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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
With all else that article had to say, the entire summary was about copyright? Hot button much?
In other news, America seems to be full of people that want money for nothing.
They also appear to want their checks for free.
There is a WIDE gulf between completely lack of copyright,and the never-ending copyright terms that we have in the USA today. (And don't tell me that copyrights are finite, because they DO get extended every time things are about to start to enter the public domain again.)
Arguing against infinite copyrights doesn't necessarily mean arguing for absolutely no copyright at all.
companies like Disney rape the public domain for ideas and never give back to the public domain.
Be seeing you...
How did we get in such dire straits.
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.
"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the Bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.. corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed." - Abraham Lincoln
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
you get laughed at for being a tin foil hatted conspiracy theorist. The trouble is this stuff is so horrible people can't believe it's happening. It's too far removed from reality. Plus their taught from day one that America is the greatest country on earth, and it's hard to get away from a belief that's been ingrained in you since childhood.
Ever notice how little time Obama spent attacking Romney's policies? The Obama campaign did focus groups and found they couldn't attack Romney on policy because nobody believed he was going to implement them for real. The massive cuts to medicare, social security, tax cuts for the rich, etc. Maybe Romney wasn't really gonna do those things, we'll never know. But either way Obama couldn't convince anyone that he might...
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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.
I'm not sure it's corruption. It's more like taking advantage of a system that is optimized for helping the Haves get more.
That's the textbook definition of corruption. Using your public position for personal gain.
Politicians should be like Nascar drivers and be required by law to wear a vest that has patches of all the corporations (and any individuals that donate more than a set amount per year) that own their votes. The size of the patch directly relating to the amount of ownership. When the amount of ownership gets above 50% that politician can no longer run for public office as it is obvious that he no longer represents his constituency.
this was pointed out during the recent storms (Sandy), and there were several pundits that pointed out that Democrats tended to staff FEMA with professional disaster management folks while the Republicans tended to give those positions out to friends, family and donors. That was why the disaster was as well handled as it was and didn't turn into New Orleans II: The Squeal.
The hard part about this is even though it's demonstrably true (it's easy to trace the reasons for the FEMA appointments under the two administrations) it's so outlandish to think that a man would appoint someone to such an important position for political points that people just don't believe you when you point it out. Even if you've got the evidence (google it) to back it up...
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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
Copycat responses can really sting.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
We haven't increased the size of the House of Representatives since the 1930s, but the size of the population has grown 3X since then. The House is supposed to grow (and shrink) with population, yet it has not for nearly 100 years. Are we to believe we have the same level of representation as our great grandparents? Just try to get your Representative on the phone, for example. You might be able to reach him if you have a campaign check, but even that's doubtful these days.
Why is this relevant to the conversation? Because $435 million is a drop in the bucket for most companies, while you'll likely never see your Representative in person, let alone sit down with him/her and voice your opinion. The corporations don't care about who or which party gets elected, just so they remember who cut them the million dollar donation.
But imagine if there were 1000 or more Representatives. Now how easy would it be for corps to buy the Congress? Yes, a lot of the activity would just switch over to the Senate, but both houses have to agree to get legislation passed.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Thankfully, like minded people can now come together on the internet and be brothers in arms.
Like Bain and the guys that did Hostess in are what's scaring me. Basically guys with money and connections come in, buy a company, and then immediately start raiding the pension funds and paying themselves huge consulting fees from the loans they take out on the business' good name. Then they blame the whole sodding mess on workers making 45k/yr and unions and shut the whole thing down and move it to Mexico where slave labor abounds.
br> These guys are what'll stop innovation. They've got it so good (because they're so damn rich) they don't care about innovation. They become intensely, frighteningly conservative. There what's moved the US so far right these days. They don't want anything to change since they're makin' out like bandits. Hell, they've made progress (as in 'progressive') a bad word...
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I am sorry to have to tell you that Lincoln never said that.. Although the quote has been around forever, it is not actually attributed to Lincoln, and is a forgery.
Back in the 1950s, there was a publisher called Dover, that reprinted out-of-print classics, mostly math and science orphan books that science students had to read an hour at a time on reserve in the university library. (There were professors who owned a rare book that nobody else could get, and could give an entire course by paraphrasing from the book.)
Dover was very successful, because there was a great need for these books that the free market wasn't otherwise filling. I read many of their books. I thought that was pretty innovative.
You couldn't do that today. There are important math and science books that are out of print, and nobody can legally reprint them. You might find them in a big academic library, you might be able to buy them on the rare books market for $200, you might be able to find pirated editions, but you can't legally get them when you need them under these copyright laws.
Similarly with the music industry. There was a record publisher called Nonsuch that used to put out cheap records of public domain or uncopyrighted music. (For most of its existence the Soviet Union didn't believe in copyright, and they had some of the best musicians in the world.)
Probably the most innovative thing you could do with out-of-copyright works is to compile them into an anthology. Under the old copyright laws, you could put together a pretty good poetry collection of works that were only 14 or 28 years old without royalties. Now you can't do that. You'd have to wait until 100 years after the death of the author.
"Don't be silly, there are no misattributed quotes on the Internet." -- Mark Twain
Want to see where it's similar? Try Japan and Europe. Massive regulations, people entrenched, everyone under 35 has part-time jobs, or are going through temp agencies and working 3 of them, and still not making ends meet.
This is simply not true here in Japan.
Even McDonald's here pays over $11-12/hr (which is still too low) and the majority of the work force are full-time, life-long, benefit-receiving employees.
Where did you do your in-depth research for this post?
I live in the UK and you're talking bollocks, unemployment is not exceptional, we have nothing like the poverty that the US has. We have far better minimum wages which combat poverty. there is no such thing as food stamps here. And of course the national health service is free to all so if you get sick it is not a problem financially (except for the time off work for some people).
And the Japanese guy disagrees too I see.
I don't earn great wages and I live in London and I still have plenty of spending money, food is not a concern.
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