"All roads are already toll roads, in that their maintenance is paid for by gas taxes. "
That's not what a toll road is.
"What would be so awful about that money going to an efficient enterprise, as opposed to an inefficient bureaucracy?"
Nothing, that would be great. But we're talking about "going into a few hundred-thousand independently operated, unassociated enterprises, a small minority of which are efficient". And that would be worse than the bureaucracy we have now. We'll have to disagree about how efficient it is.
By the way, nothing prevents private marketeers from building toll roads. The fact that they don't do so is good evidence that they can't compete against the vastly superior "inefficient bureaucracy" model we currently enjoy.
Extreme libertarianism is currently the law of the land in Darfur and Afghanistan. It's not working out well for those places.
Extreme Capitalism was the law of the land in America before early in the 20th century. It didn't work well for America.
Extreme Socialism would be, what, communism? We tried communism in a few places and yeah, it didn't work very well, but better than maybe I would have predicted.
every road in America is a toll road. Have you ever heard about gasoline taxes?
Cute, but that's not what a toll road is.
Does pre-paying your road fees at the pump make you happier for some reason (would love to hear what that reason could be) than paying the fees as you use the roads (ala EZPass et. al. - let's assume you can use them anonymously).
Yes, that's an accurate synopsis of my thesis. It is nicer to pre-pay via taxes than to stop and pay each individual toll operator. EZ Pass, of course, wouldn't exist in a libertarian world because you'd never get every landowner to sign up with their individual one-mile-long road segments.
It sounds like you did so without understanding how roads are paid for.
Listen again, more carefully this time, because I didn't say anything indicating that I don't understand how roads are paid for.
It's an ideologically-driven stance to accept more expensive, lower quality roads and political corruption and waste for the sake of a particular revenue model.
"Do you think the MIT researcher should pay for the higher tier and be slowed down to Grandma's speed for some sites?"
Yes. I think both of them should have their packets delivered as fast as the network hardware allows, considering the networks they are both on. If they are on equally fast networks, then yes, their speeds should be the same.
"Do you think your overnight package should be 3 days to certain destinations for the same price of overnight delivery?"
No, but I do think that putting a stamp on a letter should get it across the city or across the country. Package delivery is different in some ways from packet delivery, and similar in other ways.
"Without it you get toll roads everywhere, and you constantly have to pay by the mile"
Ah, yes, the libertarian dream.
That very hypothetical scenario is the actual reason I'm not a libertarian. Back in college it was popular to say you were a libertarian, but one day we were talking about roads and the non-hypocrites had to admit that, yes, a libertarian country would be 100% toll roads. I abandoned that stupid philosophy that day. I don't want to live in an ideologically pure world; I want to live in a good world, and libertarianism wouldn't lead to a good world.
I always thought Marxism was bad but if net neutrality is Marxist then maybe it's time to rethink my political philosophy. Thanks for the tip, Koch Brothers!
You told them to stop breaking the law because it inconveniences you, and they said "it's our right"? Seriously? Given that situation, my response would have been "Oh, gosh, I'm sorry, I thought it wasn't your right at all. I'll call the Hotel Commission just to verify you are right. Here, I'll do it while you wait..."
That's what it's about, and that's what it should be about.
Pay your taxes. Stop trying to invent clever ways to avoid taxes. When you do that, you are fucking me, and I don't appreciate it, and it makes me support a heavy-handed government. If you don't like heavy-handed government then stop being a tax cheat.
Only if you mean "portable if the only thing I have is a binary".
No, also for the development. My company is writing a major piece of new software in Java. All the programmers have Macs although the deployment environments will be mostly Linux and Windows.
But even if not, "portable if I only have a binary" is incredibly valuable because that describes a lot of situations.
I don't think that is right. For that to be true the SC would have had to find a Constitutional right to take pictures. I think they were interpreting existing privacy common law and statute.
You can certainly pass laws which go against SC rulings, if they are statutory rulings. The recent Hobby Lobby case, for instance, could be overturned by a new statute. Do I have a Constitutional right to live-stream a high-def real-time video feed of your high-fenced back yard from my swarm of drones which constantly monitor your property from 83 feet in the air? I don't think the Court has ever said that right exists and I bet they'd be receptive to some legislation limiting such actions.
Generally we divide government action from private action. If you use a racial slur and your brother frowns at you, we don't usually consider that force. But if you use a racial slur and the police arrest you for incitement, or whatever, then that would be typical of "force". There's a gray area when a whole community of private actors use shame together. But if you say "I don't think gays should be allowed to enjoy marriage rights" and your employees say "We don't want to work for someone who thinks that", I don't think that's "force", and I don't think any reasonable person could say it is.
Pictures? Getting prosecuted for drawings is a legal gray area. I think the SCUSA even struck that down, didn't they? Getting prosecuted for photos is a perfectly straightforward case of exploitation.
We don't recognize consent from children, so if you're prosecuted for that it's because you're accused of being a child rapist.
I tolerate pedophiles despite thinking their proclivities are gross. I support full equal rights for pedophiles. I don't want to deny pedophiles the right to marry, or to put pedophiles in jail, or to suppress their freedom of speech. Of course marriage and sex require consent of a second party, so you have to establish legally valid consent for those things. I don't see any contradiction there.
Yeah, the Year Of Linux On The Desktop, I remember it well. And then after that, those planes crashed into the twin towers and we went to war. Good times, good times.
At my former job the seniors got a $50-per-month phone stipend, but we juniors didn't. I once asked about it and they told me I didn't qualify. I shrugged it off, it was no big deal.
Then one day my phone started ringing after I got home from work; it was my boss. I didn't pick up the call. He called a second time; I didn't pick up the call.
Literally the next day they announced that juniors would also receive the stipend, and would be expected to answer calls when they could outside of business hours. That might be a coincidence but I doubt it. I think they realized that $50 is small change when the input of a 'junior' employee is required to seal a contract.
At the next job after that I was put on "on call rotation" meaning I'd get calls in the middle of the nite to fix problems -- usually to restart a server. They immediately gave me a phone stipend and also an internet stipend.
That is all as it should be. If you expect to be able to communicate with me outside of work hours and work space, then you can foot the bill for that. Otherwise, I'll see you at 9am at the office. If the law in California supports this notion then the law is appropriate.
If you were right then cable companies wouldn't pay fees back to the channel makers, but they do, so you aren't. Broadcast TV manages to arrive without charging for the piping.
When you pay for cable you aren't paying for the piping nor are you paying for the content. You are paying because the entire operation from top to bottom is an anti-consumer conspiracy of greed and malice.
Whoa. You know too little about the law to be mis-using "prior restraint" and "unlawful search" like that. Neither of those phrases means what your argument would need them to mean.
Yeah, that's a reasonable summary of the law today. And there is a proposition to change that law to recognize what many people think is a reasonable expectation of privacy. So then it wouldn't be legal anymore. That's the topic at hand.
Laws can't be unlawful. It sort of goes to the meaning of laws. Sometimes they can overlap or contradict but that just means picking one law over another. So I'm not really sure what you mean to say when you say that what I welcome is unlawful.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it is. Try again.
"Free-market Roads (Part of a series on Libertarianism)"
"All roads are already toll roads, in that their maintenance is paid for by gas taxes. "
That's not what a toll road is.
"What would be so awful about that money going to an efficient enterprise, as opposed to an inefficient bureaucracy?"
Nothing, that would be great. But we're talking about "going into a few hundred-thousand independently operated, unassociated enterprises, a small minority of which are efficient". And that would be worse than the bureaucracy we have now. We'll have to disagree about how efficient it is.
By the way, nothing prevents private marketeers from building toll roads. The fact that they don't do so is good evidence that they can't compete against the vastly superior "inefficient bureaucracy" model we currently enjoy.
Extreme libertarianism is currently the law of the land in Darfur and Afghanistan. It's not working out well for those places.
Extreme Capitalism was the law of the land in America before early in the 20th century. It didn't work well for America.
Extreme Socialism would be, what, communism? We tried communism in a few places and yeah, it didn't work very well, but better than maybe I would have predicted.
every road in America is a toll road. Have you ever heard about gasoline taxes?
Cute, but that's not what a toll road is.
Does pre-paying your road fees at the pump make you happier for some reason (would love to hear what that reason could be) than paying the fees as you use the roads (ala EZPass et. al. - let's assume you can use them anonymously).
Yes, that's an accurate synopsis of my thesis. It is nicer to pre-pay via taxes than to stop and pay each individual toll operator. EZ Pass, of course, wouldn't exist in a libertarian world because you'd never get every landowner to sign up with their individual one-mile-long road segments.
It sounds like you did so without understanding how roads are paid for.
Listen again, more carefully this time, because I didn't say anything indicating that I don't understand how roads are paid for.
It's an ideologically-driven stance to accept more expensive, lower quality roads and political corruption and waste for the sake of a particular revenue model.
No, it's not. It's the opposite of an ideology.
That's not what socialism means. Here's a link to get you started.
"Do you think the MIT researcher should pay for the higher tier and be slowed down to Grandma's speed for some sites?"
Yes. I think both of them should have their packets delivered as fast as the network hardware allows, considering the networks they are both on. If they are on equally fast networks, then yes, their speeds should be the same.
"Do you think your overnight package should be 3 days to certain destinations for the same price of overnight delivery?"
No, but I do think that putting a stamp on a letter should get it across the city or across the country. Package delivery is different in some ways from packet delivery, and similar in other ways.
"Without it you get toll roads everywhere, and you constantly have to pay by the mile"
Ah, yes, the libertarian dream.
That very hypothetical scenario is the actual reason I'm not a libertarian. Back in college it was popular to say you were a libertarian, but one day we were talking about roads and the non-hypocrites had to admit that, yes, a libertarian country would be 100% toll roads. I abandoned that stupid philosophy that day. I don't want to live in an ideologically pure world; I want to live in a good world, and libertarianism wouldn't lead to a good world.
I always thought Marxism was bad but if net neutrality is Marxist then maybe it's time to rethink my political philosophy. Thanks for the tip, Koch Brothers!
PS Fuck you, Koch Brothers
This is the best idea. OP, please do this and report back on your success.
"If they can't afford to pay for the costs they impose on others then they have no right to operate a business at all."
I can tell you aren't a Republican! Me, neither.
You told them to stop breaking the law because it inconveniences you, and they said "it's our right"? Seriously? Given that situation, my response would have been "Oh, gosh, I'm sorry, I thought it wasn't your right at all. I'll call the Hotel Commission just to verify you are right. Here, I'll do it while you wait..."
That's what it's about, and that's what it should be about.
Pay your taxes. Stop trying to invent clever ways to avoid taxes. When you do that, you are fucking me, and I don't appreciate it, and it makes me support a heavy-handed government. If you don't like heavy-handed government then stop being a tax cheat.
I like C# a lot. I wish people used it outside of Windows. Alas. I'll retire happy if I never touch Windows again, so C# is dead to me.
Only if you mean "portable if the only thing I have is a binary".
No, also for the development. My company is writing a major piece of new software in Java. All the programmers have Macs although the deployment environments will be mostly Linux and Windows.
But even if not, "portable if I only have a binary" is incredibly valuable because that describes a lot of situations.
I don't think that is right. For that to be true the SC would have had to find a Constitutional right to take pictures. I think they were interpreting existing privacy common law and statute.
You can certainly pass laws which go against SC rulings, if they are statutory rulings. The recent Hobby Lobby case, for instance, could be overturned by a new statute. Do I have a Constitutional right to live-stream a high-def real-time video feed of your high-fenced back yard from my swarm of drones which constantly monitor your property from 83 feet in the air? I don't think the Court has ever said that right exists and I bet they'd be receptive to some legislation limiting such actions.
Generally we divide government action from private action. If you use a racial slur and your brother frowns at you, we don't usually consider that force. But if you use a racial slur and the police arrest you for incitement, or whatever, then that would be typical of "force". There's a gray area when a whole community of private actors use shame together. But if you say "I don't think gays should be allowed to enjoy marriage rights" and your employees say "We don't want to work for someone who thinks that", I don't think that's "force", and I don't think any reasonable person could say it is.
Pictures? Getting prosecuted for drawings is a legal gray area. I think the SCUSA even struck that down, didn't they? Getting prosecuted for photos is a perfectly straightforward case of exploitation.
We don't recognize consent from children, so if you're prosecuted for that it's because you're accused of being a child rapist.
I tolerate pedophiles despite thinking their proclivities are gross. I support full equal rights for pedophiles. I don't want to deny pedophiles the right to marry, or to put pedophiles in jail, or to suppress their freedom of speech. Of course marriage and sex require consent of a second party, so you have to establish legally valid consent for those things. I don't see any contradiction there.
Yeah, the Year Of Linux On The Desktop, I remember it well. And then after that, those planes crashed into the twin towers and we went to war. Good times, good times.
At my former job the seniors got a $50-per-month phone stipend, but we juniors didn't. I once asked about it and they told me I didn't qualify. I shrugged it off, it was no big deal.
Then one day my phone started ringing after I got home from work; it was my boss. I didn't pick up the call. He called a second time; I didn't pick up the call.
Literally the next day they announced that juniors would also receive the stipend, and would be expected to answer calls when they could outside of business hours. That might be a coincidence but I doubt it. I think they realized that $50 is small change when the input of a 'junior' employee is required to seal a contract.
At the next job after that I was put on "on call rotation" meaning I'd get calls in the middle of the nite to fix problems -- usually to restart a server. They immediately gave me a phone stipend and also an internet stipend.
That is all as it should be. If you expect to be able to communicate with me outside of work hours and work space, then you can foot the bill for that. Otherwise, I'll see you at 9am at the office. If the law in California supports this notion then the law is appropriate.
If you were right then cable companies wouldn't pay fees back to the channel makers, but they do, so you aren't. Broadcast TV manages to arrive without charging for the piping.
When you pay for cable you aren't paying for the piping nor are you paying for the content. You are paying because the entire operation from top to bottom is an anti-consumer conspiracy of greed and malice.
Well, the US Constitution bars you from treason and from owning slaves, for instance.
But yeah, that "unreasonable search" argument he tried to make is total nonsense. That doesn't apply to civilians.
Whoa. You know too little about the law to be mis-using "prior restraint" and "unlawful search" like that. Neither of those phrases means what your argument would need them to mean.
Yeah, that's a reasonable summary of the law today. And there is a proposition to change that law to recognize what many people think is a reasonable expectation of privacy. So then it wouldn't be legal anymore. That's the topic at hand.
Laws can't be unlawful. It sort of goes to the meaning of laws. Sometimes they can overlap or contradict but that just means picking one law over another. So I'm not really sure what you mean to say when you say that what I welcome is unlawful.
You make a good effort, but fail.