Agree with parent. Here in Peru, Windows is used almost everywhere because it costs nothing (copyright is not enforced). Open-source is also available for enthusiasts, but most people would ask "Why use it?", expecting a practical answer (not an ideological one).
An ideological answer is a practical answer that takes the medium term future into account. Open source, is not a philosophy/ideology, just a software development thing. Free software is a philosphy/ideology. And it does take third world people into account. It's very hard to predict the result of teaching Office for kids. Of course, teaching Excel may land them jobs in multinationals, to feed their families. But also, it could entrench the influence of foreign companies in their government IT, with large expenses in licenses, that leae the country. If you teach free software, people can also learn valuable skills for the short term, but also develop a more sustainable IT insfrastructure, which could be one of the basis of future development. I live in Uruguay, more or less the same situation as Peru with copyrights, but free software is very popular. And most of our software industry (which is growing very fast) is based on free software.
Agreed. Here in Alberta, Canada, we just passed a "Distracted Driver" law last year. There are heavy fines for anyone caught using their cellphone (or other device) while behind the wheel, grooming, or eating anything that would be considered a "meal" and not a "snack".
Well, then I suppose I could have soup while driving in Alberta. It's not a meal, after all.
To be fair, all socialism is post-capitalistic.
The whole idea of socialism (like what Marx wrote) is that capitalism would succeed against scarcity (for exaple: "the end of money"), so a new model would be necessary that didn't rely on it, but on cooperation.
Of course, not all ideas can be implemented nicely, or even at all, but that doesn't mean that socialism is not prepared for "plenty". Penty is onw of its preconditions.
Well, that's your point of view.
What I see is that the GPL is one of the most used software licenses in the world, and it represents exacly his idea.
RMS has had great, awesome partial successes. His philosophy is shared by a lot of people, in practice, and his work has been key to us having real, viable, modern, free software platforms today. Without his work particularly and him been so "political", I don't think we could have gone this far.
I believe there is a false dichotomy here. You are making my point.
My point was that, for this case, markets _could_ solve it. Remember, the first option was: buy locally.
What I wanted to say was that markets do work, but some times you don't want the people to get exactly what they ask for, or what they pay for, you want to force them to choose the Right Thing (TM).
If you leave it to the markets, people will buy stuff with shit if it's cheaper, that is their choice, so they will force retailers to sell it. Traceability is possible, you can put an RFID in a living cow, and trace their whole lives, until they are BBQed, but markets won't pay for that. People will buy the cheapest, no matter what. I see that as markets working to give people what they want.
Consumers do have a way of knowing.
The can buy locally, and see whether fish are fed shit. Or they could only use brands that are well known for not feeding their fish shit. Even without a brand police, it could be done with badges that are difficult to reproduce, for example, like RFID.
Of course, that would be more expensive than buying whatever Walmart sells, and just hope there is no shit in it.
In the end, what I believe is that people prefer to buy cheaper and easier, even if there is a possibility of shit in their food.
Free markets are not designed, they just are.
Most of the time, free markets are not possible, and you get highly regulated markets, oligopolies or monopolies.
But in the cases where there is a somewhat free market, it works.
In this case, it's a free market.
If enough people stop buying this kind of fish, sellers will have to come up with a "shit free" badge, so they start buying again. If they do not stop buying, it's because shit does not taste that bad.
About hearing about it, it's the same thing. Papers will inform about shit in fish, only if enough people care about that kind of information.
In this case, markets are working.
You are right. They let them keep their logos, the only prohibition on brands is that they can't have "modifiers" like a Light version and stuff, they need to sell each version with a new brand name. Of course, they can't advertise on tv, on the streets, and inside the shops all signs also have the ugly images.
They were talking on tv last week about a decrease of more than half of teenage smokers. When al this started I thought it was nonsense, but it's funny how it works. Smokers tend to hide their boxes, because they are unpleasant, and they don't keep them in sight of kids. They even tend to smoke more privately. It should come naturally, without the offensive images, but they seem to work.
An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.