'Not worked' as in 'not been stable'? Yea. I can agree with that. There are enough people who like power/money too much, and they do their best to corrupt the system to get/keep it. They usually succeed in a generation or two.
But if you meant 'not worked' as in 'not provided lots of wealth for just about everybody' for those time periods before it becomes corrupted, then sorry dude, you need to brush up on your history and economics. I suggest starting with the Wealth of Nations. guttemberg.net for a copy.
Really? If copyrights were limited to 1 year I would be too busy reading all of last years books and downloading last years music and movies to have any time to bother with this years.
On the other hand I am a/.er, and hardly representative of the american public.
There are tons of examples in history of people choosing things with equally harsh results. Early protestants, early christians. early almost any religion for that matter. Our Founding Fathers chose treason agianst the most powerfull nation on earth, many died for it. Just because the results are not pleasant does not mean that people will never make that choice.
I do suspect that homosexuality is not a 'choice' in the simple meaning of the word. Few (if any) wake up one morning and say, 'I will from now on be attracted to members of the same sex.' or 'I want to be a hardcore heroin addict' You usually start with alcohol and then move to harder drugs. Mabe a better analogy would be girls/women who consistantly choose abusive boyfriends/husbands. (almost!) nobody chooses to be abused, and yet these people choose to be with and stay with people who abuse them. Most of them had similar family lives growing up. Abusive fathers are a major factor, IIRC.
Another think is that poeple choose what they know. If you have never heard of perl, are you going to choose to write an app using it? Likewise if you never had a good female role-model, and never had a female friend when young (due to, say, a really bad female role-model, giving you the wrong idea that all girls are witches!), but you had a really great male friend, and a good father figure (actual father or not), Would you be likely to be attracted to, and choose to be with men, or women?
Saying that you are 'just born that way' is too simplistic. So is saying that it is just a choice, I am afraid.
If it was only the big guys, I would agree with your assesment. Simply stop watching the crapy crap that just keeps getting crappier, and go make your own. Or someone elses that doesn't do crap like this. But it goes deeper than that. What happens when I can't copy my own video, that I created, because all of the equipment that I can buy refuses to do so? And I am not allowed to publish my own content, with or without DRM, for the same reasons? A brother on mine has already ran into this type of problem. His DV camera won't record (or output, I can't remember which) video from his VCR. It is all his own video that he shot himself.
Of course it should be. Just imagine the chaos that would result if DNS records were world editable, or if . .
Oh, wait. You meant, regulated by the government. The government did not build it[1], they did not buy it, they do not own it. They should not have any say in it, beyond prosecuting those who commit crimes using it.
[1]yes, I know DARPA designed it. architects do not own the buildings they designed, even if they own the plans.
I agree. There isn't a question of more importance in american politics.
Here is my answer to that question. Or at least the first part. Insure the Liberty, Safety, and Prosperity of the citizens, in that order of priority. Some level of safety is necessary to maintain liberty. Think national defense. Some level of prosperity is necessary to maintain both safety and liberty. Freedom to use your property means squat if there is no property.[1] But no level of prosperity or safety is worth the loss of liberty.
For the argument 'What, you want to let the terrorists win?' I quote Patrick Henry. "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" What is the difference between terrorists taking my life and/or property and my government doing the same?
As far as this applies to marriage, Social engineering is anathema to liberty, and usually does not enhance either safety or prosperity. Most laws dealing with marriage are social engineering attempts. Giving certain priveledges and responsibilities to marriage without explicit consent of the 'happy couple' is both social engineering and contrary to liberty. Government should allow people to take which priveledges and responsibilities they wish, and make them legally binding, without government interference. Essentially each marriage is defined by a legal contract that would look something like a pre-nuptial agreement. If this would allow society to go in some direction that someone thinks is bad, lump it. Even if they are right. It is not the job of government to effect or prevent social change.
For those who say 'This allows gays to marry', think of it this way. by giving government the power to ban two gays from commiting to each other and calling such an arraingement 'marriage', you also give the government the power to regulate your own marriage, and say what it is, or isn't. Banning gay marriage will not 'preserve marriage'. Even if gay marriage can destroy marriage. It will however, give the government the power to destroy it. Note also that having the government sanction any marriage, gay or not, also does the same thing. It gives governenment power over marriage, to do with as it pleases.
[1]Don't think 'if you have no property' here. Think 'there is no property to be had'.
Most honeybees are infertile females. The queen emits pheromones that prevent them from laying eggs. Is this a genetic defect? (retorical question of course)
To say that because homosexuality prevents individual reproduction it is a genetic defect (assuming it is genetic) is not correct. Does it help the survivability of near kin? The tribe? The species? If it harms this, then you have a valid argument that is is a defect. Inividual reproduction is not enough to come to that conclusion.
Why am I not surprised thet the politics are even more complicated that I thought? (retorical of course)
I was under the impression that Turkey's objections were the main reason that the US did not go ahead and make an independant kurdish state. As you said, they have been defacto independant ever since the northern no-fly zones started.
I think what I was trying to say was that partitoning Iraq more or less as you stated would be the best situation for IRAQ and it's people but not necessarily for the US, or anyone else. Politics as usual.
One major problem with your proposal. Turkey is very opposed to an independant kurdish state, (It would be on their border) The kurds in Turkey are in about the same position as those in Iraq, and Turkey is worried about uprisings of their kurds. I believe that they have said they will invade any such state. Turkey (a nominal US ally) would have to be delt with.
I think you are on the right path here. Iraq does need this.
There is nothing you can do or not do that does not have some effect on someone else.
I order steak instead of lobster: I affected both the cattle and fishing industries - and hurt one regardless of which I choose. Not going to the restaurant hurts the restaurant. I buy an SUV instead of an econo-box, I produce more pollution and raise the price of gas - this hurts evereyone except the oil industry, who would be hurt if I chose the econo-box. Not buying a car hurts the auto industry.
Your method of determining freedom says there are no freedoms. It is broken. Get a new one.
Do you think that IPv6 would even be around now if IPv4 had used, say 40 or 48 bit addresses, and been allocated a little bit better? If what you say is true, I would geuss the answer is no.
No, it is not the broken window fallacy. (second time that has come up in this thread too. Thanks folks, you learn something everyday!)
The fallacy of the broken window is that the broken window provids economic bennifits. It doesn't. The broken window (or the broken job skills, the analogy is valid to a point) merely changes what the person buys. A new window instead of bread. I did not conclude that the retraining brought more economic activity than would have been there if it was not needed. If I had then your complaint would have been correct.
I have ignored something else though, intentionally too. (it makes things way too messy to make my point in a/. post) The broken window fallacy makes a good framework to discuss it too. If the shopkeeper had intended to spend the money anyway, as a simple consumer, then the only economic effect is that the shopkeeper has to do without whatever he would have gotten instead of the window. The same ammount of goods $-wise was produced and consumed. Net gain/loss is zero. But what if he had intended to spend it on stock for his store? now the economy is also out the profits from selling that stock. Or what about business training for himself or employees? The economy is out the production of these more productive workers. Or what about spending it on the shopkeepers spiffy new invention to make gasoline from lawn clippings? The economy is out lots of cheap gas.
Simply put, to conclude that the broken window had a zero net effect on the economy is to conclude that economics is a zero-sum game. It is not. In my previous posts I assumed it was. To some extent that is not a bad approxamation, but you have to watch it. It also works in reverse. Your case is a good example. you paid money for some skills, only to learn later that those skills weren't worth what you paid. My position is not all that different. I graduated with a BS in Computer Engineering in spring 2001. The worst time in decades. I still don't have a related job. I was lucky though in that I have no debts.
Retraining costs are not like repair costs in one aspect though. You still retain the old skills, the old window is gone. This may well make your skills more valuable in the future, even if you go into another field.
Last point, economics is all about averages. Just like the second law of thermodynamics. In the macro world they are always true. But when you scale them down to the level of one or two individuals, they sometimes do not hold true. The situation of any single individual (you?) may well violate the economic laws.
For the worker, yes. He may not get as much as the chinese worker would if you factor in retraining costs. But those retraining costs provide income to someone else in the same nation. No net gain or loss to the average person in that nation. I am looking at overall benifit/loss here, not just one person. We already established that the person buying the sudsidised shoes wins in all cases.
The real question is why is there a difference in the cost of labor in the two nations? If it is due to immigration restrictions, or worse, currency manipulations, then you very well may be right. In that case these manupulations serve the same function as the subsidy. Net loss, not gain. If the other nation simply is poorer, and people are willing to work for less, then I doubt that the retraining costs are enough to change the net gain conclusion. Also the new chinese shoemakers will have to be trained in shoemaking. Retraining costs ballance out. The net effect is small, if not zero.
Where did the chinese subsidies come from? Taxes, of some sort, on the chinese people. So the chinese consumers are colectively out the cost of the subsidy. The problem is that the cost of that subsidy is usually greater than the price decrease in the product, even if you count the increase in productivity due to lower unemployment among the chinese. In this case subsidy costs of more than $20. So what we have is you save $20, the chinese consumer gets less, (difference of, < $20 from more employment, and, > $20 from taxes), and nobody makes shoes in the US anymore. (jobs went overseas, sound familiar?) Higher unemployment here means the net gain to the US consumer is less than the $20 you saved. It may even be more! (note: the employment gains in china will be less than the loss in the US.) Net LOSS
What if the US imposed a $20 import tax on chinese shoes. You pay $20 more for shoes, the US saves $20 (less taxes). And the chinese get stuck with the costs of the subsidy as before, except they do not benifit from higher employment. They pay all of the price for the subsidy, and the US suffers no loss. Still a net loss, but less than before, and the chinese pay it all.
Now if the price difference is only due to cheaper labor, then the equation goes like this, you save $20, the chinese consumer is not impacted at all, there are fewer unemployed chinese, and the inefficient US shoe maker (the person, not the corp.) gets to find some other kind of work. This work will not (on average, all other things being equal blah.) pay as much as his former job did, but it will pay more than the other work that the chinese worker would have done. (higher labor costs here!) So the loss to the US comsumer (shoe worker) is something less than $20. Net GAIN.
I am not arguing agianst free trade. It is the best situation. However, if someone else is not going to play along, sticking with a free trade policy is not the best situation.
And it is the latter! See James Mdisons proposal of the bill of rights. I'll quote the relavant part.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed;
a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a
free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms,
shall be compelled to render military service in person.
And this quote:George Mason: "I ask you sir, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people." (Elliott, Debates, 425-426) (from here
In fact there is tons of evidence that the militia==the people, and precious little for any other interpretation.
That consent has not been given. The Constitution is the contract of consent, and it does not grant poewr to the government to do so.
The constitution can be amended. this would qualify as consent. Just be aware that I will not give my consent. I want to keep my property, and my health care (I view both of these as aspects of my life) under my control. Not some gov. bureaucrat.
(note: I have already given my consent that some of my property may be used for those things that are in the constitution, so in that sense my property is not completely under my control. But under the constitution at least, my health care is under my sole control. I want to keep it that way)
It is not the job of governments to prevent all harm, do all good, or right all wrongs. Any attempt by the government to do this will lead to more harm, less good, and more injustice than if no attempt was made.
This does not imply that there is not some harm that governments should prevent, some good that they should not do, or some wrongs that they should not right. Which are which can be determined by whether or not the actions can be done without government intervention, and whose, (and which) rights have to be violated in order for governments to do it.
In your specific examples, taking from others to give to those in need causes more harm than good. Charity, while it may not do as good of a job as government, causes much less harm on the whole.
International trade is subject to the Nash Equilibrium. (see also Prisoners Dilemma) Subsidies always hurt economic activity. If China subsidises something in it's country, then the US (or any trade partner) can be hurt more if they impose no restrictions on that good, than if they do. Stupid restrictions can obviously hurt more, but there is usually some fair trade restrictions that will hurt less than none.
Obviously the best situation is no subsidies or trade restrictions, but if one side imposes some, then a fair resopnse by the other side is the best situation for that other side. Reality sucks sometimes.
No. There is a third option. That people are too lazy or stupid to excercise the power to decide what they watch/read/listen to.
Do you remember this article? The whole point of this book was to show how the government and the corporate types had taylored the public school system to produce exactally this kind of 'citizen' (using the term rather loosely) Try reading some of the book. I did.
" We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"
I do not have the right to someone elses stuff, but, in limited circumstances, I have been granted the priveledge of the bennifits of others lives, guns and property. This is based on their consent. Or so the legal theory goes.
In addition to this, the provision that the government is to provide for the common defense does not grant a right to be defended. This goes for foreign nations as well as for burglars. It is a priveledge, one that we all pay for, but not a right.
Just try suing you local police department for not preventing your house from being burglarized/vandalised, or your car, or your pocket etc. and you will see just how much of a right common defense is.
Yes. And you correctly identified the reason. The 14th amendment greatly shifted the balance of powers in the constitution, Mostly for the worse.
The goal of the 14th amentment was/is noble and good. (give blacks equal status under the law) The law of unintended consequences struck, and those consequences have been many and mostly bad.
Slashdot Mirror
You have to get electric or magnetic fields to have any chance of interfering with radio.
But if you meant 'not worked' as in 'not provided lots of wealth for just about everybody' for those time periods before it becomes corrupted, then sorry dude, you need to brush up on your history and economics. I suggest starting with the Wealth of Nations. guttemberg.net for a copy.
On the other hand I am a /.er, and hardly representative of the american public.
I do suspect that homosexuality is not a 'choice' in the simple meaning of the word. Few (if any) wake up one morning and say, 'I will from now on be attracted to members of the same sex.' or 'I want to be a hardcore heroin addict' You usually start with alcohol and then move to harder drugs. Mabe a better analogy would be girls/women who consistantly choose abusive boyfriends/husbands. (almost!) nobody chooses to be abused, and yet these people choose to be with and stay with people who abuse them. Most of them had similar family lives growing up. Abusive fathers are a major factor, IIRC.
Another think is that poeple choose what they know. If you have never heard of perl, are you going to choose to write an app using it? Likewise if you never had a good female role-model, and never had a female friend when young (due to, say, a really bad female role-model, giving you the wrong idea that all girls are witches!), but you had a really great male friend, and a good father figure (actual father or not), Would you be likely to be attracted to, and choose to be with men, or women?
Saying that you are 'just born that way' is too simplistic. So is saying that it is just a choice, I am afraid.
The problem goes much deeper than crappy TV.
Oh, wait. You meant, regulated by the government. The government did not build it[1], they did not buy it, they do not own it. They should not have any say in it, beyond prosecuting those who commit crimes using it.
[1]yes, I know DARPA designed it. architects do not own the buildings they designed, even if they own the plans.
Here is my answer to that question. Or at least the first part.
Insure the Liberty, Safety, and Prosperity of the citizens, in that order of priority. Some level of safety is necessary to maintain liberty. Think national defense. Some level of prosperity is necessary to maintain both safety and liberty. Freedom to use your property means squat if there is no property.[1] But no level of prosperity or safety is worth the loss of liberty.
For the argument 'What, you want to let the terrorists win?' I quote Patrick Henry. "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" What is the difference between terrorists taking my life and/or property and my government doing the same?
As far as this applies to marriage, Social engineering is anathema to liberty, and usually does not enhance either safety or prosperity. Most laws dealing with marriage are social engineering attempts. Giving certain priveledges and responsibilities to marriage without explicit consent of the 'happy couple' is both social engineering and contrary to liberty. Government should allow people to take which priveledges and responsibilities they wish, and make them legally binding, without government interference. Essentially each marriage is defined by a legal contract that would look something like a pre-nuptial agreement. If this would allow society to go in some direction that someone thinks is bad, lump it. Even if they are right. It is not the job of government to effect or prevent social change.
For those who say 'This allows gays to marry', think of it this way. by giving government the power to ban two gays from commiting to each other and calling such an arraingement 'marriage', you also give the government the power to regulate your own marriage, and say what it is, or isn't. Banning gay marriage will not 'preserve marriage'. Even if gay marriage can destroy marriage. It will however, give the government the power to destroy it. Note also that having the government sanction any marriage, gay or not, also does the same thing. It gives governenment power over marriage, to do with as it pleases.
[1]Don't think 'if you have no property' here. Think 'there is no property to be had'.
err.. you meant 'have no legal meaning' right? Marriage would become nothing more than a non-legally binding agreement between two (or more?) people.
To say that because homosexuality prevents individual reproduction it is a genetic defect (assuming it is genetic) is not correct. Does it help the survivability of near kin? The tribe? The species? If it harms this, then you have a valid argument that is is a defect. Inividual reproduction is not enough to come to that conclusion.
I was under the impression that Turkey's objections were the main reason that the US did not go ahead and make an independant kurdish state. As you said, they have been defacto independant ever since the northern no-fly zones started.
I think what I was trying to say was that partitoning Iraq more or less as you stated would be the best situation for IRAQ and it's people but not necessarily for the US, or anyone else. Politics as usual.
I think you are on the right path here. Iraq does need this.
I order steak instead of lobster: I affected both the cattle and fishing industries - and hurt one regardless of which I choose. Not going to the restaurant hurts the restaurant.
I buy an SUV instead of an econo-box, I produce more pollution and raise the price of gas - this hurts evereyone except the oil industry, who would be hurt if I chose the econo-box. Not buying a car hurts the auto industry.
Your method of determining freedom says there are no freedoms. It is broken. Get a new one.
http://www.rosenlaw.com/html/GL15a.pdf
Basicall y, there is no solid legal way to do what you are trying to do.
Do you think that IPv6 would even be around now if IPv4 had used, say 40 or 48 bit addresses, and been allocated a little bit better? If what you say is true, I would geuss the answer is no.
What am I missing?
The fallacy of the broken window is that the broken window provids economic bennifits. It doesn't. The broken window (or the broken job skills, the analogy is valid to a point) merely changes what the person buys. A new window instead of bread. I did not conclude that the retraining brought more economic activity than would have been there if it was not needed. If I had then your complaint would have been correct.
I have ignored something else though, intentionally too. (it makes things way too messy to make my point in a /. post) The broken window fallacy makes a good framework to discuss it too. If the shopkeeper had intended to spend the money anyway, as a simple consumer, then the only economic effect is that the shopkeeper has to do without whatever he would have gotten instead of the window. The same ammount of goods $-wise was produced and consumed. Net gain/loss is zero. But what if he had intended to spend it on stock for his store? now the economy is also out the profits from selling that stock. Or what about business training for himself or employees? The economy is out the production of these more productive workers. Or what about spending it on the shopkeepers spiffy new invention to make gasoline from lawn clippings? The economy is out lots of cheap gas.
Simply put, to conclude that the broken window had a zero net effect on the economy is to conclude that economics is a zero-sum game. It is not. In my previous posts I assumed it was. To some extent that is not a bad approxamation, but you have to watch it. It also works in reverse. Your case is a good example. you paid money for some skills, only to learn later that those skills weren't worth what you paid. My position is not all that different. I graduated with a BS in Computer Engineering in spring 2001. The worst time in decades. I still don't have a related job. I was lucky though in that I have no debts.
Retraining costs are not like repair costs in one aspect though. You still retain the old skills, the old window is gone. This may well make your skills more valuable in the future, even if you go into another field.
Last point, economics is all about averages. Just like the second law of thermodynamics. In the macro world they are always true. But when you scale them down to the level of one or two individuals, they sometimes do not hold true. The situation of any single individual (you?) may well violate the economic laws.
The real question is why is there a difference in the cost of labor in the two nations? If it is due to immigration restrictions, or worse, currency manipulations, then you very well may be right. In that case these manupulations serve the same function as the subsidy. Net loss, not gain. If the other nation simply is poorer, and people are willing to work for less, then I doubt that the retraining costs are enough to change the net gain conclusion. Also the new chinese shoemakers will have to be trained in shoemaking. Retraining costs ballance out. The net effect is small, if not zero.
What if the US imposed a $20 import tax on chinese shoes. You pay $20 more for shoes, the US saves $20 (less taxes). And the chinese get stuck with the costs of the subsidy as before, except they do not benifit from higher employment. They pay all of the price for the subsidy, and the US suffers no loss. Still a net loss, but less than before, and the chinese pay it all.
Now if the price difference is only due to cheaper labor, then the equation goes like this, you save $20, the chinese consumer is not impacted at all, there are fewer unemployed chinese, and the inefficient US shoe maker (the person, not the corp.) gets to find some other kind of work. This work will not (on average, all other things being equal blah.) pay as much as his former job did, but it will pay more than the other work that the chinese worker would have done. (higher labor costs here!) So the loss to the US comsumer (shoe worker) is something less than $20. Net GAIN.
I am not arguing agianst free trade. It is the best situation. However, if someone else is not going to play along, sticking with a free trade policy is not the best situation.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.
And this quote :George Mason: "I ask you sir, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people." (Elliott, Debates, 425-426) (from here
In fact there is tons of evidence that the militia==the people, and precious little for any other interpretation.
The constitution can be amended. this would qualify as consent. Just be aware that I will not give my consent. I want to keep my property, and my health care (I view both of these as aspects of my life) under my control. Not some gov. bureaucrat.
(note: I have already given my consent that some of my property may be used for those things that are in the constitution, so in that sense my property is not completely under my control. But under the constitution at least, my health care is under my sole control. I want to keep it that way)
This does not imply that there is not some harm that governments should prevent, some good that they should not do, or some wrongs that they should not right. Which are which can be determined by whether or not the actions can be done without government intervention, and whose, (and which) rights have to be violated in order for governments to do it.
In your specific examples, taking from others to give to those in need causes more harm than good. Charity, while it may not do as good of a job as government, causes much less harm on the whole.
International trade is subject to the Nash Equilibrium. (see also Prisoners Dilemma) Subsidies always hurt economic activity. If China subsidises something in it's country, then the US (or any trade partner) can be hurt more if they impose no restrictions on that good, than if they do. Stupid restrictions can obviously hurt more, but there is usually some fair trade restrictions that will hurt less than none.
Obviously the best situation is no subsidies or trade restrictions, but if one side imposes some, then a fair resopnse by the other side is the best situation for that other side. Reality sucks sometimes.
No.
There is a third option. That people are too lazy or stupid to excercise the power to decide what they watch/read/listen to.
Do you remember this article? The whole point of this book was to show how the government and the corporate types had taylored the public school system to produce exactally this kind of 'citizen' (using the term rather loosely) Try reading some of the book. I did.
" We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"
I do not have the right to someone elses stuff, but, in limited circumstances, I have been granted the priveledge of the bennifits of others lives, guns and property. This is based on their consent. Or so the legal theory goes.
In addition to this, the provision that the government is to provide for the common defense does not grant a right to be defended. This goes for foreign nations as well as for burglars. It is a priveledge, one that we all pay for, but not a right.
Just try suing you local police department for not preventing your house from being burglarized/vandalised, or your car, or your pocket etc. and you will see just how much of a right common defense is.
The goal of the 14th amentment was/is noble and good. (give blacks equal status under the law) The law of unintended consequences struck, and those consequences have been many and mostly bad.