Ha.

1. Since when do you think Germany had a budget surplus? I ask this because a trade surplus isn't really a surplus of any kind. You want to reach into the pockets of other people for your pet project?
2. It's nice to know that you think you can just divine out of your head some mythical set of desired public ends and think you also know off the top of your head how to use everyone's means without their permission to best achieve those ends. Hubris much?
3. The cheek of someone who knows nothing of economics criticizing a whole branch of technical workers for not knowing economics. You're like a Dunning kruger walking advertisement.

Let me preface this by saying that I am an avid Free Software and GNU Linux supporter and user and am very appreciative and grateful for RMS's contributions, directly to my benefit.

Q: It seems to me as an outside observer, that you have struck on this golden idea of Free Software and the 'rights' of the user and started a potent movement. How have your ideas changed over time? I say this because I've seen some interviews and when they stray outside of a narrow band directly related to Free Software, they become slightly less insightful. For example in the patent space, it seems you've come up with arbitrary proposals and while they are an improvement, they are incompatible with my views in favor of voluntarism (which makes all government immoral).

Also I've never heard an explanation of the 'rights' in so much as what are they? Are they 'God given rights'? Are they 'natural rights' by some law of information science? Are they negotiated by us as individuals? Most importantly, are they moral? What is morality?

Maybe you see where I'm going with this. The success of the Free Software Phenomenon (FSP) could be according to many (eg. Linus Torvalds) just a matter of practicality. He sticks with GPL2 because it is more practical. He doesn't like GPL3 because it's not what he 'wants' from a software license.

I'm starting to think that the preponderance of the evidence shows that the FSP is deeper than just convenience. Can you do the work philosophically to break it down to first principles and relate it to what is good, moral, ethical?

I might be asking too much, some people spend considerable time in philosophical learning to be able to give great answers to simple questions such as what is good and what is virtue. Not to mention that it may be impossible to provide good answers without someone like Richard Dawkins in the room to help with the scientific portion of the discussion.

To me this is all one topic of exploration (question).

Finally, just know that you have my profound thanks for helping to change the world for the better.

I have an older AMD card and the current AMD 'radeon' opensource driver in the kernel impeccably supports it.

In fact it's been about 5 years since I've had to ever even think about drivers for my video card. It just works, with great 3d performance, with every distro out of the box because it's supported by every default kernel and mesa libs. Even usb-flash distros.

Heck I've even run many steam games just to try them out. Had to install i386 packages for steam, but the AMD kernel driver, never had to worry about it.

If AMD can make the next driver arch as good and as open as the 'radeon' driver, I'll be buying AMD again soon.

By the way Nvidia, I wouldn't touch your junk with a 10ft pole. Come back when it's become mostly Free Software and is shipped default in every kernel and distro and I never have to worry about it.

Infrastructure, maybe. But not the type you're thinking of.

The habits of drivers of electric cars have been studied extensively and here are some of the findings:

1. Most of them don't drive very far per day
2. NONE of them used public or private charging stations because..
3. They all prefer to charge at home in their garages.

Yes the infrastructure is missing, but it's not charging stations. It's homes with garages. City dwellers aren't going to buy electric cars. The suburbs are and they'll charge at home thank you very much. Pull in for the night, plug it in, leave the next morning with a full charge. No need to go sit on the side of the road at some gas station for 30min to 8hrs, sharing charge points, waiting for other electric car owners for their 30min to 8hr charge.

Look the studies up, some were done by mini, others by other car companies. I've seen charging stations in my state that were installed 5-10 years ago at great cost (several million $) that have never been used and are now completely incompatible with charging standards. The last thing we need is for retards to go spending other people's money to build more of those.

But it is his work that is important, regardless of this. Nay, not even his work, the work of the dozens to hundreds of brave souls who fight the slavers and face death constantly so that you may live under the freedom they provide. Something that bears mentioning regardless of the topic.

Hahaha. You jest right? You complain that one man may be cherry picking what secret documents he reveals, when he has revealed thousands or more... While the other side lies, cheats, steals, fabricates, leaks and murders to deploy their overwhelming propaganda.

We live in a world where the entire mainstream media are controlled by the intelligence services, even as paid assets at the very top. Where stories are censored in multi-continent wide blackouts. Where they are crafted to fit the interests of the rulers of the world. Where a whitehouse and pentagon leak secret material on a weekly basis when it's of interest to them. Where they don't even have to leak secret info if they don't want to because just BullShitting to the media will get your words repeated as truth, with no fact-checking.

Among all of this, you object to one man working against them? I think you woke up and tried to put one pant leg on a flea and the other on an elephant.

He wasn't saying you need 'civil war' to bring socialism to a country.

He was explaining that socialist means always involve using police force to achieve their ends, given that they're not voluntary.

Worse, how many mortgages to they 'own' now through fanny and freddy? (they? us? me? who owns this nasty shit and is on the hook for it?)

Worse still, the fed controls interest rates.

We're so far removed from a free market it ain't even funny. Why was there a 2008 crash? Why do we keep seeing bubbles? Why haven't we recovered yet? Why was 1999 a bubble? What's the next bubble? Who's buying bonds? Why aren't unfunded liabilities listed as government debt? How much do unborn children owe? How long till the dollar collapses?

There are some voluntary interactions, but it ain't no free market.

Cue young earth creationists claiming this dinosaur was intelligently designed 5000 years ago.

Sigh.

Give me pogo sticks and super shoes.

Make me a set of oscar pistorious legs and some type of new car suspension.

Hahaha, does that happen often?

You think they're going to come up with 1600M euro in June? LO to the L.

Russia can't afford to help them with this payment, Greece is dead broke and Goldman Sachs who helped Greece lie about their books to get into the eurozone in the first place is long gone.

I have spent more than a few hours thinking and reading on the subject and so I will attempt to answer your questions. Apologies if they're not great answers. Hey, at least they're honest and a little better than the highly moderated comments here.

I wouldn't say it's good or bad. I think walmart has both good and bad aspects.

• good: it seems to be efficiently run
• bad: it treats it's workers badly by playing a min/max hours game to ensure they don't have to pay benefits
• good: prices can be low for the customers
• bad: it trains and ensures it's workers are making government claims for every welfare state benefit available
• good: it generates lots of profit because it serves the consumer very well.
• bad: they bribe and pressure local governments for subsidies and unfair tax breaks so they can out-compete mom & pop stores

A: it doesn't help you at all. The entire tax system is immoral. Although, I think they purposefully keep them as part-time employees (by government classifications) in order to qualify for these subsidies.

Consumption never 'helps' the economy. The economy is more than just passing money from hand to hand in exchange for consumer goods. Only the voluntary actions of individuals cooperating via a free market price system 'helps' the economy.

Don't forget all of the politicians that greased their hands making deals with all the billionaires on Forbe's list. Unfortunately it's the nature of human kind that as soon as one comes into power, the average human tends to wield it to their own advantage, especially power over others obtained by coercion and violence, hence 'government'.

Here are a few more discussions, thoughts:

Minimum Wage Argument Destroyed!

The True Cost of the Minimum Wage

Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, Peter Schiff and the War over Minimum Wage

And the best resource of them all Mises Media

I'm starting to think that it's by design because every misconception is in favor of 'government' and people being ruled by force.

Watch Tom Woods dispel these myths

and one more

Because they're always going to make exceptions for themselves and their cronies, and use the rules to stick it to everyone else, while loudly decrying that they speak *for* us.....