Are you implying that by expanding the scope and powers of government, the problem can be solved? Are you aware that the average US citizen already pays nearly 50% of their yearly earnings to government, through federal, state, and local taxes combined?
When a homeless person asks me nicely for help, I am glad to give it. I will gladly donate to the charities of my choice, if I determine that they deserve the contribution. I am a generous person.
However, I resent the fact that I am FORCED to contribute to some politician's idea of what's important, where half of my "donation" goes straight to administration costs, expanding the scope and powers of government at my expense. I resent the fact that I am forced to fund the welfare system, which has achieved exactly the opposite result it was supposed to.
There is a big difference between real compassion and forced contribution.
The US government, over the last year, has killed thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians in the name of political agenda. Thousands dead is no accident, by any logical measure. (Exactly how many deadly "accidents" can one commit before demonstrating intent?)
Evil? I don't think a word exists to describe this level of injustice.
Just the ones who stood to gain from it: those in power (government), or those with close connections to those in power. Alcohol prohibition, like drug prohibition, is a very efficient way to expand the scope, cost, and power of government -- and that's exactly what it accomplished. Not only does prohibition itself require increased costs and power over the people, the widespread crime which naturally results from prohibition (when's the last time anybody was murdered over coffee?) provides "justification" for even more government. And of course, the fact that it doesn't work provides "justification" for even more expensive prohibitionist policies.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but nobody can dispute the fact that government stands to gain from prohibition.
The "transaction" of slavery, being an act of aggression (force), created absolutely no wealth. The slaves' wealth -- their labor and self-ownership (liberty) -- was stolen from them and transformed into other things of value. No wealth was created at this point, because the aggressors' gain was exactly equal to what they stole from the slaves (labor and self-ownership). To put this in other words, the slaves did not magically acquire the ability to work and produce upon being enslaved. They owned that ability all along, until the aggressors stole it from them. Therefore, no wealth has been created at this point.
Here is an analogy. If a man is robbed on the street, the money in his wallet does not gain value upon transfer to the aggressor. No wealth is created by the "transaction" -- wealth is simply transferred from the victim to the aggressor. The "money" in the slaves' "wallet" is their life and labor potential. It does not increase in value upon transfer to the agressors. The aggressors gained ONLY at the victims expense. The net gain of enslavement is exactly zero: no wealth is created!
The act of later trading the result of the slaves' labor -- an act of voluntary consent -- is what actually created wealth for the aggressors, by the principle of mutual benefit I explained before.
I hope you can see now that we are talking about two distinct transactions: the transaction of slavery (an act of force), and the transaction of selling the result of the slaves' labor (an act of voluntary consent). Only the act of voluntary consent actually produced any wealth.
You really are telling my that slavery didn't create wealth?
Yes. Force cannot logically create wealth. Slavery represents only a transfer of wealth (the slaves' labor) to the aggressors. The aggressors gain exactly what the slaves lose. The net result is zero wealth created.
What I can't explain, however, is why I bother responding to such childish insults as yours.
Yes, but the post was trying to imply (quite incorrectly) that capitalism somehow makes it "easier" for money to be "wasted", when exactly the opposite is true. (Who's more likely to "waste" their wealth -- he who earns it through honest work, or he who simply takes it by force?)
Whether the money was originally owned by a fool wasn't really my concern.
A fool and their money soon part. Capitalism seems to make this easier
Funny you say that. Under socialism, the fool and his money are forced to part. In other words, the fool doesn't even have to be persuaded. What could be "easier" than that?
The problem with "pure" communism (the reason why it doesn't pan out in reality) is that it doesn't provide personal incentives to produce - all production is seized and redistributed by the state.
To expand, wealth is produced only by voluntary trade. Wealth cannot be produced by force. (Wealth may be transferred by force, but never created.) This is a basic principle of economics which not many people seem to understand.
For example, in the case of robbery, wealth is not created but simply transferred from one party to the other. The aggressor gains, but the victim loses. The net result is that zero wealth is created by the transaction (loss + gain = no more wealth existing after the transaction than before).
Socialism follows the same principle. Socialism cannot work by voluntary association -- the members of a socialist society must be forced to provide revenue for the state. (If members of the socialist society could voluntarily choose for themselves whether to provide revenue for the state, the "state" wouldn't be a state at all -- it would be free enterprise.) Under socialism, wealth is not created but simply transferred by force from one party (the individual) to another (the state). What the state does after confiscating the wealth is irrelevant.
Conversely, when two parties engage in voluntary trade, they do so precisely because each party determines that the trade will benefit them. Provided no foul play, each party gains by the transaction. The net result is that wealth is created, because the trade has served the purpose of increasing -- not decreasing -- each individual's respective wealth (gain + gain = more wealth existing after the transaction than before).
To illustrate this concept, when you go to the supermarket and voluntarily purchase a gallon of milk for $3, you do so because you'd rather have the milk than $3. You've determined that the milk is more valuable to you at this time. The supermarket voluntarily sells you the milk because they'd rather have $3 than the milk. They've determined that $3 is more valuable to them. The net result is that each parties' respective wealth is increased by the transaction. (If either parties' wealth was percieved to decrease by the transaction, they wouldn't have engaged in the transaction in the first place.)
This is why communism ("pure" socialism) is economically impossible over the long run: Without a means to produce wealth, the state can last only as long as the wealth it confiscates. When the wealth finally runs out, the state turns to forced production (slavery). Still no wealth is created -- force is used to simply transfer the wealth of the slaves (their labor) to the the state.
There are exactly 2 modes of human interaction: voluntary, and involuntary. Every possible human interaction must fall under exactly one of these two categories. I used the term "aggression" to describe involuntary interaction. (This is common terminology among liberty-leaning or libertarian groups.) Physical force is obviously an act of aggression, but by no means does an act of aggression HAVE to include physical force.
With that, stealing is clearly an act of aggression, because it is conducted on the principle of involuntary interaction. (If it was voluntary, it wouldn't be stealing.)
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets or steal bread.
What a misleading statement that is. Sleeping under bridges and begging in the streets are both acts of non-aggression, i.e. peaceful conduct. (Unless we are talking about excessive harrassment or trespassing on private property, which I don't believe we are.) Stealing, on the other hand, is clearly an act of aggression, i.e. an initiation of force.
Just what kind of a message are we trying to get across here?
there are more than 500 young American service men and servicewomen who fought and died in Iraq
Very true, and there are also thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians who were killed because of the invasion/occupation, each equally as important and deserving of life as the American soldiers. Common sense tells me that such injustice can only further enrage the proponents of terrorism. No doubt I will get flamed for this -- it's not considered "patriotic" to express concern for "collateral damage".
Just wanted to point that out, otherwise I fully agree with your post.
What we have in the US is not capitalism. In fact, the US is roughly 50% socialist.
A purely capitalist society is one in which participants in the market -- buyers and sellers -- retain 100% control over the wealth they generate. A purely socialist society is one in which the state assumes 100% control over the wealth. In the US today, the average citizen forks over nearly 50% (I think the actual figure is somewhere around 45%) of their yearly generated wealth to government, between federal, state, and local taxes combined. Obviously, this cannot be pure capitalism. It cannot even be "mostly" capitalism. It is roughly half capitalist, half socialist.
Government is so entangled in the market that it is nearly impossible to get ahead without exploiting the law -- invoking force, not voluntary association, as a means to an end. When force is employed, it's not capitalism.
Do you really believe that Microsoft got ahead without exploiting the law?
to say that the codec is "practically" lossless--or lossless in practical (listening) use--wouldn't be incorrect.
Not entirely incorrect, but still misleading. (A slightly corrupted zip archive is also "practically lossless".) The better terminology would be "super high-quality lossy compression", not "near-lossless compression".
I haven't missed anything, buddy. Regardless of what the orignal poster was "trying to say", he said something that was misleading. I corrected him. What was your problem again?
Nice try, but capitalism is not what we have in the US. Are you aware that the average US citizen is forced to pay 50% of their yearly earnings to federal, state, and local governments combined?
The paradigm of capitalism is that individuals -- not government -- choose where, when, and how to spend their earnings. The market is supposed to evolve through voluntary association, not force. What we have today in the US is a far, far cry from that.
Yes, I get it. And no, there is still no such thing as "relatively lossless" compression. "Less lossy", sure. "More lossy", sure. "Relatively lossless"? Impossible, by the technical definition of lossless compression.
I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing. I'm arguing because I want you to understand the technical difference between lossy and lossless compression. There is simply no "quality scale" for lossless compression, because there's only one value: lossless!
If you compress with lossless, then uncompress, the resulting file is bit-for-bit identical with the original. That is the definition of lossless compression. If you compress with lossy, then uncompress, the resulting file is NOT bit-for-bit identical. As you can see, there's no logical way to achieve lossy and lossless compression at the same time, so the term "relatively lossless" is just silly.
There's no "basically" or "relatively" or "almost" lossless! If it's not lossless, it's lossy.
I'm not saying that lossy compression can't sound great, even indistinguishable from the lossless master -- what I'm saying is that lossy compression is not lossless compression, by technical definition. They are apples and oranges. They are not on the same scale. Lossless doesn't have a "quality scale" like lossy -- it's simply lossless. Does zip have a quality scale? Of course not.
Clearly it is "more lossy" than E.g. JPEG or MPEG-2 Layer III, therefore those compression schemes are, relativly, "non lossy" compared to this one.
Wrong. JPEG and MPEG-2 are lossy. The fact that some compression schemes are "more lossy" does not change the design paradigm of JPEG and MPEG-2. You can say that JPEG and MPEG-2 are "less lossy" than your compression algorithm, but they are still lossy. You cannot, however, say they are "relatively non-lossy" (lossless). There is no such thing as "relatively lossless"! It's one or the other.
Compression is either lossy or lossless. It doesn't make sense to compare the two -- they are different design paradigms with different goals, different purposes. Use the right tool for the job.
If there was a lossy version of zip (this would be absurd of course), which throws away only "a little" data during the compression process, would you say that this version of zip is "relatively lossless"? Of course not! If you lose data during compression, you lose data during compression. If you don't, you don't. There's no ambiguity.
Relatively? That doesn't make sense. Compression is either lossy or lossless. There's no ambiguity.
Zip is lossless. JPEG is lossy. PNG is lossless. MP3 is lossy. Ogg Vorbis is lossy. This isn't something to debate about -- lossy compression is neither "good" nor "bad". It's a compression technique which simply trades data integrity for space. If lossy audio compression doesn't suit your needs, there are lossless formats available too (FLAC for example) which don't compromise data integrity.
Did you read the survivor's account of Hiroshima above? That could just as easily have been you. You are a human being, correct? The 300,000 who were brutally murdered on that day were also human beings. Or is there something which makes you special?
Don't blame us for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Who's this "us"? I had nothing to do with this mass murder, nor do I have anything to do with the ongoing murder of innocents in Iraq. I played no role in these murders just like I play no role in a street murder. The fact that I am forced to fund government does not, in any way, make me accountable for what government does.
Now, what makes you think your government wouldn't murder you if, for some reason, they saw fit? After all, you are an individual human being just like the victims of Hiroshima, with equal worth -- no less, no more. You are exactly as valuable to the murderers as the victims were. Right?
Lots of other countries in the world are getting fed up with Stupid Lawyer Tricks in the US.
I know it's "in" to bash lawyers (I do it too), but lawyers only attempt to exploit the law because they know the law is exploitable. The root of the problem is government. The wider the scope of government, the more complex the law, hence the more exploitable the law. The more government is entangled in private affairs, the more the law will be exploited.
The simple fact that a common man needs to hire a specialist just to *interpret* the law illustrates how overly complex the law really is. Until this is fixed (until the scope of government is reduced), the law will continue to be exploited.
I always get a kick out of the term "progressive". I mean, it's sheer marketing genius. Who in their right mind would vote against the candidate who plans to "make progress"?
Not even close. HTML is the open standard, viewable on any web browser, any platform. Flash is the proprietary enhancement to that standard, viewable on only select web broswers, select platforms.
you can use any tool improperly
I agree, but we are talking about 2 different tools designed for 2 different purposes. Flash is an enhancement to HTML, not a replacement.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you implying that by expanding the scope and powers of government, the problem can be solved? Are you aware that the average US citizen already pays nearly 50% of their yearly earnings to government, through federal, state, and local taxes combined?
When a homeless person asks me nicely for help, I am glad to give it. I will gladly donate to the charities of my choice, if I determine that they deserve the contribution. I am a generous person.
However, I resent the fact that I am FORCED to contribute to some politician's idea of what's important, where half of my "donation" goes straight to administration costs, expanding the scope and powers of government at my expense. I resent the fact that I am forced to fund the welfare system, which has achieved exactly the opposite result it was supposed to.
There is a big difference between real compassion and forced contribution.
The US government, over the last year, has killed thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians in the name of political agenda. Thousands dead is no accident, by any logical measure. (Exactly how many deadly "accidents" can one commit before demonstrating intent?)
Evil? I don't think a word exists to describe this level of injustice.
Just the ones who stood to gain from it: those in power (government), or those with close connections to those in power. Alcohol prohibition, like drug prohibition, is a very efficient way to expand the scope, cost, and power of government -- and that's exactly what it accomplished. Not only does prohibition itself require increased costs and power over the people, the widespread crime which naturally results from prohibition (when's the last time anybody was murdered over coffee?) provides "justification" for even more government. And of course, the fact that it doesn't work provides "justification" for even more expensive prohibitionist policies.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but nobody can dispute the fact that government stands to gain from prohibition.
The "transaction" of slavery, being an act of aggression (force), created absolutely no wealth. The slaves' wealth -- their labor and self-ownership (liberty) -- was stolen from them and transformed into other things of value. No wealth was created at this point, because the aggressors' gain was exactly equal to what they stole from the slaves (labor and self-ownership). To put this in other words, the slaves did not magically acquire the ability to work and produce upon being enslaved. They owned that ability all along, until the aggressors stole it from them. Therefore, no wealth has been created at this point.
Here is an analogy. If a man is robbed on the street, the money in his wallet does not gain value upon transfer to the aggressor. No wealth is created by the "transaction" -- wealth is simply transferred from the victim to the aggressor. The "money" in the slaves' "wallet" is their life and labor potential. It does not increase in value upon transfer to the agressors. The aggressors gained ONLY at the victims expense. The net gain of enslavement is exactly zero: no wealth is created!
The act of later trading the result of the slaves' labor -- an act of voluntary consent -- is what actually created wealth for the aggressors, by the principle of mutual benefit I explained before.
I hope you can see now that we are talking about two distinct transactions: the transaction of slavery (an act of force), and the transaction of selling the result of the slaves' labor (an act of voluntary consent). Only the act of voluntary consent actually produced any wealth.
Yes. Force cannot logically create wealth. Slavery represents only a transfer of wealth (the slaves' labor) to the aggressors. The aggressors gain exactly what the slaves lose. The net result is zero wealth created.
What I can't explain, however, is why I bother responding to such childish insults as yours.
Try "government of the people, by the people" at it's best.
Yes, but the post was trying to imply (quite incorrectly) that capitalism somehow makes it "easier" for money to be "wasted", when exactly the opposite is true. (Who's more likely to "waste" their wealth -- he who earns it through honest work, or he who simply takes it by force?)
Whether the money was originally owned by a fool wasn't really my concern.
Funny you say that. Under socialism, the fool and his money are forced to part. In other words, the fool doesn't even have to be persuaded. What could be "easier" than that?
To expand, wealth is produced only by voluntary trade. Wealth cannot be produced by force. (Wealth may be transferred by force, but never created.) This is a basic principle of economics which not many people seem to understand.
For example, in the case of robbery, wealth is not created but simply transferred from one party to the other. The aggressor gains, but the victim loses. The net result is that zero wealth is created by the transaction (loss + gain = no more wealth existing after the transaction than before).
Socialism follows the same principle. Socialism cannot work by voluntary association -- the members of a socialist society must be forced to provide revenue for the state. (If members of the socialist society could voluntarily choose for themselves whether to provide revenue for the state, the "state" wouldn't be a state at all -- it would be free enterprise.) Under socialism, wealth is not created but simply transferred by force from one party (the individual) to another (the state). What the state does after confiscating the wealth is irrelevant.
Conversely, when two parties engage in voluntary trade, they do so precisely because each party determines that the trade will benefit them. Provided no foul play, each party gains by the transaction. The net result is that wealth is created, because the trade has served the purpose of increasing -- not decreasing -- each individual's respective wealth (gain + gain = more wealth existing after the transaction than before).
To illustrate this concept, when you go to the supermarket and voluntarily purchase a gallon of milk for $3, you do so because you'd rather have the milk than $3. You've determined that the milk is more valuable to you at this time. The supermarket voluntarily sells you the milk because they'd rather have $3 than the milk. They've determined that $3 is more valuable to them. The net result is that each parties' respective wealth is increased by the transaction. (If either parties' wealth was percieved to decrease by the transaction, they wouldn't have engaged in the transaction in the first place.)
This is why communism ("pure" socialism) is economically impossible over the long run: Without a means to produce wealth, the state can last only as long as the wealth it confiscates. When the wealth finally runs out, the state turns to forced production (slavery). Still no wealth is created -- force is used to simply transfer the wealth of the slaves (their labor) to the the state.
We're not on the same page.
There are exactly 2 modes of human interaction: voluntary, and involuntary. Every possible human interaction must fall under exactly one of these two categories. I used the term "aggression" to describe involuntary interaction. (This is common terminology among liberty-leaning or libertarian groups.) Physical force is obviously an act of aggression, but by no means does an act of aggression HAVE to include physical force.
With that, stealing is clearly an act of aggression, because it is conducted on the principle of involuntary interaction. (If it was voluntary, it wouldn't be stealing.)
What a misleading statement that is. Sleeping under bridges and begging in the streets are both acts of non-aggression, i.e. peaceful conduct. (Unless we are talking about excessive harrassment or trespassing on private property, which I don't believe we are.) Stealing, on the other hand, is clearly an act of aggression, i.e. an initiation of force.
Just what kind of a message are we trying to get across here?
Very true, and there are also thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians who were killed because of the invasion/occupation, each equally as important and deserving of life as the American soldiers. Common sense tells me that such injustice can only further enrage the proponents of terrorism. No doubt I will get flamed for this -- it's not considered "patriotic" to express concern for "collateral damage".
Just wanted to point that out, otherwise I fully agree with your post.
Don't be silly. Corporations may attempt to bribe government, but you cannot claim that a corporation is at fault when government accepts the bribe!
Government holds the key, not the corporations. The law is exploitable precisely because government made it so.
If government is "controlled" by the corporations, then government -- not the corporations -- has a lot of explaining to do.
A purely capitalist society is one in which participants in the market -- buyers and sellers -- retain 100% control over the wealth they generate. A purely socialist society is one in which the state assumes 100% control over the wealth. In the US today, the average citizen forks over nearly 50% (I think the actual figure is somewhere around 45%) of their yearly generated wealth to government, between federal, state, and local taxes combined. Obviously, this cannot be pure capitalism. It cannot even be "mostly" capitalism. It is roughly half capitalist, half socialist.
Government is so entangled in the market that it is nearly impossible to get ahead without exploiting the law -- invoking force, not voluntary association, as a means to an end. When force is employed, it's not capitalism.
Do you really believe that Microsoft got ahead without exploiting the law?
Not entirely incorrect, but still misleading. (A slightly corrupted zip archive is also "practically lossless".) The better terminology would be "super high-quality lossy compression", not "near-lossless compression".
I haven't missed anything, buddy. Regardless of what the orignal poster was "trying to say", he said something that was misleading. I corrected him. What was your problem again?
Nice try, but capitalism is not what we have in the US. Are you aware that the average US citizen is forced to pay 50% of their yearly earnings to federal, state, and local governments combined?
The paradigm of capitalism is that individuals -- not government -- choose where, when, and how to spend their earnings. The market is supposed to evolve through voluntary association, not force. What we have today in the US is a far, far cry from that.
Yes, I get it. And no, there is still no such thing as "relatively lossless" compression. "Less lossy", sure. "More lossy", sure. "Relatively lossless"? Impossible, by the technical definition of lossless compression.
I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing. I'm arguing because I want you to understand the technical difference between lossy and lossless compression. There is simply no "quality scale" for lossless compression, because there's only one value: lossless!
If you compress with lossless, then uncompress, the resulting file is bit-for-bit identical with the original. That is the definition of lossless compression. If you compress with lossy, then uncompress, the resulting file is NOT bit-for-bit identical. As you can see, there's no logical way to achieve lossy and lossless compression at the same time, so the term "relatively lossless" is just silly.
There's no "basically" or "relatively" or "almost" lossless! If it's not lossless, it's lossy.
I'm not saying that lossy compression can't sound great, even indistinguishable from the lossless master -- what I'm saying is that lossy compression is not lossless compression, by technical definition. They are apples and oranges. They are not on the same scale. Lossless doesn't have a "quality scale" like lossy -- it's simply lossless. Does zip have a quality scale? Of course not.
Wrong. JPEG and MPEG-2 are lossy. The fact that some compression schemes are "more lossy" does not change the design paradigm of JPEG and MPEG-2. You can say that JPEG and MPEG-2 are "less lossy" than your compression algorithm, but they are still lossy. You cannot, however, say they are "relatively non-lossy" (lossless). There is no such thing as "relatively lossless"! It's one or the other.
Compression is either lossy or lossless. It doesn't make sense to compare the two -- they are different design paradigms with different goals, different purposes. Use the right tool for the job.
If there was a lossy version of zip (this would be absurd of course), which throws away only "a little" data during the compression process, would you say that this version of zip is "relatively lossless"? Of course not! If you lose data during compression, you lose data during compression. If you don't, you don't. There's no ambiguity.
Relatively? That doesn't make sense. Compression is either lossy or lossless. There's no ambiguity.
Zip is lossless. JPEG is lossy. PNG is lossless. MP3 is lossy. Ogg Vorbis is lossy. This isn't something to debate about -- lossy compression is neither "good" nor "bad". It's a compression technique which simply trades data integrity for space. If lossy audio compression doesn't suit your needs, there are lossless formats available too (FLAC for example) which don't compromise data integrity.
Don't blame us for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Who's this "us"? I had nothing to do with this mass murder, nor do I have anything to do with the ongoing murder of innocents in Iraq. I played no role in these murders just like I play no role in a street murder. The fact that I am forced to fund government does not, in any way, make me accountable for what government does.
Now, what makes you think your government wouldn't murder you if, for some reason, they saw fit? After all, you are an individual human being just like the victims of Hiroshima, with equal worth -- no less, no more. You are exactly as valuable to the murderers as the victims were. Right?
I know it's "in" to bash lawyers (I do it too), but lawyers only attempt to exploit the law because they know the law is exploitable. The root of the problem is government. The wider the scope of government, the more complex the law, hence the more exploitable the law. The more government is entangled in private affairs, the more the law will be exploited.
The simple fact that a common man needs to hire a specialist just to *interpret* the law illustrates how overly complex the law really is. Until this is fixed (until the scope of government is reduced), the law will continue to be exploited.
I always get a kick out of the term "progressive". I mean, it's sheer marketing genius. Who in their right mind would vote against the candidate who plans to "make progress"?
you can use any tool improperly
I agree, but we are talking about 2 different tools designed for 2 different purposes. Flash is an enhancement to HTML, not a replacement.