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Revolution in Kiev

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Re: Revolution in Kiev

#311

Post by snitko »

scribu wrote: post #308
snitko wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say I agree that regulation is a good thing. I agree that even though I myself may not care for my own safety and want to buy a purely assembled car, I should not be allowed to impose danger on other drivers on the road and this purely assembled car may as well present such danger. Now the central question here is not whether regulations are a good idea or not, but whether it's a good idea to allow those regula…

Road companies seem like a great example of a problematic scenario for anarcho-capitalism: A hypothetical company called Roads LLC owns a 20km strip of road that goes through a tunnel in a mountain. Due to the geography, all alternative routes require an extra 200km detour. Let's also say, for the sake of argument, that you can't just build another tunnel either, because the mountain would collapse. Since there are n…

First, what you forget is that roads are not the only means of transportation. Such a road company would not be able to raise prices indefinitely because customers would either switch to air travel, river transport, or, I don't know, hyperloops, or stop using the road completely. Now what it could do is find the equilibrium price at which customers are still willing to use the road and not switch to a competitor. That might seem like a problem, because the prices would still be higher, but then you have to think back to the time when this project was conceived.

Imagine you are an investor who wants to build that important tunnel. If there is a demand, obviously you wouldn't be the only one. So each of you, investors, would come up with offers for the potential customers for this road. The one who offers the best conditions - for instance, fixed low price for the next 10 years - gets the most customers and proceeds on building that tunnel. If that investor later decides to cheat and raises prices then he would have to deal with law firms of his customers, which would potentially be costly.

So here you see how this potentially difficult situation can be resolved without the need for any government whatsoever.

Re: Revolution in Kiev

#312

Post by audriusko »

thesz wrote: post #196
emilis_info wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I come from one of your "former Baltic USSR republics" (actually a country with a long history before being occupied by soviet Russia). I saw the changes from gaining freedom from Russian occupation and joining the EU with my own eyes. We gained so much from EU, I don't know were to start. Financially: we got a lot of our infrastructure built with EU funds (roads, etc.), if you see anything modernized even in the rem…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvia#Ethnic_groups is closest to the demographic graph of Latvia, for example. It stopped to grow right after Russian occupation ended. Take a closer look to the conditions in which most people live from where you have come. Or at their prospects in life. Or prospects of economy. I think that will change your opinion slightly.

Do you honestly believe in what you are implying? Just because population grew - therefore people were happy in USSR? I was born in Lithuania, a country which was occupied at that time and even though I don't remember much there's lots of people to tell the story. A story no one in their right mind would chose to live in. Stop thinking you know anything about how we live and what we want because you're just being an ignorant idiot.

Re: Revolution in Kiev

#313

Post by rosser »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #119
rosser wrote: post #4

I feel like this kind of thing (the various Arab Spring uprisings, the Ukrainian revolution, &c ) is very well served by the cacophony of amateur/citizen journalism that flows out of an individual event. Sure, at the time, it's incredibly noisy, because there's so much primary source material being created, with such incredible depth and nuance. Once people start to be able to assemble a comprehensive understanding o…

There are certainly great pictures, but depth and nuance? You can't see people's ideology and in their faces. Pretty girls can still be crazy nationalists and fascists. Does age and gender really prove anything as the author seems to suggest? He also says that the crowd is well organized. Who organizes them if they are so diverse? Who are the people who deny others access to some areas as he reports? There are very f…

Ambiguous phrasing, sorry; the depth and nuance is (usually) a consequence of the volume of reporting that citizen journalism enables, not of any one report — though it can and does sometimes emerge from one insightful and fortuitously situated perspective.

It's, in a sense, a corollary of the ESR quip that, "With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." (Yes, that was Eric Raymond, not Linus.) With enough independent, and independently motivated people documenting a given historical event, a deeper, more subtly textured view of that event becomes possible.

Re: Revolution in Kiev

#314

Post by Oculus »

I've been thinking about this all day. How could we, as hackers, build tools that allow for such activist groups to organize online, but yet keep these plans safe from the government?

Re: Revolution in Kiev

#315

Post by ajuc »

snitko wrote: post #310
ajuc wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to that I'll respond by asking how many Amazons there are? If it isn't monopoly it's pretty close. How about Google? Is there any real competition to ad words? Or google search? Does anybody use Bing without being forced? Duck Duck Go is nice, but it has worse results and will have worse results forever. How about companies making desktop CPUs? Oligopoly isn't monopoly per se, but it's so close it doesn't matter.…

First of all, Google's been around for slightly more than a decade. I can totally see it losing its monopoly over time (same for Amazon). Also, are Google and Amazon doing a bad job? Are customers (e.g. those who place ads or buy books) unhappy? If a monopoly delivers I have no problem with it. Furthermore, Google doesn't prevent other players from entering the market, it doesn't lobby the government to regulate sear…

The fact that monopolist doesn't need to play dirty doesn't mean it's not a monopoly. In fact it's the definition of natural monopoly. Same with the fact that customers are happy.

Yep, monopoly can fall, like everything else. Still the statement "natural monopoly is a myth" is false. Besides - states can fall just like companies. They are just bigger and fall slower than companies, but they eventually all fall.

But people do have a choice, at least in the well run countries. They are more like share owners than customers - they can vote on who will be on the board. And they can migrate if they doesn't like some policy. For example in EU you can always move to another country if you don't like your own. It's why I don't support global government or too close unification of EU. I prefer to have a choice.

Proposing to change states into system of companies is a risky experiment. We know how to organize states so they are quite just. Some people doesn't want to follow that schema because they want power, but we know how to do this if we want to. On the other hand we don't know how to separate power without a state and universal laws. It all sounds nice in theory, but in practice it probably would fail spectacularly. I don't want to be part of anarchism experiment - if you want to do sth like this please do it on volunteers.

BTW google started in 1997 IIRC. It's like the old movies that came out decade age = in nineties :) Makes me feel old.

Re: Revolution in Kiev

#316

Post by dimitar »

wslh wrote: post #208
jccooper wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The courage these activists are showing is going to do a lot to help accomplish their political goals." What are their political goals? The author of this piece seems to say that there are none, other than being generally angry. Even if you know what you're fighting for, it's hard to accomplish; if you don't know what you want, it's rather unlikely you'll get it.

More information here http://mobile.news.com.au/world/what-you-need-to-know-about-...

The media both in Russia and West like to play up the East vs. West angle, which I believe is inaccurate. While there are foreign and cultural factors in Ukrainian politics, this is a much more boring story of corruption, mismanagement authoritarianism and human rights abuses of the current rule.

Re: Revolution in Kiev

#317

Post by ricardobeat »

mjmahone17 wrote: post #309
nikolak wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that definitely justifies setting someone on fire. The protesters are just this peaceful bunch of people who would never do something like that, hurt other people who are just standing there... /s http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=959_1390672028 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuO53xeZkm8

Did you watch the first video until the end? They forcefully take the police shields, then, when the police are left standing defenseless, and actually surrender, they tell them to go through, and let them walk out of the building. There's no beating taking place, besides that required to break the police's stand. Even the guy with the fire hose is clearly going for the shield, not actively trying to injure the offic…

The guy with the firehose is clearly going for their heads. There would be no point banging on the shield anyway. If you're going to support this, you have to admit that eggs are going to be broken, and that the ultimate motives are far more important than the physical integrity of government actors. Can you do that?

Re: Revolution in Kiev

#318

Post by nice1 »

Russia has not accepted the fall of the Soviet Empire and has been trying to roll things back at least since 1999. Ukraine is very important for them and they will not let go of it easily.

Re: Revolution in Kiev

#319

Post by dimitar »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #285
us0r wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably the best write up on it: http://www.businessinsider.com/understanding-euromaidan-2014...

That entirely fails to even mention the ethnic angle, which is probably the main thing never-mind the current political details. The western part of the country speaks Ukranian, not Russian, and was historically aligned with the Polish empire.

There isn't an ethnic angle - although Russian-speaking, the majority of the population of the east is also of Ukrainian ethnicity. Even the language thing isn't that big of a deal, almost all Ukrainians use both languages to some extent.

Re: Revolution in Kiev

#320

Post by lostlogin »

adobriyan wrote: post #190
smsm42 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are aware of the fact that strict gun laws don't mean no guns? Your own link shows there are 3 million guns in Ukraine. If there's a need, some of them - probably hundreds of them - would find their way to the hostilities. But I'm not sure there is the will to escalate the situation this far. Because then the next step is using the army and heavy weaponry, and that means civil war and massive casualties. No one r…

> If there's a need, some of them - probably hundreds of them - would find their way to the hostilities. Everything will end very quickly if real guns pop up. To the disappointment of protesters.

Policemen shot, and earlier 4 protestors shot. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-protests-police-officer-shot-dead-as-violence-continues-in-kiev-despite-concessions-9084097.html

news.yahoo.com/police-disperse-kiev-protest-activists-one-shot-dead-070644319.html

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