Brazil started doing this when the US announced it was doing it to all visitors a couple of years ago. It surprised me to see that it has taken other countries so long to start doing this too. What goes around comes around. We do it to the world, then the world will do it to us.
This also applies to torture and other interogation techniques like "water boarding" for captured soldiers. In the future our military personal should expect to have the same treatment that we are giving others with water boarding, etc. UM, what captured soldiers are you talking about? To the best of my knowledge, none of the members of the Iraqi Army that were captured when we overthrew Saddam were subject to water boarding or other techniques that could be called torture.
When ebooks finally come into existence, publishers will find themselves in the same position that the RIAA members find themselves in now, with a business model that does not support the types of profit that they are used to. Publishers currently add a lot of value to the book. They produce the, relatively, expensive distribution media (paper book), they market the product, they manage the distribution, etc. Now, publishers have two things going for them that the record industry didn't. First, the costs involved are large enough that the profit is not as enormous as what the record industry was making. Two, the costs involved have been falling steadily for several decades, lowering the barriers to entry. This second point means that there are constantly new and innovative companies entering the field. This means that publishers are constantly facing competition that forces them to rethink their business model. Of course, one of the reasons that we don't have ebooks as a common phenomena yet is because publishers have continued to try and develop one that they have proprietary control over.
How about this story I just came across this morning? http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2007/nov/18/566675940.html
This didn't happen to anyone I know, but it is relevant to this story. I think the moral here is that you need to take information you learn with a grain of salt and carefully evaluate whether it is reliable enough to take action against a perceived "evil doer".
From what I have seen of this story, the following appears to not be in dispute: the woman created a false identity as a boy; she encouraged her neighbor's daughter to enter into an online relationship with this false identity; someone using that false identity made disparaging remarks to the neighbor girl, which led her to commit suicide. I am not convinced that a crime was committed (or that it should have been a crime), but I am convinced that this behavior is reprehensible and should be viewed as socially unacceptable.
You are right that the U.S. has a trade deficit. It does not, however, mean that we are losing money. I do not fully understand the economics, however, even the article you refer to indicates that the meaning and impact of a trade deficit for an economy is highly debated among economists. The most clear thing from the article is that a trade deficit cannot be easily understood by saying that it means we are losing money.
and so artists are starting to realize that the artist should get a larger share of the profit
Artists are starting to realize they can have all the profits, that the studios just really aren't all that relevant anymore. For that matter, they're starting to realize the sale of their music can actually have profits, if they just don't contract out to a major studio. Radiohead's recent efforts in this regard have certainly pointed the way to self-publishing on the Web as a way to make serious money. However, in the long run, most artists will discover that they need to pay a publicist, a promoter, and a record producer (probably a couple of other roles of which I am not thinking at the moment) to maximize their profit. The best of those that do those three jobs will get a cut of the profit, not just a flat rate. Therefore the artist that wants ALL of the profit will not make as much as the one who shares it intelligently.
You do know that the US exports were a larger percentage of GDP than ever in 2006? http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:HTP0L7C38GUJ:www.commerce.gov/NewsRoom/PressReleases_FactSheets/PROD01_002835+U.S.+trade+2006&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=us&client=firefox-a
Exports were 11.6 percent of GDP in 2006. They were 5.2 percent of GDP 50 years ago.
As for the weak dollar, the dollar is (mostly)falling against currencies of countries that fall into one of two classes (or in some case both classes), commodity(oil, for example) producers (Canada, for example), or higher central bank interest rates (Brazil and Canada, for example). The primary exception to this is the euro. However, the EU's central bank interest rates were lower than the US Fed interest rates until recently, when the Fed lowered interest rates and the EU central bank raised their's. We did not see a lot of "the sky is falling" talk about the euro when it dropped in value in 2005, why should we buy such talk when the U.S. dollar is falling in 2007?
The best evidence still suggests that the U.S. economy is the strongest in the world and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Which I would say is at best 5 years. However, considering that all of the current potential contenders to displace the U.S. as the number one economy have major demographic issues that start in about 10 years, I believe that the U.S. economy will remain the strongest in the world for at least the next 20.
Copyright holders spend 100's of thousands to mulitple millions of dollars to produce "music videos", engage in Payola, advertise to DJs and radio station programmers, etc. all for the purpose of allowing the music to be played on the air or on TV/Cable all in the hope that people will buy the music. Clearly they could save those $$, let P2P do it's work, and accrue the savings in production, Payola, etc. to any lost of royalities.
Actually, the problem the RIAA members have is that they don't control what gets played this way. RIAA members believe (wrongly) that they can manufacture demand for particular music, no matter what its quality is. They, also, believe (correctly) that if this new distribution/exposure system takes over, they will no longer be able to justify the large share of the profit from music distribution that they take.
Under the old, established music distribution system (brick and mortar stores, exposure on radio stations and MTV), the RIAA members added a lot of value to an musicians work, justifying the large share of the profits that they reaped. Under the new distribution system (download music file and mount to media of user's choice, exposure on internet radio and free download), the RIAA members add much less value and so artists are starting to realize that the artist should get a larger share of the profit and end users are realizing that there is no justification for the profit being so large.
> i guess you'd freely give up what money and property you own because you're not "greedy", right?
Would I give up some of my money to support a sensible plan to improve the overall standard of living in my nation? You betcha! Voila une liberal! But you don't just want to give up some of your money to support what you think would improve things, you want to take my money to do it as well. I much prefer to give my money to places that I believe will make things better rather than have my money taken by force to be applied where someone else (usually a beauracrat) thinks it will make things better (and going by the governments track record will make things worse).
Without the philosophy, their would have been no economic revolution. The principles that the founding fathers brought forth also happened to be the best principles for economic development. When men are free, they prosper.
Just a thought, but could the reason why most Americans are not prospering these days have anything to do with the fact that they are not as free now, with their rights having been eroded mostly within the last seventy or so years? Of course the fact that Americans today are wealthier than at any other point in history means nothing to you.
The problem is that incumbents have lots of ways to get their names in front of people without doing any "campaigning". The incumbents will send out letters telling people what a great job they are doing as whatever office they hold, using taxpayer dollars (which they already do). They will have articles written about actions they take in their official duties, etc. None of this will be part of the campaign, so it won't be regulated by the rules you propose. There will be no campaign coverage that falls under your rules that is not mandated by your rules, so those challenging an incumbent will find it very difficult to make people aware that they are even running. The incumbent will have no such problem. The only exception to what I said above is when the media dislike the incumbent and carry editorials and news articles playing up how bad he is and how saintly his opponent is. There will be almost no voices contrary to the media template because your rules will limit their avenues of expression. I am sorry, but your are a misguided idealist.
My solution may not be politically possible, but your solution just plain won't work. As long as there is the kind of money and economic impact involved in the actions of government, people will find a way to get money to the candidates to influence their actions when in office.
Except, "We're not covering a candidate, we're covering this new law that was passed (it just happens that the law's sponsor is also running for reelection)."
"Gee, Mr FEC (FCC) you're investigating the coverage this station that covered the passage of the law I sponsored, anyway about that money you say you need for xxx. I don't see how we can put that in the next appropriations bill."
Newspaper editors can print their opinions on the editorial page as individuals, not as "the newspaper"
So, I own the newspaper. I tell you, "write an editorial favoring candidate A, or your fired". Except I don't say it quite that openly, but you get the message. Or, I own the paper, so I write an editorial endorsing candidate A and put it in my paper. And since it is my paper, you the editor are not allowed to write an editorial endorsing any of candidate A's opponents (or even opposing candidate A). Oh yeah, I don't own just one paper, but one in most major cities. And perhaps I, also, own a radio station and a tv station in those cities. I don't offer any airtime to any candidates beyond that I am mandated to by law. Except that I support candidate A, so when candidate A has a rally, I cover it with cameras, when candidate B has a rally, I cover it with a short blurb on the news, but no footage. There are all kinds of ways that media companies can slant the coverage to favor the candidate they want to win. If there is no paid advertising allowed, it becomes very hard for another candidate to even get enough exposure for people to know they are running.
Do you have any idea how many ways an incumbent has to get his name in front of his constituents, thus generating name recognition? How does reducing ads reduce the influence of media companies? You said yourself that they can still do endorsements, under your system, media endorsements would carry even more weight.
You say that if one candidate is given airtime/space all candidates must be given the same. Do you mean all candidates, or only the ones that would be in the debates that are held? My guess would be that under your system no candidate would get any airtime/space beyond that required by law. So the end result would be that for the most part all we would know about any of the candidates would be what the media companies wanted us to know. That of course leaves out the Internet, for now. The other problem is that the Supreme Court has ruled that regulating the amount a candidate spends is an infringement on free speech. BTW, freedom of speech is meaningless if I can't disseminate my views to a wider audience.
IBM predicted that world demand would be satisfied with five computers. They also thought there would be no harm in outsourcing operating systems. No profit there after all. Right?
If IBM told me the sun was going to rise tomorrow, I'd get a tarot reading just to be sure.
Two points. First it is Thomas J. Watson who it is claimed said that the world would never need more than five computers. The best evidence is that he never said it. It appears that this is a mis attribution of a misquote of a different computer experthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson.
Second, the reason that IBM outsourced the operating system for the first PC is because they were in the middle of a protracted and difficult antitrust lawsuit by the Justice Department. If they had developed the OS in house as an IBM proprietary product, it would have led to significant further complications of a court case where there was reason to believe that the Justice Department was going to do to them what it had done to AT&T only a couple years previously--break them up into multiple companies.
The problem is that the educational system is an even bigger scam. Tuition has gone up even faster than textbooks. I worked for two separate college bookstores. At one of them one of the professors wrote a book that he used for his class. The publisher discontinued the publication and gave him the remaining copies. He provided them to the bookstore every year for the price that the publisher had. He then checked that each student had a copy of the book, if you didn't have a copy of the book, you didn't pass. Oh yeah, the bookstore wasn't allowed to sell used copies. I have two or three other similar stories.
Open Source teaching materials is a great thing, but colleges and universities will try and find a way to get money out of it.
one thing this court is known for is pushing federalism
Oh, yeah, like the part where the constitution says that states get to run elections by their own rules, and then decided that Florida couldn't do a recount according to their own rules... Actually, the constitution says that the state legislature gets to run the elections. The Florida Supreme Court was exceeding its authority in this matter. However, the constitutionally correct thing is probably for the SCOTUS to stay out of it. It wouldn't have changed the outcome, as things stood the Florida legislature would probably have chosen its own panel of Electors to send to the Electoral College (according to its constitutional authority), the Florida Supreme Court would probably have ruled that the legislatures electors were invalid, then either the SCOTUS would have ruled in favor of the Florida Legislature or the SCOTUS would have sent the election to the House of Representatives (as per the constitution if the Electoral College does not have enough votes for one candidate for President). Any scenario with even the remotest resemblance to constitutionality would have resulted in the same outcome as what we got.
I think that your solution will have massive negative impact on anyone who wants to change the way that the government does things. Under your system, those who control the media companies will have inordinate influence on what people know about the candidates. I, also, believe that your system will infringe on free speech. You say that my idea of minimalistic government is utopian, no more so than your idea of elections that can make or break a company not being influenced by corporate money.
Any system that tries to force money out of the elections will impact the ability of the "little guy" to get heard long before it impacts the ability of the wealthy to influence the outcome of an election. As long as the government is spending trillions of dollars and regulations/laws that cost businesses trillions more, those with wealth will find a way to influence who is in government.
In my opinion, every attempt to "get the money out of politics", has made the problem worse. I don't have a reference, but I am pretty sure that every "campaign finance reform" law that has been passed has increased the rate at which incumbents get re-elected. I know that that is the case since the McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection Act was passed.
I have said this before, the surest way to change the government, and increase its responsiveness,is: "When in doubt, vote the Ins. out". Any proposal which makes it harder to replace the incumbent is a bad idea.
But that was the point I was making in the first place, the reason there is so much money in political campaigns is because the government is such a major economic player. It either is a major source of revenue or a major source of expense for any and all businesses. As a result anyone who is in business must do whatever they can to manage the government's impact on their business. No business can survive if those who compete with it have influence in government and it doesn't.
I agree with your last statement though - cut down the amount of government regulations. You only need 2: 1) you can't buy ad time, and 2) paid air time/print space must be balanced between all candidates that want the time/space. I think those two will in and of themselves cut down on the amount of money in political campaigns, because money no longer is the driver. It also doesn't trample any freedoms. So, no government regulations on working conditions? or drugs? or food? etc?
The regulations I was talking about are the ones that cost businesses and individuals money or that make individuals or businesses money. If we reduce the amount of impact the government has on the economy, we will reduce the incentive to spend money to get people elected. People spend so much on campaigns because the economic consequences of government actions are so great.
So, the guy who is rich enough to own a newspaper can say "Vote for Candidate A", but I can't get together with people who agree with me and buy space to say "Vote for Candidate B"? And if we can't do that, can we pay a printer to print it for us and then pay someone to deliver it to every address in an area? If we can't do the latter, why not? And if we can, why not just pay the guy who prints the newspaper to include it with the paper?
So, because I am rich enough to own a newspaper, radio station, or television station, I get to talk politics, but you can't get together with a couple hundred of your buddies and pool your resources and buy exposure for your political ideas from me?
You police the intent of the donor by removing the ability to donate.
Have candidates get their petitions signed. Get on the ballot. Have debates and individual presentations on PBS/network TV (the latter are under charters that require "public service" and I can think of no better service than to televise at least presidential debates and presentations). No ads, except ads for the debates/presentations. (Something would have to be worked out as to who can do "presentations", but something along the lines of getting your required petitions within a state seems reasonable for that state to air a specific presentation).
It's radical. It would work. So, what you are saying is that you want to regulate political speech? Are newspapers going to be allowed to endorse candidates in your system? If they are, why can't I pay them to print my endorsement of a candidate? If they aren't, what about the First Amendment? What about television stations?
You want to know how to cut down on the amount of money in political campaigns? Cut down the amount of money the government spends and cut down the amount of government regulations.
The most common form of dichromacy in humans is the inability to distinguish red from green. If these monkeys had that type of vision, in both the red vs blue case and the green vs blue case they thought they were choosing the same color. To reiterate TA: they had a choice between red and blue, they chose red; then they had a choice between green and blue, they chose green. If they had the same dichromacy that is common in humans, they would have thought that the green M&M was the same color as the red M&M.
I don't think this experiment tells us much. In order to reach the conclusion that they reach, I would want to see a study where the monkeys that chose blue in the red vs blue case were given a second choice between red and green, and then chose green over the red. Without that, one is justified in suspecting that there is some perceived commonality between red and green, not a rejection of blue.
Slashdot Mirror
This also applies to torture and other interogation techniques like "water boarding" for captured soldiers. In the future our military personal should expect to have the same treatment that we are giving others with water boarding, etc. UM, what captured soldiers are you talking about? To the best of my knowledge, none of the members of the Iraqi Army that were captured when we overthrew Saddam were subject to water boarding or other techniques that could be called torture.
When ebooks finally come into existence, publishers will find themselves in the same position that the RIAA members find themselves in now, with a business model that does not support the types of profit that they are used to. Publishers currently add a lot of value to the book. They produce the, relatively, expensive distribution media (paper book), they market the product, they manage the distribution, etc. Now, publishers have two things going for them that the record industry didn't. First, the costs involved are large enough that the profit is not as enormous as what the record industry was making. Two, the costs involved have been falling steadily for several decades, lowering the barriers to entry. This second point means that there are constantly new and innovative companies entering the field. This means that publishers are constantly facing competition that forces them to rethink their business model. Of course, one of the reasons that we don't have ebooks as a common phenomena yet is because publishers have continued to try and develop one that they have proprietary control over.
How about this story I just came across this morning? http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2007/nov/18/566675940.html
This didn't happen to anyone I know, but it is relevant to this story. I think the moral here is that you need to take information you learn with a grain of salt and carefully evaluate whether it is reliable enough to take action against a perceived "evil doer".
From what I have seen of this story, the following appears to not be in dispute: the woman created a false identity as a boy; she encouraged her neighbor's daughter to enter into an online relationship with this false identity; someone using that false identity made disparaging remarks to the neighbor girl, which led her to commit suicide. I am not convinced that a crime was committed (or that it should have been a crime), but I am convinced that this behavior is reprehensible and should be viewed as socially unacceptable.
You are right that the U.S. has a trade deficit. It does not, however, mean that we are losing money. I do not fully understand the economics, however, even the article you refer to indicates that the meaning and impact of a trade deficit for an economy is highly debated among economists. The most clear thing from the article is that a trade deficit cannot be easily understood by saying that it means we are losing money.
Artists are starting to realize they can have all the profits, that the studios just really aren't all that relevant anymore. For that matter, they're starting to realize the sale of their music can actually have profits, if they just don't contract out to a major studio. Radiohead's recent efforts in this regard have certainly pointed the way to self-publishing on the Web as a way to make serious money. However, in the long run, most artists will discover that they need to pay a publicist, a promoter, and a record producer (probably a couple of other roles of which I am not thinking at the moment) to maximize their profit. The best of those that do those three jobs will get a cut of the profit, not just a flat rate. Therefore the artist that wants ALL of the profit will not make as much as the one who shares it intelligently.
You do know that the US exports were a larger percentage of GDP than ever in 2006? http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:HTP0L7C38GUJ:www.commerce.gov/NewsRoom/PressReleases_FactSheets/PROD01_002835+U.S.+trade+2006&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=us&client=firefox-a Exports were 11.6 percent of GDP in 2006. They were 5.2 percent of GDP 50 years ago.
As for the weak dollar, the dollar is (mostly)falling against currencies of countries that fall into one of two classes (or in some case both classes), commodity(oil, for example) producers (Canada, for example), or higher central bank interest rates (Brazil and Canada, for example). The primary exception to this is the euro. However, the EU's central bank interest rates were lower than the US Fed interest rates until recently, when the Fed lowered interest rates and the EU central bank raised their's. We did not see a lot of "the sky is falling" talk about the euro when it dropped in value in 2005, why should we buy such talk when the U.S. dollar is falling in 2007?
The best evidence still suggests that the U.S. economy is the strongest in the world and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Which I would say is at best 5 years. However, considering that all of the current potential contenders to displace the U.S. as the number one economy have major demographic issues that start in about 10 years, I believe that the U.S. economy will remain the strongest in the world for at least the next 20.
Actually, the problem the RIAA members have is that they don't control what gets played this way. RIAA members believe (wrongly) that they can manufacture demand for particular music, no matter what its quality is. They, also, believe (correctly) that if this new distribution/exposure system takes over, they will no longer be able to justify the large share of the profit from music distribution that they take.
Under the old, established music distribution system (brick and mortar stores, exposure on radio stations and MTV), the RIAA members added a lot of value to an musicians work, justifying the large share of the profits that they reaped. Under the new distribution system (download music file and mount to media of user's choice, exposure on internet radio and free download), the RIAA members add much less value and so artists are starting to realize that the artist should get a larger share of the profit and end users are realizing that there is no justification for the profit being so large.
Would I give up some of my money to support a sensible plan to improve the overall standard of living in my nation? You betcha! Voila une liberal! But you don't just want to give up some of your money to support what you think would improve things, you want to take my money to do it as well. I much prefer to give my money to places that I believe will make things better rather than have my money taken by force to be applied where someone else (usually a beauracrat) thinks it will make things better (and going by the governments track record will make things worse).
Just a thought, but could the reason why most Americans are not prospering these days have anything to do with the fact that they are not as free now, with their rights having been eroded mostly within the last seventy or so years? Of course the fact that Americans today are wealthier than at any other point in history means nothing to you.
The problem is that incumbents have lots of ways to get their names in front of people without doing any "campaigning". The incumbents will send out letters telling people what a great job they are doing as whatever office they hold, using taxpayer dollars (which they already do). They will have articles written about actions they take in their official duties, etc. None of this will be part of the campaign, so it won't be regulated by the rules you propose. There will be no campaign coverage that falls under your rules that is not mandated by your rules, so those challenging an incumbent will find it very difficult to make people aware that they are even running. The incumbent will have no such problem. The only exception to what I said above is when the media dislike the incumbent and carry editorials and news articles playing up how bad he is and how saintly his opponent is. There will be almost no voices contrary to the media template because your rules will limit their avenues of expression. I am sorry, but your are a misguided idealist.
My solution may not be politically possible, but your solution just plain won't work. As long as there is the kind of money and economic impact involved in the actions of government, people will find a way to get money to the candidates to influence their actions when in office.
Except, "We're not covering a candidate, we're covering this new law that was passed (it just happens that the law's sponsor is also running for reelection)."
"Gee, Mr FEC (FCC) you're investigating the coverage this station that covered the passage of the law I sponsored, anyway about that money you say you need for xxx. I don't see how we can put that in the next appropriations bill."
Do you have any idea how many ways an incumbent has to get his name in front of his constituents, thus generating name recognition? How does reducing ads reduce the influence of media companies? You said yourself that they can still do endorsements, under your system, media endorsements would carry even more weight.
You say that if one candidate is given airtime/space all candidates must be given the same. Do you mean all candidates, or only the ones that would be in the debates that are held? My guess would be that under your system no candidate would get any airtime/space beyond that required by law. So the end result would be that for the most part all we would know about any of the candidates would be what the media companies wanted us to know. That of course leaves out the Internet, for now. The other problem is that the Supreme Court has ruled that regulating the amount a candidate spends is an infringement on free speech. BTW, freedom of speech is meaningless if I can't disseminate my views to a wider audience.
IBM predicted that world demand would be satisfied with five computers. They also thought there would be no harm in outsourcing operating systems. No profit there after all. Right?
If IBM told me the sun was going to rise tomorrow, I'd get a tarot reading just to be sure.
Two points. First it is Thomas J. Watson who it is claimed said that the world would never need more than five computers. The best evidence is that he never said it. It appears that this is a mis attribution of a misquote of a different computer experthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson. Second, the reason that IBM outsourced the operating system for the first PC is because they were in the middle of a protracted and difficult antitrust lawsuit by the Justice Department. If they had developed the OS in house as an IBM proprietary product, it would have led to significant further complications of a court case where there was reason to believe that the Justice Department was going to do to them what it had done to AT&T only a couple years previously--break them up into multiple companies.The problem is that the educational system is an even bigger scam. Tuition has gone up even faster than textbooks. I worked for two separate college bookstores. At one of them one of the professors wrote a book that he used for his class. The publisher discontinued the publication and gave him the remaining copies. He provided them to the bookstore every year for the price that the publisher had. He then checked that each student had a copy of the book, if you didn't have a copy of the book, you didn't pass. Oh yeah, the bookstore wasn't allowed to sell used copies. I have two or three other similar stories.
Open Source teaching materials is a great thing, but colleges and universities will try and find a way to get money out of it.
I think that your solution will have massive negative impact on anyone who wants to change the way that the government does things. Under your system, those who control the media companies will have inordinate influence on what people know about the candidates. I, also, believe that your system will infringe on free speech. You say that my idea of minimalistic government is utopian, no more so than your idea of elections that can make or break a company not being influenced by corporate money.
Any system that tries to force money out of the elections will impact the ability of the "little guy" to get heard long before it impacts the ability of the wealthy to influence the outcome of an election. As long as the government is spending trillions of dollars and regulations/laws that cost businesses trillions more, those with wealth will find a way to influence who is in government.
In my opinion, every attempt to "get the money out of politics", has made the problem worse. I don't have a reference, but I am pretty sure that every "campaign finance reform" law that has been passed has increased the rate at which incumbents get re-elected. I know that that is the case since the McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection Act was passed.
I have said this before, the surest way to change the government, and increase its responsiveness,is: "When in doubt, vote the Ins. out". Any proposal which makes it harder to replace the incumbent is a bad idea.
But that was the point I was making in the first place, the reason there is so much money in political campaigns is because the government is such a major economic player. It either is a major source of revenue or a major source of expense for any and all businesses. As a result anyone who is in business must do whatever they can to manage the government's impact on their business. No business can survive if those who compete with it have influence in government and it doesn't.
I agree with your last statement though - cut down the amount of government regulations. You only need 2: 1) you can't buy ad time, and 2) paid air time/print space must be balanced between all candidates that want the time/space. I think those two will in and of themselves cut down on the amount of money in political campaigns, because money no longer is the driver. It also doesn't trample any freedoms. So, no government regulations on working conditions? or drugs? or food? etc?
The regulations I was talking about are the ones that cost businesses and individuals money or that make individuals or businesses money. If we reduce the amount of impact the government has on the economy, we will reduce the incentive to spend money to get people elected. People spend so much on campaigns because the economic consequences of government actions are so great.
So, the guy who is rich enough to own a newspaper can say "Vote for Candidate A", but I can't get together with people who agree with me and buy space to say "Vote for Candidate B"? And if we can't do that, can we pay a printer to print it for us and then pay someone to deliver it to every address in an area? If we can't do the latter, why not? And if we can, why not just pay the guy who prints the newspaper to include it with the paper?
So, you are going to forbid newspapers (at least those that are paid for)from publishing political opinion?
So, because I am rich enough to own a newspaper, radio station, or television station, I get to talk politics, but you can't get together with a couple hundred of your buddies and pool your resources and buy exposure for your political ideas from me?
Have candidates get their petitions signed. Get on the ballot. Have debates and individual presentations on PBS/network TV (the latter are under charters that require "public service" and I can think of no better service than to televise at least presidential debates and presentations). No ads, except ads for the debates/presentations. (Something would have to be worked out as to who can do "presentations", but something along the lines of getting your required petitions within a state seems reasonable for that state to air a specific presentation).
It's radical. It would work. So, what you are saying is that you want to regulate political speech? Are newspapers going to be allowed to endorse candidates in your system? If they are, why can't I pay them to print my endorsement of a candidate? If they aren't, what about the First Amendment? What about television stations?
You want to know how to cut down on the amount of money in political campaigns? Cut down the amount of money the government spends and cut down the amount of government regulations.
The most common form of dichromacy in humans is the inability to distinguish red from green. If these monkeys had that type of vision, in both the red vs blue case and the green vs blue case they thought they were choosing the same color. To reiterate TA: they had a choice between red and blue, they chose red; then they had a choice between green and blue, they chose green. If they had the same dichromacy that is common in humans, they would have thought that the green M&M was the same color as the red M&M.
I don't think this experiment tells us much. In order to reach the conclusion that they reach, I would want to see a study where the monkeys that chose blue in the red vs blue case were given a second choice between red and green, and then chose green over the red. Without that, one is justified in suspecting that there is some perceived commonality between red and green, not a rejection of blue.