Venture capitalists take risks on investments for the possibility of a large financial gain afterwards. What you are proposing is to force every tax payer to take those risks, when the reality is that we won't be the main benificiaries of the results, if there even are any.
My infatuation with the free market comes from my infatuation with liberty, freedom, and a voluntary society. The main reason that big industry is ridden with beaurocrats is through their ties to the government. They spend billions of dollars on lobbyists to get special laws and ordinances passed that benefit them (and usually harm others). These lobbyists seek funding from the government for projects like the one you are proposing under the same premise that it "benefits the people."
Your conclusions of free-enterprise based on the outcome of the Enron situation is severely flawed. You would discount all of the companies and markets that do operate without government intervention on the basis of one big failed company that operated with lies and deceit? In the long run, probably no one benefited from their false accounting practices. That and the threat of criminal charges serves as a deterrant for other companies to operate in the same manner.
Also, the beginnings of the internet are rooted in government funding, but the majority of the computer revolution is not. The government didn't start companies such as IBM, Apple, and AOL.
You're right, the government has given funding to some projects, but that doesn't mean that we wouldn't have gotten those technologies without it (and probably at a cheaper cost, since we wouldn't have had to pay for all the beaurocrats that pick and choose where to hand out our money).
If something is worthwhile to produce, funding can come from private investors and borrowing from banks just as easily.
I didn't call the research into alternative energy sources a silly premise. I said that YOUR belief that everyone (who is going to be paying for this research) agrees of the benefits is a silly premise.
You would place shackles on everyone and have us do your bidding while telling us all that it is for our own good are blinders of a much more dangerous sort. F.A. Hayek called it the road to serfdom.
I'll ignore the Alaska comment since you seem to naively packaged me into a little box of who you think I am and what my ideas are (and you're wrong).
That said, there are ways to get the free market to do your bidding without taxing everyone to death. Failures in the market are a result of ambiguous property rights. For example, no one owns the air that we breathe and pollute with our cars. That's the purpose of government laws such as EPA emissions standards. While we may pay for those costs in terms of more expensive vehicles, we benefit from the cleaner air. If we didn't benefit from it, then the emissions standards should be repealed or lowered. If the costs of maintaining gas burning vehicles that meet emissions standards ever outweighs the cost of finding an alternative, an alternative will be found. What you propose however is handing millions and millions of dollars to research organizations that may or may not even find a viable alternative that can be implemented without the government forcing that down our throats as well.
You are absolutely right. How dare the government use public money on a project that would have huge benefits in terms of the enviroment, cheap energy, independance from the middle east, national security, and on and on.
You base your silly premise on the idea that everyone believes that the project actually would benefit us in those ways.
The government didn't fund the industrial revolution. The government didn't fund the computer revolution. Most of the things that we have today that improve our lives did not come from the government. And yet for some reason the only way we can continue to improve our lives in the future is through the government? Who is the one being short sighted?
What every geek should scream at is the refusal of every statist who refuses to acknowledge why the US is one of the wealthiest nations in the world and that the governments interventions since the days of FDR have done nothing but curtail that.
The tax burden may be lower than what it was in world war ii, but it is many times higher than what we started a revolution with the British over. The only thing perpetuating the current system of high taxes is the continued lies of all the benefits we recieve from having somebody else spend our money for us.
A robber walks into a man's home and takes 40% of everything he owns, and then says "What the hell are you complaining about? I stole 80% from the last house I robbed!" I, like that man, feel much better from reading your comment.
I didn't say it was unlimited. Just that our oil consumption hasn't reached this peak where prices begin going up because of shortages or because supply can't keep up with demand. If we had, OPEC wouldn't need to limit production to hold up costs.
"The reality is that world oil production will peak this decade if it hasn't already."
OPEC is an oil cartel that maintains higher prices by LIMITING the production of oil. They've been doing it for decades. Oil production has NOT peaked yet.
But you are right, when oil resources do start becoming limited, prices of oil will rise and the incentive for alternative fuel sources will grow. The market will find a solution.
It must be time to go to bed. I just worked all night and at first I read "Hebrew rackmount cooling." I was so confused.
Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp
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I don't support the ban of any drugs, "soft" or "hard". Like you said, the crime waves created by the war on drugs are much worse to society than the effects of having them be legal. We wouldn't have drug turf wars destroying places like East St. Louis and even our nations capital. Granted that's a small part of the picture since a lot of these ghetto's were created by government housing programs, many of which have been very racist in their objectives.
Hard drugs are ugly. They do horrible things to people. But it's so much more productive to work on educating people on the harms of drug abuse and helping those who have already been affected by them with private charities and organizations. Legalizing drugs immediately takes the drug lord suppliers out of the equation because then it loses it's profitability. Hell we could all just grow our own weed in the back yard. Or giant weed farms could grow it and competition would drive down prices (which of course like you said, the government could go back and slap big taxes on it). Nothing wrong with government raising funds for LEGITIMATE uses.
As for big businesses manipulating the market- I can only assume you mean the ways that they manipulate markets through their government connections and lobbyists. In my little fantasy land I would do away with those activities as well.
Human's really aren't as illogical as you say when you take away their means to do illogical things. One senator or house representative from (i think) the state of vermont sponsored some bill that allowed businesses to recieve the money collected on tariffs on products that compete with their own. This bill caused some fireworks firm that had gone bankrupt a decade before to reopen it's doors and produce a small ammount of fireworks for the SOLE PURPOSE of collecting this tarriff money. Consumers are harmed because they have to pay more for fireworks, society as a whole is harmed because there is a waste of labor and capital going into producing fireworks that are better produced in China. (Yes, my degree is in Mathematical Economics).
Although now that I think about it, people are pretty illogical for ever voting that guy into office, or any of the other nuts who voted for the bill. I think most illogical actions by people stem from ignorance or lack of knowledge/understanding. The solution is to work on THAT problem, not pander to their ignorant illogical actions.
As I've gotten older and more educated, my "faith" in a voluntary society has only grown stronger. The biggest problem is that I'll never be able to force you or anyone else to stop forcing me and everyone else into doing what you want.
You sound sure of yourself and your opinions, but I think that if you havent read it yet, you and every other voting American should read Free to Choose by Milton Friedman. At the very least it will give your opinions a good challenge.
Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp
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Extremism mellows with age? You don't think banning smoking in all public places is extremist? That our governments war on drugs isn't extremist?
If you want to discount me because I'm only 21, that's fine. Milton Friedman is in his 90's and his "extremism" hasn't mellowed any. If anything, from reading his books, it sounds as if he becomes more "extreme" with age.
Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp
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That's funny because 5 years ago I would've agreed with you.
Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp
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Absolutely.
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I've thought this through plenty, thanks.
Privately owned is privately owned.
Freedom cannot be absolute, it must be limited in a variety of ways, or society cannot exist.
Not being an anarchist-libertarian, I only barely agree. The government should provide for our mutual defense, and protect us from infringing upon the rights of each other. People smoking in a PRIVATELY OWNED restaurant is not infringing on anyone's rights.
If I invite people over to my house for dinner and I allow people to smoke, am I infringing on the rights of the other people I invited who do not smoke? No, because they can leave. They didn't have to come to my home.
If there was a demand for smoke free restaurants, market demand will provide for that. If that's your goal, then you should work to educate people more against smoking, and try to convince restaurant owners to ban it themselves. Don't use the government as a means of strong arming people to do what you want.
Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp
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If you want to sacrifice your freedoms at the whims of the majority, that's fine. I, however, do not.
Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp
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IMO, smoking (of anything) should be banned in all public places, which includes private establishments that are frequented by the public. The problem with smoke is that it cannot easily be contained, which means that it gets shared with whoever is nearby, whether they want it or not.
That's the thing- private places are NOT A PUBLIC PLACE. Who the fuck are you to tell people what they can and can't do with their property and business? Don't like it? Start your own non-smoking restaurant. Welcome to capitalism, freedom, and teh responsibility of choice that comes along with it.
Like I said, I expect this in the Southern US, but didn't think I'd ever see it on Slashdot.
Now who is the one doing the stereotyping? I smell hypocrisy.
Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp
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The alternative is to cut down forests in order to make way for hemp-farms. This is counter-productive to the goal of saving forests.
If our government would stop heavily subsidizing the agrilculture industry, then that would free up farm lands for hemp production as well. Plus, if growing hemp was determined to be more profitable than growing corn, a sufficient number of farms would switch to growing hemp until the profit was driven back down to a normal level. Forests would not be cleared out any faster than at the rate they already are.
Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp
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Smoking should be banned in TRUE public places- government buildings, parks, etc. As long as you don't include restaurants or any other business/privately owned location in that, then there is no argument. You don't HAVE to go to any of those places. I don't care if you "have a life" or not. You claim that people smoking violates your rights, but then have no problem violating their rights to smoke in private places that allow it. That's absolute hypocrisy.
Smoking weed should be the same way. Who are you to tell people what they can and can't do in the privacy of their own home? Or why can't there be bars where people go and get high? It's a hell of a lot safer than alcohol. No one has ever died of Marijuana poisoning.
Marijuana will stay illegal because of the widespread ignorance of it by people like you. The so-called "war on drugs" has been one of the costliest, worthless wastes of government spending in history. It causes the gigantic slums like east st. louis to be warzones and infringes on the rights of every citizen in this country whether they choose to smoke it or not!
No one's putting a gun to your head and saying "smoke this joint", but you sanction putting guns to everyone elses heads and saying "don't smoke any joints, anywhere, anytime."
When I lived in Hawaii we had geckos all over the house. Unfortunately they weren't abel to take care of all the ants/cockroaches and other bugs in the house.
I think the problem was that the cat managed to eat most of the geckos. He took out a centipede or two for us as well. Now THOSE were freaky.
Re:I can testify to that!
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I was worried they'd come back, since the house had only jalousie (yeah, and lousy they were, too) windows, which couldn't be shut tight enough to keep out flies much less smaller-than-average-ants, but they never came back.
Um.. did you try putting SCREENS outside the windows?
I thought about it for a minute... I can't see why one way is better than the other. Although because I am so use to it being on the right side, seeing it on the left made me cringe a little.
There are those of us who have never smoked it in our lives and would absolutely vote to legalize it. It isn't just a matter of believing the government has no right to intrude on our rights to do things that only harm our bodies, but also the reality that the war on drugs has destroyed inner cities and increased poverty in many areas.
You can tell people that pot is less harmful than alcohol until you are blue in the face, but some people just won't liste. I don't understand the scapegoating, either.
Slashdot Mirror
Venture capitalists take risks on investments for the possibility of a large financial gain afterwards. What you are proposing is to force every tax payer to take those risks, when the reality is that we won't be the main benificiaries of the results, if there even are any.
My infatuation with the free market comes from my infatuation with liberty, freedom, and a voluntary society. The main reason that big industry is ridden with beaurocrats is through their ties to the government. They spend billions of dollars on lobbyists to get special laws and ordinances passed that benefit them (and usually harm others). These lobbyists seek funding from the government for projects like the one you are proposing under the same premise that it "benefits the people."
Your conclusions of free-enterprise based on the outcome of the Enron situation is severely flawed. You would discount all of the companies and markets that do operate without government intervention on the basis of one big failed company that operated with lies and deceit? In the long run, probably no one benefited from their false accounting practices. That and the threat of criminal charges serves as a deterrant for other companies to operate in the same manner.
Also, the beginnings of the internet are rooted in government funding, but the majority of the computer revolution is not. The government didn't start companies such as IBM, Apple, and AOL.
You're right, the government has given funding to some projects, but that doesn't mean that we wouldn't have gotten those technologies without it (and probably at a cheaper cost, since we wouldn't have had to pay for all the beaurocrats that pick and choose where to hand out our money).
If something is worthwhile to produce, funding can come from private investors and borrowing from banks just as easily.
I didn't call the research into alternative energy sources a silly premise. I said that YOUR belief that everyone (who is going to be paying for this research) agrees of the benefits is a silly premise.
You would place shackles on everyone and have us do your bidding while telling us all that it is for our own good are blinders of a much more dangerous sort. F.A. Hayek called it the road to serfdom.
I'll ignore the Alaska comment since you seem to naively packaged me into a little box of who you think I am and what my ideas are (and you're wrong).
That said, there are ways to get the free market to do your bidding without taxing everyone to death. Failures in the market are a result of ambiguous property rights. For example, no one owns the air that we breathe and pollute with our cars. That's the purpose of government laws such as EPA emissions standards. While we may pay for those costs in terms of more expensive vehicles, we benefit from the cleaner air. If we didn't benefit from it, then the emissions standards should be repealed or lowered. If the costs of maintaining gas burning vehicles that meet emissions standards ever outweighs the cost of finding an alternative, an alternative will be found. What you propose however is handing millions and millions of dollars to research organizations that may or may not even find a viable alternative that can be implemented without the government forcing that down our throats as well.
You are absolutely right. How dare the government use public money on a project that would have huge benefits in terms of the enviroment, cheap energy, independance from the middle east, national security, and on and on.
You base your silly premise on the idea that everyone believes that the project actually would benefit us in those ways.
The government didn't fund the industrial revolution. The government didn't fund the computer revolution. Most of the things that we have today that improve our lives did not come from the government. And yet for some reason the only way we can continue to improve our lives in the future is through the government? Who is the one being short sighted?
What every geek should scream at is the refusal of every statist who refuses to acknowledge why the US is one of the wealthiest nations in the world and that the governments interventions since the days of FDR have done nothing but curtail that.
The tax burden may be lower than what it was in world war ii, but it is many times higher than what we started a revolution with the British over. The only thing perpetuating the current system of high taxes is the continued lies of all the benefits we recieve from having somebody else spend our money for us.
A robber walks into a man's home and takes 40% of everything he owns, and then says "What the hell are you complaining about? I stole 80% from the last house I robbed!" I, like that man, feel much better from reading your comment.
I didn't say it was unlimited. Just that our oil consumption hasn't reached this peak where prices begin going up because of shortages or because supply can't keep up with demand. If we had, OPEC wouldn't need to limit production to hold up costs.
Hey, maybe we'll be able to find a use for all that subsidized agriculture our country grows but doesn't need.
"The reality is that world oil production will peak this decade if it hasn't already."
OPEC is an oil cartel that maintains higher prices by LIMITING the production of oil. They've been doing it for decades. Oil production has NOT peaked yet.
But you are right, when oil resources do start becoming limited, prices of oil will rise and the incentive for alternative fuel sources will grow. The market will find a solution.
He shouldn't be giving our tax dollars away for this purpose in the first place! Even if it is "relatively small."
When alternative fuel sources become economically feasible, they will come onto the market.
It must be time to go to bed. I just worked all night and at first I read "Hebrew rackmount cooling." I was so confused.
I don't support the ban of any drugs, "soft" or "hard". Like you said, the crime waves created by the war on drugs are much worse to society than the effects of having them be legal. We wouldn't have drug turf wars destroying places like East St. Louis and even our nations capital. Granted that's a small part of the picture since a lot of these ghetto's were created by government housing programs, many of which have been very racist in their objectives.
Hard drugs are ugly. They do horrible things to people. But it's so much more productive to work on educating people on the harms of drug abuse and helping those who have already been affected by them with private charities and organizations. Legalizing drugs immediately takes the drug lord suppliers out of the equation because then it loses it's profitability. Hell we could all just grow our own weed in the back yard. Or giant weed farms could grow it and competition would drive down prices (which of course like you said, the government could go back and slap big taxes on it). Nothing wrong with government raising funds for LEGITIMATE uses.
As for big businesses manipulating the market- I can only assume you mean the ways that they manipulate markets through their government connections and lobbyists. In my little fantasy land I would do away with those activities as well.
Human's really aren't as illogical as you say when you take away their means to do illogical things. One senator or house representative from (i think) the state of vermont sponsored some bill that allowed businesses to recieve the money collected on tariffs on products that compete with their own. This bill caused some fireworks firm that had gone bankrupt a decade before to reopen it's doors and produce a small ammount of fireworks for the SOLE PURPOSE of collecting this tarriff money. Consumers are harmed because they have to pay more for fireworks, society as a whole is harmed because there is a waste of labor and capital going into producing fireworks that are better produced in China. (Yes, my degree is in Mathematical Economics).
Although now that I think about it, people are pretty illogical for ever voting that guy into office, or any of the other nuts who voted for the bill. I think most illogical actions by people stem from ignorance or lack of knowledge/understanding. The solution is to work on THAT problem, not pander to their ignorant illogical actions.
As I've gotten older and more educated, my "faith" in a voluntary society has only grown stronger. The biggest problem is that I'll never be able to force you or anyone else to stop forcing me and everyone else into doing what you want.
You sound sure of yourself and your opinions, but I think that if you havent read it yet, you and every other voting American should read Free to Choose by Milton Friedman. At the very least it will give your opinions a good challenge.
Extremism mellows with age? You don't think banning smoking in all public places is extremist? That our governments war on drugs isn't extremist?
If you want to discount me because I'm only 21, that's fine. Milton Friedman is in his 90's and his "extremism" hasn't mellowed any. If anything, from reading his books, it sounds as if he becomes more "extreme" with age.
That's funny because 5 years ago I would've agreed with you.
Absolutely.
I've thought this through plenty, thanks.
Privately owned is privately owned.
Freedom cannot be absolute, it must be limited in a variety of ways, or society cannot exist.
Not being an anarchist-libertarian, I only barely agree. The government should provide for our mutual defense, and protect us from infringing upon the rights of each other. People smoking in a PRIVATELY OWNED restaurant is not infringing on anyone's rights.
If I invite people over to my house for dinner and I allow people to smoke, am I infringing on the rights of the other people I invited who do not smoke? No, because they can leave. They didn't have to come to my home.
If there was a demand for smoke free restaurants, market demand will provide for that. If that's your goal, then you should work to educate people more against smoking, and try to convince restaurant owners to ban it themselves. Don't use the government as a means of strong arming people to do what you want.
If you want to sacrifice your freedoms at the whims of the majority, that's fine. I, however, do not.
IMO, smoking (of anything) should be banned in all public places, which includes private establishments that are frequented by the public. The problem with smoke is that it cannot easily be contained, which means that it gets shared with whoever is nearby, whether they want it or not.
That's the thing- private places are NOT A PUBLIC PLACE. Who the fuck are you to tell people what they can and can't do with their property and business? Don't like it? Start your own non-smoking restaurant. Welcome to capitalism, freedom, and teh responsibility of choice that comes along with it.
Like I said, I expect this in the Southern US, but didn't think I'd ever see it on Slashdot.
Now who is the one doing the stereotyping? I smell hypocrisy.
The alternative is to cut down forests in order to make way for hemp-farms. This is counter-productive to the goal of saving forests.
If our government would stop heavily subsidizing the agrilculture industry, then that would free up farm lands for hemp production as well. Plus, if growing hemp was determined to be more profitable than growing corn, a sufficient number of farms would switch to growing hemp until the profit was driven back down to a normal level. Forests would not be cleared out any faster than at the rate they already are.
Smoking should be banned in TRUE public places- government buildings, parks, etc. As long as you don't include restaurants or any other business/privately owned location in that, then there is no argument. You don't HAVE to go to any of those places. I don't care if you "have a life" or not. You claim that people smoking violates your rights, but then have no problem violating their rights to smoke in private places that allow it. That's absolute hypocrisy.
Smoking weed should be the same way. Who are you to tell people what they can and can't do in the privacy of their own home? Or why can't there be bars where people go and get high? It's a hell of a lot safer than alcohol. No one has ever died of Marijuana poisoning.
Marijuana will stay illegal because of the widespread ignorance of it by people like you. The so-called "war on drugs" has been one of the costliest, worthless wastes of government spending in history. It causes the gigantic slums like east st. louis to be warzones and infringes on the rights of every citizen in this country whether they choose to smoke it or not!
No one's putting a gun to your head and saying "smoke this joint", but you sanction putting guns to everyone elses heads and saying "don't smoke any joints, anywhere, anytime."
When I lived in Hawaii we had geckos all over the house. Unfortunately they weren't abel to take care of all the ants/cockroaches and other bugs in the house.
I think the problem was that the cat managed to eat most of the geckos. He took out a centipede or two for us as well. Now THOSE were freaky.
I was worried they'd come back, since the house had only jalousie (yeah, and lousy they were, too) windows, which couldn't be shut tight enough to keep out flies much less smaller-than-average-ants, but they never came back.
Um.. did you try putting SCREENS outside the windows?
Because it's nested as a reply to the post. it's on a level below it.
I thought about it for a minute... I can't see why one way is better than the other. Although because I am so use to it being on the right side, seeing it on the left made me cringe a little.
There are those of us who have never smoked it in our lives and would absolutely vote to legalize it. It isn't just a matter of believing the government has no right to intrude on our rights to do things that only harm our bodies, but also the reality that the war on drugs has destroyed inner cities and increased poverty in many areas.
You can tell people that pot is less harmful than alcohol until you are blue in the face, but some people just won't liste. I don't understand the scapegoating, either.
Umm, didn't the Canadian government already take away your gun rights? I know the Australian gov't did, but I thought that it was the same in Canada.
If they did, how exactly would you be able to defend your country from any invader?