$100,000 in batteries, and they couldn't use a microwave? Something's wrong there. When you can spend $1k on an inverter, and get a LARGE pure-sine unit that will handle a microwave without sweating, and another $1k will buy you enough batteries to run that for an hour straight, it's hard to believe that a $100,000 setup couldn't do it.
I think the point was that their solar/wind generators couldn't produce enough power on a continuous basis to keep their equipment running, not that the storage system was insufficient. The batteries are there to handle peak usage and cloudy / non-windy days; to really work the generator(s) have to be capable of meeting the average power draw of the household. If the average preferred power draw is 5kW and the generator can only produce an average of 3kW, for example, then you'd only be able to run things 60% of the desired time (or at 60% capacity) over the long term. That sound's like the GP's situation.
Are you proposing that all law enforcement personnel nationwide drop everything they are doing and focus on preventing terrorism?
Sure. Not that I think they'd have any much change of success, mind you, but it might occupy them enought to keep them away from things they have no business getting involved in (such as the topic of this article). It'd be nice to see law enforcement focused on defense of life and property for a change instead of victimless "crimes" like illicit drugs and online gambling.
For having rights one should be able to lay a claim to this right
You would therefore argue that a baby has no rights?
The baby's parents have rights as the ones that brought it into the world. Any aggression directed against the baby would violate the rights of the parents; they're really the only ones (besides the baby) with any standing should something happen. (Correllary: if the parents are the ones responsible then no one gets punished.) On the other hand, if the aggression is not fatal then the child could seek justice later on, either directly -- after emancipation -- or by choosing a new guardian willing to act on the its behalf.
I could respond on a point-by-point basis, but that would probably be a waste of both our times. Instead I'll simply refer you to this excerpt from Power & Market by Murray N. Rothbard, which addresses most of the issues you've raised.
. . . as long as it's in Dollar denominations and $1 of your dollars is valued/redeemed at $1 USD.
That seems unreasonably strict, considering that even Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs) aren't valued at or redeemable in U.S. dollars, although they are denominated that way. (U.S. dollars are legally defined as 1/42.22 of a troy ounce of gold, worth about $15.74 in FRNs at present gold prices.) Furthermore, you can't actually redeem FRNs for anything because they really aren't backed by anything, in the sense of representing a claim on some specific property.
The key value in monetary terms is wide acceptance. Trust is key in trade, when governments started making currency used gold backing to get people to trust and therefore accept it.
Both true. The first part is the "marketability" I was referring to -- basically, the assurance that you'll be able to trade the intermediate good offered for what you actually want later on. Incidently, that's one of the prerequisites for a non-monetary good to become a currency in the first place.
Fiat is nice because it allows the government to better manage it's currency.
Personally, I would say that being easy to manipulate is a mark against fiat currency (as it creates a hidden tax on savings and encourages a large, invasive government), but to each his/her own. At least fiat currency is one thing I can easily "opt out" of for the most part, which makes it a great deal better than most of their programs.
[T]here were gold-vs-silver debates (the details of which I've forgotten) in American history too.
That's correct. It's part of the reason why they eventually went to a fiat system, actually. The thing is, the whole "gold-vs.-silver" argument was idiotic from the beginning. Their problem was simple: they tried to fix the price (exchange rate) between gold and silver (bimetallism). As an inevitable consequence you would rarely see both gold and silver used in exchange simultaneously. Whenever you have a fixed (or otherwise arbitrary) exchange rate "bad money drives good money out of circulation"; i.e. if 16 ounces of silver is worth one ounce of gold on the open market, but the law mandates an exchange rate of 20:1, then no one will pay for anything in gold (and visa-versa). This was a well-known principle at the time, since the same effect had previously been observed in Britain under similar circumstances. The decision to enforce a fixed exchange rate was strongly politically motived, and (as I recall) mainly driven by the silver manufacturers.
If they had just left the exchange rate "floating" according to the demand for gold and silver the most likely result would have been the use of silver for small transactions and the simultaneous use of gold for larger ones, which is emminently practical considering the relative "value densities" of silver and gold. At present prices, for example, silver becomes cumbersomely large when dealing with more than, say, $35 worth (about two troy-ounce coins in coin form, each about twice the diameter of a quarter), whereas gold becomes cumbersomely small for anything under about $55 (1/10 ounce, about the size of a dime). Amounts in the $35-$55 gap can be easily handled by simply making change in silver from a 1/10-oz gold piece according to the store's advertised exchange rate.
Of course it would be even more likely, given today's technology, that people would simply use some sort of electronic exchange system similar to our debit cards. Existing exchange networks, such as e-gold, permit online transfers of as little as 1/10,000-oz. (~$0.055), which tends to eliminate the need for multiple currencies. For such a system gold would probably be considered preferable for its small size (and thus ease of storage).
Really, what's the significance of gold? What good would it do you or anyone else? Why does it have value?
There are a number of industrial uses for gold: corrosion-resistant plating, wiring in integrated circuits, etc.; its use in jewelry, too, is partially due to its material properties (including appearance) and not just its price. It can even be formed into an aerogel and employed in supercapacitors and some kinds of filters.
In monetary terms gold has value (apart from its marketability) both because it has a naturally limited supply and because its alternate uses tend to set a floor on its value. Fiat currencies can be devalued without limit; their scarcity is purely artificial and they have no significant uses besides exchange.
The only reason we have a fiat system in the U.S. is that at one point in our fairly-recent history the government confiscated (stole) all the privately-owned gold (at that point the primary medium of exchange), banned its use, and replaced it with paper notes. People didn't really have a choice; they could either use the notes or revert to a primitive barter system. The ban on gold ownership/use was eventually lifted (within the last 35 years, I believe), but at that point the damage was already done -- and the stolen property was never returned. It remains to be seen whether the fiat system will remain now that it's no longer legally mandated; it took a few thousand years to develop the system we had before, and short of forcing everyone to switch yet again I wouldn't expect things to go back to normal in just one or two generations.
A universal set of social rules would simply include the necessary provisions, such as self-defense, which permit such enforcement.
Just to follow up on this point, you can find a reasonably sound defense of the legitimacy of proportional punishment -- based on common-law principles -- in the journal article Punishment and Proportionality: The Estoppel Approach by N. Stephan Kinsella.
Without "rulers", how can a society define - and, especially, enforce - the "rules"?
Defining the rules is easy enough; just look at the system of common law prior to the point where it was co-opted by the governments of the time. Or, for that matter, international law today. There's no world government to which all the other nations are subject, so how can there be such a thing as international law, and what ensures that the individual states will follow it? Answer: The rules are established through precedent (i.e. rulings which successfully resolved disputes in the past are re-used in the present), and enforced through self-defense, the value of reputation in the wider community, and the simple fact that violence is always costly to both sides in any dispute. Diplomacy, in other words, substitutes for arbitrary legislation.
For that matter, I would go so far as to say that any society which is not anarchic cannot be lawful, because it contains, by definition, an organization not bound to follow the laws which bind the rest of society.
By that rationale it's basically impossible to have laws at all, since enforcing them will almost certainly break them.
Untrue. A universal set of social rules would simply include the necessary provisions, such as self-defense, which permit such enforcement. These provisions would apply to each individual rather than being restricted to designated law-enforcement personnel; in turn, no would would be able to legitimately exceed the bounds of self-defense as present enforcement personnel routinely do, on their own or as directed by the legislature. (Obviously one would be able to delegate self-defense to a third party, as I suspect would generally occur, but they would then be acting as one's agent and thus limited to a purely defensive role. One cannot delegate authority one does not possess.)
[Ad hominem clipped]
No comment, except to say that your characterization of me as a "stoned teenager" is entirely untrue. I am not a teenager, and have at no time consumed any variety of illicit drug, nor the more legal varieties such as alcoholic beverages or tobacco products. This is not because they are illegal, mind you; I simply have no desire to experiment with mind-altering substances. I prefer my mind the way it is.
It's the difference between a free society and anarchy.
Bad example: anarchy means "no rulers", not "no rules". An anarchic society can also be a lawful and free society.
For that matter, I would go so far as to say that any society which is not anarchic cannot be lawful, because it contains, by definition, an organization not bound to follow the laws which bind the rest of society. Any universally lawful & free society must be anarchic. (This is not to say that all anarchic societies will necessarily be free and lawful ones -- that is up to the individuals involved, just as it is with the non-anarchic societies.)
Personally, I think that contractual price floors are repugnant, not because of antitrust concerns, but because it's a contract that affects me directly without permitting me to have any negotiation rights or to even agree to it.
This sentiment -- that everything that might affect my environment should be under my control, subject to my own personal veto -- is at the heart of authoritarian politics. In essence it declares society subservient to the individual's will. The policitally successful become the masters; everyone else becomes their slaves.
The opposite philosophy, that things can rightfully exist which may affect me and which I have no rightful control over -- that other have a right to their own decisions -- is the essence of the libertarian position, which places all the individuals in society on the same level under the common law. (Which, incidently, is why it's called the common law.)
Libertarianism is social by nature; authoritarianism, anti-social. The economic end of libertarianism is cooperation and the libre market; the economic end of authoritarianism is isolation and self-sufficiency.
They control the schools so they can control the curriculum with
the intent of making good little socialists out of everyone?
They are doing a remarkably bad job of it, considering how many
conservatives there are.
Or "democracy" but some how I have lost faith in it.
Then you have lost faith in yourself. I think that's what they're after.
First, "faith in democracy" is closer to "faith in others" than "faith in oneself". To lose faith in democracy implies the belief that one's own decisions are correct and the majority vote is therefore wrong. If anything it's a demonstration of faith in oneself.
Second, there are many kinds of "faith in democracy" depending on what you expect out of it. Faith in it as a decision-making process, for example; that tends to be rather hit-or-miss depending on the group (think "designed by committee"). Or faith in its morality: the idea that moral rights and wrongs are determined by the majority opinion. You see that all too often in discussions like this one, where some choose to uphold unjust laws as morally sound simply because they were written by representatives of a (supposed) majority of "we the people." In my opinion individual moral responsibility and geniune leadership ability trump democracy any day.
It's a fine distinction, but I disagree. Under the present system a patent holder has the option of refusing to license, in which case case they wouldn't technically be paid a subsidy (unless you consider exclusive franchise agreements and the like to be subsidies -- I don't). Under the proposed system they wouldn't have the option of a true monopoly; instead their competitors would be taxed a specific, limited amount (the compulsory license fee) to subsidize the patent holder. It would probably be better than the current system, on the whole, but I don't care much for either approach.
It is time the law is changed to prevent patents from being used to stifle innovation, much like the endless extension of copyright needs to stop.
Just as water, or air, is extremely valuable and yet would be difficult to profit from selling
Just to let you know that I heard the water selling market is quite in shape.
I realize that water was probably a poor choice compared to air. Still, the common price for preprocessed tap water (or even bottled water) is hardly proportional to the "value" of water as most would estimate it -- particularly after going a few days without Similarly, people often pay others to make copies of various content ("commercial copyright infringement") despite the fact that they could, in general, make said copies more cheaply themselves from a purely monetary point of view. As with water, the supply of such copies is essentially unlimited, and their prices derive mainly from the convenience of getting them pre-made rather than the "value" of the content to the buyer.
No, the value of an image is what people are willing to pay for it.
No, the demand for the image is what people would be willing to pay for it. The value of an image is subjective and impossible to measure, as it exists only in the mind of the one evaluating the image. Demand is a function of the potential buyer's resources, the available alternatives (competition), and the relative value of the image compared to all the other goods that person might wish to acquire. The thing is, absent the threat of coercion by the government via copyright enforcement, the "competition" for the image (assuming it was already available to the public) would obviously include the potential buyer's ability to duplicate the image at zero cost. Just as water, or air, is extremely valuable and yet would be difficult to profit from selling, copies of images may be valuable while yet commanding little or no demand after the initial publication. There is nothing unfair or unjust about that.
That is, forced licensing to allow others to use the patent (at a reasonable market rate).
The "reasonable market rate" is what they would have paid in the absence of the patent -- i.e., probably nothing. Market prices are determined, by definition, solely by unrestricted and unforced trade between individuals; there is no other context in which the term "market rate" has any meaning. What you are proposing is that we do away with patents altogether in favor of tax-funded subsidies. (You might not call it a "tax", but that's what the compulsory license fees are nonetheless.)
So would I -- extortion by the U.S. government against Vonage (and all the other relevant VoIP providers). Verizon's involved, to be sure, but its complicity is trivial compared to that of the organization responsible for granting and enforcing the patent(s) in the first place.
Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with any kind of legal advise.
He was the leader of a terrorist group which is in the Terrorist Groups Lists of most countries. Therefore it is not an issue of whom you ask.
Actually, it still is. You see, no government would ever call any organization "freedom fighters" for the simple reason that such groups are always opposed to the particular government in power; ergo their presence on the "Terrorist Group Lists" published exclusively by such governments. If you were to ask people outside of government, however, you would probably tend to get a mixture of responses. At the very least I doubt many such organizations think of themselves as purely terrorist groups.
The difference between "terrorist" and "freedom fighter" is entirely a matter of perspective.
Ok, I got a torrent, and yeah, it will be another 3 hours 40 minutes until it's downloaded at 64KB/s.
From my experiences with Linux ISOs and similar, for which the BitTorrent link is usually the quickest download method:
1) Wait until you've downloaded a couple of blocks before measuring the speed. Your speed won't peak until you have something to upload due to the nature of the protocol.
2) Assuming you have more than 64KB/s download capacity and there are more than a dozen or so peers (or seeds), try limiting your upload rate to just under your real upload capacity. If you don't your uploads will choke out the ACK packets and download speeds will suffer. (You may have to experiment a bit to find the optimal upload speed.)
The BitTorrent protocol works better than many give it credit for, provided you're not the only peer and you manage your bandwidth properly. It also doesn't hurt to use a client like Azureus with a built-in DHT client, in case the tracker goes down -- or just to pick up additional peers the tracker doesn't know about.
If the latter is the majority, then I think it's right that everybody abides by that moral code.
This is the only statement of any consequence in your reply, and (IMHO) it's completely wrong.
First, what people "should do" -- what it is right for them to do -- is the moral code. It can be evaluated from any given person's point-of-view: your moral code, their moral code, "society's" moral code, etc.
As you say, the definition of "moral" varies from person to person. Each person is responsible for coming up with their own moral code. (Even in your system there must be individual codes before one can become the majority position.) It is possible for an individual's moral code to require adherance to the moral code of another, but it is not possible to adhere to all moral codes simultaneously, since many stand in direct contradiction to each other. (It is worth noting that no complete moral code holds an absolute majority; there are almost as many moral codes as there are individuals. You only ever have majority consensus on specific, highly polarized issues.)
I do not hold that one is bound to follow the moral codes adopted by others -- though one may certainly choose to do so -- but even if I did I would still say that one's own code must take precedence in choosing and judging one's own actions in the event of an outright conflict. To do otherwise would be to effectively abdictate responsibility for the morality of one's actions.
P.S. I think you missed my point on that last bit -- I believe that democracy itself, the ideal form along with all the real-world varieties, is not fit for the purposes of liberty or justice or freedom.
H-1B visas artificially increase the labor supply while decreasing wage growth.
Rather, the requirement for H-1B visas artificially restricts the labor supply, raising wages (but reducing wealth), whereas an increased supply of visas allows the labor supply and wages to grow toward their natural levels.
One should always obey the law, no matter how idiotic, obscene, corrupt and morally bankrupt, I presume? . . . Or not.
Reply:
If you live in a democratic country, then yes. The whole point of democracy is to give the lawmakers legitimacy.
I agree on the second point -- though with a different connotation than you probably intended -- but what difference should it make whether one person or a billion play a part in making the law? If a law is moral (not popular) then one should follow it, not because its the law but because its the moral thing to do. It would still be the moral thing to do even if the law didn't exist. On the other hand, if the law does not correspond to moral behavior -- whether it prescribes outright immoral behavior or merely prohibits non-immoral behavior -- then the law has no legitimacy and there is no moral reason to follow it (and there may be moral reasons against doing so). The only consideration that then remains is the possible repurcussions of violating the law, if/when one is caught. Given the probability of getting caught and the penalty for breaking the law some choose defiance whereas others choose to comply for their own safety; I applaud those who choose to stand up for their civil liberties, an act which benefits all those who seek freedom, but I see nothing morally wrong with either choice.
Of course, you are free to believe that the democratic process in your country is not fit for purpose (I do of my country).
I believe that and more: I believe that no democratic process in any country is fit for the purposes of liberty or justice or freedom. It may be fit for other purposes -- granting legitimacy to the government in the eyes of the people, for example, as you pointed out -- but such are not purposes I would willingly endorse.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the point was that their solar/wind generators couldn't produce enough power on a continuous basis to keep their equipment running, not that the storage system was insufficient. The batteries are there to handle peak usage and cloudy / non-windy days; to really work the generator(s) have to be capable of meeting the average power draw of the household. If the average preferred power draw is 5kW and the generator can only produce an average of 3kW, for example, then you'd only be able to run things 60% of the desired time (or at 60% capacity) over the long term. That sound's like the GP's situation.
Sure. Not that I think they'd have any much change of success, mind you, but it might occupy them enought to keep them away from things they have no business getting involved in (such as the topic of this article). It'd be nice to see law enforcement focused on defense of life and property for a change instead of victimless "crimes" like illicit drugs and online gambling.
The baby's parents have rights as the ones that brought it into the world. Any aggression directed against the baby would violate the rights of the parents; they're really the only ones (besides the baby) with any standing should something happen. (Correllary: if the parents are the ones responsible then no one gets punished.) On the other hand, if the aggression is not fatal then the child could seek justice later on, either directly -- after emancipation -- or by choosing a new guardian willing to act on the its behalf.
I could respond on a point-by-point basis, but that would probably be a waste of both our times. Instead I'll simply refer you to this excerpt from Power & Market by Murray N. Rothbard, which addresses most of the issues you've raised.
That seems unreasonably strict, considering that even Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs) aren't valued at or redeemable in U.S. dollars, although they are denominated that way. (U.S. dollars are legally defined as 1/42.22 of a troy ounce of gold, worth about $15.74 in FRNs at present gold prices.) Furthermore, you can't actually redeem FRNs for anything because they really aren't backed by anything, in the sense of representing a claim on some specific property.
Both true. The first part is the "marketability" I was referring to -- basically, the assurance that you'll be able to trade the intermediate good offered for what you actually want later on. Incidently, that's one of the prerequisites for a non-monetary good to become a currency in the first place.
Personally, I would say that being easy to manipulate is a mark against fiat currency (as it creates a hidden tax on savings and encourages a large, invasive government), but to each his/her own. At least fiat currency is one thing I can easily "opt out" of for the most part, which makes it a great deal better than most of their programs.
That's correct. It's part of the reason why they eventually went to a fiat system, actually. The thing is, the whole "gold-vs.-silver" argument was idiotic from the beginning. Their problem was simple: they tried to fix the price (exchange rate) between gold and silver (bimetallism). As an inevitable consequence you would rarely see both gold and silver used in exchange simultaneously. Whenever you have a fixed (or otherwise arbitrary) exchange rate "bad money drives good money out of circulation"; i.e. if 16 ounces of silver is worth one ounce of gold on the open market, but the law mandates an exchange rate of 20:1, then no one will pay for anything in gold (and visa-versa). This was a well-known principle at the time, since the same effect had previously been observed in Britain under similar circumstances. The decision to enforce a fixed exchange rate was strongly politically motived, and (as I recall) mainly driven by the silver manufacturers.
If they had just left the exchange rate "floating" according to the demand for gold and silver the most likely result would have been the use of silver for small transactions and the simultaneous use of gold for larger ones, which is emminently practical considering the relative "value densities" of silver and gold. At present prices, for example, silver becomes cumbersomely large when dealing with more than, say, $35 worth (about two troy-ounce coins in coin form, each about twice the diameter of a quarter), whereas gold becomes cumbersomely small for anything under about $55 (1/10 ounce, about the size of a dime). Amounts in the $35-$55 gap can be easily handled by simply making change in silver from a 1/10-oz gold piece according to the store's advertised exchange rate.
Of course it would be even more likely, given today's technology, that people would simply use some sort of electronic exchange system similar to our debit cards. Existing exchange networks, such as e-gold, permit online transfers of as little as 1/10,000-oz. (~$0.055), which tends to eliminate the need for multiple currencies. For such a system gold would probably be considered preferable for its small size (and thus ease of storage).
There are a number of industrial uses for gold: corrosion-resistant plating, wiring in integrated circuits, etc.; its use in jewelry, too, is partially due to its material properties (including appearance) and not just its price. It can even be formed into an aerogel and employed in supercapacitors and some kinds of filters.
In monetary terms gold has value (apart from its marketability) both because it has a naturally limited supply and because its alternate uses tend to set a floor on its value. Fiat currencies can be devalued without limit; their scarcity is purely artificial and they have no significant uses besides exchange.
The only reason we have a fiat system in the U.S. is that at one point in our fairly-recent history the government confiscated (stole) all the privately-owned gold (at that point the primary medium of exchange), banned its use, and replaced it with paper notes. People didn't really have a choice; they could either use the notes or revert to a primitive barter system. The ban on gold ownership/use was eventually lifted (within the last 35 years, I believe), but at that point the damage was already done -- and the stolen property was never returned. It remains to be seen whether the fiat system will remain now that it's no longer legally mandated; it took a few thousand years to develop the system we had before, and short of forcing everyone to switch yet again I wouldn't expect things to go back to normal in just one or two generations.
Just to follow up on this point, you can find a reasonably sound defense of the legitimacy of proportional punishment -- based on common-law principles -- in the journal article Punishment and Proportionality: The Estoppel Approach by N. Stephan Kinsella.
Defining the rules is easy enough; just look at the system of common law prior to the point where it was co-opted by the governments of the time. Or, for that matter, international law today. There's no world government to which all the other nations are subject, so how can there be such a thing as international law, and what ensures that the individual states will follow it? Answer: The rules are established through precedent (i.e. rulings which successfully resolved disputes in the past are re-used in the present), and enforced through self-defense, the value of reputation in the wider community, and the simple fact that violence is always costly to both sides in any dispute. Diplomacy, in other words, substitutes for arbitrary legislation.
Untrue. A universal set of social rules would simply include the necessary provisions, such as self-defense, which permit such enforcement. These provisions would apply to each individual rather than being restricted to designated law-enforcement personnel; in turn, no would would be able to legitimately exceed the bounds of self-defense as present enforcement personnel routinely do, on their own or as directed by the legislature. (Obviously one would be able to delegate self-defense to a third party, as I suspect would generally occur, but they would then be acting as one's agent and thus limited to a purely defensive role. One cannot delegate authority one does not possess.)
No comment, except to say that your characterization of me as a "stoned teenager" is entirely untrue. I am not a teenager, and have at no time consumed any variety of illicit drug, nor the more legal varieties such as alcoholic beverages or tobacco products. This is not because they are illegal, mind you; I simply have no desire to experiment with mind-altering substances. I prefer my mind the way it is.
Bad example: anarchy means "no rulers", not "no rules". An anarchic society can also be a lawful and free society.
For that matter, I would go so far as to say that any society which is not anarchic cannot be lawful, because it contains, by definition, an organization not bound to follow the laws which bind the rest of society. Any universally lawful & free society must be anarchic. (This is not to say that all anarchic societies will necessarily be free and lawful ones -- that is up to the individuals involved, just as it is with the non-anarchic societies.)
This sentiment -- that everything that might affect my environment should be under my control, subject to my own personal veto -- is at the heart of authoritarian politics. In essence it declares society subservient to the individual's will. The policitally successful become the masters; everyone else becomes their slaves.
The opposite philosophy, that things can rightfully exist which may affect me and which I have no rightful control over -- that other have a right to their own decisions -- is the essence of the libertarian position, which places all the individuals in society on the same level under the common law. (Which, incidently, is why it's called the common law.)
Libertarianism is social by nature; authoritarianism, anti-social. The economic end of libertarianism is cooperation and the libre market; the economic end of authoritarianism is isolation and self-sufficiency.
Conservatism is a form of socialism (pages 65+).
First, "faith in democracy" is closer to "faith in others" than "faith in oneself". To lose faith in democracy implies the belief that one's own decisions are correct and the majority vote is therefore wrong. If anything it's a demonstration of faith in oneself.
Second, there are many kinds of "faith in democracy" depending on what you expect out of it. Faith in it as a decision-making process, for example; that tends to be rather hit-or-miss depending on the group (think "designed by committee"). Or faith in its morality: the idea that moral rights and wrongs are determined by the majority opinion. You see that all too often in discussions like this one, where some choose to uphold unjust laws as morally sound simply because they were written by representatives of a (supposed) majority of "we the people." In my opinion individual moral responsibility and geniune leadership ability trump democracy any day.
It's a fine distinction, but I disagree. Under the present system a patent holder has the option of refusing to license, in which case case they wouldn't technically be paid a subsidy (unless you consider exclusive franchise agreements and the like to be subsidies -- I don't). Under the proposed system they wouldn't have the option of a true monopoly; instead their competitors would be taxed a specific, limited amount (the compulsory license fee) to subsidize the patent holder. It would probably be better than the current system, on the whole, but I don't care much for either approach.
You won't get any argument from me.
I realize that water was probably a poor choice compared to air. Still, the common price for preprocessed tap water (or even bottled water) is hardly proportional to the "value" of water as most would estimate it -- particularly after going a few days without Similarly, people often pay others to make copies of various content ("commercial copyright infringement") despite the fact that they could, in general, make said copies more cheaply themselves from a purely monetary point of view. As with water, the supply of such copies is essentially unlimited, and their prices derive mainly from the convenience of getting them pre-made rather than the "value" of the content to the buyer.
No, the demand for the image is what people would be willing to pay for it. The value of an image is subjective and impossible to measure, as it exists only in the mind of the one evaluating the image. Demand is a function of the potential buyer's resources, the available alternatives (competition), and the relative value of the image compared to all the other goods that person might wish to acquire. The thing is, absent the threat of coercion by the government via copyright enforcement, the "competition" for the image (assuming it was already available to the public) would obviously include the potential buyer's ability to duplicate the image at zero cost. Just as water, or air, is extremely valuable and yet would be difficult to profit from selling, copies of images may be valuable while yet commanding little or no demand after the initial publication. There is nothing unfair or unjust about that.
The "reasonable market rate" is what they would have paid in the absence of the patent -- i.e., probably nothing. Market prices are determined, by definition, solely by unrestricted and unforced trade between individuals; there is no other context in which the term "market rate" has any meaning. What you are proposing is that we do away with patents altogether in favor of tax-funded subsidies. (You might not call it a "tax", but that's what the compulsory license fees are nonetheless.)
So would I -- extortion by the U.S. government against Vonage (and all the other relevant VoIP providers). Verizon's involved, to be sure, but its complicity is trivial compared to that of the organization responsible for granting and enforcing the patent(s) in the first place.
Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with any kind of legal advise.
Actually, it still is. You see, no government would ever call any organization "freedom fighters" for the simple reason that such groups are always opposed to the particular government in power; ergo their presence on the "Terrorist Group Lists" published exclusively by such governments. If you were to ask people outside of government, however, you would probably tend to get a mixture of responses. At the very least I doubt many such organizations think of themselves as purely terrorist groups.
The difference between "terrorist" and "freedom fighter" is entirely a matter of perspective.
There's your problem. It has nothing to do with seat belts, just run-of-the-mill welfare statism.
From my experiences with Linux ISOs and similar, for which the BitTorrent link is usually the quickest download method:
1) Wait until you've downloaded a couple of blocks before measuring the speed. Your speed won't peak until you have something to upload due to the nature of the protocol.
2) Assuming you have more than 64KB/s download capacity and there are more than a dozen or so peers (or seeds), try limiting your upload rate to just under your real upload capacity. If you don't your uploads will choke out the ACK packets and download speeds will suffer. (You may have to experiment a bit to find the optimal upload speed.)
The BitTorrent protocol works better than many give it credit for, provided you're not the only peer and you manage your bandwidth properly. It also doesn't hurt to use a client like Azureus with a built-in DHT client, in case the tracker goes down -- or just to pick up additional peers the tracker doesn't know about.
This is the only statement of any consequence in your reply, and (IMHO) it's completely wrong.
First, what people "should do" -- what it is right for them to do -- is the moral code. It can be evaluated from any given person's point-of-view: your moral code, their moral code, "society's" moral code, etc.
As you say, the definition of "moral" varies from person to person. Each person is responsible for coming up with their own moral code. (Even in your system there must be individual codes before one can become the majority position.) It is possible for an individual's moral code to require adherance to the moral code of another, but it is not possible to adhere to all moral codes simultaneously, since many stand in direct contradiction to each other. (It is worth noting that no complete moral code holds an absolute majority; there are almost as many moral codes as there are individuals. You only ever have majority consensus on specific, highly polarized issues.)
I do not hold that one is bound to follow the moral codes adopted by others -- though one may certainly choose to do so -- but even if I did I would still say that one's own code must take precedence in choosing and judging one's own actions in the event of an outright conflict. To do otherwise would be to effectively abdictate responsibility for the morality of one's actions.
P.S. I think you missed my point on that last bit -- I believe that democracy itself, the ideal form along with all the real-world varieties, is not fit for the purposes of liberty or justice or freedom.
It's a bit hard to tell from just the unannotated text, but I'm going to assume that was intended as sarcasm...
Rather, the requirement for H-1B visas artificially restricts the labor supply, raising wages (but reducing wealth), whereas an increased supply of visas allows the labor supply and wages to grow toward their natural levels.
Original post:
Reply:
I agree on the second point -- though with a different connotation than you probably intended -- but what difference should it make whether one person or a billion play a part in making the law? If a law is moral (not popular) then one should follow it, not because its the law but because its the moral thing to do. It would still be the moral thing to do even if the law didn't exist. On the other hand, if the law does not correspond to moral behavior -- whether it prescribes outright immoral behavior or merely prohibits non-immoral behavior -- then the law has no legitimacy and there is no moral reason to follow it (and there may be moral reasons against doing so). The only consideration that then remains is the possible repurcussions of violating the law, if/when one is caught. Given the probability of getting caught and the penalty for breaking the law some choose defiance whereas others choose to comply for their own safety; I applaud those who choose to stand up for their civil liberties, an act which benefits all those who seek freedom, but I see nothing morally wrong with either choice.
I believe that and more: I believe that no democratic process in any country is fit for the purposes of liberty or justice or freedom. It may be fit for other purposes -- granting legitimacy to the government in the eyes of the people, for example, as you pointed out -- but such are not purposes I would willingly endorse.