Yes because this is working great for rural areas which do not show profit for secondary companies.... oh wait.
And if you drive up the taxes in those rural areas to pay for this progress, everyone in those areas will have less money to spend, and productivity will go down. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
It's called a natural monopoly for a reason.
Natural monopolies can come into existence. However, they cannot thrive while providing bad service. The only way that can be maintained is through government restriction on competition.
Your street was paid for with money taken from people on the other side of town who will never drive down your street.
The third time, I'll have my city passing a law banning parallel lines when there's existing fiber, and pushing for city maintenance of a common resource.
And thus you'll be supporting the violation of individual rights to your own detriment. Local monopolies will thrive, consumer prices will be inflated, future technological developments will restricted from application.
Some things just don't work when left to the free market.
Am I supposed to accept you at your word? First, define "work", then define "free market". Maybe then we'll get somewhere. Until then we'll just continue talking past eachother.
I pay for the cost for AT&T to lay the lines. Then I pay every month in increased costs because they have a monopoly.
That monopoly, and those inflated costs, are only being maintained by government restriction on the existence of competition. Plain and simple.
No, the city would lay fibre and then rent it out to service providers with a non-discriminatory policy to recoup costs.
And whichever company gives the most money to the campaigns of incumbent city officials will be granted monopolies in return. The only means for a monopoly to be sustained is through force - forcing the consumer to buy an unwanted service, at an undesirable price; forcing out competition through selective taxation and comparable restrictions - and the only entity legally permitted to apply force in this country is the government, at the local, state, and national level.
The Dam became popularly accepted (and approved) once it was trumpeted as a means to stimulate the economy, around the end of 1928 into 1929. It remains true that the spending actually occurred when the dam was built, and they could have stopped the plan at any time and returned the money to the consumers.
who's work has been effectively discredited by anyone who cared to think about it for five minutes.
And I can say the same for Paul "Have Your Cake And Eat It Too" Krugman.
Why can't we have public fiber? I'm sure they could have some type of usage tax structure where the ISPs rent the public fiber and re-sell it.
So the public would be taxed to pay for the city to lay the fiber, and then the increased tax on ISPs would be passed on to the same public to pay for service? This is your plan?
I have a better plan. If a company comes along and wants to lay parallel lines. Let them. Don't stop them in any way. Don't fine them. Remove all possible hindrances, anything that could turn them away. It'll start out small and slowly expand at the same time that the demand for cheaper service drives prices down. More and more people will have better and better service.
Hoover Dam, anyone? You may want to check out The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes. She lists in detail with quotes the big spending projects of Hoover and FDR meant to stimulate the economy, and the result these projects had on the economy.
Hoover tried big spending to fix a recession. That recession became a depression. When will politicians learn that increased govt spending and employment do not stimulate production and advance the economy, but in fact have the opposite effect? They are sacrificing the future for the present (the next 4 years). This is a clear sign of political pragmatism: help those who complain the loudest now, without regard for anyone else. Those other people who will be harmed by increased govt. spending - employers who could have had more employees (now working for the govt), producing goods that could have existed (supplanted with unnecessary bridges to nowhere), bought with the additional money that could have been in the pockets of consumers (now taxed to pay for these jobs) - will be the ones complaining tomorrow.
The problem here is that many British newspapers have spread wholly-untrue scare stories about the MMR injections
Stories don't spread themselves. People buy them, buy into them, and then "sell" them through word of mouth to others.
No-one can be be expected to follow every major medical story by reference to the original papers
Nothing is expected of anyone. If someone wants to make an informed decision about their personal life, they will have to inform themselves. There is no shortcut to that. Any perceived shortcut is just a means to a false sense of security. And in this specific case, it is not necessary to scour source material, because there is plenty of good, informative, non-scary material out there that summarizes the scientific understanding. Whether people choose to read that or just accept what they read in a 25-cent paper is entirely up to them.
We all rely on the media, both to alert us to potential medical risks, and to give accurate and even handed treatment to medical stories.
Any existing reliance on the media developed voluntarily. This "media" voluntarily sold information, and people voluntarily bought that information. If it becomes apparent that some paper has been misinforming the public, concerned individuals should persuade their friends/family/community members not to buy that paper. Vote with your wallet.
The argument I see developing instead is something involuntary - a government-backed requirement that the paper meet certain standards. The end result is a fundamental violation of individual rights, as realized through the restriction of content (ie, censorship) and the manipulation of productivity and wealth distribution.
The papers and journalist in question (and. Melanie Phillips, I'm looking at you) have put sales-grabbings scare stories ahead of providing actual information
And people have bought those stories.
Like people who shout "Fire" in a crowded theatre, they should be held to account.
The two situations are not similar. You cannot build the foundations of an ethical system on an emergency scenario (such as shouting Fire! in a crowd) in which people have no time to think and process their perceptual data, but must accept what little information they are given and act accordingly. The present situation is not an emergency - people have plenty of time to find and digest alternative information, and make a rational decision in their self-interest. Some people choose not to.
Since when is this nebulous entity called "the media" the only group that "has access to all the information"? If people decide to shirk responsibility for their own lives, and blindly accept conventional wisdom, that is their choice and they have freely made it, whether or not they consciously acknowledge it.
Again, you've contrived a situation in which a small-time provider is completely surrounded by a large provider who, contrary to their desire for increased profits, decides to disregard the connection request of the smaller provider. You have not shown that such a scenario could persist under a capitalist system. You have also not justified the rights violations that come with forcing people to do with their property other than they please.
So you see, pure unregulated capitalism would fail here.
Fail at what? The purpose of capitalism is to permit people to voluntarily trade between eachother, to mutual benefit, without any use of force. If a larger provider rejects the connection request of a smaller provider, it is not a failing of capitalism. No force was applied, and no rights were violated. The failings, if any, are restricted to the larger provider - for acting against their rational self-interest - or the smaller provider - for investing their money in an unprofitable endeavor.
oh crap, to do that you need to set up a peering/connection agreement with the company who has a monopoly you are endangering...
Your fallacy is in treating the existing system as if it is representative of capitalism. Such a monopoly as you mention could not be maintained under a capitalist system. There would be no governmental force, or any other force, preventing the small startup from laying competing lines. Read up on how Edison got his start. He had to go through the exact same thing. Only when local governments started labeling such services "public utilities" were these monopolies created and enforced.
Assuming the customers were dumb enough to fall for that, would you want those customers' business anyway?
Yes. If I'm a business, I want customers.
I didn't ask that.
Very few customers are 'smart' anyway
Is it necessarily the case that it would always be that way? Or would people be more likely to read contracts, understand what they're buying, and research their purchases, if they didn't have the inevitable government "safety net" to dumb them down?
So when the colluding companies/monopolies drop their prices, the customers will jump ship back and the new company will lose.
And if the new company tells those customers that the colluding companies are just going to raise prices again, you don't think the customers will listen? And again, for the people who don't listen, would you have wanted their business anyway? They'll soon realize their mistake.
Through your 'competition' you eliminate the possibility to charge enough, and you won't be able to get enough customers through the aforementioned mechanisms.
You haven't shown that your example is realistic. You assume that the only possible competitor starts out with little to no money, and that every customer he gets will jump ship once the price fluctuates a little. If that were the case the stock market would crash every day, wouldn't it?
And most importantly, you haven't shown how you can justify the rights violations that must occur if the government steps in to manipulate the economy itself.
After reading the article they were just simultaneously poking people with sticks...
One experiment involved using the researchers themselves. Another experiment used mannequins found in the dumpster behind a department store. They also mention using chairs and blocks of wood as test equipment. Is it just me, or does it sound like scientific research in Sweden is ridiculously underfunded?
The two are similar in no way, and sticking them next to eachother in the same post does nothing to make them similar. One is a violation of the rights of another - taking their property without their permission. The other, at best, may be a violation of some end user agreement, resulting in the termination of the user's account, but no rights are being violated. eBay is selling the stuff for $1, and people found a way to find the stuff and buy it. The transaction is made with both parties acting voluntarily. Where's the problem?
Oh yes, I forget that in Free Market Theory, a new company will spontaneously spring into existence regardless of any barriers to entry either inherent in the industry
>
Why would a new company have to spring up when an existing similar company with enough equity can see the huge demand and desire to fulfill it?
or set up by the trust in question.
How does this trust set up barriers that prevent a company from doing with its property what it wishes... without government intervention?
And, despite the fact that in this universe the SEC doesn't exist, this new company isn't immediately purchased, or simply bribed into colluding with the others.
And that would be another irrational move on their part. Your point?
Maybe, eventually, that will happen
Where did I say it would happen overnight?
but in the mean time a great deal of damage has been done.
What damage? Be more specific.
For example, the principle behind anarcho-capitalism is maximal freedom for all with minimal restrictions, but it's a system that essentially turns into feudalism very quickly.
Who's promoting anarchy? The government has its purpose. Economic manipulation is not one of those purposes. Anyone can label a belief a "principle", it doesn't mean that it's a coherent belief and does not lead to a contradiction.
But I don't think I have the "right" to form an abusive trust
Again, what is this "abuse" that you would be performing? Are you hitting someone with a bat? Then you're violating their rights and should be punished. If that's not what you mean by "abuse", be clearer next time.
ok, now the coluding companies drop there price below your, you go away, and they jack up there prices.
Assuming the customers were dumb enough to fall for that, would you want those customers' business anyway? You cannot argue moral principles based on contrived situations. The underlying reason for arguing for the free market is it is the only system in which individual rights are not violated.
You should really study up an large company behavior during the beginning of the 20th century to see where this leads.
Would you care to give any specifics, or are you assuming you know what you're talking about. I'd suggest checking out Murray Rothbard's America's Great Depression, or the book by the chief architect of the New Deal, Raymond Moley, titled After Seven Years, if you want to "see where [government manipulation of the economy] leads."
Ther was a time when there was no regulation, regulation came about becasue of monumental abuse.
Abuse of whom? What time was this? You need to give some specifics if you want to be taken seriously. If people were killing other people, polluting their land, forcing them to use their services, obviously the government should step in to prevent those rights violations from occurring, and to punish the guilty. That is the purpose of the government. If you are not talking about rights violations when you say, "abuse", then what are you talking about?
Thank you for posting some actual content this time.
The OP was stating that businesses will try to fuck the consumer.
Agreed.
You go and say Nyah, they won't!
No, I did not.
I then joined in and said(colloquially); given the preponderance of evidence of past actions of businesses, it is relatively certain that, left to their own devices, the businesses will try to fuck the consumer.
You're arguing against the free market, but your evidence of bad behavior is not from a free market system. A free market is a market free of forced intervention. It should be obvious that, so long as politicians are willing to hold up signs reading, "Will manipulate the economy for money", as soon as one person or company starts buying favorable laws, competitors will respond in the same way. The end result is a system in which government manipulation of the economy is so common and integrated as to make it difficult to untangle. With each manipulation, individual rights are violated. No matter how common these violations become, though, they will never be justifiable.
You stated that all the protection from businesses consumers need comes from their wallets("Their wallets are all the power they need.")
Agreed. I did say that.
I replied, in effect, that historically, this *is not* all the consumers need.
Again, please provide some specific examples, and then for each of those examples, show why you believe the system at that time was a free market.
If my post conveyed a lack of information to you, the reason is you refuse to see the information contained therein.
Another possibility is that there was no information to begin with.
By the time this thing gets regulatory approval, a young Bones McCoy will be writing his high school paper on primitive medical barbarism of the early 21st century.
Yeah, there is no history of any company trying to fuck their customers.
What does that have to do with anything? How is that a sound argument? There is a history of people killing other people. Does that mean every person should be considered a criminal? Please try to stay in context.
Because "it would be dum of them".
Actually, I spelled dumb correctly. The reason it would be dumb of them is because they would lose business.
Oh, and that vote with your wallet gig really has worked out quite well too - that *always* keeps those companies in line.
What are you talking about? You've constructed a sentence, but conveyed no information. Please provide some argument or evidence next time.
Perhaps you should take off your IBM coloured glasses?
I have perfect vision thank you very much. And I hate sunglasses.
"could not be regarded as necessary in a democratic society... fortunately for us, the UK could never be mistaken for a democratic society, so feel free to violate any and all rights."
Slashdot Mirror
Yes because this is working great for rural areas which do not show profit for secondary companies.... oh wait.
And if you drive up the taxes in those rural areas to pay for this progress, everyone in those areas will have less money to spend, and productivity will go down. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
It's called a natural monopoly for a reason.
Natural monopolies can come into existence. However, they cannot thrive while providing bad service. The only way that can be maintained is through government restriction on competition.
Sorry bud. The first time they tear up my street
Your street was paid for with money taken from people on the other side of town who will never drive down your street.
The third time, I'll have my city passing a law banning parallel lines when there's existing fiber, and pushing for city maintenance of a common resource.
And thus you'll be supporting the violation of individual rights to your own detriment. Local monopolies will thrive, consumer prices will be inflated, future technological developments will restricted from application.
Some things just don't work when left to the free market.
Am I supposed to accept you at your word? First, define "work", then define "free market". Maybe then we'll get somewhere. Until then we'll just continue talking past eachother.
I pay for the cost for AT&T to lay the lines. Then I pay every month in increased costs because they have a monopoly.
That monopoly, and those inflated costs, are only being maintained by government restriction on the existence of competition. Plain and simple.
No, the city would lay fibre and then rent it out to service providers with a non-discriminatory policy to recoup costs.
And whichever company gives the most money to the campaigns of incumbent city officials will be granted monopolies in return. The only means for a monopoly to be sustained is through force - forcing the consumer to buy an unwanted service, at an undesirable price; forcing out competition through selective taxation and comparable restrictions - and the only entity legally permitted to apply force in this country is the government, at the local, state, and national level.
who's work has been effectively discredited by anyone who cared to think about it for five minutes.
And I can say the same for Paul "Have Your Cake And Eat It Too" Krugman.
Why can't we have public fiber? I'm sure they could have some type of usage tax structure where the ISPs rent the public fiber and re-sell it.
So the public would be taxed to pay for the city to lay the fiber, and then the increased tax on ISPs would be passed on to the same public to pay for service? This is your plan?
I have a better plan. If a company comes along and wants to lay parallel lines. Let them. Don't stop them in any way. Don't fine them. Remove all possible hindrances, anything that could turn them away. It'll start out small and slowly expand at the same time that the demand for cheaper service drives prices down. More and more people will have better and better service.
Hoover Dam, anyone? You may want to check out The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes. She lists in detail with quotes the big spending projects of Hoover and FDR meant to stimulate the economy, and the result these projects had on the economy.
What is the problem, with internet connectivity anyway, is the deeply entrenched telecoms companies with their local monopolies.
Agreed. The only thing that can break up their monopoly is for the local governments to permit competitors to lay competing parallel lines.
This moderation system is a joke. How's that for trolling?
At 20 minutes an episode, October 31st still has over 17 hours left.
Hoover tried big spending to fix a recession. That recession became a depression. When will politicians learn that increased govt spending and employment do not stimulate production and advance the economy, but in fact have the opposite effect? They are sacrificing the future for the present (the next 4 years). This is a clear sign of political pragmatism: help those who complain the loudest now, without regard for anyone else. Those other people who will be harmed by increased govt. spending - employers who could have had more employees (now working for the govt), producing goods that could have existed (supplanted with unnecessary bridges to nowhere), bought with the additional money that could have been in the pockets of consumers (now taxed to pay for these jobs) - will be the ones complaining tomorrow.
Technically, all the characters are over 18 by now, whether or not they're drawn that way.
The problem here is that many British newspapers have spread wholly-untrue scare stories about the MMR injections
Stories don't spread themselves. People buy them, buy into them, and then "sell" them through word of mouth to others.
No-one can be be expected to follow every major medical story by reference to the original papers
Nothing is expected of anyone. If someone wants to make an informed decision about their personal life, they will have to inform themselves. There is no shortcut to that. Any perceived shortcut is just a means to a false sense of security. And in this specific case, it is not necessary to scour source material, because there is plenty of good, informative, non-scary material out there that summarizes the scientific understanding. Whether people choose to read that or just accept what they read in a 25-cent paper is entirely up to them.
We all rely on the media, both to alert us to potential medical risks, and to give accurate and even handed treatment to medical stories.
Any existing reliance on the media developed voluntarily. This "media" voluntarily sold information, and people voluntarily bought that information. If it becomes apparent that some paper has been misinforming the public, concerned individuals should persuade their friends/family/community members not to buy that paper. Vote with your wallet.
The argument I see developing instead is something involuntary - a government-backed requirement that the paper meet certain standards. The end result is a fundamental violation of individual rights, as realized through the restriction of content (ie, censorship) and the manipulation of productivity and wealth distribution.
The papers and journalist in question (and. Melanie Phillips, I'm looking at you) have put sales-grabbings scare stories ahead of providing actual information
And people have bought those stories.
Like people who shout "Fire" in a crowded theatre, they should be held to account.
The two situations are not similar. You cannot build the foundations of an ethical system on an emergency scenario (such as shouting Fire! in a crowd) in which people have no time to think and process their perceptual data, but must accept what little information they are given and act accordingly. The present situation is not an emergency - people have plenty of time to find and digest alternative information, and make a rational decision in their self-interest. Some people choose not to.
Since when is this nebulous entity called "the media" the only group that "has access to all the information"? If people decide to shirk responsibility for their own lives, and blindly accept conventional wisdom, that is their choice and they have freely made it, whether or not they consciously acknowledge it.
So you see, pure unregulated capitalism would fail here.
Fail at what? The purpose of capitalism is to permit people to voluntarily trade between eachother, to mutual benefit, without any use of force. If a larger provider rejects the connection request of a smaller provider, it is not a failing of capitalism. No force was applied, and no rights were violated. The failings, if any, are restricted to the larger provider - for acting against their rational self-interest - or the smaller provider - for investing their money in an unprofitable endeavor.
oh crap, to do that you need to set up a peering/connection agreement with the company who has a monopoly you are endangering...
Your fallacy is in treating the existing system as if it is representative of capitalism. Such a monopoly as you mention could not be maintained under a capitalist system. There would be no governmental force, or any other force, preventing the small startup from laying competing lines. Read up on how Edison got his start. He had to go through the exact same thing. Only when local governments started labeling such services "public utilities" were these monopolies created and enforced.
Assuming the customers were dumb enough to fall for that, would you want those customers' business anyway?
Yes. If I'm a business, I want customers.
I didn't ask that.
Very few customers are 'smart' anyway
Is it necessarily the case that it would always be that way? Or would people be more likely to read contracts, understand what they're buying, and research their purchases, if they didn't have the inevitable government "safety net" to dumb them down?
So when the colluding companies/monopolies drop their prices, the customers will jump ship back and the new company will lose.
And if the new company tells those customers that the colluding companies are just going to raise prices again, you don't think the customers will listen? And again, for the people who don't listen, would you have wanted their business anyway? They'll soon realize their mistake.
Through your 'competition' you eliminate the possibility to charge enough, and you won't be able to get enough customers through the aforementioned mechanisms.
You haven't shown that your example is realistic. You assume that the only possible competitor starts out with little to no money, and that every customer he gets will jump ship once the price fluctuates a little. If that were the case the stock market would crash every day, wouldn't it?
And most importantly, you haven't shown how you can justify the rights violations that must occur if the government steps in to manipulate the economy itself.
After reading the article they were just simultaneously poking people with sticks...
One experiment involved using the researchers themselves. Another experiment used mannequins found in the dumpster behind a department store. They also mention using chairs and blocks of wood as test equipment. Is it just me, or does it sound like scientific research in Sweden is ridiculously underfunded?
The two are similar in no way, and sticking them next to eachother in the same post does nothing to make them similar. One is a violation of the rights of another - taking their property without their permission. The other, at best, may be a violation of some end user agreement, resulting in the termination of the user's account, but no rights are being violated. eBay is selling the stuff for $1, and people found a way to find the stuff and buy it. The transaction is made with both parties acting voluntarily. Where's the problem?
Oh yes, I forget that in Free Market Theory, a new company will spontaneously spring into existence regardless of any barriers to entry either inherent in the industry
> Why would a new company have to spring up when an existing similar company with enough equity can see the huge demand and desire to fulfill it?
or set up by the trust in question.
How does this trust set up barriers that prevent a company from doing with its property what it wishes... without government intervention?
And, despite the fact that in this universe the SEC doesn't exist, this new company isn't immediately purchased, or simply bribed into colluding with the others.
And that would be another irrational move on their part. Your point?
Maybe, eventually, that will happen
Where did I say it would happen overnight?
but in the mean time a great deal of damage has been done.
What damage? Be more specific.
For example, the principle behind anarcho-capitalism is maximal freedom for all with minimal restrictions, but it's a system that essentially turns into feudalism very quickly.
Who's promoting anarchy? The government has its purpose. Economic manipulation is not one of those purposes. Anyone can label a belief a "principle", it doesn't mean that it's a coherent belief and does not lead to a contradiction.
But I don't think I have the "right" to form an abusive trust
Again, what is this "abuse" that you would be performing? Are you hitting someone with a bat? Then you're violating their rights and should be punished. If that's not what you mean by "abuse", be clearer next time.
ok, now the coluding companies drop there price below your, you go away, and they jack up there prices.
Assuming the customers were dumb enough to fall for that, would you want those customers' business anyway? You cannot argue moral principles based on contrived situations. The underlying reason for arguing for the free market is it is the only system in which individual rights are not violated.
You should really study up an large company behavior during the beginning of the 20th century to see where this leads.
Would you care to give any specifics, or are you assuming you know what you're talking about. I'd suggest checking out Murray Rothbard's America's Great Depression, or the book by the chief architect of the New Deal, Raymond Moley, titled After Seven Years, if you want to "see where [government manipulation of the economy] leads."
Ther was a time when there was no regulation, regulation came about becasue of monumental abuse.
Abuse of whom? What time was this? You need to give some specifics if you want to be taken seriously. If people were killing other people, polluting their land, forcing them to use their services, obviously the government should step in to prevent those rights violations from occurring, and to punish the guilty. That is the purpose of the government. If you are not talking about rights violations when you say, "abuse", then what are you talking about?
The OP was stating that businesses will try to fuck the consumer.
Agreed.
You go and say Nyah, they won't!
No, I did not.
I then joined in and said(colloquially); given the preponderance of evidence of past actions of businesses, it is relatively certain that, left to their own devices, the businesses will try to fuck the consumer.
You're arguing against the free market, but your evidence of bad behavior is not from a free market system. A free market is a market free of forced intervention. It should be obvious that, so long as politicians are willing to hold up signs reading, "Will manipulate the economy for money" , as soon as one person or company starts buying favorable laws, competitors will respond in the same way. The end result is a system in which government manipulation of the economy is so common and integrated as to make it difficult to untangle. With each manipulation, individual rights are violated. No matter how common these violations become, though, they will never be justifiable.
You stated that all the protection from businesses consumers need comes from their wallets("Their wallets are all the power they need.")
Agreed. I did say that.
I replied, in effect, that historically, this *is not* all the consumers need.
Again, please provide some specific examples, and then for each of those examples, show why you believe the system at that time was a free market.
If my post conveyed a lack of information to you, the reason is you refuse to see the information contained therein.
Another possibility is that there was no information to begin with.
By the time this thing gets regulatory approval, a young Bones McCoy will be writing his high school paper on primitive medical barbarism of the early 21st century.
Yeah, there is no history of any company trying to fuck their customers.
What does that have to do with anything? How is that a sound argument? There is a history of people killing other people. Does that mean every person should be considered a criminal? Please try to stay in context.
Because "it would be dum of them".
Actually, I spelled dumb correctly. The reason it would be dumb of them is because they would lose business.
Oh, and that vote with your wallet gig really has worked out quite well too - that *always* keeps those companies in line.
What are you talking about? You've constructed a sentence, but conveyed no information. Please provide some argument or evidence next time.
Perhaps you should take off your IBM coloured glasses?
I have perfect vision thank you very much. And I hate sunglasses.
"could not be regarded as necessary in a democratic society... fortunately for us, the UK could never be mistaken for a democratic society, so feel free to violate any and all rights."
A corporation does not. Its constituents do. I shortened it to "Google's Rights" so that it would actually fit in the length limit for headers. :)