The problem with what some of the people here are saying is this; the modern corporation is an intentional government construct. Corporations, and dominated monopolies, do not naturally appear in a free market.
Since corporations are government constructed, and not created within a free market, you cannot blame capitalism for this.
FDR and Wilson, two of the most anti-capitalistic Presidents in U.S. History, were key players in the creation of the modern corporation.
You're proposing making more government laws to reform government in business. What you need to be promoting is removing government regulation from the market.
The_ORIGINAL_Primer, you're making alot of good points and I agree with you. However, you need to understand not only the deffiency of government involvement in business, but also that more government (laws, regulations, three letter acronyms, and more bureaucracy) is not the answer.
For state schools, you only pay about 40-50% of the total tuition. It costs about $30,000 to educate one student per year at a state owned university (on average, in the country).
$30,000 x 4 = $120,000
With the exception of elite schools, most high quality private institutions run no more (and often significantly less) than $25,000.
$25,000 x 4 = $100,000
Now of course there's government regulation and red tape that keeps private institutions from lowering costs. But we'll ignore this for now, since we're already $20,000 below government education.
Of course, this is all assuming that you stay in the state where you go to get your state education from. You might end up paying more than your fair share of somebody else's education depending on how Socialized education is in that state. Or, you might move to a state that will drain you for less money for socialized education. Hmmm.
While I feel like typing, we can also compare standardized scores, law school entrance exam scores, average SAT scores, and so on between private schools vs public schools. The bottom line? Private schools provide a better education for less money.
People who cannot make themselves into worthy investments for private scholarship, grant, and loan dealers do not deserve to be in college. Not everybody has the right to go to college. We're not all born equal. We only have equal opportunity to EARN our way to school.
Of course, in this day and age, nobody wants to EARN anything. People want things given to them... of course at the expense of others.
(Taking my money to finance someone else going to school sounds a whole lot like theft to me.)
(Comparing private to public schools on the K-12 level is even less promising for public schools. Private schools often cost less than half of public schools, overall, and Catholic schools least of all. The verdict? Private schools prepare and educate students better than public schools. Home schoolers are often much better than either of those -- though one can easily count them into Private Schools and make public education even less good.)
Of course in those other places you didn't have to worry about some idiot pulling a gun, but you really could do nothing but accept the way things were in a society. Let the government take all the money, property and rights from you that they'd like. It's kind of funny that people with similar thought processes talk about how low crime is in countries with no guns amongst the citizenry --- completely ignoring crimes committed by the government.
And as far as capitalism goes, you ignorant sod, Enron, Microsoft, and SCO are examples of Corporations. If you had any sort of sense to you, and knew anything about economics and modern socio-economic history, you might have known that the modern corporation is an intentional government construct. It's called "Market Socialism".
Here's a pipe. Come and smoke it.
You basically just agreed that there would have been no Soviets for the Germans to bother fighting if it weren't for the contributions of the Americans.
They certainly had a hand in it, but helped feed that hand, clothe that hand, arm that hand, and send that hand into battle. Heh.
John Paul Jones, for whatever reasoned, joined all the other British Colonists (most of the people living in the colonies were British subjects) in their struggle for revolution by enlisting in the United States Navy.
During the American Revolution, British warships were captured off the coast of Scotland and England, and the American Navy took the Bahamas right out from under the noses of the British.
The whole point of the battle for Yorktown virginia, and the battle at sea off the coast of Virginia was about REestablishing British supremacy at sea. Cornwallis was pushed back into Yorktown by Lafayette, Brig. General Wayne, and von Stueben (and their armies, of course).
It's certainly helpful that the French did the significant portion of the work defeating the British fleets off of Virginia, but American Naval vessels were involved. More than half of the troops that besieged Yorktown were American troops.
When I said "civilized warfare", I was referring to the practice of 'gentleman' soldiers who marched in columns and fought in lines. The British were not known for attacking officers. While most of the battles were fought between opposing conventional forces, guerilla units played a very significant part in the war. Unconventional warfare has been overshadowed by the romantic visions given to us of Washington and his armies dominating British troops (with the help of Rochambeau.
The war on land and the war at sea, while both being brought to an end by large conventional forces, were won by the smaller unceonventional forces. A final point, the French never really wanted to help the colonists, they just wanted revenge against the British. They got that, and we go our independence.
Who hasn't grasped that regulation is always there?
In economics, a free market does have regulation just like in politics, an anarchy has rules -- they're just not government mandated and controlled.
Actually, in a true democracy, there is no government. Because by our modern definition of a democracy, only 51% get represented -- the other 49% percent can be violated in any way. You know Hitler was democratically elected...
But what does Kerry run on his own personal computers? What does George W. Bush run? Well... Ok, Dubya is probably still trying to turn the thing on.
I'll be damned if I'm going to vote for Kerry just because he supports open sourced software. Don't get me wrong, though, I'm not going to vote for George W. Bush either. Nader? Bah! You've got to be kidding me. Modern democracy has become a farcical onanism, and it's disgusting.
Third party candidates, no matter what their operating system of choice may be or no matter whether or not they support Open Source or Free Software, aren't going to be represented at all.
They do, however, sometimes show nonvoter turnout. What does it mean when people do not vote? It means either that they have no interest in voting or they do not consider any of the candidates good choices (and aren't being jackasses and voting for the 'lesser of two evils').
I have indeed heard about the outsourcing trend being reversed. It is good news for all of the IT people out there or on slashdot. The best cases for or against outsourcing are based upon sound economics. If it doesn't work and people who buy the products or services don't want them, the company will not pursue it. You don't see this when it comes to government. Calling people evil, unpatriotic, or unAmerican for outsourcing jobs is an ignorant stance to take.
Microsoft and Walmart wouldn't have risen to the power that they have become without government regulation. At least in the case of Microsoft. Walmart is giving people what they want at very low prices. Microsoft, on the other hand, even though not an actual monopoly, has been rather suspect in its business practices. It just could never have gotten away with them in a free market. Not that we should condemn people for taking advantage of the government, governments take advantage of their people all the time.
Microsoft and Walmart being examples of the modern corporation... purposeful government constructs and all. You know, market socialism. I guess you missed that part. Heh.
Alright. I overstated the capabilities of the Germans. They might not have conquered all of Russia, but they could have beaten it into submission. The drain of such a thing, coupled with the problems of a continual occupation of the rest of Europe and the necessity to maintain a war time footing for fear of renewed war with Britain and Russia would have lead to German collapse long before all of Russian could be crushed.
I was merely wanting to argue that the Soviets would have submitted if it weren't for the British (with the support of Americans... and Canadians.. heh). All Germany had to do would be to capture the important Central Asian oil fields and crumble their armies. What the hell good would the rest of the Soviet Union be? If it weren't for the Western Front, Germany would have been able to do this.
The economies of Germany and the Soviet Union would have collapsed long before the war was won... I doubt Great Britain would have been successfully invaded or conquered, let alone CONUS -- with our powerful economy, huge and diverse landmass, separation by two vast oceans, and well over 100 million well armed civilians.
Who said that the U.S. going to war in Europe was a good deed? We certainly had our reasons to go there, few of which were near being just. Don't forget most Americans had no interest in going to Europe. Roosevelt did everything he could to provoke the Axis powers (specifically Japan) through his economic foreign policy.
Before the U.S. officially entered World War II, America was violating neutrality by trading weaponry and war materials, as well as prosecution of German U-Boats. Though, technically I think the Germans drew first blood by sinking the USS Reuben James.
A thing I find funny about most Europeans today is that they thought we owed it to them to help them back then --- but yet we don't owe it to the Iraqis today. But now I think we're getting extremely far from Michael Moore...
Michael Jordan didn't make all his money from playing basketball... Nike made him into the wealthiest man in sports for all those years.
I hope that's insightful... The point is that Moore isn't making all THAT money off of DVD and VHS sales.
Without American financial support and military supplies, the Britons would have been in awhole lot of trouble - especially if the Germans were able to break through on the Eastern Front to crush the Soviet Union (which would've been quite likely if the U.S. was not involved as much as it was.).
Next time a fascist or communist regime starts to dominate Europe (like the European Union:-p), I hope the United States stays completely away from it. Let them suffer for their mistakes completely this time. The economiess behind the Soviet Union or fascist Germany would never be able to support the empire long enough to get here.
Actually, this isn't what capitalism is. It's what socialism is, except that instead of a business explicitly and openly being the monopoly (in the form of market socialism), the government becomes the monopoly, dominating the market more wretchedly than any corporation has ever [or could ever].
If I had to choose between Bill Gates or Stalin, I'd have to go with Bill Gates on that one... Though ideally, I'd choose neither the lesser of the two evils (why I won't be voting for Kerry or Bush;))
What people don't grasp about pure free market capitalism, is that there is regulation -- it's just not government regulation. Does Smith's 'invisible hand' ring a bell?
Also, nobody has made any final, convincing arguments proving that outsourcing is both bad and immoral or unpatriotic. Infact, the side for outsourcing is winning where those who know anything about economics debate.
This is just plain stupid.
The United States, like any significantly overpowered force [with any intelligence] resorted to guerilla warfare where the object isn't to win--but to survive by bankrupting the opposition or lowering their willingness to fight.
Certainly the French relieved some of the burden, but giving the French credit is ludicrous. The American Navy actually won quite a few victories over the British at sea. We may never would have faced them and defeated them head on, but we wouldn't have needed to.
America is free because we realized we weren't on equal footing with the world's super power at the time so we never stood our ground on equal footing. The English could have forgotten about the French and anyone else in Europe and sent their entire fleet here, and we would never have met them head on. We would have picked on the slowest ships, whittling the British down piece-meal. We would have crippled British commercial shipping by the same method.
It's the same principle at play when we hid behind rocks and trees and sniped at British officers as they marched in orderly lines down country roads. "Civilized warfare", indeed!
Also at the time, the British didn't even realize the economic potential of these beautiful lands, so they probably wouldn't have even tried to fight a long lasting American resistance movement.
Americans are free because they won their freedom. Let's not overrate the French influence on our freedom or make them sound like they were just being benevolent.
Modern capitalism of course being 'market socialism'. We should all be so thankful to FDR and Wilson for nationalizing industry in the form of capitalism.
Well, maybe not. I don't think the problems of socialism popping up all over the business world should be celebrated.
Defending corporations because you're a capitalist is like trying to blame capitalism for HMOs, which of course were created by government, not choice.
Another thing that's funny and ironic, is how people blame capitalism for destroying the environment. The tremendously bloated and expensive American military is the biggest polluter. Why? Because it's the government at work. The government does not have to answer for its actions as long as it has people blaming someone else or asking the wrong questions.
In a free market, businessmen have to be responsible and answer for their actions.
Actually, I didn't read the link until after I posted --- I thought it was a link to an article I was sent earlier in the day. The link I posted here was found by me today, while I was searching for more information about it.
I just posted the wrong link --- and apparently revealed the truth of the matter to you and anyone else who read the article at the link I posted.
I suppose the good thing about my goof up is that I reminded myself to read that link (debunking asbestos as the claim).
Once again jumped the gun and 'spoke to soon' --- though with all the bookmarks I have, if I hadn't posted the wrong link, I might not have ever read it.
Isn't "anti-competitive" behavior competitive behavior? This all seems like nonsense to get your product to the top.
Like IBM financially supporting OS/Linux against Microsoft. Like Netscape against Microsoft all that long ago.
This is getting out of hand. Microsoft is exploiting holes in the system --- or benefitting by utilizing copyright and IP laws that exist in the system. This means that Microsoft is not being anti-competitive, but rather competitive; they're just being better at it.
So long as rediculous copyright laws and IP nonsense doesn't prevent others from pursuing space travel, you're likely to never find a monopoly in this field. If you don't want it to happen, then support reformation of copyright laws and total trashing of current IP laws.
But without having to start a war over Microsoft, Pepsi/Coke, AOL, etc --- none of them are a monopoly. To be a monopoly means to be the only option.
I have to totally apologize for that slip up.
It was supposed to be "I sincerely hope that those pursuing private spaceflight do not settle..."
Sorry about that. I was in a hurry when I wrote that post. I probably should have waited until I could spare the extra moment to review my post --- but alas I couldn't hold myself back and wait until I had the time.
Again, sorry for that.
I think we can all agree that privatization is key for/affordable/ civilian spaceflight. However, I sincerely hope that those pursuing privately pursuing spaceflight settle for heavily regulated and subsidized government regulation (control) of "private spaceflight"./We/ will never reach maturity in spaceflight as long as government is involved. Government just waists too much money and is too sluggish and inefficient. Any sort of [government] planning of capital and resources going into private/civilian spaceflight will have a negative effect.
If government and NASA would stop with the Mars nonsense and the Impending Asteroid Impact bullcrap and completely privatize space, we'd be much further along --- technologically and financially.
Slashdot Mirror
Haha. Touche.
The problem with what some of the people here are saying is this; the modern corporation is an intentional government construct. Corporations, and dominated monopolies, do not naturally appear in a free market.
Since corporations are government constructed, and not created within a free market, you cannot blame capitalism for this.
FDR and Wilson, two of the most anti-capitalistic Presidents in U.S. History, were key players in the creation of the modern corporation.
You're proposing making more government laws to reform government in business. What you need to be promoting is removing government regulation from the market.
The_ORIGINAL_Primer, you're making alot of good points and I agree with you. However, you need to understand not only the deffiency of government involvement in business, but also that more government (laws, regulations, three letter acronyms, and more bureaucracy) is not the answer.
When is the problem ever the solution?
For state schools, you only pay about 40-50% of the total tuition. It costs about $30,000 to educate one student per year at a state owned university (on average, in the country).
$30,000 x 4 = $120,000
With the exception of elite schools, most high quality private institutions run no more (and often significantly less) than $25,000.
$25,000 x 4 = $100,000
Now of course there's government regulation and red tape that keeps private institutions from lowering costs. But we'll ignore this for now, since we're already $20,000 below government education.
Of course, this is all assuming that you stay in the state where you go to get your state education from. You might end up paying more than your fair share of somebody else's education depending on how Socialized education is in that state. Or, you might move to a state that will drain you for less money for socialized education. Hmmm.
While I feel like typing, we can also compare standardized scores, law school entrance exam scores, average SAT scores, and so on between private schools vs public schools. The bottom line? Private schools provide a better education for less money.
People who cannot make themselves into worthy investments for private scholarship, grant, and loan dealers do not deserve to be in college. Not everybody has the right to go to college. We're not all born equal. We only have equal opportunity to EARN our way to school.
Of course, in this day and age, nobody wants to EARN anything. People want things given to them... of course at the expense of others.
(Taking my money to finance someone else going to school sounds a whole lot like theft to me.)
(Comparing private to public schools on the K-12 level is even less promising for public schools. Private schools often cost less than half of public schools, overall, and Catholic schools least of all. The verdict? Private schools prepare and educate students better than public schools. Home schoolers are often much better than either of those -- though one can easily count them into Private Schools and make public education even less good.)
Of course in those other places you didn't have to worry about some idiot pulling a gun, but you really could do nothing but accept the way things were in a society. Let the government take all the money, property and rights from you that they'd like. It's kind of funny that people with similar thought processes talk about how low crime is in countries with no guns amongst the citizenry --- completely ignoring crimes committed by the government. And as far as capitalism goes, you ignorant sod, Enron, Microsoft, and SCO are examples of Corporations. If you had any sort of sense to you, and knew anything about economics and modern socio-economic history, you might have known that the modern corporation is an intentional government construct. It's called "Market Socialism". Here's a pipe. Come and smoke it.
You basically just agreed that there would have been no Soviets for the Germans to bother fighting if it weren't for the contributions of the Americans.
They certainly had a hand in it, but helped feed that hand, clothe that hand, arm that hand, and send that hand into battle. Heh.
John Paul Jones, for whatever reasoned, joined all the other British Colonists (most of the people living in the colonies were British subjects) in their struggle for revolution by enlisting in the United States Navy.
During the American Revolution, British warships were captured off the coast of Scotland and England, and the American Navy took the Bahamas right out from under the noses of the British.
The whole point of the battle for Yorktown virginia, and the battle at sea off the coast of Virginia was about REestablishing British supremacy at sea. Cornwallis was pushed back into Yorktown by Lafayette, Brig. General Wayne, and von Stueben (and their armies, of course).
It's certainly helpful that the French did the significant portion of the work defeating the British fleets off of Virginia, but American Naval vessels were involved. More than half of the troops that besieged Yorktown were American troops.
When I said "civilized warfare", I was referring to the practice of 'gentleman' soldiers who marched in columns and fought in lines. The British were not known for attacking officers. While most of the battles were fought between opposing conventional forces, guerilla units played a very significant part in the war.
Unconventional warfare has been overshadowed by the romantic visions given to us of Washington and his armies dominating British troops (with the help of Rochambeau.
The war on land and the war at sea, while both being brought to an end by large conventional forces, were won by the smaller unceonventional forces. A final point, the French never really wanted to help the colonists, they just wanted revenge against the British. They got that, and we go our independence.
Who hasn't grasped that regulation is always there?
In economics, a free market does have regulation just like in politics, an anarchy has rules -- they're just not government mandated and controlled.
Actually, in a true democracy, there is no government. Because by our modern definition of a democracy, only 51% get represented -- the other 49% percent can be violated in any way. You know Hitler was democratically elected...
But what does Kerry run on his own personal computers? What does George W. Bush run? Well... Ok, Dubya is probably still trying to turn the thing on.
I'll be damned if I'm going to vote for Kerry just because he supports open sourced software. Don't get me wrong, though, I'm not going to vote for George W. Bush either. Nader? Bah! You've got to be kidding me. Modern democracy has become a farcical onanism, and it's disgusting.
Third party candidates, no matter what their operating system of choice may be or no matter whether or not they support Open Source or Free Software, aren't going to be represented at all.
They do, however, sometimes show nonvoter turnout.
What does it mean when people do not vote? It means either that they have no interest in voting or they do not consider any of the candidates good choices (and aren't being jackasses and voting for the 'lesser of two evils').
"None of the Above in 2004."
Yes, something like that.
They have every right to fight us. As unpatriotic as it may be taken as, I'm quite glad that they are.
LoL. Thanks for the advice.
I have indeed heard about the outsourcing trend being reversed. It is good news for all of the IT people out there or on slashdot. The best cases for or against outsourcing are based upon sound economics. If it doesn't work and people who buy the products or services don't want them, the company will not pursue it. You don't see this when it comes to government. Calling people evil, unpatriotic, or unAmerican for outsourcing jobs is an ignorant stance to take.
Microsoft and Walmart wouldn't have risen to the power that they have become without government regulation. At least in the case of Microsoft. Walmart is giving people what they want at very low prices. Microsoft, on the other hand, even though not an actual monopoly, has been rather suspect in its business practices. It just could never have gotten away with them in a free market.
Not that we should condemn people for taking advantage of the government, governments take advantage of their people all the time.
Microsoft and Walmart being examples of the modern corporation... purposeful government constructs and all. You know, market socialism. I guess you missed that part. Heh.
Alright. I overstated the capabilities of the Germans. They might not have conquered all of Russia, but they could have beaten it into submission. The drain of such a thing, coupled with the problems of a continual occupation of the rest of Europe and the necessity to maintain a war time footing for fear of renewed war with Britain and Russia would have lead to German collapse long before all of Russian could be crushed.
I was merely wanting to argue that the Soviets would have submitted if it weren't for the British (with the support of Americans... and Canadians.. heh). All Germany had to do would be to capture the important Central Asian oil fields and crumble their armies. What the hell good would the rest of the Soviet Union be? If it weren't for the Western Front, Germany would have been able to do this.
The economies of Germany and the Soviet Union would have collapsed long before the war was won... I doubt Great Britain would have been successfully invaded or conquered, let alone CONUS -- with our powerful economy, huge and diverse landmass, separation by two vast oceans, and well over 100 million well armed civilians.
Who said that the U.S. going to war in Europe was a good deed? We certainly had our reasons to go there, few of which were near being just. Don't forget most Americans had no interest in going to Europe. Roosevelt did everything he could to provoke the Axis powers (specifically Japan) through his economic foreign policy.
Before the U.S. officially entered World War II, America was violating neutrality by trading weaponry and war materials, as well as prosecution of German U-Boats. Though, technically I think the Germans drew first blood by sinking the USS Reuben James.
A thing I find funny about most Europeans today is that they thought we owed it to them to help them back then --- but yet we don't owe it to the Iraqis today. But now I think we're getting extremely far from Michael Moore...
Michael Jordan didn't make all his money from playing basketball... Nike made him into the wealthiest man in sports for all those years. I hope that's insightful... The point is that Moore isn't making all THAT money off of DVD and VHS sales.
I always found Western Canadians and non French Canadians to be very much like Americans --- but the French Canadians... send them back to France.
(I kid, of course.)
Without American financial support and military supplies, the Britons would have been in awhole lot of trouble - especially if the Germans were able to break through on the Eastern Front to crush the Soviet Union (which would've been quite likely if the U.S. was not involved as much as it was.). Next time a fascist or communist regime starts to dominate Europe (like the European Union :-p), I hope the United States stays completely away from it. Let them suffer for their mistakes completely this time. The economiess behind the Soviet Union or fascist Germany would never be able to support the empire long enough to get here.
Actually, this isn't what capitalism is. It's what socialism is, except that instead of a business explicitly and openly being the monopoly (in the form of market socialism), the government becomes the monopoly, dominating the market more wretchedly than any corporation has ever [or could ever]. If I had to choose between Bill Gates or Stalin, I'd have to go with Bill Gates on that one... Though ideally, I'd choose neither the lesser of the two evils (why I won't be voting for Kerry or Bush ;))
What people don't grasp about pure free market capitalism, is that there is regulation -- it's just not government regulation. Does Smith's 'invisible hand' ring a bell?
Also, nobody has made any final, convincing arguments proving that outsourcing is both bad and immoral or unpatriotic. Infact, the side for outsourcing is winning where those who know anything about economics debate.
This is just plain stupid. The United States, like any significantly overpowered force [with any intelligence] resorted to guerilla warfare where the object isn't to win--but to survive by bankrupting the opposition or lowering their willingness to fight. Certainly the French relieved some of the burden, but giving the French credit is ludicrous. The American Navy actually won quite a few victories over the British at sea. We may never would have faced them and defeated them head on, but we wouldn't have needed to. America is free because we realized we weren't on equal footing with the world's super power at the time so we never stood our ground on equal footing. The English could have forgotten about the French and anyone else in Europe and sent their entire fleet here, and we would never have met them head on. We would have picked on the slowest ships, whittling the British down piece-meal. We would have crippled British commercial shipping by the same method. It's the same principle at play when we hid behind rocks and trees and sniped at British officers as they marched in orderly lines down country roads. "Civilized warfare", indeed! Also at the time, the British didn't even realize the economic potential of these beautiful lands, so they probably wouldn't have even tried to fight a long lasting American resistance movement. Americans are free because they won their freedom. Let's not overrate the French influence on our freedom or make them sound like they were just being benevolent.
Modern capitalism of course being 'market socialism'. We should all be so thankful to FDR and Wilson for nationalizing industry in the form of capitalism.
Well, maybe not. I don't think the problems of socialism popping up all over the business world should be celebrated.
Defending corporations because you're a capitalist is like trying to blame capitalism for HMOs, which of course were created by government, not choice.
Another thing that's funny and ironic, is how people blame capitalism for destroying the environment. The tremendously bloated and expensive American military is the biggest polluter. Why? Because it's the government at work. The government does not have to answer for its actions as long as it has people blaming someone else or asking the wrong questions.
In a free market, businessmen have to be responsible and answer for their actions.
Actually, I didn't read the link until after I posted --- I thought it was a link to an article I was sent earlier in the day. The link I posted here was found by me today, while I was searching for more information about it.
I just posted the wrong link --- and apparently revealed the truth of the matter to you and anyone else who read the article at the link I posted.
I suppose the good thing about my goof up is that I reminded myself to read that link (debunking asbestos as the claim).
Once again jumped the gun and 'spoke to soon' --- though with all the bookmarks I have, if I hadn't posted the wrong link, I might not have ever read it.
Thanks for pointing that out.
erhm. "It" being the banning of asbestos... (Have to remember to "Preview". Sorry.)
I'm glad that they phased out asbestos too...
Oh wait, no I'm not. It killed the crew members of the Challenger back in 1987.
http://www.info-pollution.com/challenger.htm
Isn't "anti-competitive" behavior competitive behavior? This all seems like nonsense to get your product to the top.
Like IBM financially supporting OS/Linux against Microsoft. Like Netscape against Microsoft all that long ago.
This is getting out of hand. Microsoft is exploiting holes in the system --- or benefitting by utilizing copyright and IP laws that exist in the system. This means that Microsoft is not being anti-competitive, but rather competitive; they're just being better at it.
So long as rediculous copyright laws and IP nonsense doesn't prevent others from pursuing space travel, you're likely to never find a monopoly in this field. If you don't want it to happen, then support reformation of copyright laws and total trashing of current IP laws.
But without having to start a war over Microsoft, Pepsi/Coke, AOL, etc --- none of them are a monopoly. To be a monopoly means to be the only option.
I have to totally apologize for that slip up. It was supposed to be "I sincerely hope that those pursuing private spaceflight do not settle..." Sorry about that. I was in a hurry when I wrote that post. I probably should have waited until I could spare the extra moment to review my post --- but alas I couldn't hold myself back and wait until I had the time. Again, sorry for that.
I think we can all agree that privatization is key for /affordable/ civilian spaceflight. However, I sincerely hope that those pursuing privately pursuing spaceflight settle for heavily regulated and subsidized government regulation (control) of "private spaceflight". /We/ will never reach maturity in spaceflight as long as government is involved. Government just waists too much money and is too sluggish and inefficient. Any sort of [government] planning of capital and resources going into private/civilian spaceflight will have a negative effect.
If government and NASA would stop with the Mars nonsense and the Impending Asteroid Impact bullcrap and completely privatize space, we'd be much further along --- technologically and financially.