Thread: Texas Teamplayers in the tech class.

Originally Posted by redfuzzy

0_0

*tries to open mouth to talk* *closes*

*tries again* *succeeds*

Can we, possibly, be a bit reasonable here? The world is far from black and white, good and evil, or even worse than ever. The world is quite complicated, and the solutions to its problems are so too. There is no absolute truth, only different shapes and hues from which we can derive a complex answer to a problem. There are no simple solutions.

I also am slightly appalled at jyrodus for thinking that the government allows us our rights. However, that is a different discussion, and is not particularly relevant to this topic, so I'm going to not touch upon that. I would also like to politely ask him to refrain from that off-topic discussion as well because although it would be interesting, it could get heated very fast, and derail the thread.


I do think that passing legislation to preserve net neutrality (which is the current policy of most ISP's) is a good idea. But, they must be careful. There are several techniques that ISP's employ which will slow down, or affect the connection of some users that slow down the system as a whole. This, along with techniques of prioritizing certain connections over others, is to keep the system running smoothly. If they interfere with this, then all they will do is slow the internet down.

However, there needs to be a block on such things as unreasonable download limits. For example, Time Warner a few months ago tested a new payment plan that would put a cap on download limits. I can not locate the article at this time, but someone in the test area easily went over the limit by simply doing her daily routines with an xbox. This plan was scrapped luckily, however it is important to note that it was tested in an area where Time Warner was the only high speed provider.

This is actually the case in many areas. There are several internet providers, but there is only one high speed provider. This means that a company can decide to pull something, and your option is to either put up with it or get a lower internet speed. This is not free market at its best, and it is an issue that I believe needs to be dealt with as well.

My overall point is that some light regulation is needed to make sure that companies won't try things like ridiculous download caps or having websites pay for higher speeds. But, they need to be very careful that they don't prevent the companies from using creative marketing techniques, nor keeping them from using certain network techniques that inconvenience one user because he is slowing down the network as a whole.

Careful regulation, the sign of a good mixed economy at work.

You can't just have a little regulation, it just wont happen. The govnerment has no right to tell a business how to run itself. What the FCC is planning on doing is forcing ISP's to provide bandwidth hogging service. I for one am very happy with my ISP, I also love the service too. I don't see a real reason that the FCC is needed to come in and say "you MUST provided this service". All this really is doing is allowing the govenment to get its foot in the door to be able to regulate the internet. Plain and simple.

Originally Posted by jyrodus

Re redfuzzy:

Rights are arbitrary. Just like law. Unless you want to get religious, the only 'rights' you have are written on paper. If there is nobody willing to enforce what that paper says, then you in effect have no rights. You only have to look at history to see this plainly.

Also, there is no black and white, true. But there will often be black or white in a given instance of time.... i.e. the end result is what matters - if you break a window the window is undeniably in a broken state, regardless of how it got that way.

But yeah, I digress. Forgive my derailing the thread.

Hmmmmmmm, I can think of thousands of men and women in the US armed forces that died to ensure people like myself still have freedom among other rights. You're right, you only do have to look at history to see it plainly. Revolutionary war, Civil War, World War 1, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam, Golf War, and War on Terrorism.

Its not the governing bodies, at least here in the US, that allow us to have these rights, it is its people. The people have the power, the people elect who represents them, if we the people don't like what an offical is doing, we elect a new one. Democracy does exist, if the governemnt tried to take our rights away, the people here would not sit for it. We have a constitution that guarentees our rights and we the people, enforce it and in some cases have died enforcing it. The people created the government here to help protect thier rights. The people does NOT serve the government, the governement serves the people. Ask anyone serving in the military why they are serving. I will bet you that their answer NOT be, "becuase i am serving my government!" It is becuase they are ensuring that their rights, and the rights of others are protected!

"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate."

-Thomas Jefferson, Rights of British America, 1774

Originally Posted by jyrodus

You think I don't know all of this? No offense, but everyone knows this.

I am not talking about rights as a lofty ideal that we all love to have.

I am talking about real and practical applications. And there is more history than American history I'll have you know.

Also, why do you think we are over in Afghanistan? Go tell the terrorists and taliban that they are violating human rights. Yeah, ok, we killed some of them, we saved some lives. They killed some of us. But the people who are dead, are still dead! Their right to live did not protect them because nobody was there to do anything about it (and in the case of Iraq, their own people could do nothing for the fear of BEING EXECUTED)

You take comfort in the fact that our system has worked so far. And it has. But it CAN fall apart. The people have power but voices can be silenced as well. The Constitution, as great as it is, is still paper. If we get hit by a significant natural disaster, or a nuclear exchange, or a pandemic that wipes out the population, or the global network goes down, or whatever... it becomes anyone's game then.

Did you think Rome didn't have something like a constitution? The Greeks and Romans pioneered many of the political systems we have today, but look what happened to them. The same goes for Germany, China, Japan, Russia, France, whoever.

Rights do not come from nature if the people who have all of the guns say they don't. We simply have a herd mentality and think that just because most of us agree with the society that we have now, that it can't be broken.

Listing a bunch of wars that show we as a people have power doesn't work - you've only picked ones where it worked out that way. I can tell you plenty of wars where it did not work out that way. But you'll probably say that they weren't Americans so they are inferior or some such....

Edit:
Also, it's funny that you say we can't have a little regulation because the government gets carried away with it, but yet WE are the government and WE enforce all our own rights.

Elect officials who will regulate properly, since we have the power... unless you just contradicted yourself.

See, of course they are people over seas that arn't free or don't have the same amount rights as I do here in America. My point is this, I feel that my rights are more than just what the government says they are, and I, as many others are willing to defend those rights to the end.

"why do you think we are over in Afghanistan?"
September 11, 2001. Thats why we're over there, we were attacked by a foreign power that hates our way of life, and wants nothing more than to kill Americans and try and change how we live. We're overthere to help protect our right to be FREE back here in America. That is our number 1 priority. Can my right to be free stop bullets, no. Can my right to be free win wars, no. If you look at strickly like that then no it can't. Only if I stand up for my right to be free can I try and win a war. Rights mean nothing if you don't stand up for them, which is what we do here in the US. You cannot take our rights away becuase we believe them do be natural, and if the governemnt tries and takes them away we will stand up to them.

Your examples of dicators and what not don't apply to this country. Sure, maybe in those countries thier rights are nothing more than what the goverment says they are, but thats not the case everywhere, especially here. Of course if all hell breaks loose and the world pretty much ends, our society will fall apart. But thats why they call it the 'APOCOLYPSE' world as we know it coming to an end.

Yes Rome may had something similar, but it was flawed, allowing people to take 'Total control' in a time of crisis. Which is why our founding fathers set of the system of checks and balances the way they did. So no one man has complete power. Germany had a similar situation when Hitler rose to power. But lets just look at a few other coutnries for a moment, Russia? Former soviet russia? And china? I'll just stop there. You can find countries around the world that don't have democracy, don't have a lot of human rights and what not. But here in America, the people do. Why? Becuase thats what WE believe in, and thats why we still have them.

Our founding fathers looked at governments in the past and thought, how can we make our government great and not turn into somthing they just fought against. The answer took them some years before they all agreed and came up with our constitution. They looked at governments before them, and of other countries and looked at whats wrong with that and how can we fix that. They didn't want one man to be able to control everything, so they created a system that still works today. History shows if you're not willing to stand up and fight for what you believe in then what you believe in will perish. And idea alone is nothing unless you stand up for it. Thats why here in the US we still have our rights today, and always will have our rights.

"Elect officials who will regulate properly"

Thats what i plan to do in the next election. See the reason why we have those officals there in the first place are because some people believe in more government control. They didn't agree with how the old officals were doing things so they elected more democrats than republicans. Hense more govnerment control. See now people here in the US don't like a lot of things that our government is trying to do, which is why many of us or voicing our opinion. When the next congressional election comes around you'll see a radical change in who is elected. So no, i didn't contradict my self, becuase not everone agrees with me about regulation and those people elected officals that have a similar idealogy.

holy fuck, that's quite a wall of text

Originally Posted by jyrodus

Also, to get back on topic (and agree somewhat with red)

Some regulation is necessary. People may generally have good will, but I wouldn't blindly depend on it.

A totally free market does not work because companies set standards for each other. You may get lucky and have a company that goes beyond the norm, but without regulations there is really no actual incentive to do so.

e.g. if I'm the only ISP that offers an 8 mbit connection in my service area, I can pretty much set whatever rules I want (as redfuzzy rightly mentioned)

Or alternately, if everyone offers 8mbit, I don't have to offer any more if it will cost me. I'd only offer more speed if it would guarantee more customers and more profits.

So yeah, the FCC's wholesale prevention of bandwidth throttling is not good. Though I feel some sort of regulation may be in order so that ISP's can't shaft customers whenever they feel like it to lower costs beyond a reasonable level.

A free market works precisely because companies set standards for each other. Maybe if we didn't live in a society that praises selfless sacrifice you would realize that there is a very large reason for a company to go beyond the norm, the PROFIT MOTIVE! Don't depend on their good will, depend on their selfishness, on their will to survive, or do better than survive.

If a company can offer the best service, it will generally get a larger percentage of the customers and therefore more profits.


And if a company could offer faster speeds (a better service) it wouldn't invest money for a chance at a larger percentage of the customers? You think this would never happen? WHAT IS FIOS THEN! A business taking a huge risk to sell a superior service, which costs it huge money to spread to new areas.

So, you say without regulations there's no real reason to improve your service? Regulation in general does not incite improved service. Governments discourage growth by their very nature. Taxation drains capital, slowing growth. Even in businesses where regulations demand minimum standards, what does this achieve? A minimum! Businesses all see who can adhere to the MINIMUM STANDARDS for the least amount of money. And, if a company gets the shiny seal of approval from the government, it stays open and sells its product or service. What does this cause? Lack of an informed consumer. With the government out there to ensure the Minimums, we don't put much care into what we buy because everything is assumed to be at least at the minimum. You said not to trust blindly in people's goodwill, but you'd trust blindly in the government, an institution fraught with corruption and immorality? I'm not saying the business world does not have those problems, far from it, I'm just saying you should trust in your self, and if you are not in a position to make an informed opinion, get that way.

As for the argument on rights... I have to finish studying for an exam...

You think you're worthless? Somehow that makes me sad.

the large amount of texts makes me want to say TLR

Originally Posted by jyrodus

Trusting myself is pointless. I alone am worth nothing.

Also, taxation does not hurt companies. And a lot of times it doesn't hurt the rich either. Do you know who pays the taxes of a company? I'll give you a hint - it isn't the company. Do you know who pays when a company is fined in a civil suit? Again, not the company. The customers will pay because the company will defer its costs to keep itself from going under.

I trust government because they can do things that I alone cannot. You should really take a look at the way finances have worked.

You do make some good points about the way society in general works, but an informed opinion in itself accomplishes nothing. Look at some of the shady companies which are still around in spite of the many people that hate them.

Can people band together and force change? Sure. But there are many cases where it does not work either.

Tell me, what do you do when a market is so saturated that we resort to producing things over seas, and the local managers over seas resort to sweat shops and slave labor? Or how is it that cigarette makers are supposedly supporting ways to quit (and some even profiting off of it) but are still making more cigarettes? Isn't that a conflict of interests?

The 'profit motive' wraps back around you know. If you get into a deadlock where companies get total market penetration, things start getting divided up into demographics. Like you might have a company that makes shitty cars because it can't compete with the luxury cars, but it still knows there are people who don't have as much money who will buy that car because they need transportation. If a market is flooded to the point where you can't get significantly more customers, there's only one way to go - back down.

Combining governemnt with private business/industry always fails. For this reason. Governement, in theory, exsists to provide protections critical to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Private companies manage thier expenses to ensure that every dollar has a return. The government attempts to spend every dollar and it measures returns in campaign donations and polling data. The two are different. Corporations serve thier shareholders and customers, and the governemnt, in theory, serves taxpayers, politicians, special-interest groups, and established bureaucracy first. The incentive to earn profit goes hand in hand with the ability to operate efficently and effectively. Take on away and the other will vanish. It is a simple rule in economics.

I have taken a look at how finances worked, have you? So lets look at some of these shady companies that are still around that many people hate. Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, Amtrak, Citigroup, and the USPS. What do they all have in common? Well i'll tell you. They are all run by heavy governemnt regulations, and tax payer dollars especially the USPS. They also all have huge debts and are not making any profits on a yearly basis. Governemnt bureaucracy gets in the way of their ability to make profits. USPS can't change the way they run things to reduce thier operting costs, which would reduce the cost of stamps, becuase the bureaucrates in washington are too worried about re election to allow the USPS to close down unecessary offices.

Raising taxes does hurt the company it drives away business. One example is California, made corporate taxes so high that it literally drove away business. Also, California economy isn't doing to well either. New York is heading in the same direction. You want to solve the problem of shipping jobs over seas, how about giving companies incentive to stay here. Lower thier taxes, remove strict regulations, and business will thrive again. Just take a look at any government run program/organization/agency, and look at how they are run. I alrdy gave four examples above. But there are much more.