Your argument whilst superficially attractive seems to be based on jealousy greed and ignorance.
False. If it were even superficially attractive, politicians would like it. The reason it's not superficially attractive is that it requires individual responsibility. People prefer to hide from the repercussions of their choices.
Applying age-old, standard and proven property rights makes problems like pollution solvable. It places responsibility directly in the laps of the individuals whose choices create the polution. The problem of governmental polutants is the problem of a lack of individual responsibility. Government grants itself immunity from prosecution.
The straw-man of atomic bombs is old. Get a new one.
And don't forget that if the price of a CD included manufacturing, shipping, every penny that goes to the artist(s) now, a 100% markup to the record label, and a 100% markup to the retail outlet, they would still cost maybe $5.
So where is the other $10-20 going? Lawyers, politicians, record label executives.
Subsidizing the farmers and cities who are pulling H2O out of the river, raising the relative salt concentrations by using tax money to remove salt to try to reduce the relative salt level to "normal".
Another "tragedy of the commons" caused by a lack of private property rights.
Want to solve this whole problem? Salt-neutral use of the river. If you want it, take it and deal with the salt. If you put into it, treat it first so it's at least as clean as what you took out.
Don't get me wrong, this same physical problem might exist as Provo or Los Vegas tries to deal with excess salt in their water, but at least then it wouldn't be my taxes paying for it. Or yours. Only the people who choose to use it deserve to be responsible for the cost of it.
You haven't been keeping track of Libertarian political candidates, have you?
Seriously. Michael Badnarik, the 2004 presidential candidate, is a programmer. The http://www.lp.org/ web page runs on FreeBSD and Apache.
The things you complain about are not "political issues" because the mainstream press and their butt-buddies, the two faces of the Party of State Power, all agree that Copyright and Patent should cover everything and the mere "citizen" has no rights at all.
It goes into the absurdity of "TotC" concerning the radio spectrum and the way the government fostered a crisis in order to justify their regulation of the medium.
The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stone.
The Stone Age ended because mud huts and dung fires suck. As soon as alternatives became viable, people changed their lifestyles.
Dung fires are still used in places like India where the alternatives are simply more expensive.
The cost to me of a block of stone the size and shape of a cinderblock, don't forget the cost of handling something that heavy, makes stone far more expensive than cinderblocks for building.
That's why cinderblocks were developed, that's why they're used. They're cheap, compared to the alternatives. Stone remains, and is used when and where desired by people willing to pay for it. Just like sailboats.
I suggest you visit Home Power Magazine for a dirt level examination of the alternatives available.
Home Power isn't about pie-in-the-sky schemes, it's about real working alternative energy. Solar, wind, micro-hydro (my favorite), hydrogen, etc.
They have an unfortunate bias against clean, efficient nuclear power however. Oh well, no one is perfect.
The "tragedy of the commons" is completely dependent on the lack of private property. This is clearly echoed in the atrocious conditions in so-called "public" housing projects, compared to the condition in privately owned buildings practically next door.
Government is the CAUSE of the commons problem in the first place. No one owns the commons. Otherwise, the owner could step in and prosecute for the abuse exactly like I would if someone abusively grazed their sheep on my front lawn.
This is a very uninformed view, given that the last fifty-odd years of economics research have been devoted to showing the very real limits on Adam Smith's "invisible hand."
Your assertion shows that you have a very uninformed view; have ignored several Nobel Prizes for Economics during that same 50 years; that you've never heard of Murry Rothbard, among many other luminaries of the last 50 years.
You might be interested in the Ludwig von Mises Institute: http://www.mises.org/ They have many books and articles online, for free.
The LVMI also has a blog dedicated to economics topics where you can post and thereby educate all those, like me, who don't know everything you do.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with your "fine for me but not for thee" comment.
The fact that governments exempt themselves from the restrictions and regulations that they impose on others.
Thanks for the elaboration on the ship-board reactors. I would be more than pleased if the only reasons they weren't used privately were technical ones. Unfortunately, that kind of investigation is styfled by the legal restrictions. Thus my comment.
As oil gets used up (as people have been proclaiming would happen very soon since before WW2), the price goes up.
The only reason oil and other petrochemicals are utilized is that they cost less than the alternatives.
So as the price of oil goes up, the prices of alternatives such as grain alcohol and veggie oil for fuel, telecommuting, atomic generation of electricity, solar, wind, etc, will be exceeded and they will in turn gain market share.
The greatest danger is in trying to prevent the changes in price which reflect demand and supply. Distorting this process keeps destructive processes in place, or brings "alternative" systems into play before they are safe, cheap or clean as they would have had to be before people would have paid for them without that coercion.
Relatively small, safe and clean atomic power generators have been in place for decades, but not in the so-called "private" sector. They are used in warships. This is an important lesson in "fine for me but not for thee".
Yes, full sarcastic mode. A democracy is just as efficient at crushing individual liberty as any dictatorship, with the added bonus that the oppressors get to tell you that you CHOSE to be oppressed because of the existence of voting.
1: Skype uses proprietary protocols that are incompatible with any other service.
2: Skype refuses to publish their interface profiles, so no one else can make software that is compatible.
3: Skype has stated in no uncertain terms, over and over on their web page and FAQ, that they will never publish their API, never open their source. Period.
Yet Skype doesn't sell their software. They maintain the full burden of development and testing, and try to pay for it by selling the service of POTS calls made through their software.
Oh well, once the idea is in the wild, someone will "open source" it. Maybe someone will adapt the Speak Freely user interface to a P2P transport layer, maybe utilizing the Gnutella network itself? Hey, this is sounding like a good idea....
Politicians and elected officials would never hurt anyone. And they must respect the individual and the minority group because to do anything else would hurt their chances of being re-elected....Unless, of course, Public Choice theory is correct and the bureaucrats are actually just humans like everyone else, looking out for their own self interest.
The Corporations are just making sound investments. If either of their candidates win, the corporate welfare continues to flow.
If a Libertarian were to win, the corporate welfare, along with the military and special-interest welfare, would be in serious jeopardy.
This they're just acting in their own self interest, just like all bureaucrats.
Libertarians love to argue which came first, the corporate donations or the power over peoples lives that can so be purchased. It's irrelevant, really, since so long as there is power to be purchased, there will be buyers. Just like Enron.
BTW, I agree completely, and will be voting for Badnarik and every other Libertarian on the ballot.
The higher profits will be a signal to others that there is money to be made. They will step in, and in order to make money they will use the more efficient methods, undercut the price and sell more, trying to make money like the original pioneer.
The pioneer will then lower their price (or raise their quality) or go out of business.
Since there are more players in the market than before, productive workers originally laid off will be hired by the competition or become the competition themselves.
The winners are consumers who enjoy better quality, lower prices, or most often both.
When another development in efficiency or quality changes the production cost point again, the new profit margins will again signal to ready entrepreneurs that there is money to be made. Consumers enjoy another round of lower prices and higher quality.
If the governments weren't printing money like it was going out of style, a steady deflation would be the rule (again) as this progression of improvements in quality and efficiency continues to occur in every field and industry.
This is not a game of chess. Have you forgotten that the Republicans did not always exist? They were a 3rd party in 1860. However, they got into the debates, and look what happened.
This is also not a game of chess because I am compelled to participate. If I choose not to participate, I am first prosecuted, then jailed, and my property taken by force anyway. Just like you.
There are lots of other tools than the two faces of the Party of State Power. That you cannot see them is not my problem, except that you continue to vote for what you think is the lesser of two evils, thus contributing to the imposition of evil on other people.
Are you ready to face people and say you personally contributed to the effort to rob their children of their livelihoods with this irrational national debt? Too bad, that's exactly what you are telling me. Your use of force against me is not appreciated, which is something you need to grok soon.
How can saying "no" mean "yes"? I give the two faces of the Party Of State Power no money, I give them no votes, I do not give them my registration for their false claims of popularity.
I am doing everything I can short of violence to say "no".
Yet to you this is saying "yes"?
Let me guess, you want me to vote for YOUR candidate, and you're angry that I don't. Too bad.
Were Badnarik to take a state or two, the Democrat and Republican parties would start taking actual action on those parts of their own platforms (repeal of drug prohibitions, actual fiscal responsibility) that are the linchpins of the Libertarian position.
Who cares what the party label is on the candidate, if he actually represents your views? Ron Paul ran as the Libertarian candidate for President, but is in the US House as a Republican. His views haven't changed. He still is the most consistently socially liberal, fiscally conservative, voter in the House.
Look at the Socialist party platform from prior to FDR's reign. Practically the entire party platform has been enacted, by both Democrats and Republicans. Party label is irrelevant once the candidate is elected.
At any rate, I think its better than voting for someone who's not going to win at all.
I would rather continue voting for candidates who agree with my views that bear ANY responsibility for the crap going on by voting for either a Republican or a Democrat.
free speech also means we're free to ignore you, too.
Not at a taxpayer-funded facility.
If this were being held privately, there would be objection but not LEGAL action taken.
Hopefully, as with the "ballot access restriction laws", this suit will drive the debate organizers to publish objective criteria about who may and may not be permitted to "debate". Once the rules are published for everyone to see, they can be addressed.
At this time, those rules are not published, or are merely "we only want those two".
Do you know why California invented the "assault weapon" ban?
In 1992, a group of police beat the crap out of Rodney King.
They were later acquited of assault because, surprise surprise, it turned out that they were indeed "just following orders." It was, and likely still is, in their rule book to "hit the suspect until he stays down" even if it kills him.
During the ensuing riots, the police abandoned the city of Los Angeles to the rioters. Sorry folks, you're on your own. The police have no legal requirement to protect you (look it up, it's true).
The news cameras were still rolling, however. Lots of pictures of wide spread violence and looting, but not everywhere. There were islands of peace in the maelstrom.
Pictures of store owners and their employees and families defending their property and their customers with rifles made the evening news.
Mere citizens standing firm, peacefully, successfully, while the police cut and run.
The various government bureaucrats, politicians, and especially the police were furious! They looked at the pictures, saw that the shop owners had done nothing illegal, and decided to punish them.
So the bureaucrats looked to see what kind of weapons the shop owners had used so effectively, cataloged them, called them something nasty sounding which they hoped gullible citizens would confuse with machine guns, and decried how these things were "the weapons of choice of criminals".
That's why the definition of "assault weapon" is meaningless, it's based on nothing but looks.
Bob-
Re:I think you're looking at the wrong thing
on
Assault Weapons Ban
·
· Score: 1
You're missing the point, then. The point is prevention, not prosecution.
Let us cut off our arms at the shoulder, then, since I can kill with my hands.
The largest mass murder in the US, prior to September, 2001, was inflicted with Gasoline. Let us prohibit gasoline and prevent such crimes.
Since wearing a shock-collar which would prevent anyone but legally married people from getting within 3 feet of each other would prevent rape, many murders, pickpocking, let's wear them.
Since it is possible for me to incite violence with words, shall all speech be cleared through censors first, to prevent that crime too?
Here's the problem: Prevention by any other means than education eliminates the very concept of "rights". The police in the US used to be peace officers. When some broke the peace, they were punished.
Then they became "law enforcement", and the jack booted thug and standing army inside the borders is a daily occurrence.
It's easy to talk high and mighty about preventing other people from doing bad things. But it is altogether another thing to accept the responsibility for the kind of society it requires to prevent crimes.
Do you accept moral responsibility for every mass-murder?
I accept the moral responsibility for my own actions. That is why I own arms for my own defense and the defense of innocents against predation.
If you choose to prevent me from making that choice, you are taking a positive step to interfere in my life. My owning arms in no way impells someone else to commit murder. Your supposed conundrum is false.
Slashdot Mirror
Your argument whilst superficially attractive seems to be based on jealousy greed and ignorance.
False. If it were even superficially attractive, politicians would like it. The reason it's not superficially attractive is that it requires individual responsibility. People prefer to hide from the repercussions of their choices.
Applying age-old, standard and proven property rights makes problems like pollution solvable. It places responsibility directly in the laps of the individuals whose choices create the polution. The problem of governmental polutants is the problem of a lack of individual responsibility. Government grants itself immunity from prosecution.
The straw-man of atomic bombs is old. Get a new one.
Bob-
So it's natural. So they are taking the salt out, why?
If it's natural, there is no reason for humans to screw it up.
Bob-
And don't forget that if the price of a CD included manufacturing, shipping, every penny that goes to the artist(s) now, a 100% markup to the record label, and a 100% markup to the retail outlet, they would still cost maybe $5.
So where is the other $10-20 going? Lawyers, politicians, record label executives.
Subsidizing the farmers and cities who are pulling H2O out of the river, raising the relative salt concentrations by using tax money to remove salt to try to reduce the relative salt level to "normal".
Another "tragedy of the commons" caused by a lack of private property rights.
Want to solve this whole problem? Salt-neutral use of the river. If you want it, take it and deal with the salt. If you put into it, treat it first so it's at least as clean as what you took out.
Don't get me wrong, this same physical problem might exist as Provo or Los Vegas tries to deal with excess salt in their water, but at least then it wouldn't be my taxes paying for it. Or yours. Only the people who choose to use it deserve to be responsible for the cost of it.
Bob-
You haven't been keeping track of Libertarian political candidates, have you?
Seriously. Michael Badnarik, the 2004 presidential candidate, is a programmer. The http://www.lp.org/ web page runs on FreeBSD and Apache.
The things you complain about are not "political issues" because the mainstream press and their butt-buddies, the two faces of the Party of State Power, all agree that Copyright and Patent should cover everything and the mere "citizen" has no rights at all.
Bob-
You might like this article over on LVMI:
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1662
It goes into the absurdity of "TotC" concerning the radio spectrum and the way the government fostered a crisis in order to justify their regulation of the medium.
Bob-
The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stone.
The Stone Age ended because mud huts and dung fires suck. As soon as alternatives became viable, people changed their lifestyles.
Dung fires are still used in places like India where the alternatives are simply more expensive.
The cost to me of a block of stone the size and shape of a cinderblock, don't forget the cost of handling something that heavy, makes stone far more expensive than cinderblocks for building.
That's why cinderblocks were developed, that's why they're used. They're cheap, compared to the alternatives. Stone remains, and is used when and where desired by people willing to pay for it. Just like sailboats.
I suggest you visit Home Power Magazine for a dirt level examination of the alternatives available.
Home Power isn't about pie-in-the-sky schemes, it's about real working alternative energy. Solar, wind, micro-hydro (my favorite), hydrogen, etc.
They have an unfortunate bias against clean, efficient nuclear power however. Oh well, no one is perfect.
Bob-
The "tragedy of the commons" is completely dependent on the lack of private property. This is clearly echoed in the atrocious conditions in so-called "public" housing projects, compared to the condition in privately owned buildings practically next door.
Government is the CAUSE of the commons problem in the first place. No one owns the commons. Otherwise, the owner could step in and prosecute for the abuse exactly like I would if someone abusively grazed their sheep on my front lawn.
This is a very uninformed view, given that the last fifty-odd years of economics research have been devoted to showing the very real limits on Adam Smith's "invisible hand."
Your assertion shows that you have a very uninformed view; have ignored several Nobel Prizes for Economics during that same 50 years; that you've never heard of Murry Rothbard, among many other luminaries of the last 50 years.
You might be interested in the Ludwig von Mises Institute: http://www.mises.org/ They have many books and articles online, for free.
The LVMI also has a blog dedicated to economics topics where you can post and thereby educate all those, like me, who don't know everything you do.
Bob-
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with your "fine for me but not for thee" comment.
The fact that governments exempt themselves from the restrictions and regulations that they impose on others.
Thanks for the elaboration on the ship-board reactors. I would be more than pleased if the only reasons they weren't used privately were technical ones. Unfortunately, that kind of investigation is styfled by the legal restrictions. Thus my comment.
Bob-
As oil gets used up (as people have been proclaiming would happen very soon since before WW2), the price goes up.
The only reason oil and other petrochemicals are utilized is that they cost less than the alternatives.
So as the price of oil goes up, the prices of alternatives such as grain alcohol and veggie oil for fuel, telecommuting, atomic generation of electricity, solar, wind, etc, will be exceeded and they will in turn gain market share.
The greatest danger is in trying to prevent the changes in price which reflect demand and supply. Distorting this process keeps destructive processes in place, or brings "alternative" systems into play before they are safe, cheap or clean as they would have had to be before people would have paid for them without that coercion.
Relatively small, safe and clean atomic power generators have been in place for decades, but not in the so-called "private" sector. They are used in warships. This is an important lesson in "fine for me but not for thee".
Bob-
Fallen Andy,
Yes, full sarcastic mode. A democracy is just as efficient at crushing individual liberty as any dictatorship, with the added bonus that the oppressors get to tell you that you CHOSE to be oppressed because of the existence of voting.
And they did it to themselves.
1: Skype uses proprietary protocols that are incompatible with any other service.
2: Skype refuses to publish their interface profiles, so no one else can make software that is compatible.
3: Skype has stated in no uncertain terms, over and over on their web page and FAQ, that they will never publish their API, never open their source. Period.
Yet Skype doesn't sell their software. They maintain the full burden of development and testing, and try to pay for it by selling the service of POTS calls made through their software.
Oh well, once the idea is in the wild, someone will "open source" it. Maybe someone will adapt the Speak Freely user interface to a P2P transport layer, maybe utilizing the Gnutella network itself? Hey, this is sounding like a good idea....
Bob-
Politicians and elected officials would never hurt anyone. And they must respect the individual and the minority group because to do anything else would hurt their chances of being re-elected. ...Unless, of course, Public Choice theory is correct and the bureaucrats are actually just humans like everyone else, looking out for their own self interest.
Bob-
The Corporations are just making sound investments. If either of their candidates win, the corporate welfare continues to flow.
If a Libertarian were to win, the corporate welfare, along with the military and special-interest welfare, would be in serious jeopardy.
This they're just acting in their own self interest, just like all bureaucrats.
Libertarians love to argue which came first, the corporate donations or the power over peoples lives that can so be purchased. It's irrelevant, really, since so long as there is power to be purchased, there will be buyers. Just like Enron.
BTW, I agree completely, and will be voting for Badnarik and every other Libertarian on the ballot.
The higher profits will be a signal to others that there is money to be made. They will step in, and in order to make money they will use the more efficient methods, undercut the price and sell more, trying to make money like the original pioneer.
The pioneer will then lower their price (or raise their quality) or go out of business.
Since there are more players in the market than before, productive workers originally laid off will be hired by the competition or become the competition themselves.
The winners are consumers who enjoy better quality, lower prices, or most often both.
When another development in efficiency or quality changes the production cost point again, the new profit margins will again signal to ready entrepreneurs that there is money to be made. Consumers enjoy another round of lower prices and higher quality.
If the governments weren't printing money like it was going out of style, a steady deflation would be the rule (again) as this progression of improvements in quality and efficiency continues to occur in every field and industry.
Bob-
Bummer. I didn't know he'd died.
This is not a game of chess. Have you forgotten that the Republicans did not always exist? They were a 3rd party in 1860. However, they got into the debates, and look what happened.
This is also not a game of chess because I am compelled to participate. If I choose not to participate, I am first prosecuted, then jailed, and my property taken by force anyway. Just like you.
There are lots of other tools than the two faces of the Party of State Power. That you cannot see them is not my problem, except that you continue to vote for what you think is the lesser of two evils, thus contributing to the imposition of evil on other people.
Are you ready to face people and say you personally contributed to the effort to rob their children of their livelihoods with this irrational national debt? Too bad, that's exactly what you are telling me. Your use of force against me is not appreciated, which is something you need to grok soon.
Bob-
Just be careful about checking and cleaning the power supply sometimes, and you should be fine.
In my experience, "servers" are merely designed with rack-mountable boxes as opposed to floor-sitting boxes.
Bob-
Man I wish I could edit for typos.
It should have been "than bear any", but from replies it seems my meaning came through.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote Republican or Democrat.
Bob-
Jherico,
How can saying "no" mean "yes"? I give the two faces of the Party Of State Power no money, I give them no votes, I do not give them my registration for their false claims of popularity.
I am doing everything I can short of violence to say "no".
Yet to you this is saying "yes"?
Let me guess, you want me to vote for YOUR candidate, and you're angry that I don't. Too bad.
No.
Bob-
Were Badnarik to take a state or two, the Democrat and Republican parties would start taking actual action on those parts of their own platforms (repeal of drug prohibitions, actual fiscal responsibility) that are the linchpins of the Libertarian position.
Who cares what the party label is on the candidate, if he actually represents your views? Ron Paul ran as the Libertarian candidate for President, but is in the US House as a Republican. His views haven't changed. He still is the most consistently socially liberal, fiscally conservative, voter in the House.
Look at the Socialist party platform from prior to FDR's reign. Practically the entire party platform has been enacted, by both Democrats and Republicans. Party label is irrelevant once the candidate is elected.
Bob-
At any rate, I think its better than voting for someone who's not going to win at all.
I would rather continue voting for candidates who agree with my views that bear ANY responsibility for the crap going on by voting for either a Republican or a Democrat.
Bob-
free speech also means we're free to ignore you, too.
Not at a taxpayer-funded facility.
If this were being held privately, there would be objection but not LEGAL action taken.
Hopefully, as with the "ballot access restriction laws", this suit will drive the debate organizers to publish objective criteria about who may and may not be permitted to "debate". Once the rules are published for everyone to see, they can be addressed.
At this time, those rules are not published, or are merely "we only want those two".
Bob-
Do you know why California invented the "assault weapon" ban?
In 1992, a group of police beat the crap out of Rodney King.
They were later acquited of assault because, surprise surprise, it turned out that they were indeed "just following orders." It was, and likely still is, in their rule book to "hit the suspect until he stays down" even if it kills him.
During the ensuing riots, the police abandoned the city of Los Angeles to the rioters. Sorry folks, you're on your own. The police have no legal requirement to protect you (look it up, it's true).
The news cameras were still rolling, however. Lots of pictures of wide spread violence and looting, but not everywhere. There were islands of peace in the maelstrom.
Pictures of store owners and their employees and families defending their property and their customers with rifles made the evening news.
Mere citizens standing firm, peacefully, successfully, while the police cut and run.
The various government bureaucrats, politicians, and especially the police were furious! They looked at the pictures, saw that the shop owners had done nothing illegal, and decided to punish them.
So the bureaucrats looked to see what kind of weapons the shop owners had used so effectively, cataloged them, called them something nasty sounding which they hoped gullible citizens would confuse with machine guns, and decried how these things were "the weapons of choice of criminals".
That's why the definition of "assault weapon" is meaningless, it's based on nothing but looks.
Bob-
You're missing the point, then. The point is prevention, not prosecution.
Let us cut off our arms at the shoulder, then, since I can kill with my hands.
The largest mass murder in the US, prior to September, 2001, was inflicted with Gasoline. Let us prohibit gasoline and prevent such crimes.
Since wearing a shock-collar which would prevent anyone but legally married people from getting within 3 feet of each other would prevent rape, many murders, pickpocking, let's wear them.
Since it is possible for me to incite violence with words, shall all speech be cleared through censors first, to prevent that crime too?
Here's the problem: Prevention by any other means than education eliminates the very concept of "rights". The police in the US used to be peace officers. When some broke the peace, they were punished.
Then they became "law enforcement", and the jack booted thug and standing army inside the borders is a daily occurrence.
It's easy to talk high and mighty about preventing other people from doing bad things. But it is altogether another thing to accept the responsibility for the kind of society it requires to prevent crimes.
Do you accept moral responsibility for every mass-murder?
I accept the moral responsibility for my own actions. That is why I own arms for my own defense and the defense of innocents against predation.
If you choose to prevent me from making that choice, you are taking a positive step to interfere in my life. My owning arms in no way impells someone else to commit murder. Your supposed conundrum is false.
Bob-