Actually the negative affects of vaccines generally aren't mentioned very much in newspapers/TV, anyway, this article notwithstanding.
Despite the quoted text, if "the media" are biased one way or the other, it's in favor of vaccines and against discussion and study of potential side-affects.
It doesn't provide any protection that's not in the URL anyway, so no, it doesn't provide any protection. It is somewhat useful to know that a site is associated with phishing attacks, but it's easy to figure that out anyway based on the URL not being what it claims to be.
But arguably yes, there is a minor enhancement in visibility, with a trade-off of decreased privacy (i.e. security).
1. That still tells google (and anyone watching the network) that you are using firefox and have that feature enabled.
2. Firefox actually does tell Google when you visit a site that is on the local list. The stated reason for this is to make sure that the site is still on the list -- that it hasn't been removed.
Except that browser "phishing detection" does NOT actually increase security. The form of phishing detection used by firefox, which involves telling a third-party site what websites you are visiting, is detrimental to security. Removing such "features" is quite appropriate to a security update.
You are incorrect -- actually, the fact that people would have "more money" in my scenario would not mean everything costs more, because it would not mean more total money, but only that the money which does exist stays in the hands of those who earn it, i.e., those who rightfully own it. Remember, by interfering in the economy (as a major spender), government causes a rise in prices.
You assert that a truly free market is not sustainable, but you make no attempt to sustain that claim or to lay a foundation from which one might arrive at said claim... I say that you are incorrect.
You list four things, currency, defense, courts, and laws, which you claim necessarily imply government, although I'm not sure whether you mean all four are required in order to have government, or whether you believe that government would exist with some proper subset of the four.
There is nothing inherently government-ish about currency -- it is only a medium of exchange. It would most certainly exist in a free market, as a sound currency is not a product of government.
Nor does defense require government, when individuals are free to associate and to contract amongst themselves toward this goal. The same goes for courts.
Lastly, laws -- in this case it depends, of course, what is meant by 'law', as there are different kinds of laws. If you mean arbitrary law set force by some person or group of persons seen as having authority, or claiming authority, to make laws, then yes, you are correct. But we do not need this type of law.
The owners of a company (e.g. stockholders) have the right to demand that certain standards be upheld by the people they hire to run their company (e.g. CEOs). They can, for example, put clauses into a CEO's contract stipulating that everything he does and all the financial records of the company are publicly available or available at least to the owners. They can restrict him from behaving in certain ways or dealing with certain people. They can hire outside inspectors to ensure that things are being done the way they want. They can inspect the records and assets themselves. There is no need for government regulation here. All that is needed is a mechanism to enforce the property and contract rights of the owners (i.e. courts). A manager who violated the terms of the contract would, of course, be personally responsible to the owners.
The free market, even absent government intervention, IS NOT FREE!
Well, of course the free market is free. What you mean is that investing is not guaranteed to be safe. That's the way life works, and such are the risks which any investor needs to consider before making an investment. If you don't like that, you should realize that government can't fix it -- government can, and has, only made it worse.
It's easy to make such 'alternate universe' type assertions, because they cannot be conclusively disproven. But neither can they be proven. The fact is, the situation is much more complicated than you allow for.
To start with, in a free market, every potential investor would have significantly greater funds to invest, since there would be no taxes or other government interference in the market. All reasonably interesting investments with a decent chance for profit would benefit. Looking at just a few of the results of space travel which you mentioned, satellites, GPS, and, of course, Tang, it is obvious that each of these is extremely profitable. An investor who could have imagined this type of technology 50 years ago would have stood to profit quite handsomely from funding its development.
It's also a fallacy to suggest that only a single individual as wealthy as Buffett or Gates could fund such ventures, as you ignore the reality that many business ventures are funded by many smaller-scale investors (as with stocks).
Morally speaking, there's no trade off. In order to truly respect property rights, you must reject copyright, as the latter is intrinsically a perversion and a violation of the former.
Now, when it comes to accomplishing certain goals, sure there's a trade off, but I don't see principles and moral absolutes as something worth trading away, even if there was some material benefit to myself, and I'm certainly not willing to empower rulers to make that trade in my name.
I agree with the crux of your last paragraph, though -- even if we allow the copyright system to remain, government most certainly should not be actively policing copyrights.
Force insurance companies to provide insurance, got it. What happens when all the insurance companies decide the cost of business is no longer worth it, and close down? Just what is it that you think motivated people to start insurance companies in the first place?
By the way, it is also a fallacy to say that the practice of Keynesian never occurred before Keynes himself was born. It was actually Keynesianism, in the form of government subsidies to the railroad industry, which led to the panic of 1873, quite analagous to the current crisis which resulted from government subsidy and abuse in the housing finance industry.
Keynes wasn't even born yet when the 19th Century had its many economic crashes. The panic of 1873, for example, was in many ways worse than the Great Depression. So you're wrong about Keynesian economics being the cause of market meltdowns.
I didn't say Keynesian economics was the cause of all economic crashes. I said government is, and that the current US government is following Keynesianism, which is unsound and detrimental to the economy. Keynesianism is not the only possible cause of economic crashes, but it certainly causes and contributes to them.
Your comments are sheer idiocy. No, I am not so obsessed about short term profit that I sacrifice my future. I plan for the future. I invest in my future. So does anyone who cares about himself, his family, his well-being, his business, his reputation, his profits, etc., etc.. There goes your absurd theory. Seriously, what crap have you been watching, to make you believe that? There isn't even a shred of truth to your assertion that a free market would lead to a "banana republic".
You begin to hint at the truth in your last paragraph. Yes, people and businesses can think in longer terms, but yes, due to excessive government involvement in the market, many have failed to do so.
Take the current bailouts, for example. Obviously these companies taking money from the government have been mismanaged. Why? Because the government is there absorbing the risk. In a free market, companies and the individuals who run them are held accountable. In a free market, there are no billions of dollars in tax-payer money for careless bankers to fall back on, so they limit their risk-taking to reasonable levels. They plan for the future.
Instead of throwing money at healthcare, figure out why health care is expensive.
Right. Because government made it that way.
As for taxes, tax cuts seem, for lack of a better term, "silly", in a time of recession. Shouldn't we focus on getting the national debt down before we cut anyone's taxes?
In a time of recession, it's taxes that are (despite better terms) "silly". An economy has the ability to overcome recession/depression to the extent that it is free. Taxes impose a burden on everyone, a far greater economic burden than gasoline or health care, and this burden, in part, keeps the economy down. Beyond that, there's (government-designed) inflation, which lowers the value of everyone's dollar, further depressing the economy and making Americans feel its pain.
(Unless there are some harmful taxes going on right now. Are the poor really that taxed heavily right now?) Of course, I feel eliminating the national debt can be good for the economy.
"Harmful taxes", ha ha.
Yes, eliminating the national debt would be good for the economy. But taxes are not the answer to that. The federal debt is $10+ trillion and will probably be double that in a year, (or more, considering the current $7.4 trillion bailout figures). A very tiny fraction of those in government want to actually fix that. Most of them since FDR have been convinced that government debt never has to be paid off -- except with more debt.
Even a 100% income tax, if people could somehow survive it and would continue to work hard to earn that money (which would not happen, of course), with no increase in federal expenditures, over a period of several years, would make only a tiny dent in the massive federal debt.
Yes, most of the DoD budget can safely be cut. The government maintains hundreds of military bases all around the world which do nothing for our country's defense. A very small fraction is necessary for actual defense purposes. At home, the government hires too many military persons who have nothing to do but sit around on base doing trivial tasks. This too, should be cut.
Thankfully, there is the House of Representatives. Perhaps we should voice our concerns to them, and let them decide what to do based on our input. After all, it's not necessarily the President's job to make the laws now, is it? (Maybe Bush changed things. Who knows?)
It's not Congress's job to bring technological advances either. Their job is spelled out quite explicitly in the Constitution.
Sure, space exploration is technologically interesting, but if it's actually worthwhile to people, it will be done by a free market. Note the recent progress in private space travel. If people want it, it will happen. On a personal level, if you want it, help fund it.
100% of economic failures were caused by government. There is no significant Republican-Democratic difference. Both favor unsound Keynesian economics -- the theoretical framework which has caused numerous economic crashes, including the current bust.
There's a more fundamental right - right to own one's body and one's labor. If I sit down and spend a year of my life writing a book, and citizens copy the book without payment (whether by computer or using a 1700s-era printing press), then they've stolen my year's labor without just compensation.
In effect, they've turned me into a slave.
You claim that one has a "right to own one's body and one's labor", while implicitly accepting my point that one has a right to the free use of one's property. But they cannot both be true. A right, by definition, literally cannot be in opposition to another right. It is simply impossible. So check your premises. One or the other is not a true right.
Now, I certainly agree that one owns one's body. But several things must be true of a thing in order for it to be labeled property. First, it must be tangible, physical. Only actual objects may be owned. Second, it must be scarce. If I own a chair, I own the only chair that is that exact chair -- it is a scarce good. If someone takes my chair, I no longer possess it. Even with things which are not considered "scarce" in common language, are indeed scarce. If I hold some air in a bag, no one else has exactly that same air, even though there may be a lot of similar air around the world.
Thomas Jefferson said it rather well:
Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
No one can 'steal' your labor, because labor cannot be property. If you go somewhere where no one else has gone and use your labor to transform the earth or an object of nature, the land or object can become your property, as a result of your labor, but your labor itself is not property. It is quite possible to expend labor in a manner which gains you no property -- whether to waste time and effort, or to expend labor for some temporary pleasure or immaterial virtue or benefit.
On the other hand, the right to own one's own body is fundamental and is the same right as the general right to hold property. You own your body in the same manner in which you own your computer, your books, your keyboard, your cardboard box, and so on, except that you owned it first, before you could own anything else. (As for alienability, that's a separate debate, with quite interesting arguments on both sides... but it doesn't affect my main point here.) Thus, if your property right in your pen and paper is violated, then your right to own your body has been violated -- they are one and the same right, the right of property.
As for the slave analogy, that has absolutely zero validity whatsoever. A slave is forced to work. No one
Why should government enforce the rights of creators? If they don't like what people are doing with their creations, then sue them. Oh, people are doing it by the millions and there's no practical way to sue them all? Tough...
Your ideas about about ten years ahead of where most people are and they will sound extremist to them. Many politicians still see copyright as property and therefore infringement as theft. Copyright as a government granted monopoly to create scarcity is far too complex for them. They see redressing copyright in favour of fair use as being government intervention in a free market of creativity rather than appropriate regulation of a resource to encourage economy and free speech. They still see it as balancing the majority rule with minority rights, and that copyright infringement is minority rights infringement as the mob seek to steal and in response civil rights must be suspended.
Instead it's much better to talk about fairness and the right to trial, and due process being removed by 3 strikes than anything you're talking about. Your ideas are too extreme and are not persuasive right now.
The best communication builds upon existing ideas and directs them in compelling ways. Communication is about having a sensitivity for your audience and where they're coming from. Understanding the law makers and the public is the difficult part and going too far at once will scare them off.
Be smarter.
You have some interesting points, but the your major mistake is in referring to copyrighted works as "scarcity". Clearly, something which can be perfectly copied with negligible use of time and resources cannot legitimately be called a scarce good. This is much of the problem with the copyright system itself. (Another issue is that anything non-physical simply cannot be property, by definition, but that's obviously related.)
But you are certainly right that copyright is a government-granted monopoly. More than that, however, it's a monopoly on the use of other people's property. i.e. the government tells a person that he cannot use the computer, paper, and other resources which are legitimately his property in a certain way. Copyright is a violation of one of the most fundamental of rights -- the right to property.
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly correlation does not equal causation, but ignoring correlation when seeking a cause is sheer idiocy.
Whether you agree with his conclusion or not, parent is mis-modded. The post is not a troll.
Despite the quoted text, if "the media" are biased one way or the other, it's in favor of vaccines and against discussion and study of potential side-affects.
But arguably yes, there is a minor enhancement in visibility, with a trade-off of decreased privacy (i.e. security).
2. Firefox actually does tell Google when you visit a site that is on the local list. The stated reason for this is to make sure that the site is still on the list -- that it hasn't been removed.
Except that browser "phishing detection" does NOT actually increase security. The form of phishing detection used by firefox, which involves telling a third-party site what websites you are visiting, is detrimental to security. Removing such "features" is quite appropriate to a security update.
You assert that a truly free market is not sustainable, but you make no attempt to sustain that claim or to lay a foundation from which one might arrive at said claim... I say that you are incorrect.
You list four things, currency, defense, courts, and laws, which you claim necessarily imply government, although I'm not sure whether you mean all four are required in order to have government, or whether you believe that government would exist with some proper subset of the four.
There is nothing inherently government-ish about currency -- it is only a medium of exchange. It would most certainly exist in a free market, as a sound currency is not a product of government.
Nor does defense require government, when individuals are free to associate and to contract amongst themselves toward this goal. The same goes for courts.
Lastly, laws -- in this case it depends, of course, what is meant by 'law', as there are different kinds of laws. If you mean arbitrary law set force by some person or group of persons seen as having authority, or claiming authority, to make laws, then yes, you are correct. But we do not need this type of law.
Unless said corporation is forcing one to work, yes.
The free market, even absent government intervention, IS NOT FREE!
Well, of course the free market is free. What you mean is that investing is not guaranteed to be safe. That's the way life works, and such are the risks which any investor needs to consider before making an investment. If you don't like that, you should realize that government can't fix it -- government can, and has, only made it worse.
To start with, in a free market, every potential investor would have significantly greater funds to invest, since there would be no taxes or other government interference in the market. All reasonably interesting investments with a decent chance for profit would benefit. Looking at just a few of the results of space travel which you mentioned, satellites, GPS, and, of course, Tang, it is obvious that each of these is extremely profitable. An investor who could have imagined this type of technology 50 years ago would have stood to profit quite handsomely from funding its development.
It's also a fallacy to suggest that only a single individual as wealthy as Buffett or Gates could fund such ventures, as you ignore the reality that many business ventures are funded by many smaller-scale investors (as with stocks).
Now, when it comes to accomplishing certain goals, sure there's a trade off, but I don't see principles and moral absolutes as something worth trading away, even if there was some material benefit to myself, and I'm certainly not willing to empower rulers to make that trade in my name.
I agree with the crux of your last paragraph, though -- even if we allow the copyright system to remain, government most certainly should not be actively policing copyrights.
These guys: "About 100 students at MIT agreed to completely give away their privacy to get a free smartphone."
Force insurance companies to provide insurance, got it. What happens when all the insurance companies decide the cost of business is no longer worth it, and close down? Just what is it that you think motivated people to start insurance companies in the first place?
We are Borg.
By the way, it is also a fallacy to say that the practice of Keynesian never occurred before Keynes himself was born. It was actually Keynesianism, in the form of government subsidies to the railroad industry, which led to the panic of 1873, quite analagous to the current crisis which resulted from government subsidy and abuse in the housing finance industry.
Keynes wasn't even born yet when the 19th Century had its many economic crashes. The panic of 1873, for example, was in many ways worse than the Great Depression. So you're wrong about Keynesian economics being the cause of market meltdowns.
I didn't say Keynesian economics was the cause of all economic crashes. I said government is, and that the current US government is following Keynesianism, which is unsound and detrimental to the economy. Keynesianism is not the only possible cause of economic crashes, but it certainly causes and contributes to them.
Maybe you were kidding. Please tell me you were joking, that you don't really believe what you wrote. It's very hard to tell the difference anymore.
You begin to hint at the truth in your last paragraph. Yes, people and businesses can think in longer terms, but yes, due to excessive government involvement in the market, many have failed to do so.
Take the current bailouts, for example. Obviously these companies taking money from the government have been mismanaged. Why? Because the government is there absorbing the risk. In a free market, companies and the individuals who run them are held accountable. In a free market, there are no billions of dollars in tax-payer money for careless bankers to fall back on, so they limit their risk-taking to reasonable levels. They plan for the future.
No one thinks anymore. For example...
Instead of throwing money at healthcare, figure out why health care is expensive.
Right. Because government made it that way.
As for taxes, tax cuts seem, for lack of a better term, "silly", in a time of recession. Shouldn't we focus on getting the national debt down before we cut anyone's taxes?
In a time of recession, it's taxes that are (despite better terms) "silly". An economy has the ability to overcome recession/depression to the extent that it is free. Taxes impose a burden on everyone, a far greater economic burden than gasoline or health care, and this burden, in part, keeps the economy down. Beyond that, there's (government-designed) inflation, which lowers the value of everyone's dollar, further depressing the economy and making Americans feel its pain.
(Unless there are some harmful taxes going on right now. Are the poor really that taxed heavily right now?) Of course, I feel eliminating the national debt can be good for the economy.
"Harmful taxes", ha ha.
Yes, eliminating the national debt would be good for the economy. But taxes are not the answer to that. The federal debt is $10+ trillion and will probably be double that in a year, (or more, considering the current $7.4 trillion bailout figures). A very tiny fraction of those in government want to actually fix that. Most of them since FDR have been convinced that government debt never has to be paid off -- except with more debt.
Even a 100% income tax, if people could somehow survive it and would continue to work hard to earn that money (which would not happen, of course), with no increase in federal expenditures, over a period of several years, would make only a tiny dent in the massive federal debt.
Yes, most of the DoD budget can safely be cut. The government maintains hundreds of military bases all around the world which do nothing for our country's defense. A very small fraction is necessary for actual defense purposes. At home, the government hires too many military persons who have nothing to do but sit around on base doing trivial tasks. This too, should be cut.
Thankfully, there is the House of Representatives. Perhaps we should voice our concerns to them, and let them decide what to do based on our input. After all, it's not necessarily the President's job to make the laws now, is it? (Maybe Bush changed things. Who knows?)
It's not Congress's job to bring technological advances either. Their job is spelled out quite explicitly in the Constitution.
Sure, space exploration is technologically interesting, but if it's actually worthwhile to people, it will be done by a free market. Note the recent progress in private space travel. If people want it, it will happen. On a personal level, if you want it, help fund it.
Who? You mean the guy who designed the income tax withholding system?
100% of economic failures were caused by government. There is no significant Republican-Democratic difference. Both favor unsound Keynesian economics -- the theoretical framework which has caused numerous economic crashes, including the current bust.
Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After Government Collapse -- looks interesting.
There's a more fundamental right - right to own one's body and one's labor. If I sit down and spend a year of my life writing a book, and citizens copy the book without payment (whether by computer or using a 1700s-era printing press), then they've stolen my year's labor without just compensation. In effect, they've turned me into a slave.
You claim that one has a "right to own one's body and one's labor", while implicitly accepting my point that one has a right to the free use of one's property. But they cannot both be true. A right, by definition, literally cannot be in opposition to another right. It is simply impossible. So check your premises. One or the other is not a true right.
Now, I certainly agree that one owns one's body. But several things must be true of a thing in order for it to be labeled property. First, it must be tangible, physical. Only actual objects may be owned. Second, it must be scarce. If I own a chair, I own the only chair that is that exact chair -- it is a scarce good. If someone takes my chair, I no longer possess it. Even with things which are not considered "scarce" in common language, are indeed scarce. If I hold some air in a bag, no one else has exactly that same air, even though there may be a lot of similar air around the world.
Thomas Jefferson said it rather well:
Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
No one can 'steal' your labor, because labor cannot be property. If you go somewhere where no one else has gone and use your labor to transform the earth or an object of nature, the land or object can become your property, as a result of your labor, but your labor itself is not property. It is quite possible to expend labor in a manner which gains you no property -- whether to waste time and effort, or to expend labor for some temporary pleasure or immaterial virtue or benefit.
On the other hand, the right to own one's own body is fundamental and is the same right as the general right to hold property. You own your body in the same manner in which you own your computer, your books, your keyboard, your cardboard box, and so on, except that you owned it first, before you could own anything else. (As for alienability, that's a separate debate, with quite interesting arguments on both sides... but it doesn't affect my main point here.) Thus, if your property right in your pen and paper is violated, then your right to own your body has been violated -- they are one and the same right, the right of property. As for the slave analogy, that has absolutely zero validity whatsoever. A slave is forced to work. No one
Your ideas about about ten years ahead of where most people are and they will sound extremist to them. Many politicians still see copyright as property and therefore infringement as theft. Copyright as a government granted monopoly to create scarcity is far too complex for them. They see redressing copyright in favour of fair use as being government intervention in a free market of creativity rather than appropriate regulation of a resource to encourage economy and free speech. They still see it as balancing the majority rule with minority rights, and that copyright infringement is minority rights infringement as the mob seek to steal and in response civil rights must be suspended.
Instead it's much better to talk about fairness and the right to trial, and due process being removed by 3 strikes than anything you're talking about. Your ideas are too extreme and are not persuasive right now.
The best communication builds upon existing ideas and directs them in compelling ways. Communication is about having a sensitivity for your audience and where they're coming from. Understanding the law makers and the public is the difficult part and going too far at once will scare them off.
Be smarter.
You have some interesting points, but the your major mistake is in referring to copyrighted works as "scarcity". Clearly, something which can be perfectly copied with negligible use of time and resources cannot legitimately be called a scarce good. This is much of the problem with the copyright system itself. (Another issue is that anything non-physical simply cannot be property, by definition, but that's obviously related.) But you are certainly right that copyright is a government-granted monopoly. More than that, however, it's a monopoly on the use of other people's property. i.e. the government tells a person that he cannot use the computer, paper, and other resources which are legitimately his property in a certain way. Copyright is a violation of one of the most fundamental of rights -- the right to property.
I doubt that very much. And (as I've already repeated twice in this thread) I am not promoting the end of copyright.
Why not? You should. Copyright is immoral as it is inherently a denial of legitimate property rights.