You bring up an interesting point, but it is one that is widely thought of as unacceptable in this case. ICANN would not exist if it had been deemed that the "free market" would come up with a suitable solution on its own.
ICANN also has the money to market themselves as necessary, whereas I don't have the money to market that they really aren't necessary. This is why I work slowly trying to convince individuals, who as a group are more powerful than the wealthiest advertiser. That is the free market at work:)
Domains cannot be influenced by the free market, as you would either have so many domains that you would have search google every time you wanted to find a website, or everyone would be so lazy that there would only be one. It is important that there are some rules determining what a domain can represent, and that there is a collection of people who are willing to debate propriety of creating or redefining a new domain.
Interesting -- I already use Google more than I use the address bar. In between those two I use my bookmarks. Google has blown up in popularity because there are ALREADY too many domain names to recall them. If you want someone to remember your domain name, you either ask them to bookmark it (online) or you print the proper one on your business card. The person doing EITHER action doesn't care if you are.biz or.com or.net or.tv -- there may be dozens of other companies with the same name but a different extension. This is the free market at work and unlimited extensions would not cloud or confuse the issue at all. The world is completely able to deal with McDonalds.com, McDonalds.tv and McDonalds.xxx and even thousands of others.
If it was left up to the free market, the chances are that any rules that may be created would be haphazard or confusing, or we would be left with a chaotic mess without any rules at all.
How so? Why would ANY company want chaos and confusion? In my experience, companies do what they do in order to increase their profit, and that means getting along with what consumers desire. I don't see how ICANN reduces confusion in any way. If a bunch of ISPs wanted to offer domain names that others don't want, then the market will make the decision to run those ISPs out of business. In fact, this has already occurred.
You cannot expect the free market to sort out the problems of the pensions crisis in Britain, or to regulate the monopoly of only-just-privatised companies like National Rail, Royal Mail or BT.
Actually, the pensions crises in every country comes from the fact that the currency they are based in is being debased, and that the companies that invested in the pensions are finding themselves uncompetitive because of those pensions. Let the individual decide how to save for the future, don't mandate it through social security or "force the employer to offer pensions." In fact, the pensions of private businesses came out of the desire to avoid taxes, not out of a competitive atmosphere.
If they don't regulate it, then who will? And who would enforce all of these newly determined free-market solutions? I certainly can't be bothered to spend my Sunday afternoons on the problem.
Yet your purchases regulate the free-market solution. If you like something, you buy it. If you don't, you don't buy it. Companies that provide a solution you like, and offer it at a competitive price, and service and support it in the long run are generally the ones that last the longer. Companies that try for rock bottom prices and offer terrible service get run out of business.
The big fear for many is that one company, such as AOL or Microsoft, could all of a sudden control the majority of the Internet and start shutting out smaller ISPs and businesses. Yet the way the Internet is built -- millions of subnetworks tied together, sometimes with two or three backbones -- makes it virtual
t's a foregone conclusion to governments (even so-called capitalist ones) that the free market, without regulation, does not always result in the best solution for everyone. I'd have to agree with them, but YMMV.
Which market requires force and coercion most, in your opinion?
I'd hate to have to pay for 10x the number of registrations, just to preserve the integrity of my company's business name online.
So you believe you have the right to monopoly over the use of non-unique words presented in a certain combination? I don't agree. You need to utilize guns as the last resort to force me even though I never initiated force against anyone.
In some markets, hardware is released and only then does software take advantage of it. Sometimes software never takes advantage of the new hardware because of the complexity in writing code. I remember all the MMX and the like promotions, but I never really saw any evidence that it did anything.
In other markets, software is released and the hardware follows. I recall Quake (or was it Quake 2) and the rush months later to have a Voodoo SLI to boost framerates.
I am sure a 3-core processor could be "better" but only if the software to support it can be easily ported from the single core or dual core versions. Will software eventually be core-transparent because of a "xCore" abstraction layer? Will software be optimized properly for the ability to take advantage of the added cores?
I see the need for multitasking the processor side, but I also see the complexity in trying to differentiate all the different configurations a workstation may have. The more cores that are released, the more I see application-specific turn key solutions over "one version fits all." I also see the added costs in testing and developing, and who really knows if those costs lead to any savings by creating the additional cores.
That's the point of this post -- just because something increases efficiency in one sphere doesn't mean that there is an overall savings. There is no way to properly judge if the market will see a savings overall, and if it costs much more to produce/support/service the new product, it will fail. Nothing can stop that, not even great marketing.
I've found this applies to whatever business you're in. I've started, grown, and sold 4 different companies, in completely unrelated industries. The more we were able to make ourselves unnecessary, the more work we got.
Succinctly put. What you just said is about 1/3rd the reason I became a libertarian and then became an anarchocapitalist. I realized that businesses that exist to grow and tread new markets are what makes this world wonderful. I saw how some corporations (not businesses) fought to stay the same, and wanted to make a law to enforce the status quo. I've been a businessman since I was 13/14, and I never really thought about "What is legal?" I thought "What is moral?" I didn't need the law to tell me what my customers wanted and what I could provide. I didn't need the law to tell me when a product I made was harmful to my customers. I just knew. As I left my teens, I realized that almost all my businesses were just stepping stones to new ones. I'm always focusing on what will replace me, and then seeing what will replace other industries. Those are the businesses to be in before the masses start investing in IPOs -- which are already too late to the scene.
So, exactly how are we supposed to create new pharmaceuticals in your brave new IP-less world?
In my experience, the IP debate ends when someone brings up pharmaceuticals. It is now called Dada's Law of IP Debate. The pharmaceutical industry has incredibly high costs because of government regulations, not because it really costs US$325million to make a new drug. We have 6.5 billion people in the world. If reducing government intrusion would save half, we're talking about 2.5 cents per person to make a new drug. Even if we didn't dump the FDA of every country, it is still only 5 cents. Forget about 70% of the world who can't afford, and we are still looking at 17 cents per person. Considering that more and more of the population is needing medication, I don't think you can say that drug reseach would halt -- the costs would just be passed on in different ways.
As long as there is a demand for something that has zero supply, people will always find ways to create a supply. That is how the market operates. Then along comes government regulations, which slows the supply, causing prices to go up. Then along comes government taxation of the population, which decreases the available dollars to spend, causing prices to go down. Then along comes government manipulation of the currency, which causes prices to go up. Then along comes anti-drug laws removing drugs that actually have a purchase, causing legal drug prices to increase. The drug business adds thousands of layers of complexity to the equation, but there will always be a demand, so there will always be someone trying to supply it.
Actually, this isn't completely true. The complexity of the market is due much to government control of currency, wages and wealth redistribution.
In a completely free market, you DO have the ability to provide a solely service economy more now than ever in history. There are so many services that can be performed over the Internet, but we are not competitive because of our government's destruction of wealth and currency while continuing to push prices higher through counterfeiting the dollar (legally).
I am currently working on outsourcing some new services -- drafting, engineering, estimating and marketing -- to Western Europe. The production quality of $6 per hour college students far surpasses that of many of the $30 per hour college graduates I find in the States. The world will change overnight and we'll continue to believe that we're worth $60,000 per year here in the U.S. when there are billions of others who can live nicely on $12,000. You can blame the high standard of living on Greenspan, not the free market.
If you're serious and want some great insight, drop me an e-mail. I've found some really inexpensive ways to play for a market crash while still being profitable if the market moves forward. Trailer park ownership, home improvement co-ops, and even local bartering clubs are great ways to maximize your financial security while still making money if my doom-and-gloom fears don't come to bloom.
You're right -- just training someone in proper use isn't enough. It is also important to train people in questioning every action before performing it. Phishing is getting harder to detect, yet it is causing the banks to take better security measures (they end up paying for the phishing in the end). This is the market at work -- government is coming along to draw the chalk-line and collect evidence, the banks are working to prevent the crime from ever happening.
According to the Libertarian ethos, I should be rewarded for my efforts to defraud someone by using misleading, but technically correct on some level, language to sell something, or by using knowledge only I have access to (say, as the director of a large multinational) to gain a massive advantage of others (say, by selling stock on the sly shortly before revealing losses, etc),
I'm not a libertarian really, but that's not important:)
First, the ability to defraud the public was much more accessible in the past -- which is why I understand the reason for laws. Now, we have the Internet, the instant access to information shared by the masses. Moderation of products is happening real time, in fact, we're receiving information about test products before they come to market. If you are an uneducated consumer even with all the reviews and moderations available, you're at fault for making bad decisions. Ebay and slashdot are good examples of market anarchism: there really isn't any force being used against consumers or producers, and both consumers and producers are able to rate the transactions made. Is it perfect? No, but it is becoming more perfect as time goes on, thanks to the market's ability to change at an instant.
but I shouldn't be rewarded for creating new music, movies, and novels.
Of course you do -- get a job with a company that makes those things. You're guaranteed a paycheck that way. If you want to be independent (just like an IT consultant or an independent hair stylist), you are accepting a much bigger risk in exchange for the chance of a much bigger reward. I became an independent consultant at 14 and for 3 years I made less than $0.50 per hour. At 17 I was making over $60 an hour and at 20 I was making over $150 per hour. At 21 I was bad to making less than $0.25 per hour for 2 years while I watched my old profession fall apart. Risks/rewards!
Much as I generally agree that personal liberty should be maximized, I can't get my head around the notion of a world being a better place because dishonesty and crookedness are rewarded, but creativity is for losers.
Dishonest and crooked producers will be judged by the market's moderation system in place. Look at Sony. Look at Enron. Look at http://www.fuckedcompany.com/ for a list of producers who screwed their customers and ended up with what they deserved. I'm losing one of my companies right now because we didn't focus on our customers, and in April that business was one of the top 100 in the nation. 8 months later and its bankrupt. I continue to learn lessons. If I didn't want such a big reward, I know I could go get a job for someone else and do very well, but I don't want that. My businesses that treat the customers with respect and concern grow -- slowly but surely. My business that took advantage of customers and lied grew VERY fast but crashed even faster.
It wouldn't surprise me if 30% of my IT company's income came from user stupidity combined with software such as the XCP, spywared games, and other fun entertainment products. Yet this is just the market at work. Loopholes are found, usually because of click-through-licensing. Companies will always attempt to build their markets and consumers will always find the bad seeds.
It is very important to realize that as long as end users continue to install these programs, marketing companies will feed their needs. You could ague for laws against these backdoor programs, but it wouldn't solve anything and in fact might make the problem worse as companies find sneakier ways to get into your desktop.
The only way to make a smart consumer is to inform them of the bad things. This means getting the word out, telling others to be careful, and even offering training for groups. My company makes a good profit on spyware, but we offer completely free training days for companies that want to save money by training their employees in safe web browsing. I don't think the answer is "Install Linux and Firefox and the problem will go away!" If Linux/Firefox occupied 90% of desktops, the marketing companies would find a way to take advantage of that platform.
Smart users are informed users are users who won't continue making the same mistakes. Finding band-aids through legislation or discrete installation of anti-spyware software isn't going to solve the problem.
As a sidenote -- the reason for training my customers in smart browsing techniques is a selfish one. As we reduce a company's cost of doing business, our referral rate skyrockets. The less we work/bill, the more work we have to bill. If you're a consultant and you're not seeing a decent increase in your customer base every year, you're not doing a good enough job. There is more work in the U.S. than is being tapped, and it is usually because companies aren't seeing things getting better.
There is. It is called a salary. If you want to earn a living from writing, get a job with a writing house (newspaper, website, cartoon creator, etc). They'll pay you a salary in exchange for your creativity. They will take on the costs and risks of trying to make a profit.
If you want to be independent, you are accepting a HUGE risk, just as an independent IT consultant is taking a huge risk versus working for "the man."
Creating content is not enough to make a product. I'm working on an article regarding the death of copyright -- and the more I research it by querying succesful authors/musicians/writers, the more I realize that copyright has absolutely no effect on creation and only puts power in the hands of the distribution corporation.
This is very true. A service-oriented economy can be very profitable IF the market is free to set prices. Unfortunately, minimum wage laws combined with a union focus combined with an inflationary policy by the central bank all lead to higher costs which lead to a lower demand.
I'm preparing for the market surprise by holding gold-as-money, downsizing my house significantly so I have no mortgage, and traveling more (which helps me gauge the realities of the market, not what the media and the government report).
I see bad things ahead for most, and I feel bad that no one listens to the realities of the economy. Keep building those 401Ks if you're interested in having zero net value in a decade.
The only interests that matter, IMO, are those of the individuals. There is no mass-interest-level that can be made into a number and protected by a law or a regulation. In fact, interests change constantly.
For governments and regulatory bodies to try to assess interests for the masses, failure will always be the end result. We have the free market where the billions of consumers make decisions every second and the market continuously changes in response to the demand by consumers and the supply of a given service or product. On the other hand we have regulatory bodies and governments that change over years or even decades in order to satisfy 51% of the voting block.
Domain name extensions don't make sense anymore -- as we continue to add more, the value of the old extensions diminishes (except, maybe,.com). Why not just open the floodgates and let the market create what it needs? Why should anyone have a say in guiding those billions of buying decisions, other than the individual consumers making them?
Clearly there is a great inequity built into the system, which is only aggravated by the zero-cost, zero-effort rquired to make copies of a work.
And?
Here's a little secret to the free market: it requires dozens of people or groups to bring anything to the mass public. Idea makers, content producers, content directors, content creators, sales and marketing, packaging, shipping, distribution, retail and the end customer.
Just because you can come up with a great idea doesn't mean you have the best version of it. Just because you can code the best version doesn't mean you have the best interface. Just because you have the best interface doesn't mean you have access to the best distribution. Just because you have the best distribution doesn't mean you have an in-road to the customers' minds. Just because you have good advertising doesn't mean the sales staff will understand how to sell the product.
This is my problem with IP -- it disregards everything after creation. Creation is not enough, in fact, it is worthless. So much of creation is based on previous inventions -- how fast would we have new inventions if the old investions didn't have decades of protection?
There are those who say that creation will stop without protections, but I think this is stupid. Companies for hundreds of years have hired "invention wings" of thinkers who come up with new ideas. Before IP laws became so protective, companies continued to invent, create and distribute. The IP laws that help your company protect one idea are the same laws that prevent your company from perfecting the ideas of millions of others.
IP does not protect freedom or creation, it hampers both. Monopolies are bad -- and can only be protected in the long run by government force.
Many slashdot readers are starting to realize what a scam Intellectual Property laws are, and I firmly believe that the only ownership one can have is physical ownership of a good. The power of IP is born from government's monopoly on force, and the majority of IP-owners are corporations, another figment of government's imagination. Isn't the intent of government to make all citizens safe, secure and let no one's freedom to produce be hampered by another?
The U.K. isn't going to make any changes to their laws. In a country with increasing inflation, increasing unemployment and increasing debt, the powers-the-be will more likely collude with megacorps than shun them. There is a mistaken belief that employment is a creation of government fiat and that the market won't provide unless government sets up regulations and restrictions. IP is one of those restrictions. IP also creates unemployment, as companies that could otherwise compete with the IP holder are not allowed entry into the market.
Kinsella wrote a decent article (PDF warning) about Intellectual Property and how anti-freedom/pro-force the idea is. I don't believe we can "fix" the laws, and I don't think we can even roll them back. The slippery slope has shown its ugly face, and the only hope we have is to completely toss the rules and find a better way, maybe a non-government way. Kinsella's 53 page article has more footnotes and links that I could ever place in a slashdot article, but he hits the nail on the head in reaching the same conclusion: don't offer protection for non-physical property.
If you post it, expect it to get copied. If you create it, expect cheap knock-offs to appear. If you don't want either thing to happen, don't put your idea into the public eye. If you want to profit from your creation, you have to add in the cost of knock-offs and copying into the equation, and offer value added options in order to attract customers to your first-to-market creation.
I'm sure that is how you feel. When I found my "libertarian roots" I discovered that the word libertarian was virtually unheard of in every-day language. I worked on using that word often (in newspaper OpEds, radio call-ins, reviews and online pieces). About a decade later and the word appears hundreds of times a week in the media. Will anarchocapitalist or AnCap ever become a known word? I expect not. Yet it is important for people to learn that anarchists aren't chaotic nihilists and capitalists aren't big-corporation abusers. Both words were robbed by others, I am just taking them back.
What I meant is that many stores already have the mechanism for weighing every item. It is currently used only for self checkout (or fruit) but the store can adapt it for their checkout tellers to use.
I have very good luck at my Dominicks (grocery store) and Home Depot with the self checkout. It seems like I have been lucky!
I meant that the barcode contains a unique identifier saying "This is the UPC, this is the unique item number." When a customer buys that unique item number, its removed from the database, hence no duping. The generic portion of the UPC allows a simpler database of items with an allotment for the unique portion.
I knew a kid who worked at a Best Buy with a bunch of his friends. They all were caught months later running a register scam. They'd ring up a friend who bought maybe 6 CDs, a VCR and a TV. They'd "forget" to scan the TV, and the friend would roll right out with the helper employee (another scammer) and put the TV in a car. They did this for months and finally got caught.
Another scammer I met (who didn't do jail time) used to be in charge of returns. He would check returns for completeness, put it back together, reshrink wrap the item and stick it back on the floor. Oh, he also threw other expensive items in the box. His friend would come, buy the $19.99 big box radio, and walk out with hundreds of items. Since the item was shrink wrapped, no one caught on for months.
I thought of the barcode scan YEARS ago when I found a barcode scanner at a garage sale. This is pre-USB days. I messed with barcodes for weeks, and figured one could print barcodes onto a label and stick it on a box. I never did it (even though I am an anarchocapitalist and anti-government/anti-mercantilism, I would never steal), but I can't believe it took this long for stores to see the problem.
The solution is one-time use barcodes. It isn't as bad as you'd think for the big box stores. When a skid is received, it has two barcodes on the packing list: first code, last code. The employee scans both (say 1111183.17 and 1111183.234) and the system registers all the item codes and the unique codes. If the register scans a duplicate, there's a problem.
The other solution is already in place in Home Depot and grocery stores -- the self checkout. You can't buy an item without weighing it. I believe Best Buy and Circuit City are already starting to work on incorporating scale barcode scanners that weigh the item when they scan it.
I've considered starting a security company for ma-and-pa stores to battle these forms of theft. There are many ways a store can protect itself, but the best way is to have intelligent staff who aren't helping the thieves. Good luck there.
and that the constitution was amended to include such rights.
No, it wasn't. The rights that the Amendments cover are protected by the Amendments, but they've always been there. They added the Bill of Rights in fear that down the road the central government would trample them. Guess what? Every right protected in the Bill of Rights has been destroyed already. They are basic human rights that no government can take away.
In 200 years, not ONE new technology or idealogy has surfaced that the Constitution does not completely cover. Name one. You can't.
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;"
Congress sets treaties here, not laws to be enforced by the military.
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;"
The militia run by each independent state. The laws of the union: counterfeit, treason, and piracy. Also for defending against offense ON OUR SOIL. This clause reminds me how unconstitutional our military is, on top of the FBI.
Department of Justice
The DoJ isn't constitutional! The founding of the DoJ (1870ish) happened in order to create a more powerful central authority. It was created after Lincoln won his illegal War between States in order to create a strong federal government. Lincoln campaigned for a stronger central government and the South threatened to secede if he won (they knew he would tax them in order to build his empire). Lincoln hated blacks and had no opinion on slavery.
The Constitution specifically addresses interstate issues by placing them under the jurisdiction of the Federal government. You can't just assign them to individual states or municipalities
Regulating the states means making sure no state attempts to prevent trade between themselves and another. It doesn't mean taking over what two states could normally accomplish together (and often do).
Try running a kidnapping or mail fraud investigation across several states, where each state has to provide resources for the investigation pertaining to their particular state. So instead of one group freely travelling across state lines investigating the issue, you're trying to coordinate multiple groups all with limited knowledge of the evidence
One unconstitutional group freely travels to handle kidnapping, all the while creating havoc and performing oppresive actions against its citizens.
Kidnapping should be handled by private investigators paid for by insurance companies, not federal thug who rarely solve the crimes anyway. I'm shocked that citizens today really feel safer with the FBI breathing down our necks.
Great post. When the lady and I are out "doing the town" (we travel a LOT), it seems we're the only two smiling. I smile ALL THE TIME because I'm happy. I look around and all I see are unhappy people. At the airport a few weeks back (O'hare International Terminal) I was smiling and looked at one of the security guards and he aked me why I was smiling.
For the past 10 years I've fought to keep my freedom, but as things get worse (and they are) we've been traveling more looking for more freedom. I found it in Dubai (one of the freest cities in the world and most prosperous for all) which is smack dab in the Middle East. I found more freedom in Asia, in Australia, even in socialist countries in Europe.
What I saw, even more importantly, were people smiling. I once went an entire warm afternoon in downtown San Diego without seeing ONE person crack a smile. Orwellian indeed.
Considering all our homegrown terrorists are angry over the unconstitutionality of this government, I don't think you can really believe that having the FBI makes us safer.
Were the soldiers in the War for Independence terrorists?
Marshall in McCulloch v. Maryland: "The power to tax involves the power to destroy."
Do you even know what McCullock v. Maryland was about? It was about a State attempting to tax a Federal institution. Marshall was greatly concerned that if a State might trump the Feds, the Supremacy Clause could be in danger. Of COURSE a Federal judge would worry about that. Also, in MvM the Federal institution at hand was the Central Bank -- the worse institution ever created. It is, at heart, one of the primary causes of the stock market bubble, the housing bubble, and the tax-bracket fraud that the feds cause on the unknowing citizens.
U.S. v. Fisher is a case where Marshall may have partially upheld his Constitutional oath. I believe (from memory) that this case was regarding bankruptcy and debt and forcing the U.S. to the top of the chain in who collects debts from the bankrupt.
You can blame the Supreme Court in the past 100 years for much of the damage done to the Constitution. I really don't understand, if treason is punishable by death, and violating the oath to uphold the Constitution is treason, why haven't we had more hangings in Washington these past 100 years?
Slashdot Mirror
You bring up an interesting point, but it is one that is widely thought of as unacceptable in this case. ICANN would not exist if it had been deemed that the "free market" would come up with a suitable solution on its own.
:)
.biz or .com or .net or .tv -- there may be dozens of other companies with the same name but a different extension. This is the free market at work and unlimited extensions would not cloud or confuse the issue at all. The world is completely able to deal with McDonalds.com, McDonalds.tv and McDonalds.xxx and even thousands of others.
ICANN also has the money to market themselves as necessary, whereas I don't have the money to market that they really aren't necessary. This is why I work slowly trying to convince individuals, who as a group are more powerful than the wealthiest advertiser. That is the free market at work
Domains cannot be influenced by the free market, as you would either have so many domains that you would have search google every time you wanted to find a website, or everyone would be so lazy that there would only be one. It is important that there are some rules determining what a domain can represent, and that there is a collection of people who are willing to debate propriety of creating or redefining a new domain.
Interesting -- I already use Google more than I use the address bar. In between those two I use my bookmarks. Google has blown up in popularity because there are ALREADY too many domain names to recall them. If you want someone to remember your domain name, you either ask them to bookmark it (online) or you print the proper one on your business card. The person doing EITHER action doesn't care if you are
If it was left up to the free market, the chances are that any rules that may be created would be haphazard or confusing, or we would be left with a chaotic mess without any rules at all.
How so? Why would ANY company want chaos and confusion? In my experience, companies do what they do in order to increase their profit, and that means getting along with what consumers desire. I don't see how ICANN reduces confusion in any way. If a bunch of ISPs wanted to offer domain names that others don't want, then the market will make the decision to run those ISPs out of business. In fact, this has already occurred.
You cannot expect the free market to sort out the problems of the pensions crisis in Britain, or to regulate the monopoly of only-just-privatised companies like National Rail, Royal Mail or BT.
Actually, the pensions crises in every country comes from the fact that the currency they are based in is being debased, and that the companies that invested in the pensions are finding themselves uncompetitive because of those pensions. Let the individual decide how to save for the future, don't mandate it through social security or "force the employer to offer pensions." In fact, the pensions of private businesses came out of the desire to avoid taxes, not out of a competitive atmosphere.
If they don't regulate it, then who will? And who would enforce all of these newly determined free-market solutions? I certainly can't be bothered to spend my Sunday afternoons on the problem.
Yet your purchases regulate the free-market solution. If you like something, you buy it. If you don't, you don't buy it. Companies that provide a solution you like, and offer it at a competitive price, and service and support it in the long run are generally the ones that last the longer. Companies that try for rock bottom prices and offer terrible service get run out of business.
The big fear for many is that one company, such as AOL or Microsoft, could all of a sudden control the majority of the Internet and start shutting out smaller ISPs and businesses. Yet the way the Internet is built -- millions of subnetworks tied together, sometimes with two or three backbones -- makes it virtual
t's a foregone conclusion to governments (even so-called capitalist ones) that the free market, without regulation, does not always result in the best solution for everyone. I'd have to agree with them, but YMMV.
Which market requires force and coercion most, in your opinion?
I'd hate to have to pay for 10x the number of registrations, just to preserve the integrity of my company's business name online.
So you believe you have the right to monopoly over the use of non-unique words presented in a certain combination? I don't agree. You need to utilize guns as the last resort to force me even though I never initiated force against anyone.
The question can't be answered.
In some markets, hardware is released and only then does software take advantage of it. Sometimes software never takes advantage of the new hardware because of the complexity in writing code. I remember all the MMX and the like promotions, but I never really saw any evidence that it did anything.
In other markets, software is released and the hardware follows. I recall Quake (or was it Quake 2) and the rush months later to have a Voodoo SLI to boost framerates.
I am sure a 3-core processor could be "better" but only if the software to support it can be easily ported from the single core or dual core versions. Will software eventually be core-transparent because of a "xCore" abstraction layer? Will software be optimized properly for the ability to take advantage of the added cores?
I see the need for multitasking the processor side, but I also see the complexity in trying to differentiate all the different configurations a workstation may have. The more cores that are released, the more I see application-specific turn key solutions over "one version fits all." I also see the added costs in testing and developing, and who really knows if those costs lead to any savings by creating the additional cores.
That's the point of this post -- just because something increases efficiency in one sphere doesn't mean that there is an overall savings. There is no way to properly judge if the market will see a savings overall, and if it costs much more to produce/support/service the new product, it will fail. Nothing can stop that, not even great marketing.
I've found this applies to whatever business you're in. I've started, grown, and sold 4 different companies, in completely unrelated industries. The more we were able to make ourselves unnecessary, the more work we got.
Succinctly put. What you just said is about 1/3rd the reason I became a libertarian and then became an anarchocapitalist. I realized that businesses that exist to grow and tread new markets are what makes this world wonderful. I saw how some corporations (not businesses) fought to stay the same, and wanted to make a law to enforce the status quo. I've been a businessman since I was 13/14, and I never really thought about "What is legal?" I thought "What is moral?" I didn't need the law to tell me what my customers wanted and what I could provide. I didn't need the law to tell me when a product I made was harmful to my customers. I just knew. As I left my teens, I realized that almost all my businesses were just stepping stones to new ones. I'm always focusing on what will replace me, and then seeing what will replace other industries. Those are the businesses to be in before the masses start investing in IPOs -- which are already too late to the scene.
So, exactly how are we supposed to create new pharmaceuticals in your brave new IP-less world?
In my experience, the IP debate ends when someone brings up pharmaceuticals. It is now called Dada's Law of IP Debate. The pharmaceutical industry has incredibly high costs because of government regulations, not because it really costs US$325million to make a new drug. We have 6.5 billion people in the world. If reducing government intrusion would save half, we're talking about 2.5 cents per person to make a new drug. Even if we didn't dump the FDA of every country, it is still only 5 cents. Forget about 70% of the world who can't afford, and we are still looking at 17 cents per person. Considering that more and more of the population is needing medication, I don't think you can say that drug reseach would halt -- the costs would just be passed on in different ways.
As long as there is a demand for something that has zero supply, people will always find ways to create a supply. That is how the market operates. Then along comes government regulations, which slows the supply, causing prices to go up. Then along comes government taxation of the population, which decreases the available dollars to spend, causing prices to go down. Then along comes government manipulation of the currency, which causes prices to go up. Then along comes anti-drug laws removing drugs that actually have a purchase, causing legal drug prices to increase. The drug business adds thousands of layers of complexity to the equation, but there will always be a demand, so there will always be someone trying to supply it.
Actually, this isn't completely true. The complexity of the market is due much to government control of currency, wages and wealth redistribution.
In a completely free market, you DO have the ability to provide a solely service economy more now than ever in history. There are so many services that can be performed over the Internet, but we are not competitive because of our government's destruction of wealth and currency while continuing to push prices higher through counterfeiting the dollar (legally).
I am currently working on outsourcing some new services -- drafting, engineering, estimating and marketing -- to Western Europe. The production quality of $6 per hour college students far surpasses that of many of the $30 per hour college graduates I find in the States. The world will change overnight and we'll continue to believe that we're worth $60,000 per year here in the U.S. when there are billions of others who can live nicely on $12,000. You can blame the high standard of living on Greenspan, not the free market.
If you're serious and want some great insight, drop me an e-mail. I've found some really inexpensive ways to play for a market crash while still being profitable if the market moves forward. Trailer park ownership, home improvement co-ops, and even local bartering clubs are great ways to maximize your financial security while still making money if my doom-and-gloom fears don't come to bloom.
You're right -- just training someone in proper use isn't enough. It is also important to train people in questioning every action before performing it. Phishing is getting harder to detect, yet it is causing the banks to take better security measures (they end up paying for the phishing in the end). This is the market at work -- government is coming along to draw the chalk-line and collect evidence, the banks are working to prevent the crime from ever happening.
According to the Libertarian ethos, I should be rewarded for my efforts to defraud someone by using misleading, but technically correct on some level, language to sell something, or by using knowledge only I have access to (say, as the director of a large multinational) to gain a massive advantage of others (say, by selling stock on the sly shortly before revealing losses, etc),
:)
I'm not a libertarian really, but that's not important
First, the ability to defraud the public was much more accessible in the past -- which is why I understand the reason for laws. Now, we have the Internet, the instant access to information shared by the masses. Moderation of products is happening real time, in fact, we're receiving information about test products before they come to market. If you are an uneducated consumer even with all the reviews and moderations available, you're at fault for making bad decisions. Ebay and slashdot are good examples of market anarchism: there really isn't any force being used against consumers or producers, and both consumers and producers are able to rate the transactions made. Is it perfect? No, but it is becoming more perfect as time goes on, thanks to the market's ability to change at an instant.
but I shouldn't be rewarded for creating new music, movies, and novels.
Of course you do -- get a job with a company that makes those things. You're guaranteed a paycheck that way. If you want to be independent (just like an IT consultant or an independent hair stylist), you are accepting a much bigger risk in exchange for the chance of a much bigger reward. I became an independent consultant at 14 and for 3 years I made less than $0.50 per hour. At 17 I was making over $60 an hour and at 20 I was making over $150 per hour. At 21 I was bad to making less than $0.25 per hour for 2 years while I watched my old profession fall apart. Risks/rewards!
Much as I generally agree that personal liberty should be maximized, I can't get my head around the notion of a world being a better place because dishonesty and crookedness are rewarded, but creativity is for losers.
Dishonest and crooked producers will be judged by the market's moderation system in place. Look at Sony. Look at Enron. Look at http://www.fuckedcompany.com/ for a list of producers who screwed their customers and ended up with what they deserved. I'm losing one of my companies right now because we didn't focus on our customers, and in April that business was one of the top 100 in the nation. 8 months later and its bankrupt. I continue to learn lessons. If I didn't want such a big reward, I know I could go get a job for someone else and do very well, but I don't want that. My businesses that treat the customers with respect and concern grow -- slowly but surely. My business that took advantage of customers and lied grew VERY fast but crashed even faster.
It wouldn't surprise me if 30% of my IT company's income came from user stupidity combined with software such as the XCP, spywared games, and other fun entertainment products. Yet this is just the market at work. Loopholes are found, usually because of click-through-licensing. Companies will always attempt to build their markets and consumers will always find the bad seeds.
It is very important to realize that as long as end users continue to install these programs, marketing companies will feed their needs. You could ague for laws against these backdoor programs, but it wouldn't solve anything and in fact might make the problem worse as companies find sneakier ways to get into your desktop.
The only way to make a smart consumer is to inform them of the bad things. This means getting the word out, telling others to be careful, and even offering training for groups. My company makes a good profit on spyware, but we offer completely free training days for companies that want to save money by training their employees in safe web browsing. I don't think the answer is "Install Linux and Firefox and the problem will go away!" If Linux/Firefox occupied 90% of desktops, the marketing companies would find a way to take advantage of that platform.
Smart users are informed users are users who won't continue making the same mistakes. Finding band-aids through legislation or discrete installation of anti-spyware software isn't going to solve the problem.
As a sidenote -- the reason for training my customers in smart browsing techniques is a selfish one. As we reduce a company's cost of doing business, our referral rate skyrockets. The less we work/bill, the more work we have to bill. If you're a consultant and you're not seeing a decent increase in your customer base every year, you're not doing a good enough job. There is more work in the U.S. than is being tapped, and it is usually because companies aren't seeing things getting better.
There has to be reward for work.
There is. It is called a salary. If you want to earn a living from writing, get a job with a writing house (newspaper, website, cartoon creator, etc). They'll pay you a salary in exchange for your creativity. They will take on the costs and risks of trying to make a profit.
If you want to be independent, you are accepting a HUGE risk, just as an independent IT consultant is taking a huge risk versus working for "the man."
Creating content is not enough to make a product. I'm working on an article regarding the death of copyright -- and the more I research it by querying succesful authors/musicians/writers, the more I realize that copyright has absolutely no effect on creation and only puts power in the hands of the distribution corporation.
This is very true. A service-oriented economy can be very profitable IF the market is free to set prices. Unfortunately, minimum wage laws combined with a union focus combined with an inflationary policy by the central bank all lead to higher costs which lead to a lower demand.
I'm preparing for the market surprise by holding gold-as-money, downsizing my house significantly so I have no mortgage, and traveling more (which helps me gauge the realities of the market, not what the media and the government report).
I see bad things ahead for most, and I feel bad that no one listens to the realities of the economy. Keep building those 401Ks if you're interested in having zero net value in a decade.
The only interests that matter, IMO, are those of the individuals. There is no mass-interest-level that can be made into a number and protected by a law or a regulation. In fact, interests change constantly.
.com). Why not just open the floodgates and let the market create what it needs? Why should anyone have a say in guiding those billions of buying decisions, other than the individual consumers making them?
For governments and regulatory bodies to try to assess interests for the masses, failure will always be the end result. We have the free market where the billions of consumers make decisions every second and the market continuously changes in response to the demand by consumers and the supply of a given service or product. On the other hand we have regulatory bodies and governments that change over years or even decades in order to satisfy 51% of the voting block.
Domain name extensions don't make sense anymore -- as we continue to add more, the value of the old extensions diminishes (except, maybe,
Clearly there is a great inequity built into the system, which is only aggravated by the zero-cost, zero-effort rquired to make copies of a work.
And?
Here's a little secret to the free market: it requires dozens of people or groups to bring anything to the mass public. Idea makers, content producers, content directors, content creators, sales and marketing, packaging, shipping, distribution, retail and the end customer.
Just because you can come up with a great idea doesn't mean you have the best version of it. Just because you can code the best version doesn't mean you have the best interface. Just because you have the best interface doesn't mean you have access to the best distribution. Just because you have the best distribution doesn't mean you have an in-road to the customers' minds. Just because you have good advertising doesn't mean the sales staff will understand how to sell the product.
This is my problem with IP -- it disregards everything after creation. Creation is not enough, in fact, it is worthless. So much of creation is based on previous inventions -- how fast would we have new inventions if the old investions didn't have decades of protection?
There are those who say that creation will stop without protections, but I think this is stupid. Companies for hundreds of years have hired "invention wings" of thinkers who come up with new ideas. Before IP laws became so protective, companies continued to invent, create and distribute. The IP laws that help your company protect one idea are the same laws that prevent your company from perfecting the ideas of millions of others.
IP does not protect freedom or creation, it hampers both. Monopolies are bad -- and can only be protected in the long run by government force.
Many slashdot readers are starting to realize what a scam Intellectual Property laws are, and I firmly believe that the only ownership one can have is physical ownership of a good. The power of IP is born from government's monopoly on force, and the majority of IP-owners are corporations, another figment of government's imagination. Isn't the intent of government to make all citizens safe, secure and let no one's freedom to produce be hampered by another?
The U.K. isn't going to make any changes to their laws. In a country with increasing inflation, increasing unemployment and increasing debt, the powers-the-be will more likely collude with megacorps than shun them. There is a mistaken belief that employment is a creation of government fiat and that the market won't provide unless government sets up regulations and restrictions. IP is one of those restrictions. IP also creates unemployment, as companies that could otherwise compete with the IP holder are not allowed entry into the market.
Kinsella wrote a decent article (PDF warning) about Intellectual Property and how anti-freedom/pro-force the idea is. I don't believe we can "fix" the laws, and I don't think we can even roll them back. The slippery slope has shown its ugly face, and the only hope we have is to completely toss the rules and find a better way, maybe a non-government way. Kinsella's 53 page article has more footnotes and links that I could ever place in a slashdot article, but he hits the nail on the head in reaching the same conclusion: don't offer protection for non-physical property.
If you post it, expect it to get copied. If you create it, expect cheap knock-offs to appear. If you don't want either thing to happen, don't put your idea into the public eye. If you want to profit from your creation, you have to add in the cost of knock-offs and copying into the equation, and offer value added options in order to attract customers to your first-to-market creation.
I'm sure that is how you feel. When I found my "libertarian roots" I discovered that the word libertarian was virtually unheard of in every-day language. I worked on using that word often (in newspaper OpEds, radio call-ins, reviews and online pieces). About a decade later and the word appears hundreds of times a week in the media. Will anarchocapitalist or AnCap ever become a known word? I expect not. Yet it is important for people to learn that anarchists aren't chaotic nihilists and capitalists aren't big-corporation abusers. Both words were robbed by others, I am just taking them back.
I can only view /. in flat mode on my PDA phone (which is what I primarily use to read and post).
:)
He said "anarchocapitalist moron" so I assumed he was talking to me
Right. I wasn't clear in my original post.
What I meant is that many stores already have the mechanism for weighing every item. It is currently used only for self checkout (or fruit) but the store can adapt it for their checkout tellers to use.
I have very good luck at my Dominicks (grocery store) and Home Depot with the self checkout. It seems like I have been lucky!
I meant that the barcode contains a unique identifier saying "This is the UPC, this is the unique item number." When a customer buys that unique item number, its removed from the database, hence no duping. The generic portion of the UPC allows a simpler database of items with an allotment for the unique portion.
The only moron is he who doesn't read the OP.
...are usually the employees.
I knew a kid who worked at a Best Buy with a bunch of his friends. They all were caught months later running a register scam. They'd ring up a friend who bought maybe 6 CDs, a VCR and a TV. They'd "forget" to scan the TV, and the friend would roll right out with the helper employee (another scammer) and put the TV in a car. They did this for months and finally got caught.
Another scammer I met (who didn't do jail time) used to be in charge of returns. He would check returns for completeness, put it back together, reshrink wrap the item and stick it back on the floor. Oh, he also threw other expensive items in the box. His friend would come, buy the $19.99 big box radio, and walk out with hundreds of items. Since the item was shrink wrapped, no one caught on for months.
I thought of the barcode scan YEARS ago when I found a barcode scanner at a garage sale. This is pre-USB days. I messed with barcodes for weeks, and figured one could print barcodes onto a label and stick it on a box. I never did it (even though I am an anarchocapitalist and anti-government/anti-mercantilism, I would never steal), but I can't believe it took this long for stores to see the problem.
The solution is one-time use barcodes. It isn't as bad as you'd think for the big box stores. When a skid is received, it has two barcodes on the packing list: first code, last code. The employee scans both (say 1111183.17 and 1111183.234) and the system registers all the item codes and the unique codes. If the register scans a duplicate, there's a problem.
The other solution is already in place in Home Depot and grocery stores -- the self checkout. You can't buy an item without weighing it. I believe Best Buy and Circuit City are already starting to work on incorporating scale barcode scanners that weigh the item when they scan it.
I've considered starting a security company for ma-and-pa stores to battle these forms of theft. There are many ways a store can protect itself, but the best way is to have intelligent staff who aren't helping the thieves. Good luck there.
and that the constitution was amended to include such rights.
No, it wasn't. The rights that the Amendments cover are protected by the Amendments, but they've always been there. They added the Bill of Rights in fear that down the road the central government would trample them. Guess what? Every right protected in the Bill of Rights has been destroyed already. They are basic human rights that no government can take away.
In 200 years, not ONE new technology or idealogy has surfaced that the Constitution does not completely cover. Name one. You can't.
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;"
Congress sets treaties here, not laws to be enforced by the military.
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;"
The militia run by each independent state. The laws of the union: counterfeit, treason, and piracy. Also for defending against offense ON OUR SOIL. This clause reminds me how unconstitutional our military is, on top of the FBI.
Department of Justice
The DoJ isn't constitutional! The founding of the DoJ (1870ish) happened in order to create a more powerful central authority. It was created after Lincoln won his illegal War between States in order to create a strong federal government. Lincoln campaigned for a stronger central government and the South threatened to secede if he won (they knew he would tax them in order to build his empire). Lincoln hated blacks and had no opinion on slavery.
The Constitution specifically addresses interstate issues by placing them under the jurisdiction of the Federal government. You can't just assign them to individual states or municipalities
Regulating the states means making sure no state attempts to prevent trade between themselves and another. It doesn't mean taking over what two states could normally accomplish together (and often do).
Try running a kidnapping or mail fraud investigation across several states, where each state has to provide resources for the investigation pertaining to their particular state. So instead of one group freely travelling across state lines investigating the issue, you're trying to coordinate multiple groups all with limited knowledge of the evidence
One unconstitutional group freely travels to handle kidnapping, all the while creating havoc and performing oppresive actions against its citizens.
Kidnapping should be handled by private investigators paid for by insurance companies, not federal thug who rarely solve the crimes anyway. I'm shocked that citizens today really feel safer with the FBI breathing down our necks.
Great post. When the lady and I are out "doing the town" (we travel a LOT), it seems we're the only two smiling. I smile ALL THE TIME because I'm happy. I look around and all I see are unhappy people. At the airport a few weeks back (O'hare International Terminal) I was smiling and looked at one of the security guards and he aked me why I was smiling.
For the past 10 years I've fought to keep my freedom, but as things get worse (and they are) we've been traveling more looking for more freedom. I found it in Dubai (one of the freest cities in the world and most prosperous for all) which is smack dab in the Middle East. I found more freedom in Asia, in Australia, even in socialist countries in Europe.
What I saw, even more importantly, were people smiling. I once went an entire warm afternoon in downtown San Diego without seeing ONE person crack a smile. Orwellian indeed.
Good comment.
Considering all our homegrown terrorists are angry over the unconstitutionality of this government, I don't think you can really believe that having the FBI makes us safer.
Were the soldiers in the War for Independence terrorists?
Marshall in McCulloch v. Maryland: "The power to tax involves the power to destroy."
Do you even know what McCullock v. Maryland was about? It was about a State attempting to tax a Federal institution. Marshall was greatly concerned that if a State might trump the Feds, the Supremacy Clause could be in danger. Of COURSE a Federal judge would worry about that. Also, in MvM the Federal institution at hand was the Central Bank -- the worse institution ever created. It is, at heart, one of the primary causes of the stock market bubble, the housing bubble, and the tax-bracket fraud that the feds cause on the unknowing citizens.
U.S. v. Fisher is a case where Marshall may have partially upheld his Constitutional oath. I believe (from memory) that this case was regarding bankruptcy and debt and forcing the U.S. to the top of the chain in who collects debts from the bankrupt.
You can blame the Supreme Court in the past 100 years for much of the damage done to the Constitution. I really don't understand, if treason is punishable by death, and violating the oath to uphold the Constitution is treason, why haven't we had more hangings in Washington these past 100 years?