Crime is detered when criminals believe the chances are they will be caught.
This requires long term investment in the police forces.
Crime is not detered by heavy sentancing since if the criminal believes the chances are he will not be caught, the sentance is irrelevent.
Heavy sentancing however can be enacted instantly, by act of law, unlike long term investment in police forces (which is also, of course, expensive and has little immediate effect).
Over the decades, there has been a general failure to invest in police forces because of the cost and lack of immediacy and, due to the consequencial lack of decrease in crime, a general turning towards increasingly heavy sentancing.
This does not work. It also gradually leads to penalities become entirely disproportional to offence, leading to institutionalized injustice.
In what way is the US national interest served by maintaining the demiliterization of space, when the other non-US aligned major powers in the world (Russia, China) would certainly militerize space if they could do so?
The only reason Russia and China have not is because if they did, the US would know it had to as well, and would certainly beat them at it.
The US has come to a position where it can obtain a firm grasp of near space. This is a huge geopolitical advantage. Why should it not be taken, given that if it is not taken now, it will have to be taken later, when a non-democratic country does obtain or begin to obtain a firm grasp of near space?
Does anyone imagine for a second that unilaterally choosing *not* to hold near-space would lead Russia or China to abstain from doing so, if they could do so?
http://www.summerblue.net/missives/copyright.htm l
The major distributors are now in a situation where their product is having to compete with a free rival (P2P). It's hard to compete with free. In fact, all the major distributors have to offer are ease of access, breadth of catalogue and guaranteed quality. This is not worth 15 UKP a CD and 25 UKP a DVD! this painful adjustment is currently what the major distributors are in denial about, and have attempted to perform a minimum-effort resolution, lawsuits, and via DRM.
Our culture is accustomed to copying, because of the VCR, and it is not possible, a la prohibition, to legislate out of existance an act which is widely culturally accepted.
DRM is a brittle solution, since the P2P networks provide immediate and universal distribution of material; if a DRMed product is broken *just once*, then it's gone - it goes public, and that's that. Since DRM is a major investment, and since these companies have a long habit of choosing proprietory security implimentations, I think they're on a burning plane with no parachutes.
All in all, I think the heyday of the major distributors is over.
When an industry is nationalised, which is to say, funded by tax rather than its customers, that industry no longer has ANY need to produce a service which is in ANY way desirable to its customers.
The connection between customer and provider is unlinked.
In this case, customers like reliable, cheap electricity. What exactly is supposed to lead to this sort of electricity being generated?
The National Power Company, being part of the State, will have it's wages bill paid no matter what happens, as long as it doesn't become *so* awful that it becomes politically necessary to dispose of it.
A real private company has an extreme sharp and pointed need to provide electricity to its customers satifaction; they pay its bills, and if they don't like it, they leave.
How do you leave a National Power Company, when there ARE no other companies to turn to? and why should the NPC even care, since its bills are paid by the State?
You'll also find, as the UK experienced during it's period of nationalised power, that the National Power Company has responsibility for ensuring adequate power generation reserves, whcih is to say, for deciding how many power plants are built.
Now, who else but the NPC are competent to decide such a matter? so their recommendations are acted upon. However, building a power plant is an expensive and profitable construction, for the various private construction companies involved, and for the taxpayer, since he's funding all this.
What happens is the construction companies become rather pally with the NPC, who tend to be rather generous in their estimation of the necessary power reserves.
All of which increases both taxation, to pay for unnecessary power plants and their maintaince while they turn over, idle.
Nationalisation is almost invariably a disaster. Economics has a reputation as a boring subject, which is why, I suspect, almost everyone is so uninformed, and why people keep touting these insane ideas.
I'm not sure the source code to a huge programme is useful.
About the only thing you can do with it, without *understanding it*, is compile it and use the binary (and stealing the binary in the first place is much easier than the source.)
The effort required to understand a large programme is vast. It's far easier just to buy a license.
It is entirely and deliberately deceitful to compare the price of a luxury item to the average wage.
"30 meter yachts priced at 6m USD, in a country where the average wage is only 45k USD, are being pirated by bootleggers and sold for 10k USD! guess those anti-piracy coastguards just aren't working."
The distribution of income in Russia is highly uneven; low in the country, high in the city. If you lived in povery, you wouldn't be *buying* CDs. The Russians who buy CDs are affluent, can afford them and buy pirated material because it's cheaper and often more convenient, just like everyone else everywhere else in the world.
The skills required to successfully design and impliment software remain light-years beyond quantification - unlike the skills required to build a cart wheel or hammer, or, for that matter, a car body or a silicon wafer.
The concept of a "software" factory, building generic components, is more or less exactly that originally touted by OO back in the 80s.
This approach failed because large components have not been made (people tend to make "stack" and "list", not "user interface" and "VPN") and because of the huge front-loaded cost of making such components general-purpose rather than one-shot.
> I have to pay for a police department, which > I've never used. I've never called the fire > deparment, which I have to pay for. There's a > park down the road that I've never used, but I > have to pay for it.
> Get over it. Sometimes you pay for things, which > you won't use, but they still make the world a > better place.
The argument is valid within it's domain, but you've applied it to something - TV taxation - where it is invalid.
The State exists to achieve common goals held by a large group of private individuals that could not otherwise be achieved.
Police and fire cover are valid examples of this. National defence is another.
TV programming is *not* an example of this, since it is not a universally held goal and it can be provided through private enterprise.
You must also remember that when the State becomes involved in providing a service which is properly provided commerically, three negative effects occur; everyone is taxed more, and the economy is that much smaller, since private industry usually cannot exist in a field where the State operates, and the State expands it's power, both politically and economically, and becomes that much more of a threat to the freedom and liberty of the private individuals who created the State in the first place.
> The problem with this argument is that it > doesn't take into account how the non-public > funded channels get their money. Most of them > receive most of their money through advertising > revenue, and the advertisers pay for their slots > by increasing their prices.
I suspect you've not completed the loop.
Advertisers only advertise if they believe it increases sales enough that they come out ahead. The more a good or service is sold, the cheaper it becomes, since greater consumption encourages greater production, which in turn leads to both increased competition, as other companies enter the field, and to efficiencies of scale.
Advertising, all in all, should *lower* prices, despite the overhead of paying for the advertisement.
> Your ethics not mine. The free market is not a > universally held principle (nor does it, in any > meaningful sense, exist). Indeed the free market > is unethical as it violates the principles of > socialism and public accountability.
Anything that attempts to run an economy in a way other than a free market is bunk, because it won't work. People may not understand the free market, and by and large people pass opinion on it having read absolutely nothing about it, but the free market is inexorable. It cannot be bettered and if it is not used, economic disaster occurs.
Public accountability for what, about what, and why? if I, a private individual, choose to make say software and another private individual, who is well-informed about my product, voluntarily enters into a transaction with me, what business does ANY other private individual have in what we are doing?
The free market is one of the best guardians against excessive and unnecessary State interference in private lives.
> The BBC is not a private individual. It is a > public corporation (in the British sense, not > the American) created and run for the benefit of > the British people. Private companies are > created and run of the benefit of the few > shareholders.
Everything, from the State downwards, consists of private individuals. Sometimes they work together in groups, and that grouping has a name; but it is not a seperate, living entity which is to be treated differently from private individuals. The BBC in that sense is properly regarded as a private individual; it does not get extra rights, abilities to demand money from private individuals, because it is a larger organisation.
For any one, or any organisation, to force private individuals to give them money, there must be the correct reason - otherwise it is a violation of personal freedom and, seperately, a violation of the free market.
> > Any arguments about "they produce high quality > > TV" are obviously bunk.
> They are? How? The BBC certainly does produce > high quality TV. It is not of course unique in > that.
They're bunk in the sense that they do not justify the BBC's taxation.
[taxation] > If the government can convince us of this, then > yes. For a long time after the war, most food > production and distribution was administered by > the Boards (the Milk Board, the Poultry Board, > etc) and a lot of farmers would like to return > to this. Why? The Boards gave the farmers a > better price than the supermarkets which use the > 'free' market to screw the producers.
The upshot of this approach is that farmers will receive more money, so their apparent wealth will increase, but the cost of everything they buy will increase by the same, or more, since everyone who buys from them, which is *everyone*, has to pay more, and so in turn charge more for their services, which eventually, inexorably, gets back to the farmers, and so their real wealth will be the same, or less.
It's all very well being paid say 600 dollars an hour, but if a loaf of bread costs 600 dollars, you're not actually a rich man.
If those farmers knew where their real interest lay, they would not wish for this. Most people however have read nothing about economics and do not know where their true interest lies.
> How do the goods you buy arrive at the shops you > buy them from?
Often by road transport, as you imply. The cost of that transport is part of the price the consumer pays for the product. It is often the case with tax that the group the tax is supposedly placed upon do not, in fact, bear that tax, for they pass it on to consumers. This is the case with food. If, for example, a tax of 100% was placed on the manufacture of bread, the price of bread would rise by that exact amount (or perhaps more, since it is often the case that if a reason for increasing prices is available, prices rise not merely to cover the tax, but an additional amount, to the benefit of the manufacturer) and the production of bread would remain exactly as profitable as it was before, except in that the higher price of bread to consumers would reduce consumption.
So, to get back to the point; if road tax was charged pro rata to those using roads, then those people who indirectly cause traffic - the consumers of products which rely on road transport - will indirectly pay the road tax through the price of what they buy.
Any business will charge at a rate necessary to maintain a reasonable long term profit, or it will not exist. The business cannot charge more due to competition.
If taxes or other charges occur, these are passed onto the consumer; they must be, or the business would no longer make a reasonable long term profit, and would dissolve, voluntarily or involuntarily.
The rise in prices will reduce consumption, which may possibly itself cause the business to dissolve.
> As it is, road tax is *not* completely > indiscriminate - if you don't own a car or > similar vehicle, you don't pay it.
That's small consolation. If I drive a hundred miles a year, I pay the same as someone who does a hundred thousand. In this case it's irrelevent that if I had *no* car, I'd pay no tax. I do have a car, and I don't use it much.
Regarding enlightened self-interest; you are, I think, right in your conclusion, but unfortunately by an entirely incorrect reasoning.
The greater the competition for work, the lower wages are. This reduces my apparent wealth, but actually increase my real wealth, since the reduction in wage costs reduces the cost of the things I buy with my apparently lower wages.
Private health care as it should be is nothing like how it is today, either in the UK, due to the NHS, or in the US, due to Medicare/Medicaid.
It is improper to look at current state of private health care and argue on that basis for or against non-State provision of health care.
> The state(at least here in Germany) has to keep > its citizens well informed. As a matter of fact, > it made it into the Verfassung. That's how our > founding fathers wanted it to be.
They were wrong.
It is desireable, to be sure, that the private individuals who live together in a single country are well informed.
But you must remember at all times we are not "the State's citizens". It is not our parent, our guardian. We are independent individuals. The State only exists in so far as it allows to to achieve common goals we could not individually achieve.
It is improper for the State to nanny the private individuals in a country, and for the State to say "I will keep you informed, it's good for you".
In any one case - such as this one - the end in question may well be desireable; but the means, the giving of such power to the State, is highly undesireable, and will, in time, be used for ends which are highly undesireable - such as incredibly stupid taxes, lots of State enterprise, vested interested, pork-barrel politics.
The centralisation of power is a deadly meance to freedom.
Road tax is indiscriminate. As you say, if I have a car but almost always use a bike, I pay the same as a taxi driver. This is improper. Road tax should perhaps be collected through a tax on petrol, so that it is more fairly placed upon those who use and wear down the road system.
Universal health care is ethically necessary; it must exist. The NHS, however, is an appalling way to provide universal health care. It's grossly inefficient and expensive. Private health care should be mandatory and the State should pay the private insurance bill for people who cannot themselves afford it.
If an individual pays the State for health care, through his taxes, he is in effect paying the equivelent of a very expensive health insurance policy. Better deals exist!
To return to your point, though, since universal health care is ethically necessary, even if a man privately pays for his health care, he is still ethically obliged to contribute towards the funds necessary to allow the State to provide medical care for everyone.
This ethical imperative does not exist for television programmes!
> No. I can see why this is hard to understand for > an American,
I'm a Brit.
> The program of the public broadcasters is not > determined by the Government. It is determined > by special councils ('Rundfunkraete') in which > the various state governments are represented, > but also the current parliamental opposition.
Okay, so it's determined by the Government and the Opposition. But the State sets the funding levels, and will have a good deal of background influence, and the Opposition will one day be in power again.
The State and the Opposition will find they have a great deal in common, and the State run stations will reflect this.
Moreover, the people running the TV station are going to be more influenced by the views of those currently in power, since they control the budget. Like it or not, they will know what the State thinks, and they will, more or less, be biased by that, regardless of the existance of the council.
Contrast all this to a privately run TV station. They can say what they damn well *please*. No politicians, no vested interests represented on the council, *no council*.
*That* is independence.
If an enterprise is ever beheld to the State for anything, let alone it's *budget*, it is not truely independent.
> Germany, like the UK, has official broadcasting. > Our BBC is ARD, ZDF and lots of radio stations. > The rationale is along these lines:
> If you own a TV or radio set, then you are > benefiting from this service. If you benefit, > you have to cough up some dough.
Great, isn't it - I didn't *ask* for the service, I don't *want* the service, but I have to pay for the service!
A group of private individuals (the State) has decided that it's in my benefit to have public broadcasting, and that I have to pay for it.
The State should ONLY provide services which absolutely everyone needs - such as national defence, enforcing the law, ensuring the existance of universal medical coverage, ensuring the existance of a minimum income for all.
If the State ever strays outside of this domain, it automatically is violating the personal freedom of the private individuals in that country since it is, to a greater or lesser extent, forcing them to accept services or deals non-voluntarily.
> I have four machines connected to the net at home, > and I can ignore this new regulation, cause I > registered with GEZ as a TV owner. So who cares?
You should care, because if the State hass composed such an appalling tax, which violates individual freedom and the basic principles of taxation, it's going to be doing more of them same in the future.
It's an appalling deal, because it's not voluntary.
If you want to watch TV - *any* TV, including all the channels which are not the BBC - you are legally obliged to pay the TV license fee tax to fund the BBC.
This is unethical, and it violated the principles of the free market.
If a private company sets up a TV channel and I, a private individual, want to watch that channel, what right do *other* private individuals (the BBC) have to *force me* to then pay for *their* TV channels?
Any arguments about "they produce high quality TV" are obviously bunk. Consider that you can apply that argument to anything. Care to have your food taxed, so that a State run enterprise can produce high quality food?
If you don't like the way a channel behaves, don't watch it. You have that choice, and when you excercise that choice, you are then totally unburdened by that channel, since it is privately funded.
If you don't like a State channel, you can choose not to watch it, but - ha! - you can't choose not to keep paying for it.
The German State has, to a greater or lesser extent, discouraged ownership of Internet access.
Free dialup no longer exists in Germany. By setting the minimum possible cost of Internet access to 17 Euros per month, the very poorest have been excluded from the Internet.
What's worse is that this tax does not even fall upon those who consume the material the tax money funds - it falls upon everyone, indiscriminately.
And this has been done in the name of supporting a State run enterprise!
-- Toby
Re:Outsourcing - a huge negative
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
>I disagree... Outsourcing means taking money out of > the American economy (wages that would be paid to > someone getting taxed and buying stuff over here), > and sends it overseas where that money (generated > with the assistence of US-taxpayer funded US > infrastructure, and taxpayer funder corporate tax > breaks) now instead helps a competitor to America. > That's not a good thing.
There are a couple of fundmanetal misunderstandings here; that an increase in competition is bad and that jobs going overseas takes money out of the US.
I'm not going to address your whole post, 'cause it's long, and it would be insensitive to critique extensively.
I would say, try giving Freedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" a go. It's a short book, and a *superb* introduction to economics. Economics is a science, a vague science a lot of the time, but some of the basics are aboslutely clear and they are rules, just as F=P/A is a rule. Some of those rules you've said are wrong, in the first paragraph, so you've gone amiss. If you do some reading, you'll see why those rules are correct.
> Milton Friedman and his buddies totally > destroyed Latin America in the 90's.
I doubt it, because I know what advice they'd give and I think, from what I've studied, that it's right, and I know what the Governments in question were like, and I think it's much more likely they baulked at meaningful change, because reform simply doesn't happen. The only time real change occurs is when an externally imposed crisis happens.
Adam Smith would, I think, have been completely in favour of the free movment of labour between countries. He was completely in favour of free movement inside countries, since it increases competition for labour, and movement between countries acts in exactly the same way.
Adam Smith wasn't against Government intervention *per se*, but he was against *improper* intervention, and the sad fact is Government almost always intervene improperly, because their self-interest differs from that of the economy, and because of incompetence.
It is unlikely that an individual can hold an accurate and well-formed opinion upon a subject when they are ill-informed.
I may be totally wrong, but I suspect you may be ill-informed about economics.
A short but excellent book on the free market is "Capitalism and Freedom", by Milton Freedman.
A much longer and wonderful book is the original work in the field, "An Inquiry Into The Wealth Of Nations", by Adam Smith.
I would say this to you: if you knew of a person who was presenting a strong opinion on a subject and you were pretty sure they'd never read anything about the subject, would you take their opinion seriously? bear in mind everyone reading this thread will react pretty much in the same way.
Slashdot Mirror
I moved on a long time ago.
I need a basic mp3 player and WinAmp bloated; it long ago stopped being an appropriate solution merely for mp3 playback.
--
Toby
Crime is detered when criminals believe the chances are they will be caught.
This requires long term investment in the police forces.
Crime is not detered by heavy sentancing since if the criminal believes the chances are he will not be caught, the sentance is irrelevent.
Heavy sentancing however can be enacted instantly, by act of law, unlike long term investment in police forces (which is also, of course, expensive and has little immediate effect).
Over the decades, there has been a general failure to invest in police forces because of the cost and lack of immediacy and, due to the consequencial lack of decrease in crime, a general turning towards increasingly heavy sentancing.
This does not work. It also gradually leads to penalities become entirely disproportional to offence, leading to institutionalized injustice.
Such is the current state of affairs.
--
Toby
In what way is the US national interest served by maintaining the demiliterization of space, when the other non-US aligned major powers in the world (Russia, China) would certainly militerize space if they could do so?
The only reason Russia and China have not is because if they did, the US would know it had to as well, and would certainly beat them at it.
The US has come to a position where it can obtain a firm grasp of near space. This is a huge geopolitical advantage. Why should it not be taken, given that if it is not taken now, it will have to be taken later, when a non-democratic country does obtain or begin to obtain a firm grasp of near space?
Does anyone imagine for a second that unilaterally choosing *not* to hold near-space would lead Russia or China to abstain from doing so, if they could do so?
--
Toby
I wrote about this a while ago.
m l
http://www.summerblue.net/missives/copyright.ht
The major distributors are now in a situation where their product is having to compete with a free rival (P2P). It's hard to compete with free. In fact, all the major distributors have to offer are ease of access, breadth of catalogue and guaranteed quality. This is not worth 15 UKP a CD and 25 UKP a DVD! this painful adjustment is currently what the major distributors are in denial about, and have attempted to perform a minimum-effort resolution, lawsuits, and via DRM.
Our culture is accustomed to copying, because of the VCR, and it is not possible, a la prohibition, to legislate out of existance an act which is widely culturally accepted.
DRM is a brittle solution, since the P2P networks provide immediate and universal distribution of material; if a DRMed product is broken *just once*, then it's gone - it goes public, and that's that. Since DRM is a major investment, and since these companies have a long habit of choosing proprietory security implimentations, I think they're on a burning plane with no parachutes.
All in all, I think the heyday of the major distributors is over.
--
Toby
Nationalizing any industry is crazy.
When an industry is nationalised, which is to say, funded by tax rather than its customers, that industry no longer has ANY need to produce a service which is in ANY way desirable to its customers.
The connection between customer and provider is unlinked.
In this case, customers like reliable, cheap electricity. What exactly is supposed to lead to this sort of electricity being generated?
The National Power Company, being part of the State, will have it's wages bill paid no matter what happens, as long as it doesn't become *so* awful that it becomes politically necessary to dispose of it.
A real private company has an extreme sharp and pointed need to provide electricity to its customers satifaction; they pay its bills, and if they don't like it, they leave.
How do you leave a National Power Company, when there ARE no other companies to turn to? and why should the NPC even care, since its bills are paid by the State?
You'll also find, as the UK experienced during it's period of nationalised power, that the National Power Company has responsibility for ensuring adequate power generation reserves, whcih is to say, for deciding how many power plants are built.
Now, who else but the NPC are competent to decide such a matter? so their recommendations are acted upon. However, building a power plant is an expensive and profitable construction, for the various private construction companies involved, and for the taxpayer, since he's funding all this.
What happens is the construction companies become rather pally with the NPC, who tend to be rather generous in their estimation of the necessary power reserves.
All of which increases both taxation, to pay for unnecessary power plants and their maintaince while they turn over, idle.
Nationalisation is almost invariably a disaster. Economics has a reputation as a boring subject, which is why, I suspect, almost everyone is so uninformed, and why people keep touting these insane ideas.
--
Toby
I'm not sure the source code to a huge programme is useful.
About the only thing you can do with it, without *understanding it*, is compile it and use the binary (and stealing the binary in the first place is much easier than the source.)
The effort required to understand a large programme is vast. It's far easier just to buy a license.
--
Toby
150% increase in productivity?
Switching from assembler to a high level language doesn't give that much of an increase.
Raising the office temperature by 5C does?
My ass it does.
--
Toby
It is entirely and deliberately deceitful to compare the price of a luxury item to the average wage.
"30 meter yachts priced at 6m USD, in a country where the average wage is only 45k USD, are being pirated by bootleggers and sold for 10k USD! guess those anti-piracy coastguards just aren't working."
The distribution of income in Russia is highly uneven; low in the country, high in the city. If you lived in povery, you wouldn't be *buying* CDs. The Russians who buy CDs are affluent, can afford them and buy pirated material because it's cheaper and often more convenient, just like everyone else everywhere else in the world.
--
Toby
Writing software is hideously complicated.
The skills required to successfully design and impliment software remain light-years beyond quantification - unlike the skills required to build a cart wheel or hammer, or, for that matter, a car body or a silicon wafer.
The concept of a "software" factory, building generic components, is more or less exactly that originally touted by OO back in the 80s.
This approach failed because large components have not been made (people tend to make "stack" and "list", not "user interface" and "VPN") and because of the huge front-loaded cost of making such components general-purpose rather than one-shot.
--
Toby
> I have to pay for a police department, which
> I've never used. I've never called the fire
> deparment, which I have to pay for. There's a
> park down the road that I've never used, but I
> have to pay for it.
> Get over it. Sometimes you pay for things, which
> you won't use, but they still make the world a
> better place.
The argument is valid within it's domain, but you've applied it to something - TV taxation - where it is invalid.
The State exists to achieve common goals held by a large group of private individuals that could not otherwise be achieved.
Police and fire cover are valid examples of this. National defence is another.
TV programming is *not* an example of this, since it is not a universally held goal and it can be provided through private enterprise.
You must also remember that when the State becomes involved in providing a service which is properly provided commerically, three negative effects occur; everyone is taxed more, and the economy is that much smaller, since private industry usually cannot exist in a field where the State operates, and the State expands it's power, both politically and economically, and becomes that much more of a threat to the freedom and liberty of the private individuals who created the State in the first place.
--
Toby
> The problem with this argument is that it
> doesn't take into account how the non-public
> funded channels get their money. Most of them
> receive most of their money through advertising
> revenue, and the advertisers pay for their slots
> by increasing their prices.
I suspect you've not completed the loop.
Advertisers only advertise if they believe it increases sales enough that they come out ahead. The more a good or service is sold, the cheaper it becomes, since greater consumption encourages greater production, which in turn leads to both increased competition, as other companies enter the field, and to efficiencies of scale.
Advertising, all in all, should *lower* prices, despite the overhead of paying for the advertisement.
--
Toby
> Your ethics not mine. The free market is not a
> universally held principle (nor does it, in any
> meaningful sense, exist). Indeed the free market
> is unethical as it violates the principles of
> socialism and public accountability.
Anything that attempts to run an economy in a way other than a free market is bunk, because it won't work. People may not understand the free market, and by and large people pass opinion on it having read absolutely nothing about it, but the free market is inexorable. It cannot be bettered and if it is not used, economic disaster occurs.
Public accountability for what, about what, and why? if I, a private individual, choose to make say software and another private individual, who is well-informed about my product, voluntarily enters into a transaction with me, what business does ANY other private individual have in what we are doing?
The free market is one of the best guardians against excessive and unnecessary State interference in private lives.
> The BBC is not a private individual. It is a
> public corporation (in the British sense, not
> the American) created and run for the benefit of
> the British people. Private companies are
> created and run of the benefit of the few
> shareholders.
Everything, from the State downwards, consists of private individuals. Sometimes they work together in groups, and that grouping has a name; but it is not a seperate, living entity which is to be treated differently from private individuals. The BBC in that sense is properly regarded as a private individual; it does not get extra rights, abilities to demand money from private individuals, because it is a larger organisation.
For any one, or any organisation, to force private individuals to give them money, there must be the correct reason - otherwise it is a violation of personal freedom and, seperately, a violation of the free market.
> > Any arguments about "they produce high quality
> > TV" are obviously bunk.
> They are? How? The BBC certainly does produce
> high quality TV. It is not of course unique in
> that.
They're bunk in the sense that they do not justify the BBC's taxation.
[taxation]
> If the government can convince us of this, then
> yes. For a long time after the war, most food
> production and distribution was administered by
> the Boards (the Milk Board, the Poultry Board,
> etc) and a lot of farmers would like to return
> to this. Why? The Boards gave the farmers a
> better price than the supermarkets which use the
> 'free' market to screw the producers.
The upshot of this approach is that farmers will receive more money, so their apparent wealth will increase, but the cost of everything they buy will increase by the same, or more, since everyone who buys from them, which is *everyone*, has to pay more, and so in turn charge more for their services, which eventually, inexorably, gets back to the farmers, and so their real wealth will be the same, or less.
It's all very well being paid say 600 dollars an hour, but if a loaf of bread costs 600 dollars, you're not actually a rich man.
If those farmers knew where their real interest lay, they would not wish for this. Most people however have read nothing about economics and do not know where their true interest lies.
--
Toby
> How do the goods you buy arrive at the shops you
> buy them from?
Often by road transport, as you imply. The cost of that transport is part of the price the consumer pays for the product. It is often the case with tax that the group the tax is supposedly placed upon do not, in fact, bear that tax, for they pass it on to consumers. This is the case with food. If, for example, a tax of 100% was placed on the manufacture of bread, the price of bread would rise by that exact amount (or perhaps more, since it is often the case that if a reason for increasing prices is available, prices rise not merely to cover the tax, but an additional amount, to the benefit of the manufacturer) and the production of bread would remain exactly as profitable as it was before, except in that the higher price of bread to consumers would reduce consumption.
So, to get back to the point; if road tax was charged pro rata to those using roads, then those people who indirectly cause traffic - the consumers of products which rely on road transport - will indirectly pay the road tax through the price of what they buy.
Any business will charge at a rate necessary to maintain a reasonable long term profit, or it will not exist. The business cannot charge more due to competition.
If taxes or other charges occur, these are passed onto the consumer; they must be, or the business would no longer make a reasonable long term profit, and would dissolve, voluntarily or involuntarily.
The rise in prices will reduce consumption, which may possibly itself cause the business to dissolve.
> As it is, road tax is *not* completely
> indiscriminate - if you don't own a car or
> similar vehicle, you don't pay it.
That's small consolation. If I drive a hundred miles a year, I pay the same as someone who does a hundred thousand. In this case it's irrelevent that if I had *no* car, I'd pay no tax. I do have a car, and I don't use it much.
Regarding enlightened self-interest; you are, I think, right in your conclusion, but unfortunately by an entirely incorrect reasoning.
The greater the competition for work, the lower wages are. This reduces my apparent wealth, but actually increase my real wealth, since the reduction in wage costs reduces the cost of the things I buy with my apparently lower wages.
Private health care as it should be is nothing like how it is today, either in the UK, due to the NHS, or in the US, due to Medicare/Medicaid.
It is improper to look at current state of private health care and argue on that basis for or against non-State provision of health care.
--
Toby
> The state(at least here in Germany) has to keep
> its citizens well informed. As a matter of fact,
> it made it into the Verfassung. That's how our
> founding fathers wanted it to be.
They were wrong.
It is desireable, to be sure, that the private individuals who live together in a single country are well informed.
But you must remember at all times we are not "the State's citizens". It is not our parent, our guardian. We are independent individuals. The State only exists in so far as it allows to to achieve common goals we could not individually achieve.
It is improper for the State to nanny the private individuals in a country, and for the State to say "I will keep you informed, it's good for you".
In any one case - such as this one - the end in question may well be desireable; but the means, the giving of such power to the State, is highly undesireable, and will, in time, be used for ends which are highly undesireable - such as incredibly stupid taxes, lots of State enterprise, vested interested, pork-barrel politics.
The centralisation of power is a deadly meance to freedom.
--
Toby
Road tax is indiscriminate. As you say, if I have a car but almost always use a bike, I pay the same as a taxi driver. This is improper. Road tax should perhaps be collected through a tax on petrol, so that it is more fairly placed upon those who use and wear down the road system.
Universal health care is ethically necessary; it must exist. The NHS, however, is an appalling way to provide universal health care. It's grossly inefficient and expensive. Private health care should be mandatory and the State should pay the private insurance bill for people who cannot themselves afford it.
If an individual pays the State for health care, through his taxes, he is in effect paying the equivelent of a very expensive health insurance policy. Better deals exist!
To return to your point, though, since universal health care is ethically necessary, even if a man privately pays for his health care, he is still ethically obliged to contribute towards the funds necessary to allow the State to provide medical care for everyone.
This ethical imperative does not exist for television programmes!
--
Toby
> No. I can see why this is hard to understand for
> an American,
I'm a Brit.
> The program of the public broadcasters is not
> determined by the Government. It is determined
> by special councils ('Rundfunkraete') in which
> the various state governments are represented,
> but also the current parliamental opposition.
Okay, so it's determined by the Government and the Opposition. But the State sets the funding levels, and will have a good deal of background influence, and the Opposition will one day be in power again.
The State and the Opposition will find they have a great deal in common, and the State run stations will reflect this.
Moreover, the people running the TV station are going to be more influenced by the views of those currently in power, since they control the budget. Like it or not, they will know what the State thinks, and they will, more or less, be biased by that, regardless of the existance of the council.
Contrast all this to a privately run TV station. They can say what they damn well *please*. No politicians, no vested interests represented on the council, *no council*.
*That* is independence.
If an enterprise is ever beheld to the State for anything, let alone it's *budget*, it is not truely independent.
--
Toby
> Germany, like the UK, has official broadcasting.
> Our BBC is ARD, ZDF and lots of radio stations.
> The rationale is along these lines:
> If you own a TV or radio set, then you are
> benefiting from this service. If you benefit,
> you have to cough up some dough.
Great, isn't it - I didn't *ask* for the service, I don't *want* the service, but I have to pay for the service!
A group of private individuals (the State) has decided that it's in my benefit to have public broadcasting, and that I have to pay for it.
The State should ONLY provide services which absolutely everyone needs - such as national defence, enforcing the law, ensuring the existance of universal medical coverage, ensuring the existance of a minimum income for all.
If the State ever strays outside of this domain, it automatically is violating the personal freedom of the private individuals in that country since it is, to a greater or lesser extent, forcing them to accept services or deals non-voluntarily.
--
Toby
> I have four machines connected to the net at home,
> and I can ignore this new regulation, cause I
> registered with GEZ as a TV owner. So who cares?
You should care, because if the State hass composed such an appalling tax, which violates individual freedom and the basic principles of taxation, it's going to be doing more of them same in the future.
--
Toby
It's an appalling deal, because it's not voluntary.
If you want to watch TV - *any* TV, including all the channels which are not the BBC - you are legally obliged to pay the TV license fee tax to fund the BBC.
This is unethical, and it violated the principles of the free market.
If a private company sets up a TV channel and I, a private individual, want to watch that channel, what right do *other* private individuals (the BBC) have to *force me* to then pay for *their* TV channels?
Any arguments about "they produce high quality TV" are obviously bunk. Consider that you can apply that argument to anything. Care to have your food taxed, so that a State run enterprise can produce high quality food?
--
Toby
If you don't like the way a channel behaves, don't watch it. You have that choice, and when you excercise that choice, you are then totally unburdened by that channel, since it is privately funded.
If you don't like a State channel, you can choose not to watch it, but - ha! - you can't choose not to keep paying for it.
--
Toby
State broadcasting exists purely and simply because it has been legislated into existance by the Government.
The funding is legally enforced by the Government, and the funding level is set by the Government.
State broadcasting inherently tends to reflect the Government line because it, essentially, is funded by the Government; it's not truely independent.
What difference does it make whether or not it's collected by the third party?
--
Toby
This is absoulutely INSANE.
The German State has, to a greater or lesser extent, discouraged ownership of Internet access.
Free dialup no longer exists in Germany. By setting the minimum possible cost of Internet access to 17 Euros per month, the very poorest have been excluded from the Internet.
What's worse is that this tax does not even fall upon those who consume the material the tax money funds - it falls upon everyone, indiscriminately.
And this has been done in the name of supporting a State run enterprise!
--
Toby
>I disagree... Outsourcing means taking money out of
> the American economy (wages that would be paid to
> someone getting taxed and buying stuff over here),
> and sends it overseas where that money (generated
> with the assistence of US-taxpayer funded US
> infrastructure, and taxpayer funder corporate tax
> breaks) now instead helps a competitor to America.
> That's not a good thing.
There are a couple of fundmanetal misunderstandings here; that an increase in competition is bad and that jobs going overseas takes money out of the US.
I'm not going to address your whole post, 'cause it's long, and it would be insensitive to critique extensively.
I would say, try giving Freedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" a go. It's a short book, and a *superb* introduction to economics. Economics is a science, a vague science a lot of the time, but some of the basics are aboslutely clear and they are rules, just as F=P/A is a rule. Some of those rules you've said are wrong, in the first paragraph, so you've gone amiss. If you do some reading, you'll see why those rules are correct.
--
Toby
> Milton Friedman and his buddies totally
> destroyed Latin America in the 90's.
I doubt it, because I know what advice they'd give and I think, from what I've studied, that it's right, and I know what the Governments in question were like, and I think it's much more likely they baulked at meaningful change, because reform simply doesn't happen. The only time real change occurs is when an externally imposed crisis happens.
Adam Smith would, I think, have been completely in favour of the free movment of labour between countries. He was completely in favour of free movement inside countries, since it increases competition for labour, and movement between countries acts in exactly the same way.
Adam Smith wasn't against Government intervention *per se*, but he was against *improper* intervention, and the sad fact is Government almost always intervene improperly, because their self-interest differs from that of the economy, and because of incompetence.
--
Toby
It is unlikely that an individual can hold an accurate and well-formed opinion upon a subject when they are ill-informed.
I may be totally wrong, but I suspect you may be ill-informed about economics.
A short but excellent book on the free market is "Capitalism and Freedom", by Milton Freedman.
A much longer and wonderful book is the original work in the field, "An Inquiry Into The Wealth Of Nations", by Adam Smith.
I would say this to you: if you knew of a person who was presenting a strong opinion on a subject and you were pretty sure they'd never read anything about the subject, would you take their opinion seriously? bear in mind everyone reading this thread will react pretty much in the same way.
--
Toby