A believe he's referring to Article 1, Section 10:
"No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
Apparently, losing 70% of their market cap in one day and shopping themselves around frantically hoping to be "acquired" before they go bankrupt is just "day-to-day minutia" for their CEO.
An order barring a victim from revealing the names of her assailants is, I think, clearly unconstitutional, even when the assailants are juveniles. Oklahoma Publishing Co. v. District Court (1977) expressly rejected the notion that courts or legislatures may bar the publication of the names of juvenile offenders; that case involved a newspaper's publishing the name of the juvenile offender, which it learned from a court hearing, but the rationale applies at least as strongly to a person's publishing a name that she learned from the attack itself. Likewise, even when it comes to grand jury proceedings - probably the most historically secret part of the criminal justice system - Butterworth v. Smith (1990) held that, while a grand jury witness could be barred from revealing what he learned as part of the grand jury proceedings, the witness could not be generally barred from revealing information that he had learned on his own (even if that was the subject of his testimony).
Arguing about which party is "responsible" for our current economic woes is like arguing over which driver of the car is pushing down the gas pedal harder as it careens towards the cliff. In the end, it's the direction that matters, not how fast or slow we're headed there.
What we're seeing is nothing more than the death rattle of economies built on paper currency debt. It has happened before, and it will happen again.
I won't defend RMS's support for things like the GPL, because I do find him hypocritical on that point. It's one of the reasons I dislike the GPL, actually.
Additionally, my comment about the price of an infinitely reproducable good going to zero is still spot on, regardless of how much money was required to develop it. The price of something is not set by the cost of its creation, initial or otherwise, but by the intersection of supply and demand. The goal, then, is to sell things that are scarce. As an example, consider that the creation of art is a scarce good; charge for that (e.g. Kickstarter) and not for the copies after creation is completed.
And finally, I do not believe that you can own a configuration of bits on a hard drive. To believe such a thing is to believe that everybody who has ever organized the bits on a hard drive in a certain manner has a property right in my physical hard drive, such that they can demand that I not organize the bits on it in the same manner. Thus, these fake "intellectual property" rights are actually violations of real, physical property rights. If I own the pen, and I own the paper, I can damn well write whatever I please with them, regardless of what someone half a world away may have already written in the past.
The artist should be perfectly free to charge any fee he wants to send a copy of his art to a potential customer. He should also be free to make that customer sign a contract stipulating that said customer won't make copies for any else (a contract that can and should be enforced).
What he does not have the moral right to do, however, is attempt to make that contract binding on third parties who have not agreed to it. This presents a practical problem with such a business model, but it is a business model problem. Attempting to charge for copies runs up against a hard truth of economics: the price of a good that can be copied at zero cost trends to zero. Artists can either whine about the law of supply and demand, or use better business models.
any answer to this "problem" that does not involve a mutually agreeable voluntary transaction between the purchaser and the seller is immoral
I agree, in cases where the artist is a party to the transaction. If he refuses to let me see his new work, I absolutely don't have the right to hack into his server and copy it off. However, when I connect up to a torrent, it is in fact a voluntary transaction between my computer and the other computers in the swarm. The artist is not a party to the transaction, does not have property rights in either my computer or the computers that I'm receiving data from, and therefore doesn't factor in.
The barriers to entry in a market are created by the government in the first place. You're putting the cart before the horse.
Big business uses government regulation to create cartels and monopolies. You're basically saying that we need a government big enough to save us all from destructive influence of big government.
"Nice company you got there; it'd be a shame if the anti-trust department took a keen interest in it. Say, we have some requests for user information here . .."
"Manipulation of their currency" in this case is pegging the yuan to the dollar, meaning they print yuan and use it to buy dollars, which they then convert into US treasuries. In practical terms, this means that China is taking upon themselves the inflation that we would otherwise see due to our massive budget deficit, and as a bonus we get cheap goods. This is supported pretty heavily by the inflation data for both of our countries.
Far from taking advantage of us, we're taking advantage of them.
You go ahead and compete in the "free market" with people willing to work for a fraction of your salary and just see what happens to your beloved first-world living standard.
You're failing to make a comparison between what is seen (lost US jobs) and what is unseen (improved standard of living for everyone in the country because of cheaper energy-related goods). You're angry that other people might out-compete you in the job market, so in essence you want the government to use force to make sure that solar energy is kept more expensive so that all the other citizens in the country will subsidize your job.
If you're handing out checks to everyone who passes within several hundred feet of your house, then you can't complain that someone has your banking information.
Actually using that information to break into your account and take money would be theft, of course, but have you proved that Google did anything untoward with the data that they were given (yes, given)? If not, your analogy does not hold.
If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
Or in this case, if you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be broadcasting it over the airwaves to the public at large.
Saying greed causes financial collapses is like saying gravity causes plane crashes; while trivially true, it doesn't give us much insight into the nature of the problem.
Stability is largely a function of size. As Bitcoin matures and becomes more widely used, prices should stabilize. Aside from the giant bubble and subsequent crash right around the time people started paying attention to it, it's actually been fairly quiet. If it can keep it up, that bodes well for its chances.
And don't forget that currencies exchanges are a two-way street. The dollar's increasing weakness should be expected to increase the price of Bitcoins just like it would also do to stocks or commodities (see: gold).
I realize this is snark, but having a currency that is semi-anonymous, convenient, and resistant to meddling by central banks would be quite valuable to some.
The value you place on such a thing is probably not very high, but value is entirely subjective, and can only be shown on an individual basis by what that person is willing to trade to acquire the object (or information) in question.
Given the nature of Bitcoin, the feds would probably have to rely on tracking the shipments of illicit goods back to their source to try and bust Silk Road. But as I understand it, Silk Road does not sell the drugs themselves; they simply act as an eBay-like service for others to sell their drugs. So even if the feds do find the initial source of a package, the most they've accomplished is to remove one seller from Silk Road, and not the site itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently, losing 70% of their market cap in one day and shopping themselves around frantically hoping to be "acquired" before they go bankrupt is just "day-to-day minutia" for their CEO.
Not as clear cut, actually. Here's Eugene Volokh's take:
Arguing about which party is "responsible" for our current economic woes is like arguing over which driver of the car is pushing down the gas pedal harder as it careens towards the cliff. In the end, it's the direction that matters, not how fast or slow we're headed there.
What we're seeing is nothing more than the death rattle of economies built on paper currency debt. It has happened before, and it will happen again.
I won't defend RMS's support for things like the GPL, because I do find him hypocritical on that point. It's one of the reasons I dislike the GPL, actually.
Additionally, my comment about the price of an infinitely reproducable good going to zero is still spot on, regardless of how much money was required to develop it. The price of something is not set by the cost of its creation, initial or otherwise, but by the intersection of supply and demand. The goal, then, is to sell things that are scarce. As an example, consider that the creation of art is a scarce good; charge for that (e.g. Kickstarter) and not for the copies after creation is completed.
And finally, I do not believe that you can own a configuration of bits on a hard drive. To believe such a thing is to believe that everybody who has ever organized the bits on a hard drive in a certain manner has a property right in my physical hard drive, such that they can demand that I not organize the bits on it in the same manner. Thus, these fake "intellectual property" rights are actually violations of real, physical property rights. If I own the pen, and I own the paper, I can damn well write whatever I please with them, regardless of what someone half a world away may have already written in the past.
What he does not have the moral right to do, however, is attempt to make that contract binding on third parties who have not agreed to it. This presents a practical problem with such a business model, but it is a business model problem. Attempting to charge for copies runs up against a hard truth of economics: the price of a good that can be copied at zero cost trends to zero. Artists can either whine about the law of supply and demand, or use better business models.
I agree, in cases where the artist is a party to the transaction. If he refuses to let me see his new work, I absolutely don't have the right to hack into his server and copy it off. However, when I connect up to a torrent, it is in fact a voluntary transaction between my computer and the other computers in the swarm. The artist is not a party to the transaction, does not have property rights in either my computer or the computers that I'm receiving data from, and therefore doesn't factor in.
No it isn't; artists are perfectly free to create new works and then never share them with anyone.
The barriers to entry in a market are created by the government in the first place. You're putting the cart before the horse.
Big business uses government regulation to create cartels and monopolies. You're basically saying that we need a government big enough to save us all from destructive influence of big government.
Just so I have this straight, China unfairly damages the US economy when they:
1. Trade low-cost goods with us.
2. Don't trade low-cost goods with us.
Those bastards! *shakes fist*
"Nice company you got there; it'd be a shame if the anti-trust department took a keen interest in it. Say, we have some requests for user information here . . ."
"Manipulation of their currency" in this case is pegging the yuan to the dollar, meaning they print yuan and use it to buy dollars, which they then convert into US treasuries. In practical terms, this means that China is taking upon themselves the inflation that we would otherwise see due to our massive budget deficit, and as a bonus we get cheap goods. This is supported pretty heavily by the inflation data for both of our countries.
Far from taking advantage of us, we're taking advantage of them.
You're failing to make a comparison between what is seen (lost US jobs) and what is unseen (improved standard of living for everyone in the country because of cheaper energy-related goods). You're angry that other people might out-compete you in the job market, so in essence you want the government to use force to make sure that solar energy is kept more expensive so that all the other citizens in the country will subsidize your job.
That's kind of a jerk thing to do, FYI.
If you're handing out checks to everyone who passes within several hundred feet of your house, then you can't complain that someone has your banking information.
Actually using that information to break into your account and take money would be theft, of course, but have you proved that Google did anything untoward with the data that they were given (yes, given)? If not, your analogy does not hold.
Actually, I'm fine with that. I don't feel that I have a right to stop people from using the data I voluntarily send straight to them.
Good luck decrypting it, though.
Or in this case, if you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be broadcasting it over the airwaves to the public at large.
Just a thought.
Saying greed causes financial collapses is like saying gravity causes plane crashes; while trivially true, it doesn't give us much insight into the nature of the problem.
Stability is largely a function of size. As Bitcoin matures and becomes more widely used, prices should stabilize. Aside from the giant bubble and subsequent crash right around the time people started paying attention to it, it's actually been fairly quiet. If it can keep it up, that bodes well for its chances.
And don't forget that currencies exchanges are a two-way street. The dollar's increasing weakness should be expected to increase the price of Bitcoins just like it would also do to stocks or commodities (see: gold).
In 10 years, someone is going to look very stupid, and it will either be Bitcoin's shrill proponents, or its shrill detractors.
The suspense is killing me.
I realize this is snark, but having a currency that is semi-anonymous, convenient, and resistant to meddling by central banks would be quite valuable to some.
The value you place on such a thing is probably not very high, but value is entirely subjective, and can only be shown on an individual basis by what that person is willing to trade to acquire the object (or information) in question.
Child abuse isn't taken seriously? Here in the states, child services can take your kid away from you if you so much as look at it wrong in public.
That's not specific to business, though. If I put an untruthful story about someone on my non-monetized blog, I can still get in trouble.
I think you missed my point, which was that what follows both of those statements often completely contradicts the statements themselves.
Ever notice how "I'm all for free speech, but" sounds an awful like "I'm not a racist, but" in terms of what comes after?
So, under your analogy, you watching the news constitutes a business transaction, the speech contents of which can be regulated by the state?
Eek.
Given the nature of Bitcoin, the feds would probably have to rely on tracking the shipments of illicit goods back to their source to try and bust Silk Road. But as I understand it, Silk Road does not sell the drugs themselves; they simply act as an eBay-like service for others to sell their drugs. So even if the feds do find the initial source of a package, the most they've accomplished is to remove one seller from Silk Road, and not the site itself.