Er, then why do these people actually need immunity?
The immunity belongs to the organization, not the people (even when sometimes they attach to people because of their relationship to the organization.) Like much stronger diplomatic or consular immunities, they are not individual rights; particularly, the institution to whom they are granted may waive them, whether or not the individual affected wishes them to. The rights exist to protect the operation of the institution (particularly, for the protections granted to international institutions, they exist principally to get other countries to cooperate fully with the institution by assuring them that the host country of the institution's facilities won't either use them to seize property acquired by other nation's funding of the organization or to seize sensitive information shared with the organization outside of the scope of the information sharing carried out under the procedures of the organization.)
The immunities at issue that INTERPOL was previously specifically excluded from that apply to international organizations are: * Immunity to search and confiscation of the organizations premises, property, and archives * Freedom of customs duties for baggage of staff * Immunity from various taxes (Social Security, property taxes, federal income taxes)
(Note, all of this is laid out in TFA)
The personal immunities that apply to international organization staff (exemption from immigration controls, and immunity to suit based on official acts) already applied to INTERPOL, because the Reagan Administration order that added INTERPOL to the list of organizations getting the standard set of protections set out for such organizations in US law didn't exclude those personal protections, just some of the institutional protections. All the Obama order did is remove the special limitations that were applied to INTERPOL (and which were irrelevant at the time of the Reagan order, since INTERPOL didn't have offices in the US at the time.) No special privileges beyond those usually granted to international organizations that the United States participates in (and some that it doesn't!) have been granted to INTERPOL.
If you see it, you can kill it, with RPGs or whatever, so hovering in the air merely increases the range from which it can be struck.
Being able to easily pop up from the ground is better, from that respect, from being able to pop up from NOE flight, so there is a respect that a VTOL craft that can move well on roads and do light off-road work could be better than, say, a helicopter (which is very poor at moving on the ground.)
On the other hand, being able to move at high speed (compared to ground vehicles) through the air (and thereby bypass unpassable terrain on the ground) provides better tactical mobility in many environments than a typical ground vehicle.
So, conceivably, if you could do this, it would probably have utility.
Whether the probability that anything viable will ever be produced, when considered with the likely cost of the effort, makes it worthwhile is still questionable.
Then there are no current levitation systems that don't involve massive airflow, making a huge dust cloud (also ingesting all kinds of junk into the engines)
There are certainly systems which could be used for vertical take-off that exist now that don't require having open air intakes during take-off -- like rockets.
We don't need flying cars. Flying cars = Falling cars. Add in volatile fuel and you have bombs. What they need to work on is a car that will hover about 2-3 feet above the ground. A hover car would eliminate the need for paved roads, road maintenance, bridges, bridge maintenance, etc...
Assuming the car actually moves parallel to the ground while above it, that's a low-altitude flying car. Hovering doesn't get you anywhere except off the ground.
It's too close to netbooks, but not as useful as a netbook.
Alternatively, they are large eBook readers that trade the better all-condition and long-term reading ease of electronic ink with for additional functionality and color display.
Not sure they'll succeed even so -- there's a whole of different applications in the mobile space, and getting the right combination of features to hit the sweet spots is going to be an area where there is a lot of trial and error in the next few years.
Did you even read the bits you quoted? URIs point to speciic servers, or at least to specific IP blocks behind the DNS lookup.
No, Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) provide identity. Some URIs (Uniform Resource Locators -- URLs) also provide information about the preferred method of accessing information, which may or may not be relevant to their use in a particular application. Some URIs (Uniform Resource Names -- URNs) do not location information at all.
The content might be in multiple locations, but there's no guarantee you'll get the closest or least-congested one.
The URI itself does not present such a guarantee, true, but its quite possible to build systems which do that, using existing internet technologies. (For "closest", with http: URLs, that's the point of caching proxies.)
More importantly, once you have the content downloaded to your system, if your roommate goes looking for it (withint knowing you already have it) he or she will end up re-downloading that content from some distant machine identified by a URI
Well, assuming that he just doesn't get it from the local browser cache, or (if using different user accounts that wouldn't share a cache), if you aren't using a local caching proxy running as a system process. But this problem is obviously solvable by setting up the local environment correctly using the current structure of the internet, replacing the internet to fix it is clearly overkill (and, because there is a lot of investment in the current internet, isn't likely to happen, anyway.)
I think people have very strange idea about what capitalism is: if control of the means of production can be purchased for money, and you can make money by controlling the means of production, you have capitalism (to some extent: "control" is a matter of degree, of course).
Except for land in the narrow sense (which is often distinguished from capital), the Communist Manifesto did not include in its program for changes to the system of property (the elimination of capitalist property) the elimination of private ownership of the means of production (it did feature public control -- though it does not specify that the mechanism of that control be expropriation -- of certain infrastructure industries, like communication and transportation.)
So, if we accept your definition of capitalism, a system which adopted all of the changes the Communist Manifesto suggested for developed capitalist countries would still be a "capitalist" system.
I would suggest that this is an overbroad definition of "Capitalism" as an economic system, especially when contrasting it with "Communism" as such a system.
(It may be a useful definition of "capitalism" as a feature of an economic system in some contexts.)
I would have though that Marx's main flaw was that he saw the problem of the workers not receiving the fruits of their labor and tried to solve it by implementing a system in which you did not own the fruits of your labor.
If you look at the particular property-oriented policy recommendations Marx made for changes that should occur in the developed capitalist economies to implement the Communist program, they don't generally lay out a system in which an individual does not own the fruits of their own labor.
The adaptation of Marxist theory by Lenin and others to work in places which were not developed capitalist economies -- which Marx saw as a prerequisite for moving on to socialism -- and the implementation of that adapted theory in the Soviet Union and those countries influenced by the Soviet Union surely did what you say, but that's not the same thing.
Well someone has to decide what is needed, and without price indicators there's no unconscious mechanism doing so
The steps to revise the nature of property laid out in the Communist Manifesto doesn't eliminate price indicators -- it argues for essentially eliminating fee simple (perpetual) property in favor of a maximum of life estates in most forms of property (elimination of inheritance) and further eliminating private ownership of land in favor of private parties leasing land from the State -- so even if you limit the world of possible economic systems to "Communist" (i.e., a system which adopts the specific steps laid out in the Communist Manifesto) and "Capitalist" (the 19th Century practice in the developed countries of the West criticized by Marx), price indicators as a tool for coordinating knowledge aren't a unique feature of "capitalism".
I think the point is that "pre-Lenin Communist theory" fails in practice because of Lenin.
That point is ridiculous. Leninism is a distinctly different theory.
It's unworkable because it fails to adequately protect against corruption.
Insofar as one accepts that it is fair to charge than a political/economic theory "fails to adequately protect against corruption" because one can create an distinctly different theory that incorporates some parts of the theory, and implement it, and have bad results, the charge can be made equally well against any political/economic theory. Its an argument that has no substance.
Capitalism has the virtue of a feedback loop that protects against corruption.
No, it doesn't. Its easy to point to many extraordinarily corrupt capitalist systems in history, which is one reason why the capitalist practice of the 19th Century (the thing originally called "capitalism") has been replaced in the developed world by modern mixed economy, which adopt many aspects of socialism -- some almost straight from the Communist Manifesto -- and which, while not corruption-free, has more checks against corruption than does capitalism, as such.
As there is no way that phone companies would want to (or be allowed to) abandon millions of miles of copper wire and the tasty franchises and monopolies that went along with their installation, there will be no switch to a wireless-only phone network.
This isn't about a "switch to a wireless phone network", its about abandoning analog landlines (as you can tell from reading the headline of the summary), and switching to an all-digital, IP-based instead of PSTN-based, phone network.
And summarization to make a clear point is far from rambling.
Yes, properly done, a summarization to make a clear point is far from rambling. That doesn't affect my characterization of GGGP, though.
Seems rudeness goes hand and hand with most Ruby guys.
This is amusing coming when you -- by your own admission in the same post containing this accusation of rudeness -- just posted a "response" to someone claiming that their claims are contradicted by empirical testing, when no such claims were contained either in the post responded to or any other post by the same poster, because its too much effort to pay attention to who has posted different claims before attributing them to the poster they are responding to.
Now if you can't test communism anywhere but in practice, and all the tests (USSR, Cuba, what else is there?) shows that it's failing miserably, then one could (should?) come to the conclusion that communism simply does not work.
The thing called "Communism" that was "tested in practice" in the USSR, Cuba, etc., is at least as distant from pre-Lenin Communist theory as are the mixed economies to which the advanced nations of the West transitioned from 19th Century capitalism. (Leninism abandoned the starting conditions which were necessary prerequisites for the socialist transition which was the first step to Communism, and altered the methodology to suit nations which didn't have the necessary starting conditions, whereas western mixed economies largely avoided embracing the long-term goal of the socialist state "withering away" and didn't implement the more extreme changes in property relations -- abolition of real property and inheritance -- while most often adopting central regulation rather than appropriation as the means of acheiving public control of essential industries [though nationalization of some key industries in some Western regimes did occur].)
It is at least as wrong to say that the failure of USSR and other Leninist regimes proves that Communist theory is unworkable as to say that the success of modern mixed economies proves that it is correct.
Capitalism stimulates technological advance better than any system that has ever been tried
I don't think there is any evidence that capitalism does so better than "any system that has ever been tried", and particularly not better than the mixed economies employed by every major advanced nation on Earth today.
Right, and lots of people have complained that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is a communist/socialist action taken by a radical left-wing tyrant and his cronies.
Well, certainly, some people -- that have the backing of certain powerful interests including a major media network -- have. Whether or not those people loud complaints are a good touchstone for whether America believes in something or not is debatable, though the fact that they are a subset of a larger faction that itself is in opposition might indicate that they aren't all that reliable of an indicator in that direction.
The biggest issue - VOIP is simply not reliable. POTS lines are required by federal regulations to have a certain uptime, VOIP lines are not.
Since the context here is the FCC taking the first step in exploring policy for a switch from PSTN to IP-based networks as the basis for the nation's primary, universally accessible communication network, while one should certainly demand that the FCC require, as part of that policy, that the IP network have the same uptime requirement that applies to the PSTN network it is replacing, I don't think it makes sense -- in that context -- to view the difference in current regulatory requirements for reliability as an intrinsic difference between the technologies.
With the right hardware, fax machines, credit card terminals, and satellite receivers can work over VoIP.
You could also move away from a fax machine to a PDF scanner, and get credit card terminals that work over ethernet, then send everything over your internet connection instead of doing analog to digital to analog conversions.
Right -- and, I'd say, if you have an IP-based primary, universally-accessible network on which telephone service is just another application, all of those functions can be served rather more simply than with machines designed to encode information over an analog telephone network. Remember that the context of this discussion is the FCC exploring policy to promote and govern a PSTN to IP switch for phone service in the context of its mandate to provide guidance on the best policy for universal broadband access and utilization.
I would like to see ATT say this, with the knowledge that they would have to provide the equivalent of "Universal Access", be it with broadband or cellular. Frankly, I don't think they're capable of doing such a thing (technically, yes, they're capable, but I highly doubt they'll want to subsidize Universal Access, particularly with cell service).
Universal access is subsidized by the government through taxes. I'm sure AT&T would love to "forced" to accept public subsidies for its broadband and/or wireless services.
OTOH, they'd probably be less happy to have the same kind of common carrier regulations that apply to them in their roles as a provider of access to the PSTN network be applied to them as a provider of access to the IP network.
It's a real shame that the US doesn't believe in investing in infrastructure.
Its kind of funny that that comment comes up in a discussion about a response by AT&T to a Public Notice from the FCC spurred by a legislative mandate in a major infrastructure spending bill (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) which seeks input on potential investigations related to how to most effectively direct further public policy (including infrastructure spending) to acheive universal broadband access.
If I had a reliable VOIP service, I would be happy, but the most reliable thing is POTS.
No doubt. And as long as the national policy is to support a universal PSTN-based network and VoIP is a luxury service, I suspect that will remain the case. But what is there about the technology that makes PSTN more reliable than IP-based telephony? AFAICT, there is nothing fundamental that makes a PSTN-based communication network superior.
The FCC is exploring whether it makes sense to begin the process of formulating policy that would guide a transition from PSTN to IP as the basis for universally-accessible telephony: one would certainly hope that part of that policy would be focussed on assuring that, before the plug is pulled on PSTN, the nation has a universally accessible broadband IP network that provides at a minimum all of the desirable features of the existing PSTN network.
I was always under the impression that landlines were necessary. When there's a power outage you can't use cellular or cordless.
The FCC Public Notice (TFA refers to a Notice of Inquiry, but links to a Public Notice soliciting comments as to whether the FCC should issue of a Notice of Inquiry) isn't about cutting "landlines", its about replacing PSTN with IP as the implementation technology for telephone service.
But the concern you raise is valid even in that context; issues like usefulness in emergencies (both in terms of 911 service and resilience to power failures and other sources of outages) are things that would no doubt be significant areas if the FCC's investigation of such a transition moves forward -- which I fully expect it to.
The context of the FCC Public Notice is about the transition in the context of the Congressional mandate for the FCC to provide guidance on acheiving universal broadband access and utilization, and transitioning the phone system to IP so that the IP network is the single universal communication network that has to be maintained would make sense as a means of doing that.
Of course, that does raise the question of the kind of common carrier provisions that have applied to the providers of access to the PSTN network because it is the nation's principal universal communication system and frequently and naturally (because of the infrastructure requirements) the subject of regional monopolies, but not (though they are often the same providers) to the providers of IP access.
I believe he simply meant free markets, but the free market is the cornerstone of capitalism.
That changes the claim, but doesn't justify either the original or the revised version.
For a good comparison, look at the Cold War and Communist Russia vs Capitalist America.
Russia was -- when the USSR was founded -- something like a half-century or more behind Western Europe and the US technology, and probably two centuries socially. And was devastated by war (like most of Europe, but unlike the US.) It then went through several years of civil war that further wrecked the econom, made a brief attempt under the NEP to build a sustainable economy without an immediate threat of major war, then returned to war mobilization for the short term in the 1930s, was again -- like much of Europe and again unlike the US -- devastated by war again, and then got into a global economic and military competition with an opposing block that was far ahead in starting position.
So, even if Leninist/Stalinist Russia was a good study in Communist theory (which, given how radically Leninism rewrote Marxism with no real theoretical basis, only the recognition that Russia wasn't in the condition which Marxist theory saw as a precondition for the socialism that was the first step to Communism, is a pretty hard case to make), and the US was a good study in Capitalist theory (which, given that like most advanced economies, the US from the mid-20th century was a mixed economy, is also a hard case to make), the comparison between the two in direct competition -- given the difference in starting conditions -- wouldn't be a particularly good way to compare the theoretical systems in any broad way.
Actually, no, I didn't. I pointed out flaws in the particular mischaracterization of Communism.
Pure Communism cannot and will not ever work for the same reasons that pure Democracy cannot and will not work - natural cooperation breaks down when the group size becomes so large that individuals do not know every other member of the group on a personal level.
As I pointed out, Communism doesn't really on cooperation, like democracy -- in the modern, liberal, limited form -- it relies on setting up the structure of incentives so that the natural human tendency to seek personal advantage produces social benefit.
Incidentally, Capitalism doesn't get it right either, but it much better accounts for human nature than Communism does on a large scale.
Merely asserting that does not make it true.
Pure Capitalism misses the mark because it assumes we are completely self-serving, seeking only for our own best advantage.
That's a principle of the rational actor model of human behavior, to be sure, but its not really essential to capitalism (nor, to the extent it is, is it something that distinguishes it from Communism, which doesn't really rely on it any less than capitalism does.)
This is not the case - there is altruism within us, and while not as prevalent as our self-serving nature, it tends to screw up the Capitalist ideal if not taken account for.
The biggest problem with extreme laissez-faire (I won't say "pure", because as a theoretical construct its actually fairly new, and exist mostly as an after-the-fact justification of the excesses that -- among others -- Communists criticized in the 19th century) capitalism isn't that it sees people as principally self-serving, but that it overlooks the limits of the implications of power imbalances, imperfect information, externalities, and other situations that cause market failure, and that it ignores basic results of game theory, like the Tragedy of the Commons.
Incidentally this altruistic streak really screws with Game Theory, making it completely unreliable.
Actually, Game Theory is, rather than "completely unreliable", experimentally shown to be a pretty good model of how people behave when certain basic external conditions (perfect information about costs and rewards, immediate rather than distant results, etc.) Where it becomes difficult to apply in practice is because, in the real world, those ideal conditions are usually missing to a greater or lesser degree.
Regarding Carl Marx, I commit a conscious logical fallacy [...]
Without addressing the validity of your perception of Marx, that's the kind of thing you'd do better to learn to get over rather than self-righteously bragging about
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Please explain the sense of "failing" for which this is true even for a bare majority of drivers, much less a "vast" majority.
Who does the security search before you fly an airplane that you own, instead of a commercial airliner?
I suspect the answer will be the same.
The immunity belongs to the organization, not the people (even when sometimes they attach to people because of their relationship to the organization.) Like much stronger diplomatic or consular immunities, they are not individual rights; particularly, the institution to whom they are granted may waive them, whether or not the individual affected wishes them to. The rights exist to protect the operation of the institution (particularly, for the protections granted to international institutions, they exist principally to get other countries to cooperate fully with the institution by assuring them that the host country of the institution's facilities won't either use them to seize property acquired by other nation's funding of the organization or to seize sensitive information shared with the organization outside of the scope of the information sharing carried out under the procedures of the organization.)
The immunities at issue that INTERPOL was previously specifically excluded from that apply to international organizations are:
* Immunity to search and confiscation of the organizations premises, property, and archives
* Freedom of customs duties for baggage of staff
* Immunity from various taxes (Social Security, property taxes, federal income taxes)
(Note, all of this is laid out in TFA)
The personal immunities that apply to international organization staff (exemption from immigration controls, and immunity to suit based on official acts) already applied to INTERPOL, because the Reagan Administration order that added INTERPOL to the list of organizations getting the standard set of protections set out for such organizations in US law didn't exclude those personal protections, just some of the institutional protections. All the Obama order did is remove the special limitations that were applied to INTERPOL (and which were irrelevant at the time of the Reagan order, since INTERPOL didn't have offices in the US at the time.) No special privileges beyond those usually granted to international organizations that the United States participates in (and some that it doesn't!) have been granted to INTERPOL.
Being able to easily pop up from the ground is better, from that respect, from being able to pop up from NOE flight, so there is a respect that a VTOL craft that can move well on roads and do light off-road work could be better than, say, a helicopter (which is very poor at moving on the ground.)
On the other hand, being able to move at high speed (compared to ground vehicles) through the air (and thereby bypass unpassable terrain on the ground) provides better tactical mobility in many environments than a typical ground vehicle.
So, conceivably, if you could do this, it would probably have utility.
Whether the probability that anything viable will ever be produced, when considered with the likely cost of the effort, makes it worthwhile is still questionable.
There are certainly systems which could be used for vertical take-off that exist now that don't require having open air intakes during take-off -- like rockets.
Assuming the car actually moves parallel to the ground while above it, that's a low-altitude flying car. Hovering doesn't get you anywhere except off the ground.
Alternatively, they are large eBook readers that trade the better all-condition and long-term reading ease of electronic ink with for additional functionality and color display.
Not sure they'll succeed even so -- there's a whole of different applications in the mobile space, and getting the right combination of features to hit the sweet spots is going to be an area where there is a lot of trial and error in the next few years.
No, Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) provide identity. Some URIs (Uniform Resource Locators -- URLs) also provide information about the preferred method of accessing information, which may or may not be relevant to their use in a particular application. Some URIs (Uniform Resource Names -- URNs) do not location information at all.
The URI itself does not present such a guarantee, true, but its quite possible to build systems which do that, using existing internet technologies. (For "closest", with http: URLs, that's the point of caching proxies.)
Well, assuming that he just doesn't get it from the local browser cache, or (if using different user accounts that wouldn't share a cache), if you aren't using a local caching proxy running as a system process. But this problem is obviously solvable by setting up the local environment correctly using the current structure of the internet, replacing the internet to fix it is clearly overkill (and, because there is a lot of investment in the current internet, isn't likely to happen, anyway.)
Except for land in the narrow sense (which is often distinguished from capital), the Communist Manifesto did not include in its program for changes to the system of property (the elimination of capitalist property) the elimination of private ownership of the means of production (it did feature public control -- though it does not specify that the mechanism of that control be expropriation -- of certain infrastructure industries, like communication and transportation.)
So, if we accept your definition of capitalism, a system which adopted all of the changes the Communist Manifesto suggested for developed capitalist countries would still be a "capitalist" system.
I would suggest that this is an overbroad definition of "Capitalism" as an economic system, especially when contrasting it with "Communism" as such a system.
(It may be a useful definition of "capitalism" as a feature of an economic system in some contexts.)
If you look at the particular property-oriented policy recommendations Marx made for changes that should occur in the developed capitalist economies to implement the Communist program, they don't generally lay out a system in which an individual does not own the fruits of their own labor.
The adaptation of Marxist theory by Lenin and others to work in places which were not developed capitalist economies -- which Marx saw as a prerequisite for moving on to socialism -- and the implementation of that adapted theory in the Soviet Union and those countries influenced by the Soviet Union surely did what you say, but that's not the same thing.
The steps to revise the nature of property laid out in the Communist Manifesto doesn't eliminate price indicators -- it argues for essentially eliminating fee simple (perpetual) property in favor of a maximum of life estates in most forms of property (elimination of inheritance) and further eliminating private ownership of land in favor of private parties leasing land from the State -- so even if you limit the world of possible economic systems to "Communist" (i.e., a system which adopts the specific steps laid out in the Communist Manifesto) and "Capitalist" (the 19th Century practice in the developed countries of the West criticized by Marx), price indicators as a tool for coordinating knowledge aren't a unique feature of "capitalism".
That point is ridiculous. Leninism is a distinctly different theory.
Insofar as one accepts that it is fair to charge than a political/economic theory "fails to adequately protect against corruption" because one can create an distinctly different theory that incorporates some parts of the theory, and implement it, and have bad results, the charge can be made equally well against any political/economic theory. Its an argument that has no substance.
No, it doesn't. Its easy to point to many extraordinarily corrupt capitalist systems in history, which is one reason why the capitalist practice of the 19th Century (the thing originally called "capitalism") has been replaced in the developed world by modern mixed economy, which adopt many aspects of socialism -- some almost straight from the Communist Manifesto -- and which, while not corruption-free, has more checks against corruption than does capitalism, as such.
This isn't about a "switch to a wireless phone network", its about abandoning analog landlines (as you can tell from reading the headline of the summary), and switching to an all-digital, IP-based instead of PSTN-based, phone network.
Yes, properly done, a summarization to make a clear point is far from rambling. That doesn't affect my characterization of GGGP, though.
This is amusing coming when you -- by your own admission in the same post containing this accusation of rudeness -- just posted a "response" to someone claiming that their claims are contradicted by empirical testing, when no such claims were contained either in the post responded to or any other post by the same poster, because its too much effort to pay attention to who has posted different claims before attributing them to the poster they are responding to.
The thing called "Communism" that was "tested in practice" in the USSR, Cuba, etc., is at least as distant from pre-Lenin Communist theory as are the mixed economies to which the advanced nations of the West transitioned from 19th Century capitalism. (Leninism abandoned the starting conditions which were necessary prerequisites for the socialist transition which was the first step to Communism, and altered the methodology to suit nations which didn't have the necessary starting conditions, whereas western mixed economies largely avoided embracing the long-term goal of the socialist state "withering away" and didn't implement the more extreme changes in property relations -- abolition of real property and inheritance -- while most often adopting central regulation rather than appropriation as the means of acheiving public control of essential industries [though nationalization of some key industries in some Western regimes did occur].)
It is at least as wrong to say that the failure of USSR and other Leninist regimes proves that Communist theory is unworkable as to say that the success of modern mixed economies proves that it is correct.
I don't think there is any evidence that capitalism does so better than "any system that has ever been tried", and particularly not better than the mixed economies employed by every major advanced nation on Earth today.
Well, certainly, some people -- that have the backing of certain powerful interests including a major media network -- have. Whether or not those people loud complaints are a good touchstone for whether America believes in something or not is debatable, though the fact that they are a subset of a larger faction that itself is in opposition might indicate that they aren't all that reliable of an indicator in that direction.
Since the context here is the FCC taking the first step in exploring policy for a switch from PSTN to IP-based networks as the basis for the nation's primary, universally accessible communication network, while one should certainly demand that the FCC require, as part of that policy, that the IP network have the same uptime requirement that applies to the PSTN network it is replacing, I don't think it makes sense -- in that context -- to view the difference in current regulatory requirements for reliability as an intrinsic difference between the technologies.
Right -- and, I'd say, if you have an IP-based primary, universally-accessible network on which telephone service is just another application, all of those functions can be served rather more simply than with machines designed to encode information over an analog telephone network. Remember that the context of this discussion is the FCC exploring policy to promote and govern a PSTN to IP switch for phone service in the context of its mandate to provide guidance on the best policy for universal broadband access and utilization.
Universal access is subsidized by the government through taxes. I'm sure AT&T would love to "forced" to accept public subsidies for its broadband and/or wireless services.
OTOH, they'd probably be less happy to have the same kind of common carrier regulations that apply to them in their roles as a provider of access to the PSTN network be applied to them as a provider of access to the IP network.
Its kind of funny that that comment comes up in a discussion about a response by AT&T to a Public Notice from the FCC spurred by a legislative mandate in a major infrastructure spending bill (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) which seeks input on potential investigations related to how to most effectively direct further public policy (including infrastructure spending) to acheive universal broadband access.
No doubt. And as long as the national policy is to support a universal PSTN-based network and VoIP is a luxury service, I suspect that will remain the case. But what is there about the technology that makes PSTN more reliable than IP-based telephony? AFAICT, there is nothing fundamental that makes a PSTN-based communication network superior.
The FCC is exploring whether it makes sense to begin the process of formulating policy that would guide a transition from PSTN to IP as the basis for universally-accessible telephony: one would certainly hope that part of that policy would be focussed on assuring that, before the plug is pulled on PSTN, the nation has a universally accessible broadband IP network that provides at a minimum all of the desirable features of the existing PSTN network.
The FCC Public Notice (TFA refers to a Notice of Inquiry, but links to a Public Notice soliciting comments as to whether the FCC should issue of a Notice of Inquiry) isn't about cutting "landlines", its about replacing PSTN with IP as the implementation technology for telephone service.
But the concern you raise is valid even in that context; issues like usefulness in emergencies (both in terms of 911 service and resilience to power failures and other sources of outages) are things that would no doubt be significant areas if the FCC's investigation of such a transition moves forward -- which I fully expect it to.
The context of the FCC Public Notice is about the transition in the context of the Congressional mandate for the FCC to provide guidance on acheiving universal broadband access and utilization, and transitioning the phone system to IP so that the IP network is the single universal communication network that has to be maintained would make sense as a means of doing that.
Of course, that does raise the question of the kind of common carrier provisions that have applied to the providers of access to the PSTN network because it is the nation's principal universal communication system and frequently and naturally (because of the infrastructure requirements) the subject of regional monopolies, but not (though they are often the same providers) to the providers of IP access.
That changes the claim, but doesn't justify either the original or the revised version.
Russia was -- when the USSR was founded -- something like a half-century or more behind Western Europe and the US technology, and probably two centuries socially. And was devastated by war (like most of Europe, but unlike the US.) It then went through several years of civil war that further wrecked the econom, made a brief attempt under the NEP to build a sustainable economy without an immediate threat of major war, then returned to war mobilization for the short term in the 1930s, was again -- like much of Europe and again unlike the US -- devastated by war again, and then got into a global economic and military competition with an opposing block that was far ahead in starting position.
So, even if Leninist/Stalinist Russia was a good study in Communist theory (which, given how radically Leninism rewrote Marxism with no real theoretical basis, only the recognition that Russia wasn't in the condition which Marxist theory saw as a precondition for the socialism that was the first step to Communism, is a pretty hard case to make), and the US was a good study in Capitalist theory (which, given that like most advanced economies, the US from the mid-20th century was a mixed economy, is also a hard case to make), the comparison between the two in direct competition -- given the difference in starting conditions -- wouldn't be a particularly good way to compare the theoretical systems in any broad way.
Actually, no, I didn't. I pointed out flaws in the particular mischaracterization of Communism.
As I pointed out, Communism doesn't really on cooperation, like democracy -- in the modern, liberal, limited form -- it relies on setting up the structure of incentives so that the natural human tendency to seek personal advantage produces social benefit.
Merely asserting that does not make it true.
That's a principle of the rational actor model of human behavior, to be sure, but its not really essential to capitalism (nor, to the extent it is, is it something that distinguishes it from Communism, which doesn't really rely on it any less than capitalism does.)
The biggest problem with extreme laissez-faire (I won't say "pure", because as a theoretical construct its actually fairly new, and exist mostly as an after-the-fact justification of the excesses that -- among others -- Communists criticized in the 19th century) capitalism isn't that it sees people as principally self-serving, but that it overlooks the limits of the implications of power imbalances, imperfect information, externalities, and other situations that cause market failure, and that it ignores basic results of game theory, like the Tragedy of the Commons.
Actually, Game Theory is, rather than "completely unreliable", experimentally shown to be a pretty good model of how people behave when certain basic external conditions (perfect information about costs and rewards, immediate rather than distant results, etc.) Where it becomes difficult to apply in practice is because, in the real world, those ideal conditions are usually missing to a greater or lesser degree.
Without addressing the validity of your perception of Marx, that's the kind of thing you'd do better to learn to get over rather than self-righteously bragging about
Which, incidentally, Communism is premised on the observation that they aren't and don't...
What, exactly, does that have anything to do with the theory of Communism?