Capitalism is a great system as it makes consumers the ultimate decision makers of company actions (unless the government gets involved of course). If you’re outraged by the actions of a private company you can let them know but taking your money elsewhere. It’s really a case of rational self-interest as companies who fail to meet the demands of consumers can only find themselves in a state of insolvency. GoDaddy recently came out in support of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the current piece of legislation being worked on to censor the Internet:
Website hosting company GoDaddy has officially voiced its support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) Bill in 2012, which is designed to thwart movie and music piracy on the Internet by empowering copyright holders to effectively shut down websites or online services found with infringing material. If passed, the U.S. government could blacklist any website it deems in violation of copyright, which could range from a few posts in a Web forum to a few links sent in an e-mail.
As you can guess many of GoDaddy’s customers were pissed. In response to GoDaddy’s support of SOPA many customers transfered their domains and hosted websites to other providers. Seeing this loss of money GoDaddy finally yielded and listened to their customers:
Go Daddy is no longer supporting SOPA, the “Stop Online Piracy Act” currently working its way through U.S. Congress.
“Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation – but we can clearly do better,” Warren Adelman, Go Daddy’s newly appointed CEO, said. “It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.”
This is the beauty of capitalism, the decisions of companies can be changed without the need for violence. Instead consumers can voice their concern and take their business elsewhere. Unlike the state companies can’t initiate violence in order to force their customers to continue paying.
Everybody repeat after me, “I will never, ever give a police officer permission to search my vehicle. If he wants to search it he can come back with a fucking warrant.” Even if you have nothing to hide the police will plant evidence in your vehicle if they want to nail you. Don’t believe me? Why don’t we ask Officer Bill Glass:
A former Haskell police officer was found guilty after pleading no contest to fabrication of physical evidence charges.
Bill Glass resigned from the Haskell Police Department in March of 2010, saying allegations he’d planted methamphetamine in a car during a traffic stop were “baseless.” When the drugs were sent off for testing, a chemist at the lab traced them back to the officer.
When you give an officer permission to search your vehicle your are giving them an ample opportunity to boost their arrest numbers by fabricating evidence. Unless the officer has a warrant or probably cause (which basically means any poor excuse an officer can fabricate, but at least it’s something) they can not search your property without express permission.
If you’re asked to step out of your vehicle during a traffic stop do so but make sure you lock your car doors and put your keys into your pocket before exiting the vehicle. At any point during the traffic stop if an officer asks, “May I have a look inside the vehicle?” you should only responsd by saying, “No.” Ignore anything they say after that because they’re going to try guilting or threatening you into giving them permission. Do not say anything further because the officer will try to hang you with it. In fact it would be a very good idea to get your lawyer on the horn at that point in time.
When Julian Heicklen was arrested for informing jurors of their rights I gave a brief overview of jury nullification. Nullification is a power juries have that the government has been trying to keep secret because not doing so would allow the people to effectively reign in government power. Information regarding jury nullification has been creeping out after the arrest of Mr. Heicklen and is now hitting the New York Times:
IF you are ever on a jury in a marijuana case, I recommend that you vote “not guilty” — even if you think the defendant actually smoked pot, or sold it to another consenting adult. As a juror, you have this power under the Bill of Rights; if you exercise it, you become part of a proud tradition of American jurors who helped make our laws fairer.
One thing to note is the right of jury nullification doesn’t come from the Bill of Rights but from the fact juries aren’t punished for their verdict. If you’re a juror and find somebody not guilty you are not required to justify your ruling nor can you be punished for voting “the wrong way.” Besides that point the article is a good read. Unfortunately if you don’t inform yourself about jury powers you’ll never hear about them thanks to the Supreme Court:
In 1895, the Supreme Court ruled that jurors had no right, during trials, to be told about nullification. The court did not say that jurors didn’t have the power, or that they couldn’t be told about it, but only that judges were not required to instruct them on it during a trial. Since then, it’s been up to scholars like me, and activists like Mr. Heicklen, to get the word out.
When the Supreme Court said judges were not required to inform juries of their rights it was interpreted as judges being able to make up any line of bullshit they want while never informing jurors what they can and can’t do. Judges usually inform juries that they’re required to uphold the letter of the law, an idea that’s entirely false. This is irrelevant because judges, like police officers, can legally lie to you all they want (but it’s a crime if you lie to them).
That story has become, in part, the basis for a lawsuit Savage and the Times have filed against the DOJ for not disclosing the memo that justifies al-Awlaki’s assassination. The lawsuit, which Savage posted online today, “seek[s] the production of agency records improperly withheld by the United States Department of Justice in response to requests properly made by Plaintiffs.” While Savage and the Times don’t know how many documents exist, Savage’s contact in the administration revealed to him that “there exists at least one legal memorandum detailing the legal analysis justifying the government’s use of targeted killing.”
Good on them. Unfortunately in this country the president is above the law has history demonstrates:
Even if The New York Times and Savage win their suit, there is a chance the Obama administration will not comply with the ruling. In spring 2009 Obama refused to comply with a U.S. Court of Appeals decision ordering the Pentagon to release photos of detainees captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Regardless of the fact we have a kind instead of a president I’m glad somebody has finally brought attention to this mess. Anwar al-Awalki may have been a terrible person but we’ll never know because no trial was every held, he was an American citizen killed by simple decree for the king. What makes matters worse is nobody besides the king’s men have even seen this decree.
In a country supposedly built upon equality under the law al-Awalki should have been captured and brought to trial to face is accusers. Instead we flew a drone over to his hiding place and sent a missile in to blow him apare.
Via Engadget I found some very depressing news, The International Trade Commission sided with Apple in a recent patent dispute case. This means that several phones manufactured by HTC are no longer legal to import into the United States:
So what Apple has won is a formal import ban scheduled to commence on April 19, 2012, but relating only to HTC Android phones implementing one of two claims of a “data tapping patent”: a patent on an invention that marks up phone numbers and other types of formatted data in an unstructured document, such as an email, in order to enable users to bring up other programs (such as a dialer app) that process such data. The import ban won’t relate to HTC Android products that don’t implement that feature, or that implement it in ways not covered by those patent claims.
I’m not sure what HTC phones this will affect, but I know this patent describes behavior found in my Evo 4G. Regardless of what phones this affects one thing is for certain, this ruling perfectly demonstrations how businesses use the government to force competition out of their market.
While many HTC fans have been quick to jump on Apple as the culprit here I disagree. Apple simply used tools made available to cause problems for a competitor. The real culprit here is the International Trade Commission (ITC) who hold a monopoly on making such rulings and have the ability to initiate violence in order to enforce the decision. Were it not for these two things the matter would be entirely between Apple and HTC. Unfortunately our federal government maintains monopoly power over what can and can’t be imported into this country so this matter is now between Apple, HTC, and consumers who wish to purchase HTC phones. What should have been a ruling consisting entirely of monetary compensation has turned into a series of devices being added to the verboten list.
Another problem that has lead to this ruling are software patents. Software patents are one of the dumbest ideas our government has ever decided to allow. I’m not sure how algorithms are treated the same as physical inventions but alas I didn’t make the stupid laws. All I know is when a product can be banned from importation because of the way an application link is formatted that something is horribly wrong with our legal system.
During an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Gingrich suggested the president could send federal law enforcement authorities to arrest judges who make controversial rulings in order to compel them to justify their decisions before congressional hearings.
When asked by host Bob Schieffer how he would force federal judges to comply with congressional subpoenas, Gingrich said he would send the U.S. Capitol Police or U.S. Marshals to arrest the judges and force them to testify.
So if Newt gets elected he will become the supreme judge in the United States. Tremble he who hath rule against the wishes of Newt for he will be collected and forced to answer for his actions. If Newt’s position doesn’t scream dictator I’m not sure what does.
The idea of having three branches of government was to prevent any one branch of obtaining supreme power. Obviously that has failed but to this day the courts have remained somewhat autonomous. Judge’s rulings are seldom the final word as decisions can be appealed to higher courts. Ultimately a case can make its way to the Supreme Court where a final decision will be made but a judge is never supposed to be under threat of violence for ruling “the wrong way.”
This action is no different than threatening jury members with punishment for ruling in a way opposed to the views of the state. At such a point the entire idea behind a jury trial is lost because juries no longer base their decision on whether or not they feel a crime has been committed but on whether or not they will be punished for the decision. If judges can be rounded up and force to justify their decisions then they to will make their decisions based upon whether or not it will lead to their punishment instead of whether or not they believe a crime has been committed.
In the end this is one of the most dangerous ideas a presidential wannabe could conjure up. It’s obvious if Newt became the president he would work fast to remove the few remaining constraints that prevent the Office of the President from being Supreme Dictator.
Dune is one of the most well known science fiction series in existence. There is good reason for this, the series is incredibly complex and covers numerous ideas including ecology, philosophy, and the dangers of leadership:
How did it evolve? I conceived of a long novel, the whole trilogy as one book about the messianic convulsions that periodically overtake us. Demagogues, fanatics, con-game artists, the innocent and the not-so-innocent bystanders-all were to have a part in the drama. This grows from my theory that superheroes are disastrous for humankind. Even if we find a real hero (whatever-or whoever-that may be), eventually fallible mortals take over the power structure that always comes into being around such a leader.
Personal observation has convinced me that in the power area of politics/economics and in their logical consequence, war, people tend to give over every decision-making capacity to any leader who can wrap himself in the myth fabric of the society. Hitler did it. Churchill did it. Franklin Roosevelt did it. Stalin did it. Mussolini did it.
I would be very interested in reading any political theory paper put out by Frank Herbert (if such papers exist). He really hit the nail on the head with this statement. Our history seems litered with untold examples of powerful leaders reigning death and destruction down upon their subjects. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
One of the main threads running through libertarian philosophy is the idea of self-rulers. That is to say the idea that you are the only person who can rightfully rule yourself. Nobody else has any right to force you into actions you do not wish to follow and nobody else can possibly known what is best for you. Often we forget this fact and rely on others to make decisions for us or demand others force our beliefs onto others.
The Dune series does a great job of demonstrating the evils of power. While Muad’Dib frees the planet of Arrakis from the tyrannical control of House Harkonnen he only manages to replace it with the tyrannical rule of religion. Through control of the spice Maad’Dib is able to take control over the entirety of the Landsraad and is eventually succeeded by his son who ends up being even worse. I think the Dune series can be summarized as a vicious power cycle played out through the ages.
I very much like the conclusion of the article:
Of course there are other themes and fugal interplays in Dune and throughout the trilogy. Dune Messiah performs a classic inversion of the theme. Children of Dune expands the number of themes interplaying. I refuse, however, to provide further answers to this complex mixture. That fits the pattern of the fugue. You find your own solutions. Don’t look to me as your leader.
Caution is indeed indicated, but not the terror that prevents all movement. Hang loose. And when someone asks whether you’re starting a new cult, do what I do: Run like hell.
Power corrupts so it is best to run from people trying to hand you power. Sadly not enough people believe this and instead seek power to wield over fellow humans, often in the name of “the greater good.” Ends do not justify means and the greater good generally isn’t great or good. We all need to step back and realize forcing our beliefs and ideas onto others is a terrible thing.
During last night’s debate there was a great argument between Ron Paul and Michelle Bachmann on foreign policy. Dr. Paul totally obliterated the idea that we need to go to war with Iran, something every other candidate is chomping at the bit to do:
Some excellent facts were made by Dr. Paul. The most obvious is the fact the terrorists in the Middle East aren’t coming here because they hate our way of life, if that were the case they would also be striking Switzerland and Sweden. Unlike our country, neither Switzerland or Sweden have a foreign policy built upon imperialism. In fact Switzerland, because of their neutrality, is the only channel of communications that exists between the United States and Iran.
I also love the fact he brings up the drone captured by Iran. While the other candidates were berating Obama for asking Iran to return the drone Ron Paul asked why the drone was even being flown of Iranian airspace to begin with. That is the million dollar question.
Bachmann than falsely claims there are reports stating Iran is only months away from developing a nuclear weapon. Again Dr. Paul explains that this isn’t true and that no evidence exists of Iran being anywhere near developing a nuclear weapon.
Then Dr. Paul brings up the Cuban Misslie Crisis. We didn’t perform a preemptive strike on the Soviet Union when they parked nuclear weapons in Cuba, instead Kennedy called up Kruschev and talked. Through conversation we reached a compromise where the Soviet Union would remove their nuclear weapons from Cuba and we would remove our from Turkey.
I’ve been saying that a nuclear armed Iran is the biggest boogeyman put out by our government. First of all Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon, second if they eventually build one they will still lack a delivery system that can get it from their country to ours, and third we’re so far ahead of the game that our anti-missile defense system (which we’ve also given Israel so don’t worry about them) that it’s practically impossible for Iran to leapfrog ahead of us. We also encourage the Iranians to develop nuclear weapons by constantly threatening invasion. The leaders of Iran aren’t stupid, they realize the only countries that get any form of respect from the United States are nuclear armed countries. They also saw what happened with Libya where we encouraged them to stop development of nuclear weaponry, they listened, and we ended up killing them.
The more we rattle sabres with Iran the more they’re going to want nuclear weaponry. Looking at a map it’s pretty easy to see that Iran is now surrounded by American military bases. Iranians also still remember that little incident in 1953 where we toppled their democratically elected government and replaced it with a brutal puppet dictatorship. After 26 years they finally booted our puppet out and the new regime has been using anti-American sentiment caused by our last action in that country to both cement their own power and prevent an easy overthrow by our forces again. We should all stop and remember that the only reason extremist Islam was able to overtake that country was because we decided it was a good idea to eliminate their democratically elected government in the first place.
Behold an idiot standing in front of a Soviet flag babbling on about capitalism being a religion:
Why do I link to this video? Because I feel like decimating an idiot Maxist for personal amusement. First let me say that the advertisement that plays before this video is a great way to make some quick cash… you know like a dirty capitalist (but hey you have to fund that capitalist produced video camera somehow). Next let me urge the videographer to iron his Soviet flag, those creases are distracting and show a complete lack of professionalism. I’m also going to throw out the obvious point that having a flag of a country that killed millions of its own citizens hanging in the background doesn’t send a very positive message. At least most Marxists I talk to have the decency of disavowing the Soviet Union for the violent acts it unleashed upon the people unfortunate enough to live within its borders.
Honestly those are just petty complaints and avoid the message he’s trying to portray, which is the idea that capitalism is a religion. I’ve not actually heard the argument that Marxism is a religion before. In fact that seems a bit odd considering Marx was a self-proclaimed atheist and considered religion to be “the opiat of the people.” Still I will humor this accusation for the sake of quality argumentative decimation.
The videographer, who I’ll now refer to as Marxy Marxist, is claiming that capitalism is a religion because its proponents believe that some “magical” thing call the market will fix all ills in the world. This right here demonstrates Marxy Marxists’s complete ignorance on the capitalism economic system. Namely proponents of capitalism do not believe the free market will fix all ills in the world. For instance Marxy Marxist mentions inequality, a phenomenon the free market makes no attempt to correct.
The free market is nothing more than a system that allows individuals to compete in the providing of goods and services to consumers. Those who properly fulfill the needs of consumers are rewarded for their efforts, usually with money. Their reward is then reinvested to provide for additional consumer wants. Thus those who properly fulfill the wants of society are granted control of more resources as they have demonstrated a socially desirable use of those resources. The only problem a free market attempts to solve is providing consumers with the products and services they want.
It is true that free markets can have a hand in solving other social issues such as racism. For example a businessman who refused to sell his goods or services to a hispanic person loses out on their money. In addition to that many other people will boycot the person’s business because he’s being a racism asshole. Strictly speaking though, voluntary association dictates any person may chose to or not to interact with any other person. While the free market does punish an individual who refuses to do business with a specific group it does not force them to associate with anybody.
Marxy Marxist also brought up the name Adam Smith. Smith was an important early figure in free market economic theory but certainly wasn’t the be all end all. Smith, and later Menger, both missed a crucial piece of the free market puzzle, which is the understanding that value is subjective. Unfortunately Smith followed the labor theory of value limiting the potential of his works. It was Ludwig von Mises who first articulated the idea of subjective value so I would argue if you’re going to talk about capitalism it would be best to use Mises as the poster child as he was the one who provided the crucial missing piece of the puzzle. Again this demonstrates Marxy Marxist’s ignorance of the development of free market economic theory.
Marxy Marxist continues to refer to the free market as a magical being that can not be controlled. I can see how a Marxist would have a difficult time grasping the concept of something not tyrannically controlled. Truth be told the free market is controlled by the consumers. As stated above producers who fulfill the wants of consumers are rewarded. There is another side of the coin, producers who do not make products or provide services consumers want will fail. We as consumers control the market and producers are at our mercy (unless of course a violent state intervenes on the producer’s behalf, but that is not capitalism).
Right around the 2:10 mark Marxy Marxist makes his most ignorant claim, that those of us calling ourselves capitalist really aren’t because we don’t own any means of production. Guess what I’m writing this post on? A fucking computer. Guess what I, as a programmer, use to produce? A fucking computer. Holy shit I own means of production! Marxy Marxist is also a capitalist because he owns a video camera and a computer, which he uses to make money by producing advertisement supported videos on YouTube. Even a so-called Marxist can make money in a capitalist system.
Finally Marxy Marxist closes by accusing capitalists of not wanting to fix society’s problems but to profit from them. Interestingly enough by profiting off of society’s problems capitalists solve them. Case in point medical technology used to save millions of lives every year is developed by medical companies to generate profit. Automobiles solved a problem of personal transportation over long distances than horse drawn buggies could not and Henry Ford was certainly in the business to make money. Computers, a device that have helped solved an almost uncountable number of social issues, are built by profit seeking companies. Profiting off of society’s ills is not mutually exclusive to solving them regardless of what Marxy Marxist claims.
In closing I leave you with a question: why do all these Marxists wear military fatigues? If I was going to go on camera to preach about something I’d have the decency to wear a suit and tie because people are more apt to listen to a well dressed individual than a tactic-cool Internet commando.
The Letters to the Editor section of the Star Tribune is a source of near infinite entertainment for me. Seldom can I read through the section without finding at least two stupid letters penned by persons ignorant on the subject they’re expressing an opinion about. This is one of those letters:
The U.S. Post Office is vital to the economic and cultural health of our country and should not be treated as a for-profit business.
Actually the United States Post OFfice isn’t all that vital. With the exception of first class letter delivery, which the government maintains a monopoly on, the functions of the Post Office are also performed but numerous parcel deliver services including UPS, FedEx, and DHL. Our economy would suffer little, if any, were the Post Office shut down. Even most of the jobs lost by this move would likely be picked up by private parcel delivery services to cope with the additional surge of business that would have previously went to the Post Office.
It should be subsidized sufficiently so that closures or delayed deliveries are unnecessary. It is an honored and respected department of our government.
Emphasis mine. There isn’t a single department of our government that has one shred of honor not deserves any respect.
A history of the department shows it was responsible for keeping members of the Constitutional Convention informed on a daily basis no matter where they were.
Because of what the Post Office did way back when we should continue to subsidize it now? Should our government have subsidize the horse and buggy industry when Ford came in and stomped that market into practical extinction?
In furtherance of its charter, in 1848 the Post Office Department awarded a contract to the Pacific Mail Steamship Co. to carry mail to California. Under this contract, mail traveled by ship from New York to Panama, moved across Panama by rail, then went on to San Francisco by ship.
Emphasis mine once again. What one man called a contract I call a monopoly. Whenever government contracts with a company to provide a good or service that company receives a de facto monopoly in the government market. Because Pacific Mail Steamship Co. was granted the contract they received an increase in business that was denied to other potential shipping companies. Because of this large surge in business they would have gained more money and therefore would have been better positioned to buy out or otherwise eliminate their competition. It is never good news when the government grants a monopoly contract to a private firm for something.
It was supposed to take three to four weeks to receive a letter from the East, but this goal was seldom achieved. The Pony Express was very competitive in time, but the mail was limited to 20 pounds.
NEIL CLARK, MINNEAPOLIS
Do you know what other company was very competitive with the United States Post Office? Lysander Spooner’s American Letter Mail Company. Of coure the government didn’t have any control over that mail provider so they killed it through costly (to Spooner, not the government as they control the courts) court battles.
We need to face the fact that the United States Postal Service needs to be entirely privatized (not this stupid hybrid of private and public they currently suffer) and made to compete on the free market. Their monopoly on first class letter delivery needs to be revoked and they must be forced to innovate and improve their service just like UPS and FedEx.