There's an assumption in the post you replied to that went unstated. He is implicitly asserting that in some ways our "private industry" is in practice indistinguishable from nationalized industry.
Consider that in some ways, the control that the government exerts over the players in many industries has reached a degree such that the businesses are no longer able to experiment with new business models and new products.
Also, many industries are so insulated from competitive pressures that they need not behave like businesses. Price supports, protective tariffs, paying farmers not to farm, etc., prevent businesses from reacting to market demands. And those businesses become so dependent on the supports that their arms are twisted into doing business the way that the gov't demands. These subsidies always come with conditions, and that's just another way of saying that the government is assuming control.
The airline industry certainly meets both of these criteria. They're incredibly regulated, only allowed to offer the services that the FAA allows, and subject to the conditions of the DHS. The medical industry is in this boat as well, particularly given the reliance on Medicare/Medicaid that dictates its actions. I could go on...
But beyond this, it's not too hard to identify nationalized industries. Just take off your blinders -- there's no reason that *any* enterprise needs to be undertaken by government. Without debating whether or not these things SHOULD be in the government's hands, please just admit that they ARE: - Education - Police - Highway building & maintenance - Retirement planning - Disability insurance This is just off the top of my head. All of these enterprises have historically been in the hands of free enterprise at some point, but have been nationalized here in the USA.
I agree with the broad strokes of your posting. However, I think it needs some clarification.
First, can you describe the difference between fascism, marxism, Communism (note the "big C", and socialism? As far as I can tell, the first three are all extreme instances of socialism, and more specifically, fascism and Communism are for practical purposes the same, differing only in the point of view from which you describe it.
Second, despite the fantasies of slashdotters, corporations do *not* run America. It's certainly true that corporations have a strong influence, but only because our corrupt legislators (and regulators) are in their pockets. In no way do the corporations have DIRECT control.
Rather, much of the legislative authority has been ceded to "agencies" under the Executive Branch (EPA, FDA, etc.). Since these agencies have such a large influence, and do exert direct control largely unchecked by the legislature, it would be more accurate to refer to our de facto system as "Statist" because we are governed by a non-elected State bureaucracy.
Finally, not only is it not true that corporations exert direct control, but in your short list, it's easy to point out ways in which that Statist bureacracy exert extreme degrees of control over the corporations as well as corporate welfare that coerces bureaucratically-mandated standards.
Consider: * airlines - DHS, FAA * farms - USDA, FSA, various welfare programs, protectionism * factories - OSHA, EPA * hospitals - medicare/medicaid (I have some intimate knowledge of this, and can attest to its oppression and absurdity) * media - FCC, various "indecency" stuff
Large parts of these businesses are entirely dictated by the regulatory bureaucracy.
I submit that we are well down the path to socialism. I think you agree, but I don't think you can claim that the corporations are running the country.
Considering the rather large gap between OS/2 1.x and 2.x, I find it hard to believe that there's any links of consequence between OS/2 1.x and NT.
Well, let's see what the historians think...
The collaboration between IBM and Microsoft unravelled in 1990, between the releases of Windows 3.0 and OS/2 1.3. The increasing popularity of Windows prompted Microsoft to shift its development focus from OS/2, and IBM grew concerned about delays in development of OS/2 2.0. Initially, the companies agreed that IBM would take over maintenance of OS/2 1.0 and development of OS/2 2.0, while
Microsoft would continue development of OS/2 3.0, then known as "NT OS/2". However, Microsoft decided to recast NT OS/2 as Windows NT, leaving all future OS/2 development to IBM. Windows NT's OS/2 heritage can be seen in its initial support for the HPFS filesystem (although write support was dropped in Windows NT 4.0 and read support was dropped in Windows 2000) and text mode OS/2 1.x applications (support dropped in Windows XP)....
...although OS/2 2.0 is often believed to be IBM's own work, a beta version, accompanied by an SDK, had already been released by Microsoft in the second half of 1990
(lockergnome encyclopedia article on OS/2; all emphasis mine)
- - -
By late 1990, Microsoft had intensified its disagreements with IBM to the point where IBM decided that it would have to take some overt action to ensure that OS/2 development continued at a reasonable pace. IBM, therefore, took over complete development responsibility for OS/2 1.x, even though it was in its dying days, and OS/2 2.00. Microsoft would continue development on Windows and OS/2 3.00.
Shortly after this split, Microsoft renamed OS/2 V3 to Windows NT.
[you continued:]
There are a hell of a lot more striking differences, like portability, the HAL, multiple APIs, SMP, being multiuser, ACLs, message passing, fully 32 bit...
generic concepts (like "threading"...).
My point here was that at this point in time, this was NOT a generic concept. (to the best of my knowledge) the concept of lightweight processes viz threading was originated in OS/2 and carried into NT, as was the DLL DynaLink Library concept.
Evidence 1: Look at some of the internal version numbers of OS/2 1.x's DLLs, they identify themselves as Windows.
Evidence 2: Look at the OS/2 API, and see how they clearly evolve from the early windows API (like, having names of the form "WinXyz")
Evidence 3: NT support for OS/2's HPFS file system.
Windows NT's architecture did diverge from OS/2, and that's a big part of why it shipped several years later than OS/2. But there are still many striking similarities, like the innovation of threading, and DLLs themselves.
The Windows elements weren't part of OS/2. All it did was run Windows in a virtual machine, and cut an aperture in the graphical desktop for Windows to render its own GUI into.
So the Windows 3 code was never part of OS/2 per se. On the other hand, a lot of what eventually became the NT kernel and file systems were in OS/2.
That's great and all if we suddenly believed that corporations are honest and will regulate themselves.
So if a government says "we'll protect you; read my lips", you'll believe them? You might ask Jose Padilla, Randy Weaver, Carol Howe, and a few dozen people who used to live in Waco, Texas about that.
Corporations may not always be trustworthy, but they don't cause anywhere near the level of misery and death as do the government who claim to protect us.
I'm not talking about bias, though. I'm talking about running features that are outside the scope of the publication.
In my example, there's no reason to run an article on finding landmines. It's a political topic, and not advancing our understanding of science at all. The only reason I can see for running the story is to advance an agenda.
But I want science articles! If they don't provide them, I don't pay for them.
Regarding bias, there's no reason one needs to give "equal time" to every hairbrained idea. But when someone asserts something, do a little digging. In newspapers I rarely see a journalist challenging statements by the statements of their interviewees: "...but an investigation shows that this happened as recently as..."
The sarcastic tone indicates that they'll keep reporting as they have been.
I stopped subscribing when they started featuring stories on removing lanmines from southeast asia. The story was nothing but politics, I didn't learn a bit of science from it.
When they get back on track reporting quantum physics, biology, even economics and sociology, maybe I'll read it again. But when they're choosing ENTIRE TOPICS based on their politics, count me out.
the hands of a private unregulated "not for profit" US registered company that is given it's power by the US government
Huh? You think that the default condition is that nothing is allowed, and that we only get the right to function by government whim? I don't want to live in the UK!
Now, there may well be abuses by corporations here in America. But that is precisely because of the government assuming so much control that they can grant preferences to those companies. Without governmental meddling, we'd all be on a level playing field.
Hence the Java reputation for "Write Once Debug Everywhere".
My employer's website used Java applets way back when, but when we found that it wasn't as portable as promised (e.g., events firing in different orders, colors mapping differently), we canned it.
So what you might view as Java's asset turned out to be, given our particularly priorities, a dealbreaker.
Your link points to the much-hyped and rarely-apologized-for debunked Mann "hockey stick". It's now well known that the data going into this graph was wrong, and there were procedural errors.
Here's the latest nail in its coffin:
Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey-stick.
More than just "private" roads -- California has at least one corporate-run highway. Presumably you've already paid for this via its toll, so you shouldn't be charged for gas used while traveling it. And it appears that the State is obligated to preserve the pricing structure.
the local population was affluent, congestion was a problem, and time-savings were valued enough to make investment in a private toll road reasonably attractive. Electronic toll collection, the company reasoned, would keep labor operating costs low.
The CPTC built the 91, which has no intermediate entrances or exits, and then ceded ownership back to the state in exchange for a 35-year lease to operate the road. The company has complete pricing flexibility outside of its commitment to permit toll-free use for vehicles with three or more occupants....
In January 1998, the CPTC began to charge tolls discounted by 50 percent based on its franchise agreement on carpools with three or more occupants. By August of that year, the company reported that the 91 had broken even for the year in the first six months. Today, the toll road carries more than 250,000 vehicles per day --- so many that, at peak hours, it is operating beyond its design capacity.
There's no such thing as "privacy laws", just like there's no such thing as "free speech laws".
The default condition, at least in a (putatively) free society, is freedom. This includes one's right to privacy. It's only necessary to create laws in order to limit or erase these rights away.
So when you see a bill with a corny name like "USA PATRIOT", ask yourself, "Why do I think I don't already have this right? If I don't have it, where did it go to?"
Cool, now I don't have to worry that the hot blond I'm dancing with might be a terrorist!
Seriously, the only reason that accuracy of IDs is of any concern is if they're being checked. Since this was touted as such a necessity to national security, it must be that the government plans on checking them.
And since they're only being checked currently at the couple of times a year that I get on a plane, I'm expecting that something is just over the horizon that will force me to prove my identity much more frequently.
I don't want to be stopped and questioned as I cross state lines to go visit my nieces. I'm afraid of having my door kicked down because my ID was associated with buying some fertilizer (ANFO bombs, you know). I'd like to buy ammunition and hunt at my out-of-state cabin without the anti-self-defense people in New Jersey putting me on some list.
Are these things too much to expect in a "free" nation?
Hey, this is fun (albeit slightly-off-topic karma whoring):
The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.
--Norman Thomas
We can't expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism."
--Nikita Khrushchev
The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution.
--Ronald Reagan
In looking at the Indigo code base (which was 1123 C# files as of early last week), only 19 of them use the unsafe keyword.
Why in the world would one consider the *possibility* of unsafe code in the CLR a security hole? Sure, you can call the use of unsafe a hole. But if (like virtually all.Net developers I know) you never use that, then there's no issue at all.
Is Gosling complaining that the CLR is so flexible that someone with extraordinary needs *can* use unsafe when necessary?
First I thought this was a joke or a troll, then I read the web page.
Unfortunately, the system can only answer visual-based questions. Anything about sound, scent, tactile, temperature, taste, etc., will be beyond its ken.
Seriously, I think you're badly misunderstanding where the challenge is here. You wave your hand over the "when reading the book", but extracting *meaning* from the book is what's been beyond our grasp for so long. And you'd need this to build your 3D model.
Implying that Democrats are fighting for our free speech? Bah!
Wasn't it the Clinton administration that gave beginnings of Congress's desperate grasp at Internet pornograpy controls (ala COPA)? Didn't they twist arms to try to implement Clipper?
To be sure, Republicans trample our rights, including free speech, but if you believe that Democrats are protecting those right, then I've got a bridge to sell you.
I would agree 100% with you if employers and laborers were on the same playing field with the same barganing power.
Of course they have the same bargaining power. The potential workers are completely free to refuse employment, just as the employer is free to refuse higher wages.
you [the worker] can make that choice, but you're going to starve to death, just as the laborer will without some sort of job.
You acknowledge that the corporation really is helping the local community, since they workers would "starve to death" without the employment. It's just not apparently as much help as you'd like. But you don't get to make that choice, the parties to the transaction do. How cruel of you to sentence the workers to starvation rather than work for wages that are low by our standards.
Conversely, the employer will not starve to death if the laborer is not hired. The worst that that company will have to endure is a smaller number of widgets shipped this quarter. I hope you can see the difference between less widgets and less people.
So follow your argument to its conclusion, and you'll see that it's self-contradictory. In fact, they do realize that there's some intersection of the curves between costs of paying employees and profits for selling widgets. If they can't sell enough widgets, they'll lose money, but if they have to pay too much money they'll lose wages. If we can see that, don't you think the corporation can do the math too? They will, and try to find the point at which the equation is maximized. You're implying that the corporation is fundamentally evil, that their goal is to exploit. But in fact, if they can pay people enough to be able to work, but not too much, they eventually expand their own potential market (see Henry Ford for an example).
It is clear to anyone without their brain in idle, that the employer dictates wages to the employee. At one time, it was a different story (see union employment in the mid 20th century), and that too needed to be rectified.
Anyone who thinks that is a valid argument has their own brain parked outside. There's no comparison, as the century-ago employers used Pinkertons with Tommy guns to force people to work. That's not what we're talking about here. The potential worker is free to accept a transaction, just as the employer is free to decide to hire based on a worker's request.
Since you don't seem to understand the difference between use of force vs. unfortunate circumstances, please actually read the economics books, as I suggested earlier:
before you object, make sure you read [one of F.A. Hayek's books], either "The Fatal Conceit" or "The Road to Serfdom" to really understand
Capitalism is just like socialism and communism.
No, socialism and communism are discredited philosophies. Capitalism, on the other hand, is like gravity. You might want to pretend it doesn't exist, or try to legislate it out of existence, but you can't. People will always be willing to pay for what they want or need, so capitalism is simply understanding the real world.
1) The employees of the "sweat shops" have chosen to engage in this transaction of labor-for-pay. Apparently they think it's a better deal than anything else they can get. Should we arrogantly say "this job isn't good enough for you, so we're not going to let you work"? Because if somehow corporations were forced to pay US minimum wages, then those poor people wouldn't be employed at all. (this is always the end effect of minimum wage laws, by the way)
2) The local economies surrounding those "sweat shops" is grown, helping not only the employees, but their neighbors as well, to achieve independence and provide education, healthcare, etc. As Hayek points out, the actions driven by greed wind up benefitting everyone in the long run. (and before you object, make sure you read either "The Fatal Conceit" or "The Road to Serfdom" to really understand)
Conclusion: Yup, it seems like a pretty good thing to me. Are you suggesting that we should take these things away because we feel that WE wouldn't work on those terms? That seems mighty arrogant.
I think the real objection to so-called sweat shops is that it circumvents the economically ignorant protectionism and minimum-wage laws. People in America and Europe seem to think that the stroke of a politician's pen can cause workers to be paid more than a service is worth.
Well, you may not *like* the market, but it exists and always will. Efforts to change it are as effective as changing the law of gravity -- and maybe less so. The market always finds away around meddling, and the people who create the alternate paths around interference wind up getting rich while the people you tried to "help" don't fare any better.
I thought that everyone AGREED that the constitution serves to limit the government. You are the first to say that we are talking out of our butt to say so.
Apparently you didn't read the parent that I was saying to mod up... Seriously, what I'm saying is not a revolutionary idea. Go back and look at the Federalist Papers to see the Founders' discussion of this.
But the constitution doesn't limit the "infiniteness" of the government. That's meaningless.
Precisely my point. It's quite impossible to enumerate every one of the people's rights, or the ways in which government must be constrained. The Founding Fathers were smart guys. They realized this, and built the thing from the other way around. They gave a specific list of the things the government is ALLOWED to do. Don't just take my word for it; read Article I Section 8 in the actual document, and then the 9th and 10th Amendments.
Can you tell me what constitutional right social security tramples?
As I mentioned above, the 9th Amendment:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
in conjunction with Article 1 Section 8.
do other government programs like public education and the road system and the ports similarly trample constitutional rights?
You haven't studied this very much, have you? First, let me repeat that everything imaginable is a right of the people, unless it has been explicitly delegated to the government; see the 10th Amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
However, the courts have seen fit to allow a degree of wiggle room. Specifically, the Interstate Highway System is squeezed into "To raise and support Armies", because the roads are putatively built to move military materiel around.
The justification for education is even more bizarre, coming from the infamous Interstate Commerce Clause: "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States". That may be true, but the link is tenuous, considering the types of programs being pushed into education (how does sex education affect the ability of the poeple to read contracts and calculate invoices?).
Do you really think that the founding fathers believed that government should not have the right to tax people and build roads?
Given the way that you phrased this, it's an easy question. Yes, not only do I believe it, but it's an objective fact. The thing is, the government does not have ANY rights. Only people have rights. Government has only the powers that are explicitly delegated to it by the people. For a fuller understanding of this, read Thomas Paine's Common Sense.
If I can rewrite your question properly, then yes, these specific powers are authorized in Article I Section 8 (and the 16th Amendment, in the case of taxation).
Thank you for correcting someone who's clearly talking out of his butt.
Anyone who believes that the Constitution serves to *limit* a potentially infinite government has clearly never taken the time to read it.
Since any schoolkid should know that the Constitution defines a strictly limited government, having only those powers that the document delegates to the government, and since the grandparent poster presumably is the product of our educational system, which violates these limits, we have one obvious datapoint showing that the Founding Fathers were right.
Slashdot Mirror
There's an assumption in the post you replied to that went unstated. He is implicitly asserting that in some ways our "private industry" is in practice indistinguishable from nationalized industry.
Consider that in some ways, the control that the government exerts over the players in many industries has reached a degree such that the businesses are no longer able to experiment with new business models and new products.
Also, many industries are so insulated from competitive pressures that they need not behave like businesses. Price supports, protective tariffs, paying farmers not to farm, etc., prevent businesses from reacting to market demands. And those businesses become so dependent on the supports that their arms are twisted into doing business the way that the gov't demands. These subsidies always come with conditions, and that's just another way of saying that the government is assuming control.
The airline industry certainly meets both of these criteria. They're incredibly regulated, only allowed to offer the services that the FAA allows, and subject to the conditions of the DHS. The medical industry is in this boat as well, particularly given the reliance on Medicare/Medicaid that dictates its actions. I could go on...
But beyond this, it's not too hard to identify nationalized industries. Just take off your blinders -- there's no reason that *any* enterprise needs to be undertaken by government. Without debating whether or not these things SHOULD be in the government's hands, please just admit that they ARE:
- Education
- Police
- Highway building & maintenance
- Retirement planning
- Disability insurance
This is just off the top of my head. All of these enterprises have historically been in the hands of free enterprise at some point, but have been nationalized here in the USA.
I agree with the broad strokes of your posting. However, I think it needs some clarification.
First, can you describe the difference between fascism, marxism, Communism (note the "big C", and socialism? As far as I can tell, the first three are all extreme instances of socialism, and more specifically, fascism and Communism are for practical purposes the same, differing only in the point of view from which you describe it.
Second, despite the fantasies of slashdotters, corporations do *not* run America. It's certainly true that corporations have a strong influence, but only because our corrupt legislators (and regulators) are in their pockets. In no way do the corporations have DIRECT control.
Rather, much of the legislative authority has been ceded to "agencies" under the Executive Branch (EPA, FDA, etc.). Since these agencies have such a large influence, and do exert direct control largely unchecked by the legislature, it would be more accurate to refer to our de facto system as "Statist" because we are governed by a non-elected State bureaucracy.
Finally, not only is it not true that corporations exert direct control, but in your short list, it's easy to point out ways in which that Statist bureacracy exert extreme degrees of control over the corporations as well as corporate welfare that coerces bureaucratically-mandated standards.
Consider:
* airlines - DHS, FAA
* farms - USDA, FSA, various welfare programs, protectionism
* factories - OSHA, EPA
* hospitals - medicare/medicaid (I have some intimate knowledge of this, and can attest to its oppression and absurdity)
* media - FCC, various "indecency" stuff
Large parts of these businesses are entirely dictated by the regulatory bureaucracy.
I submit that we are well down the path to socialism. I think you agree, but I don't think you can claim that the corporations are running the country.
Well, let's see what the historians think...
- - -
----
My point here was that at this point in time, this was NOT a generic concept. (to the best of my knowledge) the concept of lightweight processes viz threading was originated in OS/2 and carried into NT, as was the DLL DynaLink Library concept.
Don't believe me?
Evidence 1: Look at some of the internal version numbers of OS/2 1.x's DLLs, they identify themselves as Windows.
Evidence 2: Look at the OS/2 API, and see how they clearly evolve from the early windows API (like, having names of the form "WinXyz")
Evidence 3: NT support for OS/2's HPFS file system.
Windows NT's architecture did diverge from OS/2, and that's a big part of why it shipped several years later than OS/2. But there are still many striking similarities, like the innovation of threading, and DLLs themselves.
Believe me, I worked at IBM at the time.
The Windows elements weren't part of OS/2. All it did was run Windows in a virtual machine, and cut an aperture in the graphical desktop for Windows to render its own GUI into.
So the Windows 3 code was never part of OS/2 per se. On the other hand, a lot of what eventually became the NT kernel and file systems were in OS/2.
So if a government says "we'll protect you; read my lips", you'll believe them? You might ask Jose Padilla, Randy Weaver, Carol Howe, and a few dozen people who used to live in Waco, Texas about that.
Corporations may not always be trustworthy, but they don't cause anywhere near the level of misery and death as do the government who claim to protect us.
I'm not talking about bias, though. I'm talking about running features that are outside the scope of the publication.
In my example, there's no reason to run an article on finding landmines. It's a political topic, and not advancing our understanding of science at all. The only reason I can see for running the story is to advance an agenda.
But I want science articles! If they don't provide them, I don't pay for them.
Regarding bias, there's no reason one needs to give "equal time" to every hairbrained idea. But when someone asserts something, do a little digging. In newspapers I rarely see a journalist challenging statements by the statements of their interviewees: "...but an investigation shows that this happened as recently as..."
The sarcastic tone indicates that they'll keep reporting as they have been.
I stopped subscribing when they started featuring stories on removing lanmines from southeast asia. The story was nothing but politics, I didn't learn a bit of science from it.
When they get back on track reporting quantum physics, biology, even economics and sociology, maybe I'll read it again. But when they're choosing ENTIRE TOPICS based on their politics, count me out.
Huh? You think that the default condition is that nothing is allowed, and that we only get the right to function by government whim? I don't want to live in the UK!
Now, there may well be abuses by corporations here in America. But that is precisely because of the government assuming so much control that they can grant preferences to those companies. Without governmental meddling, we'd all be on a level playing field.
This is part of the problem. The government's job isn't to decide or even enforce culture. It's just to protect us.
If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal.
If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative.
If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate.
If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist.
-- Joseph Sobran
Hence the Java reputation for "Write Once Debug Everywhere".
My employer's website used Java applets way back when, but when we found that it wasn't as portable as promised (e.g., events firing in different orders, colors mapping differently), we canned it.
So what you might view as Java's asset turned out to be, given our particularly priorities, a dealbreaker.
There's no such thing as "privacy laws", just like there's no such thing as "free speech laws".
The default condition, at least in a (putatively) free society, is freedom. This includes one's right to privacy. It's only necessary to create laws in order to limit or erase these rights away.
So when you see a bill with a corny name like "USA PATRIOT", ask yourself, "Why do I think I don't already have this right? If I don't have it, where did it go to?"
Cool, now I don't have to worry that the hot blond I'm dancing with might be a terrorist!
Seriously, the only reason that accuracy of IDs is of any concern is if they're being checked. Since this was touted as such a necessity to national security, it must be that the government plans on checking them.
And since they're only being checked currently at the couple of times a year that I get on a plane, I'm expecting that something is just over the horizon that will force me to prove my identity much more frequently.
I don't want to be stopped and questioned as I cross state lines to go visit my nieces. I'm afraid of having my door kicked down because my ID was associated with buying some fertilizer (ANFO bombs, you know). I'd like to buy ammunition and hunt at my out-of-state cabin without the anti-self-defense people in New Jersey putting me on some list.
Are these things too much to expect in a "free" nation?
RTFA:
Why in the world would one consider the *possibility* of unsafe code in the CLR a security hole? Sure, you can call the use of unsafe a hole. But if (like virtually all .Net developers I know) you never use that, then there's no issue at all.
Is Gosling complaining that the CLR is so flexible that someone with extraordinary needs *can* use unsafe when necessary?
Yes! And I'll call it "Zork".
First I thought this was a joke or a troll, then I read the web page.
Unfortunately, the system can only answer visual-based questions. Anything about sound, scent, tactile, temperature, taste, etc., will be beyond its ken.
Seriously, I think you're badly misunderstanding where the challenge is here. You wave your hand over the "when reading the book", but extracting *meaning* from the book is what's been beyond our grasp for so long. And you'd need this to build your 3D model.
Implying that Democrats are fighting for our free speech? Bah!
Wasn't it the Clinton administration that gave beginnings of Congress's desperate grasp at Internet pornograpy controls (ala COPA)? Didn't they twist arms to try to implement Clipper?
To be sure, Republicans trample our rights, including free speech, but if you believe that Democrats are protecting those right, then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Of course they have the same bargaining power. The potential workers are completely free to refuse employment, just as the employer is free to refuse higher wages.
You acknowledge that the corporation really is helping the local community, since they workers would "starve to death" without the employment. It's just not apparently as much help as you'd like. But you don't get to make that choice, the parties to the transaction do. How cruel of you to sentence the workers to starvation rather than work for wages that are low by our standards.
So follow your argument to its conclusion, and you'll see that it's self-contradictory. In fact, they do realize that there's some intersection of the curves between costs of paying employees and profits for selling widgets. If they can't sell enough widgets, they'll lose money, but if they have to pay too much money they'll lose wages. If we can see that, don't you think the corporation can do the math too? They will, and try to find the point at which the equation is maximized. You're implying that the corporation is fundamentally evil, that their goal is to exploit. But in fact, if they can pay people enough to be able to work, but not too much, they eventually expand their own potential market (see Henry Ford for an example).
Anyone who thinks that is a valid argument has their own brain parked outside. There's no comparison, as the century-ago employers used Pinkertons with Tommy guns to force people to work. That's not what we're talking about here. The potential worker is free to accept a transaction, just as the employer is free to decide to hire based on a worker's request.
Since you don't seem to understand the difference between use of force vs. unfortunate circumstances, please actually read the economics books, as I suggested earlier:
Capitalism is just like socialism and communism.Well, let's see:
1) The employees of the "sweat shops" have chosen to engage in this transaction of labor-for-pay. Apparently they think it's a better deal than anything else they can get. Should we arrogantly say "this job isn't good enough for you, so we're not going to let you work"? Because if somehow corporations were forced to pay US minimum wages, then those poor people wouldn't be employed at all. (this is always the end effect of minimum wage laws, by the way)
2) The local economies surrounding those "sweat shops" is grown, helping not only the employees, but their neighbors as well, to achieve independence and provide education, healthcare, etc. As Hayek points out, the actions driven by greed wind up benefitting everyone in the long run. (and before you object, make sure you read either "The Fatal Conceit" or "The Road to Serfdom" to really understand)
Conclusion: Yup, it seems like a pretty good thing to me. Are you suggesting that we should take these things away because we feel that WE wouldn't work on those terms? That seems mighty arrogant.
I think the real objection to so-called sweat shops is that it circumvents the economically ignorant protectionism and minimum-wage laws. People in America and Europe seem to think that the stroke of a politician's pen can cause workers to be paid more than a service is worth.
Well, you may not *like* the market, but it exists and always will. Efforts to change it are as effective as changing the law of gravity -- and maybe less so. The market always finds away around meddling, and the people who create the alternate paths around interference wind up getting rich while the people you tried to "help" don't fare any better.
Apparently you didn't read the parent that I was saying to mod up... Seriously, what I'm saying is not a revolutionary idea. Go back and look at the Federalist Papers to see the Founders' discussion of this.
Precisely my point. It's quite impossible to enumerate every one of the people's rights, or the ways in which government must be constrained. The Founding Fathers were smart guys. They realized this, and built the thing from the other way around. They gave a specific list of the things the government is ALLOWED to do. Don't just take my word for it; read Article I Section 8 in the actual document, and then the 9th and 10th Amendments.
As I mentioned above, the 9th Amendment:
in conjunction with Article 1 Section 8.You haven't studied this very much, have you? First, let me repeat that everything imaginable is a right of the people, unless it has been explicitly delegated to the government; see the 10th Amendment:
However, the courts have seen fit to allow a degree of wiggle room. Specifically, the Interstate Highway System is squeezed into "To raise and support Armies", because the roads are putatively built to move military materiel around.
The justification for education is even more bizarre, coming from the infamous Interstate Commerce Clause: "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States". That may be true, but the link is tenuous, considering the types of programs being pushed into education (how does sex education affect the ability of the poeple to read contracts and calculate invoices?).
Given the way that you phrased this, it's an easy question. Yes, not only do I believe it, but it's an objective fact. The thing is, the government does not have ANY rights. Only people have rights. Government has only the powers that are explicitly delegated to it by the people. For a fuller understanding of this, read Thomas Paine's Common Sense .
If I can rewrite your question properly, then yes, these specific powers are authorized in Article I Section 8 (and the 16th Amendment, in the case of taxation).
Thank you for correcting someone who's clearly talking out of his butt.
Anyone who believes that the Constitution serves to *limit* a potentially infinite government has clearly never taken the time to read it.
Since any schoolkid should know that the Constitution defines a strictly limited government, having only those powers that the document delegates to the government, and since the grandparent poster presumably is the product of our educational system, which violates these limits, we have one obvious datapoint showing that the Founding Fathers were right.