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Technology Stocks : Skype running hot, turbo-charged on Metcalfe's Law -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GPS Info who wrote (133)	4/3/2006 7:11:17 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 170

Thank you kindly for the invitation to rant. I will ignore the follow up post saying "no need". <<…counterproductive welfare services…education time-wasting> OK, I think I understand you: governments are bad; they waste hard-earned money.> Yes, that's true. Financial entropy for governments is more than other entities [though charities might even be worse, but at least they do it on a voluntary basis, like me wasting my life playing golf and doing other futile things]. Not every single dollar is wasted. <If the government is bad, are corporations a better means of controlling the market place and the population?> Yes. Except that it's customers who control the market place, not the corporations. All corporations do is lay bait to try to attract money. Companies don't control the population. They just offer goods and services, which are declined by most people. Nissan and Microsoft would love to control customers and have EVERYONE buy their products and services. The way buying works is the customer decides whether to buy or not. All the corporations do is decide what to offer for sale. And they can't stop anyone else offering goods and services [other than via patents, licences, or other government-enforced monopoly]. <Do oil companies police themselves and their customers, or do they have a fiduciary responsibility to make as much money as they possible can – whatever the eventual environment impact?> Of course the commons have to be protected and allocated. That's a government job. But better than the present serfdom system, where citizens are chattels of the state, is tradable citizenships with people directly and personally owning a shareholding in the commons. Companies just make as much money as possible - unfortunately, usually blundering in that process. See Globalstar as an excellent example of great blundering. <Precisely what entity should provide for the common defense, infrastructure, non-futile and non-counterproductive services that benefit the welfare of its subjects or citizens?> Commons = government. Other = private. Where things can be provided privately, such as water supplies, then leave it to companies and individuals. <Should all education be from private schools? Are you a strict libertarian, or are you just have a little fun while venting steam?> I'm not particularly religious in my Libertarian dogma, but I'm fairly well convinced about it in general. I think private schooling would be better than the state mess. I had a bad time in state schools. <(If you never get to these questions, I’m certain to continue to enjoy your rants.) The vast multitude of factors influencing a civilization (and more narrowly, a country) creates an unstable equilibrium that any governing entity must address in an open manner, IMO. I highly recommend a book by Jared Diamond, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” Prof. Diamond has a lecture available from the University of California TV website: uctv.tv. This one-hour lecture is a very good synopsis of the book. The book attempts to support a very generalized set of four factors that precede a collapse: 1) a group may fail to anticipate a problem before the problem actually arrives, 2) when the problem does arrive, the group may group may fail to perceive it, 3) after they [do] perceive it, they may fail even to try to solve it, and 4) they may try to solve it but may not succeed. This is taken from Chapter 14. I posted comments on the moderated Qualcomm board about hubris in companies like Nokia. I think hubris can blind a country or civilization in the exact same manner as a company. Under not-uncommon circumstances the equilibrium becomes uncontrollably unstable and collapse soon follows. Educating a population to make rational, informed decisions is absolutely, positively the most important responsibility of a government. Having done this, its national defense and common welfare will come about from taxes, properly levied or not. Methods of taxation should be continually discussed in public forums as the values and technologies of a country shift over time. The intended ROI of an education should be the continuation of the best a civilization has to offer to the world, and to the collective history of our humanity. I wish you wellness> Thanks, got to go right now and indoctrinate grandson in Libertarian ways. Mqurice