can you make a plain language argument countering my point?
i am saying a high cost to market entry creates a natural monopoly. no government is needed to create it. it's a natural consequence of the underlying costs of the market sector in question
where am i wrong?
i think my statement is pretty straightforward and without error
you simply paste a link
i'm sorry, but "go read my religious literature" is not an argument. in fact, i would say you have no argument. you have an unfounded faith in an unsupported belief. a bit of foolish trendiness, which is all your link represents, that will fade to history, along with such nonsense as phrenology and lamarckism, as dead ends of academic thought
the emperor has no clothes my friend
the cult of the free market fairy: the free market fairy solves all problems! how? don't ask silly questions, don't think, just BELIEVE
1. for chronic conditions there isn't informed choice. choosing oncologist A over oncologist B because A smiles more doesn't mean much. 99.99% of us lack the educational capacity in oncology to know which is the better oncologist.
2. broadband for the narrow topic of internet connectivity is pretty much about fiber/ cable. it's too slow to get it over dial up/ cell networks/ satellites (unless you live in nunavut, not much choice otherwise). so when we talk "broadband" the topic is for all practical purposes only about the guys running fiber in your average urban/ suburban environment
which is a natural monopoly the government should own, then lease the fiber fractionally to everyone and anyone who pays a fee and wants to offer a service, any service. pretty much the same economic model of how we auction off the EM spectrum to radio, television, wifi, telephony, etc. that's the way it should work with fiber
the error is with those who believe it is government behind it all
the truth is the monopolies corrupt the government
for those fools who think the answer is to weaken government, well the monopolies can do away with corrupting legislators and regulators and rape you directly. they want that
then what? with no government/ weak government, how is the monopoly challenged?
the answer of course, is that nothing stops them now
only government is your tool against monopolies
those who argue for the weakening of government then are either genuine plutocrats with vile intent, or witless naive well-meaning fools in the unwitting service of plutocrats who genuinely believe pseudoreligious wishfulfillment economic nonsense ("the free market fairy solves all problems!" "how..." "shut up, stop thinking, just repeat after me!")
the true solution of course is to fight corruption, not fight government
oh don't get me wrong, government sucks on many levels and in many ways. i don't like government. it's inefficient, bureaucratic, slow, and often blind
but on the specific topic of natural monopolies alone (the only topic i am defending government in, to inoculate this comment from all the idiots who want to accuse me of loving government in all matters), government regulation and control is the only viable option. not an option to like. a horrible option. but better than all the other options (weak government and monopolistic control)
again: on the topic of natural monopolies alone, government is the unfortunate only answer. only answer because no government, weak government, or corrupt government, is worse
just look at healthcare or broadband in the usa. and compare the status quo in our social and economic peers who spend far less on healthcare and have higher quality healthcare, and likewise with broadband, because of heavy government involvement and regulation
rather than the legalized corruption of the usa where plutocrats buy regulators with revolving door jobs, buy legislators with election campaign funds, and screw us with shoddy service and high prices
and pump out propaganda saying it's all government's fault. and morons lap it up, helping with their impoverishment. in their effort to weaken and corrupt government, the only tool we have against monopolies, there is no greater friend to the plutocrat than the propagandized fool who hates the idea of government without thought or reason, when it's the only tool we have *on this topic of natural monopolies alone* (because here comes all the "you love government on all topics" drool snort. no, i do not)
things like fire, police, healthcare, powerplants: there is no market for such things. for a number of reasons. with broadband it's because of high barrier to entry: no one has the billions to gamble on entering the market with uncertain payout
oh google does. so go ahead and wait 40 years until they get to your city
but if you make believe (like the usa does) that things like broadband and healthcare are free markets, you just wind up with grossly expensive, inefficient jokes
what we need is universal healthcare, and government owned fiber
i hear it already: "oh you evil socialist statist..." *drool, snort*
i don't like the government. but unlike some people, i recognize that on the topic of *natural* monopolies, government control is the least horrible situation, and certainly better than the usa's joke of healthcare system or approach to broadband
capitalism is a wonderful tool. i love capitalism
for example: governments should own all fiber, and then lease it to private companies to deliver services. any private company can lease to provide any service. that's wonderful capitalism, embraced in a manner of fair competition. without the bullshit notion they own the fiber too, and there's "competition". no there isn't. and there never will be. and no government policy is to blame. it's the simple nature of the sector fo the economy: too high of a cost to enter. no one else can afford to roll out the fiber
capitalism is not a fucking religion, and it has its limits
natural monopolies represent those limits
if you don't understand what a natural monopoly is, stop talking about economics, you don't understand the topic
government is not your enemy, rent seeking parasites CORRUPTING your government are. you want to remove the corruption and have your government work for you. not weaken and remove government, thereby allowing the monopolists to rape you even more
there's just a certain kind of person in the world that think government is the problem no matter what. and on topics where the real problem is something else: natural monopolies, they simply enable the monopolists by misdirecting their anger at the wrong target (government). propaganda funded by the plutocrats are happy to feed this error, because indeed, with a weakened government, they get to rape you even more without even the pesky need to buy off congresscritters and pass warped regulations at all
no matter how many intelligent, forward thinking students you have agitating in the cities, the government just calls up busloads of basiji thugs from the countryside and cracks skulls until change seekers shut up in fear. or worse:
so if you want a rockstar working for you, you better be ready to shell out big money or provide truly extraordinary perks
you can't just expect or demand rock star status from average or even above average programmers. you can't mold people's personalities like their technical proficiency. i suppose there does exist stress mitigating strategies someone can consciously adapt. but from the rock star i met, it is a sort of chilly immunity to even the concept of stress that is quite awesome to behold
that's why i quoted eisenhower
because when i met such a person, i immediately thought of someone functioning under the stresses of extreme combat. i thought of this person on the eastern front in wwii. what it would take to survive *real* stress, because stress in programming, while real, taken in perspective to something like fields of combat, is a joke
i always wondered if this person had indeed been in such an extreme stressful environment, like war. a sort of "once i've seen that, none of this shit impresses me." because indeed, nothing seemed to impress him. you could scream in his face and he would react the same as if you were casually discussing gardening. nothing phased the dude
I haven't met or heard of anybody who is a "rock star" by your criterion. The closest I met was a person of very resilient personality, capable of working hard and steady through great stress, and who had an average level of talent. Not a bad person to have as part of a team, but in no way a rock star.
i have met a person with that stress proof personality, and above average talent. they exist. those are the rockstars
ok, let's say you prevail. zuckerberg gives turkey the middle finger and doesn't censor images
ok, now facebook is kicked out turkey
what have you "won" exactly?
how has turkey changed in any way? you've given the authoritarians a win: they've successfully excised the evil western cancer of facebook from glorious turkey
and how will turkey change in the future?
so you're for not opening diplomatic relations with cuba? we should just never ever ever reconcile or talk with cuba? how has that strategy paid off to change cuba?
we don't talk to iran? what is iran's attitude going to be then?
you are a dogmatic rigid ideologue
you are exactly the same as what you don't like in turkey
and the fruits of your ignorant stubbornness is you HELP the people you don't like
"i know you are but what am i" went out of style as rhetorically effective sometime around the second grade of elementary school. you don't even make any logical sense
the absence of facebook won't make those problems go away. how do you make those problems go away? with influence. like facebook. a bastardized influence, in order to exist, is still an influence, and better than no influence at all
this is called realism
it trumps ineffectual dogmatic idealism, which is just as authoritarian and extreme as what you are complaining about
compromise always wins
if you want to lose, hold fast to extreme adherence to difficult demands and never budge. there's no better way to make yourself marginalized, ineffectual, and ignored
if he doesn't follow the laws turkey bans facebook. a facebook clone in turkey pops up instead. now all those connections to the outside world are greatly diminished. turkey becomes a social silo that stagnates
and so all the valuable positive subtle free speech influences that aren't live wire topics like muhammad's face are lost
by following turkey's authoritarian freedom crushing instructions that would otherwise get facebook banned, facebook remains influential in turkey in a positive way, in more subtle ways
you can't think of these nuanced complex issues in such blockheaded black-or-white "my way or the highway" rigid ways. that makes you something like turkey's authoritarianism actually
I tell this story to illustrate the truth of the statement I heard long ago in the Army: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of "emergency" is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.
there's nothing like a real life emergency in programming but business culture is "get this done yesterday." no one can do that. but some programmers are very fragile and can only function according to one set of requirements/ work environment/ speed, and if you mess with that they get angry/ stressed/ tune out/ burnt out. while the "rock stars" can react to sudden and dramatic changes of requirement and need and crank out the changes relatively adroitly (not necessarily quickly). a sort of suppleness of mind and eerie lack of stress that's more about personality than training. and i say personality, and not training, because their code is a reflection of their personality: you can throw a curve ball at it from any direction and it can adapt without falling to pieces when "little" things (it's never little) change
your code is a reflection of how your mind works. which is your personality. and certain chilly stress proof people can generate flexible durable code that is almost like the redundancy and flexibility of logistics in war
wouldn't take much of the right kind. nice aerosolizer already provided by the craft
biologic if you're exotic
nuclear just plain stupider
but for maximum shits and giggles and no loss of life, i'd load a degaussing coil on a drone and fly it through a target office. do a little tap over all the workstations to get the hard drives
Slashdot Mirror
can you make a plain language argument countering my point?
i am saying a high cost to market entry creates a natural monopoly. no government is needed to create it. it's a natural consequence of the underlying costs of the market sector in question
where am i wrong?
i think my statement is pretty straightforward and without error
you simply paste a link
i'm sorry, but "go read my religious literature" is not an argument. in fact, i would say you have no argument. you have an unfounded faith in an unsupported belief. a bit of foolish trendiness, which is all your link represents, that will fade to history, along with such nonsense as phrenology and lamarckism, as dead ends of academic thought
the emperor has no clothes my friend
the cult of the free market fairy: the free market fairy solves all problems! how? don't ask silly questions, don't think, just BELIEVE
thank you
a toast to the day we do not have to suffer anymore the economically illiterate fools and their magic cult of the free market fairy, peace be unto her
agreed except for two points:
1. for chronic conditions there isn't informed choice. choosing oncologist A over oncologist B because A smiles more doesn't mean much. 99.99% of us lack the educational capacity in oncology to know which is the better oncologist.
2. broadband for the narrow topic of internet connectivity is pretty much about fiber/ cable. it's too slow to get it over dial up/ cell networks/ satellites (unless you live in nunavut, not much choice otherwise). so when we talk "broadband" the topic is for all practical purposes only about the guys running fiber in your average urban/ suburban environment
which is a natural monopoly the government should own, then lease the fiber fractionally to everyone and anyone who pays a fee and wants to offer a service, any service. pretty much the same economic model of how we auction off the EM spectrum to radio, television, wifi, telephony, etc. that's the way it should work with fiber
that's called corruption
the error is with those who believe it is government behind it all
the truth is the monopolies corrupt the government
for those fools who think the answer is to weaken government, well the monopolies can do away with corrupting legislators and regulators and rape you directly. they want that
then what? with no government/ weak government, how is the monopoly challenged?
the answer of course, is that nothing stops them now
only government is your tool against monopolies
those who argue for the weakening of government then are either genuine plutocrats with vile intent, or witless naive well-meaning fools in the unwitting service of plutocrats who genuinely believe pseudoreligious wishfulfillment economic nonsense ("the free market fairy solves all problems!" "how..." "shut up, stop thinking, just repeat after me!")
the true solution of course is to fight corruption, not fight government
oh don't get me wrong, government sucks on many levels and in many ways. i don't like government. it's inefficient, bureaucratic, slow, and often blind
but on the specific topic of natural monopolies alone (the only topic i am defending government in, to inoculate this comment from all the idiots who want to accuse me of loving government in all matters), government regulation and control is the only viable option. not an option to like. a horrible option. but better than all the other options (weak government and monopolistic control)
again: on the topic of natural monopolies alone, government is the unfortunate only answer. only answer because no government, weak government, or corrupt government, is worse
just look at healthcare or broadband in the usa. and compare the status quo in our social and economic peers who spend far less on healthcare and have higher quality healthcare, and likewise with broadband, because of heavy government involvement and regulation
rather than the legalized corruption of the usa where plutocrats buy regulators with revolving door jobs, buy legislators with election campaign funds, and screw us with shoddy service and high prices
and pump out propaganda saying it's all government's fault. and morons lap it up, helping with their impoverishment. in their effort to weaken and corrupt government, the only tool we have against monopolies, there is no greater friend to the plutocrat than the propagandized fool who hates the idea of government without thought or reason, when it's the only tool we have *on this topic of natural monopolies alone* (because here comes all the "you love government on all topics" drool snort. no, i do not)
The threat of competition prevents long term monopolies from persisting.
explain how that works. you've just made a statement of unsupported belief
i've explained to you reality, straightforward: a high cost of entry into the market prevents competition. high cost alone
you have opposed my description of reality. that's fine, you don't have to agrere with me
but you have to be able to explain how or why i am wrong. you have not done that
"go read my religious literature" is not an argument
if you can't make your case in plain language, that says something doesn't it?
an unsupported faith in an unsupported statement is trendy nonsense
a fiber rollout for a large city costs {X}
{X} is huge
therefore {X} is a barrier for competition
what's the difficulty with grasping this straightforward concept exactly?
so explain it to me
it's not government mandated, it's a *natural* monopoly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
things like fire, police, healthcare, powerplants: there is no market for such things. for a number of reasons. with broadband it's because of high barrier to entry: no one has the billions to gamble on entering the market with uncertain payout
oh google does. so go ahead and wait 40 years until they get to your city
but if you make believe (like the usa does) that things like broadband and healthcare are free markets, you just wind up with grossly expensive, inefficient jokes
what we need is universal healthcare, and government owned fiber
i hear it already: "oh you evil socialist statist..." *drool, snort*
i don't like the government. but unlike some people, i recognize that on the topic of *natural* monopolies, government control is the least horrible situation, and certainly better than the usa's joke of healthcare system or approach to broadband
capitalism is a wonderful tool. i love capitalism
for example: governments should own all fiber, and then lease it to private companies to deliver services. any private company can lease to provide any service. that's wonderful capitalism, embraced in a manner of fair competition. without the bullshit notion they own the fiber too, and there's "competition". no there isn't. and there never will be. and no government policy is to blame. it's the simple nature of the sector fo the economy: too high of a cost to enter. no one else can afford to roll out the fiber
capitalism is not a fucking religion, and it has its limits
natural monopolies represent those limits
if you don't understand what a natural monopoly is, stop talking about economics, you don't understand the topic
government is not your enemy, rent seeking parasites CORRUPTING your government are. you want to remove the corruption and have your government work for you. not weaken and remove government, thereby allowing the monopolists to rape you even more
there's just a certain kind of person in the world that think government is the problem no matter what. and on topics where the real problem is something else: natural monopolies, they simply enable the monopolists by misdirecting their anger at the wrong target (government). propaganda funded by the plutocrats are happy to feed this error, because indeed, with a weakened government, they get to rape you even more without even the pesky need to buy off congresscritters and pass warped regulations at all
c'mon man, don't mess it up
it's called the IoT of Things
there isn't an IoTa of awareness
insane != abstract
you don't get to redefine words as their opposite meaning and expect to sound logically coherent
"i'm going to redefine 'wet' as 'dry' and continue talking about climatology and expect people to still take me seriously..."
okay, crackpot
i'm not willing to entertain the mental gymnastics whereby moderation is defined as an extreme
you're nuts dude
You "win" Turkish citizens annoyed with their government -- a win in the only venue likely to be able to create change there.
i stopped reading there
how did that work with cuba? iran? north korea? china?
what you're asking for is massacred citizens
iran for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...
no matter how many intelligent, forward thinking students you have agitating in the cities, the government just calls up busloads of basiji thugs from the countryside and cracks skulls until change seekers shut up in fear. or worse:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
slow stead engagement is what really works
reactionary inflexibility simply means no change at all
welcome to reality
this is you:
http://www.politico.com/story/...
pragmatism, flexibility, realism, compromise always wins
inflexible ideological dogmatism is how you lose and are ignored
well yeah, by definition a rock star is very rare
so if you want a rockstar working for you, you better be ready to shell out big money or provide truly extraordinary perks
you can't just expect or demand rock star status from average or even above average programmers. you can't mold people's personalities like their technical proficiency. i suppose there does exist stress mitigating strategies someone can consciously adapt. but from the rock star i met, it is a sort of chilly immunity to even the concept of stress that is quite awesome to behold
that's why i quoted eisenhower
because when i met such a person, i immediately thought of someone functioning under the stresses of extreme combat. i thought of this person on the eastern front in wwii. what it would take to survive *real* stress, because stress in programming, while real, taken in perspective to something like fields of combat, is a joke
i always wondered if this person had indeed been in such an extreme stressful environment, like war. a sort of "once i've seen that, none of this shit impresses me." because indeed, nothing seemed to impress him. you could scream in his face and he would react the same as if you were casually discussing gardening. nothing phased the dude
I haven't met or heard of anybody who is a "rock star" by your criterion. The closest I met was a person of very resilient personality, capable of working hard and steady through great stress, and who had an average level of talent. Not a bad person to have as part of a team, but in no way a rock star.
i have met a person with that stress proof personality, and above average talent. they exist. those are the rockstars
not sure if joking (look around here, there are some socially autistic morons on slashdot)
if you are joking, thanks for the laugh
if not, the middle way and compromise as an extreme is... stupid. not even logically coherent
ok, let's say you prevail. zuckerberg gives turkey the middle finger and doesn't censor images
ok, now facebook is kicked out turkey
what have you "won" exactly?
how has turkey changed in any way? you've given the authoritarians a win: they've successfully excised the evil western cancer of facebook from glorious turkey
and how will turkey change in the future?
so you're for not opening diplomatic relations with cuba? we should just never ever ever reconcile or talk with cuba? how has that strategy paid off to change cuba?
we don't talk to iran? what is iran's attitude going to be then?
you are a dogmatic rigid ideologue
you are exactly the same as what you don't like in turkey
and the fruits of your ignorant stubbornness is you HELP the people you don't like
pragmatism always wins
"i know you are but what am i" went out of style as rhetorically effective sometime around the second grade of elementary school. you don't even make any logical sense
people met on the street and in taverns and in private rooms, completely beyond the ability of anyone to eavesdrop
but enforcement against illegal activity proceeded by infiltrating groups and other methods
it seems the feds are complaining they might have to actually engage in hard work
do your damn job
if the positive influence outweighs the negative
the absence of facebook won't make those problems go away. how do you make those problems go away? with influence. like facebook. a bastardized influence, in order to exist, is still an influence, and better than no influence at all
this is called realism
it trumps ineffectual dogmatic idealism, which is just as authoritarian and extreme as what you are complaining about
compromise always wins
if you want to lose, hold fast to extreme adherence to difficult demands and never budge. there's no better way to make yourself marginalized, ineffectual, and ignored
they'll start blocking proxies
not possible?
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...
yes, theoretically impossible to be watertight, but the whack-a-mole effort makes for a degraded dangerous existence for those seeking to use proxies
so you effectively banned facebook by forcing users to exert so much effort it's not worth it
culturally and politically, you've also antagonized turkey to go more silo
look at the constant "west is destroying us" ultranationalist bullshit in russia nowadays as an example of how turkey could go
so you let turkey have its way on the lightning rod topic of muhammad's face
then allow the more subtle influence to continue
time plus slow force can erode mountains
geologists should be in charge of topics like this
hard to tell if joking or not
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
if you're joking, thanks for the laugh
if not, well... you need help
you don't defeat authoritarianism or totalitarianism with the same sort of simplistic black-or-white ideological rigidity
it's not that simple
if he doesn't follow the laws turkey bans facebook. a facebook clone in turkey pops up instead. now all those connections to the outside world are greatly diminished. turkey becomes a social silo that stagnates
and so all the valuable positive subtle free speech influences that aren't live wire topics like muhammad's face are lost
by following turkey's authoritarian freedom crushing instructions that would otherwise get facebook banned, facebook remains influential in turkey in a positive way, in more subtle ways
you can't think of these nuanced complex issues in such blockheaded black-or-white "my way or the highway" rigid ways. that makes you something like turkey's authoritarianism actually
there's nothing like a real life emergency in programming but business culture is "get this done yesterday." no one can do that. but some programmers are very fragile and can only function according to one set of requirements/ work environment/ speed, and if you mess with that they get angry/ stressed/ tune out/ burnt out. while the "rock stars" can react to sudden and dramatic changes of requirement and need and crank out the changes relatively adroitly (not necessarily quickly). a sort of suppleness of mind and eerie lack of stress that's more about personality than training. and i say personality, and not training, because their code is a reflection of their personality: you can throw a curve ball at it from any direction and it can adapt without falling to pieces when "little" things (it's never little) change
your code is a reflection of how your mind works. which is your personality. and certain chilly stress proof people can generate flexible durable code that is almost like the redundancy and flexibility of logistics in war
explosives?
chemicals my friend
wouldn't take much of the right kind. nice aerosolizer already provided by the craft
biologic if you're exotic
nuclear just plain stupider
but for maximum shits and giggles and no loss of life, i'd load a degaussing coil on a drone and fly it through a target office. do a little tap over all the workstations to get the hard drives
oh shit, am i on some list now?