Economies of scale are barriers of entry. The existence of economies of scale in every market means that the free market at the core of traditional capitalism (invisible hand, etc) does not and cannot exist. At that point, the only thing that needs to be discussed is what kind of market distortions need to be introduced to best approximate the workings of a theoretical free market.
You're taking it too literally. Companies can be formed just like they are now - people getting together, pooling their money, getting investment from elsewhere, etc. Once you hire employees though, they get a share in the say over the direction of the company, no matter how far down the totem pole they are. In Germany, this is done by requiring representatives of the employees to sit on the board of directors. Does this make selling the entire company more difficult? Sure does. Does this reduce the amount of money someone else might pay for it? Of course.
You also misunderstand what it means to reap the benefit: the benefit here is stable employment, with the idea that an employee will have more of the long-term interest of the company at heart than a venture capitalist looking to cash out their profits. Once you leave the company, you have decided to give up that benefit.
I'm shocked at the level of rational discussion in this thread. I thought this was going to be an epic flamefest, but instead, it's a rational discourse of where Marx got it right, where he got it wrong, and how this ties into today's economic policy.
Care to explain that? A truly free market - no barriers to entry, perfect information available instantly about all products in the market - stabilizes its price at the zero profit point. That's different from moving towards a monopoly market, which by definition can extract monopoly rents that are above the cost of the product.
And even that's stretching it. Studies found that people might do what's best for the immediate short term (chocolate for passwords? a little money now instead of lots of blow later?), but on average do not do what's best in the long-run. And that's where hardcore libertarians fall down.
Libertarianism, capitalism, communism all have ideas that are worth implementing. But we need to realize that all the main forms of economic policy, in their pure, distilled form, fall apart because of human nature.
You mean, like the Russians in Afghanistan? Yeah, that worked out so well. And even the Romans abandoned certain areas wholesale (North of the Roman wall in England, East of the Rhine, etc.) due to local resistance and ambushes.
Governments are the biggest, most "evil" corporations of all. Bloated, inefficient, and corrupt, they make the laws and therefore are above them. Even worse, they have no incentive to please the people using their services because, unlike a corporation which must compete for customers in order to survive, you are forced to pay the government at gunpoint.
Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were actually a rational person. Instead, you're one of "those" "libertarians". Nevermind, carry on. The men in white wil be by shortly. Alternatively, I hear there's a project to build islands just for you. Feel free to go check that out.
What my signature implies is that Google is hypocritical for professing to be an openness advocate when their core product is as closed and proprietary as Microsoft Windows.
What your signature implies is that you don't understand the difference between an OS and a search engine, and between security research and information research.
Gawker better have some proof. They're the World of the News of Silicon Valley. In the meantime...
If it's true, the answer is simple: yes, of course they need to disclose it. Actually, it doesn't matter whether you're a celebrity or not. You're supposed to disclose for-profit postings. If it's not, there's nothing to say.
It really all boils down to whether Gawker is making shit up or not.
Probably because you have a brand new account. Post for a little while, and the restriction should go away. Standard restriction is about 30 seconds or so, and that's just to prevent a lot of "me too!" posts.
Except that the rationale used for shutting down FB and Twitter is exactly the same as the one that would be used to shut down a communication service that is FOSS, respects privacy, has no censorship (you're missing a citation for that, btw - sounds to me you're mistaking reporting pages by the community with actual filtering) and otherwise farts unicorns and lives on rainbows.
That's the problem here. This is where a slippery slope argument is not a fallacy, but a valid argument: the argument used is one of effect, not of technology. As a result, anytime anything comes out of a communication service that anyone disapproves with, it will get shut down with the same reasoning. That should terrify you.
Do you understand the concept of statistics? If I have a run of 5 heads when flipping a coin, does that automatically mean that the coin isn't random?
And if you're looking for predictions that came true, there are quite a few of them. One of the more obscure ones is that some of the botanical organizations had to update their maps of where certain species thrive - generally moving everything northward.
Good grief, AC. If you want to flame me, at least know that the full name of a Skinner box is an operant conditioning chamber. And if you want to stretch definitions beyond breaking points, everything is the same as anything.
And it seems I have a mod stalker. I must have really pissed someone off.
I know it's an AC, but I'm replying anyway because this is a widely held belief in certain circles.
When media asked Assange about the risks to human lives because of their first releases, Assange stated that he didn't care and that their deaths served his purposes well. Assange is a sociopath and repeatedly on recorded saying people deserve to die for his cause and that its a just death.
Complete bullshit. I know exactly what story you're talking about: http://wikileaks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/07/which_is_it_mr_assange The deaths occurred because the Kenyan people decided to riot and face death of their own accord, a decision they based on information leaked on Wikileaks. These people actively chose to fight a tyrant. They weren't executed based on information in the leak.
In short, just the fuck up. You don't have a clue.
Kinda. But at least MMOGs provide fun ways to hang out with friends, and game mechanics similar to regular single-player games. The good ones even have a good story. Zynga games have none of that.
Not really. Wikileaks is dead. They can't protect their documents, what makes you think they can protect their sources? They won't receive a single valuable document anymore.
I still think that the idea behind Wikileaks - an untraceable and unblockable repository of whistleblowing documents - is brilliant and necessary. I'm starting to also think that Assange is the wrong person to run this project. This kind of project requires someone at the helm whose single, overarching goal is to enforce its basic principle, at the cost of everything else. Because if the project is fails to be untraceable, no one will submit documents. If the project fails to be unblockable, no one will be able to access it. If it doesn't contain whistleblowing documents - documents that show wrongdoing, but not who uncovered or fought the wrongdoing, it will be a clearinghouse for reprisal targeting.
At this point, I don't understand what Assange is doing. If the document is out there, why post it on Wikileaks? It doesn't add anything to the discussion. It only shows that Wikileaks can't be trusted to be perform its stated mission. I was thinking for a while that maybe Assange is indeed being set up. But right now, it's quite clear that Assange is incapable of playing with the big boys, and will instead jeopardize the entire idea behind Wikileaks, just to get even.
Here's hoping that someone learns from Assange's mistakes and creates an independent project that does Wikileaks right.
Yes, consumers do not need Disney. They also don't need the Internet, cable, a fancy house or even clothes. Let's just dispense with the discussion of need and say that someone wants something, and they have roughly identified what it is they want.
In this case, just for the sake of argument, let's say that that's a well-written animated movie that was released in the last 5 years, appropriate for kids and adults of all ages. Shouldn't be hard, right? Well, for a very large section of population, that's Pixar, and therefore Disney. For a lot of people, this means that a Netflix contract with Starz is the only way that they're going to get what they're looking for through Netflix. The switching barrier is that only one distributor has the story that they're looking for, and switching distributor is completely pointless.
Can you settle for something else? Sure. I mean, I can watch Star Trek for a couple of hours without noticing time go by. But I will have changed product. It's like walking into a hardware store looking for a hammer, and walking out with a saw because no one within 100 miles carries a hammer. Sure, they're both handy tools, but I'm changing my woodworking plans.
You can argue that the movie situation is similar to Ford versus Toyota, although I would say that you're missing the visceral connection that people have with stories, as opposed to with things. No one says "That Ford truck speaks to me". Many people say "That movie speaks to me".
Zynga games are really not games. They're Skinner boxes. You unlock more stuff by performing many repetitive actions (clicking different areas on the areas for 5 minutes, for example). The more repetitive actions you perform, the more pictures and widgets you unlock. Nothing of what you unlock changes the game in any significant fashion. But people keep clicking, because that's how we work. And Zynga has figured out that some people are willing to pay money to not have to click so much, and still unlock stuff. So they have many, many things that can be unlocked for just a few dollars here and there; none of which changes the game, but just lets you get stuff faster.
In essence, Zynga games ask you to pay to not play them. The author of this article argues that that's just one way of doing microtransactions, and that there are many other ways: TF2-style cosmetic changes, BF Heroes-style game-breaking changes, etc.
And people don't want to reread a sentence three times to figure out what it actually means. Then, there's the issue that if someone can't be arsed to put together a coherent sentence, they probably couldn't be arsed to put together a coherent argument.
Grammar is an easy filter by which I determine whether I should read someone's work. I'm not alone in that.
And finally....
Grammar nazi's, by contrast, are just autistics who've managed to find a dictionary.
You realize that a dictionary has nothing to do with grammar, right? Right? See above for correlation between content and form.
Slashdot Mirror
Very true. It's a great way to live your life. It's a terrible way to create economic policy.
Economies of scale are barriers of entry. The existence of economies of scale in every market means that the free market at the core of traditional capitalism (invisible hand, etc) does not and cannot exist. At that point, the only thing that needs to be discussed is what kind of market distortions need to be introduced to best approximate the workings of a theoretical free market.
Then tell me exactly where that is in your theory of Capitalism. Feel free to quote me some passages from some authors.
You're taking it too literally. Companies can be formed just like they are now - people getting together, pooling their money, getting investment from elsewhere, etc. Once you hire employees though, they get a share in the say over the direction of the company, no matter how far down the totem pole they are. In Germany, this is done by requiring representatives of the employees to sit on the board of directors. Does this make selling the entire company more difficult? Sure does. Does this reduce the amount of money someone else might pay for it? Of course.
You also misunderstand what it means to reap the benefit: the benefit here is stable employment, with the idea that an employee will have more of the long-term interest of the company at heart than a venture capitalist looking to cash out their profits. Once you leave the company, you have decided to give up that benefit.
I'm shocked at the level of rational discussion in this thread. I thought this was going to be an epic flamefest, but instead, it's a rational discourse of where Marx got it right, where he got it wrong, and how this ties into today's economic policy.
Carry on, Slashdot.
Thanks for pointing this out. I hadn't heard of this quote. Seems we really are just rehashing the past.
It expects people to be people, not ants.
No. It expects people to be able to act rationally and in their long-term best interest. That's still not how people work.
Care to explain that? A truly free market - no barriers to entry, perfect information available instantly about all products in the market - stabilizes its price at the zero profit point. That's different from moving towards a monopoly market, which by definition can extract monopoly rents that are above the cost of the product.
And even that's stretching it. Studies found that people might do what's best for the immediate short term (chocolate for passwords? a little money now instead of lots of blow later?), but on average do not do what's best in the long-run. And that's where hardcore libertarians fall down.
Libertarianism, capitalism, communism all have ideas that are worth implementing. But we need to realize that all the main forms of economic policy, in their pure, distilled form, fall apart because of human nature.
You mean, like the Russians in Afghanistan? Yeah, that worked out so well. And even the Romans abandoned certain areas wholesale (North of the Roman wall in England, East of the Rhine, etc.) due to local resistance and ambushes.
Governments are the biggest, most "evil" corporations of all. Bloated, inefficient, and corrupt, they make the laws and therefore are above them. Even worse, they have no incentive to please the people using their services because, unlike a corporation which must compete for customers in order to survive, you are forced to pay the government at gunpoint.
Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were actually a rational person. Instead, you're one of "those" "libertarians". Nevermind, carry on. The men in white wil be by shortly. Alternatively, I hear there's a project to build islands just for you. Feel free to go check that out.
What my signature implies is that Google is hypocritical for professing to be an openness advocate when their core product is as closed and proprietary as Microsoft Windows.
What your signature implies is that you don't understand the difference between an OS and a search engine, and between security research and information research.
Gawker better have some proof. They're the World of the News of Silicon Valley. In the meantime...
If it's true, the answer is simple: yes, of course they need to disclose it. Actually, it doesn't matter whether you're a celebrity or not. You're supposed to disclose for-profit postings.
If it's not, there's nothing to say.
It really all boils down to whether Gawker is making shit up or not.
Probably because you have a brand new account. Post for a little while, and the restriction should go away. Standard restriction is about 30 seconds or so, and that's just to prevent a lot of "me too!" posts.
Except that the rationale used for shutting down FB and Twitter is exactly the same as the one that would be used to shut down a communication service that is FOSS, respects privacy, has no censorship (you're missing a citation for that, btw - sounds to me you're mistaking reporting pages by the community with actual filtering) and otherwise farts unicorns and lives on rainbows.
That's the problem here. This is where a slippery slope argument is not a fallacy, but a valid argument: the argument used is one of effect, not of technology. As a result, anytime anything comes out of a communication service that anyone disapproves with, it will get shut down with the same reasoning. That should terrify you.
Do you understand the concept of statistics? If I have a run of 5 heads when flipping a coin, does that automatically mean that the coin isn't random?
And if you're looking for predictions that came true, there are quite a few of them. One of the more obscure ones is that some of the botanical organizations had to update their maps of where certain species thrive - generally moving everything northward.
I can only find one tricorder app on the Android market. And the one I have installed has gone missing. At least they didn't remotely remove it.
Meh, hopefully they can bring them back with a similar name. Quadcorder maybe?
You should look into some anger management. All that bad temper is just going to give you a heart attack.
Good grief, AC. If you want to flame me, at least know that the full name of a Skinner box is an operant conditioning chamber. And if you want to stretch definitions beyond breaking points, everything is the same as anything.
And it seems I have a mod stalker. I must have really pissed someone off.
I know it's an AC, but I'm replying anyway because this is a widely held belief in certain circles.
When media asked Assange about the risks to human lives because of their first releases, Assange stated that he didn't care and that their deaths served his purposes well. Assange is a sociopath and repeatedly on recorded saying people deserve to die for his cause and that its a just death.
Complete bullshit. I know exactly what story you're talking about: http://wikileaks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/07/which_is_it_mr_assange The deaths occurred because the Kenyan people decided to riot and face death of their own accord, a decision they based on information leaked on Wikileaks. These people actively chose to fight a tyrant. They weren't executed based on information in the leak.
In short, just the fuck up. You don't have a clue.
Kinda. But at least MMOGs provide fun ways to hang out with friends, and game mechanics similar to regular single-player games. The good ones even have a good story. Zynga games have none of that.
Not really. Wikileaks is dead. They can't protect their documents, what makes you think they can protect their sources? They won't receive a single valuable document anymore.
I still think that the idea behind Wikileaks - an untraceable and unblockable repository of whistleblowing documents - is brilliant and necessary. I'm starting to also think that Assange is the wrong person to run this project. This kind of project requires someone at the helm whose single, overarching goal is to enforce its basic principle, at the cost of everything else. Because if the project is fails to be untraceable, no one will submit documents. If the project fails to be unblockable, no one will be able to access it. If it doesn't contain whistleblowing documents - documents that show wrongdoing, but not who uncovered or fought the wrongdoing, it will be a clearinghouse for reprisal targeting.
At this point, I don't understand what Assange is doing. If the document is out there, why post it on Wikileaks? It doesn't add anything to the discussion. It only shows that Wikileaks can't be trusted to be perform its stated mission. I was thinking for a while that maybe Assange is indeed being set up. But right now, it's quite clear that Assange is incapable of playing with the big boys, and will instead jeopardize the entire idea behind Wikileaks, just to get even.
Here's hoping that someone learns from Assange's mistakes and creates an independent project that does Wikileaks right.
Yes, consumers do not need Disney. They also don't need the Internet, cable, a fancy house or even clothes. Let's just dispense with the discussion of need and say that someone wants something, and they have roughly identified what it is they want.
In this case, just for the sake of argument, let's say that that's a well-written animated movie that was released in the last 5 years, appropriate for kids and adults of all ages. Shouldn't be hard, right? Well, for a very large section of population, that's Pixar, and therefore Disney. For a lot of people, this means that a Netflix contract with Starz is the only way that they're going to get what they're looking for through Netflix. The switching barrier is that only one distributor has the story that they're looking for, and switching distributor is completely pointless.
Can you settle for something else? Sure. I mean, I can watch Star Trek for a couple of hours without noticing time go by. But I will have changed product. It's like walking into a hardware store looking for a hammer, and walking out with a saw because no one within 100 miles carries a hammer. Sure, they're both handy tools, but I'm changing my woodworking plans.
You can argue that the movie situation is similar to Ford versus Toyota, although I would say that you're missing the visceral connection that people have with stories, as opposed to with things. No one says "That Ford truck speaks to me". Many people say "That movie speaks to me".
Zynga games are really not games. They're Skinner boxes. You unlock more stuff by performing many repetitive actions (clicking different areas on the areas for 5 minutes, for example). The more repetitive actions you perform, the more pictures and widgets you unlock. Nothing of what you unlock changes the game in any significant fashion. But people keep clicking, because that's how we work. And Zynga has figured out that some people are willing to pay money to not have to click so much, and still unlock stuff. So they have many, many things that can be unlocked for just a few dollars here and there; none of which changes the game, but just lets you get stuff faster.
In essence, Zynga games ask you to pay to not play them. The author of this article argues that that's just one way of doing microtransactions, and that there are many other ways: TF2-style cosmetic changes, BF Heroes-style game-breaking changes, etc.
And people don't want to reread a sentence three times to figure out what it actually means. Then, there's the issue that if someone can't be arsed to put together a coherent sentence, they probably couldn't be arsed to put together a coherent argument.
Grammar is an easy filter by which I determine whether I should read someone's work. I'm not alone in that.
And finally....
Grammar nazi's, by contrast, are just autistics who've managed to find a dictionary.
You realize that a dictionary has nothing to do with grammar, right? Right? See above for correlation between content and form.