I imagine it's more likely they'll end up charging everyone less in order to make their service actually usable.
I doubt it. Their competitive advantage is that they own the towers; their competitive disadvantage is that they know nothing about the online movie delivery business. If they can't take advantage of their strength, they are just going to get out of the business.
But doesn't Canada know that Net Neutrality is going to equal government censorship and all the telcos will immediately stop any infrastructure investments?
Nice hyperbole, but the effect of this decision is simple and obvious: wireless providers will continue charge all wireless video towards your data plan. Since that uses data up much too fast, you will effectively not be able to watch movies wirelessly at all. What a great victory for network neutrality. Aren't you proud of yourself.
Well, some X11 screen locking programs have bugs. Possibly there are subtle bugs in the protocol too. But in principle, X11 screen locking is no different from Windows screen locking.
Many economic models are possible (including subsistence, gift, exchange, and planned, or a mix). The choice depends what sort of society you want and what your priorities are and what your cultural history is.
"Choice"? Whose "choice" are you talking about? If it's a "choice" that is made for an entire society or nation, then it necessarily tramples on the rights of many people.
If you believe that individuals have the right of self-determination and that majorities don't have a right to oppress minorities, none of those systems are feasible "choices" as economic systems. Some of them are completely inconsistent with individual liberties, and others are consistent with individual liberties in that people may choose such transactions but may not be forced to participate in them (e.g., gift exchanges).
When a country runs out of tear gas, isn't that a hint that it is possible for something to go wrong seriously with a market leaving many people unhappy?
What does anything that's going on in Greece have to do with "markets"? The Greek economy is in the toilet because of the corruption and crony capitalism of the German and Greek governments. Neither Germany nor Greece have anything resembling a free market, and both are vehemently opposed to liberalism.
But the same is true of free markets in practice, given monopolies, wealth centralization, regulatory capture, lobbying and (legal) vote buying by the wealthiest, and a host of other potential problems.
Every single one of those problems is a problem with government, not with free markets. And bad as those problems are in our "regulated markets" and ochlocracy, they get a whole lot worse in all other systems that have ever been implemented.
The one system we have never tried is a liberal government and free markets.
Coupled with improved 3D printing for local on-demand production, this may totally transform our economy,
The example of software is quite apt. You cannot freely gift physical objects in the US today, as you could in a liberal free market. However, the inability of government to regulate such exchanges means that we have taken that power away from government and restored the natural, liberal state of affairs. Techniques like desktop fabrication may do the same for physical objects. Bitcoin tried to undermine the ability of government to interfere with voluntary financial and business transactions; that struggle is still on-going, but government is likely to lose it too.
A "gift economy" isn't an alternative to a clasically liberal free market economy, it is simply part of such an economy. And bit by bit, as technology gives people more control over their lives, we may realize liberal free market economy despite the corruption of our government and the totalitarian aspirations of our neighbors.
Screen lockers protect against physical access; you're welcome to try and get around an X11 lock screen by tapping at the keyboard. Good luck.
Comparing this to Windows is silly, because Windows doesn't have anything like the X11 protocol. On Windows, running code can disable the screen saver in other ways: patching or replacing DLLs, changing system configuration, etc. No difference from a security point of view.
You'd be surprised to how much non-trivial stuff this extends, as people thumb their noses at ineffective and bumbling state and federal governments and do what they damned well please.
And, in any case, it's the best we got, so you better deal with it.
Voting for one or the other party because you delude yourself that they are going to fix it, on the other hand, is making the problem worse.
Which doesn't require any market activity at all, simply use retained earnings.
Yes, that's the point! Reinvesting the retained earnings and having the stock price go up is the same as paying dividends and then issuing new stock. That is, it "funds [new] economic activity" but involves no primary markets. It does involve secondary market activity, because the only reason investors would hold a stock that doesn't pay dividends and instead reinvests in the company is because they can look forward to eventually realizing those gains in the secondary market. That's why it doesn't make any sense to treat primary markets, secondary markets, or dividends any differently: income from them all represents the same thing, namely value created by companies.
You stated that "secondary market transactions which have nothing to do with funding economic activity whatsoever", and that's wrong: capital gains on secondary market transactions fund economic activity the same way as primary market transactions.
In fact, it's not even clear what you mean by "zero taxes on the primary market" since there are no capital gains on the primary market. People buy in the primary market because they want either dividends or capital gains that they need to realize in the secondary market. And the more you tax dividends and capital gains, the less motivated people are to buy in the primary market. When the expected gains after taxes fall below, say, T-bills, people have no financial incentive to invest in a company at all.
Our government's own self destructiveness partisanship might be the only thing preventing a dictatorship at this point.
That is usually the only thing that keeps governments in check: government gridlock and incompetence are the friends of liberty. That's why calls from both the left and the right for more streamlined government, executive power grabs, etc. are so dangerous.
When you vote, vote with an eye towards maximizing gridlock in Washington.
The reason we are using encryption more widely is because the US government has been spying on US citizens without lawful court orders. That is, Leslie Caldwell should be concerned about the "Zone of Lawlessness" at the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the Justice Department. Fix that, and then the American people might consider not using encryption anymore.
So, ironically, we have the worst of both systems. We could have a really centralized system run efficiently with a tiny fraction of the workforce now, with a lot less variety perhaps (that is, all the old Soviet Central Planning stuff would work now that we have the internet and great software and great designs and great computers if we accept some voluntary simplicity)
Soviet style central planning doesn't work no matter how much Internet and software and design you throw at it because it is impossible for computers to obtain the information necessary for planning. In addition, such systems will be abused by rent seekers and totalitarians, so even if the economic part of it worked, the political part wouldn't.
And simplicity that is imposed by the economic system on individuals isn't "voluntary". It isn't "voluntary" even if a majority of people votes for it.
Hopefully Greece will now default, and shut down the insolvent banks.
The "insolvent banks" are partially government owned. In the end, the German tax payer will foot the bill.
I don't understand the mention that their leader is an atheist. I guess that most people with normal levels of brain power will be,
Well, Germany is governed by an outspoken Christian chancellor and has a Lutheran pastor for its president. Obama proclaims loudly to be a Christian. Atheist leaders are somewhat unusual in Western democracies.
Because the super rich have vacuumed up all the gains of all the productivity gains leaving the consumers threadbare.
How does some rich fart sitting on $10b keep any consumer from buying anything? If he isn't spending his money, the money doesn't exist as far as the economy is concerned.
Of course, Mr Rich Fart doesn't just put the money under his mattress. What he actually does is choose between lending money to the government or investing it in productive ventures. Your beef is with the fact that he does the former rather than the latter. Your prescription is to make the former even more attractive than the latter, which is of course utterly stupid.
It has been soundly proved wrong. We have been coddling them by cutting cap gain taxes for 30 years. World is awash with capital. 2 trillion dollars uninvested. Labor is cheap, capital is cheap now. There is no demand for goods and services, so there are no good investment opportunities available.
What a bunch of bullshit. People put their money where they get the highest return. The more you tax and regulate labor, sales, profits, and capital gains, the less people invest. Capital gains by itself is irrelevant, what matters is the effective corporate tax rate, of which capital gains is only one component.
The US has some of the highest effective corporate tax rates, and labor is also quite costly (and just got more so with ACA). At the same time, the government is spending like crazy and handing out debt like candy. Of course, people are going to finance government borrowing while not investing their money in new ventures.
Must tax the rich and spend it,
You going out and buying crap with other people's money doesn't produce economic growth.
Frankly, your text is so ludicrous that I can't even tell whether you are serious. Nobody can be as much of an idiot as you seem to be, can they?
Yes, thanks. How embarrassing; that should have been "can't".
I get what you are saying. In fact, I think almost all of the people attending Davos have good intentions. At the same time, their combination of incompetence and self-interest means that they actually end up doing much more harm than good.
When I say "incompetence" I don't mean that they are incompetent relative to other people, I mean that nobody has the competence to do what they are attempting to do, which is little more than economic planning and social engineering. Since they can't achieve their economic objectives for society, the only thing they ever achieve is advancing their personal interests.
(I'm not sure Jesus is a good example, since he (1) seemed rather humble, and (2) the subsequent history of the church built in his name illustrates how good intentions can lead to horrible outcomes.)
That would be true if capital gains were mostly paid on primary market transactions, instead they're mostly paid on secondary market transactions which have nothing to do with funding economic activity whatsoever.
That's a common misconception. In fact, the secondary market funds economic activity just as much as the primary market.
When a company makes a profit, it could choose to pay out that profit as dividends and then when it needs to raise more capital in the primary market. That's the model you probably have in mind, a model in which only the primary market helps companies expand and invest in the long term.
But that would rather wasteful, both because the dividends are taxed and because raising money in the primary market is costly. That's why most companies choose to simply reinvest the profits directly in themselves. That way, reinvestment in themselves ends up not being taxed, and shareholders are encouraged to hold on to the stocks for longer. It's the same as if they had raised more capital in the primary market and given out extra shares to all existing share holders (in lieu of dividends).
Taxing the secondary market while not taxing the primary market would encourage more short term speculation and discourage companies from investing in themselves for the long term; it would be an even more serious distortion of the market than we already have.
Using the Gini coefficient (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient) the US is worse than most countries in the world for income disparity
True. And using the Gini coefficient, Australia has about the same Gini coefficient as Ethiopia. New Zealand has about the same Gini coefficient as Syria. What's your point? There is nothing intrinsically desirable about Australia's or New Zealand's Gini coefficient.
The USA has some terrible social issues to deal with,
While life is just roses for Australian aboriginees?
with some crazy rich living alongside some crazy poor.
True. The crazy rich in your country just move away so they don't have to deal with the common folks.
But the US has nasty tax rules if you decide to reside somewhere else and keep your US citizenship
Yes, while Australia doesn't have such nasty tax rules. The net effect is that wealthy Australians just move into some tax haven, the Australian Gini coefficient drops, and fools like you marvel at the high degree of equality in Australia!
But fundamentally money is easy to move and if the US does start to have too many social and civil issues the money will leave.
Well, so far it shows no sign of leaving. In fact, both people and money seem to greatly prefer the US to Australia. I certainly do.
The top 0.5% is reached only by people with inherited wealth, or very lucky people who get to top 5% by smartness and hardwork, and end up in 0.5% due to good fortune, or stock options.
That's a tendentious and misleading way of putting it. In fact, inherited wealth is only a small fraction of the top 1% or top 0.5%. It may constitute a large part of his clients because those people don't know how to manage their money.
They turned their back to the USA, invested all the savings in low wage countries to maximize their profits.
It's not "they"; corporations, individual investors, retirement plans, etc. all maximize returns. That's what they are supposed to do. It's why we have markets in the first place. What do you want them to do instead?
In USA money earned by blood, sweat, tears and brains (wages, earned income) is taxed at much higher rate than money earned by money (capital gains, carried interest, qualified dividends, etc). This is the root cause of the inequality.
Well, yes indeed it is. The conclusion of that should not be to tax capital gains more, it should be to tax income less. If you tax capital gains more, people will invest less in things that produce capital gains, which means less economic activity, fewer jobs, lower wages, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently, being a buffoon is all you are capable of; rational arguments are evidently beyond your intellectual abilities.
I doubt it. Their competitive advantage is that they own the towers; their competitive disadvantage is that they know nothing about the online movie delivery business. If they can't take advantage of their strength, they are just going to get out of the business.
Nice hyperbole, but the effect of this decision is simple and obvious: wireless providers will continue charge all wireless video towards your data plan. Since that uses data up much too fast, you will effectively not be able to watch movies wirelessly at all. What a great victory for network neutrality. Aren't you proud of yourself.
How is forcing Bell to charge customers more "common sense"?
Canadians keep telling us how morally and intellectually superior they are! So, this story can't be true!
How is that a problem with X11?
In any case, some systems simply check when X11 is locked and either lock those virtual consoles themselves, or warn you.
Virtual consoles have nothing to do with X11; they are also safe (you just get a login prompt).
Killing the X server is also safe, it just goes back to the login screen; it's also disabled on many distributions.
The rest are X.org-specific debugging keys; they shouldn't be on by default and they have nothing to do with X11 either.
Well, some X11 screen locking programs have bugs. Possibly there are subtle bugs in the protocol too. But in principle, X11 screen locking is no different from Windows screen locking.
"Choice"? Whose "choice" are you talking about? If it's a "choice" that is made for an entire society or nation, then it necessarily tramples on the rights of many people.
If you believe that individuals have the right of self-determination and that majorities don't have a right to oppress minorities, none of those systems are feasible "choices" as economic systems. Some of them are completely inconsistent with individual liberties, and others are consistent with individual liberties in that people may choose such transactions but may not be forced to participate in them (e.g., gift exchanges).
What does anything that's going on in Greece have to do with "markets"? The Greek economy is in the toilet because of the corruption and crony capitalism of the German and Greek governments. Neither Germany nor Greece have anything resembling a free market, and both are vehemently opposed to liberalism.
Every single one of those problems is a problem with government, not with free markets. And bad as those problems are in our "regulated markets" and ochlocracy, they get a whole lot worse in all other systems that have ever been implemented.
The one system we have never tried is a liberal government and free markets.
The example of software is quite apt. You cannot freely gift physical objects in the US today, as you could in a liberal free market. However, the inability of government to regulate such exchanges means that we have taken that power away from government and restored the natural, liberal state of affairs. Techniques like desktop fabrication may do the same for physical objects. Bitcoin tried to undermine the ability of government to interfere with voluntary financial and business transactions; that struggle is still on-going, but government is likely to lose it too.
A "gift economy" isn't an alternative to a clasically liberal free market economy, it is simply part of such an economy. And bit by bit, as technology gives people more control over their lives, we may realize liberal free market economy despite the corruption of our government and the totalitarian aspirations of our neighbors.
Screen lockers protect against physical access; you're welcome to try and get around an X11 lock screen by tapping at the keyboard. Good luck.
Comparing this to Windows is silly, because Windows doesn't have anything like the X11 protocol. On Windows, running code can disable the screen saver in other ways: patching or replacing DLLs, changing system configuration, etc. No difference from a security point of view.
You'd be surprised to how much non-trivial stuff this extends, as people thumb their noses at ineffective and bumbling state and federal governments and do what they damned well please.
And, in any case, it's the best we got, so you better deal with it.
Voting for one or the other party because you delude yourself that they are going to fix it, on the other hand, is making the problem worse.
Yes, that's the point! Reinvesting the retained earnings and having the stock price go up is the same as paying dividends and then issuing new stock. That is, it "funds [new] economic activity" but involves no primary markets. It does involve secondary market activity, because the only reason investors would hold a stock that doesn't pay dividends and instead reinvests in the company is because they can look forward to eventually realizing those gains in the secondary market. That's why it doesn't make any sense to treat primary markets, secondary markets, or dividends any differently: income from them all represents the same thing, namely value created by companies.
You stated that "secondary market transactions which have nothing to do with funding economic activity whatsoever", and that's wrong: capital gains on secondary market transactions fund economic activity the same way as primary market transactions.
In fact, it's not even clear what you mean by "zero taxes on the primary market" since there are no capital gains on the primary market. People buy in the primary market because they want either dividends or capital gains that they need to realize in the secondary market. And the more you tax dividends and capital gains, the less motivated people are to buy in the primary market. When the expected gains after taxes fall below, say, T-bills, people have no financial incentive to invest in a company at all.
That is usually the only thing that keeps governments in check: government gridlock and incompetence are the friends of liberty. That's why calls from both the left and the right for more streamlined government, executive power grabs, etc. are so dangerous.
When you vote, vote with an eye towards maximizing gridlock in Washington.
The reason we are using encryption more widely is because the US government has been spying on US citizens without lawful court orders. That is, Leslie Caldwell should be concerned about the "Zone of Lawlessness" at the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the Justice Department. Fix that, and then the American people might consider not using encryption anymore.
Oops, typo: Assume an average spread of one light year every 10000 years and an intelligent species has the entire galaxy covered in 1 billion years.
Soviet style central planning doesn't work no matter how much Internet and software and design you throw at it because it is impossible for computers to obtain the information necessary for planning. In addition, such systems will be abused by rent seekers and totalitarians, so even if the economic part of it worked, the political part wouldn't.
And simplicity that is imposed by the economic system on individuals isn't "voluntary". It isn't "voluntary" even if a majority of people votes for it.
Well to be fair, it lacks both "ecumenic" and "economic" freedom...
The "insolvent banks" are partially government owned. In the end, the German tax payer will foot the bill.
Well, Germany is governed by an outspoken Christian chancellor and has a Lutheran pastor for its president. Obama proclaims loudly to be a Christian. Atheist leaders are somewhat unusual in Western democracies.
Because the Orthodox Church used to be in bed with the government in Greece.
You know, like, for example, Germany is governed by a Christian democrat and has a Lutheran pastor as its president.
Nobody is technically qualified to be chief economist for a socialist government because nobody can actually make that dream work.
How does some rich fart sitting on $10b keep any consumer from buying anything? If he isn't spending his money, the money doesn't exist as far as the economy is concerned.
Of course, Mr Rich Fart doesn't just put the money under his mattress. What he actually does is choose between lending money to the government or investing it in productive ventures. Your beef is with the fact that he does the former rather than the latter. Your prescription is to make the former even more attractive than the latter, which is of course utterly stupid.
What a bunch of bullshit. People put their money where they get the highest return. The more you tax and regulate labor, sales, profits, and capital gains, the less people invest. Capital gains by itself is irrelevant, what matters is the effective corporate tax rate, of which capital gains is only one component.
The US has some of the highest effective corporate tax rates, and labor is also quite costly (and just got more so with ACA). At the same time, the government is spending like crazy and handing out debt like candy. Of course, people are going to finance government borrowing while not investing their money in new ventures.
You going out and buying crap with other people's money doesn't produce economic growth.
Frankly, your text is so ludicrous that I can't even tell whether you are serious. Nobody can be as much of an idiot as you seem to be, can they?
Yes, thanks. How embarrassing; that should have been "can't".
I get what you are saying. In fact, I think almost all of the people attending Davos have good intentions. At the same time, their combination of incompetence and self-interest means that they actually end up doing much more harm than good.
When I say "incompetence" I don't mean that they are incompetent relative to other people, I mean that nobody has the competence to do what they are attempting to do, which is little more than economic planning and social engineering. Since they can't achieve their economic objectives for society, the only thing they ever achieve is advancing their personal interests.
(I'm not sure Jesus is a good example, since he (1) seemed rather humble, and (2) the subsequent history of the church built in his name illustrates how good intentions can lead to horrible outcomes.)
That's a common misconception. In fact, the secondary market funds economic activity just as much as the primary market.
When a company makes a profit, it could choose to pay out that profit as dividends and then when it needs to raise more capital in the primary market. That's the model you probably have in mind, a model in which only the primary market helps companies expand and invest in the long term.
But that would rather wasteful, both because the dividends are taxed and because raising money in the primary market is costly. That's why most companies choose to simply reinvest the profits directly in themselves. That way, reinvestment in themselves ends up not being taxed, and shareholders are encouraged to hold on to the stocks for longer. It's the same as if they had raised more capital in the primary market and given out extra shares to all existing share holders (in lieu of dividends).
Taxing the secondary market while not taxing the primary market would encourage more short term speculation and discourage companies from investing in themselves for the long term; it would be an even more serious distortion of the market than we already have.
True. And using the Gini coefficient, Australia has about the same Gini coefficient as Ethiopia. New Zealand has about the same Gini coefficient as Syria. What's your point? There is nothing intrinsically desirable about Australia's or New Zealand's Gini coefficient.
While life is just roses for Australian aboriginees?
True. The crazy rich in your country just move away so they don't have to deal with the common folks.
Yes, while Australia doesn't have such nasty tax rules. The net effect is that wealthy Australians just move into some tax haven, the Australian Gini coefficient drops, and fools like you marvel at the high degree of equality in Australia!
Well, so far it shows no sign of leaving. In fact, both people and money seem to greatly prefer the US to Australia. I certainly do.
That's a tendentious and misleading way of putting it. In fact, inherited wealth is only a small fraction of the top 1% or top 0.5%. It may constitute a large part of his clients because those people don't know how to manage their money.
It's not "they"; corporations, individual investors, retirement plans, etc. all maximize returns. That's what they are supposed to do. It's why we have markets in the first place. What do you want them to do instead?
Well, yes indeed it is. The conclusion of that should not be to tax capital gains more, it should be to tax income less. If you tax capital gains more, people will invest less in things that produce capital gains, which means less economic activity, fewer jobs, lower wages, etc.