Well, something is worth only what someone else is willing to pay for it.
So, if someone has to sell their wedding ring to eat, and if people will only pay $100 for it, but the current owner initially paid $500, then that's just the nature of the market. If that person shopped around for buyers willing to pay more then perhaps a higher value could be attributed to the sale of that ring. Why should someone be expected to pay more than the market value for a given product? It doesn't make sense.
If you want to get emotional/philsophical about it, then I will say the REAL tragedy is the fact that a woman has to sell posessions in order to eat. The price of what she gets for those posessions is inconsequential. The question is, why is she in such financial strife to begin with? Poverty in the US is an individual behavior problem, not a social or economic one.
Your understanding of laissez faire capitalism is correct.
However I must correct you on your "someone always gets screwed statement"
I have a marketing minor. Any marketing or business freshmen in college can tell you that in a truly free market (barring regulation/government intervention) a transaction ONLY takes place when both parties in the transaction precieve a benefit. In other words, if there is no benefit to one of the parties, they will not continue with the transaction.
Let me explain how market forces work using your analogy.
If you charge $1m for a glass of water on an oasis in the desert, and people are willing to pay it, then you have (possibly) made a profit. Assuming the market is free and not subject to regulation, other firms will begin to set up shop next to you and charge $900k for a glass of water. Then, you'll be forced to lower your price to equal theirs; better for the person buying the water. Well, eventually enough firms will come in to where the price becomes what one would consider 'normal' (assuming no collusion). In fact, some firms might go out of business because they cannot compete as the price approaches the cost of production and firms are forced to compete on very thin margin and high volume.
The natural course of the economy should be left alone as things always work themselves out assuming a free market because a free market seeks equlibrirum. If you were to impose "anti-price gouging" or "fair price controls" there would be little or no incentive for firms to bring resources into the area, innovate, and foster competition which of course lowers prices. Why would firms then resist this? Because the chance for profit would be reduced and regulation compliance (expenses) would be increased.
Yes - the UN ambassadors are unelected, so are the officials inside the UN (as they relate to the general populace).
But the UN has NO power. It is just a discussion forum like/. is except it is for countries, not us nerds. Think of it as a building in which member-states enter in to discuss events and do business. The building itself doesn't mean anything, it is just a place/organization for states to get together.
Also, ambassadors and representatives (diplomats) of each member state must vote on things how their country tells them. If there is a vote on a specific issue coming up, each rep that has a vote MUST communicate with their prime minister (or in the case of the US Sec of State), to determine how their country will be voting.
Countries can only agree or disagree to specific issues. For example, Iran signed a treaty (a document) that said they will not pursue nuclear weapons. They have since withdrawn from that treaty, therefore nullifying and voiding it. In the US (or most other sovereign nations) if a party was to do that they would be found in breach of contract and a penalty would be imposed. However the UN is NOT sovereign and to date there is nothing above the sovereignty of states. The EU might change that one day, who knows.
When I discovered this I was in high school. I worked as a office guy in our Navy ROTC unit mostly doing secretarial sort of bs.
I installed that on all 4 of the computers in our office and it was a big hit. These retired Navy guys liked watching the int'l events page and their stocks on the screen. It was quite interesting.
Now adays though I just don't care as much. "Too Much Information" has a real world meaning to me now:-(
"Actually, such [socialist] systems only "seem" to work. Thousands of Canadians cross the U.S. border each year to pay for heart surgery and other treatments. The "free" health care in their native land is available only after months, sometimes years of waiting, even if you die before your number is called.
In Britain and over 55, you'll probably be denied expensive treatments such as kidney dialysis. It's sad enough to watch loved ones die when a disease is incurable, but it's much worse to watch them die just because the line is too long.
The secret to lowering health care costs is to do away with the excessive regulation which drives up prices by 70-90% with no added benefit. "
And we use the AP wire. It comes in off of satellite updated every couple of minutes. The decoding/reception box also acts as a server to our LAN which distributes the news when it is downloaded from the bird. All of the computers that need it have an AP desktop application which reads the stories off of the AP server in the building.
At the top of every hour when the news guys are in (about 15 hours a day) they will select the best pick of local and national/regional/int'l stories to read over a 3 minute span from x:00-x:03. Unless something is specifically called to their attention or it is a very unique situation (it usually is not), they simply read and/or rewrite the news coming off of the 'AP wire'.
When no one is manning our news booth, from 9pm until 05:30am, we simply take an audio feed from ABC News at the top of the hour.
Most news outlets are like this. Newspapers will do a fair amount of "on-the-street" fact-finding (and then maybe up-link it to the AP), and your local TV station might do some of the same. However the majority of news copy that you will read/see/hear usually comes off of a wire, typically AP, sometimes Reuters, and occasionally others.
If you study late 19th century US Presidents before McKinley and Teddy, and general attitudes towards government after reconstruction but prior to the Spanish-American War, you will find a very laissez-faire atmosphere. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire
This is, among other things, what allowed the US IR to take place. Limited government regulations, new technology, economic boom, westward expansion etc.
Unless you are doing it to turn a profit, then you don't get prosecuted. You get sued. Specific amounts are below the threshold of criminal copyright acts and fall into civil torts. Civil law is party x vs party y. Criminal law is party x vs the government.
If the goal is to eliminate corporate power and influence over government, simply eliminate government's ability to regulate business. Then the corporations and special interests will have no reason to buy legislation because the legislators cannot legislate in their favor and against their competition. Restrictions on contributions wouldn't be needed since the government would have little power to pander to contributors.
The last time the US gov had a lassie-faire mindset it caused the Industrial Revolution. A capitalistic free-market economy is a vehicle for progress and the IR proves it. Imagine what kind of progress could be made with our current technology if regulations were minimized.
Remember big business likes big government because the gov has the power to regulate in their favor. Small government has no such power thus the government can't pander to big business.
The problem is that the government has granted itself more and more power to legislate and regulate where it doesn't belong as defined by the US Constitution.
This is why big business likes big government. Might seem counterintuitive at first but think about it. If big business can buy influence and legislative bills, then they can stifle their competition.
For example, one has to jump through many many hoops to open a small business in this country. Why? Because the government has over legislated and regulated to ensure that every single rule is followed for business. Big business has the capital and resources to be able to handle all of these hoops because they have legal departments, paper pushers, accountants, etc etc. The sole businessman doesn't have all of these methods to be in compliance with the nessecary laws. Therefore they have to spend an inordinate amount of time, effort, and money to keep up.
If the government would stick to its original definition as set forth in the US Constitution and Declreation of Independence, then we wouldn't have any special interests, buying of influence, over legislation, draconion regulation, etc because the government wouldn't have the power to affect such things.
If the government doesn't have the power to regulate the markets, then no one will pay money for the government to regulate the markets because it would be futile. We should stop governmental creep and bloat NOW!
I agree with you... I am not quite as much of an activist of the LP as you are, I do share many of your sentiments.
I vote LP whenever I get the chance. Since that isn't most of the time, I, like many other Americans, end up playing the "vote for the lesser evil candidate"
If you look at all of the RIAA/P2P cases, they always go for the person distributing (uploading) the files. Therefore, by definition, making the files available for downloading is considered distribution.
I seem to recall that most states have laws that actually prohibit competition for the phone networks. In other words you can't directly compete with the phone company by running wire and providing a dial-tone. Protectionary measures are taken to ensure they make a profit.
Wiondows may have taken years and millions of dollars (marketing dollars don't count) to develop, but there are other products that work just as well (and some would argue even better than Windows). Mac OS and Linux are two that instantly come to mind. One was developed for profit, the other was a collabarative effort amongst thousands of people.
But a very simple OS can be written by any CS student, and is done all of the time. I know people who have had to write an OS as a course requirement. Granted these underdeveloped OS are just that. And small independent companies can write their fully developed OS without spending massive amounts of money like MS or Apple.
So again, there isn't a huge barrier to entry if one wants to compete with MS. Outspending them in marketing dollars is a different story, but that is about market share, not a barrier to entry. Even so, the % of users has probably gravitated away from MS as other competiting products have become more substanstial, again specifically Linux and Mac OS.
In general I am not talking about anarchy; lack of government. I am talking about libertarianism; limited government.
If the goal is to eliminate corporate power and influence over government, simply eliminate government's ability to regulate business. Then the corporations and special interests will have no reason to buy legislation because the legislators cannot legislate in their favor and against their competition. Restrictions on contributions wouldn't be needed since the government would have little power to pander to contributors.
#1-I don't think #1 would work. In my opinion I think that the clause IS specific enough that it will fly, but yet vague enough to allow the labels to do what they want.
#2-There is a case in copyright law (and for the life of me I cannot remember the case name or the brief) but it basically says that the rights of the art are not dependent upon the medium that they exist on. In other words, just because you are the engineer that records the band and you have the finished master recording and you physically posses it, doesn't mean you have the rights to that recording. The phrase "seperation of content and medium" seems to jog a memory.
Plus there was a clause in one of the copyright acts passed in the 90s (maybe even the DMCA) which gives digital transmission rights to the copyright holder on top of traditional copyright rights. I do not know if that was retroactive or not.
If anyone out there who actually IS a copyright attorney could please chime it, it would be appreciated!
It is a French phrase meaning "let do, let go, let pass." First used in the eighteenth century as an injunction against government interference with trade, it became used as a synonym for strict free market economics during the early and mid-19th century. It is generally understood to be a doctrine opposing economic interventionism by the state beyond that which is perceived to be necessary to maintain peace and property rights.
Me? I'm 24 and want the government out of my life and out of my markets! Things tend to come out better that way.
The last time the US gov had a lassie-faire mindset it caused the Industrial Revolution. A capitalistic free-market economy is a vehicle for progress and the IR proves it. Imagine what kind of progress could be made with our current technology if regulations were minimized.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, something is worth only what someone else is willing to pay for it.
So, if someone has to sell their wedding ring to eat, and if people will only pay $100 for it, but the current owner initially paid $500, then that's just the nature of the market. If that person shopped around for buyers willing to pay more then perhaps a higher value could be attributed to the sale of that ring. Why should someone be expected to pay more than the market value for a given product? It doesn't make sense.
If you want to get emotional/philsophical about it, then I will say the REAL tragedy is the fact that a woman has to sell posessions in order to eat. The price of what she gets for those posessions is inconsequential. The question is, why is she in such financial strife to begin with? Poverty in the US is an individual behavior problem, not a social or economic one.
Your understanding of laissez faire capitalism is correct.
However I must correct you on your "someone always gets screwed statement"
I have a marketing minor. Any marketing or business freshmen in college can tell you that in a truly free market (barring regulation/government intervention) a transaction ONLY takes place when both parties in the transaction precieve a benefit. In other words, if there is no benefit to one of the parties, they will not continue with the transaction.
Let me explain how market forces work using your analogy.
If you charge $1m for a glass of water on an oasis in the desert, and people are willing to pay it, then you have (possibly) made a profit. Assuming the market is free and not subject to regulation, other firms will begin to set up shop next to you and charge $900k for a glass of water. Then, you'll be forced to lower your price to equal theirs; better for the person buying the water. Well, eventually enough firms will come in to where the price becomes what one would consider 'normal' (assuming no collusion). In fact, some firms might go out of business because they cannot compete as the price approaches the cost of production and firms are forced to compete on very thin margin and high volume.
The natural course of the economy should be left alone as things always work themselves out assuming a free market because a free market seeks equlibrirum. If you were to impose "anti-price gouging" or "fair price controls" there would be little or no incentive for firms to bring resources into the area, innovate, and foster competition which of course lowers prices. Why would firms then resist this? Because the chance for profit would be reduced and regulation compliance (expenses) would be increased.
Holding it down fer da Deutchland, yaaah!
:-)
(did anyone else find that chick hot in a synthetic/industrial sort of way?)
Same as in the copyright discussions. 'Fraud' does NOT equal 'theft'!
No one can STEAL your name or who you are! They can fraudulently use your name, SSN, etc, but you cannot have your name STOLEN! It is impossible.
Can we PLEASE quit calling it "identity theft" and use a more accurate description of "identity fraud".
Yes - the UN ambassadors are unelected, so are the officials inside the UN (as they relate to the general populace).
/. is except it is for countries, not us nerds. Think of it as a building in which member-states enter in to discuss events and do business. The building itself doesn't mean anything, it is just a place/organization for states to get together.
But the UN has NO power. It is just a discussion forum like
Also, ambassadors and representatives (diplomats) of each member state must vote on things how their country tells them. If there is a vote on a specific issue coming up, each rep that has a vote MUST communicate with their prime minister (or in the case of the US Sec of State), to determine how their country will be voting.
Countries can only agree or disagree to specific issues. For example, Iran signed a treaty (a document) that said they will not pursue nuclear weapons. They have since withdrawn from that treaty, therefore nullifying and voiding it. In the US (or most other sovereign nations) if a party was to do that they would be found in breach of contract and a penalty would be imposed. However the UN is NOT sovereign and to date there is nothing above the sovereignty of states. The EU might change that one day, who knows.
When I discovered this I was in high school. I worked as a office guy in our Navy ROTC unit mostly doing secretarial sort of bs.
:-(
I installed that on all 4 of the computers in our office and it was a big hit. These retired Navy guys liked watching the int'l events page and their stocks on the screen. It was quite interesting.
Now adays though I just don't care as much. "Too Much Information" has a real world meaning to me now
From Dr. Ruwart:
"Actually, such [socialist] systems only "seem" to work. Thousands of Canadians cross the U.S. border each year to pay for heart surgery and other treatments. The "free" health care in their native land is available only after months, sometimes years of waiting, even if you die before your number is called.
In Britain and over 55, you'll probably be denied expensive treatments such as kidney dialysis. It's sad enough to watch loved ones die when a disease is incurable, but it's much worse to watch them die just because the line is too long.
The secret to lowering health care costs is to do away with the excessive regulation which drives up prices by 70-90% with no added benefit. "
You can read more about this in her book posted online:
http://www.ruwart.com/Healing/chap5.html
http://www.ruwart.com/Healing/chap6.html
Honestly MM is good at what he does and is a brilliant propagandist. He is a good filmmaker.
On a more sarcastic but yet truthful note, he would've served well under the Nazis or perhaps the Communists' "Ministry of Information".
And we use the AP wire. It comes in off of satellite updated every couple of minutes. The decoding/reception box also acts as a server to our LAN which distributes the news when it is downloaded from the bird. All of the computers that need it have an AP desktop application which reads the stories off of the AP server in the building.
At the top of every hour when the news guys are in (about 15 hours a day) they will select the best pick of local and national/regional/int'l stories to read over a 3 minute span from x:00-x:03. Unless something is specifically called to their attention or it is a very unique situation (it usually is not), they simply read and/or rewrite the news coming off of the 'AP wire'.
When no one is manning our news booth, from 9pm until 05:30am, we simply take an audio feed from ABC News at the top of the hour.
Most news outlets are like this. Newspapers will do a fair amount of "on-the-street" fact-finding (and then maybe up-link it to the AP), and your local TV station might do some of the same. However the majority of news copy that you will read/see/hear usually comes off of a wire, typically AP, sometimes Reuters, and occasionally others.
For more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press
Yes, I have read that and it is not complete.
If you study late 19th century US Presidents before McKinley and Teddy, and general attitudes towards government after reconstruction but prior to the Spanish-American War, you will find a very laissez-faire atmosphere. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire
This is, among other things, what allowed the US IR to take place. Limited government regulations, new technology, economic boom, westward expansion etc.
Unless you are doing it to turn a profit, then you don't get prosecuted. You get sued. Specific amounts are below the threshold of criminal copyright acts and fall into civil torts. Civil law is party x vs party y. Criminal law is party x vs the government.
Mandated sniffing?
Yes... and it smells like fresh moist horse shit!
My posting here will explain it for you:
2 51144
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=184697&cid=15
If the goal is to eliminate corporate power and influence over government, simply eliminate government's ability to regulate business. Then the corporations and special interests will have no reason to buy legislation because the legislators cannot legislate in their favor and against their competition. Restrictions on contributions wouldn't be needed since the government would have little power to pander to contributors.
The last time the US gov had a lassie-faire mindset it caused the Industrial Revolution. A capitalistic free-market economy is a vehicle for progress and the IR proves it. Imagine what kind of progress could be made with our current technology if regulations were minimized.
Remember big business likes big government because the gov has the power to regulate in their favor. Small government has no such power thus the government can't pander to big business.
The problem is that the government has granted itself more and more power to legislate and regulate where it doesn't belong as defined by the US Constitution.
This is why big business likes big government. Might seem counterintuitive at first but think about it. If big business can buy influence and legislative bills, then they can stifle their competition.
For example, one has to jump through many many hoops to open a small business in this country. Why? Because the government has over legislated and regulated to ensure that every single rule is followed for business. Big business has the capital and resources to be able to handle all of these hoops because they have legal departments, paper pushers, accountants, etc etc. The sole businessman doesn't have all of these methods to be in compliance with the nessecary laws. Therefore they have to spend an inordinate amount of time, effort, and money to keep up.
If the government would stick to its original definition as set forth in the US Constitution and Declreation of Independence, then we wouldn't have any special interests, buying of influence, over legislation, draconion regulation, etc because the government wouldn't have the power to affect such things.
If the government doesn't have the power to regulate the markets, then no one will pay money for the government to regulate the markets because it would be futile. We should stop governmental creep and bloat NOW!
I agree with you... I am not quite as much of an activist of the LP as you are, I do share many of your sentiments.
I vote LP whenever I get the chance. Since that isn't most of the time, I, like many other Americans, end up playing the "vote for the lesser evil candidate"
You seriously have no understanding of how a libertarian free-market system works.
The most commonly heard pickup line in a gay bar is "pardon me, can I push in your stool"?
HA HA!
With a name like "Redbox" I thought it was a fetish pr0n about mensturation ;-)
If you look at all of the RIAA/P2P cases, they always go for the person distributing (uploading) the files. Therefore, by definition, making the files available for downloading is considered distribution.
I seem to recall that most states have laws that actually prohibit competition for the phone networks. In other words you can't directly compete with the phone company by running wire and providing a dial-tone. Protectionary measures are taken to ensure they make a profit.
Wiondows may have taken years and millions of dollars (marketing dollars don't count) to develop, but there are other products that work just as well (and some would argue even better than Windows). Mac OS and Linux are two that instantly come to mind. One was developed for profit, the other was a collabarative effort amongst thousands of people.
But a very simple OS can be written by any CS student, and is done all of the time. I know people who have had to write an OS as a course requirement. Granted these underdeveloped OS are just that. And small independent companies can write their fully developed OS without spending massive amounts of money like MS or Apple.
So again, there isn't a huge barrier to entry if one wants to compete with MS. Outspending them in marketing dollars is a different story, but that is about market share, not a barrier to entry. Even so, the % of users has probably gravitated away from MS as other competiting products have become more substanstial, again specifically Linux and Mac OS.
In general I am not talking about anarchy; lack of government. I am talking about libertarianism; limited government.
If the goal is to eliminate corporate power and influence over government, simply eliminate government's ability to regulate business. Then the corporations and special interests will have no reason to buy legislation because the legislators cannot legislate in their favor and against their competition. Restrictions on contributions wouldn't be needed since the government would have little power to pander to contributors.
#1-I don't think #1 would work. In my opinion I think that the clause IS specific enough that it will fly, but yet vague enough to allow the labels to do what they want.
#2-There is a case in copyright law (and for the life of me I cannot remember the case name or the brief) but it basically says that the rights of the art are not dependent upon the medium that they exist on. In other words, just because you are the engineer that records the band and you have the finished master recording and you physically posses it, doesn't mean you have the rights to that recording. The phrase "seperation of content and medium" seems to jog a memory.
Plus there was a clause in one of the copyright acts passed in the 90s (maybe even the DMCA) which gives digital transmission rights to the copyright holder on top of traditional copyright rights. I do not know if that was retroactive or not.
If anyone out there who actually IS a copyright attorney could please chime it, it would be appreciated!
Assuming I am NOT feeding a troll....
It is a French phrase meaning "let do, let go, let pass." First used in the eighteenth century as an injunction against government interference with trade, it became used as a synonym for strict free market economics during the early and mid-19th century. It is generally understood to be a doctrine opposing economic interventionism by the state beyond that which is perceived to be necessary to maintain peace and property rights.
You can read more in detail here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire
Interesting... I did not know that was there. Thank you for imparting that knowledge on me.
Me? I'm 24 and want the government out of my life and out of my markets! Things tend to come out better that way.
The last time the US gov had a lassie-faire mindset it caused the Industrial Revolution. A capitalistic free-market economy is a vehicle for progress and the IR proves it. Imagine what kind of progress could be made with our current technology if regulations were minimized.