You're argument appears to be sound, but generally speaking, don't courts take a rather dim view of "it happened because I was ignorant" and particularly so when installing P2P software, presumably, involved some positive action on the part of the user with consent to at least install the program in the first place? If you chose to use a product and through ignorance, not reading the warnings in the manual, or negligence harm others then shouldn't the bar for a successful "it is not my fault because..." argument be pretty high? Just playing devil's advocate here.
Also, would anyone really have a problem with this if said bloggers were clearly labeled rather than astro-turfing? In a world full of splogs, shills, and guerilla marketers why would you take any blog at face value? The problem is that people want to judge the usefulness or correctness of information they receive based mostly upon their preconceived notions about the source instead of thinking for themselves. It is a trained response that is branded (pun intended) into the minds of young people from an early age by relentless marketing, consumer-oriented public education, and paternalistic government programs and policies so that when they grow up they are compliant, don't ask too many questions, and are easily manipulated.
Why keep records at all? Be careful what you say, don't step out of line, big brother is watching...is this really how we want to live? Constantly looking over our shoulders, conducting business in secret, suspicious of our neighbors, and tight-lipped about what we say in public?
He mixes the weekly 2-hour trance mixes called "A State of Trance" You can listen online every Thursday at 11:00 AM Pacific Time on Digitally Imported AND you can listen to the last recorded show and special events in the OnDemand section.
Could this be a potentially good model for other things as well? Podcasts and radio shows becoming the next big thing - played both on real radio and available online? They already were the big thing at one time but once there was big money involved and Payola the studios screwed it all up and what we are ultimately left with are the burned out husks of once great radio stations and DJs who are almost all of them now owned by a single conglomerate, Clear Channel, which effectively ensures that crap music is served up 99% of the time 24x7x365.
The powers that be, of course, understand that niche Internet broadcasters have the power to break their hegemony and they have already fired shots across the bow of Internet radio and they are still working to either control it as they have controlled terrestrial radio or ensure its demise. Fortunately there are some groups working against them, but it is only a matter of time before the Clear Channels of the world initiate a new push to control Internet radio.
I'm not convinced that it'd ultimately pan out that way The complete destruction of the offending company (i.e. start over) is not always necessary and in fact occurs only rarely. It would be more common, particularly in the example of your utility, for new owners to purchase the company out of bankruptcy, make the necessary investments and changes to return the business to profitability and then either sell the now profitable business for a profit or continue running it themselves for profit. The community gets good utility service at reasonable prices and the new owners earn profit. What is not to like?
what's the expected lifespan of a "non-durable" monopoly? It would depend upon how large the company was, the industry, how badly run the company was and many other factors, but in general I believe that you would not have long to wait if the company was really that bad.
The way that telecommunications technology is advancing these days, if it takes 20 years for a monopoly company to die out, that's still two decades that they can hold everything back, and consumers are getting screwed the whole time. So start a competing company and compete your geriatric competitors into the ground.
I also think that there are plenty of valid reasons why most utilities should not be an un-regulated market. You know how I would respond to that one...
We would not be well served by dozens of different companies fighting to dig trenches and run cables everywhere. You are referring to a Natural Monopoly right? There may be some limited circumstances where this could be appropriate, but nothing is stopping a community from forming their own corporation to either build their own local infrastructure, where the locals are all shareholders, or contracting a firm to build it for them and then collectively running it. There are other solutions besides natural monopoly and regulation, it just depends upon what the community property owners collectively want.
but the same is just as true for corporations As stated above, corporations are easier to get rid off when things go wrong.
Even if the market can manage to self-correct that (and I'm not completely convinced), it happens very slowly. Governments usually come and go even more slowly.
Getting government organized and focused is certainly tough, but when it does happen, it can bring a lot of resources to bear and actually be very effective. Government can act quickly and it does have lots of resources, but as I have stated previously the temptation to meddle combined with a tendency to bungle usually makes these government incursions, fast though they may be, a disaster (witness the FEMA response to Katrina: the temporary shelter trailers were contaminated with formaldehyde, people spent their government issued debit cards on pron, there were double-dippers and fraudsters on the relief funds, etc..).
We in NW Europe and Scandinavia beg to differ. Suit yourselves, but the only Northern European country that I would consider living in is Estonia where the taxes are low and the government interference is minimal.
Sure we see cases of corruption but they are dealt with by the system. The ones that you catch anyway. How many slip by or sneak in below the radar and then disappear? Probably a lot more.
Executive and legislature are carefully separated and would one step over the line he'll not have a second chance. Congratulations, most other democracies around the world include the same features.
Of course this has a lot to do with a healthy political system where a government is usually made up of a coalition, a major factor to prevent sleaze. That I will give you. There is indeed value in gridlock whereby the government is prevented from doing much harm, but do not confuse the good government with poor government which appears good merely because gridlock and factionalism prevents it from behaving badly. If one party ever gets majority control then you will see how well the government really runs.
but having an inspector show up twice a year is more likely to deter the company from trying to maximize profits by cheaper disposal methods that arent safe. Effective deterrence is achieved by ensuring via the laws that the expected winnings or the expected value of gaming the system will always be negative for those who are eventually caught doing it. If the penalties are set up as an increasing function of size and revenue then even the most daring individuals or companies would think twice before doing something that is likely to have adverse consequences down the road. There is a balance to be struck here between controlling externalities and preventing useful economic activities but this can probably be done in such a way that the result is at least as effective as the current regulatory scheme and more efficient to boot.
But since there is no governing body to regulate the airwaves, I'm SOL as to my options. The government would still license the right to use the resource via the public auction. It would be the place of the rights holder to sue violators. If you don't hold the license then you are SOL but how is that any different than living near a broadcast television station today (analog broadcasting is going away now I know, but surely you can see my point) and trying to use an antenna?
A government body decided what level of lead was ok and said if its above this level, you cant do business here. There are private agencies that do the same types of testing and reporting, Consumer Reports for instance.
With things like national transportaion, energy, etc that spans multiple states and needs to be interconnected to work properly, there needs to be some sort of federal oversight so when State A wants to hire (or OK's for zoning) Company X to build thier road, State B might have a better offer from Company Y, but where it is supposed to meet State A's road is 40mi away from where Company X wanted it to cross the border. So the states work something out and demand that their contractors do what they want or else find new ones who are willing to do the work for a price that everyone can agree on. The private sector and the free markets find ways to connect up people and resources and make things work. If it cannot be done profitably then it is probably wiser to ask why the government should be doing it. Where I live in California, people are always passing new initiatives every time we vote for the government to provide free ice cream to everyone on Friday or whatever else people think is a good idea. They are so enamored with the prospect of free ice cream that they don't stop and think about whether the government should be providing free ice cream with taxpayer money or perhaps they simply don't care because that money comes "from somebody else, not me". That is on of the main reasons why the state indebtedness has increased by around 1,200% in the last 38 years since about 1978.
But getting rid of it all just because its governemnt controlled isnt too smart in my opinion. Not all, just most. Of course, none of this can be done overnight. If we were serious about reducing the size of government then it would have to be done gradually over a long period of time. However, it is necessary for one to state the ideal so that we can judge whether a certain policy change or proposal leads us forward towards that goal or holds us back from reaching it.
With no EPA, whos to stop Company X from dumping that waste into a deep hole and let it pollute the ground water?
Would you let them dump that waste on your private property? You might be willing to allow it if they compensate you or you might not want to sell that right to them at any price and either way is your right to use your property as you wish. If they dump anyway then you can sue them in court for causing damages and violating your rights as a property owner. If someone else allows them to dump on their property and it affects the ground water then you can sue both the other property owner AND the dumper for damages. The court system, appropriate laws to address negative externalities, and private property solve these problems with very interested parties (i.e. the property owners) carefully looking out for their own self-interest and in so doing supporting the public interest at the same time even though it was no part of their intention to do so.
Without an FCC, whos to stop Tom Psycho HAM operator to build a giant tower that he can talk to Siberia with but drowns out every otehr signal in the neighborhood?
Again this is a matter than can be addressed via the courts and when the offender is told to stop (as he surely will be) and doesn't then the court can order the police to enter his property and remove or disable the offending equipment or impose any other remedies which the laws allow and the courts see fit to apply. The people with cause to bring the action, those being interfered with by the illegal broadcast antenna, will bring it.
Now, I concede that the courts will...gasp...probably have to be expanded somewhat to support the increased load of cases that need to be adjudicated when the regulating agencies are dismantled. However, a great deal of the day to day operations of the court (i.e. administrative, IT, and other support functions) can be bid out to contract with private business, freeing up the court to concentrate on actually settling legal matters.
Without a federal transportation commision, why would a lot of states keep up the interstates? In a lot of east coast states, a large portion of traffic is from out of staters, and in southern states (MS, AL etc) the interstate is mostly used to go through the state, not travel in it. Why should they spend their tax dollars keeping a road working that is mostly used by out of staters?
Why does the butcher or the brewer provide you with cuts of meat or beer to buy? Does he care about whether you get your dinner or not? No, he cares about his own self interest, which is to earn a living. Now, states would support these roads because they WANT out of state people to visit their state and spend money there which they cannot do easily if there are no good roads to bring them in on. In fact, I am in favor of private toll roads replacing the interstate highway system. Why should the government run the road system when every toll road that I have been on suggests that private industry does a better job?
Without the FDA, whos going to make sure that when a food or drug product comes to market, that its truly safe to consume?
Those who sell tainted products will be liable for their negligence or malice under the law and via the courts. It is not in the best interests of a private entity to sell tainted food. It harms their customers, helps their competitors by driving business to them instead, and exposes them to lawsuits and liability.
Yes I know theres a lot of different solutions to those problems, but none of them are perfect either.
Yes, but some solutions are clearly superior to others, even if they too have some problems.
Also remember that without regulations of some kind, corperations would try to milk the crap out of the consumer without regards for thier health or safety.
Corporations are nothing if not rational and if the
Why have fewer species than ever been added to the endangered species list?
This is relevant how?
Maybe the FCC shouldn't have any authority over the electromagnetic spectrum, parts of which were recently reclaimed, repackaged, and auctioned off?
Other than to manage and sell licenses and enforce exclusive rights they shouldn't. In fact, they could even outsource the management and auctioning parts and concentrate on the enforcement. This is the same as the government selling oil, mining, and mineral extraction rights on public lands.
Why did the Department of Homeland Security bungle Katrina so badly?
Government, by definition, bungles. That is why I and many other Libertarians want substantially less government.
Why does DHS insist on spending big $ for radiation detectors that won't reliably detect smuggling and which are subject to false alarms, while barely pursuing other, more promising methods?
Again, because the government has no profit motive AND they are spending other people's money they aren't very careful about what they buy or what gets wasted. They might buy product A over product B because product A is made by a company that made a contribution to the re-election campaign of a certain politician or promised to do a personal favor for a DHS manager in the future. If you were spending the money of another person for them would you be as careful as if you were spending your own money on yourself? Probably not.
Maybe they don't have enough people?
They almost certainly have too MANY people already.
It couldn't be because consolidating several agencies into one overall smaller agency was a bad idea, could it?
Of course it was a bad idea. The new agency should never have been created and most of the other existing ones should have been ELIMINATED. The ideal government, IMHO, would be composed of the constitutionally mandated branches (president, congress, supreme court), the justice system (state and federal courts) to adjudicate disputes, police (national, state, and local) to enforce the rules and prevent violence and coercion, and finally the military to prevent foreign powers from conquering us by force. That is it and that is all.
The problem is not the size of the government
Yes it is.
it's the size of the corruption, incompetence, and stupidity in government and in corporations.
Corruption is inevitable in government, it will always be present at some level and it will be larger and ever more present as the size and scope of government is increased. I know of NO counter example to this principle from any time in all of human history. The difference between incompetence or stupidity in government and the same in corporations is that an incompetent or stupid corporation will be selected OUT of the system by the forces of market competition (it will declare bankruptcy and cease to exist). The government on the other hand, no matter how incompetent or stupid, will not go bankrupt OR be forced out by market competition because they control the market via the ultimate power, threat of violence and coercive physical force. Replacing governments can be dangerous work, just look at the US experience in Iraq if you don't believe that.
In some cases, government authority has been used for rent seeking, but in many other cases, lack of government authority has been used to put together monopolies and to get away with short changing the people.
If one looks at the economic history of monopolies then it is clear that the durable monopolies (i.e. ones that were not temporary) were invariably backed up by the coercive power of government to enforce the continuation of the mono
If you consider self interest to be criminal then you may be right. However, t is my own considered opinion that the extensive power of the government to regulate has created the opportunity for rent seeking and anti-competitive behavior to occur in the first place. If there were less power to be gained by corrupting politicians because the government was smaller then you would have more broadband at cheaper prices right now. The competitive market does not allow people "to get away with it" because inefficient competitors are ruthlessly driven out of business by their more able competition. The problem in the real world is that busy-body governments, even though their intentions may be good, cannot resist interfering and we all know a certain road that is paved with good intentions.
There's no secret about how to do this. It wouldn't even add much cost to servers to do it right. That is the very problem: COST. The users who want this type of functionality buy the mainframe and run Linux and Windows sessions inside of virtual machines on the mainframe which might run thousands of these sessions (I know that you already know that, but I am repeating it for the sake of completeness). The margins on PC "workstation" and "server" hardware and software are so thin (ask Dell or HP about how thin the margins are on PCs these days) that almost ANY additional cost, particularly one that unsophisticated users are unlikely to understand or appreciate, is anathema. The markets are just different.
Interesting. You must take great care then, between your daemon and OS improvements, not to mix ANY source code between the linux code base and your proprietary daemon in order to avoid triggering the distribution sharing clauses of GPL. If you slip up even once then you have to release the full version on demand as of the date that the distribution occurred (at least theoretically). Surely that is a risk?
My comment was made within the context of a "core competency" of a firm competing in a niche industry. I agree that collaboration on non-essential or non-competitive business operations can be worthwhile. However you yourself said, "We never open sourced our core routing protocols and code (where we really competed)". Now, if our hypothetical firm is going to expend effort (i.e. paid developer time) to improve an open source product then isn't it more likely that they are going to attempt to add or improve features that have more to do with their core competency and not ancillary bug fixes or improvements?
One question I have for you, if I may: How can you "distribute" your improved routing code as an improvement to an open source software system without exposing your improved routing algorithm as well? In GPL for example, the act of distribution triggers the share and share alike clause, so unless you use the improvements only internally or perhaps as part of a Software as a Service (SAS) model how can you keep your "secret sauce" secret? That is one of the problems with using open source software in franchise operations.
The one they showed slung over the steering wheel of a car, that's just bad. BAD BAD BAD! Perhaps they are laboring under the discredited notion that every vehicle currently on the road right now will be replaced with fully automated self-driving SMART cars, leaving the driver free to manage other things.
And then what, drive and type? Agreed. It is bad enough to see people texting on their cell phones today while operating four (4) tons of SUV moving down the road at 25+ mph. Just imagine them trying to edit their spreadsheets on the way to work, the airbag would deploy and smash that laptop right through their face, which might be a fitting end for the self-important ass of a spreadsheet jockey, but small consolation to the passengers of the other vehicle(s) involved in the accident.
I was very unhappy about signing such a contract, but I needed the work. Why should you have been unhappy? Where they offering a flat rate or fee for the contract where the difference between the cost of the solution and what they paid was your salary? If that is the case then maybe I can see why limiting the types of software could be a negative factor for you, but you could always negotiate a higher price to accommodate that demand (many other businesses charge more for "upgrades" and "premium services"). Otherwise, give the customer what he wants, it is his money after all.
This leads to many advantages for the companies including: lower overall development costs, more competitive bidding on development, and standardization within the industry for interoperability. Further, getting some of this code open sourced gives Redhat (and other such companies) a way to undercut proprietary software developers when providing custom coding, support, and added services. While I can see why this might benefit Red Hat it is not as clear to me how it benefits the companies serving that niche. It is always better, from the standpoint of any given company, to compete from the position of a franchise rather than as a price taker in a purely competitive market. The provider of franchise product or service has greater pricing power than a price-taker in a purely competitive industry (although less than a monopoly) and pricing power translates into extra economic profits for the controller of the franchise. Lowering costs is a worthwhile goal, but it must also be weighed against the possibility of helping one's competitors, particularly in a niche industry where franchises are more common, and lowering the barrier of entry to new competitors. If one firm has a franchise than standardization is not as important because the franchise can become a de-facto standard. Also, why would a company want competitive bidding if they could possibly help it? From the standpoint of the profit maximizer a no-bid contract is best and limited bidding is the next best thing.
I for one don't like her because her husband gave her the job of instituting national health care like the civilized world has and she botched it. Which is indeed fortunate because as bad as the present system of tax advantaged, employer-provided, and third party payer health insurance is, the single payer universal plan is even worse. If you think that health care is expensive now, just wait until you see what it costs when it's free. Now, if you want REAL health care reform that actually works then check out the Milton Friedman plan, How to Cure Health Care, before you cast your vote on health care issues.
Re:Artists should make the most money, not the lab
on
Must a CD Cost $15.99?
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· Score: 1
You are aware that the artist is billed by the label for studio time, promotional costs, etc...right? The label "loans" the artist the cost of producing the album and if they really want to screw the artist over they can ask for additional collateral like your house or your car or whatever else they can think of to secure the loan. So the studio takes some risk in loaning the money to the artist, but the artist does not receive a salary from the music label (or at least not generally), but rather a portion of the sales . The loans have to paid out of the income of the artist by the artist (it just like a mortgage or car payments from the point of view of the artist) and the difference is the income which they have to live on. Artists are contractors NOT hourly or even salaried employees.
And you expect sympathy somehow? Agreed. The music labels can either suck it up and lower the price or Walmart will dump them for something that has a non-negative margin. If the loss-leader CD does not result in enough additional sales of other products to make up the difference AND still provide enough revenue to be better than alternative products that could occupy the same shelf space (opportunity cost) then Walmart should dump CDs and sell something else in their place. Walmart doesn't care about CD sales, they care about maximizing their profit and if dumping CDs and selling something else maximizes their profit then you can bet your bottom dollar that they will do it a New York minute. As much as Walmart is hated by many people who call themselves consumer advocates they also play an important role in keeping prices low, limiting franchises, and maximizing consumer surplus.
Or in otherwords we are afraid of trying something different. On the contrary, mathematics is always revealing new truths and ever greater answers so long as our limited minds can continue to grasp the truths which have always been there since the birth of the universe, waiting to be discovered. In that way mathematics is the purest of all the sciences even while it is the most abstract.
Most other areas of studies evolve over time Math tends to be stuck in a style taught thousands of years ago. That is the beauty of mathematics and it is a strength not a weakness. In mathematics, once something is proven true it is never again wrong. There are no yes buts, ifs, or maybes as one finds in other areas of human inquiry. Moreover, each subsequent proof allows additional abstractions and new insights to be developed which in turn lead to newer and more profound proofs such that the entire edifice is built upon a foundation which spans all cultures, languages, and possibly even human life itself (if one accepts as probable the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life). Mathematics is the universal language of absolute truth and while other disciplines change radically over time, mathematics and the truths that it reveals remain provable, constant, and infallible down through the centuries.
It is sad, but that is precisely what used to happen in the old days of the Soviet Union except then it was the list of "enemies of the people". One might reasonably ask what the "wrong book" is doing in the library if checking it out gets one's name put onto the list of "enemies of the people" but such questions are invariably ignored in pursuit of "the enemies of the people". The punishment continued even after one had served time in the form of a wolf ticket and being sent to the 101st kilometer. It is scary to think that certain types of ex-criminals are effectively getting the same treatment today in the United States.
They are often bad at taking their findings and describing them in real-world terms. Science and engineering are related but different disciplines. The scientist is concerned with the acquisition of knowledge whereas the engineer is concerned with the knowledge gained by science to solve the real world problems at hand. These people are often not one in the same.
To be unable to break your field's concepts down into simpler terms is a mental shortcoming. The simple answer is that not everything worth knowing is easily within the grasp of the average human mind.
But the "film majors are morons" poster seemed to think smart=articulate, and that's just not the case. You mean smart == articulate right? The assignment operator could give you a very hard to debug run time error in your loop termination or branch condition (engineer joke). You are right that smart does not imply articulate but the converse is more often true or at least that has been my experience. How many articulate idiots do you know?
Slashdot Mirror
You're argument appears to be sound, but generally speaking, don't courts take a rather dim view of "it happened because I was ignorant" and particularly so when installing P2P software, presumably, involved some positive action on the part of the user with consent to at least install the program in the first place? If you chose to use a product and through ignorance, not reading the warnings in the manual, or negligence harm others then shouldn't the bar for a successful "it is not my fault because..." argument be pretty high? Just playing devil's advocate here.
The powers that be, of course, understand that niche Internet broadcasters have the power to break their hegemony and they have already fired shots across the bow of Internet radio and they are still working to either control it as they have controlled terrestrial radio or ensure its demise. Fortunately there are some groups working against them, but it is only a matter of time before the Clear Channels of the world initiate a new push to control Internet radio.
With no EPA, whos to stop Company X from dumping that waste into a deep hole and let it pollute the ground water?
Would you let them dump that waste on your private property? You might be willing to allow it if they compensate you or you might not want to sell that right to them at any price and either way is your right to use your property as you wish. If they dump anyway then you can sue them in court for causing damages and violating your rights as a property owner. If someone else allows them to dump on their property and it affects the ground water then you can sue both the other property owner AND the dumper for damages. The court system, appropriate laws to address negative externalities, and private property solve these problems with very interested parties (i.e. the property owners) carefully looking out for their own self-interest and in so doing supporting the public interest at the same time even though it was no part of their intention to do so.
Without an FCC, whos to stop Tom Psycho HAM operator to build a giant tower that he can talk to Siberia with but drowns out every otehr signal in the neighborhood?
Again this is a matter than can be addressed via the courts and when the offender is told to stop (as he surely will be) and doesn't then the court can order the police to enter his property and remove or disable the offending equipment or impose any other remedies which the laws allow and the courts see fit to apply. The people with cause to bring the action, those being interfered with by the illegal broadcast antenna, will bring it. Now, I concede that the courts will...gasp...probably have to be expanded somewhat to support the increased load of cases that need to be adjudicated when the regulating agencies are dismantled. However, a great deal of the day to day operations of the court (i.e. administrative, IT, and other support functions) can be bid out to contract with private business, freeing up the court to concentrate on actually settling legal matters.
Without a federal transportation commision, why would a lot of states keep up the interstates? In a lot of east coast states, a large portion of traffic is from out of staters, and in southern states (MS, AL etc) the interstate is mostly used to go through the state, not travel in it. Why should they spend their tax dollars keeping a road working that is mostly used by out of staters?
Why does the butcher or the brewer provide you with cuts of meat or beer to buy? Does he care about whether you get your dinner or not? No, he cares about his own self interest, which is to earn a living. Now, states would support these roads because they WANT out of state people to visit their state and spend money there which they cannot do easily if there are no good roads to bring them in on. In fact, I am in favor of private toll roads replacing the interstate highway system. Why should the government run the road system when every toll road that I have been on suggests that private industry does a better job?
Without the FDA, whos going to make sure that when a food or drug product comes to market, that its truly safe to consume?
Those who sell tainted products will be liable for their negligence or malice under the law and via the courts. It is not in the best interests of a private entity to sell tainted food. It harms their customers, helps their competitors by driving business to them instead, and exposes them to lawsuits and liability.
Yes I know theres a lot of different solutions to those problems, but none of them are perfect either.
Yes, but some solutions are clearly superior to others, even if they too have some problems.
Also remember that without regulations of some kind, corperations would try to milk the crap out of the consumer without regards for thier health or safety.
Corporations are nothing if not rational and if the
why did the EPA try to claim it didn't have authority to regulate CO2 emissions [acs.org]?
Regulatory Capture
Why have fewer species than ever been added to the endangered species list?
This is relevant how?
Maybe the FCC shouldn't have any authority over the electromagnetic spectrum, parts of which were recently reclaimed, repackaged, and auctioned off?
Other than to manage and sell licenses and enforce exclusive rights they shouldn't. In fact, they could even outsource the management and auctioning parts and concentrate on the enforcement. This is the same as the government selling oil, mining, and mineral extraction rights on public lands.
Why did the Department of Homeland Security bungle Katrina so badly?
Government, by definition, bungles. That is why I and many other Libertarians want substantially less government.
Why does DHS insist on spending big $ for radiation detectors that won't reliably detect smuggling and which are subject to false alarms, while barely pursuing other, more promising methods?
Again, because the government has no profit motive AND they are spending other people's money they aren't very careful about what they buy or what gets wasted. They might buy product A over product B because product A is made by a company that made a contribution to the re-election campaign of a certain politician or promised to do a personal favor for a DHS manager in the future. If you were spending the money of another person for them would you be as careful as if you were spending your own money on yourself? Probably not.
Maybe they don't have enough people?
They almost certainly have too MANY people already.
It couldn't be because consolidating several agencies into one overall smaller agency was a bad idea, could it?
Of course it was a bad idea. The new agency should never have been created and most of the other existing ones should have been ELIMINATED. The ideal government, IMHO, would be composed of the constitutionally mandated branches (president, congress, supreme court), the justice system (state and federal courts) to adjudicate disputes, police (national, state, and local) to enforce the rules and prevent violence and coercion, and finally the military to prevent foreign powers from conquering us by force. That is it and that is all.
The problem is not the size of the government
Yes it is.
it's the size of the corruption, incompetence, and stupidity in government and in corporations.
Corruption is inevitable in government, it will always be present at some level and it will be larger and ever more present as the size and scope of government is increased. I know of NO counter example to this principle from any time in all of human history. The difference between incompetence or stupidity in government and the same in corporations is that an incompetent or stupid corporation will be selected OUT of the system by the forces of market competition (it will declare bankruptcy and cease to exist). The government on the other hand, no matter how incompetent or stupid, will not go bankrupt OR be forced out by market competition because they control the market via the ultimate power, threat of violence and coercive physical force. Replacing governments can be dangerous work, just look at the US experience in Iraq if you don't believe that.
In some cases, government authority has been used for rent seeking, but in many other cases, lack of government authority has been used to put together monopolies and to get away with short changing the people.
If one looks at the economic history of monopolies then it is clear that the durable monopolies (i.e. ones that were not temporary) were invariably backed up by the coercive power of government to enforce the continuation of the mono
If you consider self interest to be criminal then you may be right. However, t is my own considered opinion that the extensive power of the government to regulate has created the opportunity for rent seeking and anti-competitive behavior to occur in the first place. If there were less power to be gained by corrupting politicians because the government was smaller then you would have more broadband at cheaper prices right now. The competitive market does not allow people "to get away with it" because inefficient competitors are ruthlessly driven out of business by their more able competition. The problem in the real world is that busy-body governments, even though their intentions may be good, cannot resist interfering and we all know a certain road that is paved with good intentions.
Interesting. You must take great care then, between your daemon and OS improvements, not to mix ANY source code between the linux code base and your proprietary daemon in order to avoid triggering the distribution sharing clauses of GPL. If you slip up even once then you have to release the full version on demand as of the date that the distribution occurred (at least theoretically). Surely that is a risk?
My comment was made within the context of a "core competency" of a firm competing in a niche industry. I agree that collaboration on non-essential or non-competitive business operations can be worthwhile. However you yourself said, "We never open sourced our core routing protocols and code (where we really competed)". Now, if our hypothetical firm is going to expend effort (i.e. paid developer time) to improve an open source product then isn't it more likely that they are going to attempt to add or improve features that have more to do with their core competency and not ancillary bug fixes or improvements?
One question I have for you, if I may: How can you "distribute" your improved routing code as an improvement to an open source software system without exposing your improved routing algorithm as well? In GPL for example, the act of distribution triggers the share and share alike clause, so unless you use the improvements only internally or perhaps as part of a Software as a Service (SAS) model how can you keep your "secret sauce" secret? That is one of the problems with using open source software in franchise operations.
Did anyone else notice that all of the "futuristic" laptops were running Windows?
You are aware that the artist is billed by the label for studio time, promotional costs, etc...right? The label "loans" the artist the cost of producing the album and if they really want to screw the artist over they can ask for additional collateral like your house or your car or whatever else they can think of to secure the loan. So the studio takes some risk in loaning the money to the artist, but the artist does not receive a salary from the music label (or at least not generally), but rather a portion of the sales . The loans have to paid out of the income of the artist by the artist (it just like a mortgage or car payments from the point of view of the artist) and the difference is the income which they have to live on. Artists are contractors NOT hourly or even salaried employees.
It is sad, but that is precisely what used to happen in the old days of the Soviet Union except then it was the list of "enemies of the people". One might reasonably ask what the "wrong book" is doing in the library if checking it out gets one's name put onto the list of "enemies of the people" but such questions are invariably ignored in pursuit of "the enemies of the people". The punishment continued even after one had served time in the form of a wolf ticket and being sent to the 101st kilometer. It is scary to think that certain types of ex-criminals are effectively getting the same treatment today in the United States.