> Then why don't we treat them as such? Why do we give them bailouts, lobbying jobs, and cabinet positions instead?
Does any sane person advocate more bailouts, lobbying and revolving door cabinet positions? Because I haven't heard any
> Seems much safer
He who would give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety...
Because a bunch of people being allowed, by privilege of owning a lot, to do whatever the hell they want without consequences is a bad thing indeed- despite the existence of other groups with the same amount of money doing good.
You can prevent people from doing a lot of bad in two ways. First, you can prevent people from doing a lot period. Second, though, you can prevent people from doing bad no matter what the scale. Liberty is not about doing whatever you want without consequences, it's about doing whatever you want that does not infringe on the rights of others. Some rich people will do good (eg. by setting up charities), others will act neutrally (eg. by leaving their money as inheritance to children who waste it all and contribute nothing themselves), but those that use their money to do harm are criminals no matter what political system you subscribe to.
Because flip-flopping in practice tends to be motivated by what's popular, not new knowledge.
> Since corporations only exist due to special protections granted to them by the government, many (most?) libertarians (myself included) do not consider them to be actors in, nor an accurate representation of, a true free market.
I don't think it's quite that simple. In an unhampered free market it is possible that people will voluntarily choose to organize themselves into groups that function according to similar rules as those that what we now call "corporations" do now. There will be no limited liability (with regard to lawsuits; limited liability with regard to debts can still exist as part of the loan contract, so conservatives' fears that without limited liability there will be no business at all are quite unfounded), so people will be punished for fraud and environmental damage more, and things will be better in that regard, but the format of the large business as a whole could still exist. And there's nothing wrong with that - it's never as simple as "rich people are evil"; look at the so-called "robber baron" era of the 19th century - some rich people got their way through powerful friends and corruption and government-assisted cartelization, while others played fairly on the market and used their fortunes to set up institutions that continue to serve the public good even now (see: Nobel prizes, American non-profit universities, etc). It's exactly the same way even now.
The problem lies in the implementation. It's easy to prefer more democratic ownership of the means of production, but how do you make that happen? If you, as a socialist-leaning individual, work to implement it by shopping more at family-owned and cooperative stores, using open source software, working for yourself, a small business or a cooperative, and by encouraging your friends to do the same, that's one thing. But if you're a socialist politician, or socialist voter, then that means that you support the sort of government that causes more democratic ownership of MOP, and the majority of people here seem to think that an activist, centralized, powerful federal government big enough to push down the banks and corporations is the best way to do that, and that's why so many people see socialism = big government. What other government policy could socialist politicians and voters advocate?
Chief Alchemist to the Court of Gates, perhaps?
Microsoft Research does actually release some stuff for public use from time to time, you know.
And why should the people in the medium and far future have to suffer for your political weakness and unwillingness to commit the necessary evil? Why should people have to suffer under an unfair system forever just because you were too concerned with a few collateral consequences of breaking the whole system down? Your argument works both ways,
> We both think that it removes hands-on learning and frees the teacher from actually teaching anything (not a good thing).
Depends on what "teaching" is. If it's a teacher encouraging class discussion and collectively coming up with an answer to a problem, then yes, technology can't help that. But if it's someone just delivering a one-way lecture, then there's no reason why it can't be one person recording a speech and drawing stuff on camera and having the video copied a hundred million times and shown to every class that needs to see that material all across the world and reused again and again until the information ceases to be accurate.
Just wondering, if WoW is losing subscribes so quickly than what's replacing it? What are the upstart alternatives, and what's so good about them?
technically, the energy requirements would stay the same. But the delta-v required would become as low as we please, making very cheap and low-power sources effective
It's even better than you think. The fuel needed to accelerate a spacecraft to escape velocity (and the container to carry it) is very heavy (at an exhaust velocity of 4.5 km/s, fuel to get from surface to deep space (11.3 km/s delta-v) is nearly 10x the weight of the rest of the fuel and the payload), but with space elevators all the "fuel" is stored on the ground, so you actually need 90% less energy.
So instead of everyone having to pay for public services, let only the generous pay, while the egoists also get the benefits but for free (with the added advantage of having more money to spend in themselves, i.e., a better position in the "free" market).
1. Not all of these services are of the type that the benefit is too distributed for it to be worth it for a single solely materially self-interested party to contribute. Roads could be paid for by billboards (tolls for anything but interstate highways are impractical IMO) and on the lower level by individual businesses that want to be accessible by the public and might also want the public to drive by them. Higher education used to be paid for by employers as on-the-job training before the system got turned upside down and we got a corporate welfare system where the government pays for training. Police and fire protection are obviously fairly private goods, etc.
2. Why do people not shoplift? It's obviously fairly easy, in many places you can just grab something on display outside and walk off without being noticed. Even though the act is unilaterally quite profitable, our society has so little theft (discussions regarding Wall Street and the government itself aside) that it's actually worth it for shopowners to leave their wares outside unsupervised! The same reasons why this does not happen could be turned around and used to encourage generosity, and, since with acts of generosity the perpetrator does not have an incentive to hide the act, the incentive of public approval would even be magnified in the other direction!
With the way things are going, they'll eventually remarket their games as a computer cracking hobbyist product: we sell you a nice shiny piece of DRM to break, and because we love our customers as a free bonus if you succeed you'll have a nice cute minigame at the end!
in fact this story demonstrates that ONLY the government should be doing this; as it's too risky a business proposition for private enterprise. Governments don't HAVE to make money on these ventures.
Economic calculation. The reason why no private venture went for this themselves is because all the private investors who are capable of acquiring $500000 capital in the first place were all smart enough to see that the risk isn't worth the reward here, so the business venture is not worth undertaking at all. That's the key - not all business ventures are worth undertaking, even if they make you feel warm and fuzzy thinking about them they might actually be huge wastes of money. If a government project fails, the taxpayers are penalized so there is no incentive for the government to maximize the benefits and minimize the wastes of its expenditure.
These 50 people otherwise wouldn't have had a job, and it's well known that the US has the WORST social security and healthcare in the developed world. In reality, this is $500,000 worth of research and development that otherwise wouldn't have happened.
Two counts of broken window fallacy. Those $500,000 would have otherwise been spent by taxpayers, providing just as many jobs and giving $500,000 worth of useful goods and services to the taxpayers.
I am waiting for the day the US does default on it's debts
Actually, most free market fanbois I see would see the US defaulting on its debt and the general shit hitting the fan that follows as a confirmation of their beliefs - that our extreme levels of government spending are unsustainable after all.
Biz law - contracts
Please don't. I'd like to have at least one terms of service agreement somewhere that's written by someone without experience in legalese.
you should know that it is already illegal for a minor to be exposed to porn. This would only help us stay in the law better.
Of course this would also be a tremendous help to most businesses who need to avoid sexual harassment lawsuits.
So you need a bad law to protect you from other bad laws. Got it.
Real Programmers don't eat quiche. They eat Twinkies and Szechwan food.
