eldude

Then God bless that the United States is a Republic[1] and not a Democracy, such that my rights should never be beholden to such contemptible motives.

Also, this is a very materialistic view of money. You falsely assume that money's sole use is the acquisition of material goods, and not what it really is, the transfer of value.

Wealthy and poor alike choose to donate to and support causes they see as perpetuating their values. Are you really suggesting that an individual that wants for no goods to consume has no use of money? No.

What you are proposing is that to those who refuse, by virtue of their property rights, to give you what you want, you would take from them at the point of a gun upon non-compliance that which they would not give you. _This_ is the tyranny of the majority, a true democracy, a form of government our founding fathers held in disdain.

I suspect that you hold this view of money because you find that no amount of it would grant you the power to take that which you desire to obtain through a democracy, the violation of other rights.

[1] Art. 4 Sec. 4 Par. 1 http://www.house.gov/house/Constitution/Constitution.html

Monopolies which no one is free to compete against (e.g., the federal government) are corrupt monopolies. They use the force of a gun to force the will and goods of other to serve their own selfish greed. The founding fathers of the United States understood this, and instituted a federal system in which states were not only free, but expected to compete against each other. Unfortunately, those who seek power and control over others and their rights recognized this obstacle, and have gradually coerced and persuaded the populace toward supporting an increasingly larger federal government at the expense of free competition amongst states. No one is legally allowed to compete with the federal government, and thus any endeavor in which it labors who's sole purpose is not to uphold the rights of its people, is corrupt. Both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of this corruption, whether out of malice or negligence is of no importance.

There is no contradiction.

A successful business progressing to the point of an earned "monopoly", is still beholden to both competitors and a free market. It has neither violence nor coercion as means to enforce its interests. However, a government monopoly (note the lack of quotes), retains the privilege to force by means of violence any that refuse its product. If you refuse to pay taxes, you will go to jail. If you refuse to go to jail, you will be forced to go to jail. If you refuse to be forced to go to jail against your life, your life will be taken from you. You are not free in this transaction; there is no nobility in the greed of the government to take what it wants at your expense.

It would serve you well to brush up on the definition of a monopoly, specifically as Webster defines it[1]:

  exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action

The important distinction here being "legal privilege". The _federal_ government maintains the sole legal privilege to be the provider of many goods and services which _no other entity is allowed to provide_. Google does not enjoy such a legal privilege and is competing in, please excuse the very loose use of the phrase, a free market.

Please do not co-opt the word monopoly so trivially.

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly

A monopoly does not kill competition, it disuades it. Nobody competes with the monopoly because the incentives are not great enough to do so. The same incentives for success do not disappear because a monopoly emerges. The monopoly must still sell their item to a free market that's free to refuse their goods on moral or pragmatic grounds. A monopoly means solely that they are not challenged by a competitor and can therefore sell their product beholden only to demand, and not supply. Again, this is a _good_ thing.

The demand of the consumers that products be offered at the price they want, as opposed to the company's, is again plain and simple _greed_.

Let's not be coy about it. Consumers want more for less and they seek to use the government and the tyranny of the masses to force corporations, the private property of others, to give it to them. Again, this conduct is reprehensible and any government that encourages it will only be hurting itself and its citizens.

Let me repeat that, a monopoly is not some magical power to force one's will upon the people. In a free market, a monopoly remains subject to the demand of the market and cannot and will not succeed by offering a product nobody wants. Success is not anti-competitive, far from it! Success is the greatest incentive for competition that has ever existed.

You're forcing your desires onto a free market that is clearly making its own choice. You're proclaiming to know more about what's best for people than they do. Leave the free market alone, empower and grant the people their free will, educate, and if you want to change the world, do so by competing and earning it, not by undermining others' rights to satisfy your own ideology.

The people this is going to hurt the most are the citizens and businesses in France. No company or entrepreneur is going to want to setup shop in a country where success is punished. No creator, achiever or pursuer of excellence will desire to go to France if they risk being sued the moment they become successful enough to be worth it. Argue all you want that this is about "monopolies" and "anti-competitive" behavior, but what this is really about is greed. The greed of Bottin Cartographes, jealous of Google's success, using a government that doesn't respect private property rights to steal from another. This is reprehensible behavior on behalf of the government, its people, and anyone here who defends it.

If the only differentiating factor between the "monopoly" and a local business is price, the "monopoly" is going to win every time, and this is in fact a _good_ thing and best for everyone as it rewards successful business models. The "monopoly" didn't become successful because it was handed to them, it had to compete and earn it, and now it's enjoying the fruits of its labor. If on the other hand it did not earn its position, but instead lobbied or procured favors from government officials, then it deserves to be shut down, broken up, etc... as this is what's known in a free market as corruption.

Competition does not die in the face of a stronger competitor. Competition dies when rewards are removed and you take away the purpose for competing. Reward inferior products and call it justice, and you'll get more of the same.

Ask yourself this; If this were to happen in Silicon Valley, would Silicon Valley as we know it continue to exist? Doubtful.

Checkout Zipstream if you're looking to zip in node (Stream and pipe compatible).

https://github.com/wellawaretech/node-zipstream

Or in this case it was simply a matter of drawing attention for any who appreciated our entry to show appreciation by helping us win. Considering this was my project, I felt obliged to bring attention to something I felt warranted it. I was neither being rude, nor would it be rude in person (as is often emphasized in the guidelines) to speak loudly in a crowded noisy room filled with people gathering to appreciate what you've built. I often host developer events, and as a host this type of behavior is not only not rude, but often necessary and appreciated. The notion that all caps are "very rude" is at best contextual. In this case, it would seem to be ignorance on the part of the admins to recognize such a purpose and intention.

However, it would appear I stand corrected as I missed the following:

"Please don't use uppercase for emphasis." [1]

However, I stand by the ridiculousness of banning a sincere contributer that's bringing traffic to the site solely due to (positive constructive) ignorance of the rules.

Would you kick a guest out from your home without warning for temporarily speaking loudly in good intention, and exclude them from all future discussions? It would seem in this case HN violates their own rule regarding civility treating people online as you would in a face to face conversation, and please don't give me the excuse of this being necessary in order to deal with spambots. Such an argument defends rudeness and laziness as a better algorithm could easily be written.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

While I may even agree with you, the unfortunate fact is that it is not in fact spam and violates no rules or guidelines and suffers only from being overly enthusiastic in a positive and friendly manner. In truth, it is not even "empty" in that it provides an important link to the voting page.

At best this is an example of incompetence in the form of a poorly written spam detection algorithm, at worst it represents an admin's lazy disregard for the effects of "hellbanning" on a sincere community.

> Every time I've seen a hellbanned account, I have agreed with the decision.

I'd be curious to get your opinion on my (just discovered) ban: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3354475

It doesn't look like anything to the banned individual apparently, as I just now discovered that my account was banned. Awesome.

http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3354475

I'm absolutely shocked and disgusted to be be reading this discussion regarding being "hellbanned" only to discover that my account in fact has been hellbanned for the past 1.5 yrs without even knowing it!

http://news.ycombinator.org/threads?id=CrabDude * enable showdead in your profile to read my comments

As you can see from my comments and contributions, most are extremely well reasoned and often entirely unique and invaluable contributions to a given conversation that to my frustration were inexplicably never upvoted or commented on, without any real insight as to why. I honestly am in shock and beyond frustrated that so much of my efforts and attempts to edify and contribute have been undermined by something that is explicitly allowed in comment guidelines. [1]

Specifically, the comment that is apparently responsible for my hellban, was on a post that linked to MY NodeKnockout entry which both won the competition category and received over 60 votes to end up on the front page:

  HEY ALL! REMEMBER TO VOTE FOR US! WE'RE TRYING TO WIN THE INNOVATION CATEGORY!
  http://nodeknockout.com/teams/starcraft-2-destroyed-my-marri...
  AND RETWEET THIS WITH #nodeko! =)

Worse, this manner of comment is explicitly mentioned as okay in the guidelines. [1]

  Empty comments can be ok if they're positive. There's nothing wrong with submitting a comment saying just "Thanks."

And to any who would comment that my use of all caps elicited my ban, I'd respond by pointing out the use of capitalization is used "for emphasis," [2] in this case, specifically, enthusiasm -- unfortunately making the resulting ban all the more disgusting and frustrating.

To any in YC who have control over such things, please unban my account. I would greatly prefer to use it and retain all my contributions than be forced to play wack-a-mole in response to inaccurate rule enforcement.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_caps