They don't know the difference between an app and a document.
A=B=C -> A=C
It logically follows that they don't know the difference between a document and an OS. There is further practical proof of this from the way you can open configuration windows from their help files.
Ergo, the next version of MS-Windows will be called MS-Help. Instead of CTRL-ALT-DEL to log in, you'll use F1. Every time you want to type something in, you'll need to reassure your computer that you are indeed familiar with the operation of a keyboard, and probably still be forced to repeat the "This is the space bar. This is what we call the home row." tutorial every time you reboot.
Damn, don't you ever test anything? You obviously can't write a working program without having the compiler point out your errors through 10 or 20 iterations.
The fact remains that my 1-minute hack written for humorous purposes worked, yet you took my working code, made minor modifications to suit your idea of good style (without significantly improving readability or performance) and came out with code that doesn't run. And now you've done it again.
It's not that you're not making a good models of landing lights with your split coconuts, it's just that the planes still aren't landing.
(Or do you even have the slightest glimmer of understanding for the "cargo cult" analogy you attempt to insult me with?)
At least mine runs and does what it's supposed to! I think it's a little less "cargo cult" to have an ugly program that works than one that looks like your idea of good style, but doesn't actually work.
What part of "There's more than one way to do it." don't you understand?
I think a metric like app count is a bit ridiculous.
voila (stick it in a file like "manyapps.pl" and run with "perl manyapps.pl"):
#manyapps.pl
#create 100,000 C++ applications, each of which
#sums a different number of integer inputs
#you can test them with something like:
#"yes 1 | add100000"
If 50 people like a piece of software, and 49 pay, the one who doesn't wins out economically; they've gotten the software, keep their money, and rely on the rest of the pool to encourage the developer.
You're looking at it from the wrong angle. Donating is like voting, not buying. By your logic, people shouldn't vote either: their personal vote is unlikely to make the decision, and if they don't vote, they save the time and effort of voting.
You're looking at it from the angle of the software being "paid for". In buskware, nothing gets "paid for", donors create pressure toward those areas where their interests lie. It's like pushing your finger down on a rubber sheet to make balls roll toward that point. There's no "sufficient" amount that the 49 can pay so that the 1's payment is in vain, more effort can always be expended for the benefit of the donors (although can be a point where it is more beneficial to pay someone else, so producers in the area don't think that you're hung up on just paying this one guy, and they've still got a shot at making a buck).
The payoff for donating is in having your voice heard, and allocating a little more effort toward your personal tastes.
Anyone is free to enjoy the products of the industry, but any payment on their part will be balanced by a proportional consideration of their interests by the producers. It just wouldn't make sense for profit-motivated producers to ignore that data.
Actually I don't see that happening; small business development has been increasing in recent years I think.
This is the result of moderate-scaled businesses being driven out of business. Megacorps grow beyond their naturally efficient size to gain the advantages of legal thuggery and government lobbying (esp. for corporate welfare), and the family businesses are being driven into garages.
The biggest prosper and grow, everyone else shrinks. Only in extremely unsettled industries, like the computer industry, are sufficiently wild profit margins and low barriers to entry for moderate businesses to grow and compete with large ones.
Also, people who are essentially temporary employees, like consultants, are calling themselves "small businesses", even when they take corporate contract after corporate contract, and go work in the cubicle farms every day.
Yet another factor in the "growth of small business" is that people are running a small business as a tax shelter, even when the business itself is unproductive and unprofitable. This is nothing but a symptom of how insane the tax laws really are.
The amount of your tax dollar that goes to pay for schooling your children is much less than it would cost for private school, as the cost is taken from everyone.
First of all, it's morally wrong to steal from me to raise your children. It's a form of slavery.
Secondly, the education per dollar of public school is so low that even an individual parent's share of the tax burden is more than adequate to produce the same level of education on the free market.
Thirdly, as I explained, it is my opinion that public school is damaging to children, and does not contribute to a usefully-educated population (rather, it is the direct cause, in large part, of the general apathy, nihilism, ignorance, and laziness of young people).
Add private school tuition to paying for your water supply, sewage system use, sanitation, roads and highways, fire and police, etc. and the amount your paying approaches what you pay in taxes
Oh yes, that's right. You believe that tax-supported bureaucratic government monopolies are as efficient as free market production. If you believe that, there's no point in me arguing the point, you probably also believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairie.
BTW, I do pay for water and sewage system use, where I live. I've also lived in places where people dig their own wells and septic fields. It's really no big deal compared to the other complications of house-ownership. Of course, as a natural monopoly, I do believe this is an area for the government to have a strong role in.
This kind of expense is the classic excuse for taxation, and in reality it is a tiny, tiny portion of actual government spending. Roads are much more than paid for by gas taxes alone (a fair tax, if you ask me, if it was limited to road-maintenance costs instead of being yet another general revenue grab). Garbage-hauling, distributed over all the clients, takes roughly 2 minutes, once per week, of paid truck/driver time: its cost is pennies per week.
Let me and my fellow law-abiding citizens have guns, and we'll have damned little need for police. Police are not your friends, they are the government's enforcers, and you would not hire them for most of what they do.
But a hell of a lot more goes to welfare, in all its guises, both the personal and corporate kinds, than to basic services like these.
First of all, the US has had a reasonably good school system through most of it's history;
The public school system is fundamentally flawed. It was initially carried by the enthusiasm and honesty of the originators, but, of course, is slowly decaying to uselessness and being twisted into a propaganda tool of the state. This is the natural progression, as all people follow their best interests: a mandated bureaucracy like public education does not survive and prosper by performing its stated function to the best of its ability.
And that's even assuming you agree with the government on what should be taught. I don't.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
One man who submarined, and had his legs all smashed up, but had the top half of the car sheared right off, and would have been cut in half if a seatbelt held him upright. Another who was thrown from a car and landed in nice soft muck when his car rolled and the top was flattened right down.
Of course, I also know a lot of people who have survived accidents wearing seatbelts, and many would probably have died without them. And I've seen people hurt badly from accidents without seatbelts (I mean that, I've seen it happen with my own eyes).
I knew one woman who was burned over her whole body and permanently disfigured, while trapped in the flames by her seatbelt.
I also know plenty of people who had to pay fines because they weren't wearing seatbelts, and plenty more who have just learned to watch for cops and slip their seatbelts on when they see them.
I don't see any point to wearing a seatbelt on the highway. The chances of a crash are small, and you're not likely to survive one anyway. In the city, it makes much more sense, but I still think it should be left up to individual choice.
I find your attitude most offensive, assuming that my opinion is based on lack of real-world experience. I'm quite familiar with the real world. It's a place where everybody dies, sooner or later.
I'm not against seatbelts. Statistically they do lower your chances of death. I'm against "protecting" people from their own choices, and I'm against government pretending it always knows what's best for you.
People have a right to take whatever risks with their own lives that they wish. When it comes right down to it, people who act stupidly tend to die and improve the species. It's not biologically sound policy to interfere with that: eventually, you'd produce a race of hopeless morons who have to be watched constantly
Think of it this way: how many lives would be saved every year if every surface of every wall, floor, and piece of furniture was padded, if nobody had kitchens or workshops in their homes or was allowed to keep any sharp things, if everyone had to follow a diet set by his state-selected physician, couldn't smoke, and had to do the exercies prescribed for him, if cars were restricted to speeds at which they could guarantee the survival of all passengers (say, 15 mph)? Probably over a million. The average lifespan would probably be extended by 10 years.
However, that isn't sufficient justification for those measures; people have a right to destroy themselves, quickly or slowly, intentionally or through negligence. But we are moving toward that, one little step, one regulation, one tax "for your own good", at a time.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
If you're going to complain that all of the above is unfair to the author, you must like the DMCA, as it allows the copyright holders many rights they never used to have.
Oo! Look! A man made entirely of straw! If he only had a brain...
I must like nothing. I don't agree with the doctrine of first sale, it was fine back in the days when people didn't even have reliable postal service, but now it's all too easy to transfer copies from place to place.
However, I don't believe that copyright holders should be granted a monopoly on production. They should be able to set a price, but then should be required to sell printing rights at that price to anyone who wants to buy them (of course, for this to work, they couldn't be allowed to keep changing their prices; they'd have to start high and only be allowed to lower the per-copy price). If you go to watch a movie, your ticket should include the price of a legal copy of the movie, and you should be able to buy a cheap DVD of the movie (for which no additional payment is offered to the copyright holder) on your way out.
The purpose of copyright is to encourage the production and distribution of works, not to maximize profit nor to maximize the number of works available in the public domain. The concept of fairness to both sides is central; there must be a balance between making sure there is an incentive to produce and distribute works, and making sure the works are not shut away from the public.
I don't like the DMCA because it gives the copyright holder much more than a guarantee of profit, it gives him control of his customers' use of the product.
If copyright was shortened to five years and limited to the right to set and charge a royalty from all publishers, and this was balanced by making copies non-transferable, I think we'd have a system that worked much more smoothly than the current one. Libraries and used book stores would no longer be the enemies of publishers, and would have access to all books over five years old. Copyright couldn't be abused to force distributors into monopolistic contracts (MS), to hide dirty little secrets (Church of Scientology), or to extort money for access to cultural icons created by men long dead(Disney).
I think it's a good balance: five years of guaranteed income from everyone who accesses your work, but no control over who gets it and under what terms, and then it becomes part of our cultural heritage.
But the problem begins when you have a company that changes it's prices not in response to costs or demand, but rather as a way to force others out of the market.
If there aren't a lot of legal barriers to entry into the business, this isn't a problem.
When one company underprices its goods, the consumers benefit from the lower prices. When they raise them again, the consumers hurt for a little while, but it becomes profitable to compete again and the situation corrects itself. That competition can spring up awfully quickly when the consumer feels cheated and actively hates the company that is gouging them.
Like I said, it's natural price fluctuation.
problem comes to one of self-interest. It's the old "tragedy of the commons" aspect of environmental economics: it is of greater benefit for me to abuse the system than to abide by it.
Not at all. The self-interest component is effectively purchase of status. You pay to be treated as a relevant person by buskware developers. The essence of the difference between this and shareware is in the public record of revenues. By paying for products which support your interests, you alter the priorities of the producing pool toward your interests. This is because profit-seeking producers will naturally try to predict what will be profitable, and this will be most evident from what has been paid for in the past. I don't expect everyone to jump on the bandwagon at once, but for spectacular successes in niche markets to gradually demonstrate the viability of the model. Some people will be willing to pay, and they'll start getting exactly the products they want for less money than their proprietary-software counterparts do, so the practice will spread.
The reason that "tragedy of the commons" doesn't apply is because nobody can do harm to the system. There isn't a limited resource available to be consumed for free. You can either be irrelevant because you don't pay, whether you use the product or not, or you can contribute and have your wishes considered in future production.
since when has moving into a higher tax bracket ever prevented people from seeking pay raises or higher paying jobs?
Of course it hasn't. But it does severely hurt division of labor.
Work you do inefficiently, for yourself, isn't taxed. You get all the benefit from it. If you want to spend your time more efficiently by earning more money and hiring a professional, suddenly you must work longer to pay extra income tax, pay his income tax inflated price, often pay a service tax, etc.
Without this kind of barriers, it would be, for example, cheaper to eat in restaurants or have take-out delivered than to eat at home (saving everyone lots of time). That's the insanity I'm talking about.
Taxes on earnings are a disincentive to effective division of labor because they are a penalty for doing things efficiently with money rather than by your own untrained labor.
It further hurts people by forcing them into the "large corporation - small employee" model of earning a living (and naturally limiting consumer choice), because beating these tax penalties requires economies of scale and tax breaks available only to large central organizations. Extremely personalized services, which could easily be provided by microbusinesses (the perfect escape from corporate wageslavery), are made prohibitively expensive by these taxes.
What other options are there? Home schooling? Go ahead, nobody's preventing you.
...as long as you have the wealth and legal savvy to defend yourself against charges of child abuse.
You think everybody just willingly sent their kids off to public school? Near-universal attendance was achieved under threat of force.
Let's not ignore the fact that everybody pays for public schools, too. If the gov't didn't take the money from you by force, you could afford to send your kid to private school or hire a group-tutor with your neighbors (another one of those great microbusinesses the government discourages so severely).
For-profit private schools? Too much incentive for them to cut costs.
Pure and unmitigated nonsense. This argument can be used against every for-profit private enterprise. Children going to a good private school will come home and impress their parents with what they are being taught. When parents are buying an education for their children on the free market, they lose that sense of inevitability and the apathy that goes with it.
The situation can't get any worse than it is. Children are taught that they are "special", and to have a disdain for honest work. They are given passing grades in advanced physics, biology, and mathematics without understanding that rockets don't move by "pushing against" the air, humans didn't coexists with dinosaurs, or how to divide large numbers without a calculator. Fat, lazy, clumsy children are given high grades in "physical training". Don't even get me started on what passes for language training!
Public education, IMNSHO, has a net negative effect on practically everyone who passes through it. If it was cut off abruptly, tomorrow, there might be more people who were totally illiterate (most of these people don't amount to much as it is anyway), but the "hump" of the distribution would move forward. IOW, the base lousy education of public school wouldn't be universal as it is now, but on average, the level of education would be much higher.
I consider this preferable. Socialist garbage like public schooling always has the effect of pushing toward flattening everyone to the same low level. Schools teach as much as the dumbest student can pass, and screw everyone who can do better. Considering who is more imporant to society, this is clearly a very dangerous instance of clinging to what passes for security.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
It's half of fair copyright law: protection of the copyright holder. If you can resell copyrighted works, that cheats the copyright holder of his income. Wouldn't you, if you were an author, feel screwed by one person buying a book, then passing it on to 20 others?
This isn't one-sidedly for the holder. Remember, book-passing has to be taken into account when setting prices.
Unfortunately, I don't see any efforts toward the other, much more important half of copyright reform: shortening the term to about five years after publishing. Copyright, like patent, is supposed a temporary monopoly on one's own ideas. Most copyrighted works make most of their profit in the first year; many in the first month. If you aren't expecting to make a sufficient profit in 5 years, you probably aren't doing it for the money.
It's been consistently shown that the freer a market, the more liable consumers are to abuse.
I think your confusing incompetent management with a free market.
Each of your examples is caused by incompetent government intervention:
Whether it's the railroad companies in the 1800s using variable pricing schemes to squeeze out every dollar they could,
Not everyone with money can lay rail. The government granted and enforced monopolies on rail-lines in certain places, which was naturally a bad thing for consumers.
In those cases where there is a natural monopoly, like rail or power lines, the government should retain ownership and rent their use to the highest bidder (they should also contract out construction and maintenance). That's the true free market solution here (and it's a better way for gov't to earn their money than taxing).
Look at Manitoba Hydro (in Canada) for a prime example of a natural monopoly owned by the government and run well. Okay, they should be renting more things out, and contracting more jobs out, but they luckily had some very sensible and competent bureaucrats so it worked anyway. Too bad such things are a crap shoot; if every gov't endeavor could be done this competently, I'd be a socialist (I was when I was younger and prone to thinking of how best to run the world if someone competent was in charge and everyone was pulling together for the common good... before I realized that those basic assumptions are totally backwards).
to Japanese electronics companies flooding the US market with below-cost goods then driving up prices once the competitors were gone,
Were they truly intentionally selling them at a loss? I doubt it. This was just the standard Jap-bashing propaganda line to justify protectionist tariffs.
America has more capital than Japan, and some of the best high-tech workers in the world. It isn't some two-bit banana republic that can't afford to ride out product dumping or build new factories to re-enter a profitable market.
Prices do fluctuate in a free market. That's the natural order of things. Low prices drive some out of business, high prices bring more into business. Any amount that stops this fluctuation does so by holding the prices high, and screwing the buyers.
to Microsoft driving competitors out of the market,
Poorly written IP laws. Copyright shouldn't grant total control over distribution in this age of instant near-free copying, only the right to set a price the holder must be paid per copy made.
IP law is an unnecessary government interference in the free market. Here is an essay that covers why I don't think IP law is necessary for software.
The ownership of copies as if they were physical objects is acceptable, but the ownership of the monopoly right of making copies, to do with as one wills, is insane. This behavior isn't analogous to any real property. All forced monopolies, like natural monopolies, should be owned by the government, and legal copies of copyrighted work (really just permission to make physical copies) should be sold by the government, with proceeds going to the copyright holder. Furthermore, copyright term should be limited to five years. If you aren't going to make your money back in five years, you won't write it for the money. These aren't the days of giant, expensive printing presses anymore.
If government's going to interfere, it should keep its interference under it's own control, not just hand over their power of violent enforcement to be wielded in whatever manner the IP "owner" sees fit.
to Savings and Loans going under because they made obviously bad loans to 3rd world dictators,
Yes, some companies are run incompetently. Some people invest poorly. Tough.
Regulation hasn't, and never will, guarantee any return on (or of) your investment.
business without oversight has been consistently shown to end in harm.
I don't see that at all. Regulation without foresight consistently causes harm.
Other evil government interference in the free market:
corporations- corporations are not natural, they are creatures of the government that have greater power than individuals in many ways and are used for securing individual profit without individual responsibility. You should not be able to buy voting stock in a company without being personally responsible for all actions of that company.
public schooling- Incompetent government bureaucracy given an important task combined with the government indoctrination of our children. How much worse can a deal get? I remember grade school as the greatest waste of time in my life, and I believe that the chosen course material forms most of the political opinions of the masses.
income tax- The more you earn, the more you pay, in fact, the higher a portion of your earnings you pay! An insane disincentive to profit and productivity.
With gaping holes like these in the boat, adding other regulations atop them to fix the problems they cause is akin to drilling holes in the other side of the boat so it sinks evenly instead of overturning.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
After all, a democracy can be a totalitarian state in which your only freedom is for whom to vote, if a majority decides that's the way it should be.
The majority is as dumb as the average person, so effectively, it is roughly equivalent to being ruled by a monarch of average intelligence, who is prohibited from referring to himself in his legislation. So if he want to make a law for his own benefit, he has to vote that benefit for everyone like him.
The majority don't have enough money for all the health-care they want, so they vote to make it "free". Sure, they still don't get all the health-care they want, but at least nobody else can buy more than them, and they don't have to worry about which insurance plan they should buy. Ughh, God I hate them, they sell out my rights for their convenience.
I'd never live in a country where the power of the democracy wasn't limited by an acceptable constitution.
Right now, most limit personal economic freedom so severely that I'd prefer anarchy. I'm getting off this dirtball ASAP.
It costs nothing,
TANSTAAFL; everyone pays for it in their taxes, and in higher prices due to having to comply with regulations.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
And how many individual medical practitioner can afford to fund their own tests? This isn't about who's qualified; private practitioners may be just as skilled in these matters as FDA scientists, but they have neither the time, the inclination, or the money to pursue rigorous testing. And the drug companies have a history of suppressing negative results, and a financial incentive to cut down on testing as much as possible.
Herein we find the root of the error of your reasoning: you rightly recognize the need for large-scale organization, but you believe that only government can provide it.
Consider: professional engineering organizations, bar associations, and medical associations did not, as a rule, start out as government organizations. They started out as voluntary private associations, and by long demonstration of superior competence, they were eventually granted special status by the government as having monopolies on official competence. Some have held to their private origins, while others have been integrated into the government, but they originally came into being without government assistance. However, there is no way to assure their competence after the day the government accepts them as the sole such organization. As they age, secure in their monopolies, they tend to gradually place higher and higher barriers to entry, while actually delivering a lower standard of service. It's not that hard to become a doctor, an engineer, or a lawyer, but you've got to put in your dollars and your years. From what I've seen, they've shifted from guaranteeing a high level of competence to guaranteeing knowledge of one's limits: doctors that refer all patients that might have a problem to other doctors, engineers that sit quietly in the back of meetings, and lawyers who act as glorified clerks. Meanwhile, as they claim to raise their standards by raising the barriers to entry, they lobby to expand their monopolies so it gets harder and harder to do anything without hiring an Official Professional.
Sorry, I got off track a bit, but the point is that they grow without any special privilege of the government to competence (which, tangentially, decays after they gain their government-granted monopoly).
The average doctor can't, by himself, test a drug. The average driver can't, by himself, design and build a car. However, both are bright enough to hire such work to be done for them, and figure out which sources produce reliable results. Private business has long since learned how split costs up among many buyers. So what if your drug verification cost shows up on your doctor's bill rather than your drug bill?
Intelligent buyers have always known that they can get honest evaluations by hiring uninvolved 3rd parties with good reputations. A lot of testing is done by private labs. Naturally, they work for the person who pays them. So it's in their best interests to be honest if they're hired by people who want them to be honest. Bribery is possible, but no more so than in a government process.
The drug companies won't do the testing that doctors trust. That would be insane. The doctors' associations would do the testing.
When the government isn't setting standards, obviously it becomes vitally important for private organizations to set them. That is why it's vitally important for government to enforce the trademarks of such organizations. It would be total chaos if not only were there no government standards, but any street vendor could put the "Kentucky Central Food Standards Association" logo on his cart without actually meeting their standards.
I'd really rather have the choice between, say the "Kentucky C.F.S.A." (which considers feeding growth hormone to chickens an acceptable practice) and the "Kentucky Food Approval Organization" (which considers feeding growth hormone to chickens unacceptable), instead of considering the government's decision as the only valid one.
Sure, you might say, that's all to the good, but there's nothing stopping you from starting such standards organizations now! True, but the government isn't very friendly to competing standards associations. For one thing, you have to meet the government standards, no matter what else; that gives a competitive price advantage to businesses that only comply with the minimum gov't regulations (not bad by itself, but downright nasty combined with the next two). For another, governments have a way of pooh-poohing these competing standards in their official propaganda (letters from the Surgeon General, etc.). Most importantly, though, is the nanny-state attitude that most citizens have: "the gub'r'ment will take care of us! we don't have to look out for ourselves." Part of that comes from the official propaganda lines, and part from the public education system, but mostly from the fact that this is a democracy, ruled by the whim of the majority, who see any problem and think, "There oughta be a law!" (I would never dream of blaming the government as something seperate from the people; the majority of the enfranchised public is directly responsible for all actions of the government; unfortunately, they don't understand government)
Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so does a free market. Supply grows to meet demand.
The free market is a "magical black box" which produces all good things without an outside controlling organization. You can control the quality of its products purely through selecting which businesses get your dollars, if you can muster the brainpower to choose someone competent to decide who's competent (and if you can't, you sure as hell shouldn't be trusted with a vote). The advantage over doing it with dollars has over doing it with violence-backed government enforcement is that each person can make his own choice, rather than all having to conform to the choice of the voting majority.
But distributing unsafe medicine to an unsuspecting public isn't [a crime against the non-consenting public?]
No, it isn't. It is a damned fool who buys medicine that his doctor hasn't told him is safe and necessary. If some such fool wants to buy it, that is all his fault and none of the seller's.
The difference here is that murder, robbery, or poisoning rivers, is something that is done to a non-consenting individual or public, while in a purchase of unsafe goods, the buyer asks for these goods.
That doesn't mean fraud shouldn't be a crime. Of course it should be illegal to claim that some sale good meets a standard when it doesn't. That doesn't mean that the government has to pick the standard.
I've always also felt that people should be able to make legal oaths, call down whatever government punishments upon themselves that they wish (guaranteeing payment in advance for the cost), and file them as public records. It would make establishing trust much easier. Contracts do part of this, but generally limit losses to financial ones, and criminal law can never codify appropriate punishments for every kind of betrayal.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
It's wrong in principle? How? Is it wrong in principle when the FDA "interferes" with drug companies by examining their product before it allowing it to go on the market?
Absolutely. Doctors know their business and are quite capable of organizing their own testing of drugs. Putting the thing in the hands of government bureaucrats only adds a healthy dose of waste and incompetence to the process.
The FDA adds to the cost of drugs and puts them more firmly under control of large corporations.
Furthermore, it takes the choice out of how "experimental" a drug a patient can choose to take. People die who could be saved while FDA human drug tests go on, with no option to tell the government to stick their cautious testing methods wherever they care, and just try the medicine themselves.
Suckers are still sold poison as medicine every day. The FDA hasn't stopped that, and nothing ever will.
Or forcing food companies to maintain some standard of quality control?
Again, who is the government to say what is fit food and what isn't?
As long as the government enforces the exclusivity of standards-organization trademarks, sensible people would only buy food from vendors who follow practices they consider fit.
How about when the EPA "interferes" with corporations pouring toxic chemicals into our rivers?
This is pure "straw man" idiocy. The corporations don't own the rivers. Not everybody who has some interest in the river is agreeing freely to have toxic chemicals poured into it. This has nothing to do with the freedom for any two consenting parties to form any contract they wish. It is instead a crime against the non-consenting public, like robbery or murder.
That kind of thing is exactly what the government should be dealing with.
However, they often do it incompetently, setting required mechanisms rather than required results. For example: catalytic converters. These were needed to bring emissions from inferior American cars down to acceptable levels, but were not necessary for foreign cars which could meet the emission limits without them. They are now, in fact, counterproductive, adding expense and increasing fuel consumption. There are better ways to lower emissions, but you still can't sell a car without a catalytic converter. That kind of crap is what ties us to a handful of large car manufacturers and slows innovation to a crawl.
That kind of poor decision is exactly why government shouldn't be involved in anything it doesn't absolutely have to be.
If I buy a P3 that's really a falsely marked P2, how is that a "bad choice"?
It isn't, it's fraud, and it's already illegal.
It's saying that if you have a warranty, it must be honored; that's all.
Bullshit. They are already legally obligated to honor warrantees.
Everything that should be done in protecting "consumer rights" in purchasing is already done, and in fact, too much is done already, hurting business and consumer alike.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
This is not interference this is consumer protection.
Consumer "protection" is interference. This isn't protection from the seller lying about the product, this is protection from their own bad choices, like seat-belt laws and anti-drug laws. It's government saying, "We know what's good for you better than you do." and forcing their opinion of what's good for you on you whether you like it or not. It's wrong in principle, even if it improves results for thousands of stupid or careless people.
Every new regulation makes it a bit harder and more expensive to open a new business, locking us more and more into the role of employee, making us more dependent on lawyers and professional business managers. More power for corporations, less for individuals.
The fact is, you can buy computers with full 2-year warrantees. Some people don't, and some buy inferior discounted products. Sometimes their computers don't work. Tough luck for them, it was their choice.
I don't think the government should be regulating minimum lengths to warrantees. It's not their business.
I want the option of buying from some shop on a shoestring that doesn't have a service department, if I think it's the better deal. I don't necessarily want to do it, but I'd still rather have the option.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
It's a sad day when you can't decide whether you want to pay extra for the warrantee or not.
Computer hardware failures within the first two years are pretty rare, and usually covered by warrantee.
This is just a publicity stunt which will drive prices up slightly for those of us who would rather take our chances.
But this kind of thinking is dangerous. Now it's "responsibility" legislation, next it will be "safety" regulations and all computers sold will be required to be equipped with the latest anti-virus software. Once government starts regulating an industry, it never stops.
Remember, bureaucracium has a negative half-life, the damned stuff grows over time, sucking energy from the area it's in.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
IOW, the stuff that defines his coding style. The stuff he can either rewrite over and over again, debug over and over again, or just do once and gradually refine it, making him a better, more productive prgrammer.
There's nothing I hate more than that "Gimme, gimme, gimme! Mine, mine, mine! I hired you for this job, so I own everything you produce in the course of doing it!" attitude.
It's bullshit. Do you claim to own the skills he learned while working for you? He developed them on working time, just the same. I say a programmer's private toolbox is part of his skill set. He has a right to improve the parts of it that are used in the line of his current job, on paid time.
This code itself is nothing but a convenience, to the person who wrote it. He can recreate it easily, but it wastes his time. Insisting on the IP ownership of the company that he was working for at the time he wrote it helps no one, and is a purely hostile act.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
We in the PC world enjoy the privilege of choosing whether we want to spend the extra money on silly junk like gigabit ethernet, optical mice, and spare processors. Most of us would rather spend the money on more important things like larger hard drives, more memory, and better video cards. Never the less, such hardware is also available for PCs, unpopular though it is.
Instead of having yesterday's top gadgets forced on us at yesterday's top prices, we can choose to buy yesterday's toys at a discount or today's toys at a premium.
Don't expect me to be impressed when you flash "standard" gadgets in my face that I don't want as substitutes for unavailable ones that I do want.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Slashdot Mirror
Why on earth do you even need them? I mean, you (the /. team) have full control of the server, right? So why use a goofy hack like 1 pel images?
It seems to me that it's lazy and irresponsible to require an extra http request.
--------
They don't know the difference between an app and a document.
A=B=C -> A=C
It logically follows that they don't know the difference between a document and an OS. There is further practical proof of this from the way you can open configuration windows from their help files.
Ergo, the next version of MS-Windows will be called MS-Help. Instead of CTRL-ALT-DEL to log in, you'll use F1. Every time you want to type something in, you'll need to reassure your computer that you are indeed familiar with the operation of a keyboard, and probably still be forced to repeat the "This is the space bar. This is what we call the home row." tutorial every time you reboot.
--------
(stupid short subject line, forcing me to use obscure dialects...)
Is it the DeCSS program specifically that they claim violates the DMCA, or is it any mere description of how to decrypt DVDs?
I'm curious about whether this is an "is source code speech?" issue.
--------
You'd still be violating the license, and you'd still be hurting Sony because you'd be undermining a deal they would have been paid for.
--------
There are a lot more IP addresses than there are people connected to the internet.
--------
Damn, don't you ever test anything? You obviously can't write a working program without having the compiler point out your errors through 10 or 20 iterations.
The fact remains that my 1-minute hack written for humorous purposes worked, yet you took my working code, made minor modifications to suit your idea of good style (without significantly improving readability or performance) and came out with code that doesn't run. And now you've done it again.
It's not that you're not making a good models of landing lights with your split coconuts, it's just that the planes still aren't landing.
(Or do you even have the slightest glimmer of understanding for the "cargo cult" analogy you attempt to insult me with?)
--------
At least mine runs and does what it's supposed to! I think it's a little less "cargo cult" to have an ugly program that works than one that looks like your idea of good style, but doesn't actually work.
What part of "There's more than one way to do it." don't you understand?
--------
I think a metric like app count is a bit ridiculous.
voila (stick it in a file like "manyapps.pl" and run with "perl manyapps.pl"):
#manyapps.pl
#create 100,000 C++ applications, each of which
#sums a different number of integer inputs
#you can test them with something like:
#"yes 1 | add100000"
`mkdir manyapps`;
for($i=0; $i<100000; $i++){
open CURFILE, ">manyapps/temp.cpp";
print CURFILE<<'END';
#include <iostream.h>
int main(){
long sum=0;
for(unsigned long i=0; i<
END
$num=$i+2;
print CURFILE "$num; i++)\{\n";
print CURFILE<<'END';
long addthis;
cin>>addthis;
sum+=addthis;
}
cout<<sum<<endl;
return 1;
}
END
close CURFILE;
print "g++ -o manyapps/add$num manyapps/temp.cpp\n";
`g++ -o manyapps/add$num manyapps/temp.cpp`;
}
#end of Perl code
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If 50 people like a piece of software, and 49 pay, the one who doesn't wins out economically; they've gotten the software, keep their money, and rely on the rest of the pool to encourage the developer.
You're looking at it from the wrong angle. Donating is like voting, not buying. By your logic, people shouldn't vote either: their personal vote is unlikely to make the decision, and if they don't vote, they save the time and effort of voting.
You're looking at it from the angle of the software being "paid for". In buskware, nothing gets "paid for", donors create pressure toward those areas where their interests lie. It's like pushing your finger down on a rubber sheet to make balls roll toward that point. There's no "sufficient" amount that the 49 can pay so that the 1's payment is in vain, more effort can always be expended for the benefit of the donors (although can be a point where it is more beneficial to pay someone else, so producers in the area don't think that you're hung up on just paying this one guy, and they've still got a shot at making a buck).
The payoff for donating is in having your voice heard, and allocating a little more effort toward your personal tastes.
Anyone is free to enjoy the products of the industry, but any payment on their part will be balanced by a proportional consideration of their interests by the producers. It just wouldn't make sense for profit-motivated producers to ignore that data.
Actually I don't see that happening; small business development has been increasing in recent years I think.
This is the result of moderate-scaled businesses being driven out of business. Megacorps grow beyond their naturally efficient size to gain the advantages of legal thuggery and government lobbying (esp. for corporate welfare), and the family businesses are being driven into garages.
The biggest prosper and grow, everyone else shrinks. Only in extremely unsettled industries, like the computer industry, are sufficiently wild profit margins and low barriers to entry for moderate businesses to grow and compete with large ones.
Also, people who are essentially temporary employees, like consultants, are calling themselves "small businesses", even when they take corporate contract after corporate contract, and go work in the cubicle farms every day.
Yet another factor in the "growth of small business" is that people are running a small business as a tax shelter, even when the business itself is unproductive and unprofitable. This is nothing but a symptom of how insane the tax laws really are.
The amount of your tax dollar that goes to pay for schooling your children is much less than it would cost for private school, as the cost is taken from everyone.
First of all, it's morally wrong to steal from me to raise your children. It's a form of slavery.
Secondly, the education per dollar of public school is so low that even an individual parent's share of the tax burden is more than adequate to produce the same level of education on the free market.
Thirdly, as I explained, it is my opinion that public school is damaging to children, and does not contribute to a usefully-educated population (rather, it is the direct cause, in large part, of the general apathy, nihilism, ignorance, and laziness of young people).
Add private school tuition to paying for your water supply, sewage system use, sanitation, roads and highways, fire and police, etc. and the amount your paying approaches what you pay in taxes
Oh yes, that's right. You believe that tax-supported bureaucratic government monopolies are as efficient as free market production. If you believe that, there's no point in me arguing the point, you probably also believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairie.
BTW, I do pay for water and sewage system use, where I live. I've also lived in places where people dig their own wells and septic fields. It's really no big deal compared to the other complications of house-ownership. Of course, as a natural monopoly, I do believe this is an area for the government to have a strong role in.
This kind of expense is the classic excuse for taxation, and in reality it is a tiny, tiny portion of actual government spending. Roads are much more than paid for by gas taxes alone (a fair tax, if you ask me, if it was limited to road-maintenance costs instead of being yet another general revenue grab). Garbage-hauling, distributed over all the clients, takes roughly 2 minutes, once per week, of paid truck/driver time: its cost is pennies per week.
Let me and my fellow law-abiding citizens have guns, and we'll have damned little need for police. Police are not your friends, they are the government's enforcers, and you would not hire them for most of what they do.
But a hell of a lot more goes to welfare, in all its guises, both the personal and corporate kinds, than to basic services like these.
First of all, the US has had a reasonably good school system through most of it's history;
The public school system is fundamentally flawed. It was initially carried by the enthusiasm and honesty of the originators, but, of course, is slowly decaying to uselessness and being twisted into a propaganda tool of the state. This is the natural progression, as all people follow their best interests: a mandated bureaucracy like public education does not survive and prosper by performing its stated function to the best of its ability.
And that's even assuming you agree with the government on what should be taught. I don't.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
One man who submarined, and had his legs all smashed up, but had the top half of the car sheared right off, and would have been cut in half if a seatbelt held him upright. Another who was thrown from a car and landed in nice soft muck when his car rolled and the top was flattened right down.
Of course, I also know a lot of people who have survived accidents wearing seatbelts, and many would probably have died without them. And I've seen people hurt badly from accidents without seatbelts (I mean that, I've seen it happen with my own eyes).
I knew one woman who was burned over her whole body and permanently disfigured, while trapped in the flames by her seatbelt.
I also know plenty of people who had to pay fines because they weren't wearing seatbelts, and plenty more who have just learned to watch for cops and slip their seatbelts on when they see them.
I don't see any point to wearing a seatbelt on the highway. The chances of a crash are small, and you're not likely to survive one anyway. In the city, it makes much more sense, but I still think it should be left up to individual choice.
I find your attitude most offensive, assuming that my opinion is based on lack of real-world experience. I'm quite familiar with the real world. It's a place where everybody dies, sooner or later.
I'm not against seatbelts. Statistically they do lower your chances of death. I'm against "protecting" people from their own choices, and I'm against government pretending it always knows what's best for you.
People have a right to take whatever risks with their own lives that they wish. When it comes right down to it, people who act stupidly tend to die and improve the species. It's not biologically sound policy to interfere with that: eventually, you'd produce a race of hopeless morons who have to be watched constantly
Think of it this way: how many lives would be saved every year if every surface of every wall, floor, and piece of furniture was padded, if nobody had kitchens or workshops in their homes or was allowed to keep any sharp things, if everyone had to follow a diet set by his state-selected physician, couldn't smoke, and had to do the exercies prescribed for him, if cars were restricted to speeds at which they could guarantee the survival of all passengers (say, 15 mph)? Probably over a million. The average lifespan would probably be extended by 10 years.
However, that isn't sufficient justification for those measures; people have a right to destroy themselves, quickly or slowly, intentionally or through negligence. But we are moving toward that, one little step, one regulation, one tax "for your own good", at a time.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
[holds up sign: "Y I P E S !"]
--------
If you're going to complain that all of the above is unfair to the author, you must like the DMCA, as it allows the copyright holders many rights they never used to have.
Oo! Look! A man made entirely of straw! If he only had a brain...
I must like nothing. I don't agree with the doctrine of first sale, it was fine back in the days when people didn't even have reliable postal service, but now it's all too easy to transfer copies from place to place.
However, I don't believe that copyright holders should be granted a monopoly on production. They should be able to set a price, but then should be required to sell printing rights at that price to anyone who wants to buy them (of course, for this to work, they couldn't be allowed to keep changing their prices; they'd have to start high and only be allowed to lower the per-copy price). If you go to watch a movie, your ticket should include the price of a legal copy of the movie, and you should be able to buy a cheap DVD of the movie (for which no additional payment is offered to the copyright holder) on your way out.
The purpose of copyright is to encourage the production and distribution of works, not to maximize profit nor to maximize the number of works available in the public domain. The concept of fairness to both sides is central; there must be a balance between making sure there is an incentive to produce and distribute works, and making sure the works are not shut away from the public.
I don't like the DMCA because it gives the copyright holder much more than a guarantee of profit, it gives him control of his customers' use of the product.
If copyright was shortened to five years and limited to the right to set and charge a royalty from all publishers, and this was balanced by making copies non-transferable, I think we'd have a system that worked much more smoothly than the current one. Libraries and used book stores would no longer be the enemies of publishers, and would have access to all books over five years old. Copyright couldn't be abused to force distributors into monopolistic contracts (MS), to hide dirty little secrets (Church of Scientology), or to extort money for access to cultural icons created by men long dead(Disney).
I think it's a good balance: five years of guaranteed income from everyone who accesses your work, but no control over who gets it and under what terms, and then it becomes part of our cultural heritage.
--------
But the problem begins when you have a company that changes it's prices not in response to costs or demand, but rather as a way to force others out of the market.
If there aren't a lot of legal barriers to entry into the business, this isn't a problem.
When one company underprices its goods, the consumers benefit from the lower prices. When they raise them again, the consumers hurt for a little while, but it becomes profitable to compete again and the situation corrects itself. That competition can spring up awfully quickly when the consumer feels cheated and actively hates the company that is gouging them.
Like I said, it's natural price fluctuation.
problem comes to one of self-interest. It's the old "tragedy of the commons" aspect of environmental economics: it is of greater benefit for me to abuse the system than to abide by it.
Not at all. The self-interest component is effectively purchase of status. You pay to be treated as a relevant person by buskware developers. The essence of the difference between this and shareware is in the public record of revenues. By paying for products which support your interests, you alter the priorities of the producing pool toward your interests. This is because profit-seeking producers will naturally try to predict what will be profitable, and this will be most evident from what has been paid for in the past. I don't expect everyone to jump on the bandwagon at once, but for spectacular successes in niche markets to gradually demonstrate the viability of the model. Some people will be willing to pay, and they'll start getting exactly the products they want for less money than their proprietary-software counterparts do, so the practice will spread.
The reason that "tragedy of the commons" doesn't apply is because nobody can do harm to the system. There isn't a limited resource available to be consumed for free. You can either be irrelevant because you don't pay, whether you use the product or not, or you can contribute and have your wishes considered in future production.
since when has moving into a higher tax bracket ever prevented people from seeking pay raises or higher paying jobs?
Of course it hasn't. But it does severely hurt division of labor.
Work you do inefficiently, for yourself, isn't taxed. You get all the benefit from it. If you want to spend your time more efficiently by earning more money and hiring a professional, suddenly you must work longer to pay extra income tax, pay his income tax inflated price, often pay a service tax, etc.
Without this kind of barriers, it would be, for example, cheaper to eat in restaurants or have take-out delivered than to eat at home (saving everyone lots of time). That's the insanity I'm talking about.
Taxes on earnings are a disincentive to effective division of labor because they are a penalty for doing things efficiently with money rather than by your own untrained labor.
It further hurts people by forcing them into the "large corporation - small employee" model of earning a living (and naturally limiting consumer choice), because beating these tax penalties requires economies of scale and tax breaks available only to large central organizations. Extremely personalized services, which could easily be provided by microbusinesses (the perfect escape from corporate wageslavery), are made prohibitively expensive by these taxes.
What other options are there? Home schooling? Go ahead, nobody's preventing you.
...as long as you have the wealth and legal savvy to defend yourself against charges of child abuse.
You think everybody just willingly sent their kids off to public school? Near-universal attendance was achieved under threat of force.
Let's not ignore the fact that everybody pays for public schools, too. If the gov't didn't take the money from you by force, you could afford to send your kid to private school or hire a group-tutor with your neighbors (another one of those great microbusinesses the government discourages so severely).
For-profit private schools? Too much incentive for them to cut costs.
Pure and unmitigated nonsense. This argument can be used against every for-profit private enterprise. Children going to a good private school will come home and impress their parents with what they are being taught. When parents are buying an education for their children on the free market, they lose that sense of inevitability and the apathy that goes with it.
The situation can't get any worse than it is. Children are taught that they are "special", and to have a disdain for honest work. They are given passing grades in advanced physics, biology, and mathematics without understanding that rockets don't move by "pushing against" the air, humans didn't coexists with dinosaurs, or how to divide large numbers without a calculator. Fat, lazy, clumsy children are given high grades in "physical training". Don't even get me started on what passes for language training!
Public education, IMNSHO, has a net negative effect on practically everyone who passes through it. If it was cut off abruptly, tomorrow, there might be more people who were totally illiterate (most of these people don't amount to much as it is anyway), but the "hump" of the distribution would move forward. IOW, the base lousy education of public school wouldn't be universal as it is now, but on average, the level of education would be much higher.
I consider this preferable. Socialist garbage like public schooling always has the effect of pushing toward flattening everyone to the same low level. Schools teach as much as the dumbest student can pass, and screw everyone who can do better. Considering who is more imporant to society, this is clearly a very dangerous instance of clinging to what passes for security.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
It's half of fair copyright law: protection of the copyright holder. If you can resell copyrighted works, that cheats the copyright holder of his income. Wouldn't you, if you were an author, feel screwed by one person buying a book, then passing it on to 20 others?
This isn't one-sidedly for the holder. Remember, book-passing has to be taken into account when setting prices.
Unfortunately, I don't see any efforts toward the other, much more important half of copyright reform: shortening the term to about five years after publishing. Copyright, like patent, is supposed a temporary monopoly on one's own ideas. Most copyrighted works make most of their profit in the first year; many in the first month. If you aren't expecting to make a sufficient profit in 5 years, you probably aren't doing it for the money.
--------
It's been consistently shown that the freer a market, the more liable consumers are to abuse.
I think your confusing incompetent management with a free market.
Each of your examples is caused by incompetent government intervention:
Whether it's the railroad companies in the 1800s using variable pricing schemes to squeeze out every dollar they could,
Not everyone with money can lay rail. The government granted and enforced monopolies on rail-lines in certain places, which was naturally a bad thing for consumers.
In those cases where there is a natural monopoly, like rail or power lines, the government should retain ownership and rent their use to the highest bidder (they should also contract out construction and maintenance). That's the true free market solution here (and it's a better way for gov't to earn their money than taxing).
Look at Manitoba Hydro (in Canada) for a prime example of a natural monopoly owned by the government and run well. Okay, they should be renting more things out, and contracting more jobs out, but they luckily had some very sensible and competent bureaucrats so it worked anyway. Too bad such things are a crap shoot; if every gov't endeavor could be done this competently, I'd be a socialist (I was when I was younger and prone to thinking of how best to run the world if someone competent was in charge and everyone was pulling together for the common good... before I realized that those basic assumptions are totally backwards).
to Japanese electronics companies flooding the US market with below-cost goods then driving up prices once the competitors were gone,
Were they truly intentionally selling them at a loss? I doubt it. This was just the standard Jap-bashing propaganda line to justify protectionist tariffs.
America has more capital than Japan, and some of the best high-tech workers in the world. It isn't some two-bit banana republic that can't afford to ride out product dumping or build new factories to re-enter a profitable market.
Prices do fluctuate in a free market. That's the natural order of things. Low prices drive some out of business, high prices bring more into business. Any amount that stops this fluctuation does so by holding the prices high, and screwing the buyers.
to Microsoft driving competitors out of the market,
Poorly written IP laws. Copyright shouldn't grant total control over distribution in this age of instant near-free copying, only the right to set a price the holder must be paid per copy made.
IP law is an unnecessary government interference in the free market. Here is an essay that covers why I don't think IP law is necessary for software.
The ownership of copies as if they were physical objects is acceptable, but the ownership of the monopoly right of making copies, to do with as one wills, is insane. This behavior isn't analogous to any real property. All forced monopolies, like natural monopolies, should be owned by the government, and legal copies of copyrighted work (really just permission to make physical copies) should be sold by the government, with proceeds going to the copyright holder. Furthermore, copyright term should be limited to five years. If you aren't going to make your money back in five years, you won't write it for the money. These aren't the days of giant, expensive printing presses anymore.
If government's going to interfere, it should keep its interference under it's own control, not just hand over their power of violent enforcement to be wielded in whatever manner the IP "owner" sees fit.
to Savings and Loans going under because they made obviously bad loans to 3rd world dictators,
Yes, some companies are run incompetently. Some people invest poorly. Tough.
Regulation hasn't, and never will, guarantee any return on (or of) your investment.
business without oversight has been consistently shown to end in harm.
I don't see that at all. Regulation without foresight consistently causes harm.
Other evil government interference in the free market:
corporations- corporations are not natural, they are creatures of the government that have greater power than individuals in many ways and are used for securing individual profit without individual responsibility. You should not be able to buy voting stock in a company without being personally responsible for all actions of that company.
public schooling- Incompetent government bureaucracy given an important task combined with the government indoctrination of our children. How much worse can a deal get? I remember grade school as the greatest waste of time in my life, and I believe that the chosen course material forms most of the political opinions of the masses.
income tax- The more you earn, the more you pay, in fact, the higher a portion of your earnings you pay! An insane disincentive to profit and productivity.
With gaping holes like these in the boat, adding other regulations atop them to fix the problems they cause is akin to drilling holes in the other side of the boat so it sinks evenly instead of overturning.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
After all, a democracy can be a totalitarian state in which your only freedom is for whom to vote, if a majority decides that's the way it should be.
The majority is as dumb as the average person, so effectively, it is roughly equivalent to being ruled by a monarch of average intelligence, who is prohibited from referring to himself in his legislation. So if he want to make a law for his own benefit, he has to vote that benefit for everyone like him.
The majority don't have enough money for all the health-care they want, so they vote to make it "free". Sure, they still don't get all the health-care they want, but at least nobody else can buy more than them, and they don't have to worry about which insurance plan they should buy. Ughh, God I hate them, they sell out my rights for their convenience.
I'd never live in a country where the power of the democracy wasn't limited by an acceptable constitution.
Right now, most limit personal economic freedom so severely that I'd prefer anarchy. I'm getting off this dirtball ASAP.
It costs nothing,
TANSTAAFL; everyone pays for it in their taxes, and in higher prices due to having to comply with regulations.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
And how many individual medical practitioner can afford to fund their own tests? This isn't about who's qualified; private practitioners may be just as skilled in these matters as FDA scientists, but they have neither the time, the inclination, or the money to pursue rigorous testing. And the drug companies have a history of suppressing negative results, and a financial incentive to cut down on testing as much as possible.
Herein we find the root of the error of your reasoning: you rightly recognize the need for large-scale organization, but you believe that only government can provide it.
Consider: professional engineering organizations, bar associations, and medical associations did not, as a rule, start out as government organizations. They started out as voluntary private associations, and by long demonstration of superior competence, they were eventually granted special status by the government as having monopolies on official competence. Some have held to their private origins, while others have been integrated into the government, but they originally came into being without government assistance. However, there is no way to assure their competence after the day the government accepts them as the sole such organization. As they age, secure in their monopolies, they tend to gradually place higher and higher barriers to entry, while actually delivering a lower standard of service. It's not that hard to become a doctor, an engineer, or a lawyer, but you've got to put in your dollars and your years. From what I've seen, they've shifted from guaranteeing a high level of competence to guaranteeing knowledge of one's limits: doctors that refer all patients that might have a problem to other doctors, engineers that sit quietly in the back of meetings, and lawyers who act as glorified clerks. Meanwhile, as they claim to raise their standards by raising the barriers to entry, they lobby to expand their monopolies so it gets harder and harder to do anything without hiring an Official Professional.
Sorry, I got off track a bit, but the point is that they grow without any special privilege of the government to competence (which, tangentially, decays after they gain their government-granted monopoly).
The average doctor can't, by himself, test a drug. The average driver can't, by himself, design and build a car. However, both are bright enough to hire such work to be done for them, and figure out which sources produce reliable results. Private business has long since learned how split costs up among many buyers. So what if your drug verification cost shows up on your doctor's bill rather than your drug bill?
Intelligent buyers have always known that they can get honest evaluations by hiring uninvolved 3rd parties with good reputations. A lot of testing is done by private labs. Naturally, they work for the person who pays them. So it's in their best interests to be honest if they're hired by people who want them to be honest. Bribery is possible, but no more so than in a government process.
The drug companies won't do the testing that doctors trust. That would be insane. The doctors' associations would do the testing.
When the government isn't setting standards, obviously it becomes vitally important for private organizations to set them. That is why it's vitally important for government to enforce the trademarks of such organizations. It would be total chaos if not only were there no government standards, but any street vendor could put the "Kentucky Central Food Standards Association" logo on his cart without actually meeting their standards.
I'd really rather have the choice between, say the "Kentucky C.F.S.A." (which considers feeding growth hormone to chickens an acceptable practice) and the "Kentucky Food Approval Organization" (which considers feeding growth hormone to chickens unacceptable), instead of considering the government's decision as the only valid one.
Sure, you might say, that's all to the good, but there's nothing stopping you from starting such standards organizations now! True, but the government isn't very friendly to competing standards associations. For one thing, you have to meet the government standards, no matter what else; that gives a competitive price advantage to businesses that only comply with the minimum gov't regulations (not bad by itself, but downright nasty combined with the next two). For another, governments have a way of pooh-poohing these competing standards in their official propaganda (letters from the Surgeon General, etc.). Most importantly, though, is the nanny-state attitude that most citizens have: "the gub'r'ment will take care of us! we don't have to look out for ourselves." Part of that comes from the official propaganda lines, and part from the public education system, but mostly from the fact that this is a democracy, ruled by the whim of the majority, who see any problem and think, "There oughta be a law!" (I would never dream of blaming the government as something seperate from the people; the majority of the enfranchised public is directly responsible for all actions of the government; unfortunately, they don't understand government)
Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so does a free market. Supply grows to meet demand.
The free market is a "magical black box" which produces all good things without an outside controlling organization. You can control the quality of its products purely through selecting which businesses get your dollars, if you can muster the brainpower to choose someone competent to decide who's competent (and if you can't, you sure as hell shouldn't be trusted with a vote). The advantage over doing it with dollars has over doing it with violence-backed government enforcement is that each person can make his own choice, rather than all having to conform to the choice of the voting majority.
But distributing unsafe medicine to an unsuspecting public isn't [a crime against the non-consenting public?]
No, it isn't. It is a damned fool who buys medicine that his doctor hasn't told him is safe and necessary. If some such fool wants to buy it, that is all his fault and none of the seller's.
The difference here is that murder, robbery, or poisoning rivers, is something that is done to a non-consenting individual or public, while in a purchase of unsafe goods, the buyer asks for these goods.
That doesn't mean fraud shouldn't be a crime. Of course it should be illegal to claim that some sale good meets a standard when it doesn't. That doesn't mean that the government has to pick the standard.
I've always also felt that people should be able to make legal oaths, call down whatever government punishments upon themselves that they wish (guaranteeing payment in advance for the cost), and file them as public records. It would make establishing trust much easier. Contracts do part of this, but generally limit losses to financial ones, and criminal law can never codify appropriate punishments for every kind of betrayal.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
It's wrong in principle? How? Is it wrong in principle when the FDA "interferes" with drug companies by examining their product before it allowing it to go on the market?
Absolutely. Doctors know their business and are quite capable of organizing their own testing of drugs. Putting the thing in the hands of government bureaucrats only adds a healthy dose of waste and incompetence to the process.
The FDA adds to the cost of drugs and puts them more firmly under control of large corporations.
Furthermore, it takes the choice out of how "experimental" a drug a patient can choose to take. People die who could be saved while FDA human drug tests go on, with no option to tell the government to stick their cautious testing methods wherever they care, and just try the medicine themselves.
Suckers are still sold poison as medicine every day. The FDA hasn't stopped that, and nothing ever will.
Or forcing food companies to maintain some standard of quality control?
Again, who is the government to say what is fit food and what isn't?
As long as the government enforces the exclusivity of standards-organization trademarks, sensible people would only buy food from vendors who follow practices they consider fit.
How about when the EPA "interferes" with corporations pouring toxic chemicals into our rivers?
This is pure "straw man" idiocy. The corporations don't own the rivers. Not everybody who has some interest in the river is agreeing freely to have toxic chemicals poured into it. This has nothing to do with the freedom for any two consenting parties to form any contract they wish. It is instead a crime against the non-consenting public, like robbery or murder.
That kind of thing is exactly what the government should be dealing with.
However, they often do it incompetently, setting required mechanisms rather than required results. For example: catalytic converters. These were needed to bring emissions from inferior American cars down to acceptable levels, but were not necessary for foreign cars which could meet the emission limits without them. They are now, in fact, counterproductive, adding expense and increasing fuel consumption. There are better ways to lower emissions, but you still can't sell a car without a catalytic converter. That kind of crap is what ties us to a handful of large car manufacturers and slows innovation to a crawl.
That kind of poor decision is exactly why government shouldn't be involved in anything it doesn't absolutely have to be.
If I buy a P3 that's really a falsely marked P2, how is that a "bad choice"?
It isn't, it's fraud, and it's already illegal.
It's saying that if you have a warranty, it must be honored; that's all.
Bullshit. They are already legally obligated to honor warrantees.
Everything that should be done in protecting "consumer rights" in purchasing is already done, and in fact, too much is done already, hurting business and consumer alike.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
This is not interference this is consumer protection.
Consumer "protection" is interference. This isn't protection from the seller lying about the product, this is protection from their own bad choices, like seat-belt laws and anti-drug laws. It's government saying, "We know what's good for you better than you do." and forcing their opinion of what's good for you on you whether you like it or not. It's wrong in principle, even if it improves results for thousands of stupid or careless people.
Every new regulation makes it a bit harder and more expensive to open a new business, locking us more and more into the role of employee, making us more dependent on lawyers and professional business managers. More power for corporations, less for individuals.
The fact is, you can buy computers with full 2-year warrantees. Some people don't, and some buy inferior discounted products. Sometimes their computers don't work. Tough luck for them, it was their choice.
I don't think the government should be regulating minimum lengths to warrantees. It's not their business.
I want the option of buying from some shop on a shoestring that doesn't have a service department, if I think it's the better deal. I don't necessarily want to do it, but I'd still rather have the option.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
It's a sad day when you can't decide whether you want to pay extra for the warrantee or not.
Computer hardware failures within the first two years are pretty rare, and usually covered by warrantee.
This is just a publicity stunt which will drive prices up slightly for those of us who would rather take our chances.
But this kind of thinking is dangerous. Now it's "responsibility" legislation, next it will be "safety" regulations and all computers sold will be required to be equipped with the latest anti-virus software. Once government starts regulating an industry, it never stops.
Remember, bureaucracium has a negative half-life, the damned stuff grows over time, sucking energy from the area it's in.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
People will learn to pay for it.
It is in their own best interests.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
note: generic, private libraries
IOW, the stuff that defines his coding style. The stuff he can either rewrite over and over again, debug over and over again, or just do once and gradually refine it, making him a better, more productive prgrammer.
There's nothing I hate more than that "Gimme, gimme, gimme! Mine, mine, mine! I hired you for this job, so I own everything you produce in the course of doing it!" attitude.
It's bullshit. Do you claim to own the skills he learned while working for you? He developed them on working time, just the same. I say a programmer's private toolbox is part of his skill set. He has a right to improve the parts of it that are used in the line of his current job, on paid time.
This code itself is nothing but a convenience, to the person who wrote it. He can recreate it easily, but it wastes his time. Insisting on the IP ownership of the company that he was working for at the time he wrote it helps no one, and is a purely hostile act.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Remember, Amiga isn't just a software package, it's hardware. Old, slow hardware.
Linux, OTOH, is portable software. It can be ported to every new machine, and take advantage of the new speed to be competitive with other new OSs.
It's entirely possible for it to still be in fairly common use twenty years from now.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
We in the PC world enjoy the privilege of choosing whether we want to spend the extra money on silly junk like gigabit ethernet, optical mice, and spare processors. Most of us would rather spend the money on more important things like larger hard drives, more memory, and better video cards. Never the less, such hardware is also available for PCs, unpopular though it is.
Instead of having yesterday's top gadgets forced on us at yesterday's top prices, we can choose to buy yesterday's toys at a discount or today's toys at a premium.
Don't expect me to be impressed when you flash "standard" gadgets in my face that I don't want as substitutes for unavailable ones that I do want.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
The "real work" is always done by some other program. That doesn't mean that the OS is irrelevant.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.