While Mussolini may actually never have *said* the quoted sentence, it still exactly describes what Mussolini and the fascists *did*. (Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism).
Fascist economic policy pretty much followed classical liberal lines, as laid out by the "carta del lavoro" in Italy.
The following quote by Mussolini apparently has a reliable source:
"The [Fascist] government will accord full freedom to private enterprise and will abandon all intervention in private economy."
Nothing is gained by the investors or by the citizens of China by Google exiting the market ?
Wrong: if the Chinese government had to recognize that it looses mutually benefitial business opportunities by oppressing human rights, it might change its human rights policies to the benefit (and freedom) of the citizens of China.
Unfortunately the greed of Western investors and their preference for profit over people just teaches oppressive governments that they human rights violations don't do them any harm so that they can just continue oppressing their people.
No. In a democracy you elect representatives and those decide for you. If all representatives are against your opinions that's it. By no means does "democracy" necessarily mean "parliamentary democracy" or "representative democracy". Of course, for practical reasons large democratic societies are normally organized that way. But even so, if the elected representatives consistently and notoriously disregard the will of the people, the people should sooner or later notice and should not re-elect those representatives. Chances are that the successors show more respect for the people. There's one big caveat however: all this can only work if people get enough education and if information can freely disseminate. If all media are controlled by a few private entities with their own agendas then the people can not even notice that it is being betrayed.
There are several definitions of "democracy". The simplest just means "rule by the people". However, all really meaningful definitions also comprise equality before the law and unalienable human rights, such as the right to life and freedom of expression. Your analogy doesn't work with those definitions, as it describes a case in which both human rights and equality before the law are violated. (And even intentionally so.)
The grand-parent is actually right: As long as equality and human rights are respected, the will of the majority of the people should be decisive for how affairs get handled in a democratic society. This would include the handling of so-called intellectual property. (I.e. whether society accepts that concept at all and if it does, how far it should reach and how it should be enforced.)
Keep in mind that he's communist only in the sense that he believes there is (or ought to be) no such thing as private property. If you had actually seen the lecture you would know how utterly silly your comment is. Stallman explicitly talked about how if you own a PC, a book, a CD, a DVD or whatever you paid your money for, you should actually be able to use it in whatever way you like (lend it to a friend, inherit it to your children, read/hear/watch it as often as you like), because it is your property. Actually the "freedom" to use your own property was at the core of his reaoning and he showed how DRM and proprietary software limit this freedom.
When I heard this I was already wondering whether he actually is a freaking libertarian, who doesn't acknowledge that private property always only comes with a social responsibility. However when he continued, it became clear that he fortunately isn't. Rather he carefully compared the social consequences that different sets of copyright rules would have.
That's great for everyone in the high-tech industry. However, all those jobs with lower skill requirements are being transferred to other countries. Germany is more than just car production. Most jobs with lower skills requirement are not in production but in the service sector. (Packer, driver, waiter, call center agent.) Therefore it's nonsense to say that those get transferred to other countries. The problem is that not enough such jobs are created in the first place because of low incomes which lead to low demand.
Apart from that there would be a lot of job opportunities in the public sector given the sorry state of schools, hospitals, streets and so on. Of course they can't be paid for if the state budget gets driven down further and further to the benefit of the capital holders.
In many areas they're still too high. Again, average values don't paint the complete picture. They say more than sweeping statements which aren't founded on any values at all.
In addition, you cut out some of the other factors I mentioned. Which ones?
Maybe you should learn to interpret the numbers correctly. Or look at something beyond those reports. Like a German newspaper. Please tell me which of the numbers I've given you must be interpreted in a different way. An average state quota is an average state quota. No room for interpretation there.
And do you seriously suggest that looking into the mainstream German newspapers and magazines (FAZ, SZ, Spiegel, Focus, Zeit) who all regurgitate the usual market-radical spin and are influenced by corporate lobbyism is a better idea than looking at real numbers from independent international organizations? The more independent newspapers like FTD and taz support my position pretty much.
Scandinavian countries have a different population structure, history, education and social system. Comparisons between them and Germany are mostly flawed. Again, how about some real arguments?
Globalization can't be blamed for Germany's economic problems as it is the absolute export champion (above China and the U.S.) with an incredibly high trade surplus.
Wage levels in Germany have long been surpassed by a lot of other European countries so that now it has labor costs below the average of the West European EU countries. A lot of full-time workers can't afford a decent living without additional state welfare. (No minimum wage so that in the end the state pays for cheap labor from which capital owners can make their private profits.)
Government spending has been driven down further and further during the recent years which caused a lot of economic problems in the first place and also has a lot to do with the problems of the educational system. (There are e.g. not enough teachers) The state quota is now also only EU average and the public service is paid less for as a percentage of the GDP than in the U.S. and the U.K.
Please get your facts right first by reading OECD reports and the like.
If your diagnosis had anything to do with reality, the Scandinavian countries with their huge public spending would have to be among the economically worst off while in fact they are among the economically best off.
what about gold as money? or silver? or another precious metal? Weight in gold could be used as money without a state issuer, no?
Yes, it could - if you wanted the mine-owning nations/organizations/individuals to have all the purchasing power even without producing any consumer goods or offering any services.
Apart from that individuals can not really determine the purity of precious metals in daily life, unless they come in the form of state-issued coins (Eagle, Kruegerrand, etc.) It is for a reason that the monarchs had a monopoly on the mints for precious metals in the times when they were still used as a currency.
The JBoss story is one that is close to my heart -- it epitomizes much of what I believe in when it comes to my hardcore beliefs. I am a true capitalist (anarcho-capitalist [unanimocracy.com]) at heart, and I believe that earning money requires constant work in the field you're in.
Anarcho-capitalists shouldn't believe something which presupposes the existence of money. After all money is state-issued and only a state can grant that these little sheets of printed paper get accepted when you want to exchange them for something of real value.
If anarcho-capitalists are serious about the anarcho-part they would have to demand the abolition of state-issued money and the introduction of competing private currencies which may be accepted but wouldn't have to.
But you can bet that if there is a legal way of harming content producers, I will pursue it.
But does that mean you would prefer a world without content producers? That would then also be a world without content. (And mind you, the real content producers are the artists, not the big media corporations they might have contracts with.)
While I agree that the concept of intellectual property is debatable (as actually is the whole concept of private property) and that equating copyright violations with theft is ridiculous, don't you think that there should be a way for artists to produce works of art and live from it? Perhaps that income of artists should only consist of the entry fees to their live performances, but if their whole audience is just determined to harm them, they couldn't even get those.
The money you make is the fruit of your work, which is a human endeavour.
That's plainly wrong. (Except for those who are printing the money.) You neither "create" any money nor do you "own" it in a strict sense. (You musn't even burn it.) You have a government-issued license to use it by receiving it for selling your work or products and for exchanging it for goods and services. But the government could for example at any time de-value it and replace it with a new currency. (The U.S. government is actually already de-valuing the US-Dollar by allowing a trade deficit of 6% of the gross domestic product, meaning that 6% of what the U.S. consume they haven't produced but received in return for printing little green sheets of paper.)
It has always struck me as a contradiction that libertarians would rely on government-issued money, since after all government is always evil for them. At least Hayek was so consequent as to also demand competing "private" money.
gowen never said that belonging to a Microsoft-founded lobby group constitutes circumstances which make the article's author disposed to be critical of GPL 3. He had just pointed out that the author belongs to that group, which he does.
Your own examples show the difference to ad hominem circumstantial: Had gowen linked the author's opinion to his membership in the lobby group, it would have been that fallacy. But he didn't.
In fact, you are implicitly saying here that the author's belonging to the group constitutes circumstances which make him disposed of the opinion he holds. So actually you are commiting ad hominem.
Copyright is not a restriction on free speech because for speaking your mind freely you can always choose a form that does not break anyone's copyright. Likewise you could say that the prohibition of physical violence is a restriction on free speech because you would like to criticize the government by beating up the president.
On the other hand, in a dictatorship like China you can not speak your mind freely because criticizing the government alone will get you into prison, no matter which form you choose.
So why should we hold Google to a different standard when they operate in China?
Quite simple: because China is a dictatorship and the U.S. are not. The censorship in a dicatorship has no legitimacy whatsoever. It's only there to protect the illegitimate rulers from the people.
In a democracy on the other hand, the human right of freedom of speech only gets restricted if it collides with other human rights, e.g. the right of children to not be sexually exploited. In a democracy freedom of speech is never ever restricted when it comes to criticizing the government.
I can't grasp that anyone wouldn't see the difference.
The dollars the Chinese own are after all just printed paper. Sure, the U.S. are in dept with China, but if they stopped all trade relations with China, how could anyone force them to pay back their dept or give the Chinese something in return for their dollar bills?
The U.S. could simply declare the current dollar bills invalid and could give their citizens and friends new ones in exchange for the old ones. How would that harm the U.S. economy? After all it's the fault of the Chinese if they deliver goods on credit without any real values in return.
The only thing that could really hurt the U.S. in such a case is if they were already so dependent on the constant flow of goods from China, that they couldn't produce them on their own anymore. Perhaps it would then be better to make the cut now instead of waiting for that dependency to grow even bigger from day to day.
China censors certain political groups on the grounds that they pose a danger to the security, safety and freedom of the Chinese people.
If you mean to be sarcastic you should say so. Of course you know well that this is bullshit and the Chinese government censors information that poses a danger to the Chinese government. That's contrary to democratic habits where it is never illegal to criticize the government.
France and germany censor certain political groups on the grounds that they pose a danger to the security, safety and freedom of the French and German people.
Nonsense as well. Nobody in Germany or France is afraid that some lunatic neo-Nazis could overthrow the democratically elected governments. Germany and France simply don't allow Holocaust deniers to publicly deny the historical fact of the Holocaust because that is a personal insult all Holocaust survivors. This is an example where some human right (freedom of speech, or -in this case- freedom to lie) collides with another one (protection of personal integrity).
Is one wrong and the other not?
If you can't see that yourself, I won't be able to help you.
The argument about Google just complying to local law in China the same way as it does in France is complete nonsense. Because law in a dictatorship denying human rights to its citizen has no value whatsoever, while law in a democracy respecting human rights is legitimate, even if sometimes different human rights (e.g. freedom of speech vs. right to privacy) must be weighed against each other.
You can prove the non-existence of something if you show the logical impossibility of its existence. In mathematics you often prove the non-existence of something by assuming its existence and then deriving a logical contradiction (a and non-a).
For example, if you assume an omniscient and omnopotent being, you can show that such a being could never win a chicken-style game against you. (Since you know that your opponent is omniscient, you can simply risk your own destruction. Your opponent would then have to give in to not be destroyed herself.) Hence that being would not be omnipotent, meaning it would be omnipotent and not omnipotent. That's logically impossible, hence an omniscient and omnipotent being can not exist.
Of course, you can go so far as to deny that the laws of logic are universal. Or you can simply leave your definition of "God" so unclear that it becomes undebatable. In that sense you could then also not prove its non-existence.
Slashdot Mirror
""The [Fascist] government will accord full freedom to private enterprise and will abandon all intervention in private economy." --- Benito Mussolini
While Mussolini may actually never have *said* the quoted sentence, it still exactly describes what Mussolini and the fascists *did*. (Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism).
Fascist economic policy pretty much followed classical liberal lines, as laid out by the "carta del lavoro" in Italy.
The following quote by Mussolini apparently has a reliable source:
"The [Fascist] government will accord full freedom to private enterprise and will abandon all intervention in private economy."
Nothing is gained by the investors or by the citizens of China by Google exiting the market ?
Wrong: if the Chinese government had to recognize that it looses mutually benefitial business opportunities by oppressing human rights, it might change its human rights policies to the benefit (and freedom) of the citizens of China. Unfortunately the greed of Western investors and their preference for profit over people just teaches oppressive governments that they human rights violations don't do them any harm so that they can just continue oppressing their people.There are several definitions of "democracy". The simplest just means "rule by the people". However, all really meaningful definitions also comprise equality before the law and unalienable human rights, such as the right to life and freedom of expression.
Your analogy doesn't work with those definitions, as it describes a case in which both human rights and equality before the law are violated. (And even intentionally so.)
The grand-parent is actually right: As long as equality and human rights are respected, the will of the majority of the people should be decisive for how affairs get handled in a democratic society. This would include the handling of so-called intellectual property. (I.e. whether society accepts that concept at all and if it does, how far it should reach and how it should be enforced.)
When I heard this I was already wondering whether he actually is a freaking libertarian, who doesn't acknowledge that private property always only comes with a social responsibility. However when he continued, it became clear that he fortunately isn't. Rather he carefully compared the social consequences that different sets of copyright rules would have.
Apart from that there would be a lot of job opportunities in the public sector given the sorry state of schools, hospitals, streets and so on. Of course they can't be paid for if the state budget gets driven down further and further to the benefit of the capital holders. In many areas they're still too high. Again, average values don't paint the complete picture. They say more than sweeping statements which aren't founded on any values at all. In addition, you cut out some of the other factors I mentioned. Which ones? Maybe you should learn to interpret the numbers correctly. Or look at something beyond those reports. Like a German newspaper. Please tell me which of the numbers I've given you must be interpreted in a different way. An average state quota is an average state quota. No room for interpretation there.
And do you seriously suggest that looking into the mainstream German newspapers and magazines (FAZ, SZ, Spiegel, Focus, Zeit) who all regurgitate the usual market-radical spin and are influenced by corporate lobbyism is a better idea than looking at real numbers from independent international organizations? The more independent newspapers like FTD and taz support my position pretty much. Scandinavian countries have a different population structure, history, education and social system. Comparisons between them and Germany are mostly flawed. Again, how about some real arguments?
So wrong on all accounts:
Globalization can't be blamed for Germany's economic problems as it is the absolute export champion (above China and the U.S.) with an incredibly high trade surplus.
Wage levels in Germany have long been surpassed by a lot of other European countries so that now it has labor costs below the average of the West European EU countries. A lot of full-time workers can't afford a decent living without additional state welfare. (No minimum wage so that in the end the state pays for cheap labor from which capital owners can make their private profits.)
Government spending has been driven down further and further during the recent years which caused a lot of economic problems in the first place and also has a lot to do with the problems of the educational system. (There are e.g. not enough teachers) The state quota is now also only EU average and the public service is paid less for as a percentage of the GDP than in the U.S. and the U.K.
Please get your facts right first by reading OECD reports and the like.
If your diagnosis had anything to do with reality, the Scandinavian countries with their huge public spending would have to be among the economically worst off while in fact they are among the economically best off.
Yes, it could - if you wanted the mine-owning nations/organizations/individuals to have all the purchasing power even without producing any consumer goods or offering any services.
Apart from that individuals can not really determine the purity of precious metals in daily life, unless they come in the form of state-issued coins (Eagle, Kruegerrand, etc.) It is for a reason that the monarchs had a monopoly on the mints for precious metals in the times when they were still used as a currency.
Anarcho-capitalists shouldn't believe something which presupposes the existence of money. After all money is state-issued and only a state can grant that these little sheets of printed paper get accepted when you want to exchange them for something of real value.
If anarcho-capitalists are serious about the anarcho-part they would have to demand the abolition of state-issued money and the introduction of competing private currencies which may be accepted but wouldn't have to.
While I agree that the concept of intellectual property is debatable (as actually is the whole concept of private property) and that equating copyright violations with theft is ridiculous, don't you think that there should be a way for artists to produce works of art and live from it? Perhaps that income of artists should only consist of the entry fees to their live performances, but if their whole audience is just determined to harm them, they couldn't even get those.
That's plainly wrong. (Except for those who are printing the money.) You neither "create" any money nor do you "own" it in a strict sense. (You musn't even burn it.) You have a government-issued license to use it by receiving it for selling your work or products and for exchanging it for goods and services. But the government could for example at any time de-value it and replace it with a new currency. (The U.S. government is actually already de-valuing the US-Dollar by allowing a trade deficit of 6% of the gross domestic product, meaning that 6% of what the U.S. consume they haven't produced but received in return for printing little green sheets of paper.)
It has always struck me as a contradiction that libertarians would rely on government-issued money, since after all government is always evil for them. At least Hayek was so consequent as to also demand competing "private" money.
gowen never said that belonging to a Microsoft-founded lobby group constitutes circumstances which make the article's author disposed to be critical of GPL 3. He had just pointed out that the author belongs to that group, which he does.
Your own examples show the difference to ad hominem circumstantial: Had gowen linked the author's opinion to his membership in the lobby group, it would have been that fallacy. But he didn't.
In fact, you are implicitly saying here that the author's belonging to the group constitutes circumstances which make him disposed of the opinion he holds. So actually you are commiting ad hominem.
Copyright is not a restriction on free speech because for speaking your mind freely you can always choose a form that does not break anyone's copyright. Likewise you could say that the prohibition of physical violence is a restriction on free speech because you would like to criticize the government by beating up the president.
On the other hand, in a dictatorship like China you can not speak your mind freely because criticizing the government alone will get you into prison, no matter which form you choose.
In a democracy on the other hand, the human right of freedom of speech only gets restricted if it collides with other human rights, e.g. the right of children to not be sexually exploited. In a democracy freedom of speech is never ever restricted when it comes to criticizing the government.
I can't grasp that anyone wouldn't see the difference.
Your argument doesn't make sense.
The dollars the Chinese own are after all just printed paper. Sure, the U.S. are in dept with China, but if they stopped all trade relations with China, how could anyone force them to pay back their dept or give the Chinese something in return for their dollar bills?
The U.S. could simply declare the current dollar bills invalid and could give their citizens and friends new ones in exchange for the old ones. How would that harm the U.S. economy? After all it's the fault of the Chinese if they deliver goods on credit without any real values in return.
The only thing that could really hurt the U.S. in such a case is if they were already so dependent on the constant flow of goods from China, that they couldn't produce them on their own anymore. Perhaps it would then be better to make the cut now instead of waiting for that dependency to grow even bigger from day to day.
The argument about Google just complying to local law in China the same way as it does in France is complete nonsense. Because law in a dictatorship denying human rights to its citizen has no value whatsoever, while law in a democracy respecting human rights is legitimate, even if sometimes different human rights (e.g. freedom of speech vs. right to privacy) must be weighed against each other.
You can't prove the non-existance of something.
You can prove the non-existence of something if you show the logical impossibility of its existence. In mathematics you often prove the non-existence of something by assuming its existence and then deriving a logical contradiction (a and non-a).
For example, if you assume an omniscient and omnopotent being, you can show that such a being could never win a chicken-style game against you. (Since you know that your opponent is omniscient, you can simply risk your own destruction. Your opponent would then have to give in to not be destroyed herself.) Hence that being would not be omnipotent, meaning it would be omnipotent and not omnipotent. That's logically impossible, hence an omniscient and omnipotent being can not exist.
Of course, you can go so far as to deny that the laws of logic are universal. Or you can simply leave your definition of "God" so unclear that it becomes undebatable. In that sense you could then also not prove its non-existence.