Yesterday I went to Walmart to get new light bulbs, old CFLs I had burned out. There Walmart had LED bulbs in stock, at around $20 a bulb. I ended up going to Sam's to get CFLs, an 8 pack cost less than $6.

Falcon

Unfortunately it is old, it's a Santa Rosa 3,1 MBP. Released in July 2007, so it's more than 5 years old. But it still works fine. Of course I wanted to get a 17" MBP with a Retina display, however Apple dropped the 17" models. The 15" model has too small a display for the high resolution the Retina can display clearly. The only good is plugging in a large monitor capable of high resolution, which can be done with the 17" models. Actually I'm looking for a high res monitor, at least 24", with an IPS panel to plug into my laptop.

And my new desktop. It too is 5 years old but whereas my MBP has a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo the desktop is a 2.4GHz Quad Core. In the MBP I have a 750GB HDD, and it's almost full. The desktop has 2 HDDs. The first one is 160GB and is for the OS, also Ubuntu 12.04. However I plan on installing other distros in virtual machines on the first drive. The second drive is a 3TB drive and is for user files. For backups I use external HDDs, the latest one also being 3TB. The MBP is maxed out at 2GB RAM versus 4GB which I can double in the desktop.

Falcon

Yea, look at Wiki's entry to Modern liberalism in the United States and Classical Liberalism. Today the closest political party we have to Classical Liberalism in the US is the Libertarian Party. However even there, it seems to me that some libertarians are corporate libertarians. Thomas Jefferson warned about the corporate aristocracy though. Corporations were originally granted limited liability by government if the corporation served a public good. And when it did not the corporate charter could be revoked.

Most people don't even know about the history of corporations and where they got their start. The first corporate charter was granted to the Dutch East India Company by the Dutch government in 1602. In 1604 Britain granted a charter to the British East Indian Company. Both companies were shippers and shipping was a risky business. If cargo being shipped was lost the ship owner was liable. Whether by bad weather or by pirates cargo lost was expensive to replace or pay for. Both of these companies transported cargo between Europe and India. Someone who was able to set aside some money to invest in a ship was liable to lose everything they owned, including their home. But with corporate charters the same person could invest in a shipping corporation. Then if the ship was lost the only thing the investor lost was the amount they invested. This enabled more people to invest in and expand shipping which benefited a lot of people. So as it were, the Dutch and British East India Companies were the first multinational corporations.

But talk of revoking a corporate charter today is denigrated by some so called libertarians, those corporate libertarians I mentioned above, even as corporations write the rules and regulations they are regulated by.

Falcon

I like my MacBook Pro. What I don't like is that Apple dropped the 17" MacBook Pro from the line-up. That's what mine is and it's about tyme I get a new one. But unfortunately the biggest MacBook Pro now is only 15". Now why would Apple put a retina display on a 15" laptop but not a 17"? Using as high a resolution as that on a small display is stupid, just how many people can distinguish the details on such a small display?

Falcon

Reading this I glanced down at my keyboard, I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro, and what do I see? I see Page Up, Page Down, Home, End, and Delete, which is Backspace on Linux and Windows PCs, keys. Now if I hold "fn" while pressing Delete I get the normal Delete. I dual-boot my MacBook, Snow Leopard and Ubuntu 12.04 and I've used the "flower power" when booted into Ubuntu. Without remapping the keyboard. I have not had a problem doing in Ubuntu what I do in Snow Leopard.

Falcon

Over the past couple of weeks I've been hearing about "economic cliff" and such. When I do I think I want to see it just to show people how dangerous government is to the economy. The bigger the part of economy the government is the worse. If I had my way I would abolish parts of the federal government. The DEA would be chopped off as would the ATF. Drug Czar? Gone. Washington state and Colorado are hopefully leading the nation here. Fatherland, er Motherland, er Homeland Security, bye bye. We already have national security, it's called the Department of Defense. And it would be pruned as well. End these wars that have off-line budgets and bring our troops back. Including the War on Drugs. I once started going through the federal budget and requests and came up with trillions of dollars in cuts without going through half the budget. By eliminating parts that are not in the Constitution of the USA.

I don't know what Modern Progressivism is but liberalism is not what it used to be. Thomas Jefferson in advocating for liberty and small government was a liberal. Most so called liberals in the US are almost the opposite of him. They want bigger not smaller government. Conservatives are no better, they too want bigger government. The only difference between conservatives and today's liberals is what part of government will be big and what part will be small if not gone. For instance conservatives want morality police while fake liberals want to redistribute wealth.

Falcon

One company may have paid back the subsidy it received but not all of them did. And where there is competition one company has to compeat with others by for instance having lower prices or offering better service In the case of electricity offering cleaner produced energy is a selling point to those who care about the environment.

So open the market. Or have a non-profit such as a coop take over the grid. The members or owners of the coop could then be generators and electricity users, even the workers. But not government.

Here is where you make the same mistake as others, because where there are MONOPOLIES there are NOT FREE MARKETS. A free market is one with little to no government interference, and monopolies are government granted and therefore government interference. A free market is one where buyers have more than one option. Technically where cables, and fiber, has to be laid down there can not be a free market. For power, ie electricity, until it can be transmitted wirelessly like Nikolai Tesla worked on there will not be a free market. Earlier this year MIT demonstrated this however it has not been commercialized yet. And when it finally is it will probably be patented, thus ruling out a free market until the patent expires. Quite simply even in CA I can not buy electricity from any generator I want and pick the distributor I'll use to deliver it. Here I advocate encouraging more competition, for generators, and open access for distributors. Even better I think would be to have a coop own the power cables. Of course if I were in CA I'd have solar panels on my roof, and depending on where in CA, maybe a wind genie (generator) and or a geothermal system too.

First, can you provide any links backing this up? Here's one on Milton Friedman speaking about government regulations. In it he targets the FDA saying the FDA should not be approving drugs. Instead drug companies are supposed to be held liable to harm or death caused by their drugs. While the FDA may save lives not approving a bad drug, it also causes deaths by taking too long to approve life saving drugs. Next, I don't want monopolies and would seek to get rid of them.

I'm glad I don't live in your world, in mine not all businesses will screw over anyone they can. Though I know and knew people who have and had their own businesses, my sister owns one and I want to start one of my own among others, most of those people do not try to screw over others. Also if I had my own way I'd ban all monopolies I could. Well maybe not copyrights and patents, but I'd shorten their terms. I don't care if George Lucas makes another Billion dollars off of Star Wars 7, oops, he sold the franchise to Walt Disney, but after say 10 years it should enter the public domain. Or if I can create something using my own resources and independently at the same tyme IBM does I should not be blocked from making and selling it because IBM beat me to the patent office.

Falcon

Ooh, I thought that was better than your previous reply.

Bullshit!!! You obviously didn't read the links I provided. You didn't provide any yourself either. Don't waste anymore tyme, I won't answer if you can't debate properly.

Falcon

Except it was government granted monopolies that made Bill Gates wealthy. That is what copyrights are, government granted monopolies.

Falcon

I didn't say buy round trip tickets but not fly back.

Now that is crazy, fees and taxes 3 times as much as the fare itself. Goes to show how dangerous government is to markets.

Falcon

That is not what caused the brown-outs. Sure Enron and other made money from it but they did not cause the problem. The problem was caused by the state government. Traders like Enron used state laws to do what they did. Partial deregulation was in fact reregulation. The new laws stipulated that electrical generators could not also own the electrical distribution cables. Also while generators could raise their prices to distributors, those distributors could not raise their prices to energy users without government permission. Consumer rates would be frozen With energy traders such as Enron buying electrical units prices went up which left distributors up a tree, they had to pay higher prices but could not raise their prices. That wasn’t deregulation!

Policy Debate: Has Deregulation Caused the Energy Shortage in California? "As an economist, whenever I hear the word "shortage" I wait for the other shoe to drop. That other shoe is usually "price control." So it was no great surprise to discover, after the electric power shortage in California made headlines, that there were price controls holding down the price of electricity to the consumers."

"Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric were required to charge consumers no more than 6.5 per kilowatt hour until March 2002. Because this rate had become much lower than the market rate, both utilities began to lose vast sums of money because they had to purchase power at the unregulated market rates."

Do you still want to call what happened in CA deregulation? If so then you don't know what deregulation is, which the removal of regulations without other regulations being added. However you're not the only one to think that way. To most reporters as well as the public the problem in CA was deregulation, that everything was deregulated when it was not. Sellers to end users could not raise prices but generators and trades not only could but did raise their prices to those sellers.

Falcon

That may be true in the UK but I don't think it is the the US. However airlines used to give discounts for round trip tickets, I don't know if they still do. That's not the same thing.

Falcon

And it's being contested:

Meanwhile, Spirit Airlines, Allegiant Air and Southwest Airlines - with backing from industry trade associations - are asking the Supreme Court to reverse an appeals court ruling forcing them to include taxes in their advertised fares. The appeals court upheld a Transportation Department rule that went in effect nearly a year ago that ended airlines' leeway to advertise a base airfare and show the taxes separately, often in smaller print. Airlines say the regulations violate their free-speech rights.

Falcon

But there wasn't deregulation. Even if I had enough money I could not start a new airline without jumping through some hoops that have nothing to do with flying. All that happened was that some regulations were dropped but others were added.

The exact same thing happened when California "deregulated electricity" back in the late 1990s causing CA's blackouts and brownouts.

Falcon

That's simple, charge extra for more than 2 bags carried on. I shouldn't have to pay more because I don't check in baggage if I don't need it. Let me give an example:

I'm a programmer who's been lain-off and I have an interview across the state, but for a local job. Now say the interview is 300 miles away. I have 2 choices drive or fly. I can drive 5 hours for it then 5 hours back. Or I can leave the house 3 hours before the interview to go to the airport to fly there and rent a car or take a taxi to the interview location then go back the opposite way. I don't need check-on luggage because I'm only going to be there a couple of hours. By charging for not having check-in luggage you're raising my costs.

Falcon