2 bring suit in federal court claiming the law is un-constitutional That's gonna happen. It's as slam dunk a case as you can get. And it will invalidate completely the entirety of all copyright law, since the SC itself is not allowed to amend the length of the term.
3 don't buy any, or buy a lot less, copyrighted stuff (even independents, if they aren't on board, are a part of the problem)
4 sue the RIAA lawyers and music industry executives for RICO violations, seize their personal civil assets and freeze their corporate assets for the restitution fund, put them in jail
5 develop faster better anonymous sharing technology, such that all the content ever created can be copied in seconds and stored on a flash drive
All the progress is important and beneficial to society, not just the big ticket items. Further, the big ticket items are usually produced by inventors with more of their own ability to protect their invention from competition until at least the ROI justifies the investment. So that class of smaller inventions is precisely what patents must protect.
The point is that "incremental innovation" isn't an oxymoron. No where do you mention the word "OBVIOUS". Patents should not be granted for *incremental*, by definition OBVIOUS, "innovation". This is precisely what must never be granted patent in the first place. Patents are for genius level innovation, not stuff that doesn't take extraordinary talent or luck to discover. Is it really your belief that ZERO PROGRESS would occur without patent protection?! (which is by definition included in your advocation "all progress is important and beneficial to society")
The MS example would fall apart under what I'm describing. For one, SW wouldn't get patented. But even if it did, patenting stuff that's not really an invention, like most of their 5000 a year, wouldn't pass examination. It would be rejected as merely incremental, at best an update of an existing patent of theirs. They shouldn't be spamming 5,000 applications in the first place, at lower cost then sending out 10 college applications! Each patent application is a potential assault on free speech freedom that shouldn't be undertaken so carefree and lightly. Microsoft should either be permanently banned from ever filing a patent again for its abuse, or the fees should double per additional application per additional year.
If Microsoft sends in 5,000 patent applications in a year, that's an average of 13.7 patents sought PER #$%^ DAY!!! If you are vacuuming up 13.7 ideas per day that are being submitted to the USPTO, they are by DEFINITION COMPLETELY OBVIOUS! "Obvious", it's a word you need to incorporate into any proposed fix for the patent system. Now if those ideas are completely obvious, since 13.7 are submitted PER DAY, that is nothing less then an attempted *criminal* abuse of the Constitutional privilege of patents. So the USPTO should revoke the MSFT patent portfolio in its entirety for general obviousness or charge for additional applications at a doubling fee scale (which is refunded if the patent receives validity).
It should not be cheaper to apply for a patent than it is to apply for college!
How many patents did the biggest geniuses in American History like Thomas Edison typically apply for in their lifetime? How many were granted? How many were rejected? Is Microsoft pretending they are more innovative then Thomas Edison? They are attempting to hijack the USPTO through DDoS spam percentage breaking through the rejection filter so that they can be paid at a relative level 5,000 times (or whatever) than Thomas Edison was paid. And this is exactly how and the sole reason Bill Gates became the richest billionaire person in the world. And now the thousands attempting to emulate Gates are crushing American ingenuity, competition, and economic growth as the legal system suffocates progress. The number of parasitic lawyers is now dangerously multiplying. And this has real consequences on everybody's quality of life and economic prosperity (and they aren't at all small).
The point for the government is not solely whether the patent office benefits, but whether the US economy benefits as a whole. The US economy as a whole benefits from absolutely every free market voluntary trade exchange transaction, no matter where the imaginary boundary lines are placed, country to country, state to state, city to city, or next door neighbor to next door neighbor. The result is exactly the same for them all, immediate wealth increasing profit from all exchange. Just like the laws of physics don't vary from country to country, neither do the laws of economics.
Most innovation isn't $billion innovation, it's that "small-time" innovation. No, that's small scale *obvious* technical advancement, not society changing technological innovation. Patents don't exist for small time independent leach "inventors" to intrude into fields and markets they are not even remotely serving or intending to serve, in order to eek a living from extortion by jumping in front of the train tracks of inevitable obvious advancement yelling "jinx", "i was here first", "you can't touch me", "PATENT!". This BS shouldn't ever be applied for in the first place. That's why patents aren't granted for OBVIOUS ideas. If at best an idea can't generate a billion dollars in new wealth, it isn't deserving of patent monopoly protection because it's not society changing technological innovation worthy of violating the freedom of others to compete. These small time inventors can gather voluntary funding from personal bank loans, venture start ups, or they can go work as employees in the companies whose lines of businesses they wish to conduct small scale routine OBVIOUS "improvements".
This is exactly why we have a problem of a company like Microsoft filing for 5,000 patents a year. Don't you find that outrageous! These are acts of economic terrorism against American freedom and prosperity. The USPTO has been hijacked!
Every single grant of patent is granted at the EXPENSE of the natural free speech rights of the public to copy, to have as many businesses selling groceries or whatever else as can voluntarily compete and exist in a free exchange market. It had better be one hell of a damn important scientific advancement to be granted a monopoly. And that monopoly is hella valuable and should be paid for by the person or corporation up front for mere examination. This isn't a make work scheme so patent examiners can have jobs. The business method "on the internet" grants are an outrage, are an ASSAULT on public freedom, are a detriment to competition and economic growth. Those who signed off on those grants should literally be jailed as criminals. You are talking about protecting small time OBVIOUS improvements under the guise of true society-wide benefiting technological innovation. And you also confuse analysis with your invocation of temporary monopoly grants with "imaginary property". No, it's nothing more than a government interference in the free market monopoly grant, under the exclusive purpose for allegedly increasing the incentives of technological innovation (itself highly suspect and debatable if not an outright economic fallacy). Your suggested improvements to the patent process do diddly squat to dissuade a company like Microsoft abusing the public with an incessant slap to our Constitution with a reckless DDoS spam attack of 5,000 yearly patent applications.
If you want a patent, in the meantime before a Constitutional Amendment eliminate patents and copyright, it should be extremely important and beneficial to society, and the monopoly grant should carry a market rate charge for the privilege. Patent application fees shouldn't be cheaper than what a huge percentage of the common people pay in application fees merely to have their college applications examined! That is an outrage! That is a scam! That is a rip off of the public trust! And the backlog is proof of a systemic failure, that perhaps should be shut down by court order until it is fixed.
Just getting the monopoly is no guarantee of profits to defray the registration costs. If these patent innovations upon granting aren't netting at least a billion dollars they are by definition wasting everybody's time with small-time or bogus non-existent innovations that aren't increasing technological innovation. Think a billion is too high? Perhaps a hundred million? One million? Yes, an application penalty deposit of $10,000 as a bounty for Open Public Patent Examination (marketed to the campaign, "You down with O.P.P.E? Yeah you know me"), is an extremely small pittance for a government monopoly grant. If you can't recover that sum, if the up front positive expected value is not hundreds or thousands of times greater for a typical bank loan department to consider as collateral for an application loan, you are wasting people's time with small insignificant technical improvements (which are most likely obvious and bogging down real innovation from occurring), not big time technological innovation, the sole purpose for patent monopoly grants.
What is the market value for a USA monopoly patent grant? It sure the @#$% ain't $400, or even $4,000.
The true market value should be paid at least partially up front as significantly higher non-refundable filing fees along with a public examination bounty in addition to an ongoing revenue collection. If you don't put in an incentive at the front door for bad patent applications to be eliminated, taxing monopoly grants is still exactly what occurs now. Taxing already granted monopolies does absolutely nothing to discourage the granting of those monopolies without merit in the first place.
The more I think of it, the bounty should be post-dated to include any and all current patent grants as well, so if you don't deposit $10k per patent already granted to undergo O.P.P.E. scrutiny, your patent is forfeited to the public domain. This should correct a giant chunk of egregiously awarded patents. And this doubles for each additional patent applied for (or granted previously) in the same fiscal year, so Microsoft Patent Application #10 in 2008 will require an O.P.P.E. deposit of $5,120,000 which can be claimed by any non-USPTO person who shows prior art of obviousness to invalidate the patent application. It's a slap in the face to the spirit of the US Constitution and the privilege of sacrificing the free speech rights of the public for Microsoft to submit 5,000 patent applications in a single year. Remember, if the patents are actually granted and validated, the deposit is refunded in full and costs zero!
Well, the problem is that increasing the filing fee will lock out small-scale inventors, who often produce quite a lot of the innovation, and who need patent protection a lot more than do the big, rich inventors who could also afford to market the invention before a competitor competes with them even without patent protection. Ok, give them a choice if they don't want to pay a higher upfront application fee of an increased tax rate on any sales receipts for products used in that invention. It is obscene to award government enforced monopoly protection for obscenely low fees. These fees need to cover not just the examining process but also any tangential legal enforcement and dispute costs (by definition for it to be a net benefit to society). All applicants can thus choose a waiving of all fess in exchange for 50% surtax on sales of the product for the duration of the patent. Except that would just be synthetically increasing the costs consumers paid for new technology, so that's a bad idea.
No, $10,000 is a pittance for patent monopoly protection. If some inventor is so strapped he needs to work for a corporation or form a non-profit inventor's fund to stake ideas.
I like it, a class action RICO lawsuit against law professors and the legal profession, Congress, et al for conspiracy to violate the Constitution, racketeering, interstate fraud, conspiracy this, conspiracy that, basically everything you could charge the RIAA with you could also charge the entire legal profession with. We should do it, it's not like that profession hasn't declared war on other professions like businesses like mutual fund management fees whilst ignoring their own professional fees or the massive administrative thievery of public schooling funds for children. End the war on drugs, free the non-violent drug offenders and put the lawyers in jail with the spots freed up from releasing non-violent drug offenders. We need a grassroots political party electing people who are not lawyers to office.
Sorry, that's completely false inaccurate economic analysis. All trade whatsoever only occurs because that which is received is valued MORE than that which is given away in exchange. It doesn't matter what the goods traded are, manufactured hard commodities, labor, fiat paper currency. Both parties by definition immediately profit and increase their subjective wealth from all trade. You don't voluntarily "buy" or "sell" anything unless doing so makes you better off. Thus, if the USPTO were outsourcing patent applications to India, *both* the Indians performing labor to examine the patents and the USPTO paying dollars to save examining costs would both be benefiting, both be increasing their wealth, both be benefiting their local economies.
Pay the public for discovering errors. Mandate that all patent applications be posted for public review. Any discovery of prior art should be the *burden* of those submitting patent applications. Double or triple the patent applications fees. Mandate a $10,000 penalty (which must be deposited with the application fee) to be paid by all applicants who submit patent applications containing prior art or too obvious an idea that is forfeited if their application is rejected for any reason. This $10,000 is up for grabs to any public person who finds prior art of obviousness. The government USPTO Patent Examiners cannot receive this money as it's supposed to be their job to not be morons in the first place. Such an incentive could even fund a private free market patent examining business with much better quality and efficiency than a government bureaucracy. We won't outright privatize the USPTO, but allow private individuals and businesses to compete in the patent examining process. This will also help establish market rate salaries for patent examiners.
Patents were supposed to be granted for innovative ideas. Innovative ideas are worth many more times than $10,000, so the fee (actually penalty deposit, so it's refundable, if the patent is granted) is not in the least burdensome. Also dramatically increase the fee and penalty deposit by number of submissions per year from the same company/individuals/holding companies/subsidiaries. Somebody like Microsoft submitting 5,000 patent applications per year at a $400 application fee is ripping off the public taxpayer. Double the fee for each additional application in a fiscal year.
These stops should solve 90% of the problems of the backlog and quality in the first year after implementation alone. Oh, and fire all the moron examiner managers who are currently signing off on the patents.
Making a DVD is very environmentally unfriendly when the content can be distributed via download or torrent. But you urge people to "pick up the DVD", waste fossil fuels driving or ordering a delivery of a physical product? I assume the PirateBay will be winning next years Nobel Peace Prize.
The Global Warming Theory was the biggest scientific fraud ever to be pushed by those with an anti-capitalist agenda. The Sun wasn't even a variable in their temperature models. The Global Warming scientists couldn't explain how the temperature drops and increases dramatically from day to night, from winter to summer, they couldn't explain the reason why there is a temperature difference between the equator and the poles (now imagine, for the purposes of showing what a fraud their model was, you move the Earth 1% closer to the Sun --what is the effect on temperature? -- don't ask them, because their temperature model was a fraud). You don't eliminate a variable(s) that account for 99% of the output and call yourself a scientist.
It was economists that exposed their fraud. But there's other variables that have been ignored, volcanic activity, and the weakening and flipping of the Earth's magnetic field, all possibly *huge* variables. Yup, they tried to claim a changing average Earth Temperature whilst excluding the Sun as a variable in the average Earth temperature -- biggest fraud ever. That's why you never saw a formula for their temperature model along the lines of Sun + Core + ManMadeActivity = Temperature, whereby the variables are weighted like 0.95 for the Sun 0.039 for Core, and 0.0001 for MMA. Soon as you look at it in those terms, you realize what an agenda of fraud they were pushing. They just pretended the Sun was constant and completely removed it from the Global Average Temperature Model (the better to push an agenda). And it's a shame too, because it tarnishes legitimate environmental anti-pollution campaigns.
The global warming fraudsters would have saved a lot of wasted money, not to mention the irreparable crying wolf damage they have caused to future scientific credibility, if they ordered and passed out scale model replicas of the solar system. That big glowing burning thing that's 100 times larger than the planet Earth is called the Sun. Here's a website for those "scientists" to get an education.
Sun-any ball, diameter 8.00 inches
Mercury-a pinhead, diameter 0.03 inch
Venus-a peppercorn, diameter 0.08 inch
Earth-a second peppercorn
Mars-a second pinhead
Jupiter-a chestnut or a pecan, diameter 0.90 inch
Saturn-a hazelnut or an acorn, diameter 0.70 inch
Uranus-a peanut or coffeebean, diameter 0.30 inch
Neptune-a second peanut or coffeebean
Pluto- a third pinhead (or smaller, since Pluto is the smallest planet)
This peppercorn is the Earth we live on.
The Earth is eight thousand miles wide! The peppercorn is eight hundredths of an inch wide. What about the Sun? It is eight hundred thousand miles wide. The ball representing it is eight inches wide. So, one inch in the model represents a hundred thousand miles in reality.
This means that one yard (36 inches) represents 3,600,000 miles. Take a pace: this distance across the floor is an enormous space-journey called "three million six hundred thousand miles." Those global warming scientists should be sued to have all the moneys invested returned so it can be invested in legitimate solar scientific research.
This isn't true. In the past couple of months, I have passed over OSS projects for their proprietary counterparts. Mainly because of features and usability. How much of that is due to competition being shut out by patents and copyrights?
You are forgetting an import part of the equation: human nature. Without an incentive, nothing will get completed (one can look at all the abandoned projects in sourceforge or freshmeat for a good example of this). Money is the prime motivating factor. Well, I'm an economics expert, maybe the best in the world on this topic. The underlying incentive for all creation is not "money" but the the results (value) that the creation imparts (yes, this is economic wealth, a form of "money"). People will only develop code for others because others have a need for the results that code can give them. This means removing copyright/patent monopoly alleged incentive does not in the slightest remove the incentive for wanting the results the code can give. Just like not monopoly limiting the business of cutting hair through patent or copyright does not remove the incentive for people to pay for getting hair cuts.
At my current job, we have a patented product (that is very unique..and non-software related). About 3 months ago, a wholesale client of ours decides to get an exact duplicate of our product manufactured in china and start selling it as his own product. Without the current system, we would not be able to get this guy shutdown. That government interference is only creating artificial scarcity, higher prices, and a net slower rate of technological innovation for society (which, compounding through time, results in a vastly net poorer society than would otherwise be the case).
any great open source collaboration has great funding by large corporations. There aren't any old really rich people that want to live longer healthier lives? If you're over 60 you might miss out and be dead (assuming copyrights and patents can be eliminated very near term), even though it didn't have to be that way, and only is, solely due to government interference in the free market though patent and copyright monopoly grants.
I'd like to a game made, where a baboon throws chairs that flip-roll down levels that you have to jump over to advance to harder levels... I call it Developers Kong.
Imagine the ingenuity of the Linux devs combined with the endless resources of Microsoft. It would be an unstoppable combination. Of course, it goes without saying that the nature of both sides would prevent this from ever happening, but you get the idea... Or imagine a world without copyright and patent protections, and the Linux devs can take and combine code or write new code that copies (monopoly protected) functions from any and all sources whatsoever... we can already see the results that would start to emerge simply by comparing real world data, say wikipedia versus the S.S. Encyclopedia Brittanica.
Correct, robots won't develop software programs, humans will. But that software program is infinitely reusable and reproducible. One person laboring writing a program for one year can build 6 billion and ever counting houses. One person's laboring writing a program for one year can be paid for by another person writing a program that has robots plant seats and harvest crops -- the programmer's food needs are taken care of.
This is how society advances, technology increases economic efficiency and wealth such that more free leisure time is created when every person doesn't have to till the farm from dawn til dusk. This originally freed up time for leisurely activities such as creating music. Eventually so much free leisure time will be created that semi- and full- professional hobbyists will create ever higher quality content at ever lower and free prices. That means exactly what I said above, programs to build everyone a house (I'm sure Habitat for Humanity would gladly voluntarily raise and pay millions for this).
Sure, writing programs, creating music, takes time. So does posting on the internet. And just look at the geometrically growing trillions of free internet posts out there. Internet forums, internet encylopedias, internet video sites, are just different forms in their wee infancy compared to the advanced technological high quality content releases which will inevitably be a mouse click away.
Even the biggest slouches that freeload absolutely everything can be harnessed as raters of quality merely by market based evaluation of clicks and content usage. Corporate proprietary closed source won't be able to compete with open source voluntary collaboration. This is why common languages evolve in the first place, and every individuals doesn't spam undecipherable gibberish to every other individual. Sure scarcity will still exist for physical things, but non-scarce infinitely reproducible technology will continue to increase the things which can be gotten from ever smaller amounts of scarce physical things. We already don't need to waste scarce resources (not to mention saving on pollution costs) producing cds and dvds for content. We will harness DNA just like we harnessed the atom, and this will bring about abundant renewable material physical stocks for all sorts of things: fish, trees, crops, animals (we've already put cows in the CowMatrix), synthetic diamonds, you name it. These aren't even long-term science fictions dreams anymore. These are things which are already developed or on the cusp on being developed.
Give me an open source collaboration including the brightest scientific minds, and we can have effective human immortality in twenty years, renewable 1,000 year life spans. Copyright and patent are the only things in the way from that occurring.
Actually, market value is 100% subjectively extrinsic for absolutely every single good and service. Cost of production is completely immaterial to value. Example: an original Pablo Picasso painting consisting of canvass and paint costing less than $10 may be 100% subjectively extrinsically valued at ten million dollars while the public works ditch dug by 100 laborers during the day shift and filled back in by 100 laborers during the night shift for 1 year straight may be subjectively extrinsically valued at zero dollars.
proprietary software has a cost associated too. The cost of the developers. That can be paid by robots that produce all the necessities of life, such as robots that plant seeds and farm crops, robots that harvest cotton, and produce clothing, robots that grow trees (harnessing and massively speeding up the process of DNA replication, such that trees can be grown from seed to red oak size in a minute, and then build you a house. The labor of past generations that invent replicator technology, internet copying is just the first step, will forever pay for your leisure time, during which you can develop content because you enjoy developing content, or you can just freeload all the content as a lazy slug that harms nobody.
It would be better for those people to go back to school and further their education. Most of that could be done on-line for free as well. Just eliminate copyrights. The number of educated PhDs would skyrocket globally, by definition increasing wealth. Even medical surgery is being done by computers and thus can be simulated, just like pilot training. Wikipedia is just the wee beginning. The methodology of learning K-PhD is about to undergo a humongous revolution in efficiency.
Now why should the paying customers care that they're subsidizing the freeloaders is the unanswered issue in the piracy debate?* This always, naturally, easily, occurs. Public museums, universities, most of these institutions were started by private wealthy benefactors. Rich people like university buildings and museums named after them. It generates free publicity positive PR headlines. Not to mention, there are competing political agendas. Politicians pay for their message to be heard by the people. Fame can be a valuable commodity. Actors at the Oscar's Awards get free high end gift bags, because famous people wearing and using your stuff is valuable.
All surplus production for trade in a sense is a kind of "freeloader subsidy". Both parties to every trade increase their wealth because that which is received is valued more than that which is given away in exchange. That means the guy you trade your marginal stuff away to benefits more from that marginal stuff than you yourself do. Producers will be voluntarily funded enough to continue producing if people want and value their content. Producers, by definition of continuing to produce, won't care about excess freeloaders. Big contributors can be given extra real scarcity value, such as private parties/showings, limited edition memorabilia and stuff. Excess freeloaders are fans that generate fame/celebrity wealth (so in a sense they are paying producers merely by being fans, and those fans have been exploited plenty by artists, sexually and financially), and some may become possible big benefactors down the line.
The price of many things absolutely will come down, to a negative price, as in they will pay you. When millions are competing to be *heard*, paying people to listen makes sense. Old traditional broadcast media delivery channels are an inefficient middle man being paid by advertisers to sell consumer eyeballs. Such things as the Advertising Channel (patent and trademark hereby claimed) will pay the individual consumer to watch. What's the difference if the advertisers pay the cable company middlemen billions per year or they pay the consumers directly billions per year? This means not only will most content end up being free by simple supply and demand, but simple supply and demand will increase the quality and pay you to watch that content.
Sites like/., or their peers, will eventually compete and start paying quarterly dividends to the posters who add 99% of the value to the site with their free posts. This model is coming and coming fast.
And here's the fundamental problem: There is a perfectly valid definition for the word "afford" that you're simply ignoring because you're fixated on the operational one. When people say, "You're buying more than you can afford" they do not mean that you're buying things that you're incapable of buying. They're suggesting that there will be negative long run consequences to your behavior and that the utility gained from the transaction is likely to be less than the disutility of those actions. Feel free to define yourself into correctness, but you're not using the definition originally intended in the conversation.
That conventional wisdom is just flat out wrong. That's why I constantly harp on trade only always occurring because that which is received is valued MORE than that which is given away in exchange. It matters absolutely not what the goods or services or credit promises or unperceived risks are involved in any trade transaction. Both parties are by definition immediately better off wealthier from the transaction. It's precisely because this fundamental law of economics is clouded by the words "buy" and "sell" that bigger errors proceed unseen in the economics discipline. If a person did not immediately better their economic wealth profit from trade, including trading contractual debt, they would not undertake the trade in the first place. All goods are extrinsically subjectively valued differently by different actors. That's why trade occurs. "Afford" is a meaningless word with zero definition of precision. Feel free to lobby and define "afford" as being limited solely to transactions that don't involve the exchange of any debt or credit. But that would be silly because all corporations are funded by debt or the capital of others, and they can "afford" to invest in furthering corporation business from taking on and leveraging debt.
Your point is essentially that people value things at what people value them, which is true, but not particularly illuminating.
No, it's extremely illuminating because it establishes the epistemological and scientific basis, the reason for which any and all trade of any and all things occurs. If everybody valued the exact same things the same, no trade would ever occur. All things have value only because extrinsic human actors subjectively value those things; it's a false error to claim there is any such thing as objective unchanging intrinsic value for anything. Subjective value is one of the key foundations of economics science. To claim it is not illuminating is akin to claiming Newton's law that a body in motion stays in motion unless operated upon by an outside force is not illuminating. In a free market, trade increases the net wealth of society even if the exact same goods exist in the world after the trades as exist before the trades. From this, we *prove* the restriction of free trade in every instance leads to a net less wealthier society, *causes* poverty.
You might decide to light yourself on fire to purge the demons, and that decision would be motivated by something that made you believe you'd get utility out of doing it. There are those of us, however, who would point out that you may not be accurately evaluating the risks involved.
But that's the point. It doesn't matter what the reason are, whether they are alleged to be rational or irrational; no action whatsoever is ever undertaken except because doing so aims at increasing utility, going to a state of lower dissatisfaction from a state of greater dissatisfaction. By definition all action, including trade, is only undertaken because it increases utility. If action didn't increase utility it would be pointless to act in the first place. These are strict mathematically precise "greater than" and "lesser than" concepts. It's an epistemological error to believe risks can be "accurately evaluated" when they are solely subjectively evaluated. They are by definition always "accurate". You cannot "inaccurately" prefer chocolate ice cream to va
Somebody should look into suing the Managers and Examiner's of the USPO. There's a pattern of massive abuse and fraud that should be shut down completely by court order. Let's start listing names of individuals who examined and certified these patents, freeze their bank accounts, and take them to court for negligence, RICO violations, and Sarbanes-Oxley violations. Perhaps a Patent Examiner whistleblower can receive 50% of all profits netted by any bogus patents. If legiltors can be sanctioned and punished for bribery, why can't they be sanctioned and punished for conspiracy to violate the Constitution?
Oh sure, there's lots of things different between Terminator 2 and Robocop. But there's *also* many things which are similar, and many things which are exactly the same. It's impossible to not copy innumerable ideas of others in creating anything. Therefore, it's absurd to argue against copying, period. Every single artist copies. The minor areas of their work which is not a direct exact copy of someone else is just conveniently exempt from their embrace of copying the ideas of others?
Copyright is predicated on fooling people into believing all art is original and granting artists exemption from government interference against copying through monopoly while shutting out competition. None of them invented the words used in character dialogue. And that is just one minor example of the way in which they have copied the ideas of others. Don't even need to begin listing the innumerable other ideas of others they have also copied when copyright proponents continue to close their eyes and not answer criticisms which expose their argument as fraud. So they hypocritically want to copy the work of others but prevent others from copying any original work they themselves might do.
If these directors, producers, actors, and studios are so against copying, then why are they copying the ideas of others in their own work? They just copied them for their own purposes. All education whatsoever, from K-PhD occurs precisely by copying the ideas of others. Libraries exist precisely to pay for material once to be consumed by an unlimited many.
So no, it's not a bit silly at all. It's an epistemological fact that they copy innumerable ideas of others in their own work. And they have no moral, ethical, epistemological, or any other basis, upon which to argue against any form of copying, in total or in part, whatsoever.
I should have known that taking up a discussion with somebody who is clearly arguing semantics and philosophy over objective reality and mainstream definitions on slashdot was a bad idea, but I've made my bed now.
Not at all, I'm arguing precisely objectively reality with epistemologically accurate demonstrations.
As one of my economics professors used to say, "Every behavior including lighting yourself on fire to kill the demons in your head is rational.
Whether you label any action rational or irrational is immaterial to the fundamental point that all action only occurs because it aims at going to a state of lesser dissatisfaction from a state of greater dissatisfaction; it increases strictly defined economic wealth.
What I'm arguing is that when we normalize for objectively measurable costs and benefits, there is definitely such a thing as more credit than one can afford.
That argument is wrong. Your credit has exchange value up to the limit that others are willing to trade other real goods and services for that credit. By definition of voluntary trade, all that is received from trade is "afforded". It doesn't matter if you discovered an oil field in your backyard or the market discovered a smaller different form of an oil field in your back pocket called "credit".
What you're glossing over is a matter of imperfect and or asymmetric information.
Absolutely not. I embrace imperfect and asymmetric information directly in to all my definitions and demonstrations. No human being whatsoever is omniscient. Therefore, all information is by definition imperfect and asymmetric at all times. That's reality. But information to the extent it is known and unknown is still subjectively valued in all trade transactions, even if someone mistakenly values such things as risk "incorrectly" at zero. They always by definition have the choice to trade or not do the trade. Therefore, all possible information, unknown and known, is subjectively valued. Your examples are examples of fraud, not typical trade transactions. But even still, all willing exchanges factor in the possibility of that being received being fraudulent even if the subjective valuation of the possibility of that which is being received is fraudulent is subjectively valued (what you would call "incorrectly" -- after the fact) at zero or near zero. Trust has positive economic value. Trading with strangers may not be regarded at the same risk level as trading with known friends. But as humans are not omniscient, there's *always* the possibility of fraud with absolutely ever instance of trade. That possibility is therefore by definition subjectively valued, as it's impossible to ever remove all possibility of fraud. This is commonly observed with people hanging up on telemarketers, closing their car windows to people selling bottled water at intersections, closing the door on door to door salesmen.
In the most techincal sense, you're correct.
Give credit where credit is due. I'm correct in the most technical sense solely because I'm correct in the objective reality sense. And I aim for the most significant Nobel Prize in the field of Economics since the concept of marginal utility with my "Pure Theory of Trade".:P Whatever, that's my goal, and I think I will obtain it.
Based on subjective valuation, you got what you agreed to get: a promise. In a more realistic sense, this isn't a long-term sustainable behavior. Try borrowing more than you can pay back and see what happens.
Nothing is guaranteed a long-term sustainable behavior precisely because the value for all goods and services is extrinsically subjective. This is the only reason prices change. Pet rocks, housing bubbles, tulipomania, fiat paper currency, Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire", anything. People can only "borrow more than they can pay back" to the extent they do today solely because of government interference in the free marke
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3 don't buy any, or buy a lot less, copyrighted stuff (even independents, if they aren't on board, are a part of the problem)
4 sue the RIAA lawyers and music industry executives for RICO violations, seize their personal civil assets and freeze their corporate assets for the restitution fund, put them in jail
5 develop faster better anonymous sharing technology, such that all the content ever created can be copied in seconds and stored on a flash drive
The point is that "incremental innovation" isn't an oxymoron. No where do you mention the word "OBVIOUS". Patents should not be granted for *incremental*, by definition OBVIOUS, "innovation". This is precisely what must never be granted patent in the first place. Patents are for genius level innovation, not stuff that doesn't take extraordinary talent or luck to discover. Is it really your belief that ZERO PROGRESS would occur without patent protection?! (which is by definition included in your advocation "all progress is important and beneficial to society") The MS example would fall apart under what I'm describing. For one, SW wouldn't get patented. But even if it did, patenting stuff that's not really an invention, like most of their 5000 a year, wouldn't pass examination. It would be rejected as merely incremental, at best an update of an existing patent of theirs. They shouldn't be spamming 5,000 applications in the first place, at lower cost then sending out 10 college applications! Each patent application is a potential assault on free speech freedom that shouldn't be undertaken so carefree and lightly. Microsoft should either be permanently banned from ever filing a patent again for its abuse, or the fees should double per additional application per additional year.
If Microsoft sends in 5,000 patent applications in a year, that's an average of 13.7 patents sought PER #$%^ DAY!!! If you are vacuuming up 13.7 ideas per day that are being submitted to the USPTO, they are by DEFINITION COMPLETELY OBVIOUS! "Obvious", it's a word you need to incorporate into any proposed fix for the patent system. Now if those ideas are completely obvious, since 13.7 are submitted PER DAY, that is nothing less then an attempted *criminal* abuse of the Constitutional privilege of patents. So the USPTO should revoke the MSFT patent portfolio in its entirety for general obviousness or charge for additional applications at a doubling fee scale (which is refunded if the patent receives validity).
It should not be cheaper to apply for a patent than it is to apply for college!
How many patents did the biggest geniuses in American History like Thomas Edison typically apply for in their lifetime? How many were granted? How many were rejected? Is Microsoft pretending they are more innovative then Thomas Edison? They are attempting to hijack the USPTO through DDoS spam percentage breaking through the rejection filter so that they can be paid at a relative level 5,000 times (or whatever) than Thomas Edison was paid. And this is exactly how and the sole reason Bill Gates became the richest billionaire person in the world. And now the thousands attempting to emulate Gates are crushing American ingenuity, competition, and economic growth as the legal system suffocates progress. The number of parasitic lawyers is now dangerously multiplying. And this has real consequences on everybody's quality of life and economic prosperity (and they aren't at all small).
This is exactly why we have a problem of a company like Microsoft filing for 5,000 patents a year. Don't you find that outrageous! These are acts of economic terrorism against American freedom and prosperity. The USPTO has been hijacked!
Every single grant of patent is granted at the EXPENSE of the natural free speech rights of the public to copy, to have as many businesses selling groceries or whatever else as can voluntarily compete and exist in a free exchange market. It had better be one hell of a damn important scientific advancement to be granted a monopoly. And that monopoly is hella valuable and should be paid for by the person or corporation up front for mere examination. This isn't a make work scheme so patent examiners can have jobs. The business method "on the internet" grants are an outrage, are an ASSAULT on public freedom, are a detriment to competition and economic growth. Those who signed off on those grants should literally be jailed as criminals. You are talking about protecting small time OBVIOUS improvements under the guise of true society-wide benefiting technological innovation. And you also confuse analysis with your invocation of temporary monopoly grants with "imaginary property". No, it's nothing more than a government interference in the free market monopoly grant, under the exclusive purpose for allegedly increasing the incentives of technological innovation (itself highly suspect and debatable if not an outright economic fallacy). Your suggested improvements to the patent process do diddly squat to dissuade a company like Microsoft abusing the public with an incessant slap to our Constitution with a reckless DDoS spam attack of 5,000 yearly patent applications.
If you want a patent, in the meantime before a Constitutional Amendment eliminate patents and copyright, it should be extremely important and beneficial to society, and the monopoly grant should carry a market rate charge for the privilege. Patent application fees shouldn't be cheaper than what a huge percentage of the common people pay in application fees merely to have their college applications examined! That is an outrage! That is a scam! That is a rip off of the public trust! And the backlog is proof of a systemic failure, that perhaps should be shut down by court order until it is fixed.
What is the market value for a USA monopoly patent grant? It sure the @#$% ain't $400, or even $4,000.
The true market value should be paid at least partially up front as significantly higher non-refundable filing fees along with a public examination bounty in addition to an ongoing revenue collection. If you don't put in an incentive at the front door for bad patent applications to be eliminated, taxing monopoly grants is still exactly what occurs now. Taxing already granted monopolies does absolutely nothing to discourage the granting of those monopolies without merit in the first place.
The more I think of it, the bounty should be post-dated to include any and all current patent grants as well, so if you don't deposit $10k per patent already granted to undergo O.P.P.E. scrutiny, your patent is forfeited to the public domain. This should correct a giant chunk of egregiously awarded patents. And this doubles for each additional patent applied for (or granted previously) in the same fiscal year, so Microsoft Patent Application #10 in 2008 will require an O.P.P.E. deposit of $5,120,000 which can be claimed by any non-USPTO person who shows prior art of obviousness to invalidate the patent application. It's a slap in the face to the spirit of the US Constitution and the privilege of sacrificing the free speech rights of the public for Microsoft to submit 5,000 patent applications in a single year. Remember, if the patents are actually granted and validated, the deposit is refunded in full and costs zero!
No, $10,000 is a pittance for patent monopoly protection. If some inventor is so strapped he needs to work for a corporation or form a non-profit inventor's fund to stake ideas.
I like it, a class action RICO lawsuit against law professors and the legal profession, Congress, et al for conspiracy to violate the Constitution, racketeering, interstate fraud, conspiracy this, conspiracy that, basically everything you could charge the RIAA with you could also charge the entire legal profession with. We should do it, it's not like that profession hasn't declared war on other professions like businesses like mutual fund management fees whilst ignoring their own professional fees or the massive administrative thievery of public schooling funds for children. End the war on drugs, free the non-violent drug offenders and put the lawyers in jail with the spots freed up from releasing non-violent drug offenders. We need a grassroots political party electing people who are not lawyers to office.
Sorry, that's completely false inaccurate economic analysis. All trade whatsoever only occurs because that which is received is valued MORE than that which is given away in exchange. It doesn't matter what the goods traded are, manufactured hard commodities, labor, fiat paper currency. Both parties by definition immediately profit and increase their subjective wealth from all trade. You don't voluntarily "buy" or "sell" anything unless doing so makes you better off. Thus, if the USPTO were outsourcing patent applications to India, *both* the Indians performing labor to examine the patents and the USPTO paying dollars to save examining costs would both be benefiting, both be increasing their wealth, both be benefiting their local economies.
Pay the public for discovering errors. Mandate that all patent applications be posted for public review. Any discovery of prior art should be the *burden* of those submitting patent applications. Double or triple the patent applications fees. Mandate a $10,000 penalty (which must be deposited with the application fee) to be paid by all applicants who submit patent applications containing prior art or too obvious an idea that is forfeited if their application is rejected for any reason. This $10,000 is up for grabs to any public person who finds prior art of obviousness. The government USPTO Patent Examiners cannot receive this money as it's supposed to be their job to not be morons in the first place. Such an incentive could even fund a private free market patent examining business with much better quality and efficiency than a government bureaucracy. We won't outright privatize the USPTO, but allow private individuals and businesses to compete in the patent examining process. This will also help establish market rate salaries for patent examiners.
Patents were supposed to be granted for innovative ideas. Innovative ideas are worth many more times than $10,000, so the fee (actually penalty deposit, so it's refundable, if the patent is granted) is not in the least burdensome. Also dramatically increase the fee and penalty deposit by number of submissions per year from the same company/individuals/holding companies/subsidiaries. Somebody like Microsoft submitting 5,000 patent applications per year at a $400 application fee is ripping off the public taxpayer. Double the fee for each additional application in a fiscal year.
These stops should solve 90% of the problems of the backlog and quality in the first year after implementation alone. Oh, and fire all the moron examiner managers who are currently signing off on the patents.
Making a DVD is very environmentally unfriendly when the content can be distributed via download or torrent. But you urge people to "pick up the DVD", waste fossil fuels driving or ordering a delivery of a physical product? I assume the PirateBay will be winning next years Nobel Peace Prize.
It was economists that exposed their fraud. But there's other variables that have been ignored, volcanic activity, and the weakening and flipping of the Earth's magnetic field, all possibly *huge* variables. Yup, they tried to claim a changing average Earth Temperature whilst excluding the Sun as a variable in the average Earth temperature -- biggest fraud ever. That's why you never saw a formula for their temperature model along the lines of Sun + Core + ManMadeActivity = Temperature, whereby the variables are weighted like 0.95 for the Sun 0.039 for Core, and 0.0001 for MMA. Soon as you look at it in those terms, you realize what an agenda of fraud they were pushing. They just pretended the Sun was constant and completely removed it from the Global Average Temperature Model (the better to push an agenda). And it's a shame too, because it tarnishes legitimate environmental anti-pollution campaigns.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/magnetic/about.html
The global warming fraudsters would have saved a lot of wasted money, not to mention the irreparable crying wolf damage they have caused to future scientific credibility, if they ordered and passed out scale model replicas of the solar system. That big glowing burning thing that's 100 times larger than the planet Earth is called the Sun. Here's a website for those "scientists" to get an education.
http://www.noao.edu/education/peppercorn/pcmain.html First, collect the objects you need. They are:
Sun-any ball, diameter 8.00 inches
Mercury-a pinhead, diameter 0.03 inch
Venus-a peppercorn, diameter 0.08 inch
Earth-a second peppercorn
Mars-a second pinhead
Jupiter-a chestnut or a pecan, diameter 0.90 inch
Saturn-a hazelnut or an acorn, diameter 0.70 inch
Uranus-a peanut or coffeebean, diameter 0.30 inch
Neptune-a second peanut or coffeebean
Pluto- a third pinhead (or smaller, since Pluto is the smallest planet) This peppercorn is the Earth we live on.
The Earth is eight thousand miles wide! The peppercorn is eight hundredths of an inch wide. What about the Sun? It is eight hundred thousand miles wide. The ball representing it is eight inches wide. So, one inch in the model represents a hundred thousand miles in reality.
This means that one yard (36 inches) represents 3,600,000 miles. Take a pace: this distance across the floor is an enormous space-journey called "three million six hundred thousand miles." Those global warming scientists should be sued to have all the moneys invested returned so it can be invested in legitimate solar scientific research.
I'd like to a game made, where a baboon throws chairs that flip-roll down levels that you have to jump over to advance to harder levels ... I call it Developers Kong.
Correct, robots won't develop software programs, humans will. But that software program is infinitely reusable and reproducible. One person laboring writing a program for one year can build 6 billion and ever counting houses. One person's laboring writing a program for one year can be paid for by another person writing a program that has robots plant seats and harvest crops -- the programmer's food needs are taken care of.
This is how society advances, technology increases economic efficiency and wealth such that more free leisure time is created when every person doesn't have to till the farm from dawn til dusk. This originally freed up time for leisurely activities such as creating music. Eventually so much free leisure time will be created that semi- and full- professional hobbyists will create ever higher quality content at ever lower and free prices. That means exactly what I said above, programs to build everyone a house (I'm sure Habitat for Humanity would gladly voluntarily raise and pay millions for this).
Sure, writing programs, creating music, takes time. So does posting on the internet. And just look at the geometrically growing trillions of free internet posts out there. Internet forums, internet encylopedias, internet video sites, are just different forms in their wee infancy compared to the advanced technological high quality content releases which will inevitably be a mouse click away.
Even the biggest slouches that freeload absolutely everything can be harnessed as raters of quality merely by market based evaluation of clicks and content usage. Corporate proprietary closed source won't be able to compete with open source voluntary collaboration. This is why common languages evolve in the first place, and every individuals doesn't spam undecipherable gibberish to every other individual. Sure scarcity will still exist for physical things, but non-scarce infinitely reproducible technology will continue to increase the things which can be gotten from ever smaller amounts of scarce physical things. We already don't need to waste scarce resources (not to mention saving on pollution costs) producing cds and dvds for content. We will harness DNA just like we harnessed the atom, and this will bring about abundant renewable material physical stocks for all sorts of things: fish, trees, crops, animals (we've already put cows in the CowMatrix), synthetic diamonds, you name it. These aren't even long-term science fictions dreams anymore. These are things which are already developed or on the cusp on being developed.
Give me an open source collaboration including the brightest scientific minds, and we can have effective human immortality in twenty years, renewable 1,000 year life spans. Copyright and patent are the only things in the way from that occurring.
Actually, market value is 100% subjectively extrinsic for absolutely every single good and service. Cost of production is completely immaterial to value. Example: an original Pablo Picasso painting consisting of canvass and paint costing less than $10 may be 100% subjectively extrinsically valued at ten million dollars while the public works ditch dug by 100 laborers during the day shift and filled back in by 100 laborers during the night shift for 1 year straight may be subjectively extrinsically valued at zero dollars.
All surplus production for trade in a sense is a kind of "freeloader subsidy". Both parties to every trade increase their wealth because that which is received is valued more than that which is given away in exchange. That means the guy you trade your marginal stuff away to benefits more from that marginal stuff than you yourself do. Producers will be voluntarily funded enough to continue producing if people want and value their content. Producers, by definition of continuing to produce, won't care about excess freeloaders. Big contributors can be given extra real scarcity value, such as private parties/showings, limited edition memorabilia and stuff. Excess freeloaders are fans that generate fame/celebrity wealth (so in a sense they are paying producers merely by being fans, and those fans have been exploited plenty by artists, sexually and financially), and some may become possible big benefactors down the line.
The price of many things absolutely will come down, to a negative price, as in they will pay you. When millions are competing to be *heard*, paying people to listen makes sense. Old traditional broadcast media delivery channels are an inefficient middle man being paid by advertisers to sell consumer eyeballs. Such things as the Advertising Channel (patent and trademark hereby claimed) will pay the individual consumer to watch. What's the difference if the advertisers pay the cable company middlemen billions per year or they pay the consumers directly billions per year? This means not only will most content end up being free by simple supply and demand, but simple supply and demand will increase the quality and pay you to watch that content.
/., or their peers, will eventually compete and start paying quarterly dividends to the posters who add 99% of the value to the site with their free posts. This model is coming and coming fast.
Sites like
And here's the fundamental problem: There is a perfectly valid definition for the word "afford" that you're simply ignoring because you're fixated on the operational one. When people say, "You're buying more than you can afford" they do not mean that you're buying things that you're incapable of buying. They're suggesting that there will be negative long run consequences to your behavior and that the utility gained from the transaction is likely to be less than the disutility of those actions. Feel free to define yourself into correctness, but you're not using the definition originally intended in the conversation.
That conventional wisdom is just flat out wrong. That's why I constantly harp on trade only always occurring because that which is received is valued MORE than that which is given away in exchange. It matters absolutely not what the goods or services or credit promises or unperceived risks are involved in any trade transaction. Both parties are by definition immediately better off wealthier from the transaction. It's precisely because this fundamental law of economics is clouded by the words "buy" and "sell" that bigger errors proceed unseen in the economics discipline. If a person did not immediately better their economic wealth profit from trade, including trading contractual debt, they would not undertake the trade in the first place. All goods are extrinsically subjectively valued differently by different actors. That's why trade occurs. "Afford" is a meaningless word with zero definition of precision. Feel free to lobby and define "afford" as being limited solely to transactions that don't involve the exchange of any debt or credit. But that would be silly because all corporations are funded by debt or the capital of others, and they can "afford" to invest in furthering corporation business from taking on and leveraging debt.
Your point is essentially that people value things at what people value them, which is true, but not particularly illuminating.
No, it's extremely illuminating because it establishes the epistemological and scientific basis, the reason for which any and all trade of any and all things occurs. If everybody valued the exact same things the same, no trade would ever occur. All things have value only because extrinsic human actors subjectively value those things; it's a false error to claim there is any such thing as objective unchanging intrinsic value for anything. Subjective value is one of the key foundations of economics science. To claim it is not illuminating is akin to claiming Newton's law that a body in motion stays in motion unless operated upon by an outside force is not illuminating. In a free market, trade increases the net wealth of society even if the exact same goods exist in the world after the trades as exist before the trades. From this, we *prove* the restriction of free trade in every instance leads to a net less wealthier society, *causes* poverty.
You might decide to light yourself on fire to purge the demons, and that decision would be motivated by something that made you believe you'd get utility out of doing it. There are those of us, however, who would point out that you may not be accurately evaluating the risks involved.
But that's the point. It doesn't matter what the reason are, whether they are alleged to be rational or irrational; no action whatsoever is ever undertaken except because doing so aims at increasing utility, going to a state of lower dissatisfaction from a state of greater dissatisfaction. By definition all action, including trade, is only undertaken because it increases utility. If action didn't increase utility it would be pointless to act in the first place. These are strict mathematically precise "greater than" and "lesser than" concepts. It's an epistemological error to believe risks can be "accurately evaluated" when they are solely subjectively evaluated. They are by definition always "accurate". You cannot "inaccurately" prefer chocolate ice cream to va
Somebody should look into suing the Managers and Examiner's of the USPO. There's a pattern of massive abuse and fraud that should be shut down completely by court order. Let's start listing names of individuals who examined and certified these patents, freeze their bank accounts, and take them to court for negligence, RICO violations, and Sarbanes-Oxley violations. Perhaps a Patent Examiner whistleblower can receive 50% of all profits netted by any bogus patents. If legiltors can be sanctioned and punished for bribery, why can't they be sanctioned and punished for conspiracy to violate the Constitution?
Oh sure, there's lots of things different between Terminator 2 and Robocop. But there's *also* many things which are similar, and many things which are exactly the same. It's impossible to not copy innumerable ideas of others in creating anything. Therefore, it's absurd to argue against copying, period. Every single artist copies. The minor areas of their work which is not a direct exact copy of someone else is just conveniently exempt from their embrace of copying the ideas of others?
Copyright is predicated on fooling people into believing all art is original and granting artists exemption from government interference against copying through monopoly while shutting out competition. None of them invented the words used in character dialogue. And that is just one minor example of the way in which they have copied the ideas of others. Don't even need to begin listing the innumerable other ideas of others they have also copied when copyright proponents continue to close their eyes and not answer criticisms which expose their argument as fraud. So they hypocritically want to copy the work of others but prevent others from copying any original work they themselves might do.
If these directors, producers, actors, and studios are so against copying, then why are they copying the ideas of others in their own work? They just copied them for their own purposes. All education whatsoever, from K-PhD occurs precisely by copying the ideas of others. Libraries exist precisely to pay for material once to be consumed by an unlimited many.
So no, it's not a bit silly at all. It's an epistemological fact that they copy innumerable ideas of others in their own work. And they have no moral, ethical, epistemological, or any other basis, upon which to argue against any form of copying, in total or in part, whatsoever.
I should have known that taking up a discussion with somebody who is clearly arguing semantics and philosophy over objective reality and mainstream definitions on slashdot was a bad idea, but I've made my bed now.
Not at all, I'm arguing precisely objectively reality with epistemologically accurate demonstrations.
As one of my economics professors used to say, "Every behavior including lighting yourself on fire to kill the demons in your head is rational.
Whether you label any action rational or irrational is immaterial to the fundamental point that all action only occurs because it aims at going to a state of lesser dissatisfaction from a state of greater dissatisfaction; it increases strictly defined economic wealth.
What I'm arguing is that when we normalize for objectively measurable costs and benefits, there is definitely such a thing as more credit than one can afford.
That argument is wrong. Your credit has exchange value up to the limit that others are willing to trade other real goods and services for that credit. By definition of voluntary trade, all that is received from trade is "afforded". It doesn't matter if you discovered an oil field in your backyard or the market discovered a smaller different form of an oil field in your back pocket called "credit".
What you're glossing over is a matter of imperfect and or asymmetric information.
Absolutely not. I embrace imperfect and asymmetric information directly in to all my definitions and demonstrations. No human being whatsoever is omniscient. Therefore, all information is by definition imperfect and asymmetric at all times. That's reality. But information to the extent it is known and unknown is still subjectively valued in all trade transactions, even if someone mistakenly values such things as risk "incorrectly" at zero. They always by definition have the choice to trade or not do the trade. Therefore, all possible information, unknown and known, is subjectively valued. Your examples are examples of fraud, not typical trade transactions. But even still, all willing exchanges factor in the possibility of that being received being fraudulent even if the subjective valuation of the possibility of that which is being received is fraudulent is subjectively valued (what you would call "incorrectly" -- after the fact) at zero or near zero. Trust has positive economic value. Trading with strangers may not be regarded at the same risk level as trading with known friends. But as humans are not omniscient, there's *always* the possibility of fraud with absolutely ever instance of trade. That possibility is therefore by definition subjectively valued, as it's impossible to ever remove all possibility of fraud. This is commonly observed with people hanging up on telemarketers, closing their car windows to people selling bottled water at intersections, closing the door on door to door salesmen.
In the most techincal sense, you're correct.
Give credit where credit is due. I'm correct in the most technical sense solely because I'm correct in the objective reality sense. And I aim for the most significant Nobel Prize in the field of Economics since the concept of marginal utility with my "Pure Theory of Trade". :P Whatever, that's my goal, and I think I will obtain it.
Based on subjective valuation, you got what you agreed to get: a promise. In a more realistic sense, this isn't a long-term sustainable behavior. Try borrowing more than you can pay back and see what happens.
Nothing is guaranteed a long-term sustainable behavior precisely because the value for all goods and services is extrinsically subjective. This is the only reason prices change. Pet rocks, housing bubbles, tulipomania, fiat paper currency, Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire", anything. People can only "borrow more than they can pay back" to the extent they do today solely because of government interference in the free marke