So you think we should be selling vodka and cigs to 7th graders?
Obviously not. I simply don't think you should be prohibited from doing so. You can still choose not to do so on your own, of course, and I think most decent people would make that choice.
The money gets passed on. Think of it like momentum. I buy a CD, artist gets their $0.50. I sell the CD to a friend, artist doesn't get a cut but now I have another $9 to spend on another CD.
Actually, the existence of a second-hand market is part of what allows them to sell the CD for $9 (or whatever) in the first place -- people will spend more up front if they believe they can get some of it back later. The value of the used CD is factored in to the price of the new ones.
Compare this to only downloading. I buy a CD, artist gets their $0.50. I upload the music and half a million people get the song; artist gets nothing, I never get an additional cent to buy another CD.
Going by your original logic, half a million people now have an extra $9+ to buy another CD. This would seem to be an improvement from the "available money" point-of-view.
It's not nearly that simple. Individuals are not entirely responsible for what happens to them, a big part of it is circumstances.
So you're saying that the circumstances are responsible? Circumstances don't act or plan. You can't sue circumstances when things go wrong. When an individual's actions or plans run contrary to what actually happens (i.e. the way the universe is) the only one responsible for that outcome must be the individual. That's not an assignment of blame; sometimes, as you point out, the circumstances are simply beyond one's ability to control. Just the same, no one but the individual can be held responsible for the outcome, unless that other person actively contributed to it.
. . . who's to say the owners of these resources, or the people with lots of money, got to that position through entirely fair means that were open to others? What of the person who makes high-pressure business deals to get richer, or gets control over resources by underrepresenting their value to people or municipalities who are desperate for the cash? Business is all about persuasion--it's no more "pure" than government.
Who cares, so long as these deals were all voluntary on both sides? The owners had the right to make any offer they wished; the sellers had the right to refuse, and chose not to. Provided the sellers weren't threatened into agreeing, and neither side was defrauding the other, what's the problem?
Moreover, ownership is a social construct. People are granted ownership rights because society believes it's in everyone's best interest.
False. Property rights exist because resources are scarce. Someone has to choose how those resources will be used, and the person with the right to make that choice is (by definition) the property owner. You cannot eliminate the role of ownership; rather, your only options are to respect the existing ownership or assume that ownership yourself, an act commonly known as theft. Rightful ownership can be assigned either by a system similar to common law -- homesteading and contractual transfer -- or by some other, more arbitrary, method, such as the "all property belongs to 'society' (i.e. the government)" position you seem to endorse. The former mechanism has the distinct advantage of not granting any one individual or group more rights than another. Any other mechanism divides the world into masters and slaves, those with rights and those without.
Well, if you were willing to pay for it you could probably get a direct fiber or T1 connection no matter how far out of town you were. (Or you could pay them to put a DSLAM in range of your house, which would probably be a bit more cost-effective.) Like I said, though, matching the level of service you'd get in town with a regular cable or DSL connection would cost a lot more than $100/month.
Who cares about ping times anyway? That's only important for losers who spend all their time playing online games. If I want to play a game, I'll start up MAME and play Pac-Man or something.
Well, for starters a 500ms ping time would add about 1/4 to 2/5 seconds to the time required to load every object on every web page. For pages with many objects (images, scripts, CSS, Flash, etc.) that can add up fast. Additionally, ping times eat into the TCP acknowledgement windows, which limits the total bandwidth you can get on any one TCP stream (download or upload). It also tends to rule out any attempt to replace expensive landline calls with VoIP, since most people have a hard time holding a conversation with half-second delays interspersed throughout.
I'm sure the $50 a month this costs over my current cable modem service is far more than made up by the savings in other cost-of-living expenses (house cost, taxes, etc.).
Perhaps, but remember that you're not getting cable-modem-level service for that extra $50/month. Matching the service available to you in the city (whether DSL or cable) would cost a lot more than $100/month.
I wouldn't; so-called "free market" ideology has always been about defining strong property rights, even in things which have previously not been considered individual tradable property, so that they can be commercialized and traded on the market.
No, "free market" ideology is only "about" defining property rights in things that are inherently rivalrous. Physical property, and certain forms of intangibles, are rivalrous; ideas (and information in general) are not.
Property rights are properly minimal, not maximal. You have property rights because, for certain types of objects, someone must decide how they will be used, because they can't be used to serve unlimited different ends simultaneously. The role of property owner is inherent in the nature of the object. When there is no need for such a decision-maker (e.g. with abstract ideas, information) there is no need for property rights.
The easiest way to demonstrate the difference is to explore the results of eliminating property rights. When it comes to physical property you find that you can't -- someone still has to decide how it will be used. Whoever ends up getting their way is the effective property owner. With ideas things are different; there is no conflict, because everyone can use the idea in their own way without affecting anyone else's use.
Are you kidding? Have you seen some of these satellite data plans? $100/month (plus $100 up front) for download rates that barely meet broadband speeds, awful upload ratios, and ping times in excess of 500ms? They have a bit of a speed advantage over dial-up, to be sure, but only if you're willing to pay over five times as much. I can see how it might be useful for a business, but it simply isn't practical for personal use.
Except that the rationing mechanism may not be fair. So while there may not be an absolute shortage, there may be an effective shortage for most of the population, while it's still quite accessible to the rich few.
Sure. As you said, those who have the foresight to "save for a rainy day" will be able to purchase their necessities during the disaster, whereas those who lived paycheck-to-paycheck and saved nothing will most likely go without, or at least find their lifestyle significantly curtailed. Individuals are always responsible for their own well-being; those who refuse to plan for the future may indeed find themselves lacking something essential one day. I see no injustice here.
Anyway, the resources will be allocated by their owners, not mechanically by "the market". If those owners wish to run a charity (presumably trading financial loss for goodwill, or some other intangible) they are free to do so, just as they are free to keep the food entirely for themselves. If, however, you were to force them to run such a charity, then (a) you would be stealing from them; (b) you'd end up with a real shortage eventually, during which those necessities couldn't be bought at any price because they were consumed early on; and (c) no one would bother to save for future shortages, knowing that anything they saved would simply be taken from them.
What . . . are you talking about? Did you know you are talking about *real* state [sic]? Do you know what does it mean? It means it's *real*. I means it won't vapourish [sic]. It means that it will stay there. . ..
Obviously the property itself isn't going anywhere. However, it could easily be made useless for some urgent future demand. For example, let's imagine a scenario involving a potential food shortage. Someone owns a bit of prime-grade farmland which they want to sell. Someone else is looking for land on which they can build some warehouses. Building the warehouses would make the farmland useless for growing food, but at present (pre-shortage) the warehouse will bring in more profit -- in order words, warehouses are a more urgent short-term demand. Sans speculators, the farmer would sell the land to the highest bidder, the warehouse-builder.
Along comes a speculator, however, and this speculator is willing to pay more because it believes there will soon be a urgent need for good farmland. The speculator outbids the warehouse builder and leaves the land untouched for a while. The farmer receives more compensation than it otherwise would, but some people grumble about the buyer, saying that warehouses are in short supply and the speculator is wrong to hold the land off the market. They can't see the use of letting that land lie empty when there are warehouses to be built.
If the shortage occurs, however, farmland prices will rise and the speculator will sell the land at a profit, and everyone benefits from the extra supply of food. If the speculator was wrong then it will eventually have to sell off the property at a loss (before the opportunity cost of holding onto it rises even further), and someone with more foresight can take its place. Speculators tend to be right more often than not in any event, since those who aren't bankrupt themselves in short order.
Speculators [...] may not necessarily *produce* anything, but they are a necessary part of any free market. [...] If prices fluctuate, there will be people trying to buy low and sell high. That's just the way things work.
. . . You might very well argue that speculators were an unavoidable side effect of a free market, and that the benefits of that free market outweighs the damage done by speculators. That would not mean that they are doing something useful however, nor would it mean that they deserve respect. . ..
Arbitrage ("buy low, sell high", or speculation) is not simply an "unavoidable side effect of a free market". It's an essential process in the formation of prices. Arbitrage is the process by which prices approach the intersection point between the supply and demand curves (to use the mathematical approximation); without such speculation there would be no mechanism to correct surpluses and shortages, or to bring about the single, optimal price for a commodity. Speculation is no different from any other form of entrepreneurship; the profit comes about by identifying and correcting some deficiency in the relationships between supply, demand, and price. Arbitrage is productive in that it serves to allocate resources toward their most urgent demands. It creates wealth by preventing the expenditure of resources on less urgent goals at the expense of more urgent ones.
This applies also to the case where property -- real estate, commodities, tools, etc. -- is held off the market for a time. The speculator purchased the property in the expectation that the future need would be greater than the present need, and thus command a higher price. This is no less productive than any other form of arbitrage; if it were eliminated you would have present surpluses followed by future shortages. For this reason it is particularly important to permit speculation and arbitrage in the event of a major disruption, such as a natural disaster; speculation will raise the prices and ration the supply of all the items whose supply is affected by the disaster. Doing otherwise -- by setting price ceilings, for example -- will only lead to eventual shortages as unchecked demand overwhelms the dwindling supply.
On several occasions I've been on commercial flights that were hit by lightning while in flight. The times it happened, it was no big deal... but it shouldn't be taken for granted that it is never a big deal. Particularly with the increasing dependence of basic aircraft flight systems on electronics.
Not to try to say that being hit by lightning isn't a big deal, but those electronics you refer to are tested in a lab for their response to lightning-level charges delivered directly to their input ports. Anything truly flight-critical will be certified to handle such events.
While it might be legal to receive any broadcast transmission, it would be difficult to check email and surf the web without transmitting something.
True, but since Wi-Fi occurs in the unlicensed portion of the spectrum no one has any legal basis to complain about your transmissions either, provided they stay within the spectrum protocols (e.g. limited broadcast power). The debate is over a completely different set of (bad) laws regarding the use of computer networks in general. It has nothing to do with Wi-Fi in particular. The principles would be essentially the same if free wired Internet access was commonplace instead.
If only some of their content falls into this royalty-free category, then what's to stop them from excluding that portion from their SoundExchange reporting?
As I understand it, SoundExchange won't license anything to you unless you pay them royalties on everything you play, regardless of origin. If that is the case then you could indeed play 100% CC-licenced media without worrying about royalities, but you'd have to pay full royalties on everything if you wanted to mix in non-CC media.
And the fact that if you want to use any programs on linux you usually have to compile the source yourself.
I think you need to update your list of objections. I use Debian (not Ubuntu) and I can't remember the last time I was forced to install anything from source that an average computer user would have any use for. (As a developer and general "tinkerer" I do install things from source occasionally, but those packages tend to be so far from mainstream use that they are perfectly justified in assuming their users can handle source-based installation.)
On any modern Linux distro failing to find a binary package for anything but prerelease or "ultra-niche" software is generally a sign that you're doing something wrong.
It is fair to say that while linux is out of touch with the average user, so too is the average linux user out of touch with the average user.
Here we agree. Linux users tend to have different requirements, and they prefer software that meets those requirements. There's nothing wrong with that, and I hope things stay that way. I don't use Windows or Mac OS at home because I prefer the way Linux works. What would people like me do if the Linux developers all got it into their heads to make Linux "just like" Windows and/or Mac OS? They'd be alienating their existing userbase to go after a different group -- a group whose members, for the most part, are happy with the software they already have, despite the cost and the bugs and the lack of control.
And, again, the idea that companies don't have waste and bureacracy is laughable. Just talk to anyone who works at a reasonably large company and they'll tell you stories.
Precisely. The larger the organization becomes, the more waste and bureaucracy it tends to develop. The government, as the largest of all the organizations, inevitably has the most waste and the most bureaucracy. (This, incidentally, is the answer to the worst fears of the anti-capitalists: there can never be a single all-encompassing monopoly because any corporation that approached that point would choke to death on its own inefficiency.)
Regarding profit, if the government's accounting profit (what you described) isn't at least equal to the pure rate of interest then the venture is a net loss -- they could have produced more simply by investing the money in a minimal-risk loan. In such a case their opportunity cost exceeds the benefit of the program and their economic profit would thus be negative.
Municipal Wi-Fi is a good idea, but it was farmed out, in most cases, to groups that have a lot to lose from it doing well, or to groups that didn't have and weren't given the resources they needed. This is an instance of "Crap in, crap out." not government deficiencies.
Seeing as how it was the governments that chose who to "farm out" these projects to, and that took it upon themselves to allocate (other people's) resources toward the projects, isn't the projects' failure still an example of "government deficiencies"? The governments were the ones making all the major decisions; they ought to take the blame when things fail as well.
first of all... i seriously doubt there is any conclusive evidence to sustain that capitalism is a natural state of society... and i am sure there is absolutely no evidence to say that capitalism is the best or most natural state of a human society.
second... your affirmation that capitalist societies are free of any "aggressive force" is quite mind-boggling.
the legal system is a pretty aggressive force, the police is another one, governments are too, etc... how did you manage to "forget" all those?
To address these points together, "aggression" (the initiation of violent force) specifically does not include defensive force or proportional retribution. Ergo, the legal system and police (in general) are not examples of aggression. Capitalism, or more precisely a system of private property, is any system in which aggression is not tolerated. Ergo, by definition, any society which lacks aggression is capitalistic.
anyway... in this world there is no such thing as an "aggression-free environment"... nowhere!.. and it may never exist.
You won't get any argument from me. While we always hope evil will be vanquished eventually (to use a more generic term), we can never be certain of reaching that goal. That doesn't mean we can't try, though. Anyway, capitalism doesn't depend on a lack of aggression, just a lack of general tolerance for aggression.
I suggest you investigate human psychology and economics, which is simply human psychology applied to money.
There is a bit more to economics than just human psychology. Scarcity, for example, is a property of the physical world and not merely a product of the human mind.
Anyway, the GP's suggestion would work great -- in the short term. Everyone would have enough for survival, at least, for a week, or maybe even a month or two. After that people would begin to feel the effects of eliminating all the incentives for productive labor and saving. The only two ways out would be forced labor or a return to capitalism, which is the natural state of society in the absence of any aggressive use of force. Considering history, though, the former seems more likely during a worldwide panic of that magnitude -- though capitalism would doubtless return as well in the form of extensive "black" markets, barter, favors, etc.
Incidently, I had thought all the scarcity-deniers died out a long time ago. How did the GP manage to escape the rise of modern economics?
Gas prices in the USA are not particularly high -- even at $3.50 per gallon. Gas in Europe costs $10 per gallon.
But most of the difference is taxes, which goes back to the taxpayers (instead of into $400m retirement packages).
No, the distinction is that in the USA 100% of the difference goes directly back to the purchaser, whereas in Europe some unknown percentage of the difference is spent on overpriced government programs that the individual purchasers may neither want nor need, but which are ostensibly done "for their benefit".
On the other hand, it wouldn't cost them anything at all to simply ignore the notice (optionally forwarding it to the student named) until and unless they receive a proper legal order from a recognized legal authority or private arbitrator. Obviously Stanford has no obligation to provide Internet access (unless they agreed to do so by contract), but all the costs you bring up are self-imposed. No one made them track down the computer, terminate its internet access, update the student's records, etc. -- they chose to do that on their own.
On a slightly-related note, why is it that schools still provide Internet access their their own IT departments -- particularly the larger schools? Why take the risk? Couldn't they simply make students go through a normal ISP like everyone else? The school would still provide labs, of course, for those who can't afford their own connection, but lab computers can be locked down and thus aren't as much of an issue.
While I would bet that most people agree that the US tax system is overly complex and unfair, if you don't take advantage of a deduction you qualify for there is nobody to blame but yourself.
Only if (a) you would actually save more than the default deduction by itemizing, (b) your time spent keeping track of all your expenses in order to document your itemization is worthless, and (c) you discount the additional risk itemization creates should you ever be subject to an audit (poor/missing expense documentation, and/or the expense of maintaining and insuring the same).
Personally I don't itemize. I could probably save a bit of money by doing so, but in my opinion it's not worth the additional documentation burden and risk. I pay extra, not by choice -- because nothing about taxation is ever voluntary -- but because I do not feel that the opportunity for saving is worth the immediate and potential costs of itemizing.
No, hate laws in Europe are the results of a fascist government exterminating six million people and ruining a continent.
Excessive preoccupation with pathological behavior is, itself, pathological. (Arthur C. Clark, 3001, slightly paraphrased)
Europe in general seems to be obsessed with the world wars (not without reason, of course) and as a result they are gradually becoming that which they most detest. Perhaps one of the worst things about a war is that it tends to lead people to adopt the worst characteristics of their enemies without realizing it.
Why didn't you download them via HTTP from your university IT department's mirror?
If it's anything like the Linux mirror at my school, you won't find anything released within the last two years on the IT department's servers. It's a decent idea in theory, but in practice I think that between the frequent releases and various distributions it probably doesn't save much bandwidth over individual downloads. Sure, you save a bit when multiple people want the same file; on the other hand, you have to maintain up-to-date versions of all the different versions, even if no one wants that particular release. (Note, however, that I've never actually seen the statistics. I'm basing this on the fact the our IT department didn't bother keeping their mirror up-to-date.)
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously not. I simply don't think you should be prohibited from doing so. You can still choose not to do so on your own, of course, and I think most decent people would make that choice.
Yes.
The other requirements were also out of line. They ought to be repealed, not used as a basis for further restrictions.
Actually, the existence of a second-hand market is part of what allows them to sell the CD for $9 (or whatever) in the first place -- people will spend more up front if they believe they can get some of it back later. The value of the used CD is factored in to the price of the new ones.
Going by your original logic, half a million people now have an extra $9+ to buy another CD. This would seem to be an improvement from the "available money" point-of-view.
So you're saying that the circumstances are responsible? Circumstances don't act or plan. You can't sue circumstances when things go wrong. When an individual's actions or plans run contrary to what actually happens (i.e. the way the universe is) the only one responsible for that outcome must be the individual. That's not an assignment of blame; sometimes, as you point out, the circumstances are simply beyond one's ability to control. Just the same, no one but the individual can be held responsible for the outcome, unless that other person actively contributed to it.
Who cares, so long as these deals were all voluntary on both sides? The owners had the right to make any offer they wished; the sellers had the right to refuse, and chose not to. Provided the sellers weren't threatened into agreeing, and neither side was defrauding the other, what's the problem?
False. Property rights exist because resources are scarce. Someone has to choose how those resources will be used, and the person with the right to make that choice is (by definition) the property owner. You cannot eliminate the role of ownership; rather, your only options are to respect the existing ownership or assume that ownership yourself, an act commonly known as theft. Rightful ownership can be assigned either by a system similar to common law -- homesteading and contractual transfer -- or by some other, more arbitrary, method, such as the "all property belongs to 'society' (i.e. the government)" position you seem to endorse. The former mechanism has the distinct advantage of not granting any one individual or group more rights than another. Any other mechanism divides the world into masters and slaves, those with rights and those without.
Well, if you were willing to pay for it you could probably get a direct fiber or T1 connection no matter how far out of town you were. (Or you could pay them to put a DSLAM in range of your house, which would probably be a bit more cost-effective.) Like I said, though, matching the level of service you'd get in town with a regular cable or DSL connection would cost a lot more than $100/month.
Well, for starters a 500ms ping time would add about 1/4 to 2/5 seconds to the time required to load every object on every web page. For pages with many objects (images, scripts, CSS, Flash, etc.) that can add up fast. Additionally, ping times eat into the TCP acknowledgement windows, which limits the total bandwidth you can get on any one TCP stream (download or upload). It also tends to rule out any attempt to replace expensive landline calls with VoIP, since most people have a hard time holding a conversation with half-second delays interspersed throughout.
Perhaps, but remember that you're not getting cable-modem-level service for that extra $50/month. Matching the service available to you in the city (whether DSL or cable) would cost a lot more than $100/month.
No, "free market" ideology is only "about" defining property rights in things that are inherently rivalrous. Physical property, and certain forms of intangibles, are rivalrous; ideas (and information in general) are not.
Property rights are properly minimal, not maximal. You have property rights because, for certain types of objects, someone must decide how they will be used, because they can't be used to serve unlimited different ends simultaneously. The role of property owner is inherent in the nature of the object. When there is no need for such a decision-maker (e.g. with abstract ideas, information) there is no need for property rights.
The easiest way to demonstrate the difference is to explore the results of eliminating property rights. When it comes to physical property you find that you can't -- someone still has to decide how it will be used. Whoever ends up getting their way is the effective property owner. With ideas things are different; there is no conflict, because everyone can use the idea in their own way without affecting anyone else's use.
Are you kidding? Have you seen some of these satellite data plans? $100/month (plus $100 up front) for download rates that barely meet broadband speeds, awful upload ratios, and ping times in excess of 500ms? They have a bit of a speed advantage over dial-up, to be sure, but only if you're willing to pay over five times as much. I can see how it might be useful for a business, but it simply isn't practical for personal use.
Sure. As you said, those who have the foresight to "save for a rainy day" will be able to purchase their necessities during the disaster, whereas those who lived paycheck-to-paycheck and saved nothing will most likely go without, or at least find their lifestyle significantly curtailed. Individuals are always responsible for their own well-being; those who refuse to plan for the future may indeed find themselves lacking something essential one day. I see no injustice here.
Anyway, the resources will be allocated by their owners, not mechanically by "the market". If those owners wish to run a charity (presumably trading financial loss for goodwill, or some other intangible) they are free to do so, just as they are free to keep the food entirely for themselves. If, however, you were to force them to run such a charity, then (a) you would be stealing from them; (b) you'd end up with a real shortage eventually, during which those necessities couldn't be bought at any price because they were consumed early on; and (c) no one would bother to save for future shortages, knowing that anything they saved would simply be taken from them.
Obviously the property itself isn't going anywhere. However, it could easily be made useless for some urgent future demand. For example, let's imagine a scenario involving a potential food shortage. Someone owns a bit of prime-grade farmland which they want to sell. Someone else is looking for land on which they can build some warehouses. Building the warehouses would make the farmland useless for growing food, but at present (pre-shortage) the warehouse will bring in more profit -- in order words, warehouses are a more urgent short-term demand. Sans speculators, the farmer would sell the land to the highest bidder, the warehouse-builder.
Along comes a speculator, however, and this speculator is willing to pay more because it believes there will soon be a urgent need for good farmland. The speculator outbids the warehouse builder and leaves the land untouched for a while. The farmer receives more compensation than it otherwise would, but some people grumble about the buyer, saying that warehouses are in short supply and the speculator is wrong to hold the land off the market. They can't see the use of letting that land lie empty when there are warehouses to be built.
If the shortage occurs, however, farmland prices will rise and the speculator will sell the land at a profit, and everyone benefits from the extra supply of food. If the speculator was wrong then it will eventually have to sell off the property at a loss (before the opportunity cost of holding onto it rises even further), and someone with more foresight can take its place. Speculators tend to be right more often than not in any event, since those who aren't bankrupt themselves in short order.
Arbitrage ("buy low, sell high", or speculation) is not simply an "unavoidable side effect of a free market". It's an essential process in the formation of prices. Arbitrage is the process by which prices approach the intersection point between the supply and demand curves (to use the mathematical approximation); without such speculation there would be no mechanism to correct surpluses and shortages, or to bring about the single, optimal price for a commodity. Speculation is no different from any other form of entrepreneurship; the profit comes about by identifying and correcting some deficiency in the relationships between supply, demand, and price. Arbitrage is productive in that it serves to allocate resources toward their most urgent demands. It creates wealth by preventing the expenditure of resources on less urgent goals at the expense of more urgent ones.
This applies also to the case where property -- real estate, commodities, tools, etc. -- is held off the market for a time. The speculator purchased the property in the expectation that the future need would be greater than the present need, and thus command a higher price. This is no less productive than any other form of arbitrage; if it were eliminated you would have present surpluses followed by future shortages. For this reason it is particularly important to permit speculation and arbitrage in the event of a major disruption, such as a natural disaster; speculation will raise the prices and ration the supply of all the items whose supply is affected by the disaster. Doing otherwise -- by setting price ceilings, for example -- will only lead to eventual shortages as unchecked demand overwhelms the dwindling supply.
Not to try to say that being hit by lightning isn't a big deal, but those electronics you refer to are tested in a lab for their response to lightning-level charges delivered directly to their input ports. Anything truly flight-critical will be certified to handle such events.
Which, ironically, is itself an absolute statement. (I.e. Anyone who think in absolutes must be a Sith.)
True, but since Wi-Fi occurs in the unlicensed portion of the spectrum no one has any legal basis to complain about your transmissions either, provided they stay within the spectrum protocols (e.g. limited broadcast power). The debate is over a completely different set of (bad) laws regarding the use of computer networks in general. It has nothing to do with Wi-Fi in particular. The principles would be essentially the same if free wired Internet access was commonplace instead.
As I understand it, SoundExchange won't license anything to you unless you pay them royalties on everything you play, regardless of origin. If that is the case then you could indeed play 100% CC-licenced media without worrying about royalities, but you'd have to pay full royalties on everything if you wanted to mix in non-CC media.
I think you need to update your list of objections. I use Debian (not Ubuntu) and I can't remember the last time I was forced to install anything from source that an average computer user would have any use for. (As a developer and general "tinkerer" I do install things from source occasionally, but those packages tend to be so far from mainstream use that they are perfectly justified in assuming their users can handle source-based installation.)
On any modern Linux distro failing to find a binary package for anything but prerelease or "ultra-niche" software is generally a sign that you're doing something wrong.
Here we agree. Linux users tend to have different requirements, and they prefer software that meets those requirements. There's nothing wrong with that, and I hope things stay that way. I don't use Windows or Mac OS at home because I prefer the way Linux works. What would people like me do if the Linux developers all got it into their heads to make Linux "just like" Windows and/or Mac OS? They'd be alienating their existing userbase to go after a different group -- a group whose members, for the most part, are happy with the software they already have, despite the cost and the bugs and the lack of control.
Precisely. The larger the organization becomes, the more waste and bureaucracy it tends to develop. The government, as the largest of all the organizations, inevitably has the most waste and the most bureaucracy. (This, incidentally, is the answer to the worst fears of the anti-capitalists: there can never be a single all-encompassing monopoly because any corporation that approached that point would choke to death on its own inefficiency.)
Regarding profit, if the government's accounting profit (what you described) isn't at least equal to the pure rate of interest then the venture is a net loss -- they could have produced more simply by investing the money in a minimal-risk loan. In such a case their opportunity cost exceeds the benefit of the program and their economic profit would thus be negative.
Seeing as how it was the governments that chose who to "farm out" these projects to, and that took it upon themselves to allocate (other people's) resources toward the projects, isn't the projects' failure still an example of "government deficiencies"? The governments were the ones making all the major decisions; they ought to take the blame when things fail as well.
To address these points together, "aggression" (the initiation of violent force) specifically does not include defensive force or proportional retribution. Ergo, the legal system and police (in general) are not examples of aggression. Capitalism, or more precisely a system of private property, is any system in which aggression is not tolerated. Ergo, by definition, any society which lacks aggression is capitalistic.
You won't get any argument from me. While we always hope evil will be vanquished eventually (to use a more generic term), we can never be certain of reaching that goal. That doesn't mean we can't try, though. Anyway, capitalism doesn't depend on a lack of aggression, just a lack of general tolerance for aggression.
There is a bit more to economics than just human psychology. Scarcity, for example, is a property of the physical world and not merely a product of the human mind.
Anyway, the GP's suggestion would work great -- in the short term. Everyone would have enough for survival, at least, for a week, or maybe even a month or two. After that people would begin to feel the effects of eliminating all the incentives for productive labor and saving. The only two ways out would be forced labor or a return to capitalism, which is the natural state of society in the absence of any aggressive use of force. Considering history, though, the former seems more likely during a worldwide panic of that magnitude -- though capitalism would doubtless return as well in the form of extensive "black" markets, barter, favors, etc.
Incidently, I had thought all the scarcity-deniers died out a long time ago. How did the GP manage to escape the rise of modern economics?
No, the distinction is that in the USA 100% of the difference goes directly back to the purchaser, whereas in Europe some unknown percentage of the difference is spent on overpriced government programs that the individual purchasers may neither want nor need, but which are ostensibly done "for their benefit".
On the other hand, it wouldn't cost them anything at all to simply ignore the notice (optionally forwarding it to the student named) until and unless they receive a proper legal order from a recognized legal authority or private arbitrator. Obviously Stanford has no obligation to provide Internet access (unless they agreed to do so by contract), but all the costs you bring up are self-imposed. No one made them track down the computer, terminate its internet access, update the student's records, etc. -- they chose to do that on their own.
On a slightly-related note, why is it that schools still provide Internet access their their own IT departments -- particularly the larger schools? Why take the risk? Couldn't they simply make students go through a normal ISP like everyone else? The school would still provide labs, of course, for those who can't afford their own connection, but lab computers can be locked down and thus aren't as much of an issue.
Only if (a) you would actually save more than the default deduction by itemizing, (b) your time spent keeping track of all your expenses in order to document your itemization is worthless, and (c) you discount the additional risk itemization creates should you ever be subject to an audit (poor/missing expense documentation, and/or the expense of maintaining and insuring the same).
Personally I don't itemize. I could probably save a bit of money by doing so, but in my opinion it's not worth the additional documentation burden and risk. I pay extra, not by choice -- because nothing about taxation is ever voluntary -- but because I do not feel that the opportunity for saving is worth the immediate and potential costs of itemizing.
Excessive preoccupation with pathological behavior is, itself, pathological. (Arthur C. Clark, 3001, slightly paraphrased)
Europe in general seems to be obsessed with the world wars (not without reason, of course) and as a result they are gradually becoming that which they most detest. Perhaps one of the worst things about a war is that it tends to lead people to adopt the worst characteristics of their enemies without realizing it.
If it's anything like the Linux mirror at my school, you won't find anything released within the last two years on the IT department's servers. It's a decent idea in theory, but in practice I think that between the frequent releases and various distributions it probably doesn't save much bandwidth over individual downloads. Sure, you save a bit when multiple people want the same file; on the other hand, you have to maintain up-to-date versions of all the different versions, even if no one wants that particular release. (Note, however, that I've never actually seen the statistics. I'm basing this on the fact the our IT department didn't bother keeping their mirror up-to-date.)