Would you consider Wolf Blitzer or Chris Matthews to be mainstream? Well this is how they compare: http://tvbythenumbers.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/2010.01.31-5pm-P2+-590x455.png For the record Beck is a clown and even I as a libertarian find his antics painful to watch but you can't dispute his numbers. So you might as well start weeping for your countrymen.
Not really. To make real money out of selling clothes you need factories, workers, distribution channels, preferably your own retail outlets etc. You also need reputation which is why selling other people's designs under your own brand is not very profitable. Making one or two copies of a clothing item is not the issue here. As Pirate Bay shows you can easily make millions selling advertising while providing other people's content (oh ok, links to other people's content). There is a big difference between copying physical items like in the fashion industry and copying bits.
It's not to do with the economy though, it's to do with people not sending letters as much anymore because of the Internet. That will not change whatever happens to the economy.
That might have been the case once but not anymore. Despite the legal monopoly status and no competition in its core letter delivery business the post office is far from being self sufficient and in the last three years is making huge losses which are set to get much worse.
You might wish to read its own most recent report http://oversight.house.gov/images/stories/Hearings/Committee_on_Oversight/2010/041510_Postal_Service/USPS-PG-Report-ActionPlanfortheFuture_March2010.pdf especially the accurately titled chapter Unsustainable Business Model. Even if all its goals are met it will be far from self sufficient: "However, even if it achieves the savings in its management plan, the Postal Service would still face an annual loss of $15 billion in 2020 and cumulative losses of $115 between now and then". The "action plan" doesn't amount to anything more than making few savings here and there while still not getting anywhere close to breaking even. Basically what the USPS itself is saying, with remarkable honesty, is that it is finished and it cannot do anything about it.
Only at the mercy of the USPS which has an absolute monopoly over mail delivery in the US. At it's discretion USPS made an exception for "urgent" letters (costing minimum of $3 per letter) which can be done by UPS and FedEx. They cannot deliver the equivalent of regular first class mail. They are also not allowed to deliver to mail boxes.
Most utilities are not run by the government but by private companies. As for city buses most are run by a public transportation agency which hires private contractors to actually run the buses so they are in a way run by private companies too. As for public education and postal service, does being the awful inefficient and expensive mess that they are, especially in comparison to private package delivery companies and private schools, make any case at all for privatizing them in your view?
Fashion would be a good comparison if you could put an Armani jacket in a computer and print out 1,000,000 exact copies of it for free. Since that is not true, the comparison of an industry where, even though you can copy the "style" of the clothes, you still need a damn factory and a lot of investment (and still cannot copy the all important label), to say a kid putting a movie which cost $100 million to make onto the internet and making it instantly available to the whole world for free is completely bogus.
Only 5% of all book authors and musicians are actually making money off of copyright.
And only 1% of athletes make a living out of playing sports so what? If you enter a profession where there is a ridiculously huge amount of competition that's to be expected. People are making money out of those book and music sales, it just might not be the authors. But that's the matter of a contract between them and the fact that marketing which the publisher provides seems to be more valuable when it comes to sales than content creation - otherwise why aren't the authors distributing the work themselves.
Another example is Metallica. They made $22.8 million from shows and only $1.6 million from album sales.
What show can a book writer do? What kind of live shows can Adobe do to recoup the millions it pays developers if the software itself becomes free (as it would without copyright)? How can a movie studio make any money at all if theaters can show the movie without paying anything to the studio and any fool can put their move onto the web or burn DVDs of it and sell them?
That is an interesting article but it doesn't prove much. It is no surprise that books were cheaper without copyright, the question is where is the incentive for the authors to write. In case of books, there are incentives other than making money such as reputation - the article specifically talks about science books, or just getting a point of view across such as what we are doing here for free. Unless it was butchered beyond recognition in the English translation, the article doesn't say that authors were paid better than in England at the time but I guess it is possible. In comparison to England where publishers at the time "took advantage of a monopoly" and published books in very small print runs at very high prices, it may have possibly been advantageous for the authors to have their books mass produced and distributed at lower prices even if they didn't get paid for 90% of the sales. I doubt very much that authors would make more in Germany if publishers in England tried to mass market books AND had copyright as well.
Fashion industry shows how profitable it is, especially compared to most other industries, and in Fashion industry there are no copyrights or patents. Sure there are trademarks, but no copyrights or patents at all, and they are highly creative and profitable, thus proving your position inconsistent with reality.
It doesn't really prove anything. Copying the style of clothes is a completely different thing from copying, say, a movie. Poor people buy the cheap knock off but they wouldn't pay for the designer version anyway so the designer doesn't lose anything. Rich people buy the expensive designer version because its all about the label, and possibly higher quality of work and materials even though the style might be the same. Also, fashion industry is resistant to mass copying and distribution in a way that book, software, movie and music industries aren't. There are actual materials to buy and manufacturing of a physical item requiring factories, workers, possibly large initial investment by the copier. Not something that any kid with a computer can do.
The problem with that naive view is that removing copyright really does remove the incentive to create and gives every incentive to copy. I don't see how it does not. If everyone can copy and sell, r give for free and sell advertising or profit in another way from distributing a book, software program or a movie, the we have a race in marketing instead of a race in creativity. The creator of the work becomes the most disadvantaged party because he is the only one who has to recoup the cost of creating the work (could be many millions in case of say a major software application or a movie etc) to even break even, while for the copiers any money they make out of distributing that work is free profit.
True, but you can turn that around and say that the liberals who are against government interference in sex, drugs etc issues are the same ones who are in favor of more government control over us in general (higher taxes for more welfare, more regulation of business activity etc). As someone who is socially liberal and fiscally conservative (should say liberal in both cases but let's follow the American silly usage of the word liberal) I personally consider economic liberty to be far more important and "social" issues like these indecency rules, gay marriage prohibition, "war on drugs", prostitution laws etc to be silly distractions based on outdated religious morality that will change over time. I would like to get rid of them, but it's not as big of a problem as the idea that the product of one's work actually belongs to others should the majority vote so i.e that we are not independent individuals but part of some sort of Borg collective called "society", which is the basis of the progressive agenda.
And how could increasing taxes on gas to subsidize trains possibly help the poor? What are the benefits: few lucky enough to live near a train station would have cheaper subsidizer transportation only in cases when they happen to be traveling to another place near the train station (or suitable public transport). What are the costs: The "common man" would still need a car for all the rest of the transportation needs, but he would have to pay more to run it. He will also have to pay more for every other product that is transported, which is basically everything, hence making him poorer. How is it that just about every scheme dreamed up by the big government supporters ends up harming the poor?
I wouldn't think that turning America into Europe would be a good thing at all. Much of it is to do simply with grass is greener (no pun intended) on the other side fallacy. Perhaps Europe is a bit greener but that's one of the few advantages. Even on the Human Development Index, so beloved by the liberals, the US is above every large country in Europe except France: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index US is about the same as Finland and Austria, ahead of Denmark, slightly behind countries like Sweden and Norway and a lot better than UK, Germany, Italy, Spain (which are a more fair comparison)
And that is with lower taxes and generally less interference by the government to provide all these services that supposedly help the poorer people (in fact harm them but that's another argument). Not to mention that in the US the salaries for equivalent jobs are higher, prices for equivalent good are much lower (I live in USA but am in Europe right now). All this is easy to look up. Americans also live in bigger and cheaper houses, drive bigger and cheaper cars. Educational standards at lower levels (run by the government in the US) are better in Europe, depending on the country, but at university level the US is definitely better than every country in Europe. Again easy to look up any rating system. High speed internet is more available in certain wealthier countries in Europe but its horrible in others.
In short, what is so great about Europe? In my experience Tarantino got it right, same shit but a little bit different (and as it seems quite obvious to me, but for some reason not to others, a little bit worse).
I don't have a problem with social networking per se but the most popular ones (facebook, twitter, is something called myspace still around?) reek of insecurity and neediness to the extent that is pretty pathetic and easy to make fun of. It's the same thing as obsessive texting among teenage girls, the urge to be constantly in contact with somebody, anybody, to keep from even one second of feeling alone in the big bad world. Actually, if I do have a problem with it it is that being in contact with all the people you know, all the time, can easily mean too much interaction and too much worthless information and less quiet time for reflection. To paraphrase Ford Prefect, if humans don't keep constantly exercising their lips (in this case fingers on the keyboard) their brains might start working.
The point is that he is implicitly defending the government which runs the patent office and blaming businesses for bribing the "system" while ignoring the fact that if that is true then it is government officials that are accepting bribes.
No, I don't really expect to be able to do those things but that's not the point. The point is is there a line where one side in a war is so evil that it is plain wrong to be able to play as that side in a game? Maybe not but my biggest problem with that is the insensitivity to the feelings of the soldiers' families. I know you can play as Germans in many WWII games but that was a long time ago while this war is still going on.
By the way if you mean to equate the water boarding of a few terrorists in order to get information with what Taliban did to the people of Afghanistan then you have a lot of reading to do.
I guess it does if the goal is to simulate the war as realistically as possible. But there is a big difference. All the things I mentioned Taliban did deliberately as a matter of policy, not because of a lack of discipline among some soldiers (for which they are punished when caught).
I don't have any problem with this but I hope the simulation is realistic i.e as Taliban I want to be able to stone teenage girls to death, bury homosexuals alive, dynamite priceless historic monuments and beat people for listening to music. Are those options available?
I think it is "quite clear" that publishing the names of Afghans who, in Taliban's view, collaborate with the enemy puts their lives (and those US troops dealing with them) at risk without any further evidence needed. Same for publishing operational details, even coordinates of ground bases etc. Basically any information that helps the enemy be even a little bit more effective in fighting us obviously also puts lives at risk.
Btw, accidentally shooting some civilians is not a war crime. You have to show intent. Are you aware of the fact that we have killed about 2% of the number of civilians Soviets have killed while fighting the same enemy for more or less similar amount of time? I think that shows that we are pretty damn careful. The only way you can reduce the number of civilians killed down to 0 (while fighting the enemy who deliberately mixes with civilians and uses them as cover) is to surrender and let Taliban take over again which would cause far greater suffering for Afghans.
Thing to remember with legal mandates for warranties is that all they mean is the manufacturers adds the warranty price to the product price. I would rather pay the warranty separately and have a choice.
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Let's say a person is coming from San Francisco...
Come on now, it's pretty unlikely that any communist homosexuals would be coming to a Glenn Beck rally.
Would you consider Wolf Blitzer or Chris Matthews to be mainstream? Well this is how they compare: http://tvbythenumbers.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/2010.01.31-5pm-P2+-590x455.png For the record Beck is a clown and even I as a libertarian find his antics painful to watch but you can't dispute his numbers. So you might as well start weeping for your countrymen.
Not really. To make real money out of selling clothes you need factories, workers, distribution channels, preferably your own retail outlets etc. You also need reputation which is why selling other people's designs under your own brand is not very profitable. Making one or two copies of a clothing item is not the issue here. As Pirate Bay shows you can easily make millions selling advertising while providing other people's content (oh ok, links to other people's content). There is a big difference between copying physical items like in the fashion industry and copying bits.
It's not to do with the economy though, it's to do with people not sending letters as much anymore because of the Internet. That will not change whatever happens to the economy.
That might have been the case once but not anymore. Despite the legal monopoly status and no competition in its core letter delivery business the post office is far from being self sufficient and in the last three years is making huge losses which are set to get much worse.
You might wish to read its own most recent report http://oversight.house.gov/images/stories/Hearings/Committee_on_Oversight/2010/041510_Postal_Service/USPS-PG-Report-ActionPlanfortheFuture_March2010.pdf especially the accurately titled chapter Unsustainable Business Model. Even if all its goals are met it will be far from self sufficient: "However, even if it achieves the savings in its management plan, the Postal Service would still face an annual loss of $15 billion in 2020 and cumulative losses of $115 between now and then". The "action plan" doesn't amount to anything more than making few savings here and there while still not getting anywhere close to breaking even. Basically what the USPS itself is saying, with remarkable honesty, is that it is finished and it cannot do anything about it.
Only at the mercy of the USPS which has an absolute monopoly over mail delivery in the US. At it's discretion USPS made an exception for "urgent" letters (costing minimum of $3 per letter) which can be done by UPS and FedEx. They cannot deliver the equivalent of regular first class mail. They are also not allowed to deliver to mail boxes.
Most utilities are not run by the government but by private companies. As for city buses most are run by a public transportation agency which hires private contractors to actually run the buses so they are in a way run by private companies too. As for public education and postal service, does being the awful inefficient and expensive mess that they are, especially in comparison to private package delivery companies and private schools, make any case at all for privatizing them in your view?
It certainly drove them out of letter delivery business which is illegal for anybody other than the Post Office to do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service#Universal_Service_Obligation_and_monopoly_status
Fashion would be a good comparison if you could put an Armani jacket in a computer and print out 1,000,000 exact copies of it for free. Since that is not true, the comparison of an industry where, even though you can copy the "style" of the clothes, you still need a damn factory and a lot of investment (and still cannot copy the all important label), to say a kid putting a movie which cost $100 million to make onto the internet and making it instantly available to the whole world for free is completely bogus.
Only 5% of all book authors and musicians are actually making money off of copyright.
And only 1% of athletes make a living out of playing sports so what? If you enter a profession where there is a ridiculously huge amount of competition that's to be expected. People are making money out of those book and music sales, it just might not be the authors. But that's the matter of a contract between them and the fact that marketing which the publisher provides seems to be more valuable when it comes to sales than content creation - otherwise why aren't the authors distributing the work themselves.
Another example is Metallica. They made $22.8 million from shows and only $1.6 million from album sales.
What show can a book writer do? What kind of live shows can Adobe do to recoup the millions it pays developers if the software itself becomes free (as it would without copyright)? How can a movie studio make any money at all if theaters can show the movie without paying anything to the studio and any fool can put their move onto the web or burn DVDs of it and sell them?
That is an interesting article but it doesn't prove much. It is no surprise that books were cheaper without copyright, the question is where is the incentive for the authors to write. In case of books, there are incentives other than making money such as reputation - the article specifically talks about science books, or just getting a point of view across such as what we are doing here for free. Unless it was butchered beyond recognition in the English translation, the article doesn't say that authors were paid better than in England at the time but I guess it is possible. In comparison to England where publishers at the time "took advantage of a monopoly" and published books in very small print runs at very high prices, it may have possibly been advantageous for the authors to have their books mass produced and distributed at lower prices even if they didn't get paid for 90% of the sales. I doubt very much that authors would make more in Germany if publishers in England tried to mass market books AND had copyright as well.
Fashion industry shows how profitable it is, especially compared to most other industries, and in Fashion industry there are no copyrights or patents. Sure there are trademarks, but no copyrights or patents at all, and they are highly creative and profitable, thus proving your position inconsistent with reality.
It doesn't really prove anything. Copying the style of clothes is a completely different thing from copying, say, a movie. Poor people buy the cheap knock off but they wouldn't pay for the designer version anyway so the designer doesn't lose anything. Rich people buy the expensive designer version because its all about the label, and possibly higher quality of work and materials even though the style might be the same. Also, fashion industry is resistant to mass copying and distribution in a way that book, software, movie and music industries aren't. There are actual materials to buy and manufacturing of a physical item requiring factories, workers, possibly large initial investment by the copier. Not something that any kid with a computer can do.
The problem with that naive view is that removing copyright really does remove the incentive to create and gives every incentive to copy. I don't see how it does not. If everyone can copy and sell, r give for free and sell advertising or profit in another way from distributing a book, software program or a movie, the we have a race in marketing instead of a race in creativity. The creator of the work becomes the most disadvantaged party because he is the only one who has to recoup the cost of creating the work (could be many millions in case of say a major software application or a movie etc) to even break even, while for the copiers any money they make out of distributing that work is free profit.
True, but you can turn that around and say that the liberals who are against government interference in sex, drugs etc issues are the same ones who are in favor of more government control over us in general (higher taxes for more welfare, more regulation of business activity etc). As someone who is socially liberal and fiscally conservative (should say liberal in both cases but let's follow the American silly usage of the word liberal) I personally consider economic liberty to be far more important and "social" issues like these indecency rules, gay marriage prohibition, "war on drugs", prostitution laws etc to be silly distractions based on outdated religious morality that will change over time. I would like to get rid of them, but it's not as big of a problem as the idea that the product of one's work actually belongs to others should the majority vote so i.e that we are not independent individuals but part of some sort of Borg collective called "society", which is the basis of the progressive agenda.
And how could increasing taxes on gas to subsidize trains possibly help the poor? What are the benefits: few lucky enough to live near a train station would have cheaper subsidizer transportation only in cases when they happen to be traveling to another place near the train station (or suitable public transport). What are the costs: The "common man" would still need a car for all the rest of the transportation needs, but he would have to pay more to run it. He will also have to pay more for every other product that is transported, which is basically everything, hence making him poorer. How is it that just about every scheme dreamed up by the big government supporters ends up harming the poor?
I wouldn't think that turning America into Europe would be a good thing at all. Much of it is to do simply with grass is greener (no pun intended) on the other side fallacy. Perhaps Europe is a bit greener but that's one of the few advantages. Even on the Human Development Index, so beloved by the liberals, the US is above every large country in Europe except France: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index US is about the same as Finland and Austria, ahead of Denmark, slightly behind countries like Sweden and Norway and a lot better than UK, Germany, Italy, Spain (which are a more fair comparison)
And that is with lower taxes and generally less interference by the government to provide all these services that supposedly help the poorer people (in fact harm them but that's another argument). Not to mention that in the US the salaries for equivalent jobs are higher, prices for equivalent good are much lower (I live in USA but am in Europe right now). All this is easy to look up. Americans also live in bigger and cheaper houses, drive bigger and cheaper cars. Educational standards at lower levels (run by the government in the US) are better in Europe, depending on the country, but at university level the US is definitely better than every country in Europe. Again easy to look up any rating system. High speed internet is more available in certain wealthier countries in Europe but its horrible in others.
In short, what is so great about Europe? In my experience Tarantino got it right, same shit but a little bit different (and as it seems quite obvious to me, but for some reason not to others, a little bit worse).
I don't have a problem with social networking per se but the most popular ones (facebook, twitter, is something called myspace still around?) reek of insecurity and neediness to the extent that is pretty pathetic and easy to make fun of. It's the same thing as obsessive texting among teenage girls, the urge to be constantly in contact with somebody, anybody, to keep from even one second of feeling alone in the big bad world. Actually, if I do have a problem with it it is that being in contact with all the people you know, all the time, can easily mean too much interaction and too much worthless information and less quiet time for reflection. To paraphrase Ford Prefect, if humans don't keep constantly exercising their lips (in this case fingers on the keyboard) their brains might start working.
The point is that he is implicitly defending the government which runs the patent office and blaming businesses for bribing the "system" while ignoring the fact that if that is true then it is government officials that are accepting bribes.
Agreed. I tried posting in Braille, it says it looks too much like ascii art!
I love it when people say things like bribing the "system". System doesn't take bribes, people (politicians) take bribes.
No, I don't really expect to be able to do those things but that's not the point. The point is is there a line where one side in a war is so evil that it is plain wrong to be able to play as that side in a game? Maybe not but my biggest problem with that is the insensitivity to the feelings of the soldiers' families. I know you can play as Germans in many WWII games but that was a long time ago while this war is still going on.
By the way if you mean to equate the water boarding of a few terrorists in order to get information with what Taliban did to the people of Afghanistan then you have a lot of reading to do.
I guess it does if the goal is to simulate the war as realistically as possible. But there is a big difference. All the things I mentioned Taliban did deliberately as a matter of policy, not because of a lack of discipline among some soldiers (for which they are punished when caught).
There would have been plenty of outcry if the game came out while the war was still going on.
I don't have any problem with this but I hope the simulation is realistic i.e as Taliban I want to be able to stone teenage girls to death, bury homosexuals alive, dynamite priceless historic monuments and beat people for listening to music. Are those options available?
I think it is "quite clear" that publishing the names of Afghans who, in Taliban's view, collaborate with the enemy puts their lives (and those US troops dealing with them) at risk without any further evidence needed. Same for publishing operational details, even coordinates of ground bases etc. Basically any information that helps the enemy be even a little bit more effective in fighting us obviously also puts lives at risk.
Btw, accidentally shooting some civilians is not a war crime. You have to show intent. Are you aware of the fact that we have killed about 2% of the number of civilians Soviets have killed while fighting the same enemy for more or less similar amount of time? I think that shows that we are pretty damn careful. The only way you can reduce the number of civilians killed down to 0 (while fighting the enemy who deliberately mixes with civilians and uses them as cover) is to surrender and let Taliban take over again which would cause far greater suffering for Afghans.
Thing to remember with legal mandates for warranties is that all they mean is the manufacturers adds the warranty price to the product price. I would rather pay the warranty separately and have a choice.