The critics understand unchecked capitalism all too well. If monetary profit is all that matters, then the evidence clearly demonstrates that people suffer. This is yet another datum.
Considering that nowhere in the world does anything even close to unchecked capitalism exist, your datum is meaningless. Monetary profit also matters to those on the receiving end of this pollution, lest we forget. In a system of unchecked capitalism, where everyone is concerned with their own benefit, those who trample on others' prosperity will hardly be exempt from punishment.
There is absoloutely no guarantee that an unregulated market will lead to an optimal outcome for actual people. On the contrary, some people will suffer greatly.
What you're talking about is anarcho-capitalism, not Libertarianism. Libertarianism has always been about responsibility for your actions. By Libertarian standards, if your actions result in polluting the land and water of others, you are responsible for your crimes.
You know, there are some anarcho-capitalists who expect "market forces" to do a fine job of setting up restrictions on, and punishments for, polluting others' property. Government is not a prerequisite for law. (Anarcho-capitalists, by the way, are a subset of small-L libertarians, before you sling too much mud.)
Robert Hutchinson
Re:Picture of bills with US bill
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 1
I was able to get a hold of a couple Euros and I took a picture with the only bill I had at home at the moment (a $2 bill)
Ol' Tom looks like he resents the comparison. (He just wishes he could show off his red hair.)
The recording industry is using every means at its disposal to gain leverage for the SSSCA or something like it. In the current environment, I don't believe there's any way to counteract the numerous lines of attack "copy protection" afford the industry.
Boycott -- "Our sales are dropping! Help us, Congress!"
Download -- See above.
Buy, then return -- "Store owners are demanding that we do something about all this hassle! You see that we've already tried and failed! Help us, Congress!"
Buy, then hack -- "We told them they couldn't pirate it, and they did anyway! Obviously they aren't threatened enough! Help us, Congress!"
No, I'm convinced that we'll only truly begin to make a difference after tougher legislation goes into effect. In addition to the hurdles listed above, most people--most Slashdot readers--aren't motivated by calls to not act and to forgo listening to their favorite music. The whole reason we're angry is because we want to enjoy our music. We'll only start to shine when what's needed is positive action taken, not to attempt counter-maneuvers against the RIAA, but simply to use technology the way we want to use it and the way we know it can be used.
I say, let them copy protect all the CDs they want. It will ultimately be no protection at all.
The fundamental problem with anarchism lies in this statement. Open Source's GPL itself requires a heirarchy to maintain it, although it was designed to fight a heirarchy.
Some would say the fundamental problem lies in the definition of anarchism being used...
I have an episode recorded somewhere (maybe Cave Dwellers?) where, at the end, one of the bots states "This is THE worst movie we've ever been forced to watch!" and there ensues a great argument. They list *all* the nasties, and _Ring of Terror_ was the one that brought the house down.
That would be "Being From Another Planet," a film that ends with the bad guy's hand being burned after he messes with a mummy/alien's Chinese Checkers game.
Now, searching with Google and the terms Signetics "write only memory" gets me over 80 hits, the last 40 of which have NOTHING to do with my search at all - they just contain one or more of the words. Note the quotes - I was searching for the exact phrase "write only memory", a distinction lost upon Google.
When I did the above search, I got 41 hits, plus the "very similar" omitted ones. Also, you can't trust the brief quote that Google tosses up from the page. The one I checked, while displaying write, only, and memory all separately, did have "write only memory" on the page.
I believe this might also address the occasional annoyance of "George A. Bush" not working. Google puts priority on the phrase, but it's also looking for the individual words. This is probably helpful when you can't remember the correct prepositions in a title: "voyage at the bottom of a sea" works better without reading the common words. Google pulls up relevant hits with the above phrase; Altavista gets 0 hits.
And as for NEAR, I was under the impression that Google weights every search with nearness. Put in a long phrase without quotes, and you're still likely to find the phrase in correct order near the top of the hits.
One of the basic precepts of the libertarian philosphy is adherance to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Whoa, back up. First, that is hardly a basic precept of the libertarian philosophy. That philosophy has only one precept: the initiation of force is wrong. For a libertarian to promote adherence to the Constitution and the BoR requires them to find such a government not to be initiating force. Many of us libs find that idea laughable.
Second, even limited government Libertarians (note the capitalization) hardly stick to what you've outlined above. Any minarchists reading this who would shed a tear if the feds starting ignoring the power to run a post office tomorrow, raise your hand...
The tenth amendment is the trump card here, it basically tells the federal government to go screw itself; it isn't allowed to do much of anything.
And yet it does anyway...
If anyone would like the opinion of an anarchist libertarian: copyrights are government-provided monopolies in ideas. Any law written based on protecting them will be, by necessity, an outrageous violation of rights. I would support things like arguments for states' rights and fair use only insofar as they would help to reduce the level of violation. It would still be preposterous to claim that decentralized thugs have any claim to rights, or that "fair use" isn't a collection of bread crumbs thrown to the public so they won't have to stop thinking completely. Yet.
Oh, and to JamesOfTheDesert: Rothbard espoused minimalist government? I think a rereading of his work might be in order.
The US government is obviously being terribly corrupted by various organizations with lots of money.
Ha. Governments corrupt businesses. A cursory examination of politics vs. economics makes this clear.
Libertarians seem to think that by reducing gov't influence in daily life that things will somehow work out for the better. Hmm.
Stupid! Sorry, but the fact is that corporations would have even more control and we would live in a capitalist dictatorship!
Uh-huh. Just ignore the near-universal tendency for corporations to turn to government when they want to wield power.
I'd reply to the rest of your message, but I don't think I could come up with responses simpler than the two above.
"Oh, it's some encryption software. I use it on all my e-mail."
"I see..."
"Yep, with this baby, I could send tips on bomb-making to some guy who lives in a shack in the mountains, and no one would be the wiser!"
"Oh?"
"Yeah, and the best part is, the encryption is unbreakable! Although some federal agencies sure would love to change that."
"Hutchinson, when was your last employee review?"
Guys, if your employer is ready to read your e-mail, what makes you think he'll just twirl his moustache and mutter "foiled again!" when he sees you've put PGP on the company's computer? I suppose you might argue that he'd be more likely to get in trouble for firing you over your protection of "privacy rights."
A job is not a right, a natural resource, or any other egalitarian ideal. It is an agreement to work for pay. Conditions can, and should, come with such agreements. Next time, don't sign on with any companies that reserve the right to fire employees who can't be bothered to look for porn on their own time.
Sen. Harp, the mother of three apparently unfortunate children, argues that "these are games that train people to kill."
The senator is really onto something here. In the same spirit, I would like to propose legislation outlawing government, as it is an institution that trains people to lie and steal.
Here's a talk/interview with the author of Day of Deceit, Robert Stinnett. Considering how much effort it took in order to get the proof for his book, I doubt you'll find it neatly tied up in a bow on the Internet.
"Cryptographers hadn't yet broken the Japanese code"... ha! I thought Slashdot was interested in the truth about the NSA and its predecessors.
And how are consumers supposed to know what drugs have and have not been tested?
If the drug has been tested, the drug company can certainly provide documentation of it.
If you answer no, then drug companies are under no obligation to provide that information, and consumers will not be able to make the informed choices that you claim they will make.
If you buy a drug that has no documentation, you take it with the knowledge that it could be instant death. If you buy a drug that has documentation, you take it with the knowledge provided. In both cases, the consumer is sufficiently informed to make a reasonable judgment. Yes?
If we got rid of the FDA, new drugs would get to market a lot faster, as would genetically-engineered foods. This is a double-edged sword, though. We might get new medicines faster, but we'd also have more dangerous drugs reaching consumers when they shouldn't.
It would be up to the consumers to take or not take drugs that had not been tested thoroughly.
And coming from the perspective of a farmer's son, I can tell you that if the EPA wasn't around, we'd have much better pesticides and herbicides. Of course, we'd still probably have DDT and all the proplems it's caused.
What problems are those? DDT was banned due to lies and misinformation, and thousands have died of malaria needlessly as a result. Here's the first link that was handy.
A government-instituted monopoly requires making free competition illegal, which spits in the face of property rights and economics.
Of course, you can't let the monopoly have free reign. It must be regulated in the public interest.
Because there's nothing better to keep a company in line that's responsible to no one than a government that's responsible to no one.
The monopoly business gets the advantages of no competition, economy of scale, and a captive customer.
The public should get the advantages of universal service, higher levels of customer service, lower prices, and stability.
It's a win-win situation...
... unless you're that part of the public that wants to compete in the market, or that part of the public that wants to purchase services from that competition.
In the telco industry, it would be a generally good thing to allow the Bells to have a monopoly. But regulate hell outta them: force them to provide fiber to all new installations; to provide full and timely customer service; to upgrade switches with the latest technology instead of the antique crap they have in storage; to roll out DSL to every home within the next five years; and regulate the prices they charge.
If your goal is to utterly ruin Internet service, sure. Ignoring basic economics does not make them disappear. I can say with a high level of certainty that your system would bleed red ink and provide a pathetic level of service (well, at least everyone would be getting crappy service).
It can be made to work, if it were approached systematically and intelligently.
Two traits that governments excel at, to be sure.
Alas, what's going to happen is that competition is going to weed out the weak, and we'll be left with just a few very powerful, very wealthy, very uncontrolled telephone companies that answer to no one but their stockholders.
Perhaps you'll be unable to make them answer. I'll stop using their services, myself. Why in the world is it a bad thing to weed out the weak?
Internet access is not a right, damn it. It is a good. To treat it otherwise is to guarantee its misuse.
[T]he majority of the information the corps have on us is our buying capacity, what we like in ads and television. This isn't a terrible invasion of privacy, and it's not the beginning of the Thought Police, this is just the government's attept to......
I really don't know why they would want this information.
Can you say "drug profiling"?
"Look at how many straws this guy bought last year, Johnson. Big ol' cokehead. Seize his bank account."
1) The government is using force to obtain this data. Taxes are paying for these purchases, and taxes are theft.
2) The (federal, at least) government is collecting this information in order to help them in doing things which, far more often than not, they are not authorized to do.
I still can't find the opt-out checkbox on this 1040...
It's very sad to see the otherwise perfect records of the U.S. and Russian space agencies blemished by this petty fighting. Doesn't anyone remember the good times, like when we had to get to the moon to stop Communism, or when we sent astronauts up to an orbiting rustbucket to sit around for three months in order to promote... uh, to promote...
Anyway, I'm confident that this will be worked out in a perfectly fair manner. Cobbled-together governmental alliances have proven to be rock solid. At least we're not forced to resolve this issue by less assured means, like private contracts.
The only thing I can confidently say on the matter is that it's hypocritical of the publishers. Is there an entity left on the planet that screams for its IP rights to be protected while not doing its damnedest to trample on others' supposed rights when it suits them?
Beyond that, to me, arguing the specifics of piracy is like arguing the specifics of the new "Earth's sky is purple" law. Earth's sky isn't purple, so I couldn't care less about specifics.
Yeah, and anybody can build their own telephone system, too. Corporations do it every day. Fuckload of good it does you if it can't talk to anyone else's, though, and that's the difference.
The reason you want it to talk to anyone else's, though, is because other people choose to use other systems, not because MCI is holding them at gunpoint.
"Monopolies" (those that aren't propped up by government) are businesses that have become too successful for their competitors' liking. AIM won over millions of users... why is it unfair that competitors should have the same task?
AOL has been ordered to open the protocol and their servers to either "server-to-server interoperability" or direct retrieval of information by competing clients. I wouldn't say their actions fall within "their rights," then, would you?
Perhaps not their legal rights... but certainly their natural rights. (Spare me the "corporations have no rights" speech; everyone who owns AOL has natural rights, corporation or not.)
Robert Hutchinson
Arguing on behalf of the servers, NOT the protocol
Personally, I don't recognize the valid existence of intellectual property... but I still think AOL is in the right on this issue, if only because it is AOL's servers that are being used without authorization. If I leave the door to my house open, and put a sign above the door that says "Entering this house without the owner's permission will be considered trespassing," and someone enters without my permission, they are trespassing. Doors and locks are not needed to create the crime of trespassing... the rules of the owner are what ultimately define trespassing.
Slashdot Mirror
Robert Hutchinson
Robert Hutchinson
Ol' Tom looks like he resents the comparison. (He just wishes he could show off his red hair.)
Robert Hutchinson
The recording industry is using every means at its disposal to gain leverage for the SSSCA or something like it. In the current environment, I don't believe there's any way to counteract the numerous lines of attack "copy protection" afford the industry.
No, I'm convinced that we'll only truly begin to make a difference after tougher legislation goes into effect. In addition to the hurdles listed above, most people--most Slashdot readers--aren't motivated by calls to not act and to forgo listening to their favorite music. The whole reason we're angry is because we want to enjoy our music. We'll only start to shine when what's needed is positive action taken, not to attempt counter-maneuvers against the RIAA, but simply to use technology the way we want to use it and the way we know it can be used.
I say, let them copy protect all the CDs they want. It will ultimately be no protection at all.
Robert Hutchinson
Robert Hutchinson
Robert Hutchinson
Atom bombs aren't "intellectual."
Robert Hutchinson
Robert Hutchinson
Robert Hutchinson
I believe this might also address the occasional annoyance of "George A. Bush" not working. Google puts priority on the phrase, but it's also looking for the individual words. This is probably helpful when you can't remember the correct prepositions in a title: "voyage at the bottom of a sea" works better without reading the common words. Google pulls up relevant hits with the above phrase; Altavista gets 0 hits.
And as for NEAR, I was under the impression that Google weights every search with nearness. Put in a long phrase without quotes, and you're still likely to find the phrase in correct order near the top of the hits.
Robert Hutchinson
Whoa, back up. First, that is hardly a basic precept of the libertarian philosophy. That philosophy has only one precept: the initiation of force is wrong. For a libertarian to promote adherence to the Constitution and the BoR requires them to find such a government not to be initiating force. Many of us libs find that idea laughable.
Second, even limited government Libertarians (note the capitalization) hardly stick to what you've outlined above. Any minarchists reading this who would shed a tear if the feds starting ignoring the power to run a post office tomorrow, raise your hand ...
And yet it does anyway ...
If anyone would like the opinion of an anarchist libertarian: copyrights are government-provided monopolies in ideas. Any law written based on protecting them will be, by necessity, an outrageous violation of rights. I would support things like arguments for states' rights and fair use only insofar as they would help to reduce the level of violation. It would still be preposterous to claim that decentralized thugs have any claim to rights, or that "fair use" isn't a collection of bread crumbs thrown to the public so they won't have to stop thinking completely. Yet.
Oh, and to JamesOfTheDesert: Rothbard espoused minimalist government? I think a rereading of his work might be in order.
Robert Hutchinson
Ha. Governments corrupt businesses. A cursory examination of politics vs. economics makes this clear.
Uh-huh. Just ignore the near-universal tendency for corporations to turn to government when they want to wield power.
I'd reply to the rest of your message, but I don't think I could come up with responses simpler than the two above.
Robert Hutchinson
A job is not a right, a natural resource, or any other egalitarian ideal. It is an agreement to work for pay. Conditions can, and should, come with such agreements. Next time, don't sign on with any companies that reserve the right to fire employees who can't be bothered to look for porn on their own time.
Robert Hutchinson
Robert Hutchinson
"Cryptographers hadn't yet broken the Japanese code" ... ha! I thought Slashdot was interested in the truth about the NSA and its predecessors.
Robert Hutchinson
Robert Hutchinson
Robert Hutchinson
Internet access is not a right, damn it. It is a good. To treat it otherwise is to guarantee its misuse.
Robert Hutchinson
"Look at how many straws this guy bought last year, Johnson. Big ol' cokehead. Seize his bank account."
Robert Hutchinson
2) The (federal, at least) government is collecting this information in order to help them in doing things which, far more often than not, they are not authorized to do.
I still can't find the opt-out checkbox on this 1040 ...
Robert Hutchinson
Anyway, I'm confident that this will be worked out in a perfectly fair manner. Cobbled-together governmental alliances have proven to be rock solid. At least we're not forced to resolve this issue by less assured means, like private contracts.
Robert Hutchinson
Beyond that, to me, arguing the specifics of piracy is like arguing the specifics of the new "Earth's sky is purple" law. Earth's sky isn't purple, so I couldn't care less about specifics.
Robert Hutchinson
"Monopolies" (those that aren't propped up by government) are businesses that have become too successful for their competitors' liking. AIM won over millions of users ... why is it unfair that competitors should have the same task?
Robert Hutchinson
Robert Hutchinson
Arguing on behalf of the servers, NOT the protocol
Robert Hutchinson