This is probably better than losing the whole pile bit by bit to enterprising attorneys and their clever lawsuits AND with the markets being so depressed right now and the number of good alternative investments diminished it probably does make sense to recapture some of those outstanding shares while the price is still attractive.
standards body is approving bad standards because it's being manipulated/corrupted, and attempts to clean up the corruption are not being successful
Cleaning up the corruption is almost impossible because of the enormous amounts of money that are ultimately at stake in the outcome of standards board decisions. Whenever large amounts of money are concentrated around a decision making process the powers that be will attempt to capture a share of that prize for themselves by whatever means necessary (laws are of no concern to multinational corporations because laws and justice can be bought just like everything else these days). I don't presume to offer a whole solution to this problem (conflict of interest problems are always difficult to resolve) but perhaps among the best would be to de-emphasize the importance of formalized standards (i.e. crowning of winners) and instead simply provide a forum for publishing papers, maintenance of professional wikis, and discussions and let those who are interested implement these best practices as and when it suits them, perhaps with certification that their implementation satisfies a spec paper published in the forum (the RFC system is sort of like this already, but it could probably benefit from modernized and improved processes).
No downloads means no profit which means Sony will rethink their policy.
And their conclusion will be: "Nobody is downloading our wonderful movie products because evil pirates are stealing them. Therefore, let us select x random customers (you filled out your registration cards right?) because all customers are pirates anyway, and sue them for copyright infringement settlements because each copy we find on their computers is equal to at least 1000 lost download sales".
Does the limebrokerage include the annual and quarterly reports data and balance sheets (I know that those don't change as often, but it would be nice to get all of the relevant data to compute values and compare against prices from one source). Also, they don't quote any prices on their website. I do not have access to large amounts of investment capital and I am not interested in running this as a business (at least not at first) so is there anyway that one could get some level of access on a trial/free basis before subscribing? I would be happy if I could get all of the data that one might get from Yahoo finance pages (ECN, analyst estimates, balance sheet, cash flow, and income statements) from a single source. The trading data and automatic trade features are nice to watch prices and make trades on targets, but I would really need to be able to get all of the information described above to really do a comprehensive automated analysis so that that program(s) could decide what prices it would like to buy or sell at or alert on. Thanks.
The Realm vs Realm concept, which was used previously and pioneered by Mythic in Dark Age of Camelot, is not like the PVP that you may have experienced in World of Warcraft or any other MMO game. The Realm vs Realm concept allows players to engage in PvP in a meaningful way that effects the balance of power in the game (by effecting Realm bonuses which are like continuous buffs that everyone in a realm gets) without suffering the same death consequences as in PVE (since deaths are more common in PvP play this feature encourages more players who wouldn't normally PvP to give it a try). If you haven't played in a Realm vs Realm type MMO game then I would encourage you to at least give Warhammer a try (unfortunately, Mythic owns a patent on the RvR concept so you will have to play an EA\Mythic game to see what I am talking about).
I cannot speak for Texas, being a resident of California and not of Texas, but here in California the Democratic majority in the state assembly has consistently put the kabosh on any attempt to redistrict or undo the gerrymandering of the political districts which makes it very likely that they would also use their majority to shut down any proportionality proposal for California electors. Perhaps the two sides are more evenly matched in Texas and the vote could go either way, but here in California about the best that the Republicans (Arnold Schwarzenegger, the current governor, is a Republican but the Democratic majority in the state assembly means that he frequently has to compromise to get anything meaningful done leading to accusations of 'Republicrat' being leveled against him by some Republicans) can manage is to delay state budgets (as they are doing right now) in an attempt to prevent really awful spending proposals and new state bond indebtedness (California state bond debt has increased by 1250%+ from 1978 to now which corresponds roughly with the end of the Reagan era and the beginning of the more reliably Democratic California that we have today).
Yes, I wish we lived in a world where all formats, protocols, and standards were Free, but they never will be so long as capitalism remains our official state religion.
Even Richard Stallman, hardly the high priest of capitalism (although he does look somewhat like an old testament prophet with that gnarly beard), does not deny the right of the creator(s) or even just the re-distributor(s) to charge money for their software or even GNU programs (provided that they adhere to the terms of the General Public License which makes charging money and getting away with it difficult in practice, but not expressly forbidden). The free in free software means free as in freedom and not necessarily free as in beer.
He is about to learn a big lesson about the real world. The smart people very often don't make money from their good ideas. The business savvy people exploit the smart people to develop the idea, force them to assign all patents and ideas to the company as a condition of their employment, and then give them a sucker's share of the profits and keep the rest for themselves. Has anyone else noted how few of the world's billionaires came from science or engineering backgrounds? There are reasons for that.
As a software engineer, I too share some interest in financial analysis and have researched it off and on over the years with an eye towards developing some of my own analysis tools as a hobby interest. However, I have continually been discouraged by the lack of decent public market data services of the type that would be suitable for feeding to analysis software. The decent market data services all want thousands of dollars per month for their streams so that basically precludes anyone but the trading professionals working for financial services companies or high net worth individuals (HNWI), who have enough at stake to justify the $20,000 per month Bloomberg Terminal, from doing anything more than dabbling. The free services are delayed 20 minutes or more and/or have limits on queries per unit time (usually both and always the query limit) etc that make them unsuited for automated analysis (probably what the companies want, since they are trying to sell you up to their professional streaming services). I stopped after some basic analysis and test programs because I knew that without access to relatively comprehensive streaming data services, much of the value of a more complex automated analysis system would be unrealized. The professional industry is already well served by Bloomberg, Reuters, and other terminal / market data businesses so it really isn't worth trying to compete against them professionally by starting a company (the existing services have a massive head start and are already firmly entrenched and unlikely to be unseated and the company would need millions to get off the ground in any case since exchanges are not going to give a new firm any breaks on prices they charge Bloomberg and other firms for access to the live streams). In the end I learned enough about finance to do my own research and analysis manually with the assistance of some basic tools that I cobbled together for myself and that is basically all there is to be done about it unless you want to get serious and plunk down the big bucks for access to the professional data services (you have $20,000 per month to burn?).
A lawsuit in and of itself really doesn't mean anything when anyone in the United States who fills out the forms and pays the filing fees can be scheduled to be heard in court. It doesn't matter what you write in the reason part of the form, the court will be happy to take your money and file the papers. I think that this is a foolish move on the part of the RIAA. Mr. Beckerman already has superior knowledge of the relevant issues and extensive research products and documentation to buttress his defense against RIAA allegations of "vexatious" claims. Indeed, the RIAA themselves are more obviously guilty of being vexatious litigants themselves, especially in light of their targeting of Beckerman to silence legitimate criticism(s) of their (the RIAA's) abuses. I hope that Mr. Beckerman makes them pay for their error in this case and gets maximum legal fees and damages out of the RIAA for their shameful attempts to silence his legitimate criticism. Perhaps a SLAPP counter-suit on behalf of Mr. Beckerman against the RIAA is in order here? IANAL, but perhaps someone who knows more could comment (Mr. Beckerman himself will probably want to avoid making comments about pending litigation involving himself or a client, as is usual for any attorney, so I will understand if he doesn't reply to this thread).
The desensitization of an individual to violence through psychological conditioning is frequently featured in fiction, in the ST:TNG episode The Mind's Eye for example, as part of a multi-sensory simulation program necessary (supposedly) to create a Manchurian Candidate style assassin. Theses studies offer at least some proof that people can be conditioned to have a very casual reaction to an episode(s) of extreme violence, so perhaps the fiction is not too far off the mark.
But law enforcement, on the other hand, could potentially force me to divulge such passwords!
You give the average border patrol officer too much credit. He doesn't know what an encrypted partition is. If he did then he wouldn't be working a checkpoint in the middle of the desert. As long as you don't mention it he won't know or think to ask. If you are genuinely worried then you can always use TrueCrypt to create a virtual disk (name the file whatever you like and put it anywhere in the filesystem) or even a hidden OS if you are really paranoid. You have to take on the hacker mentality, know how things work (including law enforcement rules and procedures, not just your comptuer), and use your intelligence to outwit your adversaries.
They would prefer to be in that tax bracket as long as most everyone was making less than they were. They have done studies where they asked people, would you rather make x dollars per year when everyone else makes x + 5 OR would you rather make x - 2 dollars per year when everyone else gets x - 5? You know which one people chose? They almost without exception prefer to make more than other people, even if they have the choice to make even more but relatively less than other people. People compare themselves to their peers and care more about relative than absolute incomes.
The really distressing thing is that these sorts of attacks and ambushes are becoming increasingly common in the public arena. An opponent or a perceived enemy is setup to take a fall by association, rightly or wrongly (it appears wrongly in this case), with a third rail issue and once the unfortunate target has been crushed it is impossible to un-ring the bell. It is like the common lament of the acquitted man, "How do I get back my good name"?
That is true to some extent if the users can customize their channels (i.e. every user is listening to a unique playlist), but "paying for promotion" (i.e. Payola) would probably still work on Internet radio if everyone was listening to the same set of pre-determined channels (albeit somewhat diluted by the larger number of channels possible on the Internet...a channel for every niche and every niche in its own channel).
If Google is ranking them highly then they are either paying ExpertExchange for robot access (doubt it) or ExpertExchange is engaging in a form of cloaking (i.e. pay or you cannot see what the search engine saw without paying), which I thought the Google page rank algorithm penalized because it is frequently a sign of black-hat SEO. I agree that subscription only sites should be identified as such in the Google search results, although most of us know by now that ExpertExchange charges for answers and avoid it for that reason anyway. I don't dispute their right to charge for answers, but why should I pay them when I can usually find the same information for free unless it is very specific or obscure?
I wasn't talking about the patent issue at that point. I was curious to hear what your particular defense of socialism (you stated that you were a socialist) would be, since I have never heard one that adequately addresses the problem of imposition by force. Perhaps you are merely sympathetic to socialists (admiring some of what they say or agreeing with some of their ideas, but not accepting their position as a whole), but are not really one yourself?
Do you mind if I ask you a question? Suppose that two parties wish to engage in a transaction that both have decided is in their mutual interests. Should a third party, who is no part of the transaction and wielding a gun no less, be able to step in between those two parties and say, "deal is off because I say so"? The free market is made of people voluntarily associating without threat of coercion by means of violent force or threat thereof, but every time we interfere with that (and the government these days interferes tremendously in almost every aspect of our everyday lives, financial and otherwise) or condone another to do so on our behalf (i.e. the government) we are saying, "let us do a little evil, so that some good may come of it." I am not saying that the government has no role whatsoever in our society (somebody has to police the rules and punish violations), but rather that too often government oversteps its bounds and especially so when it comes to interference in the marketplace. I have heard all of the anti-corporate, anti-monopoly, and anti-private business and ownership arguments from just about all of the lefties here on Slashdot over the years and I think that if they were really honest with themselves they would see that invariably every abuse of corporate privilege, unfair trade deal, and other perceived corporate wrong is ultimately made possible by the interference of governments. Many of the problems that we have today would cease getting worse and start to get better if it were not possible to use political power as a cudgel to beat the marketplace into submission.
The problem with socialism is that it is by definition against freedom. If I am going to spend your money then I must first take it away from you. Of course, this necessarily implies use or threat of violence if you do not surrender your wealth to me on demand. If we had instead engaged in a voluntary exchange of mutually acceptable good(s) or service(s) then the coercion would not be necessary. Socialism interferes with that by dictating market results, which would not otherwise occur in the absence of coercion, at the point of a sword. Now, because governments are necessary to minimize overall violence (that is why the anarchists are wrong) and some taxes are necessary to fund the government it is not possible to eliminate all coercion, but it is possible to minimize it and that, IMHO, is a goal worthy of pursuit. I will concede that egalitarianism and communal living entered into voluntarily, as part of an intentional community for example, are possible on a small scale without coercion. However, it is not possible to organize entire societies in this fashion without resorting to strong coercion and human history is filled with tales of suffering and misery as a result of attempts to do so. So you see now why I support the free market (which I don't believe that we have now 100%, even here in the United States) and advocate for it as a consequence of my belief in self determination and a position against violence if it can possibly be avoided. Socialism strikes me as the wanton and everyday use of violence in an attempt to achieve goals that, however noble, will never be achieved by coercive means.
Perhaps I am missing something here, but is it feasible for those people who really want one to purchase it in Europe and have it shipped to the United States or maybe Mexico and then have it driven across the border?
The new Ford Focus isn't that bad and the pricing is definitely attractive compared to a comparable vehicle from either Honda, Toyota, or VW. The quality of the vehicle is less important, at least from a financial standpoint, as than the cost and frequency of repairs and the initial price of the vehicle. I will grant you that many American cars, particularly GM cars, are aweful in this regard but some of more recent model american compact and mid sized sedans have actually been fairly competitive, perhaps not as good as the Toyota in absolute terms, but certainly a good value all things considered. Besides, even if your car does have one annoying detail or defect, american vehicles typically have large and diverse after market options which can solve the problem at minimal additional cost.
In the United States, California pretty much sets the emissions standards because it is one of the biggest states and certainly one of the biggest car markets in the country. The probelm is that California emissions standards are TOUGH to meet (they probably are tougher than European standards, in fact I am almost certain of it). US automakers are reluctant to sell cars in the US if they don't meet California emissions (or cannot at least be modified easily to do so) because they would be giving up a substantial portion of potential sales by not being able to sell in the California market.
Slashdot Mirror
This is probably better than losing the whole pile bit by bit to enterprising attorneys and their clever lawsuits AND with the markets being so depressed right now and the number of good alternative investments diminished it probably does make sense to recapture some of those outstanding shares while the price is still attractive.
standards body is approving bad standards because it's being manipulated/corrupted, and attempts to clean up the corruption are not being successful
Cleaning up the corruption is almost impossible because of the enormous amounts of money that are ultimately at stake in the outcome of standards board decisions. Whenever large amounts of money are concentrated around a decision making process the powers that be will attempt to capture a share of that prize for themselves by whatever means necessary (laws are of no concern to multinational corporations because laws and justice can be bought just like everything else these days). I don't presume to offer a whole solution to this problem (conflict of interest problems are always difficult to resolve) but perhaps among the best would be to de-emphasize the importance of formalized standards (i.e. crowning of winners) and instead simply provide a forum for publishing papers, maintenance of professional wikis, and discussions and let those who are interested implement these best practices as and when it suits them, perhaps with certification that their implementation satisfies a spec paper published in the forum (the RFC system is sort of like this already, but it could probably benefit from modernized and improved processes).
"He who can destroy a thing, can control a thing" - Paul Atreides
No downloads means no profit which means Sony will rethink their policy.
And their conclusion will be: "Nobody is downloading our wonderful movie products because evil pirates are stealing them. Therefore, let us select x random customers (you filled out your registration cards right?) because all customers are pirates anyway, and sue them for copyright infringement settlements because each copy we find on their computers is equal to at least 1000 lost download sales".
Clippy: It looks like you are trying to pitch a tent. Would you like some help with that?
Beer is not the sort of thing people drink at college.
Says the college administrator while he pours himself a scotch from the bottle on the bookshelf...
Does the limebrokerage include the annual and quarterly reports data and balance sheets (I know that those don't change as often, but it would be nice to get all of the relevant data to compute values and compare against prices from one source). Also, they don't quote any prices on their website. I do not have access to large amounts of investment capital and I am not interested in running this as a business (at least not at first) so is there anyway that one could get some level of access on a trial/free basis before subscribing? I would be happy if I could get all of the data that one might get from Yahoo finance pages (ECN, analyst estimates, balance sheet, cash flow, and income statements) from a single source. The trading data and automatic trade features are nice to watch prices and make trades on targets, but I would really need to be able to get all of the information described above to really do a comprehensive automated analysis so that that program(s) could decide what prices it would like to buy or sell at or alert on. Thanks.
The Realm vs Realm concept, which was used previously and pioneered by Mythic in Dark Age of Camelot, is not like the PVP that you may have experienced in World of Warcraft or any other MMO game. The Realm vs Realm concept allows players to engage in PvP in a meaningful way that effects the balance of power in the game (by effecting Realm bonuses which are like continuous buffs that everyone in a realm gets) without suffering the same death consequences as in PVE (since deaths are more common in PvP play this feature encourages more players who wouldn't normally PvP to give it a try). If you haven't played in a Realm vs Realm type MMO game then I would encourage you to at least give Warhammer a try (unfortunately, Mythic owns a patent on the RvR concept so you will have to play an EA\Mythic game to see what I am talking about).
I cannot speak for Texas, being a resident of California and not of Texas, but here in California the Democratic majority in the state assembly has consistently put the kabosh on any attempt to redistrict or undo the gerrymandering of the political districts which makes it very likely that they would also use their majority to shut down any proportionality proposal for California electors. Perhaps the two sides are more evenly matched in Texas and the vote could go either way, but here in California about the best that the Republicans (Arnold Schwarzenegger, the current governor, is a Republican but the Democratic majority in the state assembly means that he frequently has to compromise to get anything meaningful done leading to accusations of 'Republicrat' being leveled against him by some Republicans) can manage is to delay state budgets (as they are doing right now) in an attempt to prevent really awful spending proposals and new state bond indebtedness (California state bond debt has increased by 1250%+ from 1978 to now which corresponds roughly with the end of the Reagan era and the beginning of the more reliably Democratic California that we have today).
Yes, I wish we lived in a world where all formats, protocols, and standards were Free, but they never will be so long as capitalism remains our official state religion.
Even Richard Stallman, hardly the high priest of capitalism (although he does look somewhat like an old testament prophet with that gnarly beard), does not deny the right of the creator(s) or even just the re-distributor(s) to charge money for their software or even GNU programs (provided that they adhere to the terms of the General Public License which makes charging money and getting away with it difficult in practice, but not expressly forbidden). The free in free software means free as in freedom and not necessarily free as in beer.
He is about to learn a big lesson about the real world. The smart people very often don't make money from their good ideas. The business savvy people exploit the smart people to develop the idea, force them to assign all patents and ideas to the company as a condition of their employment, and then give them a sucker's share of the profits and keep the rest for themselves. Has anyone else noted how few of the world's billionaires came from science or engineering backgrounds? There are reasons for that.
As a software engineer, I too share some interest in financial analysis and have researched it off and on over the years with an eye towards developing some of my own analysis tools as a hobby interest. However, I have continually been discouraged by the lack of decent public market data services of the type that would be suitable for feeding to analysis software. The decent market data services all want thousands of dollars per month for their streams so that basically precludes anyone but the trading professionals working for financial services companies or high net worth individuals (HNWI), who have enough at stake to justify the $20,000 per month Bloomberg Terminal, from doing anything more than dabbling. The free services are delayed 20 minutes or more and/or have limits on queries per unit time (usually both and always the query limit) etc that make them unsuited for automated analysis (probably what the companies want, since they are trying to sell you up to their professional streaming services). I stopped after some basic analysis and test programs because I knew that without access to relatively comprehensive streaming data services, much of the value of a more complex automated analysis system would be unrealized. The professional industry is already well served by Bloomberg, Reuters, and other terminal / market data businesses so it really isn't worth trying to compete against them professionally by starting a company (the existing services have a massive head start and are already firmly entrenched and unlikely to be unseated and the company would need millions to get off the ground in any case since exchanges are not going to give a new firm any breaks on prices they charge Bloomberg and other firms for access to the live streams). In the end I learned enough about finance to do my own research and analysis manually with the assistance of some basic tools that I cobbled together for myself and that is basically all there is to be done about it unless you want to get serious and plunk down the big bucks for access to the professional data services (you have $20,000 per month to burn?).
A lawsuit in and of itself really doesn't mean anything when anyone in the United States who fills out the forms and pays the filing fees can be scheduled to be heard in court. It doesn't matter what you write in the reason part of the form, the court will be happy to take your money and file the papers. I think that this is a foolish move on the part of the RIAA. Mr. Beckerman already has superior knowledge of the relevant issues and extensive research products and documentation to buttress his defense against RIAA allegations of "vexatious" claims. Indeed, the RIAA themselves are more obviously guilty of being vexatious litigants themselves, especially in light of their targeting of Beckerman to silence legitimate criticism(s) of their (the RIAA's) abuses. I hope that Mr. Beckerman makes them pay for their error in this case and gets maximum legal fees and damages out of the RIAA for their shameful attempts to silence his legitimate criticism. Perhaps a SLAPP counter-suit on behalf of Mr. Beckerman against the RIAA is in order here? IANAL, but perhaps someone who knows more could comment (Mr. Beckerman himself will probably want to avoid making comments about pending litigation involving himself or a client, as is usual for any attorney, so I will understand if he doesn't reply to this thread).
The desensitization of an individual to violence through psychological conditioning is frequently featured in fiction, in the ST:TNG episode The Mind's Eye for example, as part of a multi-sensory simulation program necessary (supposedly) to create a Manchurian Candidate style assassin. Theses studies offer at least some proof that people can be conditioned to have a very casual reaction to an episode(s) of extreme violence, so perhaps the fiction is not too far off the mark.
But law enforcement, on the other hand, could potentially force me to divulge such passwords!
You give the average border patrol officer too much credit. He doesn't know what an encrypted partition is. If he did then he wouldn't be working a checkpoint in the middle of the desert. As long as you don't mention it he won't know or think to ask. If you are genuinely worried then you can always use TrueCrypt to create a virtual disk (name the file whatever you like and put it anywhere in the filesystem) or even a hidden OS if you are really paranoid. You have to take on the hacker mentality, know how things work (including law enforcement rules and procedures, not just your comptuer), and use your intelligence to outwit your adversaries.
They would prefer to be in that tax bracket as long as most everyone was making less than they were. They have done studies where they asked people, would you rather make x dollars per year when everyone else makes x + 5 OR would you rather make x - 2 dollars per year when everyone else gets x - 5? You know which one people chose? They almost without exception prefer to make more than other people, even if they have the choice to make even more but relatively less than other people. People compare themselves to their peers and care more about relative than absolute incomes.
The really distressing thing is that these sorts of attacks and ambushes are becoming increasingly common in the public arena. An opponent or a perceived enemy is setup to take a fall by association, rightly or wrongly (it appears wrongly in this case), with a third rail issue and once the unfortunate target has been crushed it is impossible to un-ring the bell. It is like the common lament of the acquitted man, "How do I get back my good name"?
That is true to some extent if the users can customize their channels (i.e. every user is listening to a unique playlist), but "paying for promotion" (i.e. Payola) would probably still work on Internet radio if everyone was listening to the same set of pre-determined channels (albeit somewhat diluted by the larger number of channels possible on the Internet...a channel for every niche and every niche in its own channel).
If Google is ranking them highly then they are either paying ExpertExchange for robot access (doubt it) or ExpertExchange is engaging in a form of cloaking (i.e. pay or you cannot see what the search engine saw without paying), which I thought the Google page rank algorithm penalized because it is frequently a sign of black-hat SEO. I agree that subscription only sites should be identified as such in the Google search results, although most of us know by now that ExpertExchange charges for answers and avoid it for that reason anyway. I don't dispute their right to charge for answers, but why should I pay them when I can usually find the same information for free unless it is very specific or obscure?
I wasn't talking about the patent issue at that point. I was curious to hear what your particular defense of socialism (you stated that you were a socialist) would be, since I have never heard one that adequately addresses the problem of imposition by force. Perhaps you are merely sympathetic to socialists (admiring some of what they say or agreeing with some of their ideas, but not accepting their position as a whole), but are not really one yourself?
that wooshing sound you just heard is sarcasm going over your head.
Damn, I thought it was the giant sucking sound of American jobs rushing overseas. Phew, what a relief that it was only sarcasm.
Do you mind if I ask you a question? Suppose that two parties wish to engage in a transaction that both have decided is in their mutual interests. Should a third party, who is no part of the transaction and wielding a gun no less, be able to step in between those two parties and say, "deal is off because I say so"? The free market is made of people voluntarily associating without threat of coercion by means of violent force or threat thereof, but every time we interfere with that (and the government these days interferes tremendously in almost every aspect of our everyday lives, financial and otherwise) or condone another to do so on our behalf (i.e. the government) we are saying, "let us do a little evil, so that some good may come of it." I am not saying that the government has no role whatsoever in our society (somebody has to police the rules and punish violations), but rather that too often government oversteps its bounds and especially so when it comes to interference in the marketplace. I have heard all of the anti-corporate, anti-monopoly, and anti-private business and ownership arguments from just about all of the lefties here on Slashdot over the years and I think that if they were really honest with themselves they would see that invariably every abuse of corporate privilege, unfair trade deal, and other perceived corporate wrong is ultimately made possible by the interference of governments. Many of the problems that we have today would cease getting worse and start to get better if it were not possible to use political power as a cudgel to beat the marketplace into submission.
The problem with socialism is that it is by definition against freedom. If I am going to spend your money then I must first take it away from you. Of course, this necessarily implies use or threat of violence if you do not surrender your wealth to me on demand. If we had instead engaged in a voluntary exchange of mutually acceptable good(s) or service(s) then the coercion would not be necessary. Socialism interferes with that by dictating market results, which would not otherwise occur in the absence of coercion, at the point of a sword. Now, because governments are necessary to minimize overall violence (that is why the anarchists are wrong) and some taxes are necessary to fund the government it is not possible to eliminate all coercion, but it is possible to minimize it and that, IMHO, is a goal worthy of pursuit. I will concede that egalitarianism and communal living entered into voluntarily, as part of an intentional community for example, are possible on a small scale without coercion. However, it is not possible to organize entire societies in this fashion without resorting to strong coercion and human history is filled with tales of suffering and misery as a result of attempts to do so. So you see now why I support the free market (which I don't believe that we have now 100%, even here in the United States) and advocate for it as a consequence of my belief in self determination and a position against violence if it can possibly be avoided. Socialism strikes me as the wanton and everyday use of violence in an attempt to achieve goals that, however noble, will never be achieved by coercive means.
Perhaps I am missing something here, but is it feasible for those people who really want one to purchase it in Europe and have it shipped to the United States or maybe Mexico and then have it driven across the border?
Who still buys American vehicles these days
The new Ford Focus isn't that bad and the pricing is definitely attractive compared to a comparable vehicle from either Honda, Toyota, or VW. The quality of the vehicle is less important, at least from a financial standpoint, as than the cost and frequency of repairs and the initial price of the vehicle. I will grant you that many American cars, particularly GM cars, are aweful in this regard but some of more recent model american compact and mid sized sedans have actually been fairly competitive, perhaps not as good as the Toyota in absolute terms, but certainly a good value all things considered. Besides, even if your car does have one annoying detail or defect, american vehicles typically have large and diverse after market options which can solve the problem at minimal additional cost.
In the United States, California pretty much sets the emissions standards because it is one of the biggest states and certainly one of the biggest car markets in the country. The probelm is that California emissions standards are TOUGH to meet (they probably are tougher than European standards, in fact I am almost certain of it). US automakers are reluctant to sell cars in the US if they don't meet California emissions (or cannot at least be modified easily to do so) because they would be giving up a substantial portion of potential sales by not being able to sell in the California market.