what I meant was that in anarcho-capitalism, there would be private courts, and the initiation of violence would be punished, as would the threat thereof as a method of extortion to get one to sign a contract or agree to do something.
See "Towards a Libertarian Theory of Blackmail". I'm too lazy to look up the link.
much of your analysis is insightful, though the need your perceive for government is non-existent. Even if you argue that the government is necessary for some beneficial things, it is responsible for the most abhorrent things.
Firstly, the government can exist only by systematically stealing from citizens (enslavement); after all, what is slavery if not being forced to work for a compensation below that which you would otherwise accept on the free market? If anyone else forced me to work 10-38% of the year for no compensation, that'd be called slavery. The only way to eliminate this evil is to eliminate the government.
Secondly, the government is responsible for the business cycle. This is because the government inflates its supply of fiat paper-money, which is inherently worthless anyways. As inflation occurs, those graced by government priviledge benefit from it, while other's lose. Entrepreneurs see a reduced interest rate, and are fooled in regards to the average consumer time-preference; that is, they think people have a higher ratio of future:present consumption than they actually do. Hence, they miscalculate, and more capital (as opposed to consumer) goods are made than need be. This error is eventually exposed when the government is forced to call a halt to the inflation, which is what we see as the sudden cluster of errors discovered during busts. In theory, it is possible to take control of money away from the government. However, in practice, the gov't will always try to get it's hands back on money, as well as to grow in size.
Third, the centralization of massive amounts of power and division between various blocs is what causes mass murder (war). On the free market, there aren't enough people interested in wiping out an entire city to justify entrepreneurs making an atom-bomb. It is only government's that provide a massive demand for weapons of mass-murder.
As for vaccinations, you are right -- they work best if given to everyone, so as to cause the virus or bacteria to become extinct. There is no reason, however, to assume that private charities would not work to achieve this. Also, companies will understand and know how vaccinations work. If a large section of the population (the poor) don't get the vaccination, then the vaccination will be useless to those who do get it, including those in the company who created it. The free market has often provided examples where various companies have pooled resources to act in a manner that's benficial to them all, and to resolve a problem; the voluntary interconnection of railroads from different companies, for example.
On a related manner, without the government, there is no demand for biological (viral/bacterial) weapons. Again, it is only the government which provides a massive demand for biological weapons. So, without any government, we could avoid that problem as well.
All that the government is is a monopoly on the use of coercive force; indeed, the government is the only entity which obtains its income from coercive force, rather than voluntary transaction, and in which most people seem to think that's somehow OK.
enforcing contracts is not slavery...but even if there is only monetary punishment for violating the contract, that is still a major deterrant, as companies operate via profits...as well as respect; after all, who's going to go to a company that discloses private information?
I agree with you about people being naive, and I also agree with you that big daddy government shouldn't protect them from the consequences of their own actions. Since I'm an anarcho-capitalist, I support individuals bearing the full consequences of their actions, and not being able to spread the costs of those actions out over on people who don't want to share the consequences (hence, no bankruptcy, unless you insure against it).
I agree with you that public schools are a joke, which is why we need to privitize schools, along with everything else, for that matter. We can start out with privitizing the airwaves, so we can have real freedom of expression on TV and radio, not just what the government wants us to say.
As for a depression, I agree with you that more are inevitable; indeed, what we call a "recession" is in fact a depression. This problem could be solved if we got the government out of money, and went back to the gold standard. See Rothbard's "What has government done to our money?"
http://www.mises.org/money.asp
A good start to going back to real money would be to start using the Liberty Dollar:
that would be extortion, as would other power-plays (threats to initiate violence unless someone signs a contract). A contract signed under the pressure of extortion is invalid.
The free market is the most logical solution to all problems from a utilitarian standpoint, not that that's a convincing argument. The real argument is that any tampering with the free market constitute's a violation of property rights; in the case of socialized medicine, it means the systematic theft (thus enslavement) of the healthy to help pay for the medical costs of the unhealthy. No-one has the right to receive the services of another person without compensating them what they'd otherwise accept on a free market: that's called slavery. Taxing people to allow a poor person to compensate the doctor is simply shifting the enslavement from the doctor to the taxpayer.
But let's analyze it logically. On the free market, let's say Insurance Company N (for naive) offers insurance at a completely flat rate, no matter the condition of it's participants. Now, what rational healthy person would be willing to pay the necessarily high premium that he'd have to pay to account for such subsidization of those benefitting? No-one. What's going to happen is that those in mediocre and poor health will go to this insurance company, but no-one of good health will go there, and those of good health will leave, seeking an insurance company which charges lower premiums. As those in good health leave, the percentage of individuals the insurance company has to pay claims to increases.
Thus, it has to increase the premium even further on those remaining (of mediocre and poor health). The result is that those of mediocre health are driven out. They don't want to pay higher premiums to subsidize those of poor health anymore than do those of good health want to pay high premiums to subsidize those of mediocre health. Now, what happens is the insurance company has to push up premiums even more. The pattern is cyclical. It will evolve such that the company will either go bankrupt or have premiums so high that those remaining would be better off going it alone.
Simply put, to ban insurance companies from assessing risk and rating premiums accordingly is to violate the right of freedom of association, a derivative of the right to private property.
Your comments about humanity and kindness are misplaced and naive. You cannot nationalize or socialize kindness and benevolence, not anymore than you can nationalize or socialize virtue. You do not create kindness by stealing money from person A, whom you deem "not to need that money", and giving it to person B, whom you deem "needs it". All that you are doing is enslaving person A to yourself, and making person B a dependant on you, thus dependant on your enslavement of person A. This statist intervention is what creates true class warfare. It is in B's interest to see to it that I, the State, continue enslaving A; meanwhile, any hospitality A may have had towards unfortunate B is eliminated. If you wish to be philantropic, do so with your own money and your own time; you are in no way acting "kind" by stealing property from individual A to give to individual B. You don't become a philanthropist by spending someone else' money on causes you deem worthy; you're just as much a thief -- and if you do so systematically, an enslaver -- as if you'd stolen property from them for your own private satisfaction.
thanks for the penetrating insight. Maybe/. isn't as dumb as I thought. And to think, you're user #3658...having been on/. that long, it's amazing that you can still think at all. Quick, get out, before they realize you're IQ is still above the double-digits!
I thought that this article by Michael Levin from Mises.org was relevant. It's quoted in its entirity.
The Senator has a painful announcement to make. His daughter is mentally ill. This gives him special insight into a social injustice: insurance companies are less willing to cover mental illness than other forms. They place annual and lifetime limits on the number of permitted psychiatric sessions, for example.
Moved by his pleas, the entire Senate agrees to stamp out bias against mental illness with a new law. If firms offer mental coverage, the law says, it must be identical to other forms of coverage. Otherwise, the victims of mental illness will continue to be "stigmatized."
It's no shock that the Senate has taken another step towards socializing the medical sector. That's been the pattern for nearly a century. What's appalling is that this socialization is confused with authentic insurance, a viable market institution.
Here's how real insurance comes about.
Life is risky. The roof might fall in. You might get hit by a car. Your own body might rebel, sending cancer cells on their deadly metastatic journey.
In theory, an individual can manage risk by himself by exercising extreme caution. He may stay home permanently while paying someone to run errands, or set foot outside only after exhaustive research on weather and traffic.
The trouble with most individualistic measures, though, is that they are self-defeating--sitting in one's living room all day (under a reinforced roof) is hardly conducive to good health--or prohibitively expensive. Worse, the individual is lost if his private preventive measures fail.
A better hedge is a risk pool, a group of individuals agreeing to help each other in case disaster strikes one of their number. Risk pools are common in everyday life, where high school students take notes for friends who miss class, and office workers share computers should one crash.
One obvious benefit of pooling risk is cost: letting someone use your computer should his break down, in exchange for use of his in case yours does, is cheaper than buying a backup system. A greater benefit of risk pools is their access to resources to offset the aftermath of disaster. If, despite every self-reliant effort at safety, your house catches fire, you are minus a house. Join a voluntary fire brigade, and your house may be saved.
But risk-pooling has its downside. There is of course each member's contribution, the premium he must pay. It is a nuisance to take exhaustive notes in chemistry class whenever a friend is absent. There are the transaction costs of calculating the resources each member must put in to balance expected gains. In fact, even though on average everyone gets out exactly what he puts in, the careful or lucky risk-pooler will put less into the bargain than he gets out.
Enter the entrepreneur, offering to assume everyone's risk for a price. He sells you coverage should some evil befall at a cost exceeding your expected gain; after all, the insurer is not in it for his health. (He's in it for yours.) In exchange, you save on negotiating time, and, more important, you gain surer protection against a wider range of catastrophes.
Spontaneous risk pools tend to be small, and limited in purpose. The guys in the office will cover for you if you miss a meeting, but they cannot put your kids through college if you die.
However, suppose an entrepreneur finds 100,000 people, each willing to pay $100 for the assurance that his kids will be put through college should he keel over in the next ten years. The pool now contains $10 million, enough for plenty of tuition bills. Enterprising insurers can merge payments to cover unique risks: Lloyd's once insured Marlene Dietrich's legs.
The critical factor controlling an insurer's costs, hence the price he asks for a policy, is the probability of disaster. He can sell life insurance of $50,000 to 100,000 people at $100 a head only if it is actuarially certain that fe
the solution, then, is to strengthen contract law, not to create backwards laws like this. Violation of contract should be viewed as exaclty what it is -- the violation of property rights. As such, it should be punishable similar to if you aggressed against another's private property.
Regarding companies deciding to "take a peek at your DNA" from a bloodtest, that would or would not be permitted based on the contract between you and the doctor for the taking and testing of your blood. If the contract said that they were taking your blood to test it for HIV and hepatitis, then that's all they can test it for; anything else is a breech of contract on their part, and punishable as such. Contract law forms a perfectly reasonable basis for privacy (of course, let's not forget that the biggest invader of our privacy is the government, which presumes to be the sainted protector of that very right which it violates most aggregiously).
Insurance companies asking medical questions violates no-one's privacy. One chooses to or not to have health insurance. Individuals more likely to get various diseases and ailments should pay higher premiums. That's what makes insurance possible and efficient. It's no more reasonable to say that someone who's 80% likely to get alzheimer's based on his or her genome should pay the same premium as someone who isn't, than it is to say that somone who smokes should pay the same premium as someone who doesn't. I suggest you all read The Insurance Scam.
If someone doesn't want to reveal their genetic information to a health insurance company, then they will either have to pay a higher premium by default to cover all of the unexpected risks, or find another company. No-one has the right to get insurance from any particular company at a low rate.
Individuals who think like this obviously have a complete lack of understanding of how insurance works, as well as a complete lack of understanding of economics and praxeology. All that these laws are going to do is force people who are perfectly healthy and likely to be so all their lives to pay higher premiums, to cover for freeloaders much more susceptible to various risks.
The idea of sound insurance is pretty simple. Let's say I'm taking out a term life-insurance policy for the next 10 years. If I'm twice as likely to die in that next 10 years than another person, it makes sense that I pay twice the premium. On the free market, healthy people aren't going to go to insurance companies that charge them higher to allow unhealthy people to freeload.
it may characterize the actions in a negative manner, but it is accurate. That the author seems to think this -- the FSF doing it's job and protecting GPL'ed code from being appropriated -- is wrong shows how off-beat the author is. There is nothing wrong with the FSF contacting companies and working with them to bring them into compliance with the GPL. If they don't do that, there's nothing wrong with the FSF taking legal action if necessary. The reason none of these companies have gone to court is that they would be insane to try to challenge the validity of the GPL -- it's air-tight. Somehow, these guys who give away code that allows these companies to make these products are evil when they want the companies to obey the license.
It's really very simple. Every company can choose to use or not to use GPL'ed code in their products. If they use GPL'ed code and modify it, they're obliged to release the modified software under the GPL; they're also obliged to release any program that the GPL'ed code in under the GPL. Either that or they have to remove the GPL'ed code from their product.
You'll also note that unlike proprietary companies, the GPL is working with these companies privately. This is not because they're sneaking around behind closed doors, like an assassin, as the author of this article suggests. It is because they want to resolve these matters privately and quickly, without getting a bunch of press involved. Companies lose a lot of flexability to deal with these situations, and get a lot of extra pressure, once they're well-publicized.
you still have other options; most programs allow the equivalent of CTRL-V and CTRL-P. I do agree that the lack of ALT+X for file-menu's is annoying, but MS' kb menu-navigation is hardly ideal. Alt + F for file? Easy to remember, perhaps. Easy to learn, perhaps. Easy to use, no. Takes two key's, one of which is very easy to mis-type. The best thing was the good old days where F1 brought down the first menu, F2 the second menu, F3 the third, and so-on and so-forth.
right clicking and then moving down to past is just as slow as CTRL-V. Simply selecting the text to copy and middle-clicking to paste is a hell of a lot easier and faster.
It's funny you mentioned Word and compatability, since most Word versions aren't even compatable with *other* versions of word without borking some things up.
If you want to be able to have everyone see your document exactly the same way, you should be using TeX. With the rendering engine permanently frozen, TeX is vastly superior to anything else in terms of forwards and backwards compatable. Not only is it backwards comptable, but it will *always* be backwards compatable. Furthermore, it never crashes, and there hasn't been a bug found in it in years.
aside from the fact that no-one would use a program that requires to run as root, and e-mail programs with Outlooks crappy features would be exposed as worthless and not used.
I agree, though slide-shows with handouts are useful, because they allow students to focus on thinking, instead of slavishly writing. It'd probably be best, however, to only give students the handouts after-class, so they can take their own notes during lectures.
but what if the courts don't agree? you say they would "have to agree upon another court", but what if they don't? you will inevitably end up with violent coercion, where the richer and more powerful party will crush the other. Are you really happier with this than a democratically accountable State having the monopoly on violence?
Rothbard anticipated such objections, and adequately answered them. However, for the moment, let us assume that in such a world, all chaos breaks out. So what? With the world-wars and the millions killed in them, the holocaust, the dropping of the H-bomb, Vietnam, the Korean War, the Gulf Wars, and 9/11, how could the past century have possibly gone worse? Even if mass chaos broke loose without any states, that would surely be better than the mass-murder institutionalized by wars between states. At worst, the "chaos" would be localized, and would never mean the deaths of millions of civillians, not even if you would consider the cummulative world-wide effect.
However, it is not reasonable to assume that, absent The State, there would be such chaos. I will quote the relevant portions of Rothbard, which address your concerns:
What, however, if Brown does not recognize the Prudential Court? What if he is a client of the Metropolitan Court Company? Here the case becomes more difficult. What will happen then? First, victim Jones pleads his case in the Prudential Court. If Brown is found innocent, this ends the controversy. Suppose, however, that defendant Brown is found guilty. If he does nothing, the court's judgment proceeds against him. Suppose, however, Brown then takes the case to the Metropolitan Court Company, pleading inefficiency or venality by Prudential. The case will then be heard by Metropolitan. If Metropolitan also finds Brown guilty, this too ends the controversy and Prudential will proceed against Brown with dispatch. Suppose, however, that Metropolitan finds Brown innocent of the charge. Then what? Will the two courts and their arms-wielding marshals shoot it out in the streets?
Once again, this would clearly be irrational and self-destructive behavior on the part of the courts. An essential part of their judicial service to their clients is the provision of just, objective, and peacefully functioning decisions--the best and most objective way of arriving at the truth of who committed the crime. Arriving at a decision and then allowing chaotic gunplay would scarcely be considered valuable judicial service by their customers. Thus, an essential part of any court's service to its clients would be an appeals procedure. In short, every court would agree to abide by an appeals trial, as decided by a voluntary arbitrator to whom Metropolitan and Prudential would now turn. The appeals judge would make his decision, and the result of this third trial would be treated as binding on the guilty. The Prudential court would then proceed to enforcement.
One should also note that any court that decided to resolve a dispute between itself and another court by "duking it out" would immediately be recognized as an outlaw court, and dealt with by other private police forces and courts, including but not limited to the private police who would work on the streets or buildings in which such a "duking out" would have to occur.
In regards to your assertion that justice would invariably go to the richer and more powerful, this is also unlikely (however, even if it were to occur, such would be no different than as is today). Rothbard:
Let us first consider the problem of the venal or crooked judge or court. What of the court which favors its own wealthy client in trouble? In the first place, any such favoritism will be highly unlikely, given the rewards and sanctions of the free market economy. The very life of the court, the very livelihood of a judge, will depend on his reputation for integrity, fair-mindedness, objectivity, and the quest for truth in every case. This is his "brand name." Should word of any ven
Most "hands on" contact in classes consists of the professor droning on and on. You can get more from reading a book, and do so in a quicker period of time. As for actual discourse, that can also occur at a distance online, most likely more efficiently and better so than in person (have you noticed that people tend to write more coherently than they speak).
Though I realize the humorous intent of your comment, if two consenting adults want to sleep together, they should be able to. A rational university would mandate that the professor defer that student's grading to another teacher. Of course, as an anarcho-capitalist, I believe universities should be allowed to have whatever backwards rules they want.
Rothbard discusses enforcement of the court's decisions in the other chapter I mentioned, The Public Sector.
When the court reaches a decision, the private police company with which the court has a contract (or the court's marshalls) enforce the decision.
If the person ruled against disagrees, he can take the case to his own court.
If the two courts disagree on liability, then they would have to agree upon another court to function as an appeals court, which would have the final say. In this way, every court would act both as a normal court, and as an appeals court when two other courts agreed to send the matter to that court for appeals.
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what I meant was that in anarcho-capitalism, there would be private courts, and the initiation of violence would be punished, as would the threat thereof as a method of extortion to get one to sign a contract or agree to do something.
See "Towards a Libertarian Theory of Blackmail". I'm too lazy to look up the link.
much of your analysis is insightful, though the need your perceive for government is non-existent. Even if you argue that the government is necessary for some beneficial things, it is responsible for the most abhorrent things.
Firstly, the government can exist only by systematically stealing from citizens (enslavement); after all, what is slavery if not being forced to work for a compensation below that which you would otherwise accept on the free market? If anyone else forced me to work 10-38% of the year for no compensation, that'd be called slavery. The only way to eliminate this evil is to eliminate the government.
Secondly, the government is responsible for the business cycle. This is because the government inflates its supply of fiat paper-money, which is inherently worthless anyways. As inflation occurs, those graced by government priviledge benefit from it, while other's lose. Entrepreneurs see a reduced interest rate, and are fooled in regards to the average consumer time-preference; that is, they think people have a higher ratio of future:present consumption than they actually do. Hence, they miscalculate, and more capital (as opposed to consumer) goods are made than need be. This error is eventually exposed when the government is forced to call a halt to the inflation, which is what we see as the sudden cluster of errors discovered during busts. In theory, it is possible to take control of money away from the government. However, in practice, the gov't will always try to get it's hands back on money, as well as to grow in size.
Third, the centralization of massive amounts of power and division between various blocs is what causes mass murder (war). On the free market, there aren't enough people interested in wiping out an entire city to justify entrepreneurs making an atom-bomb. It is only government's that provide a massive demand for weapons of mass-murder.
As for vaccinations, you are right -- they work best if given to everyone, so as to cause the virus or bacteria to become extinct. There is no reason, however, to assume that private charities would not work to achieve this. Also, companies will understand and know how vaccinations work. If a large section of the population (the poor) don't get the vaccination, then the vaccination will be useless to those who do get it, including those in the company who created it. The free market has often provided examples where various companies have pooled resources to act in a manner that's benficial to them all, and to resolve a problem; the voluntary interconnection of railroads from different companies, for example.
On a related manner, without the government, there is no demand for biological (viral/bacterial) weapons. Again, it is only the government which provides a massive demand for biological weapons. So, without any government, we could avoid that problem as well.
All that the government is is a monopoly on the use of coercive force; indeed, the government is the only entity which obtains its income from coercive force, rather than voluntary transaction, and in which most people seem to think that's somehow OK.
enforcing contracts is not slavery...but even if there is only monetary punishment for violating the contract, that is still a major deterrant, as companies operate via profits...as well as respect; after all, who's going to go to a company that discloses private information?
I agree with you about people being naive, and I also agree with you that big daddy government shouldn't protect them from the consequences of their own actions. Since I'm an anarcho-capitalist, I support individuals bearing the full consequences of their actions, and not being able to spread the costs of those actions out over on people who don't want to share the consequences (hence, no bankruptcy, unless you insure against it).
I agree with you that public schools are a joke, which is why we need to privitize schools, along with everything else, for that matter. We can start out with privitizing the airwaves, so we can have real freedom of expression on TV and radio, not just what the government wants us to say.
As for a depression, I agree with you that more are inevitable; indeed, what we call a "recession" is in fact a depression. This problem could be solved if we got the government out of money, and went back to the gold standard. See Rothbard's "What has government done to our money?"
http://www.mises.org/money.asp
A good start to going back to real money would be to start using the Liberty Dollar:
www.norfed.org
that would be extortion, as would other power-plays (threats to initiate violence unless someone signs a contract). A contract signed under the pressure of extortion is invalid.
The free market is the most logical solution to all problems from a utilitarian standpoint, not that that's a convincing argument. The real argument is that any tampering with the free market constitute's a violation of property rights; in the case of socialized medicine, it means the systematic theft (thus enslavement) of the healthy to help pay for the medical costs of the unhealthy. No-one has the right to receive the services of another person without compensating them what they'd otherwise accept on a free market: that's called slavery. Taxing people to allow a poor person to compensate the doctor is simply shifting the enslavement from the doctor to the taxpayer.
But let's analyze it logically. On the free market, let's say Insurance Company N (for naive) offers insurance at a completely flat rate, no matter the condition of it's participants. Now, what rational healthy person would be willing to pay the necessarily high premium that he'd have to pay to account for such subsidization of those benefitting? No-one. What's going to happen is that those in mediocre and poor health will go to this insurance company, but no-one of good health will go there, and those of good health will leave, seeking an insurance company which charges lower premiums. As those in good health leave, the percentage of individuals the insurance company has to pay claims to increases.
Thus, it has to increase the premium even further on those remaining (of mediocre and poor health). The result is that those of mediocre health are driven out. They don't want to pay higher premiums to subsidize those of poor health anymore than do those of good health want to pay high premiums to subsidize those of mediocre health. Now, what happens is the insurance company has to push up premiums even more. The pattern is cyclical. It will evolve such that the company will either go bankrupt or have premiums so high that those remaining would be better off going it alone.
Simply put, to ban insurance companies from assessing risk and rating premiums accordingly is to violate the right of freedom of association, a derivative of the right to private property.
Your comments about humanity and kindness are misplaced and naive. You cannot nationalize or socialize kindness and benevolence, not anymore than you can nationalize or socialize virtue. You do not create kindness by stealing money from person A, whom you deem "not to need that money", and giving it to person B, whom you deem "needs it". All that you are doing is enslaving person A to yourself, and making person B a dependant on you, thus dependant on your enslavement of person A. This statist intervention is what creates true class warfare. It is in B's interest to see to it that I, the State, continue enslaving A; meanwhile, any hospitality A may have had towards unfortunate B is eliminated. If you wish to be philantropic, do so with your own money and your own time; you are in no way acting "kind" by stealing property from individual A to give to individual B. You don't become a philanthropist by spending someone else' money on causes you deem worthy; you're just as much a thief -- and if you do so systematically, an enslaver -- as if you'd stolen property from them for your own private satisfaction.
thanks for the penetrating insight. Maybe /. isn't as dumb as I thought. And to think, you're user #3658...having been on /. that long, it's amazing that you can still think at all. Quick, get out, before they realize you're IQ is still above the double-digits!
The Senator has a painful announcement to make. His daughter is mentally ill. This gives him special insight into a social injustice: insurance companies are less willing to cover mental illness than other forms. They place annual and lifetime limits on the number of permitted psychiatric sessions, for example. Moved by his pleas, the entire Senate agrees to stamp out bias against mental illness with a new law. If firms offer mental coverage, the law says, it must be identical to other forms of coverage. Otherwise, the victims of mental illness will continue to be "stigmatized."
It's no shock that the Senate has taken another step towards socializing the medical sector. That's been the pattern for nearly a century. What's appalling is that this socialization is confused with authentic insurance, a viable market institution.
Here's how real insurance comes about.
Life is risky. The roof might fall in. You might get hit by a car. Your own body might rebel, sending cancer cells on their deadly metastatic journey.
In theory, an individual can manage risk by himself by exercising extreme caution. He may stay home permanently while paying someone to run errands, or set foot outside only after exhaustive research on weather and traffic.
The trouble with most individualistic measures, though, is that they are self-defeating--sitting in one's living room all day (under a reinforced roof) is hardly conducive to good health--or prohibitively expensive. Worse, the individual is lost if his private preventive measures fail.
A better hedge is a risk pool, a group of individuals agreeing to help each other in case disaster strikes one of their number. Risk pools are common in everyday life, where high school students take notes for friends who miss class, and office workers share computers should one crash.
One obvious benefit of pooling risk is cost: letting someone use your computer should his break down, in exchange for use of his in case yours does, is cheaper than buying a backup system. A greater benefit of risk pools is their access to resources to offset the aftermath of disaster. If, despite every self-reliant effort at safety, your house catches fire, you are minus a house. Join a voluntary fire brigade, and your house may be saved.
But risk-pooling has its downside. There is of course each member's contribution, the premium he must pay. It is a nuisance to take exhaustive notes in chemistry class whenever a friend is absent. There are the transaction costs of calculating the resources each member must put in to balance expected gains. In fact, even though on average everyone gets out exactly what he puts in, the careful or lucky risk-pooler will put less into the bargain than he gets out.
Enter the entrepreneur, offering to assume everyone's risk for a price. He sells you coverage should some evil befall at a cost exceeding your expected gain; after all, the insurer is not in it for his health. (He's in it for yours.) In exchange, you save on negotiating time, and, more important, you gain surer protection against a wider range of catastrophes.
Spontaneous risk pools tend to be small, and limited in purpose. The guys in the office will cover for you if you miss a meeting, but they cannot put your kids through college if you die.
However, suppose an entrepreneur finds 100,000 people, each willing to pay $100 for the assurance that his kids will be put through college should he keel over in the next ten years. The pool now contains $10 million, enough for plenty of tuition bills. Enterprising insurers can merge payments to cover unique risks: Lloyd's once insured Marlene Dietrich's legs.
The critical factor controlling an insurer's costs, hence the price he asks for a policy, is the probability of disaster. He can sell life insurance of $50,000 to 100,000 people at $100 a head only if it is actuarially certain that fe
the solution, then, is to strengthen contract law, not to create backwards laws like this. Violation of contract should be viewed as exaclty what it is -- the violation of property rights. As such, it should be punishable similar to if you aggressed against another's private property.
Thank you, sir, for your most intelligent and piercing comments.
Regarding companies deciding to "take a peek at your DNA" from a bloodtest, that would or would not be permitted based on the contract between you and the doctor for the taking and testing of your blood. If the contract said that they were taking your blood to test it for HIV and hepatitis, then that's all they can test it for; anything else is a breech of contract on their part, and punishable as such. Contract law forms a perfectly reasonable basis for privacy (of course, let's not forget that the biggest invader of our privacy is the government, which presumes to be the sainted protector of that very right which it violates most aggregiously).
If someone doesn't want to reveal their genetic information to a health insurance company, then they will either have to pay a higher premium by default to cover all of the unexpected risks, or find another company. No-one has the right to get insurance from any particular company at a low rate.
Individuals who think like this obviously have a complete lack of understanding of how insurance works, as well as a complete lack of understanding of economics and praxeology. All that these laws are going to do is force people who are perfectly healthy and likely to be so all their lives to pay higher premiums, to cover for freeloaders much more susceptible to various risks.
The idea of sound insurance is pretty simple. Let's say I'm taking out a term life-insurance policy for the next 10 years. If I'm twice as likely to die in that next 10 years than another person, it makes sense that I pay twice the premium. On the free market, healthy people aren't going to go to insurance companies that charge them higher to allow unhealthy people to freeload.
Silly wabbit, don't you know that posting pro-MS comments on Slashdot is for kids?
/. (aside from their MS Sidewinder or MS Wheel) is beyond me.
Seriously, why anybody even bothers to post a recommendation of something MS on
It's really very simple. Every company can choose to use or not to use GPL'ed code in their products. If they use GPL'ed code and modify it, they're obliged to release the modified software under the GPL; they're also obliged to release any program that the GPL'ed code in under the GPL. Either that or they have to remove the GPL'ed code from their product.
You'll also note that unlike proprietary companies, the GPL is working with these companies privately. This is not because they're sneaking around behind closed doors, like an assassin, as the author of this article suggests. It is because they want to resolve these matters privately and quickly, without getting a bunch of press involved. Companies lose a lot of flexability to deal with these situations, and get a lot of extra pressure, once they're well-publicized.
you still have other options; most programs allow the equivalent of CTRL-V and CTRL-P. I do agree that the lack of ALT+X for file-menu's is annoying, but MS' kb menu-navigation is hardly ideal. Alt + F for file? Easy to remember, perhaps. Easy to learn, perhaps. Easy to use, no. Takes two key's, one of which is very easy to mis-type. The best thing was the good old days where F1 brought down the first menu, F2 the second menu, F3 the third, and so-on and so-forth.
I much prefer GNOME to KDE -- faster and simpler.
right clicking and then moving down to past is just as slow as CTRL-V. Simply selecting the text to copy and middle-clicking to paste is a hell of a lot easier and faster.
It's funny you mentioned Word and compatability, since most Word versions aren't even compatable with *other* versions of word without borking some things up.
If you want to be able to have everyone see your document exactly the same way, you should be using TeX. With the rendering engine permanently frozen, TeX is vastly superior to anything else in terms of forwards and backwards compatable. Not only is it backwards comptable, but it will *always* be backwards compatable. Furthermore, it never crashes, and there hasn't been a bug found in it in years.
actually, on the unhampered free market (in an anarcho-capitalist world), there would be .
aside from the fact that no-one would use a program that requires to run as root, and e-mail programs with Outlooks crappy features would be exposed as worthless and not used.
I agree, though slide-shows with handouts are useful, because they allow students to focus on thinking, instead of slavishly writing. It'd probably be best, however, to only give students the handouts after-class, so they can take their own notes during lectures.
Rothbard anticipated such objections, and adequately answered them. However, for the moment, let us assume that in such a world, all chaos breaks out. So what? With the world-wars and the millions killed in them, the holocaust, the dropping of the H-bomb, Vietnam, the Korean War, the Gulf Wars, and 9/11, how could the past century have possibly gone worse? Even if mass chaos broke loose without any states, that would surely be better than the mass-murder institutionalized by wars between states. At worst, the "chaos" would be localized, and would never mean the deaths of millions of civillians, not even if you would consider the cummulative world-wide effect.
However, it is not reasonable to assume that, absent The State, there would be such chaos. I will quote the relevant portions of Rothbard, which address your concerns:
One should also note that any court that decided to resolve a dispute between itself and another court by "duking it out" would immediately be recognized as an outlaw court, and dealt with by other private police forces and courts, including but not limited to the private police who would work on the streets or buildings in which such a "duking out" would have to occur.
In regards to your assertion that justice would invariably go to the richer and more powerful, this is also unlikely (however, even if it were to occur, such would be no different than as is today). Rothbard:
Most "hands on" contact in classes consists of the professor droning on and on. You can get more from reading a book, and do so in a quicker period of time. As for actual discourse, that can also occur at a distance online, most likely more efficiently and better so than in person (have you noticed that people tend to write more coherently than they speak).
Though I realize the humorous intent of your comment, if two consenting adults want to sleep together, they should be able to. A rational university would mandate that the professor defer that student's grading to another teacher. Of course, as an anarcho-capitalist, I believe universities should be allowed to have whatever backwards rules they want.
Rothbard discusses enforcement of the court's decisions in the other chapter I mentioned, The Public Sector.
When the court reaches a decision, the private police company with which the court has a contract (or the court's marshalls) enforce the decision.
If the person ruled against disagrees, he can take the case to his own court.
If the two courts disagree on liability, then they would have to agree upon another court to function as an appeals court, which would have the final say. In this way, every court would act both as a normal court, and as an appeals court when two other courts agreed to send the matter to that court for appeals.