To play devil's advocate (pardon the reference), who\what created the laws of physics? Were they created at some point in time? Have they just always "been"? If so, why couldn't a "creator" just always have "been"? Or, why couldn't a "creator" just appear at some point in time.
Of course you can easily prove the existence of one and not the other, but it doesn't solve the question of origin for either.
The question is still left to the philosophers I suppose, "why anything at all?"
Science seeks to explain observed phenomena in nature. It is axiomatic to science that nature runs in accordance to laws, not due to the mind of an unseen intelligence.
People have incorrectly used "God" to explain the gap in there understanding (ie, those lights in the sky are angels changing the scenery for the end-times, rather than being a meteor shower).
But if there is a God, science will never find it because it is axiomatic that you don't use God to explain observed phenomena. So in order to explain things of complexity in nature, science has to find an explanation that does not include God. Sometimes this produces theories that are accepted for a time, but only later to be discounted.
Science naturally produces theories like the Big Bang and evolution, because those are theories that explain how complex things come into being without the need for a God. But even those theories cannot escape the "gaps" in understanding, which are sometimes passed off as "something that obviously happened, we just don't know how."
Evolution theories get more an more complex (right or wrong). Since science must explain the existence of humans without God directly and constantly intervening, evolution makes the most sense. But when the data is put to the theory, gaps occur. Like when one species of humans scientifically cannot have evolved from species A to species B, then is it proposed that both species A and B must have had a common ancestor C, even if there is no evidence of a species C. Then some may go looking for species C to fuel the evidence for this model, and then they may or may not find something they claim to be species C. If they don't find something they can claim to be species C, then the theories are reworked. If they do find something attributed to species C, then the cycle usually repeats itself (then what is the ancestor of species C?).
The evolution ancestor tree or more like a sprawling bush now, but since the exclusion of God is axiomatic, and evolution is the best theory of scientific explanation, it must be true that the ancestor bush is correct. "Data" never says anything. You can't "look at what the data says." You can only come up with a theory and see if the data fits.
But the point can be made that evolution cannot be tested because we can't actually observe the ancestor bush. We can observe things that seem consistent with evolution (fruit flies and DNA patterns) but we can't watch the single cell ancestor slowly become a modern human. So evolution becomes inherently un-falsifiable until someone acutally starts an experiment that does exactly what evolution theory says happened in the past. But even then, it would only show that it could have happened a certain way, not that it only could have occurred that way.
Creantionists (or whatever ID-ists) have the same problem. They take what they read in the Bible (or other evidence of a supreme intelligence) and show that observed natural phenomena could have been caused by "God" (a great flood is consistent with observed phenomena, so does that mean the observed phenomena could only have been caused by a great flood?).
The debate about evolution has always been about the existence of God. But I submit that science will never give proof of God because it is axiomatic that there is no "supernatural" interference in observed phenomena.
Creationists will continue to try to show that their theories are consistent with observed phenomena. Evolutionists will continue to show that humans can exist now without the need for a God to explain their existence.
What if there is a third option? The Big Bang was the only widely accepted theory of the origin of the universe and now that is losing traction. Will the theory of evolution ever fall out of favor with scientists?
What if science uncovers dimensions previously unknown to us? Or forces, or theories of matter, or genetics that cause us to rethink a lot of our theories?
What if science figures out a better theory than e
The guys at theserverside.com have shown that the CNet article puts the circumstances differently:
Green will be leaving to join another software venture, according to Sun. Green tendered his resignation several weeks ago but waited until the Microsoft agreement was settled before announcing his departure, a Sun representative said Monday. The changes were announced internally on Friday.
I am in the SLC area and this ticks me off. I am a programmer that connects remotely to the home office maybe 80% of the time. I couldn't pay USWest (Qwest) anything for them to install a DSL line. They said they could not give special treatment to anyone by law, which apparently meant that the "rich" (those willing to pay) could not even pay them to install DSL lines in my neighborhood. We had to wait until they were ready. It has been over 3 years so far and no sign of DSL. No cable either.
I eventually went with StarBand, then ISDN (took them 4 months), Radio, then back to ISDN, but I still can't get that DSL.
So now the gov is going to come in and fix the "sluggish" implementation of high-speed internet?! Please
Economics is the study of choice. This implies that there is scarity of something (otherwise you wouldn't have to choose). Economics theory suggests that individuals make rational choices in the context of the information that they have. "Rational" only means that the individual takes costs and benefits into consideration (although it is not as simple as whether the benefits outweigh the costs), as well as future expectations. Information is never perfect so individuals uses their own estimates of things like Expected Utility from a certain action, or inaction, in order to make their choices. Since money is scarce (meaning not-unlimited), money is a convenient ways to measure and observers individuals' choices. Economic theory attempted to describe behavior of some things in groups (businesses, whole economies), but the number of variables gets very large, and the number of "external shocks" makes measurement and prediction difficult, so normally we are only making observations of patterns rather than predictions.
When information is very incomplete and hard to quantify, then it becomes extremely hard to predict individuals' behaviors because they will all have different expectations and assumptions (which is probably why politics gets so heated). Socionomics sounds more like the prediction of the acts and decisions of groups of people when their information, assumptions, expectations, etc. are all very different. They could all still be acting rationally, but economic theory won't help much predicting how the groups will act.
I doubt they are calling it the "Java Desktop System" just for branding. It wouldn't surprise me if the JDC has a whole Java API suite for using the OS and desktop. Things like setting group/file permissions, monitoring (maybe using JMX) the OS, security, window controls, whatever. Perhaps Sun hasn't found any companies willing to expose their OS to a Java API so Sun will do it themselves. Perhaps their vendor implementation will be Linux/GNOME.
If what I'm hoping is right, this would be really cool, and would really change desktop software and how people use the OS.
I suggest getting another friend as your economic guru. Saying that a reduction in R&D is because the president isn't supposedly focused on the economy is quite a stretch. The oversimplification that people are holding on to their money is a strange notion. If people are holding on to their money, then where's their money? Anywhere (anywhere!) besides in the mattress provides capital to people\businesses and the people\business that are perceived to have the best ideas for creating more capital get the money.
If you have to do something with your $1000 bucks, you want to give it to a guy who will probably turn it into $1010, or to a guy who will turn it into $1050? $1050 of course. If that guy is a house-builder, so be it. If he represents a company that wants to do some R&D for some product, so be it.
If you just put your money in the bank, then they lend it out for you, to whomever they think will give them the best return. If you buy a DVD player, proceeds for that go to the manufacturer and they then decide how much of the proceeds should go towards R&D to provide either the same product for less (increasing their profits) or to create a new product or to be paid out to their shareholders or whatever. They will determine what will give them the best return on investment.
If a business needs funding for research, they can go to investors. Investors use either their own money or the money of others that they represent. These "others" can be stockholders (or other types of funds) or members of some groups (like a bank) that is looking for a place to invest their money.
If overseas companies do more R&D than US companies than that means they have a different expectation of what the returns will be for their R&D. Some industries are positioned to gain more from R&D (like manufacturing) than other industries (like services). So you would exect to see Indonesia perhaps doing more R&D than Meryll Lynch, or Accenture, or AOL.
Where's the president's role? Market forces are way bigger than what the president (any president) can influence. Laws only foster economic growth in three ways: protection of property rights, lowered transaction costs, and general peace. However, laws can significantly curtail growth by doing things that negatively affect the three things mentioned.
So what should the president do to "focus" on the economy. Actually, I think we should pay for ever citizen to attend an Economics 101 class.
It doesn't make much sense to complain about something you agreed to. If you have a problem with it beforehand, take it up with the other party. Afterwards, what are you going to do?
If the other party tries to change the conditions after you both agreed to the initial conditions, then you have a legitimate issue (although it may just be that you did't fully understand the original terms, or you were hoping they wouldn't change into something you didn't like, even after you agreed to them).
I never was trying to establish fact that this was a gift from the gov to MIT. I was giving an example to prove a point. And if MIT didn't accept the conditions, then fine, what is the big deal? They don't have to. But I don't understand the outrage that some slashdotters are expressing against the gov.
By the way, it's spelled "moot." Go back to school (although you are probably some high school kid in Europe, looking at your arguments).
Whoever this genius and anonymous coward is, I wasn't refering to the legal right to complain. It is not ethnical, it is not common courtesy, it is not moral to receive something from someone and then complain about the gift. Just don't take the gift.
MIT is not making this a legal argument, so why are you?
You are exactly right. What right\priveledge does any school have to take money from the government for anything, and then complain about the conditions of getting the money? A korean saying goes something like, "Beggars can't complain of cold rice." I'd like to see MIT strut their "principles" and not accept any money from the government at all. If part of the conditions of the grant is that only american citizens can work on it, then fine. Noboby has to accept the money. The fact that this whole issue has gotten so much attention on Slashdot I think is sad. Everything seems to turning toward political issues rather than technological issues.
No, you don't understand his premise: allowing anti-Americans into the US will contribute to the ruin of American Enterprise.
You are trying to nullify his statement by being overly-specific about who the "anti-Americans" are, and what "anti-American" means, and using this to disprove the premise. But the argument is only about whether his premise is true, not what is anti-American.
The premise is correct, so then only the discussion of what constitutes anti-Americanism remains. This you should do without using any country as an example. After you have the paramaters established, then you compare countries and see if the match the parameters. You want to jump to the conclusion that he is targetting Mexicans, and you are making assumptions as to why.
Trying to type-cast me as someone who is not down to earth is consistent with you response to the article.
Whatever grudges the average Mexican might (legitimately, IMHO) harbor over the loss of Texas...
I don't think this is a reason that (many) Mexicans dislike the US.
The fact remains: as a source of anti-American rhetoric (never mind actual action), Mexico doesn't even come close to Cuba, to say nothing of Pakistan, Iran or China.
But what proportion of immigrants are Cuban compared to Mexican? Same for the other groups? And how do the Chinese immigrants voice their dislike of America, compared to the Mexicans?
I think Ben Stein was getting at the cultural changes that come from groups (anybody) that despises (dislikes\hates pick your own word) America. Why they do was not his point; that they do, and they come here, is.
I don't think it was his intent to single out any particular group, but other people try to single out a group, claim that this is who he was refering to, and use it as proof that he either has his facts wrong, or that he is a bigot.
An uncontrolled free market ALWAYS leads to a monopoly.
Ha, ha. This is a joke, right? Who's got the monopoly on book publishing? Who's got the monopoly on grass seed? Who's got the monopoly on janitorial services? Who's got the monopoly on selling computer parts on the internet?
Who regulates these markets to make sure that evil corporations don't rise up and monopolize the book manufacturing, the toilet cleaning, the grass growing, and the floppy drive selling?
Cmon, don't make me laugh.
Now about everyone agreeing that all monopolies are bad, I'd say they usually are, but they are not bad by definition (that ought to flip your lid). I just posted an explanation to this a few nodes up. Check it out.
There is No honest "competition". There is only monopoly.
You must be stuck in some post-communist country. Microsoft is a monopoly, but (and I even cringe to suggest this to you), just being a monopoly is not problematic, but excercizing monopoly power is. Now you have to take a deep breath, put aside some anger and think about this. Say you live near a river, and there is a town on the other side of the river. How many bridges should there be across the river? You only need one (there is not a lot of traffic). So who is going to build the bridge? You? It might cost too much. How about pooling money together with some other people in the area? That might work, but what if not everyone wants to put in. Then you have to somehow prevent those people from using the bridge, unless they pay you. So you and a few buddies build the bridge, and then a guy comes to your bridge and tries to cross it. You tell him he can't unless he pays you. He says you are a monopoly because you own the only bridge.
How do you respond?
Notice I didn't even mention what you were charging the guy for using your bridge. What if you estimate that each time a person crosses the bridge, is costs you $1 in wear-and-tear. So now you say you are going to charge the guy $0.50 to cross the bridge. Are you an evil monopoly? What if you charged him $1? What about $2, or $10? When do you become a bad guy?
How do the manufacturers know if people prefer quality? By how many phones they sell! Cmon. This is common sense. Companies can use focus groups, too. Companies can make a whole spectrum of phones with different qualities, then see which ones sell. If people have no choice, then they may not even buy the particular good (you always have a choice to not buy something). But it's really hard to argue that consumers do not have choices. If there is competition, and low barriers to entry, someone will come in and make the product.
That is the magic. People vote by choosing what they buy.
The lack of understanding of basic economics is scary.
I never said today's markets were ideal free markets. But that is what we should strive for.
I think you are tossing around phrases without actually understanding them. I don't know how you put "totalitarian" with "capitalist." Capitalism is the movement of capital from one place to another for the purpose of using it for production. Like I said in another post, if people didn't put their money in banks (if there was little available capital), hardly anyone would be able to produce anything. To start up a business you at least need some capital, whether little or a lot. If you had nothing in the bank, and could not borrow any, you would have to live day to day. You couldn't take a month to write some new software or whatever. You couldn't get a loan on your house. In a free market, the capital will go to the area where the people with the capital (investors) think they will get the greatest return on their capital. The better ideas are rewarding by people supplying capital to turn those ideas into profit.
This notion that capitalism is somehow evil is really mind boggling. In fact, it is the restriction of capitalism that usually damages market, not the widespread use of it.
I figure you must be in Europe. The long term hope of the "Western Democracy/Capitalist" is that people don't make it into something else. If you think that governments can improve market conditions more than a free market, you want a controlled market, which the Soviet Union, North Korea, and now Zimbabwe have\had. It is amazing that people still think this way.
Economics is the study of choice, which is always accompanied by scarcity. It has direct application in the marketplace, but it also has applications in non-money based decisions. Economics deals with efficiency, optimization, utility (benefit), supply and demand, substitutes and complements among goods, demand elasticity, risk, information and uncertainty, production, profit, competition, strategy, facors of production (land, labor, capital), externalities (third party factors).
It is not just simlpy buy low and sell high. Man, you got an MBA without knowing anything about Economics?
You said: trouble is, what if *everyone* is making crappy quality phones, all for the same reason? Your only option then is not to buy a phone from anyone.
No. You must not have read my whole post. I said:
What if there is not other company? Then someone will recognize the opportunity and enter the market and take market share. If there is a barrier to entry, this will possibly prolong the existence and behaviors of the problem company. .
This is called entry into the marketplace. It happens all the time and it is crucial part of a free market system. Anything that creates barriers to entry (like too much regulation) is not beneficial.
That is the theory, but unfortunately no free markets exist so it remains untested.
In many markets we have mostly a free market system, but I agree that it is not pure. A good example of a free market at work is buying goods on the internet. You can easily and nearly costlessly shop around (consumer information), anybody can sell their stuff on the web (low barriers to entry), and there are a whole lot of companies selling the stuff you are looking for (lots of competition). No one really knows each other, or cares, and regulation is minimal. The more interference there is, the worse it will get. The free market is a proven system. Companies come and go, but the good ones remain. The system fosters the best in breed.
Employees contribute to a company, customers contribute - these people are important. Shareholders are not, they contribute nothing except at the initial share offering where they give a company some money, after that they just become rich parasites.
Shareholders are enablers; they reduce certain barriers to entry. They provide capital (one of the three parts of production: land, labor, capital). Without the money from shareholders companies would have a much harder time getting the funds to build a plant, buy in bulk, hire some geek to do a website. Shareholders voluntarily cough up funds in the hopes that they will get more back than what they put in. They put their money where they think they will get the greatest return, which would be to the guy or guys who they think have the best idea.
We are all shareholders (assuming you have your money anywhere other than in a mattress). Your money in the bank gets loaned out to businesses and individuals (that's why your checking account is free). If you own any stock, mutual funds, or bonds, you are a shareholder. A great way to kill the inovation and production of an economy is to limit the available funds for enterprise. It would be pretty tough for you to buy your house if you couldn't get a loan. You be stuck in an apartment forever. The more available funds, the cheaper it is to borrow (for the most part), and the way we get funds is by investing it, or saving it in a bank.
You are making a mistake equating individual companies with a market system. Free markets clean up problem businesses.
Competition is what weeds out bad businesses. If you didn't like your phone from Samsung, don't buy another one from them. Buy one from some one else. If enough people had a similar experience as you, Samsung will either go out of the phone business, or change the quality of its phones. If all the companies make crappy phones, and all the consumers are complaining, then you just found a lucritive market. Go make quality phones. (If consumers aren't complaining about the quality, ie they keep buying them even when there are alternatives, then you are alone and there really is no issue.)
Now if there are "barriers to entry" into the marketplace for phones, that is what will stiffle competition and prevent consumers with alternatives. Often this barrier to entry comes in the form of regulation.
Imagine a terrible, corrupt, polluting, exploiting company that just makes crap phones. In a true free market system, the company will go bankrupt. Consumers will opt for the phones of another company. What if there is not other company? Then someone will recognize the opportunity and enter the market and take market share. If there is a barrier to entry, this will possibly prolong the existence and behaviors of the problem company.
Now imagine that this same terrible company has a monopoly, and no other company can make phones (for whatever reason: government contract, regulation). Then we're screwed. Competition is what keeps businesses in check.
Here is the ideal that protects consumers against problem businesses: companies can freely enter the marketplace, there are many companies competing for the same market, and consumers have enough information to make decisions that reflect what they really want. There's no regulation in there. Whatever dimishes any of those three points will make it more likely that Samsung will continue to make crappy phones, exploit third world children, and pollute the environment.
Controlled or regulated markets do not allow enough (if any) competition, which means that when a problem company\entity arises, it is very hard to oust it, or change it. When choices are limited, everything suffers.
So no, business does not know best, but the free market does (actually it is the consumers who use the free market to achieve these ends).
If you are still in school, go take Economics 101. It may change your life (it did mine). If you do, remember my username; it will mean something to you.
Slashdot Mirror
To play devil's advocate (pardon the reference), who\what created the laws of physics? Were they created at some point in time? Have they just always "been"? If so, why couldn't a "creator" just always have "been"? Or, why couldn't a "creator" just appear at some point in time.
Of course you can easily prove the existence of one and not the other, but it doesn't solve the question of origin for either.
The question is still left to the philosophers I suppose, "why anything at all?"
Science seeks to explain observed phenomena in nature. It is axiomatic to science that nature runs in accordance to laws, not due to the mind of an unseen intelligence.
People have incorrectly used "God" to explain the gap in there understanding (ie, those lights in the sky are angels changing the scenery for the end-times, rather than being a meteor shower).
But if there is a God, science will never find it because it is axiomatic that you don't use God to explain observed phenomena. So in order to explain things of complexity in nature, science has to find an explanation that does not include God. Sometimes this produces theories that are accepted for a time, but only later to be discounted.
Science naturally produces theories like the Big Bang and evolution, because those are theories that explain how complex things come into being without the need for a God. But even those theories cannot escape the "gaps" in understanding, which are sometimes passed off as "something that obviously happened, we just don't know how."
Evolution theories get more an more complex (right or wrong). Since science must explain the existence of humans without God directly and constantly intervening, evolution makes the most sense. But when the data is put to the theory, gaps occur. Like when one species of humans scientifically cannot have evolved from species A to species B, then is it proposed that both species A and B must have had a common ancestor C, even if there is no evidence of a species C. Then some may go looking for species C to fuel the evidence for this model, and then they may or may not find something they claim to be species C. If they don't find something they can claim to be species C, then the theories are reworked. If they do find something attributed to species C, then the cycle usually repeats itself (then what is the ancestor of species C?).
The evolution ancestor tree or more like a sprawling bush now, but since the exclusion of God is axiomatic, and evolution is the best theory of scientific explanation, it must be true that the ancestor bush is correct. "Data" never says anything. You can't "look at what the data says." You can only come up with a theory and see if the data fits.
But the point can be made that evolution cannot be tested because we can't actually observe the ancestor bush. We can observe things that seem consistent with evolution (fruit flies and DNA patterns) but we can't watch the single cell ancestor slowly become a modern human. So evolution becomes inherently un-falsifiable until someone acutally starts an experiment that does exactly what evolution theory says happened in the past. But even then, it would only show that it could have happened a certain way, not that it only could have occurred that way.
Creantionists (or whatever ID-ists) have the same problem. They take what they read in the Bible (or other evidence of a supreme intelligence) and show that observed natural phenomena could have been caused by "God" (a great flood is consistent with observed phenomena, so does that mean the observed phenomena could only have been caused by a great flood?).
The debate about evolution has always been about the existence of God. But I submit that science will never give proof of God because it is axiomatic that there is no "supernatural" interference in observed phenomena.
Creationists will continue to try to show that their theories are consistent with observed phenomena. Evolutionists will continue to show that humans can exist now without the need for a God to explain their existence.
What if there is a third option? The Big Bang was the only widely accepted theory of the origin of the universe and now that is losing traction. Will the theory of evolution ever fall out of favor with scientists?
What if science uncovers dimensions previously unknown to us? Or forces, or theories of matter, or genetics that cause us to rethink a lot of our theories?
What if science figures out a better theory than e
You got it. You got it. You got it. I wish I had mod points. This is the best post in this entire discussion.
The guys at theserverside.com have shown that the CNet article puts the circumstances differently:
Green will be leaving to join another software venture, according to Sun. Green tendered his resignation several weeks ago but waited until the Microsoft agreement was settled before announcing his departure, a Sun representative said Monday. The changes were announced internally on Friday.
Cnet article
The Server Side discussion
I am in the SLC area and this ticks me off. I am a programmer that connects remotely to the home office maybe 80% of the time. I couldn't pay USWest (Qwest) anything for them to install a DSL line. They said they could not give special treatment to anyone by law, which apparently meant that the "rich" (those willing to pay) could not even pay them to install DSL lines in my neighborhood. We had to wait until they were ready. It has been over 3 years so far and no sign of DSL. No cable either.
I eventually went with StarBand, then ISDN (took them 4 months), Radio, then back to ISDN, but I still can't get that DSL.
So now the gov is going to come in and fix the "sluggish" implementation of high-speed internet?! Please
Exactly right! This is capitalism. Capital is flowing to the most efficient means of producing the good.
Economics is the study of choice. This implies that there is scarity of something (otherwise you wouldn't have to choose). Economics theory suggests that individuals make rational choices in the context of the information that they have. "Rational" only means that the individual takes costs and benefits into consideration (although it is not as simple as whether the benefits outweigh the costs), as well as future expectations. Information is never perfect so individuals uses their own estimates of things like Expected Utility from a certain action, or inaction, in order to make their choices. Since money is scarce (meaning not-unlimited), money is a convenient ways to measure and observers individuals' choices. Economic theory attempted to describe behavior of some things in groups (businesses, whole economies), but the number of variables gets very large, and the number of "external shocks" makes measurement and prediction difficult, so normally we are only making observations of patterns rather than predictions.
When information is very incomplete and hard to quantify, then it becomes extremely hard to predict individuals' behaviors because they will all have different expectations and assumptions (which is probably why politics gets so heated). Socionomics sounds more like the prediction of the acts and decisions of groups of people when their information, assumptions, expectations, etc. are all very different. They could all still be acting rationally, but economic theory won't help much predicting how the groups will act.
I doubt they are calling it the "Java Desktop System" just for branding. It wouldn't surprise me if the JDC has a whole Java API suite for using the OS and desktop. Things like setting group/file permissions, monitoring (maybe using JMX) the OS, security, window controls, whatever. Perhaps Sun hasn't found any companies willing to expose their OS to a Java API so Sun will do it themselves. Perhaps their vendor implementation will be Linux/GNOME.
If what I'm hoping is right, this would be really cool, and would really change desktop software and how people use the OS.
I suggest getting another friend as your economic guru. Saying that a reduction in R&D is because the president isn't supposedly focused on the economy is quite a stretch. The oversimplification that people are holding on to their money is a strange notion. If people are holding on to their money, then where's their money? Anywhere (anywhere!) besides in the mattress provides capital to people\businesses and the people\business that are perceived to have the best ideas for creating more capital get the money.
If you have to do something with your $1000 bucks, you want to give it to a guy who will probably turn it into $1010, or to a guy who will turn it into $1050? $1050 of course. If that guy is a house-builder, so be it. If he represents a company that wants to do some R&D for some product, so be it.
If you just put your money in the bank, then they lend it out for you, to whomever they think will give them the best return. If you buy a DVD player, proceeds for that go to the manufacturer and they then decide how much of the proceeds should go towards R&D to provide either the same product for less (increasing their profits) or to create a new product or to be paid out to their shareholders or whatever. They will determine what will give them the best return on investment.
If a business needs funding for research, they can go to investors. Investors use either their own money or the money of others that they represent. These "others" can be stockholders (or other types of funds) or members of some groups (like a bank) that is looking for a place to invest their money.
If overseas companies do more R&D than US companies than that means they have a different expectation of what the returns will be for their R&D. Some industries are positioned to gain more from R&D (like manufacturing) than other industries (like services). So you would exect to see Indonesia perhaps doing more R&D than Meryll Lynch, or Accenture, or AOL.
Where's the president's role? Market forces are way bigger than what the president (any president) can influence. Laws only foster economic growth in three ways: protection of property rights, lowered transaction costs, and general peace. However, laws can significantly curtail growth by doing things that negatively affect the three things mentioned.
So what should the president do to "focus" on the economy. Actually, I think we should pay for ever citizen to attend an Economics 101 class.
You hit the nail right on the head. You should get modded to 7 (except for that part about anarchy. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater).
It doesn't make much sense to complain about something you agreed to. If you have a problem with it beforehand, take it up with the other party. Afterwards, what are you going to do?
If the other party tries to change the conditions after you both agreed to the initial conditions, then you have a legitimate issue (although it may just be that you did't fully understand the original terms, or you were hoping they wouldn't change into something you didn't like, even after you agreed to them).
I never was trying to establish fact that this was a gift from the gov to MIT. I was giving an example to prove a point. And if MIT didn't accept the conditions, then fine, what is the big deal? They don't have to. But I don't understand the outrage that some slashdotters are expressing against the gov.
By the way, it's spelled "moot." Go back to school (although you are probably some high school kid in Europe, looking at your arguments).
Whoever this genius and anonymous coward is, I wasn't refering to the legal right to complain. It is not ethnical, it is not common courtesy, it is not moral to receive something from someone and then complain about the gift. Just don't take the gift.
MIT is not making this a legal argument, so why are you?
You are exactly right. What right\priveledge does any school have to take money from the government for anything, and then complain about the conditions of getting the money? A korean saying goes something like, "Beggars can't complain of cold rice." I'd like to see MIT strut their "principles" and not accept any money from the government at all. If part of the conditions of the grant is that only american citizens can work on it, then fine. Noboby has to accept the money. The fact that this whole issue has gotten so much attention on Slashdot I think is sad. Everything seems to turning toward political issues rather than technological issues.
No, you don't understand his premise: allowing anti-Americans into the US will contribute to the ruin of American Enterprise.
You are trying to nullify his statement by being overly-specific about who the "anti-Americans" are, and what "anti-American" means, and using this to disprove the premise. But the argument is only about whether his premise is true, not what is anti-American.
The premise is correct, so then only the discussion of what constitutes anti-Americanism remains. This you should do without using any country as an example. After you have the paramaters established, then you compare countries and see if the match the parameters. You want to jump to the conclusion that he is targetting Mexicans, and you are making assumptions as to why.
Trying to type-cast me as someone who is not down to earth is consistent with you response to the article.
Whatever grudges the average Mexican might (legitimately, IMHO) harbor over the loss of Texas...
I don't think this is a reason that (many) Mexicans dislike the US.
The fact remains: as a source of anti-American rhetoric (never mind actual action), Mexico doesn't even come close to Cuba, to say nothing of Pakistan, Iran or China.
But what proportion of immigrants are Cuban compared to Mexican? Same for the other groups? And how do the Chinese immigrants voice their dislike of America, compared to the Mexicans?
I think Ben Stein was getting at the cultural changes that come from groups (anybody) that despises (dislikes\hates pick your own word) America. Why they do was not his point; that they do, and they come here, is.
I don't think it was his intent to single out any particular group, but other people try to single out a group, claim that this is who he was refering to, and use it as proof that he either has his facts wrong, or that he is a bigot.
To me, technological innovation is a big outward sign of a successful economy.
If technological innovation is a sign of a successful economy, and the US is losing it's technological edge, then I guess Ben Stein is right.
...angry, uneducated immigrants from nations that hate us.
Mexico doesn't qualify?
You read too far into it that he only meant terrorists.
An uncontrolled free market ALWAYS leads to a monopoly.
Ha, ha . This is a joke, right? Who's got the monopoly on book publishing? Who's got the monopoly on grass seed? Who's got the monopoly on janitorial services? Who's got the monopoly on selling computer parts on the internet?
Who regulates these markets to make sure that evil corporations don't rise up and monopolize the book manufacturing, the toilet cleaning, the grass growing, and the floppy drive selling?
Cmon, don't make me laugh.
Now about everyone agreeing that all monopolies are bad, I'd say they usually are, but they are not bad by definition (that ought to flip your lid). I just posted an explanation to this a few nodes up. Check it out.
There is No honest "competition". There is only monopoly.
You must be stuck in some post-communist country. Microsoft is a monopoly, but (and I even cringe to suggest this to you), just being a monopoly is not problematic, but excercizing monopoly power is. Now you have to take a deep breath, put aside some anger and think about this. Say you live near a river, and there is a town on the other side of the river. How many bridges should there be across the river? You only need one (there is not a lot of traffic). So who is going to build the bridge? You? It might cost too much. How about pooling money together with some other people in the area? That might work, but what if not everyone wants to put in. Then you have to somehow prevent those people from using the bridge, unless they pay you. So you and a few buddies build the bridge, and then a guy comes to your bridge and tries to cross it. You tell him he can't unless he pays you. He says you are a monopoly because you own the only bridge.
How do you respond?
Notice I didn't even mention what you were charging the guy for using your bridge. What if you estimate that each time a person crosses the bridge, is costs you $1 in wear-and-tear. So now you say you are going to charge the guy $0.50 to cross the bridge. Are you an evil monopoly? What if you charged him $1? What about $2, or $10? When do you become a bad guy?
How do the manufacturers know if people prefer quality? By how many phones they sell! Cmon. This is common sense. Companies can use focus groups, too. Companies can make a whole spectrum of phones with different qualities, then see which ones sell. If people have no choice, then they may not even buy the particular good (you always have a choice to not buy something). But it's really hard to argue that consumers do not have choices. If there is competition, and low barriers to entry, someone will come in and make the product.
That is the magic. People vote by choosing what they buy.
The lack of understanding of basic economics is scary.
I never said today's markets were ideal free markets. But that is what we should strive for.
I think you are tossing around phrases without actually understanding them. I don't know how you put "totalitarian" with "capitalist." Capitalism is the movement of capital from one place to another for the purpose of using it for production. Like I said in another post, if people didn't put their money in banks (if there was little available capital), hardly anyone would be able to produce anything. To start up a business you at least need some capital, whether little or a lot. If you had nothing in the bank, and could not borrow any, you would have to live day to day. You couldn't take a month to write some new software or whatever. You couldn't get a loan on your house. In a free market, the capital will go to the area where the people with the capital (investors) think they will get the greatest return on their capital. The better ideas are rewarding by people supplying capital to turn those ideas into profit.
This notion that capitalism is somehow evil is really mind boggling. In fact, it is the restriction of capitalism that usually damages market, not the widespread use of it.
I figure you must be in Europe. The long term hope of the "Western Democracy/Capitalist" is that people don't make it into something else. If you think that governments can improve market conditions more than a free market, you want a controlled market, which the Soviet Union, North Korea, and now Zimbabwe have\had. It is amazing that people still think this way.
Oh, brother.
Business != Economics
Economics is the study of choice, which is always accompanied by scarcity. It has direct application in the marketplace, but it also has applications in non-money based decisions. Economics deals with efficiency, optimization, utility (benefit), supply and demand, substitutes and complements among goods, demand elasticity, risk, information and uncertainty, production, profit, competition, strategy, facors of production (land, labor, capital), externalities (third party factors).
It is not just simlpy buy low and sell high. Man, you got an MBA without knowing anything about Economics?
You said: trouble is, what if *everyone* is making crappy quality phones, all for the same reason? Your only option then is not to buy a phone from anyone.
No. You must not have read my whole post. I said:
What if there is not other company? Then someone will recognize the opportunity and enter the market and take market share. If there is a barrier to entry, this will possibly prolong the existence and behaviors of the problem company. .
This is called entry into the marketplace. It happens all the time and it is crucial part of a free market system. Anything that creates barriers to entry (like too much regulation) is not beneficial.
That is the theory, but unfortunately no free markets exist so it remains untested.
In many markets we have mostly a free market system, but I agree that it is not pure. A good example of a free market at work is buying goods on the internet. You can easily and nearly costlessly shop around (consumer information), anybody can sell their stuff on the web (low barriers to entry), and there are a whole lot of companies selling the stuff you are looking for (lots of competition). No one really knows each other, or cares, and regulation is minimal. The more interference there is, the worse it will get. The free market is a proven system. Companies come and go, but the good ones remain. The system fosters the best in breed.
Employees contribute to a company, customers contribute - these people are important. Shareholders are not, they contribute nothing except at the initial share offering where they give a company some money, after that they just become rich parasites.
Shareholders are enablers; they reduce certain barriers to entry. They provide capital (one of the three parts of production: land, labor, capital). Without the money from shareholders companies would have a much harder time getting the funds to build a plant, buy in bulk, hire some geek to do a website. Shareholders voluntarily cough up funds in the hopes that they will get more back than what they put in. They put their money where they think they will get the greatest return, which would be to the guy or guys who they think have the best idea.
We are all shareholders (assuming you have your money anywhere other than in a mattress). Your money in the bank gets loaned out to businesses and individuals (that's why your checking account is free). If you own any stock, mutual funds, or bonds, you are a shareholder. A great way to kill the inovation and production of an economy is to limit the available funds for enterprise. It would be pretty tough for you to buy your house if you couldn't get a loan. You be stuck in an apartment forever. The more available funds, the cheaper it is to borrow (for the most part), and the way we get funds is by investing it, or saving it in a bank.
You are making a mistake equating individual companies with a market system. Free markets clean up problem businesses.
Competition is what weeds out bad businesses. If you didn't like your phone from Samsung, don't buy another one from them. Buy one from some one else. If enough people had a similar experience as you, Samsung will either go out of the phone business, or change the quality of its phones. If all the companies make crappy phones, and all the consumers are complaining, then you just found a lucritive market. Go make quality phones. (If consumers aren't complaining about the quality, ie they keep buying them even when there are alternatives, then you are alone and there really is no issue.)
Now if there are "barriers to entry" into the marketplace for phones, that is what will stiffle competition and prevent consumers with alternatives. Often this barrier to entry comes in the form of regulation.
Imagine a terrible, corrupt, polluting, exploiting company that just makes crap phones. In a true free market system, the company will go bankrupt. Consumers will opt for the phones of another company. What if there is not other company? Then someone will recognize the opportunity and enter the market and take market share. If there is a barrier to entry, this will possibly prolong the existence and behaviors of the problem company.
Now imagine that this same terrible company has a monopoly, and no other company can make phones (for whatever reason: government contract, regulation). Then we're screwed. Competition is what keeps businesses in check.
Here is the ideal that protects consumers against problem businesses: companies can freely enter the marketplace, there are many companies competing for the same market, and consumers have enough information to make decisions that reflect what they really want. There's no regulation in there. Whatever dimishes any of those three points will make it more likely that Samsung will continue to make crappy phones, exploit third world children, and pollute the environment.
Controlled or regulated markets do not allow enough (if any) competition, which means that when a problem company\entity arises, it is very hard to oust it, or change it. When choices are limited, everything suffers.
So no, business does not know best, but the free market does (actually it is the consumers who use the free market to achieve these ends).
If you are still in school, go take Economics 101. It may change your life (it did mine). If you do, remember my username; it will mean something to you.