The title of the top post in to this article (as I write this) is "Told-ya-so". And, for the most part, I agree with what the ideas in that post. There are other posts conveying the same sort of thing. While I agree with them (in general) they're missing one point. That is that a single area may shrink when something new comes along (e.g. offshoring & outsourcing). But that *OVERALL* (key word) the economy is better.
So for example, the overall economy is better because of the invention of the automobile (*). It has opened up new markets and new ways of doing business and increased productivity in our country in countless ways. But it obliterated the businesses of horse-drawn carriages and buggy whip makers. So, while *OVERALL* the economy is better, that doesn't prevent pockets of the economy from massive suffering.
(*) I didn't say anything about the environment being better or worse.. just the economy.
The same is true with offshoring & outsourcing. The IT industry may be hiring more overall, but that doesn't discount the fact that there are pockets in that industry that are suffering massively as a result. My guess is that coders are the most impacted by this.
But don't fret too much. There are other jobs that are becoming available now that coding is getting comoditized. And don't forget that the same facility for easily shipping code half way around the world has also given us free/open source software. So, it's not all bad, and *OVERALL* it's good.
The sadness is that smoking is addictive. How can there be self-regulation when smoking takes away self-control?
First, there's a huge population of smokers who have quit. It wasn't fun, but they did it. Second, anyone who smokes now can't claim ignorance about how addictive smoking is.
Third, we're not talking about people choosing to smoke. We're talking about people choosing to eat at restaurants where smoking is allowed. If it's so annoying to them, then they're free to go somewhere else. If there's such a huge demand for smoke-free restaurants, then that's a business opportunity. Legislation is not needed.
We have vegitarian restaurants and the number of vegetarians in this country is far fewer than the number of non-smokers. Why is it that the only places where non-smoking restaurants exist in areas where it's legislated? I think it's because that's the only way that those restaurants can exist. In other words, there's no market for non-smoking restaurants. Which is just another way of saying that the vast majority of people simply don't care and legislation is the only way the vocal minority can get their way.
I would think that the advantage of an icon is that it spans languages and doesn't usually need translation. For example, men's and women's bathrooms typically have icon's on them to identify which is which. Thus, for the most part, you don't need to be able to read in a specific language in order to know which place is for your gender and which is for the other.
I would think the same would apply to icons used in computer programs as well (e.g. a browser with arrow buttons instead of "forward" "back" "reload", etc). It requires less work in translation and automatically increases the size of the market who might use your program.
The statement "you can go to a different restaurant" has no bearing on whether smokers will be at that restaurant too, let alone any other factors. But you already knew that.
The statement "you could choose a different movie" has no bearing on whether or not it will be any good, let alone other factors. Those things are true, and yet we don't legislate against bad movies.
No one forces you to go to any restaurant. And when you go into a restaurant, if someone is smoking, no one forces you to stay. If, despite that, you choose to stay, how is that anyone's business except yours?
I simply do not wish to legislate your behavior. I'd rather have the freedom to self-regulate my own. And if I believe that the value of a particular restaurant is higher than the cost of being there with 2nd hand smoke, that's my choice. As it is your choice. I'd rather that we both are given the freedom to choose.
If only divorce was still illegal! For the kids! HA!
[rant] Sigh. "Think of the children" arguments are so tired. Mostly because they are more often than not red-herrings. State involvement in marriage isn't for the children (well not any more than taxes or wars are for the children, i.e., so far removed as to be meaningless). Should the government be involved in who you can date, love, procreate with, child-rear with, etc.? I wish Uncle Sam could stay out of my relationship and out of my bedroom. Ironically, most people agree. Somehow the freedom haters keep influencing law (inflammatory language used sarcastically).
You might want to read the book in this article before you claim that those arguments are tired. Other than that, I also wish that the government would lose its involvement in a great number of things.
1. All else being equal, a kid is better off being raised by both biological parents.
No, definitely not. Not as a generalisation. A kid is better off being raised by happy, low stressed people in a stable relationship. Biological relationship simply does not come in here. It's always been 'a wise child who knows who his father is' - infidelity is a fact of life in all communities and at all periods of history. Kids grow up just fine raised by cuckolds, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles, adoptive and foster parents. Biological relationship really isn't critical. Stability is critical. It may even be possible that it's important for children to have access to adult role models of both genders, which, if true, would be an argument against gay people adopting kids. But biological parents? No.
You'd think, but there might be some evidence against this. Read this article and see if there's anything in there that might cause you to rethink. At least if you consider that in the general case, children experience the divorce of their biological parents. This is very bad for children. But of course, it's not much of an argument either for or against gay marriage. It's just an argument that suggests that (in the general case) it's better for biological parents of children to stay together and stick it out, even if those parents aren't happy about it.
You make a perfect example of why the health care system should *NOT* be socialized. Because personal decisions that enable freedom suddenly impact others. The more you socialize anything, the more individual decisions impact others through increased costs. In other words socialism is the opposite of freedom. The more socialized things are the less individual freedom can exist.
But it's almost universally believers who try to prevent other people from doing things that don't affect the believers' lives in the slightest.
For example:
No smoking in restaurants
Mandatory seat belt laws
Mandatory motorcycle helmet laws
Yep. It's those darn religious conservatives who were responsible for those sort of nanny-state decisions.
</sarcasm>
About the only political party that has any claim on leaving people to make their own decisions are the libertarians. Neither the repubs nor the dems can claim any innocence in that area.
Government regulation of any type is an application of the nanny state. In the censorship world, it's the.gov saying that you're not smart enough to figure out what content you want. In the telecom world, it's the.gov telling you that you're not smart enough to manage your commercial relationships.
IMHO they should be 100% illegal. Give us the price at the register or don't advertise it. Or how about this? Say its $100 with a $50 rebate. I'll pay $25 and promise to send you that extra $25 within 4 to 8 weeks.
Geez! Because you don't like them, they should be illegal? How about just not buy the product if you don't like the fact that they have rebates? Or don't buy products from stores that offer rebates? There is nothing keeping you from having to deal with rebates. As a consequence there's no way that they can hurt you unless you let them.
But if you make them illegal all of the rest of us who like rebates are precluded from using them. That is incredibly selfish considering you have an easy way to avoid them.
In addition to what Money for Nothin' says, I would add that the study of economics frequently finds common sense being just plain wrong when compared to the data. To quote Jane Galt (on an unrelated topic):
The limits of your imagination are not the limits of reality... How did people go so badly wrong? Well, to start with, they fell into the basic fallacy that economists are so well acquainted with: they thought about themselves instead of the marginal case.
I suggest that the existence of simple return policies and Consumer Reports is evidence that consumers are not as uninformed as you think. They demand these things in order to allow themselves to become informed. But I'm willing to be wrong. So I'm looking for data. Even if I understand your "common sense", my imagination is limited and frequently wrong. I'd rather see data before drawing a conclusion.
Just curious, do you have any data to support this?
The existence (and popularity) of review magazines suggests that informed decisions are pretty significant. A few years ago, I remember when the Honda Odyssey van got the top rated review in Consumer Reports, and the demand was so high that you couldn't buy one. Sometime after that, the Toyota Sienna got top review, and the same thing happened. Several years ago, the Dodge Caravan experienced the same demand.
I think consumers are much more informed than you think. Even if that information source is:
I don't think this has anything to do with being a theocracy. I think it has more to do with there's a criteria that one group wants to use to filter out unwanted channels. It's a different criteria than some other group. So what? If I happen to want to filter out sports, does that mean that I'm trying to mix sports and government?
Moreover, there's no clear tie between a person's desire to filter out indecent channels from the television that comes into a house full of children and that house holding any sort of theological beliefs. Plenty of athiests and agnostics wish to keep this stuff from the eyes and minds of their children.
So, how exactly does wanting this imply a theocracy?
A la carte pricing could be really great (I haven't studied the economics of it, but it sounds good). But it irks me no end that this conclusion is drawn in the context of fighting "indecency" on the air.
But isn't this a sensible reason? If there's something that you don't want to receive at your house, you don't want to pay for it. Maybe for me it's that I don't want to pay for TBS because it's got too many chick flix and for you it's that you don't want to pay for ESPN becuase you don't like sports. Why does the criteria for exclusion matter if that criteria is indecency?
We may be at a point where we just have to agree to disagree here. Becuase I don't think you addressed my points and I find your points unconvincing. For example, from your very first point:
The mass market is about choosing what is the most convenient and most profitable. That almost always means cutting corners to get the job done.
What? No it doesn't. How do you define "getting the job done"? Why is it that if something is left out, that it's "cutting corners"? You use a computer. You haven't used couriers in order to communicate with me. Does using the internet mean that we've "cut corners"? I don't think so. I think it means we found a better way. And, yes, that way cut out the expense of couriers. But neither of us had any obligation to use them. In exactly the same way that none of the people who pay us have any obligation to us. IMHO, "cutting a corner" was an improvement. To you, it sounds like we didn't do the whole job because when we found a better way, someone was hurt.
This is just one reason why I think we're not going to find common ground.
And if the scientists happen to know that what people want is going to kill them and the market ignores the scientists, the minority of people who want change will be punished with pain, suffering and even death, because of the way the actions of the ignorant majority dictate the actions of the market.
Ok. Let's suppose that you're right, and the mass market is choosing something that will kill them. I'm just curious as to how you'd organize any sufficiently large group of people differently so that the "right" decision is made? The only alternative that I can think of is vesting power in a group of people who "know better". The problem with this is that, historically, this has lead to totalitarianism. And, interestingly, it's frequently not very effective. The leadership may dictate "do X" but if the mass majority doesn't want to, and possesses the means to covertly avoid it, there's nothing that the leadership can do to enforce it. For example: don't share music online. There's a small minority who wants to stop this, and the mass majority who is contentedly ignoring them.
Second, what is the "right" decision? Are you sure that you know it? Are you sure you can predict every consequence of making the policy decision that you put forth? I think environmentalists are well positioned to predict the impact on the environment. But it takes economics before you can begin trying to predict the social impact of policy decisions. People can be hurt by smog and people can be hurt by an economy which loses productivity. Are you sure that the amount of hurt caused by smog is less than the amount caused by economic loss? Until you are able to weigh all the costs, I refer you to G.K. Chesterton, who wrote:
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."
This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.
Of course, I'm not convinced of your premise - that the mass market is choosing something that will kill them. The wisdom of crowds is frequent
Why the hell is this flamebait? I disagree with him heartily, but it ain't flamebait. This response is better measured than any of the predecssor replies. Weird
Thank you.
Onto the topic, I think that everything that you've mentioned actually is addressed by economics. What you call a "seperation from a real world factor" economics calls an "externality". One of the best theories in economics on how to deal with externalities was put forth by Ronald Coase. He identified that transaction costs, not externalities, are the real culprit. And that the appropriate response is the proper assignment of property rights, at which point the market resolves the problem. He won the nobel prize for it. A really good description is here.
I've got news for you: YOUR "SCIENCE" IS FLAWED. Please try again.
In much the same way that Einstein advanced the ball down the field of physics with relativity, and the quantum mechanics have advanced it again, Coase has advanced economics with his work on transaction costs. Does that mean that economics was fundamentally flawed before Coase? Yes, in exactly the same way that Newtonian physics was fundamentally flawed before Einstein. And I'm sure that there is some theory in economics that will find limitations in our current view of economics. But it's currently a useful view to have, even if we don't know it's limitations. If you want a perfect answer once and for all, then all science (not just economics) is flawed.
On the other hand, "please try again" is exactly the correct response for physics and economics and biology and chemestry and... It seems very likely that will be the correct response long after both of us are dead.
But many lives will needlessly be lost due to energy shortages (see: heating oil becomes too expensive [that is happening now], food becomes too expensive to transport cheaply [is this inevitable?]) and air and water will be needlessly polluted while the free market waits for reality to correct its wasteful, polluting ways.
I think you may not have caught my point. If the laws of supply and demand aren't interfered with by government regulation, then you get what you want. Reductions in consumption that reflect the dwindling supply. Are there externalities to deal with? Sure. Apply Coase. But what is gone is shortages. There are no shortages. People will choose the next best alternative without the government telling them to. And this isn't "holy mantra" it's demonstrated fact, which is not only provable mathematically, but can be shown throughout history with countless specific examples. If you think it's false and can prove it, you're a shoe-in for the nobel prize in economics.
Hell, why not just let computers rule us and govern our lives by credit and debit projections on a ledger sheet? That is ultimately what "what will the market do?" mentality leads to.
Who do you think the "market" is? It's not a group of companies. It's us. It's our conglomerate decisions. It's what we want. No one rules it, so it's impossible to say that the market is the same as being ruled by a computer.
My recommendation to you is this: take econ 101. You don't have to like it. You can conclude before it's even started that it's all wrong if you like. But take it, and commit to at least understanding the basics. Then you'll at least be able to give some teeth to your arguments against economics.
Cost and pricing, according to economic theory, are supposed to represent actual real-world values of labor and resources consumed to produce something.
Only for those who continue to espouse the labor theory of value. IMHO, that theory has been thoroughly debunked. a fewexamples
The fact that economics cannot properly account, even remotely, the degradation of the environment and account for how this will impact us in ten to 100 years means that its recommendations should be taken within a strictly constrainted box.
My only comment to this is that environmentalists frequently fail to account for the economic impact of their recommendations. Which do you think is worse: the death of 50% of the population due to lack of economic resources or the death of 50% of the population due to destruction of the environment?
The world continues to ramp up nonsustainable consumption of all resources
But pricing will take care of this. And this is very basic economics. It involves the laws of supply and demand. As the supply of the resource decreases, it's cost will increase past the cost of the next best alternative. At which point, everyone will stop using that resource. In other words, we will never (ever) run out of oil. It will, at some point before we run out, become to expensive to use. So no one will use it. No government regulation required.
But seriously, I also wonder what the requirements for membership in this group is. This is a "if you don't sue me, then I won't sue you" club. But what if a corporation wants to join without holding any patents? They would get a lot out of joining, but not really have anything to contribute. Would they still be allowed to join?
I don't see why not. From the/. description:
"Patents owned by OIN will be available without payment of royalties to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against others who have signed a license with OIN, when using certain Linux-related software."
I read this to mean that OIN will sell *anyone* a license and what that license buys you is protection from anyone who files a patent claim against you, if the claimant also violates a patent held by OIN... ok that was complicated. Maybe an example:
A signs a license agreement with OIN - presumably for some amount of money, but not-necessarily.
B uses patent X held by OIN, which they can do for free per the OIN patent licensing rules. B also holds patent Y.
If A uses patent Y, B is precluded from suing A or face a licence violation on patent X.
IANAL, but that's what it sounds like to me. Can anyone who knows better provide a better explanation?
I've only skimmed the article, but has it occured to you guys that it might not be all wrong. We're quick to rush in and defend blogs - they're a great way for the underdogs to expose actual wrongdoing and injustices - but maybe not all bloggers deserve our support.
You're correct that I might not agree with the opinions of all bloggers. However, that doesn't mean that I don't support all bloggers on principle. That principle is freedom of expression. Even the freedom to be wrong, or illogical, or silly, or stupid, or insane or... fill in the blank.
Nevertheless, the general idea of my post still remains - maybe we're a bit too trusting of blogs, and it doesn't hurt to look at the other's guys point of view
I agree with your general point. But I would defend even the lunatics rights to express themselves whether using a pen & paper or a blog. And I find TFA's attempts to squash that to be self-serving and (frankly) un-American.
The deal here is that you have exclusive use of the area. I've even read of people placing their sat dishes inside a south facing window in order for this rule to apply to them.
Of course, if you don't have any view to the south you're still screwed.
There are a lot of people who do bad things, but things that happen to be true. If Hitler had ever said e=mc^2, that would not have made the equation incorrect. Similarly, it doesn't matter that Ken Lay and Andrew Fastow encourage saving and investing. It's still good advice even if they're bad people.
I would also encourage you not to give up hope too quickly. The american economy is very resilient. It's completely rebuilt itself countless times. In the process destroying old jobs and replacing them with new ones. This is another reason why saving is so important. If you have sufficient emergency savings, you can weather a short term loss of a job, and train yourself for a new one.
Slashdot Mirror
The title of the top post in to this article (as I write this) is "Told-ya-so". And, for the most part, I agree with what the ideas in that post. There are other posts conveying the same sort of thing. While I agree with them (in general) they're missing one point. That is that a single area may shrink when something new comes along (e.g. offshoring & outsourcing). But that *OVERALL* (key word) the economy is better.
So for example, the overall economy is better because of the invention of the automobile (*). It has opened up new markets and new ways of doing business and increased productivity in our country in countless ways. But it obliterated the businesses of horse-drawn carriages and buggy whip makers. So, while *OVERALL* the economy is better, that doesn't prevent pockets of the economy from massive suffering.
(*) I didn't say anything about the environment being better or worse.. just the economy.
The same is true with offshoring & outsourcing. The IT industry may be hiring more overall, but that doesn't discount the fact that there are pockets in that industry that are suffering massively as a result. My guess is that coders are the most impacted by this.
But don't fret too much. There are other jobs that are becoming available now that coding is getting comoditized. And don't forget that the same facility for easily shipping code half way around the world has also given us free/open source software. So, it's not all bad, and *OVERALL* it's good.
Third, we're not talking about people choosing to smoke. We're talking about people choosing to eat at restaurants where smoking is allowed. If it's so annoying to them, then they're free to go somewhere else. If there's such a huge demand for smoke-free restaurants, then that's a business opportunity. Legislation is not needed.
We have vegitarian restaurants and the number of vegetarians in this country is far fewer than the number of non-smokers. Why is it that the only places where non-smoking restaurants exist in areas where it's legislated? I think it's because that's the only way that those restaurants can exist. In other words, there's no market for non-smoking restaurants. Which is just another way of saying that the vast majority of people simply don't care and legislation is the only way the vocal minority can get their way.
I would think that the advantage of an icon is that it spans languages and doesn't usually need translation. For example, men's and women's bathrooms typically have icon's on them to identify which is which. Thus, for the most part, you don't need to be able to read in a specific language in order to know which place is for your gender and which is for the other.
I would think the same would apply to icons used in computer programs as well (e.g. a browser with arrow buttons instead of "forward" "back" "reload", etc). It requires less work in translation and automatically increases the size of the market who might use your program.
But, of course, this is just a guess.
No one forces you to go to any restaurant. And when you go into a restaurant, if someone is smoking, no one forces you to stay. If, despite that, you choose to stay, how is that anyone's business except yours?
I simply do not wish to legislate your behavior. I'd rather have the freedom to self-regulate my own. And if I believe that the value of a particular restaurant is higher than the cost of being there with 2nd hand smoke, that's my choice. As it is your choice. I'd rather that we both are given the freedom to choose.
You make a perfect example of why the health care system should *NOT* be socialized. Because personal decisions that enable freedom suddenly impact others. The more you socialize anything, the more individual decisions impact others through increased costs. In other words socialism is the opposite of freedom. The more socialized things are the less individual freedom can exist.
Yes. Because it happens to be correct.
- No smoking in restaurants
- Mandatory seat belt laws
- Mandatory motorcycle helmet laws
Yep. It's those darn religious conservatives who were responsible for those sort of nanny-state decisions.</sarcasm>
About the only political party that has any claim on leaving people to make their own decisions are the libertarians. Neither the repubs nor the dems can claim any innocence in that area.
Government regulation of any type is an application of the nanny state. In the censorship world, it's the .gov saying that you're not smart enough to figure out what content you want. In the telecom world, it's the .gov telling you that you're not smart enough to manage your commercial relationships.
Both are nanny-state. IMHO, both are unnecessary.
...welcome my nanny-state overlords when it comes to telecom, but reject them when it comes to porn.
I am slashdot. I have multiple personality disorder.
But if you make them illegal all of the rest of us who like rebates are precluded from using them. That is incredibly selfish considering you have an easy way to avoid them.
The existence (and popularity) of review magazines suggests that informed decisions are pretty significant. A few years ago, I remember when the Honda Odyssey van got the top rated review in Consumer Reports, and the demand was so high that you couldn't buy one. Sometime after that, the Toyota Sienna got top review, and the same thing happened. Several years ago, the Dodge Caravan experienced the same demand.
I think consumers are much more informed than you think. Even if that information source is:
But I could be wrong.
I don't think this has anything to do with being a theocracy. I think it has more to do with there's a criteria that one group wants to use to filter out unwanted channels. It's a different criteria than some other group. So what? If I happen to want to filter out sports, does that mean that I'm trying to mix sports and government?
Moreover, there's no clear tie between a person's desire to filter out indecent channels from the television that comes into a house full of children and that house holding any sort of theological beliefs. Plenty of athiests and agnostics wish to keep this stuff from the eyes and minds of their children.
So, how exactly does wanting this imply a theocracy?
This is just one reason why I think we're not going to find common ground.
Ok. Let's suppose that you're right, and the mass market is choosing something that will kill them. I'm just curious as to how you'd organize any sufficiently large group of people differently so that the "right" decision is made? The only alternative that I can think of is vesting power in a group of people who "know better". The problem with this is that, historically, this has lead to totalitarianism. And, interestingly, it's frequently not very effective. The leadership may dictate "do X" but if the mass majority doesn't want to, and possesses the means to covertly avoid it, there's nothing that the leadership can do to enforce it. For example: don't share music online. There's a small minority who wants to stop this, and the mass majority who is contentedly ignoring them.
Second, what is the "right" decision? Are you sure that you know it? Are you sure you can predict every consequence of making the policy decision that you put forth? I think environmentalists are well positioned to predict the impact on the environment. But it takes economics before you can begin trying to predict the social impact of policy decisions. People can be hurt by smog and people can be hurt by an economy which loses productivity. Are you sure that the amount of hurt caused by smog is less than the amount caused by economic loss? Until you are able to weigh all the costs, I refer you to G.K. Chesterton, who wrote:
Of course, I'm not convinced of your premise - that the mass market is choosing something that will kill them. The wisdom of crowds is frequent
Onto the topic, I think that everything that you've mentioned actually is addressed by economics. What you call a "seperation from a real world factor" economics calls an "externality". One of the best theories in economics on how to deal with externalities was put forth by Ronald Coase. He identified that transaction costs, not externalities, are the real culprit. And that the appropriate response is the proper assignment of property rights, at which point the market resolves the problem. He won the nobel prize for it. A really good description is here.
In much the same way that Einstein advanced the ball down the field of physics with relativity, and the quantum mechanics have advanced it again, Coase has advanced economics with his work on transaction costs. Does that mean that economics was fundamentally flawed before Coase? Yes, in exactly the same way that Newtonian physics was fundamentally flawed before Einstein. And I'm sure that there is some theory in economics that will find limitations in our current view of economics. But it's currently a useful view to have, even if we don't know it's limitations. If you want a perfect answer once and for all, then all science (not just economics) is flawed.On the other hand, "please try again" is exactly the correct response for physics and economics and biology and chemestry and ... It seems very likely that will be the correct response long after both of us are dead.
My recommendation to you is this: take econ 101. You don't have to like it. You can conclude before it's even started that it's all wrong if you like. But take it, and commit to at least understanding the basics. Then you'll at least be able to give some teeth to your arguments against economics.
$.02
My only comment to this is that environmentalists frequently fail to account for the economic impact of their recommendations. Which do you think is worse: the death of 50% of the population due to lack of economic resources or the death of 50% of the population due to destruction of the environment?But pricing will take care of this. And this is very basic economics. It involves the laws of supply and demand. As the supply of the resource decreases, it's cost will increase past the cost of the next best alternative. At which point, everyone will stop using that resource. In other words, we will never (ever) run out of oil. It will, at some point before we run out, become to expensive to use. So no one will use it. No government regulation required.
I don't see why not. From the /. description:
I read this to mean that OIN will sell *anyone* a license and what that license buys you is protection from anyone who files a patent claim against you, if the claimant also violates a patent held by OIN... ok that was complicated. Maybe an example:
IANAL, but that's what it sounds like to me. Can anyone who knows better provide a better explanation?Of course, if you don't have any view to the south you're still screwed.
There are a lot of people who do bad things, but things that happen to be true. If Hitler had ever said e=mc^2, that would not have made the equation incorrect. Similarly, it doesn't matter that Ken Lay and Andrew Fastow encourage saving and investing. It's still good advice even if they're bad people.
I would also encourage you not to give up hope too quickly. The american economy is very resilient. It's completely rebuilt itself countless times. In the process destroying old jobs and replacing them with new ones. This is another reason why saving is so important. If you have sufficient emergency savings, you can weather a short term loss of a job, and train yourself for a new one.