Your mistake is that you are confusing ownership with possession.
They are not the same thing, you know.
Realize this and re-read the posts you responded to as well as the ones you made yourself. Things will become more clear to you, and hopefully you might also become a tad less arrogant, and believe me, you would sure benefit from that.
Good luck.
How do you possess something without owning it? You don't unless you control it.
From Meriam-Webster online dictionary:
possession noun \-ze-shn also -se-\ Definition of POSSESSION 1 a : the act of having or taking into control b : control or occupancy of property without regard to ownership c : ownership d : control of the ball or puck; also : an instance of having such control (as in football) 2 : something owned, occupied, or controlled : property 3 a : domination by something (as an evil spirit, a passion, or an idea) b : a psychological state in which an individual's normal personality is replaced by another
As you can see ownership is a synonym for possession, and it also means that if you don't control the property in question you don't have possession of it either. When someone else patents your idea you certainly don't have control of your own idea, so you have neither possession nor ownership of it anymore.
Either way your attempt at obfuscation is refuted completely by the definition of the words themselves.
So what? What's that have to do with this discussion? Nothing. You're comparing apples and oranges.
You learning to play Blackbird isn't a copy of Blackbird, it is Blackbird. You might have learned it by ear, or from copyrighted sheet music of which you purchased a copy, but it's still "the" song, not a copy of it, when you play it, whether you play it very well or very poorly.
In your view even the original creator of the song copies it every time he plays it. Sorry, but that's just plain stupid. It's an intellectual attempt to prove something that has no basis in reality and comes across as pure nonsense.
I'm sorry, but your ideas do not work in the real world. You don't own, in any real sense of the word, something that someone else legally owns. Someone has stolen that ownership from you if they have patented your idea as their own. It's the same as having someone defraud you of physical property and getting the legal ownership of said property. You can't use it. You can't sell it. It is of no use to you.
All you can do is point to it and say someone ripped me off. It was mine, but not any more.
I went through 12 years of parochial(private) education and there was a wide range of people in those schools. From the very poor to the well-to-do, they all attended if they so desired. I don't know of anyone who was ever turned away because of inability to pay. Those kids old enough to work were offered after-school jobs and the balance of their tuition was paid for with scholarships and what was referred to as "worthy student" funds that were created and maintained through donations.
As to the quality of education, it was far better than public school. A big part of why it was better is because more was required of the student, and they were held accountable. They weren't passed on to the next grade if they flunked out, and the parents were always notified when a kid wasn't doing his homework and failing in any class. Nobody failed unless they wanted to as there were always resources available to provide tutoring either from another student in a work-study program or a teacher. A lot of effort was put forth in making sure the poorest of the kids succeeded.
Once again you try to blur lines that cannot be blurred. When someone else patents your idea in their name, they own it in all legal and financial senses of the word. You no longer own it.
As usual, you don't answer the questions that get directly to the heart of your argument.
The value of the idea is gone when someone else patents it, and if they do that fraudulently, it is theft. The value of the idea is stolen, so for all practical purposes, the idea is stolen.
If you have a stalk of wheat, and I take the kernels of wheat and leave you the chaff and the stalk, do you still have any wheat?
That is a straw man argument. If you come up with an idea separately from somebody else, and patent it before he does, then it's first come, first serve, and entirely ethical. It's a matter of both of you exercising ingenuity and imagination, and neither one of you is defrauding the other. The legal system is just set up so that the early bird catches the worm. That's entirely fair and I have no problem with it. It's a matter of timing or luck-of-the-draw, and much of what happens to you in life is predicated on that. You didn't get that job you wanted because someone else got there first. Do you think they cheated you? Do you think you should both have the job? That scholarship you were depending on to go to school isn't available because it ran out of funds before you applied for it. Did you get cheated, or is that just life?
That is not what happened in this case. The thief would never have come up with the idea on his own. He took the idea someone else came up with and fraudulently presented it to the legal and financial system as his own. That's theft.
Here's a question or two for you. How do you extract value from an idea of yours that someone else has fraudulently patented? You will get sued if you attempt to implement it. So how is that idea now yours as far as the legal and financial systems are concerned? Of what value to you is your idea now? Someone else is harvesting the value of your ingenuity and imagination.
You have got to be kidding me. The invention was the idea. The product invented was stolen through fraud. If you cannot legally profit from your own invention, from your own idea, because someone else is doing just that without your permission, then your idea was stolen.
The people inside the corporation spend money on lobbyists, PR campaigns, PACs, and so on, but they are merely the servants of the corporation. When Altria spends millions on local, state, and federal elections every year, it's not because J. Worthington Snipe, the guy who runs their Dirty Tricks Division, is exercising his rights as an individual. It's because Altria is taking advantage of its legal right to free speech, as defined by a series of Supreme Court decisions that completely ignore the fact that voting rights only matter if they are not completely overpowered by the 1st Amendment rights of goliath corporations.
I don't like the fact that corporations are treated the way they are, legally. I'm against them being granted rights. However, that being said we cannot lay the all the responsibility for corporate malfeasance at the feet of corporate executives. We, the people, must take responsibility for this too. We have allowed this to happen. We haven't raised a huge stink over this. We have invested, and will continue to until we change, our money with these totally corrupt business. And, we continue to support them financially when we buy their products. We love to bash the corporations, but we are ultimately the ones responsible for this situation. They can't stay in business without our money.
The idea of the US government is government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and we have abdicated our responsibilities as citizens. We have stood by silently as all this corruption has grown to the point it is. We elected the corrupt politicians who made the laws. That makes us responsible for what those corrupt politicians have done, for they represent us, and we accept their actions and send them back to office. We have accepted corruption as the status quo, and now we complain that it exists in government and thus is allowed to flourish in business also.
We, the people, must take a good look in the mirror and decide what it is that we want. We must clean up ourselves first for we have not found corruption offensive enough for us to do something other than complain about it when it gets as over-the-top as it is now. Corporate corruption is a reflection of a corrupt society for it is the people in the society itself that are making the corrupt decisions, making the corrupt laws, and tolerating the corruption. Without those factors corporate corruption could not exist. It would be dealt with harshly and immediately in a society that places a high value on honesty and integrity. Instead, we, the people, have placed a higher value on money than we have on the things that would have kept these evils from ruling our country. We are at fault. We are responsible for the ultimate power in our country lies with us.
That would be quite a feat, as stealing ideas is just not possible.
This is demonstrably false.
When I was a kid my old man invented a tool for fitting high pressure hoses to fittings. A trusted friend was supposed to provide funding for the patent application process.. Instead of partnering with the old man the guy just went down and applied for the patent in his own name and became very wealthy. He stole the idea and patented it, and almost all tools that you see today for press-fitting hoses to fittings are some variation of what my old man invented back in 1962.
- Free Healthcare for All? Check. - Free Retirement for the Elderly? Check. - Free Housing/Food for the Poor? Check. - Free School plus College for the People? Check. - Not free, but government-subsidized "People's Wagons" for everyone, even the poor? Check.
Boy... Of course, you know none of that stuff is free, right? It's all paid for with taxes. So, by that definition:
* Free Healthcare for at least some, including all elderly and poor? Check. * Free Retirement for the Elderly? Check. * Free and/or greatly subsidized Food/Housing for the Poor? Check. * Free school, plus subsidized college for the people? Check. * Not free, but government-subsidized "locally-built cars" for everyone, even the poor?
Man, the USA looks pretty socialist.
Actually, this is the 2nd of your posts I've replied to, and I'm starting to wonder if you're either trolling or being sarcastic. It's either that, or you're a Tea Party true believer; the fact that I can't tell is a troubling sign of the political weather.
Tea Partiers: The vuvuzelas of socio-political discourse.
You're correct, the US is becoming Socialistic. It's been moving slowly that way for a while, but since Obama being elected it's been careening wildly down that path.
If a leftist station is reporting on negative things about Obama, they are going to be criticizing him for where he doesn't go far enough left, not where he is violating the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They're just like he is, the Constitution means nothing to either of them.
This scenario does violate the 4th amendment, in my opinion. However, the post I responded to was talking about the commerce clause, and that was what I was specifically responding to.
I don't know if I agree with your sentiment here over growing drugs that are illegal to possess on your own land. I can't see the parallel to be truthful.
With Obama care a person is penalized for not participating in commerce. That means the government is telling you exactly how you must spend your own money, and is arguing that the Constitution gives them that right. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In your scenario the government is saying you cannot break existing on laws on your property. That is consistent with the Constitution. Property rights have never included the right to defy laws governing illegal behavior. You can't commit murder on your property and not be held responsible for it. You can't knock someone over the head and rob them either.
There is a considerable difference in principle between the two scenarios.
You're looking at this from a perspective that doesn't allow you to see the bigger picture. Obama and Bush are both progressives. They both want to grow government size and power and make the citizenry more dependent on government. You like your freedom? Start looking at what politicians actually do, rather than their political affiliation, to see how they fit into what is happening to our country, and voting for those who don't want to grow government and voting for them.
The Obama administration is already using a scarier description of commerce than what you're describing in court. It says it has the power to force you, the individual, to purchase anything it wants even when you have no plans to buy. Obama is arguing that the federal government can force not only groups, but individuals also, to participate in commerce where they have no desire to participate. That's the argument it is using in the suit filed by a group of states against Obama care, and the states are arguing that the Feds do not have that right.
The entire context of the quote is the problem that the colonial Pennsylvania legislature of the 1750's was having with Crown-appointed governors, and the then-current governor in particular. He had a habit of not responding to the legislature's requests, and when he did saying that they were at fault for not contacting him earlier. The specific issue was the funding of ammunition and arms for the poorer families on the frontier so that they could fight if they chose to. Those people only wanted the government to help in how they tackled the problem, because they only wanted the government to be involved so far, and no further. They were not willing to give up essential liberties to get temporary safety as the governor always wanted to do things in a way that reduced the rights of the people in exchange for help. He was always looking for ways to make them more dependent on England.
Saying that this is an anti-pacifism rant is ridiculous. It's nothing of the sort. It's a rebuke to a British Crown-appointed governor who is playing games with the lawful colonial power structure and the people.
You're the one who is taking the quote out of context and then claiming others are doing it when it clearly is applicable to the situation and has been applied to this type of situation for centuries.
on the other hand, the act of proposing/passing the law could, in theory, generate enough attention/negative reactions to cause significant pressure to cease such activities, sort of a reverse streisand effect if you will.
Are you kidding me? Since Obama came into power passing 2000 page legislative bills without even the ability to read and comprehend them is the norm. We're now told by the Democrat power structure that they have to pass the bills just so we can figure out what's in them....
What an idiot. Fox is often the only channel that will tell you what is happening with our government rather than fall all over itself bowing to Obama. Second, this article on Fox is based on a NYTimes article, you know, that bastion of conservative ideology, and a link to the original article is provided.
Or are you saying that you're insulted by the miasma of pretense and deception that surrounds DRM?
I wouldn't say I'm insulted. I'm disgusted by the greed, hypocrisy, and deceit to the point I will not reward their behavior by doing business with them. I will not reward unconscionable behavior. I don't treat others that way, and I will not allow myself to be treated that way.
If the price of an ebook were, say, 10% to 20% of the corresponding paper book, that would reflect my perception of its value.
I agree with the idea, but it still wouldn't be enough incentive for me to buy. I quit buying MS products, and all proprietary software, because of the rental aspect of their idea of "licensing", and I feel exactly the same way about all DRMed media/content. As long as the companies involved think they "own" the content they say they are "selling" to me, they aren't getting any of my money.
The principle involved is worth far more to me than the content I never see. I will not bow to greed.
For all the reasons listed from parent on down I do not buy ebooks. I'll download and read from the Gutenberg Project. However, I will not spend money on a book that will, in all likelihood in the future, not be accessible as I'll be damned if I'll buy something twice. I'll not buy at all rather than have to buy twice as DRM history has taught us is very likely.
I like the tactile feel of reading a book and that direct sunlight improves reading conditions rather than destroying them. Plus, I don't like the idea of having to buy another piece of technology just to read. And, I like the ability to share books, buy used books, and give books away if I so choose without having to jump through artificial hoops. As far as I'm concerned, until all those issues are made right I will not buy ebooks.
It is impossible for a state to spend more than it takes in.
Tell that to California and Washington, as well as a bunch of states in the eastern part of the US. They don't seem to understand that concept, as the only way they can have unfunded liabilities is to have spent more money than they took in, and both Washington and California have seriously overspent.
All your assertions are untrue in most instances. Sure, you may find an rich idiot here and there that's stupid enough to waste his money on shoddy work and poor output, but they are the exception.
I know quite a few wealthy people and when they build they hire well-known, trusted contractors. They don't want a home that's built poorly. They want it built by craftsmen who know what they are doing. They don't want something that is thrown together haphazardly. Quality of construction, and having something that will last and look good is important to them. They don't want junk, they want a quality home filled with quality furniture, and are more than willing to pay for it.
I also know a lot of people with the money to buy German and who still buy American products. In place of a Mercedes Benz they will do like Leno does and spend the money to have older US built cars restored to works of art and drive them.
When an investor invests in startup he's directly funding jobs. When someone with money to invest starts another business he's directly creating jobs. That's what a lot people with money do with their money. They reinvest it in their communities. I know a bunch of people who do that. I know a lot of them too who have kept their businesses open and running long past when they wanted to retire because they knew their employees depended on them to support their families.
Your assumption that all, or even most, people with money to invest are sociopaths is pure horseshit. What an asshole.
Slashdot Mirror
Your mistake is that you are confusing ownership with possession.
They are not the same thing, you know.
Realize this and re-read the posts you responded to as well as the ones you made yourself. Things will become more clear to you, and hopefully you might also become a tad less arrogant, and believe me, you would sure benefit from that.
Good luck.
How do you possess something without owning it? You don't unless you control it.
From Meriam-Webster online dictionary:
As you can see ownership is a synonym for possession, and it also means that if you don't control the property in question you don't have possession of it either. When someone else patents your idea you certainly don't have control of your own idea, so you have neither possession nor ownership of it anymore.
Either way your attempt at obfuscation is refuted completely by the definition of the words themselves.
So what? What's that have to do with this discussion? Nothing. You're comparing apples and oranges.
You learning to play Blackbird isn't a copy of Blackbird, it is Blackbird. You might have learned it by ear, or from copyrighted sheet music of which you purchased a copy, but it's still "the" song, not a copy of it, when you play it, whether you play it very well or very poorly.
In your view even the original creator of the song copies it every time he plays it. Sorry, but that's just plain stupid. It's an intellectual attempt to prove something that has no basis in reality and comes across as pure nonsense.
I'm sorry, but your ideas do not work in the real world. You don't own, in any real sense of the word, something that someone else legally owns. Someone has stolen that ownership from you if they have patented your idea as their own. It's the same as having someone defraud you of physical property and getting the legal ownership of said property. You can't use it. You can't sell it. It is of no use to you.
All you can do is point to it and say someone ripped me off. It was mine, but not any more.
I went through 12 years of parochial(private) education and there was a wide range of people in those schools. From the very poor to the well-to-do, they all attended if they so desired. I don't know of anyone who was ever turned away because of inability to pay. Those kids old enough to work were offered after-school jobs and the balance of their tuition was paid for with scholarships and what was referred to as "worthy student" funds that were created and maintained through donations.
As to the quality of education, it was far better than public school. A big part of why it was better is because more was required of the student, and they were held accountable. They weren't passed on to the next grade if they flunked out, and the parents were always notified when a kid wasn't doing his homework and failing in any class. Nobody failed unless they wanted to as there were always resources available to provide tutoring either from another student in a work-study program or a teacher. A lot of effort was put forth in making sure the poorest of the kids succeeded.
Once again you try to blur lines that cannot be blurred. When someone else patents your idea in their name, they own it in all legal and financial senses of the word. You no longer own it.
As usual, you don't answer the questions that get directly to the heart of your argument.
The value of the idea is gone when someone else patents it, and if they do that fraudulently, it is theft. The value of the idea is stolen, so for all practical purposes, the idea is stolen.
If you have a stalk of wheat, and I take the kernels of wheat and leave you the chaff and the stalk, do you still have any wheat?
That is a straw man argument. If you come up with an idea separately from somebody else, and patent it before he does, then it's first come, first serve, and entirely ethical. It's a matter of both of you exercising ingenuity and imagination, and neither one of you is defrauding the other. The legal system is just set up so that the early bird catches the worm. That's entirely fair and I have no problem with it. It's a matter of timing or luck-of-the-draw, and much of what happens to you in life is predicated on that. You didn't get that job you wanted because someone else got there first. Do you think they cheated you? Do you think you should both have the job? That scholarship you were depending on to go to school isn't available because it ran out of funds before you applied for it. Did you get cheated, or is that just life?
That is not what happened in this case. The thief would never have come up with the idea on his own. He took the idea someone else came up with and fraudulently presented it to the legal and financial system as his own. That's theft.
Here's a question or two for you. How do you extract value from an idea of yours that someone else has fraudulently patented? You will get sued if you attempt to implement it. So how is that idea now yours as far as the legal and financial systems are concerned? Of what value to you is your idea now? Someone else is harvesting the value of your ingenuity and imagination.
You have got to be kidding me. The invention was the idea. The product invented was stolen through fraud. If you cannot legally profit from your own invention, from your own idea, because someone else is doing just that without your permission, then your idea was stolen.
This is a clear a case of theft as exists.
I don't like the fact that corporations are treated the way they are, legally. I'm against them being granted rights. However, that being said we cannot lay the all the responsibility for corporate malfeasance at the feet of corporate executives. We, the people, must take responsibility for this too. We have allowed this to happen. We haven't raised a huge stink over this. We have invested, and will continue to until we change, our money with these totally corrupt business. And, we continue to support them financially when we buy their products. We love to bash the corporations, but we are ultimately the ones responsible for this situation. They can't stay in business without our money.
The idea of the US government is government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and we have abdicated our responsibilities as citizens. We have stood by silently as all this corruption has grown to the point it is. We elected the corrupt politicians who made the laws. That makes us responsible for what those corrupt politicians have done, for they represent us, and we accept their actions and send them back to office. We have accepted corruption as the status quo, and now we complain that it exists in government and thus is allowed to flourish in business also.
We, the people, must take a good look in the mirror and decide what it is that we want. We must clean up ourselves first for we have not found corruption offensive enough for us to do something other than complain about it when it gets as over-the-top as it is now. Corporate corruption is a reflection of a corrupt society for it is the people in the society itself that are making the corrupt decisions, making the corrupt laws, and tolerating the corruption. Without those factors corporate corruption could not exist. It would be dealt with harshly and immediately in a society that places a high value on honesty and integrity. Instead, we, the people, have placed a higher value on money than we have on the things that would have kept these evils from ruling our country. We are at fault. We are responsible for the ultimate power in our country lies with us.
This is demonstrably false.
When I was a kid my old man invented a tool for fitting high pressure hoses to fittings. A trusted friend was supposed to provide funding for the patent application process.. Instead of partnering with the old man the guy just went down and applied for the patent in his own name and became very wealthy. He stole the idea and patented it, and almost all tools that you see today for press-fitting hoses to fittings are some variation of what my old man invented back in 1962.
Since when do puns get modded insightful? Are /. mods such poor spellers that they don't know the difference between groan and grown?
- Free Healthcare for All? Check.
- Free Retirement for the Elderly? Check.
- Free Housing/Food for the Poor? Check.
- Free School plus College for the People? Check.
- Not free, but government-subsidized "People's Wagons" for everyone, even the poor? Check.
Boy... Of course, you know none of that stuff is free, right? It's all paid for with taxes. So, by that definition:
* Free Healthcare for at least some, including all elderly and poor? Check.
* Free Retirement for the Elderly? Check.
* Free and/or greatly subsidized Food/Housing for the Poor? Check.
* Free school, plus subsidized college for the people? Check.
* Not free, but government-subsidized "locally-built cars" for everyone, even the poor?
Man, the USA looks pretty socialist.
Actually, this is the 2nd of your posts I've replied to, and I'm starting to wonder if you're either trolling or being sarcastic. It's either that, or you're a Tea Party true believer; the fact that I can't tell is a troubling sign of the political weather.
Tea Partiers: The vuvuzelas of socio-political discourse.
You're correct, the US is becoming Socialistic. It's been moving slowly that way for a while, but since Obama being elected it's been careening wildly down that path.
If a leftist station is reporting on negative things about Obama, they are going to be criticizing him for where he doesn't go far enough left, not where he is violating the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They're just like he is, the Constitution means nothing to either of them.
This scenario does violate the 4th amendment, in my opinion. However, the post I responded to was talking about the commerce clause, and that was what I was specifically responding to.
I don't know if I agree with your sentiment here over growing drugs that are illegal to possess on your own land. I can't see the parallel to be truthful.
With Obama care a person is penalized for not participating in commerce. That means the government is telling you exactly how you must spend your own money, and is arguing that the Constitution gives them that right. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In your scenario the government is saying you cannot break existing on laws on your property. That is consistent with the Constitution. Property rights have never included the right to defy laws governing illegal behavior. You can't commit murder on your property and not be held responsible for it. You can't knock someone over the head and rob them either.
There is a considerable difference in principle between the two scenarios.
You're looking at this from a perspective that doesn't allow you to see the bigger picture. Obama and Bush are both progressives. They both want to grow government size and power and make the citizenry more dependent on government. You like your freedom? Start looking at what politicians actually do, rather than their political affiliation, to see how they fit into what is happening to our country, and voting for those who don't want to grow government and voting for them.
The Obama administration is already using a scarier description of commerce than what you're describing in court. It says it has the power to force you, the individual, to purchase anything it wants even when you have no plans to buy. Obama is arguing that the federal government can force not only groups, but individuals also, to participate in commerce where they have no desire to participate. That's the argument it is using in the suit filed by a group of states against Obama care, and the states are arguing that the Feds do not have that right.
The entire context of the quote is the problem that the colonial Pennsylvania legislature of the 1750's was having with Crown-appointed governors, and the then-current governor in particular. He had a habit of not responding to the legislature's requests, and when he did saying that they were at fault for not contacting him earlier. The specific issue was the funding of ammunition and arms for the poorer families on the frontier so that they could fight if they chose to. Those people only wanted the government to help in how they tackled the problem, because they only wanted the government to be involved so far, and no further. They were not willing to give up essential liberties to get temporary safety as the governor always wanted to do things in a way that reduced the rights of the people in exchange for help. He was always looking for ways to make them more dependent on England.
Saying that this is an anti-pacifism rant is ridiculous. It's nothing of the sort. It's a rebuke to a British Crown-appointed governor who is playing games with the lawful colonial power structure and the people.
You're the one who is taking the quote out of context and then claiming others are doing it when it clearly is applicable to the situation and has been applied to this type of situation for centuries.
Are you kidding me? Since Obama came into power passing 2000 page legislative bills without even the ability to read and comprehend them is the norm. We're now told by the Democrat power structure that they have to pass the bills just so we can figure out what's in them....
What an idiot. Fox is often the only channel that will tell you what is happening with our government rather than fall all over itself bowing to Obama. Second, this article on Fox is based on a NYTimes article, you know, that bastion of conservative ideology, and a link to the original article is provided.
I wouldn't say I'm insulted. I'm disgusted by the greed, hypocrisy, and deceit to the point I will not reward their behavior by doing business with them. I will not reward unconscionable behavior. I don't treat others that way, and I will not allow myself to be treated that way.
I agree with the idea, but it still wouldn't be enough incentive for me to buy. I quit buying MS products, and all proprietary software, because of the rental aspect of their idea of "licensing", and I feel exactly the same way about all DRMed media/content. As long as the companies involved think they "own" the content they say they are "selling" to me, they aren't getting any of my money.
The principle involved is worth far more to me than the content I never see. I will not bow to greed.
For all the reasons listed from parent on down I do not buy ebooks. I'll download and read from the Gutenberg Project. However, I will not spend money on a book that will, in all likelihood in the future, not be accessible as I'll be damned if I'll buy something twice. I'll not buy at all rather than have to buy twice as DRM history has taught us is very likely.
I like the tactile feel of reading a book and that direct sunlight improves reading conditions rather than destroying them. Plus, I don't like the idea of having to buy another piece of technology just to read. And, I like the ability to share books, buy used books, and give books away if I so choose without having to jump through artificial hoops. As far as I'm concerned, until all those issues are made right I will not buy ebooks.
Tell that to California and Washington, as well as a bunch of states in the eastern part of the US. They don't seem to understand that concept, as the only way they can have unfunded liabilities is to have spent more money than they took in, and both Washington and California have seriously overspent.
All your assertions are untrue in most instances. Sure, you may find an rich idiot here and there that's stupid enough to waste his money on shoddy work and poor output, but they are the exception.
I know quite a few wealthy people and when they build they hire well-known, trusted contractors. They don't want a home that's built poorly. They want it built by craftsmen who know what they are doing. They don't want something that is thrown together haphazardly. Quality of construction, and having something that will last and look good is important to them. They don't want junk, they want a quality home filled with quality furniture, and are more than willing to pay for it.
I also know a lot of people with the money to buy German and who still buy American products. In place of a Mercedes Benz they will do like Leno does and spend the money to have older US built cars restored to works of art and drive them.
When an investor invests in startup he's directly funding jobs. When someone with money to invest starts another business he's directly creating jobs. That's what a lot people with money do with their money. They reinvest it in their communities. I know a bunch of people who do that. I know a lot of them too who have kept their businesses open and running long past when they wanted to retire because they knew their employees depended on them to support their families.
Your assumption that all, or even most, people with money to invest are sociopaths is pure horseshit. What an asshole.