See my post just prior to this one. It all hinges on the word "might" in my first post. I believe you improperly inferred that I was stating all alternatives *must* exist, as opposed to *might* exist. Yuck, I don't relish the thought of being in Nietsche's company. However, that's based on experiences with my peers when we were teenagers. They were just exasperating to talk to, and one of them actually went certifiably insane.
So Clinton wasn't democratically elected because the house and senate didn't confirm him?
Are you intentionally trying very hard to miss the point or did I switch on the chinese keyboard by accident?
Clinton's private life is neither here nor there. But even if you want to bring it on, it was an individual action, not a law passed in parliament. The thing we are talking about here, however, is.
Quite frankly, comparing the passing of a law with a private sex adventure is borderline crazy.
That's why I'm confused as to your assertion that the law is the morality. The law is the law, no more.
I didn't claim the law is the morality. I do claim that it is the expression of the will of society, more or less (i.e. taking imperfections in the system into account). The corporate policies of a multinational corporation, on the other hand, are not.
Let's cycle back to what I said in the first place:
That might not be too far from the one where I'm GWBM
Do you see the word might in there?
You and a lot of other people incorrectly read that as must, hence you are arguing against something I never said, namely that infinity necessitates all possibilities. I got caught up in it a bit myself, going off on how unconstrained infinity may include all possibilities until proven otherwise, which I maintain is true.
Fact is, this whole thread actually seems to be an inference problem. There was of course, no way I could have headeed it off at the pass, I must invoke my un-named "rule" at this point:
Obviously, this means war. And strip searches at bus stations. Problem solved.
So then sex with Monica Lewinsky has been decided to be a good thing because Clinton was elected?
Last I checked, neither the House nor the Senate had made a vote asking Clinton to fuck her, so no.
Not every action by an elected government is the will of the people or the "right thing". And given that people are arguing here that it isn't even protectionism, makes me think that it isn't as settled as you assert.
First point: Of course not, but until we have a perfect liquid democracy, it is the closest thing we have, and for the moment, like it or not, it is the modus operandi of our western societies. So taking into account the realities of our lives, it has been decided.
Second point: Of course there will always be discussion in a multi-valued society. In every democratic decision, there's also a minority whose opinion did not win the day, and we allow them to continue voicing it.
Shop at the store to find what you want then order it online for $1 less is a fantasy you made up.
Not at all. I know both customers who do this and shops that had this problem and went belly up (very likely not just because of it, but it contributed).
Your examples are bad examples and they miss the point. We're talking about small, personal book stores, and you come with Best Buy and Fry.
I love cash. You can have it when you pry it from my col... wait... not quite. But for me to stop using cash, you have to make electronic cash work first. That means three things that are absolute requirements and I will not ever negotiate:
As long as even one of these conditions is not met, I will have to carry cash around me anyways, and if I have cash with me, I will use it wherever I can.
You've still missed the point.
No I haven't. If we were discussing the set of prime numbers and I said "how about six" you could say, "No, because it's divisible by 2 and 3". The set of prime numbers is an infinite set with well known restrictions.
We're discussing alternative universes. If I say, "How about the one where I'm GWB?" You have nothing to say because this discussion started with the premise, and ONLY the premise that alternative universes are an infinite set. There were no other criteria specified. I submit that in the absence of such criteria not only may we speculate on all possibilities, we must.
OK, you've done a good job now of explaining what you mean; but my possibility is just as valid as yours. Maybe the multiverse has to include numbers beyond 1.0, and maybe it doesn't.
Maybe it's an infinite set full of bizarre possibilities, and maybe it's an infinite set full of subtle variations on our known theme. We just. Don't. Know.
But the idea that it's a [good, bad] thing should be agreed first,
It has been. The french government is democratically elected.
simply shrinking the market doesn't radically change things,
The market doesn't shrink. The market is the number of exchanged goods. The market doesn't care if there are 200 merchants or 250 merchants. What changes is the distribution of goods and merchants, and when the number of merchants is very low and their concentration of market power high, we get into situations (oligopoly, monopoly) that we do not want because we know they are bad.
If you want a book that isn't in the bestsellers list, then in your local town there's probably only one or two book shops that stock it at best and most likely none.
For the past 20 years, when I go to a bookstore and I want a book they don't have, they could almost always order it and have it for me the next day.
while it'd be nice to have geographically distributed demand for labour, in practice this has not been true since the invention of cities.
I'm not talking about a perfect equilibrium. I'm talking about the simple fact that if your country has one region with 50% unemployment rates and one region where employers can't find workers, your whole country will destabilze.
Of course there will always be differences. But if they get too extreme, the consequences are much higher and much more expensive then the costs of some small interventions.
What's more once you decide that lots of people deserve to be protected from changing times,
I never said anything like that and my arguments are completely unrelated to technical or other progress. So please burn the strawman somewhere else.
What is your criterion for restricting the variations? Why are "Anonymous Coward" and "Anonymous Poster" possible, but not "XFFSF Poster" and GWB as an active Slashdot user?
Except in the one where you posted saying it wasn't, but were mistaken because it actually was. That might not be too far from the one where I'm GWB, a frequent Slashdot poster. It's interesting to ponder the concept of what "infinity" really means when you consider all the possibilities on some mundane thing like that.
small local bookshops are inherently worth protecting. Why is that?
Because you need many, many competitors in a market for it to actually be a market. The amount of large corporations any market can support is limited and fairly low, general business wisdom has it that it is around 3-5 with the first 3 being profitable and two or so more being able to just barely make it.
If you want many participants in a market, most of them will be small. That is why small shops are worthy of protection.
You also want to have employment in your country be fairly even, and not have some areas with high demand and low supply and some with low demand and many unemployed, which is why local shops are worthy of protection.
Really, you just need to use your brain a little more and it's all very simple.
Perhaps the space the bookshops used up can be replaced by coffee shops
Maybe, but this is not at all about bookshops being replaced by something else, it's about small competitors being driven out by large competitors, so put the strawman away again.
Protectionism is protectionism,
And sometimes it is needed. The whole "free market über alles" philosophy makes assumptions that are not true in the real world, such as perfect transparency. To come even close to working as it should, the free market needs to be guided. Among other things, protecting small competitors guarantees that it remains a free market and doesn't turn into an oligopol or a monopol.
With your bare hands?!?
