In a free society, nothing stops an employee from seeking a lower stress, less demanding, lower profit margin employer, lower-paying job. In America, these low-paid employees are called "public teachers."

Lower stress? In the job where you can get shot? (Well, luckily not in all locations.) Teaching is a very sensitive job, especially with the younger students. The initial state of child's mind is inquisitive curiosity; it can be either reared, or killed. Bad teachers, which is the majority of them, are literally murderers of minds. If there has to be any major change, it has to become in schools. But I digress.

And our teachers in public schools are similarly free to not operate at their full potential, or even close to it, and yet be paid a moderate salary. They can even steal stuff the way your father did.

Most of the parts were batches that didn't make it through entry-level tests. Tesla wasn't making exactly stellar things, so reliability tests had to be performed on the batches before they were put into production. There were regulations about destroying the batches considered defective. But stealing something that's scheduled for destruction anyway is not stealing in its true sense - depriving the owner of enjoying the object.

...

Hightech books were cheaper.

Probably because they were either pirated or were rehashes/copies of Western books.

Not all. But often yes.

Not in all cases. I have a few Soviet physics and math texts written by some of the greats of Soviet physics and math. Printed on cheap paper, with the authors barely compensated, they were certainly cheap. And, of course, often prone to having ideology inserted by the commisars.

Soviets had also great compilations. As they didn't pay the royalties, the cost was no issue for including an article into the book. Naturally, they were more complete than their Western counterparts. I was too young to enjoy it back then; but a friend with more experiences mourned the demise of these editions couple months back.

Which is OK, but understand that your country was operating as a Napster country.

Yes. However, I prefer students learning from napsterized books now than risking the lack of qualified people tomorrow (and having to import them from Napster countries). I say this as a potential writer myself.

Do you think American schools do not have such clubs? I was in a dozen of them, and President of several.

I am not surprised. :) How expensive they were to attend?

...

to consuming, disturbs me a lot.</RANT>

You seem to be pining for central control, for state subsidies, for communism.

Not really. Just comparing and remembering... And was too tired and talked too much. I am not for state control. I am against both the government- and megacorporate-instilled control. This is an important difference. Capitalism is a good idea, as long as it has the form of a lot of small, widely varying subjects. The current trend of consolidation brings away both the competition and the choice, and with high-enough barriers to entry there will be no new small subjects to disrupt the balance. Of course it will collapse later, but human lives have finite length, so longer-term waiting isn't the option I'd be exactly happy to take.

I doubt you'll like what we have to offer on this list.

You work with ways to rehash the situation. The corporations, over certain size, aren't as that different from the governments. Especially when they get enough power to buy the governments.

But your rant above says you would probably be happier under state socialism, which makes this list your absolute worse enemy.

Not necessarily. I just dislike the situation when money are the beginning, the center, and the end of virtually everything, and where people are degraded to mere replaceable "human resources". I don't know what approach will handle this; if I'd know, I'd suggest. I don't know what should be done, nor if anything can be done at all. I am just afraid. Very afraid. Besides, preaching to the choir rarely brings the counterarguments telling me when I am wrong.

Free markets are often rough. They mean there is no one to provide food for those who have no skills to offer.

Contemporary free markets (we'll leave aside the fact they aren't really free) are driven by short-term profits. Higher investments aimed to distant future are rare and far between. Basic research suffers, like virtually everything with no immediate profitable application.

Think of it as evolution in action. The burnoff of useless eaters will be glorious.

...if they won't rise up instead and steamroll over everything. And, as nobody paid enough care to the public education system, they are too dumb to rebuild the society in any sensible way after then. The most important thing to take care of, for the long-term future, is the education system (we started with the teachers, so why not to end with the teachers). If statistically significant amount of people will be able (and willing!) to think for themselves, many problems (eg, sheeple) will disappear or be reduced. Not only this is less stinky and more aesthetical (though less spectacular) approach than an outright burnoff, it can also be more effective.

On Friday, May 2, 2003, at 12:53 PM, Thomas Shaddack wrote:

...

In a free society, nothing stops an employee from seeking a lower stress, less demanding, lower profit margin employer, lower-paying job. In America, these low-paid employees are called "public teachers."

Lower stress? In the job where you can get shot? (Well, luckily not in all locations.)

Don't believe what you see on television or movies is any measure of the norm. Similar to the "inspection paradox," what one is observing is usually not the norm. While a few teachers all around the world (U.S., Australia, Scotland, Germany, etc.) have gotten shot, this can happen in lots of professions. It's what happens when there are a few billion people with television cameras and reporters in close proximity.

...

Do you think American schools do not have such clubs? I was in a dozen of them, and President of several.

I am not surprised. :) How expensive they were to attend?

What are you talking about? All of the clubs I knew of were free. A few were closed except to those invited (based on various criteria), but most were open to anyone with interest. Same as Cypherpunks.

Capitalism is a good idea, as long as it has the form of a lot of small, widely varying subjects. The current trend of consolidation brings away both the competition and the choice, and with high-enough barriers to entry there will be no new small subjects to disrupt the balance.

Yes, you are right, the great electronics companies of the 1960s sit astride our economic life, crushing the life out of real competition! With Fairchild and Rheem Semiconductor and Mohawk Data Sciences controlling everything, new ideas and innovations cannot be developed! And the 1970s were much, much worse, with the computer companies consolidating their power and dominating all computer work! Who can innovate when Burroughs, Honeywell, Data General, Univac, NCR, DEC, and CDC utterly dominate?

...

But your rant above says you would probably be happier under state socialism, which makes this list your absolute worse enemy.

Not necessarily. I just dislike the situation when money are the beginning, the center, and the end of virtually everything, and where people are degraded to mere replaceable "human resources".

Nonsense. Anyone who has recruited, hired, fired, and otherwise managed employees know the true story. Namely, that good people are hard to find, hard to hire, hard to keep, and that they must be coddled and accommodated in their idiosyncracies. Do you think Declan's employees view him as just an interchangeable part? Better yet, do you think I have changed all that much since when I was a physicist working for Intel? I was considered a trouble maker, a shit disturber....but a damned good thinker and problem solver. I often solved problems almost "on the spot," in meetings where I was brought in, when roomfuls of idiots had been assigning each other "action items" for months. (A lot of time people seem to think they cannot solve a problem by thinking about it, so they try to look busy, shuffle papers, and hope someone else solves the problem. I merely listened, poked around, and developed mental images of what was happening. Usually this worked very quickly.) For this, they cut me a lot of slack. They gave me a big lab and told me to keep on doing what I was doing. This is about as far from "degraded to mere replaceable "human resources"" as one can get. And there were a lot of people treated like me. And when I had to hire people, finding them and keeping them was no easy chore. (Getting rid of some of them was also difficult...especially the coloreds. Our Personnel people practically flipped out when a colored person had to be fired. We had to do extra steps, and still we got sued for "racial discrimination." I don't think any of the coloreds ever won their cases, though.) You seem to have some very skewed ideas of what "capitalism" means. You seem to think it means mean old capitalist bosses whip the proles and fire them at will. Your teachers are still teaching you the Marxist dialectic, I think.

...

Free markets are often rough. They mean there is no one to provide food for those who have no skills to offer.

Contemporary free markets (we'll leave aside the fact they aren't really free) are driven by short-term profits. Higher investments aimed to distant future are rare and far between. Basic research suffers, like virtually everything with no immediate profitable application.

Nonsense. Basic research is being done by many people. Corporations have never been the best place for blue-sky, academic research. This is one reason the U.S. and Western Europe have thousands of excellent universities and colleges offering Ph.D. programs and all the things that go with them (professors doing research, grant money, tie-ins with corporations, etc.). "Research" is a very broad topic, covering many fields and many issues. Issues of basic physics vs. applied technology, issues of biological principles vs. new drugs and new tools, issues of fundamental mathematics vs. computer programming. I think research is doing very well. Some fields are "mined out" in terms of major new paradigms, at least in terms of the energies and scales we can now probe. Some are undergoing rapid change. Some are hotbeds of academic research, some are most closely related to corporation projects. All to be expected. --Tim May "The Constitution is a radical document...it is the job of the government to rein in people's rights." --President William J. Clinton --Tim May "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant." --John Stuart Mill

At 02:55 PM 5/2/03 -0700, Tim May wrote: ...

Item: Research in astrophysics and cosmology is booming today. No corporate interest in figuring out the role of dark matter, dark energy, superstrings, anthropic reasons for the neutrino mass, inflation, and a dozen other currently hot topics. Much of the work came from the fruits of industrial development, just as much of the astronomy work of the past 150 years, even longer, has come from industrial methods and tools. In the 1930s, the ability to construct very large Pyrex mirrors...I lived in the 1950s within a pleasant Sunday drive to Mount Palomar, for a long time the very largest telescope in the world.

Nitpick: You could argue that much of the research in physics wouldn't be happening without substantial government funding for research. Certainly, it's hard to see who would be funding a lot of this stuff with any eye to practical applications within their lifetimes. ...

I reject the claim that corporations and capitalism are either stifling innovation or that innovation is not happening because corporations aren't doing "enough" basic research.

This is obviously true. In fact, hearing people say that capitalism stifles innovation, and offering the modern US as an example, is a bit mind-numbing. The pace of innovation in almost every field is breathtaking. Imagine taking a modern, Wal-Mart-available solar powered scientific calculator, and dropping it on Leslie Groves' desk in 1943. That whole group of brilliant scientists and engineers working on the first atomic bomb would have had a hell of a time distinguishing the result from space-alien technology, other than the convenient use of our numbering and lettering system. (And they would have been scared s***less when they saw "made in Japan" on the back!) Nor is this just true of this century. Look at the rate of innovation in the US and UK in the 1800s, under more-or-less capitalistic rules. Railroads and telegraphs and steam ships and radio and electricity and chemical fertilizers and pesticides and the germ theory of disease and the very beginning glimmers of modern physics and machine guns and barbed wire and streetcars and mass production factories and modern steel bridges and.... These two centuries have defined the modern world, and whatever the reasons, nearly all the real innovations have happened in mostly capitalistic countries with substantial personal freedom, and (probably more importantly) the ability to let new technology displace incumbents and to allow innovators to be rewarded for their innovation by the opportunity to do still more innovation. ...

--Tim May

--John Kelsey, kelsey.j@ix.netcom.com PGP: FA48 3237 9AD5 30AC EEDD BBC8 2A80 6948 4CAA F259

-- On 3 May 2003 at 21:03, Andy Lopata wrote:

Simply put, markets lead to consolidation.

So said Marx. He also said that markets would make the workers poorer and poorer. Despite the fact that the trend has been in the other direction for the past two hundred years, despite the fact that what Marx wrote was obviously false then, and has become more obviously false in the 150 years since he wrote, Marxists repeat Marx's prophecies with the more confidence, the more obviously the facts contradict them. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Ic1xAeCT1HkM0xATi9N8p+jTR40FPoz4Ej6T5Oep 4hL/SG1g6h/sdIbk/IJWPDxc3E/XmQj/f3wE3EYS1

Well I guess Microsoft and Intel aren't quite monopolies. At least with Intel there are viable competitors selling compatible products: AMD, transmeta, VIA, etc. And AMD processor are some of the time at the top of the heap performance-wise, and most of the time offer the best value for money processors (best performance/$). Anyway my view is that what props up software virtual monopolies is the current IP laws. If they were revised to remove copyright, and patents I think it would help level the playing field. As to virtual monopolies being worse than government: I disagree businesses aim to maximise profit margin and this places a limit on the depths of unethical and bad for the individual behavior they can do. They won't do it becaues it's not profitable: unhappy customers are not good business. Current governments on the other hand are almost universally bad for the economy, liberty and freedoms. They have no competition and are so corrupt that it's difficult for them to act anywhere near as efficiently or sanely as a company. Adam On Sat, May 03, 2003 at 09:03:00PM -0700, Andy Lopata wrote:

Simply put, markets lead to consolidation. Consolidation leads to monopoly. Monopoly leads to control from above, with no accountability. Is this better than gov't? I certainly see the dangers of gov't: state terrorism, state ineptitude, state racism and xenophobia, but I see market control as at least as dangerous since corporations are not accountable to any sort of democratic control - and I don't think the people with the most capital necessarily make the best decisions.

On Sun, May 04, 2003 at 08:40:48PM -0700, Andy Lopata wrote:

...

Anyway my view is that what props up software virtual monopolies is the current IP laws. If they were revised to remove copyright, and patents I think it would help level the playing field.

Removing patents would undercut your argument for the market working well in the processor markets.

I think if anything the processor market would be made more competitive yet by removal of patents as competitors with the fabrication technology could just outright copy other companies processors, after reverse-engineering them. (If it was cheaper to reverse-engineer than design one).

Removing patent and copyright protection for software would be great, but politically unrealistic (because of the power of the copyright content cartels among Congress).

But that's a symptom of a corrupt government and laws against the public interest. Companies in many areas have more political power than individuals. For example the DMCA. This to me doesn't argue for more government, but for less government and system reform.

However if Freenet, or some other technology, makes untraceable anonymous file-sharing effective and wide-spread, it could mean the effective end of copyright for digital materials.

I agree: I think anonymous file sharing should be the next generation in p2p evolution.

On the other hand, if the anti-copy technology produced through agreement between MS, the processor producers and the copyright cartel, becomes a reality, it could severely hamper, marginalize, or effectively destroy any type of anonymous file-sharing technology.

I don't think Palladium and other DRM hardware such as recently proposed by Paul Kocher et al can realistically make any difference to file sharing. It seems unrealistic to think that hardware in the hands of it's attackers (p2p file rippers) can withstand long term attack. And anyway the content will always be amenable to re-encoding from the analog output, or digital signal. Kocher's scheme is essentially hardware-tamper resistant watermarking -- it encodes the hardware identifier in the analog output to trace who ripped content. However it is vunlerable to collusion over some parameter of colluders (5 with the example system parameters). Even then it can't be too hard to obtain hardware anonymously removing the tracing risk even if you don't bother colluding to avoid the tracing risk; the remaining risk is that the player may be unable to decode new content if the player keys are revoked after it is detected as a source of ripped content.

I think that IP in general is a bad idea, especially when there are other methods of compensating creator's for their works.

I agree.

Those who argue that the market is the best way to produce innovation and a better world rely on the false gov't stamp of "property" on these non-rivalrous goods.

But I think IP is something created, subsidized and only made possible by governments.

...

As to virtual monopolies being worse than government: I disagree businesses aim to maximise profit margin and this places a limit [...]. They won't do it becaues it's not profitable: unhappy customers are not good business.

Maximization of profits does not create moral results. It creates the greatest short-term gain for the enterprise and low prices for the consumer at the expense of any other considerations about how the enterprise's operation affects other people or businesses or the environment.

Correct. But at least they're trying to be profitable, which most of the time means keeping their customers happy. Governments on the other hand have no such objective, and most governments burn off 25%+ of GDP -- that's a lot of money to do evil with.

Any huge organization of people is bound to be corrupt and inept. I am a constant critic of the gov't, but think there is at least some chance of democratic control or influence which is completely missing in the corporate setting.

While I agree political reform is badly needed in many aspects of government and law, it's difficult to see how one can get there from here using only the political process. Your only chance is individual mobility -- individuals voting with their feet to create competition in government. I guess it's a similar situation in some respects -- government is a virtual monopoly, in the sense that you don't have to accept your current government, you can move. However people have ties to their country, they have friends and relatives who live there; plus the alternatives have disadvantages too. While IP laws do vary, it's a pity there are no major governments that compete on IP -- by providing a copyright and patent free environment. So while governments and corporations, and corporations buying government favor are frequently against the interests of the individual lobbying for reform doesn't seem likely to improve things much. Adam

Unfortunately MSFT has enough clout with hardware manufacturers to dictacte what future PC's will be and attempt to keep them closed. i.e. MSFT's Athens: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/134689749_winhec06.... And tablet PC's. It's not as if they can fully push other designs out of the market, but if there are few places that linux, *bsd, and other OS's can run, they have vast control. This design is closer and closer to the Mac - and for good reason. There is hope and precedent in that when IBM attempted to lock the market into Microchannel they failed miserably - but only because the other hw manufacturers decided to not pay the IBM tax. If the few remaining PC makers decide to go the MSFT way, the industry is Bill's. IBM probably won't, but who knows what HP, Dell, etc. will be willing to put up with. There will probably always be generic x86, ppc boards, and possibly Macintoshes and Sun workstations... but... :( The thing that would allow MSFT to gain this sort of monopoly is the DMCA. It needs to be repealed. ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of /|\ \|/ :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\ <--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech. \/|\/ /|\ :Found to date: 0. Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD. \|/ + v + : The look on Sadam's face - priceless! --------_sunder_@_sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------ On Sun, 4 May 2003, Andy Lopata wrote:

Fortunately there is Linux as an alternative to MS and Apple, but if the hardware has built-in copy controls, this may not be enough.

On Mon, 5 May 2003, Bill Frantz wrote:

At 3:17 PM -0700 5/4/03, Adam Back wrote:

...

As to virtual monopolies being worse than government: I disagree businesses aim to maximise profit margin and this places a limit on the depths of unethical and bad for the individual behavior they can do. They won't do it becaues it's not profitable: unhappy customers are not good business.

Remind me how this relates to the relations between the RIAA, the people who write/perform music, and the people who listen.

Adam really should stick to crypto, his understanding of psychology is rather whimsical at best. If people can act through governments to probe the depths of human deprevity there is no reason to believe that adding profit to the equation will alter those depths to the less extreme at all. His faith in the power of the all mighty buck to make people act ethically or in a civil fashio is seriously misplaced. -- ____________________________________________________________________ We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" ravage@ssz.com jchoate@open-forge.org www.ssz.com www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------

At 09:53 PM 5/2/2003 +0200, Thomas Shaddack wrote:

Capitalism is a good idea, as long as it has the form of a lot of small, widely varying subjects. The current trend of consolidation brings away both the competition and the choice, and with high-enough barriers to entry there will be no new small subjects to disrupt the balance. Of course it will collapse later, but human lives have finite length, so longer-term waiting isn't the option I'd be exactly happy to take.

I gave a presentation at a conference a few years back in which I raised the idea that since Intellectual Property (e.g., trademarks) isn't, its really a lease, that our society should consider setting limits on the market penetration (say 50%, which is already in excess of the what many economists call the "friction free" point wherein companies can continue to gain market share merely by dint of their already considerable presence) of single companies in markets whose size (the therefore probably importance) exceeds some minimum threshold of the GDP. However, instead of enforcing these limits via the Department of Justice, they would become a civil matter and one's competitors can use the courts to strip a company of its sole lease on a trademark or patent applied to this market.

Contemporary free markets (we'll leave aside the fact they aren't really free) are driven by short-term profits. Higher investments aimed to distant future are rare and far between. Basic research suffers, like virtually everything with no immediate profitable application.

I guess then the many science (especially theoretical) and technology developments by "amateurs" over the past three were just a fluke?

...

Think of it as evolution in action. The burnoff of useless eaters will be glorious.

...if they won't rise up instead and steamroll over everything. And, as nobody paid enough care to the public education system, they are too dumb to rebuild the society in any sensible way after then.

The most important thing to take care of, for the long-term future, is the education system (we started with the teachers, so why not to end with the teachers). If statistically significant amount of people will be able (and willing!) to think for themselves, many problems (eg, sheeple) will disappear or be reduced. Not only this is less stinky and more aesthetical (though less spectacular) approach than an outright burnoff, it can also be more effective.

An excellent treatise on this can be found in Leonard Peikoffs' "The Ominous Parallels," 1982. The author dissects many of the parallels between the raise of Nazism and the then current situation in the U.S. He lays much of the cause for its raise and our "ominous" future in a lack of development in individual thinking, especially philosophical, the kind that launched America. steve

On Fri, 2 May 2003, Steve Furlong wrote:

What's wrong with Cambridge, MA?

(Harvard Square, the world's last bastion of hard-line communism.)

That's good, I thought it was Madison WI. Home of the "The Progessive" magazine. Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike