corentin

What in hell makes people think that reading a French newspaper is in any way "education"?

We're not talking about "The Economist" here...

As a former Frenchman, let me tell you it's a hell of a lot.

You can read the Forbes Tax Misery Index (http://www.forbes.com/global/2008/0407/060_2.html) or the Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom (http://www.heritage.org/index/Country/France) to learn more.

Despite those billions, most public services have been running huge deficits for decades. The trains are fast and the electricity is mostly nuclear, though. And you'll have the pleasure to live in a country where everyone has equal health care. And it's really, really... well, equal.

The euro actually is a disaster for most european countries. It's nothing but a fixed-parity system and as such it's likely to break down soon.

A few years ago there were games such as Rollercoaster Tycoon and the like (see http://mises.org/article.aspx?control=772 )

We already have English.

Obviously the teachers in France and Germany aren't paid, and the buildings and furniture just felt down from the sky.

It would be easy to implement:

return (DEMOCRATS == current_administration) ? REPUBLICANS : DEMOCRATS;

I'd say it should be:

taxes shutdown()

but I have a feeling it would be void shutdown()...

> I imagine it would create a thousands of government jobs, boost every sector of hardware sales, foster the creation of thousands of start ups and bring accountability and transparency to government, among other things.

The money you need to fund this stuff has to come from somewhere; hence destroying thousands of non-government jobs, slowing down every other sector of the economy and preventing the creation of thousands of startups.

By your logic, you could have outsourced the design as well.

Well, just one example: until last year, Red Bull was banned in France for health safety reasons.

The central planners running the economy in soviet Russia were incredibly smart as well.

Maybe we just need hosting review website review websites.

It's hard because he is writing a framework. Since he's not solving a real problem, he doesn't know when it's done or not.

So far, I've only seen this brilliant "business model" applied to electronic toys for geeks...

You could invent some sunscreen mayonaise.

I've also seen real-world governments ruin their own economies by making short-sighted (or just plain stupid) decisions. And I've seen Ponzi schemes in a lot of government plans as well.

I too kill people and do a lot of very nasty stuff in video games. But for some mysterious reason, I don't do them in real life.

It's quite obvious that the guy has no idea what he's talking about (e.g. "Money was very quickly given to corporations with no government oversight. Exactly how libertarians would want it.")

> Libertarianism by itself is flawed because many corporations will establish monopolies or duopolies, stop innovating, raise prices, and call it a day.

Whereas with big government, they'll never ever hire lobbyists to ask for bailouts, subsidies and protectionist legislation...

> You can't just dub yourself a "Software Engineer" because you self-taught yourself visual basic.

Well, to me it just looks like canadian Engineers(TM) are afraid of competition.

Let's eliminate both taxation and public sending and we'll know the answer.

It's regulated to prevent free competition from lowering your wages. So much for the "interests of the general public"...

Maybe their super data mining computer will eventually tell them to avoid running out of croissants every single day before 9 AM at my local Tesco...

They will consume their own production and start spending their dollars and euros.

Value is in the eye of the beholder.

If people are willing to pay 100 dollars for FooBarSoft version 12, it means that they value it at least 100 dollars.

1. Build a great product

2. Give it away for free

3. ???

4. Profit!

Are you sure you can't merge 2 and 3 into something more... sensible?

> Innovation is so expensive that the private sector can't even dream of achieving anything of those magnitudes.

Keep in mind that all the money of the public sector comes from the private sector... and ultimately ends up in some pockets in the private sector as well.

> I think that's an awful, brutal, unfair system, and I'd gladly trade a little bit of "competitiveness" for a bit more compassion.

As I see in your profile that one of your goal is to live outside the US, let me tell you that I'll gladly trade my French passport for your US passport. In France, you'll have as much compassion, fairness, equality and socialism as you want (and probably even more!)

edit: to be honest, you are on the right track to experience this brilliant social system in the US...

> The French may not work 60-hour weeks, but at least they have the good sense to make the most of the time they've been granted on the planet.

France is the number one country in the world for antidepressant drugs consumption...