In a free market system, monopolies are a figment of the imagination and cartels are highly unstable.

At best these laws were ignorant failures, at worst they were intentionally lining pockets.

When you measure the price of oil in real money, such as gold, it has stayed on a constant decline and is at all time lows.

Furthermore, when the price of oil goes up it can only be for 2 reasons:

1. Reduced supply, one of the many possible reasons for this might be opec
2. Increased demand

You can actually tell which one of these caused an increased in price by looking at the volume traded. If the volume increases, it was demand, if the volume decreases it was supply.

In either case, price has not moved up, even though we know that demand has skyrocketed. So if opec's goal is to reduce supply, it has severely failed.

Don't believe the hype.

I find that beatings work quite well. Nothing sends the ego to the shitter better than a good thumping :X

... And this strategy never works. Even in a cartel it rarely works because to make money output has to resume and to make maximum profit, the price has to be at the level that clears the market.

Good luck to you china, I wonder how long before they can no longer stand their fast.

P:

Energy is a scarce resource, so yes it matters.

What DOESN'T matter is this "green" or "renewable" bullshit.
There's nothing wrong with preferentially using a finite energy source first because it's cheaper until the prices rise to be on par with solar (or other "renewables" which are just heat pumps based on solar).

This is something the ruling class has been doing for a long time in England. When an issue is part of The Agenda, something the power elite wants passed that harms the public, the government always pushes for it and the shadow government who is powerless to stop it voices opposition.

Then the people vote the government out and the shadow government in and they switch positions. Now that the new government is in power they start being for the issue and now that the old government is out of power they can afford to be against it.

What's the solution?

Hi Linus, thank you for providing the intellect and good will that helped allow me to experience 15 years of happy GNU/Linux usage.

For me GNU/Linux was the gateway not just to happier and more rewarding computing experience, but also the development of a set of beliefs that shape the way I understand economy, politics and Liberty.

I see the success of the Linux kernel as something that could only have been brought about by the protections granted it via the GPL, these protections that allow free exchange of ideas and collaboration in a very similar way to a capitalist unhampered economy. Each individual is able to make their own decisions about how to use their available means in the ways that they see fit to achieve their most valued ends. In both cases, value is something that is specific to an individual at a specified time and the only way to maximize for value is to allow individuals to reward those efforts that are most efficient at producing value.

In both the Free Software world and an unhampered economy, those efforts with good foresight are rewarded with money, fame, success and the ability leverage even more of this for future endeavors.

I believe, this is similar to allowing efforts and ideas to live by Darwinian competition, with the outcomes thus improving society in a way that benefits every individual in a non-Darwinian way.

Because of this I could say that the GNU/Linux was the catalyst that steered me directly into the Libertarian camp, Austrian economics and the philosophies of of Ron Paul.

What are your thoughts about the similarities between Liberty in the software world and political and economic Liberty?
Are these things that can be separated or are they ultimately interconnected? How can one be politically free if they are not free economically? How can political and economic Liberty be maintained in a world where people increasingly accept life in walled gardens?

Where do you agree or disagree with Libertarians in general or Ron Paul specifically?

Do you ever disagree with Richard Stallman and if so, why?

Thanks!

My my, what a load of little totalitarianists we have on Slashdot.

It seems so easy for some power hungry and repressed social misfits to suggest bringing the force of the armed government thugs down on any little habit they don't like these days. Yeah, let's SWAT raid someone's house because they chewed some tobacco. Great idea.
I'm seeing a lot of idiots here that are happy to call for enforcement at the job, off the job and now let's make it against the law altogether to smoke.

Please, take a look again at the United States Declaration of independence:

Stated another way, it is the right of the people to abolish ANY government that becomes destructive to the people's pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness.

Happiness is always subjective and temporal. You cannot predict it, calculate it or mandate happiness. It belongs to the individual and the closest we can come to quantifying it is by allowing an unhampered economy to perform economic calculations and examine prices of ends and means relative to one another. Such an economy will deliver the most happiness to the greatest number of people.

Furthermore how can you be posting on Slashdot? Ye readers of ignorant of classic science fiction. Have you not read your Asimov? You cannot and should not go down the road where you try to protect humans from all risk. It leads to a life not worth living. Unfortunately, all of you little Hitler, Stalin or Mussolini wannabes will realize a little too late that you won't be the man or woman in charge of the oppressive government you try to construct and if you succeed, you will have lives not worth living by your own hands.

Lord knows what they would have made of that.

God hates Twinks. Twinks burn in hell!

Or
She couldn't even reach the level cap?

Also do you know any booth babes? Because I've met some very pretty ones that do claim to make a decent living out of it while having a lot of leisure time. Leisure time has great value to most people and can't be discounted in the equation.

Plus strippers can make over $1000 / night. I'm pretty sure that's more than the vast majority of women in science make per hour.

These are real professions whether they fit into your view of the world or not.

I wasn't really responding to the study and I don't read most of the study summaries on slashdot as they tend to be junk. I was responding to the general claim that's often made that men are paid more than women, therefore my first point is not invalidated.

You seem to invalidate my second point out of some moral ground; obviously you must realize that you can't invalidate an argument because you don't like it, that's just stupid. Women and men are very different in many ways and trying to create a world where people are blind to those differences is like trying to force strip clubs to hire 50% males. And if you don't like using little people in analogies, well go watch some 'Life's too short' as it's one of my favorite shows and grow some tolerance man. Obviously I wasn't being offensive except you took offense for no reason.

I don't know where in the US you work? Most of the companies I've worked for give 3 months of paid maternity leave to women and 1-3 weeks paid for men. Large companies. I'm pretty sure you are knocking this argument without actually having done any work to investigate.

Also, the ease with which you would like to waive your tyrannical regulations into existence is astonishing. Let's force companies at gunpoint to give men the same maternity leave as women, what a farce. You have no business dictating what people willingly do in their private employment agreements and it can only lead to inefficiency.

Here's my dissenting view.

Comparing salaries alone is meaningless. That's only looking at one factor in a highly complex system that may not even be knowable and claiming you understand it all.

Males and females are not the same. There are biological and socio-cultural differences that are undeniable and to deny them is to deny reality. Let's explore some potential differences that do not rely on sexism:

1. males might be better at negotiating.
   Maybe males are just less prone to accepting the first offer thrown their way and more likely to push for an increase.This may or may not result in males being employed less often, for example they lose more jobs because they pushed too hard in the negotiation, but work for higher wages when they do have employment. There is some basis in science here, many experiments have shown that males tend to take more risks. If this is the case and females could immediately begin earning the same mean wage by just rejecting the first offer and attempting to negotiate more often, would you call this sexism if it is something under their own control? I would not.
2. Wages don't equate to perceived labor value. Maybe while 1 hour of male labor is perceived to have the same value as 1 hour of female labor, there are other factors involved that impact hiring cost, or number of hours. Wages might factor in the fact that females carry babies and males don't for example.
   While each hour of female labor and male labor are as productive as each other, maybe employers understand that there is a non-zero chance of a female becoming pregnant and taking a longer maternity leave than the male. There's nothing wrong with factoring this into wage negotiations. It's not sexism if it is true.
3. maybe males somehow are better suited to that job in some way.
   
   It cuts both ways. Have you ever been to an auto show? How many male 'booth babes' have you seen at such an event? There is a special cause variation for this job, females obviously perform much better at certain jobs by virtue of being female. Is this sexism, or is it just reflective of the reality we live in? Would you hire a little person to play for a basketball team or would you consider the fact that they just may not be suited for it?
   You also don't see ANY male strippers at a strip club for men. Is that because of sexism too?

Comparing wages, does not control for any one of many other causes for wage difference. You can't just say it must be sexism without ruling all other plausible factors out first.

Now can I say it isn't because of sexism? No. But then again I'm not making that claim either.

If you actually look at the data from the studies that companies have performed, there are virtually zero current owners of electric vehicles that use or even want to use charging stations outside of their homes.

Just about all of them to the last man and woman, prefer to charge at home. Ah but what about long trips? They just don't take them in EVs. They take another method of transportation, as they should.

Just take a look at every charging station that's ever been installed for public use, they are abandoned.

Sadly, it's not this mystical infrastructure that's holding EVs back. IMHO the first factor is that their range is incompatible with the owners who could charge them. Most people who can live with a sub 100 mile range, live in the city and don't have a garage to charge the cars. Most people who do have a garage live in the suburbs and need more range. The actual number of suitable households has got to be fairly small.

Then theres the fact that they are mostly priced probably at 2x where they should. Supply and demand are not enough, they need to meet at the same price to clear the market. I might want an EV and I'm willing-to-pay $15k. If you're selling for $40k, I'm not buying.

What's most amusing, is watching these gigantic corporations try to innovate and fail. They have tremendous resources, but they're not set up to innovate. They're set up to scale up things. When they try to innovate they fail miserably. So if they can't do it, who will?