It wasn't Communism or Socialism that collapsed, it was Sovietism.

Communism as a means of where workers own the firm and means of production hasn't failed. Look at manufacturing and worker coops. Some succeed, some fail. I'm guessing around the same rate that private and publicly owned firms do. Given that though, I'm willing to say that the idea isn't a failure.

John Green said it best. "Truth resists simplicity."

If you have a system where worker owned firms are exchanging goods and services on an open market using currency and capital as means of trade, is that a communist or capitalist society? What about when state governments establish rules that govern trade?

I'm a descriptivist when it comes to language. However, when the use of language is twisted as a way to paint people and ideas as "other" I have a massive problem with it. Don't get me wrong. I do understand that when we talk about "Capitalism" we're talking about western style capitalism where production and markets are more or less handled privately(Government regulations not withstanding). Conversely and by "Communism" we're talking about Soviet style communism where the state controls the means and focus of production. It's been a few years since I've read Marx and Engels, but I don't think this was the point of the mid 19th century communist movement.

So it becomes important to remember when we talk about things like Communism and Capitalism, things are pretty complex when you start to get serious into the terminology.

Did communism fail? Probably not. Has capitalism failed? Probably not either. It's likely that these are mutually exclusive ideas that can coexist.

Furthermore, how a state governs itself and interacts with it's markets complicate things further.

One thing i'm willing to bet on being pretty simple is that state planned production systems probably won't work. Not unless you got really lucky and the Government wasn't corrupt and somehow manages to provide for everyone.

I think that's nominally true for CPUs designed from the ground up. Given that chip's taking most of it's cues from reference designs by ARM themselves... I think this is less of the usual case.

I just want a Sherlock holmes themed opium den.

However. Failing all of that. I could just add a theme park to my mind palace.

This is actually kind of interesting.

I'm waiting to see what companies like Citadel Miniatures is going to do in response to gamers printing their own figures.

It's not fair to exactly call them customers since, you know, they're printing their own figures. I guess they can try selling them 3d shape files of figs instead.

Or as gamergate would call it, "Ethical journalism."

All of Go and Swift's documentation is available as free PDFs.

Regulation of industry, particularly interstate industry is in the Constitution(Article 1, section 8). Furthermore, States have the right to further regulate industry in their own jurisdictions.

Some of the taxicab regulations are protection rackets, but some of them are high barriers to entry for a reason. Namely things like public safety and accountability.

Like I said, regulations don't have to suck.

I'm me willing to bet number 2 was true, but they screwed it up and rather than admit that they're trying to freeload off of iTunes and the iPod, they're blaming them for not sharing.

Despite the fact that RealNetworks had years to get into the game and establish a real actual standard. Sorry RN, you snooze, you fucking lose.

As someone who's on the opposite coast, Valley and San Francisco both are one and the same to me. So, oops.

I'm also a fan of the ride sharing concept. When I flew out of Laguardia last week, I took an Uber from the Roosevelt Ave/Jackson Heights station to LGA and the process was smooth and simple(Also I had Uber credit so, might as well).

I just don't like Uber as a company.

Lyft seems like it's doing the right thing by complying with NYC taxi regulations though. So I'm going to have to look into that.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/go...

speaking of screwing up...

Stupid forbes capture page.

http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welc...

If a taxi company screws with me in New York I can get redress because our regulators aren't idiots.

Apparently not. But I am American, and I understand the problem here.

What bothers me isn't the lack of an understanding of history but rather a lack of understanding about civics.

Regulations can suck, but they don't -have- to.

If the regulation sucks, reform the regulations. Don't throw a huge hissy fit and shit the bed out of spite.

There's so much entitled Valley logic in the business model at Uber that it's hideously disturbing,

(Not to mention the whole "let's get a PI on a journalist who didn't like us" thing)

Actually it'd have to go through the Tropicana, and/or swerve around several blocks because the side of the airport that faces the strip is the runways. Getting the monorail out there would be a clusterfuck to say the least.

In an ideal libertarian world, what stops the mega-wealthy from exploiting the people? Is there any room for labor laws? OSHA? EPA? Regulations of any kind? FCC?

How does any of that square with extremely limited governance?

What does Libertarianism mean to you?

From what I've been told by libertarians is that the government needs to be smaller, less rules, less regulations, less interference. Individuals and market forces and rational common interest will benefit us all.

I don't buy it myself, but...

The problems you're describing where the hyper wealthy are colluding in an oligarchy to oppress the people and keep them consuming isn't solved by being more libertarian. Being hands off, having less regulations and rules doesn't solve that problem.

That problem's solved by *more* rules, specifically the rules to reform election laws to keep money out of politics.

The implicit theoretical side effect of libertarianism is that the wealthy, those with the means and resources, would do every well and those with out wouldn't. If you don't have people paying taxes for schools, libraries, roads, etc. How do things get better? When you've got concentrated wealth, what's stopping the wealthy from taking over?

Violent insurrection is a fine idea in that case, but, I wouldn't bet on it.