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Full Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Intellectual Property Chapter Analyzed (freezenet.ca)
Dangerous_Minds writes: Freezenet seems to be the first website to publish a full run-down of the final draft of the Intellectual Property chapter in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The leak was published on Wikileaks earlier. The analysis seems to confirm what the EFF has said, saying that the chapter "confirms our worst fears about the agreement, and dashes the few hopes that we held out that its most onerous provisions wouldn't survive to the end of the negotiations." The analysis focuses mainly on copyright enforcement on the Internet and the impact the chapter would have on personal devices, VPN services, and ISPs. One noteworthy find by Freezenet is the inclusion of a "TPP Commission" which would decide when different countries are supposed to meet outside of the 10-year cycle, discussing "market circumstances" of "the development of new pharmaceutical products." What other roles the TPP Commission takes on is unclear given that it is not mentioned anywhere else in the chapter.
So to summarize the effect of TPP in one semi-sentence....
"....and the horse you rode in on..."
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The name "TTP commission" strongly echoes the EU commission's name. The later is an unelected, unaccountable body that takes over nation state sovereignty, and it is interesting they chose a look alike name.
In the future the global legal framework will be created and enforced by corporations. The nation-state will lose its sovereignty.
From the governments become more corrupted from representing their people to the privatization of military forces to Google and other corporations owning, paying for research that they can 'sell back' to consumers, your world will be controlled by corporations. Democracy, socialism and communism will no longer exist thanks to capitalism.
This is a good time to read "When Google Met Wikileaks" by Julian Assange
This video explains the evidence in a recent study. It shows why what Americans want has practically no effect on what American politicians do.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Except with healthcare. More government control has been proven to be a good thing.
... and roads. Also public health and sanitation. And peace and public order. And the aqueduct. But apart from the aqueduct, roads, public health, sanitation, peace, public order, education, and healthcare, what have the Romans ... uh, government, what has the government done for us?
Corporations = evil. Wall street regulates Congress. Solution: public money creation, distributed directly to individuals in the form of a basic income.
But apart from the aqueduct, roads, public health, sanitation, peace, public order, education, and healthcare
Yes, those are things that nobody would demand in a market situation. Clearly we need human sacrifice on the order of hundreds of millions of people to provide water transportation systems.
"But if we don't sacrifice the virgins, the sun won't come up, and then everybody will die!"
I'm not sure which is the most repulsive: the Stockholm syndrome, the lack of reason and creativity, or the sociopathic disregard for the lives of millions in deference to the propaganda of a seventh-grade government-school civics teacher.
"You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of reality."
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Govenments CAN be beneficial for those who lack power if, and only if, the government itself does not ally itself with those in power. Then it is at best useless. At worst compounding the problem.
An absence of government creates a power vacuum that will instantly be filled by whoever has the most power. In our world this essentially means that the entity with the most money will rule. And of course abuse its power to suppress anyone wanting to either rise to power himself or to force those lacking the ability to defend themselves against it to bend to his interests. In short, that "rich" entity will force the "poor" ones to work against their own interest and for his.
Any government that supports such a system can as well be considered failed because it serves no purpose. This is the state a society would assume anyway without government.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's just another run-off-the-mill anarchist position. You sound like anarchism had never been proposed as a political view before and as if there had never been any serious debate about this. This has already been discussed and rejected by most thinkers more than a hundred years ago.
Despite the fact that probably everyone wants a lean government and it is surprisingly hard to get one, you position has the fatal flaw that you need a government apparatus to control corporations via anti-cartel laws and regulations for worker protection, social security, and basic customer protection. An unrestricted market invariably leads to cartels and extreme unequal wealth distributions. Your abolishing of the government would lead to extreme corporate fascism and totalitarian oligarchy, possibly even dictatorship, and you'd end up as a slave worker in no time.
They can demand gold bricks but they won't get them, without government only wealthy people get these things, poor people wouldn't be allowed to drive on private roads, just look at third world countries for a lack of sanitation, clean water, health care etc.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
however in a free market capitalism monopolies are temporary and their existence depends on them providing a good enough product / service in the most cost effective way possible.
...or product dumping, price fixing, dividing markets, buying up competitors etc. etc.
In the real world businesses hate competition, and will do anything legal to prevent it.
Yes, those are things that nobody would demand in a market situation.
If you don't have a government you don't have a market. Markets can only operate where there are some basic rules which the participants can be trusted to follow. This requires someone with the best/most pointy sticks to enforce the rules which will be the de facto government.
Your link goes on about freedom but the only reason many of us have some guaranteed freedoms is because there is a government which is willing to enforce them with the use of pointy sticks. That's why we created them and why we still have them despite their many flaws.
If you want an idea about what life without government is like look back at history, not the 250 years that the US has been around but several thoused years ago and more. Life in the stone age was free but would you prefer living then rather than now? The big difference is of course technology but look at history: technology is closely tied to the development of governments and the better the government the more rapid the technological progress. It's unlikely Newton would have come up with his laws of motion if he had to spend most of his time worrying about how to protect himself and his property.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For those who are still very thick in the head and cannot comprehend the simplest thing since for the first time in history of this planet a rock was used to bash somebody on the head, I would like to repeat this axiom: markets = evil.
Markets is an evil structure by its very definition, as it is set up to provide the collective with violent means of dominating an individual. Whatever system that is fundamentally based on violence can not and will not avoid using violence to increase its own power, and a markets is seen as legitimate by its very definition, doesn't it? It's the *markets* after all, it is there to serve and protect...
Here is your problem: you are not the ones it will be serving and protecting once it manages to grow its power enough with its legitimate use of violence. It will dominate and subjugate you and it will imprison you.
I will also repeat something I said for nearly two decades now: abolish markets protected copyrights and patents.
Markets exists to use power and it ends up using its power against you, understand it and work against it. Copyrights and patents are a manner used to create monopoly power for specific individuals. Many of you believe that monopolies are the property of free market capitalism, however in a free market capitalism monopolies are temporary and their existence depends on them providing a good enough product / service in the most cost effective way possible.
With markets there is no such requirement, markets simply sets up monopolies and uses its violent power to maintain them. Utility companies, copyright holders, patent holders, military, education, name whatever markets does and there is violence there, used to protect somebody's monopoly.
My position is that TPP is inevitable once markets with violent powers exists.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
As much as starting your own business means you will sexually harass your female employees, defraud your investors, dump toxic waste in the river, and join the international slave trade. For what some businesses have done, all businesses will do.
That's either equally brilliant as your assertion that government = evil, or equally asinine.
Another problem left out of your Randian storyline: look back at the worst Soviet agency, program or institution you could name, and its bureaucrats wouldn't have a direct, personal incentive to cut corners the way capitalists do. Because, as you Randians constantly tell us, socialism/communism leads to lazy, unproductive workers that have guaranteed jobs and salaries no matter how little they work. As opposed to capitalists, who choose to leave people with cancer, disembowelment or death to save a buck (or less) on products that cost thousands of dollars.