculous. Our mall theater follows the ban, but I do recall one or two NC-17 movies in our smaller theater (I can't remember which films they were though). They're still in business, which is the free market telling the owners that what they did wasn't disliked by their customer base.
Wow, you really need to read about what money is. I can't even believe that you think this way, and I'm sure that 99% of the world does. Why not give the (free) book a try, and see where I'm coming from? Why can't I reference a book that encompasses all I believe about money? I'd just be repeating all that has already been written and debated.
The idea of the "dollar" came from gold. Everything valuable was priced in a certain weight of gold. Notes were issued based on a weight of gold, so you didn't have to carry gold around.
I don't use banks, I only use gold and silver to buy things. I just went to Vegas for a business trip, and the entire trip was paid in gold and silver. I'll be buying a car in a few weeks and I will buy it entirely in gold. I paid for my last house in gold, and I buy my groceries with gold (and silver). I might go to the movies or nice dinner tonight, and I'll use silver to finance it.
My money has value in times of crises and in great times. Your money is only valuable when people have faith in it. I don't have faith in the US dollar, and most of the world is starting to see problems, as well.
The supply of money would set the prices. You don't say "$1 = 1 ounce of gold" you said "We have one million ounce of gold in existance, and this house is worth 20 of those."
The word "Dollar" comes from Thaler. Thaler referred to one of the best gold coin producers. Gold was money, not the other way around. Items were priced at their weight in gold.
Again, money is not complex. Rothbard's (free) book on money is a great read and really clarifies the issue. http://www.mises.org/money.asp
Polygamy is illegal more for health and safety concerns than moral concerns, when the state is challenged on these grounds it always argues higher disease and abuse rates rather than "we think it's bad."
Not eating vitamins can be detrimental to your health. Eating too many carbs can be bad. Not washing your hands could be bad. Having sex with multiple people unprotected could be bad. Polygamy laws are based on morals, not on health. Why is prostitution illegal? Health reasons? Come on. A bucket of lies from someone who wants to be a politician is what I am seeing.
That's different from setting apart of the public world and saying "you are best situated to deal with this, deal with it and be fair, because people are watching." It's a world of difference.
It is no different. A corporation is a group of people protected from liability. I am against corporations (anarchocapitalists usually are). Government has no right to say "This is how it is going to be" when it comes to a person's non-violent voluntary actions.
Furthermore, jury nullification is a gigantic crock.
So you believe that all laws should be judged only by lawyers and politicians rather than by the people the laws cover? If 12 normal people on a jury think a law is bad, they have no right to say so? That only lawyers (such as yourself?) should be able to make law? I thought law was for the people, by the people.
but actually harms the person that they attempted to help, since they give no findings of fact, which requires a judge to either order a new, expensive trial or look at the case at the appellate level de novo, with unfound facts that likely would not help the party the jury was attempting to aid's case.
I disagree. The person that is harmed by bad laws needs the ability to fight the bad law WITHOUT a lawyer (the lawyers in this country are the ultimately worst form of force). It is unacceptable today for a person to defend themselves by saying "The law is wrong, here is why." They have to accept the law even if it is unjust, and they have to hire a lawyer in order to protect themselves. Public defenders are the crock here.
It doesn't work, it's bad policy, and it doesn't help anyone involved, except maybe a few jurors who get a warm fuzzy feeling for facially "doing the right thing.
Actually, the majority of jurors I spoke to about jury nullification liked the idea -- almost every juror I have interviewed in the past 7 years has said that their faith in the system was diminished after dealing with the lawyers and the judge. The jury should have the right to overturn laws created by the lawyers and judges, it is the ultimate form of freedom.
With our system we can enact legislation to fix things.
I have seen nothing fixed by legislation, I have seen them temporarily put off so that another generation can deal with the messes created.
Additionally, most aspects of our lives are national in scope, now, so it makes sense that federal laws should be in the driver's seat.
Created this way by the terrible 17th Amendment, I believe.
When you look at what we have right now, we're doing pretty damn good.
Funny, I don't see it this way. Almost every house has gone up in value, even though houses are supposed to depreciate as new and better houses are built. Inflation and debt has caused our dollar to bankrupt even faster, and our personal debt is more than any other country. Other countries are losing their faith in our currency and our trading ability, and are investing in other currencies, commodities and gold. In some areas, interest only loans are 60% of all the loans made, which could be a clue to the insolvency of our market.
I am not a doomer-and-gloomer, I am a realist. I see people with less money, more debt and many aren't living happy lives. I backed out of keeping up with the Jones (after getting into debt hell myself before realizing debt wasn't freedom), a
You've brought more issues to this topic than I can reply to on my PDA. I'd be happy to take it to e-mail if you like:) Many of your questions are already answered on the web, I guess I need to start on an anarchocapitalist FAQ, hmm?:)
You say education has turned into daycare? How has school replaced parents? Because we as a culture don't hold strong parenting in high regard? How is that the school's fault? Or the government's fault?
I know many parents that are exceptional parents. One parent I'm friends with has taken her kids out of public education, cut her personal expenses so she can send her kid to a great private school and works with her church and her family to make sure her kids are raised properly. Her 3 kids (single mom) function better at their ages than almost anyone I know 4-10 years older. Raising kids is not the community's job, it is the job of the family and (if you are religious) the church community. Government and society have no role in raising kids or education them. Education is not a right. Having a great childhood is not a right. You tax me in order to teach and protect your children, so I don't have enough money to raise mine?
Compared to Japan and its publically-funded education system? Compared to Germany and its publically-funded education system
I could care less about the Japanese and the Germans. I've been to both countries, and both countries are riddled with state debt and on the verge of bankruptcy. In fact, Japan is already bankrupt. I've lived in both countries and haven't seen smarter children in either, but I have seen and felt more crime in those countries in my experience. I won't judge their education systems based on what their governments and their teachers have to say. We can't compare apples, oranges and bananas without a standard testing structure.
Although I suppose since the government isn't paying for it, then only the already-wealthy could afford to go to school, so perhaps cost isn't such a big deal.
The poor had church-sponsored education that was far superior to what the public education system has today. My family was poor for 2 generations, and only when they worked hard did they give me the chance to create wealth. Education comes after a generation or two of ass-busting. Without a strong home, education is a wasted effort.
What happens to all the other ports, who can't afford to compete?
They get subpar items until they can compete. Often times, countries that are uncompetitive have an authoritarian regime stealing the wealth or the desire to build wealth. Most of the world has been blocked by their own tyrannical goverments from gaining wealth. I have no faith that regulation of the ports brings more trade to a country. With UPS and Fedex, their number one problem in exporting product is dealing with various governmental port regulations, not the lack of them.
There's a reason we have the commerce clause.
This gave the federal government the basic power to make sure no States create tariffs or taxes against one another. The clause has been stretched to include making drugs illegal and controlling every aspect of our lives.
It's an unmanageable situation.
The situation we live in today is unmanageable. I blog about it. Our government has over $10 trillion US dollars in electronic existance but only $600 billion US dollars in physical existance. The reason houses go up in value (instead of down in value as any disposable good does) is because of government inflation. The reason the stock market hasn't provided real wealth to the majority of the population is through the devaluing US dollar.
A gold standard is the safest standard that exists. Money is nothing but a store of wealth and a third party bartering medium. Trade exists as people exchange each other's abilities through a standard store of wealth. Read Rothbard's "What has government done to our money?" to r
The idea of having a federal Congress was to limit the position to very VERY strict, enumerated powers. The system we see today is outrageous and will fail by itself, as a true patriot I'd like to save this country from the socialist and fascist sides that are currently running it.
The Constitution was unique in that it allowed for a tiny federal government to strictly defend the States from each other and from outsiders. Instead of being one country where everyone is equally taxes and trampled on, we were to be a multitude of unique States composed of similarly minded people. The States were to be governed and protected by the federal branch, but the federal branch was never meant to be all encompassing.
Says you. Got a court case to cite in support of your position? Didn't think so. It's just your opinion versus 200+ years of jurisprudence. First of all, money is not speech. Second of all:
Money isn't speech, money is expression. What you buy expresses what you need. This is how life operates. Everything we do is a form of expression, including working, speaking, writing, singing, and spending money. Here are some links.
So you want to "reform democracy" by entirely removing the meager limitations on how the wealthy can influence the political process, thus ensuring that their influence will become even more intractibly entrenched.
I never said that. The money does not corrupt the position. The position is corrupted because it has unlimited power. Remove the power and the money won't flow that way!
Unlimited spending is fine if Congress has no power to harm.
Is this guy serious? Connecting random resistors across their line of communications?
Communications is getting compressed, gated and even frequency trapped in order to reduce bandwidth over the global network. Analog is dying (if it isn't dead yet). How will returning to an analog-based "encryption" system work in the digital future?
I don't see any truly safe encryption scheme. I was thinking of some a few months ago (such as having the encoding system changing how many bits and what resolution it uses in a preplanned structure that only the recipient decoding system knows). Bits are bits, and if you can vary what the bits mean and in what order they are created, it is very hard to decode those bits.
I don't think encryption is really important any more. All a government or corporate enemy needs to do is bug your office and your car and the encryption scheme falls apart. The black market government (mob, mafia, yakuza whatever) already has their perfect encryption schemes in place: say nothing, write nothing down and never tell anyone what you are doing. It works. When was the last time you heard of a mob or mafia arrest in your home town (yes, the black market exists there, too).
Government wiretapping isn't being used against the great crime squads. These systems are in place more to make citizens feel safe from terrorists, but all they really is in increase the budget of the agency trying to use the systems. In 10 years, wiretapping will be useless as information will have 500 different paths to take and no one will be able to trace them all. Imagine if you could take your voice, broadcast in your room random bits of your voice to confuse bugs and analog taps, and then chop up the real voice into 5 different streams of varying bits and frequency resolution to be sent via 5 different paths (phone line modem, DSL, cable modem, WiFi to a network 150 feet away and another path hidden in an AIM chat of noise). There is no way "they" can stop the flow of information.
The article really makes little sense to me as it seems to go backwards. It would have been great in the 80s.
I have no respect for any teacher that is a member of any teacher union. I have at least 4 friends who are teachers who quit the unions and still teach, and I have the utmost respect for them. If you are a teacher and a member of the socialist union, you're trash, plain and simple. Read what the teacher unions do every year and you'll agree.
Have you talked to the crazy parents teachers have to put up with? Most will actually tell you they expect the school to teach their kids dicipline.
I agree. This is also the teacher unions fault. They have fought, tooth and nail, the ability to bring independent graders into the system. Let teachers teach, let grades grade. A teacher grading their own students is similar to an employee setting their own salary!
And every kid is a geneous, and most parents do about 20% of their kids work, especially essays. And teachers do a LOT of work for the crap pay they get, more than you know.
Crap pay? This is a myth. Teachers are some of the best paid for the actual time they spend and the quality of their output.
They also usually have very specific lesson requirements handed down from the state level, so any real teaching or discussion gets put to the side.
Thanks, I also agree that the State is to blame. The Federal mandates on education are a big problem as well.
The problem is lazy parents who don't have time to deal with their kids because their (1) divorced or (2) both working.
When we were in the 1960s, a family of 4 paid about 20% of their income to government at every level. 1 parent could afford to stay home. In 2005, a family of 4 pays over 50% of their income to government at every level. This is 250% higher, causing both parents to have to work just to get by. Don't blame the parents for what you voted for.
Contact Jacob Hornberger at FFF.org and ask him about it. His allegations brought down many in the party. I tried finding his old website but it has been so many years that I can no longer find the website.
The government can no longer discriminate based on race, gender or religious beliefs.
And yet neither can I. I am free to express myself and congregate with groups and people that I want to. I can't discriminate who I hire at my business (which is my right) or dozens of other un-PC ways to live that are considered illegal because government mandates it.
The government can no longer use the power to enforce morality as a de facto compelling state interest.
Really? Wait until video games and cable channels are censored by law rather than by consumer buying decisions.
The government can no longer punish us for sleeping with whomever we choose or marrying whomever we choose
Most states have sodomy laws. Most states have ages of consent that vary (meaning no one has a standard knowledge of when it is OK because no one knows the individuals). Most states allow only one man to marry one woman, or one person to marry one person. Polygamy is illegal because it is considered immoral by government, not because the people who are non-violently wanting to marry more than 1 other person voluntarily want it so. Governments offer married people more rights than unmarried people.
The government can no longer appoint public corporations as sanctioned monopolies.
Sure they can. The Federal Reserve Board is a private corporation with a goverment mandate. The Student Loan Marketing Association provides liquidity for loans in a monopolist fashion. Fannie Mae is taking over almost every home loan. The Postal Service has a monopoly on first class mail. Given time, I could name 1000 corporations with monopolist mandates from government.
we have a judicial system by which a malevolent will of the majority can be quashed
Do we? My wife almost went to jail because a pig wrote a "71" instead of a "17" into a computer 9 years ago for rolling through a stop. She paid that ticket, but the police years later believed she ran from a DUI. The day she was to go to jail for a year for a crime she didn't commit (and cost me $60,000 for a year of fighting), we lucked out by finding one person in the State who actually saw the problem. Don't even start on the judicial system that kicked me off a jury twice for telling the rest of the jury about jury nullification. Don't tell me about a judicial system that told me I can't have a jury for a speeding ticket. Don't tell me about a judicial system that decrees time and again that laws are constitutional even though they aren't.
Did you know that before 1963, voting districts were determined by geography, rather than population? That means that people in denser areas actually had LESS of a vote than those in rural areas.
Have you seen the jerrymandering that has occured since this was changed? I prefer voting districts based on geography, but we have an amendment called the 17th amendment that DESTROYED the Senate's ability to protect the States. The federal system was designed so that no majority could trample on the rights of the minority. This was destroyed in the past 140 years. Who cares if Chicago can vote for something federal that Springfield doesn't want? If it is unconstitutional, it won't be law.
But it beats the heck out of a system run by people working entirely in their own interests with the absurd notion that no question or problem or desire they have will EVER conflict with anyone else's.
Just wait. You'll see that the terrible system that has been sown for the last 100 years will reap what the voters want -- complete disarray and bankruptcy. If it wasn't for an all-powerful military, our country would have been in the pits 4 decades ago. The Internet is now letting more of the truth get out, and I don't even give it half a decade before the rest of the world sees the American voters for what they are: control and power freaks with no faith in the individual.
Slashdot Mirror
Money makes complete sense when you read Rothbard. It is only after government gets involved that money gets "confusing" yet Rothbard even fixes that confusion.
Stop trying to catch pirates. Charge a fair price for stable software with good tech support and consistent upgrades and patches. Users pay for the support now and in the future. They pay for the official version to protect against viruses and spyware.
I'm anti-copyright so I see how software is worthless based on supply and demand. Companies can't protect the bits, they can only charge for the physical portion and service.
By ending the policing, they can lower their prices, bringing in more users. Data has no value if its infinitely available. It is how you package data and what value added services you provide that have value.
Yes, I do.
The FDA fails, every day. They fail to certify drugs that might help millions that might haarm a few. They fail to certify drugs in use elsewhere in the world. They fail to check drug company research. They fail to operate efficiently.
End the FDA. Let drug companies form certification boards that compete with doctors groups and consumer advocate groups. I believe if the FDA didn't have so many hoops to jump through, Merck would have released Vioxx with a warning that there might be the chance of death. This could reduce their responsibility while allowing people in need to balance their risks with their doctors.
Merck lied, that's bad. Did they lie to get past the FDA's ridiculous hoops?
Actually, consumer electronics are far more dangerous than drugs.
We're lucky to have the UL and other private safety testers. Ovens, hair dryers, irons, lamps, halogen bulbs and other daily use products could be far more dangerous without private testing.
The FDA should shoulder part of the blame in the Vioxx case. They didn't do their job, did they?
- could you imagine industry regulated (i.e. unregulated) drugs being released on the market.
Yes, I could. The FDA can't be sued. Tort law provides more than enough protection from dangerous companies. Cancer patients would have a choice of competitive cannibis products. Pain sufferers and their doctors could choose from safer opiate-based medicines. Alternative therapies would be available for those with little hope.
There are regular stories in Australia around Christmas time of kids toys imported from China that are taken off the shelves because they are a choking hazard or whatever.
You think Target or Wal*Mart pulls product because of government?
These issues WILL resolve themselves, though.
Look at the videotape industry. Most slashdotters would say "Beta versus VHS" but this is a wrong response. You had Beta, VHS, VERA, quadruplex, U-matic, C-format, betacam, M3, S-VHS, DVC, HDC, D5, 8, Hi8, and DVCAM. I probably missed a few.
All that choice led us to what we have today, and continues to lead us to new options. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD might be a hassle for early adopters, but formats MUST continually change, combine, and fall apart over time for consumers to get the best choice in meeting THEIR needs.
...and if you are too poor or stupid to reliably consult a good doctor you just go with the product which "seems to be ok".
Drug marketing is such a huge business that there needs to be solid Government oversight of the products they release.
I think drugs are potentially less dangerous than microwaves, televisions, hair dryers and even computers can be to your health. These items could emit dangerous wavelengths, have explosion potential and can even electrocute the user if designed improperly. Yet we don't have government oversight of the items we use every day. Just like Target won't sell a UL-listed lamp, your doctor/pharmacist wouldn't sell you a drug that hasn't been certified by a trustworthy organization.
I can go to Chinatown and buy a non-UL listed hairdryer, but I won't. I believe you should be able to get uncertified medications as well, you just have to make that decision yourself. The more decisions that government makes for us, the less choice and control we have over our decision making.
takes time to research what the policies of each committee is and then decide if they are pro consumer or just waiting for corporate welfare.
And this is a Good Thing. An educated consumer is the only wise consumer. All you need to do is become educated to which committee body is working in YOUR interest, and buy those products (primarily). When we only have one committee, we don't really know in who's interest that body is working in. I'm hoping you see that the FDA doesn't really work in the citizens' interest (especially with recent discoveries as to what drug companies have done that the FDA was too bureaucratic to discover).
Multiple certification houses give everyone the ability to find certifications that mean the most to them. My other half eats mostly organic foods, and she knows which organic stamps are good (for her) and which are just industry logos meaning nothing. Without these multiple certifiers out there, she'd have to research each and every ITEM she buys, not just look for the logo.
This is an interesting article, and one that shows how multiple standards committees are actually better for consumers than just one.
Intel wasn't able to convince the IEEE to accept their proposal for a standard. The ECMA accepted the standard, but opinions exist (and I agree with them) that the ECMA is more a corporate-shill than a standards committee.
How will this help consumers? By having the IEEE refuse the standard, other manufacturers aren't going to jump on the standard as it isn't widely accepted. Intel is one of the most powerful corporations in the world, yet a standards committee is preventing them from releasing a product that won't help consumers (which could include businesses of course). This will keep the manufacturers returning to the drawing board to try to find a way to convince the IEEE. Yet the ECMA has accepted the product, which means Intel will release it and attempt to gain consumer attention, which could create a de facto standard without IEEE acceptance. Consumer need/desire is met through not just competition between manufacturers but competition between standards committees as well.
I'd love to see something similar to this in replacing our FDA. If the IDDD doesn't think a drug is worthy for consumers, a drug company might go to a manufacturer-run testing body. Your doctor and you could make a decision based on your knowledge of who is backing the drug. Today, the FDA is the only body legalizing certain drugs, and I bet millions of people have died before the red tape was navigated.
As for the UWB idea, it seems that there are numerous competitive technologies, which is part of IEEE's reasoning for refusing the standard. This lets the consumers decide which standard will win out through market forces. Motorola's Freescale doesn't seem any better or worse than Intel's UWB, so I'm sure I'll see both in action in my customer base. The IEEE version may end up being a combination of both technologies.
This is the free market in action, and this is why technology tends to grow in leaps and bounds, whereas heavily regulated markets take years to wade through the red tape, spending billions in the process.
I didn't think about what you call the "counterfeit tax". I'd figured that they released the new style as they old style was brought back and destroyed. It's even worse than I expected if they're releasing the new currency out of proportion to the destruction of old. And I thought the constant addition of currency was bad already!
I've been blogging about this for a few weeks now. Our money supply on the books is US$10 trillion, yet we only have US$600 billion in real bills. Over the past 100 years, we've gone from $100 billion on the books and about $1 billion in real bills to the mess we have today. And people wonder why houses are so expensive and food costs 1000% more than it did 80 years ago.
Quoting my other post:
I read it and I agreed with it 100%. The manipulation of the population through manipulating the currency base is one of the greatest crimes of our generation. Greenspan will likely be awarded for it, when he should be found guilty of counterfeit. Most slashdot readers will not be willing to spend an hour or two reading Rothbard's classic, but I think society would be better as whole if they understood money better. Good posts.
We are in a free country, aren't we?
Absolutely. But when you vote for the federal or state government to get involved in taxing me to pay for your kids' educations, it isn't free. You can join the government-funding of schools, but don't force me to do it. I disagree with everything a public school stands for. I am no longer free.
Nope. I choose to tax everybody so everybody have enough money to raise their children, disregarding where they were born or under what surname.
Yet if the parents don't take an interest in their childrens' educations, the childrens' lives won't be any better from having an education or not. The old rule is if you give someone something for free, they will treat it badly. If they pay for it themselves, they will have more interest in following through. If you are a parent and have children, you should consider how you'll raise them and how you'll pay for that. For those who can't afford an education, there has always been ways to get children educated, at least until government decided to intrude.
That really smells even at the end of a ten foot pole. That simply is FALSE on big capital letters.
You must be a teacher or very young. Our literacy and educated rates have fallen as the public education system has grown. Some show that in 1940, whites had a 96% literacy rate while minorities were at 80%. In 1840, 1 out of 579 citizens were illiterate. At the end of the 20th century, National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress say 40 percent of blacks and 17 percent of whites can not read. How much more do we spend on public education, and why is minority illiteracy doubled and white illiteracy quadrupled?
Don't compare graduation rates if the graduates today can't compare to those who left schooling for real jobs 50 or 100 years ago. Graduation != educated. I know, I have to employ the morons that get graduated from public schools today.
If you are a symbol about what can I learn there, no thanks. You are utterly wrong.
We'll have to agree to disagree. You want to force me to pay for your childrens' education. You want to force me to accept your currency that has devalued over 99% in 100 years (my currency has appreciated over 1000% in 100 years versus your currency, and has stayed virtually the same in value over the past 2000 years). You want me to give 50% of my income to your government for all its various powers, which I believe is theft. You want to force my children to join your army to fight your wars. You want to tell me how to build my home. You want to force my business to allow any customer that walks in, even if I don't trust them or like them.
You are completely right, but I think you're missing the point that I can't define money in a few simple lines of text. I linked to Rothbard's (free) book because Rothbard did a great job explaining money.
Money is one thing and only one thing: a third party bartering tool. Of course money only has the value that people attribute to it, but to think that fiat money will HOLD value is to miss the mark completely.
Gold is the best form of money due to the fact that it doesn't degrade, it is nearly impossible to counterfeit, it isn't affected by acids or bases, it can be divided easily and it isn't quickly duplicated or lost. Gold's value over 6 thousand years has held fairly consistently, and in that time every currency is gone or depreciated to near worthlessness. The US dollar depreciated over 99% in 100 years.
Gold doesn't have to be the only form of money, but it is the best one, in my opinion. Inflationary fiat currencies always hurt the poor and middle classes and even hurt the wealthy. Only the wealthiest and most powerful elite truly create wealth out of thin air, by the acceptance of worthless paper currency by the masses.
In times of crises gold has been one of the only ways for people to get food, water and services. In every situation where a government-backed currency has failed, people turned to gold and silver jewelry to barter and trade.
You are now a "friend" :)
One other aspect you may have missed is the counterfeit tax that government produces that harms us just as much as their other taxes: they print new money. This causes old money (that the average citizen holds) to devalue, causing prices to go up. This new money is available to the wealthiest and most powerful to use first, so we don't see the effect for months or years.
Printing money forces everyone into a higher tax bracket without us realizing it. Printing money creates booms and busts in the stock and housing market. Printing money makes costs rise faster than wages. Printing money causes government's debt to decrease relatively.
The worst thing we're doing as a nation today is devaluing our money.
Without rules, there is still no fair election, because all it means is that people with money will buy political influence
You're equating money with power. This is wrong. The power comes from the governed giving the politician that power. Take away the power and the money disappears. Corporations and individuals want to spend money to influence politicians but not you. Why? Because the politicians have a monopoly on power. The Constitution was to restrict these powers, but you, the voters, decided the restriction weren't important. Money was never part of the equation per the Constitution.
Give every one ONE and ONLY ONE vote, and an equal opportunity to make an informed decision, and THEN you will have a fair system.
No, then you have 2 parties that are almost identical reducing the abilities of the minority decisions from being aired and judged by the populous. Voting is not fair by any means, in fact, we vote for laws that might be considered unfair by 49% of the voters! Voting is force, voting is theft. Fair is taking powers away from the government and giving them back to individuals.
I'm sure the movie producers wanted this rating. It generates news, for sure.
Movie ratings are a great way to use free market provisions to set rules without force. The theaters aren't required to enforce the ratings guidelines, and my local theater actually regularly disregards them based on the values in my specific community.
The whole ban on NC-17 movies seems pretty ridiculous. Our mall theater follows the ban, but I do recall one or two NC-17 movies in our smaller theater (I can't remember which films they were though). They're still in business, which is the free market telling the owners that what they did wasn't disliked by their customer base.
Wow, you really need to read about what money is. I can't even believe that you think this way, and I'm sure that 99% of the world does. Why not give the (free) book a try, and see where I'm coming from? Why can't I reference a book that encompasses all I believe about money? I'd just be repeating all that has already been written and debated.
Check it out. It is a simple short read. http://www.mises.org/money.asp
The idea of the "dollar" came from gold. Everything valuable was priced in a certain weight of gold. Notes were issued based on a weight of gold, so you didn't have to carry gold around.
I don't use banks, I only use gold and silver to buy things. I just went to Vegas for a business trip, and the entire trip was paid in gold and silver. I'll be buying a car in a few weeks and I will buy it entirely in gold. I paid for my last house in gold, and I buy my groceries with gold (and silver). I might go to the movies or nice dinner tonight, and I'll use silver to finance it.
My money has value in times of crises and in great times. Your money is only valuable when people have faith in it. I don't have faith in the US dollar, and most of the world is starting to see problems, as well.
The supply of money would set the prices. You don't say "$1 = 1 ounce of gold" you said "We have one million ounce of gold in existance, and this house is worth 20 of those."
The word "Dollar" comes from Thaler. Thaler referred to one of the best gold coin producers. Gold was money, not the other way around. Items were priced at their weight in gold.
Again, money is not complex. Rothbard's (free) book on money is a great read and really clarifies the issue. http://www.mises.org/money.asp
Polygamy is illegal more for health and safety concerns than moral concerns, when the state is challenged on these grounds it always argues higher disease and abuse rates rather than "we think it's bad."
Not eating vitamins can be detrimental to your health. Eating too many carbs can be bad. Not washing your hands could be bad. Having sex with multiple people unprotected could be bad. Polygamy laws are based on morals, not on health. Why is prostitution illegal? Health reasons? Come on. A bucket of lies from someone who wants to be a politician is what I am seeing.
That's different from setting apart of the public world and saying "you are best situated to deal with this, deal with it and be fair, because people are watching." It's a world of difference.
It is no different. A corporation is a group of people protected from liability. I am against corporations (anarchocapitalists usually are). Government has no right to say "This is how it is going to be" when it comes to a person's non-violent voluntary actions.
Furthermore, jury nullification is a gigantic crock.
So you believe that all laws should be judged only by lawyers and politicians rather than by the people the laws cover? If 12 normal people on a jury think a law is bad, they have no right to say so? That only lawyers (such as yourself?) should be able to make law? I thought law was for the people, by the people.
but actually harms the person that they attempted to help, since they give no findings of fact, which requires a judge to either order a new, expensive trial or look at the case at the appellate level de novo, with unfound facts that likely would not help the party the jury was attempting to aid's case.
I disagree. The person that is harmed by bad laws needs the ability to fight the bad law WITHOUT a lawyer (the lawyers in this country are the ultimately worst form of force). It is unacceptable today for a person to defend themselves by saying "The law is wrong, here is why." They have to accept the law even if it is unjust, and they have to hire a lawyer in order to protect themselves. Public defenders are the crock here.
It doesn't work, it's bad policy, and it doesn't help anyone involved, except maybe a few jurors who get a warm fuzzy feeling for facially "doing the right thing.
Actually, the majority of jurors I spoke to about jury nullification liked the idea -- almost every juror I have interviewed in the past 7 years has said that their faith in the system was diminished after dealing with the lawyers and the judge. The jury should have the right to overturn laws created by the lawyers and judges, it is the ultimate form of freedom.
With our system we can enact legislation to fix things.
I have seen nothing fixed by legislation, I have seen them temporarily put off so that another generation can deal with the messes created.
Additionally, most aspects of our lives are national in scope, now, so it makes sense that federal laws should be in the driver's seat.
Created this way by the terrible 17th Amendment, I believe.
When you look at what we have right now, we're doing pretty damn good.
Funny, I don't see it this way. Almost every house has gone up in value, even though houses are supposed to depreciate as new and better houses are built. Inflation and debt has caused our dollar to bankrupt even faster, and our personal debt is more than any other country. Other countries are losing their faith in our currency and our trading ability, and are investing in other currencies, commodities and gold. In some areas, interest only loans are 60% of all the loans made, which could be a clue to the insolvency of our market.
I am not a doomer-and-gloomer, I am a realist. I see people with less money, more debt and many aren't living happy lives. I backed out of keeping up with the Jones (after getting into debt hell myself before realizing debt wasn't freedom), a
You've brought more issues to this topic than I can reply to on my PDA. I'd be happy to take it to e-mail if you like :) Many of your questions are already answered on the web, I guess I need to start on an anarchocapitalist FAQ, hmm? :)
You say education has turned into daycare? How has school replaced parents? Because we as a culture don't hold strong parenting in high regard? How is that the school's fault? Or the government's fault?
I know many parents that are exceptional parents. One parent I'm friends with has taken her kids out of public education, cut her personal expenses so she can send her kid to a great private school and works with her church and her family to make sure her kids are raised properly. Her 3 kids (single mom) function better at their ages than almost anyone I know 4-10 years older. Raising kids is not the community's job, it is the job of the family and (if you are religious) the church community. Government and society have no role in raising kids or education them. Education is not a right. Having a great childhood is not a right. You tax me in order to teach and protect your children, so I don't have enough money to raise mine?
Compared to Japan and its publically-funded education system? Compared to Germany and its publically-funded education system
I could care less about the Japanese and the Germans. I've been to both countries, and both countries are riddled with state debt and on the verge of bankruptcy. In fact, Japan is already bankrupt. I've lived in both countries and haven't seen smarter children in either, but I have seen and felt more crime in those countries in my experience. I won't judge their education systems based on what their governments and their teachers have to say. We can't compare apples, oranges and bananas without a standard testing structure.
Although I suppose since the government isn't paying for it, then only the already-wealthy could afford to go to school, so perhaps cost isn't such a big deal.
The poor had church-sponsored education that was far superior to what the public education system has today. My family was poor for 2 generations, and only when they worked hard did they give me the chance to create wealth. Education comes after a generation or two of ass-busting. Without a strong home, education is a wasted effort.
What happens to all the other ports, who can't afford to compete?
They get subpar items until they can compete. Often times, countries that are uncompetitive have an authoritarian regime stealing the wealth or the desire to build wealth. Most of the world has been blocked by their own tyrannical goverments from gaining wealth. I have no faith that regulation of the ports brings more trade to a country. With UPS and Fedex, their number one problem in exporting product is dealing with various governmental port regulations, not the lack of them.
There's a reason we have the commerce clause.
This gave the federal government the basic power to make sure no States create tariffs or taxes against one another. The clause has been stretched to include making drugs illegal and controlling every aspect of our lives.
It's an unmanageable situation.
The situation we live in today is unmanageable. I blog about it. Our government has over $10 trillion US dollars in electronic existance but only $600 billion US dollars in physical existance. The reason houses go up in value (instead of down in value as any disposable good does) is because of government inflation. The reason the stock market hasn't provided real wealth to the majority of the population is through the devaluing US dollar.
A gold standard is the safest standard that exists. Money is nothing but a store of wealth and a third party bartering medium. Trade exists as people exchange each other's abilities through a standard store of wealth. Read Rothbard's "What has government done to our money?" to r
The idea of having a federal Congress was to limit the position to very VERY strict, enumerated powers. The system we see today is outrageous and will fail by itself, as a true patriot I'd like to save this country from the socialist and fascist sides that are currently running it.
The Constitution was unique in that it allowed for a tiny federal government to strictly defend the States from each other and from outsiders. Instead of being one country where everyone is equally taxes and trampled on, we were to be a multitude of unique States composed of similarly minded people. The States were to be governed and protected by the federal branch, but the federal branch was never meant to be all encompassing.
Says you. Got a court case to cite in support of your position? Didn't think so. It's just your opinion versus 200+ years of jurisprudence. First of all, money is not speech. Second of all:
Money isn't speech, money is expression. What you buy expresses what you need. This is how life operates. Everything we do is a form of expression, including working, speaking, writing, singing, and spending money. Here are some links.
So you want to "reform democracy" by entirely removing the meager limitations on how the wealthy can influence the political process, thus ensuring that their influence will become even more intractibly entrenched.
I never said that. The money does not corrupt the position. The position is corrupted because it has unlimited power. Remove the power and the money won't flow that way!
Unlimited spending is fine if Congress has no power to harm.
Is this guy serious? Connecting random resistors across their line of communications?
Communications is getting compressed, gated and even frequency trapped in order to reduce bandwidth over the global network. Analog is dying (if it isn't dead yet). How will returning to an analog-based "encryption" system work in the digital future?
I don't see any truly safe encryption scheme. I was thinking of some a few months ago (such as having the encoding system changing how many bits and what resolution it uses in a preplanned structure that only the recipient decoding system knows). Bits are bits, and if you can vary what the bits mean and in what order they are created, it is very hard to decode those bits.
I don't think encryption is really important any more. All a government or corporate enemy needs to do is bug your office and your car and the encryption scheme falls apart. The black market government (mob, mafia, yakuza whatever) already has their perfect encryption schemes in place: say nothing, write nothing down and never tell anyone what you are doing. It works. When was the last time you heard of a mob or mafia arrest in your home town (yes, the black market exists there, too).
Government wiretapping isn't being used against the great crime squads. These systems are in place more to make citizens feel safe from terrorists, but all they really is in increase the budget of the agency trying to use the systems. In 10 years, wiretapping will be useless as information will have 500 different paths to take and no one will be able to trace them all. Imagine if you could take your voice, broadcast in your room random bits of your voice to confuse bugs and analog taps, and then chop up the real voice into 5 different streams of varying bits and frequency resolution to be sent via 5 different paths (phone line modem, DSL, cable modem, WiFi to a network 150 feet away and another path hidden in an AIM chat of noise). There is no way "they" can stop the flow of information.
The article really makes little sense to me as it seems to go backwards. It would have been great in the 80s.
Don't you dare try and put that on teachers.
I have no respect for any teacher that is a member of any teacher union. I have at least 4 friends who are teachers who quit the unions and still teach, and I have the utmost respect for them. If you are a teacher and a member of the socialist union, you're trash, plain and simple. Read what the teacher unions do every year and you'll agree.
Have you talked to the crazy parents teachers have to put up with? Most will actually tell you they expect the school to teach their kids dicipline.
I agree. This is also the teacher unions fault. They have fought, tooth and nail, the ability to bring independent graders into the system. Let teachers teach, let grades grade. A teacher grading their own students is similar to an employee setting their own salary!
And every kid is a geneous, and most parents do about 20% of their kids work, especially essays. And teachers do a LOT of work for the crap pay they get, more than you know.
Crap pay? This is a myth. Teachers are some of the best paid for the actual time they spend and the quality of their output.
They also usually have very specific lesson requirements handed down from the state level, so any real teaching or discussion gets put to the side.
Thanks, I also agree that the State is to blame. The Federal mandates on education are a big problem as well.
The problem is lazy parents who don't have time to deal with their kids because their (1) divorced or (2) both working.
When we were in the 1960s, a family of 4 paid about 20% of their income to government at every level. 1 parent could afford to stay home. In 2005, a family of 4 pays over 50% of their income to government at every level. This is 250% higher, causing both parents to have to work just to get by. Don't blame the parents for what you voted for.
Contact Jacob Hornberger at FFF.org and ask him about it. His allegations brought down many in the party. I tried finding his old website but it has been so many years that I can no longer find the website.
The government can no longer discriminate based on race, gender or religious beliefs.
And yet neither can I. I am free to express myself and congregate with groups and people that I want to. I can't discriminate who I hire at my business (which is my right) or dozens of other un-PC ways to live that are considered illegal because government mandates it.
The government can no longer use the power to enforce morality as a de facto compelling state interest.
Really? Wait until video games and cable channels are censored by law rather than by consumer buying decisions.
The government can no longer punish us for sleeping with whomever we choose or marrying whomever we choose
Most states have sodomy laws. Most states have ages of consent that vary (meaning no one has a standard knowledge of when it is OK because no one knows the individuals). Most states allow only one man to marry one woman, or one person to marry one person. Polygamy is illegal because it is considered immoral by government, not because the people who are non-violently wanting to marry more than 1 other person voluntarily want it so. Governments offer married people more rights than unmarried people.
The government can no longer appoint public corporations as sanctioned monopolies.
Sure they can. The Federal Reserve Board is a private corporation with a goverment mandate. The Student Loan Marketing Association provides liquidity for loans in a monopolist fashion. Fannie Mae is taking over almost every home loan. The Postal Service has a monopoly on first class mail. Given time, I could name 1000 corporations with monopolist mandates from government.
we have a judicial system by which a malevolent will of the majority can be quashed
Do we? My wife almost went to jail because a pig wrote a "71" instead of a "17" into a computer 9 years ago for rolling through a stop. She paid that ticket, but the police years later believed she ran from a DUI. The day she was to go to jail for a year for a crime she didn't commit (and cost me $60,000 for a year of fighting), we lucked out by finding one person in the State who actually saw the problem. Don't even start on the judicial system that kicked me off a jury twice for telling the rest of the jury about jury nullification. Don't tell me about a judicial system that told me I can't have a jury for a speeding ticket. Don't tell me about a judicial system that decrees time and again that laws are constitutional even though they aren't.
Did you know that before 1963, voting districts were determined by geography, rather than population? That means that people in denser areas actually had LESS of a vote than those in rural areas.
Have you seen the jerrymandering that has occured since this was changed? I prefer voting districts based on geography, but we have an amendment called the 17th amendment that DESTROYED the Senate's ability to protect the States. The federal system was designed so that no majority could trample on the rights of the minority. This was destroyed in the past 140 years. Who cares if Chicago can vote for something federal that Springfield doesn't want? If it is unconstitutional, it won't be law.
But it beats the heck out of a system run by people working entirely in their own interests with the absurd notion that no question or problem or desire they have will EVER conflict with anyone else's.
Just wait. You'll see that the terrible system that has been sown for the last 100 years will reap what the voters want -- complete disarray and bankruptcy. If it wasn't for an all-powerful military, our country would have been in the pits 4 decades ago. The Internet is now letting more of the truth get out, and I don't even give it half a decade before the rest of the world sees the American voters for what they are: control and power freaks with no faith in the individual.