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Showing posts from 2008

Primitive understanding of money

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"Money is a man made creation and in itself worth nothing. Why are we compelled to affix price tags to everything?" I'm going to try to explain: Money is just our convenient measure of the worth of things. It's a bit like saying gallons aren't worth anything, but at the same time more gallons of fuel are worth more than less gallons of fuel. Perhaps some people might benefit by having a fresh look at money to realise why we measure things in this way. Some people have a very simplistic view of money and of economics in general. The kind of view you develop when you're a child in your parents' house. Your mother is the source of a cake and other such treats, and if your brother gets more of the cake it means there is less cake for you. All pocket money and decisions about freedom comes from your parents, and you grow up to realise the importance of some of the rules they have established with you when you were young, like not letting you run acros

Net Neutrality Myths

I'm getting a bit concerned over this whole net neutrality issue. People campaign for net neutrality legislation as if it's needed in order to save the internet. What worries me is that people don't know what they're asking for. The public is being put under the impression that without net neutrality legislation, broadband users will be restricted by their access providers on what content they can access and practically hold them at ransom to force them to pay extra for popular services (e.g. Google, Wikipedia, YouTube etc.), and when that happens it will destroy the internet as we know it. If that was really the case, we would certainly have something worth campaigning for. The internet is wonderful and standing up against the big evil corporations who are intent on destroying it for profit seems like a noble effort. Unfortunately campaigning to regulate net neutrality isn't, and it shows a lack of understanding of so much of the history and the nature of the

How to pretend that you are a useful government

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I'm starting to form a set of rules of how to pretend you're a useful government, while effectively not doing much, but also not harming anything that much either. The first and most important stunt is to look at an industry where competition is unrestricted, then make an accurate prediction as to what the outcome on a component of it would eventually be as a result of competition, and make sure it's a popular matter. Or even better, look at all popular matters and determine which ones would be satisfied by the market eventually. Then introduce laws to tell the market to do what it would have done anyway. Where this works better is where such things are delayed because it deals with issues between different competitors, where the best outcome would be if they all collaborate to a certain degree, since competitors normally take an awfully long time to come to agreement. Examples of these are: data and voice peer/routing, mobile roaming and inter-bank transfers. Thes