dpatru

25 ms·

181.
by dpatru 13y ago
Government is a parasite on society. Corporations and other private enterprises are what create good societies through mutually advantageous exchanges. In contrast, governments extract wealth by force or the printing of money (fraud) and us
182.
by dpatru 13y ago
Rights are not arbitrary. Like the laws of physics, the gory details of what rights are may be hard to pin down exactly, but this doesn't mean that they don't exist. In the examples you gave, it's had to imagine a just society in which it w
183.
by dpatru 13y ago
The error in the reasoning of this excerpt is the assumption that the government can justly create any law that it wants, short of taking away a person's bare necessities. By this logic, slavery is fine as long as the slave has food, wate
184.
by dpatru 13y ago
Taxes are theft precisely because we don't tax ourselves. In America, taxes are set by the majority choosing to not tax themselves very much and instead to tax a rich minority. It's two foxes and a chicken voting on what to have for dinner.
185.
by dpatru 13y ago
What you earn depends on the market, the bargain you strike with other free people. It's not arbitrary.
186.
by dpatru 13y ago
In practice, you'd focus on factories, powerplants, the road owners, auto-makers, etc. This is similar to how regulations already work. The regulators tend to ignore the rogue backyard barbecuer and instead focus on the big polluters. Also,
187.
by dpatru 13y ago
Murray Rothbard thought that the first users should be the owners. http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard157.html So under his scheme, the downstream owners would have to buy the river from the upstream owners to prevent them from p
188.
by dpatru 13y ago
It should be possible to sue air polluters for putting toxins on your property (your land or your body.) Pollution is usually a problem of trespass and enforcement of property rights could solve it. Regulations are kind of a roundabout way
189.
by dpatru 13y ago
Workers get "exploited" when they're poor and have limited options. Government "protections" can only make it worse. For example, many illegal aliens in the US are exploited because they are prohibited by law from getting a job. So they can
190.
by dpatru 13y ago
Following are fees collected by the USPTO for utility patents. The first three (280+600+720=$1,600) are collected before a patent is granted, to check if the a patent is grantable. If patent is granted, the USPTO has basically done all the
191.
by dpatru 14y ago
I think long-term productivity seems to come mostly from consistent , intense effort. I've read that a lot of writers only write for about three hours a day. The key is that they do this every day and it adds up. If you just put in a few
192.
by dpatru 14y ago
"Unfair playing field" is exactly what taxi companies have built for themselves erecting government hurdles to keep out competition. Why are medallions necessary to protect the public? They are not. They are necessary to protect the above-m
193.
by dpatru 14y ago
The purpose of government is to preserve liberty. For example, government should protect citizens from mafia-style extortion where people are forced to pay protection money in order to practice a certain occupation. But when government beco
194.
by dpatru 14y ago
Cab companies and local government have had a good thing going. The cab companies pay the government big fees and in return the government keeps out competition, forcing consumers to have to pay above market rates. Uber threatens this model
195.
by dpatru 14y ago
The regulations are not there to protect consumers. They are there to protect the existing cab companies from competition. It is instructive to note that it is not the consumers who are suing Uber, it is the cab companies.
196.
by dpatru 14y ago
It takes just about ten seconds to verify that a sprinter is world-class, but it takes hundreds or thousands of hours to train that sprinter. Colleges are in the "sprinter" training business. They throw in the verification for free. (Colleg
197.
Little Sun Casts A Bright Light in Africa(blogs.wsj.com)
1 points by dpatru 14y ago|0 comments
198.
by dpatru 14y ago
I don't understand why the list of reasons you gave support the idea that government should be able to just steal the hotel from its owner without first charging the owner of a crime. > The hotel is, let's not sugarcoat it, a blighted
199.
by dpatru 14y ago
> It's similar to the Tyler Clementi case, who killed himself because he was being videotaped in gay acts by his roommate. I never thought it was fair that the bully in this case would be held accountable . . . This is an unfair analogy
200.
by dpatru 14y ago
The fact that every other country also has a central bank says to me that central banks are tremendously useful devices for governments to maintain power. Government really like the fact that they (and only they) can print unlimited amounts
201.
by dpatru 14y ago
Why is submission a terrible goal in raising children? Isn't submission to authority absolutely required to achieve success and stay out of jail? And once a person is an adult, physical abuse (police beatings, confinement with criminals, di
202.
by dpatru 14y ago
A common question for anarchists (people who argue that government is unnecessary) is "Who will pay for the roads?" Here we have an entrepreneur who has paid for a bridge, and the government is trying to compete with him. Government should
203.
by dpatru 14y ago
In the US, you can file a provisional patent which will lock-in the filing date for up to one year. http://www.uspto.gov/patents/resources/types/provapp.jsp There is also a backlog for patents in certain technologies, so after you file, y
204.
Thomas Szasz: The Right to Take Drugs(youtube.com)
1 points by dpatru 14y ago|0 comments
205.
by dpatru 14y ago
> some government is necessary. Murray Rothbard's book, The Ethics of Liberty, is about how all the functions of government could be performed by the free market. He talks about roads, utilities, etc. http://mises.org/document/1179/The
206.
by dpatru 14y ago
Traditional schools are built on an industrial batch model where the goal is to get a certain percentage of the class to basic competency. So students are grouped in classes, taught for a semester, graded, and then moved on. The Khan and ho
207.
by dpatru 14y ago
The educational establishment won't "buy in" it Khan, just like the traditional encyclopedia establishment didn't "buy in" to Wikipedia. But change will happen regardless because the users of education, the parents and students, will ask th
208.
by dpatru 14y ago
Such a scheme would solve the problem of getting unsolicited, unimportant email. But I suspect that these kinds of messages are not the problem. The problem is that busy people are just getting too much good quality email. People are just o
209.
by dpatru 14y ago
> People aren't poor now because their vast wealth has been decimated by inflation. It's because we are doing more with less and commoditizing the types of work they were doing. Efficiency in production makes society as a whole richer
210.
by dpatru 14y ago
Surplus wealth, not fiat money, is necessary for investment. Investment is just surplus wealth that is spent to increase future production rather than for the present. This surplus wealth can be invested by the people through their voluntar

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