> Considering we live in an age where kids under 14 have cellular phones, is it really so wrong for > parents to want to know where they are, and for that matter, is it really an issue of "rights"? Sure, > if it's being used for tracking adults, then yes, it is. But not in keeping track of kids (as opposed > to what, implanting chips/RFID chips in them? At the least, this is the least intrusive).
What happens when the parents are abusive?
The kid goes to see a relative or a cop or a helper or whatever, to try and get help, to tell someone, and the parents will KNOW. And maybe beat the crap out of the kid for doing it.
Same problem with the State.
Say you do something or make a report which threatens a major industry. There's a LOT of money at stake. The State - or rather, a bit of it, maybe a branch which regulates this industry but has basically been compromised by that industry - starts doing things which are entirely unethical to try to suppress the report - perhaps discredit the author in whatever way they can. (Bit like with Lewinsky, where the Press Office deliberately and specifically lied about her and what happened and attempted to discredit her.)
They won't mind a bit getting hold of his position information and using it to track what he does, which journalists he visits, where his family is.
This technology is massively open to abuse, and humans are shit. It WILL be abused, and everyone who is in a position where they may be doing something which the State will object to will KNOW it will be abused, and it will flatly discourage them from doing what ought to be done.
> Kids are clever these days. They'll soon realize they can turn their phones off to go places parents > shouldn't know about. Or let the battery drain, so they don't get blamed when they get home ("oops, I > forgot to recharge it! sorry...").
Not if you parents are violent, physically or emotionally. You're a kid. You haven't grown up, you don't have experience, you're totally dependent on your parents in every way, you're scared to tell anyone what's going on, and you just don't know any better.
Roughly half the people I know, maybe somewhat more, had shit parents. I NEVER want to see such people having this sort of technological hold over their children.
It seems to me the benefits decent parents will derive from this technology is far, far outweighed by the harm and suffering that will be inflicted by it upon the kids who have awful parents.
I am afraid that the abuse of this new service will outweight its benefits.
How many good parents are out there, and how many bad? how many parents who forbid their children perfectly normal and reasonable things?
You know David Millar, the disputed champion of the most recent Tour de France? his father forbad him to do cycling, because he didn't want his son to be a cyclist. David had to sneak out at 1am in the morning to practise overnight.
A friend of mine grew up with awful parents; they wouldn't let him have any freedom, see his friends, have friends over, have girlfriends, etc. He was badly repressed. He managed to work around it as best he could, by doing things secretly. Now he'd be watched, permanently, and have absolutely no way whatsoever of having freedom.
Another friend of mine had a very violent father. He used to beat the crap out of her regularly. What would her fate now be if he could also now know exactly where she was at all times?
How would you feel, thinking back to when you grew up, if your parents always knew exactly where you were?
It's not even so much that you were going to do things which were "wrong" and now you can, but rather, you knew that you *could* and you chose not to. Now, you know that you CANNOT. That choice has been taken from you. You have no freedom.
It's ironic. We're so concerned about our own freedom from the State, but apparently we're entirely happy for our kids to have no freedom from *US*.
First off, this squid lives under 1.5km of water - 150 atmospheres of pressure. Once you've brought it up to the surface and let it die, it's going to be in a VERY different state to how it is normally. It'd be like slowly taking a human from the surface up to 71km altitude (1/150 atmopshere), during which process they die, then taking them to your home planet in your spaceship, and *THEN* examining them.
What exactly *are* you going to learn in that circumstance?
And how will what you can learn in this situation help you do something towards the greater good of the species *that you couldn't have done ANYWAY?*
There's the rub. What matters for the species is knowing the population, if it's growing or shrinking, at what rate it's changing, and why. Hauling one of them up from the depths and killing it won't tell you a thing about that.
> One individual is not the entire species.
Absolutely true. And there can be justifications for killing creatures. But what I find awful is the unthought assumption that this killing will be doing some good. I get the feeling people see it's a research ship from a University or whatever, so there is not thought applied to the fact that these people are killing living creatures - it's just assumed, without any thought, that they will only be doing it if its really necessary, and that it's doing some good, because they're learning about the creatures.
There's a whole bunch of assmuptions there which need examining and questioning.
> Monopolies created via anti-trust behaviors are different than government-granted monopolies.
> No need to confuse the two in your examples. Were it not for right-wing naivetarians like you, > Microsoft would be controlled just fine.
Ah. How fine it is, to be so certain that insulting others comes naturally and without concern.
> You've also said in other posts that monopolies only exist via government intervention.
No. I said;
"By and large, though, monopolies are inherently unstable - they usually require State ledgeslation to exist, which outlaws competition. (E.g. first class post in the USA is a monopoly, and is so because it is *illegal* to offer such a service, and so if you do, you will be jailed or fined)."
You have badly misquoted my statement.
> You completely fail to understand monopolies
Your assessment appears to be based on your misquote of my position.
> and your arguments conveniently ignore how long it takes for markets to correct themselves without > intervention in the face of an evolutionarily stable strategy such as anti-trust behavior.
I have however stated that one of the roles of State is to break up monopolies.
You appear to be selectively attending to my statements.
> Research complex adaptive systems (CAS) and evolutionarily stable strategies (ESS) sometime. Other > people have and thus are not as naive as you are.
Thank God other people are not as patronizing as you are.
I'm not sure it's applicable here. It would only be so if those who invested in infrastructure could be taken advantage of by freeloaders. If the investors are in fact contributing to a company which owns the infrastructure and rents it out once made, all they've actually done is invested in producing an income stream, e.g. they hold shares in the company.
> You're asserting that governments can't "make money". I presume you mean they can't "make capital".
No. I mean they cannot create genuine value. They are not productive industries. They do not create new real wealth; unless, that is, that there are State run enterprises which sell goods and services to the public.
> Wow, you really are deluded, or you just don't know the terminology. You call yourself an Economist?
Rather deluded than repulsive. I don't need to insult other people to hold a debate.
However, I note the State's failure to break Microsoft up when it had the chance; and Microsoft is obviously a monopoly. I see a certain degree of collusion or lobbying.
> Oh, right! Copyright law grants a limited monopoly! I get it now.
No, you don't. You've fabricated a set of arguments I've never made and accused me of making them.
Your behaviour has no place in a debate - it does however serve you well for shouting down that which you deeply wish to be wrong and so have absolutely no interest in listening to or understanding.
> Funny, last I checked, the mayors of these cities weren't planning on spending their days flinging bits > through the air.
I'm not sure what point you're making. As I recall, all of these projects were state/city run.
> Hell, if the telecoms wanted to provide that service so bad, they could have bid on the projects just like > all the other private companies did. But they didn't want to, but they didn't want the city selling the > contract to anyone else, either.
What private companies? these projects are state run. There was no bidding.
Well I'm impressed that you know me so well, having read perhaps one post of mine? and have such a good understanding of the subject, that you can be so sure.
> One concept you do not grasp is "Barriers to Entry/Cost of Entry." The capital costs to build the > railroads were staggering.
So? it all go paid for, one way or another - and the only source of money is the people who work. The Government may intermediate, but that's all.
> The government gave huge swaths of land to the railroad companies,
Which is to say, the Government took the vast amount of money represented by that land, which somehow *it* owned rather than individual citizens, and gave that to another set of individuals, who happened to own railroad companies.
What on earth is the State doing owning all this land? how did it come to own all that territory? what was it doing giving all that value away to particular groups of private citizens?
If that land had been owned by individuals, the railroad companies would have had to have paid for what they were doing - and rightly so. Those people, who never had that land, were robbed blind of what they never owned in the first place.
> I think that the implication you are making here is really disturbing. What you are saying is that if you > are willing to throw enough money at people, then you should have the right to do whatever you want, > regardless of what they want.
Ye Gods, no!
What I've said is *if* you have a neighbourhood effect, you *must* in fact bear the cost of that. It doesn't mean - and why should it?! - that you can *force* people to accept your compensation.
> It only makes sense to take it where you will make the most of your money back the quickest and then deploy > from there.
Which, interestingly, is going to be city centers, which is to say, the most densely populated parts of the country, thus bringing the most possible high speed access to the most possible people in the shortest possible time.
Isn't this the exact outcome we would wish for, if we were thinking of the "common good"?
What makes you think FIOS will only come if the Government makes it happen?
If there are enough of you wanting FIOS and it can be provided at a low enough cost, it *will arrive*.
If there aren't enough of you, and/or you're not willing to pay what it would cost to get FIOS to where you are, then you won't get it - because for the telco to provide it, they would actually be *paying you* to have their service.
There's no difference between ordering telcos to burn money in a large fire than ordering them to lose that money by providing a loss making service. In both cases, the people who have put their money into that business are being directly *robbed* by the State. The only difference is in the former case, it just means they have a nice fire to keep warm by, and in the latter case, some arbitrary people in a rural part of the States get a nice telecoms service.
Either way, its absolutely and catagorically unethical.
My thoughts have recently been leading me to that same view.
Readership seems to be all in favour of freedom and liberty, except when it comes to business, where the State should provide pretty much everything and private business is a Bad Thing.
The fact is that the more the State does, the less freedom you have.
So, we're saying Comcast is legally obliged to provide a service which loses money (which is true) and you're saying it's not true, because Comcast et al in fact, through lobbying, control the body which is supposed to regulate their market.
It certainly is true that regulatory bodies do end up being managed by the industry they are supposed to regulate.
This brings us back to our view that the whole thing is a sorry mess created purely by the State.
Your post, however, is crude and insulting. If I had mod points, you'd get "Twat (-1)".
> With your Christmas lights shop you aren't digging up miles of public property to create the means for > selling your lights. If you ever do start to do that, it becomes the public's business to say under what > conditions you can dig up their property. People in a town may not want to deal with road closings and > jackhammer noises and other disruptions if their block isn't going to be able to make use of the > infrastructure buildout that is causing that disruption.
You're talking about neighbourhood effects.
This is when a person A (power plant for example) properly has a cost they should pay (pollution effects) but in fact they don't - that cost is distributed over the neighbourhood.
You are right to say that if the road is dug up, etc, to lay cables, then a neighbourhood effect is occuring; people nearby are bearing a cost of inconvenience that properly falls upon the company.
The solution to this is compensation.
The solution to this is NOT that the people bearing the neighbourhood effect then get a voice to direct the behaviour of the company, which is what you're suggesting!
> On the other hand a community can decide whether to allow anyone to conduct a business unless they meet > certain criteria. The right to conduct unregulated business isn't God given.
If we have a society with freedom and liberty, then it is "God given".
If the community - which is to say, persons A, B, C, D, etc - can arbitrarily decide that person Z *cannot* do what he wants (sell something he makes) then we no longer have individual freedom and liberty.
John Stuart Mill argued the ONLY acceptable justification for interfering in anothers life (e.g. preventing Z from selling) is *SELF-DEFENCE*.
So if Z was selling dangerous toys, then other people could properly stop him.
But that is the only basis for doing so.
Any other basis means freedom and liberty have been compromised.
> I say we go back in time and ban the Pacific Railway Acts so that defeatocrats like your forefathers would > not get food, freight and interstate communications in the metropolitan areas of the country.
The railways, if they were worth building (financially, which is to say, people would have paid what was necessary for their services, which meant they really did need them, since they were putting their money where their mouth was) would have been built *absolutely regardless of State intervention*.
Picking something which would have happened anyway, and which could well have been retarded by State intervention, and then claiming they never would have been built if it wasn't *FOR* State intervention, is not useful.
What's more, if the State hadn't have intervened, and the railways then were not built, that means they should NOT have been built - because people were NOT prepared to pay for the services they offered, which means there were better things for people to spend their money on, and if this was so and the State intervened and forced the railways to be built, then the State would have taken their money and spent it *badly*.
> If you want my service, move to a place where I offer it, or use someone else's service. Simple as that.
*Exactly*.
If someone wants to live in rural Kansas, then it is THEIR PERSONAL CHOICE. Which is to say, they need to consider transport, communications, food, heating, etc. The consider all the factors and decide if they're going to move there or not.
What on EARTH is person A (the State) doing *making* person B (telecomms) provide cable to person C (man in rural Kansas)? what business is it of A what C does? why on earth is A forcing B through the threat of jail and fines to lay his cabling in the middle of nowhere?
The answer ultimately is that person A has no idea what freedom and liberty really mean and, co-incidentally, is voted into office by person C.
If person A forced person C, through the threat of jail and fines, to BURN HIS MONEY IN A BONFIRE, we would be OUTRAGED. If however person A forces person C to lose his money, not by burning it, but by running a loss making telecoms service which he doesn't want to do, we...applaud?
> > Anything that's vital for the proper functioning of society, and has a tendency towards a natural > > monopoly - water, electricity, telecommunications, transportation - should be controlled by the society > > and not by "market forces".
> If something is controlled by market forces then it is controlled by society.
Yes - exactly!
When something is controlled by the State, then it isn't controlled by society. It's controlled by politicans, and their agenda is *not* the same as the agenda of society or of the people who vote them into power.
> Monopolies are forbidden from entering other markets because their effective subsidy on another market > makes them able to grant their own entrance to the other markets without the same growing pains everybody > else has.
I ***think*** what you mean is that because monopolies make so much money from their monopoly, they find it easy to enter new markets - they have money to burn?
> No, certain aspects of their business should not be left to deregulation. The only way to control a > monopoly is to actually control it, not slap it on the wrist and tell it to turn away. It will turn away, > onto other markets, if left to its own devices.
You cannot politically control a monopoly. Look at Microsoft. Monopolies are too effective at lobbying. "We employ lots of people, we pay lots of taxes, etc".
Also, how does this help you when the State creates monoplies? in those situations, the monopolies are entirely gratitious. All they do is charge as much as they can (barring artifically, inaccurate, rarely changed political football price caps from the State) and offer an awful service.
>...to think monopolies are reigned in by market forces.
Of course they are. The market IS what you get, when all is taken into account.
So for example, monopolies, as guided by market forces, charge the highest rate the market can bear.
I think what you mean is something more like monopolies will take full advantage of their position to make as much money as possible. This is correct.
All companies try to take full advantage of their position to make as much money as possible.
The difference between a normal company and a monopoly is the presence of competition, and that presence in the former case leads to the company charging at the lowest rate they can while still maintaining a reasonable long term profit, and in the latter case, to charging at the highest rate the market can bear.
This is why it's so vital to avoid State interference which leads to monopolies, and to have regulation which makes monopolies illegal.
By and large, though, monopolies are inherently unstable - they usually require State ledgeslation to exist, which outlaws competition. (E.g. first class post in the USA is a monopoly, and is so because it is *illegal* to offer such a service, and so if you do, you will be jailed or fined).
> This would be great and all, except that the telecom companies have already proven just how much pent up > rage they can unleash at people moving in to serve markets where they "didn't want to" as witnessed by > all the laws they have backed and tirades their CEOs have given against cities deploying the wireless > services that they weren't.
You're confounding two different issues.
The free market telecoms companies objected to the appearance of *State provided* telecoms.
They would not have objected as they did to the appearance of *free market* telecoms, in this case, offering city-wide wifi.
Slashdot Mirror
> Considering we live in an age where kids under 14 have cellular phones, is it really so wrong for
> parents to want to know where they are, and for that matter, is it really an issue of "rights"? Sure,
> if it's being used for tracking adults, then yes, it is. But not in keeping track of kids (as opposed
> to what, implanting chips/RFID chips in them? At the least, this is the least intrusive).
What happens when the parents are abusive?
The kid goes to see a relative or a cop or a helper or whatever, to try and get help, to tell someone, and the parents will KNOW. And maybe beat the crap out of the kid for doing it.
Same problem with the State.
Say you do something or make a report which threatens a major industry. There's a LOT of money at stake. The State - or rather, a bit of it, maybe a branch which regulates this industry but has basically been compromised by that industry - starts doing things which are entirely unethical to try to suppress the report - perhaps discredit the author in whatever way they can. (Bit like with Lewinsky, where the Press Office deliberately and specifically lied about her and what happened and attempted to discredit her.)
They won't mind a bit getting hold of his position information and using it to track what he does, which journalists he visits, where his family is.
This technology is massively open to abuse, and humans are shit. It WILL be abused, and everyone who is in a position where they may be doing something which the State will object to will KNOW it will be abused, and it will flatly discourage them from doing what ought to be done.
> Kids are clever these days. They'll soon realize they can turn their phones off to go places parents
> shouldn't know about. Or let the battery drain, so they don't get blamed when they get home ("oops, I
> forgot to recharge it! sorry...").
Not if you parents are violent, physically or emotionally. You're a kid. You haven't grown up, you don't have experience, you're totally dependent on your parents in every way, you're scared to tell anyone what's going on, and you just don't know any better.
Roughly half the people I know, maybe somewhat more, had shit parents. I NEVER want to see such people having this sort of technological hold over their children.
It seems to me the benefits decent parents will derive from this technology is far, far outweighed by the harm and suffering that will be inflicted by it upon the kids who have awful parents.
I am afraid that the abuse of this new service will outweight its benefits.
How many good parents are out there, and how many bad? how many parents who forbid their children perfectly normal and reasonable things?
You know David Millar, the disputed champion of the most recent Tour de France? his father forbad him to do cycling, because he didn't want his son to be a cyclist. David had to sneak out at 1am in the morning to practise overnight.
A friend of mine grew up with awful parents; they wouldn't let him have any freedom, see his friends, have friends over, have girlfriends, etc. He was badly repressed. He managed to work around it as best he could, by doing things secretly. Now he'd be watched, permanently, and have absolutely no way whatsoever of having freedom.
Another friend of mine had a very violent father. He used to beat the crap out of her regularly. What would her fate now be if he could also now know exactly where she was at all times?
How would you feel, thinking back to when you grew up, if your parents always knew exactly where you were?
It's not even so much that you were going to do things which were "wrong" and now you can, but rather, you knew that you *could* and you chose not to. Now, you know that you CANNOT. That choice has been taken from you. You have no freedom.
It's ironic. We're so concerned about our own freedom from the State, but apparently we're entirely happy for our kids to have no freedom from *US*.
I don't buy it - my crap detector is going off!
First off, this squid lives under 1.5km of water - 150 atmospheres of pressure. Once you've brought it up to the surface and let it die, it's going to be in a VERY different state to how it is normally. It'd be like slowly taking a human from the surface up to 71km altitude (1/150 atmopshere), during which process they die, then taking them to your home planet in your spaceship, and *THEN* examining them.
What exactly *are* you going to learn in that circumstance?
And how will what you can learn in this situation help you do something towards the greater good of the species *that you couldn't have done ANYWAY?*
There's the rub. What matters for the species is knowing the population, if it's growing or shrinking, at what rate it's changing, and why. Hauling one of them up from the depths and killing it won't tell you a thing about that.
> One individual is not the entire species.
Absolutely true. And there can be justifications for killing creatures. But what I find awful is the unthought assumption that this killing will be doing some good. I get the feeling people see it's a research ship from a University or whatever, so there is not thought applied to the fact that these people are killing living creatures - it's just assumed, without any thought, that they will only be doing it if its really necessary, and that it's doing some good, because they're learning about the creatures.
There's a whole bunch of assmuptions there which need examining and questioning.
Not accidental.
Their blood is swimming with what is basically anti-freeze.
At the sort of temperatures found in their native depths, their blood works fine.
Pull them up to anywhere near the surface and their blood cannot transport oxygen - they suffocate.
Personally, I'm horrified. These people have spent a *bundle* of our money (tax revenue) and killed a living creature - and for what?
> Monopolies created via anti-trust behaviors are different than government-granted monopolies.
> No need to confuse the two in your examples. Were it not for right-wing naivetarians like you,
> Microsoft would be controlled just fine.
Ah. How fine it is, to be so certain that insulting others comes naturally and without concern.
> You've also said in other posts that monopolies only exist via government intervention.
No. I said;
"By and large, though, monopolies are inherently unstable - they usually require State ledgeslation to exist, which outlaws competition. (E.g. first class post in the USA is a monopoly, and is so because it is *illegal* to offer such a service, and so if you do, you will be jailed or fined)."
You have badly misquoted my statement.
> You completely fail to understand monopolies
Your assessment appears to be based on your misquote of my position.
> and your arguments conveniently ignore how long it takes for markets to correct themselves without
> intervention in the face of an evolutionarily stable strategy such as anti-trust behavior.
I have however stated that one of the roles of State is to break up monopolies.
You appear to be selectively attending to my statements.
> Research complex adaptive systems (CAS) and evolutionarily stable strategies (ESS) sometime. Other
> people have and thus are not as naive as you are.
Thank God other people are not as patronizing as you are.
I'm familiar with the prisoner's dilemma.
I'm not sure it's applicable here. It would only be so if those who invested in infrastructure could be taken advantage of by freeloaders. If the investors are in fact contributing to a company which owns the infrastructure and rents it out once made, all they've actually done is invested in producing an income stream, e.g. they hold shares in the company.
> You're asserting that governments can't "make money". I presume you mean they can't "make capital".
No. I mean they cannot create genuine value. They are not productive industries. They do not create new real wealth; unless, that is, that there are State run enterprises which sell goods and services to the public.
> Wow, you really are deluded, or you just don't know the terminology. You call yourself an Economist?
Rather deluded than repulsive. I don't need to insult other people to hold a debate.
> How is Microsoft a state-assisted monopoly?
I never said it was.
However, I note the State's failure to break Microsoft up when it had the chance; and Microsoft is obviously a monopoly. I see a certain degree of collusion or lobbying.
> Oh, right! Copyright law grants a limited monopoly! I get it now.
No, you don't. You've fabricated a set of arguments I've never made and accused me of making them.
Your behaviour has no place in a debate - it does however serve you well for shouting down that which you deeply wish to be wrong and so have absolutely no interest in listening to or understanding.
> Funny, last I checked, the mayors of these cities weren't planning on spending their days flinging bits
> through the air.
I'm not sure what point you're making. As I recall, all of these projects were state/city run.
> Hell, if the telecoms wanted to provide that service so bad, they could have bid on the projects just like
> all the other private companies did. But they didn't want to, but they didn't want the city selling the
> contract to anyone else, either.
What private companies? these projects are state run. There was no bidding.
> Ummmmm ... you're no economist, that's for sure.
Well I'm impressed that you know me so well, having read perhaps one post of mine? and have such a good understanding of the subject, that you can be so sure.
> One concept you do not grasp is "Barriers to Entry/Cost of Entry." The capital costs to build the
> railroads were staggering.
So? it all go paid for, one way or another - and the only source of money is the people who work. The Government may intermediate, but that's all.
> The government gave huge swaths of land to the railroad companies,
Which is to say, the Government took the vast amount of money represented by that land, which somehow *it* owned rather than individual citizens, and gave that to another set of individuals, who happened to own railroad companies.
What on earth is the State doing owning all this land? how did it come to own all that territory? what was it doing giving all that value away to particular groups of private citizens?
If that land had been owned by individuals, the railroad companies would have had to have paid for what they were doing - and rightly so. Those people, who never had that land, were robbed blind of what they never owned in the first place.
> I think that the implication you are making here is really disturbing. What you are saying is that if you
> are willing to throw enough money at people, then you should have the right to do whatever you want,
> regardless of what they want.
Ye Gods, no!
What I've said is *if* you have a neighbourhood effect, you *must* in fact bear the cost of that. It doesn't mean - and why should it?! - that you can *force* people to accept your compensation.
> It only makes sense to take it where you will make the most of your money back the quickest and then deploy
> from there.
Which, interestingly, is going to be city centers, which is to say, the most densely populated parts of the country, thus bringing the most possible high speed access to the most possible people in the shortest possible time.
Isn't this the exact outcome we would wish for, if we were thinking of the "common good"?
What makes you think FIOS will only come if the Government makes it happen?
If there are enough of you wanting FIOS and it can be provided at a low enough cost, it *will arrive*.
If there aren't enough of you, and/or you're not willing to pay what it would cost to get FIOS to where you are, then you won't get it - because for the telco to provide it, they would actually be *paying you* to have their service.
There's no difference between ordering telcos to burn money in a large fire than ordering them to lose that money by providing a loss making service. In both cases, the people who have put their money into that business are being directly *robbed* by the State. The only difference is in the former case, it just means they have a nice fire to keep warm by, and in the latter case, some arbitrary people in a rural part of the States get a nice telecoms service.
Either way, its absolutely and catagorically unethical.
> You keep peddling your version of "economics" and complain when you're modded down as Troll when the
> problem is that there is no "-1 idiot" mod.
Whereas you yourself are clearly aiming squarely for the "+1 Tolerant and Unbiased" mod?
> home of the libertarian trotskyite.
My thoughts have recently been leading me to that same view.
Readership seems to be all in favour of freedom and liberty, except when it comes to business, where the State should provide pretty much everything and private business is a Bad Thing.
The fact is that the more the State does, the less freedom you have.
This issue is not perceived.
So, we're saying Comcast is legally obliged to provide a service which loses money (which is true) and you're saying it's not true, because Comcast et al in fact, through lobbying, control the body which is supposed to regulate their market.
It certainly is true that regulatory bodies do end up being managed by the industry they are supposed to regulate.
This brings us back to our view that the whole thing is a sorry mess created purely by the State.
Your post, however, is crude and insulting. If I had mod points, you'd get "Twat (-1)".
> With your Christmas lights shop you aren't digging up miles of public property to create the means for
> selling your lights. If you ever do start to do that, it becomes the public's business to say under what
> conditions you can dig up their property. People in a town may not want to deal with road closings and
> jackhammer noises and other disruptions if their block isn't going to be able to make use of the
> infrastructure buildout that is causing that disruption.
You're talking about neighbourhood effects.
This is when a person A (power plant for example) properly has a cost they should pay (pollution effects) but in fact they don't - that cost is distributed over the neighbourhood.
You are right to say that if the road is dug up, etc, to lay cables, then a neighbourhood effect is occuring; people nearby are bearing a cost of inconvenience that properly falls upon the company.
The solution to this is compensation.
The solution to this is NOT that the people bearing the neighbourhood effect then get a voice to direct the behaviour of the company, which is what you're suggesting!
> On the other hand a community can decide whether to allow anyone to conduct a business unless they meet
> certain criteria. The right to conduct unregulated business isn't God given.
If we have a society with freedom and liberty, then it is "God given".
If the community - which is to say, persons A, B, C, D, etc - can arbitrarily decide that person Z *cannot* do what he wants (sell something he makes) then we no longer have individual freedom and liberty.
John Stuart Mill argued the ONLY acceptable justification for interfering in anothers life (e.g. preventing Z from selling) is *SELF-DEFENCE*.
So if Z was selling dangerous toys, then other people could properly stop him.
But that is the only basis for doing so.
Any other basis means freedom and liberty have been compromised.
> I say we go back in time and ban the Pacific Railway Acts so that defeatocrats like your forefathers would
> not get food, freight and interstate communications in the metropolitan areas of the country.
The railways, if they were worth building (financially, which is to say, people would have paid what was necessary for their services, which meant they really did need them, since they were putting their money where their mouth was) would have been built *absolutely regardless of State intervention*.
Picking something which would have happened anyway, and which could well have been retarded by State intervention, and then claiming they never would have been built if it wasn't *FOR* State intervention, is not useful.
What's more, if the State hadn't have intervened, and the railways then were not built, that means they should NOT have been built - because people were NOT prepared to pay for the services they offered, which means there were better things for people to spend their money on, and if this was so and the State intervened and forced the railways to be built, then the State would have taken their money and spent it *badly*.
> If you want my service, move to a place where I offer it, or use someone else's service. Simple as that.
*Exactly*.
If someone wants to live in rural Kansas, then it is THEIR PERSONAL CHOICE. Which is to say, they need to consider transport, communications, food, heating, etc. The consider all the factors and decide if they're going to move there or not.
What on EARTH is person A (the State) doing *making* person B (telecomms) provide cable to person C (man in rural Kansas)? what business is it of A what C does? why on earth is A forcing B through the threat of jail and fines to lay his cabling in the middle of nowhere?
The answer ultimately is that person A has no idea what freedom and liberty really mean and, co-incidentally, is voted into office by person C.
If person A forced person C, through the threat of jail and fines, to BURN HIS MONEY IN A BONFIRE, we would be OUTRAGED. If however person A forces person C to lose his money, not by burning it, but by running a loss making telecoms service which he doesn't want to do, we...applaud?
> > Anything that's vital for the proper functioning of society, and has a tendency towards a natural
> > monopoly - water, electricity, telecommunications, transportation - should be controlled by the society
> > and not by "market forces".
> If something is controlled by market forces then it is controlled by society.
Yes - exactly!
When something is controlled by the State, then it isn't controlled by society. It's controlled by politicans, and their agenda is *not* the same as the agenda of society or of the people who vote them into power.
> Monopolies are forbidden from entering other markets because their effective subsidy on another market
> makes them able to grant their own entrance to the other markets without the same growing pains everybody
> else has.
I ***think*** what you mean is that because monopolies make so much money from their monopoly, they find it easy to enter new markets - they have money to burn?
> No, certain aspects of their business should not be left to deregulation. The only way to control a
> monopoly is to actually control it, not slap it on the wrist and tell it to turn away. It will turn away,
> onto other markets, if left to its own devices.
You cannot politically control a monopoly. Look at Microsoft. Monopolies are too effective at lobbying. "We employ lots of people, we pay lots of taxes, etc".
Also, how does this help you when the State creates monoplies? in those situations, the monopolies are entirely gratitious. All they do is charge as much as they can (barring artifically, inaccurate, rarely changed political football price caps from the State) and offer an awful service.
> ...to think monopolies are reigned in by market forces.
Of course they are. The market IS what you get, when all is taken into account.
So for example, monopolies, as guided by market forces, charge the highest rate the market can bear.
I think what you mean is something more like monopolies will take full advantage of their position to make as much money as possible. This is correct.
All companies try to take full advantage of their position to make as much money as possible.
The difference between a normal company and a monopoly is the presence of competition, and that presence in the former case leads to the company charging at the lowest rate they can while still maintaining a reasonable long term profit, and in the latter case, to charging at the highest rate the market can bear.
This is why it's so vital to avoid State interference which leads to monopolies, and to have regulation which makes monopolies illegal.
By and large, though, monopolies are inherently unstable - they usually require State ledgeslation to exist, which outlaws competition. (E.g. first class post in the USA is a monopoly, and is so because it is *illegal* to offer such a service, and so if you do, you will be jailed or fined).
> This would be great and all, except that the telecom companies have already proven just how much pent up
> rage they can unleash at people moving in to serve markets where they "didn't want to" as witnessed by
> all the laws they have backed and tirades their CEOs have given against cities deploying the wireless
> services that they weren't.
You're confounding two different issues.
The free market telecoms companies objected to the appearance of *State provided* telecoms.
They would not have objected as they did to the appearance of *free market* telecoms, in this case, offering city-wide wifi.