From a consumer side of things, a pay-per-month model of getting access to a DRM-free library does sound good, but it seems awfully fishy that Universal would offer it. Wouldn't most people sign up for 1 month, download everything they want, and then cancel? Or are they really going to make it cheap enough, and adding new (good) content frequently enough, to make the whole thing worth it? I have my doubts.
As far as suspending copyright infringers, I've always been concerned by how readily ISPs seem to punish their own customers over a civil dispute in which they ought to have no stake. I guess if they're getting a cut of the action with this service, it makes some sense.
If you can travel faster than light, then you should, by our current scientific understanding (general relativity) be able to travel backward in time. If you can send a message faster than light, then you should be able to send that message back in time.
It's a bit tough to explain, and it would help to be able to give a diagram, but it has to do with the "light cone" the GP post refers to. If you can find information on a "light cone", Einstein said that anything outside of a light cone may be viewed as happening at the same time as the event at the vortex, but to people traveling at different velocities, any one of those points outside of these light cones could be viewed as having happened first.
If you can travel to an arbitrary point in space-time outside of your light cone, then you could go to a point where the past event (from your original position) is now outside the light-cone of your new position. From there, you would be able to travel to that point in space-time, which would have been firmly in the past from your original location.
Maybe someone can provide a better explanation? Meh, go read Einstein. But if you don't, then just remember "travelling faster than light" is the same as "able to go back in time".
Well really, I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about that as something that "needs to be solved" before you time travel. You can more or less assume that such things will work themselves out, just so long as you're confident that you're not going to destroy the universe or anything.
I'm not worried though, because I don't think we'll invent time machines. If we were to one day invent them, then most likely a future traveller would have shown up by now. I've just come to the conclusion that if a time machine will ever be invented, that the person who invents it will eventually use it to go back in time and prevent himself from inventing it, thereby preventing time travel from ever occurring, solving all time paradox problems.
I'm sorry you're so bitter about... whatever you're bitter about, but I'm talking about both the way things were designed to work and how they actually work. The right to plot another person's assassination is not one of your inalienable rights, and no one intended for the government to give you that right. When the government puts you in jail for doing that, they have not whittled your rights away. If you believe otherwise, then I suggest you seek psychiatric help.
But talking about "what is actually happening," please tell me, how many journalists are there working in the US? How many of those journalists are critical of the government and run stories the government doesn't like? And how many of those journalists are jailed as a result of their criticisms? When we have peaceful protests in our nation's capital, does the federal government send in tanks and other military personnel?
What are the big-bad scary things that are "actually happening"? I know there are abuses, like the warrantless wiretapping and the government tracking library records, and those are invasions of privacy (which has been eroded partially because there's a general dispute as to whether it's a "right"), but I don't see big crackdowns on freedom of speech. I see some restrictions on the right to bear arms, but that happens largely because people also dispute whether that's really a "right". People think that was put into the Constitution to protect a person's right to hunt or to defend themselves against criminal attack, and they don't believe that people are entitled to bear military-grade weapons.
Sorry, but if you want to continue this discussion, you're going to have to give me something more than, "Nope, I'm right," without addressing any of the points I've raised or presenting your own argument.
Yeah, contrary to the term "trickle down economics", I think the real intent was always to help wealth flow up. However, I don't think it was *purely* for the nefarious reasons that people assume, but rather from an economic philosophy that "Rich people are rich because they know how to manage and spend money well. If we want our economy to be run as well as possible, we should give as much money as we can to rich people." You can see it if you listen carefully to some people's rhetoric.
You see it in their complaints about any funding to help poor people, to provide health care, or anything else. The idea is, all poor people are poor simply because they've made bad choices, done the wrong thing, and are providing no value to society. Inversely, they believe that rich people deserve all their rewards because they are only rich because of their good judgement and contributions to society.
However, it is true that wealth has a habit of naturally trickling up. Like all forms of power, having economic power gives you the ability to draw more economic power to yourself. It's easier to get loans and investments if you already have lots of money, you can hire competent people to manage your money for you, and you have the upper hand in any conflicts you get into with those less powerful than you (even if you're in the wrong). It's just easier to go from having $100 million to $101 million than it is to go from $0 to $1 million.
I'm not sure what you mean here, but I think it's true that many people have it wrong. They believe that "free market" indicates zero governmental involvement, which isn't really a good way of thinking of things. Worse yet, they sometimes don't see governmental involvement as a violation of the free market, so long as the governmental involvement comes in the form of subsidies rather than regulation.
A real free market is one in which both the sellers and purchasers are given free and open choices, and "market forces" set the prices and terms of goods and services. Influence on the market by non-governmental bodies (monopolies and cartels) is just as effective at making a market unfree as governmental regulation. Also subsidies and tax breaks have the effect of regulation, and are just as effective at making the market unfree. Even manipulation (like people pumping/dumping stock) effectively subvert those terrific free-market forces which allow for efficient allocation of economic resources.
So when viewed this way, it becomes clear that well-formed governmental regulation can have the effect of making a market more free. Power has a tendency to pool, in that an entity with power can use that power to accrue more power. Left unchecked, that tends to lead to the sort of monopolies and cartels that might engage in price-fixing and economic abuse. If there is careful governmental legislation that, without bias toward any particular supplier or business model, prevents those monopolies from exerting undue control over the market, then it may in fact spur competition creating the very "free market" forces that you want. Forced to compete, companies tend to innovate, improve efficiency, drop prices, etc.
But beyond all that, it's also true that the free market doesn't do everything. We don't trust our police force to the "free market", and the reason is pretty simple: free markets are more efficient, but don't guarantee even and just allocation of resources. We believe that the law applies to rich and poor alike (at least most of us believe it should, even though it often doesn't), so having the only police force be the private army of the rich would be horribly unjust.
The same thing would happen (and indeed has happened) if we were specifically given a right to privacy.
We aren't "given" these rights. We are not "granted" these rights. The government does not "allow us" these rights. According to the philosophy upon which the Constitution is based, people have "natural rights", which are inalienable. The truth is the a government may, incidentally and from time to time, impinge on these rights to some degree insofar as it's required to uphold the social contract, but it may not go about systematically depriving people of those rights.
So yes, the government may disallow prisoners in jail from bearing arms. The government may prevent you from bringing a fun into the White House or on a normal passenger plane. Those things are not a sign that our society is somehow fundamentally unfree.
The US does have free speech. The distinction should be evident if you look at countries who don't have free speech. Journalists aren't jailed for being critical of the government. Peaceful protestors aren't (generally) beaten, killed, or jailed for words alone. When they have been, that may be a case of our country lacking in fundamental freedom, but it's ridiculous to claim that you're being denied your freedom of speech because "conspiracy to commit murder" is a crime.
The fundamental freedom of speech does not absolve you of the responsibility for what you say. Instructing someone to commit murder is taking part in that murder. Likewise, the right to privacy does not absolve you from responsibility for your private actions. Murdering someone in private will still be illegal, and the government is generally empowered to prosecute crime.
Yeah, sorry, but your criticism is retarded. I'm not saying I only talked to each doctor once, I'm saying after a year of the first one patting me on the head and saying, "whatever, you hypochondriac, it's nothing," I tried to find a new doctor and he did the same thing. After a few years of doctors giving me the brush off, it flared up seriously enough to put me in the hospital for 3 days.
And even after that, the second doctor was like, "Oh, well, it's not so bad at the moment that you need to be hospitalized again, at least not yet, so don't worry about it. Hopefully it just won't happen again, in spite of the fact that your symptoms haven't gone away."
And these aren't some loony back-ally doctors. These are board-certified physicians with successful practices. I think it has to be something systematic in the medical field.
What crime would they charge you with? And what happens when the first thing they do, upon arresting you, is inform you that you have the right to remain silent? Surely if you have the right to remain silent when you've been arrested, you had the right to remain silent before then too.
I don't believe you're right about that. I wouldn't be surprised if, under certain circumstances, if they have reason to think you've done something, they might be more inclined to temporarily detain you if you aren't cooperative. But "being uncooperative" in itself isn't a crime.
The fact is that the founding fathers had just defeated the former lawful government of their area using the best and latest technology available to them. Long Rifles were cutting edge tech, they were not available to the lawful army in mass, and they were used to great advantage by the rebels whenever possible.
Yeah, one well-supported interpretation of the Bill of Rights is essentially as a statement of, "These are the things that were invaluable in the revolution we just won. In order to allow us (or later generations) to rebel against their own government, should that government become bad, let's make sure we preserve those tools that are useful for a revolution." During the Revolutionary War, the British tried to deny Americans the right to free speech and freedom of assembly. They stationed soldiers in people's homes, searched houses, and made it illegal in some instances to have guns. If the Americans were caught, they weren't given fair trials, etc.
So as odd as it seems to some people, the point of the Bill of Rights is at least partially to allow us to overthrow the government. The right to bear arms, contrary to popular opinion, is not for the sake of hunters. It even says right in the second amendment that the purpose is to have common people capable of military action.
Now you can still argue that the thought behind it doesn't hold up very well. A private citizen with a long rifle is one thing, but a private citizen with a stealth bomber? However you interpret the second amendment, private citizens generally aren't going to have all the coolest state of the art military gear. But yes, the intent at the time was most definitely to allow people to arm themselves for military action.
While Amazon was correcting the problem, it told customers they had the option of launching new server instances to replace those that went down.
So basically a set of servers went down, and it took down the particular instances running on those servers. Customers were still able to take the same exact image and start new instances-- it sounds like immediately. Now sure, it'd be nice if they worked out some kind of automatic clustering and failover to take care of this sort of thing for you, but when my server goes down with my dedicated host, I don't have the option to start up a new host immediately with the same exact configuration.
Anyway, the language of the Constitution is not, "to declare the post will travel along a particular right of way". It's, "To establish Post Offices and Post Roads". The word "establish" seems purposefully vague-- it's not "build" or "declare". Using "establish" leaves them free to use whatever methods make sense, so long as the end result is post offices and post roads. It seems likely to me (unless someone can propose a better interpretation) that the authors of the Constitution saw the need for reliable communications over long distances, and reserved the necessary powers for the federal government to ensure robust communication given the technologies of the time.
Of course, the telecommunications technology of the time was basically ink on paper, transported by a man on a horse. Now they didn't just declare which roads the mail would travel on, but they actually built post offices and created roads, and though the roads were used to transport mail, they were used for other transportation too. These days, if you wanted to ensure reliable and robust communication, you'd probably want to lay some fiber down too.
We would be better off without any federal infrastructure. We could have had more rail...
So are you complaining about the fact that we went with a highway system rather than a railway system? Or against the idea of the federal government being involved in either?
it is possible to say something like, "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech regardless of the medium or technology used."
Sure, but why focus on medium? Why not location? "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech regardless of the location of the speaker." Or "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech regardless of the location of the listener." Why not subject matter? "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech regardless of the subject matter of the speech." Or race? ""Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech regardless of the race of the speaker."
We could come up with any number of arbitrary permutations, all of which are pretty redundant and useless, really. If you say, "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech." without any kind of qualification, then it means that the medium isn't really relevant to the question of whether they can abridge it-- they just can't abridge it. At least that's how any mildly intelligent person should read it.
However, if the person reading it is very stupid, then there's no end to how they may misinterpret. As you said, they may read, "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech regardless of the medium or technology used." and assume that Congress is only forbidden from abridging speech due to bias against a particular medium, but that they can abridge speech for other reasons. Or just as bad, they might read, "regardless of the medium or technology used," and think that this means explosives count as a valid "medium or technology" to express speech.
To clarify, I'm not opposed to being specific where it will help, but I don't see the need to get into specificities that should be covered by the generalities, particularly not in a document like a constitution. The constitution is really more a statement of principles. Details can be worked out in normal laws.
Well here are two possible arguments against your line of reasoning:
Trying to write something into the constitution doesn't necessarily make people understand it better. If people really don't understand the "tubes" and the "clouds", then they won't know whether the technical mumbo-jumbo written into the constitution is really being honored anyway.
If we say, "These rights apply to both physical objects and digital objects," then what happens when some hitherto unimagined technology comes up and we have to figure out how to apply the law to that? It invites someone to make the argument, "The founding fathers were being very thorough and even spelled out that it applies to digital objects, in spite of that being very redundant. It must mean that they only intended for these rights to apply to this particular technology, but not other technologies." However, if you make it very clear from the start that it's the principles that matter, and not the technology with which they're implemented, then it's actually better future-proofing against poor interpretations in the future.
Every one of your objections amounts to, "we shouldn't put specifics into the constitution," but I didn't advocate getting specific in the constitution.
Looking at the US constitution again as an example, it says the president should inform the congress of the state of the union "from time to time", and so we have a State of the Union speech every year. It didn't mandate that it be broadcast on TV (which would be overly specific, besides being anachronistic), and it doesn't dictate the form or content of that communication. Still, it requires that the president informs congress of the state of the union. Allocating powers and duties doesn't need to be specific.
So my example about posting laws on the Internet in advance, you could have something much more vague and not relating to particular technology. You could say something to the extent of, "all laws must be made available in a publicly available forum by review of the citizens before they can be put to a vote."
As far as regulating infrastructure or granting copyrights, you don't have to deal with it on a very fine level, and you don't have to use the words "infrastructure" or "copyright", but either your Constitution will allow your government to do those things or it won't.
Or let me put it another way: someday, someone in the government will propose a law to regulate the construction of some piece of infrastructure. Someone else may ask, "Is that something we're even constitutionally empowered to do?" Whatever the answer is, it'd be good if there were some hint or guideline in the Constitution that would help answer that.
Well one way or another, the Internet isn't going away. There's a demand, which means there's a profitable business model to be had, which means there will be investors. To be blunt, if Richie Rich doesn't think it's a big enough profit and chooses to invest in credit default swaps instead, then Richie Rich can go sit on it and spin.
Yeah, I know. That's what I was referring to when I wrote, "However, the federal government is given the right to create roads for the purpose of delivering mail." So there's the slightly expanded version of my argument:
The government was not explicitly and specifically given the power to create an interstate highway system, but of course they wouldn't have been given that power because there were no cars. They weren't give any general powers to build infrastructure like telephone networks, the Internet, electrical grids, or trains, but none of those things existed back then, either.
So since you can't expect that they would have anticipated these technological developments, we kind of have to go looking for intent next. So does the Constitution give any hint of what the founding fathers would think of interstate infrastructure, like roads or communications infrastructure? Why yes, it precisely does. It says the government is empowered to develop the most advanced communications infrastructure available at the time (post roads and post offices).
Given that, I would argue that the founding fathers, were they to write the Constitution today, would probably grant the government a more general power to build, maintain, and regulate interstate infrastructure.
The point is if we have a "right to privacy" (and I still contend that we do NOT) specified, then it will be eroded, as out right to free speech has, and our right to bear arms has.
So your contention is that speech would be *less* eroded if we didn't recognize it as a right? That's silly. We have laws against conspiracy to commit murder for obvious reasons, and that's not a real erosion of your freedom of speech. No one ever intended that you could formulate a plan to murder someone, instruct someone to do the deed, and then walk away without prosecution because you weren't the person who literally pulled the trigger.
But really, when all things are considered, our freedom of speech in the US is not very eroded. People are constantly criticizing the government, and they aren't prosecuted. Your freedoms get eroded much more easily when they're not recognized as general human rights. I would say that our privacy is already much more eroded than our freedom of speech or even our freedom to bear arms, and I think that's because there are a lot of people who refuse to acknowledge that you have any reason to expect that the government won't spy on you.
We had some years where people were seriously suggesting that the government should be permitted to put citizens under active surveillance indiscriminately, without cause and without warrant. People contended that it should be fine for the government to tap your phone and search your library records without reason, just for data-mining, just in case you might possibly be up to something. That's a very dangerous thing that occurred only because so many people were convinced that there's no "right to privacy".
It's not like Verizon wouldn't be in a position to make money. They should be able to set a price that allows them to recoup their expenditures.
I mean, let's assume that Verizon is doing everything at cost-- that given the amount of money they're spending on fiber and providing ISP service, they're just breaking even charging everyong $45/month. Now let's assume that the infrastructure portion of that $45/month is $30. They could instead charge other ISPs an amount that averages $30 per month per customer, and that leaves the ISP $15 per month to turn a profit or break even before consumers would see a price increase.
So now what about that $15 for the ISP? Well, for one thing, there would be greater competition between ISPs, so free market forces would kick in and force these companies to really compete. That $15 will go down if companies can find a way to bring it down.
But even let's image that's not the case. Let's imagine there's somehow not enough profit to go around, and Verizon needs $30 and the ISPs need $20 to break even. So the price goes up $5, which isn't so great, but on the plus-side, we now have a much more open data infrastructure with competition that will eventually bring costs down. There will no longer be a perverse incentive for Verizon to block new and innovative services that might compete with their own services. And instead of consumers having to battle an huge company to get decent service, lots of competing ISPs will all be battling Verizon to keep them honest.
Either way, I'm tired of companies like Verizon complaining, "But we have to abuse our customers and fail to provide good service! Building infrastructure isn't profitable! We need more subsidies!"
I say, "Fine, if building vital national infrastructure can't be made profitable, then it seems like a good argument that the government should handle it instead. We'll be taking control of your network by virtue of eminent domain." Let's see how Verizon likes that.
Of course, this is just a fantasy, as though the government weren't owned by big business. And of course, I'm sure there would be many unintended consequences. I'd just prefer a free market. I think free markets work better than situations where a single body is put in control of the market and gets to set prices. But that's just me.
Well whether or not you want a right to privacy, you have one. You have all the rights associated with leading your own life that you/we haven't granted to the government.
But take your example of taxes: the government is explicitly given the power to collect taxes, and therefore (naturally) has been granted to the power to investigate activities that are taxed.
None of your rights are completely unlimited. The first amendment doesn't give you the right to plot someone else's murder. The second amendment doesn't allow prison inmates the right to own rocket launchers. That they're limited in reasonable ways doesn't mean that you don't have those rights.
But then there's this one:
Don't want to obey the law? By my right to privacy, you can't know my name or address, office.
As far as I know, there's nothing illegal about failing to disclose your name and address. There may be forms that the government will reject if those pieces of information aren't disclosed, but I don't believe a police officer can arrest you for simply refusing to give your name.
And these:
Don't want to be drafted?
Don't want ?
Now that's a real straw-man argument. I didn't say we have the right to "do whatever we want and not-do whatever we don't want". But yes, we have a general right to privacy-- which I would roughly define this way: the government is in no way entitled to investigate or record your private affairs unless it's in the course of or a necessary component of the government exercising one of its enumerated powers.
I'm not talking about a perversion of the interstate commerce clause. I'm talking about the following (article I, section 8):
To establish Post Offices and Post Roads
Now I don't know if this was ever raised historically to justify the interstate highway system, and really that wasn't my point. My point was that, aside from that one line about "Post Roads" (and arguably the interstate commerce clause), the federal government has no legal authority to do anything regarding national infrastructure.
However, it's hard to read the failure to enumerate "to build and maintain national infrastructure" as an attempt to preclude the federal government from being involved in infrastructure, given the mention of Post Roads. Well given that, and also given that the whole thing was written before the Internet, telephones, and the automobile were invented; before electricity was really understood; and before indoor plumbing was common. The fact that there basically wasn't any such thing as large-scale infrastructure except for roads and maybe aqueducts probably had something to do with it.
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Yeah, you can tell the difference between CD and 128Kbps MP3, but can you tell the difference between CD and 256Kbps MP3? In a blind test?
Maybe you can. I've heard people claim to be able to, but I don't know anyone who can beat a blind test. Have you tried?
From a consumer side of things, a pay-per-month model of getting access to a DRM-free library does sound good, but it seems awfully fishy that Universal would offer it. Wouldn't most people sign up for 1 month, download everything they want, and then cancel? Or are they really going to make it cheap enough, and adding new (good) content frequently enough, to make the whole thing worth it? I have my doubts.
As far as suspending copyright infringers, I've always been concerned by how readily ISPs seem to punish their own customers over a civil dispute in which they ought to have no stake. I guess if they're getting a cut of the action with this service, it makes some sense.
may be viewed as happening at the same time as the event at the vortex
"vortex" should be "vertex".
If you can travel faster than light, then you should, by our current scientific understanding (general relativity) be able to travel backward in time. If you can send a message faster than light, then you should be able to send that message back in time.
It's a bit tough to explain, and it would help to be able to give a diagram, but it has to do with the "light cone" the GP post refers to. If you can find information on a "light cone", Einstein said that anything outside of a light cone may be viewed as happening at the same time as the event at the vortex, but to people traveling at different velocities, any one of those points outside of these light cones could be viewed as having happened first.
If you can travel to an arbitrary point in space-time outside of your light cone, then you could go to a point where the past event (from your original position) is now outside the light-cone of your new position. From there, you would be able to travel to that point in space-time, which would have been firmly in the past from your original location.
Maybe someone can provide a better explanation? Meh, go read Einstein. But if you don't, then just remember "travelling faster than light" is the same as "able to go back in time".
Well really, I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about that as something that "needs to be solved" before you time travel. You can more or less assume that such things will work themselves out, just so long as you're confident that you're not going to destroy the universe or anything.
I'm not worried though, because I don't think we'll invent time machines. If we were to one day invent them, then most likely a future traveller would have shown up by now. I've just come to the conclusion that if a time machine will ever be invented, that the person who invents it will eventually use it to go back in time and prevent himself from inventing it, thereby preventing time travel from ever occurring, solving all time paradox problems.
I'm sorry you're so bitter about... whatever you're bitter about, but I'm talking about both the way things were designed to work and how they actually work. The right to plot another person's assassination is not one of your inalienable rights, and no one intended for the government to give you that right. When the government puts you in jail for doing that, they have not whittled your rights away. If you believe otherwise, then I suggest you seek psychiatric help.
But talking about "what is actually happening," please tell me, how many journalists are there working in the US? How many of those journalists are critical of the government and run stories the government doesn't like? And how many of those journalists are jailed as a result of their criticisms? When we have peaceful protests in our nation's capital, does the federal government send in tanks and other military personnel?
What are the big-bad scary things that are "actually happening"? I know there are abuses, like the warrantless wiretapping and the government tracking library records, and those are invasions of privacy (which has been eroded partially because there's a general dispute as to whether it's a "right"), but I don't see big crackdowns on freedom of speech. I see some restrictions on the right to bear arms, but that happens largely because people also dispute whether that's really a "right". People think that was put into the Constitution to protect a person's right to hunt or to defend themselves against criminal attack, and they don't believe that people are entitled to bear military-grade weapons.
Sorry, but if you want to continue this discussion, you're going to have to give me something more than, "Nope, I'm right," without addressing any of the points I've raised or presenting your own argument.
And wealth doesn't trickle down, it flows up.
Yeah, contrary to the term "trickle down economics", I think the real intent was always to help wealth flow up. However, I don't think it was *purely* for the nefarious reasons that people assume, but rather from an economic philosophy that "Rich people are rich because they know how to manage and spend money well. If we want our economy to be run as well as possible, we should give as much money as we can to rich people." You can see it if you listen carefully to some people's rhetoric.
You see it in their complaints about any funding to help poor people, to provide health care, or anything else. The idea is, all poor people are poor simply because they've made bad choices, done the wrong thing, and are providing no value to society. Inversely, they believe that rich people deserve all their rewards because they are only rich because of their good judgement and contributions to society.
However, it is true that wealth has a habit of naturally trickling up. Like all forms of power, having economic power gives you the ability to draw more economic power to yourself. It's easier to get loans and investments if you already have lots of money, you can hire competent people to manage your money for you, and you have the upper hand in any conflicts you get into with those less powerful than you (even if you're in the wrong). It's just easier to go from having $100 million to $101 million than it is to go from $0 to $1 million.
"Free market" is an oxymoron.
I'm not sure what you mean here, but I think it's true that many people have it wrong. They believe that "free market" indicates zero governmental involvement, which isn't really a good way of thinking of things. Worse yet, they sometimes don't see governmental involvement as a violation of the free market, so long as the governmental involvement comes in the form of subsidies rather than regulation.
A real free market is one in which both the sellers and purchasers are given free and open choices, and "market forces" set the prices and terms of goods and services. Influence on the market by non-governmental bodies (monopolies and cartels) is just as effective at making a market unfree as governmental regulation. Also subsidies and tax breaks have the effect of regulation, and are just as effective at making the market unfree. Even manipulation (like people pumping/dumping stock) effectively subvert those terrific free-market forces which allow for efficient allocation of economic resources.
So when viewed this way, it becomes clear that well-formed governmental regulation can have the effect of making a market more free. Power has a tendency to pool, in that an entity with power can use that power to accrue more power. Left unchecked, that tends to lead to the sort of monopolies and cartels that might engage in price-fixing and economic abuse. If there is careful governmental legislation that, without bias toward any particular supplier or business model, prevents those monopolies from exerting undue control over the market, then it may in fact spur competition creating the very "free market" forces that you want. Forced to compete, companies tend to innovate, improve efficiency, drop prices, etc.
But beyond all that, it's also true that the free market doesn't do everything. We don't trust our police force to the "free market", and the reason is pretty simple: free markets are more efficient, but don't guarantee even and just allocation of resources. We believe that the law applies to rich and poor alike (at least most of us believe it should, even though it often doesn't), so having the only police force be the private army of the rich would be horribly unjust.
Yeah, and you're still missing the point:
The same thing would happen (and indeed has happened) if we were specifically given a right to privacy.
We aren't "given" these rights. We are not "granted" these rights. The government does not "allow us" these rights. According to the philosophy upon which the Constitution is based, people have "natural rights", which are inalienable. The truth is the a government may, incidentally and from time to time, impinge on these rights to some degree insofar as it's required to uphold the social contract, but it may not go about systematically depriving people of those rights.
So yes, the government may disallow prisoners in jail from bearing arms. The government may prevent you from bringing a fun into the White House or on a normal passenger plane. Those things are not a sign that our society is somehow fundamentally unfree.
The US does have free speech. The distinction should be evident if you look at countries who don't have free speech. Journalists aren't jailed for being critical of the government. Peaceful protestors aren't (generally) beaten, killed, or jailed for words alone. When they have been, that may be a case of our country lacking in fundamental freedom, but it's ridiculous to claim that you're being denied your freedom of speech because "conspiracy to commit murder" is a crime.
The fundamental freedom of speech does not absolve you of the responsibility for what you say. Instructing someone to commit murder is taking part in that murder. Likewise, the right to privacy does not absolve you from responsibility for your private actions. Murdering someone in private will still be illegal, and the government is generally empowered to prosecute crime.
Yeah, sorry, but your criticism is retarded. I'm not saying I only talked to each doctor once, I'm saying after a year of the first one patting me on the head and saying, "whatever, you hypochondriac, it's nothing," I tried to find a new doctor and he did the same thing. After a few years of doctors giving me the brush off, it flared up seriously enough to put me in the hospital for 3 days.
And even after that, the second doctor was like, "Oh, well, it's not so bad at the moment that you need to be hospitalized again, at least not yet, so don't worry about it. Hopefully it just won't happen again, in spite of the fact that your symptoms haven't gone away."
And these aren't some loony back-ally doctors. These are board-certified physicians with successful practices. I think it has to be something systematic in the medical field.
I've "fired" several doctors, and the new ones aren't better.
What crime would they charge you with? And what happens when the first thing they do, upon arresting you, is inform you that you have the right to remain silent? Surely if you have the right to remain silent when you've been arrested, you had the right to remain silent before then too.
I don't believe you're right about that. I wouldn't be surprised if, under certain circumstances, if they have reason to think you've done something, they might be more inclined to temporarily detain you if you aren't cooperative. But "being uncooperative" in itself isn't a crime.
The fact is that the founding fathers had just defeated the former lawful government of their area using the best and latest technology available to them. Long Rifles were cutting edge tech, they were not available to the lawful army in mass, and they were used to great advantage by the rebels whenever possible.
Yeah, one well-supported interpretation of the Bill of Rights is essentially as a statement of, "These are the things that were invaluable in the revolution we just won. In order to allow us (or later generations) to rebel against their own government, should that government become bad, let's make sure we preserve those tools that are useful for a revolution." During the Revolutionary War, the British tried to deny Americans the right to free speech and freedom of assembly. They stationed soldiers in people's homes, searched houses, and made it illegal in some instances to have guns. If the Americans were caught, they weren't given fair trials, etc.
So as odd as it seems to some people, the point of the Bill of Rights is at least partially to allow us to overthrow the government. The right to bear arms, contrary to popular opinion, is not for the sake of hunters. It even says right in the second amendment that the purpose is to have common people capable of military action.
Now you can still argue that the thought behind it doesn't hold up very well. A private citizen with a long rifle is one thing, but a private citizen with a stealth bomber? However you interpret the second amendment, private citizens generally aren't going to have all the coolest state of the art military gear. But yes, the intent at the time was most definitely to allow people to arm themselves for military action.
Well it does seem like it was pretty resilient:
While Amazon was correcting the problem, it told customers they had the option of launching new server instances to replace those that went down.
So basically a set of servers went down, and it took down the particular instances running on those servers. Customers were still able to take the same exact image and start new instances-- it sounds like immediately. Now sure, it'd be nice if they worked out some kind of automatic clustering and failover to take care of this sort of thing for you, but when my server goes down with my dedicated host, I don't have the option to start up a new host immediately with the same exact configuration.
Anyway, the language of the Constitution is not, "to declare the post will travel along a particular right of way". It's, "To establish Post Offices and Post Roads". The word "establish" seems purposefully vague-- it's not "build" or "declare". Using "establish" leaves them free to use whatever methods make sense, so long as the end result is post offices and post roads. It seems likely to me (unless someone can propose a better interpretation) that the authors of the Constitution saw the need for reliable communications over long distances, and reserved the necessary powers for the federal government to ensure robust communication given the technologies of the time.
Of course, the telecommunications technology of the time was basically ink on paper, transported by a man on a horse. Now they didn't just declare which roads the mail would travel on, but they actually built post offices and created roads, and though the roads were used to transport mail, they were used for other transportation too. These days, if you wanted to ensure reliable and robust communication, you'd probably want to lay some fiber down too.
We would be better off without any federal infrastructure. We could have had more rail...
So are you complaining about the fact that we went with a highway system rather than a railway system? Or against the idea of the federal government being involved in either?
it is possible to say something like, "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech regardless of the medium or technology used."
Sure, but why focus on medium? Why not location? "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech regardless of the location of the speaker." Or "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech regardless of the location of the listener." Why not subject matter? "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech regardless of the subject matter of the speech." Or race? ""Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech regardless of the race of the speaker."
We could come up with any number of arbitrary permutations, all of which are pretty redundant and useless, really. If you say, "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech." without any kind of qualification, then it means that the medium isn't really relevant to the question of whether they can abridge it-- they just can't abridge it. At least that's how any mildly intelligent person should read it.
However, if the person reading it is very stupid, then there's no end to how they may misinterpret. As you said, they may read, "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech regardless of the medium or technology used." and assume that Congress is only forbidden from abridging speech due to bias against a particular medium, but that they can abridge speech for other reasons. Or just as bad, they might read, "regardless of the medium or technology used," and think that this means explosives count as a valid "medium or technology" to express speech.
To clarify, I'm not opposed to being specific where it will help, but I don't see the need to get into specificities that should be covered by the generalities, particularly not in a document like a constitution. The constitution is really more a statement of principles. Details can be worked out in normal laws.
Well here are two possible arguments against your line of reasoning:
Every one of your objections amounts to, "we shouldn't put specifics into the constitution," but I didn't advocate getting specific in the constitution.
Looking at the US constitution again as an example, it says the president should inform the congress of the state of the union "from time to time", and so we have a State of the Union speech every year. It didn't mandate that it be broadcast on TV (which would be overly specific, besides being anachronistic), and it doesn't dictate the form or content of that communication. Still, it requires that the president informs congress of the state of the union. Allocating powers and duties doesn't need to be specific.
So my example about posting laws on the Internet in advance, you could have something much more vague and not relating to particular technology. You could say something to the extent of, "all laws must be made available in a publicly available forum by review of the citizens before they can be put to a vote."
As far as regulating infrastructure or granting copyrights, you don't have to deal with it on a very fine level, and you don't have to use the words "infrastructure" or "copyright", but either your Constitution will allow your government to do those things or it won't.
Or let me put it another way: someday, someone in the government will propose a law to regulate the construction of some piece of infrastructure. Someone else may ask, "Is that something we're even constitutionally empowered to do?" Whatever the answer is, it'd be good if there were some hint or guideline in the Constitution that would help answer that.
Well one way or another, the Internet isn't going away. There's a demand, which means there's a profitable business model to be had, which means there will be investors. To be blunt, if Richie Rich doesn't think it's a big enough profit and chooses to invest in credit default swaps instead, then Richie Rich can go sit on it and spin.
Yeah, I know. That's what I was referring to when I wrote, "However, the federal government is given the right to create roads for the purpose of delivering mail." So there's the slightly expanded version of my argument:
The government was not explicitly and specifically given the power to create an interstate highway system, but of course they wouldn't have been given that power because there were no cars. They weren't give any general powers to build infrastructure like telephone networks, the Internet, electrical grids, or trains, but none of those things existed back then, either.
So since you can't expect that they would have anticipated these technological developments, we kind of have to go looking for intent next. So does the Constitution give any hint of what the founding fathers would think of interstate infrastructure, like roads or communications infrastructure? Why yes, it precisely does. It says the government is empowered to develop the most advanced communications infrastructure available at the time (post roads and post offices).
Given that, I would argue that the founding fathers, were they to write the Constitution today, would probably grant the government a more general power to build, maintain, and regulate interstate infrastructure.
The point is if we have a "right to privacy" (and I still contend that we do NOT) specified, then it will be eroded, as out right to free speech has, and our right to bear arms has.
So your contention is that speech would be *less* eroded if we didn't recognize it as a right? That's silly. We have laws against conspiracy to commit murder for obvious reasons, and that's not a real erosion of your freedom of speech. No one ever intended that you could formulate a plan to murder someone, instruct someone to do the deed, and then walk away without prosecution because you weren't the person who literally pulled the trigger.
But really, when all things are considered, our freedom of speech in the US is not very eroded. People are constantly criticizing the government, and they aren't prosecuted. Your freedoms get eroded much more easily when they're not recognized as general human rights. I would say that our privacy is already much more eroded than our freedom of speech or even our freedom to bear arms, and I think that's because there are a lot of people who refuse to acknowledge that you have any reason to expect that the government won't spy on you.
We had some years where people were seriously suggesting that the government should be permitted to put citizens under active surveillance indiscriminately, without cause and without warrant. People contended that it should be fine for the government to tap your phone and search your library records without reason, just for data-mining, just in case you might possibly be up to something. That's a very dangerous thing that occurred only because so many people were convinced that there's no "right to privacy".
It's not like Verizon wouldn't be in a position to make money. They should be able to set a price that allows them to recoup their expenditures.
I mean, let's assume that Verizon is doing everything at cost-- that given the amount of money they're spending on fiber and providing ISP service, they're just breaking even charging everyong $45/month. Now let's assume that the infrastructure portion of that $45/month is $30. They could instead charge other ISPs an amount that averages $30 per month per customer, and that leaves the ISP $15 per month to turn a profit or break even before consumers would see a price increase.
So now what about that $15 for the ISP? Well, for one thing, there would be greater competition between ISPs, so free market forces would kick in and force these companies to really compete. That $15 will go down if companies can find a way to bring it down.
But even let's image that's not the case. Let's imagine there's somehow not enough profit to go around, and Verizon needs $30 and the ISPs need $20 to break even. So the price goes up $5, which isn't so great, but on the plus-side, we now have a much more open data infrastructure with competition that will eventually bring costs down. There will no longer be a perverse incentive for Verizon to block new and innovative services that might compete with their own services. And instead of consumers having to battle an huge company to get decent service, lots of competing ISPs will all be battling Verizon to keep them honest.
Either way, I'm tired of companies like Verizon complaining, "But we have to abuse our customers and fail to provide good service! Building infrastructure isn't profitable! We need more subsidies!"
I say, "Fine, if building vital national infrastructure can't be made profitable, then it seems like a good argument that the government should handle it instead. We'll be taking control of your network by virtue of eminent domain." Let's see how Verizon likes that.
Of course, this is just a fantasy, as though the government weren't owned by big business. And of course, I'm sure there would be many unintended consequences. I'd just prefer a free market. I think free markets work better than situations where a single body is put in control of the market and gets to set prices. But that's just me.
Well whether or not you want a right to privacy, you have one. You have all the rights associated with leading your own life that you/we haven't granted to the government.
But take your example of taxes: the government is explicitly given the power to collect taxes, and therefore (naturally) has been granted to the power to investigate activities that are taxed.
None of your rights are completely unlimited. The first amendment doesn't give you the right to plot someone else's murder. The second amendment doesn't allow prison inmates the right to own rocket launchers. That they're limited in reasonable ways doesn't mean that you don't have those rights.
But then there's this one:
Don't want to obey the law? By my right to privacy, you can't know my name or address, office.
As far as I know, there's nothing illegal about failing to disclose your name and address. There may be forms that the government will reject if those pieces of information aren't disclosed, but I don't believe a police officer can arrest you for simply refusing to give your name.
And these:
Don't want to be drafted? Don't want ?
Now that's a real straw-man argument. I didn't say we have the right to "do whatever we want and not-do whatever we don't want". But yes, we have a general right to privacy-- which I would roughly define this way: the government is in no way entitled to investigate or record your private affairs unless it's in the course of or a necessary component of the government exercising one of its enumerated powers.
I'm not talking about a perversion of the interstate commerce clause. I'm talking about the following (article I, section 8):
To establish Post Offices and Post Roads
Now I don't know if this was ever raised historically to justify the interstate highway system, and really that wasn't my point. My point was that, aside from that one line about "Post Roads" (and arguably the interstate commerce clause), the federal government has no legal authority to do anything regarding national infrastructure.
However, it's hard to read the failure to enumerate "to build and maintain national infrastructure" as an attempt to preclude the federal government from being involved in infrastructure, given the mention of Post Roads. Well given that, and also given that the whole thing was written before the Internet, telephones, and the automobile were invented; before electricity was really understood; and before indoor plumbing was common. The fact that there basically wasn't any such thing as large-scale infrastructure except for roads and maybe aqueducts probably had something to do with it.