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Economist Lester Thurow Calls for Internet Regulat 92

Posted by michael from the standing-behind-it-with-a-club dept.
Richard Finney writes "Reuters is reporting that Lester Thurow, a noted economist, says "I don't think there is any example (of self-regulation) that has ever worked, unless government is standing behind it with a club" in a Yahoo! news story. His comments come in response to the Global Business Dialog on Electronic Commerce's comments on self-regulation of the Internet."

Note that this is (ba-dum-bump) yet another "self-regulation" effort. The companies' goal here is simply to head off legislation such as privacy laws, consumer protections and minimum standards for security of customer data, although they do seem to have mentioned porn regulation as well.

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Economist Lester Thurow Calls for Internet Regulat More

Economist Lester Thurow Calls for Internet Regulat

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  • why? (Score:1)

    by nigiri ( 22248 )
    *sigh* Why does everything have to be regulated? Why can't we have even one little island of freedom in this world?
  • Well, it was only a matter of time before this happenned. Fortunately, nothing really happenned over there. It was another round of blather, yabber, and bullshit aimed at staving off the other inevitability: government (mis)regulation.

    The MIT professor, for the most part, is correct. Unless the governments of the world, on their own or in conjunction with others, make a credible threat to the many corporations that make money off online commerce then nothing substantial will be done. Why? Because it's cheaper and easier to let it fly as things are, which translates into more money into corporate coffers and that means a greater profit margin.

    Wow. This sounds a lot like the Anti-Trust Debate of 19th Century America. The more things change...
  • Are there any organizations that lobby the US government for the kind of freedoms that many Slashdot readers support? I would be willing to contribute money to support an organization that was fighting the US privacy, encryption, censorship, and other policies if I could find an organization with a good track record on these topics.
  • This is not the first time that he has come up with oddball stuff to make the news. Please just let this one go -- relying on Lester for real opinions is like relying on that spam chain mail that you got about the Good Times virus for real system security info.

  • Re:What organizations exist to lobby for freedom? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14, 1999 @05:21AM (#1682644)
    Well, there is the EFF (www.eff.org). They seem to be more or less in line with the minimalist regulatory approach that has worked just fine so far.
  • the first thing that comes to mind is the ACLU. I went to there website and found this http://www.aclu.org/features/f090999a.html
    you might find it interesting.

  • Counterpoint to fascists like Thurow (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    See this current Forbes editorial [forbes.com] for an excellent counterpoint to trendy fascists like Thurow.

    And read Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal [amazon.com] by Ayn Rand (contains several essays by Alan Greenspan) for why antitrust and other government interference is a Very Bad Idea.
    ---Brian Stretch [mindspring.com]

  • The American Civil Liberties Union: http://www.aclu.org

    Its alot more than just internet stuff, but they support the things you listed.

    Also, try http://www.epic.org
  • Lester Thurow is a deranged lunatic who likes to hear himself talk.

    He's been so discredited WRT stock market and interest rates that even Leftists don't listen to him anymore.

    In 95 he loudly complained that Greenspan was being to tight with the money supply by his low interest rates, and he (greenspan) NEEDS to raise interest rates to save the stock market.

    Remember in 92 when he proclaimed the immediate necessity of imposing a $4.50/gallon gas tax in order to "save the economy" (!)? His reasoning was "because Europe does it" (his words)!

    His basic premise is that government needs to control EVERYTHING and every method that government uses to achieve this is fine with him.

    Unlike Marxists, he considers Government control the ends instead of the means.

    He's one of the intellectual forces behind the concept in government that 'you' are not responsible for your actions and 'we' need to force 'you' to behave 'properly'

    he's skeptical about the 'self-regulation' because he wants government control of everything.

    Does that sound fundamentally evil to you?

  • Thurow only has one position (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Everything I've heard or read from Thurow indicates that he has essentially one agenda: anti-corporatism. Once upon a time, he was a brilliant economist. In recent times, he has become pretty boring and one dimensional.
  • Third and move to close. I had more than enough of him when I was in B-School and had to suffer through endless diatribes from guest lecturers who really should have known better about "Why the US needs a MITI equivalent." He was one of the major public voices behind stuff like that. That sort of genteel socialism didn't do the UK any good and only worked in Japan and Germany because of national industrial cultures that had been in progress since Bismark and the Meiji (sp?) Restoration and rock bottom bond rates, NOT MITI and the West German equivalent. Boy, I hadn't realized how long it had been since I had seen his name and how little I missed seeing it.
  • Why does everything have to be regulated?Why can't we have even one little island of freedom in this world?

    Because that freedom gets abused. And to people in general that abuse stands out more than the good qualities. Nobody cares about all the sunny days in fi Florida, but one big storm makes national headlines

    Besides would you trust unregulated companies?
    All the data most people are willing to give for their free internet use, the personal details that are collected by companies like doubleclick, the address/email/phone data needed by online stores/stock-brokers etc. I am quite sure that most people rather have laws or regulations that prevent companies from reselling that data, than absolute freedom.
    I for one would not appreciate it when fi my ISP would record all my online activity, and then sell it together with my home address and telephone number to anyone interested. I can imagine that without legislation/regulation that could well be possible and most likely be quite profitable.
    It is only that most companies do not think it is in THEIR best interest to sell your details, or it would be happening at large scale already.

    Regulation isn't out there to threaten your anonimity, it is meant to ensure your privacy!
    And we will all benefit from clear and enforced policies about the return of merchandise bought online, a clear warranty policy etc.

  • Going to Lester Thurow for a comment on self-regulation is like having Clinton define propriety - you're getting a strongly biased position, not a judgement. A major emphasis of his career has always been to justify and support governmental control of...well, everything. You have to be suspicious of an economist who claims that wealth can't be created, only divvied up differently (his best-known book is called "The Zero-Sum Game"). There's an enormous bug in that reasoning!
  • Every time I hear a rumor about Internet regulation, I have to laugh. How can a group of companies and governments regulate a world wide (excuse the pun) phenomenon? This is very similar to Internet Decency laws. Who is going to police the entire Internet? The Internet will always remain free in some way. There will always be illegal things on the net like warez, copyrighted MP3s, etc. It is impossible to prevent.
    The only way regulation could work is if every government in the entire world was on board. Once you have one little government that is not regulated, all the sites will move there. I just hope the governments and companies of the world are smart enough not to waste billions of dollars trying to do the impossible.
  • Don't overlook the Libertarian Party [lp.org] - they're for strict enforcement of the Bill o' Rights and a consistent, minimal government (police, courts, and national defense), maximum freedom society.
  • This was one of the main reasons the Federalists only centralized certain powers, and left many more to the states - people would be free to "vote with their feet" for the regulatory climate (among other factors) they found desirable. Predictably (but sadly), the federal government has found ways (such as withholding tax proceeds like highway funds from states that won't bow to a federal mandate) around it.

    What makes the Internet so positive for freedom-lovers is that it restores the chance to shop for freer conditions in at least SOME relevant areas!
  • It strikes me that governments are not the most eminently suitable entities you could pick to regulate what people say. Pretty much any regulation of the Internet is bad. Whether governments or corporations do it is not very important, although corporations are probably more likely to do a bad job. Governments (e.g. China, Singapore, U.S., Britain, Germany, France) have not exactly shown themselves to be shining examples of Liberty Showing the Way.

  • Internet already regulates self (Score:4)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Tuesday September 14, 1999 @06:07AM (#1682665) Homepage
    It always interests me to see how countries think that the Internet doesn't regulate itself. Countries have their own rules and the Internet has theirs, which are slightly more liberal, but much more universal. Take, for example, USENET, a prime example of self-regulation if there ever was one. Groups have charters. Group members take their gripes to ISPs and uplinks if problems occur. If there's too much spam coming from a site, a UDP can be put in place. None of these events happen with the help of government. For the most part, binary pictures of naked teens stay in their respective groups and news servers decide whether to carry them.

    The Web has its own form of self-regulation, and it involves linking. If people deem a site of not being worthy, they don't link to it, plain and simple. Porn and violence sites are allowed under the same free speech principles which govern America, but in a much 'freer' context.

    Where the conflict lies is when boundaries cross, just like when countries' rules contradict each other. Who is right where? A Canadian was convicted in Texas of murder and sentenced to death. Canada said it was unfair. Texas told the Canadians to go screw themselves? Who's right? Both? Neither? I say, it happened in Texas, let Texas take care of it. Same holds true for the Internet. If it happens there, let the self-regulation take care of it, but if it crosses boundaries (ie. bomb plans get printed and then get confiscated or porn gets saved and then gets discovered), let the parties involved take care of it.

    In essence, everyone self-governs themselves in a democratic society, and the Internet is just a democracy with no central governing body.
  • Thurow can't come up with a single example of successfully implemented self-regulation without government coercion? How about the MPAA ratings system? The Comics Code Authority? That's just right off the top of my head. (There may have been blustery grandstanding politicians weighing in before those examples were instituted, but any club the gov't may have been carrying would've rung pretty hollow if they'd tried to use it. In this instance, the government has no club at all. What are they going to do, drive all e-business out of the country to Cayman Islands subsidiaries?) So right there he's full of shit. You could even argue that any industry that's ever implemented an "industry standard" of any kind has adopted a self-regulatory mechanism of sorts.

    Furthermore, the Internet isn't a single industry, and attempts to draw parallels between a group of related companies policing themselves and a vague association (the annoyingly-acronymed GDBe) trying to police everyone else are inapt. I think the most that would result from the GDBe's efforts is maybe some kind of "Good Housekeeping" seal of approval for e-commerce sites that adhere to certain privacy/consumer protection/etc. guidelines, and possibly some beneficial anti-governmental intrusion lobbying. So Thurow may have a point, although not the one he thought.
  • The internet is anarchy in all it's beauty. He says "I've never seen a self regulated system that worked" - duh: IT'S WORKING JUST FINE ASSHOLE.

    Can there be no freedom in this world? Will humanity forever be trounced by facist state bastards on one hand and greedy corporate assholes on the other?

    "NO-RULES INTERNET MAKES CONTROL DIFFICULT"

    That about says it all. I'm just about tired of this facist shit. Free Speech takes a back seat to eCommerce? What the hell is this? Incredible! Why do people babble on and on about consumer rights? What ever the fuck happened to citizens rights?

    Kind of a shock seeing this guy is from MIT, the same place Stallman and Noam Chomsky are (does anyone else ever wonder if they know each other?).

  • Well it was bound to happen, but people think that there is a need to control everything. This man is obviously a rightous coward. America is the "Land of the Free and home of the brave. We don't have liberty and justice (albeit somewhat slanted justice sometimes) to sit with our thumbs up our asses and rule the world. And don't be mistaken, we do rule the world, and we do this with our consitution and our freedom. Most people in other countries wish they could live like we do.

    So obviously we need a haven for justice, freedom and liberty, where the rest of the world can try to pursue their dreams of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We regulate things in this country for safety purposes. But if this jerk wants to start a Nazi party, then do it else where. Sure the government controls the airwaves, but i'm against that too. If you don't like it, then don't watch/listen to it. you can change the channel/web page/radio station, unless your fingers are broken.

    Perhaps what this country needs is a re-evaluation of its beliefs. we need to get rid of those money grubbing politicians who think they are in touch. They only come see what you want when they need too.

    ELECT JEDILUKE for California State Senate!

    Elect a computer geek for the state of computer geeks. Have your ideas expressed. Have your thoughts be a loud thorn in the side of the state!

    hehe its a thought. lates
    JediLuke

  • Even Atlas Shrugged conceded the need for government at some level or another. You will note that the companies moving to Colorado still had one - it ran law courts and a police department.

    So sure, we should have a government, and we probably need an army. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with current targets of Internet regulation. So far, I have yet to be convinced that any of it is in the best interest of Internet users.

    D

    ----
  • Paul Krugman, an MIT professor, Slate Magazine [slate.com] columnist and economist I respect, considers Lester Thurow a, shall we say, less-than-gifted theorist. In fact, in a book [amazon.com](Pop Internationalism) I read by Krugman, he more or less dismisses Thurow and his theories of International economic competition between countries as complete junk.

    Thurow throws around metaphors like --"Think of the United States as a giant corporation, a General Motors, say." Then he tells his readers to imagine this giant corporation competing with other ones--Toyota, say.

    But of course, as Krugman points out, this is an utter nonsense metaphor. Countries and economies don't go out of business, as companies do, they don't have anything like the same variables, and in fact the entire metaphor of international economic competition is misleading and worthless.

    All of this is by way of saying that Thurow is by no means respected by real economists; he is a classic interventionist political meddler, as far as they are concerned. So it's not surprising to hear this kind of suggestion coming out of him.

  • Since everyone else is chiming in... Young Americans for Freedom [yaf.com] fights hard for individual rights. In fact, several congresscritters rely on this particular YAFer for info about the net (if I do say so myself!). (Disclaimer: YAF does not support or endorse candidates or propsosed legislation, but IANAL)
  • Get the crypto, Unix, build a business on it, and offer Net access to your employees without snooping.

    Oh and forget about the damned office you don't need one.

    I'd like to see these punks compete with that.

  • Sigh. (Score:5)

    by fable2112 ( 46114 ) on Tuesday September 14, 1999 @06:37AM (#1682673) Homepage

    First of all, what everyone else said about Thurow. He is NOT a credible source.

    Secondly, what ALL attempts to regulate the Internet in any way, shape, or form ignore is one simple yet important principle: The interplay between laws, traditions, and customs.

    To clarify what I mean by this, I'm using roughly the same definitions Isaac Bonewits uses in his writing: A law is something that is written down, that a group is supposed to obey, and if the law is disobeyed, various "punishments" can be meted out by members of the group. Traditions are "how things are done," and they may or may not be written down, but there is no *formal* penalty for breaking them (though there is more often than not an informal one). Customs are common behaviors within a group that develop of their own accord, and they tend to be relatively (though not entirely) flexible.

    In my experience, of the three, traditions are actually the strongest regulator of behavior. The law against under-21 folks drinking doesn't do much to curb the tradition of college frat parties, which are largely attended by those who are under 21. There are a lot of silly, stupid, and essentially unenforceable laws on the books -- remember "I Can't Drive 55?" What about laws against consensual sodomy? What about the supreme silliness of outlawing the hemp plant?

    The point of this little rant of mine is that governments and corporations can pass all the laws and "regulations" they like, but they aren't going to get anywhere. Aside from a few cases that will be prosecuted to "make an example out of," I expect enforcement to be lax and most people to disregard whatever ends up put together.

    Why? Simple. The most important tradition here on the Net is that freedom of information must be maintained at all costs. And we've developed plenty of ways to fight back against those who would try to break that tradition -- everything from black-background web pages up to and including cracking the "bad guy's" system. (Remember the "Department of Injustice" page?)

    This is not to say that I won't fight against any attempt to impose these irrelevant laws -- I'd hate to be, or know, an "example," and I don't think anyone should have to go through that. :)
  • Umm, last time I checked the military was still part of the government!

    I'm curious: How is it that at age 2 you already knew enough to demand to be vaccinated? Maybe your parents had something to do with it? Do you suppose we should just write off those kids unlucky enough to be born to irresponsible parents?

    As for your assertion that you didn't use federal student loans, congratulations for having well-off parents. For those of us who are not born of the manor however, student loans/state universities are often the difference b/w a good job and working at the cannery. And even if you went to a private college you were still the indirect beneficiary of a lot of governmental largesse via federal grants.

    Our taxes are the lowest in the industrialized world. Get over it already.

  • Re:why? (Score:1)

    by Dogun ( 7502 )
    Legislative instinct is what I call it. Everbody has the instinct to muck things up, I propose, but most people are happy with a clean system that works well. However, there are those out there who feel the intense desire to make things more and more convoluted. Evidence? Taxes: gold piece -> current day. I rest my case.
  • As we are, there is no such thing as a "free market": the government subsidizes many industries. In theory, there is, but in practice, the free market amount to corporations getting handouts from the state. The collusion between government and corporation, from both parties, is intense. If the government were to stop it's "meddling", and if companies were not allowed to raid thrid world nations for slave labor, many industries would collapse.
  • Every advocate of increased government control or regulation believes that his plan is the one that government will implement. This is true regardless of whether we are talking about health care, gun control or internet filtering. What advocates of moral and economic fascism like Lester don't understand is that the internet isn't really chaos; it is potentially 5 billion plans, each one carefully regulated by its owner, according to his own ideas. Thus self regulation always works, by definition; it simply doesn't always work exactly the way the people used to wielding power want it to work. Of course this angers them, and they respond in typical fashion; strangling the greatest boon mankind has ever known, murdering it in its infancy. Before it is strong enough to fight back.

    The problem isn't self regulation; we cannot concede to them the moral high ground. We must make these people call it what it is. If they want to change what we choose to say, we can't let them call it a free choice, and we can't let them still call the net free. We have to make them admit that they are trying to stifle us, processing our thoughts like so many parrots, weeding out that which they don't approve of. And we must make them say it loudly, in so many words. Write it one hundred times. No American lawmaker will dare touch us if we make them tell the truth about what they are doing. If we let them deceive themselves and their constituents, I am afraid the Internet as we know it will soon be dead.

    Scudder

    "The Soviet Union could have worked, if only they could have had microchips implanted in their brains."
    Arthur C. Clarke, 3001
  • of the same thing. While I agree with you that the US government is encroaching on our rights in many of the ways you mentioned, these intrusions come more frequently from right-wing, anti "big-guvment" types than any other flavor of politician.

    I don't see any obvious connection between programs such as Head Start and encryption regulations beyond facile "nanny state" comparisons. And you're forgeting that one of our biggest government programs, education, has always been justified by the supposition that democracy requires an educated electorate.

    When Jefferson said "Those who would have security over liberty deserve neither", I strongly doubt that he assumed they were mutually exclusive goals.

  • > Thurow can't come up with a single example of successfully implemented
    > self-regulation without government coercion? How about the MPAA ratings
    > system? The Comics Code Authority? That's just right off the top of my
    > head.

    Actually, I think that was Thurow's point - my understanding is that none of those ratings systems would have come into being without the threat of the "government club" being used on those who didn't comply, and that it's precisely this sort of "self-regulation" (i.e. the government using the ISP industry as its club to spare itself the embarassment of drafting yet another set of unconstitutional laws, only to see them shot down in court again) that he favors.

    IMHO, the government realizes that it can't nullify the First Amendment, but if it can get others to do the dirty work on its behalf in the interest of "e-commerce", it won't have to. IMHO this is the whole point of the "self-regulation" push. (Non-Americans can replace "First Amendment" with whatever guarantees of "free speech" are appropriate to their countries.)

    In the meantime, many others in the responses to this article have done good jobs of pointing folks to articles and sites that debunk Thurow. When even economists appear to agree that Thurow isn't a credible credible source, I think we can safely move on. It sounds to me like Thurow saw a big conference on self-regulation and wanted to put his two Deutschmarks in on behalf of Bertelsmann. Nice try, but no frankfurter.

  • Lester is really an amazing person, in that he is actually an expert at being wrong. He shares with Paul Ehrlich the mind-boggling trait of being wrong more consistently than most experts are right. It seems to me that someone could get a reputation as a great economist by simply reading everything he writes and publishing the opposite as quickly as possible.
  • It can be argued that it is in a company's best interest to maintain a high degree of openness when the Internet is involved. Alienating "netizens" can be a lot more dangerous than alienating a traditional customer base, due to the high degree of empowerment the average netizen has. The fellows at the Cluetrain Manifesto (www.cluetrain.com) figured this out. Their basic premise is that the concept of "company" in the wired world is largely a artificial barrier between consumers and employees (who also happen to be consumers), and that savvy companies will leverage the natural desire for communciation between these groups.

    This is why many companies have decided that selling individual user details, rather than aggregate data, is not prudent. The companies that don't "get it" will slowly, but surely, disappear.

    In regards to the "clear and enforced policies" about return of merchandise, etc., I would direct you to today's Wall Street Journal editorial page. There is an interesting article there about Land's End's refund/return policy, and how Germany is forcing them to not advertise it to keep German companies from having to compete with it. This is a classic example of why government regulation of commerce, net- or traditional, should be handled as laissez-faire as possible!

    And Thurow?

    Thurow has also recently predicted a coming recession in the economy of the U.S., arguing basically that recession was "built-in" to the economy.

    Perhaps what is "built-in" is Thurow's narcissism - I haven't heard much from him in recent years...

  • I don't understand why ALL of these US based politicians don't get that the INTERNET is an international, uncontrolled network of computers.. I can, right now, create a new network called TCharronNET and declare it Internet Law free, as it's NOT the internet.

    Technically speaking, the INTERNET doesn't even exist! It's a network of networks all talking to each other. You simply can't regulate something like that.

    Internet law is like Arizona setting local laws to govern the high seas.
  • "Those who would have security over liberty deserve neither." -Thomas Jefferson

    Didn't Ben Franklin say that?
    (It is one of my favorite quotes.)

    Anyway, while for the most part I'm against government regulation (Censorship) of the internet, and internet taxes and such, I do think that consumer protection and privacy laws might be a "good thing." If a company posts their customers' credit card numbers, or something equally boneheaded, they should be held responsible.

    Furthermore, I think that Corporate regulation (censorship) of the internet is more likely to happen, which is just part of the reason I use a loal ISP. (I wouldn't want an ISP that didn't give me shell account.)
  • Try the Cato Institute [cato.org].

    The ACLU has proven to me that they do not stand for the things that their name would suggest. They have a very juvenile and misguided notion of "rights" which leads them into supporting some pretty gnarly things.

    IMVAO...(why be humble?)
  • "We don't need so damned much government", said the e-mail of the man who never had a serious disease because of vaccines and medicines developed by brilliant scientists who weren't afraid to challenge conventional ideas. He was sitting at a tiny laptop computer, a technological marvel, with a processor developed by engineers at Intel inc. and an OS developed by ruthless egoists with names like Linus and Alan Cox; people who could easily have developed the internet on their own. He chose to buy a Pentium because the Celeron chip was faster and cheaper than any competitor and he chose Linux because it was the best there was. His next computer would be an Athlon, however, because he didn't like the way Intel did business; they finally had viable competition.

    His wife called him from her new digital phone, and asked him to lunch. He accepted of course; being the lead engineer at an aerospace company was hard work, and she only had lunch free once a month. While he was waiting for at the restaurant her he emailed his mother, a teacher at a Lutheran school just south of St. Louis, to tell her that he was flying home that weekend in his old Cessna 152. The Cessna was fine when he bought it in 1982, but he was going to buy a Dassault in January; since their aircraft were subject to fewer FAA regulation-induced design flaws, they handily outperformed anything designed in America. It was cheaper, too, even though he had to pay a grotesque import tax. His mother would be happy to see him, since his father was in Mexico building a new processor plant for Motorola. The old one, in Tyler, Texas, was being shut down; they couldn't afford to pay the inflated union wages.

    The FDA was dragging its feet approving a new medicine his company developed, one that promised to cure the common cold; a rival company who made cough drops had produced a study showing that rats died when fed nothing but his medicine for a month. Because of this, he had a red card meeting with two of his most promising employees that afternoon. He would advise them to go back to school; he even considered sponsoring them himself, since he knew they would never come back if he fired them now. However, taxes were due in April, and he was in the highest bracket; he couldn't afford to spare 50K when his taxes were taking three times that. They would have to fend for themselves. Of course, there was always unemployment. They would probably end up in an under-funded government or university cancer lab; maybe an HMO would pick them up.

    While waiting for his wife, he saw an interesting article on your Rights Online. Since its initiation in September of 1999, it had become a focal point for Internet Freedom groups; he was often terrified by what he read, but he maintained a morbid fascination. According to the article, President Bush was contemplating signing the Internet Prohibition Treaty, which would make the International War On Pornography official, and sign over control of all US networks found to be serving pornographic of otherwise dangerous or offensive materiel to the United Nations Internet Extension(UNIX). "Only 30 percent of the sites online will even be affected." A spokesman for the White House claimed. "If people would just self-regulate themselves, we wouldn't have this problem."

    "Too much damned government." He wrote. "Too much damned government."



  • Yeah, you're completely right. The Internet has tons of self-regulation of activity, but very little self-regulation of information. I'm not talking censorship-type information, but privacy-type information. This is one of those grey boundaries (where do Internet rights give way to physical-world realities), but I definitely see a problem with all the information companies 'require' for online transactions.
  • First, it was Ben Franklin that said that. Second, the problem is not with a centralized government, it's with a centralized administration of that government. Try deTocqueville's "Democracy in America", an *excellent* book, and very prescient.
  • There is only one moral justifcation for government, the protection of private property rights. All other things should be considered outside its scope. Rand supported a limited government that would do exactly this. The following funtions should fall to government. Military, police, contract enforcement(although should be no restrictions placed on contracts), records of property ownership. There are likly a few more, but they are all of similar vein.

    BTW, just because people do something with government support now != that they have to have government support to do it. It is HIGHLY inefficient to do things through government, plus to do so often is an infringement of an individuals rights.

    NB, my support for a military in general does not mean that I support all of the policies that have been undertaken by the US military in the past.

    Also, please look up the definition of "moral" before using it to accuse someone of "forcing their morality down my throat".
  • They're both just idiots who sit in an ivory tower inventing theories of how the economy works that have no basis in reality. They both spend their time pontificating instead of researching.

    Chomsky does not have much to say regarding "how the economy works" since he is not a capitalist at all (he is more or less an anarchist) - as such this separates very cleanly from someone like Thurow. You still disregard the point: the "free market" as propogated by Gingrich and friends is nothing more than a propaganda machine. I don't care that people are conservative, or liberal, or socialist or what - I just want the propagandists to own up.

  • I would be personally be very disappointed if Chomsky came forward promoting any sort of censorship.

    Just because Chomsky has spend the greater part of his life pointing out the hypocrysies of the system does not mean that he is a socialist by default. AFAIK he is an anarcho-syndicalist, but seems to have socialist leanings at times for some pragmatic reasons.

  • Let's all take a few moments and read a _knowledgeble_ economist on the subject. Try Hayek's Road to Serfdom [amazon.com], for an excellent treatment of self organizing entities.
  • The military developed the Internet for its own internal practical use. The rest of us seized the good idea after the fact. Otherwise we'd just be using some other network varient (remember Fidonet and all those other primitive nets that were evolving before the Internet took over?).

    > Do you suppose we should just write off those
    > kids unlucky enough to be born to irresponsible
    > parents?

    Yes, some parents are idiots. Idiots are the base of the Democratic Party. Who protects us from idiot bureaucrats?

    > As for your assertion that you didn't use
    > federal student loans, congratulations for
    > having well-off parents. For those of us who are
    > not born of the manor however, student
    > loans/state universities are often the
    > difference b/w a good job and working at the
    > cannery. And even if you went to a private
    > college you were still the indirect beneficiary
    > of a lot of governmental largesse via federal
    > grants.

    Yeah, I'm from a real rich family. Only people making more money than my dad were public school teachers (snort). I went to a local university, lived with my parents, WORKED, and otherwise kept my expenses under control until I graduated. Sure would've been nice to have had those SocSec taxes to apply towards tuition, but apparently I can't be trusted to make that decision. Big Brother knows how to manage finances so much better than you or I.

    > Our taxes are the lowest in the industrialized
    > world. Get over it already.

    Just because everyone else is more screwed up than America means I have no right to complain? Just because Big Brother only confiscates half my labor at gunpoint means I should be thankful?
  • --- you said ---
    Some people are afraid that this self-regulation (under threat of government regulation) will be very effective in doing everything the government would have wanted...
    ----------------

    It wouldn't be. The government can not effectively censor anything and I'll tell you why.

    The "power" of any government comes from the illusion that it is very powerful. The people always outnumber the government and in many cases out gun and out smart. Therefore the government must maintain the illusion of strength, even where it is weak.

    When a government makes a law it's reputation goes on the line with it. If it can't uphold that law the people slowly and surely begin to tempt other laws to see if they're also as unenforceable. Once people see that all laws are equally unenforceable they rebel and anarchy insues (yeehaa!). Now the more the government censors information the greater the problem of having to uphold censorship laws become.

    Of course this is a problem because the government can't uphold censorship laws. At least not effectively.

    If the government truly censored or banned the free flow of information it would create a black market for it. Much like drugs The risk would be somewhat greater to distribute it, illegal information, but the incentive to do so would be much greater.

    Also information multiplies like a virus and spreads it self everywhere. Once it's out its everywhere.

    This is why the government turns to mandatory "self regulation" of companies. It reduces the effort involved in having to uphold censorship as a law. Companies are, sadly yet happily, to say much better at controlling the populous then the government. They're kind of a kinder friendly government, like an asp in a bunny suit. :).

    but these also doesn't work, corperations are even worse then the government when it comes to screwing over the public, but they respond to dollars and consumer demands. We must gain control over the corperations if we ever hope to stem this tide of censorship. So you see, the government's worst enemy is itself, and the best thing to do here is to stop playing their game and go directly to the corporations and lobby at that level instead of bothering to petition a corrupt court system and a deaf government.

  • All above are excellent orgs with good records..I'll throw one of my favorites into the mix too--don't forget the The Center for Democracy and Technology [cdt.org].
  • Why don't we have our own Org supporting these fredoms lobying in DC (and other Contries where aplicable) that is completely based off of the /. community ? I'm sure there is a lot we could do without having to have a lot of $$ our numbers would make a difference. We could use the ever growing popularity of politicians online to our advantage. They are starting to play our game. Why not make sure it stays that way ?

    MHO
  • Just a thought, but doesnt't most censorship from government happen to corporate organizations? .. where the government has certian poweres to make that org uncomfortable if they do not follow the rules?... my whole point is If there is no single entity for the government to censor, there there is no way to enforce (not practically or economicaly). It seems that enfoceing regulation of free info would be like enforceing regulation of everyday speach between people... impractical and unconstitutional.. this post is a perfect example of my "speakingh" to other people and therefore should not be regulated... hmmm. so is moderation on /. going against my freedom to speak ? or is it Ok for a company (/. in this case) to edit it's clients views because the "speach" is in its ballroom ?...

    just Humble ramblings...
  • In the economics profession, sadly, LT has gained the nickname "Less-Than Thorough" for the quality of effort he puts into his economic writings these days.

    Oh yeah, and the newspaper industry seems to get along fine with self-regulation.

    jsm
  • The Libertarians have many interesting points, but they can't be described as being in favour of strict enforcement of the (actual, American) Bill of Rights, since this is fundamentally a statist document which provides for e.g. conscription in time of war.

    Libertarians would also be no help to you in the face of "self-regulation" by the Bertelsmann Group, or in protecting your privacy from those who would spam you mercilessly. A Libertarian Internet would quite likely become a corporate monster, with no tolerance of opposing views. But since the censorship was imposed by the cable companies and ISPs, it wouldn't be "censorship", right?

    Seriously, if you believe that only government censorship is bad (which is a defensible position; governments have amonopoly on legal use of force), then go for your life; be a Libertarian on this.

    If, on the other hand, you think that making it unreasonably costly for opposing views to be heard is also a form of de facto censorship, then the EFF or ACLU are likely to be more to your text.

    Me? I take the position of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty [utm.edu] on this;

    (relevant extract below)


    In respect to all persons but those whose pecuniary circumstances make them independent of the good will of other people, opinion, on this subject, is as efficacious as law; men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread. Those whose bread is already secured, and who desire no favors from men in power, or from bodies of men, or from the public, have nothing to fear from the open avowal of any opinions, but to be ill-thought of and illspoken of, and this it ought not to require a very heroic mould to enable them to bear. There is no room for any appeal ad misericordiam in behalf of such persons. But though we do not now inflict so much evil on those who think differently from us, as it was formerly our custom to do, it may be that we do ourselves as much evil as ever by our treatment of them.

    jsm
  • I'd be very careful of Cato -- they tend to be fair-weather friends. They have put out some very good libertarian material, but recently appear to have reinvented themselves as corporate flacks pure and simple -- very keen on Social Security privatisation, and on putting out some absolutely awful pseudo-economics to make their case[1]

    I for one would not trust Cato to stand firm if IBM, Microsoft, Bertelsmann and AOL came up with a "voluntary" self-censoring system. Particularly not if there was the sniff of a grant to Cato involved.

    jsm

    [1]For those who care about Cato's economics: their projections seem to assume that GDP will grow at 1%/year while stocks return 7%/year for twenty years -- does 1% economic growth usually coincide with bull markets?
  • In 95 he loudly complained that Greenspan was being to tight with the money supply by his low interest rates, and he (greenspan) NEEDS to raise interest rates to save the stock market.

    I have no knowledge of what Thurow did or didn't say, but this comment doesn't make sense. Low interest rates are a "loose money" policy, not a tight money. It seems much more likely to me that Thurow (as a knee-jerk expansionist Keynesian) would have been calling for lower interest rates rather than higher in 1995, in which case he got what he wanted, and was right on the money. In any case, nobody would ever call higher interest rates good for the stock market.

    Thurow is in fact bloody awful, but it is extremely unfair to lambast economists for not being able to predict the stock market. There's a lot of economic theory on why the market is unpredictable, but think about it this way -- how do you know that there aren't loads of economists around who can predict perfectly, but aren't telling you?

    jsm
  • On the other hand, and taking into account Thurow's actual comments (which I've now had time to read), you don't seem to be in disagreement with him on this matter.

    If the government "regulates" the Internet to the extent of not allowing companies to pass on information about you for marketing or other purposes, then it is arguably enforcing your property rights in your name and other valuable information about you.

    And if this is the limit of Thurow's proposal, it's hard not to agree with him that we can't trust "self-regulation" on this one -- we want the means to sue people who expropriate our valuable personal information.

    jsm
  • Hmmm ... but AFAIK, these comments are on the issue of privacy and security of personal information rather than censorship. My position on this is that I own my name and my personal details, and that I very much do expect my government to protect that ownership. I'm not prepared to rely on "self-regulation" to protect my personal details from being sold without my permission. And I'd hope that this right could indeed be recognised by any government in the world.

    jsm
  • The Institute for Justice is worth checking out at http://www.ij.org [ij.org] . They provide legal aid to people who are fighting for free speech, free enterprise and such, and are less compromised than the ACLU.
  • See this current Forbes editorial for an excellent counterpoint to trendy fascists like Thurow.

    If I saw that article on Slashdot I'd have wanted to moderate it down as flamebait. It dismisses four economists as "mice" and their writings as "mouse dung". Yeah, real intelligent debate.

    I think Thurow is probably correct in his evaluation of self-regulation, except that it can also be backed up by the big stick of effective minority protest (e.g. NC17 films in the USA).

    In particular he is correct in saying that it won't work on the Net, which is why we should be supporting efforts to promote self-regulation instead of government regulation: it won't work, and we will be at status quo. Meantime our rulers will have time to get a clue about how the net works.

    Paul.

  • Unregulated != free . There is ALWAYS somebody or someone regulating. It is just the matter of choosing who regulates : the governement (elected) or big companies (so called "self-regulated"). If something as to be regulated I prefer that it is by someone elected rather than a fat CEO in a Lexus.
  • Remember in 92 when he proclaimed the immediate necessity of imposing a $4.50/gallon gas tax in order to "save the economy" (!)? His reasoning was "because Europe does it" (his words)!

    Well that could save the planet by forcing people to drive gas-efficient cars instead of those silly SUVs. If that save the planet that saves the economy too... remember that Americans use about twice more energy per-capita than Europeans...
  • Honestly USA is certainly not the land of freedom. It is the land of knee-jerks. Ruled by an army of lawyers at the order of minorities, puritans and paranoids.

    If there is a country of freedom and tolerance this must be Holland (no, I'm not from there).
  • I don't know if Ayn Rand considered the case of natural monopolies, but they are a good example of where government intervention is a good idea for a reason other than maintenance of private property rights.

    For those who don't know what I'm talking about, a natural monopoly is an industry where fixed costs are high, but marginal costs are very close to zero. A good example is a distribution network, such as the electricity grid (note: NOT electricity production). The cost of building the grid is huge, but the cost of supplying people electricity over the grid is negligible.

    If you leave a natural monopoly to unregulated private enterprise, then they can act as a monopolist and charge profit-maximising prices. They don't need to worry about other companies trying to enter - the fixed costs are huge and the rollout times are long, so they have plenty of time to respond.

    With government regulation, prices can be brought down closer to marginal cost, maximising total utility and increasing overall production. So, before you say that government should do nothing but protect private property rights, think about what would happen if the electricity distribution company, the water company, the sewerage service, and all those other distribution networks, were private monopolies not subject to any price regulation.

  • Well that could save the planet by forcing people to....

    Hey, Lester has a /. account! Odd -- or perhaps not -- that he hasn't offerred a more substantive rebuttal to the many criticisms of his thesis.
    /.

  • Let's see now--"somebody frum the gubament standin' behind me with a club".

    Where have I heard that before?

    Fortunately, my M 14 is higher-tech than their club. So is the internet a bit beyond gubament's capacity to regulate it. Let's be damn sure to keep it that way.

  • The Libertarians have many interesting points, but they can't be described as being in favour of strict enforcement of the (actual, American) Bill of Rights, since this is fundamentally a statist document which provides for e.g. conscription in time of war.

    The Bill of Rights nowhere explicitly gives government the right to conscript people in time of war. Indeed, the 13th Amendment, with its prohibition on involuntary servitude, would seem to prohibit the government from making people involuntarily become part of the military. I don't think anything in the Bill of Rights is objectionable to Libertarians... perhaps some interpretations of the Bill of Rights ("the right to travel" == "the right to get welfare somewhere you move to if you got it where you came from") but even that's nebulous.

    Your other points on corporate censorship (etc.) do trouble me, however. For the most part, however, unnatural monopolies are encouraged by regulation (because big companies can afford to comply, while smaller ones can't), so I still think less regulation is the way to go.
  • ELECT JEDILUKE for California State Senate!

    Now, now, we don't want the Federal Elections Commission coming over and regulating Slashdot just because we're campaigning, do we?
  • Social Security privatization is not inconsistent with Libertarianism. Plus, as another poster has pointed out, publishing is explicitly unregulated in the U.S. Other areas of media, like television, would benefit from less regulation, which would reduce government influence over the mass media.

    Which appeals to you less: Microsoft unchained, or Microsoft buying influence in a government that is trying to regulate Microsoft? To me, the second choice is less palatable, given what the big influence-buyers/sellers have wrought so far.

    Not that I advocate policies that result in 1% growth, but 1% GDP growth is not inconsistent with blue chip stocks gaining 7% per year. These represent a minority of the economy, and the companies in narrow indices like the Dow can quite plausibly continue to add shareholder value at a rate that far outstrips the growth of the economy as a whole.

  • Agruments like this one set up and knock down the straw man of dogmatic Libertarianism. There is a long way from where we are at to no government. Let's take a few steps in that direction and see if it works better, then take a few more. If we reduced the size of goverment as gradually as the size has crept up, or even at twice the rate, it will be left to our great-grandkids to ask if government is getting too small.
  • I agree totally. It is better to get a little bit than nothing at all..Like Reagan
  • Givin holland is cool...but half the country is on welfare...i don't call socialism freedom. i lived there...
    JediLuke
  • thats ok if brits or whatever you are, wasn't an AC then i guess it would be ok, but i have lived outside the US and i realized how great it is...sure it has problems...but no where near what the rest of the world has...haha
    JediLuke

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