"Public education helps society in general, not just poor people. I think public healthcare would likewise improve society in general."
You need to be more specific. Education helps those who are educated. Healthcare helps those who receive treatment. I am not sure what you mean by "society" benefiting from those things.
"Calling it charity is like using entitlement in a pejorative manner to refer to Social Security. People pay into the system throughout their entire working lives, so , yes – they're entitled to it."
I call it charity because that's what it is. We hand out education and healthcare for free with the aim of ensuring that your income or wealth is not an obstacle to you obtaining those goods or services. That is charity. That is different from the government for instance providing for the common defense to solve the coordination problems that arise from collective action. The reason the government provides the army is because it would be hard for everyone to organize and voluntarily contribute to the military. It's not because without the government, the military would only protect rich people from bombs.
"Considering that the provisioning of healthcare through the private insurance industry can only capture value by restricting itself to those who need minimal levels of healthcare, how is healthcare for the population in general not a public good? Once a public option exists, it would be difficult to restrict access to it and so it would generally be both non-excludable and non-rival."
It is not a public good because the entire value of the transaction is captured by those involved in it and there is a finite amount of healthcare to go around. I gain health, my doctor gains my money. When my doctor is treating me, he cannot be treating somebody else. When the government pays for it through a "public option" nothing has changed except that payment is made through a more complicated system. My doctor still can't treat an infinite number of patients and he still can refuse to provide care to someone.
"Libertarians have done a poor job of explaining what mechanism other than the free market they would employ to prevent racism that would be as effective as the blunt instrument of government. A hundred years of free market activity in the south did not eliminate Jim Crow. When it comes to fundamental human rights the inefficiencies of the marketplace in securing those rights is simply unacceptable. "
You forgot something important in that statement. It was Jim Crow laws. Discrimination was government mandated. We are talking about the inefficiencies of the government in securing those rights. The market had nothing to do with this. In fact, there is some evidence that this discrimination was going away as businesses were seeking more workers and wanting more customers. That is part of the reason why Jim Crow laws were enacted. A very racist portion of the population was able to lobby lawmakers into passing a law which clearly attacked the property rights of business owners. In a libertarian state, Jim Crow laws would be impossible because the government would simply not have the power to do so.
Sure, you would have a couple of people here and there who would discriminate but they would rapidly be eliminated by market forces. Making hiring and firing decisions based on race is a great way to drive up your costs and ultimately be forced out of the market. Refusing to serve blacks as they want to be served is otherwise known as loosing customers and ultimately loosing your company.
"I recall all of the situations you mentioned. I also recall that few if any of the people responsible have been prosecuted and punished for their actions. If we never prosecuted murderers, murder would run rampant too. Remove the “corporations are people and therefore have free speech rights” craziness and you'll go a long way to removing the money that fuels corruption through the influencing of elections as well as the tainting of the public interest by lobbyists. I don't deny the corruptibility of human beings, but to say we know of no way to keep people honest belies the intelligence that most of your reply demonstrates."
Oh sure, we can keep some people honest in some situation. But on the whole, this a simple application of public choice theory. The way regulation works, it has a diffuse effect on the population at large and a strong effect on the companies/people that are being regulated. Those individuals have therefore a strong incentive to lobby their regulators to do things one way or another while we have very little incentives to do so. Furthermore, they are small groups and therefore can organize much more easily. Also, the more power you give to the regulators the greater the incentive for the regulated to attempt to capture the regulator. So they will pour huge amounts of resources into finding every loophole and every way to capture the regulator. You and I have day jobs and we will spend a little bit of energy every once in a while to keep the regulator honest. Guess who will win? Sure, erect all the barriers you want against certain groups unduly influencing the regulator. That's just giving a relative advantage to another group which will also not be in the public's interest.
Hm... Re-read the sentence: "Added to these rules from the Guidelines is a new restriction, that no more than 10% of the total reading for any particular class could be provided through non-permissive copying."
There are other interpretations which would make more sense. What they are saying is you can only use up to 10% without getting permissions. So CC material is ok since permission is granted. Your own material is ok since permission is granted. So the only things that this would limit are: Public domain and fair use. It's illegal and bastardly, but not quite as much as you make it sound.
Wait... Healthcare and education are not public goods??
Is this the libertarian position?
This is not the libertarian position. This is a very simple application of the economic definition of public goods. A public good is one that is non-excludable (Once it exists, it is hard to prevent anyone from using it) and it is non-rival (My getting it does not prevent you from getting it either). As it turns out, both education and healthcare are very easily excludable: The teacher doesn't have to talk to you and the doctor doesn't have to treat you, the classroom is closed etc... It is also highly rival: While a doctor is busy treating you, he cannot be treating you. While a teacher is busy teaching you, he cannot be focusing on another student. (Larger classes have significantly worst outcomes than smaller classes) So, healthcare and education are clearly private goods. There are some comparatively small externalities for healthcare in matters of public health and preventing epidemics, but those are small compared to the bulk of healthcare.
The reason why non-excludable and non-rival goods are called public goods is that it is harder for the market to provide them because it is hard for the supplier of those goods to capture enough of their value as profits to justify providing enough of them. Given how much benefits an individual gets from their own education and healthcare and the fact that businesses can easily charge for those things, private provision of those goods is no problem at all. The reason many people want publicly provided healthcare or education is to help poor people. That's government provided charity which is not the same thing as the public goods.
If so, then I'll have to add it to the list of why I can't call myself a libertarian along with "racism is okay".
Libertarians don't think that "racism is okay". They just think that the government is an incredibly blunt and inappropriate instrument to combat racism.
Libertarians seem to place more faith in the mob of humanity than I'm comfortable with doing.
Actually no. Libertarians just have difficulty trusting the corrupt politicians which are inevitably elected. Remember the Deep Water Horizon spill? I remember in connection to that scandal hearing about the Mineral Management Services. It appears they were sleeping with oil industry executive at oil industry resorts and snorting coke off toasters. Remember Meredith Baker FCC Commissioner who got hired by Comcast after approving their deal? Or the guy at the SEC who spent his days downloading porn? I find it beyond strange that you would trust these people to run anything. Of course you'll say that it's not those people who should be in charge. It should be wise, honest, principled people. Well, it turns out we don't know of any mechanism whereby wise honest people get to be in charge. What we have is a world in which regulatory capture and corruption are inevitable. So yes, as a libertarian, I want government to have as little power as possible. That way, when it screws up, it won't do too much harm.
"But what happens to public goods like roads, police, armies, parks, health and education under such a vision?"
Healthcare and education both have all the hallmarks of private goods. They are both excludable and rival.
Parks and roads are definitely excludable and they are non-rival only to a point. That makes them halfway between a private good and a club good.
The police and the army are both public goods. (In part) But especially for the police, voluntary arrangements can often solve the problem of provision since so much police work is done at the local level where interpersonal ties are so much stronger.
"Who assures us that polluters don't poison us?"
The vast majority of libertarians do believe that some amount of government is a good thing. (An army and courts to sue polluters are just two common examples) We just often believe that it should be extremely limited.
We know. We know. It could have been worst. Let us know when you and your fellow Keynesians decide to look at empirical evidence and try out scientific rigor again.
In the meantime, I would like to sell you a pen which protects from terrorist attacks. Ever since I have owned it, I have not been the victim of a single terrorist attack. Since you're such a smart man, I won't try to cheat you. You can have the pen for no more than $500,000.
I'm pretty sure that's what the second Secessio was about: The laws cannot be secret. This simple concept was understood by the plebians in Rome 2500 years ago. What is so complicated about this that President Obama, a legal scholar, doesn't understand it?
And please make an example of this copyfrauder. No reason why this should go one way. All copyfraud cases should involve mindbogglingly large damages against the one who commits copyfraud. If they are a corporation, take their house, their car, sell their children into slavery and burn down their place of worship. Oh... Wait, I was thinking of the Mongolian hordes. Oh well, looks pretty similar anyways.
"The Big Three labels, in their current incarnation, need to die. This is not because of a relentless hatred for these companies, but because it is essential to the content industry's continued relevance."
Actually, at this point, I'm pretty sure there is some relentless hatred from many of us who are tired of being screwed over and over again.
But if the boyfriend isn't given his fair share, what incentive will he have to be a jerk to his girlfriends in the future? Do you really want women to be happy Mike? That's despicable of you.
Actually, going to war is not illegal, not matter the reasons, and the laws of war are only ever implemented by the winner. The reason for that are very simple: The winner is the only one with the guns to enforce any rules. Seriously people, you all need to realize that this concept of countries being held responsible for their actions by a neutral third party is completely absurd. The power of national courts is derived from the fact that they can send a bunch of uniformed goons to beat you up if you don't comply. International courts have LOTs fewer uniformed goons than even the most demilitarized country in the world.
Somehow I doubt Syria has accepted ICC jurisdiction and even if it did, there is no UN police. All the UN can do is send angry letters, stomp its feet and ask its member countries to please do something about it. To expect action on any matter to come from the UN is a recipe for disappointment.
While I doubt anyone will start believing that Bob their anti-governement friend has suddenly become pro-government, I could definitely see this as being a stark reminder of what happened and being highly demoralizing to protesters. A sort of digital version of putting your enemy's head on a spike in a highly public place. The flip side is that it might serve to really piss people off and intensify anti-government sentiment.
My guess is they spinned up an entire network of honeypots. Then, they realized that everyone in the 192.168.*.* range was pirating their content! Those fools! How could they think to escape the US Copyright Group? A job well done, they printed out the address which copied the content and then went home to sleep the sleep of the righteous.
There are a couple categories I would like to get clarification on before including them in calculations:
1) Pain and suffering from the stress of pirating content. (Potentially also medical costs due to the same)
2) Loss of potential income: I once came close to having a job at BitTorrent and I can only assume that had BitTorrent not been such a target for potential lawsuits, they would have had more capital and probably hired me. Also, I work for a software firm that has been the subject of numerous IP lawsuits. I can only assume that they would have more money to pay me a higher salary if it wasn't for those lawsuits.
3) Pain and suffering from the stress of being really pissed off at copyright maximalists. (again, medical costs for the same)
4) Ripple effects from the fact that if people had not paid for content, the companies I worked for would have made more money and paid me a higher salary.
5) Hours spent re-inventing the wheel working on open-source implementations of copyrighted software.
6) Having to dump some really good business ideas because they would have infringed on copyright.
7) Contracts lost to an inability to agree with the client on an appropriate license.
8) Hours spent commenting on your blog about copyright maximalists being jerks instead of being privately productive.
Maybe winning an election should automatically result in your indictment for deceiving the public and abuse of power. I mean, we could wait until evidence of crimes surfaces, but we all know it will so let's just cut the middle-man. Go directly to jail. Do not pass the White House. Do not collect campaign contributions.
On the post: Senators Reveal That Feds Have Secretly Reinterpreted The PATRIOT Act
Re: Re: Public vs. Private Goods
You need to be more specific. Education helps those who are educated. Healthcare helps those who receive treatment. I am not sure what you mean by "society" benefiting from those things.
"Calling it charity is like using entitlement in a pejorative manner to refer to Social Security. People pay into the system throughout their entire working lives, so , yes – they're entitled to it."
I call it charity because that's what it is. We hand out education and healthcare for free with the aim of ensuring that your income or wealth is not an obstacle to you obtaining those goods or services. That is charity. That is different from the government for instance providing for the common defense to solve the coordination problems that arise from collective action. The reason the government provides the army is because it would be hard for everyone to organize and voluntarily contribute to the military. It's not because without the government, the military would only protect rich people from bombs.
"Considering that the provisioning of healthcare through the private insurance industry can only capture value by restricting itself to those who need minimal levels of healthcare, how is healthcare for the population in general not a public good? Once a public option exists, it would be difficult to restrict access to it and so it would generally be both non-excludable and non-rival."
It is not a public good because the entire value of the transaction is captured by those involved in it and there is a finite amount of healthcare to go around. I gain health, my doctor gains my money. When my doctor is treating me, he cannot be treating somebody else. When the government pays for it through a "public option" nothing has changed except that payment is made through a more complicated system. My doctor still can't treat an infinite number of patients and he still can refuse to provide care to someone.
"Libertarians have done a poor job of explaining what mechanism other than the free market they would employ to prevent racism that would be as effective as the blunt instrument of government. A hundred years of free market activity in the south did not eliminate Jim Crow. When it comes to fundamental human rights the inefficiencies of the marketplace in securing those rights is simply unacceptable. "
You forgot something important in that statement. It was Jim Crow laws. Discrimination was government mandated. We are talking about the inefficiencies of the government in securing those rights. The market had nothing to do with this. In fact, there is some evidence that this discrimination was going away as businesses were seeking more workers and wanting more customers. That is part of the reason why Jim Crow laws were enacted. A very racist portion of the population was able to lobby lawmakers into passing a law which clearly attacked the property rights of business owners. In a libertarian state, Jim Crow laws would be impossible because the government would simply not have the power to do so.
Sure, you would have a couple of people here and there who would discriminate but they would rapidly be eliminated by market forces. Making hiring and firing decisions based on race is a great way to drive up your costs and ultimately be forced out of the market. Refusing to serve blacks as they want to be served is otherwise known as loosing customers and ultimately loosing your company.
"I recall all of the situations you mentioned. I also recall that few if any of the people responsible have been prosecuted and punished for their actions. If we never prosecuted murderers, murder would run rampant too. Remove the “corporations are people and therefore have free speech rights” craziness and you'll go a long way to removing the money that fuels corruption through the influencing of elections as well as the tainting of the public interest by lobbyists. I don't deny the corruptibility of human beings, but to say we know of no way to keep people honest belies the intelligence that most of your reply demonstrates."
Oh sure, we can keep some people honest in some situation. But on the whole, this a simple application of public choice theory. The way regulation works, it has a diffuse effect on the population at large and a strong effect on the companies/people that are being regulated. Those individuals have therefore a strong incentive to lobby their regulators to do things one way or another while we have very little incentives to do so. Furthermore, they are small groups and therefore can organize much more easily. Also, the more power you give to the regulators the greater the incentive for the regulated to attempt to capture the regulator. So they will pour huge amounts of resources into finding every loophole and every way to capture the regulator. You and I have day jobs and we will spend a little bit of energy every once in a while to keep the regulator honest. Guess who will win? Sure, erect all the barriers you want against certain groups unduly influencing the regulator. That's just giving a relative advantage to another group which will also not be in the public's interest.
On the post: Academic Publishers Attempting To Eliminate Fair Use At Universities [Updated]
Re: Re: stupidity or opportunity
There are other interpretations which would make more sense. What they are saying is you can only use up to 10% without getting permissions. So CC material is ok since permission is granted. Your own material is ok since permission is granted. So the only things that this would limit are: Public domain and fair use. It's illegal and bastardly, but not quite as much as you make it sound.
On the post: Senators Reveal That Feds Have Secretly Reinterpreted The PATRIOT Act
Re: Re: Healthcare and education
Is this the libertarian position?
This is not the libertarian position. This is a very simple application of the economic definition of public goods. A public good is one that is non-excludable (Once it exists, it is hard to prevent anyone from using it) and it is non-rival (My getting it does not prevent you from getting it either). As it turns out, both education and healthcare are very easily excludable: The teacher doesn't have to talk to you and the doctor doesn't have to treat you, the classroom is closed etc... It is also highly rival: While a doctor is busy treating you, he cannot be treating you. While a teacher is busy teaching you, he cannot be focusing on another student. (Larger classes have significantly worst outcomes than smaller classes) So, healthcare and education are clearly private goods. There are some comparatively small externalities for healthcare in matters of public health and preventing epidemics, but those are small compared to the bulk of healthcare.
The reason why non-excludable and non-rival goods are called public goods is that it is harder for the market to provide them because it is hard for the supplier of those goods to capture enough of their value as profits to justify providing enough of them. Given how much benefits an individual gets from their own education and healthcare and the fact that businesses can easily charge for those things, private provision of those goods is no problem at all. The reason many people want publicly provided healthcare or education is to help poor people. That's government provided charity which is not the same thing as the public goods.
If so, then I'll have to add it to the list of why I can't call myself a libertarian along with "racism is okay".
Libertarians don't think that "racism is okay". They just think that the government is an incredibly blunt and inappropriate instrument to combat racism.
Libertarians seem to place more faith in the mob of humanity than I'm comfortable with doing.
Actually no. Libertarians just have difficulty trusting the corrupt politicians which are inevitably elected. Remember the Deep Water Horizon spill? I remember in connection to that scandal hearing about the Mineral Management Services. It appears they were sleeping with oil industry executive at oil industry resorts and snorting coke off toasters. Remember Meredith Baker FCC Commissioner who got hired by Comcast after approving their deal? Or the guy at the SEC who spent his days downloading porn? I find it beyond strange that you would trust these people to run anything. Of course you'll say that it's not those people who should be in charge. It should be wise, honest, principled people. Well, it turns out we don't know of any mechanism whereby wise honest people get to be in charge. What we have is a world in which regulatory capture and corruption are inevitable. So yes, as a libertarian, I want government to have as little power as possible. That way, when it screws up, it won't do too much harm.
On the post: Senators Reveal That Feds Have Secretly Reinterpreted The PATRIOT Act
Re: Re: Re:
Healthcare and education both have all the hallmarks of private goods. They are both excludable and rival.
Parks and roads are definitely excludable and they are non-rival only to a point. That makes them halfway between a private good and a club good.
The police and the army are both public goods. (In part) But especially for the police, voluntary arrangements can often solve the problem of provision since so much police work is done at the local level where interpersonal ties are so much stronger.
"Who assures us that polluters don't poison us?"
The vast majority of libertarians do believe that some amount of government is a good thing. (An army and courts to sue polluters are just two common examples) We just often believe that it should be extremely limited.
On the post: Sony's Insane Fear Of 'Piracy' Means Many Movies Now Suck In Digital Theaters
On the post: Seismologists Tried For Manslaughter Due To Earthquake
Re: Re: Can we sue
In the meantime, I would like to sell you a pen which protects from terrorist attacks. Ever since I have owned it, I have not been the victim of a single terrorist attack. Since you're such a smart man, I won't try to cheat you. You can have the pen for no more than $500,000.
On the post: Senators Reveal That Feds Have Secretly Reinterpreted The PATRIOT Act
On the post: Singer's Ex-Boyfriend Demands Royalties For Inspiring Songs About Their Relationship & Breakup
Re: Re:
On the post: Maori Angry About Mike Tyson's Tattoo Artist Claiming To Own Maori-Inspired Design
On the post: John Perry Barlow Tells Copyright Maximalists That They've Got The Fundamentals Wrong
Re: Re:
Actually, at this point, I'm pretty sure there is some relentless hatred from many of us who are tired of being screwed over and over again.
On the post: John Perry Barlow Tells Copyright Maximalists That They've Got The Fundamentals Wrong
Re:
On the post: Singer's Ex-Boyfriend Demands Royalties For Inspiring Songs About Their Relationship & Breakup
On the post: Syrian Government Posting Pro-Government Messages On Pages Of Dissidents After Getting Their Passwords
Re: Re: Assad's Corruption is Extreme!
On the post: Syrian Government Posting Pro-Government Messages On Pages Of Dissidents After Getting Their Passwords
Re: Assad's Corruption is Extreme!
On the post: Syrian Government Posting Pro-Government Messages On Pages Of Dissidents After Getting Their Passwords
On the post: Judge Allows US Copyright Group To Shakedown 23,322 IP Addresses For Downloading The Expendables
On the post: Please Help Us Figure Out How Much The Public Has 'Lost' Due To Overprotective Anti-Copy Laws
1) Pain and suffering from the stress of pirating content. (Potentially also medical costs due to the same)
2) Loss of potential income: I once came close to having a job at BitTorrent and I can only assume that had BitTorrent not been such a target for potential lawsuits, they would have had more capital and probably hired me. Also, I work for a software firm that has been the subject of numerous IP lawsuits. I can only assume that they would have more money to pay me a higher salary if it wasn't for those lawsuits.
3) Pain and suffering from the stress of being really pissed off at copyright maximalists. (again, medical costs for the same)
4) Ripple effects from the fact that if people had not paid for content, the companies I worked for would have made more money and paid me a higher salary.
5) Hours spent re-inventing the wheel working on open-source implementations of copyrighted software.
6) Having to dump some really good business ideas because they would have infringed on copyright.
7) Contracts lost to an inability to agree with the client on an appropriate license.
8) Hours spent commenting on your blog about copyright maximalists being jerks instead of being privately productive.
On the post: Travesty Of Thomas Drake Being Charged With Espionage Making Mainstream News
Re:
On the post: Travesty Of Thomas Drake Being Charged With Espionage Making Mainstream News
Re: Whistleblowers...
On the post: Travesty Of Thomas Drake Being Charged With Espionage Making Mainstream News
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