If the old systems were servers, they were probably on 24x7. If used for education, they very well might only be used 8 hours per day, or even only 8 hours per week. It depends on how they are put to use. For example, if donated to schools, the schools turn around and sell the machines to salvage companies to recycle the steel cases, strip the mother boards of precious metals, etc. Certainly there would still be some landfill impact, but not as much as you're thinking there will be.
You figured a G5 is pretty much the same thing as a P4 even though Apple has to buy a relatively low volume processor from a different company...
It was widely reported at the Mactel announcment that Apple currently pays less to IBM for G4 and G5 chips than it will cost them to buy Intel chips. Apple's processor costs per unit will actually increase as a result of moving to Intel. Further, economies of scale have both increasing and decreasing returns to scale. Making more of a widget only decreases costs per widget up to a certain point. At a certain point in volume production, the fixed costs per unit have been effectively reduced to zero. At that point, price is determined entirely by the cost of inputs which can go both up and down when purchased in high volumes.
Lastly, Apple's chip purchases from IBM were reported to be less than 5% capacity of one IBM production facility. Once you look at the universe of PPC chips that big blue is selling, it becomes rather obvious that Apple is a rather small customer. For IBM, it simply isn't worth it to ramp up higher production of Apple specific PPC chips. Consequently, Apple is restricted to buying only as many PPC chips as IBM wants to produce.
Unfettered democracy is simply a tyranny of the majority.
Which is why few nations ever make the attempt to organize themselves as pure democracies. Rather, most democratic countries organize themselves around some sort of republican model where democracy is tempered with certain constitutional rights that inhibit the grosser deficiencies of democracy.
From the OED: 1807 J. BARLOW Columbiad IX. 683 [To] Improve and utilise each opening birth, And aid the labors of this nurturing earth. And given that it's a pretty straightforward Anglicization of French or Italian, I would be quite surprized if it wasn't in utilization prior to the nineteenth century.
The Eclipse project has been working on business reporting for quite some time. They presently have a rudimentary BIRT module (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) that, for its limited breadth and depth, is actually fairly impressive. One of Business Objects' competitors, Actuate, already has a product built on top of Eclipse.
Hopefully, this shift will pan out as a move to better integration of Crystal Reports with web services without having to shell out for Crystal Enterprise. Up through the present, most of Crystal's eggs have been placed in the COM basket so that reporting is best automated through Windows programming. This is great in that you can automatically connect to a database, run a report, export the output and email the export in a few dozen lines of VBScript. But if Business Objects is moving to web services, it will offer a great deal more flexibility as automation will no longer be restricted to Windows.
One to two servings of ethanol per day demonstratively lower risk for heart disease.
Similar studies suggest the same is true for caffeine. The amount caffeine present in two to three cups of coffee, when taken every day, improves cardiovascular health.
Caffeine and ethanol, like most chemicals, are good when taken in the appropriate dose and harmful when abused.
300 microns is the width of many papers. Granted, it would be thicker than the average piece of newsprint or notebook paper, but at about 1/100 of an inch would still fall well into the thickness of paper in general.
But what about the American firm that comes up with proteomics-based individualized cancer therapies that double lung cancer survival rates? Or a little in utero genetic magic that can cure cystic fibrosis or guarantee perfect vision and superior resistance to infection in every newborn child? How about a vaccine against Alzheimer's so everybody can be as sharp in their 90s as they were in their 50s? Cure for AIDS?
Long term, China doesn't really have to worry about that because their birth rate exceeds that of the US by such a large factor.
Eh, this is the problem with Stalinist top-down economic planning. The Chicoms are fighting the last (economic) war here. I seriously doubt the future belongs to the nation that makes best progress in rocket technology, semiconductors, or high-energy materials physics for that matter.
China has never been Stalinist. And has been making tremendous strides in making its economy follow more of a market model than the strictly top-down model it followed in the fifties, sixties and seventies.
I do think you are correct that China is fighting an economic war with the US. But, presently, it would seem that China has the upper hand if one is measuring success according to the assumptions of capitalism. The simple question is which country owns more of the means of production of the other country. It seems to me that China owns far more of US factories, real estate, and government debt than the US owns of the same in China. The only non-military pressure that the US can presently exercise on China is the threat of defaulting on the US treasury bills owned by China. But China's government could probably take that hit without slowing down all that much. China, on the other hand, holds tremendous economic influence over the US.
But it's a different story in biotech, nanotech or even funky networked software
Chinese scientists are among the scientific world's leaders in stem cell and cloning research. The number of published articles from Chinese scientists and citations of those articles by other scientists is on par with most western nations in the fields of biotech, nanotech and others.
A first year college text book on economics will clear up most of your misunderstandings.
``Capitalism is a method of allocating a resources, that includes all labour, as well as production resources, and even intellectual property. ''
Not so. At least not according to economists. Capitalism is a unique mode of production that focuses on ownership of the means of production. Labor, capital and raw goods are all inputs to the production process. Other resources, such as IP and professional services (inasmuch as they are not strictly labor) are not necessarily dealt with by capitalism.
``Have you seen the definitions listed in an economics textbook. They're usually extremely inclusive. You would be hard pressed to find a business that does not produce a good or perform a service.''
Actually, no. Production in most economic textbooks refers only to the act of producing goods from raw materials and other inputs. Many key principles of economics, for example increasing and decreasing returns to scale, do not apply to the production of services. A house is a product. Plans for building a house are not. Compact disks containing data and programs are a product. The data and programs on those disks is not.
``Well, since you don't define "perfect competition" that would be hard. ''
I shouldn't have to define it. That you don't recognize one of the basic concepts at the core of economic theory suggest that you know very little about the subject. Any basic economics textbook defines the elements of perfect competition. Its essential attributes include:
1. All producers sell identical products. 2. All firms sell only at the market equilibrium price and all consumers buy only at the market equilibrium price. 3. All consumers and producers are rational and only make decisions in their own best interest. 4. No single firm has a large enough market share to impact the market equilibrium price and no single consumer buys enough of a single good to impact the market equilibrium price. 5. Buyers know the nature of the product being sold and the prices charged by each producer. 6. There is perfect freedom of entry into and exit out of every industry.
Without each and every one of those assumptions, neoclassical supply/demand price theory doesn't work. If any single one does not hold, then supply/demand price theory doesn't hold. I'm not the one making those assumptions up. Those are the assumptions that neoclassical economic theory states must hold for perfect competition to exist. They can be found in any basic economic text book. They have zero empirical support for their existence in the real world.
``But I can certainly provide numerous examples of situations where government regulation prevent competition, and thereby reduce overall efficiency.''
Be that as it may, I can empirically demonstrate that the markets fail in several key sectors: insurance, health care, education, security, consumption smoothing, and poverty relief. Whatever the inefficiency introduced by government run health care, as but one example, one has to consider that in the US, the market takes a standard profit of over 30%. Even if a government system functioned at only 2/3 the efficiency of the market in the US, the US populace would be no worse off.
``I don't see any reason the government should be generating excessive barriers to entry.''
My point is that it is question begging to accuse the government of creating artificial barriers of entry to a market segment when that market segment is itself an artificial construction. It isn't as if money were a natural resource.
Not to mention `excessive' is a value judgment. If we're going to be objective about this discussion, value judgments have no place.
Further, efficiency in a market is only unequivocally a good thing if all of the criteria of perfect competition holds. If it isn't true that all consumers have perfect knowledge of the product they are buying and of the prices offered by all producers, then it doesn't follow that an unregulated market is what is best for the consumer. In such a situation, it frequently is the case that government regulation actually benefits the consumer.
A good argument can be made that private property is an artificial construction. Money is inarguably an artificial construct. Consequently, if money is a barrier of entry to any industry, that industry has an artificial barrier of entry.
But apparently you think that the current state of technology is natural.;)
``Fitness in the evolutionary sense of the term doesn't mean the strongest, the most powerfull, or the most impressive -- it means the most capable to pass on genetic material.''
The question posed was ``why do so many insects make such great substances?'' and the reply was that ``evolution makes great things.'' But the only thing that evolution selects for, long term, is gene propagation. Saying that evolution produces `the best' or `the fittest' implies a value judgment that is not there in nature. Hence, my recasting of the theory of evolution as survival of the adequate.
In the real world, all markets have barriers to entry, chief of which is capital. The so called barrier of entry you're referring to is, practically speaking, no more a barrier to entry than being required to pony up an equivalent amount of cash to start a vending route or to beer making equipment, or any other business that requires investment.
`owning a small business doesn't turn you into a capitalist '
That much is correct. Capitalism is a theory of production, not a theory of retail or professional services. A business owner is only a capitalist inasmuch as he or she owns the means of production. Many businesses don't produce anything in the sense of the word used by economists.
But let's be objective about this. Show me a single market of concrete goods for which all the assumptions of perfect competition hold. Once you are able to do that, then we talk as to whether a license to sell things on consignment is anymore of an artifical barrier of entry than any of the other barriers of entry (such as a lack of money) to most markets.
Which is more sane, deleting.ini files from "Program Files"\AppName and from "Documents and Settings"\UserName\AppName or searching through the registry to find all references to AppName and hoping that the app didn't create any keys without it's own name in the name of the key?
If the Windows registry kept all the settings for a given app in comparable places, you might have a point. But as it is, many (perhaps most) programs change keys all over the place, leading to a snipe hunt if the app explodes beyond repair and has to be removed manually.
Having been someone who was both beat up in high school over things I've said and investigated by the secret service for things I've posted online (google for kuro5hin, smallpox, secret service if you're interested in knowing the details), I can tell you that the latter has had a far greater chilling effect on my own expression. As powerful as social norms and mores are, I don't think that they come anywhere close to the power of the coercive force of the state.
The thing that holds me back from most streaming video is that it isn't closed captioned. I tend to watch TV with the sound off because if I turn the audio up to a level that I'm comfortable with, it blows away everyone else in the room. With the tendency of organizations moving towards streaming video, hard of hearing and deaf individuals are being left behind. Federal law in the US mandates that all televisions above 13" include a closed caption decoder chip. But that doesn't help me watch the streaming video of a white house press conference in Real Media. And unless ITMS offers some similar service, it won't help me enjoy a download of my favorite television programs.
After the water all runs out, those without flippers, or with minimal flippers suddenly start to outcompete those with the uberflippers.
Not to mention, your view of competition is a bit skewed. Natural selection favors survival of the adequate, not survival of the fittest. Only in extreme situations does being the best help individuals survive to a significantly greater extent than being adequate. Certainly, there are some situations in nature where resources are so scarce that only the `best' survive, but throughout most of the natural world, being adequate is good enough.
And not to mention that adequateness in natural selection is defined entirely by propagating one's genes. It doesn't matter if a swimmer has the best fins in the world if the guys in speedos mate more frequently and have enough progeny to ensure that some survive the attacks of their quicker swimming brethren.
You ask how public censorship can be more acceptable then government censorship. But there can be no public censorship because the public at large does not back its censorship through coercive force short of a mob going door to door threatening individuals with bodily harm if they say certain things or buy certain products. Rather, a public effort to shame a company into modifying its behavior respects the principle of individual autonomy because it invites people to participate rather than forcing people to participate.
Consider a woman getting up on a soapbox to sing protest songs in a public square. If I turn my back on her and walk away solely because of the content of her songs, that isn't censorship. But if the police come along and arrest her solely because of the content of her songs, she has been censored. Even if I go around urging others to ignore this singer, I'm still not committing censorship. She is still free to express her protest just as I am still free to ignore it and free to attempt to stop her message being promulgated by depriving her of an audience by convincing others to choose to ignore her.
... also consider reading Vattel and Pufendorf. Both aren't mentioned much in the states, but their thinking has influenced a good deal of the way most European politicians look at foreign affairs.
Both Grotius' The Free Sea and Vattel's The Law of Nations are freely available online. But I'd start with Locke's Second Discourse on Government and Rousseau's Second Discourse. Both present very different liberal views of property rights.
If you follow John Locke, you could certainly make a case that money, being an abstracted form of property, is an extension of the individual as all other property is. In this view, the autonomy of the individual is restricted if the way that the individual spends money is restricted. Consequently, one can argue that spending limits on elections is a restriction of the autonomy of the individual and therefore is an illiberal idea.
But if you follow Rousseau you would counter that what is abstract is not real. In this view money, and the other artificial mechanisms that follow money such as inheritance, are really restrictions of the autonomy of other individuals and lead to a world where artificial inequality is far greater than the inequality bestowed on humanity by nature. In this view, spending limits on elections is a very liberal idea.
Liberalism is a very wide movement. Virtually all of American politics fits withing the realm of Liberalism except for those that want to return to a monarchy or impose theocracy. Granted, American liberalism tends to be right of center compared to the rest of the world, but you can find arguments for most American political positions (whether "conservative" or "liberal") in the writings of the great liberal thinkers like Grotius, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and so on.
And its shifting the goal posts as well. Even if the law is morally wrong, it does not necessarily follow that a judge upholding that law is morally wrong in doing so. One could, quite sensibly, argue that in most cases it is morally wrong for judges not to uphold laws that they think are immoral as judges are charged with upholding the law, not with judging morals.
Slashdot Mirror
The first rule of modern economic theory is that the way people spend money can be used as a measurement of their satisfaction.
If the old systems were servers, they were probably on 24x7. If used for education, they very well might only be used 8 hours per day, or even only 8 hours per week. It depends on how they are put to use. For example, if donated to schools, the schools turn around and sell the machines to salvage companies to recycle the steel cases, strip the mother boards of precious metals, etc. Certainly there would still be some landfill impact, but not as much as you're thinking there will be.
But in the US, most schools would gladly accept the old systems as donations.
It was widely reported at the Mactel announcment that Apple currently pays less to IBM for G4 and G5 chips than it will cost them to buy Intel chips. Apple's processor costs per unit will actually increase as a result of moving to Intel. Further, economies of scale have both increasing and decreasing returns to scale. Making more of a widget only decreases costs per widget up to a certain point. At a certain point in volume production, the fixed costs per unit have been effectively reduced to zero. At that point, price is determined entirely by the cost of inputs which can go both up and down when purchased in high volumes.
Lastly, Apple's chip purchases from IBM were reported to be less than 5% capacity of one IBM production facility. Once you look at the universe of PPC chips that big blue is selling, it becomes rather obvious that Apple is a rather small customer. For IBM, it simply isn't worth it to ramp up higher production of Apple specific PPC chips. Consequently, Apple is restricted to buying only as many PPC chips as IBM wants to produce.
Unfettered democracy is simply a tyranny of the majority.
Which is why few nations ever make the attempt to organize themselves as pure democracies. Rather, most democratic countries organize themselves around some sort of republican model where democracy is tempered with certain constitutional rights that inhibit the grosser deficiencies of democracy.
From the OED: 1807 J. BARLOW Columbiad IX. 683 [To] Improve and utilise each opening birth, And aid the labors of this nurturing earth. And given that it's a pretty straightforward Anglicization of French or Italian, I would be quite surprized if it wasn't in utilization prior to the nineteenth century.
The Eclipse project has been working on business reporting for quite some time. They presently have a rudimentary BIRT module (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) that, for its limited breadth and depth, is actually fairly impressive. One of Business Objects' competitors, Actuate, already has a product built on top of Eclipse.
Hopefully, this shift will pan out as a move to better integration of Crystal Reports with web services without having to shell out for Crystal Enterprise. Up through the present, most of Crystal's eggs have been placed in the COM basket so that reporting is best automated through Windows programming. This is great in that you can automatically connect to a database, run a report, export the output and email the export in a few dozen lines of VBScript. But if Business Objects is moving to web services, it will offer a great deal more flexibility as automation will no longer be restricted to Windows.
One to two servings of ethanol per day demonstratively lower risk for heart disease. Similar studies suggest the same is true for caffeine. The amount caffeine present in two to three cups of coffee, when taken every day, improves cardiovascular health. Caffeine and ethanol, like most chemicals, are good when taken in the appropriate dose and harmful when abused.
SCO's original complaint was dominated by trade secret and copyright claims. Breach of contract was added relatively late into the party.
For a good overview, look at Groklaw's summary which has the original and ammended complaints in chronological order.
At least in high enough concentrations.
300 microns is the width of many papers. Granted, it would be thicker than the average piece of newsprint or notebook paper, but at about 1/100 of an inch would still fall well into the thickness of paper in general.
Ethernet offers phantom power. For a low power application like a picture frame, this ought to be sufficient.
I do think you are correct that China is fighting an economic war with the US. But, presently, it would seem that China has the upper hand if one is measuring success according to the assumptions of capitalism. The simple question is which country owns more of the means of production of the other country. It seems to me that China owns far more of US factories, real estate, and government debt than the US owns of the same in China. The only non-military pressure that the US can presently exercise on China is the threat of defaulting on the US treasury bills owned by China. But China's government could probably take that hit without slowing down all that much. China, on the other hand, holds tremendous economic influence over the US.
Chinese scientists are among the scientific world's leaders in stem cell and cloning research. The number of published articles from Chinese scientists and citations of those articles by other scientists is on par with most western nations in the fields of biotech, nanotech and others.A first year college text book on economics will clear up most of your misunderstandings.
``Capitalism is a method of allocating a resources, that includes all labour, as well as production resources, and even intellectual property. ''
Not so. At least not according to economists. Capitalism is a unique mode of production that focuses on ownership of the means of production. Labor, capital and raw goods are all inputs to the production process. Other resources, such as IP and professional services (inasmuch as they are not strictly labor) are not necessarily dealt with by capitalism.
``Have you seen the definitions listed in an economics textbook. They're usually extremely inclusive. You would be hard pressed to find a business that does not produce a good or perform a service.''
Actually, no. Production in most economic textbooks refers only to the act of producing goods from raw materials and other inputs. Many key principles of economics, for example increasing and decreasing returns to scale, do not apply to the production of services. A house is a product. Plans for building a house are not. Compact disks containing data and programs are a product. The data and programs on those disks is not.
``Well, since you don't define "perfect competition" that would be hard. ''
I shouldn't have to define it. That you don't recognize one of the basic concepts at the core of economic theory suggest that you know very little about the subject. Any basic economics textbook defines the elements of perfect competition. Its essential attributes include:
1. All producers sell identical products.
2. All firms sell only at the market equilibrium price and all consumers buy only at the market equilibrium price.
3. All consumers and producers are rational and only make decisions in their own best interest.
4. No single firm has a large enough market share to impact the market equilibrium price and no single consumer buys enough of a single good to impact the market equilibrium price.
5. Buyers know the nature of the product being sold and the prices charged by each producer.
6. There is perfect freedom of entry into and exit out of every industry.
Without each and every one of those assumptions, neoclassical supply/demand price theory doesn't work. If any single one does not hold, then supply/demand price theory doesn't hold. I'm not the one making those assumptions up. Those are the assumptions that neoclassical economic theory states must hold for perfect competition to exist. They can be found in any basic economic text book. They have zero empirical support for their existence in the real world.
``But I can certainly provide numerous examples of situations where government regulation prevent competition, and thereby reduce overall efficiency.''
Be that as it may, I can empirically demonstrate that the markets fail in several key sectors: insurance, health care, education, security, consumption smoothing, and poverty relief. Whatever the inefficiency introduced by government run health care, as but one example, one has to consider that in the US, the market takes a standard profit of over 30%. Even if a government system functioned at only 2/3 the efficiency of the market in the US, the US populace would be no worse off.
``I don't see any reason the government should be generating excessive barriers to entry.''
My point is that it is question begging to accuse the government of creating artificial barriers of entry to a market segment when that market segment is itself an artificial construction. It isn't as if money were a natural resource.
Not to mention `excessive' is a value judgment. If we're going to be objective about this discussion, value judgments have no place.
Further, efficiency in a market is only unequivocally a good thing if all of the criteria of perfect competition holds. If it isn't true that all consumers have perfect knowledge of the product they are buying and of the prices offered by all producers, then it doesn't follow that an unregulated market is what is best for the consumer. In such a situation, it frequently is the case that government regulation actually benefits the consumer.
A good argument can be made that private property is an artificial construction. Money is inarguably an artificial construct. Consequently, if money is a barrier of entry to any industry, that industry has an artificial barrier of entry. But apparently you think that the current state of technology is natural. ;)
``Fitness in the evolutionary sense of the term doesn't mean the strongest, the most powerfull, or the most impressive -- it means the most capable to pass on genetic material.''
The question posed was ``why do so many insects make such great substances?'' and the reply was that ``evolution makes great things.'' But the only thing that evolution selects for, long term, is gene propagation. Saying that evolution produces `the best' or `the fittest' implies a value judgment that is not there in nature. Hence, my recasting of the theory of evolution as survival of the adequate.
`In a free market, anyone can enter'
In the real world, all markets have barriers to entry, chief of which is capital. The so called barrier of entry you're referring to is, practically speaking, no more a barrier to entry than being required to pony up an equivalent amount of cash to start a vending route or to beer making equipment, or any other business that requires investment.
`owning a small business doesn't turn you into a capitalist '
That much is correct. Capitalism is a theory of production, not a theory of retail or professional services. A business owner is only a capitalist inasmuch as he or she owns the means of production. Many businesses don't produce anything in the sense of the word used by economists.
But let's be objective about this. Show me a single market of concrete goods for which all the assumptions of perfect competition hold. Once you are able to do that, then we talk as to whether a license to sell things on consignment is anymore of an artifical barrier of entry than any of the other barriers of entry (such as a lack of money) to most markets.
Which is more sane, deleting .ini files from "Program Files"\AppName and from "Documents and Settings"\UserName\AppName or searching through the registry to find all references to AppName and hoping that the app didn't create any keys without it's own name in the name of the key?
If the Windows registry kept all the settings for a given app in comparable places, you might have a point. But as it is, many (perhaps most) programs change keys all over the place, leading to a snipe hunt if the app explodes beyond repair and has to be removed manually.
Having been someone who was both beat up in high school over things I've said and investigated by the secret service for things I've posted online (google for kuro5hin, smallpox, secret service if you're interested in knowing the details), I can tell you that the latter has had a far greater chilling effect on my own expression. As powerful as social norms and mores are, I don't think that they come anywhere close to the power of the coercive force of the state.
The thing that holds me back from most streaming video is that it isn't closed captioned. I tend to watch TV with the sound off because if I turn the audio up to a level that I'm comfortable with, it blows away everyone else in the room. With the tendency of organizations moving towards streaming video, hard of hearing and deaf individuals are being left behind. Federal law in the US mandates that all televisions above 13" include a closed caption decoder chip. But that doesn't help me watch the streaming video of a white house press conference in Real Media. And unless ITMS offers some similar service, it won't help me enjoy a download of my favorite television programs.
After the water all runs out, those without flippers, or with minimal flippers suddenly start to outcompete those with the uberflippers.
Not to mention, your view of competition is a bit skewed. Natural selection favors survival of the adequate, not survival of the fittest. Only in extreme situations does being the best help individuals survive to a significantly greater extent than being adequate. Certainly, there are some situations in nature where resources are so scarce that only the `best' survive, but throughout most of the natural world, being adequate is good enough.
And not to mention that adequateness in natural selection is defined entirely by propagating one's genes. It doesn't matter if a swimmer has the best fins in the world if the guys in speedos mate more frequently and have enough progeny to ensure that some survive the attacks of their quicker swimming brethren.
You ask how public censorship can be more acceptable then government censorship. But there can be no public censorship because the public at large does not back its censorship through coercive force short of a mob going door to door threatening individuals with bodily harm if they say certain things or buy certain products. Rather, a public effort to shame a company into modifying its behavior respects the principle of individual autonomy because it invites people to participate rather than forcing people to participate.
Consider a woman getting up on a soapbox to sing protest songs in a public square. If I turn my back on her and walk away solely because of the content of her songs, that isn't censorship. But if the police come along and arrest her solely because of the content of her songs, she has been censored. Even if I go around urging others to ignore this singer, I'm still not committing censorship. She is still free to express her protest just as I am still free to ignore it and free to attempt to stop her message being promulgated by depriving her of an audience by convincing others to choose to ignore her.
... also consider reading Vattel and Pufendorf. Both aren't mentioned much in the states, but their thinking has influenced a good deal of the way most European politicians look at foreign affairs.
Both Grotius' The Free Sea and Vattel's The Law of Nations are freely available online. But I'd start with Locke's Second Discourse on Government and Rousseau's Second Discourse. Both present very different liberal views of property rights.
If you follow John Locke, you could certainly make a case that money, being an abstracted form of property, is an extension of the individual as all other property is. In this view, the autonomy of the individual is restricted if the way that the individual spends money is restricted. Consequently, one can argue that spending limits on elections is a restriction of the autonomy of the individual and therefore is an illiberal idea.
But if you follow Rousseau you would counter that what is abstract is not real. In this view money, and the other artificial mechanisms that follow money such as inheritance, are really restrictions of the autonomy of other individuals and lead to a world where artificial inequality is far greater than the inequality bestowed on humanity by nature. In this view, spending limits on elections is a very liberal idea.
Liberalism is a very wide movement. Virtually all of American politics fits withing the realm of Liberalism except for those that want to return to a monarchy or impose theocracy. Granted, American liberalism tends to be right of center compared to the rest of the world, but you can find arguments for most American political positions (whether "conservative" or "liberal") in the writings of the great liberal thinkers like Grotius, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and so on.
And its shifting the goal posts as well. Even if the law is morally wrong, it does not necessarily follow that a judge upholding that law is morally wrong in doing so. One could, quite sensibly, argue that in most cases it is morally wrong for judges not to uphold laws that they think are immoral as judges are charged with upholding the law, not with judging morals.