No, the biggest enemy of the free market is the abused court system in this example...
But even libertarians agree that courts are necessary to enforce the laws of the market. Give me one rule that can't be exploited, given enough money and willpower.
I disagree with having a postal monopoly (which is deep in debt) or passenger rail monopoly (ditto).
Umm, we don't have a postal monopoly. Ever heard of UPS? FedEx? DHL? Also, the USPS actually runs at a profit. (I don't know about right now, it's a bad year for everyone, but generally they do).
They don't build the tanks themselves. They ring-up Lockheed or Northrop or some other corporation and have them build the tanks.
They used to build the tanks themselves. They were cheaper and better. Then they introduced what we would call "war profiteers." Except these folks profit even when there isn't a war on.
In any event, nobody's talking about a cable monopoly. If a municipality installs a cable system, that's not a monopoly; it's merely a strong disincentive to competition from everybody else. There's nothing stopping Qwest2010 from laying their own fiber if they want, except the economic unfeasibility.
Not to mention that these "best drivers" may well be causing accidents by breaking the rules, encouraging unpredictability and spreading the results of their mistakes to others?
(1) Mormons culturally place a higher premium on cleanliness, "family values," and "good clean living" than the average American; (2) This could result in a greater subconscious affinity for spaces that appear cleaned; (3) As a result, a study whose participants are mainly Mormon might show a greater effect from cleaned spaces than a more representative sample.
(1) is a claim that's been made to me by my Mormon relatives. (2) seems obvious, and (3) logically follows...
No, really. What mainstream environmentalist (and there's a ton out there) are you referring to? Everybody knows the Greenpeace folks are nutty. But they're also not the ones sitting at the climate-change negotiating table.
And what about the double standard here -- that environmentalists who have no interest whatsoever in destroying quality of life get raked over the coals for being "hypocrites" because they enjoy that quality of life (see people criticizing Al Gore for the size of his house). It's all just a way of discrediting people with an uncomfortable message; either you're as pure-as-the-driven snow (and therefore a wacko who's not worth talking to) or you aren't (and therefore you're a hypocrite).
Uhh... I feel your point is somewhat weakened by the fact you're talking about software that's over twenty years old. You think porting it was hard? Just imagine if you'd gotten a "convenient" "runs-anywhere" binary instead...
Really, doing *identical* work? You'd have to cite that, because that's BS. The wage gap exists because men and women don't do identical work.
I mean, honestly, if I could pay a woman 75% of what a man earns and get identical work, would I ever hire a man again?
See, this is actually the Libertarian explanation for why wage discrimination (of any kind) can't happen. Yet it does, both on gender lines and on race lines.
Your "why would I hire a man" point is actually very relevant for certain fields of work that have cottoned on. For instance, it is very rare to see male junior editorial staff in publishing, and or male career paralegals (as opposed to those who treat it as a stop on the way to law school). This is partially self-selection because of expectations within the industry (in terms of how you'll be treated, i.e. as subservient), but the wages have become depressed such that men are never hired, and ultimately stop applying.
Now it's a fair argument whether that means "companies intentionally don't hire male applicants because they'd have to pay more" or "companies have decided to pay less, driving away male applicants" but the effect winds up being the same. (And before you tell me it's women in those industries who've depressed the wages with their quality-of-life demands, these are not fields that are especially cushy... career paras work plenty of overtime, and depending on the company, editorial assistants can also work insane hours.)
On a separate note, on the "cushy" thing -- you realize that traditionally female-dominated fields like teaching and nursing are really rough jobs, right? And that women generally do a disproportionate share of child-care, and so may be obliged to work fewer hours, rather than being lazy (as you seem to imply)?
Well, okay, fine. Let's just start with a couple of your earlier points.
You assert that liberals believe that "killing a violent criminal is bad, while killing an unborn child is good." Ignoring that there's a good many liberals who are opposed to abortion, it is irrational of you to assume that this is an inconsistency in the thinking of those who disagree with you. The point at which life begins is not well-defined; the point at which human life begins is also not well-defined. Many liberals who support the right to abortion believe that an unborn fetus is not equivalent to an independent human being and does not merit the same legal status. (You can disagree with this, but that doesn't make it irrational; and, contra your elevation of "rationality" as an abstract ideal, there is no strict rational basis from which to choose between the definitions.) Many other liberals who support the right to abortion consider that the rights of the adult mother are more important than those of the unborn fetus, and thus intend to maximize her liberty. (The alternative, forbidding abortion, is a form of government interference that maximizes the liberty of a different person.) In this instance, your rational principles do not offer an indisputable criterion for decision, by virtue of the fact that you must restrict the liberty of one party at the expense of the other, without any voluntary contract between them. It would be well to avoid "good" and "bad" in these arguments; we're making claims about what is permissible to the government, not the moral standing of any given course of action. The law punishes many just acts and permits many unjust ones.
As to this assertion: "Problems created by government intervention are best solved by additional government intervention." More rigorous inspection will demonstrate that many of the problems you attribute to government intervention are not actually due to that cause. (Further discussion of this would depend on examining specific cases.) However, liberals are fully cognizant of the fact that bad government interventions can exist; and their typical solution for such a situation is to remove bad interventions and replace them with good ones, not to keep bad interventions and patch over them.
In any event, though, the reason I pulled out the part of your post that I did is that it is an example of naivete in both how your own mind works and how those of humans work generally. You claim that your positions are founded on strictly rational principles, but that is not possible, on account of the kind of beings that humans are. (Establishing a strictly rational basis for human thought was the project of the Logical Positivists from at least two centuries ago, and they never achieved it; and that entire enterprise has been generally discredited presently). Your beliefs, like everyone's, are derived from certain axioms which are fully capable of being in conflict with each other. That's not your fault; step-by-step logical construction simply isn't how any system of human thought works (including, for instance, human categorization systems). Personally, I think it is far more interesting to begin with one's conclusions, and use what-if scenarios to investigate the edge cases and thereby deduce what one's principles actually are. I think if you do so, you will likely discover that many of the differences between your positions and those of people with vastly different politics are not due to differences in rationality, but simply differences in axioms (or in the weights given to priorities in conflict). At the end of the day, though, your claim that your philosophical system is distinct from everyone else's because yours (and your friends') alone is rational, is simply not something that can be taken seriously. I would be happy to discuss any of your positions further, but I'd ask that you identify which ones you'd like to examine. I don't want to attribute positions to you that aren't yours.
To me, the real cut off should be NOT between broadband vs narrow-band, but between permanent connection + unmetered access vs dial-up + pay for use.
True that, but we can't really make that point when plenty of first-world ISPs would love to roll back the clock to hourly-use and bandwidth-use rate systems.
(Er, acknowledgment given to all the folks noting the numerous more important infrastructure concerns faced by developing nations... of course, that was always my critique of OLPC, but nobody cared then...)
I want a ISP(or series of ISP) that cater to gamers
Yes, having an actual choice of ISP is the dream. But it will never happen. EVER. In the majority of markets in the US, there is one high-speed option. In most of the rest there might be two. Your dollar votes are meaningless if you don't have a candidate.
Situations like this cry out for regulation, because there is no alternative means of reining in bad market players.
Lapdances, like booth babes, draw eyeballs and attention to the event.
The relevant people were already going to this event. They probably would've attended whether or not there were sex workers present. In any event, that isn't "getting real work done." It's marketing. You're changing the terms of your argument.
You haven't read the reports that as more women enter a job field, the status of the field goes down and the pay decreases?
Why no, I haven't. Kindly cite one or two. (I assume you're already aware of the persistent wage differential between men and women who are doing identical work.)
I understand your point about pay vs. working conditions, though I think you're overstating it; to really prove a harm done there, you'd have to show that the hourly rate of pay under the "cushy" conditions was less than the "life-eviscerating" conditions. Personally, I'd have been a banker, if I could've made my own choice between "100-hour weeks making $300,000" and "50-hour weeks making $150,000." In any event, I think that part of the sickness in American culture is that far too many of my fellow men would rather be married to their jobs than have lives outside the office.
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I generally agree with you. But to be fair, given the breadth of legal interpretation of the Commerce Clause lately, the courts may disagree.
No, the biggest enemy of the free market is the abused court system in this example...
But even libertarians agree that courts are necessary to enforce the laws of the market.
Give me one rule that can't be exploited, given enough money and willpower.
I disagree with having a postal monopoly (which is deep in debt) or passenger rail monopoly (ditto).
Umm, we don't have a postal monopoly. Ever heard of UPS? FedEx? DHL?
Also, the USPS actually runs at a profit. (I don't know about right now, it's a bad year for everyone, but generally they do).
They don't build the tanks themselves. They ring-up Lockheed or Northrop or some other corporation and have them build the tanks.
They used to build the tanks themselves. They were cheaper and better. Then they introduced what we would call "war profiteers." Except these folks profit even when there isn't a war on.
In any event, nobody's talking about a cable monopoly. If a municipality installs a cable system, that's not a monopoly; it's merely a strong disincentive to competition from everybody else. There's nothing stopping Qwest2010 from laying their own fiber if they want, except the economic unfeasibility.
There should not be any subsidization for these services by non-users. Not one single dime.
If we'd followed that philosophy, half the country would never have gotten electricity or phone service.
Not to mention that these "best drivers" may well be causing accidents by breaking the rules, encouraging unpredictability and spreading the results of their mistakes to others?
...because nobody's ever been killed by other drivers of passenger cars texting, talking on cellphones, or doing other crazy things behind the wheel?
Isn't it awesome that we don't have unions any more?
Anything?
Personally I don't care how hot you look, if you smell like an unwashed goat with an intestinal infection, I ain't buying.
Er... which point do you disagree with?
(1) Mormons culturally place a higher premium on cleanliness, "family values," and "good clean living" than the average American;
(2) This could result in a greater subconscious affinity for spaces that appear cleaned;
(3) As a result, a study whose participants are mainly Mormon might show a greater effect from cleaned spaces than a more representative sample.
(1) is a claim that's been made to me by my Mormon relatives. (2) seems obvious, and (3) logically follows...
Not to mention that, this being BYU, they probably have some serious selection bias going on in terms of study participants.
The rooms could have smelled like booze and cigarettes
Not at Brigham Young they couldn't! No booze and no 'baccey for the Latter-Day Saints.
You think you're joking, but the most environmentally destructive industry out there is the pharmaceutical industry.
If it weren't for modern medicine, we wouldn't have the overpopulation that's the root of ALL our environmental problems.
Who are you talking about?
No, really. What mainstream environmentalist (and there's a ton out there) are you referring to? Everybody knows the Greenpeace folks are nutty. But they're also not the ones sitting at the climate-change negotiating table.
And what about the double standard here -- that environmentalists who have no interest whatsoever in destroying quality of life get raked over the coals for being "hypocrites" because they enjoy that quality of life (see people criticizing Al Gore for the size of his house). It's all just a way of discrediting people with an uncomfortable message; either you're as pure-as-the-driven snow (and therefore a wacko who's not worth talking to) or you aren't (and therefore you're a hypocrite).
I know what you mean! I'd give anything to have a small penis!
environmentally useful high-grade fertilizer.
So long as you pick it up and put it where it's environmentally useful. Entirely too many people break their bones every year slipping on Fido's scat.
...or at that point, just buy the bike and the generator and keep your old server!
Uhh... I feel your point is somewhat weakened by the fact you're talking about software that's over twenty years old.
You think porting it was hard? Just imagine if you'd gotten a "convenient" "runs-anywhere" binary instead...
Really, doing *identical* work? You'd have to cite that, because that's BS. The wage gap exists because men and women don't do identical work.
I mean, honestly, if I could pay a woman 75% of what a man earns and get identical work, would I ever hire a man again?
See, this is actually the Libertarian explanation for why wage discrimination (of any kind) can't happen. Yet it does, both on gender lines and on race lines.
Your "why would I hire a man" point is actually very relevant for certain fields of work that have cottoned on. For instance, it is very rare to see male junior editorial staff in publishing, and or male career paralegals (as opposed to those who treat it as a stop on the way to law school). This is partially self-selection because of expectations within the industry (in terms of how you'll be treated, i.e. as subservient), but the wages have become depressed such that men are never hired, and ultimately stop applying.
Now it's a fair argument whether that means "companies intentionally don't hire male applicants because they'd have to pay more" or "companies have decided to pay less, driving away male applicants" but the effect winds up being the same. (And before you tell me it's women in those industries who've depressed the wages with their quality-of-life demands, these are not fields that are especially cushy... career paras work plenty of overtime, and depending on the company, editorial assistants can also work insane hours.)
On a separate note, on the "cushy" thing -- you realize that traditionally female-dominated fields like teaching and nursing are really rough jobs, right? And that women generally do a disproportionate share of child-care, and so may be obliged to work fewer hours, rather than being lazy (as you seem to imply)?
Well, okay, fine. Let's just start with a couple of your earlier points.
You assert that liberals believe that "killing a violent criminal is bad, while killing an unborn child is good."
Ignoring that there's a good many liberals who are opposed to abortion, it is irrational of you to assume that this is an inconsistency in the thinking of those who disagree with you. The point at which life begins is not well-defined; the point at which human life begins is also not well-defined. Many liberals who support the right to abortion believe that an unborn fetus is not equivalent to an independent human being and does not merit the same legal status. (You can disagree with this, but that doesn't make it irrational; and, contra your elevation of "rationality" as an abstract ideal, there is no strict rational basis from which to choose between the definitions.) Many other liberals who support the right to abortion consider that the rights of the adult mother are more important than those of the unborn fetus, and thus intend to maximize her liberty. (The alternative, forbidding abortion, is a form of government interference that maximizes the liberty of a different person.) In this instance, your rational principles do not offer an indisputable criterion for decision, by virtue of the fact that you must restrict the liberty of one party at the expense of the other, without any voluntary contract between them.
It would be well to avoid "good" and "bad" in these arguments; we're making claims about what is permissible to the government, not the moral standing of any given course of action. The law punishes many just acts and permits many unjust ones.
As to this assertion:
"Problems created by government intervention are best solved by additional government intervention."
More rigorous inspection will demonstrate that many of the problems you attribute to government intervention are not actually due to that cause. (Further discussion of this would depend on examining specific cases.) However, liberals are fully cognizant of the fact that bad government interventions can exist; and their typical solution for such a situation is to remove bad interventions and replace them with good ones, not to keep bad interventions and patch over them.
In any event, though, the reason I pulled out the part of your post that I did is that it is an example of naivete in both how your own mind works and how those of humans work generally. You claim that your positions are founded on strictly rational principles, but that is not possible, on account of the kind of beings that humans are. (Establishing a strictly rational basis for human thought was the project of the Logical Positivists from at least two centuries ago, and they never achieved it; and that entire enterprise has been generally discredited presently). Your beliefs, like everyone's, are derived from certain axioms which are fully capable of being in conflict with each other. That's not your fault; step-by-step logical construction simply isn't how any system of human thought works (including, for instance, human categorization systems).
Personally, I think it is far more interesting to begin with one's conclusions, and use what-if scenarios to investigate the edge cases and thereby deduce what one's principles actually are. I think if you do so, you will likely discover that many of the differences between your positions and those of people with vastly different politics are not due to differences in rationality, but simply differences in axioms (or in the weights given to priorities in conflict).
At the end of the day, though, your claim that your philosophical system is distinct from everyone else's because yours (and your friends') alone is rational, is simply not something that can be taken seriously.
I would be happy to discuss any of your positions further, but I'd ask that you identify which ones you'd like to examine. I don't want to attribute positions to you that aren't yours.
To me, the real cut off should be NOT between broadband vs narrow-band, but between permanent connection + unmetered access vs dial-up + pay for use.
True that, but we can't really make that point when plenty of first-world ISPs would love to roll back the clock to hourly-use and bandwidth-use rate systems.
(Er, acknowledgment given to all the folks noting the numerous more important infrastructure concerns faced by developing nations... of course, that was always my critique of OLPC, but nobody cared then...)
I want a ISP(or series of ISP) that cater to gamers
Yes, having an actual choice of ISP is the dream. But it will never happen. EVER.
In the majority of markets in the US, there is one high-speed option. In most of the rest there might be two. Your dollar votes are meaningless if you don't have a candidate.
Situations like this cry out for regulation, because there is no alternative means of reining in bad market players.
I'm an Objectivist libertarian, and my beliefs are in fact based on rationality.
Aww. That's cute.
It is good to force you to be free? (GNU GPL)?
Nobody's holding a gun to your head and telling you to use the software. There is no force involved -- only a really strong incentive.
Wouldn't it be even easier to simply keep all the important data on the USB stick? And run the OS off a R/O CD?
Lapdances, like booth babes, draw eyeballs and attention to the event.
The relevant people were already going to this event. They probably would've attended whether or not there were sex workers present. In any event, that isn't "getting real work done." It's marketing. You're changing the terms of your argument.
You haven't read the reports that as more women enter a job field, the status of the field goes down and the pay decreases?
Why no, I haven't. Kindly cite one or two. (I assume you're already aware of the persistent wage differential between men and women who are doing identical work.)
I understand your point about pay vs. working conditions, though I think you're overstating it; to really prove a harm done there, you'd have to show that the hourly rate of pay under the "cushy" conditions was less than the "life-eviscerating" conditions. Personally, I'd have been a banker, if I could've made my own choice between "100-hour weeks making $300,000" and "50-hour weeks making $150,000." In any event, I think that part of the sickness in American culture is that far too many of my fellow men would rather be married to their jobs than have lives outside the office.