If an automobile is inherently inefficient, then why do people use them? Despite what your obviously oversized brain tells you, it's not because people are stupid. Automobiles are more convenient. You don't have to plan your schedule with hundreds of other people. You leave when you want. You return when you want.
Automobiles may cause deaths on a huge scale, but they also save lives on a huge scale. When you need to go to a hospital you don't sit around waiting for a bus, do you? Sure, you could take an ambulance, but how do you think the EMTs get to the firehouse? How do the doctors get to the hospital when their pager goes off? Our road systems save lives.
Yeah, but transportation is expensive. There are lots of local shortages to burying stuff. Especially when a landfill destroys property values far beyond the location of the actual burying.
news flash, there isn't enough on planet energy from any source
enough for what? Clearly there's enough for current consumption. If you count the oceans and other uninhabited areas I'm sure there's quite enough energy to last us forever at the current consumption rates. If you could somehow cover the entire ocean with solar panels, that alone would be enough, and solar panels aren't 100% efficient.
Phone companies are a state monopoly, not a natural monopoly. They weren't even given a chance to compete, so we don't know if they would be a natural monopoly.
We don't know? How could it be just as efficient to run two sets of wires down a street as it is to run one set of wires down a street? Perhaps we've never tried it (I don't enough about the history), but I don't think you could possibly come up with an argument that it's not true. Perhaps you're confusing the term efficiency?
Now... I'm clearly only talking about local phone companies, and even then I'm only talking about a market which consists of a single CO. There's nothing inefficient about having different COs serving different houses competing, but that's not real competition. Finally, the advances in wireless phone technology to some extent have mooted that point. But still, for the market of running phone lines to your house, the telephone company is clearly and unarguably a natural monopoly.
There was fierce competition in the railroad industry before regulations stepped in oh so many years ago, yet by your argument it would be terribly innefficient to run parallel rails and thus railroads should be a natural monopoly (which history shows is not the case).
No. Even a monopoly will run parallel rails. There are lots of people who want to go from the same origin to the same destination at the same time. But in any case, even if a railroad is running parallel rails, there is still a monopoly at the train stations. You don't see two railroad company's building two railroad stations right next to each other.
Rail lines are much more like long distance phone companies. Those are not natural monopolies, at least at this stage in technology.
Business get compensated so much because of the abiity to achieve economies of scale. Monopolies help, but only so far.
Economies of scale are what cause monopolies. In a competitive market, businesses don't make any profits (other than a minimal interest rate on the capital they provide).
After a time, the monopolist runs into a barrier where it can no longer increase its number of consumers, and so it grows much more slowly or shrinks. Microsoft has been teetering in this position for a while now. Microsoft actually has more economic incentive to be competitive than it does to be monopolistic.
No. You're not explaining things right. Do you know about supply and demand curves? Here's a great explanation. A monopolist has no incentive to be competitive. If they want to increase the number of consumers, they can just lower the price.
Also, take a look at the equilibrium point. In a perfectly competitive market the cost of supply equals the cost of demand. Businesses make no profits.
Yeah but my answer wasn't really "McDonalds sucks." Sure, you can always find a job (unless you have some really severe disability), but at the current minimum wage, it's barely worth it. You'd make about as much selling beanie babies over ebay, and beanie babies aren't hot items any more.
Having the right to ply your trade does not give you the right to rent that particular storefront.
I never said anything about rights. I'm talking about an unlawful agreement in restraint of free trade. It has nothing to do with rights.
See, I think you're confused about this whole restraint of trade thing. Just because you have the right to try to conduct a business of some sort, that doesn't give you the right to force other people to do business with you.
Again, it has nothing to do with rights. For instance, look at the Robinson-Patman act. If you sell a commodity to one person at one price, then you have to sell it to their competitors at that same price, unless you can justify the cost differences.
Building your own small business is hard work, but it's hardly impossible.
I never said it was impossible. It's just expensive and hard. Too expensive and hard for any but the most determined or rich people to do.
Why not? Sounds like you got a plan and finances, but you are stopping because you can't get one location? How strong is your plan?
Oh, I just meant that it never reached that stage with that particular location. Of course, that location was really good. High traffic area, and obviously there were a lot of people interested in renting DVDs.
And don't you think that Blockbuster will go for a loss just to undercut you and get rid of your business?
That I'd be willing to sue over. Predatory pricing is most definately illegal. And by then I'd have enough invested in the place that I couldn't just ignore it like I am now.
If you were the owner of the Blockbuster, would you just sit around and do nothing while someone was taking business away from you?
Is blockbuster a franchise or a chain? I guess it's a franchise. Then again, they're probably not allowed to set their prices too low. If I owned the Blockbuster, and someone undercut me and I started losing money, I'd move the store somewhere else, or just close it. Of course, I'd never buy a Blockbuster in the first place. The franchise fees are surely too expensive.
Its been true for a long long time. Either you are big (e.g. Walmart) and sell lots of things cheap or you are tiny (e.g. Rare books store) and you beat the big guys with quality and highly specialized niche markets where people are willing to pay for quality.
Yep. That's why the "open your own business" solution isn't really a solution. As they say, "it takes money to make money."
McDonalds is a shit place to work at though and they don't pay well either. No one should be forced to work at McDonalds.
Re:Don't like it?
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Well... a lot of leases include non-compete agreements. Meaning that the landlord will not lease space to two clients selling similar products/services.
Sure, it's what should be, and probably is, an unlawful agreement in restraint of free trade. Of course I wouldn't expect to actually win such a case. That would require way too much money.
That and, while you might not like to hear it, Blockbuster pretty much has it sewn up as far as what it takes to get the maximum profit and maximum customers on DVD rental.
As in, be a monopoly? I think we could definately undercut them and make a profit.
Basically, unless your plan included a special, never done before way that you could beat blockbuster's business plan, it's a hard sell to convince the landlord that you'd be successful and be able to pay him
Well, it does. As for convincing the landlord I could pay him, I have excellent credit and would be willing to put a year's rent in escrow. I could probably even get a few cosigners. The point is it never even reached that stage.
Well, I hear this, but then I see a local electronics store that happens to rent DVDs (Steve's TV) and they have at least 300 DVDs for rent. I know it probably isn't easy, but where there's a will, there's a way.;-)
I wouldn't need or expect wholesale prices for dvd rental. I can easily obtain 300 DVDs at dirt cheap prices from Columbia House. I'm talking about thousands of DVDs, with hundreds of the same title. Columbia House doesn't allow that, and that in itself is a restraint on free trade.
Yes and no. Blockbuster is a natural monopoly, unlike some other ones, such as most phone companies. They're a monopoly because most customers like them (although I don't), not because they use underhanded tactics to force others from being unable to compete.
I'm not saying they use underhanded tactics to force others from being unable to compete. I'm just saying that the system itself discourages small businesses and competition. Between zoning laws and licensing issues, the things I've already mentioned and the many more that I haven't even brought up, it's very hard to compete with any large company. On top of that, most businesses utilize economies of scale. Without millions or even billions of dollars, or the connections to borrow it, you can't even think about competing.
By the way, the term natural monopoly is commonly used in economic theory, and it doesn't mean what you're using it to mean. In economic theory, local phone companies are a natural monopoly, and Blockbuster is not. This is because it would be terribly inefficient to have multiple companies running telephone lines down the same street. It's not so inefficient to have multiple rental places in the same area, however.
I generally have no problems with natural monopolies. Of course, perhaps I missed something, and Blockbuster is really a big bully...
I don't have a problem with Blockbuster per se. It's more with the regulations and agreements which make it so hard to compete with it.
Firstly, most people living on welfare doesn't like it and would do anything to get a job
Anything? I doubt it. In most cases I'm sure there's a job somewhere in the country that they could get which would make them enough money to get themselves off welfare. I mean, I agree with the compassion part, because hey, I don't want to shovel shit out of chicken coops either. But saying that these people would do anything is an exaggeration.
Maybe we should do more to encourage people to open up their own businesses. Stopping monopolies from creating entry-barriers would be a good start. My friend and I recently made plans to open up a video store right next door to a local Blockbuster. But when we told our plans to the person who was leasing the building, he told us he wouldn't lease to us.
As another example, has anyone ever tried to get a wholesale deal on DVDs for resale? If you're not one of the big-wigs, you're not going to get a deal.
That's why businesses really get compensated so much if they're successful. Monopoly power.
Why do you need real IPs on all your devices behind your firewall?
As for multicast, that's available as an option in IPv4 as well. I agree with you though, that's the killer app of IPv6. In fact, as soon as someone makes an easy to set-up P2P Windows app which uses an IPv6 gateway, we'll see IPv6 deployed on a large scale in no time. Either that or it'll be declared illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
If an automobile is inherently inefficient, then why do people use them? Despite what your obviously oversized brain tells you, it's not because people are stupid. Automobiles are more convenient. You don't have to plan your schedule with hundreds of other people. You leave when you want. You return when you want.
Automobiles may cause deaths on a huge scale, but they also save lives on a huge scale. When you need to go to a hospital you don't sit around waiting for a bus, do you? Sure, you could take an ambulance, but how do you think the EMTs get to the firehouse? How do the doctors get to the hospital when their pager goes off? Our road systems save lives.
There is no shortage of room to bury stuff.
Yeah, but transportation is expensive. There are lots of local shortages to burying stuff. Especially when a landfill destroys property values far beyond the location of the actual burying.
news flash, there isn't enough on planet energy from any source
enough for what? Clearly there's enough for current consumption. If you count the oceans and other uninhabited areas I'm sure there's quite enough energy to last us forever at the current consumption rates. If you could somehow cover the entire ocean with solar panels, that alone would be enough, and solar panels aren't 100% efficient.
Depends. What are you burning hydrogen in? If you burn hydrogen in pure oxygen, you get hydrogen, oxygen, and water.
and the fact that methane produces carbon dioxide.
So does breathing.
Just think, once we come up with hydrogen cars we can tax bicyclists for causing global warming.
Is there a patent? If not, buying up the company won't help.
Phone companies are a state monopoly, not a natural monopoly. They weren't even given a chance to compete, so we don't know if they would be a natural monopoly.
We don't know? How could it be just as efficient to run two sets of wires down a street as it is to run one set of wires down a street? Perhaps we've never tried it (I don't enough about the history), but I don't think you could possibly come up with an argument that it's not true. Perhaps you're confusing the term efficiency?
Now... I'm clearly only talking about local phone companies, and even then I'm only talking about a market which consists of a single CO. There's nothing inefficient about having different COs serving different houses competing, but that's not real competition. Finally, the advances in wireless phone technology to some extent have mooted that point. But still, for the market of running phone lines to your house, the telephone company is clearly and unarguably a natural monopoly.
There was fierce competition in the railroad industry before regulations stepped in oh so many years ago, yet by your argument it would be terribly innefficient to run parallel rails and thus railroads should be a natural monopoly (which history shows is not the case).
No. Even a monopoly will run parallel rails. There are lots of people who want to go from the same origin to the same destination at the same time. But in any case, even if a railroad is running parallel rails, there is still a monopoly at the train stations. You don't see two railroad company's building two railroad stations right next to each other.
Rail lines are much more like long distance phone companies. Those are not natural monopolies, at least at this stage in technology.
Business get compensated so much because of the abiity to achieve economies of scale. Monopolies help, but only so far.
Economies of scale are what cause monopolies. In a competitive market, businesses don't make any profits (other than a minimal interest rate on the capital they provide).
After a time, the monopolist runs into a barrier where it can no longer increase its number of consumers, and so it grows much more slowly or shrinks. Microsoft has been teetering in this position for a while now. Microsoft actually has more economic incentive to be competitive than it does to be monopolistic.
No. You're not explaining things right. Do you know about supply and demand curves? Here's a great explanation. A monopolist has no incentive to be competitive. If they want to increase the number of consumers, they can just lower the price.
Also, take a look at the equilibrium point. In a perfectly competitive market the cost of supply equals the cost of demand. Businesses make no profits.
Yeah but my answer wasn't really "McDonalds sucks." Sure, you can always find a job (unless you have some really severe disability), but at the current minimum wage, it's barely worth it. You'd make about as much selling beanie babies over ebay, and beanie babies aren't hot items any more.
Having the right to ply your trade does not give you the right to rent that particular storefront.
I never said anything about rights. I'm talking about an unlawful agreement in restraint of free trade. It has nothing to do with rights.
See, I think you're confused about this whole restraint of trade thing. Just because you have the right to try to conduct a business of some sort, that doesn't give you the right to force other people to do business with you.
Again, it has nothing to do with rights. For instance, look at the Robinson-Patman act. If you sell a commodity to one person at one price, then you have to sell it to their competitors at that same price, unless you can justify the cost differences.
Building your own small business is hard work, but it's hardly impossible.
I never said it was impossible. It's just expensive and hard. Too expensive and hard for any but the most determined or rich people to do.
The point is it never even reached that stage.
Why not? Sounds like you got a plan and finances, but you are stopping because you can't get one location? How strong is your plan?
Oh, I just meant that it never reached that stage with that particular location. Of course, that location was really good. High traffic area, and obviously there were a lot of people interested in renting DVDs.
And don't you think that Blockbuster will go for a loss just to undercut you and get rid of your business?
That I'd be willing to sue over. Predatory pricing is most definately illegal. And by then I'd have enough invested in the place that I couldn't just ignore it like I am now.
If you were the owner of the Blockbuster, would you just sit around and do nothing while someone was taking business away from you?
Is blockbuster a franchise or a chain? I guess it's a franchise. Then again, they're probably not allowed to set their prices too low. If I owned the Blockbuster, and someone undercut me and I started losing money, I'd move the store somewhere else, or just close it. Of course, I'd never buy a Blockbuster in the first place. The franchise fees are surely too expensive.
Its been true for a long long time. Either you are big (e.g. Walmart) and sell lots of things cheap or you are tiny (e.g. Rare books store) and you beat the big guys with quality and highly specialized niche markets where people are willing to pay for quality.
Yep. That's why the "open your own business" solution isn't really a solution. As they say, "it takes money to make money."
Here's an article about it.
McDonalds is a shit place to work at though and they don't pay well either. No one should be forced to work at McDonalds.
Well... a lot of leases include non-compete agreements. Meaning that the landlord will not lease space to two clients selling similar products/services.
Sure, it's what should be, and probably is, an unlawful agreement in restraint of free trade. Of course I wouldn't expect to actually win such a case. That would require way too much money.
That and, while you might not like to hear it, Blockbuster pretty much has it sewn up as far as what it takes to get the maximum profit and maximum customers on DVD rental.
As in, be a monopoly? I think we could definately undercut them and make a profit.
Basically, unless your plan included a special, never done before way that you could beat blockbuster's business plan, it's a hard sell to convince the landlord that you'd be successful and be able to pay him
Well, it does. As for convincing the landlord I could pay him, I have excellent credit and would be willing to put a year's rent in escrow. I could probably even get a few cosigners. The point is it never even reached that stage.
Well, I hear this, but then I see a local electronics store that happens to rent DVDs (Steve's TV) and they have at least 300 DVDs for rent. I know it probably isn't easy, but where there's a will, there's a way. ;-)
I wouldn't need or expect wholesale prices for dvd rental. I can easily obtain 300 DVDs at dirt cheap prices from Columbia House. I'm talking about thousands of DVDs, with hundreds of the same title. Columbia House doesn't allow that, and that in itself is a restraint on free trade.
Yes and no. Blockbuster is a natural monopoly, unlike some other ones, such as most phone companies. They're a monopoly because most customers like them (although I don't), not because they use underhanded tactics to force others from being unable to compete.
I'm not saying they use underhanded tactics to force others from being unable to compete. I'm just saying that the system itself discourages small businesses and competition. Between zoning laws and licensing issues, the things I've already mentioned and the many more that I haven't even brought up, it's very hard to compete with any large company. On top of that, most businesses utilize economies of scale. Without millions or even billions of dollars, or the connections to borrow it, you can't even think about competing.
By the way, the term natural monopoly is commonly used in economic theory, and it doesn't mean what you're using it to mean. In economic theory, local phone companies are a natural monopoly, and Blockbuster is not. This is because it would be terribly inefficient to have multiple companies running telephone lines down the same street. It's not so inefficient to have multiple rental places in the same area, however.
I generally have no problems with natural monopolies. Of course, perhaps I missed something, and Blockbuster is really a big bully...
I don't have a problem with Blockbuster per se. It's more with the regulations and agreements which make it so hard to compete with it.
Firstly, most people living on welfare doesn't like it and would do anything to get a job
Anything? I doubt it. In most cases I'm sure there's a job somewhere in the country that they could get which would make them enough money to get themselves off welfare. I mean, I agree with the compassion part, because hey, I don't want to shovel shit out of chicken coops either. But saying that these people would do anything is an exaggeration.
Maybe we should do more to encourage people to open up their own businesses. Stopping monopolies from creating entry-barriers would be a good start. My friend and I recently made plans to open up a video store right next door to a local Blockbuster. But when we told our plans to the person who was leasing the building, he told us he wouldn't lease to us.
As another example, has anyone ever tried to get a wholesale deal on DVDs for resale? If you're not one of the big-wigs, you're not going to get a deal.
That's why businesses really get compensated so much if they're successful. Monopoly power.
When did "drop everything bound for this host" become the only valid firewall policy?
Obviously you've never set up NAT before. You can communicate with devices behind NAT. After all, that's what putting them on a network is for.
Who cares what the Internet was designed for? We've moved beyond that now.
Actually it's working great now.
Why do you need real IPs on all your devices behind your firewall?
As for multicast, that's available as an option in IPv4 as well. I agree with you though, that's the killer app of IPv6. In fact, as soon as someone makes an easy to set-up P2P Windows app which uses an IPv6 gateway, we'll see IPv6 deployed on a large scale in no time. Either that or it'll be declared illegal.
Not really.
DELETE FROM stories where title='U.S. DoD Commits to IPv6' would be even better.
As always, please read before blindly updating...
What do you think this is, Linux?
Unexpected Delay When You Log Off
They finally fixed that? Wow, that's probably going to be my number 1 reason to install SP4.
Sure, I hang on to it for the hn210w driver, among other things.