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How Corruption Is Strangling US Innovation
hype7 writes "The Harvard Business Review is running a very interesting piece on how money in politics is having a deleterious effect on U.S. innovation. From the article: 'Somehow, it seems that every time that [Mickey Mouse] is about to enter the public domain, Congress has passed a bill to extend the length of copyright. Congress has paid no heed to research or calls for reform; the only thing that matters to determining the appropriate length of copyright is how old Mickey is. Rather than create an incentive to innovate and develop new characters, the present system has created the perverse situation where it makes more sense for Big Content to make campaign contributions to extend protection for their old work.if you were in any doubt how deep inside the political system the system of contributions have allowed incumbents to insert their hands, take a look at what happened when the Republican Study Committee released a paper pointing out some of the problems with current copyright regime. The debate was stifled within 24 hours. And just for good measure, Rep Marsha Blackburn, whose district abuts Nashville and who received more money from the music industry than any other Republican congressional candidate, apparently had the author of the study, Derek Khanna, fired. Sure, debate around policy is important, but it's clearly not as important as raising campaign funds.'"
What a surprise ! :D
getting serious, it is really sad what is happening with society, we have come to a stage where pretty much everything we do is getting richer the rich, we see that a lot here in México, every new law is pushing for lower salaries and less benefits, and from some years ago, gov is pushing to convert universities into technicall schools so we can have even more cheap workers.
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
companies like Disney rape the public domain for ideas and never give back to the public domain.
Be seeing you...
It's scary how few people in the U.S. take the corruption in their government seriously. There are jokes!
The corruption is FAR, FAR more severe than shown in the Harvard Review article. For example, read Funding the Enemy: How U.S. Taxpayers Bankroll the Taliban.
Or read House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties.
To many in the U.S. government, killing other people is a way of making money.
money corrupts politics, news @ 11
Of course, but that is not the problem.
Most civilised countries throw in jail corrupt politicians. In the US bribery is legalised among other nice things such as torture and abductions (extraordinary renditions), and the penalty is zip, nothing at all. In fact the more bribes, ehm contributions you have the bigger the possibility of finding a job in the bribing industry right after leaving Congress.
HBR is correct, the US is failing not because of bribery, but because there is no mechanism in the system to thwart that threat.
47 million on food stamps, average welfare spending per poor household is HIGHER than median income.
The tragedy isn't that 47 million people are getting food stamps, the tragedy is that a person can be holding down three part time jobs paying *more* than minimum wage, and still need food stamps. Corporations are paying their employees starvation wages, working their salaried employees for hundreds of mandatory unpaid overtime hours every year, and paying almost no taxes to boot. Our system isn't fostering corruption, it is the embodiment of it!
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted