Er. I happily pay taxes, because I enjoy the services they purchase. Roads, regulation of industries, national defense, etc. Sometimes I don't agree with the purpose to which my money is put - but as long as my perspective is properly represented and considered, I don't feel that my taxes are 'theft at gunpoint.'
Of course not—you're on the side holding the guns. Those forced to subsidize the services you enjoy may feel differently, though.
The problem with taxes isn't that no one likes them, because obviously some people do—mostly those on the receiving end. The problem is that others are forced to participate against their will. No amount of benefit to some is worth any amount of coercion against others.
Without farm subsidies we will still have cheap food, but local farmers will disappear and the country will face a strategic risk (in case of hostilities to the rest of the world that in the case will be feeding us, we being on the verge of that case anyway).
If it was really about strategic risk they wouldn't use subsidies, they would simply buy preservable food at the best market prices available (including imports) and stockpile it to offset the risk of hostilities. That would both be more cost-effective than paying farmers to over-produce and cause less price distortion in the agricultural markets, various processed foods and non-food by-products (e.g. ethanol), agricultural capital goods (farmland, farm equipment), and labor.
Note that the stockpiles don't need to outlast the hostilities, just provide a buffer sufficient to get the local agriculture industry ramped back up sufficiently to replace the missing imports.
Ignoring implementation details like whether their existing switches can handle IPv6 traffic as efficiently as IPv4, the change should be a net positive in terms of ISP infrastructure. ISPs which already hand out public IPv4 addresses will just do the same with IPv6. Their routing tables may get a bit simpler due to IPv6's mostly-hierarchical address structure. ISPs which currently use NAT will be able to skip it for IPv6 traffic, reducing CPU load and the management overhead of mapping private IPs onto a limited number of public IP / protocol / port triplets. The end-user has more addresses to work with in IPv6, but the ISP only has to track one subnet prefix per customer for routing purposes, which isn't any worse than the situation today.
One big hold-up is that many high-end routers currently in use offer hardware acceleration for IPv4, but can only deal with IPv6 packets in software. While that's fine so long as IPv6 remains rare, the ISPs will eventually need to upgrade to modern routers with hardware-accelerated IPv6 support.
If you can postulate a world where it is possible for things to "just exist" without being created, then our universe can be one of those things which "just exists". That is a far simpler answer than claiming that there must be an all-powerful creator who "just exists" and who, in turn, created the universe.
My virtual beings in my virtual world could make exactly the same argument. Since I know they would be factually wrong, I have to conclude that the argument is bad (even should it happened to be correct in this case).
They would not be factually wrong. The argument is not that their world must "just exist", but rather that there is no evidence either way, and that the model without a creator is the one with fewer assumptions. Both of those statements are factually correct. The burden of proof is on those postulating the existence of a creator to come up with actual evidence supporting the more complex model.
You say I can't "just exist" and need a creator too?
If this world was somehow created, like your virtual world, then either that creator's world "just exists", or it was created in turn. At some point you either have a world which was not created, or you have a cycle or infinite series of worlds, each creating the next. In the former case, there is no evidence to suggest that we are not in that original, uncreated universe; in the latter, there is no uncreated creator.
If you can postulate a world where it is possible for things to "just exist" without being created, then our universe can be one of those things which "just exists". That is a far simpler answer than claiming that there must be an all-powerful creator who "just exists" and who, in turn, created the universe.
Your mistake is to assume all libertarians think alike. AKA stereotyping. I'm libertarian but not opposed to the minimum wage.
It's not unreasonable to expect people who call themselves "libertarians" to actually hold libertarian principles—which primarily means the Non-Aggression Principle, which is incompatible with threatening coercion against anyone who chooses to enter into a voluntary agreement to provide or purchase labor below your arbitrary price floor.
If your basic physics classes didn't at least mention that the Newtonian formulas are only approximations, and not valid for very small dimensions or very high energies, then you should probably ask for your money back. Similarly for qualifiers about static situations and ideal materials. For the problem domain those basic science classes are concerned with, the approximate formulas are perfectly valid. The higher-level classes require different formulas only because they have an expanded problem domain. Similarly, Econ 101 covers a limited problem domain, with assumptions like purely voluntary interaction. Given the same problem, Econ 102 should give the same answer. However, knowing Econ 102 allows you to address a wider variety of situations, such as specifically how the economy is negatively impacted by coercion.
Maybe you should have stuck around for Economics 102.
If Econ 102 contradicts Econ 101, then someone messed up. At worst, the rules taught in 101 may not hold in all cases—but the boundaries should have been part of the 101 curriculum.
Anyway, the concept of supply vs. demand and the optimal price-point are fundamental to all levels of economics. There is nothing wrong with what the GP wrote. The part which was omitted, however, is that the "excuse" of rising costs pushes out the marginal producers, reducing the supply and thus raising the optimal price-point for those who are left. How much that price increase depends on a number of factors, including the elasticity of demand, the degree of competition, and existing production margins (i.e. how much the suppliers can afford to absorb before it becomes more economical to close shop or shift to a different product).
Notice how you can't sell stock on your career? Why can a musician do that?
Who says you can't? The ability to enter into such an agreement voluntarily is an inherent natural right. If you did make such an agreement of your own free will, then abiding by it is an ethical and moral imperative, even others consider it void. I think most people just aren't stupid or desperate enough to actually agree to such a thing, outside the music industry, which gets by on lingering memories of glamour and obviously unrealistic hopes of being part of the 0.001% that makes it to the top of the heap.
Then there's the fact that what the musicians are selling is really the copyrights to works produced under their contracts, in exchange for a rather one-sided partnership. They can walk away from that and keep the revenues from any future work to themselves. However, just as you won't continue to receive income from a company you leave, they won't receive any further revenues from the copyrights they sold to the labels.
You're confusing two different things here. When a patent claims "[super novel and non-obvious technique] performed by a computer," it's not saying that the computer is the point of novelty... and there's also nothing that requires every element of a claim to be independently novel and nonobvious.
The straw-man arguments are getting a bit ridiculous here, not to mention repetitive. I never said that every element had to be both novel and non-obvious, just that some element had to be. If the patent consists of one thing (the algorithm) which is non-obvious but not novel—a law of nature—plus something else which is novel ("on a computer") but obvious, then the patent shouldn't be granted.
Additionally, you're also confusing two different statutes. 35 USC 102 and 103 are the ones that say patents have to be novel and nonobvious. 35 USC 101 - what we're talking about - is the one that says that even a novel, nonobvious idea is unpatentable if it's not directed to patent-eligible subject matter.
I'm not confusing the issues, I'm saying that software patents should be rejected for both reasons. Subject matter aside, they add nothing to the state of the art which is both novel and non-obvious. From a subject matter P.O.V., irrelevancies relating to run on a computer vs. run in your head aside, algorithms are math, and math is not a patentable subject matter.
The pro-software patent camp is the group confusing the issue, by trying to claim that the subject matter restriction doesn't apply simply because you use a computer to assist you with the math.
Because it's tied to a computer, it's patent-eligible. The pencil and paper version is not patent-eligible, even if it's the most novel and non-obvious algorithm ever invented.
We already know that this is your position. The question is: Why? What's so different about using a computer for assistance, rather than pencil and paper?
... look at the areas where interoperability has suffered due to Microsoft's FAT filesystem patents, or patents on media codecs, or lossless compression algorithms, or rendering techniques.
[sarcasm]It's true. My FAT-formatted USB stick won't run at all on my Mac. And I still have to view everything in vector graphics since rendering techniques are patented.[/sarcasm]
As I already pointed out, patents don't need to completely block something in order to be stifling innovation or otherwise causing harm, they just need to be making it more costly than it otherwise would be.
On the contrary, the greater variety of wheels we have - wheels that will enter the public domain in a relatively short time - greatly increases the rate of progress.
Nonsense. We don't benefit from people driving around with hexagonal wheels for the sole reason that someone holds a patent on the round version. If there is a variation which is actually better, it will be invented and used for that reason and not just because someone holds a patent on an inferior version. Otherwise, we're better off without the workarounds. To add insult to injury, at the pace of the technology industry that "relatively short time" is generally much longer than it takes for the subject of the patent to become obsolete.
Software patents are also inherently incompatible with free and open-source software; any license fee whatsoever will block legal free software development in that area.
I fail to see how that's an argument for or against them - they're incompatible with the idea
I'm not sure what your argument about Open-Source has to do with anything. The fact is an Open Source author wants to use closed source is the issue, not whether that closed source is patented or not.
Closed source code isn't even involved here. The point is that completely open source code is blocked by the patent.
But because you refuse to pay the inventor so you can use his invention doesn't mean progress has been stifled. Sometimes new and better ways are found, like.png.
First, it's not a matter of "refusing" to pay. The requirement to pay is impossible to comply with while remaining compliant with the open source license. If others can't use or modify the software with your changes without paying a license fee, you can't incorporate those changes into an open source project.
Second, if those changes would have enhanced the state of the art—and being open source, they are necessarily available to the public—and were independently discovered, not based on the patent or related publications, then innovation has clearly been stifled. Publication as part of an open-source project would have accomplished everything the patent is supposed to do, without the cost of a monopoly. If the changes were based on the patent, then there is a question of how long it would have taken for someone else to come up with an equivalent algorithm in the absence of the patent. Obviously I think it would have been developed anyway, due simply to the demand for the algorithm itself (without which the patent is also worthless) and regardless of the limited incentive of a patent monopoly, but I'm willing to grant that there is room for debate.
Finally, I think you're promoting the Broken Window fallacy by saying that it's good to be forced to reinvent someone to circumvent a patent. Yes, the final result was better that.gif—but what might.gif turned into if others could have improved on it directly, rather than starting over from scratch? Quite a lot of effect was spent on ways to compress images without infringing on the.gif patent, not to mention reimplementing all the other features already in.gif like transparency and animation, and then pushing support for the new formats into new versions of every image-handling program. That effort could have been directed toward improving on the original format, or working on other software, if not for the patent. For that matter, just look at how long it took to get to the point where you could assume decent.png support. (Are we even there yet? Which commonly-supported raster format handles both transparency and animation?)
The question is, how much would NOT be invented if there wasn't patent protection?
For me the question is actually how anyone can possibly justify the aggression necessary to enforce a patent monopoly, regardless of the costs or benefits of granting one. However, we're talking hypotheticals here.
The flip side of your question is, how much is NOT invented today because of patent protection? You have to consider both, and both are ultimately undecidable without an alternate reality to compare against. I have yet to see a study, however, which could safely conclude that patents do anything to promote innovation. Even working within the low standards of modern politics, to justify infringing on the property rights of everyone by telling them they can't implement a patented process or device (even if they were completely unaware of it and invented the same thing independently), I would expect some sort of solid evidence that the program is actually working.
I don't think anyone would ever take a loan from a bank that demands that 90% of all future income from the investment go straight to the bank.
Not for a bank loan, no, but an IPO works somewhat like this. Whatever share of the company is sold in the IPO, that fraction of future profit belongs to the new shareholders from then on, not the original owners of the company. In exchange they receive whatever those shares initially sold for at the time of the IPO.
When an artist signs with a label they're essentially selling stock in their future music career.
A patent on a computer running an algorithm explicitly does not cover performing the algorithm in your head, on a pad of paper, inherently when you do some other function, etc. It is quite distinguishable.
What is the significant difference between evaluating an algorithm in your head, and doing the same thing with computer assistance, which would justify a patent? What is the novel, non-obvious change in the state of the art which such a patent would document? We agree that it's not the algorithm, or the computer; what's left?
More specifically, what is it about "evaluate this algorithm with a computer" which would make it patentable, which would not also apply to "evaluate this algorithm with pencil and paper"?
I can invent a new automobile transmission, and the fact that I wasn't the one who invented the automobile is irrelevant. You've created a new rule whereby each industry gets one patent by the founder of that industry, and any improvements in that industry are forever unpatentable because they incorporate something not invented by the applicant.
This is an obvious straw-man argument. There is no new rule prohibiting patents which build on prior patents. The only rule being applied here, which is hardly new, is that the patent must add something to the state of the art which is both novel and non-obvious. The automobile in your example is not novel, but your transmission is presumably both novel and non-obvious. The patent would cover just the transmission, not the automobile.
On the other hand, if you tried to get a patent on combining an existing transmission with an existing automobile design, I would expect such an application to be summarily rejected unless there was something both novel and non-obvious about the concept or method of combining the two. This is where software patents fail. You have two pre-existing components, the algorithm and the general-purpose computer. The patent application only covers combining these two existing elements together in the most obvious way possible, as running algorithms is the sole purpose of a computer.
Can you do the same and show that the software industry has stagnated because of patent disputes?
Actually, yes. For one obvious example, just look at the areas where interoperability has suffered due to Microsoft's FAT filesystem patents, or patents on media codecs, or lossless compression algorithms, or rendering techniques. Software patents are also inherently incompatible with free and open-source software; any license fee whatsoever will block legal free software development in that area. Driving people to reinvent the wheel, often in an inferior way, isn't progress. Start-ups and other small for-profit organizations have a similar problem; they don't have the portfolio necessary to enter into the standard cross-licensing agreements, or the financial resources for drawn-out patent fights in the courts. Their only real option is to settle for being bought out (under duress) by an larger incumbent.
It's obvious that patents, and especially software patents, impose costs and place roadblocks in the way of innovation. It is hoped, but not proven (and not for lack of trying), that the incentive of a state-backed monopoly is enough to compensate for this. What we lack is an alternate world to compare against, one with the same initial conditions but without patents.
If Google Glasses makes it to market, then you can publicly post a retraction statement that patents don't stifle innovation. Sounds good?... Of course you won't agree to that...
Exactly, because no retraction would be justified. That a particular product eventually makes it to market does not imply that patents do not stifle innovation—which is not the same as saying that no innovation can occur, only that the patents impede innovation rather than contributing to it. To decide that we
The term "useful art," as it was known at the time, meant an industrial process.
Exactly—and an industrial process is a specific way of making a physical product. This is completely separate from the abstract processes under discussion, which are aspects of mathematics—natural laws—waiting to be discovered, not applications of those laws invented to further the production of a specific material good, which is the essence of a "useful art".
The critical term, of course, isn't "useful arts" (which only occurs in the justification, not the actual power) but "Inventors". Algorithms aren't invented. Like other natural laws, they're discovered. Invention requires the application of the laws thus discovered toward a specific, concrete end.
The second issue is math should not be patentable because they are laws of nature and not manmade. Computer algorithms are just this and a process is simply math.
You're right, and that's why computer algorithms are not patentable by themselves. Instead, they must be explicitly tied to a machine or performed by a machine, because machines are not laws of nature, nor are they man-made.
While this is a very common argument, making it requires one to be (deliberately?) obtuse. A patent on an algorithm[1] running on a general-purpose computer is indistinguishable from a patent on the algorithm itself. The algorithm, as a universal natural law, is not eligible. The general-purpose computer was not invented by the applicant, and the use of one to evaluate any algorithm is obvious, as this is the purpose and nature of any general-purpose computer. What is left to patent?
If Google is to be believed, we'll have wearable heads-up displays by the end of the year. I mean, come on - that's freakin' science fiction right there.
Only if they can navigate the patent minefield, and manage to get it to market without anyone blocking it with an injunction. The way the mobile market is looking right now (approaching a complete all-vs.-all digraph of lawsuits), that's not looking very likely.
Moreover, it's not like the primary roadblock preventing use from having these sorts of wearable HUDs was ever in the software to begin with. It's just taken this long to develop the miniaturized logic circuits, displays, and batteries necessary to make it practical. Are you really trying to argue that no one would develop the (rather trivial) algorithms needed for HUDs without software patents?
[1] There are no "computer" algorithms, just universal mathematical algorithms which computers happen to be able to evaluate.
Rather, copyright should be retooled to define it as a protection against plagiarism, rather than a guarantee of profits.
In which case it is no longer copyright. Copyright is concerned with the making and distribution of copies, not authorship. What you are referring to is normally part of the author's so-called "moral rights", a concept not recognized in the U.S., and for good reason. The statutory damages necessary to enforce "moral rights" in non-fraudulent contexts are necessarily disproportionate to the offense, not to mention in conflict with the right to free speech. This is much the same reason for criminalizing fraud, lies with the intent of separating people from their property, but not personal dishonesty.
If I came up with something unique and original, and you went around presenting it as your own work regardless of whether you were charging for it or not, that would be dishonest and fraudulent and without copyright laws, perfectly legal.
Even without copyright laws, if you're charging for it that would be fraud, and thus illegal. If you're not charging money for it it may still be fraud if some other form of compensation is involved. In the remaining cases there are no actual damages, and thus no standing for anyone to sue.
The best approach from the author's point of view, given that the author has lost nothing but credit and has no standing in the matter, is simply to demonstrate the plagiarism to the public. The courts are not the proper forum, in terms of justice or effectiveness, for reclaiming your reputation as the original author.
And it causes all sorts of fun since even simple numbers like 0.1 can't be represented exactly in binary floating point.
People like to play this up, but it's really no different from the fact that simple numbers like 1/3 can't be represented exactly in decimal floating point. That's true for any fraction and any base where the denominator of the (reduced) fraction has factors which aren't also factors of the base. Binary is no worse in this sense than any other prime base. Decimal only has two factors (two and five), which isn't much better.
If you're writing a financial application and you need precision to the cent or mille, rather than a certain number of significant bits/digits, just store amounts in cents or milles with arbitrary-precision integers.
I've been a Libertarian since the late 70s, but I actually haven't heard the term 'minarchist' before.
That's surprising, since it's been around about as long as you've been a member of the Libertarian Party (it was coined in 1971).
So a Minarchist is just a limited government Libertarian.
Yes, though it also includes individuals who are merely libertarian-leaning, not just members of the Libertarian Party. As the Wikipedia article says, it's shorthand for exactly that phrase, aside from the connection to the Party.
I'm not sure why you believe a limited government Libertarian is not a "pure" Libertarian.
This is due to a confusion of terms. The capitalized form (which I did not use myself) usually describes members of the Libertarian Party. Obviously they can be, and usually are, minarchists or even outright statists. The Party covers a rather broad political spectrum, particularly in the U.S., where it has long been one of a few dominant third parties, and thus the place to go if you can't mange to identify with the first two, whether or not you share any core principles.
The more general term "libertarian" also has multiple meanings, ranging from individuals who merely hold many libertarian positions (which I generally refer to as "libertarian-leaning"), to those who fully endorse the Non-Aggression Principle and do not tolerate or legitimize aggression in any form (pure libertarians). The latter, of course, are necessarily anarchists, since the defining characteristic of the state is the "legitimate" use of force against non-aggressors. I consider that the pure form because it is ideologically consistent, and can be argued rationally from first principles. The others, so far as I can tell, are a mixtures of political positions with no common rational basis, like a "communist" who believes in a certain amount of private ownership of capital, or a "totalitarian" who believes in the sanctity of a certain amount of individual liberty. The core principle of libertarianism is the NAP, and non-anarchist libertarians apply the NAP inconsistently, excluding from it the "necessary" aspects of government.
Due to this confused mix of definitions, I tend to think of myself as "agorist" or "anarcho-capitalist" rather than "libertarian". Just as we once had to trade in "liberal" for "libertarian", the term "libertarian" has in turn been watered down to near uselessness. However, people know roughly what your positions are if you call yourself a libertarian, while most have never heard of the more precise terms, so it's difficult to maintain that precision in public conversation. One must use the terms people know, even if they are imprecise.
Although I haven't examined the Libertarian Party's platform recently I would quite surprised if they were actually advocating any sort of Anarchy.
They won't come out and say if this way, of course, but they're actually advocating a limited form of anarchy any time they state that they don't want the government involved in something. Full anarchy, of course, is that taken to its logical conclusion—no government involvement in anything.
Most people are in a state of anarchy—interacting voluntarily—in almost every aspect of their lives. Minarchists feel that there are some areas where involuntary interaction (e.g. taxes and regulations in conflict with natural rights) is justified by sheer necessity, but that anarchy should exist everywhere else. A pure anarchist like myself, on the other hand, would believe that no involuntary interaction is ever necessary or justified. However, we have a lot of government-reducing to do before that comes close to making a difference, and I'm content to leave the so-called "necessary" parts until last.
There's no such thing as "excessive competition". What you're referring to is just insufficient verification. Insurers (yours and the hospitals') will insist on audits and approval by well-known certification authorities.
Still, the idea that every procedure has to be first-class is part of the problem. A somewhat higher risk of a botched procedure may be an acceptable tradeoff when the alternative is not having the procedure at all due to certification-related costs. Those who can pay to have every detail triple-checked will (and do), but the rest of us need to settle for what we can afford. To put it bluntly, even a half-trained surgical team by modern standards is more than anyone had access to a century ago, at any price. Don't be greedy.
If you have a "normal" insurance plan, they cover your checkups and medications because they know it saves them money if you deal with your cholesterol before it gives you a $50k heart attack.
That risk would be factored into the cost of any insurance plan covering heart attacks. If they want to offer a discount for actually doing the checkups and/or taking medication, that's fine by me. Paying through the insurance company for routine matters like that, however, does nothing but increase the overall cost.
If you have one of those high-deductible plans..., they sign up young folks unlikely to develop chronic medical conditions and just screw them over on the doctor visits...
If the cost of the premiums exceed the risk of the covered conditions, then these "young folks" should definitely be looking for a better insurer. The high-deductable plans don't cover basic doctor's visits, however, so I don't see how they're being "screwed over" on that issue. They would be paying at least that much extra in premiums with a low-deductable plan. Those visits aren't free no matter how you structure the payments.
...but it doesn't cost them much money if the person skips the doctor visit because a 25 year old guy isn't likely to get a heart attack or a stroke or something in the next 20 years, but they can take his money in the meantime.
That's perfectly rational behavior. Paying early is almost never to one's benefit when you can save and invest that money instead. He should get a plan which corresponds to his current risks, rather than over-paying for those 20 years, and put away the balance for when he really needs it. The idea that your premiums are fixed when you sign up, and can't increase along with your risk factors over time, is partly to blame for this situation. People should expect to pay more for insurance as they grow older, and plan for it financially just as they plan for other long-term costs, including retirement.
... But he can't pay for it, at all - everybody knows it, but the hospital can't turn him away by law. So he walks out of there, they hound him for a few months and give it up as a lost cause.... We've already decided on universal healthcare - anyone can walk into an ER and get treated - but we've done it in literally the worst possible way.
It should go without saying that I oppose this form of universal health care as well. Hospital should be able to turn away those who can't or won't pay, and more should be done (in the form of less protection from creditors, not more laws) to ensure that you can't just walk away from your debts, via bankruptcy or otherwise.
In any case, only emergency treatment is mandated at the ER, though some hospitals may choose to offer more. That represents a very small fraction of the total cost of health care. You can't count the cost of the followup care which wouldn't take place at the ER. If you feel more should be done to promote preventative care, you are free to donate your own money toward charities supporting just that. Where we have a problem is you attempting to donate other people's money toward your cause in the form of mandatory excess insurance and other taxes.
If one uses the "left" to "right" terminology to mean largest government role in society to smallest government role in society with Anarchists or Anarcho-Libertarians at the furthest point to the right and Socialists/Communists/Fascists/Totalitarians as furthest to the left I would say you are just a bit to the left of the standard Limited Government Libertarian.
On a Nolan Chart this would correspond to the diagonal between the "totalitarian" and "libertarian" corners. The perpendicular axis, which is more typically assigned the "left" and "right" labels, corresponds to "liberalism" and "conservatism". The former line represents equal amounts of personal and economic freedom (from none to absolute), while the latter is a crossover from only personal freedom to only economic freedom.
Of course, all of these labels are debatable, and few ideologies or individuals can be placed at the extreme positions on either axis, much less the corners.
I'd say the GP sounds a bit short of the libertarian corner (2/3 from center?), leaning toward the "liberalism" side (preferring personal freedom over economic freedom). The Libertarian Party would probably be a good match, more so than the right-wing/conservative Tea Party. The LP is really more minarchist than pure libertarian in any case.
Everyone needs normal health care, and a few will at some point require catastrophic care for an unusual condition. In the first case, there is no mutual benefit to spreading out the costs; all you've done is add overhead. In the second case, rationally-priced insurance should result in the same average cost for everyone, barring significant individual health risks. If that basic catastrophic insurance is currently over-priced compared to the cost of providing the care, try a non-profit insurance co-op. There is no need for the government to get involved.
If the problem is that the cost of providing health care is too high, driving high insurance costs, then we need to look at a whole different set of issues. Perhaps care providers are being forced to accept too much of the risk involved in medical advise and treatment (suggesting tort reform), or we're systematically over-paying (and need more competition), or perhaps we're simply expecting more health care than we can really afford. There are lots of expensive procedures available these days which simply weren't available in the past. If one takes for granted that every option will be attempted, of course the costs will rise—there are more options to try. We need to learn that a procedure which one can't afford (after considering available insurance, charity and loans) isn't an option. The science of medicine may advance, but at some point there has to be a limit on medical expenditures.
... Libertarians are not Anarchists.... Libertarians don't want to eliminate government completely.... I repeat: Libertarians are SMALL government, not no-government anarchists.
That may be the position of the Libertarian Party—which, as a political party seeking power within the government, can't take a solidly anarchist position without imploding—but the core principle of the libertarian ideology, generally referred to as the Non-Aggression Principle or NAP, is an absolute, unconditional rejection of aggressive action[1]. The concept of "legitimate" aggression, a necessary part of things like taxes and regulations[2], is the only real difference between a government and a private co-op or other voluntary organization. Consistent, principled libertarians are, therefore, anarchists at heart. If they tolerate government at all it is only because they lack the imagination and/or faith in humanity to conceive of a society free of all aggressive influence, and thus settle for minarchism. The difference is vanishingly small, however, compared to the current size of the government.
And of course we'd still have safety nets for the poor. We'd still have Food Stamps, Housing assistance, welfare checks, and unemployment.
Endorsing any of these programs as government functions is a rather clear sign that one is no libertarian, even a minarchist "libertarian". Even your second Jefferson quote would rule that out. Of course, you may merely be pointing out that these can be provided privately, through voluntary charitable organizations with no ties to any government, which is a perfectly libertarian position.
[1] For those who have not run across this idea before, aggression defined as non-defensive coercion. Coercion is defined as the violation of others' self-ownership and/or property rights. Coercion is defensive only when the other party set out to violate your corresponding rights first. In short, so long as you follow the NAP yourself, no one else can legitimately practice aggression against you. If you break it, then you have no legitimate basis for objection should others behave the same way toward you.
[2] No, in this context "regulation" does not include self-ownership or property rights. A distinction is made between natural rights and the arbitrary rules imposed by governments which necessarily conflict with them. I'm not going to debate natural rights in a comment thread; try the link in my profile for a more involved treatment of that subject.
The rate of tax wasn't the issue. The issue was being taxed by officials who weren't elected by the taxed citizens. Perhaps you've heard the phrase "no taxation without representation?"
Do you really think representation would have made a bit of difference in the absence of any effect on the actual tax rate? The only reason to push for representation, apart from the propaganda value, is the expectation that it would make a difference regarding the primary issue, which was the level of taxation.
Actually, what the 4th Amendment guarantees is that searches will only be authorized (that's the warrant part) after probable cause has been established—that is, reason to expect the search will actually turn up evidence of a crime. All of this is required in order to protect our right to freedom from unreasonable searches. It's not two separate justifications—the search is legal if it's reasonable or a warrant was issued. That would be pointless; no one would bother to issue a warrant for a search which they considered unreasonable. Instead, it's a single justification accompanied by a rationale: in order to protect against unreasonable searches, search warrants will only be issued after establishing their reasonableness in the form of probable cause.
All this is obvious to any fair and unbiased reading of the text. Unfortunately, the courts trusted with interpreting it are hardly disinterested parties; they are the ones issuing the warrants, and moreover have close and cordial ties to those performing the searches. How could it be otherwise, given that they are both part of the same organization?
Yet it seems that the only person who does actually save money over the long term in order to make it available for investment when he needs it, the way that libertarian economic theory suggests people should do, is Warren Buffet - and libertarians seem to absolutely hate him for it!
I don't doubt that there are some libertarians with Warren Buffet-based conspiracy theories, but that has nothing to do with any libertarian principles. The overlap is a mere coincidence. I have my own problems with Buffet—such as his counter-intuitive and harmful agitation for higher tax rates, on investments of all things—but he ought to be applauded for his insightful investments, not disparaged for them.
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Er. I happily pay taxes, because I enjoy the services they purchase. Roads, regulation of industries, national defense, etc. Sometimes I don't agree with the purpose to which my money is put - but as long as my perspective is properly represented and considered, I don't feel that my taxes are 'theft at gunpoint.'
Of course not—you're on the side holding the guns. Those forced to subsidize the services you enjoy may feel differently, though.
The problem with taxes isn't that no one likes them, because obviously some people do—mostly those on the receiving end. The problem is that others are forced to participate against their will. No amount of benefit to some is worth any amount of coercion against others.
Without farm subsidies we will still have cheap food, but local farmers will disappear and the country will face a strategic risk (in case of hostilities to the rest of the world that in the case will be feeding us, we being on the verge of that case anyway).
If it was really about strategic risk they wouldn't use subsidies, they would simply buy preservable food at the best market prices available (including imports) and stockpile it to offset the risk of hostilities. That would both be more cost-effective than paying farmers to over-produce and cause less price distortion in the agricultural markets, various processed foods and non-food by-products (e.g. ethanol), agricultural capital goods (farmland, farm equipment), and labor.
Note that the stockpiles don't need to outlast the hostilities, just provide a buffer sufficient to get the local agriculture industry ramped back up sufficiently to replace the missing imports.
Ignoring implementation details like whether their existing switches can handle IPv6 traffic as efficiently as IPv4, the change should be a net positive in terms of ISP infrastructure. ISPs which already hand out public IPv4 addresses will just do the same with IPv6. Their routing tables may get a bit simpler due to IPv6's mostly-hierarchical address structure. ISPs which currently use NAT will be able to skip it for IPv6 traffic, reducing CPU load and the management overhead of mapping private IPs onto a limited number of public IP / protocol / port triplets. The end-user has more addresses to work with in IPv6, but the ISP only has to track one subnet prefix per customer for routing purposes, which isn't any worse than the situation today.
One big hold-up is that many high-end routers currently in use offer hardware acceleration for IPv4, but can only deal with IPv6 packets in software. While that's fine so long as IPv6 remains rare, the ISPs will eventually need to upgrade to modern routers with hardware-accelerated IPv6 support.
If you can postulate a world where it is possible for things to "just exist" without being created, then our universe can be one of those things which "just exists". That is a far simpler answer than claiming that there must be an all-powerful creator who "just exists" and who, in turn, created the universe.
My virtual beings in my virtual world could make exactly the same argument. Since I know they would be factually wrong, I have to conclude that the argument is bad (even should it happened to be correct in this case).
They would not be factually wrong. The argument is not that their world must "just exist", but rather that there is no evidence either way, and that the model without a creator is the one with fewer assumptions. Both of those statements are factually correct. The burden of proof is on those postulating the existence of a creator to come up with actual evidence supporting the more complex model.
You say I can't "just exist" and need a creator too?
If this world was somehow created, like your virtual world, then either that creator's world "just exists", or it was created in turn. At some point you either have a world which was not created, or you have a cycle or infinite series of worlds, each creating the next. In the former case, there is no evidence to suggest that we are not in that original, uncreated universe; in the latter, there is no uncreated creator.
If you can postulate a world where it is possible for things to "just exist" without being created, then our universe can be one of those things which "just exists". That is a far simpler answer than claiming that there must be an all-powerful creator who "just exists" and who, in turn, created the universe.
Your mistake is to assume all libertarians think alike. AKA stereotyping. I'm libertarian but not opposed to the minimum wage.
It's not unreasonable to expect people who call themselves "libertarians" to actually hold libertarian principles—which primarily means the Non-Aggression Principle, which is incompatible with threatening coercion against anyone who chooses to enter into a voluntary agreement to provide or purchase labor below your arbitrary price floor.
If your basic physics classes didn't at least mention that the Newtonian formulas are only approximations, and not valid for very small dimensions or very high energies, then you should probably ask for your money back. Similarly for qualifiers about static situations and ideal materials. For the problem domain those basic science classes are concerned with, the approximate formulas are perfectly valid. The higher-level classes require different formulas only because they have an expanded problem domain. Similarly, Econ 101 covers a limited problem domain, with assumptions like purely voluntary interaction. Given the same problem, Econ 102 should give the same answer. However, knowing Econ 102 allows you to address a wider variety of situations, such as specifically how the economy is negatively impacted by coercion.
Maybe you should have stuck around for Economics 102.
If Econ 102 contradicts Econ 101, then someone messed up. At worst, the rules taught in 101 may not hold in all cases—but the boundaries should have been part of the 101 curriculum.
Anyway, the concept of supply vs. demand and the optimal price-point are fundamental to all levels of economics. There is nothing wrong with what the GP wrote. The part which was omitted, however, is that the "excuse" of rising costs pushes out the marginal producers, reducing the supply and thus raising the optimal price-point for those who are left. How much that price increase depends on a number of factors, including the elasticity of demand, the degree of competition, and existing production margins (i.e. how much the suppliers can afford to absorb before it becomes more economical to close shop or shift to a different product).
Notice how you can't sell stock on your career? Why can a musician do that?
Who says you can't? The ability to enter into such an agreement voluntarily is an inherent natural right. If you did make such an agreement of your own free will, then abiding by it is an ethical and moral imperative, even others consider it void. I think most people just aren't stupid or desperate enough to actually agree to such a thing, outside the music industry, which gets by on lingering memories of glamour and obviously unrealistic hopes of being part of the 0.001% that makes it to the top of the heap.
Then there's the fact that what the musicians are selling is really the copyrights to works produced under their contracts, in exchange for a rather one-sided partnership. They can walk away from that and keep the revenues from any future work to themselves. However, just as you won't continue to receive income from a company you leave, they won't receive any further revenues from the copyrights they sold to the labels.
You're confusing two different things here. When a patent claims "[super novel and non-obvious technique] performed by a computer," it's not saying that the computer is the point of novelty... and there's also nothing that requires every element of a claim to be independently novel and nonobvious.
The straw-man arguments are getting a bit ridiculous here, not to mention repetitive. I never said that every element had to be both novel and non-obvious, just that some element had to be. If the patent consists of one thing (the algorithm) which is non-obvious but not novel—a law of nature—plus something else which is novel ("on a computer") but obvious, then the patent shouldn't be granted.
Additionally, you're also confusing two different statutes. 35 USC 102 and 103 are the ones that say patents have to be novel and nonobvious. 35 USC 101 - what we're talking about - is the one that says that even a novel, nonobvious idea is unpatentable if it's not directed to patent-eligible subject matter.
I'm not confusing the issues, I'm saying that software patents should be rejected for both reasons. Subject matter aside, they add nothing to the state of the art which is both novel and non-obvious. From a subject matter P.O.V., irrelevancies relating to run on a computer vs. run in your head aside, algorithms are math, and math is not a patentable subject matter.
The pro-software patent camp is the group confusing the issue, by trying to claim that the subject matter restriction doesn't apply simply because you use a computer to assist you with the math.
Because it's tied to a computer, it's patent-eligible. The pencil and paper version is not patent-eligible, even if it's the most novel and non-obvious algorithm ever invented.
We already know that this is your position. The question is: Why? What's so different about using a computer for assistance, rather than pencil and paper?
... look at the areas where interoperability has suffered due to Microsoft's FAT filesystem patents, or patents on media codecs, or lossless compression algorithms, or rendering techniques.
[sarcasm]It's true. My FAT-formatted USB stick won't run at all on my Mac. And I still have to view everything in vector graphics since rendering techniques are patented.[/sarcasm]
Sorry, do you have any concrete examples of this?
LMGTFY: Harm to standards and compatibility, Free software projects harmed by software patents
As I already pointed out, patents don't need to completely block something in order to be stifling innovation or otherwise causing harm, they just need to be making it more costly than it otherwise would be.
On the contrary, the greater variety of wheels we have - wheels that will enter the public domain in a relatively short time - greatly increases the rate of progress.
Nonsense. We don't benefit from people driving around with hexagonal wheels for the sole reason that someone holds a patent on the round version. If there is a variation which is actually better, it will be invented and used for that reason and not just because someone holds a patent on an inferior version. Otherwise, we're better off without the workarounds. To add insult to injury, at the pace of the technology industry that "relatively short time" is generally much longer than it takes for the subject of the patent to become obsolete.
Software patents are also inherently incompatible with free and open-source software; any license fee whatsoever will block legal free software development in that area.
I fail to see how that's an argument for or against them - they're incompatible with the idea
I'm not sure what your argument about Open-Source has to do with anything. The fact is an Open Source author wants to use closed source is the issue, not whether that closed source is patented or not.
Closed source code isn't even involved here. The point is that completely open source code is blocked by the patent.
But because you refuse to pay the inventor so you can use his invention doesn't mean progress has been stifled. Sometimes new and better ways are found, like .png.
First, it's not a matter of "refusing" to pay. The requirement to pay is impossible to comply with while remaining compliant with the open source license. If others can't use or modify the software with your changes without paying a license fee, you can't incorporate those changes into an open source project.
Second, if those changes would have enhanced the state of the art—and being open source, they are necessarily available to the public—and were independently discovered, not based on the patent or related publications, then innovation has clearly been stifled. Publication as part of an open-source project would have accomplished everything the patent is supposed to do, without the cost of a monopoly. If the changes were based on the patent, then there is a question of how long it would have taken for someone else to come up with an equivalent algorithm in the absence of the patent. Obviously I think it would have been developed anyway, due simply to the demand for the algorithm itself (without which the patent is also worthless) and regardless of the limited incentive of a patent monopoly, but I'm willing to grant that there is room for debate.
Finally, I think you're promoting the Broken Window fallacy by saying that it's good to be forced to reinvent someone to circumvent a patent. Yes, the final result was better that .gif—but what might .gif turned into if others could have improved on it directly, rather than starting over from scratch? Quite a lot of effect was spent on ways to compress images without infringing on the .gif patent, not to mention reimplementing all the other features already in .gif like transparency and animation, and then pushing support for the new formats into new versions of every image-handling program. That effort could have been directed toward improving on the original format, or working on other software, if not for the patent. For that matter, just look at how long it took to get to the point where you could assume decent .png support. (Are we even there yet? Which commonly-supported raster format handles both transparency and animation?)
The question is, how much would NOT be invented if there wasn't patent protection?
For me the question is actually how anyone can possibly justify the aggression necessary to enforce a patent monopoly, regardless of the costs or benefits of granting one. However, we're talking hypotheticals here.
The flip side of your question is, how much is NOT invented today because of patent protection? You have to consider both, and both are ultimately undecidable without an alternate reality to compare against. I have yet to see a study, however, which could safely conclude that patents do anything to promote innovation. Even working within the low standards of modern politics, to justify infringing on the property rights of everyone by telling them they can't implement a patented process or device (even if they were completely unaware of it and invented the same thing independently), I would expect some sort of solid evidence that the program is actually working.
I don't think anyone would ever take a loan from a bank that demands that 90% of all future income from the investment go straight to the bank.
Not for a bank loan, no, but an IPO works somewhat like this. Whatever share of the company is sold in the IPO, that fraction of future profit belongs to the new shareholders from then on, not the original owners of the company. In exchange they receive whatever those shares initially sold for at the time of the IPO.
When an artist signs with a label they're essentially selling stock in their future music career.
A patent on a computer running an algorithm explicitly does not cover performing the algorithm in your head, on a pad of paper, inherently when you do some other function, etc. It is quite distinguishable.
What is the significant difference between evaluating an algorithm in your head, and doing the same thing with computer assistance, which would justify a patent? What is the novel, non-obvious change in the state of the art which such a patent would document? We agree that it's not the algorithm, or the computer; what's left?
More specifically, what is it about "evaluate this algorithm with a computer" which would make it patentable, which would not also apply to "evaluate this algorithm with pencil and paper"?
I can invent a new automobile transmission, and the fact that I wasn't the one who invented the automobile is irrelevant. You've created a new rule whereby each industry gets one patent by the founder of that industry, and any improvements in that industry are forever unpatentable because they incorporate something not invented by the applicant.
This is an obvious straw-man argument. There is no new rule prohibiting patents which build on prior patents. The only rule being applied here, which is hardly new, is that the patent must add something to the state of the art which is both novel and non-obvious. The automobile in your example is not novel, but your transmission is presumably both novel and non-obvious. The patent would cover just the transmission, not the automobile.
On the other hand, if you tried to get a patent on combining an existing transmission with an existing automobile design, I would expect such an application to be summarily rejected unless there was something both novel and non-obvious about the concept or method of combining the two. This is where software patents fail. You have two pre-existing components, the algorithm and the general-purpose computer. The patent application only covers combining these two existing elements together in the most obvious way possible, as running algorithms is the sole purpose of a computer.
Can you do the same and show that the software industry has stagnated because of patent disputes?
Actually, yes. For one obvious example, just look at the areas where interoperability has suffered due to Microsoft's FAT filesystem patents, or patents on media codecs, or lossless compression algorithms, or rendering techniques. Software patents are also inherently incompatible with free and open-source software; any license fee whatsoever will block legal free software development in that area. Driving people to reinvent the wheel, often in an inferior way, isn't progress. Start-ups and other small for-profit organizations have a similar problem; they don't have the portfolio necessary to enter into the standard cross-licensing agreements, or the financial resources for drawn-out patent fights in the courts. Their only real option is to settle for being bought out (under duress) by an larger incumbent.
It's obvious that patents, and especially software patents, impose costs and place roadblocks in the way of innovation. It is hoped, but not proven (and not for lack of trying), that the incentive of a state-backed monopoly is enough to compensate for this. What we lack is an alternate world to compare against, one with the same initial conditions but without patents.
If Google Glasses makes it to market, then you can publicly post a retraction statement that patents don't stifle innovation. Sounds good? ... Of course you won't agree to that...
Exactly, because no retraction would be justified. That a particular product eventually makes it to market does not imply that patents do not stifle innovation—which is not the same as saying that no innovation can occur, only that the patents impede innovation rather than contributing to it. To decide that we
The term "useful art," as it was known at the time, meant an industrial process.
Exactly—and an industrial process is a specific way of making a physical product. This is completely separate from the abstract processes under discussion, which are aspects of mathematics—natural laws—waiting to be discovered, not applications of those laws invented to further the production of a specific material good, which is the essence of a "useful art".
The critical term, of course, isn't "useful arts" (which only occurs in the justification, not the actual power) but "Inventors". Algorithms aren't invented. Like other natural laws, they're discovered. Invention requires the application of the laws thus discovered toward a specific, concrete end.
The second issue is math should not be patentable because they are laws of nature and not manmade. Computer algorithms are just this and a process is simply math.
You're right, and that's why computer algorithms are not patentable by themselves. Instead, they must be explicitly tied to a machine or performed by a machine, because machines are not laws of nature, nor are they man-made.
While this is a very common argument, making it requires one to be (deliberately?) obtuse. A patent on an algorithm[1] running on a general-purpose computer is indistinguishable from a patent on the algorithm itself. The algorithm, as a universal natural law, is not eligible. The general-purpose computer was not invented by the applicant, and the use of one to evaluate any algorithm is obvious, as this is the purpose and nature of any general-purpose computer. What is left to patent?
If Google is to be believed, we'll have wearable heads-up displays by the end of the year. I mean, come on - that's freakin' science fiction right there.
Only if they can navigate the patent minefield, and manage to get it to market without anyone blocking it with an injunction. The way the mobile market is looking right now (approaching a complete all-vs.-all digraph of lawsuits), that's not looking very likely.
Moreover, it's not like the primary roadblock preventing use from having these sorts of wearable HUDs was ever in the software to begin with. It's just taken this long to develop the miniaturized logic circuits, displays, and batteries necessary to make it practical. Are you really trying to argue that no one would develop the (rather trivial) algorithms needed for HUDs without software patents?
[1] There are no "computer" algorithms, just universal mathematical algorithms which computers happen to be able to evaluate.
Rather, copyright should be retooled to define it as a protection against plagiarism, rather than a guarantee of profits.
In which case it is no longer copyright. Copyright is concerned with the making and distribution of copies, not authorship. What you are referring to is normally part of the author's so-called "moral rights", a concept not recognized in the U.S., and for good reason. The statutory damages necessary to enforce "moral rights" in non-fraudulent contexts are necessarily disproportionate to the offense, not to mention in conflict with the right to free speech. This is much the same reason for criminalizing fraud, lies with the intent of separating people from their property, but not personal dishonesty.
If I came up with something unique and original, and you went around presenting it as your own work regardless of whether you were charging for it or not, that would be dishonest and fraudulent and without copyright laws, perfectly legal.
Even without copyright laws, if you're charging for it that would be fraud, and thus illegal. If you're not charging money for it it may still be fraud if some other form of compensation is involved. In the remaining cases there are no actual damages, and thus no standing for anyone to sue.
The best approach from the author's point of view, given that the author has lost nothing but credit and has no standing in the matter, is simply to demonstrate the plagiarism to the public. The courts are not the proper forum, in terms of justice or effectiveness, for reclaiming your reputation as the original author.
And it causes all sorts of fun since even simple numbers like 0.1 can't be represented exactly in binary floating point.
People like to play this up, but it's really no different from the fact that simple numbers like 1/3 can't be represented exactly in decimal floating point. That's true for any fraction and any base where the denominator of the (reduced) fraction has factors which aren't also factors of the base. Binary is no worse in this sense than any other prime base. Decimal only has two factors (two and five), which isn't much better.
If you're writing a financial application and you need precision to the cent or mille, rather than a certain number of significant bits/digits, just store amounts in cents or milles with arbitrary-precision integers.
I've been a Libertarian since the late 70s, but I actually haven't heard the term 'minarchist' before.
That's surprising, since it's been around about as long as you've been a member of the Libertarian Party (it was coined in 1971).
So a Minarchist is just a limited government Libertarian.
Yes, though it also includes individuals who are merely libertarian-leaning, not just members of the Libertarian Party. As the Wikipedia article says, it's shorthand for exactly that phrase, aside from the connection to the Party.
I'm not sure why you believe a limited government Libertarian is not a "pure" Libertarian.
This is due to a confusion of terms. The capitalized form (which I did not use myself) usually describes members of the Libertarian Party. Obviously they can be, and usually are, minarchists or even outright statists. The Party covers a rather broad political spectrum, particularly in the U.S., where it has long been one of a few dominant third parties, and thus the place to go if you can't mange to identify with the first two, whether or not you share any core principles.
The more general term "libertarian" also has multiple meanings, ranging from individuals who merely hold many libertarian positions (which I generally refer to as "libertarian-leaning"), to those who fully endorse the Non-Aggression Principle and do not tolerate or legitimize aggression in any form (pure libertarians). The latter, of course, are necessarily anarchists, since the defining characteristic of the state is the "legitimate" use of force against non-aggressors. I consider that the pure form because it is ideologically consistent, and can be argued rationally from first principles. The others, so far as I can tell, are a mixtures of political positions with no common rational basis, like a "communist" who believes in a certain amount of private ownership of capital, or a "totalitarian" who believes in the sanctity of a certain amount of individual liberty. The core principle of libertarianism is the NAP, and non-anarchist libertarians apply the NAP inconsistently, excluding from it the "necessary" aspects of government.
Due to this confused mix of definitions, I tend to think of myself as "agorist" or "anarcho-capitalist" rather than "libertarian". Just as we once had to trade in "liberal" for "libertarian", the term "libertarian" has in turn been watered down to near uselessness. However, people know roughly what your positions are if you call yourself a libertarian, while most have never heard of the more precise terms, so it's difficult to maintain that precision in public conversation. One must use the terms people know, even if they are imprecise.
Although I haven't examined the Libertarian Party's platform recently I would quite surprised if they were actually advocating any sort of Anarchy.
They won't come out and say if this way, of course, but they're actually advocating a limited form of anarchy any time they state that they don't want the government involved in something. Full anarchy, of course, is that taken to its logical conclusion—no government involvement in anything.
Most people are in a state of anarchy—interacting voluntarily—in almost every aspect of their lives. Minarchists feel that there are some areas where involuntary interaction (e.g. taxes and regulations in conflict with natural rights) is justified by sheer necessity, but that anarchy should exist everywhere else. A pure anarchist like myself, on the other hand, would believe that no involuntary interaction is ever necessary or justified. However, we have a lot of government-reducing to do before that comes close to making a difference, and I'm content to leave the so-called "necessary" parts until last.
There's no such thing as "excessive competition". What you're referring to is just insufficient verification. Insurers (yours and the hospitals') will insist on audits and approval by well-known certification authorities.
Still, the idea that every procedure has to be first-class is part of the problem. A somewhat higher risk of a botched procedure may be an acceptable tradeoff when the alternative is not having the procedure at all due to certification-related costs. Those who can pay to have every detail triple-checked will (and do), but the rest of us need to settle for what we can afford. To put it bluntly, even a half-trained surgical team by modern standards is more than anyone had access to a century ago, at any price. Don't be greedy.
If you have a "normal" insurance plan, they cover your checkups and medications because they know it saves them money if you deal with your cholesterol before it gives you a $50k heart attack.
That risk would be factored into the cost of any insurance plan covering heart attacks. If they want to offer a discount for actually doing the checkups and/or taking medication, that's fine by me. Paying through the insurance company for routine matters like that, however, does nothing but increase the overall cost.
If you have one of those high-deductible plans..., they sign up young folks unlikely to develop chronic medical conditions and just screw them over on the doctor visits...
If the cost of the premiums exceed the risk of the covered conditions, then these "young folks" should definitely be looking for a better insurer. The high-deductable plans don't cover basic doctor's visits, however, so I don't see how they're being "screwed over" on that issue. They would be paying at least that much extra in premiums with a low-deductable plan. Those visits aren't free no matter how you structure the payments.
...but it doesn't cost them much money if the person skips the doctor visit because a 25 year old guy isn't likely to get a heart attack or a stroke or something in the next 20 years, but they can take his money in the meantime.
That's perfectly rational behavior. Paying early is almost never to one's benefit when you can save and invest that money instead. He should get a plan which corresponds to his current risks, rather than over-paying for those 20 years, and put away the balance for when he really needs it. The idea that your premiums are fixed when you sign up, and can't increase along with your risk factors over time, is partly to blame for this situation. People should expect to pay more for insurance as they grow older, and plan for it financially just as they plan for other long-term costs, including retirement.
... But he can't pay for it, at all - everybody knows it, but the hospital can't turn him away by law. So he walks out of there, they hound him for a few months and give it up as a lost cause. ... We've already decided on universal healthcare - anyone can walk into an ER and get treated - but we've done it in literally the worst possible way.
It should go without saying that I oppose this form of universal health care as well. Hospital should be able to turn away those who can't or won't pay, and more should be done (in the form of less protection from creditors, not more laws) to ensure that you can't just walk away from your debts, via bankruptcy or otherwise.
In any case, only emergency treatment is mandated at the ER, though some hospitals may choose to offer more. That represents a very small fraction of the total cost of health care. You can't count the cost of the followup care which wouldn't take place at the ER. If you feel more should be done to promote preventative care, you are free to donate your own money toward charities supporting just that. Where we have a problem is you attempting to donate other people's money toward your cause in the form of mandatory excess insurance and other taxes.
If one uses the "left" to "right" terminology to mean largest government role in society to smallest government role in society with Anarchists or Anarcho-Libertarians at the furthest point to the right and Socialists/Communists/Fascists/Totalitarians as furthest to the left I would say you are just a bit to the left of the standard Limited Government Libertarian.
On a Nolan Chart this would correspond to the diagonal between the "totalitarian" and "libertarian" corners. The perpendicular axis, which is more typically assigned the "left" and "right" labels, corresponds to "liberalism" and "conservatism". The former line represents equal amounts of personal and economic freedom (from none to absolute), while the latter is a crossover from only personal freedom to only economic freedom.
Of course, all of these labels are debatable, and few ideologies or individuals can be placed at the extreme positions on either axis, much less the corners.
I'd say the GP sounds a bit short of the libertarian corner (2/3 from center?), leaning toward the "liberalism" side (preferring personal freedom over economic freedom). The Libertarian Party would probably be a good match, more so than the right-wing/conservative Tea Party. The LP is really more minarchist than pure libertarian in any case.
Allow me to jump in with a different perspective.
Everyone needs normal health care, and a few will at some point require catastrophic care for an unusual condition. In the first case, there is no mutual benefit to spreading out the costs; all you've done is add overhead. In the second case, rationally-priced insurance should result in the same average cost for everyone, barring significant individual health risks. If that basic catastrophic insurance is currently over-priced compared to the cost of providing the care, try a non-profit insurance co-op. There is no need for the government to get involved.
If the problem is that the cost of providing health care is too high, driving high insurance costs, then we need to look at a whole different set of issues. Perhaps care providers are being forced to accept too much of the risk involved in medical advise and treatment (suggesting tort reform), or we're systematically over-paying (and need more competition), or perhaps we're simply expecting more health care than we can really afford. There are lots of expensive procedures available these days which simply weren't available in the past. If one takes for granted that every option will be attempted, of course the costs will rise—there are more options to try. We need to learn that a procedure which one can't afford (after considering available insurance, charity and loans) isn't an option. The science of medicine may advance, but at some point there has to be a limit on medical expenditures.
... Libertarians are not Anarchists. ... Libertarians don't want to eliminate government completely.... I repeat: Libertarians are SMALL government, not no-government anarchists.
That may be the position of the Libertarian Party—which, as a political party seeking power within the government, can't take a solidly anarchist position without imploding—but the core principle of the libertarian ideology, generally referred to as the Non-Aggression Principle or NAP, is an absolute, unconditional rejection of aggressive action[1]. The concept of "legitimate" aggression, a necessary part of things like taxes and regulations[2], is the only real difference between a government and a private co-op or other voluntary organization. Consistent, principled libertarians are, therefore, anarchists at heart. If they tolerate government at all it is only because they lack the imagination and/or faith in humanity to conceive of a society free of all aggressive influence, and thus settle for minarchism. The difference is vanishingly small, however, compared to the current size of the government.
And of course we'd still have safety nets for the poor. We'd still have Food Stamps, Housing assistance, welfare checks, and unemployment.
Endorsing any of these programs as government functions is a rather clear sign that one is no libertarian, even a minarchist "libertarian". Even your second Jefferson quote would rule that out. Of course, you may merely be pointing out that these can be provided privately, through voluntary charitable organizations with no ties to any government, which is a perfectly libertarian position.
[1] For those who have not run across this idea before, aggression defined as non-defensive coercion. Coercion is defined as the violation of others' self-ownership and/or property rights. Coercion is defensive only when the other party set out to violate your corresponding rights first. In short, so long as you follow the NAP yourself, no one else can legitimately practice aggression against you. If you break it, then you have no legitimate basis for objection should others behave the same way toward you.
[2] No, in this context "regulation" does not include self-ownership or property rights. A distinction is made between natural rights and the arbitrary rules imposed by governments which necessarily conflict with them. I'm not going to debate natural rights in a comment thread; try the link in my profile for a more involved treatment of that subject.
The rate of tax wasn't the issue. The issue was being taxed by officials who weren't elected by the taxed citizens. Perhaps you've heard the phrase "no taxation without representation?"
Do you really think representation would have made a bit of difference in the absence of any effect on the actual tax rate? The only reason to push for representation, apart from the propaganda value, is the expectation that it would make a difference regarding the primary issue, which was the level of taxation.
Actually, what the 4th Amendment guarantees is that searches will only be authorized (that's the warrant part) after probable cause has been established—that is, reason to expect the search will actually turn up evidence of a crime. All of this is required in order to protect our right to freedom from unreasonable searches. It's not two separate justifications—the search is legal if it's reasonable or a warrant was issued. That would be pointless; no one would bother to issue a warrant for a search which they considered unreasonable. Instead, it's a single justification accompanied by a rationale: in order to protect against unreasonable searches, search warrants will only be issued after establishing their reasonableness in the form of probable cause.
All this is obvious to any fair and unbiased reading of the text. Unfortunately, the courts trusted with interpreting it are hardly disinterested parties; they are the ones issuing the warrants, and moreover have close and cordial ties to those performing the searches. How could it be otherwise, given that they are both part of the same organization?
Yet it seems that the only person who does actually save money over the long term in order to make it available for investment when he needs it, the way that libertarian economic theory suggests people should do, is Warren Buffet - and libertarians seem to absolutely hate him for it!
I don't doubt that there are some libertarians with Warren Buffet-based conspiracy theories, but that has nothing to do with any libertarian principles. The overlap is a mere coincidence. I have my own problems with Buffet—such as his counter-intuitive and harmful agitation for higher tax rates, on investments of all things—but he ought to be applauded for his insightful investments, not disparaged for them.