Even if you have knowledge in some field and have confirmed the page correct at the time you linked to it or cited it, I could since have vandalized or added an incorrect statement the page you linked to or cited, and so could hundreds of millions of other Internet users;...
Only if you didn't link/cite the page properly. There's a reason for the "Permanent link" and "Cite this page" links in the sidebar; if you make use of them then anyone following your link, or looking up your citation, will see the same version of the page that you did.
This is not to say that Wikipedia -- or any encyclopedia -- is suitable as a primary reference, but the specific complaint about its volatility is at best uninformed.
I have some news for you: you can be poor and make above 1xFPL.
Where would you draw the line? The term is completely subjective; to someone living under an oppressive dictatorship a penniless vagrant in the U.S. may be "rich", and yet the average citizen might reasonably consider that same vagrant "poor". The FPL is at least a defined term, although there is room for debate over the meaning of "necessities."
I already said that I don't completely agree with the "FairTax" proposal. I also don't agree with the concept of so-called "progressive" taxation. You rightly object to implications of the "FairTax" name; the same applies to the whole "regressive"/"progressive" naming scheme. There's nothing inherently good about transferring money from high-income to low-income groups -- unless, of course, one happens to be in the low-income group oneself.
If the point is fairness, as you seem to be implying, then IMHO a "regressive" tax scale would be better. I think one could argue for the rich being less of a burden on the government, and thus for a decreasing absolute tax scale, but I'd settle for somewhere between a flat absolute tax and a constant percentage of income. This is assuming total spending equal to total tax revenues, with both tending toward zero.
You've somehow managed to completely overlook this bit from you own quote:
with a prebate to avoid screwing over the poor
The "FairTax" group is essentially proposing that the zero-point for their sales tax be placed at the poverty income level. Their "prebate" cancels out the sales taxes up to the estimated expenses for a poverty-level household. For yearly taxable expenses below the poverty line there is a small net handout; above the poverty line the effective sales tax rate asymptotically approaches the per-transaction rate. Thus the "poor people" (presumably poverty-level and below) pay no federal taxes at all under this system.
This comment should not be taken as an endorsement of the "FairTax" system.
The previous disclaimer should not be taken as an endorsement of the status quo.
Since the density of primes is higher than the density of squares, a number that is not divisible by anything less than its root will probably not have an integer root.
It's not a matter of probability. If a number N is not prime then it must have one or more pairs of integer divisors A and B such that (1 < A <= B < N) and (A * B = N). If (B >= sqrt(N)) then ((N / B) < sqrt(N)). (A = (N / B)), so (A <= sqrt(N)). Thus the lesser divisor in the pair can be no greater than sqrt(N); if there is no integer divisor between two and floor(sqrt(N)), inclusive, then N must be prime.
While the goal is as little regulation as possible, it is not anarchy. Only what level of regulation is required to achieve the ideal free market is debatable, not whether there should be regulation at all. Many people confuse free market above with strict lassez-faire [wikipedia.org], which is what you are describing.
From the French diction first used by the eighteenth century physiocrats as an injunction against government interference with trade, it became used as a synonym for strict free market economics.
While the term "free market" has many interpretations, some of which tend not to place very much emphasis on the "free" part of the term, it is perfectly valid to refer to a laissez-fair market as a free market.
A regulation is a legal restriction promulgated by government administrative agencies through rulemaking supported by a threat of sanction or a fine.
One's interpretation of this likely varies depending on whether on comes from a common law or civil law background, but within the context of the common law -- on which many free market principles are based -- this can only refer to interference in voluntary (non-aggressive, non-fraudulent) transactions between two or more parties. The common-law concepts of restitution for damage caused, and retribution for intentional harm, deal exclusively with non-voluntary interactions and are thus separate from regulations. Given this clear separation it is possible to argue against all forms of regulation and yet maintain the concept of personal responsibility for the effects one's actions have on others.
I had a nice long reply almost ready, but Firefox crashed before I could submit it. Rather than re-write it, I'm just going to say that I believe that (a) an unfettered free market[1] tends toward the optimum possible allocation of resources[2]; and (b) the unfettered free market is, more importantly, the only system which does not itself depend on the presence of aggression[3] to function. For whatever reasons you probably disagree with (a) and don't care about (b), so really the gulf between our basic principles is much too great for there to be any purpose in debating our respective conclusions at such a high level. I will address this point, however:
the USPS doesn't have any legal monopoly
because it is clearly incorrect. "The USPS holds a statutory monopoly on non-urgent First Class Mail, outbound U.S. international letters as well [as] the exclusive right to put mail in private mailboxes, as described in the Private Express Statutes" (Source). More information is available on the Private Express Statutes.
[1] A market system in which no aggression[3] is tolerated.
[2] Not a perfect allocation, which is only possible given perfect knowledge of the present and future, but no other system could guarantee better.
[3] Aggression is the use of force, or threat thereof, against a non-aggressor.
On the contrary. As with any government agency, private industry should be free to compete. Once no one uses the government agency, it can be scaled back/eliminated. But until then, what's wrong with the government supplying a little socially conscious competition?
(1) How does your government-run program ensure that resources aren't being wasted providing a level of service which is less urgently demanded than the other things those resources could have been expended on? In private industry this is accomplished by the profit motive, which government organizations don't have.
(2) How, exactly, do you expect private industry to compete with an organization that trivially get laws passed in its favor (see also: the USPS's monopoly on first-class letter delivery), which can get unlimited "risk-free" loans by virtue of being backed by taxation, and which has no obligation to pay back even the principle, much less the interest, on its start-up costs? Much less if the government chooses to run it at a loss, making up the balance in taxes or inflation.
The only way you can reasonably talk about a government spin-off organization actually competing against private industry is if that organization receives no support from the government at all, whether in start-up costs, operational costs, special laws, loan backing (risk) -- anything which transfers cost or risk to the taxpayers, or legally differentiates the organization from its private competitors. At that point you might as well just privatize it completely.
On the other hand, if I were planning to pay for the music, but downloaded it instead, I have denied income to the RIAA and the artist.... This lack of sympathy doesn't make the denial of income any less wrong; just more understandable.
Apply the same reasoning to this situation as you did elsewhere. You have indeed "denied income" to the RIAA, but that is not the same thing as harming them. For example, if you started up a competing label then you have "denied income" to the RIAA's member labels by getting some people to buy from you instead of them. Invalidating someone else's future expectations, however well or badly founded, is not wrong per se; it can contribute to one's liability, but only if it is the result of actual harm. For example, if you cripple someone you can become liable for their future income, but if you instead out-compete them and are awarded their job you own them nothing, despite having denied them the same amount of future income.
Nope, sorry. Lightning Rods attract electrical current, thereby drawing it away from other structures that would be damaged by it.
They do both. As the storm builds up the lightning rods help to diffuse the charge. This is one reason why they have sharp ends; electrons leave a charged conductor more readily at points of higher curvature. The pathway thus created then becomes the preferred (low-resistance) route to ground in the event of an actual lightning strike.
And in your world courts take no time at all? If your case takes ten years and the health bill of the poor kid you nearly damned killed, costs 1000000$ then no normal being on earth is going to be able to pay without going into bankruptcy.
Clearly the case will take a certain amount of time to try, but "ten years" and "$1,000,000" are both gross exaggeration compared to the majority of cases. Also, what makes you think it would take any less time to determine blame when mandatory insurance is involved? If it's not immediately obvious -- in which case a court ruling would take no time at all -- then they're not going to pay up until a court says their client was responsible.
I've known a guy who now is in a wheelchair. His parents had to pay all his expenses for years until finally the courts decided that the other guy really really was at fault.
Even assuming that this (entirely unsubstantiated) anecdote has some basis in fact, this is hardly a typical case. Moreover, as I pointed out above, the situation would not be improved merely by substituting an insurance agency in place of the individual defendant; you would still have to wait for a ruling that the other party "really really was at fault".
Except sometimes people are lowlives and they not only don't have the money to cover the damages, but they can't even earn it in a timeframe that works for the victim's medical needs.
That's just as true for other potential sources of liability as for automobile-related risks, and yet insurance is only mandatory for driving an automobile. Why not be consistent for a change?
If you can't afford [to cover any potential injury], you can't afford to drive.
One could just as easily argue that if you can't afford the risk of being injured beyond the other party's ability to pay then you can't afford to drive.
If the roads were privately owned I would unhesitatingly uphold your right to demand that the owner somehow guarantee repayment in the event of an accident. The owner could then decide whether your custom is worth the cost of implementing your demands. However, this is not the case, and those who are excluded from using the roads are still forced to pay for them. To exclude someone from using the roads that they are made to pay for would compound the obvious injustice of public funding with an unconscionable lack of fairness.
WoW Glider works by copying the entire game into memory.
However, as received by the player, it does not contain any of the WoW code. If there is any derivative work here it isn't created until the player uses this WoW Glider program, in combination with the player's own copy of the game, to create a combined in-memory executable. Ergo, if Blizzard wants to sue someone over creating an unauthorized derivative work they should be suing the players that use this mod -- not that I think they would succeed, given a competent judge, since the combined work is not being distributed. Likewise, any ToS violation should be the player's responsibility, since it was the player, not the maker of this program, who agreed to abide by the terms of service.
You are not required to answer any other question on the census, either.
Unfortunately not true, look at 13 USC 221, which is the current controlling law for the census.
I can't believe they got away with that. Looking over the text of Title 13 from your link, there don't appear to be any restrictions on the extent of the questions in the census. The government could turn this into a major money-grab simply by making the census so long -- or invasive -- that no one is willing to complete it. Allowing for under-18s and the minority of citizens with way too much time on their hands, at $100 each they could easily extort over $20 billion just in fines, all at the whim of the Secretary of Commerce.
The concept of liability insurance is to make sure that innocents are spared from paying for the idiocy or recklessness of others. If you find it okay, that damage caused by you should be paid off by others..., then your system is golden....
I take it there are no courts on your planet? Liability insurance is neither necessary nor sufficient to hold people responsible for their "idiocy or recklessness". If someone injures you, regardless of whether the injury is vehicle-related, then you sue for reparations (presuming they don't offer to cover the damages voluntarily). If they don't have sufficient assets to cover the damages then a portion of their income is turned over to the victim until the debt is repaid. This is how it already works (at least on this planet) for everything other than automobile accidents. With mandatory liability insurance we basically spread the cost of recklessness equally across all drivers, regardless of how safe or reckless they are; this is hardly the way to encourage safe driving practices.
Apparently, you don't have satellite radio if you think the sound quality is higher.
Perhaps I should have said "consistent quality". The quality of terrestrial radio can be quite good in ideal conditions, but it can also be quite bad depending on everything from the transmitter power to the weather. In my experience there are usually only a few really clear stations in any given area, and even they tend to get overrun by static during the occasional storm. I suppose that might be avoided if you happen to live within sight of the transmission tower,at least for FM, but most people don't.
You mention "others may not find terrestrial radio to be even a suitable substitute". How many of them are there?
Why should that matter? The point was that the "monopoly" label is applied in a subjective fashion, and that there is no objective division of markets that is not either all-inclusive or specific to individual service providers. Any threshold for a consensus would be just as arbitrary.
No, it can't be said that a single satellite radio company would result in a market monopoly because their product is comparable and interchangeable with AM/FM radio.
Only within certain arbitrary limits. There are various attributes -- e.g. higher sound quality, access to the same channels from anywhere -- of satellite radio which are not found in terrestrial broadcasts. You may not consider these attributes important, but others may not find terrestrial radio to be even a suitable substitute, much less "interchangeable". Going the other way, there are elements of terrestrial radio which are not present in satellite broadcasts, such as local news and events. Personally, I only listen to radio for the music, so a CD or MP3 player would be a perfectly adequate alternative to either.
... if Sirius-XM were to hike their prices up, consumers would have a choice to revert to "conventional" radio.
And if there were no "'conventional' radio" they could still choose other sources for their daily dose of music and news, even if that ultimately means making their own music and researching local events directly. There are always alternatives to any service.
People would not be able to accomplish the same actions using bicycles or motorcycles, hence it would be a market monopoly.
That, too, is quite subjective. Just about anything one might routinely wish to do with a car can be accomplished with a bicycle or motorcycle, just at a higher opportunity cost (i.e. more time, more work, etc.). There are also other alternatives besides bicycles or motorcycles, such as public transportation. Again, it's all in how you define the market: are we talking about the market for cars, or the market for transportation? Even this ignores the larger-scale alternatives, such as choosing to live closer to one's workplace and the commercial districts one frequents, thus reducing the need for transportation in general. One could say that urban housing competes with automobile ownership, placing them in a single -- very broad -- market.
It's all got to do with percentage market share. If you look at broadcast and satellite market as a whole, if both XM and Sirius had say 40% or ever 20% of that market each, then no they wouldn't be permitted to merge. Letting XM and Sirius merge at this point does not reduce choice as the percentage market share is too tiny.
Why stop at just broadcast and satellite radio? Why not talk about the "background entertainment and current events" market as a whole, of which XM and Sirius are an even smaller part competing against CDs, iTMS, Google News, etc.? On the other hand, why shouldn't their combined grasp of the satellite radio market be relevant? The whole concept of antitrust is far too subjective; it all depends on how narrowly one defines the market. By some definitions everyone has a monopoly; by others no one does.
Even if one could come up with some ethical justification for interfering in this merger -- which I have yet to see -- the law can hardly be considered objective, or even consistently applied.
4. Implement some kind of smart scheduling, so every user gets an equal chance at their share of bandwidth. So in my small neighbourhood ISP example, you'd see the same 2.5 mbit/s at peak hour regardless of whether you have 1 connection open or 100.
Now of course, the only honest solutions are #1 and #2, take your pick which you prefer.
What's so dishonest about #4? As a DSL customer (not an ISP) that approach seems perfectly reasonable to me, so long as the ISP is upfront about the average bandwidth that can be expected and not just the peak. I'd much prefer a decent protocol-agnostic load balancing system to bandwidth caps, hidden or otherwise, or the much higher prices that would result from eliminating "overselling". Bonus points if they only throttle connections to their upstream provider(s), as opposed to their own local caches (e.g. Akamai) and other local customers.
I think the per-MB rate idea has merit as well, particularly if different rates can be set for low-latency vs. bulk data (QoS to be set on the client side). Unfortunately, as you said, it would probably be rather unpopular at first, even though it's likely to be less expensive for most users than unmetered bandwidth. There would need to be some way of blocking packets upstream of the ISP, however, so that the customer doesn't get charged for unsolicited port scans and the like.
You whole theory ignores the inside information that the one client has that others do not. If everyone had the same information, most people would buy and sell in the same manner as the person with the inside information.
This is a common misconception, but the problem with insider trading is not that is is somehow "unfair" to competing investors. In a game it makes sense to place everyone on a "level playing field", because it benefits all the players; the better players get a real challenge, and the worse players have a chance at winning. The market, however, is not a game, and the concept of fairness has no place in it.
The real problem with insider trading is that it places the shareholders' agents -- the managers of the company -- in a position to use information acquired in the course of their duties as managers in a manner detrimental to the shareholders they supposedly represent. It is a conflict of interest, but not the one you described.
You can choose not to have broadband. You can't choose to not pay taxes.
Sure you can choose not to pay taxes -- just don't have any income. </sarcasm>
The involuntary part of taxation is that both you and the other party agree to the exchange -- work for money, or money for broadband, etc. -- but some third party barges in and uses force to block the exchange unless they get their cut. The fact that you could choose not to attempt the trade in the first place does not render the tax voluntary.
I'm fairly sure the reason Magnatune et al. only offer the CC "no commercial use" license is that they derive a significant portion of their revenue from their 50% cut of any commercial licensing fees. BY-SA licensing would offer them very little as no one would need to pay extra for commercial licenses.
Slashdot Mirror
Only if you didn't link/cite the page properly. There's a reason for the "Permanent link" and "Cite this page" links in the sidebar; if you make use of them then anyone following your link, or looking up your citation, will see the same version of the page that you did.
This is not to say that Wikipedia -- or any encyclopedia -- is suitable as a primary reference, but the specific complaint about its volatility is at best uninformed.
Where would you draw the line? The term is completely subjective; to someone living under an oppressive dictatorship a penniless vagrant in the U.S. may be "rich", and yet the average citizen might reasonably consider that same vagrant "poor". The FPL is at least a defined term, although there is room for debate over the meaning of "necessities."
I already said that I don't completely agree with the "FairTax" proposal. I also don't agree with the concept of so-called "progressive" taxation. You rightly object to implications of the "FairTax" name; the same applies to the whole "regressive"/"progressive" naming scheme. There's nothing inherently good about transferring money from high-income to low-income groups -- unless, of course, one happens to be in the low-income group oneself.
If the point is fairness, as you seem to be implying, then IMHO a "regressive" tax scale would be better. I think one could argue for the rich being less of a burden on the government, and thus for a decreasing absolute tax scale, but I'd settle for somewhere between a flat absolute tax and a constant percentage of income. This is assuming total spending equal to total tax revenues, with both tending toward zero.
You've somehow managed to completely overlook this bit from you own quote:
The "FairTax" group is essentially proposing that the zero-point for their sales tax be placed at the poverty income level. Their "prebate" cancels out the sales taxes up to the estimated expenses for a poverty-level household. For yearly taxable expenses below the poverty line there is a small net handout; above the poverty line the effective sales tax rate asymptotically approaches the per-transaction rate. Thus the "poor people" (presumably poverty-level and below) pay no federal taxes at all under this system.
This comment should not be taken as an endorsement of the "FairTax" system.
The previous disclaimer should not be taken as an endorsement of the status quo.
It's not a matter of probability. If a number N is not prime then it must have one or more pairs of integer divisors A and B such that (1 < A <= B < N) and (A * B = N). If (B >= sqrt(N)) then ((N / B) < sqrt(N)). (A = (N / B)), so (A <= sqrt(N)). Thus the lesser divisor in the pair can be no greater than sqrt(N); if there is no integer divisor between two and floor(sqrt(N)), inclusive, then N must be prime.
Also the people who can't afford (as much of) the product due to the costs of advertising it.
Simple: They don't.
From the article on Laissez-faire:
While the term "free market" has many interpretations, some of which tend not to place very much emphasis on the "free" part of the term, it is perfectly valid to refer to a laissez-fair market as a free market.
From the article on regulation:
One's interpretation of this likely varies depending on whether on comes from a common law or civil law background, but within the context of the common law -- on which many free market principles are based -- this can only refer to interference in voluntary (non-aggressive, non-fraudulent) transactions between two or more parties. The common-law concepts of restitution for damage caused, and retribution for intentional harm, deal exclusively with non-voluntary interactions and are thus separate from regulations. Given this clear separation it is possible to argue against all forms of regulation and yet maintain the concept of personal responsibility for the effects one's actions have on others.
I had a nice long reply almost ready, but Firefox crashed before I could submit it. Rather than re-write it, I'm just going to say that I believe that (a) an unfettered free market[1] tends toward the optimum possible allocation of resources[2]; and (b) the unfettered free market is, more importantly, the only system which does not itself depend on the presence of aggression[3] to function. For whatever reasons you probably disagree with (a) and don't care about (b), so really the gulf between our basic principles is much too great for there to be any purpose in debating our respective conclusions at such a high level. I will address this point, however:
because it is clearly incorrect. "The USPS holds a statutory monopoly on non-urgent First Class Mail, outbound U.S. international letters as well [as] the exclusive right to put mail in private mailboxes, as described in the Private Express Statutes" (Source). More information is available on the Private Express Statutes.
[1] A market system in which no aggression[3] is tolerated.
[2] Not a perfect allocation, which is only possible given perfect knowledge of the present and future, but no other system could guarantee better.
[3] Aggression is the use of force, or threat thereof, against a non-aggressor.
(1) How does your government-run program ensure that resources aren't being wasted providing a level of service which is less urgently demanded than the other things those resources could have been expended on? In private industry this is accomplished by the profit motive, which government organizations don't have.
(2) How, exactly, do you expect private industry to compete with an organization that trivially get laws passed in its favor (see also: the USPS's monopoly on first-class letter delivery), which can get unlimited "risk-free" loans by virtue of being backed by taxation, and which has no obligation to pay back even the principle, much less the interest, on its start-up costs? Much less if the government chooses to run it at a loss, making up the balance in taxes or inflation.
The only way you can reasonably talk about a government spin-off organization actually competing against private industry is if that organization receives no support from the government at all, whether in start-up costs, operational costs, special laws, loan backing (risk) -- anything which transfers cost or risk to the taxpayers, or legally differentiates the organization from its private competitors. At that point you might as well just privatize it completely.
Apply the same reasoning to this situation as you did elsewhere. You have indeed "denied income" to the RIAA, but that is not the same thing as harming them. For example, if you started up a competing label then you have "denied income" to the RIAA's member labels by getting some people to buy from you instead of them. Invalidating someone else's future expectations, however well or badly founded, is not wrong per se; it can contribute to one's liability, but only if it is the result of actual harm. For example, if you cripple someone you can become liable for their future income, but if you instead out-compete them and are awarded their job you own them nothing, despite having denied them the same amount of future income.
They do both. As the storm builds up the lightning rods help to diffuse the charge. This is one reason why they have sharp ends; electrons leave a charged conductor more readily at points of higher curvature. The pathway thus created then becomes the preferred (low-resistance) route to ground in the event of an actual lightning strike.
Clearly the case will take a certain amount of time to try, but "ten years" and "$1,000,000" are both gross exaggeration compared to the majority of cases. Also, what makes you think it would take any less time to determine blame when mandatory insurance is involved? If it's not immediately obvious -- in which case a court ruling would take no time at all -- then they're not going to pay up until a court says their client was responsible.
Even assuming that this (entirely unsubstantiated) anecdote has some basis in fact, this is hardly a typical case. Moreover, as I pointed out above, the situation would not be improved merely by substituting an insurance agency in place of the individual defendant; you would still have to wait for a ruling that the other party "really really was at fault".
That's just as true for other potential sources of liability as for automobile-related risks, and yet insurance is only mandatory for driving an automobile. Why not be consistent for a change?
One could just as easily argue that if you can't afford the risk of being injured beyond the other party's ability to pay then you can't afford to drive.
If the roads were privately owned I would unhesitatingly uphold your right to demand that the owner somehow guarantee repayment in the event of an accident. The owner could then decide whether your custom is worth the cost of implementing your demands. However, this is not the case, and those who are excluded from using the roads are still forced to pay for them. To exclude someone from using the roads that they are made to pay for would compound the obvious injustice of public funding with an unconscionable lack of fairness.
However, as received by the player, it does not contain any of the WoW code. If there is any derivative work here it isn't created until the player uses this WoW Glider program, in combination with the player's own copy of the game, to create a combined in-memory executable. Ergo, if Blizzard wants to sue someone over creating an unauthorized derivative work they should be suing the players that use this mod -- not that I think they would succeed, given a competent judge, since the combined work is not being distributed. Likewise, any ToS violation should be the player's responsibility, since it was the player, not the maker of this program, who agreed to abide by the terms of service.
I can't believe they got away with that. Looking over the text of Title 13 from your link, there don't appear to be any restrictions on the extent of the questions in the census. The government could turn this into a major money-grab simply by making the census so long -- or invasive -- that no one is willing to complete it. Allowing for under-18s and the minority of citizens with way too much time on their hands, at $100 each they could easily extort over $20 billion just in fines, all at the whim of the Secretary of Commerce.
I take it there are no courts on your planet? Liability insurance is neither necessary nor sufficient to hold people responsible for their "idiocy or recklessness". If someone injures you, regardless of whether the injury is vehicle-related, then you sue for reparations (presuming they don't offer to cover the damages voluntarily). If they don't have sufficient assets to cover the damages then a portion of their income is turned over to the victim until the debt is repaid. This is how it already works (at least on this planet) for everything other than automobile accidents. With mandatory liability insurance we basically spread the cost of recklessness equally across all drivers, regardless of how safe or reckless they are; this is hardly the way to encourage safe driving practices.
Perhaps I should have said "consistent quality". The quality of terrestrial radio can be quite good in ideal conditions, but it can also be quite bad depending on everything from the transmitter power to the weather. In my experience there are usually only a few really clear stations in any given area, and even they tend to get overrun by static during the occasional storm. I suppose that might be avoided if you happen to live within sight of the transmission tower,at least for FM, but most people don't.
Why should that matter? The point was that the "monopoly" label is applied in a subjective fashion, and that there is no objective division of markets that is not either all-inclusive or specific to individual service providers. Any threshold for a consensus would be just as arbitrary.
Only within certain arbitrary limits. There are various attributes -- e.g. higher sound quality, access to the same channels from anywhere -- of satellite radio which are not found in terrestrial broadcasts. You may not consider these attributes important, but others may not find terrestrial radio to be even a suitable substitute, much less "interchangeable". Going the other way, there are elements of terrestrial radio which are not present in satellite broadcasts, such as local news and events. Personally, I only listen to radio for the music, so a CD or MP3 player would be a perfectly adequate alternative to either.
And if there were no "'conventional' radio" they could still choose other sources for their daily dose of music and news, even if that ultimately means making their own music and researching local events directly. There are always alternatives to any service.
That, too, is quite subjective. Just about anything one might routinely wish to do with a car can be accomplished with a bicycle or motorcycle, just at a higher opportunity cost (i.e. more time, more work, etc.). There are also other alternatives besides bicycles or motorcycles, such as public transportation. Again, it's all in how you define the market: are we talking about the market for cars, or the market for transportation? Even this ignores the larger-scale alternatives, such as choosing to live closer to one's workplace and the commercial districts one frequents, thus reducing the need for transportation in general. One could say that urban housing competes with automobile ownership, placing them in a single -- very broad -- market.
Why stop at just broadcast and satellite radio? Why not talk about the "background entertainment and current events" market as a whole, of which XM and Sirius are an even smaller part competing against CDs, iTMS, Google News, etc.? On the other hand, why shouldn't their combined grasp of the satellite radio market be relevant? The whole concept of antitrust is far too subjective; it all depends on how narrowly one defines the market. By some definitions everyone has a monopoly; by others no one does.
Even if one could come up with some ethical justification for interfering in this merger -- which I have yet to see -- the law can hardly be considered objective, or even consistently applied.
What's so dishonest about #4? As a DSL customer (not an ISP) that approach seems perfectly reasonable to me, so long as the ISP is upfront about the average bandwidth that can be expected and not just the peak. I'd much prefer a decent protocol-agnostic load balancing system to bandwidth caps, hidden or otherwise, or the much higher prices that would result from eliminating "overselling". Bonus points if they only throttle connections to their upstream provider(s), as opposed to their own local caches (e.g. Akamai) and other local customers.
I think the per-MB rate idea has merit as well, particularly if different rates can be set for low-latency vs. bulk data (QoS to be set on the client side). Unfortunately, as you said, it would probably be rather unpopular at first, even though it's likely to be less expensive for most users than unmetered bandwidth. There would need to be some way of blocking packets upstream of the ISP, however, so that the customer doesn't get charged for unsolicited port scans and the like.
There's no such thing as "uncompressed MPEG-2 video". MPEG-2 is a video compression format; ergo, all MPEG-2 video is compressed to some degree.
This is a common misconception, but the problem with insider trading is not that is is somehow "unfair" to competing investors. In a game it makes sense to place everyone on a "level playing field", because it benefits all the players; the better players get a real challenge, and the worse players have a chance at winning. The market, however, is not a game, and the concept of fairness has no place in it.
The real problem with insider trading is that it places the shareholders' agents -- the managers of the company -- in a position to use information acquired in the course of their duties as managers in a manner detrimental to the shareholders they supposedly represent. It is a conflict of interest, but not the one you described.
Sure you can choose not to pay taxes -- just don't have any income. </sarcasm>
The involuntary part of taxation is that both you and the other party agree to the exchange -- work for money, or money for broadband, etc. -- but some third party barges in and uses force to block the exchange unless they get their cut. The fact that you could choose not to attempt the trade in the first place does not render the tax voluntary.
I'm fairly sure the reason Magnatune et al. only offer the CC "no commercial use" license is that they derive a significant portion of their revenue from their 50% cut of any commercial licensing fees. BY-SA licensing would offer them very little as no one would need to pay extra for commercial licenses.
Including, of course, the principle that "there are limits on everything"?