[Mandrakeot] ESR gives up on Fedora

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 07:33:14 -0500,
  Lyvim Xaphir <knightmerc at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-02-26 at 11:07 -0500, Michael Tiemann wrote:
> > 
> > I think it is you who do not understand what a free market is.  A free
> > market is one in which two parties can agree to trade without seeking
> > the explicit permission of the government to do so.  The less
> > permission/regulation exerted by the government, the freer the market.
> 
> To a point.  I generally am in agreement with libertarian models,
> however there is a sweet spot of government presence in the market; in

For economics, a Free Market usually assumes that the parties have complete
information about the exchange. Government intervention in preventing
false claims about the goods is related to this. Providing money to
make exchanges more efficient and preventing theft also help provide an
environment for Free Markets.

> other words there has to be some kind of legal consequence for scams and
> unethical activity. Obviously free trade cannot take place in an anarchy
> where you can get shot and then people just take your goods; the
> existence of it depends on civilized behavior which is not available
> without some form of government.  Otherwise corruption prevents anything
> meaningful from taking place; aka a soprano state. (that is different
> from regulations on free trade, which is not what I'm discussing in this
> case) The unethical activity I've been talking about here is forced
> licensing, where other licenses bearing other agendas are not tolerated
> because of ideology.

You are assuming certain things are naturally property which not everyone
aggrees is. That is resulting in different takes on whether some activities
are ethical. This isn't really the forum to discuss this and any argument
here isn't likely to convince the people involved to switch their positions.