You are aware that the employment market has many of the characteristics of a monopsony right?
Even if true it's quite irrelevant to the ethical question.
It is all well and good to say that government shouldn't interfere but how do you correct the ensuing and inevitable market failure?
"Market failure" is just a description in certain frameworks of economic theory of situations which are judged bad by some criterion. The simple answer is : you don't, the world is imperfect, too bard but that does not grant anyone the right coerce other people.
If we are going to allow very large employers to form as a result of granting them limited liability status or by creating natural monopolies through copyright laws and patents then we should find a way to ensure that they do not abuse any monopsony power they might have in the employment market.
Two wrongs don't make a right. End copyright, end patents.
Limited liability is a different beast as it is most often contractual... generally speaking, limited liability refers to the liability of shareholders to the creditors. As long as creditors agree to shield the personal wealth of shareholder from the debt of the company, there's nothing wrong going on.
don't harp on about government interference in the market when it was government interference that created many of the problems that these laws try to fix.
Do you seriously believe that? Do you seriously believe when people are hired they are really paid "by the hour"?
What happens has nothing to do with the size of corporation and everything to do with the most natural form of contract in this case.
When you see cleaning ladies doing unpaid overtime, wake me up.
Personally I don't mind a bit of government interference myself
Morals ? How dare you speak of morality when you are defending what is basically a law telling employer what kind of contract they can or cannot sign with their employees. Apple has all the right in the world to ask for unpaid overtime, if employees don't like it, let them work somewhere else.
You are defending people using the government to steal from an honest corporation. THAT is immoral.
This use of the word slavery is insulting to the people who are actual slaves (on the Ivory Coast for example) or to the memory of those who were. Slavery is about being completely deprived of your freedom by having someone own you.
If Apple did not respect contracts it's bad, it might be fraud, let them be sued, good, but I doubt that employees trying to leave Cupertino were hunted, captured and whipped.
This use of the word slavery to describe bad working conditions is not innocent at all, it comes straight from Marxist ideology where it originated.
By using this word to describe the situation at Apple, not only are you insulting actual slaves, you are also embracing the most murderous political ideology of all times.
The impression of safety is more important than safety, it gives popular support for the government. The government, as an organization, is acting rationally by doing this.
Same goes for all government policies actually. Popular image of a policy and actual results are very often completely independent when not opposite.
What a strange belief. Politics has been wrong and screwed up all the time, but it's just because it wasn't the right guy... And cue the supporters of a candidate : THIS guy, now he's for real, etc. Get a perspective, it's a systemic problem.
Having universities do the teaching and the certification sucks anyway, it's not such a natural bundle.
You should go to school because you want to learn something, exams telling you how well you're doing.
Getting a diploma is about proving to other people that you know something, it should be handled entirely separately. It also means autodidacts don't have to pay for useless lessons just to get the certification.
You're happy that the German mafia is going to recover some protection money that wasn't paid to them because some guy denounced the people who resisted ?
Whoa whoa. Fealty ? You have much more right under a feudal systems and much less taxes than with the current system. Comparing current democratic governments to feudalism is offensive to feudalism.
The word you're looking for is not loyal subject but serf, but serfdom was less common then than it is now.
It may be so. I'd just like to point out that there's no "big oil" in the US, the US oil companies are dwarves compared to the big nationalized company. Saudi Aramco : that's big oil
Violation the GPL is just bad. Enforcing the GPL is a whole other kind of evil. I don't care how "pragmatic" the GPL is, a GPL copyright owner enforcing his "property right" is using violence as well as a company using the DMCA for example.
Labor unions have little to do with free association and cartelization. Labor unions rely on politics to gain privileges.
For example, in NYC when a company needs to renovate an office space, they are forced by law to hire union labor. That's what unions are about.
Obviously there are some corporate rent seeking bastards as well, no doubt, but
a) That does not justify the behavior of labor unions since their practice harms innocents. b) The view that labor union are about cartelization to rise the price of labor is very very naive.
No they're not. Corporations largely predate the existence of formal governments. They're a natural way to reduce the transaction costs in doing business. At the very least they exist since feudal time, when the lord couldn't care less about "creating" some form of organizations.
Well no, GPL is not free-market since it relies on copyright. If someone violates the GPL and puts GPL'd code on P2P without the license, and I download this code, modify it, and redistribute it, I should not be bound by the GPL. Yet, RMS will use the state enforcement of copyright protection to prevent me from doing that.
I do believe it is morally wrong to violate the GPL, but I also believe it is even worst to legally enforce the GPL, the GPL should remain honor based.
As for RMS, while his scheme is somehow voluntary (somehow since it relies on copyright enforcement), he still has a lot of marxist overtones, especially in his belief that access to the source code is somehow a positive right.
You clearly have no idea how government works! Government is for the benefit of those that are governed.
By virtue of what? Wishful thinking?
Of course the aggregate makes choices and has a will, how the fuck do you think that voting works?
Voting is not an "aggregate choice", it's a process which select a representative based on diverse counting rules. It has nothing to do with some sort of "collective will". The very notion of will is individualistic in nature.
Or, since you liken yourself to a slave (since I assume you dont go around beating people with sticks), how do you think our economy works?
This is irrelevant, but a free market economy works with voluntary association and trade.
Gas isnt $4 a gallon because of government, but rather because of the aggregate will of supply and demand.
LOL... the aggregate will of supply... It's not an aggregate will. People want gas, they buy it, the price rises. There's no collective will involved here.
No one is forced to pay taxes
I am. If I don't bad people will send me to jail. Hence, these people force me to pay tax.
rather we choose
I didn't chose to do so, why should I pay tax?
to do so for the benefits that the government, that collects and uses those taxes, creates for us.
I waive these benefits, now stop collecting taxes from me.
An aggregate does not make choices, nor does it have a will. Some people impose by force a tax on others. Humanity has always been divided between the people who hold the stick, and the people beaten by the stick. The government holds the stick, the governed are its slaves.
Slashdot Mirror
You are aware that the employment market has many of the characteristics of a monopsony right?
Even if true it's quite irrelevant to the ethical question.
It is all well and good to say that government shouldn't interfere but how do you correct the ensuing and inevitable market failure?
"Market failure" is just a description in certain frameworks of economic theory of situations which are judged bad by some criterion. The simple answer is : you don't, the world is imperfect, too bard but that does not grant anyone the right coerce other people.
If we are going to allow very large employers to form as a result of granting them limited liability status or by creating natural monopolies through copyright laws and patents then we should find a way to ensure that they do not abuse any monopsony power they might have in the employment market.
Two wrongs don't make a right. End copyright, end patents.
Limited liability is a different beast as it is most often contractual... generally speaking, limited liability refers to the liability of shareholders to the creditors. As long as creditors agree to shield the personal wealth of shareholder from the debt of the company, there's nothing wrong going on.
don't harp on about government interference in the market when it was government interference that created many of the problems that these laws try to fix.
Do you seriously believe that? Do you seriously believe when people are hired they are really paid "by the hour"?
What happens has nothing to do with the size of corporation and everything to do with the most natural form of contract in this case.
When you see cleaning ladies doing unpaid overtime, wake me up.
Personally I don't mind a bit of government interference myself
Then you're part of the problem.
Morals ? How dare you speak of morality when you are defending what is basically a law telling employer what kind of contract they can or cannot sign with their employees. Apple has all the right in the world to ask for unpaid overtime, if employees don't like it, let them work somewhere else.
You are defending people using the government to steal from an honest corporation. THAT is immoral.
My whole point is that it is not an hyperbole. This is not a mild or very mild form of slavery, it has nothing to do with slavery.
This use of the word slavery is insulting to the people who are actual slaves (on the Ivory Coast for example) or to the memory of those who were. Slavery is about being completely deprived of your freedom by having someone own you.
If Apple did not respect contracts it's bad, it might be fraud, let them be sued, good, but I doubt that employees trying to leave Cupertino were hunted, captured and whipped.
This use of the word slavery to describe bad working conditions is not innocent at all, it comes straight from Marxist ideology where it originated.
By using this word to describe the situation at Apple, not only are you insulting actual slaves, you are also embracing the most murderous political ideology of all times.
When you use quantum encryption, the theorists win !
Who needs an ion thruster when you can have a mass drive... just accelerate bits of the asteroids.
The impression of safety is more important than safety, it gives popular support for the government. The government, as an organization, is acting rationally by doing this.
Same goes for all government policies actually. Popular image of a policy and actual results are very often completely independent when not opposite.
The constitution is relevant because ?
Privacy is not a "right". Your only right is to keep your information private, but you do not have a right *to* privacy.
In this case, it is a matter of trespassing and should be treated as such.
So it's a factor 50 in 10 years ? And we're supposed to be impressed ? That's doubling only every 7 quarters.
What a strange belief. Politics has been wrong and screwed up all the time, but it's just because it wasn't the right guy... And cue the supporters of a candidate : THIS guy, now he's for real, etc. Get a perspective, it's a systemic problem.
Having universities do the teaching and the certification sucks anyway, it's not such a natural bundle.
You should go to school because you want to learn something, exams telling you how well you're doing.
Getting a diploma is about proving to other people that you know something, it should be handled entirely separately. It also means autodidacts don't have to pay for useless lessons just to get the certification.
You're happy that the German mafia is going to recover some protection money that wasn't paid to them because some guy denounced the people who resisted ?
No with constant density, for a sphere, 5x mass = 5^(1/3) gravity on surface
Whoa whoa. Fealty ? You have much more right under a feudal systems and much less taxes than with the current system. Comparing current democratic governments to feudalism is offensive to feudalism.
The word you're looking for is not loyal subject but serf, but serfdom was less common then than it is now.
Really ?
You don't know about the American Letter Company then.
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/STAMP2.htm
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/STAMP1.htm
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/STAMP3.htm
The sad truth is, USPS is a coercive monopoly which wouldn't exist if it where not for competitors being threatened of jail and large fines.
It may be so. I'd just like to point out that there's no "big oil" in the US, the US oil companies are dwarves compared to the big nationalized company. Saudi Aramco : that's big oil
It wouldn't fly in court, and it's a shame. If I own a house, it's my right to agree with the renter on a set of conditions for the rental to occur.
Violation the GPL is just bad. Enforcing the GPL is a whole other kind of evil. I don't care how "pragmatic" the GPL is, a GPL copyright owner enforcing his "property right" is using violence as well as a company using the DMCA for example.
Who says ?
Labor unions have little to do with free association and cartelization. Labor unions rely on politics to gain privileges.
For example, in NYC when a company needs to renovate an office space, they are forced by law to hire union labor. That's what unions are about.
Obviously there are some corporate rent seeking bastards as well, no doubt, but
a) That does not justify the behavior of labor unions since their practice harms innocents.
b) The view that labor union are about cartelization to rise the price of labor is very very naive.
No they're not. Corporations largely predate the existence of formal governments. They're a natural way to reduce the transaction costs in doing business. At the very least they exist since feudal time, when the lord couldn't care less about "creating" some form of organizations.
Well no, GPL is not free-market since it relies on copyright. If someone violates the GPL and puts GPL'd code on P2P without the license, and I download this code, modify it, and redistribute it, I should not be bound by the GPL. Yet, RMS will use the state enforcement of copyright protection to prevent me from doing that.
I do believe it is morally wrong to violate the GPL, but I also believe it is even worst to legally enforce the GPL, the GPL should remain honor based.
As for RMS, while his scheme is somehow voluntary (somehow since it relies on copyright enforcement), he still has a lot of marxist overtones, especially in his belief that access to the source code is somehow a positive right.
You clearly have no idea how government works! Government is for the benefit of those that are governed.
By virtue of what? Wishful thinking?
Of course the aggregate makes choices and has a will, how the fuck do you think that voting works?
Voting is not an "aggregate choice", it's a process which select a representative based on diverse counting rules. It has nothing to do with some sort of "collective will". The very notion of will is individualistic in nature.
Or, since you liken yourself to a slave (since I assume you dont go around beating people with sticks), how do you think our economy works?
This is irrelevant, but a free market economy works with voluntary association and trade.
Gas isnt $4 a gallon because of government, but rather because of the aggregate will of supply and demand.
LOL... the aggregate will of supply... It's not an aggregate will. People want gas, they buy it, the price rises. There's no collective will involved here.
No one is forced to pay taxes
I am. If I don't bad people will send me to jail. Hence, these people force me to pay tax.
rather we choose
I didn't chose to do so, why should I pay tax?
to do so for the benefits that the government, that collects and uses those taxes, creates for us.
I waive these benefits, now stop collecting taxes from me.
An aggregate does not make choices, nor does it have a will. Some people impose by force a tax on others. Humanity has always been divided between the people who hold the stick, and the people beaten by the stick. The government holds the stick, the governed are its slaves.