Political Theory

Re: List: The world’s best inventions weren’t made for profit.

Magnus — Sat, 10 May 2008 19:22:47 GMT

If we are serious about convincing this guy "Edward" about the virtues of libertarianism, then there is one important difference in the political mentality between us and him that we must identify and overbridge.

Ayn Rand was right when she talked about how we need to revive philosophy. My interpretation of what she meant by that is similar to Stephan Molenuex podcasts about how we need to be loyal only too the truth and not to people. This is at the very core of our beliefs, and if we are serious about it we should never defend anyone who claims too be a libertarian just for the sake that they call themself libertarian only statists and collectivists believe that one need to defend concepts and leaders but we should never fall for that trick.

When this Edward guy talks about how "we libertarians" do this, or "believe that", he is just trying to provoke us into playing his own socialist game of tribalism where we are identifying our political belifes, not stemming from philosophy but from blind loyalty to ones supposed leaders or community. It is completely irrelevant for a true libertarian since we know that to be free, is to never want to be dominated.

Freedom is not a value in itself, rather you LIVE free! I believe that our human nature and our history teaches us that mans search for freedom is just as powerful as mans wish to be dominated and ruled. The fundamental difference between Edward and is likes and us, should be that we are willing to live free no matter what! Edwards pathetic attepts of identifying us as a homogenus group is the first sign of a much wider political mentality stemming from a primitive tribal behaviour. Remember those bullies at school, who had to make other people feel bad about themself so that they could feel good about themself? Edwards desperate attept at identifying us as a group is followed by the nececity to look down on us so that he can sleep good tonight knowing that the world and it's inhabitants can be easily grouped and understood, not as individuals but as collectives with one single will. The final step is to simply proclaim that my collective is better than you collective. No logic, no reason needed.

Re: List: The world’s best inventions weren’t made for profit.

Remnant — Sat, 10 May 2008 13:25:57 GMT

Edward

May I draw your attention to this book, "The Economic Laws of Scientific Research" by Terence Kealey? http://www.amazon.com/Economic-Laws-Scientific-Research/dp/0312128479

Regards

Chris.

Re: List: The world’s best inventions weren’t made for profit.

liberty student — Sat, 10 May 2008 13:06:00 GMT

I know that Google can index PDF files into it's search results, but I'm not sure that Yahoo and MSN have this technology. Not to mention that I don't think PDFs rank well in searches.

I was thinking of exporting all of the text to a website.

I love books, but the future of information is on the web...

Re: List: The world’s best inventions weren’t made for profit.

jtucker — Sat, 10 May 2008 12:33:41 GMT

No exclusive rights. We would never seek exclusive rights actually. the whole point is to spread information. So we have rights but the publisher has completely lost interest so there is no reason no to print and distribute as far as possible. I would love to print it but it just isn't possible. For one thing the original photos were actually in color, if you can believe it. Also, I'm learning that photos in general can't really be republished from a printing because the paper bleeds through and the quality becomes seriously diminished. I learned all this on this book in particular, which i tried to have scanned in about 5 different formats before I gave up. It's sad. And color would be unthinkable for printing prices. I have no idea how this was done in the old days.

Someone might consider just exporting the text alone and putting it out as a monograph. Lots of work there.

Re: List: The world’s best inventions weren’t made for profit.

liberty student — Sat, 10 May 2008 05:04:15 GMT

jtucker:

Have you seen this book? We spent lots of time bookmarking and scanning the thing, and it can't be printed because it would be too expensive and it has too many photos. You need the original plates for that. Anyway, it is a great answer to the claim that government is responsible for the best inventions. This book is a joy. I sure as heck wished we could print it again! We even got the permissions but the price is too high and it wouldn't be possible. So at least it lives on the internet. Flatter me please by clicking on the link and looking around at this treasure.

I looked, I am impressed. Does the LvMI hold the exclusive rights to it? Or is something we can disseminate? I think it would be a cool project to get it shared around...

Re: List: The world’s best inventions weren’t made for profit.

Twirlcan — Sat, 10 May 2008 04:11:29 GMT

Ahhh..thanks for the link. I cannot believe I never heard of it. I had hear of SLUG and now it makes more sense.

Re: List: The world’s best inventions weren’t made for profit.

Paul — Sat, 10 May 2008 03:54:26 GMT

Twirlcan:

I bow to your superior geekiness since I have no idea what you are writing about. You would do well in an IT job interview. Very well.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolics

Re: List: The world’s best inventions weren’t made for profit.

MacFall — Sat, 10 May 2008 03:42:49 GMT

jtucker:

Have you seen this book? We spent lots of time bookmarking and scanning the thing, and it can't be printed because it would be too expensive and it has too many photos. You need the original plates for that. Anyway, it is a great answer to the claim that government is responsible for the best inventions. This book is a joy. I sure as heck wished we could print it again! We even got the permissions but the price is too high and it wouldn't be possible. So at least it lives on the internet. Flatter me please by clicking on the link and looking around at this treasure.

I started it, and wow. I'm going to print it off in sections at my school's computer lab and put it in a big binder. Fantastic read; I hope you can print it again soon. I'd definately buy it.

Re: List: The world’s best inventions weren’t made for profit.

Twirlcan — Sat, 10 May 2008 03:30:00 GMT

Paul:

ITYM Genera-derivative on a 96 bit Ivory-derivative or something :)

I bow to your superior geekiness since I have no idea what you are writing about. You would do well in an IT job interview. Very well.

Re: List: The world’s best inventions weren’t made for profit.

Twirlcan — Sat, 10 May 2008 03:27:25 GMT

jtucker:

Have you seen this book?

Now I have. I just skimmed it and it would be a good book to print again but the internet will have to do. Thank those who did the scanning and bookmarking for me.

I cannot wait to read about Buck Duke. His chapter would never be included if this book was written today.

Re: List: The world’s best inventions weren’t made for profit.

Paul — Sat, 10 May 2008 01:01:11 GMT

Twirlcan:

If the better product done for just the love of technology always won we would be writing these posts now using OpenVMS on a 64 bit Alpha processor.

ITYM Genera-derivative on a 96 bit Ivory-derivative or something :)

Re: List: The world’s best inventions weren’t made for profit.

Twirlcan — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:14:53 GMT

Tesla was a genius. Smarter than Edison. But he was terrible at marketing. But luckily there was George Westinghouse...a guy who saved countless lives with the invenion of the airbrake...who realised that more money was to be had more conveniently with Teslas AC power.

Better products don't always win, but thanks to Westinghouse they did.

Tesla did invent radio but he never tried to sell it like Marconi did. Tesla had a natural genious and Marconi had a tireless work ethic, and the work ethic made Marconi wealthy and Tesla fed pigeons in a park. If there was no Marconi, Edison, Westinghouse and only the genius of Tesla to bring us into the modern world we would have been stuck with a few demonstrations and theories locked away somewhere.

If the better product done for just the love of technology always won we would be writing these posts now using OpenVMS on a 64 bit Alpha processor. But the really smart people at DEC never promoted or developed thier systems to be used by regular folks and they were shockingly expensive (and still are). But a terrible operating system on a flimsy chip is what brought computing to the world due to budget conscious consumers and nerds with a love of technology and profit.

Re: List: The world’s best inventions weren’t made for profit.

BlackSheep — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:50:15 GMT

With regard to the Internet, I'm pretty sure Bell Labs already played with computer networks in Multics and all. I believe some simple networks were already used to avoid going physically to the mainframe to put a program in queue and get the result. What government did with Arpanet was to standardize it and get it going. Nowadays, of course a lot of the Inernet Backbones are maintained by big companies like IBM and SUN, not governments.

Re: List: The world’s best inventions weren’t made for profit.

scineram — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:21:40 GMT

majevska:
I think we can learn some lessons from the OP's misconception of us. His view of libertarianism is, sadly, the view most people have of it. The more radical, anarchist/extreme minarchist wing of libertarianism is virtually unknown to most people. What is known, is watered down "conservatives who smoke pot" vulgar libertarianism. This needs to be changed.

Which is worse?

Bill Maher calling himself libertarian,

or Glenn Beck calling himself libertarian?

Re: List: The world’s best inventions weren’t made for profit.

jtucker — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:16:37 GMT

Have you seen this book? We spent lots of time bookmarking and scanning the thing, and it can't be printed because it would be too expensive and it has too many photos. You need the original plates for that. Anyway, it is a great answer to the claim that government is responsible for the best inventions. This book is a joy. I sure as heck wished we could print it again! We even got the permissions but the price is too high and it wouldn't be possible. So at least it lives on the internet. Flatter me please by clicking on the link and looking around at this treasure.