You know what would really save money? Limiting the size of government in the first place. It's really disturbing that nobody questions WHY government needs to take this much money from the people in the first place; they only squabble over where the money goes.
Everyone wants a piece of the pie, they say. Well, I say instead of baking more pie, we need to eliminate the pie.
That pre-packaged insult which associates Linux with communism is particularly ridiculous. Communism describes a society based on force, where a central "planner" (government) controls the economy -- by force. Capitalism, on the other hand, describes a socity devoid of force, where the people are free to engage in trade according to their own agenda, not the agenda of those in power. Capitalism is freedom; communism is oppression.
The notion of "working together towards a common goal" has absolutely nothing to do with it. The notion of profit has nothing to do with it. Capitalism does not guarantee business success; it only guarantees the freedom necessary to create business. By the same token, communism does not guarantee social advancement (or whatever the goal may be) -- it only guarantees force. The simple difference between the two is defined in terms of voluntary association.
The only question we have to ask, in regard to whether Linux (or OSS in general) represents communism or capitalism, is whether the OSS developers are forced to work (involuntary association), or whether they work by their own interests (voluntary association). So the answer should be quite clear. Linux (and OSS in general) represent capitalism, because the people who develop these products do so by voluntary association, and not by compulsion.
So you have redefined "profit" as size and power rather than as money.
In the business of government, that is exactly what profit is. Power is directly proportional to profit, because power guarantees profit. How could it not?
Power is the ultimate "business model". When you make a business transaction based on power, you don't worry about whether or not your "client" is going to accept your "offer". By the very definition of power, they have no choice!
Considering that the patent office has turned into a revenue source for the government I'd say it's worse.
Every government program is a revenue source, because every government program has the specific effect of expanding the cost, scope, and powers of government. If it wasn't a revenue source, they wouldn't be involved in the first place.
the U.S. government will spending over $300 million dollars more than it takes in next year
And that's profit. Let me explain...
Government is a business, but the business of government is fundamentally different than free trade. One important difference between government and private business is that government does not generate its own revenue through voluntary association, i.e. calculated risk. They simply take what they want, by force, from the people who actually do generate income through risk. In the business of government, there is no financial consequence for making a bad business decision. Those who are directly responsible for making the bad decision may or may not be removed from power, but government as a whole still profits. Why? Because they have already expanded their "market share", i.e. they have succeeded in creating new responsibilities for government. In other words, they have succeeded in growing their business.
To elaborate -- when a private business makes a bad investment, they are penalized through loss of revenue. When a government program fails (drug prohibition to cite an obvious example) it is often rewarded with more revenue. Why? Because government, holding a monopoly on force as a business model, (a) has no competitors, and (b) doesn't answer to the "market" (the people) as private business must. Simply put, government makes its own rules. The fact that we get to choose who gets the power does not, in any conceivable way, remove the element of power from government.
Therefore, when government spends more than it "earns", those in power suffer no loss. Case in point: the US government has been consistently spending more than it "earns" for the past century -- check the national debt if you need proof -- yet those in power today hold more power than anyone before them, and they have more revenue at their disposal than ever before. The US government is bigger and more powerful than ever before. Profit!
Just to be sure, why exactly should I be penalized because you feel it's important to have government involved in space exploration? Remember, there are millions of people who don't approve of this use of tax dollars, but they are still forced to support it.
Hold up moderators -- this no troll. I have a legitimate question here. What makes this arbitrary use of government so important that I should be FORCED to support it?
The key to space exploration is not bigger, more oppressive government. If we really want space exploration to "take off", we need to remove government from the picture, and give the money back to those who know how to spend it best: those who actually earned it in the first place.
I hate to bring it up, but the US government space program has failed spectacularly not once but twice. If that was a private firm competing in the market, they would have been driven into the ground a long time ago, and rightly so. When a government program fails, they are often rewarded with more funding -- digging us even deeper into the hold.
What does the federal government do with tax dollars?
They take money from some people, keep a profit for themselves, and distribute the rest to other people. That is the simple business model of government, and just in case you missed the "profit" part, there is a very good reason why the US government has grown immensely over the past century: it benefits those in power.
The fix is simple: we need to drastically reduce the size of government. The fact that the US government is in debt in the first place is, at the root, an indication that government has grown too big and now causes more problems than it solves. Big government just doesn't work -- if it did, they wouldn't be in debt.
So, we're going to propose more government to solve a problem that was created by government in the first place? That's duct tape. It might appear to fix the problem at first, but eventually it will get worse.
The permanent solution is to eliminate the powers of government which created the monopoly in the first place. We need open competition, not centralized power.
In fact, every single time the U.S. has planned, and implemented a "liberation" of a country, it has turned out for the betterment of those people.
Bullshit. That is pure opinion. Why don't we ask the thousands of innocent civilians who have been slaughtered by the US government over the past century whether THEY agree that it was worth sacrificing their lives, family, and friends for some "moral cause" defined by some foreign superpower government? For christ's sake, put yourself in these people's shoes for once.
Wake up, and have a look outside the comfort of your propaganda bin. The world does NOT unanimously support the US empire.
It's simple, but nobody wants to believe it: War is the health of the state. War is the single most effective way to increase the power and scope of government. History has proven it time and time again. The government which can successfully make a business out of war is the government which enjoys nearly unlimited power over its people.
We need to realize that government is a business. Like any business, government's objective is to serve its own interests: to profit. The main difference between government and private business, which most people don't realize, is that government is the only business that may "legally" initiate force as a business model. This is exactly why government MUST be strictly limited in power -- abuse of power is not just possible, it is inevitable. As the saying goes -- power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The only solution to this problem is to apply strict limits on the scope and power of government (as the founders proposed) -- a solution which directly conflicts with the objectives of those in power.
There is an even bigger lie associated with the invasion -- the lie that human lives can be sacrificed for the "common good" (i.e. the agenda of those in power). The lie that an individual does not own his own life, and that those in power (government) have the right to override the individual's right to life according to their agenda.
This is the lie of "collateral damage", and it proposes that all innocent deaths or injuries in time of war are ACCIDENTS. But, according to the rationale of those in power, there is no way to avoid "collateral damage" without abandoning the war -- a "greater cause" as they propose -- so we should all just accept it.
Stop right there. If "collateral damage" is unavoidable, then how can it be considered an accidental event? It can't. Although the US government would never admit it, they KNEW that innocent people would die in this war. They didn't know exactly who, or when, or how -- but they knew that innocent people would die.
Am I proposing that the US government set out to kill innocents on purpose? You're damn right I am. They made a concious decision to sacrifice innocent lives for their cause. That, my friends, is the common definition of "terrorism".
Anything that will help level the world playing field is good for world stability and peace.
Not necessarily. The US is a threat to world peace because the US government holds too much power. The root of the problem is POWER -- more specifically, the ability to initiate force. If the EU follows the path of the US, the problem gets worse. It doesn't matter who holds the power. Power will be abused, just like power has been abused since the beginning of time. Power is the problem, not the solution.
The permanent solution is to limit the powers of government, not to expand them.
"We" (the individual US citizens) do not make the decisions on how and when to invoke the force of government. Only the US government makes those decisions. Please, when you refer to the US government, do not imply that the citizens are implicitly supportive of US government.
End result of the US decision to invade ? Thousands of Iraqi civilians dead (not to count tens of thousands of Iraqi army personnel), no WMDs found and the chances of terrorist attacks have increased as people see the US as invading and subjugating another muslim country.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but the outcome provides even more "justifications" for expanding the scope and power of the US government.
What's this "us" about? "We" (individual US citizens with individual opinions) don't make the decision to invoke the force of government, military or otherwise. Only government makes that decision. "We" didn't attack Iraq, and "we" certainly didn't kill any innocent Iraqis. It was the US government that attacked Iraq, and it was the US government that killed innocent Iraqis.
Please, don't fall into the trap of equating the US government's agenda with the individual citizens.
I can't imagine Congress ever outlawing Linux, but if there was anything that could bring that day closer, this is probably it.
Congress would outlaw Linux -- or anything else you can imagine -- if (a) they determine that it would benefit them, and (b) they determine that they can get away with it. Sad but very true.
Remember, there was a time when nobody could imagine the US government waging war against peaceful individuals. Today, the US holds more prisoners per population than any other country in the world -- and the vast majority are drug users or dealers who have initiated no force against anyone. There was also a time when nobody could imagine the US government becoming a world-wide empire which invokes military force as a political weapon. Today, the US government has troops in some 150 countries around the world, is deeply engangled in many countries' political and military programs, invokes military force on a regular basis, and considers the killing of innocent people a necessary side effect of their agenda.
The root of the problem is that government holds too much power. Under no circumstances should any government have the right to force you to abandon (or adopt) any product or service, so long as you have initiated no force against another human being.
I have a feeling that somebody in the patent office has got the idea in their head that handing these out is helping the "economic recovery".
It's not even that complicated. In a nutshell, the more patents, the more "responsibility" (power/profit) for those in control. More patents brings more complexity/ambiguity to the law, which requires even more government. Basically, they're creating a "market" for their "service" (law), by forcing "solutions" which create more problems than they solve. That's the name of the game.
If you literally get rid of all the government control over peoples' lives, that's called anarchy. That system won't work, as I've argued above. That's "literal" Libertarianism, and it is a fatally flawed system.
By this statement I can see that you have no idea what Libertarianism is really about. See this site for a good intro. In a nutshell, the Libertarian philosophy says that force (government) should only be used to protect against force (theft, fraud, physical force, etc).
it's disgusting how far we've devolved into this stupid little legalistic society where everybody is suing everybody else for the dumbest reasons
I agree completely. Want to know what's responsible for the transformation? It's not the lawyers. It's not the corporations. And it sure as hell ain't "the people".
The reason why society has widely adopted back-stabbing as the road to success -- as opposed to personal responsibility and honest achievement -- is the nanny state.
In general, the bigger and more powerful government becomes, the more the average ignorant joe thinks he is entitled to, and the less he thinks he has to work for it. Government is so entangled in nearly every aspect of the average joe's life that he thinks government is the answer to any concievable problem that crops up. And this is no mistake. Government is a business, and like any business, one of the major goals is to lock your "clients" into your particular service. More government breeds more problems, and more problems breed more government.
It's a win-win situation for those in power (government), and for the successful backstabbers as well, and of course for the lawyers. But what about those who just want to live their lives in peace, achieving through honest means, accepting total responsibility for themselves -- and ONLY themselves? We're screwed. The only possible way to reverse the transformation is to reduce the size of government, an objective which directly conflicts with the objectives of those in power.
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You know what would really save money? Limiting the size of government in the first place. It's really disturbing that nobody questions WHY government needs to take this much money from the people in the first place; they only squabble over where the money goes.
Everyone wants a piece of the pie, they say. Well, I say instead of baking more pie, we need to eliminate the pie.
That pre-packaged insult which associates Linux with communism is particularly ridiculous. Communism describes a society based on force, where a central "planner" (government) controls the economy -- by force. Capitalism, on the other hand, describes a socity devoid of force, where the people are free to engage in trade according to their own agenda, not the agenda of those in power. Capitalism is freedom; communism is oppression.
The notion of "working together towards a common goal" has absolutely nothing to do with it. The notion of profit has nothing to do with it. Capitalism does not guarantee business success; it only guarantees the freedom necessary to create business. By the same token, communism does not guarantee social advancement (or whatever the goal may be) -- it only guarantees force. The simple difference between the two is defined in terms of voluntary association.
The only question we have to ask, in regard to whether Linux (or OSS in general) represents communism or capitalism, is whether the OSS developers are forced to work (involuntary association), or whether they work by their own interests (voluntary association). So the answer should be quite clear. Linux (and OSS in general) represent capitalism, because the people who develop these products do so by voluntary association, and not by compulsion.
I'd say that open source depends more on contract than copyright.
In the business of government, that is exactly what profit is. Power is directly proportional to profit, because power guarantees profit. How could it not?
Power is the ultimate "business model". When you make a business transaction based on power, you don't worry about whether or not your "client" is going to accept your "offer". By the very definition of power, they have no choice!
Every government program is a revenue source, because every government program has the specific effect of expanding the cost, scope, and powers of government. If it wasn't a revenue source, they wouldn't be involved in the first place.
And that's profit. Let me explain...
Government is a business, but the business of government is fundamentally different than free trade. One important difference between government and private business is that government does not generate its own revenue through voluntary association, i.e. calculated risk. They simply take what they want, by force, from the people who actually do generate income through risk. In the business of government, there is no financial consequence for making a bad business decision. Those who are directly responsible for making the bad decision may or may not be removed from power, but government as a whole still profits. Why? Because they have already expanded their "market share", i.e. they have succeeded in creating new responsibilities for government. In other words, they have succeeded in growing their business.
To elaborate -- when a private business makes a bad investment, they are penalized through loss of revenue. When a government program fails (drug prohibition to cite an obvious example) it is often rewarded with more revenue. Why? Because government, holding a monopoly on force as a business model, (a) has no competitors, and (b) doesn't answer to the "market" (the people) as private business must. Simply put, government makes its own rules. The fact that we get to choose who gets the power does not, in any conceivable way, remove the element of power from government.
Therefore, when government spends more than it "earns", those in power suffer no loss. Case in point: the US government has been consistently spending more than it "earns" for the past century -- check the national debt if you need proof -- yet those in power today hold more power than anyone before them, and they have more revenue at their disposal than ever before. The US government is bigger and more powerful than ever before. Profit!
Just to be sure, why exactly should I be penalized because you feel it's important to have government involved in space exploration? Remember, there are millions of people who don't approve of this use of tax dollars, but they are still forced to support it.
Hold up moderators -- this no troll. I have a legitimate question here. What makes this arbitrary use of government so important that I should be FORCED to support it?
The key to space exploration is not bigger, more oppressive government. If we really want space exploration to "take off", we need to remove government from the picture, and give the money back to those who know how to spend it best: those who actually earned it in the first place.
I hate to bring it up, but the US government space program has failed spectacularly not once but twice. If that was a private firm competing in the market, they would have been driven into the ground a long time ago, and rightly so. When a government program fails, they are often rewarded with more funding -- digging us even deeper into the hold.
They take money from some people, keep a profit for themselves, and distribute the rest to other people. That is the simple business model of government, and just in case you missed the "profit" part, there is a very good reason why the US government has grown immensely over the past century: it benefits those in power.
The fix is simple: we need to drastically reduce the size of government. The fact that the US government is in debt in the first place is, at the root, an indication that government has grown too big and now causes more problems than it solves. Big government just doesn't work -- if it did, they wouldn't be in debt.
So, we're going to propose more government to solve a problem that was created by government in the first place? That's duct tape. It might appear to fix the problem at first, but eventually it will get worse.
The permanent solution is to eliminate the powers of government which created the monopoly in the first place. We need open competition, not centralized power.
Bullshit. That is pure opinion. Why don't we ask the thousands of innocent civilians who have been slaughtered by the US government over the past century whether THEY agree that it was worth sacrificing their lives, family, and friends for some "moral cause" defined by some foreign superpower government? For christ's sake, put yourself in these people's shoes for once.
Wake up, and have a look outside the comfort of your propaganda bin. The world does NOT unanimously support the US empire.
It's simple, but nobody wants to believe it: War is the health of the state. War is the single most effective way to increase the power and scope of government. History has proven it time and time again. The government which can successfully make a business out of war is the government which enjoys nearly unlimited power over its people.
We need to realize that government is a business. Like any business, government's objective is to serve its own interests: to profit. The main difference between government and private business, which most people don't realize, is that government is the only business that may "legally" initiate force as a business model. This is exactly why government MUST be strictly limited in power -- abuse of power is not just possible, it is inevitable. As the saying goes -- power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The only solution to this problem is to apply strict limits on the scope and power of government (as the founders proposed) -- a solution which directly conflicts with the objectives of those in power.
There is an even bigger lie associated with the invasion -- the lie that human lives can be sacrificed for the "common good" (i.e. the agenda of those in power). The lie that an individual does not own his own life, and that those in power (government) have the right to override the individual's right to life according to their agenda.
This is the lie of "collateral damage", and it proposes that all innocent deaths or injuries in time of war are ACCIDENTS. But, according to the rationale of those in power, there is no way to avoid "collateral damage" without abandoning the war -- a "greater cause" as they propose -- so we should all just accept it.
Stop right there. If "collateral damage" is unavoidable, then how can it be considered an accidental event? It can't. Although the US government would never admit it, they KNEW that innocent people would die in this war. They didn't know exactly who, or when, or how -- but they knew that innocent people would die.
Am I proposing that the US government set out to kill innocents on purpose? You're damn right I am. They made a concious decision to sacrifice innocent lives for their cause. That, my friends, is the common definition of "terrorism".
Good summary. The dam is nothing but a pork barrel project: a way to expand the cost/power of government for the benefit of those in power.
Flamebait? Too bad you had to use mod points to counter my valid point. Next time, perhaps you can actually come up with a counterpoint on your own.
Not necessarily. The US is a threat to world peace because the US government holds too much power. The root of the problem is POWER -- more specifically, the ability to initiate force. If the EU follows the path of the US, the problem gets worse. It doesn't matter who holds the power. Power will be abused, just like power has been abused since the beginning of time. Power is the problem, not the solution.
The permanent solution is to limit the powers of government, not to expand them.
"We" (the individual US citizens) do not make the decisions on how and when to invoke the force of government. Only the US government makes those decisions. Please, when you refer to the US government, do not imply that the citizens are implicitly supportive of US government.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but the outcome provides even more "justifications" for expanding the scope and power of the US government.
What's this "us" about? "We" (individual US citizens with individual opinions) don't make the decision to invoke the force of government, military or otherwise. Only government makes that decision. "We" didn't attack Iraq, and "we" certainly didn't kill any innocent Iraqis. It was the US government that attacked Iraq, and it was the US government that killed innocent Iraqis.
Please, don't fall into the trap of equating the US government's agenda with the individual citizens.
The question is whether it is moral to initiate force against an individual who has initiated no force themselves.
Congress would outlaw Linux -- or anything else you can imagine -- if (a) they determine that it would benefit them, and (b) they determine that they can get away with it. Sad but very true.
Remember, there was a time when nobody could imagine the US government waging war against peaceful individuals. Today, the US holds more prisoners per population than any other country in the world -- and the vast majority are drug users or dealers who have initiated no force against anyone. There was also a time when nobody could imagine the US government becoming a world-wide empire which invokes military force as a political weapon. Today, the US government has troops in some 150 countries around the world, is deeply engangled in many countries' political and military programs, invokes military force on a regular basis, and considers the killing of innocent people a necessary side effect of their agenda.
The root of the problem is that government holds too much power. Under no circumstances should any government have the right to force you to abandon (or adopt) any product or service, so long as you have initiated no force against another human being.
It also makes criminals out of innocents, much like drug prohibition. As the saying goes, you can't rule a nation of innocents.
It's not even that complicated. In a nutshell, the more patents, the more "responsibility" (power/profit) for those in control. More patents brings more complexity/ambiguity to the law, which requires even more government. Basically, they're creating a "market" for their "service" (law), by forcing "solutions" which create more problems than they solve. That's the name of the game.
By this statement I can see that you have no idea what Libertarianism is really about. See this site for a good intro. In a nutshell, the Libertarian philosophy says that force (government) should only be used to protect against force (theft, fraud, physical force, etc).
I agree completely. Want to know what's responsible for the transformation? It's not the lawyers. It's not the corporations. And it sure as hell ain't "the people".
The reason why society has widely adopted back-stabbing as the road to success -- as opposed to personal responsibility and honest achievement -- is the nanny state.
In general, the bigger and more powerful government becomes, the more the average ignorant joe thinks he is entitled to, and the less he thinks he has to work for it. Government is so entangled in nearly every aspect of the average joe's life that he thinks government is the answer to any concievable problem that crops up. And this is no mistake. Government is a business, and like any business, one of the major goals is to lock your "clients" into your particular service. More government breeds more problems, and more problems breed more government.
It's a win-win situation for those in power (government), and for the successful backstabbers as well, and of course for the lawyers. But what about those who just want to live their lives in peace, achieving through honest means, accepting total responsibility for themselves -- and ONLY themselves? We're screwed. The only possible way to reverse the transformation is to reduce the size of government, an objective which directly conflicts with the objectives of those in power.