Innovations in Technology | Jeffrey A. Tucker

[JaguarSoundBlaster]

I could listen to this guy speak forever

[manseelol]

doesnt he get tired of standing up for more than half an hour...

[jpschubbs]

If you took a young Bruce Willis and crossed him with a young Donald Sutherland...you would get Jeff Tucker.

I love this guy. His excitement about technology is infectious, and his take on things is always new and delightful.

[FireGuyX]

Tucker makes a good point about the public sector always hiding their mistakes. We have a lot of failures in public schooling, public roads, public libraries (in my area), public housing, and yet the governments takes no blame for the damage they caused. The average joe assumes the private sector is causing all this decay when in fact it's the local government that's fucking things up.  And of course tax payers will have to pay for the failure of government.

[christo930]

Tucker is getting OLD looking. He looked great last year and now he looks like he aged 10 years since then. I had a friend (sadly, he took his own life) who looked just like Tucker. Both of them have a natural ruffian look, which is why I think he wears the bow tie, but now he just looks like an old man. Too much Bourbon for breakfast, I guess:)

[psmooth777]

This was a wonderful talk, opened me up to a different perspective. It's inspired me to look more into comparisons between the "Gilded Age" and the 20th Century. I had never thought of the 20th-21st Century as a modern dystopia if viewed by someone in the Gilded Age, but that might just be the best description of what we are living in today.

[TheLegalImmigrant05]

Thank you for the talk, Jeffrey

[ihearttubing]

People are opposed to what we used to have because they are nihilistic and empty inside and, therefore, hate prosperity, wealth, productivity and life itself. All too many people want to recreate the darkness that is within. They want the world to fit who they are.

[blackacidlizzard]

@ihearttubing

Got any evidence for those claims?

[mike6459]

Tesla gave us free energy on Long Island but Westinghouse shut him down...no meters required therefore no profit

[FreedomParadox]

Tucker is always cool!

Long live Liberty!!!

[Lifeblood086]

Wow, one of the best!! Great job Jeffrey!

[HaroldRehling]

Wondering how many Apache or Southern Blacks thought of 1893 as a "Golden Age". Granted, "Jim Crow" and the Apache Wars were first and foremost government policies. I just question the wisdom of neglecting the sentimentalities of people we should be reaching out to while providing the Far Left an open invitation to race bait.

[terramortim]

@HaroldRehling Libertarians were always friendly to the natives. . . still are.

[elricmlbone]

Bravo, Tucker

[kusari86]

@KrugmanTheCharlatan (cont)...never saw a glass of orange juice; his diet was so deficient that he lost his hair and teeth at an early age. His clothes were uncomfortable and unhygienic. He traveled on foot, on horseback, or in a springless carriage. His house had no toilet or bathtub, no furnace or heating stove, no light but candles. What was his standard of living?

It was SO HIGH that forty years ago not one American in ten thousand aspired to it...That was abundance to most Americans...''

[kusari86]

@KrugmanTheCharlatan Relative to their period and what they were accustomed to, it is easy to imagine how Americans must have been amazed and astonished at the incredible changes that were taking place. No future generation of human beings- barring an apocalypse or the like- will ever consider their predecessors as living dandy and rosy.

Rose Wilder Lane's the Discovery of Freedom wonderfully illustrates this point. ''George Washington never heard of calories and vitamins...(cont)

[heckler73]

1) If pvt industry was more accountable, why are there so many law suits where they get off with a slap on the wrist (if they are found guilty at all)?

2) P&L may have more influence in the pvt sector, but it still matters in the public sector, too. The difference is the public sector is tied to the ONLY mechanism for money creation (i.e. the gov't); as such, they have more flexibility.

So, Mr. Tucker, forming any hypothesis on those generalizations is somewhat tenuous.

[PanzerDivisionBOM]

@heckler73

1. Would you use the same metric for all crimes? The more and the heavier the punishments doled out, the better the system is working?

Regardless of whether or not you think that is reasonable, then do realize that courts aren't exactly private at the moment, and weren't in 1893. So if public services really are more accontable, then should not courts be the main vector of accountability for firms?

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[PanzerDivisionBOM]

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2. Historically, money predates governments. That flexibility is not specifically tied to money, but to unearned legitimacy. People think much more critically about private enterprise than about government institutions, giving the latter leeway to do things which they would not tolerate from the former, and habitually overvaluing promises made by bureaucrats.

[ghostbuddy]

@heckler73

Its completely backwards to think the public sector has an advantage over the private sector, because the government can just print money to fund economically inefficient programs. If enough people aren't willing to voluntarly pay for a good or service, than forcing people to pay for it through taxes and inflation is foolish among other things. The only reason you can ever get away with that, is people don't put two and two together.

[ghostbuddy]

@heckler73

2) Theres no such thing as profit in most of the public sector. Where it does exist, instead of increasing economic efficiency in response to, or inorder to avoid losses, they just subsidize the operation. Defeating the purpose of P&L in economic calculation in the first place. WRONG government is the only mechanism for money creation, in a economic climate where everyone else is disincentivized from creating other currencies.

[ghostbuddy]

@heckler73 I wouldn't call the millions, and some times billions of dollars that companies lose, in litigation, and the large sums of marketshare they stand to lose in the event their behaviour is a matter of public interest, a "slap on the wrist". The market has raped and punished far more companies and careers than any government has. The difference is one is the emergent property of voluntary interaction, the other is fiat subjective values from the top down.

[ghostbuddy]

@heckler73 1) Atleast Pvt industry isn't all but immune to law suits, and surrounded by devoted apologists that will justify the institution regardless of its behaviour, like the government is. A company can't lock people up in prison, for leaking internal documents either, can they?

[Jaycephus01]

@heckler73 said: "...why are there so many law suits where they get off...?"

1) No corps allow a lawsuit that might go wrong to go to court in the 1st place, settling even if they are innocent. Risks must be weighed, e.g., $100M payout to a woman who decides to squeeze a cup of hot coffee between her thighs. This drastically skews any statistic you might have cited. OF COURSE, corps win most lawsuits that go to court. Duh. With your ignorance, forming any hypothesis at all is somewhat tenuous.

[corenothing]

My Hero

[belatedconformr]

I am honestly puzzled at who disliked this...maybe they missed the button

[bjarnet3]

This is just amazing,, especially in the end... Thank you Jeff!!

[CurtHowland]

11:00, I couldn't agree more, Jeffrey. The 1800s encompassed the greatest technological revolution in human history. Even the 20th century does not compare.

Imagine no running water, no electricity, no gasoline, heating oil or kerosine, no automobiles, no metallic cartridges for guns, no propellers for ships, no anesthetic, not even BICYCLES, and you have the change that occurred through the 19th century.

The 20th century was a century of stagnation, not progress.

[CurtHowland]

7:50 Also keep in mind that during that time of growth, it was also a time of general DEFLATION, as the commodities used for money were slowly, but steadily, becoming MORE valuable.

Technological innovation and increases in efficiencies made everything less expensive to produce, and competition forced prices to continually drop.

[CurtHowland]

Imagine, you make money, you keep it? Really?

[sharperguy]

I was going to go the bed till I saw this.

[NicosMind]

To hear Jeffery talk about capitalism and what it truely is(not one of these straw man attacks) makes you want to join that world you can tell hes invisioning.

However the system is corrupt as hell. I got in a conversation with a communist a few years ago and i asked him what caused the "recession", to everything he said i was like "thats mercantilism, thats corporatism, thats fascism, thats cronny capitalism" And then i added a bunch more reasons he didnt know.

People need an education!

[blackacidlizzard]

@NicosMind

Maybe people on both sides need to appreciate that words have no objectively true meaning and that all all words with socio-political meanings have many opposing definitions. Asserting that "Capitalism" does not entail corporatist power abuse will get you nowhere.

Don't get hung up on the words, discuss the realities.

[NicosMind]

@blackacidlizzard Well if i had more space i would have mentioned semantics. But what i meant by people need to get an education is learn what a capitalist means by the word capitalist. Learn what a communist means by the word communist.

The fact that many communists think capitalists are pro big business coming in and ripping the place apart is nuts. They think if youre a conservative you dont care about the poor or youre rich.

And people need to look at things from all sides. (continue)

[NicosMind]

(cont) So really people need to get an education, and not a brainwashing as they so often do.

Personally i think Marx, and Keynes were charlatans. Marxs whole argument against "capitalism" was a straw man and he ignored many principles of capitalism such as property rights when making his arguments. But thats a different argument for a different day.

[blackacidlizzard]

@NicosMind

It's really not that nuts for them to think that when the most visible people talking about "free market capitalism" are the Limbaugh / Milton Friedman / Reagan crowd. Just as it is not crazy to suspect that a communist supports heavy-handed authoritarianism, given the track record of people calling themselves communist.

[NicosMind]

@blackacidlizz Yeah but it is nuts to listen to what someone says and then see different actions follow from it and then still blame their system. But for Joe bloggs in the public, who either dont care about it, or believe what some famous pundents say. Ie letting someone else do their thinking for them. I almost cant blame them.

However my grief mainly lies with the so called intellectuals who either knowingly or unknowingly mislead people. And like i said. I was in a conversation with a commie

[kingcherub]

I don't know why it just occurred to me but, how does a guy as clean cut as Jeff pull off the two day shadow so well?

[irdial]

Tucker introduced me to 'Against Intelectual Monopoly" an extremely important book on Copyright, Patents and all the fallacious arguments that swirl around them. Thanks Mr. Tucker!

[pathfight]

@irdial do you think it would be fair if we took back the length of the copyrights to 14 years. Like how it was in 1790. Also, maybe we can reduce the life-span of patents, but you still need patents. It's scary living in the patentless world and even more scary living in a rip-off-patent world.

[FreedomParadox]

@pathfight

Just read Against Intelectual Monopoly and Against Intellectual Property...

There is no need for or benefit from IP.

[irdial]

@pathfight Fair to whom? I really do suggest you Google the book I mention. You can buy it or read it for free. We do not need patents, and we will all be more prosperous without them, the people who make things and the people who consume them. Finally, being scared of the future is no reason to abandon morality. Patents and copyrights are immoral, artificial constructs of the State, not natural law based or 'fair'.

[Houshalter]

@irdial and just regular property rights aren't?

[ghostbuddy]

@Houshalter

Property rights were acknowledged and continue to be acknowledged in the absence of states. The same can't be said for intellectual property. There is evidence that people do acknowledge private property rights naturally, that it is a heuristic of sorts, that evolved. Similarly moral outrage towards theft is shown to be natural, not learned. Ultimately whats "fair" is subjective, but to one degree we have evolved a conception of fairness, that includes property rights.

[Houshalter]

@ghostbuddy There have only been a few polycentric legal systems, and they were far from perfect. It can also be said that IP is "natural" because people get pretty pissed when you steal their work and sell it as their own. Besides, whether or not something is "natural" should be irrelevant. If communism was natural than it still doesn't make it a feasible economic system.

[ghostbuddy]

@Houshalter

There have been many centralized legal systems, and they were far from perfect. Thats a bad argument for IP, because rights" are something that emerge as a norm out of a group of individuals, not the opinions of a single person. People rewarded by intellectual property laws valuing intellectual property laws, is completely different from a social norm that might have roots in evolution, being acknowledged by society and inevitably becoming law in a poly law system.

[Houshalter]

@ghostbuddy how do you know IP wouldn't emerge naturally in some economic environments? Esspecially if it was an economically beneficial rule? Or are you arguing that "emergent" law can't cover some types of rules even if they are economically beneficial, and so wouldn't that be an argument against them?

[ghostbuddy]

@Houshalter

Im sticking with what I said earlier: "I don't think its controversial to say intellectual property rights PROBABLY wouldn't (emerge as a result of consumer demand in a polycentric law system)."

Its safe to say weither or not IP laws are "economically beneficial", is very much in dispute, so you're just begging the question anyways.

[ghostbuddy]

@Houshalter

Please do try and keep up with the argument we are having.. At no point did I make a value judgement about private property. Do not attempt to claim I made a naturalistic fallacy. If you recall, the other user said; " intellectual property is an artificial concept constructed by the state, and not natural law (emergent law) based on "fair(ness)". You said the same can be said about private property. This is false, and I refuted that.

[ghostbuddy]

@Houshalter

Whether or not private property is; "an artificial concept constructed by the state, and not natural law, based on fairness" is completely relevant. Because thats exactly the claim you made.

[ghostbuddy]

@Houshalter

I think its also not controversial to say that property rights would likely be acknowledged in most places under a poly centric law system (what he refered to as "natural" law). I don't think its controversial to say intellectual property rights probably wouldn't.

[rumco]

End the State!

[richardcadbury]

@rumco how can you have objective law without a govt?

[Zorn101]

@richardcadbury a first principle like The Non-aggression principle

[PrudenceWright]

@richardcadbury Read Roderick T. Long's essay 'Market Anarchism as constitutionalism"

[rumco]

@richardcadbury Private property rights based on homesteading are absolute. There, you've got everything you need. Objective ethics/rights, using reason, not objective law.

[msungs]

@rumco I am so glad I quit my job as a Policeman and left the US(S)A which is controlled by the Federal Reserve as ''Federal'' as Federal Express. We need a revoulution and to lay siege upon Washington D.C. (District of Criminals). Happy Fourth of July to the FORMER United States of America.

[MrAdvancedAtheist]

@msungs I think the Federal Reserve System will outlive you. We can't abolish it without compensating its private owners for the "taking" according to the Fifth Amendment.

[combatjm89]

My earliest memory was of the 1964 World's Fair in NYC. I was about 3 y.o., and remember being on a conveyor belt and passing a TV camera, and seeing myself on TV.