I'm not sure that would be all that friendly to the flash drive.
They could borrow the system used in image-based persistent environments like Squeak, where in-progress changes are saved automatically as part of the system image. In Squeak (and Smalltalk in general) you can use a "FileOut" operation to save a snapshot of a particular class or method as a regular file. In a "live" editor the actual document, with all its state information and version history, would be persistent in the device (no "save" operation, and perhaps not even an explicit file format, just a collection of in-memory objects), but whenever you feel like reading it elsewhere you could export a snapshot of the current version to the flash drive (or to anything else capable of receiving a binary stream).
Freedom of association shouldn't go away just because money is involved -- to act as if it did would make it almost meaningless. There can be no fundamental separation between private and commercial rights, as they are both derived from the same source: private property rights. If I have freedom of association as an individual in a non-commercial context, then I must also have that same freedom of association as an individual (or a member of a group) in a commercial context.
If you want to avoid renting to certain types of people you hate, then you can find the person you want to rent to IN PERSON.
What's so special about finding the renter in person? What would make a public advertisement any different? The advertisement is merely information, a way for buyers and sellers to find each other; it shouldn't be considered a binding contract. The actual exchange will be carried out on an individual basis, and should be subject to the approval of both parties on the basis of any information they consider relevant. You expect nothing less when you are on the consumer side of a commercial transaction; as you are not compelled to buy from seller you find distasteful (see also: boycotts), why should the other party be required to sell to you under the same circumstances?
By the way, freedom of speech isn't about having the right to say whatever you want without facing consequences.
I'm sorry, but that's exactly what freedom of speach is. It doesn't eliminate all consequences, of course, but to say that it doesn't eliminate any would make freedom of speach completely meaningless. Even your own example admits that: "without being arrested"; free speach prohibits the potential consequence of arrest. (This is actually backward, in keeping with the example; a better wording would be that arrest cannot be justified on the sole basis of any sort of speach.) More generally, freedom of speach is the understanding that no act of speach can be considered aggression in and of itself; thus, no act of speach can (per se) be grounds for defensive or retributive coercion against the speaker. (The speach may be incidentally related to some other legitimate claim, e.g. threat of coercion, but cannot itself form such a justification.) There are numerous potential non-coercive consequences not prohibited by freedom of speach (damaged reputation, disassociation, etc.), but freedom of speach must preclude all coercive consequences to have any meaning.
If I offer to sell you a grapefruit, and sell you an orange instead, I can't defend myself on charges of fraud that oranges are, in fact, more popular. . ..
Fraud is not decided by popular vote. Fraud is making factually incorrect statements to gain to gain someone's money.
I think you misunderstand what I wrote. The sale is fraudulent if and only if you misrepresented what you were selling in order to get the contract. The term "grapefruit" has a definition, determined by consensus ("popularity"), which an orange does not meet, and so selling an orange under the name "grapefruit" would be fraud. I think we are in agreement on this point. I am simply saying that if people associate the term "WidgetX" with one definition, and you sell a product under the name "WidgetX" that doesn't live up to that definition, that is fraud.
And I fail to see how what you talk about makes things less confusing to anyone! Randomly changing ownership of trademarks because some people misuse them is not a good idea. And, I note, we already do that when they reach a certain level, anyway, or at least we public domain the trademark.
It's less confusing because the name changes aren't "random", they're based on the language. How is it more confusing to use the consensual definition (the "reasonable person" standard) of the name as the determining factor for whether the use of that name was fraudulent or not? We do the same thing all the time for other, non-trademarked terms. This merely applies the same rules to trade- and service marks.
And I'm baffled as to why you think someone pretending to be me in an interaction with someone else isn't harming me. My reputation will suffer, there could be misdirected bills and lawsuits, all sorts of bad things could happen. Same thing if pretend-Toshiba laptop batteries explode.
For a sufficiently loose definition of "harm", they may indeed be "harming" you, if only due to an inadequecy in our legal system. If the legal system were operating as it should, you ought to be able to simply ignore any bills or lawsuits incorrectly directed your way -- it should be up to the bill collector / prosecutor to prove that they have the right person before inconveniencing you. (This policy policy would tend to make identity fraud far more difficult to begin with, as creditors, etc., would necessarily require more stringent proof of identity up front.) As it is, if you felt that their actions damaged you or your property (legal fees, time, "emotional distress," etc.) you wouldn't need special identity laws to sue for compensation; we already have a framework for resolving such disputes.
Your reputation is your own problem, of course, being merely the sum of how others think about you, and not something you have any natural right to control directly; the legal system should not be involved.
As for the "pretend-Toshiba" batteries, I expect the reasonable definition for "Toshiba" would be determined to be the specific corporation that holds that trademark today (even of "Toshiba" wasn't a trademark), so selling a "pretend-Toshiba" battery with the "made by Toshiba" label on it would still be fraudulent, as the battery wasn't made by Toshiba.
Trademark law just provides a framework for made up names to exist.
That framework already exists -- it's called a language.
Trademark law is, at root, a specific form of fraud prevention.
Exactly. The problem is that the enforcement stage is handled from the wrong point of view.
If the problem is fraud, committed by the disreputable producers against their customers, who should be prosecuting it? The other manufacturers, or the customer? In anything but trademark law the answer would be the customer, the one who was actually injured by the fraud. I submit that trademarks should handled the same way.
If I make a product and call it WidgetX, and there aren't any other "confusingly similar" products out there named WidgetX, then (in most cases) my product would form the common definition of the term "WidgetX" in that product domain. Assuming the name becomes fairly well-known, if someone else were to start selling something slightly different and calling it WidgetX (whereas most consumers thought of my product as WidgetX) then they'd be misrepresenting their product. If their customers expected something other than what they were sold (design, quality -- anything, really) on the basis of that name, and a court agrees that their expectations were reasonable, then those customers would have a legitimate claim against the fraudulent seller.
The difference between this and the current system lies in who defines the terms. The current system grants that priviledge to the producer, and works under the assumption that all unlicensed use within that product domain will necessarily lead to confusion. The system described above allows producers (who are quite aware of what their product is already) to suggest names, but ultimately places control over the language in the hands of the consumers (the ones looking for the product). If two producers decided on the same name for their business or product, and the unpopular one managed to register the name first, the current system would force the vast majority of consumers to accept a less suitable marketing label for the product they actually wish to refer to, whereas the system I described above (based solely on protection against fraud, needing no new laws) would "assign" the name according to social convention (and thus probably in favor of the more popular producer). The result: less confusion among consumers.
Copyright (notwithstanding developments of the past 50ish years) is an agreement that a government (which SL is in this case) makes with people that they can benefit from their creations for a time in exchange for everyone eventually getting to benefit from the creation.
You're partially right. It's not theft by the people granted the copyright (at least not directly); the theft (or infringement of rights, whatever term you may prefer) is committed by the government itself (which Linden Labs is not, except perhaps within SL itself) against its citizens, through the act of unilaterally prohibiting them (against their will) from making copies of said creations. "The government" (the group of individuals actually making and enforcing the decisions) hasn't the right to make that agreement on behalf of everyone else; at most they may represent those who participated in the voting process (assuming one existed), though even there the participation could be considered to be under duress, in which case they represent only themselves. (Aside: There is no historical basis for the "social contract" theory of society; all governments in recorded history have arisen through force. Even if there was such a contract at one point there is no way those alive at the founding of the government could contractually bind their descendents. Contracts must be voluntarily accepted to be meaningful.)
I create some because I like it. I create more when I have financial interest in doing so.
Has anyone ever bothered to considere that "more arts and sciences at any cost" might just be a rather short-sighted arrangement of priorities? There are trade-offs, you know; perhaps the actual amount of creation (vs. all the other things people want) would better reflect people's real priorities if it weren't so heavily subsidized. (This is formally known as the "broken window fallacy": you can easily see the additional creations resulting from the subsidy, but not the things that could have otherwise happened and didn't. A full analysis must take into account the unseen effects as well as the seen.) Certainly copyrights and patents encourage the sorts of activities that qualify for such priviledges (though how well that may correspond with "encourag[ing] the sciences and useful arts" may be debatable), and I would certainly agree that people want inventions and artistic works, but at what cost? What goals are they willing to give up to achieve that increase? The answer will obviously differ from person to person (another reason why it shouldn't be a collective decision), but I doubt it's nearly as much as the government's chosen to concede on their behalf.
Yea tell that to indie software developers that make a living selling their software.
All right: Binary can be duplicated. If something is valuable due to its uniqueness don't put it in binary. Any indie software developer selling something that can be digitally duplicated should plan for their business model's demise from day one.
"Without content, the market for technology designed to deliver it will dry up quickly."
Translation: Technology providers have a financial stake in ensuring the existance of popular content to drive sales of their products.
This should suggest a simple solution for content creation in a post-copyright world: let the technology providers pay for it. They obviously have the interest, and the capacity, to represent their customers and fund popular media, without which there can be no market for their products. In some respects this would be rather similar to the advertising model, which also subsidizes the creation of media (e.g. radio and television shows, websites, print media, live events, etc.) as a side effect of creating markets for more tangible products and services; the connection between media players and the content itself is yet more direct. This approach also eliminates the disincentive of content monopolization: the technology producers would have no reason to suppress independent artistic works; quite the contrary, in fact, as the creation of additional content can only increase the demand for their products.
It won't hold up, because that's not what they really said. They're really saying, "We licensed your software, and if we're not complying with the license, then sue us for that. But once you offered the license and we accepted, then copyright was no longer an issue. The issue, now, is the contract."
Presumably they have figured out that there is some advantage to being guilty of violating a license, rather than being guilty of violating copyright. If you're going to lose, lose the way that hurts the least.:-)
That may be what they're trying to say, but if so I believe they're wrong. I'm not a lawyer (and this is not legal advice), but as best I understand the issue it is actually impossible to violate the GPL (or any similar license). Either you follow the conditions and accept the license (one and the same thing) and thus are granted permission to do something (like distribute a copyrighted program) you wouldn't otherwise be allowed to do, or you don't follow the conditions and don't receive any such permission. The license is in force only so long as it's conditions are followed; if you fail to fulfill its conditions it immediately terminates, at which point you have no permission to e.g. distribute copies of the program, an ordinary copyright infringement issue, not a breach of contract.
A free market is about being able to trade your own good freely, not other people's!
Right again. However, ideas are not goods. The creation of an idea can be a good (labour), but not all products of labour are goods. The individual objects (recordings, machines, etc.) implementing such ideas are goods, but those who create and sell such objects are trading their own goods, not goods belonging to others.
Copyrights and patents are state-enforced monopoly priviledges, nothing more. They represent an experiment in social engineering like to merchantilism and corporatism, and would not exist in a market free from state interference (i.e. any free market).
In a free market others can manufacture the things you stop selling if there still is a demand. For some reason this isn't possible.
Erm, no they can't, it's called trademark/copyright/patent infringement.
Exactly. In a free market none of those things would exist. They exist now only as a grant of monopoly from the government, and monopoly grants cannot exist in a free market (by definition). (Trademarks would still exist after a fashion, since selling something under a false trademark for the purposes of misrepresentation (fraud) would still be a crime, but they would be enforcable only by the defrauded customers, not the manufacturers.)
You know, in theory, I agree with that, actually. I don't -like- regulating things, particularly ethical or moral choices. In an ideal world, people would do what they could for other people to get by, even those without regular physical ability. But as I said in my post, the reason it's law is that [cut]"without the law, nobody would do it, because so many people are amoral [cheapskates], particularly business owners. That's why we developed employee, child labor, and consumer protection laws - business owners weren't exactly chomping at the goddamn bit to be nice to people, not when it might cost a few dollars off the top."[/cut]
Would that I could trust other folks to do the right thing more often.
Let me get this straight: you don't like regulating things, but any time people don't willingly choose to do what you want them to do you consider yourself justified in bending your rules a bit and regulating anyway. My statements were meant to apply to our world, not some impossible ideal, in which they would prove unnecessary anyway. Your sense of ethics and morals appear to have no meaning outside of that impossible ideal state.
In the world we live in, whatever the law may claim, you have no right to demand any action from anyone else, and no one else has the right to demand any action from you. If you want someone to help you out you need to offer them something worthwhile in return.
Why does a disabled person have to do without, or beg for help from someone?
I agree that people ought to be considerate and provide access and assistance in situations where it makes sense, but what mandantory ADA compliance represents is worse than begging for help: it forces people to help against their will; it demands assistance. It combines begging with a twisted sense of entitlement. You may as well ask why the person is disabled in the first place; the answer would be the same. Each person, regardless of ability, must learn to compensate for their own weaknesses. Some have more to compensate for than others; that doesn't give them any right to make demands. No one has any entitlement to the time, energy, or property of anyone else.
Whatever the law may claim, you have no right to demand any action from anyone else, and no one else has the right to demand any action from you. If you want someone to help you out you need to offer them something worthwhile in return (worthwhile by their assessment, not yours). The typical customer asks little and pays for any services rendered in the prices of the goods they purchase. You demand extra services but offer no further compensation; you expect the other customers to subsidize your "independence." Is it any wonder the ADA and its supporters draw so much ill-will?
One thing computers are horrible at dealing with are typos. Humans can just look past them, but computers get stuck on them constantly.
So just ask something like
"Wwwqhat xixxxs th_e ffiffth wABCDEord N dis s!nt!nce (after deciphering)"
And let users do the rest of the work.
What do you think a (non-braille) screen reader would do with that line? Spell it out? Could you decipher the contents of that line if someone dictated it to you letter-by-letter? Or worse, if the reader tried to guess at the correct pronounciation of each word? Reading text peppered with typos is easy in a visual medium, where you can see all the parts at once and (mostly) ignore the noise. I doubt it's so easy when the typos are being processed through a text-to-speach synthesizer. The difficulty of reading typos in braille is probably somewhere in between, though I have no way of knowing for sure. (Would any braille-reading Slashdotters care to comment on this?)
I will admit, however, that your system could represent an improvement over normal CAPTCHAs for users with text-only browsers or braille terminals. On the other hand, it also doesn't have as much complexity as a randomized image. Some simple filters (remove repeated and especially unlikely letters (like "x"), out-of-place punctuation, and misplaced capitals; run the result through a carefully-tuned spellchecker) could render your typo'd question vulnerable to the sort of dictionary attack I described before. The only part those rules didn't fix (using MS Word's spellchecker) was "N dis"; Word ignored "N" and refused to consider any corrections for "dis" that didn't start with "d". Both could be corrected easily in a special-purpose filter.
instead of obfuscated images, just put in plain text questions.
That's been considered before. The problem with that approach is that, unlike image-based CAPTCHAs, there are a limited number of templates available for natural-language questions. The spammer just has to compile a list of the various patterns of questions and answers, a much easier task than designing an OCR program capable of extracting random, disconnected letters and numbers from a randomly distorted image. The problem is essentially one of hash functions -- plain-text questions can be solved as easily as they can be generated, whereas image-based CAPTCHAs are easy to generate but difficult (for computers) to decipher. Your last example ("What is the name of my blog?") is probably the best, since it's somewhat resistant to ordinary dictionary attacks, but there could be several reasonable answers (depending on the blog) and the correct answer(s) would have to be separately entered into each site. For many sites the answer may also be trivially derived from the title of the page, or some other element no less predictable than the form elements employed to enter the comment.
I'm just guessing, but would you be willing to volunteer to pick up the pieces after its abolition? Maybe organise things a bit, whip us some smart black police uniforms and armbands,get the trains running on time, that sort of thing?
No, the failure of past revolutions was precisely in that they did what you are proposing -- they tried to replace the system they just overthrew with "something better." They tear down the corrupted government of the day but fail to destroy the legitimization of aggression on which both the corruption and the idea of government itself are based. As a result their "something better" ends up becoming just as bad as what it replaced, or possibly even worse. The only way to break the cycle is to reject the foundation, the legitimization of aggression, on which the existance of any sort of government depends. That cannot be accomplished though politics or war; both presume the existance of legitimate aggression, which contradicts and undermines the goal. It can only be accomplished if individuals choose to recognize government aggression as illegitimate and defend themselves against it, whenever and wherever it may occur; in other words, by treating the government like the criminal organization that it is.
Second, that the objective here is to make money. How about providing enough water so the population don't all die?
Your making the assumption that money is ultimately meaningless, that the costs don't matter; this is a very common fallacy. The monetary costs represent resources -- time, labour, materials -- that must be spent on this project, and which will be unavailable for other projects. If the project is not cost-effective (if the costs are more than what people are willing to pay for the water) that indicates that resources spent on the project would have been better spent on some other more urgent need.
We just need to get the government to pay for it.
Good luck with that -- the government never pays for anything. As with any government project you and your neighbors will be paying for it. At least you are paying by choice; you can't guarantee as much for your neighbors.
Oh, and if you have water supply entirely in private hands, you're just asking for trouble.
It will be in private hands regardless; the only question is whose private hands: politicians or private investors? Which of the two is more likely to get away with misrepresenting the costs and benefits for personal gain? Keep in mind that the politician is proposing to invest other people's resources in the project, whereas a private investor would have a personal stake in its success. The politician may lose an election, if the project fails spectacularly enough; each investor risks far more on the belief that the project will succeed.
But if you vote Green, or Libertarian, or Independent, you're sending a message that you don't trust mainstream politics.
On the other hand, you're also sending a message that you do trust the political system itself. Whether your candidate wins or not you've implicitly agreed to abide by the majority decision. Those who vote have no right to complain about the actions of the government they helped to create.
Illustration: Assume there's a criminal gang and two victims. The gang offers the victims a choice: vote on whether they should be robbed (and abide by the majority opinion), or don't vote and get robbed anyway. There are obviously more members in the gang than there are victims, so the outcome of the vote is a foregone conclusion. If one victim agrees to vote and the other does not, which one do you think has a right to complain about it afterward, the voter or the non-voter?
All the rights you have come from your vote. The [C]onstitution is just a paper
A ballot is also "just a [piece of] paper"; it won't defend your rights any better than a written constitution. Only you can defend your rights, by your own actions.
elect the wrong people, for long enough, and all your rights all can disappear.
If you fail to believe in your rights, for any length of time, they will disappear. If you fail to defend them they will be violated, by the government or by someone else. Whoever wins the election may be counted on to actively violate the rights of many people while in office, possibly including your own; in that sense all the candidates are "the wrong people" simply by virtue of running for political office (which has no other purpose). That includes third-party candidates and non-incumbants -- do you really think they'd be any better, once elected? Remember that the major parties are both former third parties, and all the incumbants were once challengers.
I do agree, however, on the importance of anonymous ballots.
On an unrelated topic, here's a proposal to limit unsolicited government meddling: tie the government's budget to voter turnout. Put a multiple-choice option on the ballot: "Compared to the previous term, government spending and taxation should: (a) Increase (b) Decrease (c) Remain the same." Counting (a) as +0.6, (b) as -0.4, and (c) as +0.1, compute the sum across all the ballots. Divide the result by the total eligible voting population and subtract 10%; the result will determine the change in the government's taxes and spending for the next term, from 50% of last term's budget (everyone voted "decrease") to 150% of the same (everyone voted "increase"). If no one votes the budget gets reduced by 10%; if 50% vote the min and max become 70% and 120%, respectively. All unspent revenues (not just taxes) would be returned as a flat tax rebate during the next term, and (obviously) no further deficit spending would be permitted.
Disclaimer: I'm not trying to say that the system described above would grant any more legitimacy to either taxes or the government than the currenct system, just that it would better represent popular opinion, provide better representation on tax issues, and somewhat counter the government's tendency to expand over time. An important point is that it requires active participation to offset the automatic 10%/term decrease, which should help to keep the budget at a level the population is willing to actively support, as opposed to the current system where the budget is actually allowed to rise until it meets active opposition.
And, if the owner cited Asthma, what in the HECK would they do if the person had a seeing eye dog? For that
matter, what would YOU do? It's a rough call going there, believe me.
Simple: I'd side with the owner every time. Anyone who remains on their property after being told to leave--and given the opportunity to do so--is committing trespass. It may be a stupid decision on the owner's part, but the owner is the only person with the right to remain on that property; the rest are there solely by the owner's permission. The owner thus has the right to withdraw that permission, for any reason, at any time, from one person or from many. Those who no longer have permission to remain must then leave by the most expedient route.
First, on the money side, many of us believe that the disabled shouldn't have to bear all the costs of their disability -- that society should bear some of them. In this case we are forcing Target (and, indirectly, all of Target's customers) to pay for the fact that blind shoppers can't use a website which seeing users can.
I'm sorry, but your mere preferences are not sufficient justification for punishing Target or its customers. If "many of [you]" really care so much why don't you pay these costs yourselves and leave everyone else out of it? What gives you the right to force anyone else to support you against their will? If you want something done, use your own resources to accomplish it; don't steal from others to further your goals. There are plenty of ways to influence people without resorting to aggression, as I pointed out in a recent comment on conservation.
If you can't control it, you can't own it, and all of your suggestions assume that someone can own a school of fish.
How do you control a school of fish, short of a fish farm?
First, that was meant only as an example. The reasoning could be applied to the ownership of any depletable natural resource. There are many different ways to designate ownership of fishing rights, which in practice would probably be combined: geographical areas (or volumes) of ocean, particular species or fishing techniques, etc. The ownership of any particular fish would naturally be rather imprecise, just as ownership of animals in a game reserve is imprecise. The ownership really applies to the preserve itself, not the particular animals (or fish) inside. It would be up to the individual owners to ensure that their preferred stock of fish remained within the volume(s) of ocean they control. The techniques for doing so would obviously vary depending on the type of fish.
Second, if no one can own something then no one can legitimately claim a right to defend it. The right to employ coercion defensively is derived from and implied by ownership; if no one owns something then nothing done to it can be considered aggression. At present the owners of various parts of the oceans are effectively the various governments exercising fishing rights in their respective areas; they claim the right to defend the exercise of their fishing rights, and those claims are generally considered legitimate (at least by other governments). There is no reason, however, why the same general guidelines could not be used to designate boundaries for private ownership.
But you know what, that private landowner doesn't [care] what impact his actions will have on the world 50 - much less 100 - years from now, and he certainly doesn't [care] about the ecological impact on what he does not own, nor on that which is not profitable.
Someone must care -- you obviously do. There are probably more like you. Take advantage of that fact.
Say there's someone who owns an school of endangered fish and really doesn't care about preservation. Without violating anyone's rights, what can you do to accomplish your own goal of preserving this species?
Talk to the person. Convince him/her that preservation is a worthy goal. Assuming you're successful, discuss plans for rebuilding the stock of that fish so it won't be endangered any more.
Find out whose opinions the owner cares about (family, friends, partners) and talk to them. Convert one or more of them to your side. They have more direct influence with the owner, or know specific ways to argue the case more effectively. They may also be more objective and less defensive, being further removed from the core issues.
Buy him/her out. They say everyone has their price. This isn't necessarily something you can do on your own, though; you'll probably need help from quite a few others. That shouldn't be a problem if majority (or significant minority) of people agree with your goals, which would be a prerequisite in a democracy anyway. You can probably get credit, too, as your long-term plan is a lot more economically viable than whatever the present owner is doing. You don't have to do this as a grassroots campaign every time; form an organization dedicated to general conservation. That will also increase overall awareness and help your credibility when asking for donations.
Start a boycott. Increases awareness of the issue, and may influence the owner's behavior depending on market conditions and the extent of the boycott.
Impose sanctions. Similar to a boycott, but go beyond not buying the owner's products. Convince others not to do any business with the owner -- rental housing, roads, stores, communications, utilities, defense, the works. Enough cooperation can essentially force the owner into a state of complete self-reliance; even if the sanctions are incomplete they can easily cause enough inconvenience to make the owner reconsider your request. This is almost guaranteed to work if enough people agree to support your goal.
Obviously the further down the list you go the more support you'll need from others. You also need people to actually side with you, not just remain apathetic. Both are positive traits; they prevent the more severe sanctions from being abused and thus guard against unnecessary conflict. It also helps to have the support of one or more people who specialize in finding ways to optimize goal-accomplishment (generally, though not always, identified by social status and/or wealth). Luckily for you these people are also generally investors, meaning that they tend to have relatively low time-preferences (they care more about the future and less about the present); that makes them more likely to appreciate your cause than the average consumer.
I really think that a lot of the pining for the gold standard is simply a result of people being vaguely morally outraged that their hard-earned money is decreasing in value.
No, my "moral outrage" is that the government prohibited ownership of gold and confiscated it from private citizens to give themselves the ability to take near absolute control over the economy by controlling the medium of exchange. If they had not done so we would probably still be using gold (or equivalent) as currency. Ownership is no longer prohibited (since the 70's), but by that point the damage was already done.
Other reasons for supporting gold as currency:
Gold contracts favor neither debtors nor creditors; they are fair to both sides.
Gold currency is historically a less risky "store of value" than fiat currency.
Gold, unlike paper, cannot be created on demand as a hidden form of taxation; this limits the government's influence over both the economy and its citizens.
Use of gold in place of credit contributes to higher reserve ratios, which in turn dampen the severity of boom-bust cycles.
A gold currency places monetary policy in the hands of the people, where it belongs.
As a commodity with non-monetary uses gold is far less likely to ever suffer from hyperinflation.
In regards to the "store of value" point, it is true that fiat currencies and inflation reduce "hoarding" (investments in currency) and thus increase the sum of business investments and consumption. The increase can go to either; in practice, as the reduction comes from a low-risk category, the majority of the increase will tend toward consumption. Even the part that does go toward business is hardly costless; it comes at the expense of increased risk and a lower economic stability than individuals would have chosen on their own. The correlation between risk and ROI cannot be circumvented by mere monetary policy.
[Deflation] makes debt phenomenally difficult to get out of, dries up the availability of credit, reduces spending, . ..
Debt should be hard to get out of. If you borrow someone else's property you should have to pay it back in full.
Credit is not the answer for everything. A gold currency generally limits credit to what people are willing to risk. Inflationary credit gives borrowers an unfair advantage, as they get to purchase stuff before prices start to adjust; those who have a hard time borrowing (the poor, usually) are hurt the most by this, as they get the higher prices but not the easy credit.
Are you trying to call a reduction in spending a bad thing? Saving creates capital, increasing the productivity of labor and the purchasing power of the currency; it creates new wealth for everyone, rich and poor alike. Any system that encourages consumption at the expense of saving will compromise the long-term wealth of the whole society.
[Gold currency] . . . puts a rather firm upper limit on the speed at which we can grow our economy without forcing steady deflation into the picture. Not to mention the fact that the price of gold assumes a certain rate of discovery of new deposits, and any short (and completely unpredictable) dry spells would result in spikes of deflation capable of knocking the wind out of even a robust economy.
First, you are assuming here that that a steady fall in prices is an problem. Some of the best periods in American history, from an economic point of view, were marked by a steady fall in prices and a gold-based currency. Falling prices are not an issue. Second, the price of gold as a non-currency commodity varies as a result of "dry spells". As a currency the value of gold would be primarily determined by its marketability, and the marketability of a commodity currency does not generally tend to change rapidly over time.
. . . had we been on a gold standard, the money supply would have experienced 50% deflation in five years, matching the 1929-1933 10% annual deflation that caused the Great Depression. Wouldn't that be a great way to stabilize the currency?
You responded:
It's not like your own response refuting this also advances the same claim:
The claims made by you and I were in no way similar. You claimed that falling prices alone were the cause of the Great Depression, or at least that is was a sufficient factor to cause a depression. My response was quite clear that it was the price controls -- a fallacious reaction to the falling prices -- which led to the Depression. To be sure, price controls in the absence of falling prices would probably not have led to a depression; the same could be said for falling prices without the price controls. In the case of the Depression prices were already falling (with the prices of goods falling faster than wages); by itself this was harmless. The trouble only started when the government added price controls in an attempt to offset price decreases (and further monetary inflation to nullify the price controls). Ergo, the fault was not "deflation" (falling prices) but rather the government's and unions' attempts to freeze prices at their inflated levels.
Or, in other words, the massive deflation, in conjunction with price controls that would not allow prices (most particularly wages) to adjust to the new conditions they had created, stopped us from pulling out of a recession and instead sunk into a depression. It's interesting that half of your entire text following your thesis "Neither deflation nor the gold standard caused the Great Depression" is about how deflation contributed to The Depression.
contributed to != caused
Falling prices certainly "contributed to" the Depression, in the sense that it took both falling prices and price controls to bring the Depression about. For that matter indirect exchange "contributed to" the Depression -- you couldn't have a Depression without an economy, after all. However, the cause of the Depression was, as I said, not the falling prices, but rather the price controls. The falling prices were not the work of the government; the price controls were. The price controls also had nothing to do with the presence of the gold standard. You keep placing the emphasis on the falling prices, but it was the price controls, obviously, that kept prices from adjusting to the new conditions.
America's Great Depression by Murray N. Rothbard is pretty thoroughly discredited by modern economists.
You made this sort of ad hominem attack a couple of times; care to cite any sources for your assertions? Being completely ignored is not the same as being discredited. Has anyone actually managed to credibly argue that any part of Rothbard's analysis is based on bad data, unjustified assumptions, or logical fallacies? Incidently, the "nobel prize" in economics is actually the "Bank of Sweden Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel"), and the Bank of Sweden (a Central Bank) is naturally predisposed to award the prize to economists supportive of central banks. Mises and Rothbard would never have qualified no matter how insightful they were. Basing an argument over the actions of central banks on the authority of a "nobel prize" winner in economics introduces a serious conflict of interest.
price of gold, that we would have suffered severe deflation over the past five years if we'd been on a gold standard, as over the past five years, US dollar monetary inflation has been about 1%, while the relative value of gold with respect to the dollar has increased 50%.
Slashdot Mirror
They could borrow the system used in image-based persistent environments like Squeak, where in-progress changes are saved automatically as part of the system image. In Squeak (and Smalltalk in general) you can use a "FileOut" operation to save a snapshot of a particular class or method as a regular file. In a "live" editor the actual document, with all its state information and version history, would be persistent in the device (no "save" operation, and perhaps not even an explicit file format, just a collection of in-memory objects), but whenever you feel like reading it elsewhere you could export a snapshot of the current version to the flash drive (or to anything else capable of receiving a binary stream).
Freedom of association shouldn't go away just because money is involved -- to act as if it did would make it almost meaningless. There can be no fundamental separation between private and commercial rights, as they are both derived from the same source: private property rights. If I have freedom of association as an individual in a non-commercial context, then I must also have that same freedom of association as an individual (or a member of a group) in a commercial context.
What's so special about finding the renter in person? What would make a public advertisement any different? The advertisement is merely information, a way for buyers and sellers to find each other; it shouldn't be considered a binding contract. The actual exchange will be carried out on an individual basis, and should be subject to the approval of both parties on the basis of any information they consider relevant. You expect nothing less when you are on the consumer side of a commercial transaction; as you are not compelled to buy from seller you find distasteful (see also: boycotts), why should the other party be required to sell to you under the same circumstances?
I'm sorry, but that's exactly what freedom of speach is. It doesn't eliminate all consequences, of course, but to say that it doesn't eliminate any would make freedom of speach completely meaningless. Even your own example admits that: "without being arrested"; free speach prohibits the potential consequence of arrest. (This is actually backward, in keeping with the example; a better wording would be that arrest cannot be justified on the sole basis of any sort of speach.) More generally, freedom of speach is the understanding that no act of speach can be considered aggression in and of itself; thus, no act of speach can (per se) be grounds for defensive or retributive coercion against the speaker. (The speach may be incidentally related to some other legitimate claim, e.g. threat of coercion, but cannot itself form such a justification.) There are numerous potential non-coercive consequences not prohibited by freedom of speach (damaged reputation, disassociation, etc.), but freedom of speach must preclude all coercive consequences to have any meaning.
I think you misunderstand what I wrote. The sale is fraudulent if and only if you misrepresented what you were selling in order to get the contract. The term "grapefruit" has a definition, determined by consensus ("popularity"), which an orange does not meet, and so selling an orange under the name "grapefruit" would be fraud. I think we are in agreement on this point. I am simply saying that if people associate the term "WidgetX" with one definition, and you sell a product under the name "WidgetX" that doesn't live up to that definition, that is fraud.
It's less confusing because the name changes aren't "random", they're based on the language. How is it more confusing to use the consensual definition (the "reasonable person" standard) of the name as the determining factor for whether the use of that name was fraudulent or not? We do the same thing all the time for other, non-trademarked terms. This merely applies the same rules to trade- and service marks.
For a sufficiently loose definition of "harm", they may indeed be "harming" you, if only due to an inadequecy in our legal system. If the legal system were operating as it should, you ought to be able to simply ignore any bills or lawsuits incorrectly directed your way -- it should be up to the bill collector / prosecutor to prove that they have the right person before inconveniencing you. (This policy policy would tend to make identity fraud far more difficult to begin with, as creditors, etc., would necessarily require more stringent proof of identity up front.) As it is, if you felt that their actions damaged you or your property (legal fees, time, "emotional distress," etc.) you wouldn't need special identity laws to sue for compensation; we already have a framework for resolving such disputes.
Your reputation is your own problem, of course, being merely the sum of how others think about you, and not something you have any natural right to control directly; the legal system should not be involved.
As for the "pretend-Toshiba" batteries, I expect the reasonable definition for "Toshiba" would be determined to be the specific corporation that holds that trademark today (even of "Toshiba" wasn't a trademark), so selling a "pretend-Toshiba" battery with the "made by Toshiba" label on it would still be fraudulent, as the battery wasn't made by Toshiba.
That framework already exists -- it's called a language.
Exactly. The problem is that the enforcement stage is handled from the wrong point of view.
If the problem is fraud, committed by the disreputable producers against their customers, who should be prosecuting it? The other manufacturers, or the customer? In anything but trademark law the answer would be the customer, the one who was actually injured by the fraud. I submit that trademarks should handled the same way.
If I make a product and call it WidgetX, and there aren't any other "confusingly similar" products out there named WidgetX, then (in most cases) my product would form the common definition of the term "WidgetX" in that product domain. Assuming the name becomes fairly well-known, if someone else were to start selling something slightly different and calling it WidgetX (whereas most consumers thought of my product as WidgetX) then they'd be misrepresenting their product. If their customers expected something other than what they were sold (design, quality -- anything, really) on the basis of that name, and a court agrees that their expectations were reasonable, then those customers would have a legitimate claim against the fraudulent seller.
The difference between this and the current system lies in who defines the terms. The current system grants that priviledge to the producer, and works under the assumption that all unlicensed use within that product domain will necessarily lead to confusion. The system described above allows producers (who are quite aware of what their product is already) to suggest names, but ultimately places control over the language in the hands of the consumers (the ones looking for the product). If two producers decided on the same name for their business or product, and the unpopular one managed to register the name first, the current system would force the vast majority of consumers to accept a less suitable marketing label for the product they actually wish to refer to, whereas the system I described above (based solely on protection against fraud, needing no new laws) would "assign" the name according to social convention (and thus probably in favor of the more popular producer). The result: less confusion among consumers.
You're partially right. It's not theft by the people granted the copyright (at least not directly); the theft (or infringement of rights, whatever term you may prefer) is committed by the government itself (which Linden Labs is not, except perhaps within SL itself) against its citizens, through the act of unilaterally prohibiting them (against their will) from making copies of said creations. "The government" (the group of individuals actually making and enforcing the decisions) hasn't the right to make that agreement on behalf of everyone else; at most they may represent those who participated in the voting process (assuming one existed), though even there the participation could be considered to be under duress, in which case they represent only themselves. (Aside: There is no historical basis for the "social contract" theory of society; all governments in recorded history have arisen through force. Even if there was such a contract at one point there is no way those alive at the founding of the government could contractually bind their descendents. Contracts must be voluntarily accepted to be meaningful.)
Has anyone ever bothered to considere that "more arts and sciences at any cost" might just be a rather short-sighted arrangement of priorities? There are trade-offs, you know; perhaps the actual amount of creation (vs. all the other things people want) would better reflect people's real priorities if it weren't so heavily subsidized. (This is formally known as the "broken window fallacy": you can easily see the additional creations resulting from the subsidy, but not the things that could have otherwise happened and didn't. A full analysis must take into account the unseen effects as well as the seen.) Certainly copyrights and patents encourage the sorts of activities that qualify for such priviledges (though how well that may correspond with "encourag[ing] the sciences and useful arts" may be debatable), and I would certainly agree that people want inventions and artistic works, but at what cost? What goals are they willing to give up to achieve that increase? The answer will obviously differ from person to person (another reason why it shouldn't be a collective decision), but I doubt it's nearly as much as the government's chosen to concede on their behalf.
All right: Binary can be duplicated. If something is valuable due to its uniqueness don't put it in binary. Any indie software developer selling something that can be digitally duplicated should plan for their business model's demise from day one.
It's just as true for them as for anyone else.
Translation: Technology providers have a financial stake in ensuring the existance of popular content to drive sales of their products.
This should suggest a simple solution for content creation in a post-copyright world: let the technology providers pay for it. They obviously have the interest, and the capacity, to represent their customers and fund popular media, without which there can be no market for their products. In some respects this would be rather similar to the advertising model, which also subsidizes the creation of media (e.g. radio and television shows, websites, print media, live events, etc.) as a side effect of creating markets for more tangible products and services; the connection between media players and the content itself is yet more direct. This approach also eliminates the disincentive of content monopolization: the technology producers would have no reason to suppress independent artistic works; quite the contrary, in fact, as the creation of additional content can only increase the demand for their products.
That may be what they're trying to say, but if so I believe they're wrong. I'm not a lawyer (and this is not legal advice), but as best I understand the issue it is actually impossible to violate the GPL (or any similar license). Either you follow the conditions and accept the license (one and the same thing) and thus are granted permission to do something (like distribute a copyrighted program) you wouldn't otherwise be allowed to do, or you don't follow the conditions and don't receive any such permission. The license is in force only so long as it's conditions are followed; if you fail to fulfill its conditions it immediately terminates, at which point you have no permission to e.g. distribute copies of the program, an ordinary copyright infringement issue, not a breach of contract.
Right again. However, ideas are not goods. The creation of an idea can be a good (labour), but not all products of labour are goods. The individual objects (recordings, machines, etc.) implementing such ideas are goods, but those who create and sell such objects are trading their own goods, not goods belonging to others.
Copyrights and patents are state-enforced monopoly priviledges, nothing more. They represent an experiment in social engineering like to merchantilism and corporatism, and would not exist in a market free from state interference (i.e. any free market).
Exactly. In a free market none of those things would exist. They exist now only as a grant of monopoly from the government, and monopoly grants cannot exist in a free market (by definition). (Trademarks would still exist after a fashion, since selling something under a false trademark for the purposes of misrepresentation (fraud) would still be a crime, but they would be enforcable only by the defrauded customers, not the manufacturers.)
Let me get this straight: you don't like regulating things, but any time people don't willingly choose to do what you want them to do you consider yourself justified in bending your rules a bit and regulating anyway. My statements were meant to apply to our world, not some impossible ideal, in which they would prove unnecessary anyway. Your sense of ethics and morals appear to have no meaning outside of that impossible ideal state.
In the world we live in, whatever the law may claim, you have no right to demand any action from anyone else, and no one else has the right to demand any action from you. If you want someone to help you out you need to offer them something worthwhile in return.
I agree that people ought to be considerate and provide access and assistance in situations where it makes sense, but what mandantory ADA compliance represents is worse than begging for help: it forces people to help against their will; it demands assistance. It combines begging with a twisted sense of entitlement. You may as well ask why the person is disabled in the first place; the answer would be the same. Each person, regardless of ability, must learn to compensate for their own weaknesses. Some have more to compensate for than others; that doesn't give them any right to make demands. No one has any entitlement to the time, energy, or property of anyone else.
Whatever the law may claim, you have no right to demand any action from anyone else, and no one else has the right to demand any action from you. If you want someone to help you out you need to offer them something worthwhile in return (worthwhile by their assessment, not yours). The typical customer asks little and pays for any services rendered in the prices of the goods they purchase. You demand extra services but offer no further compensation; you expect the other customers to subsidize your "independence." Is it any wonder the ADA and its supporters draw so much ill-will?
What do you think a (non-braille) screen reader would do with that line? Spell it out? Could you decipher the contents of that line if someone dictated it to you letter-by-letter? Or worse, if the reader tried to guess at the correct pronounciation of each word? Reading text peppered with typos is easy in a visual medium, where you can see all the parts at once and (mostly) ignore the noise. I doubt it's so easy when the typos are being processed through a text-to-speach synthesizer. The difficulty of reading typos in braille is probably somewhere in between, though I have no way of knowing for sure. (Would any braille-reading Slashdotters care to comment on this?)
I will admit, however, that your system could represent an improvement over normal CAPTCHAs for users with text-only browsers or braille terminals. On the other hand, it also doesn't have as much complexity as a randomized image. Some simple filters (remove repeated and especially unlikely letters (like "x"), out-of-place punctuation, and misplaced capitals; run the result through a carefully-tuned spellchecker) could render your typo'd question vulnerable to the sort of dictionary attack I described before. The only part those rules didn't fix (using MS Word's spellchecker) was "N dis"; Word ignored "N" and refused to consider any corrections for "dis" that didn't start with "d". Both could be corrected easily in a special-purpose filter.
That's been considered before. The problem with that approach is that, unlike image-based CAPTCHAs, there are a limited number of templates available for natural-language questions. The spammer just has to compile a list of the various patterns of questions and answers, a much easier task than designing an OCR program capable of extracting random, disconnected letters and numbers from a randomly distorted image. The problem is essentially one of hash functions -- plain-text questions can be solved as easily as they can be generated, whereas image-based CAPTCHAs are easy to generate but difficult (for computers) to decipher. Your last example ("What is the name of my blog?") is probably the best, since it's somewhat resistant to ordinary dictionary attacks, but there could be several reasonable answers (depending on the blog) and the correct answer(s) would have to be separately entered into each site. For many sites the answer may also be trivially derived from the title of the page, or some other element no less predictable than the form elements employed to enter the comment.
No, the failure of past revolutions was precisely in that they did what you are proposing -- they tried to replace the system they just overthrew with "something better." They tear down the corrupted government of the day but fail to destroy the legitimization of aggression on which both the corruption and the idea of government itself are based. As a result their "something better" ends up becoming just as bad as what it replaced, or possibly even worse. The only way to break the cycle is to reject the foundation, the legitimization of aggression, on which the existance of any sort of government depends. That cannot be accomplished though politics or war; both presume the existance of legitimate aggression, which contradicts and undermines the goal. It can only be accomplished if individuals choose to recognize government aggression as illegitimate and defend themselves against it, whenever and wherever it may occur; in other words, by treating the government like the criminal organization that it is.
Then perhaps the answer is to stop trying.
Your making the assumption that money is ultimately meaningless, that the costs don't matter; this is a very common fallacy. The monetary costs represent resources -- time, labour, materials -- that must be spent on this project, and which will be unavailable for other projects. If the project is not cost-effective (if the costs are more than what people are willing to pay for the water) that indicates that resources spent on the project would have been better spent on some other more urgent need.
Good luck with that -- the government never pays for anything. As with any government project you and your neighbors will be paying for it. At least you are paying by choice; you can't guarantee as much for your neighbors.
It will be in private hands regardless; the only question is whose private hands: politicians or private investors? Which of the two is more likely to get away with misrepresenting the costs and benefits for personal gain? Keep in mind that the politician is proposing to invest other people's resources in the project, whereas a private investor would have a personal stake in its success. The politician may lose an election, if the project fails spectacularly enough; each investor risks far more on the belief that the project will succeed.
On the other hand, you're also sending a message that you do trust the political system itself. Whether your candidate wins or not you've implicitly agreed to abide by the majority decision. Those who vote have no right to complain about the actions of the government they helped to create.
Illustration: Assume there's a criminal gang and two victims. The gang offers the victims a choice: vote on whether they should be robbed (and abide by the majority opinion), or don't vote and get robbed anyway. There are obviously more members in the gang than there are victims, so the outcome of the vote is a foregone conclusion. If one victim agrees to vote and the other does not, which one do you think has a right to complain about it afterward, the voter or the non-voter?
A ballot is also "just a [piece of] paper"; it won't defend your rights any better than a written constitution. Only you can defend your rights, by your own actions.
If you fail to believe in your rights, for any length of time, they will disappear. If you fail to defend them they will be violated, by the government or by someone else. Whoever wins the election may be counted on to actively violate the rights of many people while in office, possibly including your own; in that sense all the candidates are "the wrong people" simply by virtue of running for political office (which has no other purpose). That includes third-party candidates and non-incumbants -- do you really think they'd be any better, once elected? Remember that the major parties are both former third parties, and all the incumbants were once challengers.
I do agree, however, on the importance of anonymous ballots.
On an unrelated topic, here's a proposal to limit unsolicited government meddling: tie the government's budget to voter turnout. Put a multiple-choice option on the ballot: "Compared to the previous term, government spending and taxation should: (a) Increase (b) Decrease (c) Remain the same." Counting (a) as +0.6, (b) as -0.4, and (c) as +0.1, compute the sum across all the ballots. Divide the result by the total eligible voting population and subtract 10%; the result will determine the change in the government's taxes and spending for the next term, from 50% of last term's budget (everyone voted "decrease") to 150% of the same (everyone voted "increase"). If no one votes the budget gets reduced by 10%; if 50% vote the min and max become 70% and 120%, respectively. All unspent revenues (not just taxes) would be returned as a flat tax rebate during the next term, and (obviously) no further deficit spending would be permitted.
Disclaimer: I'm not trying to say that the system described above would grant any more legitimacy to either taxes or the government than the currenct system, just that it would better represent popular opinion, provide better representation on tax issues, and somewhat counter the government's tendency to expand over time. An important point is that it requires active participation to offset the automatic 10%/term decrease, which should help to keep the budget at a level the population is willing to actively support, as opposed to the current system where the budget is actually allowed to rise until it meets active opposition.
Simple: I'd side with the owner every time. Anyone who remains on their property after being told to leave--and given the opportunity to do so--is committing trespass. It may be a stupid decision on the owner's part, but the owner is the only person with the right to remain on that property; the rest are there solely by the owner's permission. The owner thus has the right to withdraw that permission, for any reason, at any time, from one person or from many. Those who no longer have permission to remain must then leave by the most expedient route.
I'm sorry, but your mere preferences are not sufficient justification for punishing Target or its customers. If "many of [you]" really care so much why don't you pay these costs yourselves and leave everyone else out of it? What gives you the right to force anyone else to support you against their will? If you want something done, use your own resources to accomplish it; don't steal from others to further your goals. There are plenty of ways to influence people without resorting to aggression, as I pointed out in a recent comment on conservation.
First, that was meant only as an example. The reasoning could be applied to the ownership of any depletable natural resource. There are many different ways to designate ownership of fishing rights, which in practice would probably be combined: geographical areas (or volumes) of ocean, particular species or fishing techniques, etc. The ownership of any particular fish would naturally be rather imprecise, just as ownership of animals in a game reserve is imprecise. The ownership really applies to the preserve itself, not the particular animals (or fish) inside. It would be up to the individual owners to ensure that their preferred stock of fish remained within the volume(s) of ocean they control. The techniques for doing so would obviously vary depending on the type of fish.
Second, if no one can own something then no one can legitimately claim a right to defend it. The right to employ coercion defensively is derived from and implied by ownership; if no one owns something then nothing done to it can be considered aggression. At present the owners of various parts of the oceans are effectively the various governments exercising fishing rights in their respective areas; they claim the right to defend the exercise of their fishing rights, and those claims are generally considered legitimate (at least by other governments). There is no reason, however, why the same general guidelines could not be used to designate boundaries for private ownership.
Someone must care -- you obviously do. There are probably more like you. Take advantage of that fact.
Say there's someone who owns an school of endangered fish and really doesn't care about preservation. Without violating anyone's rights, what can you do to accomplish your own goal of preserving this species?
Obviously the further down the list you go the more support you'll need from others. You also need people to actually side with you, not just remain apathetic. Both are positive traits; they prevent the more severe sanctions from being abused and thus guard against unnecessary conflict. It also helps to have the support of one or more people who specialize in finding ways to optimize goal-accomplishment (generally, though not always, identified by social status and/or wealth). Luckily for you these people are also generally investors, meaning that they tend to have relatively low time-preferences (they care more about the future and less about the present); that makes them more likely to appreciate your cause than the average consumer.
No, my "moral outrage" is that the government prohibited ownership of gold and confiscated it from private citizens to give themselves the ability to take near absolute control over the economy by controlling the medium of exchange. If they had not done so we would probably still be using gold (or equivalent) as currency. Ownership is no longer prohibited (since the 70's), but by that point the damage was already done.
Other reasons for supporting gold as currency:
In regards to the "store of value" point, it is true that fiat currencies and inflation reduce "hoarding" (investments in currency) and thus increase the sum of business investments and consumption. The increase can go to either; in practice, as the reduction comes from a low-risk category, the majority of the increase will tend toward consumption. Even the part that does go toward business is hardly costless; it comes at the expense of increased risk and a lower economic stability than individuals would have chosen on their own. The correlation between risk and ROI cannot be circumvented by mere monetary policy.
First, you are assuming here that that a steady fall in prices is an problem. Some of the best periods in American history, from an economic point of view, were marked by a steady fall in prices and a gold-based currency. Falling prices are not an issue. Second, the price of gold as a non-currency commodity varies as a result of "dry spells". As a currency the value of gold would be primarily determined by its marketability, and the marketability of a commodity currency does not generally tend to change rapidly over time.
Your original statement, for reference:
You responded:
The claims made by you and I were in no way similar. You claimed that falling prices alone were the cause of the Great Depression, or at least that is was a sufficient factor to cause a depression. My response was quite clear that it was the price controls -- a fallacious reaction to the falling prices -- which led to the Depression. To be sure, price controls in the absence of falling prices would probably not have led to a depression; the same could be said for falling prices without the price controls. In the case of the Depression prices were already falling (with the prices of goods falling faster than wages); by itself this was harmless. The trouble only started when the government added price controls in an attempt to offset price decreases (and further monetary inflation to nullify the price controls). Ergo, the fault was not "deflation" (falling prices) but rather the government's and unions' attempts to freeze prices at their inflated levels.
contributed to != caused
Falling prices certainly "contributed to" the Depression, in the sense that it took both falling prices and price controls to bring the Depression about. For that matter indirect exchange "contributed to" the Depression -- you couldn't have a Depression without an economy, after all. However, the cause of the Depression was, as I said, not the falling prices, but rather the price controls. The falling prices were not the work of the government; the price controls were. The price controls also had nothing to do with the presence of the gold standard. You keep placing the emphasis on the falling prices, but it was the price controls, obviously, that kept prices from adjusting to the new conditions.
You made this sort of ad hominem attack a couple of times; care to cite any sources for your assertions? Being completely ignored is not the same as being discredited. Has anyone actually managed to credibly argue that any part of Rothbard's analysis is based on bad data, unjustified assumptions, or logical fallacies? Incidently, the "nobel prize" in economics is actually the "Bank of Sweden Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel"), and the Bank of Sweden (a Central Bank) is naturally predisposed to award the prize to economists supportive of central banks. Mises and Rothbard would never have qualified no matter how insightful they were. Basing an argument over the actions of central banks on the authority of a "nobel prize" winner in economics introduces a serious conflict of interest.
Yes, gold is becoming