I do find it acceptable for the government to revoke health insurance of notorious substance abusers (including smokers and alcoholics)
Government should only be issuing health insurance as the last effort when a free market fails. And no it hasn't already failed, there is no free market in healthcare.
And guess who's going to be released? Violent criminals because those in prison for nonviolent drug offenses have minimum sentences. A good way to relieve the prison population, and the United States has the highest prison population in the world, is by freeing those in prison for nonviolent drugs offenses. Get rid of victim-less crimes such as the drug laws and the prison population can be cut by more than half [pdf warning].
Nobody should be worried about cameras on every corner unless they are a criminal worried about being caught in the act.
Everybody who believes in civil liberties and political descent should be concerned about cameras on every, heck every other, corner. I'm sure the old Soviet Union would have loved to have that ability to track everyone.
To run around ranting that cameras invade privacy and erode civil liberties is fundamentally mis-targeted - it's not the cameras that invade privacy, and it's not within the function of a mere imaging device to erode your civil liberties.
It makes it easier for those who would invade privacy and erode civil liberties if they have the means to do so. Meanwhile as some have already pointed out these cameras don't stop or prevent crimes. One teen shot dead and two injured with two cameras capturing the shooting.
I think that the govt. should sponsor selected Open Source projects. One to calculate income tax would be quite reasonable.
Make income tax easiest by getting rid of it. Instead use consumption taxes and user fees.
I'm against govt. money just being grants. That feels like a bad idea. But hiring people to build carefully selected Open Source projects should be a good thing.
These grants, subsidies, create winners and losers despite any merit.
And, in the extreme situation, where the influx of money makes open source more viable - once the government stops throwing money at it, and open source is more robust, stable, and performant than closed source software - congrats; you've just displaced an entire industry of software developers.
Do you think fairies create open source software? All open source is is a different business model, one that still uses software developers. And because it is available for everyone to look at it can be made more robust, stable, perform better, and simply be better than closed source software. Obscurity doesn't mean it's better.
That's a bad idea. Government shouldn't be funding either open source or proprietary software. They should let people keep the money they work to earn and let them decide who they want to support.
Ideology aside, government investment in technology is what created the computer and the internet and a great deal of wealth that far exceeds the initial investment.
True however government subsidizing creates winners and losers, those who get the most in subsidies can come out on top despite any technical merit. Then how's the money to be given out? Because MS has 90% of the market they get 90% of the funds? And GIMP doesn't get any?
So how do you propose choosing a government other than by democratic election? (i.e. the way that all representative democracies, including the USA, throughout the world do it)
I don't think think it's so much democracy that's the problem, "Democracy is the worst form of government, but all the others" to paraphrase Churchill, the problem is the size of government. I'm not an anarchist but I do want small government.
I thought that the whole purpose of political parties was to decide what type of government you will have. Do you think people should be banned from joining the Socialist and Communist parties in the USA?
I don't care if someone wants to be or is a member of a socialist or communist party, unlike Eugene McCarthy. What I do care about is when people use government to force their preferred economic system on everyone else. I believe in cooperation, and am a member of two coops, but it has to be voluntary not forced. Because I'm interested in them I read about Communitarianism and cohousing. Notice however in both cases they are voluntary, like minded individuals get together and agree on how to do something. Nobody is forced to do anything they don't want to. Even the Kibbutz in Israel are voluntary.
I would suggest that the right to freedom of assembly is as fundamental as any other. I may disagree with the platforms of various communist and fascist parties, but I would defend to the death their right to exist.
The same here so long as they don't try to force it on everyone else. However that's exactly what some of these groups want to do. Those who want universal healthcare for instance want to force everybody to pay into national healthcare instead of giving people a choice.
Both good points and it's certainly an option in it's current state, I was thinking of the dykes in Holland when I pulled the N.O. example out of my arse.
Holland, and some other Northern European countries, are at or below sea level. Without dikes they would be submerged. Without those dikes not many people would be able to live there. Venice, Italy is the same.
Oh yeah, "The Free Market is the solution to everything!" A real sharp bunch of people believe that. You'd have to be hopelessly naive or ignorant to believe that libertarianism has a chance of working in the real world.
More rhetoric with no substance. Try reading Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" sometime. Alexis describes what he found in America when he toured the country, freedom with most of the government at the local level. Of course this was before corporations became powerful as Thomas Jefferson warned about.
Taking all that wonderful independence, then making them dependent on the government effectively gives the government influence over these open source projects, which to me takes some of the gleam off of the whole open source movement.
Government already uses, or used to use, a lot of open source software. The internet was built on open source software.
You mean things like dykes to protect New Orleans, bridges that aren't falling down, health-care and education that doesn't cost an arm and a leg? - Now is the time to purchase those things and re-employ the tsunami of unemployed auto-workers that are on the near term horizon.
Many people will not like this but perhaps New Orleans should not be rebuilt. In less than 100 years New Orleans has been hit by hurricanes more than 8 tyme. Also the ground around New Orleans and in the bayou is subsiding ie sinking.
WHO CARES how much your house is worth, if you live there? If the price goes down, the price of every other house goes down too, so if you want to move you'll be able to afford a new home.
No, you won't be able to sell it because no body else can get banks to give them mortgages. But even if you could you may end up like a lot of others, owing more on the house than you can sell it for.
This aspect already prevents many OSS projects from going closed-source because it is nearly impossible to gather together all members of the development community to agree on legal terms
That's one of the problems I have with the GPL. On the other hand the BSD licenses allow developers to close their source code.
Don't worry I won't hold that against you, I'm a "greenie" and I appreciate factual arguments regardless of where I find them.;)
You can be both. I am a libertarian, small "l", and a greenie, er environmentalist, er someone who wants to take care of ecological systems. Private enterprises can be effective in cleaning up the environment.
Perhaps you should have read my other posts on the subject. There is no one answer to everything. Under one set of circumstances something can be legal but change one thing and it becomes illegal. And what's legal in one place is illegal in another, even in the US.
The open source movement is exactly what should be funded.
That's a bad idea. Government shouldn't be funding either open source or proprietary software. They should let people keep the money they work to earn and let them decide who they want to support.
I had an argument with a microsoftie a while ago, who was convinced that open source was destroying the software industry. I countered that all it was doing was creating a rich infrastructure on top of which other industry could be built.
Next tyme maybe you can remind him, or her, that open source software has been around longer than Microsoft. Members of the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT were writing open source programs back in the 1950s and '60s.
Yeah, I agree that farm subsidies are monsterously stupid. The logic, in theory, is that if you simply allow agriculture in this country to go the way of manufacturing (which it might well do given lower labor costs elsewhere) then it becomes a national security issue.
The problem isn't that agricultural production would decline so much that national security would be at risk. A lot of people want to farm but they can't compeat with large agricultural businesses. As it is now, many in the third world are already facing the loss of farmers due to first world subsidies. Do you recall when the Doha Rounds fell apart in Geneva? Brazil, India, and other nations complained about the First World subsidies. If I recall right India's rep in the talks walked out and went back home when the EU refused to budge on EU subsidies. If anything it's the Third World countries that are facing national security issues and are loosing food security.
But as for the highway system. If we NEED these roads so much to move stuff to the cities, then maybe the cost should be born by the goods that need to be moved. I'm not really suggesting that all these roads should be abandoned, just that the costs should be allocated where they belong.
I agree and that's why I support user fees, when you drive on roads and use them you pay for it. Now unlike many Libertarians I don't believe in privatizing roads. Instead I'd have mileage taxed. When a person, or business, renews their license plate tags their odometer would be read and they'd pay a fee depending on how much they drove. If a person was considered about being hit by a big bill when they renew what they could do was to make monthly or quarterly payments. Then they can see what they have to pay for roads and if needed adjust their driving.
look at Vermont where I am
Ah, across the state line from the Free State Project state, New Hampshire.
Heck, you can't even find a farm in this state practically that MAKES money, IN SPITE of the fact that they get subsidized.
How much do those who farm get in subsidies though? I'd bet that if businesses like Archer Daniels Midland, who the Free Market CATO Institute says is "he most prominent recipient of corporate welfare in recent U.S. history" didn't get hugh subsidies then those farmers in Vermont could make an earning farming.
Slashdot Mirror
negligable, barely noticable, if it exists at all. The loss to our pocket through wasted taxes? Millions, and thats far worse.
Ah but there was a loss of freedom. Because money was taken from your pockets you couldn't do what you wanted with that money.
Falcon
I do find it acceptable for the government to revoke health insurance of notorious substance abusers (including smokers and alcoholics)
Government should only be issuing health insurance as the last effort when a free market fails. And no it hasn't already failed, there is no free market in healthcare.
Falcon
http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSTRE5190CB20090210
And guess who's going to be released? Violent criminals because those in prison for nonviolent drug offenses have minimum sentences. A good way to relieve the prison population, and the United States has the highest prison population in the world, is by freeing those in prison for nonviolent drugs offenses. Get rid of victim-less crimes such as the drug laws and the prison population can be cut by more than half [pdf warning].
Falcon
Nobody should be worried about cameras on every corner unless they are a criminal worried about being caught in the act.
Everybody who believes in civil liberties and political descent should be concerned about cameras on every, heck every other, corner. I'm sure the old Soviet Union would have loved to have that ability to track everyone.
To run around ranting that cameras invade privacy and erode civil liberties is fundamentally mis-targeted - it's not the cameras that invade privacy, and it's not within the function of a mere imaging device to erode your civil liberties.
It makes it easier for those who would invade privacy and erode civil liberties if they have the means to do so. Meanwhile as some have already pointed out these cameras don't stop or prevent crimes. One teen shot dead and two injured with two cameras capturing the shooting.
Falcon
I think that the govt. should sponsor selected Open Source projects. One to calculate income tax would be quite reasonable.
Make income tax easiest by getting rid of it. Instead use consumption taxes and user fees.
I'm against govt. money just being grants. That feels like a bad idea. But hiring people to build carefully selected Open Source projects should be a good thing.
These grants, subsidies, create winners and losers despite any merit.
Falcon
And, in the extreme situation, where the influx of money makes open source more viable - once the government stops throwing money at it, and open source is more robust, stable, and performant than closed source software - congrats; you've just displaced an entire industry of software developers.
Do you think fairies create open source software? All open source is is a different business model, one that still uses software developers. And because it is available for everyone to look at it can be made more robust, stable, perform better, and simply be better than closed source software. Obscurity doesn't mean it's better.
Falcon
That's a bad idea. Government shouldn't be funding either open source or proprietary software. They should let people keep the money they work to earn and let them decide who they want to support.
Ideology aside, government investment in technology is what created the computer and the internet and a great deal of wealth that far exceeds the initial investment.
True however government subsidizing creates winners and losers, those who get the most in subsidies can come out on top despite any technical merit. Then how's the money to be given out? Because MS has 90% of the market they get 90% of the funds? And GIMP doesn't get any?
Falcon
I, a software developer, should pony up tax dollars to be used to create software that competes with what I create?
You could create open source software yourself.
Falcon
So how do you propose choosing a government other than by democratic election? (i.e. the way that all representative democracies, including the USA, throughout the world do it)
I don't think think it's so much democracy that's the problem, "Democracy is the worst form of government, but all the others" to paraphrase Churchill, the problem is the size of government. I'm not an anarchist but I do want small government.
I thought that the whole purpose of political parties was to decide what type of government you will have. Do you think people should be banned from joining the Socialist and Communist parties in the USA?
I don't care if someone wants to be or is a member of a socialist or communist party, unlike Eugene McCarthy. What I do care about is when people use government to force their preferred economic system on everyone else. I believe in cooperation, and am a member of two coops, but it has to be voluntary not forced. Because I'm interested in them I read about Communitarianism and cohousing. Notice however in both cases they are voluntary, like minded individuals get together and agree on how to do something. Nobody is forced to do anything they don't want to. Even the Kibbutz in Israel are voluntary.
I would suggest that the right to freedom of assembly is as fundamental as any other. I may disagree with the platforms of various communist and fascist parties, but I would defend to the death their right to exist.
The same here so long as they don't try to force it on everyone else. However that's exactly what some of these groups want to do. Those who want universal healthcare for instance want to force everybody to pay into national healthcare instead of giving people a choice.
Falcon
Both good points and it's certainly an option in it's current state, I was thinking of the dykes in Holland when I pulled the N.O. example out of my arse.
Holland, and some other Northern European countries, are at or below sea level. Without dikes they would be submerged. Without those dikes not many people would be able to live there. Venice, Italy is the same.
Falcon
Oh yeah, "The Free Market is the solution to everything!" A real sharp bunch of people believe that. You'd have to be hopelessly naive or ignorant to believe that libertarianism has a chance of working in the real world.
More rhetoric with no substance. Try reading Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" sometime. Alexis describes what he found in America when he toured the country, freedom with most of the government at the local level. Of course this was before corporations became powerful as Thomas Jefferson warned about.
Falcon
Your the second green libertarian I have met this week...err...ever!
Here's the Libertarians Party's position on the environment, The Pollution Solution: Stopping the environment's worst enemy. Notice what it says are the biggest polluters, governments at all levels. This is true whether it's the Department of Defense or a local school district. Here's On The Issues section on the Libertarian Party on Environment.
"Private enterprises can be effective in cleaning up the environment."
Yep, but only if/when our economic system properly recognises pollution as a cost.
Yeap, government doesn't make polluters accountable for a lot of pollution, as that page says "we've placed the fox in charge of the hen house".
Falcon
Taking all that wonderful independence, then making them dependent on the government effectively gives the government influence over these open source projects, which to me takes some of the gleam off of the whole open source movement.
Government already uses, or used to use, a lot of open source software. The internet was built on open source software.
Falcon
If a maglev train between Vegas and LA is worthwhile, then the private sector should step up and take care of it.
It will take government to build any train run of any length, only the government has the power of eminent domain.
The railroads weren't built by tax dollars.
But they were built with eminent domain.
Falcon
You mean things like dykes to protect New Orleans, bridges that aren't falling down, health-care and education that doesn't cost an arm and a leg? - Now is the time to purchase those things and re-employ the tsunami of unemployed auto-workers that are on the near term horizon.
Many people will not like this but perhaps New Orleans should not be rebuilt. In less than 100 years New Orleans has been hit by hurricanes more than 8 tyme. Also the ground around New Orleans and in the bayou is subsiding ie sinking.
Falcon
WHO CARES how much your house is worth, if you live there? If the price goes down, the price of every other house goes down too, so if you want to move you'll be able to afford a new home.
No, you won't be able to sell it because no body else can get banks to give them mortgages. But even if you could you may end up like a lot of others, owing more on the house than you can sell it for.
Falcon
Those who use demagoguery and not reason are the douche bags.
Exactly! That perfectly describes libertarians.
No, that describes you. While libertarians use reasoning you do not.
Falcon
This aspect already prevents many OSS projects from going closed-source because it is nearly impossible to gather together all members of the development community to agree on legal terms
That's one of the problems I have with the GPL. On the other hand the BSD licenses allow developers to close their source code.
Falcon
The GPL is freedom for users. For developers BSD licenses offer more freedom.
Falcon
Don't worry I won't hold that against you, I'm a "greenie" and I appreciate factual arguments regardless of where I find them. ;)
You can be both. I am a libertarian, small "l", and a greenie, er environmentalist, er someone who wants to take care of ecological systems. Private enterprises can be effective in cleaning up the environment.
Falcon
Perhaps you should have read my other posts on the subject. There is no one answer to everything. Under one set of circumstances something can be legal but change one thing and it becomes illegal. And what's legal in one place is illegal in another, even in the US.
Falcon
Your second sentence doesn't back up your first.
The link did back up what I said. Obviously you didn't bother to check, that or you're trolling.
Falcon
The open source movement is exactly what should be funded.
That's a bad idea. Government shouldn't be funding either open source or proprietary software. They should let people keep the money they work to earn and let them decide who they want to support.
I had an argument with a microsoftie a while ago, who was convinced that open source was destroying the software industry. I countered that all it was doing was creating a rich infrastructure on top of which other industry could be built.
Next tyme maybe you can remind him, or her, that open source software has been around longer than Microsoft. Members of the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT were writing open source programs back in the 1950s and '60s.
Falcon
Yeah, I agree that farm subsidies are monsterously stupid. The logic, in theory, is that if you simply allow agriculture in this country to go the way of manufacturing (which it might well do given lower labor costs elsewhere) then it becomes a national security issue.
The problem isn't that agricultural production would decline so much that national security would be at risk. A lot of people want to farm but they can't compeat with large agricultural businesses. As it is now, many in the third world are already facing the loss of farmers due to first world subsidies. Do you recall when the Doha Rounds fell apart in Geneva? Brazil, India, and other nations complained about the First World subsidies. If I recall right India's rep in the talks walked out and went back home when the EU refused to budge on EU subsidies. If anything it's the Third World countries that are facing national security issues and are loosing food security.
But as for the highway system. If we NEED these roads so much to move stuff to the cities, then maybe the cost should be born by the goods that need to be moved. I'm not really suggesting that all these roads should be abandoned, just that the costs should be allocated where they belong.
I agree and that's why I support user fees, when you drive on roads and use them you pay for it. Now unlike many Libertarians I don't believe in privatizing roads. Instead I'd have mileage taxed. When a person, or business, renews their license plate tags their odometer would be read and they'd pay a fee depending on how much they drove. If a person was considered about being hit by a big bill when they renew what they could do was to make monthly or quarterly payments. Then they can see what they have to pay for roads and if needed adjust their driving.
look at Vermont where I am
Ah, across the state line from the Free State Project state, New Hampshire.
Heck, you can't even find a farm in this state practically that MAKES money, IN SPITE of the fact that they get subsidized.
How much do those who farm get in subsidies though? I'd bet that if businesses like Archer Daniels Midland, who the Free Market CATO Institute says is "he most prominent recipient of corporate welfare in recent U.S. history" didn't get hugh subsidies then those farmers in Vermont could make an earning farming.
Falcon
New Deal or WWII, either way it was GOVERNMENT SPENDING that ended the great depression.
Citation needed.
Falcon