Something like 75% of native English speakers are from the United States. Thats a sufficient enough majority where USian usage doesn't need to be qualified. This is especially true when commenting on a US story about a US topic - unless someone calling Parliament "Congress" shouldn't be corrected.
The advertisements were there for at least two weeks before this "scare." If they had been bombs, they wouldn't have been left out for weeks with flashing lights. So either they: Overreacted to a device that didn't warrant shutting down most of the city. A device that didn't resemble a bomb, didn't contain any chemicals that would be necessary for an explosive device and was designed to attract attention. or Missed a device that warranted that level of response for at least two weeks. One that flashed bright lights and was designed to attract attention.
How about -Previous predictions regarding global temperature and glacial melting have come true. -Complete and full understanding is not necessary to make general large-scale predictions. Newton didn't understand Relativity but that doesn't mean he couldn't predict where the apple was going. A complete understanding of the human genome is not necessary to associate missing chromosomes with major problems. -The underlying science of global warming does not require complex interactions. More CO2= more heat retained. The fundamental science isn't extremely complex and the evidence is overwhelming.
Boston is the home of Harvard (in effect, its technically in the adjoining city Cambridge that is essentially a district of Boston). Boston/Cambridge is also the home of MIT, perhaps the most prestigious technical university in the world. If you include Boston University, Boston College, Tufts, Brandeis, Emerson, Bentley, Northeastern and other universities of the cities and its immediate vicinity, you're talking about literally hundreds of thousands of post-secondary students.
This comment is confusing. It implies that Berger's removal of photocopies of documents from the National Archives prevented others from reading those documents. However, it has been proven that this is not the case. I wonder what the basis of that assumption is. Its inconceivable that a credible news outlet, such as talk radio or FoxNews, could disseminate such clearly false information.
The privacy concerns relating to Gmail were pretty widely known when the service debuted. Main stream media outlets ran stories on how Google would 'search' your email and show ads relating to the content.
First, the NSTA represents secondary level science educators. "An Inconvenient Truth" holds material completely appropriate, and in most cases more advanced than they currently receive, for High School and Gen Ed science level courses. Science majors can read the peer reviewed papers mentioned in the documentary. Additionally, numbers are mentioned in the film along with "pretty graphs." Numbers without context would be meaningless, especially to lay people.
Second, it is not equivalent to your body increasing ".000000001 of a degree, steadily year after year." Perhaps greater familiarity with the concept of climate change would be beneficial before commenting. Humanity has existed for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, but lets look at more recent history. Being generous, let's say "civilization" is 6000 years old. In the last 100 years, temperature has increased 1.1 degrees F. If you're a 30 year old, thats in 6 months. It is projected that global temperatures will increase 2.5 to 10.5 degrees in the next 100 years if major energy changes are not made. Do you think a fever of over 110 degree F might amount to much?
I'm sure they're out there, but if I'm a science teacher and I'm going to spend valuable teaching time showing a movie, I want everything to be put together for me.
Well aren't you lazy? If you're talking about a movie made specifically for science classes, think again. The price would be too much for many districts and the quality would be much lower than "An Inconvenient Truth." If you're talking about teachers materials, you should check your facts. The information is freely available to anyone online. The movie and DVD packaging both point to this website as material can be updated and up-to-date instead of months or even years behind on the ever-increasing scientific consensus.
The general scientific method indicates that an experiment should be repeatable. Who does the experiment shouldn't matter. In this case, "independent" means, I think, a lab without connections to the first lab. By doing so, the chance that the experimenter is acting as a non-neutral agent in the experiment can be largely eliminated (as the experiment is repeated more and more times). While this has a side effect of potentially eliminating corporate bias, science inherently calls for it regardless of the source of funding.
Science is wrong a majority of the time? Perhaps if you include every tested hypothesis. However, climate change and the extent that humanity is causing a large amount of the current change is not an untested hypothesis. There isn't a single scientific peer reviewed study that contradicts these findings in any way in decades. There have been hundreds that support the scientific theory that man is causing global warming.
If you truly believe that the predictions science makes don't come true a majority of the time, I wonder how you get anywhere. Science is what predicts your automobile, train, or even bicycle will work. The predictions of science make it possible that when I strike a button on my keyboard, a signal is sent through my system (and dozens if not hundreds of other consequences therein) so it appears on my screen and eventually on slashdot. Science predicts that when you take medicine, it will have certain health consequences.
Sc.D., Harvard School of Public Health
M.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
She works for the finest institutions and universities - that doesn't mean a statement like PacMan is 64% violent isn't moronic. The methodology is clearly flawed - as is rhetoric that increased violence in video games had led or will lead to increased antisocial/violent behavior (see declining juvenile crime rates).
They rate Space Invaders as more violent than GTA:SA (which whether you think it should be regulated or not is clearly very violent). The metric and methodology is useless.
Not entirely wrong since I think many rich people do just leech off the family fortune (and I can't particularly blame them in a way). However, those who are ambitious have an advantage. Bill Gates and Paul Allen came from wealthy and influential families who used that influence to help them get their company in position (especially with IBM). Warren Buffett's father was a Congressman.
Of the other richest men- Gates, Allen, Buffett, Arnault, Li Ka-shing all increased inherited fortunes. Carlos Helu and Prince Al Waleed inherited their fortunes. Kamprad (IKEA) is self-made... and a literal Nazi. Abramovich is involved in the Russian kleptocracy but I don't know if that really constitutes the source of his wealth. Only Lakshmi Mittal (an Indian from a lower caste) seems to be legitimately 'self made'.
BTW, looking at the list of the top companies and billionaires should rid you of the idea that they all owe their fortunes to government regulation.
I believe I have slapped down your ridiculous ideology-over-economics history of monopolies, but I thought I'd discuss your ridiculous legal theory here:
I'm a vocal anti-copyright advocate and I repeatedly try to get people to realize what most Federal legislation does, especially regulatory legislation: it removes rights from the individual and creates cartelization: legal monopoly. It has happened in every industry that has any form of federal regulation: oil refinery, content distribution, medical licensing, campaign finance rules, even the stock market is cartelized now moreso than every before. Regulation at the national level is unconstitutional regardless of what people think of the non-applicable "interstate commerce clause."
First, you fail to identify what right is removed. One could frame anti-murder laws as taking away a right if you don't define 'right' robustly. A century of constitutional precedent disagrees with your interpretation of the interstate commerce clause but since this is about copyright, that is the portion of this paragraph most laughable.
The Constitution states:
[The Congress shall have Power...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
Clearly, copyrights are not Unconstitutional but specifically attributed to the federal government under the Constitution.
Cartels exist because they have the legal monopoly to do so. Copyright only helps create and empower the cartels -- it has never helped an individual unless that individual was protected by a cartel. If you created a movie and someone wanted to hack it so that more peopl could watch it -- and they paid you for each and every hack -- you'd love it because you are getting income, you're gaining a new audience, and even more profitable: you're learning what people want. DVD players already allow for multiple versions, and maybe companies would start taking advantage of it had it not been for the big cartel that controls the flow of movie productions and releases.
Overlooking the historically and economically fallacious claim that cartels exist because of government sanction, this does not make any sense. For one, many artists (in cinema, theatre, literature, music, etc) would not want their work modified ("hacked") so as to make it more accessable, less offensive or otherwise not their 'vision.' This assumes that without your reviled evil regulation that anyone would pay the original author for such copies.
Consider you're that same small movie maker -- if someone copies your movie (with or without hacking it), how would you battle them in court? What money would you use to fight the hacker/pirate/modifier/copyright violator? Is the financial risk of losing in court worth the reward? Definitely not -- more proof that cartelization is always bad.
This is a drifting into incoherence. The existance of 'cartels' has nothing to do with the lack of resources in the movie maker to fight copyright violators. Indeed, it is one of the few arguments (other than profit) FOR the existance of such groups as they pool resources for such fights (and lobbying ).
Stephan Kinsella made a great case as to why intellectual property restrictions are anti-consumer in his free PDF titled Against Intellectual Property. (PDF WARNING) Stephan is a IP lawyer, as well, and has offered dozens of great articles on the problems with IP and how more laws aren't going to support more consumer freedom, better quality products and more competition. When you create federal regulations, you create cartelization. He also has a great non-PDF article from last year titled No such thing as a free patent, which goes beyond copyright but makes very good arguments for why they're all bad. This guy makes his living with the law, amazing t
After a summer of exhibition to the public, the team will deconstruct the house for transport down to Washington and will begin its final construction Sept. 29, entering the final phase of a two-year long journey.
he testing and characterization process is ongoing and the initial results were released on September 14, 2004. Contractor will be performing the cleaning and deconstruction of the building....
In early 2004, an accord between Deutsche Bank and its insurers was reached to bring down the Deutsche Bank building. The deconstruction will remove the shrouded Deutsche Bank building that had been a constant grim reminder of the events of September 11, 2001.
Under the terms of the accord, LMDC was able to purchase the land and will pay for the deconstruction of the building.
Officials at PNC Financial Services, for example, plan to recycle more than 70 percent of the downtown Pittsburgh building they recently began deconstructing, a trend being seen at more demolition sites nationwide.
Fort Lauderdale Airport Interchange - This interchange project involved many challenges including context sensitive aesthetics, uninterrupted access over railroad tracks to the international airport, complex bridge arrangement, tight radii of curvature, and deconstruction of existing segmental bridges. Balanced cantilever precast concrete segmental bridges were selected because of their pleasing aesthetics and functionality suitable for the urban setting.
I could go on for quite a while. Get off your high horse.
Who made you the vocabulary police? Do you want to stomp your foot and pout until everyone uses words the way you want them to, regardless of what the dictionary says?
Anyone else annoyed when an article like this is written? Its effectively a late-night infomercial for this service. In some cases, this can be appropriate. However, I don't think you can claim the rehashing of an old idea (piggy-backing a signal on another signal) to deliver movies is exactly newsworthy.
For one, its clearly a sideline technology. Its not as if multiple companies are going to branch out using similar techniques. Its a deadend. Broadcast television signals are certainly not the future for data delivery. Its a relatively small portion of the population who even use those signals anymore (as opposed to cable/dish television).
For another, its already a step behind. Video On-Demand is already here in many places. I can watch a couple score of movies for free on Comcast On-Demand at high quality with no connection to my phone line or antenna sticking out my window. Its clearly a superior service and one with a more significant future than the one in this advertisement disguised as an article.
The portion of the article particularly galling is the ending in which it compares the service with other popular methods. Dismissing means much more popular, and frankly superior in many aspects, as if he was one of those payola film critics that declare Heathcliff as the best movie EVAH(!), is sophomoric and discredits the entire article. The tone is just off and it reduces the 'neat' factor that should have been the focus and is the only justification of an article on this fairly obscure company.
According to the article the device has to call the parent company every other week to tally how much you've ordered. This is where it would seem to be vulnerable. Placing something between the two (whether a full computer or some custom piece), you could simply intercept that particular signal, and send one that translates roughly to "Nothing to see here." Even if they do send back some encryption data, you can simply allow that to pass through normally.
Now there could be other measures of billing but if the only way they know to bill you is if your device calls them and tells them, its a very vulnerable system.
Exactly. Thats why I presented the example of Standard Oil. If you control all aspects of the market, for instance, market entrance requires overcoming the barriers of multiple markets - and that initial investment makes initial competition impossible. Its pretty hard to competitively price initially when you have to overcome the costs incurred entering the market. WalMart is a strong example of the power of economies of scale, a fundamental economic subsystem.
"There are NUMEROUS independent auto makers in the country right now. They can not sell their cars directly due to government regulations created by the large automakers that require certain government testing of vehicles to call them "safe." The only people who should "regulate" the safety of cars should be insurance companies.
The initial capital needed to enter a market is near zero -- I know, I own a number of large businesses that started with no money, no loans and no investments. It took people to do it, and we battled so many licensing requirements that we almost didn't start some of them."
Riiiiight. An automobile factory is wicked cheap. Do you even think about what you type or just check the political handbook? Or does your understanding of economics not acknowledge economics of scale?
"You really don't know your facts, do you? Standard Oil was never a monopoly -- when they were on top, they were #1 because they lowered the price of oil below all the other competitors. They lowered the price of oil from 58 cents to 8 cents!"
Not accurate. Standard Oil did not reach its monopoly status - if you actually knew economics and not just spouted ideological claptrap you'd know that does not require absolute 100% market control - by simply lowering prices. For one, prices were tied to the lack of use and unreliability of supply at the time. From "A History of Standard Oil":
From the first, oil men had to contend with wild fluctuations in the price of oil. In 1859 it was twenty dollars a barrel, and in 1861 it had averaged fifty-two cents. Two years later, in 1863, it averaged $8.15, and in 1867 but $2.40.
The Standard Oil initial advantage came from making under-the-table deals with railroad companies in which the railroads gave Standard Oil rebates on transporting its oil and with the refineries. This did allow them to undercut the competition (which allowed Standard Oil to acquire this competition....) but retain the same profit. They were able to do this because they were so large. That is again, because of economies of scale. Later, Standard Oil achieved its truly dominant state, controlling 90+% of all phases of the market, through buying those railroad companies and the refineries.
Mary Ruwart wrote in great detail about it.
You mean Mary Ruwart who has not expertise in economics?
Mary J. Ruwart, Ph.D. (E-Mail) is a former pharmaceutical research scientist and Assistant Professor of Surgery. She has worked extensively with the disadvantaged in low-income housing and was a contender for the 1992 Libertarian Party Vice-Presidential nomination.
Again, your ideology might want it to be true but that doesn't mean it is.
"Prove it. All property should be private, thereby allowing tort laws to cover the trespass (civil) and destruction (tort) that occurs from pollution. Society is nothing but millions of individuals -- let each one decide what they can handle."
Look, its your ideology replacing facts again!
"The Austrians have proven time and again that human action creates markets and freedom -- only government force can take it away. No megacorporation has never forced you to pay for anything. If Wal*Mart ends up owning ever store in the world, just go buy fruits from the farmer. Or do you think that a select few can control the entire world, except through the use of force by the government? All it takes is one bullet in the head of the powermongerer to end a coercive regime quickly."
(Look ideology about "ending regimes" entering into the conversation again - political thought does not replace soundness of economic paradigm. Its like talking to someone who really thinks the Soviet system should work.)
First of all, you are contradicting yourself. The central tenet of the Austrian school is that empirical evidence is not worthwhile
"MEGABIGCO won't occur in a free market if there are no barriers to entering that market"
Thats all well and good except that the barrier to market entry and not government created. They are fundamental to capitalism. Since it costs initial capital to enter a market, a company can not enter the market and be competitive immediately. There is a reason you or I couldn't start making cars that ran on butter tomorrow.
"Monopolies ONLY occur due to government licensing."
Ridiculous beyond comprehension. Learn about economics and its history. See: John D Rockefeller and Standard Oil. In an unregulated system, the natural equilibrium is monopoly.
"Not true. A provider of a product or service will provide what the consumer wants, including making sure that they abide by whatever environmental restrictions the market demands. Pollution is better covered by trespass and realistic tort laws than by regulation -- regulations of the environment today just move polluters around. The biggest polluter in the country is the US government, by the way."
First of all, a dichotomy between "tort laws" and "regulation" is patently false and intellectually shallow. Furthermore, pollution is not well-suited for tort law. Not only are harms that occur due to pollution often societal, but they are difficult to trace to individuals or companies as the cumulative effect brings about such negative consequences. Tort law focuses on private property and pollution harms the common good, public property and society in general.
"No, child labor has occured during the beginning of markets because the older workers were not able to adapt to the new markets. In most situations, children will be less productive if the government stops restricting how it pays employees. Minimum wage laws create unemployment because they rob uneducated non-productive people from finding jobs that won't pay them what they're worth until they prove their worth as employees. Many foreigners come into the country to work illegally for less than minimum wage, but quickly start earning much more than minimum wage once they've proven their worth."
Factually wrong. Its that simple. Child labor did not occur because older workers were not able to adapt. Its insulting that anyone would actually post such tripe. Children are not working in South East Asia for three generations because the older people couldn't adapt. Children didn't work in Western Europe and the United States from the start of the Industrial Revolution until nearly WWII because their parent's couldn't adapt. The children of children who were forced to work were also forced to work, are still forced to work at the same jobs.
"Go read Mises, Rothbard, Hayek and Goethe. You'll drop your Keynesian theories right quick." Ah it all becomes clear. How about this - don't try and drape ideology as economics. The Austrian School is all about how economics 'should' be. Its horrible at predicting how things are. Its also fundamentally anti-labor (relying solely on the marginal utility to produce value has no fundamental origin of the system). There's a reason the Austrian school has been a fringe theory of economics in every society (except ironically under the National Socialists).
Theres been alot of talk about how inteligent dolphins are. Maybe they are. But they havent dont anything about it. They're like the bright kid who never does anything with it. Even if they have greater cognitive ability than humans, they sure havent done much with it. They still live a brutal existance of animals. They still get caught in tuna nets and eaten by the occasional shark and die of disease without devising ways to defend themselves or finding cures.
Slashdot Mirror
Something like 75% of native English speakers are from the United States. Thats a sufficient enough majority where USian usage doesn't need to be qualified. This is especially true when commenting on a US story about a US topic - unless someone calling Parliament "Congress" shouldn't be corrected.
The advertisements were there for at least two weeks before this "scare." If they had been bombs, they wouldn't have been left out for weeks with flashing lights.
So either they:
Overreacted to a device that didn't warrant shutting down most of the city. A device that didn't resemble a bomb, didn't contain any chemicals that would be necessary for an explosive device and was designed to attract attention.
or
Missed a device that warranted that level of response for at least two weeks. One that flashed bright lights and was designed to attract attention.
Either way, my city should be embarrassed.
How about
-Previous predictions regarding global temperature and glacial melting have come true.
-Complete and full understanding is not necessary to make general large-scale predictions. Newton didn't understand Relativity but that doesn't mean he couldn't predict where the apple was going. A complete understanding of the human genome is not necessary to associate missing chromosomes with major problems.
-The underlying science of global warming does not require complex interactions. More CO2= more heat retained. The fundamental science isn't extremely complex and the evidence is overwhelming.
Boston is the home of Harvard (in effect, its technically in the adjoining city Cambridge that is essentially a district of Boston). Boston/Cambridge is also the home of MIT, perhaps the most prestigious technical university in the world. If you include Boston University, Boston College, Tufts, Brandeis, Emerson, Bentley, Northeastern and other universities of the cities and its immediate vicinity, you're talking about literally hundreds of thousands of post-secondary students.
And because collusion, even the non-explicit variety, is more profitable than competition.
This comment is confusing. It implies that Berger's removal of photocopies of documents from the National Archives prevented others from reading those documents. However, it has been proven that this is not the case. I wonder what the basis of that assumption is. Its inconceivable that a credible news outlet, such as talk radio or FoxNews, could disseminate such clearly false information.
The privacy concerns relating to Gmail were pretty widely known when the service debuted. Main stream media outlets ran stories on how Google would 'search' your email and show ads relating to the content.
Second, it is not equivalent to your body increasing ".000000001 of a degree, steadily year after year." Perhaps greater familiarity with the concept of climate change would be beneficial before commenting. Humanity has existed for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, but lets look at more recent history. Being generous, let's say "civilization" is 6000 years old. In the last 100 years, temperature has increased 1.1 degrees F. If you're a 30 year old, thats in 6 months. It is projected that global temperatures will increase 2.5 to 10.5 degrees in the next 100 years if major energy changes are not made. Do you think a fever of over 110 degree F might amount to much?
Well aren't you lazy? If you're talking about a movie made specifically for science classes, think again. The price would be too much for many districts and the quality would be much lower than "An Inconvenient Truth." If you're talking about teachers materials, you should check your facts. The information is freely available to anyone online. The movie and DVD packaging both point to this website as material can be updated and up-to-date instead of months or even years behind on the ever-increasing scientific consensus.
The general scientific method indicates that an experiment should be repeatable. Who does the experiment shouldn't matter. In this case, "independent" means, I think, a lab without connections to the first lab. By doing so, the chance that the experimenter is acting as a non-neutral agent in the experiment can be largely eliminated (as the experiment is repeated more and more times). While this has a side effect of potentially eliminating corporate bias, science inherently calls for it regardless of the source of funding.
Science is wrong a majority of the time? Perhaps if you include every tested hypothesis. However, climate change and the extent that humanity is causing a large amount of the current change is not an untested hypothesis. There isn't a single scientific peer reviewed study that contradicts these findings in any way in decades. There have been hundreds that support the scientific theory that man is causing global warming.
If you truly believe that the predictions science makes don't come true a majority of the time, I wonder how you get anywhere. Science is what predicts your automobile, train, or even bicycle will work. The predictions of science make it possible that when I strike a button on my keyboard, a signal is sent through my system (and dozens if not hundreds of other consequences therein) so it appears on my screen and eventually on slashdot. Science predicts that when you take medicine, it will have certain health consequences.
The hostility to science has to stop.
Education
Sc.D., Harvard School of Public Health
M.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
She works for the finest institutions and universities - that doesn't mean a statement like PacMan is 64% violent isn't moronic. The methodology is clearly flawed - as is rhetoric that increased violence in video games had led or will lead to increased antisocial/violent behavior (see declining juvenile crime rates).
They rate Space Invaders as more violent than GTA:SA (which whether you think it should be regulated or not is clearly very violent). The metric and methodology is useless.
Of the other richest men-
Gates, Allen, Buffett, Arnault, Li Ka-shing all increased inherited fortunes. Carlos Helu and Prince Al Waleed inherited their fortunes. Kamprad (IKEA) is self-made... and a literal Nazi. Abramovich is involved in the Russian kleptocracy but I don't know if that really constitutes the source of his wealth. Only Lakshmi Mittal (an Indian from a lower caste) seems to be legitimately 'self made'.
BTW, looking at the list of the top companies and billionaires should rid you of the idea that they all owe their fortunes to government regulation.
First, you fail to identify what right is removed. One could frame anti-murder laws as taking away a right if you don't define 'right' robustly. A century of constitutional precedent disagrees with your interpretation of the interstate commerce clause but since this is about copyright, that is the portion of this paragraph most laughable.
The Constitution states:
Clearly, copyrights are not Unconstitutional but specifically attributed to the federal government under the Constitution.
Overlooking the historically and economically fallacious claim that cartels exist because of government sanction, this does not make any sense. For one, many artists (in cinema, theatre, literature, music, etc) would not want their work modified ("hacked") so as to make it more accessable, less offensive or otherwise not their 'vision.' This assumes that without your reviled evil regulation that anyone would pay the original author for such copies.
This is a drifting into incoherence. The existance of 'cartels' has nothing to do with the lack of resources in the movie maker to fight copyright violators. Indeed, it is one of the few arguments (other than profit) FOR the existance of such groups as they pool resources for such fights (and lobbying ).
Additionally, you're wrong.
Brown University
Lower Manhattan Development Corporation
Aluminum Assoc
Cement Group
I could go on for quite a while. Get off your high horse.
Who made you the vocabulary police? Do you want to stomp your foot and pout until everyone uses words the way you want them to, regardless of what the dictionary says?
Anyone else annoyed when an article like this is written? Its effectively a late-night infomercial for this service. In some cases, this can be appropriate. However, I don't think you can claim the rehashing of an old idea (piggy-backing a signal on another signal) to deliver movies is exactly newsworthy.
For one, its clearly a sideline technology. Its not as if multiple companies are going to branch out using similar techniques. Its a deadend. Broadcast television signals are certainly not the future for data delivery. Its a relatively small portion of the population who even use those signals anymore (as opposed to cable/dish television).
For another, its already a step behind. Video On-Demand is already here in many places. I can watch a couple score of movies for free on Comcast On-Demand at high quality with no connection to my phone line or antenna sticking out my window. Its clearly a superior service and one with a more significant future than the one in this advertisement disguised as an article.
The portion of the article particularly galling is the ending in which it compares the service with other popular methods. Dismissing means much more popular, and frankly superior in many aspects, as if he was one of those payola film critics that declare Heathcliff as the best movie EVAH(!), is sophomoric and discredits the entire article. The tone is just off and it reduces the 'neat' factor that should have been the focus and is the only justification of an article on this fairly obscure company.
So? Just reverse it.
According to the article the device has to call the parent company every other week to tally how much you've ordered. This is where it would seem to be vulnerable. Placing something between the two (whether a full computer or some custom piece), you could simply intercept that particular signal, and send one that translates roughly to "Nothing to see here." Even if they do send back some encryption data, you can simply allow that to pass through normally.
Now there could be other measures of billing but if the only way they know to bill you is if your device calls them and tells them, its a very vulnerable system.
The initial capital needed to enter a market is near zero -- I know, I own a number of large businesses that started with no money, no loans and no investments. It took people to do it, and we battled so many licensing requirements that we almost didn't start some of them."
Riiiiight. An automobile factory is wicked cheap. Do you even think about what you type or just check the political handbook? Or does your understanding of economics not acknowledge economics of scale?
"You really don't know your facts, do you? Standard Oil was never a monopoly -- when they were on top, they were #1 because they lowered the price of oil below all the other competitors. They lowered the price of oil from 58 cents to 8 cents!"
Not accurate. Standard Oil did not reach its monopoly status - if you actually knew economics and not just spouted ideological claptrap you'd know that does not require absolute 100% market control - by simply lowering prices. For one, prices were tied to the lack of use and unreliability of supply at the time. From "A History of Standard Oil":
The Standard Oil initial advantage came from making under-the-table deals with railroad companies in which the railroads gave Standard Oil rebates on transporting its oil and with the refineries. This did allow them to undercut the competition (which allowed Standard Oil to acquire this competition....) but retain the same profit. They were able to do this because they were so large. That is again, because of economies of scale. Later, Standard Oil achieved its truly dominant state, controlling 90+% of all phases of the market, through buying those railroad companies and the refineries.
You mean Mary Ruwart who has not expertise in economics?
Again, your ideology might want it to be true but that doesn't mean it is.
"Prove it. All property should be private, thereby allowing tort laws to cover the trespass (civil) and destruction (tort) that occurs from pollution. Society is nothing but millions of individuals -- let each one decide what they can handle."
Look, its your ideology replacing facts again!
"The Austrians have proven time and again that human action creates markets and freedom -- only government force can take it away. No megacorporation has never forced you to pay for anything. If Wal*Mart ends up owning ever store in the world, just go buy fruits from the farmer. Or do you think that a select few can control the entire world, except through the use of force by the government? All it takes is one bullet in the head of the powermongerer to end a coercive regime quickly."
(Look ideology about "ending regimes" entering into the conversation again - political thought does not replace soundness of economic paradigm. Its like talking to someone who really thinks the Soviet system should work.)
First of all, you are contradicting yourself. The central tenet of the Austrian school is that empirical evidence is not worthwhile
Thats all well and good except that the barrier to market entry and not government created. They are fundamental to capitalism. Since it costs initial capital to enter a market, a company can not enter the market and be competitive immediately. There is a reason you or I couldn't start making cars that ran on butter tomorrow.
"Monopolies ONLY occur due to government licensing."
Ridiculous beyond comprehension. Learn about economics and its history. See: John D Rockefeller and Standard Oil. In an unregulated system, the natural equilibrium is monopoly.
"Not true. A provider of a product or service will provide what the consumer wants, including making sure that they abide by whatever environmental restrictions the market demands. Pollution is better covered by trespass and realistic tort laws than by regulation -- regulations of the environment today just move polluters around. The biggest polluter in the country is the US government, by the way."
First of all, a dichotomy between "tort laws" and "regulation" is patently false and intellectually shallow. Furthermore, pollution is not well-suited for tort law. Not only are harms that occur due to pollution often societal, but they are difficult to trace to individuals or companies as the cumulative effect brings about such negative consequences. Tort law focuses on private property and pollution harms the common good, public property and society in general.
"No, child labor has occured during the beginning of markets because the older workers were not able to adapt to the new markets. In most situations, children will be less productive if the government stops restricting how it pays employees. Minimum wage laws create unemployment because they rob uneducated non-productive people from finding jobs that won't pay them what they're worth until they prove their worth as employees. Many foreigners come into the country to work illegally for less than minimum wage, but quickly start earning much more than minimum wage once they've proven their worth."
Factually wrong. Its that simple. Child labor did not occur because older workers were not able to adapt. Its insulting that anyone would actually post such tripe. Children are not working in South East Asia for three generations because the older people couldn't adapt. Children didn't work in Western Europe and the United States from the start of the Industrial Revolution until nearly WWII because their parent's couldn't adapt. The children of children who were forced to work were also forced to work, are still forced to work at the same jobs.
"Go read Mises, Rothbard, Hayek and Goethe. You'll drop your Keynesian theories right quick."
Ah it all becomes clear. How about this - don't try and drape ideology as economics. The Austrian School is all about how economics 'should' be. Its horrible at predicting how things are. Its also fundamentally anti-labor (relying solely on the marginal utility to produce value has no fundamental origin of the system). There's a reason the Austrian school has been a fringe theory of economics in every society (except ironically under the National Socialists).
Its John Kerry from Massachusetts. Dumbass.
Read it again. You need prior art to 98 not now. Everyone has it now, its only a question of then.
Actually, microscopic organisms have been found near the poles before.
Theres been alot of talk about how inteligent dolphins are. Maybe they are. But they havent dont anything about it. They're like the bright kid who never does anything with it. Even if they have greater cognitive ability than humans, they sure havent done much with it. They still live a brutal existance of animals. They still get caught in tuna nets and eaten by the occasional shark and die of disease without devising ways to defend themselves or finding cures.
Should have previewed.... rich to poor