Right, because libertarianism is a religion that revolves around the believer being the center of the universe. The collective good is only useful to him if by collective you mean a collection of that single believer and no one else. So why would a libertarian who knows enough to want ads about virus software want to pay for ads to notify himself of the need to use virus software?
Now if you said that the libertarian could make lots of money off of making these ads to sell to people who don't use anti-virus software, you'd probably have something. As long as you weren't planning on displaying those ads on billboards above public roads, over federally subsidized cable or phone lines, the federally monitored air waves, or in a publication delivered by the postal service.
It makes no sense. Stop trying to use logic to appeal to libertarians. If they understood logic they wouldn't be libertarians.
So you were screaming when this happened a few years ago? When the Republicans were dismantling checks and balances? When they were getting rid of filibusters on judicial nominees?
Why not read his work? His model is that the market is unpredictable, so one should expose oneself to lots of risk with a huge potential upside. Things like mutual funds, insurance companies, etc. are bad investments in his eyes because the only way for the stock to go is sharply down, and they're never going to go up enough to balance that risk.
It's a very interesting way to look at the world. I'm sure he has models for what he thinks are good investments, but his model isn't to try to predict what the market will do. You're right, he does have a better model for predicting the future. His model is that the markets are going to have massive shocks and that we don't know when they'll happen.
Dish is not broadband, except when it's the DSL from your phone company. You can get 3 major types of broadband (which is great, most people can't), none of which are using the same technologies, and all of which are bundled with other services to create friction when leaving.
But you're right it's not a monopoly in all markets. The ones that are big enough they think there's enough pie for all of the they'll actually attempt to compete a little bit. They're more like oligarchies.
Yes, but if you use that rational I pay more than $50/month for my DSL or Cable too. Think of all the lobbyists and laws it takes to keep a virtual monopoly. Think of all the government kick backs and discounts. The consumer is pretty much always going to get a better deal when you restrict the market to put all the competitors on an even footing, rather than restricting the market to provide a monopoly like we do. Under both "capitalism" and "socialism" (I'm assuming in this case we're talking about US vs. Sweden), the market for broadband is heavily controlled by the government.
These are good points. And you'll notice that people think current prices are expensive, but the $50/month is something they're willing to pay. Based on your formula that would be $50/100GB. Which actually seems like a somewhat decent price.
The problem is that me watching an extra 2 hours of TV is not an extra $20 on my electrical bill. Me watching an extra 2 hours of TV using Time Warner would be. I think ultimately what's freaking people out is that this makes cable broadband unaffordable. Perhaps the solution is to have the government provide the cable lines, just like we have with the phone lines. Broadband internet is no longer something for the wealthy. I need it to conduct government business, and work from home. Perhaps we need to start talking seriously about how we get broadband into homes in a cost-effective manner without the possibility for anti-competitive shenanigans. AT&T has strong motivation to crush VOIP. Time Warner has a strong motivation to crush online music, tv, videogame and music delivery. Let's talk about cost again once AT&T and Time Warner divest themselves of their broadband divisions. Until then I don't think we can talk about this without suspecting they are trying to cap bandwidth to protect other divisions.
I understand what you're saying, but I don't think Time Warner should be in the position to make these decisions. They have a monopoly position and have an incentive to keep us locked into the old (albeit efficient) model. I'd be more sympathetic if they didn't also own channels and essentially have an extreme incentive to make sure that Netflix, iTunes, and YouTube fail. Spin off the broadband divison and let's see what you think is best for the consumer. The problem is that all the innovations in video need room to grow. We can't let Time Warner lock it down. Sure right now you need far too many independent streams and that can't be sustained with current technology, but who's to say that someone won't come up with a more efficient way of distributing TV on demand?
I think the real reason ala carte hasn't taken off is that people really don't want to take the time to figure out what they need. But whose to say that we couldn't have the equivalent of RSS channels? The best channels would pull in a portion of the advertising dollars. We could have advertising on demand. We could have targeted advertising. I know this freaks out privacy people, but I really think this is where we're going. The question is are you more comfortable with a company like Time Warner dictating how everything works, or letting democratic tools arise that will allow a better metaphor for TV to be invented? Note that, I'm not saying what I just outlined is how things are going to be. I'm just providing an example to show why we shouldn't allow Time Warner to lock us in.
And ultimately this is what it takes to have a free market. If Time Warner goes into bankruptcy because they can't provide a service that their customers will pay for that's fine. There are lots of investment houses that would LOVE to invest in new infrastructure startups dedicated to providing high bandwidth services. That's great for the economy.
"Did you mean pennies per GB?" Yes. That was a silly typo.
I agree that I'd prefer that we were charged as you proposed. That's basically the way a utility works. Most businesses work by figuring out the maximum the market will bear and then charge it. As we know from Time Warner's securities filings, they should be reducing prices since their costs are down and their profits are up. But instead they are attempting to raise prices. Which is why their customers are revolting.
While I might be willing to agree that we should be charged like utilities. The charge needs to be in the pennies per megabyte range. That's what my hosting provider charges. Why exactly is Time Warner different? I'd say it's because they have no real competition.
10GB a day is not ludicrous. If I watch one HD movie, and two hours of HD television I've crushed that. If I and everyone in my family were average Americans and shifted to watching all of our television online, we would need hundreds of GB per day. And that's what this is really about. Time Warner wants you watching TV on their heavily compressed cable network. They want you buying Movies-on-Demand(TM), not watching Netflix. They don't want you watching YouTube. They want to have a cable channel wherein they repackage YouTube content with their own commercials in between.
But past that, I can't believe anyone on Slashdot, especially after the amazing technological advances of the past 30 years would make a statements like 10GB/day is a good limit. You reading Slashdot with 1MB of RAM and a 20MB hard drive?
Sure. Sounds great. Like my other utilities, let's go ahead and heavily regulate them and reduce profits (or deregulate them and let Time Warner's lines be a free-for-all). I'd be happy to pay about $0.07/GB. which is approximately what my hosting provider charges me for bandwidth. This was part of the problem. $5/GB is a tad high for me. $150/GB for what I currently get for $50 is ludicrous.
So sure, let them charge like utilities, and we'll regulate them like utilities. That will lead to massive price drops for consumers.
What I won't support is Time Warner's Consumption Priced Billing. They were planning on using their near monopoly to raise prices for the majority of their consumers, while touting the "price drops" for consumers using less than 1GB per month. What they charge for bandwidth is still way over market rate, and their SEC filings show that they're paying less for bandwidth and getting more income for consumers, so they have no reason to charge more.
This was also an anti-competitive move to stifle companies like Netflix, YouTube, and iTunes. A move they should still be investigated for.
In short, this is a consumer rebellion to keep from being price gouged, not a revolt against consumption billing per se.
1) Affordable tier for people who think the Internet means email. 2) Raping tier for people who know about websites like YouTube.
They're effectively placing all their users who use the Internet regularly in the same bucket as file traders.You only have to download a few movies monthly off of iTunes or Netflix to need their unlimited plan.
If you are a slashdot user, my guess is that you are in tier 2. Or you read slashdot using lynx.
DSL? We've got fiber to choose from in Austin (AT&T U-verse). Plus we have a third-party cable provider (Grande) with limited availability. I think Time Warner is actually actively committing suicide.
Actually, what I think they're doing is checking to see if customers will get off their butts in a fairly competitive market and switch. That's the experiment. If everyone just rolls over and takes it in a competitive market, they can know they can roll it out to their monopoly markets without fear.
What costs? Their bandwidth costs have been going down, and their profits have been going up. There are no costs they have to pass onto the consumer.
You mean the cost of losing their cable business because Hulu, Netflix, and iTunes do what they do, but better and cheaper? I think that's the cost they're passing onto the consumer. It's an anti-competitive penalty to lock consumers into the "Time Warner Family of Products".
They haven't rescheduled anything. This is the exact same start date I got when I called them. This is just more fluff.
I called and emailed (to make sure I cost them the most money) to verify that my price lock guarantee wouldn't allow them to charge me an extra cent or restrict my access. Once I'm done with that I've notified them I'm leaving.
This is going to be really unpopular once people understand their marketing. My mom and dad don't have cable, but they do have Road Runner. They watch Netflix Watch Now movies (as they really like old movies and British TV shows, a place where Netflix excels). My Dad mentioned that he was hoping it would lower his bill. I pointed out that he was exactly the sort of user they were trying to get more money out of. He doesn't utilize their enormously profitable cable division and he's downloading movies from a competitor. He's going to be a direct target of this price gouging.
If my Dad (who's decently tech savvy) didn't spot this then the "unpopularity" they're seeing now is going to be nothing compared to what happens when they try to attempt to bill people for it.
For that price I can get unlimited Internet from AT&T's U-verse along with cable and telephone. You really want to play this game Time Warner? I don't think there's enough competition, but I think there's just enough to drive you into the ground.
Timmy (he prefers to have it spelled properly thanks) would tell you that the amount of mercury put into the air and water by the coal powered power plants needed to power your incandescent bulbs dwarf the amount put into that CF bulb. CF bulbs are still a net mercury reduction. At least until we get more green power online. At which point we'll have to reanalyze.
Funny how no answer is perfect, nor stays the best answer in perpetuity. It's almost as though we're going to make value judgments and reevaluate our choices periodically.
I actually think the "voting out the entire party" line has been shown to fail, time and time again. Isn't that what happening with the ascendancy of Bush II, isn't that what's currently happening with Obama? We've had two house cleansings within our last 3 presidential cycles. It doesn't work. Unfortunately you have to do the hard part of democracy. You have to call and visits your representatives. You have to make them aware of your views. Most politicians believe they're doing what their constituents who contact them want. It's just that most of their constituents don't contact them.
I'd recommend holding a public office for a while so you can see how all this really works. You can easily join an HOA or PTA board and see just how difficult it is to discern what your constituents actually want.
Oh because changing the letter to L or G would mean they would give back the power? This is the whole reason we have checks-and-balances. This is why we had to stop Bush from doing these things. This is why we had to stop the Republican majority from rewriting the rules on filibusters. Because once those rules are gone, they're gone. The next party isn't going to give them back. And don't believe an L or G by the name is going to fix that.
I inadvertently got off the stuff one day (super busy day), and decided to quit it cause I felt so lousy. I felt lousy for 2 weeks before my body stopped craving the stuff.
Of course, I'm currently drinking my 3rd cup of coffee.
A self-sufficient well-rounded isolated community would by definition be governed. Otherwise it wouldn't be well-rounded. Even if you decided to not call it a government. Maybe you would call it a contract board. Please look up utopian experiments for why this is the case. To live in a utopia you pretty much have to live alone.
Well except the fact you're completely isolated and have to pay massive amounts of money to get anything you want. I personally don't find politicians more onerous than having no easy access to a grocery or hardware store. But I'm also not an idio... errr... libertarian.
A patent I can fully endorse. So IBM can corner the market on poorly developed spaghetti, while simultaneously removing the cost advantage to outsourcing by anyone else. The free market is better than regulation!
Slashdot Mirror
Right, because libertarianism is a religion that revolves around the believer being the center of the universe. The collective good is only useful to him if by collective you mean a collection of that single believer and no one else. So why would a libertarian who knows enough to want ads about virus software want to pay for ads to notify himself of the need to use virus software?
Now if you said that the libertarian could make lots of money off of making these ads to sell to people who don't use anti-virus software, you'd probably have something. As long as you weren't planning on displaying those ads on billboards above public roads, over federally subsidized cable or phone lines, the federally monitored air waves, or in a publication delivered by the postal service.
It makes no sense. Stop trying to use logic to appeal to libertarians. If they understood logic they wouldn't be libertarians.
Yeah, maybe we should. Then your entire party would start crying because they're hooked up to that ginormous government teat.
Democrats pass legislation to help poor Republicans.
Republicans pass legislation to help rich Democrats.
So you were screaming when this happened a few years ago? When the Republicans were dismantling checks and balances? When they were getting rid of filibusters on judicial nominees?
Why not read his work? His model is that the market is unpredictable, so one should expose oneself to lots of risk with a huge potential upside. Things like mutual funds, insurance companies, etc. are bad investments in his eyes because the only way for the stock to go is sharply down, and they're never going to go up enough to balance that risk.
It's a very interesting way to look at the world. I'm sure he has models for what he thinks are good investments, but his model isn't to try to predict what the market will do. You're right, he does have a better model for predicting the future. His model is that the markets are going to have massive shocks and that we don't know when they'll happen.
Dish is not broadband, except when it's the DSL from your phone company. You can get 3 major types of broadband (which is great, most people can't), none of which are using the same technologies, and all of which are bundled with other services to create friction when leaving.
But you're right it's not a monopoly in all markets. The ones that are big enough they think there's enough pie for all of the they'll actually attempt to compete a little bit. They're more like oligarchies.
That's my point. Just because the US does it doesn't mean it's capitalism, and doesn't mean it should be defended.
Yes, but if you use that rational I pay more than $50/month for my DSL or Cable too. Think of all the lobbyists and laws it takes to keep a virtual monopoly. Think of all the government kick backs and discounts. The consumer is pretty much always going to get a better deal when you restrict the market to put all the competitors on an even footing, rather than restricting the market to provide a monopoly like we do. Under both "capitalism" and "socialism" (I'm assuming in this case we're talking about US vs. Sweden), the market for broadband is heavily controlled by the government.
I'd say we get the worse deal.
I think high speed rail is more of a competitor with airplanes (and their potentially high costs should energy costs spike again).
These are good points. And you'll notice that people think current prices are expensive, but the $50/month is something they're willing to pay. Based on your formula that would be $50/100GB. Which actually seems like a somewhat decent price.
The problem is that me watching an extra 2 hours of TV is not an extra $20 on my electrical bill. Me watching an extra 2 hours of TV using Time Warner would be. I think ultimately what's freaking people out is that this makes cable broadband unaffordable. Perhaps the solution is to have the government provide the cable lines, just like we have with the phone lines. Broadband internet is no longer something for the wealthy. I need it to conduct government business, and work from home. Perhaps we need to start talking seriously about how we get broadband into homes in a cost-effective manner without the possibility for anti-competitive shenanigans. AT&T has strong motivation to crush VOIP. Time Warner has a strong motivation to crush online music, tv, videogame and music delivery. Let's talk about cost again once AT&T and Time Warner divest themselves of their broadband divisions. Until then I don't think we can talk about this without suspecting they are trying to cap bandwidth to protect other divisions.
I understand what you're saying, but I don't think Time Warner should be in the position to make these decisions. They have a monopoly position and have an incentive to keep us locked into the old (albeit efficient) model. I'd be more sympathetic if they didn't also own channels and essentially have an extreme incentive to make sure that Netflix, iTunes, and YouTube fail. Spin off the broadband divison and let's see what you think is best for the consumer.
The problem is that all the innovations in video need room to grow. We can't let Time Warner lock it down. Sure right now you need far too many independent streams and that can't be sustained with current technology, but who's to say that someone won't come up with a more efficient way of distributing TV on demand?
I think the real reason ala carte hasn't taken off is that people really don't want to take the time to figure out what they need. But whose to say that we couldn't have the equivalent of RSS channels? The best channels would pull in a portion of the advertising dollars. We could have advertising on demand. We could have targeted advertising. I know this freaks out privacy people, but I really think this is where we're going. The question is are you more comfortable with a company like Time Warner dictating how everything works, or letting democratic tools arise that will allow a better metaphor for TV to be invented? Note that, I'm not saying what I just outlined is how things are going to be. I'm just providing an example to show why we shouldn't allow Time Warner to lock us in.
And ultimately this is what it takes to have a free market. If Time Warner goes into bankruptcy because they can't provide a service that their customers will pay for that's fine. There are lots of investment houses that would LOVE to invest in new infrastructure startups dedicated to providing high bandwidth services. That's great for the economy.
"Did you mean pennies per GB?"
Yes. That was a silly typo.
I agree that I'd prefer that we were charged as you proposed. That's basically the way a utility works. Most businesses work by figuring out the maximum the market will bear and then charge it. As we know from Time Warner's securities filings, they should be reducing prices since their costs are down and their profits are up. But instead they are attempting to raise prices. Which is why their customers are revolting.
While I might be willing to agree that we should be charged like utilities. The charge needs to be in the pennies per megabyte range. That's what my hosting provider charges. Why exactly is Time Warner different? I'd say it's because they have no real competition.
10GB a day is not ludicrous. If I watch one HD movie, and two hours of HD television I've crushed that. If I and everyone in my family were average Americans and shifted to watching all of our television online, we would need hundreds of GB per day. And that's what this is really about. Time Warner wants you watching TV on their heavily compressed cable network. They want you buying Movies-on-Demand(TM), not watching Netflix. They don't want you watching YouTube. They want to have a cable channel wherein they repackage YouTube content with their own commercials in between.
But past that, I can't believe anyone on Slashdot, especially after the amazing technological advances of the past 30 years would make a statements like 10GB/day is a good limit. You reading Slashdot with 1MB of RAM and a 20MB hard drive?
Sure. Sounds great. Like my other utilities, let's go ahead and heavily regulate them and reduce profits (or deregulate them and let Time Warner's lines be a free-for-all). I'd be happy to pay about $0.07/GB. which is approximately what my hosting provider charges me for bandwidth. This was part of the problem. $5/GB is a tad high for me. $150/GB for what I currently get for $50 is ludicrous.
So sure, let them charge like utilities, and we'll regulate them like utilities. That will lead to massive price drops for consumers.
What I won't support is Time Warner's Consumption Priced Billing. They were planning on using their near monopoly to raise prices for the majority of their consumers, while touting the "price drops" for consumers using less than 1GB per month. What they charge for bandwidth is still way over market rate, and their SEC filings show that they're paying less for bandwidth and getting more income for consumers, so they have no reason to charge more.
This was also an anti-competitive move to stifle companies like Netflix, YouTube, and iTunes. A move they should still be investigated for.
In short, this is a consumer rebellion to keep from being price gouged, not a revolt against consumption billing per se.
Did you look at their tiers? Basically they have:
1) Affordable tier for people who think the Internet means email.
2) Raping tier for people who know about websites like YouTube.
They're effectively placing all their users who use the Internet regularly in the same bucket as file traders.You only have to download a few movies monthly off of iTunes or Netflix to need their unlimited plan.
If you are a slashdot user, my guess is that you are in tier 2. Or you read slashdot using lynx.
DSL? We've got fiber to choose from in Austin (AT&T U-verse). Plus we have a third-party cable provider (Grande) with limited availability. I think Time Warner is actually actively committing suicide.
Actually, what I think they're doing is checking to see if customers will get off their butts in a fairly competitive market and switch. That's the experiment. If everyone just rolls over and takes it in a competitive market, they can know they can roll it out to their monopoly markets without fear.
What costs? Their bandwidth costs have been going down, and their profits have been going up. There are no costs they have to pass onto the consumer.
You mean the cost of losing their cable business because Hulu, Netflix, and iTunes do what they do, but better and cheaper? I think that's the cost they're passing onto the consumer. It's an anti-competitive penalty to lock consumers into the "Time Warner Family of Products".
They haven't rescheduled anything. This is the exact same start date I got when I called them. This is just more fluff.
I called and emailed (to make sure I cost them the most money) to verify that my price lock guarantee wouldn't allow them to charge me an extra cent or restrict my access. Once I'm done with that I've notified them I'm leaving.
This is going to be really unpopular once people understand their marketing. My mom and dad don't have cable, but they do have Road Runner. They watch Netflix Watch Now movies (as they really like old movies and British TV shows, a place where Netflix excels). My Dad mentioned that he was hoping it would lower his bill. I pointed out that he was exactly the sort of user they were trying to get more money out of. He doesn't utilize their enormously profitable cable division and he's downloading movies from a competitor. He's going to be a direct target of this price gouging.
If my Dad (who's decently tech savvy) didn't spot this then the "unpopularity" they're seeing now is going to be nothing compared to what happens when they try to attempt to bill people for it.
For that price I can get unlimited Internet from AT&T's U-verse along with cable and telephone. You really want to play this game Time Warner? I don't think there's enough competition, but I think there's just enough to drive you into the ground.
Timmy (he prefers to have it spelled properly thanks) would tell you that the amount of mercury put into the air and water by the coal powered power plants needed to power your incandescent bulbs dwarf the amount put into that CF bulb. CF bulbs are still a net mercury reduction. At least until we get more green power online. At which point we'll have to reanalyze.
Funny how no answer is perfect, nor stays the best answer in perpetuity. It's almost as though we're going to make value judgments and reevaluate our choices periodically.
I actually think the "voting out the entire party" line has been shown to fail, time and time again. Isn't that what happening with the ascendancy of Bush II, isn't that what's currently happening with Obama? We've had two house cleansings within our last 3 presidential cycles. It doesn't work. Unfortunately you have to do the hard part of democracy. You have to call and visits your representatives. You have to make them aware of your views. Most politicians believe they're doing what their constituents who contact them want. It's just that most of their constituents don't contact them.
I'd recommend holding a public office for a while so you can see how all this really works. You can easily join an HOA or PTA board and see just how difficult it is to discern what your constituents actually want.
Oh because changing the letter to L or G would mean they would give back the power? This is the whole reason we have checks-and-balances. This is why we had to stop Bush from doing these things. This is why we had to stop the Republican majority from rewriting the rules on filibusters. Because once those rules are gone, they're gone. The next party isn't going to give them back. And don't believe an L or G by the name is going to fix that.
I inadvertently got off the stuff one day (super busy day), and decided to quit it cause I felt so lousy. I felt lousy for 2 weeks before my body stopped craving the stuff.
Of course, I'm currently drinking my 3rd cup of coffee.
A self-sufficient well-rounded isolated community would by definition be governed. Otherwise it wouldn't be well-rounded. Even if you decided to not call it a government. Maybe you would call it a contract board. Please look up utopian experiments for why this is the case. To live in a utopia you pretty much have to live alone.
Well except the fact you're completely isolated and have to pay massive amounts of money to get anything you want. I personally don't find politicians more onerous than having no easy access to a grocery or hardware store. But I'm also not an idio... errr... libertarian.
A patent I can fully endorse. So IBM can corner the market on poorly developed spaghetti, while simultaneously removing the cost advantage to outsourcing by anyone else. The free market is better than regulation!