Comment Blast from the past. (Score 1) 60
It is time stamped on Wednesday August 23, 2006 @09:38PM:
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
Surprised it has not happened yet. Or, has it?
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
Surprised it has not happened yet. Or, has it?
The prices for oil product (kerosene at the time) went down from 60 or so cents in 1860s to just around 7 cents a gallon by late 1890s.
Why it did not go to 3 cents a gallon? Because Rockefeller colluded with railroad companies and had secret arrangements to get bulk discount for himself and shafted his competitors. Monopolies are not always the result of a company doing everything "right". It is always the result of companies carving up the market using secret deals, cartels, trusts. They maintain their monopoly by destroying the small upstart competitors who had better ideas, better way of doing things, which will bring greater benefit to the society.
In the early days of personal computers, the technology moved so fast the laws and the government were playing catch up. It was, in a sense, closer to utter free markets. Microsoft & Intel emerged as the winners and maintained a near monopoly and a stranglehold on the market. All the things they did that is still fresh in the minds of older Slashdotters, the oil barons and the railroad tycoons did back then, in a much harsher way. That is how Korean and Japanese industrial "houses" work to this day. That is how garment factories are run to this day in Bangladesh and Phillipines.
It is fair Rockefeller was hounded in his old age, forced to flee in a rickety car like a fugitive. He drove so many worthy better oil men to madness and suicide with his secret deals and cartel building. If you are a white person from the current Rust-Belt of USA, it is very much possible one of your ancestors was shafted by this guy, cheated out of a fair price for the oilfield or forced to go bankrupt if he was in oil/railroad business.
You are just a religious fanatic worshiping some ideal "free" market and you will dismiss all the holes as "not really free" market. You are as bad as people who believe communism will work.
But when we were learning fraction tables by rote, (only a few "enrichment" students did this, and they called the "enrichment" stream advanced stream to give us some bragging rights), we were using metric system even in currency, 100 paisa = 1 rupee. We did this mainly because our teachers were tortured by this when they were kids and it is their turn to torture us. Continuity and circle of life and all that.
2. protection of ownership and operation of private property against the government intrusion, against the mob and the collective.
Sudden switch to a passive voice sentence fragment. Is that you Sarah Palin? Who's going to do the protection? You postulate some entity more powerful than the government that will enforce the property rights, but still will not abuse the very same powers for self aggrandization.
If you assume everyone will voluntarily agree to respect the rights of the others, you are making the same mistake communists made. Absent reward, no one will work. That is communist problem. Absent enforcement no one will respect the rights of others. Enforcement can be done only by a government more powerful than the most powerful individual. The least onerous form of government is Democracy, which you disdain as mob rule.
Please go back to your ivory tower or freshman dorm.
Have you heard of fractional multiplication tables? We did them too. "Tables class" was always the hour after lunch. One student leads the class singing one line at a time, the class follows. All the class teachers would be taking a nap in the "staff room".
The Civil Rights Act fundamentally changed the role of government in people's lives. I think the goals were noble, but the result hasn't been successful. I don't see blacks and whites living together peacefully just because of some law. Furthermore, it really impinges on people's freedom even if they are wrongheaded, which is why I think he would want it gone.
We see traffic accidents all the time. More people die in automobile accidents every year than we lost in the entire Vietnam war. Does it mean the traffic laws are not effective? That we are better off without traffic rules and lights?
Goal of the law is NOT to bring about some form of utopian society. Legal behavior is the lowest standard for people to live by. Ethical and moral behavior should be voluntary, otherwise you would be infringing on the liberty of individuals. You must always have the right to be selfish, unethical and immoral. Persuading you not to be so is not the purview of the law. It should be illegal for one individual to infringe on the liberty of another individual. That is all law can do.
Anything more, it is not possible for law. Only education, understanding, empathy developed over decades can make people of disparate background live together.
Civil rights laws forced all businesses that benefit by the existence of the government, who benefit by the laws enforced by taxes paid by all to treat all people equally. If white people who were used to privilege, advantages etc before refused to play, if they kick scream and belly ache, it is their problem, not the laws. Over the years lots of lots of white people have seen the fundamental justice in civil rights laws and have accepted it. It was a problem created over centuries. It will be solved over several generations.
Libertarians want to eat the cake and have it too. They postulate some house of cards of laws, contracts etc. But they do not have any effective means of enforcing them, because enforcing them is infringing on the liberty of the individuals. At this point they are basically clueless kooks.
In the long run of history, such businesses would go bankrupt, but the invisible hand of the economy dispenses justice in a collective average statistical sense over a long period of time. Generations of blacks would go discriminated against for decades before the invisible hand acts against the bad actors.
Humanity has experienced such total free economy. It took 1000 years for Europe to break out of the feudal system where inherited property based on land concentrated power at the very top. It took four centuries of combined effects of the renaissance, age of exploration, the industrial revolution and new found serfs in the colonies to break the feudal system. Pure libertarian solutions take centuries to take effect, they require seismic paradigm shifts and the breakdown is very violent. Culminating in a 30 year world war. (According to Churchill world war I and II are just one war spread over three decades).
Pure libertarianism is just marginally more practical than communism. Communism simply will not work because it disconnects incentives from effort. Libertarianism naturally leads to oligarchy. Liberal democracy, founded on acknowledging the usefulness and sinlessness of the profit motive to the society but moderated by large number collectively holding more power than any small group of oligarchs is what would work to give justice, peace and liberty to most people.
The only thing they have to make sure to succeed is: "Sell/push/hawk/promote agile development tools".
But, when it comes to, the buyers and users of the Agile tools and methodology, the results are mixed.
Agile proponents have managed to sell the "no true scotsman" argument convincingly, probably because the management is willing let itself believe, "All we have to do is to give a few million dollars to this latest vendor selling the latest tools, all our problems will magically disappear".
Saliva causes cancer, but only if swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time. -- George Carlin
