Actually, I did point out that the founders were aghast that a document would be created giving or imputing to give the federal government exclusive jurisdiction to interpret its own authority. You are right that I did not go into detail with respect to the case, Marbury v. Madison, which the Supreme Court used to justify its ability to interpret the Constitution with finality (of course, the Court using implied powers to interpret the Constitution to say it has the ultimate power to interpret the Constitution is dubious and circular). On the other hand, this is not an argument I wanted to spend much time on, because it would have expanded the article significantly.

I ran into some space limits for my comment. In fact, to that end, what is troubling sometimes about law review student authorship is that it is often required to be as narrow as possible.

I do believe, as you suggest, that I should have touched on the fact that the 10th Amendment comes after the Supremacy Clause and therefore modifies and overrides it and any other clause that came before the 10th Amendment.

Regarding the so-called “supremecy clause”, it is in the original text of the constitution, and subject to the modification of and subordination to ammendments added later – the 10th (when there is a conflict) should take precedence.

Your handling of short sentences is a criticism worthy of standing beside some of Screwtape’s own.

For example, O and C and D purchase a single license to Alpha Bravo: the Reckoning. All three players have access to the game through online verification, but only one of them can play it at a time.

This would benefit patient players, and those not oriented to online (i.e. simultaneous) play.

This is the only time you’ll hear me suggest “commune” in a positive light, most likely. I haven’t gone red zombie on you or anything.

I think alienation of steam licenses is still the best thing you’ve ever written. You need to expand on that for E-Commerce next semester.

Just make sure you talk about Japan.

And we are (were) in Denver. It’s from December… my photos are majorly backlogged. Nice to hear from you…

ellen

It may be able to hack it by adding an extra term in with your offer, which states something along the lines that notwithstanding any time limits specified by eBay, your offer must be accepted by some time that you specify, and if accepted after this time then the sale is cancelled and the accepter is responsible for any eBay fees that may still be charged. At least, I *assume* that that would work, but it’s certainly messy.

If seller offers an item for $100 when its reasonable hypothetical value lies somewhere between $80 and $120, a buyer could offer $1. Seller will likely reject such an offer as a waste of his time.

Let’s say, however, Buyer offers N, where N is substantially but not absurdly lower than $100, e.g., $60. May the Seller take it in certain circumstances. Sure. Buyer runs the risk of Seller rejecting the offer, but if he can offer a price low enough, he can keep the product out of the hands of others (except, per eBay’s system, those who would purchase at full listed price) who might offer a more favorable price.

Assuming Buyer only means to buy one of the type of item Seller is selling, then I’m not sure that a shorter offer/acceptance time-frame will make it so much less efficient. Buyer runs the risk, upon offer, of having the offer accepted while he is scouring eBay for better prices, because, by definition, the offer is binding for 48 hours as well.

I’m not advocating for eBay to allow 1-minute offers – email notification is not instantaneous, but 30-minute offers might be worthwhile. In any case, I think the appropriate method is for eBay to allow the users to set their offer expiration times themselves, perhaps in certain increments. It allows buyers and sellers to reasonably decide how much temporal friction is worth. Maybe I’m willing to pay 15% more than I would have offered if the offer will be accepted in two hours. Otherwise, I foresee having to wait up to 46 more hours to find out whether Seller will accept or deny before I can move on to another more favorable Seller. Vice versa. That is, users are more apt to correctly gauge the worth of their own time with respect to the meta-transaction if they are given a choice.

I suspect, actually, that eBay does this to hinder off-line transactions while the user’s offer or counteroffer is valid. If Buyer only wants one item, eBay is betting on the fact that Seller, given a longer time frame, will have a more likely chance of saying yes to the transactions, thereby generating fees for eBay. Vice versa.

If Buyer offers $X for Y hours, which Seller misses altogether, there was actually no efficiency or time valuation problem for Seller at all, because he was unaware of the offer to begin with. But it does release buyer from his second-order obligation to eBay so that he can go elsewhere, including not-eBay to effect his transaction.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I am sure that eBay does this to keep a higher likelihood of profits for itself. The irony is that with a freer system, I’m also convinced Buyers and Sellers would act in ways more beneficial to themselves, effect a higher number of transactions overall and lead to greater profits for eBay.

Marketplace rules, such as a 48 hour term, create well understood marketplace environment that meets the needs of most participants. The ability to make and then rescind a counteroffer before the 48 hour limit, may be very inefficient to another participant who has alternative buyers/sellers to consider and only allocates a small time slot in each 48 hour period to negotiate with you on this particular sale.

By extending a counteroffer (rather than accepting the buyers offer) you have increased the transaction cost for you and the buyer. In fact, if you now withdraw the counteroffer, you remove the opportunity for the buyer to even transact at that price and capture any value surplus which may compensate for the time spent negotiating, essentially transferring the cost of negotiations with you to an alternative purchase the buyer would now have to pursue anew.

If the burden of this time-limit as a component of transaction cost should in the future prompt you to suspend negotiations and accept the buyer’s offer, because you assess the cost of a 48 hour wait unacceptable.

On the other side, the fact is, because of the rule an optimal buyer knows he does not even need to evaluate your counteroffer for 47.999 hours and he can seek a better offer with a shorter time limit from other suppliers. That delivers significant negotiation value to the buyer and is implicit in your offer. When Ebay constrains the form of the offer it creates standard terms which for smaller purchase values create more efficiency because the time invested in negotiation quickly becomes the largest cost. Alternatively time limits are valuable when engaging in multiple simultaneous negotiations as it creates a time window to seek the best price from alternate suppliers.

While it may be efficient to you to place and rescind offers within 48 hours, it does create a significant transaction cost burden on other participants to monitor negotiations more frequently than perhaps is efficient for them.

Americans have traditionally had strident reactions against the concept of Socialism, because Communism (the more extreme version) arose at about the time that the United States was affirming industrial capitalism both culturally and legally.

There were a string of cases in the late 19th century and early 20th century at the Supreme Court that affirmed the Freedom to Contract and continued to do so more fervently after the Bolshevik Revolution.

The Bolsheviks, for their belief that wealth should be violently transferred to ensure ‘equality,’ struck us as, well, the morally equivalent to pillaging, looting and theft.

Culturally speaking, Americans have always been more strongly independent economically speaking. Yes, we participated in mercantilistic trading (mercantilism is the reliance on government sanction and protection of certain industries) to some extent. But by and large, even the meekest of citizens could buy and sell and make a profit if they wanted without incurring much taxation at all. There were exceptions, but those exceptions, notably, served as the predicate to the vast majority of our political crises up through the Civil War.

When New England’s trade was harmed by Jefferson’s decision to blockade the United States to protect their ships from the Barbary Pirates, New England threatened secession. Later, the forty years predating the Civil War were marked by a series of significant political disputes over taxation and protectionary tariffs.

The English in England, even when irritated by taxes, did not rise up against the King. It was the American colonists, a different breed, who felt that most of the money that they earned should be theirs to keep, who rose up. The American Revolution was fought over taxes.

Taxes, by their nature, are always distributive. For some, the benefits may turn out to be a wash, but by and large, most people who are taxed do not ever see benefits totaling a 100% equivalent of what was taken. For this reason, and for philosophical notions of independence – that man should be independent, largely, from government, Americans have historically looked at taxation with a healthy amount of suspicion.

Compulsory socialism, by its nature, is concomitant with greater taxation. It denies the worth and the right of the individual to live unfettered and free, because socialism demands a substantial portion of one’s labor to be given to others.

Since 1937, however, our anathema toward socialism has largely been in name and degree only. Since the Supreme Court in that year began upholding the constitutionality of more federal programs for which there are no clauses in the Constitution, the federal government has expanded rapidly, and has increased the amount of money it takes from Americans in order to fund and redistribute.

The United States takes a great deal of everyone’s money in the form of income and related taxes, though certainly not as much as is taken by other European countries or Canada. Still, we give lip service to the notion that socialism is bad, but Americans fought a revolution over 3 and 4% taxes. Now we incur 35% income taxes + state income taxes + social security + Medicare + sales + property and all sorts of other taxes that affect us daily.

The real difference between European governmental spending and American governmental spending is that the civil law and nationalist governments of Europe are able to tax and spend money far more consistently. That is why residents in the Netherlands receive vacation spending money, taken from prior taxes, deposited into their bank accounts like clockwork. American government (again, since 1937) is driven by political pluralism and election cycles. Spending cannot change too drastically, else representatives and senators are voted out of office, and they are always attuned to pleasing the maximum number of their own constituents most of the time. The conflicts of ideals between various states and regions make for very inconsistent spending policy. Because of that, it still doesn’t ‘feel’ socialist from a benefits perspective, because benefits are given out by government in a haphazard manner under inconsistent and conflicting programs. Democratic pluralism in our federal system almost ensures that we have a dizzying array of grotesquely incongruent spending programs.

It is, thus, easy for us to believe that we do not live under socialism, since most do not receive money from the government. Even social security recipients see the money as theirs because they ‘worked for it’ and paid into the system. There is a view of the system that is markedly American, because even though the notion of being taxed to later receive benefits is socialism, most of us believe the idea that we individually deserve what we receive, because it was ours to begin with, because we originally earned it (even if most do not realize that the amounts they receive have no real relationship to what they previously earned).

We have been living under a de facto socialism for decades, tempered only in some cases by jurisdictional federalism (a Californian’s state income tax will not fund anyone outside California, for example). Still, however, politicians invoke the specter of socialism when they want support from constituents against this bill or that bill, but who will readily spend (and thereby tax) in other areas. So I agree with you, socialism is largely partisan rhetoric, or rather, bipartisan rhetoric, since there is little fiscal difference between either major party in the United States. Both are willing to tax (or print-cum-inflate) and spend, the key differences are the targets of the spending.

O.Shane

Now will you write a post explaining why everyone freaks out at the merest hint of the ‘S’ word? I am always leery when opponents to an idea (or speech or whatever) dismiss it with little more than one word. I am admittedly not well educated on the subject of Socialism and the USA’s (or the Republicans’) seemingly unthinking rejection of anything remotely resembling Socialism and would benefit from a primer from a thoughtful American’s point of view.

As I see it, ‘Socialism’, at least in the way it is used in the media and in partisan rhetoric, is no longer a helpful term. It is so taboo, so caricatured, so charged with vague affiliations with amorphous, unquestioned badness, that it becomes a sort of trump card that sweeps away any thoughtful, nuanced discussion.

Politically, Obama can’t afford to admit how Socialist his leanings are, but in my imagined ideal world he could say, “So what? Maybe I do subscribe to some Socialist ideas. Let’s talk about why that is or is not a bad thing.” But of course that’s asking too much. It’s easier to appeal to the arational and irrational sides of human beings. Not to mention it would take too long.

So what say you? Care to enlighten a politically undereducated resident alien?

My brother schools me on why the Obama speech actually does relay socialist undertones: http://www.oshane.com/wp/

But knives, slingshots, tanks, grenades, bombs, land mines, jet fighters, attack helicopters, star destroyers, death stars…

/facepalm

Your reasoning for carrying a weapon is fresh air.

2. Removing the legal status of personhood from corporate and limited liability structures: this is an interesting area to explore from a libertarian perspective.

3. Ban advertising: I cannot agree. People should never be prevented from speaking about any subject as long as they are not harassing someone else or harming private property.

Government is not the salvation of the poor, the homeless, the insane or the broken. To believe so is to believe a lie. It doesn’t work, and government programs usually end up doing more harm than good.

Question for you about “wealthy business owners”: let’s say you are getting a sliver of the profits. What would you rather have, zero? I.e. no pay, because they didn’t hire you? Or would you rather just steal their money because they have it and you don’t. Don’t accuse others of selfishness when you would use the power of the government (read: guns) to take money from others.

First of all, if it weren’t for capital owned by someone else being invested, you would be subsistence farming either on your own land or on someone else’s. By investment, I mean risk. Because some rich person was willing to risk loss of a significant amount of money, you are able to use a refrigerator. Similiarly, you are able to buy washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, dish soap, toothpaste and all the other necessities of life that you take for granted. Socialism, collectivism forced upon a mass of people such that they are stolen from to provide for others, did not produce those things.

Capital provides jobs. Again, without those “puny” people, you would have to find a way to produce everything you need on your own little plot of land. Think Little House on the Prairie: there’s nothing wrong with that life, but it’s a harder life than, I’m sure, you realize. Imagine trying to find a way to clean your teeth from the resources on your own land.

Why do you begrudge people who have worked hard to accumulate wealth by reinvesting it into labor over and over again? They provide many jobs; they bring good things to the rest of us.

I submit that you are merely envious and angry and filled with rage that is not only misplaced, but evil itself. You believe that stealing from others to satisfy your own desires is right. It is not.

Does it make you feel good to pretend that your puny labor is really supporting half the United States citizens? And please allow me to ask this question of you hard working know it alls…….When we had the welfare system and we took care of our poor, what condition was our country in? Was it in recession like now, since we’ve been making all the money we want and cutting all the social services programs and calling regulation “socialism”?

God Bless America? For what?

There are four distinct causes to homelessness:

1) Natural disaster
2) Insanity
3) Laziness or poor choices
4) Socialism

Everyone gets richer under capitalism. Everyone, except those doing very big business and those associated with government, gets poorer under socialism. This is a demonstrable, provable, historical fact.

On a serious note, anti-socialism does not imply anti-people or anti-helpfulness! Not believing in the inherent right of the government to steal one’s work and labor to provide (inefficiently) for another does not imply a lack of desire to *voluntarily* give to others in one way or another. Philosophically, it’s a matter of upholding the freedom of the individual to act without positively harming another person. Practically, the government is a horrendously bad allocator of resources fairly anyway.

Damn I wish I had said that first! Therefore, that was not mutually edifying for me and thus your mission has failed. That being the case, since you are in contradiction to your own principles, I hereby relieve you of this blog and of course all material herein. This is of course only singularly edifying, but that’s fine cause I don’t have the same goals as you anyway.

Besides… what’s an anti-socialist such as yourself spending time trying to be mutually edifying anyway?

“Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.”

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

“We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last.”

“The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.”

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.”

The solution is to have boundaries. We need to tell the people who do A, B, and C to STFU, to speak with us as human beings and not political drones, or just exit.