But the free market theory postulates a few more effects of it, though. That's why it's still being argued. Not because it would just continue to work better or worse, but because it's supposed to lead to an optimum point.
I've never heard an argument that free markets always produce some idealized, perfect outcome. What is argued is that markets tend to allocate scarce resources very efficiently. NOT perfectly efficiently, nor with perfect consistency. You are simply putting up a straw man.
Which really have only been argued on that ideal model. The whole behaviour of the free market as a perfectly self-correcting mechanism, and which does this or that so well without government intervention, is only argued to any satisfactory degree for that ideal market model and not at all on even the most laissez faire RL model. Much less on one which diverges as massively as what Monsanto wants.
Again, you are the only one calling the free market a "perfectly self-correcting mechanism".
The more you deviate from it, the more, well, you may not get the same results. Most of that theory was never proven at all on a case which differs from the ideal at all. E.g., go ahead and try to prove the first welfare theorem _without_ assuming perfectly competitive markets or perfect information and a few more such perfect assumptions. And then try the same for the second theorem, which requires even more such assumptions.
Of course you can only prove theorems about an idealized form of the market. But the welfare theorems are a much stronger form of the argument that markets tend to allocate scarce resources efficiently, and as such need not be assumed to apply perfectly in the real world.
And when you get to the extremes that Monsanto wants, where not just you don't know it all, but basically you know _nothing_ at all about the product you just bought, or at least not know if you got product A or B because they don't want them labeled... well, if you have some market theory which can sort the good from the bad without even knowing which is which, I'm all ears.
If you want non-GM products, then buy ones that are labeled as such. Nothing forces you to buy a product that is not labeled in the way you require. And if not many products are so labeled, it means not that many people actually care about having that information (e.g. Kosher foods). Besides, even without such labels, you can visit sites like this to get the information you require. Seems like the market is functioning pretty well to me.
At any rate, which to read? Well, you can start with say Milton Friedman. Should be palatable enough to the right wing, right?
Are you serious? Friedman was a monetarist. Monetarists advocate monetary intervention in the form of a central bank, which is directly contradictory to a laissez-faire approach. Try Rothbard, Mises, or Hayek instead.
But the concept of a free market is based on some key concepts, one of which is: perfectly informed buyers. No, really. It would be fun if all the Austrian school proponents (mostly libertarians) and the other right-wingers actually read what it says instead of just the bulleted propaganda points. That's the key assumption behind the idea that the market will sort out good from bad: the buyers actually know all aspects of it, and make an informed choice which to buy.
Bullshit. What you're talking about is an idealized, "perfect" free market, which economists sometimes talk about in the same way physicists sometimes talk about frictionless surfaces. Real markets do not in any way require perfect information to function well. And what, exactly, is "it" in the phrase "read what it says"? The dictionary? I find nothing about "perfectly informed buyers" in mine.
1. If you want to make a living creating works that exist in a data format (music, books, video) just accept the fact that nobody owes you a dime for your time. If some people choose to drop some money in your hat, that's awesome - but don't count on it.
I would phrase it as "information cannot be owned". "Intellectual property" is a very poor approximation; the model of ownership is fundamentally a bad fit for information. As Bruce Schneier put it: "trying to make digital files uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet".
As for "nobody owes you a dime for your time", that is true. Nobody owes you anything regardless of how much time or work you may have put in. That is, unless you arranged beforehand to be paid for your time, which you can do with or without copyright.
2. If your music is so great, tour and make money that way. If you get moderately successful locally, each band member might be able to clear $80 a night! Of course you'll need a huge cash infusion (i.e. debt) to start touring big, but I'm sure the banks will be happy to help you with loans for such a riskless endeavour.
Touring is one way to make money, sure. But heaven forbid musicians be required to work hard or take risks!
3. Always remember - costs like studio time, special effects, actors, musicians, props, sets, insurance, essentially every cost involved in the production of your work magically disconnect from the work itself at the moment it is finalized. A ripped copy of that work has absolutely no moral, legal, or implied connection to any of those costs.
Costs are an "implementation detail" of the producer, irrelevant to the consumer. Do you think companies that sell physical goods set prices according to their costs? No, they charge whatever the market will bear. If that happens to cover their costs, they make a (possibly very large) profit. If it doesn't, they go out of business, and the world moves on.
It always makes sense for them to collude and fix prices, but it very rarely if ever happens and when it does the government usually picks up on it and shuts that effort down.
It's not even necessary for the government to step in. Collusions are inherently unstable, as each participant has an incentive to "cheat" by undercutting the others. The more participants there are, the faster such a collusion collapses.
Likewise in software, where upgrades are mandatory even though the current software works just fine. "But it's old tech!" the developer shouts at his utterly stupid users. "Why won't you upgrade? I really enjoyed working on this!" I recently asked a question on a support forum about Drupal. I didn't get my question answered, as the developers immediately discussed the fact I was using the "old tech" version (5) and the entire discussion became about when I was going to upgrade to the latest greatest version (7). Why should I? My software works just fine and customers are happy. Security upgrades are more like obscurity upgrades. "Because it's last year's fashion, daaahling"
I hope you're being facetious. Newer versions of software are often far easier for developers to work on, as the code's architecture improves over time. Why should volunteer developers have to maintain multiple branches of code just because you don't want to upgrade?
If you're happy with what you've got, great. But it's unreasonable to demand that the developers of an open-source project spend their limited time supporting older versions of their software. And please don't accuse them of "planned obsolescence" or "fashion" without better support.
So Ben had not yet been at peace with his actions to enter the church. It's all very Catholic at it's core.
Being "at peace with [one's] actions" has nothing to do with Catholicism. The whole ending was a big pseudo-religious mishmash with no clear underlying philosophy.
Now if you were looking for what the island was or were it came from, that, I'm afraid is going to be another story. Or you could use your imagination. That is the idea here. Every person enjoying the story at their own level.
So the answer to the criticism that the show revealed essentially nothing about the island is... we should imagine it for ourselves? Sorry, that's not going to fly. You say "the show wasn't about the island itself", but that's wrong-- it was about both the island and the people on it. Some of us cared at least as much about the former as the latter.
I also hope it wasn't the Libertarians, since it was their lassaiz-faire philosophy of deregulation and strict adherence to the Chicago School of Economics...
Libertarians are generally Austrians, not Chicago schoolers.
...which infected and drove the Republican deregulation push of the last 20 years that in turn was directly responsible for the unregulated behavior that resulted in the current crash, and would have sent us directly into a second Great Depression had Bush/Obama/Brown not acted as they did.
Like most people who make this claim, you provide no arguments or evidence to support it. So the proper response is "nuh-uh".
Terrorism has been proven a threat, and so has excessive government control over peoples' lives. I'd say they're much closer in peril-level than the sting/gunshot example above
How many American lives has terrorism claimed over the last decade? And how many American lives has "our" government ruined in that time? (Including being thrown in jail for consuming a certain kind of plant, or facing crippling fines for sharing music.) Not to mention the insane amounts of time and money wasted by the security theater at our airports, illegal wiretaps, no-fly lists...
The threat levels aren't even close.
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
