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st_dux

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Everything posted by st_dux

  1. st_dux

    Mass Effect 3

    Count me among the blamed, then. I don't see the problem with day-one DLC. The price for just about every AAA video game has been $60 for many years now; everything else has been going up in price while the price of games has stagnated. They're past due for a price increase, and I for one am glad that the increase is coming in the form of optional content rather than simply being tacked on. And seriously, what's with the demonizing? How is offering DLC a "disgusting business practice"? EA is a for-profit company that's trying to maximize its profit by using a business model that involves DLC. Bohemia Interactive is another company that fits that description. I don't see the problem. If you really hate DLC, don't buy it.
  2. Unimaginably bad idea. Money is one of the greatest inventions in the history of mankind.
  3. Once upon a time I vaguely recall some silly reason for closing a Wikileaks thread, and I think that's why Walker is under the impression that he must be coy about mentioning them now. Of course, it's painfully obvious what "the organization that shall not be named" means, so really, it's a pointless charade (which fits well with the overarching theme of the thread as a whole if you ask me).
  4. @PELHAM: Thanks for the Atlantic article. That clears things up.
  5. Again, I was speaking generally, but it's worth noting that government agencies are routinely hacked by amateurs these days as well.
  6. I was speaking generally. As the story on this specific firm is still developing, I will reserve judgment until the details are clearer. If everything you say is indeed correct without qualification, then I would agree that this particular firm was quite corrupt. That said, the general idea of a private intelligence firm doesn't seem problematic to me.
  7. I don't really see the problem with a private intelligence firm. I prefer it over a government-run intelligence firm, to be honest.
  8. st_dux

    Mass Effect 3

    I think you all are crazy not to buy ME3 because of Origin, but I love the series.
  9. st_dux

    USA Politics Thread - *No gun debate*

    I can think of one: Barack Obama. You are right to criticize big government, but the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans when it comes to bloated government and deficit spending. Obama is on course to surpass Bush's deficit spending if he gets reelected.
  10. st_dux

    US government breaks up with LightSquared

    Walker, you are so off-base in this thread that I don't even know where to begin. There are no private GPS interests or "entrenched market players." GPS is a tax payer-funded, government-controlled system of navigational satellites that has been offered to the world for use free of charge. 4G cellular networks are not a replacement for GPS; they are different technologies that serve different purposes. 4G cellular networks already exist in the United States; only this particular one is being blocked for its interference with a very important public technology. If your phone can tell you where you are within a few meters of accuracy, it is using GPS. If your phone is better at doing this than "your GPS" (which is really just a dedicated GPS receiver), then the GPS receiver that has been built into your phone is superior to the one that your dedicated GPS receiver uses (something that is not terribly uncommon with newer phones). Cell tower triangulation is not able to compete with the accuracy of a satellite navigation system. "Communistic bureaucracy" is a contradiction in terms, and communism doesn't even relate to American conservatism.
  11. st_dux

    SOPA - Internet as we know it about to be gone?

    Austrian School economics have become much more popular over here within the last ten years (there was a particularly big spike in interest in 2008 when it became apparent that the Austrians had accurately predicted the housing crisis), but it is still far from mainstream. Mainstream American economics is basically your standard neoclassical fare with a touch of Keynesianism thrown in, which, if I'm not mistaken, is basically how it is over in Western Europe as well. That said, I think it's fair to say that the influence of the Austrians has played an important role in shaping modern economics, especially during the post-war years. In my view, Austrian School economics is really the only school of economic though out there that is always logically consistent and intellectually honest.
  12. st_dux

    SOPA - Internet as we know it about to be gone?

    This is not entirely correct. A natural temporary monopoly will arise due to technological innovation anyway -- it will take some time for potential competitors to reverse engineer whatever has been invented and recreate it effectively -- and that is what Schumpeter was referring to. It is true that patent/IP law will enhance this monopoly by making it legally binding and therefore coercive for an arbitrary period of time, but as far as I am aware, Schumpeter never commented on this directly, and I doubt he would support IP if he were around today (though I have no way of knowing this, of course). As for the Austrian School being heterodox, so what? Heliocentric theory was heterodox for a long time, too.
  13. st_dux

    SOPA - Internet as we know it about to be gone?

    Schumpeter said that technological advances will naturally lead to temporary monopolies and that this is economically desirable; on this point, I agree. He never addressed intellectual property rights, so it is difficult to say what his stance would be on them now, but the stance of the current Austrian School economists is for the most part that intellectual property is an illegitimate form of property that undermines real property. @vilas: Monopolization only hurts the economy when it is coercive, i.e., when the government creates a monopoly through law. Natural monopolies are rarely maintained for very long, and when they are, it is always the result of a particularly efficient producer that can provide quality goods at a price much lower than any potential competition, which is good for consumers. As for price fixing schemes, this makes it easier for new competition to enter the market (as prices are being kept artificially high), not more difficult, and this is one reason why such arrangements are almost always guaranteed to fall apart quickly.
  14. st_dux

    SOPA - Internet as we know it about to be gone?

    Vilas is talking about the engineer (i.e., the person who made the design), not the carpenter. The engineer's work is just as much "intellectual property" as the musician's, yet for some arbitrary reason patents only last a few years while copyright lasts nearly a lifetime. In my opinion, neither should exist at all, and non-scarce resources with a marginal production cost of zero (this includes all ideas) should be free.
  15. st_dux

    SOPA - Internet as we know it about to be gone?

    This seems relevant: D6_ZqPcNemI
  16. st_dux

    USA Politics Thread - *No gun debate*

    The effective tax rate on normal income for someone in the top 1% is around 30%. Any capital gains are taxed at about 15%' date=' and these gains usually come in the form of dividends made by corporations paying 35% in taxes. When you throw in Social Security/Medicare taxes and state taxes, your typical 1%er is effectively paying around 50% of their income in taxes. Of course, there are exceptions to this. Because the tax code is a convoluted mess that is riddled with loopholes and special exemptions, there are some very wealthy individuals who get away with paying ridiculously low effective tax rates. This is a legitimate problem that should be addressed, but it is atypical and not indicative of what the average wealthy person pays. As with most issues, the libertarian view is very straightforward: If it's your money, you can do whatever you want with it, and that includes speculating. John D. Rockefeller disagrees. This is a legitimate concern that should be dealt with through tort reform.
  17. st_dux

    SOPA - Internet as we know it about to be gone?

    Well, not exactly. The White House released a statement saying that they had concerns about the bill, but there was no clear "I will veto this if it passes" message. The White House had expressed similar concerns about NDAA while that was in congress, and Obama wound up signing that into law, so it's not possible to say for sure that he would have blocked SOPA/PIPA. But it's a moot point now anyway. SOPA and PIPA are both essentially dead.
  18. st_dux

    USA Politics Thread - *No gun debate*

    Progressive taxation is an obvious example. As long as the damages awarded are sufficient, of course civil court is a strong enough deterrent. A business isn't going to choose to pollute a water source if it isn't profitable to do so, and tort law is enough to ensure that it isn't. Mutual benefit is not the same as "common good"; the latter brings with it implications about helping others for the sake of helping (i.e., altruism) while the former is simply describing a situation in which one can personally benefit more by working with others than he can by working against others. The mutual benefit sought by humans is essentially self-serving, and there is nothing wrong with this. I didn't invent the non-aggression principle, and if you look at the history of human society it seems pretty clear to me that the single consistent feature throughout is the agreement among the people within it, either implicitly or explicitly, to refrain from harming one another for the purpose of mutual benefit. This is why societies form; there would be no such thing as society if it weren't for this. As for your contention that this fundamental principle and the principles that naturally follow from it (e.g., property rights) are insufficient for a world "populated to the degree that it is," I have to ask: At what point does the world become so populated that we must adopt completely new principles as the basis for society, and what are those principles? In my view, the trouble with adopting completely new principles as the basis for society (e.g., maintenance of the "common good") is that these new principles will invariably come into conflict with the non-aggression principle, the original cornerstone of society, which threatens the very existence of society. In advocating the non-aggression principle as the primary law in governance, I am not suggesting that people simply refrain from killing each other and beyond that stop cooperating. Your pack animal example is quite correct, and obviously people rely on others in their day-to-day affairs to an extent that goes far beyond not harming each other. My point is that these day-to-day affairs have nothing to do with government and should be left to individuals to deal with without interference. I think that most people would feel the way that you do in your neighborhood watch example, but that doesn't mean that people should have to feel that way; if someone participates in a neighborhood watch purely out of self-interest, I don't see this as problematic.
  19. st_dux

    USA Politics Thread - *No gun debate*

    Well, yes, actually it does. Trying to accumulate wealth for yourself beyond what is essential for your survival is technically greedy. In general, people try to use the word only when describing someone who is exceptionally greedy, but the point at which "just trying to live a quality life" becomes "unjustifiably greedy" is completely arbitrary and subjective. Air is a common resource not owned by anyone in particular, so I agree that it should be regulated by the government. Water pollution problems are usually best addressed through tort law as it is almost always the case that the water being polluted is owned by someone; that person (or group of persons) has the right to sue the polluting entity. In both cases, the issue is a matter of owners' rights, not curbing greed. First off, not all libertarians are members of the Libertarian Party. Second, libertarians want to get rid of the EPA because it is a bloated and inefficient government agency that causes more harm than good (which is the case with most government agencies), but that doesn't mean that there should be no environmental regulations whatsoever. As I said above, I believe that any resource that is truly common, such as air, should be regulated by the government. You're missing the point. The violence is of course rarely ever actualized, but that's only because the "greedy" person or corporation whose property is being stolen for the "common good" has acquiesced to the state's demands. Fundamentally, the state is still acting in a coercive manner here, and this flies in the face of the state's justification for existing in the first place.
  20. st_dux

    USA Politics Thread - *No gun debate*

    No libertarian is going to argue that the free market will lead to nirvana. Society will always have problems, and it will never be perfect. Keeping the market free will make our imperfect world less violent, though. Humans are naturally social animals that figured out a long time ago that it behooved them to work together for mutual benefit. Society is simply the latest and greatest form of this social instinct, and at its core is a single rule, the non-aggression principle. Following this principle, we don't kill our fellow man or take his property, and we expect him to do the same. We don't follow this principle because we necessarily care about our fellow man; we follow this principle because we care about ourselves, and we know that we can achieve more and live better lives through cooperation. Trying to accumulate personal wealth (i.e., greed), in and of itself, is not incompatible with the non-aggression principle. Indeed, greedy people can and often do cooperate peacefully with one another. Any law or regulation that targets greed, on the other hand, necessarily involves taking property from peaceful people through the implied threat of violence. Such regulations are far more detrimental to a free society than greed itself.
  21. st_dux

    USA Politics Thread - *No gun debate*

    Progressives live in a fantasy land where any problem can be solved through the sheer power of good will; they are like children whose mother told them they could do whatever they wanted in life as long as they tried their hardest that never grew up. Taking away money's influence in politics is about as possible as taking away the sun's influence on the earth: It cannot be done. What can be done is limiting the power of government so that influence won't be so detrimental. Progressives want to do the opposite of this.
  22. st_dux

    Boycott of E3 anyone?

    The ESA has dropped its support for SOPA: http://kotaku.com/5877996/esa-drops-sopa-support I guess there's no need to boycott after all.
  23. st_dux

    SOPA - Internet as we know it about to be gone?

    +1. The people fighting against internet piracy now are the same idiots who tried to make the VCR illegal when it was new. They're swimming against the tide, and they will eventually lose.
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