The only question of any real importance is "Did the government create this monopoly?"
Telcos, Federal Reserve: Yes.
Local cable companies: Maybe. (Depends on the local policies in effect.)
Microsoft: Maybe. (Enforcing copyright may count as interference.)
The corner store: No.
There is no way to uniquely define "monopoly prices" or "monopoly behavior" except as a function of interference by someone with more power/authority than the company itself. Monopolies in a free market -- a market without such interference -- only exist in cases where the monopoly is more efficient than competition would be. If they become less efficient, a competitor will eventually arise to capitalize on their "monopoly profits" and choice will be restored. Only in a non-free market can an inefficient monopoly remain prominent.
Monopolies have a much wider range of actions to sweep smaller businesses off their feet (dumping, for example), it's not that hard to stay in that position after you've taken it. Hell, look at the browser market, IE is still the most prevalent browser despite being pretty much shit on a stick. Oligopolies are very dangerous as well, multiple large companies that work together instead of really competing (an unregulated market wouldn't stop them from doing that).
Did you even read the analysis of "monopoly" economics? It covered both of the issues you mentioned. Dumping, for example, is itself self-defeating. A smart competitor would merely buy up the below-cost product, wait until the monopoly can no longer sustain the losses, and then sell back the monopoly's products between the dumping price and the new price at a profit. Even bundling works out to the favor of the competitors; take, for example, the "give away the razors, sell the blades" mentality. A smart competitor would manufacture compatible blades, undercutting the brand-name on price, which they could do since they're not trying to support the below-cost razors as well. As for IE, the primary problem there is ignorance, not bundling. If people knew of its faults, they would be willing to look for something better -- unless its faults aren't bad enough to be worth getting something better.
Oligopolies tend to break down naturally, either through mergers or through competition, whichever is more efficient. An efficient oligopoly is effectively the same as a natural monopoly, and they will eventually merge to reduce operating costs, increasing their efficiency. On the other hand, an inefficient oligopoly will break down into competition as the more efficient members tire of propping up the less efficient ones.
You are not looking at the same Constitution that I have studied. The United States Constitution does not say this nor even imply this anywhere in the text. The takings clause, which merely requires "just compensation", only involves takings. It does not concern reasonable government regulations.
How about this part?
1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
I would definitely consider regulations forcing me to act against my will, not to prevent a crime but simply to give someone else something of mine that they want, to be "involuntary servitude". Even the portion you referenced, the "takings" clause, requires just compensation. What is just compensation but the price I would have sold it for willingly? No other price can possibly be just, because anything less than that price is less than what the object is worth to me. Ergo, the takings clause can only take effect if I choose to sell my property in the first place, and it most certainly does apply, because only the owner of a piece of property can grant the use of it to another; a government regulation forcing the property to be used against the owner's wishes effectively transfers ownership of that property to the government. I believe that this interpretation was the founding fathers' intention, but I realize that courts have not always agreed with this. Frankly, the courts have nearly always been biased toward allowing the federal government to do whatever it wants without the slightest regard for the Constitutional limitations on the government's powers.
As for our own history, I am willing to admit that the government's interference did manage to accelerate the end of segregation. I still believe that their actions were unjust and excessive, but in the end their heavy-handed approach managed to force society to recognize -- at least in public -- that their prejudices were (mostly) unfounded. I believe that was the lesser of the two possible solutions; because of their interference, we never had a chance to overcome those prejudices on our own. They never gave us a change to learn from our mistakes, and if they stop interfering, those prejudices will probably be shown to still exist beneath the surface.
The real world is complex. I certainly don't deny that. However, it is also true that justice can never be served by violating the rights of one person to fulfill the desires of another. Any government that does that is not worthy of the name or the authority it implies.
That would be why I suggested a combination of sponsorship (for reputable authors, and cases where people know exactly what they want) and prizes (for new authors or experimental ideas). Furthermore, I was most definately not endorsing government sponsorship. How could They possibly know what kinds of things people want to read? That would be a communistic approach, and I agree that it would fail. The system I was describing was more like the one I described in an earlier post:
The organization would probably set the scope of the content -- the general topic, audience, medium, etc. -- and then hire promising authors, artists, and/or inventors willing to work within those limits. Some groups would, of course, be more free-form than others, but ultimately the parameters of the group would be dictated by its paying members. Members would have numerous advantages over non-members, including contact with the patronees, first-run editions of the resulting works, shareholder rights in the group's decisions, discounted merchandise, etc. The membership fees would fund the production of new stories, movies, and/or inventions.
One addition that I would make to that system would be competitions in which artists could submit their work in exchange for a chance at a monetary prize, as well as recognition, training, and better chances at future employment / sponsorship. That was something I envisioned when I wrote the above text, but neglected to include in the comment.
Given that the ones in control of the selection of rewarded authors would be the paying public (just as is the case today), I do not believe that there would be any additional bias toward formulaic work that is not present in the current system. As for "bad" (unpopular) artists, you wouldn't just hire any random applicant for a long-term position. New artists would compete for the prizes (at their own risk, as with the current system), and then may be hired later on the basis of their past work. In that way it would be no different than, for example, choosing a new employee on the basis of his/her grades in college.
One last point: free markets only turn into monopolies when monopolies are the most efficient form of organization for the market (i.e. natural monopolies). Natural monopolies follow the same rules as any other free-market organization, and they are still subject to competition should they fail to remain the most efficient provider. Only enforced monopolies (i.e. government monopolies) can avoid competition without remaining efficient. Rather than explaining the reasons for this here, I will simply refer you to this excellent economic analysis by Murray N. Rothbard.
I do think that Amtrak should be able to grant or refuse access to any part of one of their trains, or the entire train, to anyone they wish. After all, the trains are their property, and any use of their property against their will violates their Constitutional rights. Part of our freedom is freedom of association -- freedom to choose whom we will pursue voluntary agreements with, and with whom we will shun such agreements. As an individual, or a shareholder or partner in a corporation, I should be able to choose whom I will do business with on the basis of any criteria I wish. If my criteria is unjustified, I will suffer from it as much as anyone else. However, that is my mistake to make.
I'm not ignorant of the reasons our "forebearers died to end segregation". I just think that their efforts were misguided. I am opposed to segregation, but I don't believe that it should be illegal. Opponents of segregation would be better served by directing their efforts at removing the desire for segregation, not coercing others to act against their will. As a last resort, they should encourage others -- including those not subject to segregation -- to support them in boycotting the offending individuals or companies. The government ought to protect the rights of minorities, but those right do not include controlling the choices of others, however misguided or unfair those choices might be.
I say "as a last resort" because, like legal "solutions" to segregation, boycotts tend to increase the strength of the prejudices instead of removing them. If I oppose any given group of people, I'm going to resent them more after being forced by law to treat them as equals to those I do not oppose.
It does not force anyone to rent a house, it simply requires that if you make a business of selling or renting houses (meaning that you rent more than once every two years or own more than three houses that you rent out) then you must not discriminate against people on certain bases.
The fact that a restriction isn't enforced on every occasion doesn't make it any less of a restriction. True, the "fair housing" laws don't force me to start a business of renting. They can, however, force me to enter into a rent agreement if I already make a business of renting out houses, and that is just as coercive as forcing me to enter into the first agreement against my will. Why should it make any difference how many houses I rent out, or how often? If something is wrong, it's always wrong: on a large scale or a small scale; once in a lifetime or fifty times a week.
The things you mentioned are illegal because they involve someone else's person or property. Murder, rape, and robbery are violations of individual sovereignty. Housing laws are about controlling how people use their own property -- specifically, forcing them to enter into transactions that they would otherwise choose not to enter into. As such, the laws themselves violate individual sovereignty. The two sets of laws are polar opposites, and the justice of the former does not prove the latter just.
Of course it would be your problem. You should have purchased a FTA receiver that wouldn't lock up when fed unrecognizable or malformed input. Just as in the case of their poor assumption that you wouldn't build or buy a third-party receiver to pick up the data they're broadcasting indiscriminately, it would be a poor choice on your part to assume that their broadcast will always be encoded in the form your receiver expects, and the reciever should take that into account.
If a radio station tried to do the same thing the satallite broadcasters do -- send out a signal to everyone, but prosecute anyone who uses an "unauthorized" receiver -- they'd probably be laughed out of the courtroom. There is no legitimate reason that receiving, decoding, and viewing an electromagnetic signal being broadcast to everyone in the entire hemisphere should be illegal, regardless of the origins of the receiver hardware. It's not even a violation of copyright, any more than shining a light on a book (and thus duplicating the patterns of ink on the page into pattern of light suitable for your eyes) is a violation of copyright -- or playing a DVD on your computer is. You're only transforming an existing signal, which you already receive, into a perceivable form; copyright is only involved in distribution of copies or derivative works (with a few minor exceptions).
The legal issues are a result of the same process that got us the DMCA, (effectively) infinite copyright terms, and the Broadcast Flag. Those satallite-receiver laws have no more moral authority than any of the others passed to appease purely corporate interests. They may act as a disincentive due to the penalties involved, but that is the result of a risk/benefit decision, not a moral choice.
There would be no monetary reason. But as an occasional singer of songs, I can tell you I get alot of joy out of entertaining. And at least for me, I get a huge rush when I here/see someone singing a song I wrote -- it could not happen enough for me! There is art in performance.
I think there would be a monetary incentive to create, even on a copyright-free society. If I want to read a book, and it doesn't already exist, then I need someone to write it for me. If I'm lucky, I'm not the only one interested in such a book. Assuming that individuals with the time and expertise to write such a book are relatively rare (which seems to be the case), I would cooperate with the other interested individuals to sponsor the creation of the book. It's not like the current media-distribution model is the only one around. It certainly isn't the most efficient model, and it carries a lot of inherent risk for authors in that they can't be sure anyone's interested in actually buying copies of the book once it's written. A system based on sponsorship would eliminate those risks, more efficiently direct media creation according to the wishes of media consumers, and be completely independent of copyrights. Furthermore, it would be suitable for not just books, but also music, inventions, low- or mid-budget movies, etc. Sponsorship organizations, combined with privately-funded competitions for original art, would be an effective replacement for the current copyright and patent systems.
From the article: "Microsoft lifted caps on the amount of legal fees it would reimburse to makers of embedded devices that are sued for intellectual property infringement as a result of licensing Microsoft code. . .."
I agree with you, but I think the GP also has merit. One thing to consider is that movies and electronics have very different market dynamics. For example, while it isn't practical to make different versions of any given movie for different audiences, it is both possible and common to have various implementation of any given type of electronic gadget. The trouble comes when a manufacturer tries to capture the entire market for given type of device with a single design. By its very nature, such a practice will nearly always be less efficient in terms of ease-of-use and market penetration than a variety of different designs, each suited for a different audience. There's a market for iPod-like simplicity, but there is also a market for more capable/customizable devices, even though they are necessarily more complex. Any one design is guaranteed to fail to live up to someone's expectations, and the electronics market isn't winner-take-all like the big media markets.
I think the point was that the purpose of due process is to separate the evil-doers from the innocent. If everyone knows for certain that someone is an evil-doer, there isn't any point in carrying out due process, since due process will come to the same conclusion in the end. Of course, in practice, the only way to know for sure is by carrying out that same due process, to protect the innocent, not to protect the guilty.
I would say that what you're describing isn't software development at all, but rather the natural evolution of the "business manager" role to include the use of modern tools -- high-level computer languages designed specifically to solve common business problems. Sure, their job involves customizing and controlling existing business software for the tasks specific to their business, but that ought to be a standard skill for any competent business manager by now. The categories I was talking about concern software development, not just throwing together a template-based database schema and a cookie-cutter GUI into a "business app", where the "developer's" contributions make up about 1% of the final product, however important those customizations might be to the business. The software developers (or hackers) aren't the ones that performed that last, miniscule (but important) step, but rather the ones that developed the tool in the first place, without whom that final step would not be possible.
As a group, the numbers of hackers and developers are both decreasing as the tools are created for non-software-developers to easily solve their own problems. It's the same as any other industry: in the beginning, there are lots of skilled craftsmen doing custom jobs, because in a new industry all the jobs are custom. Over time, the most common jobs are automated, and the number of craftsmen decreases. However, to a greater or lesser extent, there remain cases where no existing product does what the customer needs. In those cases the craftsmen (both hackers and developers) are still quite important, and those kinds of jobs remain despite the automation. After all, you can't completely automate custom products, and there are always new problems to solve that require the attention of a tool-maker and not just a tool-user.
One is out to get the job done,
one just does whatever they want.
The concept of the "software professional" is an ideal which doesn't exist in practice. In the end, all employees do their work out of personal motivation. The difference between "hackers" and those closer to the businesses' ideal is that "hackers" find their personal motivation in the work itself, and so-called "professionals" are motivated primarily by the material compensation (i.e. money). There's nothing wrong with either, but in choosing between the two you have to be aware of the difference. A "hacker" generally has a deeper understanding of the practical side of software development, and can typically do incredible things when properly motivated. "Hackers" tend to do better in more flexible environments, where there is justification for taking some risks in exchange for a huge potential payoff: startups, R&D labs, experimental projects.
"Professionals", on the other hand, aren't primarily motivated by their love of the work itself. They can be very capable, but need the formality of processes and procedures to bind them together into a functional team. The average productivity of a good "professional" is probably about the same as the "hackers", but their peak productivity is a lot lower. Also, "hackers" pretty much have to be good at their job by definition; it's their hobby as well as their work. "Professionals" don't have that level of interest, and thus the percentage of good "professionals" is probably lower than the percentage of good "hackers" within their respective groups. On the other hand, their output will be a lot more consistent, with correspondingly lower risks. "Professionals" are generally best in established projects, doing things that are fully explored, with a low tolerance for risks and a need for consistent performance.
Both types of employees have their places. Most projects will require at least some "hackers" and some "professionals". There's nothing inherently better (for all projects) about "professional" behavior vs. "hacker" behavior, or vice-versa. It all depends on the type of project and the acceptable level of risk.
Note: I realize the other responses make similar comments. For some reason comments.pl disappeared for while and I couldn't submit this. There were still some unique elements, so I thought I'd submit it anyway once the comment pages returned.
Your example seems rather contrived. I can imagine (barely) such a contract, but the GPL3 would not get in the way, as long as the source code they provided could be used on normal systems as well, with the same functionality (or at least that is the intention). The agreement between the business and the insurance company can't have any effect on "Bluehat's" obligations under the GPL3. It would only prevent "Bluehat" from releasing the software with modifications that require "Bluehat's" signature to work. The software can require "locked" hardware, so long as either the signature required by the "locked" hardware is controlled by the machine's owner, or the signing key is provided with the source code.
In your example, the business would lock its production hardware to use only software officially signed by "Bluehat", in accordance with its contract with the insurance company. Bluehat would provide its "official" signed release software, which could be used on the production hardware, along with the source code (but not the signing key). The business could compile the own version of the software, sign it with their own key, and load it onto their development hardware. Since they can sign it themselves, they can make modified versions and use them on any machine not subject to their agreement with the insurance company.
The problem the GPL3 is trying to prevent is the case where an "open source" application is developed which requires access to e.g. DRM decryption hardware which can only be used with a specific key: a driver for a DRM-crippled video card, for example, or a media player which must be signed with an "approved" key to access an external storage device. In an extreme case, someone could create a version of a GPL'd software package modified to use DRM-aware encryption hardware to save its documents; the software would be "open source", but only their signed release would be capable of reading or saving the documents. In these cases, you can't compile your own working versions because you don't have access to the required signing key. The GPL3 would require, in these cases, that the signing key itself be included in the source distribution, because one cannot produce a working piece of software from the source code without it. Since that is unlikely to happen, the GPL3 would effectively prevent people from using existing GPL3 code to create software that is "open source" in name but cannot be used in modified form without the approval of the owner of an authorized signing key. I can't say I disagree with that intention.
Of course, the GPL3 is currently still in a draft state, and the wording of the new provisions probably still leaves some ambiguities that should be cleared up by the time the final version is released. I am confident, however, that their intention is as I described above, which is exactly the same as the intention of the GPL2: to prevent open-source software from being effectively turned into proprietary software through the addition of incompatible closed-source modifications. The GPL3's authors aren't trying to shift the balance of power; as with the changes to the software-patent clauses, developments in technology and law have simply made it necessary to close a few potential loopholes in the GPL2.
Remember that this is just the first version. There's no reason why they couldn't add support for non-pixel-shader-based XVideo rendering later on, for cards that need it. Right now they're trying to get a basic version working, and they're taking advantage of all the features of modern cards to simplify the architecture. Once the basic feature set is in place they'll create workarounds for older cards. After all, supporting the current XVideo system isn't all that difficult, since they can just pass the XVideo calls on to the underlying X server.
Of course, some of the effects (transparency, non-rectangular windows) will probably be incompatible with the old XVideo system. In the worst case, they'll just have to disable those effects while XVideo is in use. There might be some visual glitches if composited windows are overlayed on top of the XVideo rendering area, but otherwise there shouldn't be any trouble. Furthermore, with more of the graphics rendering offloaded to the video card, you should have extra CPU capacity available for the video codec.
I was only considering functions, not global data structures, but this page appears to indicate that PIC-enabled ELF programs (the default/prevalent configuration on Linux) use a Global Offset Table (GOT) for static data, which is itself referenced through a relative address from the code. Thus, relative addresses are indeed used for both functions and data in shared libraries. According to the page, Windows(tm) actually does something similar for data symbols marked with dllimport, at least in recent versions of Microsoft(tm)'s C compiler, although programmers did formerly have to take care of data relocation manually.
On the other hand, Linux does use copy-on-write for initialized data; I only meant to say that at some point in the application's execution the data would have to be copied (when it is written to), and thus the initialized data section cannot be permanently shared like the executable and constant data sections. However, that wasn't precisely what I said, so thanks for pointing out the discrepancy.
This is ludicrous; barter is not illegal. If you can convince your bank to accept mortgage payments in pearls or gold bullion you are free to transact that way.
Further, the U.S. is not a dictatorship. If the populace really wanted to transact only in gold the law could be drafted and passed and then everyone would have to. Instead, the direction of this country and every other developed country has been away from the gold standard and toward abstract currency. In fact one of the most abstract consumer representations of currency today -- the checkcard -- has quickly become ubiquitous. People choose abstract currencies because of their flexibility and ease of use.
I'm going to ignore the rest of the points for the moment, because this one deserves a proper answer. It is, in fact, completely wrong. From 1933 to 1975, private ownership of gold bullion and gold coins was illegal in the United States. President Roosevelt, in Executive Order 6102, confiscated the nation's private supply of gold bullion, gold coins, and gold certificates, and forcibly replaced them with a fiat currency under the control of the Federal Reserve. People had no choice but to accept the government's fiat currency, because they could not continue using the gold and silver currencies that they had been using quite willingly and profitably since the country was founded. That is why we have a fiat currency today: because not so long ago we were forced to accept it, much to our loss.
Given how misinformed you apparently were on such a basic part of the history of United States currency, I think the remainder of your points could probably be dismissed out-of-hand. However:
This would be true if people saved currency, but they don't. They save by investing in the economy, so that when money is spent into the economy they experience financial growth. As a result the U.S. has experienced overall economic growth since coming off the gold standard.
I'd really recommend the book on economics that another poster pointed out for this one. I'd also like to point out that we experienced significant overall economic growth before coming off of the gold standard, and (taking into account unforseen technological advancements that would have happened anyway) we probably had even more actual economic growth before we were forced into switching to an inflationary fiat currency.
I just don't see how you can talk about strength of economy and monetary policy as if they were two separate things. We had a monetary policy and experienced a strong economy--how else would you define successful policy? I'd love it if you could point to a concrete example that we can compare ourselves to. I'm not really interested in unproven "could-have-beens."
First of all, a strong economy depends on many factors, and probably the least of them is monetary policy. I'm not saying that it doesn't have an effect, but as long as the changes to policy come slowly enough for the market to adjust, the actual effect isn't all the much. In particular, the economy in this country has nearly always been fairly strong, except for those cases where those in charge of monetary policy managed to mess things up. The less monetary policy we've had, the better the economy's been, but it's almost always been a "strong" economy despite the interference. I would define a successful monetary policy as one the left things well enough alone!
Second, the only thing we have to compare the state of our economy to is the "could-have-been". We only have one history, after all, our national history makes comparisons to other countries questionable at best. Since no "concrete" comparison is possible,
The majority of monetary value in our economy is tied up in negotiable instruments such as stock and bonds, not dollar bills. Smart people don't hoard $100 dollar bills in their mattresses, they invest their money in appreciating assets.
What makes a good currency? From your post, it appears that you believe that a good currency is something that only has value in its role as an exchange medium. Why is that? After all, the remainder of your post clearly indicates that you believe your "good currency" is a poor choice as a long-term representation of value, while concrete investments -- in capital goods, in land -- are far more valuable over time. Given the choice, wouldn't people rather receive something in exchange that will retain its value for decades, or even centuries, to come, rather than your "ideal currency" that loses most of its value almost immediately? The general tendency is for items with long-term value to be chosen as currency, not worthless bits of paper. Only in cases where fiat currency was forced on a population have such fiat currencies become widely used.
I agree that it makes good economic sense to invest in long-term appreciating assets. I'm not saying that anyone should buy gold or silver instead of investing in the economy, although most would consider it wise to include pure savings among one's investments as a hedge against unforseen economic disasters. That is only practical in a non-inflationary economy, where you can save your money -- just put it aside -- and expect it to hold its value. In an inflationary economy, you have to invest your hard-earned money, since any long-term savings will lose value over time, and that means that you risk losing your savings entirely.
Are there more dollars in circulation? Yes, but who cares, since monetary value is a shared hallucination. Whether it costs $1 or $1000 for a sandwich, what actually matters is the real standard of living it affords me. Inflation is only bad when costs go up, not just prices. In other words, not when the total number of dollars goes up, but when the real cost goes up--i.e. the percentage of your total wealth it takes to buy a sandwich. If both salaries and prices rise evenly, the effect is transparent.
Disregarding the effects of inflation itself (i.e., the change in the currency over time), that would be true. The actual amount of currency, and the price of any given item, would be immaterial. However, that is not the case in an inflationary economy, as I pointed out before. The loss on immediate purchases is nearly insignificant, because you're not holding on to the currency for all that long. However, at a national level, continually making purchases out of inflationary currency ("deficit spending") devalues the currency and effectively redistributes wealth unfairly from savers (former earners) to (present) earners. Thus, there is additional incentive to enter into the lower-order land/labor portions of the economy, at the expense of long-term investments. As a result, capital goods are not maintained, and the production of higher-order goods declines. As a result, the economy shrinks.
While the prices have increased dramatically since 1913, the real costs to citizens have actually declined. This is easily measured by simply calculating what percentage of citizens are able to aquire certain things--like sandwiches for example.
I'm not saying that our current standard of living isn't higher than it was in 1913. A lot of that is due to our deficit spending (nationally and individually), which is going to be a major problem when it comes time to pay it all back. Also, our methods of production and general level of technology have improved greatly since 1913. The fact that we have managed to show an improved standard of living despite the inflation is a testiment to just how strong our economy is. None the less, you need to compare our current economy not to the economy of 1913, but instead to the economy we could have had today if we had continued to use a non-inflationary currency.
Using a market-valued medium to exchange value (example: gold) is NOT a currency, it is simply an advanced form of barter, since the value of the exchange is limited by the market value of the medium.
If you're going to take that point of view, then all indirect exchange (even your beloved paper currency) is just an "advanced form of barter." The value of any good used in indirect exchange has two components, the good-value and the exchange-value. Physical goods, such as precious metals, have a nonzero good-value, which acts as a floor (not an upper limit) on the value of the good. Even if it loses all of its exchange-value, it will still have at least the good-value left for direct use. The exchange-value is important, because goods which can be used for exchange will always be more valuable on the market than good with limited marketability, but if all else fails you can exchange the physical good for what you want in a more indirect way. If paper currency loses its exchange-value, it's no longer good for anything. For a concrete demonstration of this, look at what happened when the US substituted fiat paper currency for precious metals in 1913. Before that, all transactions were performed in, or backed by, precious metals, and the economy was remarkably stable. The purchasing power of a given amount of gold or silver was relatively constant over a large span of time (several centuries). Since 1913, however, the value of the dollar has decreased over 96%; in other words, what cost $1.00 in 1913 now costs over $96.00. Consider the consequences to someone planning their retirement, or leaving an inheritance to their children, when the effective value of their savings drops by that much in just 93 years -- and the process is accelerating.
As long as the amount of paper currency in circulation is limited, and is expected to remain that way, it remains useful. However, as new currency is created, the value (purchasing power) of all of the existing currency decreases. This inflation tends to favor those who get to the new currency first; for a short time, they can buy goods and services with their nearly-costless new currency, before the market has adjusted to the new purchasing power. In fact, the effect on the market is exactly the same as that of counterfeit currency; the only differences between newly-printed "legitimate" money and newly-printed "counterfeit" money are the difference in scale, and who benefits. The ones who stand to lose the most from inflation are the ones who receive the new money last, or not at all: savers and investors. They get to watch while their lifetime's worth of "saved value" gets siphoned off to pay for all that runaway deficit spending. As a result, saving and investing tend to decline, and the economy slides back in to the Dark Ages as people become less and less willing to invest in future production.
The only currency that can be relied upon is the one that can't be artificially created. That is why physical currency is valuable. The currency itself -- the specific material -- may have certain properties which make it more suitable than other goods as a currency, but the quality of main importance is that it cannot be created from nothing like paper currencies are. If you can come up with a system that will confer those properties on paper or digital currencies, then that would make a suitable replacement for precious metals. However, no one has managed that yet, and it is doubtful that anyone ever will.
Actually, modern runtime linkers use a table of offsets rather than embedding the relocated symbol addresses directly into the executable code, and the relocations themselves are handled by mapping the file contents into virtual memory at the necessary addresses. With those two techniques combined, it is almost never necessary for the in-memory version of the executable to differ from its on-disk representation where the code and constant-data sections are concerned. When a typical application begins execution, nearly all of its virtual memory will be mapped directly onto the executable file and its shared libraries, and loaded on demand. The initialized-data section must be copied into virtual memory, and the uninitialized-data section and the stack are typically allocated as they are accessed on a page-by-page basis. Aside from a handful of housekeeping data for the linker and the C libraries, the rest of the virtual memory consists of read-only memory-mapped files.
The problem with that, of course, is that something that can be "digitized and easily disseminated" is effectively free to distribute -- once it exists. For a long time, distribution was hard, and only a select group was willing to put the effort into doing it. Over an extended period of time, that particular method of distribution became the only way of doing business, and authors/artists/inventors got into some really bad habits in regards to their business methods. In particular, they started to assume that they could control the price of the end product (a physical copy of a book, for example) to make up for the work that they were effectively doing at a loss (actually writing the book). That worked (for the most part) as long as publication was limited to "insiders" who stood to benefit from the system, but now that anyone can be a distributor that system is breaking down.
Those who possess the ability to create valuable "content" have nothing to worry about, really. After all, they're not the ones facing this new competition; we have yet to learn how to create unique content without them. As long as that remains true, authors, artists, and inventors will continue to profit from their work. The methods by which they are paid will certainly change, but only the distributors are facing extinction.
As for the methods themselves, there are numerous workable proposals. My personal favorite is the collective-patronage system, which differs from traditional patronage only in that an organization or group replaces the individual patron. The organization would probably set the scope of the content -- the general topic, audience, medium, etc. -- and then hire promising authors, artists, and/or inventors willing to work within those limits. Some groups would, of course, be more free-form than others, but ultimately the parameters of the group would be dictated by its paying members. Members would have numerous advantages over non-members, including contact with the patronees, first-run editions of the resulting works, shareholder rights in the group's decisions, discounted merchandise, etc. The membership fees would fund the production of new stories, movies, and/or inventions. Nearly all of the income would go directly to the artists, and the system would be self-sustaining without relying on copyrights or patents at all.
Ultimately, I think that the content creators would be much better off under this system than the current one, since overall consumer spending on creative media is not likely to decrease much, while a much larger percentage goes directly to the creators rather than the distributors.
That's odd. I've always held that the "over-the-air" channels, being sufficiently distasteful that they can't even get widespread distribution on the cable or satellite networks as part of the standard channel package, are the "minor networks". They certainly seems to be missing all of the popular programming, anyway.
That doesn't change the fact that our country is not currently in a state of war with any other country. We have troops deployed all the time, in many countries, assisting our political allies, but that doesn't mean we're always at war. We can only be at war if Congress has issued a formal declaration to that effect, and that has not occurred. Constitutionally, the power to declare war rests solely with Congress. The President may be the Commander in Chief, but he does not have the constitutional authority to declare war on a sovereign nation without the approval of Congress.
What war? I must have missed a memo; last time I checked we weren't at war with anyone. So which internationally-recognized government did Congress authorize the President to declare war on lately?
Oh, right, they just like using the term "war on terror" because it gets people interested (or at least it used to). We are, in fact, not at war with anyone right now. Never mind, then.
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The only question of any real importance is "Did the government create this monopoly?"
There is no way to uniquely define "monopoly prices" or "monopoly behavior" except as a function of interference by someone with more power/authority than the company itself. Monopolies in a free market -- a market without such interference -- only exist in cases where the monopoly is more efficient than competition would be. If they become less efficient, a competitor will eventually arise to capitalize on their "monopoly profits" and choice will be restored. Only in a non-free market can an inefficient monopoly remain prominent.
For a more thorough analysis of this fact, see Chapter 10 of Man, Economy, & State by Murray N. Rothbard.
There is such a thing as real money. We just don't use it anymore.
What Has Government Done to Our Money?
Did you even read the analysis of "monopoly" economics? It covered both of the issues you mentioned. Dumping, for example, is itself self-defeating. A smart competitor would merely buy up the below-cost product, wait until the monopoly can no longer sustain the losses, and then sell back the monopoly's products between the dumping price and the new price at a profit. Even bundling works out to the favor of the competitors; take, for example, the "give away the razors, sell the blades" mentality. A smart competitor would manufacture compatible blades, undercutting the brand-name on price, which they could do since they're not trying to support the below-cost razors as well. As for IE, the primary problem there is ignorance, not bundling. If people knew of its faults, they would be willing to look for something better -- unless its faults aren't bad enough to be worth getting something better.
Oligopolies tend to break down naturally, either through mergers or through competition, whichever is more efficient. An efficient oligopoly is effectively the same as a natural monopoly, and they will eventually merge to reduce operating costs, increasing their efficiency. On the other hand, an inefficient oligopoly will break down into competition as the more efficient members tire of propping up the less efficient ones.
How about this part?
I would definitely consider regulations forcing me to act against my will, not to prevent a crime but simply to give someone else something of mine that they want, to be "involuntary servitude". Even the portion you referenced, the "takings" clause, requires just compensation. What is just compensation but the price I would have sold it for willingly? No other price can possibly be just, because anything less than that price is less than what the object is worth to me. Ergo, the takings clause can only take effect if I choose to sell my property in the first place, and it most certainly does apply, because only the owner of a piece of property can grant the use of it to another; a government regulation forcing the property to be used against the owner's wishes effectively transfers ownership of that property to the government. I believe that this interpretation was the founding fathers' intention, but I realize that courts have not always agreed with this. Frankly, the courts have nearly always been biased toward allowing the federal government to do whatever it wants without the slightest regard for the Constitutional limitations on the government's powers.
As for our own history, I am willing to admit that the government's interference did manage to accelerate the end of segregation. I still believe that their actions were unjust and excessive, but in the end their heavy-handed approach managed to force society to recognize -- at least in public -- that their prejudices were (mostly) unfounded. I believe that was the lesser of the two possible solutions; because of their interference, we never had a chance to overcome those prejudices on our own. They never gave us a change to learn from our mistakes, and if they stop interfering, those prejudices will probably be shown to still exist beneath the surface.
The real world is complex. I certainly don't deny that. However, it is also true that justice can never be served by violating the rights of one person to fulfill the desires of another. Any government that does that is not worthy of the name or the authority it implies.
That would be why I suggested a combination of sponsorship (for reputable authors, and cases where people know exactly what they want) and prizes (for new authors or experimental ideas). Furthermore, I was most definately not endorsing government sponsorship. How could They possibly know what kinds of things people want to read? That would be a communistic approach, and I agree that it would fail. The system I was describing was more like the one I described in an earlier post:
One addition that I would make to that system would be competitions in which artists could submit their work in exchange for a chance at a monetary prize, as well as recognition, training, and better chances at future employment / sponsorship. That was something I envisioned when I wrote the above text, but neglected to include in the comment.
Given that the ones in control of the selection of rewarded authors would be the paying public (just as is the case today), I do not believe that there would be any additional bias toward formulaic work that is not present in the current system. As for "bad" (unpopular) artists, you wouldn't just hire any random applicant for a long-term position. New artists would compete for the prizes (at their own risk, as with the current system), and then may be hired later on the basis of their past work. In that way it would be no different than, for example, choosing a new employee on the basis of his/her grades in college.
One last point: free markets only turn into monopolies when monopolies are the most efficient form of organization for the market (i.e. natural monopolies). Natural monopolies follow the same rules as any other free-market organization, and they are still subject to competition should they fail to remain the most efficient provider. Only enforced monopolies (i.e. government monopolies) can avoid competition without remaining efficient. Rather than explaining the reasons for this here, I will simply refer you to this excellent economic analysis by Murray N. Rothbard.
I do think that Amtrak should be able to grant or refuse access to any part of one of their trains, or the entire train, to anyone they wish. After all, the trains are their property, and any use of their property against their will violates their Constitutional rights. Part of our freedom is freedom of association -- freedom to choose whom we will pursue voluntary agreements with, and with whom we will shun such agreements. As an individual, or a shareholder or partner in a corporation, I should be able to choose whom I will do business with on the basis of any criteria I wish. If my criteria is unjustified, I will suffer from it as much as anyone else. However, that is my mistake to make.
I'm not ignorant of the reasons our "forebearers died to end segregation". I just think that their efforts were misguided. I am opposed to segregation, but I don't believe that it should be illegal. Opponents of segregation would be better served by directing their efforts at removing the desire for segregation, not coercing others to act against their will. As a last resort, they should encourage others -- including those not subject to segregation -- to support them in boycotting the offending individuals or companies. The government ought to protect the rights of minorities, but those right do not include controlling the choices of others, however misguided or unfair those choices might be.
I say "as a last resort" because, like legal "solutions" to segregation, boycotts tend to increase the strength of the prejudices instead of removing them. If I oppose any given group of people, I'm going to resent them more after being forced by law to treat them as equals to those I do not oppose.
The fact that a restriction isn't enforced on every occasion doesn't make it any less of a restriction. True, the "fair housing" laws don't force me to start a business of renting. They can, however, force me to enter into a rent agreement if I already make a business of renting out houses, and that is just as coercive as forcing me to enter into the first agreement against my will. Why should it make any difference how many houses I rent out, or how often? If something is wrong, it's always wrong: on a large scale or a small scale; once in a lifetime or fifty times a week.
The things you mentioned are illegal because they involve someone else's person or property. Murder, rape, and robbery are violations of individual sovereignty. Housing laws are about controlling how people use their own property -- specifically, forcing them to enter into transactions that they would otherwise choose not to enter into. As such, the laws themselves violate individual sovereignty. The two sets of laws are polar opposites, and the justice of the former does not prove the latter just.
Did you expect someone to disagee?
Of course it would be your problem. You should have purchased a FTA receiver that wouldn't lock up when fed unrecognizable or malformed input. Just as in the case of their poor assumption that you wouldn't build or buy a third-party receiver to pick up the data they're broadcasting indiscriminately, it would be a poor choice on your part to assume that their broadcast will always be encoded in the form your receiver expects, and the reciever should take that into account.
If a radio station tried to do the same thing the satallite broadcasters do -- send out a signal to everyone, but prosecute anyone who uses an "unauthorized" receiver -- they'd probably be laughed out of the courtroom. There is no legitimate reason that receiving, decoding, and viewing an electromagnetic signal being broadcast to everyone in the entire hemisphere should be illegal, regardless of the origins of the receiver hardware. It's not even a violation of copyright, any more than shining a light on a book (and thus duplicating the patterns of ink on the page into pattern of light suitable for your eyes) is a violation of copyright -- or playing a DVD on your computer is. You're only transforming an existing signal, which you already receive, into a perceivable form; copyright is only involved in distribution of copies or derivative works (with a few minor exceptions).
The legal issues are a result of the same process that got us the DMCA, (effectively) infinite copyright terms, and the Broadcast Flag. Those satallite-receiver laws have no more moral authority than any of the others passed to appease purely corporate interests. They may act as a disincentive due to the penalties involved, but that is the result of a risk/benefit decision, not a moral choice.
I think there would be a monetary incentive to create, even on a copyright-free society. If I want to read a book, and it doesn't already exist, then I need someone to write it for me. If I'm lucky, I'm not the only one interested in such a book. Assuming that individuals with the time and expertise to write such a book are relatively rare (which seems to be the case), I would cooperate with the other interested individuals to sponsor the creation of the book. It's not like the current media-distribution model is the only one around. It certainly isn't the most efficient model, and it carries a lot of inherent risk for authors in that they can't be sure anyone's interested in actually buying copies of the book once it's written. A system based on sponsorship would eliminate those risks, more efficiently direct media creation according to the wishes of media consumers, and be completely independent of copyrights. Furthermore, it would be suitable for not just books, but also music, inventions, low- or mid-budget movies, etc. Sponsorship organizations, combined with privately-funded competitions for original art, would be an effective replacement for the current copyright and patent systems.
Does that answer your question?
I agree with you, but I think the GP also has merit. One thing to consider is that movies and electronics have very different market dynamics. For example, while it isn't practical to make different versions of any given movie for different audiences, it is both possible and common to have various implementation of any given type of electronic gadget. The trouble comes when a manufacturer tries to capture the entire market for given type of device with a single design. By its very nature, such a practice will nearly always be less efficient in terms of ease-of-use and market penetration than a variety of different designs, each suited for a different audience. There's a market for iPod-like simplicity, but there is also a market for more capable/customizable devices, even though they are necessarily more complex. Any one design is guaranteed to fail to live up to someone's expectations, and the electronics market isn't winner-take-all like the big media markets.
I think the point was that the purpose of due process is to separate the evil-doers from the innocent. If everyone knows for certain that someone is an evil-doer, there isn't any point in carrying out due process, since due process will come to the same conclusion in the end. Of course, in practice, the only way to know for sure is by carrying out that same due process, to protect the innocent, not to protect the guilty.
I would say that what you're describing isn't software development at all, but rather the natural evolution of the "business manager" role to include the use of modern tools -- high-level computer languages designed specifically to solve common business problems. Sure, their job involves customizing and controlling existing business software for the tasks specific to their business, but that ought to be a standard skill for any competent business manager by now. The categories I was talking about concern software development, not just throwing together a template-based database schema and a cookie-cutter GUI into a "business app", where the "developer's" contributions make up about 1% of the final product, however important those customizations might be to the business. The software developers (or hackers) aren't the ones that performed that last, miniscule (but important) step, but rather the ones that developed the tool in the first place, without whom that final step would not be possible.
As a group, the numbers of hackers and developers are both decreasing as the tools are created for non-software-developers to easily solve their own problems. It's the same as any other industry: in the beginning, there are lots of skilled craftsmen doing custom jobs, because in a new industry all the jobs are custom. Over time, the most common jobs are automated, and the number of craftsmen decreases. However, to a greater or lesser extent, there remain cases where no existing product does what the customer needs. In those cases the craftsmen (both hackers and developers) are still quite important, and those kinds of jobs remain despite the automation. After all, you can't completely automate custom products, and there are always new problems to solve that require the attention of a tool-maker and not just a tool-user.
The concept of the "software professional" is an ideal which doesn't exist in practice. In the end, all employees do their work out of personal motivation. The difference between "hackers" and those closer to the businesses' ideal is that "hackers" find their personal motivation in the work itself, and so-called "professionals" are motivated primarily by the material compensation (i.e. money). There's nothing wrong with either, but in choosing between the two you have to be aware of the difference. A "hacker" generally has a deeper understanding of the practical side of software development, and can typically do incredible things when properly motivated. "Hackers" tend to do better in more flexible environments, where there is justification for taking some risks in exchange for a huge potential payoff: startups, R&D labs, experimental projects.
"Professionals", on the other hand, aren't primarily motivated by their love of the work itself. They can be very capable, but need the formality of processes and procedures to bind them together into a functional team. The average productivity of a good "professional" is probably about the same as the "hackers", but their peak productivity is a lot lower. Also, "hackers" pretty much have to be good at their job by definition; it's their hobby as well as their work. "Professionals" don't have that level of interest, and thus the percentage of good "professionals" is probably lower than the percentage of good "hackers" within their respective groups. On the other hand, their output will be a lot more consistent, with correspondingly lower risks. "Professionals" are generally best in established projects, doing things that are fully explored, with a low tolerance for risks and a need for consistent performance.
Both types of employees have their places. Most projects will require at least some "hackers" and some "professionals". There's nothing inherently better (for all projects) about "professional" behavior vs. "hacker" behavior, or vice-versa. It all depends on the type of project and the acceptable level of risk.
Disclaimer: IANAL and this is not legal advise.
Note: I realize the other responses make similar comments. For some reason comments.pl disappeared for while and I couldn't submit this. There were still some unique elements, so I thought I'd submit it anyway once the comment pages returned.
Your example seems rather contrived. I can imagine (barely) such a contract, but the GPL3 would not get in the way, as long as the source code they provided could be used on normal systems as well, with the same functionality (or at least that is the intention). The agreement between the business and the insurance company can't have any effect on "Bluehat's" obligations under the GPL3. It would only prevent "Bluehat" from releasing the software with modifications that require "Bluehat's" signature to work. The software can require "locked" hardware, so long as either the signature required by the "locked" hardware is controlled by the machine's owner, or the signing key is provided with the source code.
In your example, the business would lock its production hardware to use only software officially signed by "Bluehat", in accordance with its contract with the insurance company. Bluehat would provide its "official" signed release software, which could be used on the production hardware, along with the source code (but not the signing key). The business could compile the own version of the software, sign it with their own key, and load it onto their development hardware. Since they can sign it themselves, they can make modified versions and use them on any machine not subject to their agreement with the insurance company.
The problem the GPL3 is trying to prevent is the case where an "open source" application is developed which requires access to e.g. DRM decryption hardware which can only be used with a specific key: a driver for a DRM-crippled video card, for example, or a media player which must be signed with an "approved" key to access an external storage device. In an extreme case, someone could create a version of a GPL'd software package modified to use DRM-aware encryption hardware to save its documents; the software would be "open source", but only their signed release would be capable of reading or saving the documents. In these cases, you can't compile your own working versions because you don't have access to the required signing key. The GPL3 would require, in these cases, that the signing key itself be included in the source distribution, because one cannot produce a working piece of software from the source code without it. Since that is unlikely to happen, the GPL3 would effectively prevent people from using existing GPL3 code to create software that is "open source" in name but cannot be used in modified form without the approval of the owner of an authorized signing key. I can't say I disagree with that intention.
Of course, the GPL3 is currently still in a draft state, and the wording of the new provisions probably still leaves some ambiguities that should be cleared up by the time the final version is released. I am confident, however, that their intention is as I described above, which is exactly the same as the intention of the GPL2: to prevent open-source software from being effectively turned into proprietary software through the addition of incompatible closed-source modifications. The GPL3's authors aren't trying to shift the balance of power; as with the changes to the software-patent clauses, developments in technology and law have simply made it necessary to close a few potential loopholes in the GPL2.
Remember that this is just the first version. There's no reason why they couldn't add support for non-pixel-shader-based XVideo rendering later on, for cards that need it. Right now they're trying to get a basic version working, and they're taking advantage of all the features of modern cards to simplify the architecture. Once the basic feature set is in place they'll create workarounds for older cards. After all, supporting the current XVideo system isn't all that difficult, since they can just pass the XVideo calls on to the underlying X server.
Of course, some of the effects (transparency, non-rectangular windows) will probably be incompatible with the old XVideo system. In the worst case, they'll just have to disable those effects while XVideo is in use. There might be some visual glitches if composited windows are overlayed on top of the XVideo rendering area, but otherwise there shouldn't be any trouble. Furthermore, with more of the graphics rendering offloaded to the video card, you should have extra CPU capacity available for the video codec.
I was only considering functions, not global data structures, but this page appears to indicate that PIC-enabled ELF programs (the default/prevalent configuration on Linux) use a Global Offset Table (GOT) for static data, which is itself referenced through a relative address from the code. Thus, relative addresses are indeed used for both functions and data in shared libraries. According to the page, Windows(tm) actually does something similar for data symbols marked with dllimport, at least in recent versions of Microsoft(tm)'s C compiler, although programmers did formerly have to take care of data relocation manually.
On the other hand, Linux does use copy-on-write for initialized data; I only meant to say that at some point in the application's execution the data would have to be copied (when it is written to), and thus the initialized data section cannot be permanently shared like the executable and constant data sections. However, that wasn't precisely what I said, so thanks for pointing out the discrepancy.
I'm going to ignore the rest of the points for the moment, because this one deserves a proper answer. It is, in fact, completely wrong. From 1933 to 1975, private ownership of gold bullion and gold coins was illegal in the United States. President Roosevelt, in Executive Order 6102, confiscated the nation's private supply of gold bullion, gold coins, and gold certificates, and forcibly replaced them with a fiat currency under the control of the Federal Reserve. People had no choice but to accept the government's fiat currency, because they could not continue using the gold and silver currencies that they had been using quite willingly and profitably since the country was founded. That is why we have a fiat currency today: because not so long ago we were forced to accept it, much to our loss.
Given how misinformed you apparently were on such a basic part of the history of United States currency, I think the remainder of your points could probably be dismissed out-of-hand. However:
I'd really recommend the book on economics that another poster pointed out for this one. I'd also like to point out that we experienced significant overall economic growth before coming off of the gold standard, and (taking into account unforseen technological advancements that would have happened anyway) we probably had even more actual economic growth before we were forced into switching to an inflationary fiat currency.
First of all, a strong economy depends on many factors, and probably the least of them is monetary policy. I'm not saying that it doesn't have an effect, but as long as the changes to policy come slowly enough for the market to adjust, the actual effect isn't all the much. In particular, the economy in this country has nearly always been fairly strong, except for those cases where those in charge of monetary policy managed to mess things up. The less monetary policy we've had, the better the economy's been, but it's almost always been a "strong" economy despite the interference. I would define a successful monetary policy as one the left things well enough alone!
Second, the only thing we have to compare the state of our economy to is the "could-have-been". We only have one history, after all, our national history makes comparisons to other countries questionable at best. Since no "concrete" comparison is possible,
I think you're making my point for me.
What makes a good currency? From your post, it appears that you believe that a good currency is something that only has value in its role as an exchange medium. Why is that? After all, the remainder of your post clearly indicates that you believe your "good currency" is a poor choice as a long-term representation of value, while concrete investments -- in capital goods, in land -- are far more valuable over time. Given the choice, wouldn't people rather receive something in exchange that will retain its value for decades, or even centuries, to come, rather than your "ideal currency" that loses most of its value almost immediately? The general tendency is for items with long-term value to be chosen as currency, not worthless bits of paper. Only in cases where fiat currency was forced on a population have such fiat currencies become widely used.
I agree that it makes good economic sense to invest in long-term appreciating assets. I'm not saying that anyone should buy gold or silver instead of investing in the economy, although most would consider it wise to include pure savings among one's investments as a hedge against unforseen economic disasters. That is only practical in a non-inflationary economy, where you can save your money -- just put it aside -- and expect it to hold its value. In an inflationary economy, you have to invest your hard-earned money, since any long-term savings will lose value over time, and that means that you risk losing your savings entirely.
Disregarding the effects of inflation itself (i.e., the change in the currency over time), that would be true. The actual amount of currency, and the price of any given item, would be immaterial. However, that is not the case in an inflationary economy, as I pointed out before. The loss on immediate purchases is nearly insignificant, because you're not holding on to the currency for all that long. However, at a national level, continually making purchases out of inflationary currency ("deficit spending") devalues the currency and effectively redistributes wealth unfairly from savers (former earners) to (present) earners. Thus, there is additional incentive to enter into the lower-order land/labor portions of the economy, at the expense of long-term investments. As a result, capital goods are not maintained, and the production of higher-order goods declines. As a result, the economy shrinks.
I'm not saying that our current standard of living isn't higher than it was in 1913. A lot of that is due to our deficit spending (nationally and individually), which is going to be a major problem when it comes time to pay it all back. Also, our methods of production and general level of technology have improved greatly since 1913. The fact that we have managed to show an improved standard of living despite the inflation is a testiment to just how strong our economy is. None the less, you need to compare our current economy not to the economy of 1913, but instead to the economy we could have had today if we had continued to use a non-inflationary currency.
If you're going to take that point of view, then all indirect exchange (even your beloved paper currency) is just an "advanced form of barter." The value of any good used in indirect exchange has two components, the good-value and the exchange-value. Physical goods, such as precious metals, have a nonzero good-value, which acts as a floor (not an upper limit) on the value of the good. Even if it loses all of its exchange-value, it will still have at least the good-value left for direct use. The exchange-value is important, because goods which can be used for exchange will always be more valuable on the market than good with limited marketability, but if all else fails you can exchange the physical good for what you want in a more indirect way. If paper currency loses its exchange-value, it's no longer good for anything. For a concrete demonstration of this, look at what happened when the US substituted fiat paper currency for precious metals in 1913. Before that, all transactions were performed in, or backed by, precious metals, and the economy was remarkably stable. The purchasing power of a given amount of gold or silver was relatively constant over a large span of time (several centuries). Since 1913, however, the value of the dollar has decreased over 96%; in other words, what cost $1.00 in 1913 now costs over $96.00. Consider the consequences to someone planning their retirement, or leaving an inheritance to their children, when the effective value of their savings drops by that much in just 93 years -- and the process is accelerating.
As long as the amount of paper currency in circulation is limited, and is expected to remain that way, it remains useful. However, as new currency is created, the value (purchasing power) of all of the existing currency decreases. This inflation tends to favor those who get to the new currency first; for a short time, they can buy goods and services with their nearly-costless new currency, before the market has adjusted to the new purchasing power. In fact, the effect on the market is exactly the same as that of counterfeit currency; the only differences between newly-printed "legitimate" money and newly-printed "counterfeit" money are the difference in scale, and who benefits. The ones who stand to lose the most from inflation are the ones who receive the new money last, or not at all: savers and investors. They get to watch while their lifetime's worth of "saved value" gets siphoned off to pay for all that runaway deficit spending. As a result, saving and investing tend to decline, and the economy slides back in to the Dark Ages as people become less and less willing to invest in future production.
The only currency that can be relied upon is the one that can't be artificially created. That is why physical currency is valuable. The currency itself -- the specific material -- may have certain properties which make it more suitable than other goods as a currency, but the quality of main importance is that it cannot be created from nothing like paper currencies are. If you can come up with a system that will confer those properties on paper or digital currencies, then that would make a suitable replacement for precious metals. However, no one has managed that yet, and it is doubtful that anyone ever will.
Actually, modern runtime linkers use a table of offsets rather than embedding the relocated symbol addresses directly into the executable code, and the relocations themselves are handled by mapping the file contents into virtual memory at the necessary addresses. With those two techniques combined, it is almost never necessary for the in-memory version of the executable to differ from its on-disk representation where the code and constant-data sections are concerned. When a typical application begins execution, nearly all of its virtual memory will be mapped directly onto the executable file and its shared libraries, and loaded on demand. The initialized-data section must be copied into virtual memory, and the uninitialized-data section and the stack are typically allocated as they are accessed on a page-by-page basis. Aside from a handful of housekeeping data for the linker and the C libraries, the rest of the virtual memory consists of read-only memory-mapped files.
The problem with that, of course, is that something that can be "digitized and easily disseminated" is effectively free to distribute -- once it exists. For a long time, distribution was hard, and only a select group was willing to put the effort into doing it. Over an extended period of time, that particular method of distribution became the only way of doing business, and authors/artists/inventors got into some really bad habits in regards to their business methods. In particular, they started to assume that they could control the price of the end product (a physical copy of a book, for example) to make up for the work that they were effectively doing at a loss (actually writing the book). That worked (for the most part) as long as publication was limited to "insiders" who stood to benefit from the system, but now that anyone can be a distributor that system is breaking down.
Those who possess the ability to create valuable "content" have nothing to worry about, really. After all, they're not the ones facing this new competition; we have yet to learn how to create unique content without them. As long as that remains true, authors, artists, and inventors will continue to profit from their work. The methods by which they are paid will certainly change, but only the distributors are facing extinction.
As for the methods themselves, there are numerous workable proposals. My personal favorite is the collective-patronage system, which differs from traditional patronage only in that an organization or group replaces the individual patron. The organization would probably set the scope of the content -- the general topic, audience, medium, etc. -- and then hire promising authors, artists, and/or inventors willing to work within those limits. Some groups would, of course, be more free-form than others, but ultimately the parameters of the group would be dictated by its paying members. Members would have numerous advantages over non-members, including contact with the patronees, first-run editions of the resulting works, shareholder rights in the group's decisions, discounted merchandise, etc. The membership fees would fund the production of new stories, movies, and/or inventions. Nearly all of the income would go directly to the artists, and the system would be self-sustaining without relying on copyrights or patents at all.
Ultimately, I think that the content creators would be much better off under this system than the current one, since overall consumer spending on creative media is not likely to decrease much, while a much larger percentage goes directly to the creators rather than the distributors.
That's odd. I've always held that the "over-the-air" channels, being sufficiently distasteful that they can't even get widespread distribution on the cable or satellite networks as part of the standard channel package, are the "minor networks". They certainly seems to be missing all of the popular programming, anyway.
That doesn't change the fact that our country is not currently in a state of war with any other country. We have troops deployed all the time, in many countries, assisting our political allies, but that doesn't mean we're always at war. We can only be at war if Congress has issued a formal declaration to that effect, and that has not occurred. Constitutionally, the power to declare war rests solely with Congress. The President may be the Commander in Chief, but he does not have the constitutional authority to declare war on a sovereign nation without the approval of Congress.
What war? I must have missed a memo; last time I checked we weren't at war with anyone. So which internationally-recognized government did Congress authorize the President to declare war on lately?
Oh, right, they just like using the term "war on terror" because it gets people interested (or at least it used to). We are, in fact, not at war with anyone right now. Never mind, then.