December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Another question about free-markets...
by Jim Choate 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

Milton Friedman won the Nobel price in 1976 in economics. One of the questions he asked was: Do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? His answer was 'no', they have no responsibility outside of those two considerations (ie the law, stockholders expectations of profit). Now in a free-market, by definition, there is no law. What then is the responsibility of businesses other than the pure unadulterated pursuit of profit? If this includes lying, denying consumers information, etc. what harm is done, they have fulfilled their responsibility to their shareholders (potentialy quite lucratively) and broken no law. Within this environment it follows that a primary strategy for such executives is the elimination of *all* competition. And since there is no law other than the measure of profit all can be justified. ____________________________________________________________________ The seeker is a finder. Ancient Persian Proverb The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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18 Dec '03

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18 Dec '03

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No Subject
by Rod Logic 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

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Capitalism and Monopolies (was RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction)
by Matthew James Gering 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

Jim Choate wrote: > Only after the early 1890's when the situation got so bad > they had to do something. Prior to that there was no federal > intervention in railroad operations per se Completely false. Traffic to/from the West coast did not warrant the capital investment in transcontinental railway, so the government make *exclusive* lands grants to specific railroads to extend the railways to the West coast (100M acres between 1863-7) . Those subsidies created the monopolies, the source of coercive power over Western farmers. Protest against this arbitrary power was blamed on the market instead of the government subsidies, and resulted in the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, and the Sherman Act of 1890. I should have stated government "distortions" instead of "regulation." That includes subsidies. > And every drop of mineral rights in this country is owned > by oil companies or the US government as a result of the > conflicts that took place from the late 1800's to the > early 1900's. The placement (ownership) of these rights, their value, restrictions and enforcement are the result of a free market? No, government intervention. > Actualy the local and state regulators did that back in the > late 50's and early 60's the federals had no hand in it. Did anyone ever state monopolies result from federal regulations? Government distortion/intervention, that can come at any level. Acts of force or coercion can create a monopolistic situation, free trade cannot. > Bullshit math. The interactions are nowhere near as simple as > you state. The big company has the resources to outlast the > smaller company in any industry that can monopolize (an issue > you seem to miss, not all industries can monopolize) So what is the discriminating factor(s) distinguishing industries that can and cannot be monopolized? Don't forget capital markets; a free fluid capital market can and will support a smaller competitor if potential long term profits will support it. I will qualify that we do not have a very free capital market, it currently favors larger businesses. The answer is to deregulate the capital market. Even with our heavily regulated capital markets this works often. > Examples please where a small firm dukes it out (sic) on > equal terms with a larger one... Equality is about freedom of action, not status or result. Amazon vs Barnes & Noble, Yahoo vs NBC, Red Hat vs Microsoft, etc. I see the egalitarian perversion of "equality" polluting arguments against free market capitalism. Equal states and "game" like fairness and handicapping is not ideal, Freedom is ideal. > > In one of those nordic countries, I think Finland, the phone > > system was never made a public enterprise or state regulated > > monopoly, but most other things were. > > Then how does it operate? Who owns the switches and wires? > Either it's a public utility or it's some sort of private > enterprise (though it may by under contract to the government). However buys and installs the switches and wires. There is no artificial barriers such as right-of-way restrictions, exclusive franchise, utilities commission, or nationalization. There are many competing telecom companies, all the way to local loop. > > There is no "natural monopoly" that is not somewhere a > > A 'natural' monoploy, to my mind, is a company that operates > in an industry that can be saturated. That's a perverted definition of 'natural' monopoly. A 'natural' monopoly involves something where all or none must benefit (e.g. military defense) or something based on a severely scarce resource (e.g. real estate to your house). Market saturation is a natural effect of free competition, the number of firms it takes is irrelevant, and competition is not barred by artificial restraint, only profit. If a firm abuses its position competition can and will capitalize on the opportunity. A coercive monopoly is one that is immune to market constraints (supply and demand) -- that requires artificial barriers. > The VCR industry is a great example of a 'natural' monopoly. You must be joking. I could enter the video recording/playback equipment market tomorrow with sufficient capitalization and turn good profits in 5 years. I didn't say VCR because that is terribly myopic, the market demand is the function not the technology. Technology and innovation is a natural destabilizer to monopoly positions. Matt

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RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd)
by Matthew James Gering 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

Jim Choate wrote: > Explain further, from your description of the differences there > are no fundamental mentionings or views of intellectual property. > As a matter of fact the specific role of the individual is never > even mentioned in either definition. Intellectual property is fundamentally unenforceable in an anarchic state (you have no govt), at least in the manner we have now, whereas a Laissez Faire state could enforce it (you have limited govt). That says nothing about whether IP should exist in current form or at all, simply that it *could* exist under LF. I don't support the current path IP law is headed, but I support the underlying basis for intellectual property rights, as do most LF advocates. There are many different takes on anarchism, from those that include coercion as a market (and marketable) element to those where it is prohibited, but without the state (rational anarchy). Therefore it is difficult to discriminate the differences other than limited government versus no government. > So people don't have a right to self-defence? I agree > consensual crimes are not crimes. No, you certainly have a right to self-defense. >> "What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual >> right to lawful defense." > Is it? Is it? No. Should it be? Yes. > Or is it simply another sort of coercion to cooperate with the > collective? Yes. "Nowhere has the coercive and parasitic nature of the State been more clearly limned than by the great late nineteenth-century German sociologist, Franz Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer pointed out that there are two and only two mutually exclusive means for man to obtain wealth. One, the method of production and voluntary exchange, the method of the free market, Oppenheimer termed the 'economic means'; the other, the method of robbery by the use of violence, he called the 'political means.' The political means is clearly parasitic, for it requires previous production for the exploiters to confiscate, and it subtracts from rather than adding to the total production in society. Oppenheimer then proceeds to define the State as the 'organization of the political means' -the systematization of the predatory process over a given territorial area." -- Murray Rothbard on Franz Oppenheimer's _Der Staat_ > I'm interesting to see how you reconcile the belief nobody > has a right to use force yet has a right to defend their > life. Abolition of *coercive* force. Defensive force I promote. >>"For what are our faculties but the extension of our >>individuality? And what is property but an extension >>of our faculties?" > By facluty I assume you mean our emotional and psychological > makeup coupled with our sensory record of them. > > I'd say that such issues are not a facet of individualism but > rather a characteristic of life itself. That was a quote from Frederick Bastiat, not me. Faculty is a broad term, your cognitive faculty is physiological, but your rational faculty (your mind) is really the essence of individuality. You are more correct, your individuality is derived from your faculty, your faculty is derived from the nature of man. > No it doesn't. You must first prove that a group of > individuals have some right that as individuals they don't have. Absolutely not and no they don't. What part did you miss? A group is simply a collection of individuals, therefore holds no more rights nor less rights than any single member, nor does any member sacrifice any rights by participating in a group. > For one thing, even in your definition, rights are a > fundamental aspect of birth as an individual. Rights are based on the nature of reality (survival). "In order to sustain its life, every living species has to follow a certain course of action required by its nature. The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort. Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival... Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to exercise his rational faculty or not depends on the individual, man's survival requires that those who think be free of the interference of those who don't. Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgement. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man's mind... The social recognition of man's rational nature--of the connection between his survival and his use of reason--is the concept of *individual rights*. ..."rights" are a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context... ...man has to work and produce in order to support his life. He has to support his life by his own effort and by the guidance of his own mind. If he cannot dispose of the product of his effort, he cannot dispose of his effort; if he cannot dispose of his effort, he cannot dispose of his life. Without property rights, no other rights can be practiced." -- Ayn Rand Matt

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RE: Another question about free-markets...
by Matthew James Gering 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

Jim Choate wrote: > Now in a free-market, by definition, there is no law. A free market is not the absence of law (that is anarchy), a free market is the absence of government intervention in trade and commerce. That does not mean people and businesses are immune from criminal law, fraud statutes, civil liability, etc. > If this includes lying, denying consumers information, The market addresses information disclosure by favoring vendors that disclose. The legal system addresses intentional misinformation. You are confusing Laissez Faire [free market] Capitalism with Anarcho-Capitalism. Matt

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No Subject
by Anonymous 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

> At 12:59 PM 10/3/98 -0400, Michael Motyka wrote: > >> There is a desert which is 1000 miles across. There is a camel who can > carry > >> 1000 bananas maximum. The camel eats 1 banana per mile travelled. The camel > >> has a total of 3000 bananas to begin with. What is the maximum number of > >> bananas that the camel can get across to the other side uneaten? > > > >My camels don't understand/can't eat fractional bananas. > > Why are bananas quantized in the presense of camels? Is this > a quantum-computing thing? > Can the camel increase his miles/banana ratio if he dries out the peels and smokes them??

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RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd)
by Matthew James Gering 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

"Corruptissima republicae, plurimae leges." -- Tacitus > -----Original Message----- > From: Robert Hettinga [mailto:rah@shipwright.com] > Most criminologists will tell that the more corrupt the > jurisdiction, the harder it is to be in compliance with > the law. That way, it's easier for the state's > functionaries to shake you down. > "'If we could just pass a few more laws', we could all be > criminals!"

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