I think they (or we, I've said a similar thing on a few occasions) are shortening "direct democracy" to democracy. I presume there varying levels of directness in different democracy systems, but the point is, in the US, thee people should not be able to vote in some national health care nonsense (for example) because the elected people should not have the power to be able to do that. They should be democratically elected to uphold the constitution. So, in that respect they do not have supreme power because the constitution restricts it. In the UK there is less restrictions on the power, for example the power to take away free speech. I'm no lawyer, as you may have guessed, but that is just my perception of it.
Won't the urban sprawl problem fix it self (after a long while but nevertheless.) TBH I don't remember seeing an urban sprawl before so I'm just guessing what it is like. The land price of part of the urban sprawl nearer the town will increase in price as it is nearer the jobs and shops and the owners will be encouraged to sell it to a couple of people to build more houses on their, or they may sell part of the land so someone else can build another house there. I'm sure there are other ways it would happen that was just one example, but the point is that higher density buildings will grow outward throughout the urban sprawl.
I haven't mentioned zoning, maybe that is one thing that slows the natural process down.
University of Toronto economist Matthew Turner charges that "a lot of people out there don't like urban sprawl, and those people are trying to hijack the obesity epidemic to further the smart-growth agenda [and] change how cities look."
Well, I guess it isn't any worse than the people doing the zoning have already done.
"bad things happen, like toll roads, dumped sewage and dirty water."
Hey, but government wasn't doing their job of protecting private property if they allowed the dumping of sewage and dirty water! In many cases where that has happened it is because the government has owned these, as you said they are not motivated by profit that much because they have the monopoly on tax, they are motivated by power.
Toll roads are not needed now-a-days for charging access to private roads, RFID chips and such could be used instead. In the UK they tax massive amounts on petrol, and tax discs as well, so it is not like it would be more expensive under a private system. Then there are massive queues because people are not charged more for using a busy road, even though obviously there is a higher demand for them!
And Standard Oil fiasco was a farce anyway. It only maintained a monopoly because it could bring customer what they wanted, cheapest. It was actually slowly loosing market share by the time the law was past. The Truth About the "Robber Barons"
It seems utterly stupid to trust government to regulate something when it is actively giving corporations monopoly rights!! I guess this is because a previous special privilege deal has affected another group of people negatively so they lobby for government polices that help them. And the cycle continues.
On a quick note, Standard Oil was already loosing market share before it was broken up.
Your argument seems to be held on the premise that competition creates an incentive for people to cheat. Cheat how? By cheating the workers or the customers?
If the customers are cheated, they will go to a different competitor, if no decent competitors exist an entrepreneurial customer will start his own competing company.
The companies are customers to the worker, who sells his services to the employer's company. For example, an employee of Standard Oil values the money he gets more than the hours he puts in. So, they are merely choosing the best offer, he may go and work on a farm or something if he wanted, but instead he chooses the industry because that is better for him.
My assumption is that private property rights and contracts are upheld. If this, 100 years ago, was not done properly then the government is at fault because that was their job.
100 years ago there was not a lot of wealth in the world so it had to be created. That is why children worked, that is why it was dangerous. As more wealth was created, work hours went down and children could go to school. The market decided the time this happened, not the government, the government simply made some laws and took the credit. If anything it would have created unemployment for the people who still wanted to work long hours. What would they do instead? You can not create wealth out of thin air, it needs to be created. It is Utopian to think government can click its fingers to make this stuff happen.
Ones I can think of: some corporations may price fix, or say they will limit their production. Or they may try and under cut prices. But these tactics don't work in the long run. A great story I read in an article was about a chemical supplier: a chemist found a new, cheaper way to create some chemical, so he sets up his company. Then he decides to do business in Europe but the monopoly there (natural monopoly I presume) didn't like that so they said they would undercut him in America. Of course the chemist just buys the chemical at a cheaper price and then sells it in Europe:) Also cartels can fail from the inside because one company will always want to make more money, so they would either sell more of the product secretly, or they would sell the product cheaper, again secretly. De Beers is an interesting one I wonder how they have kept their monopoly, although artificial diamonds are already challenging them. Maybe the market can seem a bit slow sometimes, but it works itself out.
In conclusion, I don't trust the state to step in because on one hand they create monopolies, and on the other hand they try and break them up. I don't trust that system. I think it would be better if they just enforced property rights.
This is Keynesian economics and it was proven wrong a long time ago. The public sector does not survive by fulfilling a demand particularly efficiently, if someone in the private sector spent inanely they would loose money and probably go bankrupt, so the people who use resources inefficiently are pushed out of the market by the efficient producers. Therefore, there is a much higher chance of a public sector worker to be wasting resources. This is because the money was stolen, and not voluntarily invested. People are usually more careful with their own money! This process simply pulls money out of more efficient spending and puts it into some big bureaucratic machine.
They can only maintain a monopoly by government intervention. If a monopoly forms and they keep the price high, then that is a signal for someone else to enter the market.
I've noticed that Slashdot has more opponents of net neutrality than the other sites (e.g. Digg). The people on those sites just parrot what Google says. The telecoms have colluded with government a lot more to the expense of everyone with their subsidies and monopolies, but that does not mean Google and co. do not have their own agenda either.
Well it certainly wasn't laissez-faire policies that created the monopolies. Policy-problem-policy-problem. This is simply another policy so it is pretty much guaranteed there it will result in a big problem, then there will be another policy, and the cycle continues.
Preposterous, giving a positive right to something means that something must be taken away from others to provide it. And, in practical terms I thought people had worked out that nationalised power and water was pretty shit. So, if you want the internet to go downhill by all means nationalise it (or regulate, or whatever...). If someone chose to live in a house in the middle of no where they should not be given subsided internet because it infringes on the rights of other people.
I thought the US was built on small government that was not meant to interfere with peoples lives.
150 or so years ago government stopped enforcing property rights properly; if property rights were upheld then pollution would not be as bad a problem. Although, I do concede it is more difficult dealing with CO2 than other pollutants
They stopped upholding property rights because they thought it was better for companies too pollute, rather than to spend money on cleaner coal, or ways to clean the smoke as it left the chimney. For example, I think I read somewhere an orchid grower sued a factory but the court decided it was better for everyone for the factory to belch out black smoke. There was no reason to develop cleaner technology so they did not spend resources on it.
The FDA is bad because it is too careful. Yes this means it has saved lives, but at the expense of thousands of lives that could have been saved because patients did not have access to new drugs that were not approved by the FDA. The cost to get drugs approved the FDA are astronomical and take a lot longer, that is why Europe gets many drugs more quickly and more cheaply. And, just look at the people crossing the border to Canada to buy drugs there. The FDA is too careful because if they did approve a drug that killed many people their names and reputations would be in the papers immediately. When a case like thalidomide comes along they can look great in the papers and have a reputation boost. Btw, the way they have done testing has since improved since that episode.
And free markets do regulate themselves because a company has a reputation to keep. If a company sells a drug that has disasterouis results it will not have any more customers, and it will probaly be sued in to the ground. The shareholders will not like that, or a company who does not take care. There could be competing regulatories, who also have a reputation to keep. Drug companies could use these so the patietn and the doctors have choice in what they want to take.
Yes things do go wrong but it is important to look at the otherside of the coin and look at how polices effect everyone.
I think you're confusing free markets with capitalism. Capitalism is all about monopolies, corruption, and destroying the competition. The entire idea is to take everything you can at any cost.
I think you're confusing capitalism with state-controlled non-free market "capitalism". Capitalism is mainly about private property. It is where the people engage in trade because it is mutually beneficial, they would not trade if it was not! For example, I pay for some apples because the apples are more useful to me than the money I have. The shop owner has lots of apples so the money is more useful to them. People who are successful do not get money at the expensive of other people. Any thing that is not free-market is not capitalism. Corporatism is probably a better word. This is when people use the government to achieve their own means at the expense of others. For example, protectionism, tariffs and subsidies. These measures are not capitalistic, they are part of coercive "capitalism".
When I was 10 or something I thought America was backwards for not having public health care. Now, I think it is a retarded and failing concept. First you point out that hospitals should not make money. Well, how do they calculate costs properly, how do they have an easy way to tell if they are doing well. Companies who make profit use this as an indication they are doing well. If profit is a stupid concept then why don't we socialise everything... If anything the most important services should be private sector because it is better and more efficient. It also takes money in taxes, this stops poorer people from being able to afford private medical care. Bismarck said his welfare state was a device to control the people. Even if the intentions of European countries were better, it still creates the same dependency and it means treating poor people like little children.
I didn't read it but I assume MS is trying to make a product for the people who speak this language.
So these people are clearly trying to use IP laws to profit, at the expense of the people who already know the language---the people who are going to buy it!! I'm sure MS would pass the cost along to them if they had to pay a fee. And, if the fee was too much they simply would not make the product---then everyone would loose.
Slashdot Mirror
I think they (or we, I've said a similar thing on a few occasions) are shortening "direct democracy" to democracy. I presume there varying levels of directness in different democracy systems, but the point is, in the US, thee people should not be able to vote in some national health care nonsense (for example) because the elected people should not have the power to be able to do that. They should be democratically elected to uphold the constitution. So, in that respect they do not have supreme power because the constitution restricts it. In the UK there is less restrictions on the power, for example the power to take away free speech. I'm no lawyer, as you may have guessed, but that is just my perception of it.
Won't the urban sprawl problem fix it self (after a long while but nevertheless.) TBH I don't remember seeing an urban sprawl before so I'm just guessing what it is like. The land price of part of the urban sprawl nearer the town will increase in price as it is nearer the jobs and shops and the owners will be encouraged to sell it to a couple of people to build more houses on their, or they may sell part of the land so someone else can build another house there. I'm sure there are other ways it would happen that was just one example, but the point is that higher density buildings will grow outward throughout the urban sprawl.
I haven't mentioned zoning, maybe that is one thing that slows the natural process down.
Well, I guess it isn't any worse than the people doing the zoning have already done.Hey, but government wasn't doing their job of protecting private property if they allowed the dumping of sewage and dirty water! In many cases where that has happened it is because the government has owned these, as you said they are not motivated by profit that much because they have the monopoly on tax, they are motivated by power.
Toll roads are not needed now-a-days for charging access to private roads, RFID chips and such could be used instead. In the UK they tax massive amounts on petrol, and tax discs as well, so it is not like it would be more expensive under a private system. Then there are massive queues because people are not charged more for using a busy road, even though obviously there is a higher demand for them!
It was encoded, then encrypted, and put on the disc. So the ripper has decrypted the disc and the resulting file is the original encoded file.
And Standard Oil fiasco was a farce anyway. It only maintained a monopoly because it could bring customer what they wanted, cheapest. It was actually slowly loosing market share by the time the law was past. The Truth About the "Robber Barons"
It seems utterly stupid to trust government to regulate something when it is actively giving corporations monopoly rights!! I guess this is because a previous special privilege deal has affected another group of people negatively so they lobby for government polices that help them. And the cycle continues.
I'd support regulation when two wrongs make a right.
On a quick note, Standard Oil was already loosing market share before it was broken up.
Your argument seems to be held on the premise that competition creates an incentive for people to cheat. Cheat how? By cheating the workers or the customers?
If the customers are cheated, they will go to a different competitor, if no decent competitors exist an entrepreneurial customer will start his own competing company.
The companies are customers to the worker, who sells his services to the employer's company. For example, an employee of Standard Oil values the money he gets more than the hours he puts in. So, they are merely choosing the best offer, he may go and work on a farm or something if he wanted, but instead he chooses the industry because that is better for him.
My assumption is that private property rights and contracts are upheld. If this, 100 years ago, was not done properly then the government is at fault because that was their job.
100 years ago there was not a lot of wealth in the world so it had to be created. That is why children worked, that is why it was dangerous. As more wealth was created, work hours went down and children could go to school. The market decided the time this happened, not the government, the government simply made some laws and took the credit. If anything it would have created unemployment for the people who still wanted to work long hours. What would they do instead? You can not create wealth out of thin air, it needs to be created. It is Utopian to think government can click its fingers to make this stuff happen.
What kind of barriers though?
Ones I can think of: some corporations may price fix, or say they will limit their production. Or they may try and under cut prices. But these tactics don't work in the long run. A great story I read in an article was about a chemical supplier: a chemist found a new, cheaper way to create some chemical, so he sets up his company. Then he decides to do business in Europe but the monopoly there (natural monopoly I presume) didn't like that so they said they would undercut him in America. Of course the chemist just buys the chemical at a cheaper price and then sells it in Europe :) Also cartels can fail from the inside because one company will always want to make more money, so they would either sell more of the product secretly, or they would sell the product cheaper, again secretly. De Beers is an interesting one I wonder how they have kept their monopoly, although artificial diamonds are already challenging them. Maybe the market can seem a bit slow sometimes, but it works itself out.
In conclusion, I don't trust the state to step in because on one hand they create monopolies, and on the other hand they try and break them up. I don't trust that system. I think it would be better if they just enforced property rights.
This is Keynesian economics and it was proven wrong a long time ago. The public sector does not survive by fulfilling a demand particularly efficiently, if someone in the private sector spent inanely they would loose money and probably go bankrupt, so the people who use resources inefficiently are pushed out of the market by the efficient producers. Therefore, there is a much higher chance of a public sector worker to be wasting resources. This is because the money was stolen, and not voluntarily invested. People are usually more careful with their own money! This process simply pulls money out of more efficient spending and puts it into some big bureaucratic machine.
They can only maintain a monopoly by government intervention. If a monopoly forms and they keep the price high, then that is a signal for someone else to enter the market.
I've noticed that Slashdot has more opponents of net neutrality than the other sites (e.g. Digg). The people on those sites just parrot what Google says. The telecoms have colluded with government a lot more to the expense of everyone with their subsidies and monopolies, but that does not mean Google and co. do not have their own agenda either.
Well it certainly wasn't laissez-faire policies that created the monopolies. Policy-problem-policy-problem. This is simply another policy so it is pretty much guaranteed there it will result in a big problem, then there will be another policy, and the cycle continues.
Could this be used to attack cancer cells?
Preposterous, giving a positive right to something means that something must be taken away from others to provide it. And, in practical terms I thought people had worked out that nationalised power and water was pretty shit. So, if you want the internet to go downhill by all means nationalise it (or regulate, or whatever...). If someone chose to live in a house in the middle of no where they should not be given subsided internet because it infringes on the rights of other people.
I thought the US was built on small government that was not meant to interfere with peoples lives.
150 or so years ago government stopped enforcing property rights properly; if property rights were upheld then pollution would not be as bad a problem. Although, I do concede it is more difficult dealing with CO2 than other pollutants
They stopped upholding property rights because they thought it was better for companies too pollute, rather than to spend money on cleaner coal, or ways to clean the smoke as it left the chimney. For example, I think I read somewhere an orchid grower sued a factory but the court decided it was better for everyone for the factory to belch out black smoke. There was no reason to develop cleaner technology so they did not spend resources on it.
CO2 is obviously a bit more difficult though. Maybe the biggest offenders could be made to cut down by class action lawsuits. This pie chart only shows 14% is generated from transportation so cars and stuff arent really much of offenders. (Glad I dont live in a city though, that's another problem).
The FDA is bad because it is too careful. Yes this means it has saved lives, but at the expense of thousands of lives that could have been saved because patients did not have access to new drugs that were not approved by the FDA. The cost to get drugs approved the FDA are astronomical and take a lot longer, that is why Europe gets many drugs more quickly and more cheaply. And, just look at the people crossing the border to Canada to buy drugs there. The FDA is too careful because if they did approve a drug that killed many people their names and reputations would be in the papers immediately. When a case like thalidomide comes along they can look great in the papers and have a reputation boost. Btw, the way they have done testing has since improved since that episode.
And free markets do regulate themselves because a company has a reputation to keep. If a company sells a drug that has disasterouis results it will not have any more customers, and it will probaly be sued in to the ground. The shareholders will not like that, or a company who does not take care. There could be competing regulatories, who also have a reputation to keep. Drug companies could use these so the patietn and the doctors have choice in what they want to take.
Yes things do go wrong but it is important to look at the otherside of the coin and look at how polices effect everyone.
64 bit mode has more registers which speeds up some things.
When I was 10 or something I thought America was backwards for not having public health care. Now, I think it is a retarded and failing concept. First you point out that hospitals should not make money. Well, how do they calculate costs properly, how do they have an easy way to tell if they are doing well. Companies who make profit use this as an indication they are doing well. If profit is a stupid concept then why don't we socialise everything... If anything the most important services should be private sector because it is better and more efficient. It also takes money in taxes, this stops poorer people from being able to afford private medical care. Bismarck said his welfare state was a device to control the people. Even if the intentions of European countries were better, it still creates the same dependency and it means treating poor people like little children.
I didn't read it but I assume MS is trying to make a product for the people who speak this language. So these people are clearly trying to use IP laws to profit, at the expense of the people who already know the language---the people who are going to buy it!! I'm sure MS would pass the cost along to them if they had to pay a fee. And, if the fee was too much they simply would not make the product---then everyone would loose.
That's like saying "The War on Poverty worked".
I've never seen them in the same place at the same time. Hmm...
I prefer Free Hat!, from South Park.
Isn't Norway a big-off welfare/nanny state, so they wouldn't know that? :P