General Poker Discussion Poker Forums

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m1SLk8hr2I

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.
Noam Chomsky

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
Noam Chomsky



A couple quotes that I thought apply to this issue. While I dont agree with a lot of the content on the internet, I will always defend the right to post that content free of fear of pursecution and censorship.

no, the only monopolies that are good for the consumer are the ones that come about because of purely outperforming all competitors without any special privileges granted to it and without the use of coercion. A monopoly that comes about from government privileges, for example, is disgusting.

how about natural monopolies that become so powerful that they rival the government for power and/or stifle new upstarts to maintain their monopoly long after innovation has ceased? in other words, with your views on limited government, should there also not be a place for limited business? why are the two different in your mind?

how about natural monopolies that become so powerful that they rival the government for power and/or stifle new upstarts to maintain their monopoly long after innovation has ceased?

this isn't possible under purely free market conditions. The only way they can stifle competition is either by a) being granted government privileges, or b) by legitimately outperforming all competition. which is fine, since the consumer benefits greatly from this.

really, that's your argument?

I don't have the energy to pull all the history that definitively shows how life in the west was. If you're interested it's out there.

the fact of the matter is that the way to get rid of child labor is to get to the point where the society is wealthy enough such that the parents work is productive enough and the currency is valuable enough that the children don't have to work. And free markets unimpeded by government is the way for society to produce the most possible wealth for the greatest number of people.

Society will never be wealthy enough for that. There are people right now in this country who would send their children to work if it were allowed, and we're certainly not a poor society relatively. As for a free market producing the most wealth for the greatest number of people, that's so ridiculous I don't even know where to start. I think when you use free here you mean it in a theoretical sense, where human beings don't act like human beings. Not to mention the fact that it's central for the free market to have losers.

if you have *one* "private" police force exerting its will over members of society in a given geographical area, then yeah you have a government. Like I said before, a government is a monopoly over the use of force. If you have multiple private protection agencies, you don't have a monopoly.

So you have competing police forces? I could wrong you in some way, you go to one police force and I go to another police force and whoever's force survives wins? Or the police forces get together and decide which one of us wins and which one of us to shoot in the head?

Rockefeller haha, you realize the way he got such a huge market share in the oil industry was because his company was just that more productive than all its competitors? His market share rose from something like 4 percent in 1870 to 25 percent in 1874 then to like 85 percent in 1880, and he cut its cost of refining a gallon of oil from 3 cents to less than half a cent, and he passed these savings along to the consumer - price of refined oil went from more than 30 cents per gallon in 1869 to 8 cents in 1885. If his company hadn't been so much more productive and efficient than the competitors he wouldn't have gotten such a huge market share. This is a natural monopoly, and it's the only way a monopoly can come about in a truly free market, and it's certainly not undesirable as the consumer benefits tremendously from a company that is so efficient that it can cut costs so much and offer such low prices.

Again, if interested you should look up Rockefeller. He bullied people out of the market. Not that that was all he did, but he did that too.

no government doesn't mean no rules! lol

If you have rules, you have to have some means of enforcing them.



didn't mean to derail this thread, but to get it back on track, looks like megaupload was shut down by the feds, and some record labels got hacked by Anonymous in response.

It is much easier to get rich in Scandinavia than it is in the US.

this isn't possible under purely free market conditions. The only way they can stifle competition is either by a) being granted government privileges, or b) by legitimately outperforming all competition. which is fine, since the consumer benefits greatly from this.

how about c) buying up the competition and killing it? or d) pricing the competition out of business then once the competitor is gone, setting new prices at will since there is no competition?

"isn't possible" is a strong view. i think we're back in utopia.

The old west was basically a constant, violent violation of human rights by people with money over those who didn't have it. Towns were created and run by railroad companies, mining companies, and large ranchers. It wasn't anarchy, it was the government of the powerful over the powerless.

That's a common misconception - http://invisiblemolotov.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/wild-west3.pdf

i read through this kind of quickly, and i agree that there was effective peacekeeping and order without government per se in the Wild West, but i fail to see how the crude attempts at order is anarcho-capitalism. there's nothing anarchist about it. governments were forming and contracts being made to keep order. that's just the start of civil government, not a state of anarchy.

so this paper discredits the idea that the wild west was anarchy, but it doesn't prove that civilized society can exist without government; in fact, i think it proves the exact opposite.

I happen to disagree as I noted above. Law/contract enforcement etc can be handled by private agencies better than government imo, and there have been glimpses in history where that's been the case, though Robert Nozick does makes a strong case for why this would always eventually evolve into "minarchy" in Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

I consider it a pretty trivial observation that law enforcement should be non-political and founded by taxes.

It is much easier to get rich in Scandinavia than it is in the US.

why is this?

oh,

http://utopianist.com/2011/05/american-dream-much-more-likely-to-be-realized-in-scandinavia/

but that's just referring to middle class social mobility. if your dream is to become a balla rapper or an overpaid CEO, America is still where it's at.

how about c) buying up the competition and killing it? or d) pricing the competition out of business then once the competitor is gone, setting new prices at will since there is no competition?

as soon as they try this and set new prices higher, a new competitor will enter the market.

i read through this kind of quickly, and i agree that there was effective peacekeeping and order without government per se in the Wild West, but i fail to see how the crude attempts at order is anarcho-capitalism. there's nothing anarchist about it. governments were forming and contracts being made to keep order. that's just the start of civil government, not a state of anarchy.
.

anarchy isn't the absence of contracts or order. it's the absence of a monopoly over the use of force/coercion.

if your dream is to become a balla rapper or an overpaid CEO, America is still where it's at.

Find me one person who's dream isn't to become a balla

I don't have the energy to pull all the history that definitively shows how life in the west was. If you're interested it's out there.

read the paper I posted.

Society will never be wealthy enough for that. There are people right now in this country who would send their children to work if it were allowed, and we're certainly not a poor society relatively.

I think it's pretty ridiculous claim that society will never be wealthy enough for that. a) just look at how the rate of technology advancement alone has increased society's wealth over the last 100 years.and technology is improving exponentially, imagine where we'll be in 30 years. b) we don't have free markets in the US. We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world, high personal income taxes, a lot of regulations, and a government run monetary system that is an utter failure. If we had free markets our country would be MUCH wealthier.

As for a free market producing the most wealth for the greatest number of people, that's so ridiculous I don't even know where to start. I think when you use free here you mean it in a theoretical sense, where human beings don't act like human beings. Not to mention the fact that it's central for the free market to have losers.

The free market will have "losers," but that benefits the consumer since the losers are the ones who don't provide the best products at the best prices. So the fact that there are losers benefits a ton of people. If the government made it so that people who made shitty products at high prices stayed in business and the consumer had to buy their products, society would be much worse off.

The fact that there are losers doesn't at all disprove the fact that free markets produce the best product at the lowest price for the most number of people, and the most wealth for the greatest number of people.

For you to claim that it's ridiculous is ridiculous. Governments do not produce wealth. Governments have nothing so anything they get is taken from elsewhere in the economy and put to less productive/less efficient uses. The only cases in recorded history where the masses have escaped from grinding poverty are where they've had largely free enterprise.

So you have competing police forces? I could wrong you in some way, you go to one police force and I go to another police force and whoever's force survives wins? Or the police forces get together and decide which one of us wins and which one of us to shoot in the head?

it's pretty hard to explain something that could take up a whole book in a forum post, but basically rival agencies would act under the authority of rulings made by arbitrators empowered by inter-agency arbitration agreements. Note that I did admit in an earlier post that Robert Nozick makes strong arguments as to why this scenario would evolve into "minarchy," but from what I've read I still think there's a strong case as to why anarchy would work. In either case, though, there is a complete absence of a centralized government.

Again, if interested you should look up Rockefeller. He bullied people out of the market. Not that that was all he did, but he did that too.

Lol, kind of condescending to act like I have no knowledge about Rockefeller. Perhaps you should look him up some more, because a lot of the history about the big bad "robber baarons" is way off. For example, author of The History of the Standard Oil Company Ida Tarbell's brother was the treasurer of the Pure Oil Company, which could not compete with Standard Oil's low prices.

The fact is that Rockefeller had hundreds of competitors and even some in the international markets, but they couldn't compete with him. He was a business man truly ahead of his time. He was able to offer his product at significantly lower prices than his competitors, and paid his employees a lot more than his competition did and created thousands of new jobs.

a lot of the history about the big bad "robber baarons" is way off. For example, author of The History of the Standard Oil Company Ida Tarbell's brother was the treasurer of the Pure Oil Company, which could not compete with Standard Oil's low prices.

The fact is that Rockefeller had hundreds of competitors and even some in the international markets, but they couldn't compete with him. He was a business man truly ahead of his time. He was able to offer his product at significantly lower prices than his competitors, and paid his employees a lot more than his competition did and created thousands of new jobs.

i'm actually pretty fascinated by this (i wanna be a balla). well, there goes my friday night.

good things, AGtJ.

If SOPA passes, I am officially done with thinking the USA is anything but an epic face palm.