Writing for The Nation – Urizenus Sklar’s Secret Shame!!!
by Alphaville Herald on 17/09/10 at 12:03 pm
Herald founder explains WikiLeaks and activist hackers
Ignoring the life-and-death Second Life political scene for more ephemeral fare, Herald founder Urizenus Sklar (Peter Ludlow) weighs in on WikiLeaks and Hacktivist Culture at The Nation – a guilty pleasure to be sure – but one that may steer the Wikileaks debate in a more realistic direction. As Ludlow points out
The traditional media, governments and their security organizations just cannot get unglued from the idea that there must be a single mastermind behind an operation like WikiLeaks. While this model works great in fictional dramas, it does not track what is really happening. This is not a one-man or even one-group operation. It is a network of thousands motivated by a shared hacktivist culture and ethic.
To support his argument, Ludlow traces the hacktivist aesthetic – information should not be hoarded by powerful constituencies—it needs to be placed in the hands of the general public – through a number of high profile incidents such as the 4Chat assault on the Church of Scientology, the work of the Cypherpunks, Hong Kong Blondes, Urban Ka0s, and others.
The conclusion? WikiLeaks is a network enabled social movement that is far from unique – and almost certainly unstoppable.
Ludlow’s analysis may remind Second Life residents of recent developments in the metaverse that parallel the WikiLeaks scandal, including the exposure of the Justice League Unlimited Brainiac database and the revelations that led to fall from grace of the Emerald Viewer gang – so perhaps there is some redeeming value to be gleaned from Uri’s shameful practice of moonlighting for the Nation.
Pappy Enoch
Sep 17th, 2010
Ol’ Doc Uri got him a point.
I don’t know nuffin’ about not wackyleaks, but I reckons they am a cornparison to sum’fin I does know: It won’t no Jed or Ellie Mae or Jethro Bodine who done created them stereo-tapes o’ hillbilly life. I won’t even me.
Hillbilly life am what them eggheads call a crowd-sourced phearnomernom.
They am bazillions o’ us, an’ we ain’t a gonna be stopped.
Ajax Manatiso
Sep 17th, 2010
I think you left most Alphaville readers with their jaws hanging open and drool running down and thinking “What, no Post girl?”
Wikileaks is more of a political story and certainly not a Second Life story. Hacking to release political secrets to the public is certainly viewed by most westerners as a good thing.
However the 12 year old who finds a PN script and rains down cows on an SL wedding is not in the same universe, let alone the same ballpark.
Moose
Sep 17th, 2010
Is this how Prokofy previously got involved at the Herald? I know she supports Marxist and extreme socialist candidates like Obama and Yassky. She contributes to Soros and some of the other big ant-capitalist far left backers. So perhaps Prokofy was writing for The Nation under a nom de plume too?
Boyd Doghouse
Sep 17th, 2010
Oh boy! More hackers and script kiddies saving the world from itself!
Colonel D Bugger
Sep 17th, 2010
@Boyd Doghouse
“Oh boy! More hackers and script kiddies saving the world from itself!”
Don’t be scared. Quick, go back inside where it’s safe and cosy and you won’t have to be concerned about the things that governments and corporations and self-appointed groups are hiding from you. Let the nice marshmallow people do all your thinking for you.
Urizenus
Sep 17th, 2010
Prok has weighed in in the comments at The Nation already. Tying the discussion to Woodbury and Emerald. For the readers of The Nation!
I love Prok.
Orca Flotta
Sep 17th, 2010
@ Moose:
I don’t know Yassky, but I know Obama. If we’re talking about the same person here (US president) how in the living hell did you get the idea he’s a marcist or extreme socialist? He’s the muckin president of the USA, an extreme nationalist far right winger. In most decent democratic countries he’d be under surveilance by their “homeland security” and/or constitution guarding agencies for spreading his almost fascist ultra-conservative ideology.
Also it doesn’t need a far left background to be an anti-capitalist. Everybody who was screwed during the recent self-made economic crisis can tell you that
I can’t really believe how anybody can still be pro-capitalism after the system has proven again how dysfunctional and anti-social it really is.
IntLibber Brautigan
Sep 17th, 2010
And….. Orca explains why Americans should never do as internationalist toadies like Obama say we should do and become more like the rest of them. America became exceptional by being UNLIKE the rest of the fucked up planet, which is why the US, even in its present economic circumstances, still has the highest immigration rate of any nation on the planet. Evidently we are still doing something that is more right than what is preached by radical leftists like Orca here.
BamBam
Sep 17th, 2010
It’s totally a government conspiracy MAN! It’s all controlled by the military industrial complex! I’m tellen ya MAN, the hackers are just CIA sleepers. They are trying to get in our mind. You didn’t hear this from me MAN, but Wikileaks is controlled by a Nixon’s clone. I know MAN, cause we were smoking some bud and he told me. Power to the people MAN!!! -_-
Persephone Bolero
Sep 17th, 2010
@Orco “I can’t really believe how anybody can still be pro-capitalism after the system has proven again how dysfunctional and anti-social it really is.”
Because Capitalism had nothing to do with it. Despite what CNN and the ridiculous Naomi Klein told you (and you slavishly believed), Bush actually increased regulations. This trend just followed under Obama, and wow!- the economy didn’t improve. What do we do now? More of the same! Yay!
Meanwhile, China and India have seen their standards of living rapidly rise in the past couple decades. Was this due to greater government interference in the market? No. Quite the opposite. The freer their markets become, the richer they get. We are moving in the other direction and we’ve seen an increase in poverty. Coincidence?
If you don’t understand this, you simply don’t understand Capitalism. And you continue to criticize it without any real knowledge of what Capitalism is or how it works. Do not confuse Bush as a Capitalist. He’s not. Like all Republicans, he’s a corporate cronyist, which is a marriage of business and government. That just creates mega-corporations by impeding entrance into the market place by competitors. That’s what we have in America today, and it’s not Capitalism. True Capitalism is a separation of government and economy. And it works for every country that’s tried it.
Gaara Sandalwood
Sep 17th, 2010
I actually found sense in that, Percy.
Darien Caldwell
Sep 17th, 2010
“China and India have seen their standards of living rapidly rise in the past couple decades.”
That’s pretty easy when you’re coming from zero.
I agree capitalism isn’t the problem. It’s the concentration of wealth, power, and influence into the hands of a few that’s the problem. Our system of government is no longer ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’. It’s ‘of the influential, by the wealthy, for the corporations’.
Boyd Doghouse
Sep 17th, 2010
Can I sell you a tin foil hat colonel?
Emperor Norton hears a who?
Sep 17th, 2010
Persephone Bolero @” Meanwhile, China and India have seen their standards of living rapidly rise in the past couple decades.”
The rising standard of living in China is because of massive public works products that suck up the unemployed like the Seven Gorges Dam. That’s FDR style New Deal socialism you dumb gilbtardarian. If we tried the China system over here you’d pee your pants bright yellow from the ragegasm you would have over the socialism. And you have to be a twit living under a rock to think the Chines Communists take a hands off approach to business.
You want a libertarian economic miracle – look at Somalia. If the economy gets a Somalian down they pull themselves up by their RPG straps and hijack a freighter. That’s the creative destruction of the Free Market in action. Somalia – no government regulation to hold the hard working Somalian down and Second Amendment Rights for all.
Alyx Stoklitsky
Sep 17th, 2010
The Pentagon is just jealous that none of them have hair as cool as Julian Assange’s is.
Persephone Bolero
Sep 17th, 2010
@Emperor Wrong. China liberalized a lot of its economy.
Here’s my source:http://www.heritage.org/index/Country/China
Do you have one?
Oh, and I know you won’t understand this. But Somalia has no rule of law. With no rule of law, there is no Capitalism. So, your comparison is comical at best.
Persephone Bolero
Sep 17th, 2010
@Darrien “It’s the concentration of wealth, power, and influence into the hands of a few that’s the problem.”
Agreed. Thank corporate cronyism for that. But so long as people address these problems with more centralized government control over the economy, you’ll have more of the same.
IntLibber Brautigan
Sep 17th, 2010
Persephone,
You are, of course, correct in your analysis. The corporate-government collusion you speak of is called mercantilism, not capitalism. It is sometimes easy for the left to confuse the two because both tend to use markets. What distinguishes mercantilism is a propensity for government regulation that, under the guise of “protecting consumers” or “protecting the taxpayer” in actuality protects established market share holders from new entrants into the market, with “standards”, “inspections”, bonding requirements, which raise significant barriers to entry for people seeking to enter into the market.
We see a good example in government contracting in the present day with the established monopoly of United Launch Alliance, which is the sole supplier of Expendable Launch Vehicle launch services to the US government (including NASA) and primary contractor for NASA’s Space Shuttle and planned Constellation launch vehicles (along with their allies in the ICBM-industrial-complex: ATK, Lockheed, Boeing, etc) operating on cost plus contracts that allow them to bloat their costs as far as they can get away with, which results in their fixed 5% being as large in absolute dollars as possible, while accomplishing as little as possible in actual people and missions in space.
Along comes SpaceX, with its Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon manned capsule system, offering launch services at less than half what ULA charges, and you see mercantilist politicians in both parties in Congress attacking SpaceX and defending the fraud and wasteful pork spending in their districts.
Similarly, the whole Apple/Microsoft duopoly in operating systems (and, despite the artsy left typically painting Microsoft as the worst player, Apple has always been the most monopolistic with its fully vertically integrated closed system, controlling all hardware and operating systems they allow into their architecture), fighting hard against other operating systems, particularly the various flavors of linux.
Microsoft is also a good example of how yesterdays market revolutionaries become tomorrows mercantilists. Originally, Microsoft broke IBM’s dominance of the PC market only to itself become a market dominator that shut down competitors, stole competitors IP, and insisted on predatory pricing and distribution contracts with PC assemblers… Microsoft, unlike most mercantilist big corporations, has not received much help from government in protecting its market, and as a result has seen its market dominance, once fought by lawsuits from Apple, reversed with Apple now in ascendance not through litigation, but by innovation, which proves the capitalist argument that when you free markets to innovate, and keep government out of the regulation of those markets, preventing government from raising barriers to entry from new competitors, you get innovative competitors arising who challenge the establishment.
Emperor Norton,
You unfortunately, dont know wtf you are talking about. The Seven Gorges Dam’s cost of construction accounts for less than 1% of the GDP of China during the time it was built, a time when the economy of China was growing at a 10% rate annually.
China’s growth has come, as Darien notes, largely by growing from nothing. When per capita income is only $1000 annually, a rise of $100 is 10% growth, when an identical $100 growth in an income of $50,000 annually is less than 0.2% growth. China has monopolized on its third world workforce and in many cases outright slave labor.
Somalia is no kind of libertarian example. In fact, proponents of big government keep Somalia in its present state intentionally as an “example” when in fact, the only things that Somalia are an example of is the confluence of imperialist funded warlordism, nationwide drug (khat) dependency, and the perennial african problem of tribalism dominating politics.
IntLibber Brautigan
Sep 17th, 2010
Alyx,
Julian’s undead-like albinoism is so Twilight-ago.
I agree with most of what Peter has to say on the topic but have to point out that wikileaks doesn’t seem too interested in getting leaked info on iran’s nuke program and sales of weapons to the Taliban, or Chinese human rights abuses and sales of weapons to the Taliban, or Russian deconstruction of its democratic system or manipulation of groups in Georgia to instigate the conflict there. Wikileaks selective focus is IMHO similar to the same sort of hypocrisy we once saw in the Cold War period from environmental groups who only protested pollution and nuclear power in western nations, and not in communist countries or against communist countries, where the worst pollution and nuclear offenses actually occured.
Believer
Sep 17th, 2010
@Boyd
Please go back to Hanja and not bother anybody else with your droning, pointless geriatric babble. Over the hill means stop hanging out with kids.
Edna
Sep 17th, 2010
You know else is an egghead….
Lebron James
Little Lost Linden
Sep 18th, 2010
When I think about China, I immediately think about reducing the worlds population substantially. And that is where ZPG can help.
http://www.populationconnection.org
It really is just like they say in the Matrix.
Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area…
hobo kelly
Sep 18th, 2010
Crazy Cat Lady Talking Hand Puppet (sings):
“K9 Crunchies can’t be beat…
“They make each meal a special treat
“Happy dogs are
“Those who eat
“Delicious K9 Crunchies…
mercedes zepp
Sep 18th, 2010
i still think old fashion whippings
Gundel Gaukelei
Sep 18th, 2010
@Ajax Manatiso However the 12 year old who finds a PN script and rains down cows on an SL wedding is not in the same universe, let alone the same ballpark.
Maybe just not yet.
Anon
Sep 18th, 2010
Nobody noticed the typo? It was (is) 4chan that protested the cult of scientology, not 4chat.
Not only 4chan BTW, it should be noted. Numerous other chans and even furfags helped protest this dangerous cult. Credit where it’s due.
Anon
Sep 18th, 2010
BTW, comments are considered spam when the username Anonymous is used? Wtf is that bullshit?
Nelson Jenkins
Sep 18th, 2010
I’m going to abstain from arguing in the comments this time, except I have one question…
What the hell is 4Chat?
Kiddoh
Sep 18th, 2010
Perhaps it is a form of 3-way calling?
Pappy Enoch
Sep 18th, 2010
@IntLibber Brautigan, git out o’ yo’ mama’s basement an’ git drunk, nekkid, and laid.
You mite thank me later, boy.
Alyx Stoklitsky
Sep 18th, 2010
>It really is just like they say in the Matrix.
>Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not.
Because animals have NEVER become extinct without humans around to cause it, right?
How wonderfully arrogant to think that we aren’t part of nature ourselves.
Ted
Sep 18th, 2010
Wow…. Interesting take on events. My perspective is that if there is anything at all to do with shame, it’s Linden Lab. Now there is something completely shameful.
Your site allows others to express their views. We can all appreciate the open forum even though many believe it not worthy.
Many things to come have been prophesied on this very open channel. And rest assured, it will happen as described. It’s been happening for quite some time, and only the dunce cannot see what was stated.
“Linden Lab will dance to the pole in the attic. The one they sent to others with the mind games. Linden will pay the price from the father, because they do not believe. And in such , Linden Lab will no longer exist as a company and anything related to Linden Lab will be known for what it was we experienced.”
Tracy Welles
Sep 18th, 2010
I’ve even warned about the attacks from even stating what I do. But I have the knowledge to figure out what is going on and try to correct the issues.
Example:
Unix:
[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1
[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=2nbx4lwc.default
Mozilla Firefox was cracked – Today’s date 9-12-2010
Not sure when this was done.
Monitored ports localhost :80
/home/mymachine/.mozilla/firefox/haq4uizu.default/
“Hack for you, I see you”
—–
Linden Lab is not all well. And anytime you speak out against the issues you will find the “leetz crackerz” will find a flaw in your way of thinking and working.
——-
Linden has taken on may evil spirits and have no sound judgement or wisdom. They will not belong, not be, nor will they exist on the web.
Ever again… And the most high will take care of what and whom they are.
—–
Seer
Tracy Welles
Sep 19th, 2010
Linden has taken on may evil spirits and have no sound judgement or wisdom.
Should read:
Linden has taken on many evil spirits and have no sound judgement or wisdom.
—-
I wrote this due to several years of experience in Second Life. And I assure the best and the most intelligent that Linden Lab are the enemy. They stole, they lied, and now anyone speaking of it is in constant fear of what they will do next.
Well, not I. I left, I deleted my inventory and they still don’t like what I have to say on the web. But this is the only way and means I have to reach out. So please do understand.
Urizenus
Sep 19th, 2010
lol, Pix *did* say 4chat. She will never live that one down.
pixeleen mistral
Sep 19th, 2010
Uri,
It was bad enough when you started moonlighting for the Friendly Fridley Penny Shopper. But because I am fundamentally an optimistic sort, despite evidence to the contrary, I held out hope — right up until you went *totally* downmarket with The Nation.
As I mentioned when you first started flirting with writing for the Chaska Herald, bringing Audrey from typesetting along for the ride is it’s own punishment – we all know she is entirely to blame for all of the typos, and I have it on good authority that she has gotten into the Cristal again – so don’t try to pin 4chat on me. But I have an idea. Maybe we can send Audrey over the Blue World Notes? Hammie won’t notice.
Gundel Gaukelei
Sep 19th, 2010
IntLibber Brautigan Wikileaks selective focus is IMHO similar to the same sort of hypocrisy we once saw in the Cold War period…
Form follows function. Wikileaks is doing the jobs your “free” press stopped doing long ago.
Little Lost Linden
Sep 19th, 2010
@Alyx
“Because animals have NEVER become extinct without humans around to cause it, right?
How wonderfully arrogant to think that we aren’t part of nature ourselves.”
Not sure how you came to that conclusion. I’ve seen certain predatoristic animals cause other prey to become extinct in any given area before. It’s science.
Humans are a part of nature, They are one of the more irresponsible parts however…
makomk
Sep 19th, 2010
IntLibber: you’re quite right, if it wasn’t for government intervention we wouldn’t have the Apple/Microsoft duopoly. Instead, we’d have a Microsoft monopoly – the only reason Apple didn’t go out of business is because Microsoft gave them massive financial and non-financial support in order to avoid further government intervention. Microsoft is, as it turns out, fundamentally a monopoly – once enough businesses are using Microsoft products, you have to use Microsoft products or you can’t do business with them. It’s only possible to use Apple products effectively because Microsoft chose to release Office for them, and that’s again because of their fear of government intervention.
It also turns out that regulation can lower barriers to entry. Imagine if medicines weren’t regulated – how would you know if they were safe? The only thing you could go by was whether you trusted the manufacturer. Now, you might say that manufacturers would compete to produce the safest drug – but people can’t make buying decisions based on what’s actually safest, just on what they perceive to be safest. If one company spends a vast fortune on safety, and another spends the same amount on buying up or paying off the news media so that their drug is portrayed as safe and the news is full of scare stories about their competitor, who do you think will make more money?
IntLibber Brautigan
Sep 19th, 2010
Pappy,
Ah’m waitin’ on mah Linden class action lottery winnings to show up, then ah’m gonna go on a bender.
IntLibber Brautigan
Sep 19th, 2010
Little Lost Linden,
Natural law recognises no such thing as “responsibility”. Man evolved to be an adaptable generalist. If we have any responsibility, it is to learn to adapt to the changes that nature makes beyond our control, to adapt those parts of nature that we can change to suit our survival, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Little Lost Linden
Sep 20th, 2010
“Man evolved to be an adaptable generalist. If we have any responsibility, it is to learn to adapt to the changes that nature makes beyond our control, to adapt those parts of nature that we can change to suit our survival, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Indeed, we can adapt our population levels to suit our survival needs by recognizing when our species becomes too abundant.
Selene Putzo
Sep 20th, 2010
@Little Lost Linden
I suggest a humanity cull on China for the sake of all human kind – Let’s round the Chinese up, put them in a field and bomb the b@5t@rds to oblivion.
Oh – that includes me.
Change everything…. Cull the USA. They’re mostly obese, so that’ll remove a very large amount of matter from the planet when it all blows higher than the stratosphere.
Persephone Bolero
Sep 20th, 2010
@makomk “Imagine if medicines weren’t regulated – how would you know if they were safe? The only thing you could go by was whether you trusted the manufacturer. ”
How do you know products are safer when the government tests them?
A business that creates an unsafe product faces lawsuits and bad press, which will put it out of business. How do you put a government out of business without violence?
This bizarre argument here assumes that somehow if you place responsibility of safety with the government, you’re somehow more safe. Exactly what incentives are in place for a government entity to provide you with more safety than private industry? And how are these incentives more effective than the threat of bankruptcy that business face but government entities do not?
So, the only thing you have to go by is your blind and baseless trust the government, despite the fact it has far less incentive to keep you safe than a business does, not to mention a track record of failures in safety (ie Hurricane Katrina, 9-11, etc.) A business can go bankrupt when it fails. The government will continue on merrily with or without your satisfaction with its services. And you will pay for those services or go to prison.
And you really think that’s a safer system?
Jumpman Lane
Sep 20th, 2010
uri is a sap! poison clan rocks the world!
makomk
Sep 20th, 2010
Persephone: did you read the rest of my comment? My whole point is that it’s not the unsafe product that drives the company out of business, it’s the bad press. Without government intervention, there’s nothing to stop someone buying up most or all of the press via intermediateries, creating masses of unsafe products, and driving their far safer competitors out of business through media scare stories. Even lawsuits require that the individuals affected know and can prove that they were harmed, and that’s hard to achieve.
You’d be astonished what this can lead to. For example, part of the reason drug regulation happened in the US is a lovely incident in 1937 involving something called Elixir Sulfanilamide, which was made with a solvent known to be toxic to humans. Unfortunately, the chemist creating it didn’t bother to check this or perform any kind of tests, and people started dying. When informed of this, the manufacturer refused to issue a recall or provide a list of who they’d sold it to because this would damage their reputation and might lead to lawsuits – even though people would continue dying from it. The FDA only managed to force a recall through a labelling technicality, and a few years earlier no-one would even have had the power to do that.
You’re also treating the Government as though it’s some kind of monolithic group – but in democratic states, the Government is made up of individuals who generally have to be elected individually. When it works well, this provides enough competition within the Government to discourage collusion.
IntLibber Brautigan
Sep 20th, 2010
makomk,
Your thesis that there is competition within government is only valid when bureaucrats operate on merit in an every man for themselves environment. This is not the case in the US, where all non-appointed bureaucrats belong to one of the government employee unions, primarily SEIU, and these unions are the largest financiers of Democratic Party candidate campaigns. The Democrats, of course, reward this union support by creating new government programs and expanding old government programs in order to increase the number of government employees that need to join the union and pay union dues and vote for and donate to Democrat candidates. This is much like the legal and banking professions, which depend on Democrats (and bribable Republicans) to pass more laws, more regulation, in order to raise barriers to entry, enable banks to earn more profits, and more laws that are more inscrutable without high priced legal interpretation.
For instance, if you think the Democrats financial regulation legislation they passed somehow punishes the biggest banks that behaved the worst and needed the most bailouts, then why did stocks in those banks rise after this supposedly punitive regulation passed?
SImilarly, if you think Democrats are for the little guy, why is it that, outside of the unions, the largest donors to Democrat campaigns are lawyers, who earn the highest incomes in our society?
Republicans are similar in different ways, with different corporate constituencies but which most big government supporters generally are aware of.
Collusion is inherent in government, because the lobbying game is the second career for retired bureaucrats. They collude in making the laws difficult for people to understand or comply with so that it is easy for bureaucrats to find ordinary people in violation, so that those people will need the services of retired bureaucrats in law firms and other organizations to get them out of trouble.
For instance, if you live in the US, I am sure you’ve seen ads for various firms that promise to help you deal with various government agencies. Binder and Binder helps people get their social security benefits when the bureaucrats find excuses to deny people their full benefits. Tax Masters and Ronnie Deutch advertise as retired IRS agents or IRS lawyers who know the tax codes they helped write so they now make huge money off of the people who become entrapped in the rats nest of regulations and risk losing everything they have. It is not an accident that the tax code is so byzantine, it is made that way in order to give people like them high paying jobs after they retire from government service in their 30′s and 40′s, raping the private citizenry coming and going. These services help ordinary people, small business people, all the types who cannot afford to own their own Senator or Congressman.
The Senators, Congressmen, cabinet secretaries, undersecretaries, assistant undersecretaries, etc all are very similar to these sort of syncophants, but are much higher priced and help those who produce large amounts of economic activity to not just navigate the system, but to write legislation to make the system labyrinthine for smaller competitors, in order to limit competition and turn free markets into mercantilist oligopolys.
Now, before you go blaming the corporations for this state of affairs, consider who it is that is lying to you, the voter, during the campaign about representing YOUR interests in congress, in the senate, in the white house. They want to gain office, because they are addicted to power, they are willing to compromise themselves in order to get that power. They sell out to those who see the existing system and either need help dealing with the byzantine system as it is, or want to change the system to give themselves a competitive advantage. A politician cannot be forced to accept a bribe, and generally as a matter of course, you the citizen are prevented from getting help from an elected official unless you are a campaign donor, and particularly if the people who have victimized you are donors to a given elected official.
Those of you outside the US who think this only happens in the US, you are even more wrong. Baksheesh is not an American term. Here in the US, corporations are prohibited, when they engage in trade overseas, from bribing officials in those foreign countries in order to obtain contracts. We actually have a law against it. Problem is that bribery, either overt bribery, or kickbacks, or other schemes, are such a standard part of doing business for politicians around the world, that US companies are actually at a disadvantage when competing against companies from countries that don’t have such anti-corruption laws. The only reason you hear about US corporate officials being prosecuted is that we’re the only place that actually prosecutes for that. Everyplace else it is considered good business to improve one’s own country’s balance of trade.
The only way to prevent corrupt government is to remove the power from government to do the things that attract corruption. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, is Actons Law, and its polar opposite is just as true.
Persephone Bolero
Sep 20th, 2010
@makomk “Without government intervention, there’s nothing to stop someone buying up most or all of the press via intermediateries, creating masses of unsafe products, and driving their far safer competitors out of business through media scare stories. Even lawsuits require that the individuals affected know and can prove that they were harmed, and that’s hard to achieve.”
Riiight. And how much would it cost to buy the internet? Seriously, without even considering the internet as a medium, you’re telling me a company, as part of a deceptive PR campaign, would just buy every TV station, radio station, and newspaper? And that would be cheaper than the lawsuits, how?
And yes, it is true you actually have to prove that someone has injured you through intent or negligence in the court of law before you can deprive them of property. That’s how courts work. Depriving people of property without due process is called thievery, and it gets pretty nasty when governments do it.
“Government is made up of individuals who generally have to be elected individually.”
Yes, that means that those entities serve the political interests and not financial ones. Quite simply, that means it ONLY serves the wealthy and politically connected. So, if it’s politically viable to let people die to serve a special interest group, that’s what those elected people do. They have no incentive to serve any financial interests. Dead people don’t protest. So, if it takes an extra decade or two to get a medicine out, there’s no risk at all to politicians, even if the benefits to people who use the medicine outweigh the risks.
This is, for example, why marijuana is Schedule 1 and cannot be prescribed by a doctor. This has NOTHING to do with the safety of the medicine and EVERYTHING to do with what happens when you let government decide whether or not a product is safe for consumption. The politics undermine rational assessments and give power to those who just want control over what we choose to do with our own bodies. This is also why abortion medicines are slow in being approved, if at all. (And it discourages innovation in businesses to find better birth control medicines.) Political processes interfere in way they don’t when the medicines one takes are determined by the consumer.
A company, on the other hand, actually has a financial incentive to get medicines to people who need it, while balancing the risk posed by lawsuits. Therefore, they make a much more effective decision making process. Is it perfect and without risks? No. But it’s much less susceptible to inefficiency and corruption than government.
Businesses will cease to exist if they face enough successful lawsuits. And especially in an economic system where there isn’t a marriage of business and government (as in the corporate cronyistic system we have now), you don’t have mega-corporations that can absorb the hit from a lot of lawsuits. So there is an even higher value put on human life and well being. Their demise for a bad decision would be eminent, especially with competitors vying to prove their superior safety.
Who is competing with the FDA to provide people with marijuana and abortion pills? No one is and no one can. You’re only hope is to vote enough people into power to create the political will to change the bureaucratic barriers preventing those safe medicines from getting to people.
How is that working out? I wouldn’t hold your breath.
We
Sep 21st, 2010
@makomk
Don’t bother debating them. Libertarians base their belief system entirely on faith in a fantasy dream land. Libertarians toss around the word “reason” like terrorists do “freedom”; they have little to do with it at all.
They have faith that if a monopoly happened in a free market some vague “innovation” will bring down the entire monopoly, but ask them exactly how that would be possible and they’re fuzzy on the details.
They have faith that if a company violated health and safety practices in their products and methods to save a buck (something corporations do just about every week), that lawsuits and bad press would bring them down. Again dig deeper and they’re fuzzy on details of how this would be possible.
They have faith that the corporate monopoly that somehow can’t happen in a free market, somehow wouldn’t buy up all the media to control it (something that’s already happening now), and that the internet is some free information source forever (kept that way only by government net neutrality laws).
It’s a religion. You’d have better luck convincing a devout Christian that god doesn’t exist than trying to convince a libertarian that their beliefs are ridiculous.
Persephone Bolero
Sep 21st, 2010
@We
Actually I demonstrated with examples how a free market would undermine monopolies. The problem is I used sources from Reason Magazine, which We said was “biased,” so he wouldn’t even look at them.
Then, I asked him for an example of an unbiased source, and he couldn’t cite a single one. So, he won’t accept my “biased” sources and he can’t point to a source that is unbiased. So, he basically won’t accept anything that doesn’t conform to his anti-capitalist dogma. In other words, “biased” means “doesn’t say what I want,” according to We.
We relies exclusively on paranoid apocalyptic fantasies that say that if people are set free to prosper however they choose, we’ll all become exploitative, greedy zombies. A single monopoly will come to rule over all of us, and the human race as we know it will cease to exist. (And setting up a business won’t do any good, even though no one can stop you from doing so at any time in a free market and the only determinant of your success is whether or not people like your products more than the single corporation that rules over everyone, somehow, even though everyone is voluntarily buying form the company and can stop at any time and shop where ever they want.)
He’s a lot like those Christians that truly believe that if people are free to choose whom they have s3x with, we’ll all become s3x-crazed zombies with AIDS. So, we have to centrally plan everyone’s personal choices to be sure that, you know, things don’t get out of hand.
Yet, he’ll insist he’s open minded and it’s actually his opponents that are rigid. I have no need to debate the flexibility of my opponents, since that’s just a personal attack. Instead, I rely on rational arguments and facts.
I could cite many sources to show how ridiculous this “monopoly myth” is, but We will dismiss them because they’re “biased.” Of course, this just means he doesn’t want to view anything that doesn’t conform to his silly, unsubstantiated, paranoid fears.