free market

Google Launches Same-Day Delivery in San Francisco Bay Area

"Google has been testing the service, called Google Shopping Express, with employees for a few months. The company opened it up to the public this morning in a limited launch focused on San Francisco residents and others living south of the city from San Mateo to San Jose. Shoppers who sign up will get six months of free, same-day delivery of online orders placed with select retailers in the area. Google plans to charge for the service in the future, but it has not decided how much yet. Companies taking part in the test include national retailers such as Target, Office Depot Inc, Staples Inc and Toys 'R' Us Inc and smaller, local firms." Continue reading →

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Idea is floated for a start-up colony anchored in the Pacific Ocean

"Two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, frustrated by the shortage of visas that keep some of the world's brightest science and engineering minds from building companies on dry land, have hatched a plan to build a start-up colony in the middle of the Pacific. They plan to park a cruise ship 12 nautical miles off the coast of Northern California in international waters. Foreign-born entrepreneurs would live and work on the ship, building start-ups within commuting distance of Silicon Valley. They wouldn't have to get work visas that are so hard to come by. They would just need business tourism visas that would let them ferry back and forth to Silicon Valley." Continue reading →

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‘Pirate Bay’ for 3D printing launched

"The company that developed 3D printed gun parts has announced plans to launch a new firm, dedicated to copyright-free blueprints for a range of 3D printable objects. The firm, Defcad, is the brainchild of Cody Wilson, law student and self-styled crypto-anarchist. Mr Wilson said the revolution which many predict 3D printing will bring about will only happen if it can be freed from corporate ties. The blueprints available on the site will be for 'important stuff', he said. 'Not trinkets, not garden gnomes but the things institutions and industries have an interest in keeping from us; access, medical devices, drugs, goods, guns.'" Continue reading →

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Bitcoin: the fastest growing currency in the world

"Bitcoin is an unregulated, uncontrolled online currency – worth more than £500m, it's the world's fastest growing. It can be used to buy drugs, move money across the world, or get rich quick. The people behind Bitcoin speak to the Guardian's James Ball at their home in a squat in central London." Continue reading →

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Why Bitcoins Are Just Like Gold

"Bitcoin is gold on steroids, designed for a society that lives through the internet. Bitcoin is designed with the ideals of the contemporary cyber movement in mind: decentralization, peer to peer, cryptography. Easily transferable in ones and zeros, it’s a storage of value for a virtual society. As a payment system, it's a temporal store of money that can be easily sent across the globe securely and speedily without counterparty risk. No matter the price of bitcoin, these benefits will always give it purpose. Given its self-contained nature, it eliminates the need for inherent human interference. There’s no need for a central bank because bitcoin self-regulates." Continue reading →

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Don’t Hold Bitcoins; Krugman Won’t Like It

"Paul Krugman has written about Bitcoins, and he has come to the conclusion that they represent a grim development. Fortunately, no one is asking for Krugman’s permission to mine, hold, or use Bitcoin. He is not in charge of designing this emerging alternative money. As for making society rich, a main reason why Bitcoin is taking off is because people want to flee government paper money or at least have some hedge against government money and all that it brings with it. Bitcoin might someday save the economy from being destroyed by government and its economic advisers." Continue reading →

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Underground Economy Helps Account for Discrepencies in Economic Data

"Kalmes is among the 4.8 million unemployed Americans -- 40 percent of all those jobless -- who have been out of work for more than 27 weeks, even as the economy has been growing since June 2009 and the job market shows recent signs of healing. As her unemployment benefits have run out, she has entered the informal economy to make ends meet. America's shadow economy includes activities that are actually illicit -- prostitution and drug dealing -- and more benign jobs like working construction for a day for cash, or even the $2 per child that Kalmes gets for walking neighborhood students to the bus. Economists estimate $2 trillion could be involved." Continue reading →

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Supreme Court rules ‘first sale doctrine’ applies to lawful copies of a copyrighted work

"The US Supreme Court sided Tuesday with a former Thai student who made $90,000 reselling text books bought abroad and sparked a copyright row with a publisher. Supap Kirtsaeng, who arrived in the United States in 1997 to study math at the University of Southern California on a scholarship, had asked his friends and family to buy the books, published by John Wiley & Sons, which were cheaper back home. John Wiley & Sons filed a complaint in 2008 alleging illegal importation and resale without the payment of exclusive distribution rights protected by copyright. Lower courts had sided with the publisher, imposing a $600,000 fine on Kirtsaeng." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingSupreme Court rules ‘first sale doctrine’ applies to lawful copies of a copyrighted work