Is this valuable because they paid too much for it, or because it was heavily involved in putting our economy in the tank and they would prefer that the world not see what the bubble was based on, lest their be lawsuits?
The lawsuit nonsense is just media hype. Texas has capped damages on medial lawsuits, and guess what? My health insurance didn't go down one bit. In fact it keeps going up. Time to retire that stupid meme.
Yes, but look at the run-up in prices on ammunition and guns. Both are completely non-scarce commodities, made scarce by silly fear-mongering. So yes. Suckers will buy them. Guns, ammunition and gold from vending machines - the beanie babies of the Obama administration.
The problem with ammo is that it's a non-scarce commodity being inflated by unfounded fear mongering. So while I think buying gold is also a silly idea, it's a far less silly idea.
Interesting side-note. Time Warner's DNS servers stopped working recently for my Playstation 3. I switched to OpenDNS and all is well, but does anyone have an idea what's going on here? I thought DNS was DNS.
Well, that's not all iPhone revenue. iPhone could have a 0% profit margin or 75%. No real way of knowing.
That said, using gross vs. net to come up with profit margin seems to be taking into account the fact that the place is running like a well oiled machine. From what I understand AT&T makes the Federal Government look like a model of efficiency.
Nice liberal arts crack. Actually liberal arts is generally one of the biggest majors at most universities. I looked up my alma mater - University of Texas - most popular are Biology, Business, and Liberal Arts.
I think barring school specialization, you'll always see Liberal Arts at the top. There are still a large number of people who are after an education and realize that college is not a vocational school.
This might quickly become a moot point if fuel costs continue to rise since electric trains date back to the turn of last century and electric jumbo jets...
Uh. Sure. This will be a problem when Microsoft makes.Net run well on Linux. Until then they'll just be that really obnoxious loud truck rumbling in the next lane over.
I have no idea what you mean by SQL Server being ahead of Oracle, but SQL Server also only runs on Microsoft OSes and is thus only useful for people who run Microsoft OSes.
No. I would be happy when it is as fast or faster than my cable internet and costs the same for an unlimited connection. I just don't believe in going backwards.
No, that was the Internet 5 years ago. Now I need to be able to watch streaming videos and and do all those things. Devices like the iPhone have shown that people aren't interested in using the mobile internet for 1 hour/day while on a bus. They want to use it all the time, everywhere they are. I don't want there to be a distinction between "crappy internet on the go" and "home/office internet". I want everything everywhere. That's the world we're moving into, and I'm not interested in settling.
I don't understand why you guys are so interested in settling. "Guess this is the best Internet we can get. Well I guess I'll fork over lots of cash. Are they sure they couldn't get the price a little higher?"
I won't be happy until I keep getting more service for less money, not less service for more money. The former is how the market is supposed to work. The latter might happen for a short time with a new service, but as people use it the price should go down. Something that doesn't seem to happen currently.
I'm honestly not saying that I couldn't be happy with 160MB/day, today. But I'm happy with crummy cell phone network speeds today. We're getting richer and richer hand held devices, and more and more interesting music and video services over the net. The "new" services can't be a little bit better with a huge price tag. To keep the economy humming and innovation we need huge advances with the same price tag.
Yes, and we are allowed to bitch and moan and create massive campaigns about what poor service we're getting for the price that they want to increase.
The only problem is that many of us don't have real choices (choosing between powerful corporations known for colluding isn't much choice). We're doing exactly what we should be doing in a free market. We're shouting at the vendor that they're overpriced and looking at legislation to keep them from changing prices (which is appropriate in this case since the carriers like to get legislation passed to block competition).
It's not socialism when Slashdot users do it. It's libertarians pursuing a common goal without losing site of the individual within the constraints of an organization that while providing rules and standards is not a government.
OS seems somewhat immaterial. From what you're saying a bunch of netbooks would not be bad. I've used MediaWiki for script collaboration with some custom tags and it's really not bad. Use google apps on top of that and you've got pretty much everything you should need.
1. User goes to internal site, gets ISP not found page. 2. User goes "Whoops, need to turn on VPN". Turns on VPN 3. User hits refresh. Still goes to ISP not found page.
Is he sure this isn't an issue of just needing the user to close their browsers to clear the browser dns cache?
"That wouldn't be a government. That would be a bank." I said let's call it a government. If you want to call it a bank, call it a bank. If you think about our federal government the majority of the representatives are under the AR/AP branch - the legislative. We feel the need to have one guy in charge of the executive, and just a few in charge of the law, but we need hundreds to lead the billing system.
"Obviously the USA Republic has failed miserably. " Those kind of statements are where people start calling libertarians crazy. Obviously? Obviously to whom? Carping about our representatives or president is not in any way the same thing as believing our country has failed.
"For example: you would only pay a fire department when they put out a fire for you. Utilities are paid monthly even with government. Court fees are paid on a per-case basis. School tuition for private schools are paid per-semester."
Fire is insurance based. It would probably move over to that. The bill collecting aspects of an on demand payment fire department doesn't make the economics look very good. Sort of the same problem as on demand policing. "Just had your wallet stolen? I'll look for the guy who stole it - for a price." The accountants wouldn't like your business model.
Schools would eventually move back to where we are. Sending kids to private schools funded only by parents would be far too expensive (see our still heavily subsidized private colleges). Businesses wouldn't have an educated enough work force. So you probably see some sort of collective partnership pop up, or you'd see a system where rather than pay for school as you're in it, you contributed a smaller dollar amount each month for your entire life.
I guess what I'm saying is that most of what the US federal government does is what the people want it to do. Ultimately humans collectivize those essential things that cost too much per user. And the US has been a leader in doing that in decently cost effective ways that mostly stay out of the way of private industry. Are there inefficiencies? Sure. But look at the kind of inefficiencies you'd have in a libertarian society with everyone paying per use.
Ok, so if everything works properly I have enormity of choice. I can chose my police protection, fire protection, defense provider, electrical provider, gas provider, phone provider, school system provider, etc. I get really sick of paying 1300 bills every month, so in steps some sort of group. Let's call them a government. In exchange for $x/month they'll handle all payments for a set number of providers, including some overhead. They'll do some conflict resolution between providers, etc. Granted you could opt out, which is something you could not technically do now, but would the providers want you? Why would they want to deal with individual payees, wouldn't they want to deal with a large group?
Ultimately it sounds like you'd prefer the system we have now with more than one government in competition. But would you be happy if their ultimately emerged a monopoly government that no other startup government could compete with due to market friction? Because ultimately once you get past a certain point it would be hard to compete. I mean, sure I could go with the Finland brand's more nanny state government, but would I be willing to get rid of the United States brand's awesome military provider? 'Cause you know the US brand would have that military provider locked up tight with an exclusive contract. If everyone in the world truly wants to be an American couldn't this potentially lead to even less choice as everyone locks into the dominant provider?
Ah Ok, I understand now. I didn't really understand how far you would take the idea of privatization. It's an interesting idea.
So where does a person who owns no private property fit into the equation? If a small minority buy up the majority of land and water rights (as would surely happen) what do the people who own no property have in the way of rights? Or do they have no rights because they own no property?
Since a property owner would (I assume) be able to decide how their property gets used under this system (as long as it doesn't impede the property of others), what would keep property owners from becoming slave owners. Or is that fine (I guess it is an efficient use of resources)?
And you keep attacking the structure of my arguments rather than their content, so I would say it's not so much that you have good ideas, but that you enjoy reasoning why my arguments are bad, rather than if the ideas actually are.
You have not explained how you cannot have human rights without property rights. That's an interesting claim. And you still haven't explained how the property rights in a libertarian society are resolved with common property such as air and water.
Yes. Again, I'm aware of libertarian arguments. You're taking my lack of belief as misunderstanding. See you believe that if I just understand what you're saying this ultimate power of "REASON" will make me believe as you do. But I do understand what you're saying. I just think it doesn't work very well in the real world, which is why you see very few instances of your REASON dictating events in the real world. Side note: don't you wonder why, if your "REASON" is what drives all decisions on earth, that the world seems so illogical to you?
Yes, I make lots of appeals to emotion. Because emotion drives human beings much more than logic. I suppose it might be wonderful if that wasn't true, but it is. Have you noticed a single Slashdot story where the comments used reason and everyone ended up happy and in agreement?
I won't even go into your other arguments, because they're quite silly. You merely re-enforce the fact that you have already worked out all the answers with your "REASON", but haven't bothered to observe the real world enough to know if the definitions you are using are true.
This is hilarious:
"The quantity of genuinely mentally ill people who lack any means to take care of themselves is so infinitesimal that voluntary charitable organizations are perfectly capable of caring for them."
I can't even believe you would say something so ridiculous.
What no one has explained to me about a libertarian society is how it wouldn't be either:
a) a society that devolves into some sort of Mad Max tribal world; every one/tribe for themselves b) exactly the same society we have now after we rebuild all the same government entities we have minus the title government.
What does this society look like that has no laws, except those that are required to make business work, enforced by something that isn't a government, with collective infrastructure built by private industry and interacting in an efficient way with volunteer standards bodies (that are not a government)? And with everyone doing what they want, except where it would impact others, and with some sort of small (private?) policing tribunal thingy that mediates disputes, but is not government?
I understand everything you're saying. I understand that you believe we all could be supermen able to discard emotion and somehow find a way to always act in our own interest without hurting anyone else. I just think that idea is ridiculous. Anyone who's every been a lowly HOA board member knows that this isn't possible.
And you didn't address the most powerful reason why collectivism appeared. It's because we have collective resources. We all share water, earth, and air. At some point we have to have a governing body to allocate those resources or we end up with 'a)' above.
I understand libertarianism. I'm just not glossing over all the things that make it impossible.
"No sane person would claim that people don't occasionally make bad & mistaken choices, and no sane libertarian would claim that anybody should be immune from responsibility for those bad / mistaken choices."
Right. But what happens when 60% of your society makes a bad choice? Or someone makes a bad choice and the stock market crashes and you can't extract those billions of lost dollars back out of the people responsible?
"False dichotomy. Open Source developers are not mandated to adhere to open standards by any government regulation or standard."
Open Source developers rely upon the infrastructure created by the U.S. government - the Internet. I'm not discounting the fact that some people would cooperate and get things done. I'm just saying getting those things done would be very hard without a lot of cooperation. You would probably see people creating these loose knit organizarion to get things done. We'd see a working group for implementing roads. And a working group for implementing electrical infrastructure. Kind of like city government. Then those working groups would start cooperating with geographically related, but distant working groups. Kind of like the state governments. Pretty soon you're right back where we are now.
And I have no clue why you'd want to invoke the W3C or other such organizations as somehow being more efficient than our governments now.
Yes I do. I was explaining how they cannot be rationalized with:
"Libertarianism has nothing to do with selfishness, but responsibility." Responsibility to yourself and no one else. Which I would call selfishness If a libertarian was responsible for their fellow man, they might do something like create the Social Security administration so they wouldn't go hungry and homeless in their old age. A libertarian would counter that that person who goes hungry or homeless in their own age should have been more responsible. So either they are selfish or heartless. From what I can tell there is no libertarian solution to homelessness other than people taking responsibility for themselves.
"The land owner has the right to place billboards, not the state." That's true. I guess your cows could enjoy them without the state to build roads. No one would pay to advertise on that road that you and your libertarian friend Bob contracted to have built between your two properties.
"A libertarian doesn't believe these should be subsidized." Right. Under a libertarian system we would have many companies competing for the same densely developed customers. There would be no mass internet, cable, or phone system. Again, advertising wouldn't be profitable or really work under this system since there would be very few customers. On the upside the need for anti-virus wouldn't be as urgent since your "internet" would only connect to other people who were on your commercially developed and highly regulated (privately) communications system that didn't interconnect with any other commercially developed and highly regulated (privately) communications systems.
"A libertarian frowns upon corporations owned by the government. Fortunately, other parcel delivery services are allowed but socialists require that the USPS be the only one allowed to deliver letters." Actually our "socialist" government allows Fedex and UPS to deliver letters, and shockingly the DO! They just don't really want to deliver to everyone's house on a daily basis as it's not cost effective. So in your libertarian world you would have no mail because that road you and your libertarian friend Bob built to go between your two properties wouldn't be connected to any other roads and thus the private mail carrier couldn't get to you. The private mail carrier might deliver packages by helicopter, but advertisers wouldn't be willing to send out a helicopter to get you a message about anti-virus software.
My point was that in a libertarian world advertising wouldn't work, because in a libertarian world there is no good way to do anything in mass because there is no common infrastructure. Advertising would be prohibitively expensive as you made contracts with each individual person you wanted to communicate with to somehow advertise to them. Many libertarians would like this world. My point was that no libertarian would agree to the plan in question, since there would be no way to do such things in a libertarian "state".
Slashdot Mirror
Is this valuable because they paid too much for it, or because it was heavily involved in putting our economy in the tank and they would prefer that the world not see what the bubble was based on, lest their be lawsuits?
The lawsuit nonsense is just media hype. Texas has capped damages on medial lawsuits, and guess what? My health insurance didn't go down one bit. In fact it keeps going up. Time to retire that stupid meme.
Neighborhood Watch is actually the neighborhood. Cameras being recorded by who knows, for who knows...
Yes, but look at the run-up in prices on ammunition and guns. Both are completely non-scarce commodities, made scarce by silly fear-mongering. So yes. Suckers will buy them. Guns, ammunition and gold from vending machines - the beanie babies of the Obama administration.
The problem with ammo is that it's a non-scarce commodity being inflated by unfounded fear mongering. So while I think buying gold is also a silly idea, it's a far less silly idea.
Seriously? Most scientists just need to do either:
1) Lots of math that would be tedious to do manually.
2) Lots of pattern matching in large data files.
Both of these things can be accomplished with small scripts by semi-skilled programmers. This isn't application programming. It's on par with macros.
Interesting side-note. Time Warner's DNS servers stopped working recently for my Playstation 3. I switched to OpenDNS and all is well, but does anyone have an idea what's going on here? I thought DNS was DNS.
Well, that's not all iPhone revenue. iPhone could have a 0% profit margin or 75%. No real way of knowing.
That said, using gross vs. net to come up with profit margin seems to be taking into account the fact that the place is running like a well oiled machine. From what I understand AT&T makes the Federal Government look like a model of efficiency.
Nice liberal arts crack. Actually liberal arts is generally one of the biggest majors at most universities. I looked up my alma mater - University of Texas - most popular are Biology, Business, and Liberal Arts.
I think barring school specialization, you'll always see Liberal Arts at the top. There are still a large number of people who are after an education and realize that college is not a vocational school.
This might quickly become a moot point if fuel costs continue to rise since electric trains date back to the turn of last century and electric jumbo jets...
Uh. Sure. This will be a problem when Microsoft makes .Net run well on Linux. Until then they'll just be that really obnoxious loud truck rumbling in the next lane over.
I have no idea what you mean by SQL Server being ahead of Oracle, but SQL Server also only runs on Microsoft OSes and is thus only useful for people who run Microsoft OSes.
No. I would be happy when it is as fast or faster than my cable internet and costs the same for an unlimited connection. I just don't believe in going backwards.
No, that was the Internet 5 years ago. Now I need to be able to watch streaming videos and and do all those things. Devices like the iPhone have shown that people aren't interested in using the mobile internet for 1 hour/day while on a bus. They want to use it all the time, everywhere they are. I don't want there to be a distinction between "crappy internet on the go" and "home/office internet". I want everything everywhere. That's the world we're moving into, and I'm not interested in settling.
I don't understand why you guys are so interested in settling. "Guess this is the best Internet we can get. Well I guess I'll fork over lots of cash. Are they sure they couldn't get the price a little higher?"
I won't be happy until I keep getting more service for less money, not less service for more money. The former is how the market is supposed to work. The latter might happen for a short time with a new service, but as people use it the price should go down. Something that doesn't seem to happen currently.
I'm honestly not saying that I couldn't be happy with 160MB/day, today. But I'm happy with crummy cell phone network speeds today. We're getting richer and richer hand held devices, and more and more interesting music and video services over the net. The "new" services can't be a little bit better with a huge price tag. To keep the economy humming and innovation we need huge advances with the same price tag.
Let's talk when this can be used for using the internet. Until the price/GB drops, this is pretty much useless.
Yes, and we are allowed to bitch and moan and create massive campaigns about what poor service we're getting for the price that they want to increase.
The only problem is that many of us don't have real choices (choosing between powerful corporations known for colluding isn't much choice). We're doing exactly what we should be doing in a free market. We're shouting at the vendor that they're overpriced and looking at legislation to keep them from changing prices (which is appropriate in this case since the carriers like to get legislation passed to block competition).
It's the loud, messy sorta-free market in action.
It's not socialism when Slashdot users do it. It's libertarians pursuing a common goal without losing site of the individual within the constraints of an organization that while providing rules and standards is not a government.
OS seems somewhat immaterial. From what you're saying a bunch of netbooks would not be bad. I've used MediaWiki for script collaboration with some custom tags and it's really not bad. Use google apps on top of that and you've got pretty much everything you should need.
I wonder if the actual problem is this:
1. User goes to internal site, gets ISP not found page.
2. User goes "Whoops, need to turn on VPN". Turns on VPN
3. User hits refresh. Still goes to ISP not found page.
Is he sure this isn't an issue of just needing the user to close their browsers to clear the browser dns cache?
"That wouldn't be a government. That would be a bank."
I said let's call it a government. If you want to call it a bank, call it a bank. If you think about our federal government the majority of the representatives are under the AR/AP branch - the legislative. We feel the need to have one guy in charge of the executive, and just a few in charge of the law, but we need hundreds to lead the billing system.
"Obviously the USA Republic has failed miserably. "
Those kind of statements are where people start calling libertarians crazy. Obviously? Obviously to whom? Carping about our representatives or president is not in any way the same thing as believing our country has failed.
"For example: you would only pay a fire department when they put out a fire for you. Utilities are paid monthly even with government. Court fees are paid on a per-case basis. School tuition for private schools are paid per-semester."
Fire is insurance based. It would probably move over to that. The bill collecting aspects of an on demand payment fire department doesn't make the economics look very good. Sort of the same problem as on demand policing. "Just had your wallet stolen? I'll look for the guy who stole it - for a price." The accountants wouldn't like your business model.
Schools would eventually move back to where we are. Sending kids to private schools funded only by parents would be far too expensive (see our still heavily subsidized private colleges). Businesses wouldn't have an educated enough work force. So you probably see some sort of collective partnership pop up, or you'd see a system where rather than pay for school as you're in it, you contributed a smaller dollar amount each month for your entire life.
I guess what I'm saying is that most of what the US federal government does is what the people want it to do. Ultimately humans collectivize those essential things that cost too much per user. And the US has been a leader in doing that in decently cost effective ways that mostly stay out of the way of private industry. Are there inefficiencies? Sure. But look at the kind of inefficiencies you'd have in a libertarian society with everyone paying per use.
Ok, so if everything works properly I have enormity of choice. I can chose my police protection, fire protection, defense provider, electrical provider, gas provider, phone provider, school system provider, etc. I get really sick of paying 1300 bills every month, so in steps some sort of group. Let's call them a government. In exchange for $x/month they'll handle all payments for a set number of providers, including some overhead. They'll do some conflict resolution between providers, etc. Granted you could opt out, which is something you could not technically do now, but would the providers want you? Why would they want to deal with individual payees, wouldn't they want to deal with a large group?
Ultimately it sounds like you'd prefer the system we have now with more than one government in competition. But would you be happy if their ultimately emerged a monopoly government that no other startup government could compete with due to market friction? Because ultimately once you get past a certain point it would be hard to compete. I mean, sure I could go with the Finland brand's more nanny state government, but would I be willing to get rid of the United States brand's awesome military provider? 'Cause you know the US brand would have that military provider locked up tight with an exclusive contract. If everyone in the world truly wants to be an American couldn't this potentially lead to even less choice as everyone locks into the dominant provider?
Ah Ok, I understand now. I didn't really understand how far you would take the idea of privatization. It's an interesting idea.
So where does a person who owns no private property fit into the equation? If a small minority buy up the majority of land and water rights (as would surely happen) what do the people who own no property have in the way of rights? Or do they have no rights because they own no property?
Since a property owner would (I assume) be able to decide how their property gets used under this system (as long as it doesn't impede the property of others), what would keep property owners from becoming slave owners. Or is that fine (I guess it is an efficient use of resources)?
And you keep attacking the structure of my arguments rather than their content, so I would say it's not so much that you have good ideas, but that you enjoy reasoning why my arguments are bad, rather than if the ideas actually are.
You have not explained how you cannot have human rights without property rights. That's an interesting claim. And you still haven't explained how the property rights in a libertarian society are resolved with common property such as air and water.
Yes. Again, I'm aware of libertarian arguments. You're taking my lack of belief as misunderstanding. See you believe that if I just understand what you're saying this ultimate power of "REASON" will make me believe as you do. But I do understand what you're saying. I just think it doesn't work very well in the real world, which is why you see very few instances of your REASON dictating events in the real world. Side note: don't you wonder why, if your "REASON" is what drives all decisions on earth, that the world seems so illogical to you?
Yes, I make lots of appeals to emotion. Because emotion drives human beings much more than logic. I suppose it might be wonderful if that wasn't true, but it is. Have you noticed a single Slashdot story where the comments used reason and everyone ended up happy and in agreement?
I won't even go into your other arguments, because they're quite silly. You merely re-enforce the fact that you have already worked out all the answers with your "REASON", but haven't bothered to observe the real world enough to know if the definitions you are using are true.
This is hilarious:
"The quantity of genuinely mentally ill people who lack any means to take care of themselves is so infinitesimal that voluntary charitable organizations are perfectly capable of caring for them."
I can't even believe you would say something so ridiculous.
What no one has explained to me about a libertarian society is how it wouldn't be either:
a) a society that devolves into some sort of Mad Max tribal world; every one/tribe for themselves
b) exactly the same society we have now after we rebuild all the same government entities we have minus the title government.
What does this society look like that has no laws, except those that are required to make business work, enforced by something that isn't a government, with collective infrastructure built by private industry and interacting in an efficient way with volunteer standards bodies (that are not a government)? And with everyone doing what they want, except where it would impact others, and with some sort of small (private?) policing tribunal thingy that mediates disputes, but is not government?
I understand everything you're saying. I understand that you believe we all could be supermen able to discard emotion and somehow find a way to always act in our own interest without hurting anyone else. I just think that idea is ridiculous. Anyone who's every been a lowly HOA board member knows that this isn't possible.
And you didn't address the most powerful reason why collectivism appeared. It's because we have collective resources. We all share water, earth, and air. At some point we have to have a governing body to allocate those resources or we end up with 'a)' above.
I understand libertarianism. I'm just not glossing over all the things that make it impossible.
"No sane person would claim that people don't occasionally make bad & mistaken choices, and no sane libertarian would claim that anybody should be immune from responsibility for those bad / mistaken choices."
Right. But what happens when 60% of your society makes a bad choice? Or someone makes a bad choice and the stock market crashes and you can't extract those billions of lost dollars back out of the people responsible?
"False dichotomy. Open Source developers are not mandated to adhere to open standards by any government regulation or standard."
Open Source developers rely upon the infrastructure created by the U.S. government - the Internet. I'm not discounting the fact that some people would cooperate and get things done. I'm just saying getting those things done would be very hard without a lot of cooperation. You would probably see people creating these loose knit organizarion to get things done. We'd see a working group for implementing roads. And a working group for implementing electrical infrastructure. Kind of like city government. Then those working groups would start cooperating with geographically related, but distant working groups. Kind of like the state governments. Pretty soon you're right back where we are now.
And I have no clue why you'd want to invoke the W3C or other such organizations as somehow being more efficient than our governments now.
Yes I do. I was explaining how they cannot be rationalized with:
"Libertarianism has nothing to do with selfishness, but responsibility."
Responsibility to yourself and no one else. Which I would call selfishness If a libertarian was responsible for their fellow man, they might do something like create the Social Security administration so they wouldn't go hungry and homeless in their old age. A libertarian would counter that that person who goes hungry or homeless in their own age should have been more responsible. So either they are selfish or heartless. From what I can tell there is no libertarian solution to homelessness other than people taking responsibility for themselves.
"The land owner has the right to place billboards, not the state."
That's true. I guess your cows could enjoy them without the state to build roads. No one would pay to advertise on that road that you and your libertarian friend Bob contracted to have built between your two properties.
"A libertarian doesn't believe these should be subsidized."
Right. Under a libertarian system we would have many companies competing for the same densely developed customers. There would be no mass internet, cable, or phone system. Again, advertising wouldn't be profitable or really work under this system since there would be very few customers. On the upside the need for anti-virus wouldn't be as urgent since your "internet" would only connect to other people who were on your commercially developed and highly regulated (privately) communications system that didn't interconnect with any other commercially developed and highly regulated (privately) communications systems.
"A libertarian frowns upon corporations owned by the government. Fortunately, other parcel delivery services are allowed but socialists require that the USPS be the only one allowed to deliver letters."
Actually our "socialist" government allows Fedex and UPS to deliver letters, and shockingly the DO! They just don't really want to deliver to everyone's house on a daily basis as it's not cost effective. So in your libertarian world you would have no mail because that road you and your libertarian friend Bob built to go between your two properties wouldn't be connected to any other roads and thus the private mail carrier couldn't get to you. The private mail carrier might deliver packages by helicopter, but advertisers wouldn't be willing to send out a helicopter to get you a message about anti-virus software.
My point was that in a libertarian world advertising wouldn't work, because in a libertarian world there is no good way to do anything in mass because there is no common infrastructure. Advertising would be prohibitively expensive as you made contracts with each individual person you wanted to communicate with to somehow advertise to them. Many libertarians would like this world. My point was that no libertarian would agree to the plan in question, since there would be no way to do such things in a libertarian "state".