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If you de facto deny that supernatural events can’t happen, I’d say you have some pretty strong religious beliefs. If you want to deny that, I’d say that just means you’re not particularly self aware. You can play word games all day, but at the end of the day you’re operating from a set of unproven religious presuppositions about how the world operates (naturalism) and filtering everything through that lens. But I don’t think we’re going to get any further. Good day, sir.

So it sounds like you don’t agree with contract law. that if you make an agreement with someone or something that you are bound to keep your word. You somehow think that because you agreed to something voluntarily that the government should then act and impose new terms on the parties.

That’s one reason why we are regulation drunk in this country. Instead if having a simple rule that says you live up to contracts that you agree to, now we have to have a million rules for exceptions to contracts people sign.

I do t thing we can get anywhere if you don’t agree with contract law.

It would be better for both to enforce contract law all around. Don’t let either lie or steal and you’ll have a better outcome for all.

It’s a set of beliefs about how you should view and act in the world, that’s good enough.

I remember about 10 years ago the promise was that JRuby was going to let ruby be basically as fast as Java for many things. Invokedynamic and all that.

On the contrary, we could finally raise the voting age to 60.

Secularism is its own religion and gets quoted often around here. Guess you’ll just have to learn to be tolerant.

> preventing us from doing things with phones that we purchased.

Nobody is preventing you. Who is preventing you? There’s no government action here. You buy the phone or you buy a librephone. Let’s leave the government out altogether.

You’re the one pushing for some kind of regulation against free agents interacting. No need to contact the federals on this.

Could or should? If you want to download a bunch of mp3s without paying the author, knowing that the author has not intended for you to do so, do you think that is right?

Yes I think we do agree on many things. I think in general we both value property rights and that’s a good place to be.

We may disagree on which is the cart and which is the horse. I think that in general you need a moral people who will enforce the rule of law to get economic growth, so the rule of law is the horse. And the horse’s horse is the morality of the people, something Weimar Germany was certainly lacking. Get those in order first and I think prosperity will follow. Try to put prosperity first, then it won’t matter what rule of law you have b/c the most important thing is to make money.

Right but that’s tangential to the main point which is that if people come together to create something and you don’t like it, don’t buy it. Don’t attempt to strongarm them into making something you like, or punish them legally because you think they have had too much success.

> Your analysis didn't touch on the fundamental need of any democratic society to sustain strong economic growth

The need of the society is to defend property rights and sustain the rule of law. Economic growth is good, but you can’t make it the top of your list. Besides, we are already awash in too much regulation as it is, we should be heading the other direction towards more liberty. I’m not saying there’s never a time for regulation, just that we are waaaay past the point of reason in many areas.

> created by the government

The entity sure, but beyond the entity you have a group of people who have created something and want to sell it to you. If the Democratic will of the people said that we should jail them for creating shows we don’t like, I’m sure you’d object. Just because the people will it doesn’t mean it is correct.

People have a right to get together and create things and sell them to you under a contract. You have the right to accept or refuse. That simple.

Our society is regulation drunk.

This is such a cowardly view.

> If anything, breaking up these monopolies will lead to more innovation

Yes, let’s violate a company’s right to exist and conduct business just because we don’t like ads, or have preferences for how the run things. If you’re so concerned that they are not doing the right thing, then you go out and do it.

Less government regulation doesn’t mean violating contract law.

People seem to like them. And what a wonderful service they have done for society.

But I guess Walmart is always available, or boutique stores if you don’t like big box.

“Had to”

They did not have to. They could have let market forces dictate how it played out.

Right. Then you boot it up and have to agree to a bunch of stuff to use iOS. You can bail at that point and not use the device. Or you can know that you’ll have to agree to it later, and that the device is quite difficult to put another OS on, and just not purchase it. Get a librephone or Android or …

You may say that you bought the phone and so you can do with it what you want —- ok. Hack/root it to run another OS. It’s your device in that sense. But they are under no obligation (nor should be forced to be) to make it easy.

I agree with you that I wish they would make it easy, but alas. Buy a librephone.

I certainly support contract law. What I don’t want is coercion. They make a device, offer it to you with a contract, and you can say yes or no.

You make a recommendation for how they run their platform, they can say yes or no. You can go or you can stay.

It’s that simple.

But I think we’ve run this well dry.

As long as it doesn’t break the contract you signed when buying the device, go for it.

If they would band together, why not just make a new phone? Going after jail breaking apple devices would be fruitless since apple could release a new firmware to block your OS. I wish they wouldn’t, but the market solution would be for people to stop buying apple devices.

Didn’t realize, I wish they wouldn’t. even more reason to not buy Apple (I’m typing this on an iPhone :) )

I agree with you that I wish they would allow it. I agree that I should be able to put windows 10 on my iPhone. Thanks for the back and forth, and we may not be able to get past our starting assumptions about the nature of trade/commerce, but I still wouldn’t want to legally force apple to do anything. People should definitely make a big stink about it, though. Thanks for the back and forth, but I’ll leave it there.

I appreciate the back and forth, I really do.

> Instead it is about preventing them from spending so much effort and trying to remove other people's ability to install other app stores.

I think we are coming at this from 2 separate sets of foundational assumptions. I’m of the camp that companies are free to make devices and we are free to buy or not buy them. If we don’t like how they operate, we buy a competitor who does what we want. Hopefully enough people agree with us that a competitor will cater to us, or we can start our own. I know that some people start from a different set of assumptions that assumes we can just force the seller to sell us what we want. I don’t know that we can bridge that divide easily, but I wish you well. Thanks for the back and forth.

Of course you own it and should be able to put whatever OS you want on it. But you are confusing that with forcing apple to write their software in a way that suits you.

Antitrust laws _can_ be good, but like I said elsewhere, we are a country swimming neck deep in regulation and seem to like our particular hammer. It has a cooling effect on innovation, and China in some ways has a freer economy than we do.

I think it odd that many people rush to strongarm companies through law when there is a perfectly good alternative in Android. Even Microsoft and Amazon have been in the phone business and could get back in, offering you a phone with multiple app stores. Epic could even do it. There doesn’t seem to be enough people who care. You apparently do, and actually I agree with you that Apple should allow alternative app stores. But voluntarily because the people demand it or are leaving for Android, not because the hammer came down on them.

I’m also saying that our culture absolute swims in regulation and we as fish just get used to it and are quick to reach for it as a hammer, seeing everything as nails. We are so steeped in it, that in many ways _China_ has a freer economy than the US does. I’d urge much caution here.

Yea, their OS, their store, their software stack. Sure, you own the device, so put whatever OS you want on it. But you can’t force Apple to write their OS however you want except by market forces. Well, you could try using extreme tactics like government regulation, but that’s a severe overreach and uncalled for just because you don’t like the way apple writes their software.

I agree it is your phone, you should be able to put whatever OS you want on it if you are unhappy with the default. But don’t take the extreme position of forcing apple through law to write software the way you want. You have other options, buy an Android device.

I’m saying if someone tells you that the software sold with his device is locked to to only work with company X, then you are free to buy it or not. You should also be free to put other software on it yourself, like a new OS. You should not take the extreme position of leveraging law to force the seller to write his software the way you like.

I’m glad we agree that they willingly entered a contract, no one forced them.

Yes, I’m suggesting that people leave if they are unhappy with Apple. Go to Google; or maybe MS or Amazon will see how hated apple is and start a new phone division. That’s how markets work.

Companies that have seemed on top and undefeatable before have fallen due to customer unhappiness, and can fall quite quickly, too.