this story is so old it voted for bob dole. i suspect in 10 years RT will have finally heard of melodyne.

I used to think like this, but then I finished high school.

Seriously, anarchy is a lovely ideal. Everyone lives in peace and harmony and no-one is tramping anyone elses rights. When a job needs doing, we find someone willing to do it and compensate them (preferably with a barter system or something).

One minor problem though..

IT

DOESN'T

FUCKING

WORK.

We don't live in some kind of post-scarcity utopia. I wish we did, but that is simply not the reality of human society or history. Anarchists and libertarians seem to think that anyone who disagrees with them loves government and simply can't wait to pour their hard earned money in a military industrial complex.

I don't know anyone like that. I don't like my government, and I sure as hell don't like yours. I don't mind paying for hospitals and roads and welfare (and yeah, I don't even really give a fuck about "welfare queens" or "dole bludgers" or other mythical right wing beasties), but I fucking hate the idea that my money goes to fund the pointless "war on drugs" or on mass surveillance.

But I recognise that for all its ills, the system (for the most part) works. People today have a higher standard of living, live longer, and have more rights than at any other time in history. Some of that is down to science; some of it is because of private innovation and some of it is simply that we have changed the way our societies run through elections, etc.

What I do know is that when government becomes beholden to private interests (lobbyists in the USA) shit goes bad. But the solution to that is not to allow powerful people even more leeway to fuck over the weak.

That's nuts. Wonder how many concussions, or various other injuries, were doled out that day.

@Trancecoach: We're not going to agree, and that's fine. This'll be my last reply.

Retailer strong-arming: Imagine Apple makes up 95% of Best Buy's tablet sales. Off-brand-X wants to sell tablets at Best Buy. Apple says: If you sell Off-brand-X tablets, we will not let you sell our tablets. Off-brand-X is likely to only provide a tiny profit to Best Buy, compared to Apple, so they comply. (This actually happened, in a different form, with Intel paying computer manufacturers to not use AMD processors. See here). Also see price-fixing.

Widget-distribution-prevention: This is just an extension of the previous point.

Buying up all of the competitors: Ma Bell. Old AT&T. That should be enough said. But, if that's not enough, now Ma Bell is nearly entirely re-formed. The US was one government approval away from having cell carriers limited to Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T. That's been spoiled, now, but I don't think it's hard to imagine that future continuing on to two carriers colluding and price-fixing (as Verizon and AT&T pretty much have freedom to do anyway). This is another quasi-natural-monopoly situation (or at least a tragedy of the commons situation), in that the radio spectrum is not infinite. To keep the spectrum usable at all, blocks of frequencies are doled out to radio/TV/cellular/military/etc. etc. with stiff penalties for interference.

Patents: Patents present a litany of problems, but the world without them is even worse. You have two things happen, both of which are bad:
1) New technology remains veiled in secrecy indefinitely; no one else can riff on it even after patents would normally have expired
2) My previous point. The marginal utility of R&D decreases drastically based on the likelihood of a competitor being able to get hold of your secrets before you can profit on them sufficiently.
This is exactly why patents were created. It's a temporary monopoly granted by the government in exchange for the promise that the knowledge will be released to the universe after X years.

Predatory pricing: If excessive, it's illegal. That's why it doesn't happen very often. In a country with anti-trust laws, you just want to hurt your competitor, you don't want to drive them out of the market.

Natural monopolies: Since you brought this one up, you can choose your energy service because the government forces the utility to lease its lines and to decouple distribution from production. That is to say, you have a free market in production because the distribution is not free. See here. My state is the same way.

Misinformation: Who vets marketing claims in a free market? My competitor says that their food is organic. Well--hell, so is mine! They're environmentally conscientious? So am I! Their drug cures cancer? Mine cures it even better!

Oh, shit. Someone caught me in a lie! Well, I'll just force the media to ignore it and ramp up my disinformation campaign.

This music makes me wanna try heroin. Is that why indie music people dig this droning, annoying, sing-along stuff so much?

Look, after he's finished he's got that greasy, hipster look on his face..."Feel my pain and rage and, OH! Dole me out another warm gush of arm candy!"

You simply can't SEE a scenario without force, because you've drunk the Kool Aid, Stormsinger, we all have.

Anarcho-Capitalism sounds good in ether, eliminate the state's influence on yer shit. Hire private security firms to dole-out justice, and fuck the police. Sounds REAL good. Privatizing currency structures, anything goes. Sounds righteous and fair-Keeps out gangsters who will eventually become masters.

Eliminate compulsory taxation. Good thing. Ombudsman-like dispute resolution rather than laws and a punishment to follow. Sounds fucking SANE to me. Problem is , with all the robots programmed by the state for the past 100 years, it's kinna hard to convince idiots that something like this could work....to free them from the inevitability of the failure of the current paradigm. About the only problems I can see with a switch would be how to maintain environmental impact standards, but these problems' solutions would become evident when people become responsible for themselves, for another's well-being within the social structure, and their own destinies.

Democracy (the meaning, 'rule of the people') has been lost to the rule of a very few, and historically it never works for very long before assholes find a way around it.


You're in a pot of water being slowly heated, Stormsinger-Warm 'n cozy now, melting skin from your screaming carcass later.

Thanks for your purchase of 5 Power Points and for helping to support the Sift!

Sorry for the delay in doling these out to you. There's an extra PP in there for the long delay.

that's not a fail, that's a win, so many kiwi's moved across the Tasman to get the dole that this orange land is now the WEST island of NZ. muhahaah

You can dole em out to anyone, use em to promote or doublepromote or quality or beg....all kinnna stuff to do with those-Cast that bread on the water and watch it sink!

GOOD LUCK TO ALL-i shall begin doling-out power-points to all three contestants, per my Cocksure Fastdraw awards structure which has me beholden to each for 25 power points. First place however, receives the coveted pre-owned and never-worn Videosift T-shirt originally won by choggie in a contest of hi own design......Sort of like a, "What if there was a party and nobody came." kind of contest.

Results and Video after New Years, shall we saaaay, Sunday, January 6th??

MERRY XMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR

Calling it an "Arms Race" sort of suggests that they're in a competition with eachother. Israel is a US Client State, it has the most modern military force in the region. Palestine can't even come close to competing with Israel for arms. It shows in the amount of death Israel doles out consistently.

Yeah, suppose the table cloth trick kinna riled us a bit....Nice while it lasted, guess we can dole out love 2 points atta time and live with it...kinna pussified, but OK.

Oh, and second and third place get 25 power points as well, doled -out in order of placement....and a hearty hand-clasp.

Cool robot, but a crappy riff on the Dole can.

>> ^Engels:

i don't think you have a grasp of the level of protest going on. Estimates have that 77 percent of the population support the protesters. This isn't a confusing WTO mess, with imported protesters with abstracted ideals on the line. The severity of the social cuts is so punitive that the force behind the protest won't cave to police enforcement as easily. That, and the Spanish populace won't tolerate the level of violence US law enforcement is used to doling out.


This because BY DESIGN, the people who run the show want a dick-less, purposeless, exhausted and discourage bunch of sheepies that are unable to bitch while being ass-fucked, IMLTHO