Zachary Young

"You need to read more." I dunno, I'm currently reading 'Failed States', 'Reagan : A Life in Letters', 'The SEcret Mulroney Tapes' as well as a few science fiction novels... I think I read plenty thanks "Emery broke the law repeatedly. Just because you don't like a particular law it doesn't mean you can ignore it." Actually you can. To quote St. Thomas Aquinas 'An unjust law is no law', to quote Thoreau 'Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law'. Einstein weighed in on the subject with 'Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it'. Even Heinlein, in the 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' got it right "I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do." "BTW, how did Emery "bring us Sunday shopping"? (I think I sense an Al Gore internet moment coming.)" You need to read more! Here's a good place to start : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Emery "In 1991, Emery defied the province's Sunday shopping laws, spending time in jail. He also campaigned against London's by-law prohibiting sidewalk signs."

"Why fraud?" In the broadest sense, a fraud is a deception made for personal gain. source : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud seems like it fits. "If you are against trademark, you should be able to use anyone's name, any time, any place." Which is why I made the caveat that I am not sure if copying someone's name / trademark is ok. "Sounds like you are recognizing that someone's name or symbol is property. If I want to call myself McDonald's and use the golden aches as my symbol, it should be okay...according to what you said about doing no harm." You keep going on about this... do you think if you say the same thing five times it will help me resolve the contradiction between the fact that misrepresenting yourself is fraudulent but doesn't violate the non-aggression principle? It won't...

"I regard it as theft and an aggressive act. It is why nearly every government in the world believes it is important to recognize intellectual property." Well that's like, your opinion man. As for the second sentence, if everyone government in the world told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it? "I thought you said the free market would jump into fray. Non-profit organizations are usually tax exempt. If you are a free market person, you should be against this. This is a government subsidy." This makes no sense - but I think EVERYONE should be tax exempt, and if you were a free market person (no idea if you are or not) you would to. The government NOT stealing from someone is not a subsidy. "Yet you support non-government organizations, one of the biggest recipient of government aid in the form of exemptions in taxation. The lasts a week or so in the case of the iPhone." Exemption from taxation is not government aid - but I certainly oppose government subsidies (actual subsidies, not these phantom subsidies you refer to). If I decide not to steal your car this week, will that be me giving you a car? "And what is the point of a secret if someone can call themselves Apple and market the iPhone. You said this was okay." Actually, I initially said this was ok, and then before anyone said anything I clarified saying "I'm not sure if this is ok, because I'm against fraud". This is still my stance. "Patent has been exchanged in many cases for the time it is takes to get regulatory approval. Eliminate approval for new drugs by the FDA if you really believe in the free market." I'm more for eliminating the FDA. "Sure companies can profit copying things. Why create them in the first place if someone can market it the same day without compensation?" Objection your honour! Question has already been asked and answered. "And your solutions to issues of copyright, patent and trademark would likely result in a grinding halt to invention and creativity." Source? "Your non-profit solution to research sounds like a leftist notion of supporting invention." Fail... a leftist solution for supporting invention would be 'have the government do it' or 'have the government provide monopolies to companies that do it' - oh hey that's your position!

Oh my bad! Because, like I said, I am against fraud. I confess I have never been asked this specific question before (about copying mcdonalds name) and I will have to think about it. My gut says it's ok - because it does not violate the non aggression principle, but since it seems like fraud I'm not comfortable saying I think it's okay yet.

The U.S. did having it coming though.

I think it's fairly routine for Canadian politicians to fly to America for any serious surgery. Four legs good, two legs better.

Because you are violating the property rights of the owner of the school by using their property without their permission...

"How these compare to your mother I cannot see" Really? It seems pretty obvious to me... they are / were both poor. However charming your prose may be, it does not include an argument of any sort...

Sure, that's fine by me once you get permission from the property owner of the school.

Actually I'm not entirely sure about copying someone's name, because I do oppose fraud.

"Why do you support stealing?" If I download a movie off the interwebz, who has less of something when I do so? Who's property is no longer there? What act of aggression have I committed? "Do you support the end of trademark as well?" Yes. "Can I copy McDonald's and use their symbol and names and market myself as McDonald's?" Yes. "Would that be free market competition or stealing?" The former. "Isn't that simply another form of intellectual property?" Yes. "You are saying that if someone invests millions in a new drug that someone can use the same name and copy the formula the very same day?" Yes. "Obviously the profit incentive would not be there." False. Indeed the patent process in many ways inhibits development, as the process itself is very expensive and can only be utilized by powerful special interests. "I guess someone could spend millions and create a new drug for the sheer joy of creating it but who has that type of money?" Non profit organizations, for one. You suffer from a common fallacy regarding science. Science is not like building boats, where you can hire more people and train them to be boat builders and you will get more boats. You cannot just throw money at science, training 'scientists', giving them government grants and expecting to get a bunch more science. It doesn't work that way. The truth is, for every 100 "scientists" there are 99 frauds and 1 real scientist - because it's a very easy living to get a degree, call yourself a "scientist" and live off the taxpayer for 50 years pushing paper. The real scientists can as much NOT do science as the faux scientists CAN - that is to say it's impossible, as they are absorbed by their work, as unable to put it down as a true writer is able to stop writing. See 'The Nature of Scientific Revolutions' for a more detailed explanation of this. Indeed if we eliminated all government subsidies for research and left it all to the free market we would see these frauds exposed for what they are, and the actual scientists would probably receive much greater funding as the market is great for determining what works and what doesn't - unlike the government (case in point, ethanol). Furthermore there are still large profits to be reaped simply from keeping your techniques a secret, the initial sales you get from a new product and support services from having all the extra knowledge that comes from creating a new product. Furthermore patents decrease innovation as well! A patent allows a company to 'rest on their laurels' where open competition could force them to develop newer and better products. By forbidding competition in a given product for ten or twenty years, other companies are ten or twenty years of experience less able to develop newer and better versions of it or other products that are developed building upon the new technology. And there is all the money wasted on the patent process and the lawsuits as well... Companies can profit off of things without patents - just as companies can profit off of things which are not patented. If you needed a patent to profit, the market in public domain books would not exist. "Even Adam Smith knew there was limits in the free market. If there wasn't, we'd still have slavery." Adam Smith also was a proponent of the ridiculous 'labour theory of value', which is so absurd even a small child should be able to disprove it. He is no God...

I disagree, I feel there should be no law against discrimination. The government has no business telling people how they can use their property, so long as that property is not used in a violent manner against another. If a business does not want to hire someone, for any reason, that is there business - the claim otherwise contains within it the assumption that the business is actually the property of the government, a claim which I find abhorrent. Property rights (including self ownership) are absolute - indeed they are the only right, and from which all other rights are derived.

"If there's any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it's flawed logic. I simply can't accept that. It's unacceptable to think that there's any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective, Terry." On this subject President Bush is very much mistaken, as the Unites States Government is the largest supporter of terrorism in the world - this, I suppose, is why Bush commands his subjects never to think these forbidden thoughts, because they are terribly true.

Capitalism does work. If you're going to critique it, I'd probably want to source something a little bit more impressive than some movie with Marilyn Monroe. Communism on the other hand does not work - not even in theory. Why? Because absent a price structure, rational economic calculation is impossible.

"How can a leader that improved the living conditions of his people, safeguarded the socialist order from invaders and spies and ensured that freedom, democracy and socialism would exist in the USSR, be ever considered a villain?" I dunno, maybe because he was responsible for the death of more people than Hitler? Just a thought.

"There are around 60% of seniors in our area living on Old Age Pension in our area, this means that they get around $900 to $15,000 a year to live on. How could they afford to pay almost half of this for health care?" Moonlighting at Walmart as greeters FTW. Whenever the cry for privatization is brought up, there are those who ask 'but what about the poor'? The truth is that socialism has never helped the poor - it is only under capitalism that the standard of living for the poor has been elevated to any meaningful degree. How will the poor be able to eat, if we do not have the government give away the food supplies? How will the poor be able to wear clothes, if we do not have government give away clothing? As a matter of fact, as the child of a very poor single mother, I am in the unique position to answer my question. We eat because my mother was frugal and did not waste money on alcohol or drugs or fancy clothes - instead she bought staple foods and we bought clothes at the salvation army (clothing that was charitably donated and sold for a pittance). It is important to note that the government giving away health care does not make it free - it must still be paid for. Free market health care would cost less and be of higher quality. For those who are truly desperate, there will always be enough charity - and if we adopt a fully free market system, we will see so much prosperity that those who are truly desperate will be few in number, and those who give charitably are of a much greater number. The reason there are so many seniors in your area of such a level of poverty is an indictment against the current system, not a defense of it.

Is free trade really that good for Canadians? Yes. Is NAFTA free trade? No. For more detailed answers, go read a intro to economics textbook.

Abolish it. The censorship of controversial opinions is not something we should allow in a free society.

Ethanol is a fraud and a scam and compelling proof that only the free market can accurately determine the most efficient energy sources. Government is too stupid to be put in charge of our energy needs.

No we really don't. A carbon tax would be akin to throwing a monkey wrench into the economy - which in fact is the desire of the green movement, which is really an anti-capitalist facade. There is no proven link between carbon and increases in global temperature, despite the fact that billions have been spent trying to find one, so I think we should hold off on destroying our economy before we can find proof that there is a point to destroying our economy. Note even if this was the right solution, whether Canada does it or not is completely unimportant relative to global warming, since we are nothing compared to China, India and the United States, which makes the "OMG WE MIGHT ALL DIE IF WE DON'T DO THIS" argument particularly useless and the "OMG YOURE GONNA PUT EVERYONE OUT OF WORK YOU IDIOT LEFTARDS" argument particularly compelling.

The first post was not so thinly veiled racism and I'm not going to read this thread because I'm sure it's more of the same. We should adopt a policy of open borders and allow anyone who wishes to immigrate to do so - but before we do this we must abolish the welfare state, although even if we didn't it would collapse within a few years of an open border regime as it became rapidly untenable - but this would be a chaotic transition and undesirable.

We weren't always so poor you know. In the fifties we had the second highest per capita income in the G8. Sadly, since that time we have walked down a path that is going to end with us as a third world nation. Why? I could give you a technical answer about capital consumption and the decline in savings but let's just sum it up in three words : Bloated Welfare State. What we need to do is abolish about 90% of the government and the taxes that are necessary to pay for it (income tax, GST, gas taxes). We can pay off our debt by selling the governments massive land holdings / crown corporations.

"Why would anyone create or invent anything if it was just going to be copied?" The same reason that is the explanation of all human action, to achieve their various ends - most likely to profit off of it, but some people also get joy from the act of creation itself. Why do you support government created monopolies? Do you feel that a monopoly will result in a superior product or a lower price to the consumer? What do you have against free market competition?

Keep laughing chuckles.

"You really think it's authoritarian to track chronic criminals? You must find the use of prisons to be intolerable." Yes, the government monitoring it's citizens is authoritarian, go read some Orwell asap.