Such things as savings + investment on the one hand, and waste + disasters on the other hand have clearly never entered your mind.
Yeah, that's right, in neither of my economics degrees did this enter my mind. However, as an empirical proposition, my statement stands up rather well. The world is not made up of people saving their own money and investing it in files and lawnmowers to increase their own production -- it's made up of workers, using capital owned by other people, and (implicitly) paying rent for the use of that capital to its owners.
Hasn't Karl Marx been proven wrong so many times it's not even funny?
Well no, as it happens (unless there is something funny about "none" that I have missed). Not his economic theories anyway (the political is another matter).
I'm a believer in free trade because I think that people produce more than they consume when they don't have governments stealing most of the product of their labor.
If people are "producing more than they consume", then someone is stealing some of the product of their labour.
"Does not yield a truth when quined" does not yield a truth when quined.
"Yields a falsehood when quined" does not yield a falsehood when quined. It yields a sentence whose truth value (in natural language) is indeterminate.
"Yields a sentence of indeterminate truth-value when quined" yields a sentence of indeterminated truth value when quined.
If you use a decent OS and don't surf as root, the options for hacking your PC online should be limited
Not for the government. Under this legislation, they would have the option of placing a telephone call saying "Give us root, or it's five to ten in the slammer". No burgling needed, and (it would appear) none of the tricky democratic accountability involved in getting permission to burgle. That's the nasty.
I have often read that the first thing Hitler did was outlaw private ownership of guns.
A canard -- guns were already all but illegal.
You seem to even support that occurring in Cuba with Castro with the statement "...with guns not allowed."
But Cuba was already a dictatorship
I have also read that Milosevic also passed numerous laws outlawing guns when he took power
Yugoslavia had been a dictatorship for many years under Tito (albeit a much less awful one). And Milosevic clearly had no intention of removing guns from circulation.
I do indeed think that governments will attempt to remove liberties one by one if the people don't speak up. Once the government is able to abolish guns, I believe that the people are in a precarious position from that point on
Having guns didn't help the Cubans (or indeed, the Chileans, Iraqis or Sudanese).
While countries which outlaw guns, such as Great Britain, may retain their freedom for years, as they have, they are still in a position of weakness should the wrong people take power.
Unfortunately, you cling to an eighteenth century vision of totalitarianism and its relationship to popular movements. Two hundred years ago, when the issue was imperialism and colonial revolution, it would be vital for there to be widespread gun ownership, so that an oppressed colony could gather a militia together and fight the colonial power.
In the twentieth century, however, the examples of Nazi Germany, Cuba, Russia and Yugoslavia show us that the popular militia is almost always on the side of the totalitarian power. I fear mobs, and I don't trust the people around me not to form one. And I think that an authoritarian mob is a much more likely proposition than a libertarian revolution (brown shirts rather than black flags).
That's why I, as a libertarian, support gun control as a necessary evil. If you believe that only government can oppress you, you will disagree. But don't blame me when the local Party show up at your door with rifles.
I agree. In history, other countries which followed down this path wound up ruled by dictators and wishing they hadn't allowed such "safety" measures: Cuba, Nazi Germany, Yugoslavia.
This is arguable at best for Nazi Germany and absolutely false for Cuba and Yugoslavia.
In Nazi Germany, weapons were removed from the population by the Allied powers as part of the Versailles settlement. And if disastrous mistakes hadn't been made in the Weimar Republic, Hitler would not have come to power. (In any case, your argument seems to presuppose widespread popular opposition to the Nazis in Germany, which there was not).
In Cuba, they were ruled by a dictator (Batista) with guns allowed, then they had a revolution, fought with guns, then they were ruled by a dictator (Castro) with guns not allowed. That's been a pretty unfortunate rock to be stuck to this century (rum and salsa excepted), but clearly has nothing to do with firearms policy.
In Yugoslavia, Tito took power at the end of the Second World War, following on directly from a monarchy. And indeed, under Tito, Yugoslavia was a fairly free country (albeit a one-party state). It was not a bad place to live at all. And despite compulsory registration, gun ownership in Yugoslavia was widespread, as has been tragically proved over the last ten years.
Your general attitude to government is one I share, but statements like this don't do much to advance it.
What annoys me is that I can't stand the EU's attitude to "national security", but I can't stand the US' attitude to privacy of personal information. It seems that everywhere you go, you either have to take it from the government, or take it from the corporations. This planet sucks.
Smithian economics would have you believe that it is
All apologies to/.ers for bringing this up, and do feel free to turn my karma to a thick yellow spray, but this is a crusade of mine . . .
Don't blame Smith for this one. The Wealth of Nations is a great book, and it doesn't take this sort of view at all. Smith has an incredibly sensible view of the power of free-market economics, while remaining utterly clear-minded about its drawbacks. And one of the things he is clearest about of all is the need for publicly funded education.
Karl Marx's Capital is also a great book. The nineteenth century was a great century.
Don't worry. I havewillnow sortingedwould that problem out fiveten years innowfromhere and will be patentingedif the idea anytime nowsoonfortyyearsago.
Unfortunately, RMS repeats a few myths about the PTA in this otherwise excellent essay.
1. IIRC, the PTA was passed by a Labour government, not a Conservative one.
2. In fact, the PTA would not necessarily linger on after peace in Northern Ireland. It was only passed for the current year, and must be debated, voted on and passed by the Houses of Parliament, or it lapses. Unlikely, I know, but the potential is there.
3. The attack on the right to silence comes from the Criminal Justice Act, which was passed by the last Conservative Government. In effect, it says that if you choose to rely in court on information which you refused (as in, were asked, but refused) to speak to the police about, they can mention this fact. Any infringement of liberty is bad, but this one is quite mild.
4. However, the CJA does not have any sunset provision like the PTA. WOrryingly, nor will the Electronic Communications Act.
And possilbly an.smear file where we can put words we don't want appearing on our screen. [I check from work and would love to be able to replace obsenity with the traditional @$#!.]
This would be a good idea -- I, on the other hand would like a file that replaced "***" with "uck".
Well, I always heard that there are two kinds of sex -- sex you pay for and sex you get for free -- and the only difference is that sex you pay for is cheaper.
Is the primary, intended use of BO2000 really remote network admin? hmmmmm maybe. This is where the legal concept of "recklessly" is very useful.
If I happen to be doing all sorts of useful research into a cure for malaria, and happen upon a genetic toxin that kills black people (this might happen, given that malaria immunity is linked to the sickle-cell gene), then I have a responsibility not to, for example, publish my results in "South African Racists' Weekly", noting that although my new formula is meant for innoculating white people against malaria, it can also be used to kill black people.
Similarly, I tend to think that BO2000 is a network admin tool which is also useful for cracking, and that its developers have not been shy in pointing out how useful it is for this purpose to people who might reasonably be expected to abuse it. So yeah, I'd say that CdC bear a degree of moral (possibly legal?) responsibility for its use.
Guns are not inherently dangerous products at all. Used properly, at a target range
I have no opinions whatsoever on the general subject of gun control. But this seems a little bit glib:
Used properly, at a target range
Guns were not designed to be shot at targets. Historically, they weren't designed to be shot at animals. It's at least arguable that "using a gun properly" means shooting it at a person, with intent to kill them.
Of course, cigarettes will not generally harm the user if used as time fuses on fertiliser bombs.
Let's take this a stage further. Are you prepared to defend the proposition that if I invent a gas chamber, and knowingly sell it to a totalitarian ruler, that I'm not in any way responsible for what he then does?
How about if I hand over a bunch of nerve gas ingredients to Saddam Hussein? Or if I design a special genetic toxin that gives cancer to black people and hand it over to the South Africans in the 1980s? No responsibility? It's clear that at some point designer's responsibility exists; the question is just what constitutes reasonable care or legitimate alternative use.
The refusal to live in the world gets the scientific community a very bad reputation which does not seem to be entirely undeserved.
It's a matter of "reasonable care". If I'm hit round the head by a baseball bat purchased at a sporting goods shop, I don't blame the shop.
If I'm hit round the head walking out of the local NAACP rally by a baseball bat bought from a baseball bat stall set up by the local sports shop to make a few bucks off the crowd of Klansmen which has assembled, I think I have a right to ask the guy what he thought he was playing at.
Similarly, if you write a virus "to demonstrate how a system can be compromised" (btw, since when is this the only or best way to demonstrate such a thing), then you have a responsibility to take reasonable care that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
no, virus, with the u pronounced long, and with good precedent. Virii would be the plural of "virius".
These guys think that there is no Latin plural, but I have to respectfully disagree. I would analogise "prospectus", which is quite definitely long u plural as well as being a second declension neuter not mentioned in the link.
Sorry, Hemos. Last I heard, most Fortune 500 CEOs were convinced that Microsoft would come out with something better than respiration, and were holding their breath . . .
While I imagine Microsoft does accept certain subsidies (property tax abatements and the like) I personally don't think that their competitors are under any disadvantage attibutable to any alleged "monopoly".
I'd say that they operate using a government enforced monopoly on Windows (which is what copyright is, pure and simple). If you reproduce copies of Windows, then men with guns will come round to your door, just as surely as if you didn't pay your taxes. I also might quibble over whether they really operate in a non-coercive marketplace, but that's of secondary importance.
I'd also disagree with you on whether corporations can be considered on the same legal footing as natural individuals. Limited liability corporations (as opposed to partnerships) are basically creations of the state, with all sorts of protections denied to the rest of us (most importantly, the right to walk away from their debts).
My comment about "not a consistent libertarian" was a jibe against those who believe in the concept of intellectual property, and it was wrong of me to personalise it -- sorry. I just think that points 2 and 3 of the LP platform are inconsistent unless you do not allow intellectual creations to be property. And copyright and patents do not fit in well with the Lockean rule of acquisition of property, in that "as much and as good" is not left for others.
I've always thought that an acceptable compromise would be to teach the kids in Kansas that evolution explains all the fruit flies, dogs, duck-billed platypuses and such all around us, plus all the plants, plus all the birds, plus all the apes, but that one single species of mammal called homo sapiens was no part of this process, hacing been created ex nihilo by an act of the divine will 6000 years ago.
The beauty of this compromise is that the smart ones will see through it immediately (and also learn a salutory lesson about the honesty of authority figures), while the rest will never need to be troubled by things they wouldn't understand anyway. jsm
Slashdot Mirror
Such things as savings + investment on the one hand, and waste + disasters on the other hand have clearly never entered your mind.
Yeah, that's right, in neither of my economics degrees did this enter my mind. However, as an empirical proposition, my statement stands up rather well. The world is not made up of people saving their own money and investing it in files and lawnmowers to increase their own production -- it's made up of workers, using capital owned by other people, and (implicitly) paying rent for the use of that capital to its owners.
Hasn't Karl Marx been proven wrong so many times it's not even funny?
Well no, as it happens (unless there is something funny about "none" that I have missed). Not his economic theories anyway (the political is another matter).
jsm
I'm a believer in free trade because I think that people produce more than they consume when they don't have governments stealing most of the product of their labor.
If people are "producing more than they consume", then someone is stealing some of the product of their labour.
As Karl Marx pointed out.
jsm
"Does not yield a truth when quined" does not yield a truth when quined.
"Yields a falsehood when quined" does not yield a falsehood when quined. It yields a sentence whose truth value (in natural language) is indeterminate.
"Yields a sentence of indeterminate truth-value when quined" yields a sentence of indeterminated truth value when quined.
Except, of course, that it doesn't.
jsm
It was printed in the London Observer a couple of weeks ago, and I'm not aware of any official denial.
jsm
If you use a decent OS and don't surf as root, the options for hacking your PC online should be limited
Not for the government. Under this legislation, they would have the option of placing a telephone call saying "Give us root, or it's five to ten in the slammer". No burgling needed, and (it would appear) none of the tricky democratic accountability involved in getting permission to burgle. That's the nasty.
jsm
I have often read that the first thing Hitler did was outlaw private ownership of guns.
A canard -- guns were already all but illegal.
You seem to even support that occurring in Cuba with Castro with the statement "...with guns not allowed."
But Cuba was already a dictatorship
I have also read that Milosevic also passed numerous laws outlawing guns when he took power
Yugoslavia had been a dictatorship for many years under Tito (albeit a much less awful one). And Milosevic clearly had no intention of removing guns from circulation.
I do indeed think that governments will attempt to remove liberties one by one if the people don't speak up. Once the government is able to abolish guns, I believe that the people are in a precarious position from that point on
Having guns didn't help the Cubans (or indeed, the Chileans, Iraqis or Sudanese).
While countries which outlaw guns, such as Great Britain, may retain their freedom for years, as they have, they are still in a position of weakness should the wrong people take power.
Unfortunately, you cling to an eighteenth century vision of totalitarianism and its relationship to popular movements. Two hundred years ago, when the issue was imperialism and colonial revolution, it would be vital for there to be widespread gun ownership, so that an oppressed colony could gather a militia together and fight the colonial power.
In the twentieth century, however, the examples of Nazi Germany, Cuba, Russia and Yugoslavia show us that the popular militia is almost always on the side of the totalitarian power. I fear mobs, and I don't trust the people around me not to form one. And I think that an authoritarian mob is a much more likely proposition than a libertarian revolution (brown shirts rather than black flags).
That's why I, as a libertarian, support gun control as a necessary evil. If you believe that only government can oppress you, you will disagree. But don't blame me when the local Party show up at your door with rifles.
jsm
I agree. In history, other countries which followed down this path wound up ruled by dictators and wishing they hadn't allowed such "safety" measures: Cuba, Nazi Germany, Yugoslavia.
This is arguable at best for Nazi Germany and absolutely false for Cuba and Yugoslavia.
In Nazi Germany, weapons were removed from the population by the Allied powers as part of the Versailles settlement. And if disastrous mistakes hadn't been made in the Weimar Republic, Hitler would not have come to power. (In any case, your argument seems to presuppose widespread popular opposition to the Nazis in Germany, which there was not).
In Cuba, they were ruled by a dictator (Batista) with guns allowed, then they had a revolution, fought with guns, then they were ruled by a dictator (Castro) with guns not allowed. That's been a pretty unfortunate rock to be stuck to this century (rum and salsa excepted), but clearly has nothing to do with firearms policy.
In Yugoslavia, Tito took power at the end of the Second World War, following on directly from a monarchy. And indeed, under Tito, Yugoslavia was a fairly free country (albeit a one-party state). It was not a bad place to live at all. And despite compulsory registration, gun ownership in Yugoslavia was widespread, as has been tragically proved over the last ten years.
Your general attitude to government is one I share, but statements like this don't do much to advance it.
jsm
What annoys me is that I can't stand the EU's attitude to "national security", but I can't stand the US' attitude to privacy of personal information. It seems that everywhere you go, you either have to take it from the government, or take it from the corporations. This planet sucks.
jsm
No, it's just you and you are being paranoid.
Nobody else in the world is remotely worried about the government being able to randomly frame them with undetectable fake evidence.
Why would they be?
Of course it's a very scary privilege!!!!! fer crying out loud.
jsm
MOTBO=master of the bleedin' obvious
Smithian economics would have you believe that it is
/.ers for bringing this up, and do feel free to turn my karma to a thick yellow spray, but this is a crusade of mine . . .
All apologies to
Don't blame Smith for this one. The Wealth of Nations is a great book, and it doesn't take this sort of view at all. Smith has an incredibly sensible view of the power of free-market economics, while remaining utterly clear-minded about its drawbacks. And one of the things he is clearest about of all is the need for publicly funded education.
Karl Marx's Capital is also a great book. The nineteenth century was a great century.
jsm
Don't worry. I havewillnow sortingedwould that problem out fiveten years innowfromhere and will be patentingedif the idea anytime nowsoonfortyyearsago.
jsm
Unfortunately, RMS repeats a few myths about the PTA in this otherwise excellent essay.
1. IIRC, the PTA was passed by a Labour government, not a Conservative one.
2. In fact, the PTA would not necessarily linger on after peace in Northern Ireland. It was only passed for the current year, and must be debated, voted on and passed by the Houses of Parliament, or it lapses. Unlikely, I know, but the potential is there.
3. The attack on the right to silence comes from the Criminal Justice Act, which was passed by the last Conservative Government. In effect, it says that if you choose to rely in court on information which you refused (as in, were asked, but refused) to speak to the police about, they can mention this fact. Any infringement of liberty is bad, but this one is quite mild.
4. However, the CJA does not have any sunset provision like the PTA. WOrryingly, nor will the Electronic Communications Act.
jsm
And possilbly an .smear file where we can put words we don't want appearing on our screen. [I check from work and would love to be able to replace obsenity with the traditional @$#!.]
This would be a good idea -- I, on the other hand would like a file that replaced "***" with "uck".
jsm
Well, I always heard that there are two kinds of sex -- sex you pay for and sex you get for free -- and the only difference is that sex you pay for is cheaper.
what the hell, I can afford -2 karma.
jsm
Is the primary, intended use of BO2000 really remote network admin? hmmmmm maybe. This is where the legal concept of "recklessly" is very useful.
If I happen to be doing all sorts of useful research into a cure for malaria, and happen upon a genetic toxin that kills black people (this might happen, given that malaria immunity is linked to the sickle-cell gene), then I have a responsibility not to, for example, publish my results in "South African Racists' Weekly", noting that although my new formula is meant for innoculating white people against malaria, it can also be used to kill black people.
Similarly, I tend to think that BO2000 is a network admin tool which is also useful for cracking, and that its developers have not been shy in pointing out how useful it is for this purpose to people who might reasonably be expected to abuse it. So yeah, I'd say that CdC bear a degree of moral (possibly legal?) responsibility for its use.
jsm
Guns are not inherently dangerous products at all. Used properly, at a target range
I have no opinions whatsoever on the general subject of gun control. But this seems a little bit glib:
Used properly, at a target range
Guns were not designed to be shot at targets. Historically, they weren't designed to be shot at animals. It's at least arguable that "using a gun properly" means shooting it at a person, with intent to kill them.
Of course, cigarettes will not generally harm the user if used as time fuses on fertiliser bombs.
jsm
Let's take this a stage further. Are you prepared to defend the proposition that if I invent a gas chamber, and knowingly sell it to a totalitarian ruler, that I'm not in any way responsible for what he then does?
How about if I hand over a bunch of nerve gas ingredients to Saddam Hussein? Or if I design a special genetic toxin that gives cancer to black people and hand it over to the South Africans in the 1980s? No responsibility? It's clear that at some point designer's responsibility exists; the question is just what constitutes reasonable care or legitimate alternative use.
The refusal to live in the world gets the scientific community a very bad reputation which does not seem to be entirely undeserved.
jsm
It's a matter of "reasonable care". If I'm hit round the head by a baseball bat purchased at a sporting goods shop, I don't blame the shop.
If I'm hit round the head walking out of the local NAACP rally by a baseball bat bought from a baseball bat stall set up by the local sports shop to make a few bucks off the crowd of Klansmen which has assembled, I think I have a right to ask the guy what he thought he was playing at.
Similarly, if you write a virus "to demonstrate how a system can be compromised" (btw, since when is this the only or best way to demonstrate such a thing), then you have a responsibility to take reasonable care that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
jsm
no, virus, with the u pronounced long, and with good precedent. Virii would be the plural of "virius".
These guys think that there is no Latin plural, but I have to respectfully disagree. I would analogise "prospectus", which is quite definitely long u plural as well as being a second declension neuter not mentioned in the link.
jsm
I think that if you stay to the end, you'll find that the nerds are the winners in that string of 80s movies.
The clue's in the title, you see, "Revenge of the Nerds".
If they were the losers, it would be called "Ass-kicking of the Nerds", or "Triumph of the Jocks", or "Many Nerds Hurt", or something.
God, I'm bored.
jsm
If that's the funniest thing you read in weeks, then either you forgot to check this out on the Onion, or you're just not as puerile as I am.
.sig was actually quite funny.
jsm
PS: Before its premature termination, that
Sorry, Hemos. Last I heard, most Fortune 500 CEOs were convinced that Microsoft would come out with something better than respiration, and were holding their breath . . .
jsm
Thanks very much for that link!
While I imagine Microsoft does accept certain subsidies (property tax abatements and the like) I personally don't think that their competitors are under any disadvantage attibutable to any alleged "monopoly".
I'd say that they operate using a government enforced monopoly on Windows (which is what copyright is, pure and simple). If you reproduce copies of Windows, then men with guns will come round to your door, just as surely as if you didn't pay your taxes. I also might quibble over whether they really operate in a non-coercive marketplace, but that's of secondary importance.
I'd also disagree with you on whether corporations can be considered on the same legal footing as natural individuals. Limited liability corporations (as opposed to partnerships) are basically creations of the state, with all sorts of protections denied to the rest of us (most importantly, the right to walk away from their debts).
My comment about "not a consistent libertarian" was a jibe against those who believe in the concept of intellectual property, and it was wrong of me to personalise it -- sorry. I just think that points 2 and 3 of the LP platform are inconsistent unless you do not allow intellectual creations to be property. And copyright and patents do not fit in well with the Lockean rule of acquisition of property, in that "as much and as good" is not left for others.
cheers
jsm
I've always thought that an acceptable compromise would be to teach the kids in Kansas that evolution explains all the fruit flies, dogs, duck-billed platypuses and such all around us, plus all the plants, plus all the birds, plus all the apes, but that one single species of mammal called homo sapiens was no part of this process, hacing been created ex nihilo by an act of the divine will 6000 years ago.
The beauty of this compromise is that the smart ones will see through it immediately (and also learn a salutory lesson about the honesty of authority figures), while the rest will never need to be troubled by things they wouldn't understand anyway.
jsm
It's all right mate, they did invent one, but then we copied it and changed the ciphers.
jsm