That merely points out one of the other flaws in the idea of a "free" market.
Not many people claim that free markets always produce economically optimal results, but that isn't the idea. It's not a "flaw", it's just a side effect of how free markets work with human participants.
Nothing succeeds like Success.
Yes and no, maintaining success is not easy even when built on success; there are a bazillion counter-examples of highly successful and well-entrenched companies in some market, who practically overnight disappear into obscurity. Borland for example once totally dominated the development tools market, and in no time at all they vanished into obscurity.
Very plausible, but not actually correct I think. The FDA does not test drugs. The pharmaceutical companies test the drugs then try to persuade the FDA and it's overseas equivalents like the EMA (European Medicines Agency) to approve the drugs.
Technically yes, but the effect is the same, because the FDA requires the pharmaceutical companies to not just test the drugs, but do multiple exhaustive, comprehensive tests over several stages, that take years. And yes, that costs a lot and those costs are obviously ultimately paid by those who purchase the drugs.
Not only is there nothing wrong with price discrimination, but many business models rely on it for production to be viable at all. In the movie example, if movie producers could not get more than a few dollars per movie anywhere, many would not be able to cover the costs of movie production and would simply go out of business --- yay, then you have 'no movie at all' as the alternative. (Yes there are very profitable movies but many movies do little more than break even currently, and some run at a loss.) The same is true in software (e.g. expensive 'professional editions' vs inexpensive student or lower-end editions) and hardware, e.g. the classic example of CPU pricing which is so non-linear. It might look 'unfair' and you might think 'but gee, this price is artificial and the company could just be selling the same thing to me for less' but in reality the company can *not* just sell you the same thing for less because aggregate income would drop below overall cost of production if the more expensive markets weren't helping subsidise the lower-end market. It's not some 'evil' thing companies do, it's usually the choice of do that or have no product at all.
Not just time, but money. Your tax dollars, hard at work, put to good use. That huge deficit is so justified. Isn't it time we voted out all this deadweight?
they still use a demonized picture of bill gates for microsoft stories...
which is worse, personalized corporate attacks long after the person has left the corporation
What? Since when do peoples actions magically get absolved the moment they change jobs? By your logic, if Hitler had merely changed jobs instead of committing suicide, then voila, it would no longer be reasonable to "demonize" him. Not that I'm comparing Bill Gates to Hitler, but nonetheless Bill Gates earned his bad reputation quite deservedly.
Actually it's "politicians state the words 'for the good of the children', the *voters* turn their brains off, and the politicians abuse their power to beget more power". The politicians are the only ones with their brains working very well here --- it's their moral centers that are turned off.
I don't really agree that 'all power corrupts', as the parroty meme goes, but in general it does tend to, and I do agree that in most cases, power begets more power, by its nature. But this is why the 2nd Amendment is there, to help create a balance of power in favor of the liberty of individuals. Governments have stepped way too far beyond their mandate.
You are being so obviously disingenuous in feigning an inability to see that somebody might try interpret an enumeration of individual rights as exhaustive. But come on. You *honestly* can't see that? Honestly? Really? Somehow I don't think so. I mean yeeeahhh... nobody would *ever* conceivably misinterpret enumerations of rights as exhaustive, ever. Come the F on. You cannot really believe that. You seem to have at least a passing knowledge of law (and are perhaps a lawyer), but if so, you would know that this is one of the THE most common points of attempts at misinterpretations of ANY legal document --- that's why just about every contract has boilerplate clauses in list enumerations stating explicitly that they aren't necessarily exhaustive. Your argument is absurdly incredulous. The GP AC doesn't have to "prove" anything to you in order for his/her point to be valid, but nice try at attempting to cast doubt by attempting to artifically tack on conditions to be "proven"... you're a sly character indeed, but I have very finely tuned BS and manipulation detectors, and logic trumps all fallacy-based attempts at manipulating arguments.
I have no idea what you are talking about here. It seems to me to be an emotional tirade.
Nice attempt at misdirection --- but it seemed very clear to me, as a third party reading the conversation. Ignoring the point by labelling it ad hominem doesn't make the point go away, and I'm afraid you insult the intelligence of readers here if you think they're fooled.
cretinous martinets would try to argue that those were the only limits. And here we have one, doing just that.
I don't know how to respond to this. What I'm saying is that you can't just say "the Constitution protects my rights." You've got to take positive political actions if you want to secure those rights.
That makes me a "cretinous martinet"?
Actually, having read the whole thread, it's clear that what you were saying is that 'the Constitution is outdated and therefore doesn't apply in today's situations', and you were also clearly saying that the government has a right to do things that aren't specifically forbidden in the Constitution --- now on both of those points you're clearly already not just incorrect but very much 'lost in the forest', but apart from that, giving you the benefit of the doubt, maybe you think you're just being "pragmatic" are are just 'innocently' suggesting that practical attempts at fixing things shouldn't be based on the constitution because you think you'll get 'better' results working through other systems and via other arguments, or maybe your motives are ultimately fascist, who knows, but ultimately the moment you start on that road of 'well let's ignore the Constitution it's outdated and there are other frameworks to work in', you are *lost* --- because at that point, you've already lost the whole point, and are a downhill road where any kind of fascism is not only possible but *inevitable* over time. The Constitution is the highest law of the land, is still very much relevant. You attempt to foggy the argument by throwing in lots of little technical 'points of debate' (e.g. whether or not some right applies to state/federal or both) as if it's something very complex that mere mortals can't figure out, but really that's just an attempt to throw distractions in from the bigger picture --- because it doesn't take a genius to figure out the framers would've intended the fourth amendment be interpreted to state and local government, and that all this is very clearly laid out in the Constitution, and the framers would be turning in their graves now at this news, absolutely aghast.
I think the tide is slowly turning; people are slowly getting tired of politicians running roughshod all over the Constitution, and the chickens of the steady decades-long erosion of rights are starting to come home to roost in the form of major economic damage.
The issues are actually very simple. People you try to make them look 'very complex', and try muddy the issues, but at heart they are very simple. Just take a step back and look at the spirit of the Constitution and a lot of things become clear. Crystal-clear, in fact --- you may fool some people, but you aren't fooling everyone.
This is honestly the first time in my life that I am ashamed of my heritage.
I hope I'm not interpreting you incorrectly, but this gives the impression you don't feel that the previous actions of fascist Italy in recent history were shameful. I presume (and hope) that's not what you intended? (Honest question not trolling.)
Frankly I think this Google incident (and apparently there are a number of other cases the Italian government are pursuing) reeks of fascism to me.
The exact same arguments apply to any kind of online publishing forum that allow individuals to post content --- there is nothing "special" about video. Therefore, by the same logic, I suppose you also believe that online forums such as slashdot should be required to vet every single post a user makes before it goes online, in case it contains anything illegal etc. In fact, what you're saying is that there should not be such a thing as a public publishing forum. In fact, you're defending fascism - maybe unwittingly through stupitidy or maybe maliciously, but the effect is the same. People like you give me the creeps, what a horrible world we'd live in if you had your way in the legal system. This is precisely why Thomas Jefferson said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants".
Excuse my cynicism about such reports, but at least once a year every year we hear some major government department bemoan how vulnerable the 'cyber-infrastructure' is to 'cyber attack'. Be scared! The message is clear! We simply must give some deadweight organisation a whole lot of money from the tax-funded budget, pronto, so that a whole building full of people somewhere can sit around pretending to come up with solutions for another year! Then they'll do nothing until budget time again next year, when we'll hear another yet alarming report about how vulnerable everything is and how the whole Internets is on the verge of being attacked and destroyed by (insert boogie-man-of-the-day blah blah) etc. Or worse, instead of doing nothing, they still don't solve the actual problems, but just pass bills that give government more power.
I'm not saying there aren't vulnerabilities in the infrastructure - certainly there are - but there's 'solving those problems', and then there's 'solving those problems'.
Forcing the defenseless to your personal political whims
Gee, yeah, totally defenseless, I mean the government only has a police force, the largest military in the world, and numerous other powerful organisations to defend itself. A monopoly on the biggest 'force of force' in the world - under what strange definition of "defenseless" can you possibly make such an absurd statement with a straight face?
That makes you a tyrant, no better than any other dictator rightly despised by history.
What, like Nelson Mandela, who engaged in precisely such practices? You don't ultimately tell if someone is on the good side or the bad side by looking at the strategies they employ --- you tell by looking at the principles they're fighting for --- are they fighting for liberty or fighting for fascism. Some terrorists really are freedom fighters.
At first I thought there were sure a lot of anti-Stack people on/. who love paying taxes so much, then I realised that most the posts on your side of the argument are posted by you alone. 20 odd comments and counting. And given the nonsensical distortions in this comment, I'd say you're trolling.
He didn't blame the Catholic Church, he merely cited them as an example of a large organization that is able to successfully avoid paying taxes while the middle class gets the screws tightened on them. RTFM next time (i.e. Read The Fucking Manifesto).
No, getting caught in such a spectacular and public way was dumb --- but come on, who amongst us has never, ever looked at one single porn-y image while at work?
It's extremely un-PC to say this, and it's also somewhat counterintuitive, but merely vaccinating a population doesn't *necessarily* raise their standard of living --- it may merely raise the *number* of people living in poverty. Africa is a prime example; it historically has been one of the biggest benefactors of vaccinations since vaccinations were first developed... do most Africans now have a high standard of living? No, instead they have a massive population explosion but are still living about the same poor quality of life they did 100 years ago. In other words, 'well done, you just made even more poor people'. (PS I am speaking as an African, and have lived in Africa and worked with Africans my whole life, this is not just armchair rubbish.)
Bill Gates seems to genuinely mean well, but I fear his efforts will just serve to further explode the population of people living in poverty, and then there'll be even more people that need to be fed that can't feed themselves. You need to also simultaneously educate those people whose lives you are saving, to teach them to run their own modern industrialised economies, and that is much, much harder than merely sending them a bunch of medicine or food.
I think if I had that much money, I'd rather create an investment fund for funding free-market entrepreneurs within poor communities who help build solutions to their own problems.
The thing is, there is no fundamental difference between a currency trade, and *any* movement of money. Thus the fundamental question at heart here is actually "do free citizens have the right to ever exchange money without the government being informed". If you believe governments must have knowledge of every forex transaction, then by extension you must also believe that governments must have knowledge every time money changes hands anywhere at all for anything at all. Governments mostly already believe they have that right, but I draw the line there and don't agree. Of course we need to minimise problems like terrorism (which is actually quite minimal already), but most e.g. problematic money laundering is already for activities that probably should be legal anyway (e.g. cannabis, gambling), and if that was fixed, that would free state resources to do more and better policing against the really bad stuff, which would seriously mitigate any negative effect that easing the omnipresence of government "watching every transaction" might have.
I hope they get in the crap with even more countries and are forced to do stuff like this, maybe eventually they'll have to declare themselves as an actual bank
I hope not - God help us if that happens, because the reason banks are unable to compete and become as useful as PayPal is that they're crippled by over-regulation (yeah I know it's unpopular to say that in today's "banks are teh evil, pitchforks against the banks!!1!" culture, but people are over-reacting). Be careful what you wish for: The fact is, that thing you cry out for is precisely what would destroy PayPal if you ever got your wish, and then you'll wish there was a PayPal. I live in a country where PayPal isn't available precisely because of government over-regulation (hangover from dictatorship days where government tried to watch and control every movement people made with their money), and if you'd prefer to trade places with me and have have no PayPal at all instead of the current crappy one, I'd be very happy to do so.
Just because some buyer decides to do a chargeback on his credit card 120 days after purchase does not mean I am responsible for the money. Paypal is not a bank. I did not borrow from them. I do not owe them anything, and they can't touch my credit
But surely when you signed up with them initially, you agreed to their terms of service, which would've included responsibility for chargebacks? Are you saying you committed fraud against PayPal by flouting the ToS you had agreed to? Sorry to be a 'devil's advocate', but if you didn't like their ToS, you should not have agreed to use their services in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
That merely points out one of the other flaws in the idea of a "free" market.
Not many people claim that free markets always produce economically optimal results, but that isn't the idea. It's not a "flaw", it's just a side effect of how free markets work with human participants.
Nothing succeeds like Success.
Yes and no, maintaining success is not easy even when built on success; there are a bazillion counter-examples of highly successful and well-entrenched companies in some market, who practically overnight disappear into obscurity. Borland for example once totally dominated the development tools market, and in no time at all they vanished into obscurity.
Very plausible, but not actually correct I think. The FDA does not test drugs. The pharmaceutical companies test the drugs then try to persuade the FDA and it's overseas equivalents like the EMA (European Medicines Agency) to approve the drugs.
Technically yes, but the effect is the same, because the FDA requires the pharmaceutical companies to not just test the drugs, but do multiple exhaustive, comprehensive tests over several stages, that take years. And yes, that costs a lot and those costs are obviously ultimately paid by those who purchase the drugs.
There is nothing wrong with price discrimination.
Not only is there nothing wrong with price discrimination, but many business models rely on it for production to be viable at all. In the movie example, if movie producers could not get more than a few dollars per movie anywhere, many would not be able to cover the costs of movie production and would simply go out of business --- yay, then you have 'no movie at all' as the alternative. (Yes there are very profitable movies but many movies do little more than break even currently, and some run at a loss.) The same is true in software (e.g. expensive 'professional editions' vs inexpensive student or lower-end editions) and hardware, e.g. the classic example of CPU pricing which is so non-linear. It might look 'unfair' and you might think 'but gee, this price is artificial and the company could just be selling the same thing to me for less' but in reality the company can *not* just sell you the same thing for less because aggregate income would drop below overall cost of production if the more expensive markets weren't helping subsidise the lower-end market. It's not some 'evil' thing companies do, it's usually the choice of do that or have no product at all.
Not just time, but money. Your tax dollars, hard at work, put to good use. That huge deficit is so justified. Isn't it time we voted out all this deadweight?
they still use a demonized picture of bill gates for microsoft stories...
which is worse, personalized corporate attacks long after the person has left the corporation
What? Since when do peoples actions magically get absolved the moment they change jobs? By your logic, if Hitler had merely changed jobs instead of committing suicide, then voila, it would no longer be reasonable to "demonize" him. Not that I'm comparing Bill Gates to Hitler, but nonetheless Bill Gates earned his bad reputation quite deservedly.
Quote yourself: "I'd be fine with a youtube or ted link or something."
So you'd be fine with a youtube or ted link, but not wikipedia? That makes no sense, sounds more like backpedalling to me.
Actually it's "politicians state the words 'for the good of the children', the *voters* turn their brains off, and the politicians abuse their power to beget more power". The politicians are the only ones with their brains working very well here --- it's their moral centers that are turned off.
There is no question that "all power corrupts".
I don't really agree that 'all power corrupts', as the parroty meme goes, but in general it does tend to, and I do agree that in most cases, power begets more power, by its nature. But this is why the 2nd Amendment is there, to help create a balance of power in favor of the liberty of individuals. Governments have stepped way too far beyond their mandate.
You are being so obviously disingenuous in feigning an inability to see that somebody might try interpret an enumeration of individual rights as exhaustive. But come on. You *honestly* can't see that? Honestly? Really? Somehow I don't think so. I mean yeeeahhh ... nobody would *ever* conceivably misinterpret enumerations of rights as exhaustive, ever. Come the F on. You cannot really believe that. You seem to have at least a passing knowledge of law (and are perhaps a lawyer), but if so, you would know that this is one of the THE most common points of attempts at misinterpretations of ANY legal document --- that's why just about every contract has boilerplate clauses in list enumerations stating explicitly that they aren't necessarily exhaustive. Your argument is absurdly incredulous. The GP AC doesn't have to "prove" anything to you in order for his/her point to be valid, but nice try at attempting to cast doubt by attempting to artifically tack on conditions to be "proven" ... you're a sly character indeed, but I have very finely tuned BS and manipulation detectors, and logic trumps all fallacy-based attempts at manipulating arguments.
because it doesn't take a genius to figure out the framers would've intended the fourth amendment be interpreted to state and local government,
Apologies, a correction, I meant "state and federal" government, of course.
I have no idea what you are talking about here. It seems to me to be an emotional tirade.
Nice attempt at misdirection --- but it seemed very clear to me, as a third party reading the conversation. Ignoring the point by labelling it ad hominem doesn't make the point go away, and I'm afraid you insult the intelligence of readers here if you think they're fooled.
cretinous martinets would try to argue that those were the only limits. And here we have one, doing just that.
I don't know how to respond to this. What I'm saying is that you can't just say "the Constitution protects my rights." You've got to take positive political actions if you want to secure those rights.
That makes me a "cretinous martinet"?
Actually, having read the whole thread, it's clear that what you were saying is that 'the Constitution is outdated and therefore doesn't apply in today's situations', and you were also clearly saying that the government has a right to do things that aren't specifically forbidden in the Constitution --- now on both of those points you're clearly already not just incorrect but very much 'lost in the forest', but apart from that, giving you the benefit of the doubt, maybe you think you're just being "pragmatic" are are just 'innocently' suggesting that practical attempts at fixing things shouldn't be based on the constitution because you think you'll get 'better' results working through other systems and via other arguments, or maybe your motives are ultimately fascist, who knows, but ultimately the moment you start on that road of 'well let's ignore the Constitution it's outdated and there are other frameworks to work in', you are *lost* --- because at that point, you've already lost the whole point, and are a downhill road where any kind of fascism is not only possible but *inevitable* over time. The Constitution is the highest law of the land, is still very much relevant. You attempt to foggy the argument by throwing in lots of little technical 'points of debate' (e.g. whether or not some right applies to state/federal or both) as if it's something very complex that mere mortals can't figure out, but really that's just an attempt to throw distractions in from the bigger picture --- because it doesn't take a genius to figure out the framers would've intended the fourth amendment be interpreted to state and local government, and that all this is very clearly laid out in the Constitution, and the framers would be turning in their graves now at this news, absolutely aghast.
I think the tide is slowly turning; people are slowly getting tired of politicians running roughshod all over the Constitution, and the chickens of the steady decades-long erosion of rights are starting to come home to roost in the form of major economic damage.
The issues are actually very simple. People you try to make them look 'very complex', and try muddy the issues, but at heart they are very simple. Just take a step back and look at the spirit of the Constitution and a lot of things become clear. Crystal-clear, in fact --- you may fool some people, but you aren't fooling everyone.
This is honestly the first time in my life that I am ashamed of my heritage.
I hope I'm not interpreting you incorrectly, but this gives the impression you don't feel that the previous actions of fascist Italy in recent history were shameful. I presume (and hope) that's not what you intended? (Honest question not trolling.)
Frankly I think this Google incident (and apparently there are a number of other cases the Italian government are pursuing) reeks of fascism to me.
The exact same arguments apply to any kind of online publishing forum that allow individuals to post content --- there is nothing "special" about video. Therefore, by the same logic, I suppose you also believe that online forums such as slashdot should be required to vet every single post a user makes before it goes online, in case it contains anything illegal etc. In fact, what you're saying is that there should not be such a thing as a public publishing forum. In fact, you're defending fascism - maybe unwittingly through stupitidy or maybe maliciously, but the effect is the same. People like you give me the creeps, what a horrible world we'd live in if you had your way in the legal system. This is precisely why Thomas Jefferson said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants".
Excuse my cynicism about such reports, but at least once a year every year we hear some major government department bemoan how vulnerable the 'cyber-infrastructure' is to 'cyber attack'. Be scared! The message is clear! We simply must give some deadweight organisation a whole lot of money from the tax-funded budget, pronto, so that a whole building full of people somewhere can sit around pretending to come up with solutions for another year! Then they'll do nothing until budget time again next year, when we'll hear another yet alarming report about how vulnerable everything is and how the whole Internets is on the verge of being attacked and destroyed by (insert boogie-man-of-the-day blah blah) etc. Or worse, instead of doing nothing, they still don't solve the actual problems, but just pass bills that give government more power.
I'm not saying there aren't vulnerabilities in the infrastructure - certainly there are - but there's 'solving those problems', and then there's 'solving those problems'.
Forcing the defenseless to your personal political whims
Gee, yeah, totally defenseless, I mean the government only has a police force, the largest military in the world, and numerous other powerful organisations to defend itself. A monopoly on the biggest 'force of force' in the world - under what strange definition of "defenseless" can you possibly make such an absurd statement with a straight face?
That makes you a tyrant, no better than any other dictator rightly despised by history.
What, like Nelson Mandela, who engaged in precisely such practices? You don't ultimately tell if someone is on the good side or the bad side by looking at the strategies they employ --- you tell by looking at the principles they're fighting for --- are they fighting for liberty or fighting for fascism. Some terrorists really are freedom fighters.
Sorry, that was my post; I must've accidentally ticked 'post anonymously'.
At first I thought there were sure a lot of anti-Stack people on /. who love paying taxes so much, then I realised that most the posts on your side of the argument are posted by you alone. 20 odd comments and counting. And given the nonsensical distortions in this comment, I'd say you're trolling.
He blamed 'politicians, the Catholic Church
He didn't blame the Catholic Church, he merely cited them as an example of a large organization that is able to successfully avoid paying taxes while the middle class gets the screws tightened on them. RTFM next time (i.e. Read The Fucking Manifesto).
No, getting caught in such a spectacular and public way was dumb --- but come on, who amongst us has never, ever looked at one single porn-y image while at work?
It's extremely un-PC to say this, and it's also somewhat counterintuitive, but merely vaccinating a population doesn't *necessarily* raise their standard of living --- it may merely raise the *number* of people living in poverty. Africa is a prime example; it historically has been one of the biggest benefactors of vaccinations since vaccinations were first developed ... do most Africans now have a high standard of living? No, instead they have a massive population explosion but are still living about the same poor quality of life they did 100 years ago. In other words, 'well done, you just made even more poor people'. (PS I am speaking as an African, and have lived in Africa and worked with Africans my whole life, this is not just armchair rubbish.)
Bill Gates seems to genuinely mean well, but I fear his efforts will just serve to further explode the population of people living in poverty, and then there'll be even more people that need to be fed that can't feed themselves. You need to also simultaneously educate those people whose lives you are saving, to teach them to run their own modern industrialised economies, and that is much, much harder than merely sending them a bunch of medicine or food.
I think if I had that much money, I'd rather create an investment fund for funding free-market entrepreneurs within poor communities who help build solutions to their own problems.
What role will humanity play in such a system?
Food for robots
You mean "God forbid that someone should give some money to someone else (without government taking a cut)".
The thing is, there is no fundamental difference between a currency trade, and *any* movement of money. Thus the fundamental question at heart here is actually "do free citizens have the right to ever exchange money without the government being informed". If you believe governments must have knowledge of every forex transaction, then by extension you must also believe that governments must have knowledge every time money changes hands anywhere at all for anything at all. Governments mostly already believe they have that right, but I draw the line there and don't agree. Of course we need to minimise problems like terrorism (which is actually quite minimal already), but most e.g. problematic money laundering is already for activities that probably should be legal anyway (e.g. cannabis, gambling), and if that was fixed, that would free state resources to do more and better policing against the really bad stuff, which would seriously mitigate any negative effect that easing the omnipresence of government "watching every transaction" might have.
I hope they get in the crap with even more countries and are forced to do stuff like this, maybe eventually they'll have to declare themselves as an actual bank
I hope not - God help us if that happens, because the reason banks are unable to compete and become as useful as PayPal is that they're crippled by over-regulation (yeah I know it's unpopular to say that in today's "banks are teh evil, pitchforks against the banks!!1!" culture, but people are over-reacting). Be careful what you wish for: The fact is, that thing you cry out for is precisely what would destroy PayPal if you ever got your wish, and then you'll wish there was a PayPal. I live in a country where PayPal isn't available precisely because of government over-regulation (hangover from dictatorship days where government tried to watch and control every movement people made with their money), and if you'd prefer to trade places with me and have have no PayPal at all instead of the current crappy one, I'd be very happy to do so.
Just because some buyer decides to do a chargeback on his credit card 120 days after purchase does not mean I am responsible for the money. Paypal is not a bank. I did not borrow from them. I do not owe them anything, and they can't touch my credit
But surely when you signed up with them initially, you agreed to their terms of service, which would've included responsibility for chargebacks? Are you saying you committed fraud against PayPal by flouting the ToS you had agreed to? Sorry to be a 'devil's advocate', but if you didn't like their ToS, you should not have agreed to use their services in the first place.