If you are dropping packages your customers still need to be able to find them once delivered. That means precision maneuvering at low altitude, even if it is done over a long distance. What is your model for actually picking up and leaving a payload?
The drone would land on the receiver's lawn where he would remove his package, load another one if he wanted, and relaunch the drone to claim his deposit less any new sending fees. Folks could also sign up to be nodes to increase the range of the service. |
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Quadricopters are probably best for urban environments where you'd need precise maneuverability to avoid collisions, but I was thinking of something a little longer distance, lower precision. I think we already have the technology at low enough prices to make drone mail possible in either case. |
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For fine measurements in metric, (I assume you mean for something like carpentry or metalworking?) mm would be used almost exclusively - I had a crusty old carpentry teacher who shouted at the class if anyone used centimetres! I presume there are (commonly used) fractions of inches that are smaller than millimetres, and that's where the precision comes from? I always found mm precise enough, but I was never much of a carpenter...
Anyone ever use decimal fractions of an inch? I have. |
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It must not be very windy where you live.
I vote for carpeting the Earth with nanobots which simply manufacture your order out of whatever is lying about.
It can be from time to time. I think the novelty of a robot courier service would overcome the weather imposed delays of airborne ideas. I suppose gliders would be better suited than blimps. How about just robot carrier pigeons? |
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Perhaps for now we shouldn't worry about the robot providing its own locomotion. Why not have it hitch rides? Perhaps just a box that would only open for the intended recipients and destroy the contents if tampered with.
Otherwise, I like blimp-bots or pipe laying tunnel bots. The latter would allow for pneumatic delivery later on.
How about just a rocket with a robotic paraglider payload that deploys at apogee? The payload would glide to its destination. Seems like a good way to cover a large area.
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Metric/SI is the backward units. Decimal really does suck. Seriously, just look at history: people naturally see the benefit of, and move toward, bases 6*2 and 8*2, DESPITE writing them in base 5*2. People only go back to base 5*2 units when forced. It's obvious which is superior. Now the question is, why do people still use base 5*2 for writing?
You mean the use of base ten has nothing to do with the fact that most people have five digits on each of their two hands, that we will "naturally see the benefit of, and move toward" not counting our thumbs? |
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Satoshi is really Sebastian Rooks.
Or Keyser Söze.
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There are many reasons why one individual would agree to be employed by another. Risk, up front costs, reputation, etc. As always, no state necessary. What's the real risk? Interest on loans, non-refundable permit fees? These are capitalist and governmental creations. Without them, in the event of failure you could recuperate most of your start-up costs by selling what you've purchased. If some individuals still find that too risky, they could join workers' cooperatives that already exist. I used to work independently and work being employed. Working independently was nice, but if that business was not going well, I got no money. Sometimes I even lost money. When I go to work as an employee, I never lose money, even if my company does. Having a steady paycheck is more valuable to some people than the possibility of making more, but having the money inconsistent (and sometimes not making any). If you have a decent amount of savings, then it might be worth it. See my previous response. Workers may find security, as long as they're profitable enough, under the tutelage of an employer, but they'll find security and liberty in worker solidarity. There are many reasons why one individual would agree to be employed by another. Risk, up front costs, reputation, etc. As always, no state necessary.
Division of labor is conspicuously absent from your list. If workers desire managers to help with this task, they can democratically elect recall-able ones. So, first of all, gains or loses more what? Matter? Energy? Dollars? It could be any of that. Secondly, if you engage in trade, and you have no idea whether you are gaining or losing, how is anyone else supposed to know? I happen to think that the market is useful for determining value, but not so much if you have an employer that excludes you from it. labor theory of value Ho-boy.... Pardon? If an employer is not in his right to sell the production of his employees for more than he pays them, then exactly what incentive does he have in such a business to begin with? If he shouldn't make a profit, then he has no reason to run that business and he shall close it, rendering all his employee's effectively jobless. Which brings the simple question: is the employer needed for the employee's job to exist? If the employee is consenting to the conditions of the employer, then the answer is yes, and the employer is rightfully entitled to his profit. If the employee doesn't consent to the conditions, then he's either jobless, which is his own prerogative, or he's forced to labor anyways, in which case he is a slave and thus isn't relevant to this argument. As such, you're point is moot my good Father. If the workers can take ownership of the means of production, they could create cooperatives and manage themselves. Some anarchists would prefer communes, collectives, syndicates, or solitary craftsmanship and that's fine, too. Unfortunately, the state prevents workers from taking ownership of that which they've already paid for in the difference between their wages and the sales prices of their products. So, it's not that the workers need employers to work. They don't. It's that employers need the state to employ. The discussion on air and water pollution is technically a discussion on commons, which I think are wrong. Yeah? Based on who's determination of value? Yours?
I happen to think that the market is good for determining value as long as everyone can participate in it without patronizing middlemen. Since all value is subjective, what you are saying is that as long as both parties agree, the trade fair. Did you just defeat you're own argument there? Nope. Value is subjective, but the market is useful, useful enough anyway, for determining it.
You can divide labor when being self employed. You hire out services to someone else outside of your skillset.
That's just another form of employer/employee relationship. Only if you boss them around and try to resell the product of their services for a profit. Or you form a co-op, which is just a really big form of self-employment.
And so is this. Only when its members are employees, or find themselves subordinated in some other way, instead of partners, but then it's not much of a co-op. |
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Hi everyone, glad to see this thread is remaining popular. Just to address the quote above in case it concerns anyone, the portal page and tor site are completely separate and neither can be traced back to any physical persons at Silk Road in any conceivable way. The portal page was an afterthought to get more traffic to the site, but did its job too well, over-exposing Silk Road. We will reopen it when we feel like the site is ready for that kind of exposure. On another note, I would like to bring this thread back to the "Feedback requested" part of the title. I am especially interested in hearing from anyone with alot of experience in network security about how to improve the anonymity of the site beyond running it as a tor hidden service. How would YOU do it? What are some worse case scenarios? Thanks everyone for your support  After Oink went away, new tracker sites started up to fill the void, kind of like a hydra. Because of open source tracker software, new heads grew quickly. Do you think there's anything you can do, or have you already done things, to facilitate the creation of new hydra heads in the unfortunate case that the authorities shut down Silk Road? |
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Not strictly correct. Anarchism is an anti-state philosophy, not necessarily anti authoritarian. After all, Father, what is the ultimate authority, if not God? In your question, you assume that God exists, that he is an authority, that that means that we must embrace authoritarianism. I cannot validate these assumptions. Can you? Furthermore, it simply doesn't make sense that anarchists would only oppose the state. That would mean contentedness with switching from one master to another and we already do that. No, anarchists know that anarchy is a struggle against all authority that may never end.
Furthermore, employers, landlords, and usurers (they're pretty much all usurers, but whatever) cannot do what they do without a state of some kind and states are authoritarian entities. Therefore, anarchy opposes capitalism.
In practice, perhaps. Not in ideology. The problem that persists with your conversations is that the word "capitalism" is different for different people. What you rail against is actually corporatism. Capitalism is not an ideology, but a definable set of natural economic laws. Capitalism exists in every human society, whether the people involved wish to acknowledge it or not. In places where capitalism is respected, societies prosper in general. There are some downsides to capitalism, but overall it is always best to go along with nature rather than fight it. Really Father, you should actually read some of the recommended reading on the subject that has been presented already. I particularly recommend Economics in One Lesson. I oppose the individual capitalist as much as the biggest group of them. If corporatism is inherently authoritarian, I will oppose it too. You assume that capitalism is something of nature. Can you prove that? Can you prove that humans must behave naturally? Case in point, political structures are, by definition, not capitalist structures. The political rulers in the UK are not capitalists. The same is true for every other nation on Earth. There is no such thing as a capitalist nation, and there cannot be. I suppose it's not safe to assume that all people in government are capitalists, but I wasn't doing so. The capitalists living off of the cumulative interest they collect from borrowers are also rulers. If a society's government can fund the education of its members in a non-profit manner, it will weaken the capitalist usurer kings. Hopefully doing so will also redirect funds from its more oppressive activities. Of course, that probably won't ever happen and any rioting will make its alleged participants look bad. I never said it was the smart thing to do, but it is justifiable. Why would it make sense? Education has always been a for-profit, vocational venture. Has it? If so, why does it have to be? If they were raised to understand the natural laws of God, then yes, we can. See my earlier response in this post. Probably we should not. Glad we can agree on that. Father McGruder, if you could take a minute out from kicking ass for the Lord, please tell us why owning things is inherently authoritarian. Christ, I've been waiting for someone to make that reference. Have you actually seen Dead Alive or did you watch me make that reference in IRC? Ownership is authoritarian when you come to own or maintain ownership of something through authoritarian means. Simply owning the product of your labor, and not using it to extort from others the product of their labor is not authoritarian. Capitalist profit is extortion though and therefore authoritarian. Some anarchists might argue that private ownership is always authoritarian, but I disagree. |
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Please define "fair" in this context. When neither side gains nor loses more than the other and they only trade what they have fairly gained. No. Two things. Something only has value when another is willing to trade for it. The product's value, from the time it leaves the worker's hands until it reaches the consumer's, is one hundred percent speculative. The reason that the worker chooses to work for his employer rather than himself is that his employer absorbs any difference in the speculative value of an object with the traded value. This is in addition to all of the time the employer spent building the company before the worker came around, and the risks involved in such.
No magic involved. If I make three widgets for a given amount of my labor, that amount of my labor clearly has a value of three widgets. Why would I give someone even one of those widgets to absorb risk that they can simply pass right back down to me in the form of layoffs or uncomfortable or unsafe working conditions? Even if that person built the workplace, a finite thing, he has no right to collect indefinitely on it. By any metric, governments are the largest polluters. Yet they are universally exempt from damage claims. I'll agree with that, for the most part. Yeah, I guess it's useless to try to form a more voluntary system that might actually fix some of those issues states have conveniently entrenched over the centuries. I disagree, but I can't prevent you from consigning yourself to them. Might as well keep being right twice a day. I try. This is nonsense. Value is whatever someone is willing to bid for a given good or service. Unless you're bearing all the risk and tying up your own capital, your labor is not worth the product you produce by it, and it really isn't their either, you're just bearing the other costs yourself in that scenario that the business owner would have otherwise. Nothing has intrinsic value. Value is the preference people show for certain goods or services. See above. This is an entirely ridiculous and meaningless sentence. If you can't or don't want to support yourself in self-employment, you have to find a job. If you don't like the job you're at, you're at no obligation to stay there. The threat of losing one's home, among other things, is obligation enough. What EULAs? Stop making up ridiculous problems that wouldn't even happen if there was a fleet of caricature villain billionaires out there with unlimited funds and a psychopathic tendency to try to make other people's lives hard at any cost. I established this concept earlier in the thread. And these 'strongmen' are likely to be arbiters, insurance agents, and other mediators. Don't forget the mob. Stop being disingenuous. You understand perfectly well why matter in some shapes is worth more than others, and it's because people have preferences that bear out when they have to make choices of what to do with their limited time and resources. I'm not being disingenuous. The only reason an employer can sell the product of my labor for less than what he sells if for on the market is if he has the authority to exclude me from that market. He gets this authority from a state of some kind. Are people just signing up for this site because they think cryptography is cool or something?
Why don't you start another thread with a poll? |
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And you make this conclusion, how?
Anarchism is an anti-authoritarian philosophy, and capitalism consists of authoritarian relationships: employer over employee, landlord over tenant, usurer over borrower. These roles may occasionally reverse, but the authoritarian relationships still persist. Furthermore, employers, landlords, and usurers (they're pretty much all usurers, but whatever) cannot do what they do without a state of some kind and states are authoritarian entities. Therefore, anarchy opposes capitalism. Someone explain to me how kids rioting for cheaper education constitute "anarchists". Does the state regulate and limit the availability of education or something?
If anarchists cannot get rid of the state very easily, it makes sense to try to decrease the power of the other capitalist rulers. It also makes sense for anarchists to get angry when education becomes more of a for-profit, vocational venture. To anarchists, such policy changes mean an exacerbation of the capitalist status quo. And can we honestly expect a mass of indignant, radical youth, anarchist or not, not to do something rash? We should also not disregard the likely possibility of agents provocateur. |
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Because labor has inherent value? No. The labor one might expend to exploit others is worthless because it produces nothing. Or all trades must be equal trades? If they qualify as fair trades, yes. Only the state grants impunity. A state is just an entity with the power to do so. A usurer will have to become a state himself or find another one to rely on to continue his usury. If your labor is worth more, go find a job somewhere else. My labor is worth the product I produce by it, no more, no less. That I'd have to flee my workplace, a second home really, to find fair compensation is an injury to my humanity. As if that's not bad enough, I'd have to flee my home because there are no engineering cooperatives nearby. The point is that you're worrying about a non-issue. If people are worried about something bad happening, there will be demand for people to ensure bad thing 'x' doesn't happen. If everyone in the world owned a private factory spewing carbon monoxide over a wide radius making most of the world uninhabitable, and it seemed like no one cared, then I'd be a little worried; but it's obviously not the case, and government has only codified that pollution is okay, as long as it's under arbitrary limit 'y,' and then made it impossible for the average person to ever recover any damages, even if an entity goes above arbitrary limit 'y.'
Even if there was a problem here, violence is not the way to solve complex, social problems. Can the demand be so great that people will break their EULAs, or will they have to enter into others by buying protection from strongmen? Everything with mass is excludable. You cannot say some atoms are special and need to be un-owned or that you have some master plan to distribute atoms fairly to people. I never said that and I do not. I find it curious though that some atoms, after a worker uses his labor to arrange them in some fashion so as to create a product, become more valuable after the employer takes it. Must be magic. |
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Don't worry, they promise to only do it when it is in your best interests. I thought you agreed that consent was not a good factor by which to judge an outcome? ...consent isn't necessarily the best factor, or even a good factor, by which to judge an outcome. I added emphasis. Investors may have consented to a company printing new shares when they bought its stock. That doesn't mean that it won't harm them if it does so. Splitting stock creates more units for the current owners. Not for the company to give away. Isn't a company typically a current owner? Does it not have the authority to sell the new shares created after a split? |
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And in the usury example?
Whomever takes the product of your labor while giving back relatively less with impunity. |
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Who is the potentate? Who is imposing harm on whom? Property owners? In the pollution example, it is whomever pollutes, and thereby imposes harm on others, with impunity. |
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If I happen to not own Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart can just do whatever they please, and they may decide not to stock things I want to buy. I'll have no choice but to just buy things I hate then.
Indeed, that's a crappy position to be in, wherein you can only choose to shop at Wal-Mart or not shop at all. Even worse is the choice to breath or not breath. Scarce things are scarce, yo.
Ownership just means you can lay a claim to keep other people from using said resource if you rightfully acquired it (<---debate for another time in there). If someone comes along and dirties it up or otherwise harms this resource, you have recourse. It's just a combination of this notion of 'public property' and our inefficient court systems that favor (due to their expensive nature and laws written by lobbyists rather than dictated by natural rights) large corporations that allow 'acceptable levels' of pollution to happen today.
Without both of those in place, it would become trivial to seek redress vs. any damage to your property by another party, and this includes pollution. Without limited liability laws, the stockholders and management of any company that decided to risk polluting others' property would be at personal risk of losing their assets if they wronged others.
Incentives matter.
But people often use and depend on things that other people (legally) own. Wherein everyone (legally) owns only that which they procure through their own labor, use, and occupy themselves, then I think you have something. You imply that some can rightfully own more water and air than others?
Of course, as with any scarce resource. Such a property concept has negative externalities because it allows for polluters to own and rightfully pollute the water and air that I drink and breath. With every gulp and breath I would give my consent to some grotesque EULA.
The same thing could theoretically be happening to food and everything else, right now.... OMG, we'll all starve!!!  Competition solves the "issue". What doesn't help are regulations, barriers of entry, disrespect over people's property rights and so on... So, living according to an EULA of another person's creation does not count as a negative externality? Even if one can escape the terms of the EULA through death or exile, all the choices represent a potentate imposing harm on that person. As such, all forms of usury are negative externalities. |
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I'm going to send some samples up. If you'd like I'll send you a bottle on the condition that if you like it you spread the word. I'd really like that. In regards to the flavored oils I've been making those myself with local herbs and a native indian (mapuche) spice called Merken that is made with dried goat's horn peppers, corriander and a few other things. I was shocked at how good they turned out, I underestimated my ability (or more likely luck). Is it hot? |
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If there is no "public" ownership, it becomes a case of damages, not negative externalities. If someone dumps a pile of manure in my yard, that's not an externality, it's damaging my property and I will sue him or at least make him clean it up. My last post in this thread still applies. If I happen not to own my yard, or my home for that matter, the landlord can do whatever he pleases. |
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I'm also going to be importing olive oil in to the US (from Chile) and selling it online for btc.
Organic and herb infused as well. It is probably a few months out though but stay tuned. I would love to buy olive oil with bitcoins. I don't think I've ever had Chilean olive oil. Can anyone attest to it's quality? |
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