That is, either offer municipal broadband or offer for-profit broadband outside the city. What compelling reason is there for a single company to do both?
Whether it does or not, it's not worth the lack of freedom. It would greatly deter voting your conscience, voting for the unpopular, generally bucking whatever happened to be politically correct. No one should ever face retribution for an honestly-cast secret vote.
Well, that's your opinion and preference; you have not made any argument why private voting results in more freedom. I mean, it obviously removes social pressures on you to behave a particular way, but the removal of social pressures is not usually considered a matter of freedom or liberty in the political sense.
That's entirely different, but even if that was considered "vote buying," the solution to corruption is not even more corruption.
"Vote buying" isn't "more corruption", it's just a different kind. In fact, arguably, it is far more democratic compared to the current system, where only powerful special interests get paid for their political support.
In any case, the solution is indeed reducing the overall level of corruption, which can only been done by moving towards a minarchist system of government; as long as the US government spend $7 trillion per year, or $23000 per American, corruption is inevitable
The fact that the researchers went with the subjects they had doesn't indicate any agenda or bias, and only one ignorant of how science works would say such a thing.
Unlike you, I am actually a scientist. And it's really pointless to have any further discussions with you.
Are you saying chopping down the trees is mostly what changed the southern climate?
Chopping down the trees changed Spain into a near-desert.
Isn't it already agreed by most researchers that global warming is caused by humans? The Spanish are humans, no? I'm confused here.
Yes, but global warming did not devastate the environment in the Iberian peninsula; that happened much earlier. And, in fact, it probably won't cause it to get any drier or warmer either. Hence, the Spanish are trying to shift blame for their environmental sins onto others.
and you only really seem interested in arguing about the effectiveness of government
Yes, because that is the only thing that really matters when it comes to discussions about climate change: if government intervention is ineffective, then the question of the benefits of preventing it is only of academic relevance. And the simple fact is: neither you nor anybody else has come up with a rational plan for limiting climate change without massive damage to the economy.
Alll you have done is spread FUD, the standard m.o. for progressives: overpopulation, DDT, nuclear power, the ozone hole, GMOs, blacks, drugs, guns, whatever, are going to kill everybody and destroy civilization. Fear is what you people use to manipulate others, and you don't care how many people suffer as a result of the corrupt and ineffective policies that you advocate.
Censorship, as far as I've always known, is preventing someone from saying something.
Well, and now you know better. I explained to you why: you can look at countries where censorship was widely practiced, and "censorship" refers to the practice that mass media did not include statements or information that ran counter to the interests of the political class. Likewise of sexual content in the US wasn't about preventing people from taking dirty pictures, it was simply about keeping those dirty pictures off television and out of newspapers. Your definition of censorship as "preventing someone from saying something" simply makes no sense and has no connection with actual, historical censorship practices.
And given the massive political imbalance of US journalists and tech workers, that kind of biased selection of public messages is exactly what is happening in the US.
Ah, the predictable bullshit response. You put up "no control or planning" and "no zones" as a red herring, setting up a false dichotomy. All I said was that "libertarians object to subsidize housing". The rest is your own delusions and attempts to derail the discussion. You're a dishonest, manpulative prick.
Climate change refers to an increase in average global temperatures. It turns out that that increase in the average is largely due to increases at high latitudes. Climate change will likely lead to very little warming in areas that are already warm. Furthermore, it will likely lead to increased evaporation and precipitation. That is, there is a good chance that Spain will actually become greener.
Every one of my links is well-sourced with numerous references to peer-reviewed research to support the argument that they (and I) are making. I'm not the one making completely unsupported assertions here.
You're pointing, without insight or analysis, to popular articles written by authors and think tanks with a political agenda which then sometimes point to the scientific literature. That isn't a debate or science.
In your own opinion. In everyone else's, the IPCC's summaries and countless references to peer-reviewed research are a heck of a lot more reliable than some random web comment.
You are trying to deflect from the central point again, namely whether government intervention can affect carbon emissions without hurting people, not whether the IPCC predictions are correct. Nevertheless, you are naive in your trust in the IPCC as a scientific source. The IPCC is merely expert opinion and judgments, not fact. Furthermore, the "countless references" that the IPCC cites are not independent replications, they are simply many papers written on what is essentially a few closely related models based on largely the same data and assumptions.
Your point is? Would you like me to cite more cost-benefit research?
My point is that if you actually knew the literature, you would be pointing to the latest IPCC report, not to an outdated one. So stop pretending that you are an expert.
Well, only justified by the historical track record of successful government interventions in other emissions issues, as I stated further down.
First of all, the other "emission issues" are of a completely different nature; particulates and CFCs have a fairly short half-life compared to CO2, so eliminating them is effective; there were also good and simple solutions available. None of that is true for CO2 emissions right now. CO2 emissions will be drastically reduced when, and only when, the actual cost of generating energy from CO2 exceeds that of generating energy from renewables. Second, it is far from clear that government interventions actually helped, rather than hurt, in those cases; it's not sufficient simply that something bad stopped some time after the government intervened.
The research I didn't conjure is concerned with rises beyond 2100 - if their model is valid, there could be far more drastic sea level rise over the next 500 years than was anticipated, to the point that almost every coastal city on the globe will be heavily flooded.
Think about the globe 500 years ago and how populations have shifted and technologies have changed entirely without anthropogenic climate change. The idea that we need to be concerned about the economic well being of the descendants of Miami beach-house-owning millionaires 500 years from now is utterly ludicrous. And, again, it doesn't matter because there is simply nothing that government can do about it.
What makes you so confident they will get an alternate option in any reasonable time-frame, if fossil-fuel companies are allowed to continue offloading their biggest costs?
What makes me confident? Simple, straightforward extrapolations of the cost of renewables vs the cost of fossil fuels, extrapolations from trends that have been going since long before significant government interventions to support renewables. You can't speed up the technological developments that drives down these costs through government intervention, but you can certainly slow them down by hurting the economy with government interventions.
Furthermore, whether companies are "offloading costs" or not doesn't matter; even if your argument about externalities were valid, government cannot successfully intervene to compensate for these externalities through taxes. If any government tries, companies will simply move their production to places in the wo
It's also not clear why non-secret voting or vote buying should necessarily be bad.
Non-secret voting might well serve to deter extremism and lead to more discussion and consensus among voters.
And vote buying hasn't disappeared, it has become institutionalized in the form of massive government handouts to special interest groups (as the link you point to also hints at). Again, it's far from clear that that is better.
In most of Europe it's a criminal offense. As it should be, since it undermines the integrity of the election.
And by "integrity" you mean that people walk like sheep to the ballot box and make a bunch of choices based on empty promises and no understanding of the issues involved, while their representatives are chosen by baroque rules, and politicians then go on merrily ignoring what they promised?
Well, hell, maybe that "integrity" deserves to be undermined. It certainly doesn't deserve the kind of blind adoration you show for it.
My god. Has the land of the free become so incredibly incompetent at democracy that it does not realise a key feature of a secret ballot is removing evidence (intentional or not): about how someone voted? Still not seeing it?
What you aren't seeing is that there are much bigger problems with our democracy than whether the ballot is secret or not. It has been known since the time of the Greeks that our kind of democracy leads to oligarchy. Furthermore, our democracy has turned into a tyranny of the majority, which it was also not supposed to.
Still not seeing it? I didn't think so. Europeans really know little about democracy, its meaning, or its history.
Correct. And that's a good thing. They are voluntary private associations in which power, ownership, cost, and risk are all closely linked. That is, in an HOA, it is very hard to enrich yourself at the expense of others.
Bans on AirBNB need to be addressed through the democratic process.
Yes, they do need to be addressed that way, because that is the only way you can enact unjust laws in the the US.
Hotel owners are part of the polity and deserve to have a voice in government.
They are also a special interest group, and when they exercise disproportionate interest and enrich themselves at the expense of society, then that is political corruption.
Corruption is a serious charge which you throw out with no evidence. Maybe your point is that they have undue influence?
I said it "corrupts the political process", not that "hotel owners are corrupt". That is, I made a political point, not a legal point, and furthermore, the people who actually are corrupt are the politicians granting these favors, not the hotel owners asking for them.
There's a reason that these things are decided at a more encompassing level than just HOAs.
Yes: we call those reasons "power", "greed", and "corruption".
A city can't just grow with reckless abandon and no control or planning, that would never form a workable society. Therefore regulations are a necessity.
Historically, most cities have grown like that, and there are still many modern cities that are largely unplanned and unregulated.
Regulations are not only not necessary, they are harmful. A far more effective mechanism than regulations is private property rights.
Government, esp. city government, is in essence a longterm homeowner's association. I defy you to draw a line between a city government and an HOA,
Usually, in an HOA, only owners can vote; they vote proportionally to their shares; they pay dues proportionally to their shares; expenses must be accounted for; any debt is incurred proportionally to owners; it can't take away property from people; it can't deprive people of their liberty; its management is subject to civil and criminal liability. Need I go on?
Government often started out as a private association, but it deteriorated into the corrupt system we have today. HOAs are slowly following the same path driven by government interference and laws (e.g., in some states, renters have a right to vote in HOA meetings), but that is still rare, and when that happens, the "HOA" ceases to be an HOA or a voluntary, private association in the usual sense.
You wouldn't dream of imposing such restrictions on property owners, did I get that right?
No, you got it wrong. I have no problems with imposing restrictions on property owners, I have a problem with such restrictions being imposed through a political process that necessarily ends up being corrupt.
It is perfectly fine for my HOA to decide, according to our own rules, to prohibit AirBnB rentals.
It is not fine for the hotel lobby to corrupt the political process in order to prohibit other private property owners from competing with them, while they themselves don't bear the cost of the restrictions they impose.
So I guess you're not going to complain about me opening that rendering plant next to your home, right?
As for the "rendering plant", you couldn't build that next to my house since the private property association that I'm a member of doesn't allow it; in effect, I paid for being protected from such land use. If, on the other hand, I had converted a building in an industrial area to residential use, then I wouldn't object to my neighbor building a rendering plant; there would be no basis for such an objection.
What you are saying is that you want to buy unrestricted land at a low price, and then later impose restrictions on other property owners without paying for them. That's what a lot of property owners are trying to do, and it's wrong.
That AirBnB can't pick and choose the tax, safety, and other regulations that apply to their 'service' isn't discriminatory against AirBnB, it is treating everyone equally.
AirBnB isn't picking anything. They are hooking up private property owners with private guests. This is no different from renting out rooms on Craigslist or having a Bed&Breakfast, except that it is actually safer for both renters and hosts.
Same with capitalism. There is no abstract ideal, it only exists as its actual realization which turns out to be a man-made hell of 0.1% of the richest enslaving everyone else.
No, sorry, that's false. Free markets and low taxes have existed in many places throughout history, and they have generally resulted in peace and prosperity.
While some minimal government regulation may be necessary (far less than what we have right now in the US), beyond that, more government interference in the economy makes people increasingly worse off.
It seems that every time we have a good example of capitalism the entrenched players come in and justify why it doesn't work. There is no way that capitalism will ever exist in it's true form because the established payers have no incentive to allow it.
There are plenty of pretty economically liberal areas within the US and around the world. The fact that NYC is not one of them doesn't change that.
In fact, the biggest problem the US faces is that many other countries have caught on to the benefits of free markets and liberalized their economies. That is why so many companies are leaving the US. In the US, on the other hand, increasing centralization of power in Washington has meant that states are increasingly prevented from competing on liberal economic policies.
Libertarians object to subsidized housing in the first place. If you don't subsidize housing, you don't have to worry about people renting out subsidized housing on AirBnB.
that's why California totally isn't the 6th largest economy in the world. Chicago's economy totally isn't the size of Switzerland. and NYC totally isn't larger than all of Canada . such yuuuge failures, the lot of them, amirite?/s
I'm sure you also marveled at how huge the Soviet economy was and what a huge city Moscow was. See, it's easy to build a huge economy if you bleed others dry to pay for it.
And California, Chicago, and NYC also have huge fiscal problems, huge inequality, and huge social problems.
These cities and states are doing well for a powerful political and social elite, who use government interference in the market to enrich themselves. In fact, you left out the biggest example of them all: Washington DC, whose wealth has gone through the roof under recent, increasingly corrupt administrations.
Slashdot Mirror
That is, either offer municipal broadband or offer for-profit broadband outside the city. What compelling reason is there for a single company to do both?
Well, that's your opinion and preference; you have not made any argument why private voting results in more freedom. I mean, it obviously removes social pressures on you to behave a particular way, but the removal of social pressures is not usually considered a matter of freedom or liberty in the political sense.
"Vote buying" isn't "more corruption", it's just a different kind. In fact, arguably, it is far more democratic compared to the current system, where only powerful special interests get paid for their political support.
In any case, the solution is indeed reducing the overall level of corruption, which can only been done by moving towards a minarchist system of government; as long as the US government spend $7 trillion per year, or $23000 per American, corruption is inevitable
Unlike you, I am actually a scientist. And it's really pointless to have any further discussions with you.
Chopping down the trees changed Spain into a near-desert.
Yes, but global warming did not devastate the environment in the Iberian peninsula; that happened much earlier. And, in fact, it probably won't cause it to get any drier or warmer either. Hence, the Spanish are trying to shift blame for their environmental sins onto others.
It used to be all forests before the Spanish chopped down all the trees to build houses and fleets.
But, of course, instead of the Spanish taking responsibility for destroying their own environment, it's now "climate change".
In different words, you're self-righteous and ignorant.
Yes, because that is the only thing that really matters when it comes to discussions about climate change: if government intervention is ineffective, then the question of the benefits of preventing it is only of academic relevance. And the simple fact is: neither you nor anybody else has come up with a rational plan for limiting climate change without massive damage to the economy.
Alll you have done is spread FUD, the standard m.o. for progressives: overpopulation, DDT, nuclear power, the ozone hole, GMOs, blacks, drugs, guns, whatever, are going to kill everybody and destroy civilization. Fear is what you people use to manipulate others, and you don't care how many people suffer as a result of the corrupt and ineffective policies that you advocate.
Well, and now you know better. I explained to you why: you can look at countries where censorship was widely practiced, and "censorship" refers to the practice that mass media did not include statements or information that ran counter to the interests of the political class. Likewise of sexual content in the US wasn't about preventing people from taking dirty pictures, it was simply about keeping those dirty pictures off television and out of newspapers. Your definition of censorship as "preventing someone from saying something" simply makes no sense and has no connection with actual, historical censorship practices.
And given the massive political imbalance of US journalists and tech workers, that kind of biased selection of public messages is exactly what is happening in the US.
Ah, the predictable bullshit response. You put up "no control or planning" and "no zones" as a red herring, setting up a false dichotomy. All I said was that "libertarians object to subsidize housing". The rest is your own delusions and attempts to derail the discussion. You're a dishonest, manpulative prick.
Climate change refers to an increase in average global temperatures. It turns out that that increase in the average is largely due to increases at high latitudes. Climate change will likely lead to very little warming in areas that are already warm. Furthermore, it will likely lead to increased evaporation and precipitation. That is, there is a good chance that Spain will actually become greener.
We already see this effect in the Sahara desert.
You're pointing, without insight or analysis, to popular articles written by authors and think tanks with a political agenda which then sometimes point to the scientific literature. That isn't a debate or science.
You are trying to deflect from the central point again, namely whether government intervention can affect carbon emissions without hurting people, not whether the IPCC predictions are correct. Nevertheless, you are naive in your trust in the IPCC as a scientific source. The IPCC is merely expert opinion and judgments, not fact. Furthermore, the "countless references" that the IPCC cites are not independent replications, they are simply many papers written on what is essentially a few closely related models based on largely the same data and assumptions.
My point is that if you actually knew the literature, you would be pointing to the latest IPCC report, not to an outdated one. So stop pretending that you are an expert.
First of all, the other "emission issues" are of a completely different nature; particulates and CFCs have a fairly short half-life compared to CO2, so eliminating them is effective; there were also good and simple solutions available. None of that is true for CO2 emissions right now. CO2 emissions will be drastically reduced when, and only when, the actual cost of generating energy from CO2 exceeds that of generating energy from renewables. Second, it is far from clear that government interventions actually helped, rather than hurt, in those cases; it's not sufficient simply that something bad stopped some time after the government intervened.
Think about the globe 500 years ago and how populations have shifted and technologies have changed entirely without anthropogenic climate change. The idea that we need to be concerned about the economic well being of the descendants of Miami beach-house-owning millionaires 500 years from now is utterly ludicrous. And, again, it doesn't matter because there is simply nothing that government can do about it.
What makes me confident? Simple, straightforward extrapolations of the cost of renewables vs the cost of fossil fuels, extrapolations from trends that have been going since long before significant government interventions to support renewables. You can't speed up the technological developments that drives down these costs through government intervention, but you can certainly slow them down by hurting the economy with government interventions.
Furthermore, whether companies are "offloading costs" or not doesn't matter; even if your argument about externalities were valid, government cannot successfully intervene to compensate for these externalities through taxes. If any government tries, companies will simply move their production to places in the wo
http://marginalrevolution.com/...
It's also not clear why non-secret voting or vote buying should necessarily be bad.
Non-secret voting might well serve to deter extremism and lead to more discussion and consensus among voters.
And vote buying hasn't disappeared, it has become institutionalized in the form of massive government handouts to special interest groups (as the link you point to also hints at). Again, it's far from clear that that is better.
And by "integrity" you mean that people walk like sheep to the ballot box and make a bunch of choices based on empty promises and no understanding of the issues involved, while their representatives are chosen by baroque rules, and politicians then go on merrily ignoring what they promised?
Well, hell, maybe that "integrity" deserves to be undermined. It certainly doesn't deserve the kind of blind adoration you show for it.
What you aren't seeing is that there are much bigger problems with our democracy than whether the ballot is secret or not. It has been known since the time of the Greeks that our kind of democracy leads to oligarchy. Furthermore, our democracy has turned into a tyranny of the majority, which it was also not supposed to.
Still not seeing it? I didn't think so. Europeans really know little about democracy, its meaning, or its history.
Correct. And that's a good thing. They are voluntary private associations in which power, ownership, cost, and risk are all closely linked. That is, in an HOA, it is very hard to enrich yourself at the expense of others.
Yes, they do need to be addressed that way, because that is the only way you can enact unjust laws in the the US.
They are also a special interest group, and when they exercise disproportionate interest and enrich themselves at the expense of society, then that is political corruption.
I said it "corrupts the political process", not that "hotel owners are corrupt". That is, I made a political point, not a legal point, and furthermore, the people who actually are corrupt are the politicians granting these favors, not the hotel owners asking for them.
Yes: we call those reasons "power", "greed", and "corruption".
Historically, most cities have grown like that, and there are still many modern cities that are largely unplanned and unregulated.
Regulations are not only not necessary, they are harmful. A far more effective mechanism than regulations is private property rights.
Usually, in an HOA, only owners can vote; they vote proportionally to their shares; they pay dues proportionally to their shares; expenses must be accounted for; any debt is incurred proportionally to owners; it can't take away property from people; it can't deprive people of their liberty; its management is subject to civil and criminal liability. Need I go on?
Government often started out as a private association, but it deteriorated into the corrupt system we have today. HOAs are slowly following the same path driven by government interference and laws (e.g., in some states, renters have a right to vote in HOA meetings), but that is still rare, and when that happens, the "HOA" ceases to be an HOA or a voluntary, private association in the usual sense.
No, you got it wrong. I have no problems with imposing restrictions on property owners, I have a problem with such restrictions being imposed through a political process that necessarily ends up being corrupt.
It is perfectly fine for my HOA to decide, according to our own rules, to prohibit AirBnB rentals.
It is not fine for the hotel lobby to corrupt the political process in order to prohibit other private property owners from competing with them, while they themselves don't bear the cost of the restrictions they impose.
As for the "rendering plant", you couldn't build that next to my house since the private property association that I'm a member of doesn't allow it; in effect, I paid for being protected from such land use. If, on the other hand, I had converted a building in an industrial area to residential use, then I wouldn't object to my neighbor building a rendering plant; there would be no basis for such an objection.
What you are saying is that you want to buy unrestricted land at a low price, and then later impose restrictions on other property owners without paying for them. That's what a lot of property owners are trying to do, and it's wrong.
AirBnB isn't picking anything. They are hooking up private property owners with private guests. This is no different from renting out rooms on Craigslist or having a Bed&Breakfast, except that it is actually safer for both renters and hosts.
No, sorry, that's false. Free markets and low taxes have existed in many places throughout history, and they have generally resulted in peace and prosperity.
Today, there are many nations economically more free than the US, and economic freedom strongly correlates with prosperity and other positive social indicators.
While some minimal government regulation may be necessary (far less than what we have right now in the US), beyond that, more government interference in the economy makes people increasingly worse off.
There are plenty of pretty economically liberal areas within the US and around the world. The fact that NYC is not one of them doesn't change that.
In fact, the biggest problem the US faces is that many other countries have caught on to the benefits of free markets and liberalized their economies. That is why so many companies are leaving the US. In the US, on the other hand, increasing centralization of power in Washington has meant that states are increasingly prevented from competing on liberal economic policies.
Libertarians object to subsidized housing in the first place. If you don't subsidize housing, you don't have to worry about people renting out subsidized housing on AirBnB.
I'm sure you also marveled at how huge the Soviet economy was and what a huge city Moscow was. See, it's easy to build a huge economy if you bleed others dry to pay for it.
And California, Chicago, and NYC also have huge fiscal problems, huge inequality, and huge social problems.
https://www.brookings.edu/rese...
These cities and states are doing well for a powerful political and social elite, who use government interference in the market to enrich themselves. In fact, you left out the biggest example of them all: Washington DC, whose wealth has gone through the roof under recent, increasingly corrupt administrations.