The Constitution doesn't say anything about handing keys to the kingdom over to private fucking armies.
Actually, it does. Private merc contracts were called "Letters of Marque" in the day, and that exact language is used in the Constitution.
Yeah I know the Constitution is old and quaint but despite how often it is abused some of us still believe in it. Private armies are an enemy of the Constitution and should be dealt with harshly.
Actually, the opposite is true. Thomas Jefferson, among others, regarded standing armies as a continous threat to the republic. Militias were, and are, privately organized military units by definition, whose membership do not answer to any direct chain of command. The US Army and Marine Corps are not, in point of fact, continously commissioned institutions from their founding dates. Both were dispanded for a few years following the Revolution, in part, because the Articles of Confederation did not provide any collective funding for a national military. We didn't even have a Navy, in the modern sense anyway. John Paul Jones is credited with being the first Naval commander during the Revolution, but at the time he was more like a merc in the modern context.
I hope I am dead before this country gets royally (censored) by the concept of privatized defense because it will be the final nail in the coffin of our grand experiment. Time to rip of the Constitution and start over.
Sorry, but as I have already noted, mercs have been a part of the US defense forces since the beginning. You were born (censored). The free market is great for a lot of thing, probably almost all things but when people try to make it do everything it is like a square peg into a round hole.
This is a valid argument, but the debate between private and public defense forces is a question of stragedies that the POTUS has always had the constitutional right to decide. The fact that almost all of them has strongly favored a professional & government 'regulated' military does not alter that fact. BTW, please watch your language. |
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When will the bitcoin community or even just the forum members here take presidence over not wanting to step on the toes of those that ruin these forums ?
I don't think that you understand the point. To answer your question directly, it won't, ever. An ignorant irritant of a member has exactly the same rights to say stupid things as anyone else does, so long as s/he continues to do so in a civil manner. We will not favor any one group of the membership over any other, no matter how you might look at it. |
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Btw, anyone else find it strange that, whether it is an explosion and special effects spectacular, a horror movie, a slapstick comedy, a romantic comedy, a general foreign flick, or a documentary, the price for the movie is exactly the same, both theater ticket and DVD wise? What's with that?
Well, that's not entirely true, as the best flicks retain their "suggested retail price" point pretty well while the mediocre flicks start off in the 20% discount section and fall from there. But a lot of that is that IP laws actually function as price support that decends with time since release. You can see this in how movies move from the first run theater, to the discount theater, to DVD release, to group DVD's (the package deals that you can get more than one movie in a single retail package, either on the same disk or more than one disk in a single case/package) a few years down the line. Fallacies aside, if IP laws are repealed this process (that the market value of information tends towards zero) would proceed much faster than it does at present. |
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As moonshadow said, the 10% can be forced to pay after they have a fire.
I didn't make that argument. I said that the guy who tries to get by cheap without any protection and his house burns down (and his homeowners' insurance policy drops him because he is an idiot, what kind of guy would keep his homeowners and not his fire protection anyway?) would serve as a warning to others in the area to the great risk that they would be taking by cutting liabilites in this area. |
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...snip...
They didn't elect to have such burdens placed upon them so that you can have a privilege of an income. And the irony of your choice of words is not lost on myself.
Correct - they tolerate it because they like movies and jobs. As do I. And absent a democratic mandate, I don't think those benefits should be taken away. It would appear that Steam has plans to make a movie or two using their rendering engine.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Fortress_2#Marketing"The "Meet the Team" videos are based on the audition scripts used for the voice actors for each of the classes; the "Meet the Heavy" scripts is nearly word-for-word a copy of the Heavy's script. More recent videos, such as "Meet the Sniper", contain more original material.[86] The videos have been used by Valve to help improve the technology for the game, specifically improving the facial animations, as well as a source of new gameplay elements, such as the Heavy's "Sandvich" or the Sniper's "Jarate".[86] Newell has stated that Valve is using the "Meet the Team" shorts as a means of exploring the possibilities of making feature film movies themselves. Newell believed that only game developers themselves have the ability to bring the interesting parts of a game to a film, and suggested that this would be the only manner through which a Half-Life-based movie would be made." (Emphasis mine) So, will it take millions to make a movie from a VALVe game? Will fans of the game pay to see it? I understand that this doesn't actually contradict your claim that IP laws are necessary, but it does put the error to your claim that major motion pictures must continue to be produced in the manner that presently dominates. Nor must they cost a fortune to be truely entertaining. As an aside, when the original Toy Story was produced, it required a custom built Belwolf cluster to render the CGI graphics. Today VALVe's rendering engine produces comparable quality CGI video, in real time, on a not-too-recent home PC or iMac. And it does this while connected to a game server across the Internet which manages the interaction of up to 36 rendering engines at the same time. If Toy Story hadn't already been produced, the exact same movie could have been produced by a creative team using three or four consumer desktops networked together. Just because you can't (or we can't) imagine how such entertainment would be produced sans IP; or even what form that it would take, it doesn't logically follow that such entertainment will not be produced nor that the market will fail to fund it's production. VAVLe apparently understands this, regardless of their view on IP laws in general. Their management and marketing team does not depend upon the continuing enforcablity of copyright laws (or even licensing contracts, for that matter) in order to create great art that a great many people are willing to contribute money for. Hell, they still make money off of a free-to-play game such as TF2 by selling virtual hats inside the game. And it's an awesome game. I heard about it on this very forum last year or so, and downloaded it a couple of weeks ago for free. It's also free to join most game host servers, although they will tend to advertise to you or solicit donations. Steam (whatever that program actually is) logs my game time, and I've burned over 60 hours of time. At tjhe original sale price that would already be less than a dollar per hour, which is way better entertainment value that a two hour movie at the movie theater. |
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From what I can find on the internet, it looks to me that the media is focusing on particular groups within the protests, intentionally or otherwise. It doesn't look like there is any single group, but some groups make more news than others.
I hope so, because it smells like the Tea Party thing all over again. It's the left's version of the tea party movement. So now freedom can be trampled from both the left and the right--by the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party movement. It's pretty obvious that neither one of you have ever actually attended a Tea Party rally to find out for yourself what they are about. I have, and at least in my area of the country, freedom from government (and oppressive taxation) is pretty much the major undercurrent. There are many libertarian leaning groups there, both young and old. I shouldn't have to say this, but don't depend upon the observations of others for your opinions, particularly not people that listen to the media much. I think that both of you would likely find that you have much in common with both the Tea Party people and the Wall Street occupiers if you took either event first hand. I realize that there is a wide variety of people involved in the Occupy movement. I cannot fly down to New York to go check it out myself, so I have to rely on secondary sources such as videos, interviews and the comments on the occupywallst.org forum. What my observations from these secondary sources have told me is that there are a lot of socialists and progressives involved who want more government regulation and intervention to protect them from the corporations. They want free college education, an increase in the minimum wage and free health care. There was a very small Occupy protest on my campus and I know some of the people involved. Again, more progressives and leftists. That doesn't mean that everyone in the OWS movement is leftist or socialist, but I see it getting coopted in the same way that the Tea Party has. I know a lot of Tea Partiers, and most of them do indeed want freedom from government and lower taxes and they'll vote in any Republican who promises them said things regardless of voting record or historical stances on the issues. Also, most of them are pro-war and want us to invade Iran. I'm sure there are a lot of libertarian leaning Tea Party members as well, but the vibe I've gotten from the ones I've interacted with is that of neo-conservatism, which I detest. I cannot contradict this observation. In my own experience, half of the tea parties people are libs and half are neo-con fodder. Kinda like a dead split between Ron Paul and Sarah Palin. I have no direct experience with the OWS crowd, so I can't comment on that. However, if they really are the liberal far left's version of the 'Tea Party' they are their own worst enemy. The tea party types that showed up for Glenn Beck's 9/12 rally last year left the grounds at least as clean as it was when they arrived, and that was property of the very government that they want downsized. The OWS crowd are camped out on private property that is managed by a trust that does not have the authority from the donator to evict peaceful patrons, and they are defiling the grounds. |
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Urban areas with tall buildings are different; they have not been around since Roman times and you need the powerful pumps. Since the costs of this kit and of fire station buildings and staff is high, it makes sense that everyone is obligated to make a contribution. Wherever people look at this, they come up with a system where every property owner must contribute. It may be some not state based mechanism like the town deeds but you need something.
Really? What if only 99% of homeowners participated, whould the system fail for lack of funding? What if only 95%? At was point is an urban "free rider" problem really a problem? What if that free rider has a fire, is the fire company obligated to put the fire out, because both his neighbors paid the fees? Or simply obligated to keep his neighbors' homes wet while his burns to the ground? What happens to that free rider then? Everyone has a purpose in this great world. For some, that purpose is to serve as a warning to others. That will vary by the size of the town. Some will struggle to get even 2 pumpers and they will need close to 100% if you have individual houses paying fire protection fees. However, the bigger point is that its simpler to do this as part of taxation. There is no reason to create a new administration system for billing a fire service fee, a refuse service fee, a road service fee, a town parks fee when one tax covers all and is levied democratically. If the best argument for maintaining the status quo is simplicity at the cost of consumer choice; then well, I guess your pragmatism trumps our principle (*cough*). However, that problem has long been solved. It's called the 'free market' and it is that big grey animal in the middle of the room you keep ignoring. You can't even argue that private fire protection has never been attempted, it has and does fine. You just don't notice because it's successful. |
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...snip...
I'd be willing to bet that the average adult, if polled, has no idea that there are laws that criminalize sharing.
That average adult is the guy you want to improve the life of. He likely works in a company that uses trademarks as part of its business strategy. He may like movies. Removing IP laws will hurt him and as you say, the IP laws as they stand never interfere with him. And that changes the argument, how? Even if I accepted that your view was correct, and that the only way to improve the lives of the ignorant was to do so by imposing force upon them as a group, how does that change the argument that you don't have the right to do so? You can educate the "ignorant" - you don't have a right to overrule their choices in elections. That would lead to slavery - people said it was needed to protect black people from themselves. They didn't elect to have such burdens placed upon them so that you can have a privilege of an income. And the irony of your choice of words is not lost on myself. |
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Urban areas with tall buildings are different; they have not been around since Roman times and you need the powerful pumps. Since the costs of this kit and of fire station buildings and staff is high, it makes sense that everyone is obligated to make a contribution. Wherever people look at this, they come up with a system where every property owner must contribute. It may be some not state based mechanism like the town deeds but you need something.
Really? What if only 99% of homeowners participated, whould the system fail for lack of funding? What if only 95%? At was point is an urban "free rider" problem really a problem? What if that free rider has a fire, is the fire company obligated to put the fire out, because both his neighbors paid the fees? Or simply obligated to keep his neighbors' homes wet while his burns to the ground? What happens to that free rider then? Everyone has a purpose in this great world. For some, that purpose is to serve as a warning to others. |
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...snip...
I'd be willing to bet that the average adult, if polled, has no idea that there are laws that criminalize sharing.
That average adult is the guy you want to improve the life of. He likely works in a company that uses trademarks as part of its business strategy. He may like movies. Removing IP laws will hurt him and as you say, the IP laws as they stand never interfere with him. And that changes the argument, how? Even if I accepted that your view was correct, and that the only way to improve the lives of the ignorant was to do so by imposing force upon them as a group, how does that change the argument that you don't have the right to do so? |
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http://cafehayek.com/2011/10/a-note-on-commenting.htmlI saw this today, and I believe that it pretty well sums up the common moderation policy on this forum. For those of you who read this post (which is about the comment section for Cafe Hayek, not this forum) and don't know who are the people that they are talking about, then you are the people they are talking about. We tolerate your presence and ignore your ignorance, so long as you are neither unforgivablely rude nor vulgar. No one should take our silence (moderators) as consent or approval of their opinions.
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I believe that we have a right to choose as a society. If you seek a change that takes that choice away, you need to convince the majority of people its a good idea. Otherwise a minority could argue they want slavery back and you'd be saying we should listen to them. Except IP law removes my choice of how to use my property because you say that you have a greater claim to your idea than I do to my property. "IP law allows for the production of movies that I like" = "slavery allows for the production of cotton that I like" You're making multitudes of logical fallacies, the main ones being... Just because movies you like are made with IP law doesn't mean the only way movies you like can be made is with IP law. Just because something is currently accepted by society, doesn't mean it is right, good, or moral. See: slavery. The Greeks couldn't even imagine a society without slavery, it doesn't change the fact slavery is immoral. And if someone proposes that slavery be re-introduced, I will join with you in opposing it. If it ever is, it won't be called that by it's proponents, only it's opposition. I might be called something cryptic like "Organic Property" and require dozens of laws establishing different aspects of privilages for certain citizens over the free will and existing propery law of the remainder of citizens. Over a period of time, these same laws become entrenched into certain industries where they are adopted first, and proponents insist that those monopoly privileges established and enforced by government are "rights" dispite the fact that the average 8 year old has a decent understanding of what is actually right and wrong, yet these laws don't make sense to the average adult. Ask an 8 year old if he takes his neighbors bicycle without permission is wrong, and then ask that same child if borrowing a (legitimate) copy of his best friend's latest Xbox game with the owner's permission is wrong; and take note of the differences in response. Just because you consider copyright to be your right, doesn't mean that it's actually right. I'd be willing to bet that the average adult, if polled, has no idea that there are laws that criminalize sharing. |
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Its not a question of imagination. Firemen risk their lives if they don't have the right set-up.
So do high tension linemen, but their job isn't paid for by taxes. Who's job is more dangerous on average, a NYC cop or a NYC cabbie? Risk is part of life, I ask, so what?
Trucks with pumps cost $400k. That's the real world.
Is a new truck a requirement? Is a pumper truck at all? Obviously not, since firemen have been around pretty much since the Roman age. Can a company of volunteer firemen without a brand new pumper truck compete against a fully outfitted company? Probably not, but again so what? Should they not have a right to try? And besides, a $400K pumper truck is actually a pretty small venture capital business plan. The greater cost of currently employed fire suppresssion plans is the real estate and the labor costs. If your local town has only one firehouse, it's almost certainly already paid for and the firemen are local volunteers. Do you think that a few of those volunteers could start a private company, should the city stop providing funds, with the help and fees of the town's wealthiest? Or even just to cover the businesses and banks on Main Street. Again, a terminal lack of imagination.
Any proposal you make that changes the real world needs to accommodate reality.
Any proposal that I make is irrelevent. As is your view of reality, or what consitutes such accommodation. |
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And this is what we have come to expect from our "moderators".
Thanks for the previously civil conversation.
How was I uncivil? Hawker has a history of ignoring the solutions presented to him, I was just being jovial about it. I'm guessing he is at least as old as I, and I'll admit that I've walked into a room and then stopped and asked myself, "Why did I come in here?" It's simply the process of life, and it would somewhat explain his propensity to ignore certain posts. Then again, maybe he simply has half the libs on 'ignore'. I have a history of pointing out that if you want to change society, its best start with actual improvements. Your fix to the free rider is to pretend it doesn't matter. When a firetruck with a pump costs $400k and you need 2 at each fire, the free riders will make the entire service unaffordable. See - logical and sensible correction of your fallacy - and all done without flaming people. I don't wish to change society. I wish to change government. If you believe that a pair of $400K firetrucks is the only way to provide for fire protection, or even if it is that taxation is the only way to pay for it, then you suffer from a terminal lack of imagination. There is nothing that I can say that is going to help you to reevaluate your premises, because first you would have to accept that at least one of them is wrong. If if you really thought that I was flaming you, first I apologize, for I was just playing around; and second, now I'm certain your are a Boomer. |
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And this is what we have come to expect from our "moderators".
Thanks for the previously civil conversation.
How was I uncivil? Hawker has a history of ignoring the solutions presented to him, I was just being jovial about it. I'm guessing he is at least as old as I, and I'll admit that I've walked into a room and then stopped and asked myself, "Why did I come in here?" It's simply the process of life, and it would somewhat explain his propensity to ignore certain posts. Then again, maybe he simply has half the libs on 'ignore'. |
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I would also argue that there is not a natural monopoly situation in rural settings because no one - private or public - can achieve the same kinds of economies of scale, and so the issue of monopoly is moot.
You might be right about urban areas becoming a natural monopoly situation, regardless of direct support via city government. And, generally speaking, libs don't have a problem with natural monopolies so long as they do not become artificial ones. If a single fire protection company gains a natural monopoly on a given cityscape, so long as no one starts getting it in their heads that, when that monopoly situation changes, said single fire protection company is 'too big to fail' then so be it. You are still left with the free rider problem unless there is some way to compel property owners to pay. There is no free rider problem. That has already been addressed in this very thread. Do you have memory issues, Hawker? Doubtless you are a boomer, IMHO, due to your use of language; are you now having trouble remembering where you left your keys, too? Why did you go into that room, anyway? |
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quesiton is would a business take this sort of risk.
Not one that is not currently struggling under the "legitimte" system. After all, grocery stores that have to remove their out of date product can write that off their taxes as a corporate loss but then must throw the stuff out. Giving away to a local soup kitchen for near term use is out of the question. If they should do it before the date expires, it's only a donation deduction and not a full loss write off. The people who dive into the dumpster after audit day, however, are the kind of people willing to take the risks; but I don't think that things are quite so bad in America for that to be widespread. |
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I would also argue that there is not a natural monopoly situation in rural settings because no one - private or public - can achieve the same kinds of economies of scale, and so the issue of monopoly is moot.
You might be right about urban areas becoming a natural monopoly situation, regardless of direct support via city government. And, generally speaking, libs don't have a problem with natural monopolies so long as they do not become artificial ones. If a single fire protection company gains a natural monopoly on a given cityscape, so long as no one starts getting it in their heads that, when that monopoly situation changes, said single fire protection company is 'too big to fail' then so be it. |
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Drugs are a high value item, wherein privacy is a requirement. It's Silk Road that needs Bitcoin, not the other way around. The reason it looks like it's the only successful model is because, for the time being, shopping online for legal items that are otherwise high value and easy to ship works just fine with credit cards. The only thing that's going to undermine that is if the currency they use loses their trust or the credit card companies lose their trust. A local model that you might pursue is the 'foodie movement' such as raw milk and local honey. With the FDA coming down on raw milk suppliers and contract arrangements, there is room for a revival of the "milk man" who delivers the milk to the foodies from an undisclosed farm.
Bottom line is they have the most experience by far in conducting commerce with bitcoin as a medium of exchange. Raw food stuff is not even close to being in a market that is in in the same country of the ballpark I am in lol. I would absolutely never waste my time building a business around that. Not trying to be negative that's just me. That's okay. Someone else will. Anyone without a job, but with a minivan that can hold a couple of large coolers, get going. Make your own job. |
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