Hello? Who says that a provider of a service has to charge you anything less than it costs you to get that service some other way. Companies stay in existence because they make money. No money, no company. If, in your hypothetical situation, the energy provider didn't exist you'd have no choice but to use the expensive "alternative" energy. The service provider gets you to use their service (and thus makes money off of said transaction) by providing it for less than you would otherwise pay. Would you prefer that they didn't provide a service at all? If you're getting energy more cheaply than you are otherwise, why are you complaining?
Furthermore, your naive pricing model assumes that energy demand is fixed, and this is clearly not the case. If an energy provider were to jack up the prices for energy their customers would tend to use less energy. Since the provider is trying to maximize their profit they will seek that "sweet spot" that provides a compromise between maximal customer demand and maximal price.
That's what a monopoly is--if the only alternatives are not fiscally prudent, then there aren't any viable alternatives.
No, a monopoly is when there is only one provider of a good or service (hence the prefix mono-). Monopoly means you have no choice, not that the choices are unpleasant.
The reason they ass-fuck is because it costs more to not harm the consumer, in many many ways. Conservation of resources, protecting the environment, ensuring you're not poisoning your client base slowly... all these things cost more to do than to not do.
The reason that these things cost less is that corporations are able to externalize the costs via the government. Not surprisingly, the worst environmental abuses have been perpetrated by private entities on public land (they don't own it, so why should they care what happens to it).
That's why the government exists to act as a restraining influence on corporations.
And a fine job it's been doing. Look, government doesn't restrain corporate power, it creates corporate power. The original corporations were created specifically (by governments) to take on ventures deemed "too risky" for individual investors, or even governments. That's less true today, but the fact remains that corporations are an extension of the government, not an alternative to it.
Standard Oil. Ma Bell. Microsoft.
Ma Bell: a monopoly created by government regulation. Microsoft: apparently going the way of that last great "monopolist" of the computing industry, IBM. Standard Oil: the poster-child for monopolists - except that government intervention (i.e. the Sherman anti-trust breakup) occurred well after SO's market share had begun to decline in the face of more efficient competitors.
The market forces themselves are the problem. They TEND toward monopolies.
Stating a fallacy over and over again won't make it true. Show me an example of real monopoly that has harmed consumers, and has stayed in existence without the help of the government, and I might believe you.
That is the 'have you stopped beating your wife' question. It implies that less legal framework would make companies less abusive.
No, it implies that your assumption that governments would restrain the power of corporations has apparently led to a result you didn't want. Perhaps you should cehck your assumptions. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.
Why don't people do exactly that to misbehaving corporations already? What's stopping them?
Good question. Maybe because they expect that mythical chimera called "government" to solve all their problems. And you have ignored my second point: there have been plenty of cases of people deciding they didn't like the goods or services available to them and choosing to set up their own companies to do better or cheaper.
Bullshit. Monopolies are the result of market forces.
Plese read what I said again: pure monopolies are the result of government intervention. Microsoft, much as I dislike them does not have a pure monopoly, they have, as you mentioned an "effective" monopoly. But effective monopolies only last so long (as IBM discovered) because ebtter competitors will arise - if the government lets them.
The mandate of a government (one of them) is to act as a safeguard against runaway market effects like cutting down all the trees and filling the air with pollution.
Ah. Which would explain why all of the worst clear-felling and pollution takes place on government land.
Jesus, what's with you people? If I bash socialism I must be a free market libertarian nutball. If I bash libertarianism I must be a commie bastard. In fact I'm just a guy in the middle that recognizes that too much of anything, privitization or nationalization, is deadly to an economy.
Hey, you were the one who started taking things to "logical extremes". I never claimed you were a socialist, I was trying to point out that your argument about logical extremes was silly.
Most consumers don't have much choice about the price of electricity - there's only one wire going to their house.
They have the choice to install a generator. Or a photovoltaic system. Or some other method of generating off-grid power. Oh, wait - that costs way more than the power they'd get from the grid? Guess they're not getting such a bad deal then, are they? And if the consumer is truly getting screwed then it probably will be economically feasible (even with high startup costs) to create a competitor. Perhaps it could even be done as a community co-op or something like that (the free market doesn't require that every solution be a corporate one, just that people are allowed to choose the solution they prefer).
Well, for starters, the fact that corporations are a legal fiction, and only exist because of various pieces of legislation passed by the government of the country in which they are incorporated. Part of the reason that corporations engage in the aforementioned "ass-fucking" is that the shareholders are shielded from liability, and thus can avoid responsibility for the actions of their proerty. In addition, there are a huge number of tax breaks, subsidies, and tariffs set up by governments to provide welfare for large corporations. Big corporations that abuse their customer base simply couldn't survive without help from the government.
From what I see the goverment is the only thing that keeps companies from going overboard in their excesses. And the difference between a government and a corporation is that its the government's mandate to protect its citizens. In a well functioning democracy a government that doesn't serve its citizens is subject to being voted out.
Then why have governments been so happy to provide a legal framework that allows powerful and abusive corporations to exist? It appears that the governments have been shirking their mandate, haven't been voted out. Or do we not live in a well-functioning democracy? If that's the case, I wouldn't be so quick to rely on the government to solve your problems.
Corporations on the other hand can't be voted out.
Not strictly true, since you can
Vote with your dollars by refusing to buy their products or services
Buy stock, and vote that stock
And before you complain that "the little guy" can't afford to buy enough stock to make a difference, consider that there is nothing to prevent a like-minded group of citizens from getting together to purchase the necessary stock in a block (kind of like a hostile takeover). That said, there is also nothing to prevent that group of like-minded citizens getting together to form their own corporation that acts the way they want it to act. Given that corporations are unlikely to get as large or as powerful as they presently are if you take away government supports (see above), it becomes much more feasible for individuals to affect the way corporations are run.
And before you trot out the 'a competing company that serves the populace better will rise to the top' argument, keep in mind that in practice what happens is the major companies either end up with monopoly...
We'll neglect for the moment the fact that pure monopolies are the result of government regulation to exclude competition.
...after which they have no incentive to continue to keep customers happy...
In which case another company or organization will step in, so long as they are not prevented by law from doing so. Consumer getting screwed == market opportunity.
...or a set of companies will collude to prevent customer choice with tactics like price fixing.
I'm sorry, are you arguing that they keep the price artificially high (in which case a competitor will spring up - see above), or artificially low, to prevent new competitors from arising? If the latter, either the consumer is getting a better deal than they would otherwise, or they will be willing to pay more for a better quality of product or service (if they're not willing to pay more they are getting what they deserve).
Tactics which are only not used because they're made illegal by the government because of the past problems they've caused.
You seem to be assuming that corporations are inherently evil, while governments are inherently good. Both are made up of people, who can be both good and bad. Many corporations act in ethical ways. Many governments have become riddled with corruption. In either case, it's safer for everyone to limit the power that any large organization can wield.
Right, because transnational corporations would exist without the web of (government-created) legislation and subsidies that supports them.
The power of transnational corporations is an extension of the power that we have ceded to governments. That's why limiting government power is a Good Thing(TM)
The problem with your argument about free markets is that the "ass-fucking" corporations exist only by government fiat in the first place. Libertarians wouldn't remove the shackles from said corporations, so much as make it impossible for such corporations to exist in the first place (you did RTFA about removing liability shielding for shareholders didn't you?)
I'll also point out that your statement to the effect that "That's corporations, no matter if 99% of the employees are saints." could apply equally well to governments. Except that the guys running governments have far more power than corporations. If you don't trust corporate power why would you trust government power?
Due to the fact that energy and heating costs are very high in germany a lot of people consider a "low-energy-house" or even a "zero-energy-House".
You've pretty much hit the nail on the head there. Energy costs are (comparatively) low in the US. And people will buy what they can afford. If energy costs skyrocketed, fewer and fewer people could afford to buy giant energy-sucking houses, and they wouldn't get built. It's the same reason that rising petrol costs have made hybrid cars popular (although those that can afford them still buy gas-guzzling SUVs). The question is, why is energy so cheap in the US?
Somehow I doubt enforced equality is going to prevent people from wanting (and taking) stuff they don't own. There are plenty of criminals that a comparatively very well off. They take stuff because they want it and see nothing wrong with fulfilling that urge, not because they are "disadvantaged" in some way.
Besides, what makes you think that "equality" could be enforced any better than the current property laws are enforced?
Anecdotal evidence doesn't exactly give you good statistical information. I average about one spam every few weeks (across several different email addresses). But it didn't even cross my mind to comment on this (until I saw your post) because the fact that I get far less spam than Chen just didn't seem like that big a deal.
More important, ZFS is endian-neutral. You can easily move disks from a SPARC server to an x86 server. Neither architecture pays a byte-swapping tax due to Sun's
patent-pending "adaptive endian-ness" technology, which is unique to ZFS.[emphasis mine]
So while it might be open-sourced, you're not likely to see it migrating to Linux or the BSDs any time soon.
I stand corrected. However, I think that my point remains the same - the naming had nothing to do with academic achievement, and everything to do with money.
Uh... hate to break it to you, but most campuses name buildings after whoever fronts the cash, not after anyone "inspiring". I find it particularly ironic that this interchange was sparked as a result of discussions at Stanford, which is named for Leland Stanford: not an academic luminary, but a man who made a lot of money in railroads and used that moeny to endow a college.
The problem is that the corporations (much as I dislike them) are caught in a classic Catch-22: low price means poor service, good service means high price. Either way (poor service or high price), the consumer will run whining to the government. But there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, and you can't get good service at a low price.
Are the telcos providing the best possible service for the price they charge? Damned if I know! Do you know? If not, how can you claim that they're lazy and/or greedy?
Star Wars, Trek, Blade Runner, etc... were all created by people that were kids during the Gemini, Apollo runs
Huh? Trek was first aired in the mid '60's (i.e. pre-moon landing). It seems unlikely that the creators "were kids during the Gemini, Apollo runs" since it was created (not by kids) in the middle of those programs.
Philip K. Dick, the man who wrote "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (aka Bladerunner) was born in 1928. And I'd hardly call the future depicted in either the book or movie the product of some "inspired" by NASA.
I'd also add that many of the writers in the "golden age" of science fiction (Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke) witnessed the Great Depression firsthand - far worse than the "recession, budget cuts, unemployment" that you claim current SF writers have had to deal with.
Are a Cubesat's imaging elements rad-hard? No. Are the microcontrollers rad-hard? No. Is anything on a Cubesat rad-hard? Not bloody likely! That's how they manage to get the cost down to around $40K - rad-hard parts are expensive. You're a little closer on the batteries, and a lot closer on the testing. Plus there's a complete lack of economies of scale when you're building a one-off item, so parts tend to be more expensive. And you only have one unit to amortize the non-recurring engineering (aka design) costs across. That's mostly where the $40K cost comes from.
The first part of this statement is technically correct, but the second part doesn't seem right, unless you consider pitching over to a heading of 72 degrees rather than 90 as a "turn". (which, I guess it is in a coriolis sort of way)
A pitchover to a different heading angle is essentially the same thing as launching with that heading angle - you cannot attain sub-28 deg inclinations. To change your inclination you need to wait until the launch trajectory intersects the equatorial plane (at either the ascending or descending node), and then perform a maneuver. Launch vehicles out of the Cape should perform their pitchover long before they reach the equator, otherwise they wouldn't reach the equator at all.
The lowest inclination available without a performance hit is approximately 28 deg. Anything else requires turning the rocket in flight in the equivalent of an orbit plane change maneuver, which costs delta-v that could have been used to loft payload mass.
If you launch due east from the cape you will end up in a 28 deg orbit. If you launch in a northerly direction you will end up on the ascending side of a > 28 deg orbit. If you launch in a southerly direction you will end up on the descending side of a > 28deg orbit. Please see this handy NASA website for a laymans explanation of why this is so.
Regarding your assertion that the time of year matters: although you don't make it clear, I'm guessing that you are trying to argue that the obliquity of the ecliptic (and resulting seasonal variation in the path of the sun in the sky) somehow make some difference to the achievable launch inclination. This is not the case, because inclination is measured relative to the equatorial plane (which does not change relative to the Earth), not the ecliptic plane. I welcome a correction, if you were making some other kind of argument.
Yes, he does have ads. Therefore any traffic steered his way by/. (and lets face it,/. steers a lot of traffic around the web) directly benefits him. I wouldn't care if it happened once or twice, but it happens every other day. I probably also wouldn't care if the stories were any good, but Piquepaille seems to traffic in hype rather than substance, presumably because that also helps to gather traffic to his blog.
The assist from rotation of the Earth is minimal. The real reason to be closer to the equator is that it makes it easier to get into low inclination orbits. Seems you may be as dumb as the (non-existent) moderator that you are excoriating.
Interestingly enough, the cost per pound to put something in orbit was significantly lower for the (expendable) Saturn V than for the (reusable) Space Shuttle. Even when you take inflation into account.
While the extra kick you get from the Earth's spin helps some, the key reason that ESA picked the Kourou launch site is that being near the equator makes it significantly easier to get into the lucrative 0 deg inclination geostationary orbits. The lowest inclination available (given by a due east launch) out of Kennedy is ~28 deg. You can go lower, but that involves turning the launch vehicle in flight, thereby sacrificing payload mass. The other alternative is to perform plane change maneuver once on orbit, again at the price of payload mass. Either way, you get less mass to your final mission orbit than you would with a lower latitude launch (and mass is money in the space game).
Florida was about as far south as the US could go, while still being able to launch over the ocean (instead of a populated area). ESA was able to go further south. The same reasoning is what lead Boeing to set up Sea-Launch, which operates out of Long Beach, but sails the launch vehicle down near the equator and launches it from a floating platform.
Slashdot Mirror
Furthermore, your naive pricing model assumes that energy demand is fixed, and this is clearly not the case. If an energy provider were to jack up the prices for energy their customers would tend to use less energy. Since the provider is trying to maximize their profit they will seek that "sweet spot" that provides a compromise between maximal customer demand and maximal price.
That's what a monopoly is--if the only alternatives are not fiscally prudent, then there aren't any viable alternatives.
No, a monopoly is when there is only one provider of a good or service (hence the prefix mono-). Monopoly means you have no choice, not that the choices are unpleasant.
The reason that these things cost less is that corporations are able to externalize the costs via the government. Not surprisingly, the worst environmental abuses have been perpetrated by private entities on public land (they don't own it, so why should they care what happens to it).
That's why the government exists to act as a restraining influence on corporations.
And a fine job it's been doing. Look, government doesn't restrain corporate power, it creates corporate power. The original corporations were created specifically (by governments) to take on ventures deemed "too risky" for individual investors, or even governments. That's less true today, but the fact remains that corporations are an extension of the government, not an alternative to it.
Standard Oil. Ma Bell. Microsoft.
Ma Bell: a monopoly created by government regulation. Microsoft: apparently going the way of that last great "monopolist" of the computing industry, IBM. Standard Oil: the poster-child for monopolists - except that government intervention (i.e. the Sherman anti-trust breakup) occurred well after SO's market share had begun to decline in the face of more efficient competitors.
The market forces themselves are the problem. They TEND toward monopolies.
Stating a fallacy over and over again won't make it true. Show me an example of real monopoly that has harmed consumers, and has stayed in existence without the help of the government, and I might believe you.
That is the 'have you stopped beating your wife' question. It implies that less legal framework would make companies less abusive.
No, it implies that your assumption that governments would restrain the power of corporations has apparently led to a result you didn't want. Perhaps you should cehck your assumptions. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.
Why don't people do exactly that to misbehaving corporations already? What's stopping them?
Good question. Maybe because they expect that mythical chimera called "government" to solve all their problems. And you have ignored my second point: there have been plenty of cases of people deciding they didn't like the goods or services available to them and choosing to set up their own companies to do better or cheaper.
Bullshit. Monopolies are the result of market forces.
Plese read what I said again: pure monopolies are the result of government intervention. Microsoft, much as I dislike them does not have a pure monopoly, they have, as you mentioned an "effective" monopoly. But effective monopolies only last so long (as IBM discovered) because ebtter competitors will arise - if the government lets them.
The mandate of a government (one of them) is to act as a safeguard against runaway market effects like cutting down all the trees and filling the air with pollution.
Ah. Which would explain why all of the worst clear-felling and pollution takes place on government land.
Jesus, what's with you people? If I bash socialism I must be a free market libertarian nutball. If I bash libertarianism I must be a commie bastard. In fact I'm just a guy in the middle that recognizes that too much of anything, privitization or nationalization, is deadly to an economy.
Hey, you were the one who started taking things to "logical extremes". I never claimed you were a socialist, I was trying to point out that your argument about logical extremes was silly.
They have the choice to install a generator. Or a photovoltaic system. Or some other method of generating off-grid power. Oh, wait - that costs way more than the power they'd get from the grid? Guess they're not getting such a bad deal then, are they? And if the consumer is truly getting screwed then it probably will be economically feasible (even with high startup costs) to create a competitor. Perhaps it could even be done as a community co-op or something like that (the free market doesn't require that every solution be a corporate one, just that people are allowed to choose the solution they prefer).
Well, for starters, the fact that corporations are a legal fiction, and only exist because of various pieces of legislation passed by the government of the country in which they are incorporated. Part of the reason that corporations engage in the aforementioned "ass-fucking" is that the shareholders are shielded from liability, and thus can avoid responsibility for the actions of their proerty. In addition, there are a huge number of tax breaks, subsidies, and tariffs set up by governments to provide welfare for large corporations. Big corporations that abuse their customer base simply couldn't survive without help from the government.
From what I see the goverment is the only thing that keeps companies from going overboard in their excesses. And the difference between a government and a corporation is that its the government's mandate to protect its citizens. In a well functioning democracy a government that doesn't serve its citizens is subject to being voted out.
Then why have governments been so happy to provide a legal framework that allows powerful and abusive corporations to exist? It appears that the governments have been shirking their mandate, haven't been voted out. Or do we not live in a well-functioning democracy? If that's the case, I wouldn't be so quick to rely on the government to solve your problems.
Corporations on the other hand can't be voted out.
Not strictly true, since you can
And before you complain that "the little guy" can't afford to buy enough stock to make a difference, consider that there is nothing to prevent a like-minded group of citizens from getting together to purchase the necessary stock in a block (kind of like a hostile takeover). That said, there is also nothing to prevent that group of like-minded citizens getting together to form their own corporation that acts the way they want it to act. Given that corporations are unlikely to get as large or as powerful as they presently are if you take away government supports (see above), it becomes much more feasible for individuals to affect the way corporations are run.
And before you trot out the 'a competing company that serves the populace better will rise to the top' argument, keep in mind that in practice what happens is the major companies either end up with monopoly...
We'll neglect for the moment the fact that pure monopolies are the result of government regulation to exclude competition.
In which case another company or organization will step in, so long as they are not prevented by law from doing so. Consumer getting screwed == market opportunity.
I'm sorry, are you arguing that they keep the price artificially high (in which case a competitor will spring up - see above), or artificially low, to prevent new competitors from arising? If the latter, either the consumer is getting a better deal than they would otherwise, or they will be willing to pay more for a better quality of product or service (if they're not willing to pay more they are getting what they deserve).
Tactics which are only not used because they're made illegal by the government because of the past problems they've caused.
You seem to be assuming that corporations are inherently evil, while governments are inherently good. Both are made up of people, who can be both good and bad. Many corporations act in ethical ways. Many governments have become riddled with corruption. In either case, it's safer for everyone to limit the power that any large organization can wield.
Lucky for us Amazon's shipping error resulted in the book being sent to someone actually capable of writing a cogent and coherent review.
choir
The power of transnational corporations is an extension of the power that we have ceded to governments. That's why limiting government power is a Good Thing(TM)
I'll also point out that your statement to the effect that "That's corporations, no matter if 99% of the employees are saints." could apply equally well to governments. Except that the guys running governments have far more power than corporations. If you don't trust corporate power why would you trust government power?
You've pretty much hit the nail on the head there. Energy costs are (comparatively) low in the US. And people will buy what they can afford. If energy costs skyrocketed, fewer and fewer people could afford to buy giant energy-sucking houses, and they wouldn't get built. It's the same reason that rising petrol costs have made hybrid cars popular (although those that can afford them still buy gas-guzzling SUVs). The question is, why is energy so cheap in the US?
Besides, what makes you think that "equality" could be enforced any better than the current property laws are enforced?
Anecdotal evidence doesn't exactly give you good statistical information. I average about one spam every few weeks (across several different email addresses). But it didn't even cross my mind to comment on this (until I saw your post) because the fact that I get far less spam than Chen just didn't seem like that big a deal.
I stand corrected. However, I think that my point remains the same - the naming had nothing to do with academic achievement, and everything to do with money.
Uh... hate to break it to you, but most campuses name buildings after whoever fronts the cash, not after anyone "inspiring". I find it particularly ironic that this interchange was sparked as a result of discussions at Stanford, which is named for Leland Stanford: not an academic luminary, but a man who made a lot of money in railroads and used that moeny to endow a college.
Are the telcos providing the best possible service for the price they charge? Damned if I know! Do you know? If not, how can you claim that they're lazy and/or greedy?
Did you mean VAPORWARE? Perhaps you should have taken some more time on your careful wording... :)
Huh? Trek was first aired in the mid '60's (i.e. pre-moon landing). It seems unlikely that the creators "were kids during the Gemini, Apollo runs" since it was created (not by kids) in the middle of those programs.
Philip K. Dick, the man who wrote "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (aka Bladerunner) was born in 1928. And I'd hardly call the future depicted in either the book or movie the product of some "inspired" by NASA.
I'd also add that many of the writers in the "golden age" of science fiction (Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke) witnessed the Great Depression firsthand - far worse than the "recession, budget cuts, unemployment" that you claim current SF writers have had to deal with.
Are a Cubesat's imaging elements rad-hard? No. Are the microcontrollers rad-hard? No. Is anything on a Cubesat rad-hard? Not bloody likely! That's how they manage to get the cost down to around $40K - rad-hard parts are expensive. You're a little closer on the batteries, and a lot closer on the testing. Plus there's a complete lack of economies of scale when you're building a one-off item, so parts tend to be more expensive. And you only have one unit to amortize the non-recurring engineering (aka design) costs across. That's mostly where the $40K cost comes from.
A pitchover to a different heading angle is essentially the same thing as launching with that heading angle - you cannot attain sub-28 deg inclinations. To change your inclination you need to wait until the launch trajectory intersects the equatorial plane (at either the ascending or descending node), and then perform a maneuver. Launch vehicles out of the Cape should perform their pitchover long before they reach the equator, otherwise they wouldn't reach the equator at all.
If you launch due east from the cape you will end up in a 28 deg orbit. If you launch in a northerly direction you will end up on the ascending side of a > 28 deg orbit. If you launch in a southerly direction you will end up on the descending side of a > 28deg orbit. Please see this handy NASA website for a laymans explanation of why this is so.
Regarding your assertion that the time of year matters: although you don't make it clear, I'm guessing that you are trying to argue that the obliquity of the ecliptic (and resulting seasonal variation in the path of the sun in the sky) somehow make some difference to the achievable launch inclination. This is not the case, because inclination is measured relative to the equatorial plane (which does not change relative to the Earth), not the ecliptic plane. I welcome a correction, if you were making some other kind of argument.
To what orbit?
Yes, he does have ads. Therefore any traffic steered his way by /. (and lets face it, /. steers a lot of traffic around the web) directly benefits him. I wouldn't care if it happened once or twice, but it happens every other day. I probably also wouldn't care if the stories were any good, but Piquepaille seems to traffic in hype rather than substance, presumably because that also helps to gather traffic to his blog.
The assist from rotation of the Earth is minimal. The real reason to be closer to the equator is that it makes it easier to get into low inclination orbits. Seems you may be as dumb as the (non-existent) moderator that you are excoriating.
Interestingly enough, the cost per pound to put something in orbit was significantly lower for the (expendable) Saturn V than for the (reusable) Space Shuttle. Even when you take inflation into account.
Florida was about as far south as the US could go, while still being able to launch over the ocean (instead of a populated area). ESA was able to go further south. The same reasoning is what lead Boeing to set up Sea-Launch, which operates out of Long Beach, but sails the launch vehicle down near the equator and launches it from a floating platform.