In all seriousness, though: If you believe in liberty and small government you are called a "liberal" in Europe; in the US you are called a "libertarian" and the big-l "Liberal" term is reserved for the big-govt types...
"Liberal" is used in the US now to mean big government but it wasn't always. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other Founding Fathers of the USA were proponents of the liberalism of their tyme, which is now called Classical liberalism.
The Bretton Woods system was still a de facto gold standard, even if it wasn't direct.
Yea it was, but individual Americans could not exchange their money for gold. Unless of course they bought jewelry.
But do you really think commodities such as food crops fluctuate less than precious metals? Diversification might average things out, but...
Also, precious gems are completely worthless as a standard, now that they can be manufactured at will, in forms more perfect than nature.
My idea isn't so much about specific things that are used for a standard so much as it is that the standard is a mixed bag of assets instead of one thing.
For the ACLU, some rights are more equal than others.
Horribly disingenuous. The ACLU says in it's title it's about Civil Liberties.
And of course some rights in the Bill of Rights are civil rights whereas other rights in it are not? For the ACLU whereas every other right in the BoR is an individual right, the only right in it that is a collective and not an individual right is the 2nd Amendment.
But maybe you should re-think your regulation==evil shtick the next time you step on an airplane, take a drink of water, get a prescription drug or even take a bite of food.
Yeap, I've said many tymes the only laws that should be in the books are those in which there harm is inflicted on others. Drugs should not be illegal, only the crimes committed while using a drug, which are already crimes. Or if a person wants to sell their own body as in prostitution they should legally be able to do so.
just wish the ACLU would say "Yes, it's an individual right, yes it's important, but the NRA does a way better job so we'll leave it to them". They don't have to fight that fight, but acknowledging that it should be done would be good.
The ACLU does not consider the right to bare arms to be an individual right, only a collective one.
the international banks removed the last vestige of gold standard from the U.S. dollar? (Nixon had done it officially
Before Nixon did, FDR took the US off the gold standard. FDR outlawed private ownership of gold. What Nixon did was end the Bretton Woods system whereby national governments and international organizations could trade gold for dollars.
Without a standard, there is "freedom" to print money pretty much at will.
In any case, whata it boils down to is that while metal prices might fluctuate, a standard is still necessary. Even metals are a better standard than none at all.
Instead of a standard based on gold or another commodity the standard could be a mix of commodities, such as a blend of precious metals and gems as well as food crops.
How often did you hear over the past decade that "real estate was the safest investment you could make"?
Real estate is the best investment for the long term. The problem with the housing boom and bust was that credit was easy to get and people paid too high a price in the belief prices would always rise. Another problem is what people bought. If instead of buying a single family home they had bought a multiplex house, one with more than one apartment, they could have lived in one while renting out the others. Let renters pay part if not all of the mortgage.
I have a Browning Hi-Power and a shotgun I just inherited. Nothing too special.
The.22 long rifle my dad gave me when I was little and the.45 I bought while in the Army. Back then he and my best friend's dad would take us out to target practice. Unfortunately the rifle was taken by the police when my mother used it and shot someone who broke into our house. And the person who sold me the.45 kept it in his home, he was married and lived off base. As I lived in the barracks, I would have turned it into the armory and would not have been able to check it out easily, also I was only 20 and I had to be 21 to put the gun in my name. Eventually he pawned the gun and did not get it back.
I'm not even sure I want a C&C, now that I think about it. I will be working in a federal courthouse starting at the end of August, so I won't even be allowed to take it in.
I don't know if I'd want a C&C either, to tell the truth I'd rather just carry a gun in a holster strapped to my waist. As for the courthouse, years ago I knew someone who was a guard in a courthouse, and he too believed in the right to bear arms.
The Constitution does go past the 10th Amendment...something about regulating something or ether between the states...
There are many local ISPes that do not serve interstate. In my greater area there are a number of local ISPs that only serve the area.
And if you look at the Constitution it provides for flexibility. For example, General Welfare, which is mentioned twice.
Yes, it allow mentions liberty. The Preamble says:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Now if you look the definition for "welfare" it says:
"welfare n. 1. health, happiness, or prosperity; well-being." Thomas Jefferson said of the 'general welfare clause":
"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer." In Federalist No 41James Madison said
"the general welfare clause is neither a statement of ends nor a substantive grant of power. It is a mere "synonym" for the enumeration of particular powers, which are limited and wholly define its content."
As you say the feds have gone after people in California for marijuana after the state legalized medical marijuana.
Rather atrocious. It boggles the mind that it's conventional wisdom that Prohibition was a complete failure with alcohol, yet we insist on continuing Prohibition 2.0: WOD.
Agreed bigtime!!! All these politicians and drug warriors have their heads stuck in the sand. There never has been much debate about it, but hopefully it's a good sign that CNN's Anderson Cooper has been having part of his show AC 360 all week about "America's High: The case for and against pot" with drug legalization proponents debating drug warriors on legalization. Now I haven't watched all of them in their entirety but what I did see it looked like the legalization hands were better.
The whole reason we have regulation and oversight is because we already tried free market Libertarianism
No, we have not tried free markets. The closest we came to free markets was in the 1830s. Alexis de Tocqueville was so overwhelmed by what he saw when he toured the USA in 1831 he wrote his books "Democracy in America" extolling how free people were. As there was still slavery, which Thomas Jefferson wanted to end, there wasn't a compleat free market but it's the closed we've had to one. Since then big businesses have become more and more powerful and have bought politicians to write laws favorable to them. In a free market businesses wouldn't have the power to buy them off and the politicians wouldn't have the power to enact bad laws.
Oh, and that Daily Kos link does not say those problems cited were caused by a
No, the state should not have capped the price electricity distributors could charge for electricity. Instead I think it would be much better if distributors were allowed to have a fee on top of what generators charge end users. Then allow the end users to choose who they buy electricity from. Say for the sake of argument, as I don't know how much maintenance costs, distributors could add 2 cents to the electric bill. One person may pay 10 cents per KWH for energy from a natural gas fired power plant while another may pay 12 cents to buy from a wind farm, so the first person would pay 12 cents total while the second would pay 14 cents.
Of course that uses a set cost for electricity. Now if a floating rate is needed, such as for peak periods of usage, then the generator may raise prices then lower then for low periods of usage. Of course for such floating rates end users would need a readout of how much they are using and what is the cost of it.
And the Second Amendment still hasn't been incorporated to apply to the states yet. This is why DC can't ban guns, but California can. Well, technically no state in the Ninth Circuit can now, since the Ninth Circuit recently selectively incorporated the Second Amendment to apply to the states.
The ruling just doesn't apply outside the Ninth Circuit. However, expect the SCOTUS to grant cert and incorporate within the next year or so.
I'd like to see the bans as well as NY's ban end up in the Supreme Court and the Justices rule they are unconstitutional. Like they did with DC's ban. I no longer have firearms, I used to own a.45 APC and a.22 long rifle, but I've been thinking about buying a couple. Nevermind hunting I haven't been target practicing in years.
It wasn't until the 14th Amendment that what you said was true. The major rights in the BoR have been "selectively incorporated" via the 14th to apply to the states. Before the Civil War, a state that didn't give you freedom of speech in its own constitution didn't have to obey the Constitution's 1st Amendment.
You're right the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th amendment barred stated from abridging privileges or immunities. However Article IV - The States Section 2 - State citizens, Extradition says "The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States." That sounds like what's a right in one state other states have to honour.
Madison staunchly opposing a national bank
That I didn't know but I know his friend Thomas Jefferson had a big problem with banks saying they were more dangerous to liberty than standing armies. What I find ironic about TJ is that he had his own standing army, the US Marine Corp. And about 100 years before Teddie Roosevelt did he sent them to Tripoli in the Med to fight the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War.
but from what I read the crux was the California power companies could make more money selling their power to neighboring states than they could selling it to Californians. That should not have been allowed.
Yea, California regulations barred distributors from raising their prices. Other states didn't have those regs, so where's a business going to sell, someplace with caps or someplace without?
The Bill of Rights was a compromise. Some of the USA's Founding Fathers wanted rights included in the Constitution but others didn't. Alexander Hamilton and others didn't want rights included because they were concerned some rights would be left out. So a compromise was worked out wherein the Constitution would be signed without rights but then the Bill of Rights would be proposed for ratification.
If the federal government was truly limited only to its enumerated powers, then a Bill of Rights is unnecessary because nothing in the main body of the Constitution gives Congress the right "to infringe the freedom of speech," e.g.
The Constitution does not prevent states or local governments from infringing on rights, but the Bill of Rights does.
The fact that the federal government has ruled that somebody growing weed for personal use in his own residence, because he might impact the insterstate weed market by not buying from a street dealer, should be all you need to know to understand that the Federal government would consider ISPs interstate commerce.
Oh, I agree the feds may try. As you say the feds have gone after people in California for marijuana after the state legalized medical marijuana. Going all the way to the Supreme Court 5 of the 9 justices ruled the feds do have the power. However the other 4 said the feds didn't. What's generally not know is that the district judge in the medical marijuana case Gonzales v Raich barred the jury from being told the state had approved of medical marijuana. In Ed Rosenthal's case "several jurors renounced their verdict and rallied to his cause" after learning the state and city allowed medical marijuana. In that case the judge gave him 1 day in jail. Fact is is some judges do what they can to prevent jury nullification wherein juries tell politicians a law is as well as Fully Informed Juries.
Looking to the federal government is not even that wrong anymore. In this ever more globalized economy, people are wanting ever greater conformity in the laws. Having significant differences between the law in various states can be a real hassle. I mean picture if each state had its own set of regulations on what is legal in a cell phone, such that having your cell phone turned on when you entered the state next to you would be a crime, since your phone does not meet that states regulations.
Therein lies the problem, governments have gotten big and enact a bunch of laws. Laws should only be ones wherein harm to others is caused. Crimes like murder, pollution, rape, robbery. The rest can be handled with civil lawsuits. If there is no victim something shouldn't be illegal. And simply using drugs doesn't cause harm, the over use of drugs may harm the user but that's self inflicted. Legal drugs would end gang violence of the drug trade. Which brings up one group opposed to legalization, gangs. If drugs were legal it'd cut into gang profits if not put gangs out of business. A second group opposed to legalization is the drug warriors and businesses that profit from illegal drugs, all those companies that screen for drugs, provide weapons, and such. A third group is the pharmaceutical companies. They can't patent street drugs.
That whole mess kind of led to Arnold yanking away the governors spot didn't it ? , Which was a little unfair as most of the fixes (patches ?) where done right before Davis lost his job.
CA's recall vote was a terrific show of democracy working, only if Iran can get it working there.
Sure, since we can't just magically wave more water into existence, we conserve it. I water my plants with water from the washing machine.
I did something like this last year. Even though I reported it to my landlord the drain in the bathtub in my apartment was clogged up for months. So what I did was scoop water out of it to water my garden.
OTOH, due to technology improvements, we can just wave more bandwidth into existance (or close to it).
I was only addressing the statement that we can not create more water, which is a problem in CA.
Yes, I know about natural monopolies. I have suggested elsewhere that ownership of infrastructure should be separated from ownership of services. I have also argued for freeing the airwaves by allowing people to once again homestead the airwaves.
People who write legal documents usually leave much leeway to account for the unaccountable. If you look up the right articles of constitution or law, there's bound to be a section ascribing federal powers to "other areas not yet covered by current document"
And if you look at other early documents you'll see government was supported to be strictly limited in what powers it had. Repeatedly Thomas Jefferson wrote that the people have the power and that government is but a servant to the people, not their dictator. He "sought to establish a federal government of limited powers."
Slashdot Mirror
In all seriousness, though: If you believe in liberty and small government you are called a "liberal" in Europe; in the US you are called a "libertarian" and the big-l "Liberal" term is reserved for the big-govt types...
"Liberal" is used in the US now to mean big government but it wasn't always. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other Founding Fathers of the USA were proponents of the liberalism of their tyme, which is now called Classical liberalism.
Falcon
The Bretton Woods system was still a de facto gold standard, even if it wasn't direct.
Yea it was, but individual Americans could not exchange their money for gold. Unless of course they bought jewelry.
But do you really think commodities such as food crops fluctuate less than precious metals? Diversification might average things out, but...
Also, precious gems are completely worthless as a standard, now that they can be manufactured at will, in forms more perfect than nature.
My idea isn't so much about specific things that are used for a standard so much as it is that the standard is a mixed bag of assets instead of one thing.
For the ACLU, some rights are more equal than others.
Horribly disingenuous. The ACLU says in it's title it's about Civil Liberties.
And of course some rights in the Bill of Rights are civil rights whereas other rights in it are not? For the ACLU whereas every other right in the BoR is an individual right, the only right in it that is a collective and not an individual right is the 2nd Amendment.
Falcon
But maybe you should re-think your regulation==evil shtick the next time you step on an airplane, take a drink of water, get a prescription drug or even take a bite of food.
So you have no valid argument?
Falcon
Yeap, I've said many tymes the only laws that should be in the books are those in which there harm is inflicted on others. Drugs should not be illegal, only the crimes committed while using a drug, which are already crimes. Or if a person wants to sell their own body as in prostitution they should legally be able to do so.
Falcon
just wish the ACLU would say "Yes, it's an individual right, yes it's important, but the NRA does a way better job so we'll leave it to them". They don't have to fight that fight, but acknowledging that it should be done would be good.
The ACLU does not consider the right to bare arms to be an individual right, only a collective one.
Falcon
The stuff the NRA does that bothers me are things such as fighting trigger locks
Excuse me mr robber while I unlock my gun and load it." Bang you're dead.
Falcon
ACLU considered themselves idealogically to be a "liberal" organization, and no self-respecting "liberal" was a promoter of gun rights.
If you don't support the right to bare arms you aren't really a liberal, true liberals believe in liberty and small government.
Falcon
And he had to use real money, $4300 worth, for the prop?
No, the money wasn't a prop, it was "from the sale of tickets, t-shirts, stickers and campaign material."
Falcon
the international banks removed the last vestige of gold standard from the U.S. dollar? (Nixon had done it officially
Before Nixon did, FDR took the US off the gold standard. FDR outlawed private ownership of gold. What Nixon did was end the Bretton Woods system whereby national governments and international organizations could trade gold for dollars.
Without a standard, there is "freedom" to print money pretty much at will.
Fiat money.
In any case, whata it boils down to is that while metal prices might fluctuate, a standard is still necessary. Even metals are a better standard than none at all.
Instead of a standard based on gold or another commodity the standard could be a mix of commodities, such as a blend of precious metals and gems as well as food crops.
Falcon
How often did you hear over the past decade that "real estate was the safest investment you could make"?
Real estate is the best investment for the long term. The problem with the housing boom and bust was that credit was easy to get and people paid too high a price in the belief prices would always rise. Another problem is what people bought. If instead of buying a single family home they had bought a multiplex house, one with more than one apartment, they could have lived in one while renting out the others. Let renters pay part if not all of the mortgage.
Falcon
I used to own a .45 APC and a .22 long rifle
I have a Browning Hi-Power and a shotgun I just inherited. Nothing too special.
The .22 long rifle my dad gave me when I was little and the .45 I bought while in the Army. Back then he and my best friend's dad would take us out to target practice. Unfortunately the rifle was taken by the police when my mother used it and shot someone who broke into our house. And the person who sold me the .45 kept it in his home, he was married and lived off base. As I lived in the barracks, I would have turned it into the armory and would not have been able to check it out easily, also I was only 20 and I had to be 21 to put the gun in my name. Eventually he pawned the gun and did not get it back.
I'm not even sure I want a C&C, now that I think about it. I will be working in a federal courthouse starting at the end of August, so I won't even be allowed to take it in.
I don't know if I'd want a C&C either, to tell the truth I'd rather just carry a gun in a holster strapped to my waist. As for the courthouse, years ago I knew someone who was a guard in a courthouse, and he too believed in the right to bear arms.
Falcon
The Constitution does go past the 10th Amendment...something about regulating something or ether between the states...
There are many local ISPes that do not serve interstate. In my greater area there are a number of local ISPs that only serve the area.
And if you look at the Constitution it provides for flexibility. For example, General Welfare, which is mentioned twice.
Yes, it allow mentions liberty. The Preamble says:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Now if you look the definition for "welfare" it says:
"welfare n. 1. health, happiness, or prosperity; well-being."
Thomas Jefferson said of the 'general welfare clause":
"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer." In Federalist No 41 James Madison said
"the general welfare clause is neither a statement of ends nor a substantive grant of power. It is a mere "synonym" for the enumeration of particular powers, which are limited and wholly define its content."
As you say the feds have gone after people in California for marijuana after the state legalized medical marijuana.
Rather atrocious. It boggles the mind that it's conventional wisdom that Prohibition was a complete failure with alcohol, yet we insist on continuing Prohibition 2.0: WOD.
Agreed bigtime!!! All these politicians and drug warriors have their heads stuck in the sand. There never has been much debate about it, but hopefully it's a good sign that CNN's Anderson Cooper has been having part of his show AC 360 all week about "America's High: The case for and against pot" with drug legalization proponents debating drug warriors on legalization. Now I haven't watched all of them in their entirety but what I did see it looked like the legalization hands were better.
The whole reason we have regulation and oversight is because we already tried free market Libertarianism
No, we have not tried free markets. The closest we came to free markets was in the 1830s. Alexis de Tocqueville was so overwhelmed by what he saw when he toured the USA in 1831 he wrote his books "Democracy in America" extolling how free people were. As there was still slavery, which Thomas Jefferson wanted to end, there wasn't a compleat free market but it's the closed we've had to one. Since then big businesses have become more and more powerful and have bought politicians to write laws favorable to them. In a free market businesses wouldn't have the power to buy them off and the politicians wouldn't have the power to enact bad laws.
Oh, and that Daily Kos link does not say those problems cited were caused by a
See, they shouldn't have had the choice.
No, the state should not have capped the price electricity distributors could charge for electricity. Instead I think it would be much better if distributors were allowed to have a fee on top of what generators charge end users. Then allow the end users to choose who they buy electricity from. Say for the sake of argument, as I don't know how much maintenance costs, distributors could add 2 cents to the electric bill. One person may pay 10 cents per KWH for energy from a natural gas fired power plant while another may pay 12 cents to buy from a wind farm, so the first person would pay 12 cents total while the second would pay 14 cents.
Of course that uses a set cost for electricity. Now if a floating rate is needed, such as for peak periods of usage, then the generator may raise prices then lower then for low periods of usage. Of course for such floating rates end users would need a readout of how much they are using and what is the cost of it.
Falcon
And the Second Amendment still hasn't been incorporated to apply to the states yet. This is why DC can't ban guns, but California can. Well, technically no state in the Ninth Circuit can now, since the Ninth Circuit recently selectively incorporated the Second Amendment to apply to the states.
I didn't know CA banned guns. Yea, I see where CA governor Davis signed 5 "new anti-gun bills into law" in 1999.
The ruling just doesn't apply outside the Ninth Circuit. However, expect the SCOTUS to grant cert and incorporate within the next year or so.
I'd like to see the bans as well as NY's ban end up in the Supreme Court and the Justices rule they are unconstitutional. Like they did with DC's ban. I no longer have firearms, I used to own a .45 APC and a .22 long rifle, but I've been thinking about buying a couple. Nevermind hunting I haven't been target practicing in years.
Falcon
It wasn't until the 14th Amendment that what you said was true. The major rights in the BoR have been "selectively incorporated" via the 14th to apply to the states. Before the Civil War, a state that didn't give you freedom of speech in its own constitution didn't have to obey the Constitution's 1st Amendment.
You're right the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th amendment barred stated from abridging privileges or immunities. However Article IV - The States Section 2 - State citizens, Extradition says "The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States." That sounds like what's a right in one state other states have to honour.
Madison staunchly opposing a national bank
That I didn't know but I know his friend Thomas Jefferson had a big problem with banks saying they were more dangerous to liberty than standing armies. What I find ironic about TJ is that he had his own standing army, the US Marine Corp. And about 100 years before Teddie Roosevelt did he sent them to Tripoli in the Med to fight the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War.
Falcon
but from what I read the crux was the California power companies could make more money selling their power to neighboring states than they could selling it to Californians. That should not have been allowed.
Yea, California regulations barred distributors from raising their prices. Other states didn't have those regs, so where's a business going to sell, someplace with caps or someplace without?
Falcon
The Bill of Rights was a compromise. Some of the USA's Founding Fathers wanted rights included in the Constitution but others didn't. Alexander Hamilton and others didn't want rights included because they were concerned some rights would be left out. So a compromise was worked out wherein the Constitution would be signed without rights but then the Bill of Rights would be proposed for ratification.
If the federal government was truly limited only to its enumerated powers, then a Bill of Rights is unnecessary because nothing in the main body of the Constitution gives Congress the right "to infringe the freedom of speech," e.g.
The Constitution does not prevent states or local governments from infringing on rights, but the Bill of Rights does.
Falcon
I can definitely relate to water shortages here in Atlanta though we seem to be recovering this year. We're still not permitted to water the lawn.
It was pretty bad last year, but it's getting better now? There may not be plenty of water but there's more than last year?
Falcon
The fact that the federal government has ruled that somebody growing weed for personal use in his own residence, because he might impact the insterstate weed market by not buying from a street dealer, should be all you need to know to understand that the Federal government would consider ISPs interstate commerce.
Oh, I agree the feds may try. As you say the feds have gone after people in California for marijuana after the state legalized medical marijuana. Going all the way to the Supreme Court 5 of the 9 justices ruled the feds do have the power. However the other 4 said the feds didn't. What's generally not know is that the district judge in the medical marijuana case Gonzales v Raich barred the jury from being told the state had approved of medical marijuana. In Ed Rosenthal's case "several jurors renounced their verdict and rallied to his cause" after learning the state and city allowed medical marijuana. In that case the judge gave him 1 day in jail. Fact is is some judges do what they can to prevent jury nullification wherein juries tell politicians a law is as well as Fully Informed Juries.
Looking to the federal government is not even that wrong anymore. In this ever more globalized economy, people are wanting ever greater conformity in the laws. Having significant differences between the law in various states can be a real hassle. I mean picture if each state had its own set of regulations on what is legal in a cell phone, such that having your cell phone turned on when you entered the state next to you would be a crime, since your phone does not meet that states regulations.
Therein lies the problem, governments have gotten big and enact a bunch of laws. Laws should only be ones wherein harm to others is caused. Crimes like murder, pollution, rape, robbery. The rest can be handled with civil lawsuits. If there is no victim something shouldn't be illegal. And simply using drugs doesn't cause harm, the over use of drugs may harm the user but that's self inflicted. Legal drugs would end gang violence of the drug trade. Which brings up one group opposed to legalization, gangs. If drugs were legal it'd cut into gang profits if not put gangs out of business. A second group opposed to legalization is the drug warriors and businesses that profit from illegal drugs, all those companies that screen for drugs, provide weapons, and such. A third group is the pharmaceutical companies. They can't patent street drugs.
Falcon
This is light on details on how people can help to push this through and make it law.
This is light on how competition would help more than regulations would.
Falcon
That whole mess kind of led to Arnold yanking away the governors spot didn't it ? , Which was a little unfair as most of the fixes (patches ?) where done right before Davis lost his job.
CA's recall vote was a terrific show of democracy working, only if Iran can get it working there.
Falcon
Sure, since we can't just magically wave more water into existence, we conserve it. I water my plants with water from the washing machine.
I did something like this last year. Even though I reported it to my landlord the drain in the bathtub in my apartment was clogged up for months. So what I did was scoop water out of it to water my garden.
OTOH, due to technology improvements, we can just wave more bandwidth into existance (or close to it).
I was only addressing the statement that we can not create more water, which is a problem in CA.
Falcon
Why don't you read this
Yes, I know about natural monopolies. I have suggested elsewhere that ownership of infrastructure should be separated from ownership of services. I have also argued for freeing the airwaves by allowing people to once again homestead the airwaves.
People who write legal documents usually leave much leeway to account for the unaccountable. If you look up the right articles of constitution or law, there's bound to be a section ascribing federal powers to "other areas not yet covered by current document"
And if you look at other early documents you'll see government was supported to be strictly limited in what powers it had. Repeatedly Thomas Jefferson wrote that the people have the power and that government is but a servant to the people, not their dictator. He "sought to establish a federal government of limited powers."
Falcon