By no means was I suggesting Amazon's actions absolve Apple of anything.

That said, you're only considering the one side of the market (i.e. whether they are abusing their near-monopoly), whereas I was addressing the other side of the market (i.e. whether they are abusing their near-monopsony). Just as it's illegal for a company to abuse their dominant position to force prices up since people lack alternative choices to purchase, so too is it illegal for a company to abuse their dominant position to force down the prices they're paying when their suppliers lack alternative choice to sell to. Negotiating is fine, but when you're essentially the only company buying, you have a legal responsibility to not abuse your position in those negotiations. The danger there is that they can keep forcing prices down to levels that are unsustainable for their suppliers.

Amazon does not seem to be abusing their near-monopoly, but they are almost certainly abusing their near-monopsony.

Setting aside Apple for the moment, there's nothing "theoretical" about Amazon engaging in actions of this sort. They've been doing it as long as Apple has, at least.

Using most favored nation clauses and the agency model, which is exactly what got Apple in trouble: http://www.selfpublishingrevie...
Leveraging their near-monopsony to try and gouge the publishers: http://www.teleread.com/ebooks...
Making hard-to-implement immediate demands when the publishers pushed back: http://www.thepassivevoice.com...
Delisting multiple publishers during re-negotiations: http://time.com/110412/amazon-...
Jacking shipping times from a few days to 3-5 weeks: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
The author's guild is outright accusing Amazon of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/...

Spend 30 seconds Googling around. You'll be shocked at what all Amazon has already done when it comes to this industry, and it's only been getting worse in recent years. It's like looking inside the door at a sausage factory: you'd have wished you never looked.

He's partially correct. A large part of the issue was that they were accused of colluding in this regard. Another part, however, was that they combined Most Favored Nation clauses and the Agency Model for doing business. Neither of those latter two are considered illegal, in and of themselves, but together with the each other and the collusion that was alleged (e.g. there's a story about the execs from the publishers and Apple all getting together at a boathouse to talk), they were considered a form of price fixing. Effectively, the case made against them alleged that the publishers were being told, "You all get to control your own prices. All we demand is that you make sure we have the lowest price, or else that you jack up other's prices to match ours. Oh, and *nudge nudge* you're all making these decisions at the same time as each other."

Negotiating en masse isn't illegal, nor are MFN clauses or an agency model. But combining them all together, particularly if you suggest to the folks on the other side of the table that they work together for their mutual benefit? You run into some issues doing that.

The entire eBooks market was only making $3 billion in revenue in each of 2012 and 2013. And I think we'll all agree that the market of today is much larger than it was back in 2010, when Apple and the iPad entered the scene with their combination of an Agency Model and Most Favored Nation clauses, which were deemed to be anticompetitive when used together.

  Apple's share of the market in 2010 was somewhere between 10% and 20%, depending on who you believe (most suggest it was 10%, but let's go with 20% for the sake of argument, since it'd mean they'd have made more money). So, if we use 2012's numbers (which, again, will be larger than 2010's actual numbers), their revenue would have only been $600 million at most during that time. I'll admit that I am not an accountant, so I may be misusing these numbers, but as I understand it, their 30% cut for the agency model would be taken out of the $600 million, meaning they'd receive roughly $180 million in a year.

To say the least, you'd have a hard time making the case that the $180 million they made was somehow $450 million or more greater than the amount they'd have made had they not engaged in anticompetitive practices. Though, if I recall correctly, treble damages were being pursued, so that may explain a large chunk of the discrepancy. Even so, it is highly doubtful Apple benefitted by anywhere even in the ballpark of the amount they are being fined.

Which view is perfectly consistent with the bit of my post that you quoted. A belief that no effort to address externalities and a belief that we should find a way to internalize them are both consistent with the statement that money should not be forcibly collected from everyone to cover externalities.

I didn't dispute your claim that some libertarians think no effort should be made to address externalities. I did say that "most libertarians would be just fine with using government to find a way to internalize the externalities", which may or may not be true, though I obviously think it is, or I wouldn't have said it.

Some jurisdictions do have Son of Sam laws that are designed to keep criminals from profiting from their criminal pursuits, but from the Wikipedia entry, it sounds like they may be of questionable constitutionality (and that the court has been willing to throw them out), depending on how they are phrased and enforced.

So, all I have to do is observe a small selection of your passwords and I know most of them, and even have strong clues as to the structure to facilitate what little guessing I need to do for your "hard" passwords.

Brilliant!

Nonsense. The statement you quoted is one that basically all libertarians would agree with. You can perhaps quibble with my other statement that "most libertarians would be just fine with using government to find a way to internalize the externalities", but I think you'd have a very hard time finding anyone who self-identifies as libertarian who would agree that "money should be forcibly collected from everyone in order to cover the externalities".

Ok, for the sake of argument, let's say that the union president misread Tesla's management and that they are, in fact, neutral towards the idea of unionization. What of it? A large piece of what I said was that the OP had completely glossed over unions fighting against Tesla outside of the factories, and I provided an example of a large and well-known one doing so. Even if the employee's union isn't fighting Tesla, the point still stands: trade unions are attacking Tesla.

All I see is DOJ advocacy of direct sales: http://www.justice.gov/atr/pub...
And the DOJ suing some dealerships under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act: http://www.justice.gov/atr/pub...

It sounds like they're doing what they can, which is nice... that is their job, after all.. But I'm still pretty sure they lack the power to do anything about this until they're authorized to intervene by some statute empowered by the Commerce Clause.

You're (I believe inadvertently) painting an inaccurate picture when it comes to Tesla's stance towards unions. Even if they are neutral towards employee unions (more on that in a minute), NADA is still one of the largest unions in the automotive industry, and has made no bones about the fact that they are opposed to Tesla's business model. Unions have been attacking Tesla from the start and continue to do so even now. Factory employee unions may not be a part of the fray yet, but they're hardly the only type of trade union.

Moreover, on the topic of employee unions, Musk may say he's neutral, but Tesla's actions make it clear that it is hardly neutral. From another article (emphasis mine):

And, contrary to your claims regarding Uber, it has been facing issues from trade unions, namely taxi, limo, and other professional driver unions across the country that have been campaigning extremely hard to keep Uber out. I'll grant that they are almost entirely operating against Uber at the city and state level, but that pressure on the governments is originating from the unions. Without the unions campaigning, the city governments likely wouldn't be getting involved at all.

That said, I do agree with you that the summary grossly missteps by suggesting that the issue of state-level protectionist regulators has much of anything to do with the complaints of small-government folks.

Not in France. You can tip in France, but it's rare and servers don't expect it to make up a significant portion of their wage.

That's certainly one brand of libertarian, but libertarianism is a pretty broad swath of ideas. I'd say that most libertarians would be just fine with using government to find a way to internalize the externalities, to make whoever causes them to pay them. What libertarians don't like is the idea that money should be forcibly collected from everyone in order to cover the externalities... which, incidentally, still allows those who directly benefit from them to avoid paying their way.

There's nothing low about "freesource zealotry", particularly among those who actually contribute their time and skills to free software. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I've always done this. I have one short, low-entropy password which I use on ALL low-risk web sites. For example, it's the one I use on slashdot. I don't really care if anyone gets in and starts posting stuff as me. In fact it might be a good thing, since it would give me some plausible deniability for the stupid things I sometimes say :-)

For important sites (e.g. financial), I use long, randomly-generated passwords and manage them in a password manager, which itself is protected with a very strong password. But for everything else, that's too much effort and serves no purpose. And for my "crown jewels" account -- my e-mail account, which if hacked would provide the intruder with the ability to reset most all of my other passwords -- I use a strong password and have two-factor authentication enabled.