Comments by "PM" (@pm71241) on "Ayn Rand's Philosophy on Helping the Poor (Pt. 3) | Yaron Brook | POLITICS | Rubin Report" video.

  1. No no no no... you are not telling the whole story about the Microsoft Internet Explorer. The problem was not that they gave it away for free. The problem was that they deliberately made it behave in a non-interoperable way to use their windows monopoly to drive the other browsers out of the market. That's not free market forces working. Monopoly markets are not free markets.
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  2. d13sel1990 Currently Firefox... Which is totally besides the point. - and I know you are trying to claim "gotcha". There are still now 20 years later sites I can't access without IE which I actually pay for through my taxes. Googles sites are not amongst those, since Google actually seem to care about Open Standards.
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  3. Taylor Adams > "Simply saying "sorry, brankuptcy, don't have to pay you now" isn't exactly a great way to get out of paying a debt." That's also not the way bankruptcy works - at least on in Europe. It's not without consequences to declare bankruptcy and you will still have to pay your debt if you later becomes able to do so. > "and even the American president takes pride in the fact that he learned those rules and regulations and used them to his advantage. Just doesn't sound very libertarian to me." Neither to me. But then ... In Denmark we actually have regulations preventing people from exploiting bankruptcy rules like Donald Trump did. > "Some things are simply handled more easily by the government (such as infrastructure in most cases)" I could agree with that... but I would state it more generally (as a georgist). The government comes into play when we are speaking of monopolies. Essential infrastructure (like sewage system), stuff where there's a natural monopoly which excludes actual competition is justified as government responsibility since the monopoly it self is a violation of the basic principles. The thing that gives you that monopoly - a natural opportunity - is not the fruit of your own labor. That could be the unimproved land, the radiowave spectrum or other natural opportunities. Monopolizing those without compensating the rest of society for the positive externalizes the society creates is unjust. So the government should be involved in such monopolies - or at least, collect the rent from such monopolies - as, say, a land value tax.
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  4. +umejiaku6 IMNSHO he make really shitty points. He just don't know what he's talking about.
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  5. jsgdk Yes... I regard my self as classical liberal and I fully get many of the arguments, but anarcho-capitalism is a evil and as utopian as communism.
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  6. umejiaku6 There are many ways to run a company into the ground, while extracting values from it, inflicting harm on people, declare bankruptcy, run from the bill and let the tax payers pay the damages. People speculate in bankruptcy. Trump even bragged about it. Not all companies have an interest in long term survival - as he suggests.
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  7. Taylor Adams > "The only thing that I think is missing from your description of the purpose of government is stuff like scientific research." Well yes... I understand that objection. Science - especially natural sciences - is very near to my heart. And I'm fully aware of that much fundamental research for many years have no obvious connection to the market. When they formulated quantum theory, no one predicted the Internet. The Danish government had the stupid idea a few years back of instituting a research-to-invoice program which resulted in deep cuts in basic research. I agree with you in the importance of such at-first seemingly non-profitable research. I've never really thought about how that should be connected to basic ideological considerations. I guess I've just regarded it as the obvious sane thing to do if you cared about science. I can assure you that the party program of the party I'm a member of does support government funding of basic research. I'll have to think about that... :)
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  8. Wow... he's full of conspiracy theories. Absurd how he argues for better science education, when as soon as the scientists say something he doesn't like he declares they are a part of a big leftists hoax.
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  9. InfoSopher Yeah... he completely ignored huge portions of the market dynamics in the Internet sphere. Microsoft didn't just bundle the browser and give it away for free. They actively made it incompatible with the Internet standards in an effort to make a Windows only experience be the only thing which worked. ... with huge success btw... for a long time there were several government sites you needed to access as a citizen in many countries were you were turned away and told to come back with Internet Explorer if you accessed it with a different product. That's not free market forces.
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  10. Taylor Adams But how would you solve that? It's not solved by just declaring that there's no option for bankruptcy. You cannot pick hairs of a bald guy. (don't know the equivalent english proverb here). There do exist damage a company can do which is so costly that there's no way for the company to pay. Imagine a small company had done the Deep Horizon oil spill. How would it help just to say: You cannot declare bankruptcy ?
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  11. Taylor Adams > "debt slavery" Wouldn't solve anything. People can easily end up owing more than they can ever repay by slavery. That only leads us back to the middle ages. Also ... as it is now, when you lend people money, you are taking a risk (hence the justification for higher interest). If you insist on no bankruptcy, you effectively removes that risk. Or lessen it by having people put their lives as guarantee by debt slavery. Apart from that conflicting with basic classical liberal principles, you are intervening in the voluntary transaction on behalf of one side protecting them against that all investments (also a loan) has risks. ... If you lend money to someone not able to pay you back. You are taking a financial risk. You should be able to suffer the consequences of loosing your investment in the case of bankruptcy. I don't see any problem with that. The alternative - slavery - is insane and doesn't solve anything. In the same way ... people doing activity which impose a risk on others (or the environment) should not be allowed to do that freely and only pay in the case of an actual accident. If you want insist you want to drive twice as fast on the highway as it's designed for, you are already violating a basic classical liberal principle that your freedom only extends to far as to not interfere with other peoples equal freedom. Other people have a right to not be put in a situation where only luck decides whether another persons actions hurt them. It's not only at the moment an accident actually happens you are violating that principle. You do it by puttings other peoples lives, or property, or the environment in danger. The government has one role only: To protect the basic freedom principles, like: 1) Self ownership 2) You have the right to the fruit of your own labor 3) Your personal freedom only extends so far as to not interfere with the equal freedom of others. ... So it's perfectly reasonable for the government to enforce speeding limits on the highway and not allow people to violate 3). In the same way it's perfectly reasonable to have environmental regulations which not only require the polluter to always pay for damages and clean up the mess, but to also prevent situations where a polluter does more damage than he will be able to pay for in a bankruptcy.  
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  12. Yeah right... If something happened to the elevator, the company would suffer financial cost... and go bankrupt. I've lost count of all the cases of companies which have actively exploited that there's plenty of ways for a company to not end up paying the cost of damages it's responsible for. Sure the company will probably fold ... but that can be a part of the plan. I say this as a former employee in a company bought by a guy deliberately planning to run it into the ground taking as much value he could out of it before. The creditors never got their money.
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  13. kutark ... and you missed my point (entirely actually). I don't buy the claim that just because it's private company it has a vested interest in not causing others irreparable harm. It's simply false. Companies can and have done exploited that those who have gained on their behavior will not be made pay the actual damages. When a company - say - goes bankrupt and you discover that they have left over a huge environmental problem and the people actually responsible have died - who's going to pay?
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  14. Calum Strange I did some research and listened to a speech he gave to a Heartland Institute science denial conference. Yes - conspiracies can be real. Climate Science is not one of them. What provoked me to write this specific comment was his claim that regulators had anti-trust laws to go after the people who didn't bribe them. Absurd...
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  15. Calum Strange "That would be an attempt to poison the well; just because he holds some falscious views does not mean he is wrong on this." I don't deny that I argue against his integrity. If I should listen to him and trust him on (say) his examples, I need to have assurance that he is actually interested in a discussion based on reason and facts. His stance on climate change shows he is not. And yes, he gave an example of anti-trust. But his specific example (MS IE) is actually something I know a great deal about as an IT professional. And I KNOW for a fact that he presented the example incomplete and biased. He probably doesn't know the technical details, but still - the over all impression is that I cannot trust him to be objective. And that's a really big problem when he tries to argue objectivism and "reason".
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  16. Calum Strange He spends much of the time in this interview arguing for a science based approach and "objectivism". His relation to actual science in general is completely relevant for any trust you can have to him actually being objective If you don't agree about that, we just have to disagree. I don't think it's "completely unrelated". And I have addressed the point he made - in another comment.
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  17. Calum Strange ... it is. In exactly the same way it's rational for a creationist who haven't bothered to actually understand what evolution is about to be skeptical of common descent. But if you have so little insight into a subject, you should go around making speeches calling the science a "lie".
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  18. Calum Strange I certainly hope he has done more research into other stuff. (he has a Ph.D. in Finance) ... but I don't regard it as irrelevant. I have to repeat: He's sitting in the interview and arguing how important hard natural science is (which I agree with) ... but at the same time, as soon as a scientific result gets in the way for his moral philosophy he happily calls it a "lie" and "leftist" hoax. That simply doesn't fly with me.
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  19. Calum Strange You should listen to his speech at Heartland Institute - which is what I primarily base my impression on in addition to this interview.
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  20. Calum Strange 1) I don't agree 2) My argument was not that all his views were wrong because one is. (that's a strawman).
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