the article says 39 milimiters cubed, I read that as 39 mm^3. 39,000 mm^3 would be 39 cm^3 that's a bar of length 3.9cm, height 1cm and width 1cm, actually much smaller than current laptop batteries.
Of course maybe the article meant 39mm x 39mm x 39mm then it would take 1521 times more space.
Also I don't think the volume of the fuel is taken into account.
No they are not doing anything in my name. Doing something in my name requires my consent, I do not consent to be governed by the winner of an election. When shareholders vote, the decision is taken in their name because they contractually agreed that their decision be represented by a majority vote. I never agreed to such contract with the government, and the government has no right to force me to leave, the government is not my landlord.
Any government should not choose which laws it chooses to enforce, they are either on the books or not.
Oh no they choose what they put on the book. That is sooooooo different.
May I suggest the use of www.iterating.com, it's by no mean exhaustive yet but it has been growing fast. Unfortunately it looks like many reviews are still from the original submitter, but it has a lot of structure which help narrow down choices. Anyway it's a collaborative website for software description and reviews and I encourage you to check it out.
- Spend time studying philosophy, economy to ponder the ethical economical and sociological implications of a candidate's proposed policies. Get a vote among millions.
- Vote for the candidate who offer policies that you *enjoy believing* will be efficient ("let's prevent the sale of food so that all food is free"). Wrong or right, no big deal, it's just a vote, but it's pleasant not to confront your belief.
Option 2 is much more appealing, why would you go through the trouble of option 1, what's the point? So which choice is more rational?
What happened in USSR and South America (in all honesty I can only speak for the Argentinian crisis) was not a privatization but, as some have called it, a grabatization... nationalized enterprises handed down to friends of Menen or to Russian Oligarchs. Privatization of public utility is extremely difficult because it's often incomplete.
There are three main caveats to privatization.
- Failing to adjust regulation. If the enterprise benefits from a legal monopoly, the law has to be changed before the privatization. This also applies to price controls.
- Failing to create a competitive environment. Selling all the restaurants to someone, a position he could have not achieved in a free market.
- Failing to privatize the relevant business... Imagine privatizing only the chairs of a restaurant... providing chairs in a restaurant is an interesting business only if you own the restaurant. The same goes for many public utility, they would make sense as part of a larger business, like a housing lot, a private city etc. You can't just sell the sewer system.
Since you are mentioning fairness, fairness is about recognizing everyone the product of his work. The alternative is to say that the product of one's work belong to another, which is slavery.
You can see plenty experimentation in the real world, the freer the more prosperity.
Producing positive externalities is always a tough problem, but there are many ways to internalize them. It's a very long subject by itself but it generally boils down to the ability for the producer to get payment for the externality before producing it. For example I can buy call options on the real estate surrounding a zone where I plan to build a parc, or even build real estate around the parc. I don't think of pollution as "negative externalities" but as crime. If someone has a legitimate claim against a set of polluters for deteriorating his health he should be able to sue for damage. Companies would insure against such claims and thus balance the cost of their insurance policy with the cost of doing cleaner business. No system is perfect, I just think this system is more ethical and efficient than any other I can think of.
I think there is no need to level the playing field, in free economies there is a huge brassing of capital. The main obstacle is currently inflation, which create huge wealth disparities (think Brazil, Argentina and to a lesser extent US). All properties should be assumed legitimate unless a plaintiff could substantiate a better claim in courts.
Responsibility is a complex chain. If I sell a pair of wool socks to a psychopath who use them to choke a girl to death that doesn't make me his accomplice. Similarly if I own a share of MS and Balmer throws a furniture (bought with shareholder money) at someone and kill him, I am definitely not a murderer. If a CEO decides on his own to commit murder, he is the murder, if stockholders ask him explicitly to do it, they are murderers as well. If I kill my stepmother to get her life-insurance, even though the insurer gave me an incentive to do it, he did not participate in the crime and is not responsible for it.
Are responsible those who willingly participate in the crime. The "stock market society" is a vague concept, individuals have responsibilities, not "societies". If a company kills someone by releasing a deadly gaz, the people who made that decision ought to be tried.
Collusion is an unstable equilibrium, one can increase his profits by getting out of it. Furthermore there are huge transaction cost and enforcement cost associated to it. People without money can move but as I explained they don't even have to. Political and ethical theory deals with the real world. What if alien-who-hate-capitalism went to earth to destroy us? It's certainly a possibility, it doesn't mean it's relevant. Yes it's possible to imagine that someone buys all available land and legitimately control what everyone does it's just not what happens. Division of work is more efficient than centralization, it means business are getting smaller and more numerous as technology lowers transaction cost, concentration and local monopolies do not fit observation.
You're mentioning democracy but earlier you were referring to unanimous consent... democracy is more associated to majority rule.
There is no such thing as "abusing a market position", now what keep the prices low and the service efficient for natural monopolies? Most demand now is elastic... sure you might have the monopoly of the road from A to B, but guess what, there are plenty of other cities to go to, or you can trade locally instead. The road has to be efficient because otherwise consumer will put their money somewhere else, not necessarily transportation, instead of going from A to B people might prefer going to the movies. Good sewers increase the value of homes, therefore the sewer system may be paid for by a company building a set of homes, if home are rented there is a natural incentive in keeping the sewer system efficient, if they are sold then home buyers would require a contractual guarantee of service from the sewer provider. It's also possible that people in the town agree to mutually buy and maintain a sewer system.
An individual owns himself thus his labor and the product of his labor, therefore he can exchange the product of his labor against property. Each owner has a vested interest in not colluding with the others to get the most profitable terms for himself. People can and do move to get the best labor condition, it can and does happen when not prevented by governments. Even when people can't move, job providers can and do move to areas of lower wages thus arbitraging the labor market. The newly installed firm must bid a little higher to get the local worker, thus it obtains cheaper labor and the worker higher wages.
You failed to explain me how you solve the sharing problem with a 'sociological unit' of size 2.
Natural monopoly is an economic concept describing a service or good which is best produced by a monopoly, it does not mean an actual monopoly is doing it. Furthermore, there are no standard, separated services and goods that would give sense to what being a "monopoly" is.
Corporatism now has a different meaning, I was referring to Mussolini's corporativismo. It is basically about vertical unions supposed to end class struggle by negociation between workers and bosses. The same system was proposed as recently as 2007 in France by democratic socialist candidate Segolene Royale.
Individuals do not share a collective mind, they have different and conflicting goals. Individual rights, property rights allow individual to pursue their goal without harming each other.
Simple example, assume that you take a "sociological unit" of even only two persons, they will not agree on everything, especially when it comes to sharing. Suppose I propose 50%,50% the other party has a vested interest in bullying me into accepting a lower share... over time there is a master / slave relation that will develop... you will know that the other party won't settle for anything less than 90% of the share and won't refuse it to him because 10% is still better than nothing. Things get work when you increase the size of the sociological unit and degenerate into violence or misery.
Resources do not actually account for a lot of value in the real world, most value is added through trade and work. There is a Lockean provisio you might like which says one can own property as long as he he lives substantial share to other. I do not subscribe to it, but I think this is what naturally happens. Resources are spread over the earth, you cannot "claim it all" just like that, you need to process it. Once resources are owned, forming a monopoly is extremely difficult and unlikely because
- With technology many many resources are replacable by other
- The more you buy, the higher the cost
- There are simply no real world example of this happening, I am concerned with th e real world. The only monopolies that exist and should be feared are coercive monopoly, such as the monopoly of justice and law enforcement over geographical areas exerced by governements.
According to you without a claim of ownership you have no justification for mixing your labor with resources, however you also mention that you are opposed to private ownership. The logical consequence is that you cannot do anything, like grow a crop unless you have the agreement of everyone else in the whole universe.
The problem is that you can't "opt-out" the private property system. A thief might very well say he "opted-out" the private property system... but what you mention seems different, it is about having a community that renounces private property rights while respecting the rights of those who do not opt-out, which is perfectly fine. Buying an unreasonable amount of land is unreasonably expensive, land is not scarce at all on earth, and the community can very well decide not to sell.
I completely agree with you on that matter. Only the defrauded person has a claim against the fake trademark (and a Rolex for $5 in the street is so obviously not from Rolex, it doesn't count as being defrauded)
Fascism itself is another brand of socialism that tries to abolish class struggle through nationalism and corporatism. USSR and China had a much worse case of socialism than Italian fascism. There is nothing "benevolent" in Cuba. You can't bring books in Cuba, the population can't talk to you about politics, people can't go from one place to another without a lengthy authorization process, the hospitals are shitty (mind you not the one for tourists) and you get a bowl of rice a day. Hurray.
Well not quite. Using a trademark's appeal to deceive customers, pretending: "this product is from this manufacturer" when it's not is definitely wrong and it has nothing to do with regulation.
Patents and copyright in their current form are indeed regulation and should be abolished.
Slashdot Mirror
Ths s rly gret !
Hey I don't *need* pron, I can quit anytime I want!
Seriously though, christianism does have a strong lean towards altruism and machosism.
Right there in your hand.
Argh now I've fallen too.
You have a twisted mind. I would *genuinely* appreciate the ability to power mobile devices with a foldable crank.
the article says 39 milimiters cubed, I read that as 39 mm^3. 39,000 mm^3 would be 39 cm^3 that's a bar of length 3.9cm, height 1cm and width 1cm, actually much smaller than current laptop batteries. Of course maybe the article meant 39mm x 39mm x 39mm then it would take 1521 times more space. Also I don't think the volume of the fuel is taken into account.
I can convert glucose to energy very efficiently, just give me a crank.
No they are not doing anything in my name. Doing something in my name requires my consent, I do not consent to be governed by the winner of an election. When shareholders vote, the decision is taken in their name because they contractually agreed that their decision be represented by a majority vote. I never agreed to such contract with the government, and the government has no right to force me to leave, the government is not my landlord.
Any government should not choose which laws it chooses to enforce, they are either on the books or not.
Oh no they choose what they put on the book. That is sooooooo different.
A reality TV show on a manned mission to Mars might be a profitable venture.
Well duh, though shall not steal.
Though shall not kill as well, so he should hate republicans too.
May I suggest the use of www.iterating.com, it's by no mean exhaustive yet but it has been growing fast. Unfortunately it looks like many reviews are still from the original submitter, but it has a lot of structure which help narrow down choices. Anyway it's a collaborative website for software description and reviews and I encourage you to check it out.
Consider your options:
- Spend time studying philosophy, economy to ponder the ethical economical and sociological implications of a candidate's proposed policies. Get a vote among millions.
- Vote for the candidate who offer policies that you *enjoy believing* will be efficient ("let's prevent the sale of food so that all food is free"). Wrong or right, no big deal, it's just a vote, but it's pleasant not to confront your belief.
Option 2 is much more appealing, why would you go through the trouble of option 1, what's the point? So which choice is more rational?
What happened in USSR and South America (in all honesty I can only speak for the Argentinian crisis) was not a privatization but, as some have called it, a grabatization... nationalized enterprises handed down to friends of Menen or to Russian Oligarchs. Privatization of public utility is extremely difficult because it's often incomplete. There are three main caveats to privatization. - Failing to adjust regulation. If the enterprise benefits from a legal monopoly, the law has to be changed before the privatization. This also applies to price controls. - Failing to create a competitive environment. Selling all the restaurants to someone, a position he could have not achieved in a free market. - Failing to privatize the relevant business... Imagine privatizing only the chairs of a restaurant... providing chairs in a restaurant is an interesting business only if you own the restaurant. The same goes for many public utility, they would make sense as part of a larger business, like a housing lot, a private city etc. You can't just sell the sewer system. Since you are mentioning fairness, fairness is about recognizing everyone the product of his work. The alternative is to say that the product of one's work belong to another, which is slavery. You can see plenty experimentation in the real world, the freer the more prosperity. Producing positive externalities is always a tough problem, but there are many ways to internalize them. It's a very long subject by itself but it generally boils down to the ability for the producer to get payment for the externality before producing it. For example I can buy call options on the real estate surrounding a zone where I plan to build a parc, or even build real estate around the parc. I don't think of pollution as "negative externalities" but as crime. If someone has a legitimate claim against a set of polluters for deteriorating his health he should be able to sue for damage. Companies would insure against such claims and thus balance the cost of their insurance policy with the cost of doing cleaner business. No system is perfect, I just think this system is more ethical and efficient than any other I can think of. I think there is no need to level the playing field, in free economies there is a huge brassing of capital. The main obstacle is currently inflation, which create huge wealth disparities (think Brazil, Argentina and to a lesser extent US). All properties should be assumed legitimate unless a plaintiff could substantiate a better claim in courts.
Responsibility is a complex chain. If I sell a pair of wool socks to a psychopath who use them to choke a girl to death that doesn't make me his accomplice. Similarly if I own a share of MS and Balmer throws a furniture (bought with shareholder money) at someone and kill him, I am definitely not a murderer. If a CEO decides on his own to commit murder, he is the murder, if stockholders ask him explicitly to do it, they are murderers as well. If I kill my stepmother to get her life-insurance, even though the insurer gave me an incentive to do it, he did not participate in the crime and is not responsible for it.
Are responsible those who willingly participate in the crime. The "stock market society" is a vague concept, individuals have responsibilities, not "societies". If a company kills someone by releasing a deadly gaz, the people who made that decision ought to be tried.
If you think rape and murder define human nature you musn't have a very good opinion of yourself or anyone else for that matter. It's very sad.
Collusion is an unstable equilibrium, one can increase his profits by getting out of it. Furthermore there are huge transaction cost and enforcement cost associated to it. People without money can move but as I explained they don't even have to. Political and ethical theory deals with the real world. What if alien-who-hate-capitalism went to earth to destroy us? It's certainly a possibility, it doesn't mean it's relevant. Yes it's possible to imagine that someone buys all available land and legitimately control what everyone does it's just not what happens. Division of work is more efficient than centralization, it means business are getting smaller and more numerous as technology lowers transaction cost, concentration and local monopolies do not fit observation.
You're mentioning democracy but earlier you were referring to unanimous consent... democracy is more associated to majority rule.
There is no such thing as "abusing a market position", now what keep the prices low and the service efficient for natural monopolies? Most demand now is elastic... sure you might have the monopoly of the road from A to B, but guess what, there are plenty of other cities to go to, or you can trade locally instead. The road has to be efficient because otherwise consumer will put their money somewhere else, not necessarily transportation, instead of going from A to B people might prefer going to the movies. Good sewers increase the value of homes, therefore the sewer system may be paid for by a company building a set of homes, if home are rented there is a natural incentive in keeping the sewer system efficient, if they are sold then home buyers would require a contractual guarantee of service from the sewer provider. It's also possible that people in the town agree to mutually buy and maintain a sewer system.
An individual owns himself thus his labor and the product of his labor, therefore he can exchange the product of his labor against property. Each owner has a vested interest in not colluding with the others to get the most profitable terms for himself. People can and do move to get the best labor condition, it can and does happen when not prevented by governments. Even when people can't move, job providers can and do move to areas of lower wages thus arbitraging the labor market. The newly installed firm must bid a little higher to get the local worker, thus it obtains cheaper labor and the worker higher wages.
You failed to explain me how you solve the sharing problem with a 'sociological unit' of size 2.
Natural monopoly is an economic concept describing a service or good which is best produced by a monopoly, it does not mean an actual monopoly is doing it. Furthermore, there are no standard, separated services and goods that would give sense to what being a "monopoly" is.
What kind of books did you bring? Didn't they check the content at customs? I've had many friends going to Cuba and they definitely check the books.
Corporatism now has a different meaning, I was referring to Mussolini's corporativismo. It is basically about vertical unions supposed to end class struggle by negociation between workers and bosses. The same system was proposed as recently as 2007 in France by democratic socialist candidate Segolene Royale.
Individuals do not share a collective mind, they have different and conflicting goals. Individual rights, property rights allow individual to pursue their goal without harming each other.
Simple example, assume that you take a "sociological unit" of even only two persons, they will not agree on everything, especially when it comes to sharing. Suppose I propose 50%,50% the other party has a vested interest in bullying me into accepting a lower share... over time there is a master / slave relation that will develop... you will know that the other party won't settle for anything less than 90% of the share and won't refuse it to him because 10% is still better than nothing. Things get work when you increase the size of the sociological unit and degenerate into violence or misery.
Resources do not actually account for a lot of value in the real world, most value is added through trade and work. There is a Lockean provisio you might like which says one can own property as long as he he lives substantial share to other. I do not subscribe to it, but I think this is what naturally happens. Resources are spread over the earth, you cannot "claim it all" just like that, you need to process it. Once resources are owned, forming a monopoly is extremely difficult and unlikely because
- With technology many many resources are replacable by other
- The more you buy, the higher the cost
- There are simply no real world example of this happening, I am concerned with th e real world.
The only monopolies that exist and should be feared are coercive monopoly, such as the monopoly of justice and law enforcement over geographical areas exerced by governements.
How can I possibly grow a crop in your system? I cannot physically get everyone in the universe to agree with it.
According to you without a claim of ownership you have no justification for mixing your labor with resources, however you also mention that you are opposed to private ownership. The logical consequence is that you cannot do anything, like grow a crop unless you have the agreement of everyone else in the whole universe.
The problem is that you can't "opt-out" the private property system. A thief might very well say he "opted-out" the private property system... but what you mention seems different, it is about having a community that renounces private property rights while respecting the rights of those who do not opt-out, which is perfectly fine. Buying an unreasonable amount of land is unreasonably expensive, land is not scarce at all on earth, and the community can very well decide not to sell.
I completely agree with you on that matter. Only the defrauded person has a claim against the fake trademark (and a Rolex for $5 in the street is so obviously not from Rolex, it doesn't count as being defrauded)
Fascism itself is another brand of socialism that tries to abolish class struggle through nationalism and corporatism. USSR and China had a much worse case of socialism than Italian fascism. There is nothing "benevolent" in Cuba. You can't bring books in Cuba, the population can't talk to you about politics, people can't go from one place to another without a lengthy authorization process, the hospitals are shitty (mind you not the one for tourists) and you get a bowl of rice a day. Hurray.
Well not quite. Using a trademark's appeal to deceive customers, pretending: "this product is from this manufacturer" when it's not is definitely wrong and it has nothing to do with regulation.
Patents and copyright in their current form are indeed regulation and should be abolished.