The problem with privatization is not that the service is being provided by a private organization, it's that it's trading one monopoly (public) for another (private). The issue is that certain services have been monopolized by the government via the law. Services aren't magically better when performed by private companies. They are better in the free market because there is competition and no one can force you do to one thing or the other. Government and the services it has privatized are still just monopolies.
More than likely, any corporation that threatened to send men with guns to kick in your front door would quickly go out of business. Sending guns to kick in doors is expensive business and the government is the only institution that is funded by involuntary "customers". Don't confuse corporations with business. Corporations are creations of government and as such they draw much of their power from that unholy alliance.
an ever-shrinking number of companies leveraging their ever-increasing power to charge more and more for less and less
You just described a mixed economy having a central bank that controls the money supply, not capitalism. The United States has never had capitalism, only a mixed economy. This leads always to monopolies and corporate manipulation with government. Please explain how a corporation could establish itself as a monopoly without the legal use of force, i.e. government. Without government support, no company would be safe from competition. I'm wrong you say? Please provide an example of a corporation that became a "monopoly", provided a shitty product, and charged a high price for it.
It's not that the market is a bad thing or that capitalism is unworkable, it's just that it's not a magical cornucopia.
Supporters of true laissez faire don't claim that it is magical. Contrast that with supporters of state control and increased regulation. To them, the government can fix anything.
Whenever I hear "the government ruins everything" I know that I'm hearing ideology, not reality.
The people saying such things take so many of the regulations, which make this country run smoothly, for granted.
Whenever I hear "the government makes this country run smoothly", I know that I'm hearing ideology, not reality. The government is by its very nature and definition an institution of criminals that accomplishes everything it does by force and coercion. In a democratic nation, just because 51% of the population chooses something, it does not mean it is justified to FORCE the other 49% into doing it. Likewise, the 51% majority likely will not even get what they vote for anyway, as is seen with the current and previous American administrations. You may remember that GW Bush campaigned on a non-interventionist foreign policy.
All of the agencies you have listed have nothing to do with the quality of food, worker safety, air travel, highway safety, and building codes - those things are all improved only by the actions of free individuals on the market. While companies may be compelled by government "standards", the real driving force behind any increase of quality is due to competition. Company A, no matter how large must, must maintain a certain level of quality if it does not want to risk losing market share to smaller, better companies in the same sector. The belief that without government constraints, all production would be rubbish or food poisonous, etc. is ludicrous. On the contrary, look at any country that has had increased controls and you will see less production at a lower quality, along with a worse standard of living.
In a free market, no company can escape from competition. Coercive monopolies are not possible without government policy. Without the force of government, no company has the power to force anyone and can always be out maneuvered.
Sure, the government pays for health care, but that money doesn't have to then come out of your pocket or your company's pocket.
And where exactly are you suggesting the government gets its money from if not from corporate and individual citizens? (Printing and borrowing aside since they only defer the responsibility temporarily)
I'm not sure that hardware profit margins are ever as large as software ones. It seems like it would be a smart move for Apple to license OS X to x86 OEM vendors like Dell, HP, etc. If not now, maybe in the near future when these guys begin to feel more and more betrayed by Microsoft (XBox 360). If Microsoft wants to bail out on their vendors, the vendors should preempt Microsoft and start licensing OS X, assuming Apple would allow it. Seems like it would be a good business more for them, but who knows.
Then there's always 'C' for Correct. Maybe "giving your fellow man your time, energy and expertise over the internet" (or over other means) is the CORRECT thing to do. Not correct in the sense that any religious character or figurehead would like or would have liked it or promoted it, but correct in the sense that it ultimately produces the BEST results, both industrially/for society and for individuals' own happiness. I suppose this falls back on the utopian communist concept in some respects, namely, a world where everyone does what is best and beneficial for all, and therefore for themselves.
Maybe what happened to the Mozilla Suite needs to happen to OpenOffice? No doubt this would be a huge undertaking, but I wonder how plausible it would be to componentize OpenOffice? Instead of OpenOffice.org Writer, how about Writerfox, or BirdWriter, or.... um... ThunderWriter...
"-- A University of Florida scientist has created a living "brain" of cultured rat cells that now controls an F-22 fighter jet flight simulator."
Rat pilots controlling the skies eh? Maybe they can get some of these rats to fill in the air traffic control job openings in the United States. Then after that, maybe we could use some of them in government agencies like the FAA... oh wait, we already have that.
It's pretty funny how any post opposing this judge's decision is marked as troll or flamebait... hmmm. Fair and balanced? Differing views? Nope! Trolls!
Looks like I can vote at as many places as I can drive to on November 2! Good thing you don't have to provide evidence of citizenship in Ohio (or most other states). Honestly though, why do some people think it's a good thing to allow anyone to just walk into the polls and vote without I.D., evidence that they live in that precinct, etc.? Feeling disenfranchised? Just drive up to Ohio and vote as many times as you want! Let that stress out! phew...
Going with the different laws of physics idea, also don't forget the TIME itself is subject to the laws of physics in our universe as well. Just because we PERCEIVE a 10 year time period to have passed (in our simulation world), that time period could very well have been 1 second in the world of the simulation machine we are running on. The reverse is also true. One second in the simulation world could have taken 10 billion years to compute, it's just what we perceive. If you look at it that way, any discussion of computer power/speed gets completely thrown out the window. This way, the simulation would be much like the Level 4 multiverse in the parallel universes article posted here a few weeks ago. The physical laws that we are bound to exist and are defined in a completely different environment (or no environment at all, in the case of the Level 4 multiverse where they exist outside of space/time in general). From this, you could assume that anything, no matter how complex, could be computed in what seems like an instant to us, since we are bound to the laws of the "program", aka the matrix could be run on an 8086:)
"The glamour, the influence, the youth, the hipness, the hookers, the drugs -- gone."
Regardless of how music is distributed, rather it be by record labels or by bootlegged mp3's, the music and its makers will still be influencial on other people. If you have a CD or if you have mp3's, that doesnt change your mind on what you think of an artist or if you'd like to see them play live.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with privatization is not that the service is being provided by a private organization, it's that it's trading one monopoly (public) for another (private). The issue is that certain services have been monopolized by the government via the law. Services aren't magically better when performed by private companies. They are better in the free market because there is competition and no one can force you do to one thing or the other. Government and the services it has privatized are still just monopolies.
More than likely, any corporation that threatened to send men with guns to kick in your front door would quickly go out of business. Sending guns to kick in doors is expensive business and the government is the only institution that is funded by involuntary "customers". Don't confuse corporations with business. Corporations are creations of government and as such they draw much of their power from that unholy alliance.
I think it's time to retire the "In Soviet Russia..." comments and replace them with "In Democratic America..." No, really...
an ever-shrinking number of companies leveraging their ever-increasing power to charge more and more for less and less
You just described a mixed economy having a central bank that controls the money supply, not capitalism. The United States has never had capitalism, only a mixed economy. This leads always to monopolies and corporate manipulation with government. Please explain how a corporation could establish itself as a monopoly without the legal use of force, i.e. government. Without government support, no company would be safe from competition. I'm wrong you say? Please provide an example of a corporation that became a "monopoly", provided a shitty product, and charged a high price for it.
It's not that the market is a bad thing or that capitalism is unworkable, it's just that it's not a magical cornucopia.
Supporters of true laissez faire don't claim that it is magical. Contrast that with supporters of state control and increased regulation. To them, the government can fix anything.
Whenever I hear "the government ruins everything" I know that I'm hearing ideology, not reality. The people saying such things take so many of the regulations, which make this country run smoothly, for granted.
Whenever I hear "the government makes this country run smoothly", I know that I'm hearing ideology, not reality. The government is by its very nature and definition an institution of criminals that accomplishes everything it does by force and coercion. In a democratic nation, just because 51% of the population chooses something, it does not mean it is justified to FORCE the other 49% into doing it. Likewise, the 51% majority likely will not even get what they vote for anyway, as is seen with the current and previous American administrations. You may remember that GW Bush campaigned on a non-interventionist foreign policy.
All of the agencies you have listed have nothing to do with the quality of food, worker safety, air travel, highway safety, and building codes - those things are all improved only by the actions of free individuals on the market. While companies may be compelled by government "standards", the real driving force behind any increase of quality is due to competition. Company A, no matter how large must, must maintain a certain level of quality if it does not want to risk losing market share to smaller, better companies in the same sector. The belief that without government constraints, all production would be rubbish or food poisonous, etc. is ludicrous. On the contrary, look at any country that has had increased controls and you will see less production at a lower quality, along with a worse standard of living.
In a free market, no company can escape from competition. Coercive monopolies are not possible without government policy. Without the force of government, no company has the power to force anyone and can always be out maneuvered.
(1) He doesn't have that authority (neither does the Congress) and (2) it violates the tenth amendment.
Sure, the government pays for health care, but that money doesn't have to then come out of your pocket or your company's pocket.
And where exactly are you suggesting the government gets its money from if not from corporate and individual citizens? (Printing and borrowing aside since they only defer the responsibility temporarily)
How about a YouTube channel for some transparency into the workings of the Federal Reserve? Yea, that's what I thought...
You didn't RTFB, did you?
Thank you Richard.
You're not supposed to tell students about JCL until AFTER you _hire_ them. Don't want to scare them off too early.
No no, you've got it all wrong. It means that Cessnas now run Linux.
I'm not sure that hardware profit margins are ever as large as software ones. It seems like it would be a smart move for Apple to license OS X to x86 OEM vendors like Dell, HP, etc. If not now, maybe in the near future when these guys begin to feel more and more betrayed by Microsoft (XBox 360). If Microsoft wants to bail out on their vendors, the vendors should preempt Microsoft and start licensing OS X, assuming Apple would allow it. Seems like it would be a good business more for them, but who knows.
Then there's always 'C' for Correct. Maybe "giving your fellow man your time, energy and expertise over the internet" (or over other means) is the CORRECT thing to do. Not correct in the sense that any religious character or figurehead would like or would have liked it or promoted it, but correct in the sense that it ultimately produces the BEST results, both industrially/for society and for individuals' own happiness. I suppose this falls back on the utopian communist concept in some respects, namely, a world where everyone does what is best and beneficial for all, and therefore for themselves.
Maybe what happened to the Mozilla Suite needs to happen to OpenOffice? No doubt this would be a huge undertaking, but I wonder how plausible it would be to componentize OpenOffice? Instead of OpenOffice.org Writer, how about Writerfox, or BirdWriter, or .... um... ThunderWriter...
What happens when you put two on a dual processor mobo? Your Oracle licensing will quadruple instead of just double. (yea yea, redundant)
Maybe it's just me, but this beta search engine page renders better in Firefox than in IE. What browser are MS's devs using for their testing?
"-- A University of Florida scientist has created a living "brain" of cultured rat cells that now controls an F-22 fighter jet flight simulator." Rat pilots controlling the skies eh? Maybe they can get some of these rats to fill in the air traffic control job openings in the United States. Then after that, maybe we could use some of them in government agencies like the FAA... oh wait, we already have that.
It's pretty funny how any post opposing this judge's decision is marked as troll or flamebait... hmmm. Fair and balanced? Differing views? Nope! Trolls!
Looks like I can vote at as many places as I can drive to on November 2! Good thing you don't have to provide evidence of citizenship in Ohio (or most other states). Honestly though, why do some people think it's a good thing to allow anyone to just walk into the polls and vote without I.D., evidence that they live in that precinct, etc.? Feeling disenfranchised? Just drive up to Ohio and vote as many times as you want! Let that stress out! phew...
So which version number is it? Java 2, Java 1.5, or Java 5? Someone should teach these guys to count before they start coding!
Going with the different laws of physics idea, also don't forget the TIME itself is subject to the laws of physics in our universe as well. Just because we PERCEIVE a 10 year time period to have passed (in our simulation world), that time period could very well have been 1 second in the world of the simulation machine we are running on. The reverse is also true. One second in the simulation world could have taken 10 billion years to compute, it's just what we perceive. If you look at it that way, any discussion of computer power/speed gets completely thrown out the window. This way, the simulation would be much like the Level 4 multiverse in the parallel universes article posted here a few weeks ago. The physical laws that we are bound to exist and are defined in a completely different environment (or no environment at all, in the case of the Level 4 multiverse where they exist outside of space/time in general). From this, you could assume that anything, no matter how complex, could be computed in what seems like an instant to us, since we are bound to the laws of the "program", aka the matrix could be run on an 8086 :)
FYI -- it's Cornucopiae Sorry, couldn't help myself :)
"The glamour, the influence, the youth, the hipness, the hookers, the drugs -- gone." Regardless of how music is distributed, rather it be by record labels or by bootlegged mp3's, the music and its makers will still be influencial on other people. If you have a CD or if you have mp3's, that doesnt change your mind on what you think of an artist or if you'd like to see them play live.