Interesting, so how is it a "troll" to indicate that government has nothing, it doesn't own anything, it cannot own anything and thus it cannot give anybody anything.

Government doesn't produce food, it doesn't manufacture cars, it doesn't pump oil from the underground reserves, it doesn't do anything that it can 'dole out' to anybody.

The only way for government to 'dole out' other people's productivity to you is to steal it. Stealing via taxes is one thing, stealing via inflation is another. But the huge difference is that if the government is stealing productive output from people who do not live in your country via money printing right now, it does not mean that it can do that forever, because nothing forces those people to accept that fake paper.

And that obvious fact is marked a "troll" on /. and people are still confused whether this is a 'right' or a 'left' site?

Government cannot provide you with anything because government has nothing. Printing fiat currency is not a virtue, it's a transgression that the people will pay for dearly with their entire economy collapsing around them.

You cannot live on printed money under the impression that somebody will provide you with the goods in exchange for that printed money. Sure, it seems like it has been working exactly that way from at least 1971, the moment when Nixon defaulted on the dollar and the inflation increased many fold, but that's what destroyed the productive economy, pushing production elsewhere and the foreigners are not obligated to keep giving you stuff they produce in exchange for your printed paper.

The foreigners are not obligated to give you stuff they produce in exchange for paper dollars.

Again, the foreigners are not obligated to give you stuff they product in exchange for paper dollars.

You think you can run the economy by printing money, not by creating money via actual productive output being generated by economic entities that are acting in their own best self interest being guided by the invisible hand of the market (the desires of the people that are willing to trade their productivity for yours). Too bad for you if you believe that.

As to the stock market, the inflation in the currency supply causes massive price hikes in various asset classes, the direction of these price hikes cannot be controlled by any entity, including the Fed. It was the stock market during Alan Greenspan's bubble, it was the housing market during Bernanke and it is the bond bubble with what the hell is her name... Janet Yellen.

These are not good for anybody except for speculators who pretend that price hikes are the economy, they are not, they hurt the economy more than they help, they push prices up rather than allowing them to come down because of the inflation (expansion of the money supply) is currently directed in that area. Well, the stock market may be high and the house prices may still be high, but your quality of life is not and as the money loses value and you find it more and more difficult to pay for your energy and food and shelter and medical costs, you will realise something: the high market prices are not actually helping you to offset your high cost of living and if you don't own any of the stocks that are rising, you are not even able to protect yourself against even the most basic level of inflation and most people don't own much of anything in this economy of socialism, collectivism and the ideas that you stand for.

The government already prints and borrows money to supply tens if not hundreds of millions of citizens with 'basic income', didn't you notice all the welfare checks, food stamps, house vouchers, low interest rates for nonsensical 'education' and housing and cars and other forms of debt?

Maybe you should look around.

wait, WHAT? A group of people releases some code without asking for any money and then if people start using the code then they will come for money later? I am with the OpenBSD team on this, not with you! What you are suggesting is actually immoral and probably cannot be legally enforced. Once you release your code under a license that allows people to use it (at least that version of it, which you released), you can't now come after those people's money!

You know you don't have to develop anything at all, you don't have to develop anything for free and you don't have to develop anything and then give it away, but if you do, don't cry if people start using it!

Now, I already mentioned that in free software community code became money long time ago, that's the point I am trying to make - code is money and we exchange it for free seemingly, but actually we are making a payment with our code to other people who also create code that we can use.

Code is money and the labour that is used to create this wealth is not taxed or regulated by government, we do it on our own around all government regulations and around taxes and that is what built a vibrant economy, which the guy in TFA doesn't understand.

In this case the loss leader may just be a payment on other projects.

When Elon Musk develops his Tesla thing that I do not own, does this change things for me, does it make me poorer or wealthier? Well, it's making the economy more productive, it's making the overall economy wealthier because of this new product that people want and a generally wealthier economy allows people to pursue their hobbies and in the case of free software developers the hobbies are developing free software (excuse me for that), so when I say a "loss leader", maybe another way to put it is a payment.

In the software world code because currency itself. Code is something tangible, code has intrinsic value to people who want to use that code for something, so code is actually money. We exchange code, we exchange money, we make payments to each other this way.

In fact us not charging for our code in some fiat government currency but instead just using each other's code, we are going around the government taxation and various business regulations.

For all the talk about so many programmers being 'socialists', we are actually doing everything we can to avoid paying taxes, if the politicians only understood what kind of an economy is running right under their noses in this so called "free" software community, they'd be screaming murder! There would be Obama on the stage, talking about "paying fair share" and throwing "you didn't build that" slogans, while pointing fingers at a community that exchanges what basically amounts to labour without allowing government to skim off the top.

Well, he is wrong, but your feeling about the economy do not matter one way or another, it operates outside of your sentiment, a failing economy would not allow you to be a developer.

Imagine if the economy was such that for you to be able to do all the 'geeky' stuff you do, you'd literally have to starve yourself to death and/or use up 99% of your normal sleeping time. I mean if you had no choice but to gather/hunt for food the entire day or otherwise you wouldn't survive, that would be the economy dictating to you that you cannot really do much of anything beyond just surviving.

The economy as is allows people to spend their time however they feel like, some forego entertainment and leisure to work on their favourite pet projects. It's like telling a stamp collector that his hobby is a failed idea economically... he'd just laugh at the guy.

You do what you have to do to survive in the economy, so you do care, you are just not necessarily aware of it, but everything you do in life is based on the health / state of the economy.

Freeriders are giving you the marketshare. Having a loss leader is not an uncommon business practice, nor is it untenable.

That's .50 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.

You do realise why that is, right? Lawsuits.

Companies are legally liable if they hire an ex con and he is involved in anything at all while in his official capacity or even outside of it. AFAIC the lawsuits fuelled by government laws make it impossible for companies to hire ex cons.

Another misconception, you are looking at the effect of a higher productivity - fewer work hours and then you decide that it is the cause of it.

I live in Germany on and off for half a decade now, so I can tell you this: it is the capital savings and investments that make Germans so productive, they have the savings that allow them to acquire/build the tools and train management and afford investments into technology that make their workers more productive and the more productive workers can work fewer hours. Unproductive workers can work a thousand hours and not be as productive as productive workers at a tenth of that time due to the difference in capital savings and investments.

you know, love or something, it's the latest fad in the movies like Interstellar.

what 'math' questions make into any IQ tests? Actually I think IQ tests are subjective rather than objective on the more complex questions specifically because they are not math but in many casee intuition on complex pattern matching.

The inability to do well on those is more interesting, more indicative of lower intelligence than specialized knowledge.

There is nothing more noble that creating opportunities for work for people who cannot create them for themselves. That's literally allowing people to survive on this planet where they couldn't figure out how to survive on their own without the employer.

The only people who should be careful are socialists/fascists and all types of dictatorial assholes, once they destroy the private sector there will be no jobs and then you'll know what it's like to live without anybody creating any opportunities for you not to be a subsistence hunger/gatherer and people with mental issues will not be doing that well under those circumstances compared to the others at all.

Wrong, a wealthy society is wealthy despite the government it has taking advantage of the wealth generated by the private sector.

Governments do not generate any wealth and there is nowhere to extract the wealth for a government of a society that has no wealth in the private sector. Wealth societies precisely appear as anarchies, USA was as close to an anarchy as it gets during the 19th century industrial revolution simply by the virtue of the tiniest of governments in the world up until that time.

Exploiting people? As in creating possibilities for people to work, to become useful in a society and to give meaning to many where they had little before, to make them feel useful and appreciated, to give them a way to earn a living while at it...

so 'exploitative', do you wish nobody ever created any businesses and offered jobs in them to others?

Wrong completely, but understandably. You look at the effect and believe it ti be the cause. A wealthy society grows cancer that is government, which steals the wealth, calls it 'taxes', creates a number of monopolies that are government propped and protected, which makes it look like infrastructure only can happen because of taxes.

The reality is that it was the wealthy economy that built the infrastructure, except the government destroyed competition and private initiative, making the infrastructure inefficient.

Poor economies cannot afford as much wasteful building as wealthy economies build due to theft called 'taxes'.

The result is that you are looking at inefficient glitter of a wealthy economy, that is overburdened with theft that is taxes and think that the economy is wealthy from the theft that is taxes. The reality is the opposite from what you believe.