[Jerrek]

Originally Posted by philip.j.fry

Restrictions of whose fundamental liberties and freedoms? I do not advocate restricting anyones liberties.

Erm, lets see:


"We, in Europe, have a controlled market which has proved that it does work. That is the level of control that I advocate, so I don't see why it always has to come back to total control (communism)"


So, what will it be?

Originally Posted by philip.j.fry

It is my personal belief that people be free to do whatever they choose, so long as it does not (actively) cause a negative impact on anothers liberties.

Yes. Your rights and freedoms stop where mine begins. I do agree with you. No one has a right to infringe on another person's rights.

I hope and believe that this gives everyone the maximum freedom possible. I do not see businesses as people, they are quasi-physical constructs (okay, I made that up ) that should not be afforded the same liberties as individuals. It is my belief that what you call free enterprise does negatively impact on the liberties of individuals, but, without major change, they are a necessary evil.

No. Corporation, the concept, is a legal term. There never was any of that. It was individuals that decided to band together to provide a product or service to society. You are advocating to infringe on those individuals' rights and freedoms. There is nothing evil about a corporation or a business.

Do you REALLY support restricting my rights and freedoms to make products, provice services, and to improve it in any way I can? Assuming I'm a corporation. A one-man corporation. What grounds do you have to infringe on my very basic liberties that you claim to want to protect?

I'm sorry. You can't possibly claim to want to protect liberties and freedoms and in the same breath advocate severe and drastic restrictions.

Why do I feel that I have the right to tell businesses what to do? I don't, but I feel I have a right to have an input in what businesses do.

You don't. It is NOT your business, and it is NOT your place to order people and businesses around. If it IS your business, fine. Otherwise, RESPECT other's rights. Do you honestly expect me to listen to you when you tell me how I should run MY corporation? No. Not in one million years. I may listen to advice, but you WILL NOT BE TELLING ME HOW TO RUN MY CORPORATION. You don't have that right, and you don't have the right to tell Microsoft what they should do. No one has that right except the shareholders.

Where does this right come from? It comes from the fact that I am one of the people, and I feel that the people as a whole have a right to influence businesses. The higher authority is the people, and we are all part of that higher authority.

Altruism? Who do YOU think YOU are to proclaim yourself so important that YOU should be allowed to run other's companies? Can't you understand that people, other people, put a LOT of effort, time, and money into a business, and that it is THEIR PROPERTY because it is the product of THEIR labor? WHO are YOU to come in and suddenly decide what can and can't go? YOU that put NOTHING into that company?

Ayn Rand has the following to say on atruism:

Altruism is an ethical system

. . . which regards man as a sacrificial animal, which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value. . . Altruism holds death as its ultimate goal and standard of value †” and it is logical that renunciation, resignation, self-denial, and every other form of suffering, including self-destruction, are the virtues it advocates.
Ayn Rand, †œThe Objectivist Ethics,ââ‚à ‚¬Ã‚ The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, 37-38

Monetary wealth is one way of looking at things, not my chosen way though. Also, I feel that all people should have access to approximately equal wealth, if you accept that there is only a finite amount of money in the world then for things to balance out the GDPPC of the US would have to be reduced. From that, I hope that you can see that according to my beliefs, free enterprise is not the way to go about things.

No, definitely not. If you want equal wealth for anyone, then capitalism isn't a good system. Capitalism rewards those that work harder and smarter with more wealth. In addition, it creates wealth. Socialism is a form of redistributing the wealth, but it doesn't say how you're supposed to create it. Capitalism creates wealth, socialism does not. THAT is why socialism fails as an economic model, and THAT is why I'm not a socialist.

I've incorporated my own company. I would not have done that if all my profits were seized and redistributed.

I firmly believe that there are many lazy people out there, and many people willing to slave away for hours to be able to have a higher standard of living. I firmly believe that NOT everyone should have equal wealth, unless they work equally hard to their abilities.

I'm not trying to say that my way is right, or even that it would work. But these are my strongly held beliefs and all I would like from it is for people to undersatnd that. As an individual, all I can do is make these beliefs known and have my say in how things are to be, the same as that is all you can do, and the actual path that is taken will be a consensus decision based on the beliefs of all of the people.

*shrug* Thats fine, as long as you realize then that you're basically a socialist, not someone that advocates free enterprise and capitalism.

The problem is, they have people so locked in to their technology that it is impossible to avoid.

Bull****. Here, open cmd window and type format c: [enter]. They even provide you with the means of getting rid of their software. People are NOT locked in. YOU're not using it, and THOUSANDS of others are not using it. You have a choice whether you want to use it or not. No one is forcing anyone to do anything.

Why can I not visit some webpages when I have a standards compliant browser? Why do people keep sending me word document files? Why do java applications not run on my VM?

Because Microsoft choose to make their product that way, and if you don't like it, don't ****ing use it! It isn't a hard concept.

I'm not locked into buying them

Wait, didn't you just say,

"hey have people so locked in to their technology"


So what will it be?

Originally Posted by towny

No, it was me not engaging in the issues by refusing to give a proper reply to your post. I was criticising myself at that point, not you!

I am suggesting you are naive because you are thinking in extremely black-and-white terms. As Philip J Fry has since pointed out, you can have a totally controlled economy, like the USSR, anything goes capitalism (which nobody has) or varying degrees of regulated competition. Both the EU and the USA have regulated competition; the EU's regulation is more evident than that in the USA, but don't kid yourself that the States has a completely free market. Your anti-trust laws have seen to that.

You apparently missed this post:

"Europe used to be free market, but has steadily drifted towards socialism and planned economies. What you have right now is semi-capitalism with a touch (ok more than a touch...) of planned economies."

(Post 81)

And, anti-trust laws should be repealed immediately.

The essential difference between a regulated market and a controlled market is that in a regulated regime, competition is encouraged and legally protected, as it is held to be the best way to safeguard the long-term interests of the consumer. In a Soviet-style controlled economy, competition is not allowed, on the (IMO sorely mistaken) assumption that it is more efficient if everyone works as a collective.

So, you're encouraging "competition" by forcing Microsoft to reveal source code and prohibiting them from improving their products? You're essentially stopping Microsoft from improving so that the rest of the players, those that can't seem to make good products that people want, can catch up. In the meantime, Microsoft could have raised the notch yet one more step. Or two more. Now you have both Microsoft and the "competition" sitting down there when they could have been higher up.

Eh. No.

Ironically (and to try to keep on topic), M$ has fallen foul of the regulated market in both the EU and the USA. Remember it was a US judge that was asked to rule in the 'browser wars', and a number of US states are still pursuing the company through the courts. Here in Europe M$ has been accused of doing things with its media player that are contrary to our own, admittedly more stringent, competition regulations.

And that was wrong. Fortunately, the case was resolved relatively peacefully without the government putting some anti-competition rulings through.