If enjoying an artists work without paying for it is equivalent to theft, then I am the biggest thief because I rarely give money to performance artists on the street.
Strange how none of them have accused me of theft and tried to sue me
Basically the studios refuse to sell their content online. They will RENT it attached to DRM or advertising (e.g. streaming neflix, amazon rentals, etc.)
But they absolutely refuse to give you a DRM free file downloaded to your PC for money. Heck they've even stopped allowing you to download DRM'd files to be played on your PC for money. (remember google video?)
So really, they are refusing to sell their content, and then complaining about people not buying their content
If I could go to sony.com and see every sony pictures movie ever made, and can download DRM free SD, HD, or HD+Bonus Features files for say, $2.99, $5.99, and $8.99 and basically got a similar file to what i would on a pirated site, only i didn't have to deal with malicious advertisements, sleazy advertisements (its embarrassing to browse some of these sites) and I knew the movie would always be available for me to purchase on the site, and the the download speeds where fast and not unprofessionally slow, i would never ever pirate a Sony movie ever again..
its surprising that no studio has made such a site thus far. From what i can tell they think if they sold their content like that, the pirates would pay for one copy of each movie, and then we would all download the files for free from the pirate sites.
i don't think that would actually happen because A) the big pirates actually have to pay money for the upload bandwidth B) a professional amazon-grade website would have download speeds greater than Bittorrent C) I think most people actually WANT to pay a few bucks for a legitimate copy of a movie they're gonna watch once D) a bunch of other economic factors i don't wanna bother to type out, but basically I think they would make more money from this buisness model then they would loose from the small percentage who will continue to pirate, using files from the official site
Are the patents on physical devices still limited to 7 years? If so then I guess I'm not against them (as in, i don't like it, but not gonna get off my couch to do anything about it), but patents are government enforced monopolies, which in general I think are bad things.
One question i've been hearing from more and more venture capitalists is 'do you have a patent' Which makes me angry, since 10 years ago software patents didn't even exist. If Google started today, they'd be destroyed by patent trolls before becoming big and successful. Even if they managed to succeed in court without loosing all their money, they would be bought up by Yahoo or Bing so the company could acquire the tech, and of course the patents!
10 Times today it was repeated on CNN that the CIA "Only spies on foreign citizens, not on US citizens"
I don't believe that for one second. Knowing how little oversight the CIA gets from congress they could dragnet all of American communications and lie to congress and say they weren't doing it. Actually, wait isn't that exactly what the NSA did? Didn't Former NSA director James Clapper lie under oath to congress when he professed the NSA wasn't spying on americans, just a few months before snowden proved that they where? Why should we expect the CIA to do any different, just because their mission statement say's they don't have jurisdiction to spy within american borders?
Nobody's watching this watcher, which is why we shouldn't trust them one iota.
10 Times today it was repeated on CNN that the CIA "Only spies on foreign citizens, not on US citizens"
I don't believe that for one second. Knowing how little oversight the CIA gets from congress they could dragnet all of American communications and lie to congress and say they weren't doing it. Actually, wait isn't that exactly what the NSA did? Didn't Former NSA director James Clapper lie under oath to congress when he professed the NSA wasn't spying on americans, just a few months before snowden proved that they where? Why should we expect the CIA to do any different, just because their mission statement say's they don't have jurisdiction to spy within american borders?
Nobody's watching this watcher, which is why we shouldn't trust them one iota.
I have been excited about this idea for a long time. Terra-forming Mars is a must before we can colonize in my opinion, and NASA is taking too darn long to do it. "Stop looking for life and put some there already!" - is what i say.
My first thought was to jump start the Martian core so as to generate a natural magnetosphere like the planet once had (and earth has). I assumed we could drill to the center of the martian core, detonate a few atomic bombs to heat up the core and turn it back into magma. Then you just step back and let the natural rotation of molten metal generate a magnetosphere. The process would probably increase the amount of volcanism on mars (volcanoes would start forming/existing ones would start spewing) that would pour CO2 into the atmosphere, helping to thicken it and giving the bio-engineered plants we put there some "fuel" to grow. Melting the polar ice caps, distributing water and oxygen, and hopefully generating a thick atmosphere we could either use, or work with until it was livable for humans.
Unfortunately I did the math... turns out nuclear explosions don't convect heat that well, and martian rock (actually we used the parameters of common earth rocks) don't absorb heat that quickly. So the atomic bomb generates a lot of heat, but only for a few seconds and the rock doesn't absorb that much, turns out it would take more uranium than we have on earth to heat up the martian core with nuclear bombs.
So I guess putting a shield up in the L1 Lagrange point is more feasible? Alright fine, lets do it!
I just wish we could use explosions...
But really, isn't this just regular old network theory at work? Isn't this situation analogous to Internet routing? If one line is congested you use smaller, alternate lines to get around the congestion. This is just natural behavior that should be completely normal, predictable and i bet there are research papers analyzing Internet traffic patterns, and the patterns of blood cells traveling through our veins that can help describe this situation with more clarity.
While i understand the reaction of the locals to implement turn restrictions and harsh speed control mechanisms to deter this, it sounds like they are fighting nature. (yes humans are part of nature) Instead of fighting perfectly logical, natural behavior, there should be another way to solve/tackle this problem, and i don't think any of the comments thus far (which seem to fall either into "MORE MASS TRANSIT" or "BIGGER FATTER ROADS") are the optimal solution
Gold isn't really that arbitrary, its only created during supernova's, and the amount created is proportional to the star's mass. This means when you look around the universe, the proportion, or ratio of all gold to all other elements is the same. Sure you get some planetary systems with more gold than others (or more likely, more ACCESSIBLE gold than others) but on average, the ratio of gold to other elements remains the same.
Now consider that all prices are ratios. In a barter economy things where expressed as 'one pair of shoes is worth three loaves of bread' or 'one woman is worth two goats' e.g. 1/3 and 1/2. The great invention of money was to take one single commodity and make it the denominator, so now one woman is worth 2 gold ounces, and a goat is worth 1/2 ounce of gold. Later we (moronically) replaced gold with paper fiat currency.
As scientists we should advocate for standardization of weights and measures. If the length of the meter changed every day it would be extremely difficult for two construction companies to co-operate in building a bridge. Without extremely precise measurements modern science couldn't exist.
Meters measure distance, money is supposed to measure value. So why does our unit of measurement (the dollar) change in value every day? It should be as constant as possible, we should standardize this unit of measurement. We have defined the meter to be a fraction of the distance light travels in a second. As scientists we try to define our units using universal constants. Since the ratio of gold to all other elements is constant, and all prices are ratios, the only logical objective solution is for gold to be our unit of value, or currency, or money.
For other reasons in the past Gold has historically been money and still holds those properties today. How much humans value this element forged in the heart of a dying star that never rusts, can be easily divided, is fungible, and impossible to counterfeit is not arbitrary.
The fact that a large group of people (in this case, the number of people conducting transactions in bitcoin) have decided it is worth as much or more than gold is actually quite notable
If (and that's a big if) private space companies can actually make money doing this, the profits could go towards funding more ambitious private projects, such as hotels on the moon, and astroid mining. Just need to start making money off of space tourism so space exploration and space science can be funded in the future without having to rely on government spending, which can be extremely fickle depending on politics and often comes with strings attached.
i have no problems with jury trials (so long as the jury is truly your peers from the local community) and judges elected or nominated by locally elected officials.
And what if these people are all bought off or on the take, or just don't like you and want to screw you over? What then? Who has the ultimate authority to decide and what specifically gives them the right to do so? Why does their authority outweigh yours?
This is a really good argument against the arbitrary power of government. Why is it that government officials seem to have authority that outweighs ours? Are you sure you're not a libertarian?
There are so very many movies that you just cannot acquire legally in digital form. I'm done with DVD's, and my PC doesn't have a blu ray player, so if its not available on a streaming site, i'm gonna pirate!
You know what i want? I want to be able to go to sonypictures.com or disney.com and see a list of every movie that studio has ever produced. Let me download an.avi or.mpeg version of that movie for $5-$20 depending on the movies resolution/release date. Oh and if DRM is involved then the deal is off the table. No DRM, just a plane jane movie file i can play with VLC.
No studios are doing this currently, even though they would MAKE SO MUCH MONEY HAND OVER FIST if they did. Instead they continue to try their region locking and limited releases and think we are going to feel sad for them for loosing some money to pirating.
Stop complaining, either sell your goods or get outta town.
1) Where do property rights come from, how are they established, and in the case of disputes, how would the determination of true ownership be decided and enforced? Specifically, who would enforce them and how?
They come from god, (or if you don't believe in that sort of thing) our humanity. We are all born with a piece of property, the first property you own is your body. In Israel during the times of judges when there where disputes over who owned what property both disputing parties would go to a neutral third party that was respected amongst the community as being fair (these where the 'judges') societal norms (not laws enforced by a government) made sure that both parties would agree to arbitration, with the only discussion being who the arbiter would be.
An anarchist libertarian would argue that this function (arbitration) could be handled by private services. There are some interesting proposals out there about how insurance companies could evolve to fulfill this role. I am not an anarchist, i am a minarchist. I have no problem with locally elected sheriffs that deputize citizens when needed (as apposed to a professional police force), i have no problems with jury trials (so long as the jury is truly your peers from the local community) and judges elected or nominated by locally elected officials. The court system gets extra points if they decide facts only based on local (state) law and ignore federal laws or precedent, even more points if jury nullification is openly discussed and even encouraged.
Who or what would take the place of the police departments that keep everyone stronger than you from stealing your stuff, and from where would they derive their legitimacy?
This problem exists even today with governments. There was nothing to stop the stronger American government from invading iraq and taking their stuff. Our country has even overthrown legitimately elected government officials because they didn't agree with US policy.
So even if we got rid of governments and had multiple companies offering these arbitration/protection services within the same territory, competing on price/quality for maximum customers and therefore profits, we would still have the problem where my insurance company is bigger than yours and demands that the judge on MY companies payroll be the arbiter of our dispute. What we have today is not perfect, and the anarchists libertarian solution is not perfect either, but its possible that it is better than what we have today
But i digress and acknowledge that a peaceful world with no government is beyond our grasp. Instead i will dedicate myself to fighting for government that is actually held accountable to the people (which to me means small, more locally controlled government) getting there necessitates a massive reduction of taxes in the US. Jesus they tax income, spending, investement, AND Savings?? Whats next death? Oh wait.....
I have actually discussed state taxes with my state reps/senators before, and managed to influence the votes they made on key bills, that actually did a small part in preventing certain taxes from being raised. No matter how many times I email/call my US representative or Senator, I never get to talk to the politician directly, just aides, and pretty much nothing ever comes from my communications.
It was seeing a pro-taxes post that got me upset, because though i understand the necessary evil of both government and taxes, i DO NOT think we need as much as we have today, nor do i think it is healthy for a free society
Well I guess my original assessment was correct, you do have some kind of grudge against libertarians (or a few where very rude to you). So I won't try to persuade you of its merits, only to try to implore that my libertarian beliefs do not come from a place of hate or uncaring, I just sincerely believe in freedom and that maximization of freedom is the best policy for all issues, for I truly believe that freedom brings about prosperity for all and incentiveizes regions to pursue peace.
As for successful libertarian societies:
1) Twelve tribes of Israel during the reign of judges
2) first 200 years of rome
3) Spain circa 1700, prior to war with england
4) United States of America 1700-1800
But if you live within a society that provides services to the population at large, you should expect to help pay for those things.
again, you are confusing society with government. The first definition i found online for society was 'the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community' you can have order without government. I should not be expected to pay for anything against my will. That is the case in the US today, and its an authoritarian approach, you are free to think its good or bad, but its definitely not freedom.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiight, because all the people that would do those things only have our best interests at heart and would be completely fair about it.
never did say they would have our best interest at heart or would be completely fair about it. Its also implied that the government DOES have our best interests at heart and is completely fair about it, i would reject both those assumptions
I never said anything about charity, mostly because it doesn't work for large-scale problems. Charity really doesn't work on a national level, never has, never will. There are simply too many selfish people in the world and we both know it.
Well i completely disagree, charity does work, we have lots of charitable organizations and they do great work at local, state, and national levels. To say 'it doesn't really work' i think is really to imply that charities don't donate enough, and the answer to that problem i think is to encourage people to donate more money, deregulate charities so they are free to conduct wild experiments that may be radically more efficient. I also think reducing taxes would encourage people to donate more. It feels like a cop-out to me to say 'people aren't charitable enough, so we have to FORCE EVERYONE to donate money to this inefficient bureaucracy cause that will totally fix the problem'
You are correct that you didn't directly mention charity, but most services offered to the poor that don't come from governments come from charities, which i find to be much more compatible with freedom than the authoritarian approach that is taxation.
We're all in this together, like it or not and just because Joe Blow doesn't want to pay for a school or a library or other service that he may not use directly doesn't mean that making him pay for it is evil or wrong- other members of the society he lives in may need it.
This is fundamentally the statement i am disagreeing with. I believe it IS wrong to force joe blow to pay for a school or library that he doesn't use directly. Instead of taxation i am recommending increasing the role that charities play in our society.
The fact is, though, that there's a huge amount of overlap in those two things. They are both shaped by each other, and only a fool or a libertarian would deny that. Which one are you? Are you the kind of guy who complains about having to pay for a road you may never personally drive on?
Societies do indeed shape the government that attempts to rule it, and governments can shape the society it governs (unfortunately). I think it is very important for citizens to remember that these are indeed separate concepts and entities that should not be confused with each other. To equate one with another is to fall into a multitude of intellectual fallacies. I have read some incredibly smart people write some incredibly stupid things because they made this basic mistake.
I also feel like you are trying to shame me for being a 'libertarian' as if that would be a bad thing, or equivalent to a 'fool'. I realize there are many other libertarians who post on/. so maybe that word has specific connotations for you that it doesn't for me, perhaps due to some aggressive libertarians rubbing you the wrong way. I will admit to being a practical minarchist libertarian ( i don't advocate for the abolishment of government but
I think right now they are positioning the switch as a console to compete with Xbox one and PS4. You can see this with the games they have announced (Zelda! Skyrim! Mario Odessy! Big open world games you're used to seeing on home consoles)
That approach will let them sell out the initial shipment of switches on launch day. They'll sell a few million units in the first few months after launch.
Then come E3, they'll announce "All our handheld teams have been making games for the switch. So you get a Kirby game, a Pokemon, a Phoenix Wright, an animal crossing, a Mario and Luigi RPG, and a Fire Emblem! Oh by the way, these teams all targeted the games to use the resources of a handheld, so they can be played for 6 hours on the switch before needing to be charged!"
Thats when they will remind us that the switch is a handheld mobile console.
The combination of a home console with the Marios, Zelda's and Skyrims, plus all the amazing hand held games you are used to seeing from a nintendo handheld console will be the big seller. Then a bunch of 3rd parties will join in cause it turns out when you take a PS4 game, downscale it to 720P (which lets face it, on a 6 inch screen still looks really impressive) and drop the draw distance or texture resolution by 10% the game still looks great on the switch and runs at a good 60fps, oh and the load times will be cut in half cause your streaming data of an SD card and not a rotating disc. Only when you want VR or 4K do you need the power of the PS4/Xbone. Take that away and the switch can run your game just fine and gets the added benefit of suddenly being a mobile on-the-go gaming experience.
We all have to pay for things that we personally may not want, but other people are saying the exact same thing about things we do want.
Umm.. excuse me but WHAT? In a free society you only pay for the things you want, e.g. My apartment, my food, my netflix subscription, my internet etc. There is not a single thing that i pay money for that I DONT WANT. If i didn't want it i wouldn't have paid for it.
Thats not the same for taxes. I pay for other kids to go to juvenile detention indoctrination centers (schools) i don't approve of them or other people sending their kids to them. I also pay for water even if i buy my own water from a commercial supplier. I'd love to get the money back that i spend on 'police' so i can instead buy another gun or maybe a personal body guard, either way the private sector would deliver me far superior security than i get from the state for 'free'.
And if our government would allow roads to be built, owned, and wholly operated by private businesses I would gladly pay to use those instead of government ones.
The fact is that we all need to share the burden in order to provide a certain standard of living for the society in which we live.
Yeah but we probably disagree on what 'sharing the burden' means. There is a homeless man on the street. My solution is to give him a good meal, maybe have a conversation, see if i can help him acquire the medication, counseling, or temporary housing that he needs to get back on his feet. Your solution is probably for me to 'pay taxes for homeless program'
Charity is only charity when the money is given freely from the heart. Forcing me to pay taxes to help the poor isn't charity. and you're not being a good person by advocating for increased taxes to help the homeless. Your being an authoritarian, if you think its a problem, then donate your own money and or time.
Also, Society != Government. Stop confusing the two
THIS is why i read slashdot. Sure, article summary's are sometimes atrocious just like they are on every other site (and on other sites often worse) but I always know I can read the comments on slashdot to get the most informed reviews (and sometimes brand new information) from people in the actual Tech world who know what they are talking about. Thanks GuB-42!
Completely missing a fundamental point of economics: Labor is a commodity. More people means more scientists to solve hard technical problems. It means more authors and artists to inspire humanity to reach greater heights. It means more welders, construction workers, programmers, and mission specialists to build the spaceships, fusion reactors, and other devices that will exist in the future that allow this planet to sustain even greater populations (in an environmentally friendly way) while at the same time making it economically feasible to populate and colonize the stars.
Too many people buy into this fallacy of logic that more humans will always mean destruction of the ecology and a doomed future for humanity. I for one chant "bring on the babies!!!"
Slashdot Mirror
If enjoying an artists work without paying for it is equivalent to theft, then I am the biggest thief because I rarely give money to performance artists on the street.
Strange how none of them have accused me of theft and tried to sue me
Basically the studios refuse to sell their content online. They will RENT it attached to DRM or advertising (e.g. streaming neflix, amazon rentals, etc.) But they absolutely refuse to give you a DRM free file downloaded to your PC for money. Heck they've even stopped allowing you to download DRM'd files to be played on your PC for money. (remember google video?)
So really, they are refusing to sell their content, and then complaining about people not buying their content
If I could go to sony.com and see every sony pictures movie ever made, and can download DRM free SD, HD, or HD+Bonus Features files for say, $2.99, $5.99, and $8.99 and basically got a similar file to what i would on a pirated site, only i didn't have to deal with malicious advertisements, sleazy advertisements (its embarrassing to browse some of these sites) and I knew the movie would always be available for me to purchase on the site, and the the download speeds where fast and not unprofessionally slow, i would never ever pirate a Sony movie ever again..
its surprising that no studio has made such a site thus far. From what i can tell they think if they sold their content like that, the pirates would pay for one copy of each movie, and then we would all download the files for free from the pirate sites.
i don't think that would actually happen because A) the big pirates actually have to pay money for the upload bandwidth B) a professional amazon-grade website would have download speeds greater than Bittorrent C) I think most people actually WANT to pay a few bucks for a legitimate copy of a movie they're gonna watch once D) a bunch of other economic factors i don't wanna bother to type out, but basically I think they would make more money from this buisness model then they would loose from the small percentage who will continue to pirate, using files from the official site
Are the patents on physical devices still limited to 7 years? If so then I guess I'm not against them (as in, i don't like it, but not gonna get off my couch to do anything about it), but patents are government enforced monopolies, which in general I think are bad things.
One question i've been hearing from more and more venture capitalists is 'do you have a patent' Which makes me angry, since 10 years ago software patents didn't even exist. If Google started today, they'd be destroyed by patent trolls before becoming big and successful. Even if they managed to succeed in court without loosing all their money, they would be bought up by Yahoo or Bing so the company could acquire the tech, and of course the patents!
10 Times today it was repeated on CNN that the CIA "Only spies on foreign citizens, not on US citizens"
I don't believe that for one second. Knowing how little oversight the CIA gets from congress they could dragnet all of American communications and lie to congress and say they weren't doing it. Actually, wait isn't that exactly what the NSA did? Didn't Former NSA director James Clapper lie under oath to congress when he professed the NSA wasn't spying on americans, just a few months before snowden proved that they where? Why should we expect the CIA to do any different, just because their mission statement say's they don't have jurisdiction to spy within american borders?
Nobody's watching this watcher, which is why we shouldn't trust them one iota.
10 Times today it was repeated on CNN that the CIA "Only spies on foreign citizens, not on US citizens"
I don't believe that for one second. Knowing how little oversight the CIA gets from congress they could dragnet all of American communications and lie to congress and say they weren't doing it. Actually, wait isn't that exactly what the NSA did? Didn't Former NSA director James Clapper lie under oath to congress when he professed the NSA wasn't spying on americans, just a few months before snowden proved that they where? Why should we expect the CIA to do any different, just because their mission statement say's they don't have jurisdiction to spy within american borders?
Nobody's watching this watcher, which is why we shouldn't trust them one iota.
Unfortunately I did the math... turns out nuclear explosions don't convect heat that well, and martian rock (actually we used the parameters of common earth rocks) don't absorb heat that quickly. So the atomic bomb generates a lot of heat, but only for a few seconds and the rock doesn't absorb that much, turns out it would take more uranium than we have on earth to heat up the martian core with nuclear bombs. So I guess putting a shield up in the L1 Lagrange point is more feasible? Alright fine, lets do it! I just wish we could use explosions...
While i understand the reaction of the locals to implement turn restrictions and harsh speed control mechanisms to deter this, it sounds like they are fighting nature. (yes humans are part of nature) Instead of fighting perfectly logical, natural behavior, there should be another way to solve/tackle this problem, and i don't think any of the comments thus far (which seem to fall either into "MORE MASS TRANSIT" or "BIGGER FATTER ROADS") are the optimal solution
Now consider that all prices are ratios. In a barter economy things where expressed as 'one pair of shoes is worth three loaves of bread' or 'one woman is worth two goats' e.g. 1/3 and 1/2. The great invention of money was to take one single commodity and make it the denominator, so now one woman is worth 2 gold ounces, and a goat is worth 1/2 ounce of gold. Later we (moronically) replaced gold with paper fiat currency.
As scientists we should advocate for standardization of weights and measures. If the length of the meter changed every day it would be extremely difficult for two construction companies to co-operate in building a bridge. Without extremely precise measurements modern science couldn't exist.
Meters measure distance, money is supposed to measure value. So why does our unit of measurement (the dollar) change in value every day? It should be as constant as possible, we should standardize this unit of measurement. We have defined the meter to be a fraction of the distance light travels in a second. As scientists we try to define our units using universal constants. Since the ratio of gold to all other elements is constant, and all prices are ratios, the only logical objective solution is for gold to be our unit of value, or currency, or money.
For other reasons in the past Gold has historically been money and still holds those properties today. How much humans value this element forged in the heart of a dying star that never rusts, can be easily divided, is fungible, and impossible to counterfeit is not arbitrary.
The fact that a large group of people (in this case, the number of people conducting transactions in bitcoin) have decided it is worth as much or more than gold is actually quite notable
If (and that's a big if) private space companies can actually make money doing this, the profits could go towards funding more ambitious private projects, such as hotels on the moon, and astroid mining. Just need to start making money off of space tourism so space exploration and space science can be funded in the future without having to rely on government spending, which can be extremely fickle depending on politics and often comes with strings attached.
I had to look it up, thought I'd post it here for anyone else who was wondering what the heck CNG is.
i have no problems with jury trials (so long as the jury is truly your peers from the local community) and judges elected or nominated by locally elected officials.
And what if these people are all bought off or on the take, or just don't like you and want to screw you over? What then? Who has the ultimate authority to decide and what specifically gives them the right to do so? Why does their authority outweigh yours?
This is a really good argument against the arbitrary power of government. Why is it that government officials seem to have authority that outweighs ours? Are you sure you're not a libertarian?
No studios are doing this currently, even though they would MAKE SO MUCH MONEY HAND OVER FIST if they did. Instead they continue to try their region locking and limited releases and think we are going to feel sad for them for loosing some money to pirating.
Stop complaining, either sell your goods or get outta town.
1) Where do property rights come from, how are they established, and in the case of disputes, how would the determination of true ownership be decided and enforced? Specifically, who would enforce them and how?
They come from god, (or if you don't believe in that sort of thing) our humanity. We are all born with a piece of property, the first property you own is your body. In Israel during the times of judges when there where disputes over who owned what property both disputing parties would go to a neutral third party that was respected amongst the community as being fair (these where the 'judges') societal norms (not laws enforced by a government) made sure that both parties would agree to arbitration, with the only discussion being who the arbiter would be.
An anarchist libertarian would argue that this function (arbitration) could be handled by private services. There are some interesting proposals out there about how insurance companies could evolve to fulfill this role. I am not an anarchist, i am a minarchist. I have no problem with locally elected sheriffs that deputize citizens when needed (as apposed to a professional police force), i have no problems with jury trials (so long as the jury is truly your peers from the local community) and judges elected or nominated by locally elected officials. The court system gets extra points if they decide facts only based on local (state) law and ignore federal laws or precedent, even more points if jury nullification is openly discussed and even encouraged.
Who or what would take the place of the police departments that keep everyone stronger than you from stealing your stuff, and from where would they derive their legitimacy?
This problem exists even today with governments. There was nothing to stop the stronger American government from invading iraq and taking their stuff. Our country has even overthrown legitimately elected government officials because they didn't agree with US policy. So even if we got rid of governments and had multiple companies offering these arbitration/protection services within the same territory, competing on price/quality for maximum customers and therefore profits, we would still have the problem where my insurance company is bigger than yours and demands that the judge on MY companies payroll be the arbiter of our dispute. What we have today is not perfect, and the anarchists libertarian solution is not perfect either, but its possible that it is better than what we have today
But i digress and acknowledge that a peaceful world with no government is beyond our grasp. Instead i will dedicate myself to fighting for government that is actually held accountable to the people (which to me means small, more locally controlled government) getting there necessitates a massive reduction of taxes in the US. Jesus they tax income, spending, investement, AND Savings?? Whats next death? Oh wait..... I have actually discussed state taxes with my state reps/senators before, and managed to influence the votes they made on key bills, that actually did a small part in preventing certain taxes from being raised. No matter how many times I email/call my US representative or Senator, I never get to talk to the politician directly, just aides, and pretty much nothing ever comes from my communications. It was seeing a pro-taxes post that got me upset, because though i understand the necessary evil of both government and taxes, i DO NOT think we need as much as we have today, nor do i think it is healthy for a free society
Well I guess my original assessment was correct, you do have some kind of grudge against libertarians (or a few where very rude to you). So I won't try to persuade you of its merits, only to try to implore that my libertarian beliefs do not come from a place of hate or uncaring, I just sincerely believe in freedom and that maximization of freedom is the best policy for all issues, for I truly believe that freedom brings about prosperity for all and incentiveizes regions to pursue peace. As for successful libertarian societies: 1) Twelve tribes of Israel during the reign of judges 2) first 200 years of rome 3) Spain circa 1700, prior to war with england 4) United States of America 1700-1800
But if you live within a society that provides services to the population at large, you should expect to help pay for those things.
again, you are confusing society with government. The first definition i found online for society was 'the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community' you can have order without government. I should not be expected to pay for anything against my will. That is the case in the US today, and its an authoritarian approach, you are free to think its good or bad, but its definitely not freedom.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiight, because all the people that would do those things only have our best interests at heart and would be completely fair about it.
never did say they would have our best interest at heart or would be completely fair about it. Its also implied that the government DOES have our best interests at heart and is completely fair about it, i would reject both those assumptions
I never said anything about charity, mostly because it doesn't work for large-scale problems. Charity really doesn't work on a national level, never has, never will. There are simply too many selfish people in the world and we both know it.
Well i completely disagree, charity does work, we have lots of charitable organizations and they do great work at local, state, and national levels. To say 'it doesn't really work' i think is really to imply that charities don't donate enough, and the answer to that problem i think is to encourage people to donate more money, deregulate charities so they are free to conduct wild experiments that may be radically more efficient. I also think reducing taxes would encourage people to donate more. It feels like a cop-out to me to say 'people aren't charitable enough, so we have to FORCE EVERYONE to donate money to this inefficient bureaucracy cause that will totally fix the problem'
You are correct that you didn't directly mention charity, but most services offered to the poor that don't come from governments come from charities, which i find to be much more compatible with freedom than the authoritarian approach that is taxation.
We're all in this together, like it or not and just because Joe Blow doesn't want to pay for a school or a library or other service that he may not use directly doesn't mean that making him pay for it is evil or wrong- other members of the society he lives in may need it.
This is fundamentally the statement i am disagreeing with. I believe it IS wrong to force joe blow to pay for a school or library that he doesn't use directly. Instead of taxation i am recommending increasing the role that charities play in our society.
The fact is, though, that there's a huge amount of overlap in those two things. They are both shaped by each other, and only a fool or a libertarian would deny that. Which one are you? Are you the kind of guy who complains about having to pay for a road you may never personally drive on?
Societies do indeed shape the government that attempts to rule it, and governments can shape the society it governs (unfortunately). I think it is very important for citizens to remember that these are indeed separate concepts and entities that should not be confused with each other. To equate one with another is to fall into a multitude of intellectual fallacies. I have read some incredibly smart people write some incredibly stupid things because they made this basic mistake. I also feel like you are trying to shame me for being a 'libertarian' as if that would be a bad thing, or equivalent to a 'fool'. I realize there are many other libertarians who post on /. so maybe that word has specific connotations for you that it doesn't for me, perhaps due to some aggressive libertarians rubbing you the wrong way. I will admit to being a practical minarchist libertarian ( i don't advocate for the abolishment of government but
That approach will let them sell out the initial shipment of switches on launch day. They'll sell a few million units in the first few months after launch. Then come E3, they'll announce "All our handheld teams have been making games for the switch. So you get a Kirby game, a Pokemon, a Phoenix Wright, an animal crossing, a Mario and Luigi RPG, and a Fire Emblem! Oh by the way, these teams all targeted the games to use the resources of a handheld, so they can be played for 6 hours on the switch before needing to be charged!"
Thats when they will remind us that the switch is a handheld mobile console.
The combination of a home console with the Marios, Zelda's and Skyrims, plus all the amazing hand held games you are used to seeing from a nintendo handheld console will be the big seller. Then a bunch of 3rd parties will join in cause it turns out when you take a PS4 game, downscale it to 720P (which lets face it, on a 6 inch screen still looks really impressive) and drop the draw distance or texture resolution by 10% the game still looks great on the switch and runs at a good 60fps, oh and the load times will be cut in half cause your streaming data of an SD card and not a rotating disc. Only when you want VR or 4K do you need the power of the PS4/Xbone. Take that away and the switch can run your game just fine and gets the added benefit of suddenly being a mobile on-the-go gaming experience.
We all have to pay for things that we personally may not want, but other people are saying the exact same thing about things we do want.
Umm.. excuse me but WHAT? In a free society you only pay for the things you want, e.g. My apartment, my food, my netflix subscription, my internet etc. There is not a single thing that i pay money for that I DONT WANT. If i didn't want it i wouldn't have paid for it. Thats not the same for taxes. I pay for other kids to go to juvenile detention indoctrination centers (schools) i don't approve of them or other people sending their kids to them. I also pay for water even if i buy my own water from a commercial supplier. I'd love to get the money back that i spend on 'police' so i can instead buy another gun or maybe a personal body guard, either way the private sector would deliver me far superior security than i get from the state for 'free'. And if our government would allow roads to be built, owned, and wholly operated by private businesses I would gladly pay to use those instead of government ones.
The fact is that we all need to share the burden in order to provide a certain standard of living for the society in which we live.
Yeah but we probably disagree on what 'sharing the burden' means. There is a homeless man on the street. My solution is to give him a good meal, maybe have a conversation, see if i can help him acquire the medication, counseling, or temporary housing that he needs to get back on his feet. Your solution is probably for me to 'pay taxes for homeless program'
Charity is only charity when the money is given freely from the heart. Forcing me to pay taxes to help the poor isn't charity. and you're not being a good person by advocating for increased taxes to help the homeless. Your being an authoritarian, if you think its a problem, then donate your own money and or time.
Also, Society != Government. Stop confusing the two
THIS is why i read slashdot. Sure, article summary's are sometimes atrocious just like they are on every other site (and on other sites often worse) but I always know I can read the comments on slashdot to get the most informed reviews (and sometimes brand new information) from people in the actual Tech world who know what they are talking about. Thanks GuB-42!
Completely missing a fundamental point of economics: Labor is a commodity. More people means more scientists to solve hard technical problems. It means more authors and artists to inspire humanity to reach greater heights. It means more welders, construction workers, programmers, and mission specialists to build the spaceships, fusion reactors, and other devices that will exist in the future that allow this planet to sustain even greater populations (in an environmentally friendly way) while at the same time making it economically feasible to populate and colonize the stars. Too many people buy into this fallacy of logic that more humans will always mean destruction of the ecology and a doomed future for humanity. I for one chant "bring on the babies!!!"