Is it just me? The Internet seems to be really degrading itself now. A tour through various websites is a light show, with flash ads jumping at you from every direction, text superimposing itself over the text you want to read, and what were once known as “obnoxious pop-ups” reappearing in the form of obnoxious boxes that swell up in our faces if the cursor accidentally hits a trigger word.
And Google, the search engine that distinguished itself from the others by offering true results based on popularity instead of back-door payments, is almost entirely given over to advertising results. You have to scroll deep down a page to get true results these days.
The real business of web pages, the content, is now a left-hand affair, taking up about half the screen. The rest of the page is devoted to ads and links to ads. A visit to most web sites for any kind of video content will deliver what is known as a “pre-runroll”, and ad that you must try to ignore before you are allowed to view the content you are after.
All of this comes to mind because Steve and I were looking for Glenn Greenwald’s Radio show. Click on that link, and you will first be subjected to an annoying full-page ad, and you have to find the button to close it. The page below flashes and annoys, in customary fashion. But then another ad appears, this one imposing itself over the text you want to read. This ad will not close. You have to guess what is behind it.
It was only a matter of time before the Internet, a taxpayer invention, was taken over by that thing they call the “free market” – carnival barkers, whores in dark alleys, snake oil salesmen and, everywhere you look, Google. But I repeat myself.
Enjoy the page your are now reading, free of flashdancing and pop-ups. Most places you go for content, and get hit with shit. Here we are more up front.
Piece of Mindful 
I guess the content for Greenwald’s show just be paid for by taxpayers, right? How about the people that like to go to Salon buy subscriptions. I bet if enough of you did the number of commercials would be reduced. But since some people have the misconception that content has something to do with government funding of basic research you’ll have to put up with that “crap.”
For the amount of free content that the internet provides – compared to the amount that only 20 years ago we had to buy – it seems that dealing with pesky ads represents a pretty good deal. It will get worse if you want to figure out how to keep all this content cheap to end users but someone has to pay for Greenwald. In the mean time enjoy what you have and stop whining.
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Two things: ONe, I’m surprised that, if you believe in markets, that you complain about the market rather than try to understand what it is telling you. If all of that information was valuable, people would pay for it. When it goes away, something will take its place. The Internet is the ideal medium for the free exchange of information. Deal with it.
Secondly, we all have so much stuff that advertising has to work to stimulate us to buy things we neither want nor need. It has to create wants. To do so it must annoy us to get our attention, and once it has that attention, it is to convince us, through non-rational processes, that we want things. It is to subvert our intellects.
That’s not good.
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What do you mean that I’m ignoring the market? That’s crazy talk. The market is causing content providers to sell ad space.
And I don’t care about your annoyance quotient. You don’t like it, don’t got there.
Who’s going to pay Greewald?
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Re Greenwald, the model is not yet understood. It may be that we have to buy his content via other means. Yeah, he is either paid or goes away, but delivery amidst a light circus and ads that overlay his content is not exactly a good marketing strategy.
Advertising n AM radio is overbearing and annoying, so I don’t listen to it. Instead, if I like a show, I subscribe to its podcast. In two cases I pay money for those shows. The money goes directly to the host company without having to endure the humiliation of penis enlargement, debt relief, and so forth. If I go to a website and I am hit right away by intrusive ads, I leave right away. My tolerance quotient for annoyance is very low.
Internet marketing is in its infancy. They only know annoy and undermine, and it is not working well. IN terms of selling stuff, the Net is good for a lot of stuff, like porn and computers and books.
Content – ain’t working so well.
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Now you’re arguing against your first proposition – that the market isn’t working. But by the fact that you have the choice to leave you admit that the market is working.
The model may fail indeed but that doesn’t mean that market is no good at price discovery. If the cost of the the annoyance is too high you’ll not participate in the market. Eventually the market will find what that price of annoyance is. But it has nothing to do with what the basic research the government paid in the creation of the technology.
But, again, if you don’t like it don’t participate and stop whining. I find the cost to be so little for being able to get information that I’m willing to put up with significantly more noise. You just sound like a whiner to me.
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Now you are misinterpreting me … I was merely mocking you a little for saying that we have to pay for information on the Internet when it’s obvious that people don’t want to do that. You were complaining, as I read it, that people weren’t behaving properly while I was saying that there is no proper.
The medium will define itself. No one knew in the beginning that email would be the big thing, and no one foresaw social networking or YouTube. It’s really fun to watch it play out. (Porn – we all knew about. It was right there and right away.)
And I agree that all of that information at your fingertips is really cool – I suspect that people just don’t like to read on the computer screen. Not that many of us read anyway.
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I don’t know what you interpreted. I just said you were whining. And I’m sticking to that.
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Now it may well be true that I am whining, but that is not all you said.
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First, the internet was not a “taxpayer invention” – which I assume you mean by government (I’m sure the guy who invented it pays taxes).
Secondly, it was only after DARPA closed their experiment that the Internet became “The Internet” – government played with it along with universities, and it had very few nodes and was slow as glaciers.
The market took it over, there are millions of nodes and it is over a hundred times faster (for you – for others, it is a thousand times faster) – while the price you pay has fallen
For you, that is a failure.
Sure, advertising sucks – but the alternative; do you want to pay more? If you want government to subsidize it, where do you think government is getting its money – from a money tree (well, yeah, that’s true).
You want a free lunch, sir.
But a free lunch doesn’t, never has, and never will exist.
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No, quite the contrary – if advertising goes away, if we don’t have freight carriers for content, a whole lot of unworthy content will go away. No big deal. Flowers will grow in shit. The advertising model is not the be-all-end-all, and not the only alternative. I think of it as the least attractive one, as it is so demeaning. Pay-for-content is OK by me – like I say, I pay radio hosts directly rather than endure advertising.
And you are right about how the Internet has taken off due to market forces. I don’t think you understand the basic concept though – that government undertakes expensive research (often military research with useful fallout, like GPS) that does not yield enough prospect of payoff, and when it has success, turns it over to the private sector. It’s called “advancing commerce”, and is a useful government function. Because g0overnment did the basic research, and because of market forces, it’s been a bonanza.
Think back to when government subsidized … probably before your time but not mine … telegraphs and railroads. It’s a partnership.
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Yes, such partnership to the loss of the consumer.
Telegraph monopoly led to the Telephone monopoly.
Railroad monopoly created the Rail Barons – which, interestingly, almost every ‘subsidized’ railroad went belly up.
GPS is a poor example.
Since free market companies are expressly excluded from space (that is, satellite territory is ‘assigned’ by governments to only other governments) – thinking that a free market creation of such a thing is illogical.
However, GPS – again – demonstrates the free market and failure of government in a market.
It took free market companies less than a decade to make GPS pervasive from everything from a car to a phone.
Government didn’t do ‘dick all’ with it, except kill people.
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And if you want to build Google V.2, go right ahead.
The guys at Google didn’t like Alta Vista (do you remember that one – the leader in internet search), so they built Google.
The free market works like that. If you don’t like it, get off your sorry butt and build your own. Who knows? You may become another stinking billionaire socialist!
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Right now Bing is negotiating with HP (?-check me on that) to get them to exclude all Google access to their domains. The market is restricting access. And then there is net neutrality – the desire of large players to keep small players out of the playground that they built.
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“The Market is restricting access”
Gee, Mark. I guess in the same way you restrict access to your living room….
Either you have a right to your private property or you don’t …. and if you don’t allow it to others, you lose yours too.
Net neutrality is simply another government granted monopoly. How can there be ‘neutrality’ when you have to pay government lots of money to even enter the marketplace?
It is simply a way the big guys are using government power to squash out competition.
(See we agree – but you think its a problem with the market, whereas it is the abuse of government power in a marketplace where it has no place whatsoever).
But, of course, I’m sure you’ll demand more government to ‘fix it’.
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This is where you lose me, when you see the concentration that naturally happens in unregulated markets, concentration that eventually takes control of government, as a defect of government, and not unregulated markets.
Government’s job with the Internet to to maintain a level playing field with equal access for all players. Private power does not want that.
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Correct.
First, any “concentration” in a Free Market is temporary.
“Concentration” in this context is directly equal to “Profitable”.
In a Free Market, profit always attracts more actors. This is what money seeks – a multiplication of their capital.
So when a part of the market demonstrates “profit”, actors WILL appear to take advantage of it.
Thus, in a free market, your theory of concentration is, at best, temporary.
Continuing….
This process becomes corrupted if government is introduced.
Concentration of capital becomes a target as well as a weapon when government becomes involved in the market place.
Government want to seize the wealth for its own nefarious purposes – like war.
Capitalists want to save their wealth from such seizure.
The compromise – capitalists elites will give money to politicians and political needs in return for government to guarantee their profit.
Thus, it is not the concentration of wealth that is the problem – as described, the market naturally manages whatever outcome – it is the root desire of government to seize that wealth that creates the series of consequences that lead to tyranny.
What they want, and what they can do are wholly different things
I want a Ferrari – but it is what I can do that determines whether I have a Ferrari or a Lada.
As soon as government demonstrates its will to act in any part of society, it will attract those who will use such violent power to seize their desires within that part of society.
If you want government to ‘level’ some ‘playing field’ of free men, you will demonstrate the use of violent power upon free man.
Evil men will notice this, and work to claim control of the violent power so to twist the ‘field’ to their own desires.
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See below …
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Boys, boys, boys. Advertising is indeed subsidized, fully deductible as a busiess expense. Drop, or cap, the expense deduction
and advertising no longer becomes a prime tool of the Big getting bigger. It’s one of the great injustices that gives big
corporations an unfair competetive advantage over small business, Wall Street over Main Street.
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Whether subsidized or not, the ability to do sophisticated advertising with the necessary psychological profiling and identification of key traits to trigger impulsive buying behavior is an expensive undertaking. The only way to counter it is education – that is, once a person realizes what the advertiser is up to, the ad ceases too be effective.
Advertising resistance, the wonders of compound interest, real nutrition, critical thinking – these all seem to be worthy subjects to teach in our schools.
No way.
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For me, the most annoying advertising is agribusiness and oil companies sponsoring PBS news and the tag line insisting it couldn’t happen “without the support of viewers like you.” Twisted.
I agree education can have a positive influence on people/consumers. It’s hard for me to imagine the schools taking this seriously. They seek out advertising dollars for added revenue, and spend money on advertising.
But how much would companies spend on expensive psycological profiling, focus groups, production and air time if it wasn’t fully deductible? Would it still be worth it just to gain market share and brand recognition? Lobbyists work pretty hard and are paid a lot of money finding ways for Congress to exempt their clients from paying corporate taxes.
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Black Flag: I cannot begin to deal with you in the manner that you dissect an argument down to fine points, each of which requires a separate response … that is, I can, but I don’t want to. I have nothing to profit by doing so, and my expenditure of time is is not justified. Each small response only restates the larger point I am about to make.
I know what you are going to say about everything. You are going to say that the market self-regulates and corrects all problems over time, and that governments only interfere with market self-regulation. Further, you have carried your ideology to an extreme by claiming that every act of regulation or interference in a market by government is “violence.”
I’m going to ease your burden a bit here. I’m going to divest you of the notion of the “market.” It doesn’t exist.
There are only humans, and human interaction. Humans are not perfect, ergo their interactions do not always lead to socially desirable outcomes, nor does that undesirable fallout heal itself. What you call a market is a system of actions and reactions, each logical in its tight context. For instance, in the community where I grew up, Billings, it was completely logical for a refinery in Laurel, up the road from Billings, to dump its effluence in the Yellowstone river untreated. Billings, downstream, had to pay to treat its water to remove Laurel’s contaminants.
I won’t go forward with that story or provide any other examples, though they are legion. People interact to gain benefit, but not all people are alike. Some are sociopaths -lacking consciences, and visit intolerable violence on others, forcing them to pay exorbitant prices, enslaving them, stealing their property, and leaving them no remedy outside of violence. These sociopaths also bribe government officials to work against the people who depend on government to provide a safe and clean environment.
Even without the sociopathic tendencies of a few, who tend to become the barons of industry, people externalize their costs-dump them on others – whenever they can. Good people do bad things because in the tight circumstance of the action, it is immediately beneficial, though harmful to others.
There is no “market”. There are only humans. Human actions and interactions do not always lead to socially desirable outcomes. Therefore, together, acting as one, we agree among ourselves to curb our most detrimental impulses. We tell the Laurel refinery that it must treat its own water, and only dump treated water in the Yellowstone River.
It’s called government. It’s humans bonding together to control the worst features of our natural interactions. We do so voluntarily.
Governments are real, and work to great advantage, but sociopaths do not like governments, and work to either control or undermine them. It’s an ongoing battle. Your solution – to eliminate government because markets always self-correct, is Utopian nonsense. It is not only wrong, its antisocial in the extreme. It’s Randian, and she was no social treat. She was mentally ill. A diseased tree will not yield healthy fruit.
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Pick one and run with it.
I’m not one to claim that just because you don’t happen respond to something means “I won/You lost”.
I see our ‘chat’ more of a dialogue than a debate.
No you don’t.
Correct.
You see, free men in voluntary choice is the optimum operation of any system.
To counter this, you have to prove that men is better off as a slave to someone else by force.
That is a very hard task for you to do.
Not true.
“True” Law – that is, prohibitions, mitigation, prevention and restitution due to the use or threat of initiation of violence is core to civilization. I support these ‘regulations’.
My position is that government requires initiation of violence to enforce its monopoly on violence – therefore, is precisely the wrong tool to defend the People from those that use violence
Thus, government – which at its core initiates violence – is precisely the wrong instrument in a system where free and voluntary trade is optimum.
Of course it exists.
This is what it is not. It is not a figment of your imagination, like government.
It is a description of the aggregate choices of men in action.
A point here. Humans do interact with each, true.
But the market is more than that. It is also humans interacting with the Nature (as I say, Universe), too.
Thus it is Humans in action.
All true.
However, humans tend to void undesirable outcomes and seek more desirable ones.
Further, humans are learning animals. Over trial and error, we have discovered a few truths regarding human action.
Thus, as humans, we tend to learn from mistakes so to avoid undesirable outcomes.
What your hypothesis is predicated on is that humans do not and cannot learn. Thus, there is no corrective behavior in your theory.
Humans, once engaged, will continue undesirable behavior unless by force they are stopped.
You theory, again, depends on brain-less humans and such a dependency will undermine your theory in totality.
Not accurate. You misplace ‘logical’ in the context.
Humans act. Humans act for many reasons, many by emotional (by definition, irrational and illogical), and often by reason.
The free market does not distinguish between the two, because it cannot. I cannot discern from my position the reasoning for your action. Those choices are made by you, based on your circumstances, created by your past actions and planned, perhaps, by a future desire.
Whether your choices are derived by an unreasoned or reasoned mind cannot be discovered by my observation due to the inability to know your past, present or future desire. It looks the same to me.
The logic, therefore, of human action is wholly based on the premise that humans do act. And they act in a manner that will tend to achieve their desires.
Further, to live, all men need resources and goods. Thus, men will act in a manner to obtain those goods so that this man can achieve his desire.
What part do you believe this is ‘logical’?
Or have you mixed up ‘felt justified’ with ‘logical’?
Logic is a series of arguments that do not contradict themselves. However, that does not make an argument ‘true’. The premise of the argument is also evaluated.
I can claim a premise that positive whole numbers do not exist.
I can demonstrate perfect logic in my new number system. However, my perfect logic does not prove that my premise is true.
The only justified use of violence is to protect, mitigate, repulse and repair from the initiation of violence.
“Forcing” them to pay?? You mean they hold a gun to your head….or are you meaning they refuse to sell at your price, and that simply makes you mad???
“Enslaving” them?? You mean they chain them to their machines….or are you meaning that men have to actually do real work before they get paid for it???
Stealing…yep, and whether it is a company or it is government.
Inflicting violence…yep, and whether it is a company, or it is government.
It is a contradiction to ask government to provide a safe and clean environment. They cannot provide this.
What government does is legislate unsafe and polluted environments – determining precisely how unsafe it will be, and how polluted it will be – with no regard or recourse to you if you disagree.
Sociopaths gather in government, not industry.
It is government, with its legal violence, is most attract.
In industry, the use of violence is prohibited and violently resisted.
However, in government, any resistance to the violence of government is, actually, illegal – and will be met with overwhelming response of more legal violence, including support by the citizens on the side of legal violence.
Such a tool as that is much more desired by the pyscho’s.
Good people do bad things because of ‘practicality’ has been taught to be more important then ‘principle’.
Government teaches this. The very definition of ‘playing politics’ is the compromise of prinicples so to achieve a political (ie: practical) outcome.
It always surprises me that those the promote government as an answer are always surprised by the lack of any principles in their allies.
You contradict yourself.
First, you attempt to demonstrate that humans are irrational and random.
Then, you believe you can make them act in unison and rational – as ‘one’.
Impossible.
We are not insects organized for the collective.
There is no one, underlying, centralized, desire for all men.
Makes sense to me.
Pollution is a violation of my rights – it men imposing upon other free men.
This has nothing to do with a ‘collective’.
No, it is called free men with human rights.
Neither are protected by government and both are destroyed by government.
Thus, government is precisely the wrong tool to use.
It is the worst of human action – its wanton violence – wholly centralized and self-justified.
There is nothing voluntary in government.
Only free men act voluntarily.
I disagree.
Sociopaths love government. It gives them the legal tool of violence over non-violent men. And, indeed, it is a great advantage to them.
Without it, violent sociopaths would risk their own lives and limbs attacking non-violent (but resistant) men.
With legal violence, if the non-violent resist, the non-violent are further attacked by the rest of the society as well. Nothing could be sweeter for men of evil – the slaves keeping the other slaves in line.
Yes, and it is a battle of the most highest stakes.
Government vs. Civilization. There will be can only be one winner.
The free market always self-corrects. Unprofitable businesses fail. Profitable ones succeed.
Immoral action degrades society and the individual, and is avoided, and thus is unrewarded.
Moral action improves society and the individual and is sought, and thus is rewarded.
The actions of free men in voluntary trade and action is the root core of society and civilization – not the centralization of violence.
I do not know what you mean when you say this.
I am not adequately trained to diagnose the past mental health of a dead person.
I wholly agree.
So let’s look at the root of the tree – it will indeed tell us the health of its fruit.
All government at its core requires the monopolization of initiation of violence to enforce itself and its edicts.
Its root – its core – is the use of violence on non-violent men.
The root of free market is the voluntary choice and agreements of free men in action. It’s fruit is free choice, free of force of violence.
I’ll gorge on that fruit.
And you can even have ‘my share’ of the disease of government, if you’d like.
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I don’t need a degree in psychology to know that Ted Bundy was loopy, nor Ayn Rand. Read about her behaviors throughout her life. She wasn’t right.
And your misunderstanding is so basic, your detachment so complete, that you have a finger-snap answer for every dilemma your philosophy poses. I’ve told you something very basic: It doesn’t work. That’s why you don’t see much of it. People are not stupid.
Governments, your “free markets”, it all is like fire – a little bit is good, too much can be harmful. It takes intelligent humans to make it work. It’s always hard.
What were the people a Billings to do about the refinery in Laurel? Go down and pay them not to pollute the commons? There’s a name for that: Extortion. The entity we formed, state government, was more powerful than the refinery, and we were able to pass laws to force them to behave.
The system worked! Welcome to life.
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I do not believe he was ‘loopy’ at all.
He was, by reports, very intelligent and detailed.
I do not label others who may be different as ‘loopy’.
Evil, yes, for Bundy.
Loopy, I do not think so. But as I said, I do not know about the minds of dead people I have never met.
Because someone may act differently, believe differently and make different choices does not make them mentally ill.
Yep.
Freedom, Zero Aggression and Life.
Hard to argue against, I know.
It works wonderfully. You taste it, often, everyday.
It works so well, you only notice it when evil men interfere with it by using violence.
The free market needs no designer nor controller.
It is free men in voluntary trade. No fiddling or steering wheel required.
What would you do if your neighbor was trying to burn down your house?
That might work.
If you don’t wan to do that, do something else.
A mistake: you did not form any state government. It was well there before even your father was born.
Why do you believe there needed to be more law? Do you understand what you actually did?
You legislated the pollution.
The law already existed – a man cannot harm another man.
But instead, using the wrong tool, now you have legislated that they can harm you a little less then they were before.
Bizarrely, you think you won.
The system is perverted. You applied perversion to a perverted system to get an even more perverted outcome – you get to be poisoned at a less rate than before.
I suppose, to some, that may seem like something worked.
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I’m working on a rebuttal for this. It will be used in the future against you, and at this time, Big Swede and Craig Moore. Stay tuned to posts to follow for more.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Chatelier_principle
Le Chartelier’s Principle
Negative feedbacks govern stable systems and mechanisms materialize that act against the initial changes;
-the longer timescale one considers, the more negative feedbacks – e.g. channels to consume excessive “commodity” in the environment;
-the slower types of responses we consider, the more negative the total feedback factor is likely to be….
This applies to a free market economy – for example, it explain why your “concentration of wealth theory” cannot happen over a long term in a free market – Any change in status quo prompts an opposing reaction in the responding system.
The bulge of wealth disturbs the status quo – the system responds by flooding that market with more actors eager to get in on the profits – which levels the wealth bulge and evaporates the ‘concentration’.
PS: This is not me saying this, Paul Samuelson (who recently died at the age of 94) won his 1970 economics memorial Nobel prize for this theory as applied to economics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Samuelson
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