And for government much to gain (as with any expansion of government). Even if a government program fails outright, government still gains. This is because government does not generate its revenue through voluntary trade, and thus is not bound to its level of success. (Typically, government programs which fail are rewarded with MORE revenue, rather than eliminated as they would be if they were a voluntary undertaking.)
Hell, the very fact that government is considering these expansions of power is a benefit to government. They don't work for free. I'm sure this is one reason why the issue keeps coming back from the dead: every time it raises its ugly head, government makes a buck.
I would also take issue with the story's wording -- to "legalize" patents doesn't make any sense. The term "legalizing" refers to the de-criminalizing of criminalized acts (typically acts of non-aggression, those which aren't criminal by human nature but only by the arbitrary rule of government). A more sensible term for the story to use would be "imposing".
in the US there is an automatic tendency to like tax cuts
I wouldn't be so sure about that. The US government is the wealthiest, most powerful government in the world. If this is "government by the people", as so many claim, then how can the people "automatically like tax cuts" when at the same time, they obviously like big government? You'd think the exponential growth of the US government over the past century would have been stopped in its tracks, with the people automatically liking tax cuts.
There is no sharp border between volontary and by force, there are infinitely many levels in between
Force and voluntary association are mutually exclusive, and the only two possible modes of human interaction. Think about all the interactions you had with other people today. If you accomplished your objectives through theft, fraud, or physical force or threat thereof, then you have engaged in interaction by force, because the other party did not voluntarily agree to it. Otherwise, you have engaged in interaction by voluntary association. There is absolutely no middle ground. What could possibly be more simple than that? This is human nature.
Each interaction must fall into one mode or the other, but never both. You cannot force a person to volunteer, just as you cannot volunteer to be forced! The notion is absurd.
You are probably trying to define as force an interaction between a person and himself. For example, a blue-collar worker is "forced" to get a job at Wal-Mart because nothing better is available, and he must provide for his family. But just who is using force as a means to an end here? Was it the guy's neighbor? His landlord? The manager at Wal-Mart? The president of Wal-Mart? Of course the answer is none of the above. The worker is "forced" only by his own good judgement. If you were about to claim that "society forced him", then you'd better be ready to prove that each and every memeber of society actually interacted with him by force. In other words, this is not an example of force at all, but voluntary association.
The GPL is not a law. It's a contract, and contracts are voluntarily agreed upon by all parties involved. Laws are not. Big difference.
This is what makes contracts "ethical" by definition: they're always voluntary (otherwise they wouldn't be contracts). As for the law and ethics not always intersecting, I'd be the first to agree.
As long as government has the power to censor, government will claim that censorship is agreed upon by the people. As long as government has any type of power, it will claim that it uses that power on belalf of "the people". This is true of any government, not just democratic republics.
Trying to convince government that censorship is not what the people want is an uphill battle. The real solution is to limit the scope and power of government, so they wouldn't posess the "right" to do it in the first place. Of course, the concept of limited government was abandoned shortly after the country was first organized.
I agree with your main point, but government was heavily entangled in the market 20 years ago, just as government is heavily entangled in the market today. Laissez-faire means that government is completely seperated from the market. Our society has elements of capitalism, but it would be entirely wrong to say we live in a "capitalist" society. True capitalism would requrie true seperation of market and state.
I don't buy that. Force can only be defined as an interaction between human beings. (Otherwise the term is ambiguous and therefore meaningless.) Every possible interaction is either one of (a) force, or (b) voluntary association. An act of trade -- unless it is accomplished through fraud or similar threat -- cannot be anything but voluntary.
If a voluntary act can be classifed as force, then the term "force" is essentially meaningless.
That's not your decision to make. It's the original author's decision, and he already made his opinion quite clear by choosing the GPL. What part of the GPL are you having trouble with?
No, it depends on the license and the license only. By choosing the GPL, the original author already made clear that forks are acceptable ("ethical" if you insist). If the author thought otherwise, he would have chosen a different license.
Clean, simple, and unambiguous. Why did we have to muddy the waters by questioning "ethics"?
What could be more effortless or straightforward than mount, ls, and cp? (Especially if you've been doing it for years.) Or select, copy and paste to removable device?
For at least some people, itunes is just redundant, and therefore not part of the "portable music equation".
Forgot to mention secondspin.com, where I buy 2 or 3 used cd's a month. They have a huge selection and some of the cd's I recieve look brand new. You can pay $10 for a set of mp3's, or you can pay $6-$8 for the real deal. (This would be part of my "online retail music" solution.)
Also forgot to mention XMMS and my custom playlists, which is part of my "management software" solution. I've got it all covered!
Does it include a popular online retail music site built specifically for it?
cdparanoia, lame, and oggenc
Does it have 'best of breed' management software
mount, ls, and cp
Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm not the typical target customer. Just wanted to point out that those two features are entirely useless for at least some people.
Did you just claim that voluntary trade is the source of oppression?
Only government holds the "right" to initiate force as a means to an end. You have implied that capitalism is somehow oppressive, which just isn't logical. True capitalism is entirely voluntary. How in the world can an act of voluntary association be oppressive?
You have to realize that what we have in the US isn't capitalism. Not even close. On the contrary, the US government is heavily entangled in the "free" market.
You're just going to have to find a different boogie-man. Capitalism is no more oppressive than any other act of voluntary association.
most of these "militia men" had libertarian beliefs
A true libertarian does not believe that anyone (including himself, including government) should posesses the "right" to initiate force as a means to an end. The moment he chose to adopt the principle of force, and abandon the principle of voluntary association, was the moment he stopped being a libertarian.
Libertarianism is founded on peaceful, voluntary interaction. There is nothing peaceful or voluntary about what happened there.
Don't look further into it than you have to. Government is simply looking for ways to expand it's business for its own benefit. Same as it's been since the beginning of civilization. Each new law that is passed -- and thousands are passed each year -- gives them a little more power, a little more revenue, and a little more precedent for the next expansion of government.
Have you ever wondered why there are so many absurd laws on the books, or what the rationale could possibly be for some of those laws? Look no further than good old fashioned self-interest. Those laws don't make sense because they don't have to make sense. Even if a government program outright fails, government still benefits by its increased powers and revenue. (This is why failed government programs are typically rewarded with more power and revenue, rather than eliminated.)
No, government doesn't want to steal your job as a parent. They simply want to exploit you (and the rest of the productive sector) for their own benefit. It just happens that eliminating your natural human rights as parents is one great way to expand government.
No -- freedom is beautiful if you can accept that your business is yours alone, and other people's business is theirs alone. The problem is that very few people are willing to accept this. Born and raised under big government (this includes most of the world), it's very difficult for people accept that other people's business is theirs alone. We've been conditioned to believe exactly the opposite, and that's why nobody has any respect for anybody else.
Are you saying that since it only concerns monetary damages it doesn't warrant a jail term?
That's a good question. If our system of law focused on restitution for the victims -- rather than simply punishment for the aggressor -- I believe we could eliminate a lot of unnecessary jail sentences. What sounds better to the average thief: having to do a year in jail and be done with it, or having to spend the next 20 years working to pay off restitution to the victim?
I suppose ENRON execs would certainly share your viewpoint.
What level of restitution are the Enron execs required to pay to their victims?
Just goes to show how unjust the law really is. Under a just system of law, how could any deliberate murder recieve anything less than a life sentence?
sentences (including this one) in the United States are excessive
That depends entirely on what crimes you're talking about. Some sentences are overly long, and some are overly short. For example, the US routinely sets violent criminals free (including rapists and murderers) to make room for non-violent drug dealers. If that isn't ass-backwards, I don't know what is.
I'm not going to argue they shouldn't be punished, or better yet, forced to pay restitution to the victims. However, I don't believe the punishment fits the crime in this particular case. This is roughly the equivalant of breaking and entering, and then coming up empty handed. Let's imagine a burgler who breaks into a company office, pokes around a bit, and leaves without actually taking anything. Yes, breaking and entering is a crime. No, it does not deserve 9 years in jail (1/8 of the average person's lifespan). Most violent criminals spend less time in jail than that (but that's another topic of debate).
I can't believe I'm having to point this out to people. Government holds the keys to war and foreign intervention, not the producers or consumers of oil. Government is 100% responsible for every one of those atrocities you mentioned.
Slashdot Mirror
Hell, the very fact that government is considering these expansions of power is a benefit to government. They don't work for free. I'm sure this is one reason why the issue keeps coming back from the dead: every time it raises its ugly head, government makes a buck.
I would also take issue with the story's wording -- to "legalize" patents doesn't make any sense. The term "legalizing" refers to the de-criminalizing of criminalized acts (typically acts of non-aggression, those which aren't criminal by human nature but only by the arbitrary rule of government). A more sensible term for the story to use would be "imposing".
I wouldn't be so sure about that. The US government is the wealthiest, most powerful government in the world. If this is "government by the people", as so many claim, then how can the people "automatically like tax cuts" when at the same time, they obviously like big government? You'd think the exponential growth of the US government over the past century would have been stopped in its tracks, with the people automatically liking tax cuts.
Force and voluntary association are mutually exclusive, and the only two possible modes of human interaction. Think about all the interactions you had with other people today. If you accomplished your objectives through theft, fraud, or physical force or threat thereof, then you have engaged in interaction by force, because the other party did not voluntarily agree to it. Otherwise, you have engaged in interaction by voluntary association. There is absolutely no middle ground. What could possibly be more simple than that? This is human nature.
Each interaction must fall into one mode or the other, but never both. You cannot force a person to volunteer, just as you cannot volunteer to be forced! The notion is absurd.
You are probably trying to define as force an interaction between a person and himself. For example, a blue-collar worker is "forced" to get a job at Wal-Mart because nothing better is available, and he must provide for his family. But just who is using force as a means to an end here? Was it the guy's neighbor? His landlord? The manager at Wal-Mart? The president of Wal-Mart? Of course the answer is none of the above. The worker is "forced" only by his own good judgement. If you were about to claim that "society forced him", then you'd better be ready to prove that each and every memeber of society actually interacted with him by force. In other words, this is not an example of force at all, but voluntary association.
The GPL is not a law. It's a contract, and contracts are voluntarily agreed upon by all parties involved. Laws are not. Big difference.
This is what makes contracts "ethical" by definition: they're always voluntary (otherwise they wouldn't be contracts). As for the law and ethics not always intersecting, I'd be the first to agree.
As long as government has the power to censor, government will claim that censorship is agreed upon by the people. As long as government has any type of power, it will claim that it uses that power on belalf of "the people". This is true of any government, not just democratic republics.
Trying to convince government that censorship is not what the people want is an uphill battle. The real solution is to limit the scope and power of government, so they wouldn't posess the "right" to do it in the first place. Of course, the concept of limited government was abandoned shortly after the country was first organized.
I agree with your main point, but government was heavily entangled in the market 20 years ago, just as government is heavily entangled in the market today. Laissez-faire means that government is completely seperated from the market. Our society has elements of capitalism, but it would be entirely wrong to say we live in a "capitalist" society. True capitalism would requrie true seperation of market and state.
I don't buy that. Force can only be defined as an interaction between human beings. (Otherwise the term is ambiguous and therefore meaningless.) Every possible interaction is either one of (a) force, or (b) voluntary association. An act of trade -- unless it is accomplished through fraud or similar threat -- cannot be anything but voluntary.
If a voluntary act can be classifed as force, then the term "force" is essentially meaningless.
That's not your decision to make. It's the original author's decision, and he already made his opinion quite clear by choosing the GPL. What part of the GPL are you having trouble with?
In other words, he's a politician.
No, it depends on the license and the license only. By choosing the GPL, the original author already made clear that forks are acceptable ("ethical" if you insist). If the author thought otherwise, he would have chosen a different license.
Clean, simple, and unambiguous. Why did we have to muddy the waters by questioning "ethics"?
What could be more effortless or straightforward than mount, ls, and cp? (Especially if you've been doing it for years.) Or select, copy and paste to removable device?
For at least some people, itunes is just redundant, and therefore not part of the "portable music equation".
Also forgot to mention XMMS and my custom playlists, which is part of my "management software" solution. I've got it all covered!
Does it include a popular online retail music site built specifically for it?
cdparanoia, lame, and oggenc
Does it have 'best of breed' management software
mount, ls, and cp
Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm not the typical target customer. Just wanted to point out that those two features are entirely useless for at least some people.
Did you just claim that voluntary trade is the source of oppression?
Only government holds the "right" to initiate force as a means to an end. You have implied that capitalism is somehow oppressive, which just isn't logical. True capitalism is entirely voluntary. How in the world can an act of voluntary association be oppressive?
You have to realize that what we have in the US isn't capitalism. Not even close. On the contrary, the US government is heavily entangled in the "free" market.
You're just going to have to find a different boogie-man. Capitalism is no more oppressive than any other act of voluntary association.
How in the world did such a generic blanket statement get modded up?
you guys...
you call it...
Who exactly is "you"? Don't stereotype a group of unique individuals as if they are some kind of collective borg.
A true libertarian does not believe that anyone (including himself, including government) should posesses the "right" to initiate force as a means to an end. The moment he chose to adopt the principle of force, and abandon the principle of voluntary association, was the moment he stopped being a libertarian.
Libertarianism is founded on peaceful, voluntary interaction. There is nothing peaceful or voluntary about what happened there.
Wrong question.
Does government benefit from the increased powers and revenue that it will need to do this?
Don't look further into it than you have to. Government is simply looking for ways to expand it's business for its own benefit. Same as it's been since the beginning of civilization. Each new law that is passed -- and thousands are passed each year -- gives them a little more power, a little more revenue, and a little more precedent for the next expansion of government.
Have you ever wondered why there are so many absurd laws on the books, or what the rationale could possibly be for some of those laws? Look no further than good old fashioned self-interest. Those laws don't make sense because they don't have to make sense. Even if a government program outright fails, government still benefits by its increased powers and revenue. (This is why failed government programs are typically rewarded with more power and revenue, rather than eliminated.)
No, government doesn't want to steal your job as a parent. They simply want to exploit you (and the rest of the productive sector) for their own benefit. It just happens that eliminating your natural human rights as parents is one great way to expand government.
No -- freedom is beautiful if you can accept that your business is yours alone, and other people's business is theirs alone. The problem is that very few people are willing to accept this. Born and raised under big government (this includes most of the world), it's very difficult for people accept that other people's business is theirs alone. We've been conditioned to believe exactly the opposite, and that's why nobody has any respect for anybody else.
It's not even that complicated.
1. A crisis exists
2. Let's exploit this crisis for the benefit of the ruling class
Nothing new here. Government has been exploiting crises for its own benefit since the beginning of time.
That's a good question. If our system of law focused on restitution for the victims -- rather than simply punishment for the aggressor -- I believe we could eliminate a lot of unnecessary jail sentences. What sounds better to the average thief: having to do a year in jail and be done with it, or having to spend the next 20 years working to pay off restitution to the victim?
I suppose ENRON execs would certainly share your viewpoint.
What level of restitution are the Enron execs required to pay to their victims?
Just goes to show how unjust the law really is. Under a just system of law, how could any deliberate murder recieve anything less than a life sentence?
That depends entirely on what crimes you're talking about. Some sentences are overly long, and some are overly short. For example, the US routinely sets violent criminals free (including rapists and murderers) to make room for non-violent drug dealers. If that isn't ass-backwards, I don't know what is.
I'm not going to argue they shouldn't be punished, or better yet, forced to pay restitution to the victims. However, I don't believe the punishment fits the crime in this particular case. This is roughly the equivalant of breaking and entering, and then coming up empty handed. Let's imagine a burgler who breaks into a company office, pokes around a bit, and leaves without actually taking anything. Yes, breaking and entering is a crime. No, it does not deserve 9 years in jail (1/8 of the average person's lifespan). Most violent criminals spend less time in jail than that (but that's another topic of debate).
I can't believe I'm having to point this out to people. Government holds the keys to war and foreign intervention, not the producers or consumers of oil. Government is 100% responsible for every one of those atrocities you mentioned.