In my opinion: If you download a product, and you either (a) enjoyed it or (b) stored it in your personal library, then you have committed a Human Rights violation. You've enslaved another person to entertainment you, and stolen their labor without just compensation. IMHO you should pay the writer some cash; give him what he deserves. Complete hogwash. Every single word your vaunted Stephen King used in every single "labor work" was COPIED! He didn't compensate anyone for using words he himself didn't invent. He deserves *nothing*, because his creation is completely dependent upon freely copying the innumerable ideas of others. If he wants to bargain for payment in advance for production, he can freely do so. If consumers want King to produce further work, they can freely compensate him. Copyright is completely immaterial to the underlying economic incentives of production and compensation.
Yes, credit has value that's assessed at transaction time, as does absolutely every single good and service have value that's subjectively assessed at transaction time.
then there's the actual value of it when it's paid back (e.g. it turns out that I paid for $100,000,000 worth of stuff with credit and I only make $15K per year: at least some of my lenders are definitely not going to see the benefit they had hoped to reap from our transaction).
No, the actual value of credit is whatever somebody subjectively values that credit at. The subjective value for absolutely all goods and services is not constant. Trade only occurs precisely because two different people subjectively value the exact same good differently, one values it more, one values it less, and vice versa for the other good in the transaction. You are confusing changing subjective value through time with the subjective value of goods at the moment of trade transaction. "The benefit they had hoped to reap from the transaction" refers to a *different*, changed, future subjective valuation.
People might not have the same "fresh new" subjective valuations for their big screen televisions two years after they exchanged credit promises away for those televisions either. And that would hold still whether they instead traded fiat dollars bill away for those televisions. Subjective valuation is not constant through time, for any thing, or any person.
Consistently purchasing goods with ever increasing amounts of credit is frequently not sustainable for this very reason--credit eventually has to be backed with something of actual value or it becomes worthless, so if the goods you're purchasing aren't providing a yield greater than the interest rate you paid, you're going to run out of real value to back your credit eventually.
Credit *is* something of actual value. If credit was not something of actual value, nobody would ever voluntarily trade something away in exchange for credit promises in return. This is why credit is no different than a bar of gold, a food good, a house good, or a fiat currency unit good, on pure strictly economically evaluated terms of possessing positive subjective value. Credit may be more volatile in value than a bar of gold, but it is subjectively valued exactly as a bar of gold is subjectively valued. The creditors positively valued your credit promises, INCLUDING the possibility that you might default, more than not trading you whatever goods they did trade you. If that wasn't necessarily so, the bank wouldn't have extended you credit, traded things for that credit, in the very first place.
Perhaps the "importing more than we can afford" claim would be better phrased as "importing at an unsustainable rate" as it's clear that a massively negative trade balance funded by credit cannot go on forever unless the economy is growing faster than the debt is.
Completely wrong. Both parties to every trade immediately book mutual wealth profit from absolutely every trade transaction. If that wasn't necessarily so, they wouldn't trade in the first place. "Importing" just means something was exchanged away and something was received in return exchange from some person across an imaginary "foreign" line. Wealth is always positively increased from every instance of trade for both parties. The laws of economic don't stop and start at imaginary nation boundaries any less than do the laws of physics. There's absolutely no such thing as a "negative trade balance". That's a total epistemological absurdity. If there were ever any such nonsensical thing as a "negative trade balance", the trade which would negatively effect any one party to any transaction whatsoever would by definition not occur in the first place.
Another way of phrasing it is "importing more than is prudent."
The entire existence of society and civilization is predicated on the division of labor in which absolutely every single person "imports" and "exports". This is known as trade
No, credit is just another good with potential positive subjective value, exactly the same as absolutely all goods and services whatsoever. If credit wasn't a good, if credit did not have positive subjective value, nobody would trade things like money, houses, and cars for credit in the first place. It is epistemologically *impossible* to obtain anything through voluntary trade without having *by definition* "afforded" it. That's because the item is obtained precisely through trade, and the item you give away, even if it is your personal credit, is MORE valuable to the party who is exchanging you something else for your credit promise.
If your credit promises was not more valuable to a Bank, the Bank would never trade you money (aka "loan") in the first place for that credit promise. And it exactly the same when a Chinese person trades an American person an electronic good for some USD paper fiat bills. If those USD paper fiat bills were not by definition MORE valuable than the electronic good, the Chinese person wouldn't voluntarily trade away the electronic good for those USD paper fiat bills in the first place.
Absolutely every single instance of trade generates positive mutual wealth profit for both parties to the exchange. If it wasn't so, there would be zero reason to trade in the first place.
It's impossible to "buy" more than you can afford. If party B is *trading* you a good like a car for the *promise* of payment + interest + any collateral, Party B still values your promise of payment + interest + any collateral more than not trade you the good like the car. Countries don't import or export either; only individuals trade. And no individual trades away anything unless what they receive in return at the moment of trade is subjectively MORE valuable than that which they trade away. Because obviously, if it wasn't they wouldn't voluntarily trade away anything in the first place. A credit promise is exactly as subjectively valued as unit of currency is exactly as subjectively valued as a bar of gold is as exactly subjectively valued as any good whatsoever.
You are in error because you confuse the words "buy" (and "sell") with the action of a single individual instead of the epistemologically correct actions of more than one individual. You can't "buy" or "sell" anything unless there is a willing voluntary immediate exchange from another. That's why they call it "trade", rather than "take". If there was a "problem", the trade wouldn't occur in the first place. Thus, to claim such things as "trade deficits", or "balance of trade problems" is a sign of ignorance.
Didn't mean you personally, but this is a winning game-changing line of attack to undertake. The big government socialists are vehemently anti-religious Separation of Church and State. Unveiling their government programs, think tanks, and political caste positions, as fundamentalist religion should deservedly discredit them. Funding a mission to Mars is no less a religious endeavor than funding an excavation for Noah's Ark. Funding Government Medicare is no less a religious endeavor than funding the KKK Soup Kitchen. These leftists sorely need to be exposed as the religious zealots they are.
Except that the impact of the wealthy few like George Soros and Rupert Murdoch is even greater than ever before. It's fundamentally un-American to make a law restricting anyone's ability to give money to any cause whatsoever they so wish to voluntarily give to. Who the hell does McCain think he is to make a law that says your campaign contributions are limited to $2,300? Emperor McCain? That's nothing but the same old assault on economic freedom.
Yes, but the poor spend a much higher percentage of their money (pretty much 100%), so they get hit harder than the rich. And the subsidies or exemptions that are available to the poor just shift the burden to the middle class. Consumption taxes are by nature regressive. Well this is even better then, as it will incentivize all arbitrarily delineated "income groups" to favor the lowest possible tax intrusion, thus causing much needed mass frugality in Congress. The way it is now, is everyone has been pitted against everyone else by massive big government intrusion. Thus, the higher the tax rate (and it should be EQUAL TREATMENT UNDER THE LAW without respect to race, religion, residence, creed, or *income level*). Thus if the law is ever changed, it changes *equally* for all. Why is it people feel justified discriminating (along with the necessary invasion of privacy) against others based on income level? This is the fundamentalist religious war that is being waged neighbor to neighbor ordered by the big government two party system generals.
And you guys wonder why we're having balance of trade problems? There's no such thing as a "balance of trade problem". It's exactly as nonsensical as believing the sun revolves around the earth or the earth is flat. If there were any such thing as "balance of trade problem", no single individual would have undertaken any particular trade in the first place. It is a scientific law of economics: trade only ever 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; the law is scientific and universal.
I'd make the argument that religion has not much to do with the economic system of a country, but it's usually more detrimental than beneficial, especially when certain "faith-based" interest groups are endowed with my tax money. That, in a nutshell, is the fundamental underlying problem. When you expand your reasoning to conclude that all so-called "secular" interest groups and projects are fundamentally absolutely no different than any religious "faith-based" interest groups and projects (secular so-called "scientific" endeavors are actually routinely quite "religious"), we can all finally compromise on a live and let live libertarian solution, with the rise of voluntarily funded private non-profit charities for everybody's grand social engineering schemes.
This is a perfect example of how the population has been nastily divided by phony partisan bickering. People with absolutely no link to science, no link to reality, no link to epistemology, refer to the money and property of others as "their's". Completely eliminate the IRS, then nobody pays anything on any of their income! I'm sure we can unite the janitors and the ceos on that. And in the process you completely remove a phony issue which is used to divide and conquer, and subjugate behind smoke and mirrors en masse, as people bicker over the lesser of two evils, and which special interest group gets more spoils, inventing phony "us versus them", rich versus poor, scapegoating.
I agree, mimicking the subversion tactics of those that subvert the freedom of the people, is a much more advanced strategy then voting for the lesser of two evils from two wholly and thoroughly corrupt political corporations, Democrats and Republicans. It's time for competition, it's time to IPO new political parties, new information and entertainment sources. Keep not buying media. The effect of this unorganized disparate "boycott" of media is already massively denting the stock prices and division profitability of the music industry. Get more people to stop buying music and movies. Watch less television. Cut out all the commercials with AdBlock on the internet and DVR shifting on broadcast media. We could be on the cusp on a massive bubble deflation with internet advertising. Those are real consequential subversive effects with broad based support for efficient low participation resources (aka, smart). Undercut, Block, Don't Buy. Don't doubt that a message has already been sent and loudly heard with regard to "piracy".
"Status quo" is as vacuous and stale as "change". Maybe once actions are scientifically and epistemologically examined, a strategy can be formed. The best use of resources currently is to cut out the influence of the corrupt mainstream media. Anybody who watched the "D-E-B-A-T-E-S" knows what a propaganda dog and pony show it was with unequal time, different questions, and Jerry Springer-esque 24/7 commentator bullshit. The internet is already having big success in shifting influence. The next step is a big mainstream television network to compete with the likes of Fox, CNN, MSNBC, a Libertarian Television Network (LTN), financed and IPO'd, that is internet streamed. Now, who would be up for investing in something like that?
Nothing will change, if people are still going to be suckered into the same old smoke and mirrors phony pretend political differences. Blaming "corporations" is just as ignorant as attempting to divide people by blaming the "rich". It's *individuals* who act, it's individuals who bribe, it's *individuals* who benefit at the expense of others, it's *individuals* that write laws. But you're right, "the last 8 years" reference shouts clueless partisan hack.
So if you somebody robs a bank, do you call that "getting money"? Your propaganda attempt fails. Big government leftists always lying, always pretending there is no such thing as a difference between voluntary and involuntary.
Melting rust is very very difficult by comparison. Then that makes it potentially good coating material. Rust, the Other Bling Metal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust
Rust is a general term for a series of iron oxides formed by the reaction of iron with oxygen in the presence of water. This by definition means oxygen and water are energy sources. No shortage of water.
It is suspect there is enough material in the vacuum of space between systems that could help refuel a fast traveling vessel to keep propulsion up and since there is no weather or space bacteria (that we know of) erosion and decay won't be much of a problem. It's likely propulsion could be harnessed for free. I foresee space travel being powered by "slipping through" the dark matter energy. It would be exactly like a Pac Man eating dark matter pellets that instantaneously replenish, or just allow the ship to slip by like opposite polarities of a magnet pushing away. Of course Einstein is dead wrong on space travel being limited to the speed of light. You could constantly speed up or instantaneously slow down with ease. That's all teleportation is, going from A to B really really fast. We teleport every day already, by foot, by car, by airplane. The sooner we eliminate copyrights and patents, the sooner we will dramatically increase the rate of technological innovation and solve these problems.
Yes, if the minimum application fee is raised to at least the 6-figure level. This should occur regardless, as financing for such allegedly valuable ideas which are promoting the progress of innovation would be easily forthcoming). 100k-200k a week bonuses (i'm thinking 50k per rejection to the examiner) would be satisfactory compensation as work as a patent examiner. I'll personally knock a giant chunk out of that 4 year backlog.
Patent terms need to be shortened, software and process patents need to be thrown out, and patent offices need more resources to identify bad patents and prior art. How about the patent examiners gets a 10% or 50% bonus from the patent filing fee for every instance where the patent examiner finds prior art. And how about the patent examiner has their pension reduced (and current paycheck) by 10% for every subsequent legal ruling that overturns (for obviousness or non-patentability) their prior grants of patent. Now that's a patented (hereby publicly disclosed) incentive model for accurate results. The bad patent examiners get weeded out, and the good patent examiners get financially rewarded. It's a good medium term band-aid until all imaginary property is declared null and void by constitutional amendment.
Your reasoning is devoid of sound economic analysis. Before you ask what corporations would or would not do, ask what individuals would or would not do. Hey, that sounded like JFK.
Why would anybody bother doing R&D on any drug in the first place? Answer, because their is a problem to be solved, an ailment to be cured or ameliorated. This is the ultimate epistemological incentive for R&D action. There must first be customers or potential customers to recoup the costs. This means the incentive to act in business is originating from the CUSTOMERS (and their available means to purchase), on behalf of the customers! It matters not WHEN the costs of R&D is paid for, by venture capitalists financing up front along with by customers paying for a product after is has been developed, or by the actual customers financing the research themselves in advance. So you are absolutely incorrect when you claim "what innovation there is in the pharmaceutical industry would disappear overnight." In fact, there is no motivation then actually having an ailment to be cured. That's much more powerful an incentive than even the monetary incentive from starting a business to cure an ailment.
Without drug patents anyone who does R&D on a new drugs (hundreds of millions of dollars) would be at a massive competitive disadvantage because their competitors wouldn't have to bare those fixed costs and so could undercut them. And thus, the pharmaceutical industry would and SHOULD compete on the cheapest highest quality means of distribution for pharmaceutical products, and not the third rate research and development of pharmaceutical products. How much R&D is purely wasted when more than one company races to develop a particular drug but only the first to file the patent gets the exclusive delivery monopoly? In fact, in the absence of patent protection, the natural incentive would be for full open source disclosure harnessing the power of motivated decentralized contributors. This would by definition mean more valuable information resources were devoted to every research and development problem, and guarantee that the final product was sold at the absolute best supply and demand deal (freeing up even more savings for future research and development endeavors), unhindered by artificial scarcity monopolies created from political interference in the free market.
Abolishing patents is not a good idea. It's the only thing that protects a small inventor from having his inventions stolen by anyone who has more money. Wrong. It's the only thing that protects giant corporations from having their inventions "stolen" by millions of competing small investor upstarts.
Yes, there's been a shortage of innovation. And the innovation which has occurred is priced far far higher than would be the case in a patent-free free market. Part of being risk-averse is by definition avoiding legal minefields, such as patents and copyrights, where any work undertaken can be destroyed or siphoned by parasitic trolls. And now we are literally sinking under bureaucratic overload with tons on new lawyers graduating with licenses to sue every year. Those people are only going in to law because law pays, better than medicine, better than engineering, better than computer science, better than business. And law only pays because of the legal-political interference in the free market. Laws are the new hyper-inflation printing presses. All of this enforcement, payoffs, cartelization reciprocity mutually assured destruction (M.A.D.) non-suit deals between giant corporations, is pure wasted energy which has come at the direct expense of investment, productivity, and innovation. These are massive scale of order costs that effect the level of general wealth of all of society.
For example, though Bill Gates was able to rake in around 50 billion from government interference in the free market preventing competition and further innovation and software robustness, that amount likely pales in comparison to the amount even he himself is personally poorer from lack of technological innovation, whether from lack of environmental technological advancement, or lack of medicine technology that makes his own mortality all the more imminent. A few have benefited at a much larger cost to the rest of society, and even the own general wealth of those few is less than it otherwise would be (if you accurately measure real wealth, not some phony GDP measurement multiplied by counterfeit fiat paper dollars), though short term greed has blinded them to the unseen costs incurred by all of society, including those who use political interference to take a relatively bigger piece of a smaller economic wealth pie than they would otherwise be able to garner without political interference.
There's no epistemological difference between the expression of ideas and the ideas themselves. It's impossible to express an idea in any manner, shape, or form without copying the idea. It doesn't matter if I merely say, "YYAAARRGGHH!" That's copied an idea and an expression of an idea. It doesn't matter if I put a door in my house or in my computer operating system. That's copied an idea and an expression of an idea.
Thus, we see a clear unequal treatment under the law between musicians and architects, between plumbers and writers, between economists and engineers, between mathematicians and software developers. If mathematics can be financed by the private/public academic sector without prohibitions or licensing restrictions against copying the use or implications of mathematical results, then so too can music be similarly financed. We now require NBA players to graduate college or be of certain age; we can do the same for musicians, and make them compete for limited sponsored positions, if that was even necessary.
Or perhaps forcing musicians and writers to show up, punch in, and work at 9-5 government institutions could be mandated for all claiming copyright welfare benefits. If the material is lackluster, not selling, they can join the prisoners picking up garbage, cleaning streets and parks, for as long as they are subsisting on copyright welfare.
Yes, that line of legal attack can easily simultaneously void all the copyright statutes; the Supreme Court can't itself amend the term, it has no choice but to rule the laws unconstitutional.
Anything which is created at time X must by definition be public domain well within the average lifespan term from the moment at which that something is created, in order for it to be promoting the advancement of the arts and sciences, from which the *privilege* of limited distribution comes at the audience expense of sacrificing their natural free speech rights of copying. Of course, there's zero incentive to respect any Copyright when the Copyright term has robbed completely, plus for an additional 70 years, the public domain return benefit of the promotion of the arts and sciences. No way is art more valuable than science; copyright should assuredly be for a length of term well *less* than a patent.
But that's not all. It's also economically provable that all copyright whatsoever actually *hinders* the advancement of the arts and sciences, no matter the violently enforced length of term.
But who knows, perhaps there are some Supreme Court Justices who would like to go on record humiliating themselves for posterity like Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's blatantly racist ruling on affirmative action being Constitutionally guaranteed fresh for a little while longer "limited" time.
Then there's the whole RICO line of attack against the private party copyright police, jail terms for executives, forfeiture of civil assets, shareholder lawsuits. I'm sure we can organize and elect a D.A. at some local level to write her ticket to the U.S. Senate by suing the music and movie industry under RICO: tax evasion, a truckload of differing conspiracies, accounting fraud, interstate extortion, blah, blah, blah.
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then there's the actual value of it when it's paid back (e.g. it turns out that I paid for $100,000,000 worth of stuff with credit and I only make $15K per year: at least some of my lenders are definitely not going to see the benefit they had hoped to reap from our transaction).
No, the actual value of credit is whatever somebody subjectively values that credit at. The subjective value for absolutely all goods and services is not constant. Trade only occurs precisely because two different people subjectively value the exact same good differently, one values it more, one values it less, and vice versa for the other good in the transaction. You are confusing changing subjective value through time with the subjective value of goods at the moment of trade transaction. "The benefit they had hoped to reap from the transaction" refers to a *different*, changed, future subjective valuation.
People might not have the same "fresh new" subjective valuations for their big screen televisions two years after they exchanged credit promises away for those televisions either. And that would hold still whether they instead traded fiat dollars bill away for those televisions. Subjective valuation is not constant through time, for any thing, or any person.
Consistently purchasing goods with ever increasing amounts of credit is frequently not sustainable for this very reason--credit eventually has to be backed with something of actual value or it becomes worthless, so if the goods you're purchasing aren't providing a yield greater than the interest rate you paid, you're going to run out of real value to back your credit eventually.
Credit *is* something of actual value. If credit was not something of actual value, nobody would ever voluntarily trade something away in exchange for credit promises in return. This is why credit is no different than a bar of gold, a food good, a house good, or a fiat currency unit good, on pure strictly economically evaluated terms of possessing positive subjective value. Credit may be more volatile in value than a bar of gold, but it is subjectively valued exactly as a bar of gold is subjectively valued. The creditors positively valued your credit promises, INCLUDING the possibility that you might default, more than not trading you whatever goods they did trade you. If that wasn't necessarily so, the bank wouldn't have extended you credit, traded things for that credit, in the very first place.
Perhaps the "importing more than we can afford" claim would be better phrased as "importing at an unsustainable rate" as it's clear that a massively negative trade balance funded by credit cannot go on forever unless the economy is growing faster than the debt is.
Completely wrong. Both parties to every trade immediately book mutual wealth profit from absolutely every trade transaction. If that wasn't necessarily so, they wouldn't trade in the first place. "Importing" just means something was exchanged away and something was received in return exchange from some person across an imaginary "foreign" line. Wealth is always positively increased from every instance of trade for both parties. The laws of economic don't stop and start at imaginary nation boundaries any less than do the laws of physics. There's absolutely no such thing as a "negative trade balance". That's a total epistemological absurdity. If there were ever any such nonsensical thing as a "negative trade balance", the trade which would negatively effect any one party to any transaction whatsoever would by definition not occur in the first place.
Another way of phrasing it is "importing more than is prudent."
The entire existence of society and civilization is predicated on the division of labor in which absolutely every single person "imports" and "exports". This is known as trade
No, credit is just another good with potential positive subjective value, exactly the same as absolutely all goods and services whatsoever. If credit wasn't a good, if credit did not have positive subjective value, nobody would trade things like money, houses, and cars for credit in the first place. It is epistemologically *impossible* to obtain anything through voluntary trade without having *by definition* "afforded" it. That's because the item is obtained precisely through trade, and the item you give away, even if it is your personal credit, is MORE valuable to the party who is exchanging you something else for your credit promise.
If your credit promises was not more valuable to a Bank, the Bank would never trade you money (aka "loan") in the first place for that credit promise. And it exactly the same when a Chinese person trades an American person an electronic good for some USD paper fiat bills. If those USD paper fiat bills were not by definition MORE valuable than the electronic good, the Chinese person wouldn't voluntarily trade away the electronic good for those USD paper fiat bills in the first place.
Absolutely every single instance of trade generates positive mutual wealth profit for both parties to the exchange. If it wasn't so, there would be zero reason to trade in the first place.
It's impossible to "buy" more than you can afford. If party B is *trading* you a good like a car for the *promise* of payment + interest + any collateral, Party B still values your promise of payment + interest + any collateral more than not trade you the good like the car. Countries don't import or export either; only individuals trade. And no individual trades away anything unless what they receive in return at the moment of trade is subjectively MORE valuable than that which they trade away. Because obviously, if it wasn't they wouldn't voluntarily trade away anything in the first place. A credit promise is exactly as subjectively valued as unit of currency is exactly as subjectively valued as a bar of gold is as exactly subjectively valued as any good whatsoever.
You are in error because you confuse the words "buy" (and "sell") with the action of a single individual instead of the epistemologically correct actions of more than one individual. You can't "buy" or "sell" anything unless there is a willing voluntary immediate exchange from another. That's why they call it "trade", rather than "take". If there was a "problem", the trade wouldn't occur in the first place. Thus, to claim such things as "trade deficits", or "balance of trade problems" is a sign of ignorance.
Didn't mean you personally, but this is a winning game-changing line of attack to undertake. The big government socialists are vehemently anti-religious Separation of Church and State. Unveiling their government programs, think tanks, and political caste positions, as fundamentalist religion should deservedly discredit them. Funding a mission to Mars is no less a religious endeavor than funding an excavation for Noah's Ark. Funding Government Medicare is no less a religious endeavor than funding the KKK Soup Kitchen. These leftists sorely need to be exposed as the religious zealots they are.
Except that the impact of the wealthy few like George Soros and Rupert Murdoch is even greater than ever before. It's fundamentally un-American to make a law restricting anyone's ability to give money to any cause whatsoever they so wish to voluntarily give to. Who the hell does McCain think he is to make a law that says your campaign contributions are limited to $2,300? Emperor McCain? That's nothing but the same old assault on economic freedom.
This is a perfect example of how the population has been nastily divided by phony partisan bickering. People with absolutely no link to science, no link to reality, no link to epistemology, refer to the money and property of others as "their's". Completely eliminate the IRS, then nobody pays anything on any of their income! I'm sure we can unite the janitors and the ceos on that. And in the process you completely remove a phony issue which is used to divide and conquer, and subjugate behind smoke and mirrors en masse, as people bicker over the lesser of two evils, and which special interest group gets more spoils, inventing phony "us versus them", rich versus poor, scapegoating.
I agree, mimicking the subversion tactics of those that subvert the freedom of the people, is a much more advanced strategy then voting for the lesser of two evils from two wholly and thoroughly corrupt political corporations, Democrats and Republicans. It's time for competition, it's time to IPO new political parties, new information and entertainment sources. Keep not buying media. The effect of this unorganized disparate "boycott" of media is already massively denting the stock prices and division profitability of the music industry. Get more people to stop buying music and movies. Watch less television. Cut out all the commercials with AdBlock on the internet and DVR shifting on broadcast media. We could be on the cusp on a massive bubble deflation with internet advertising. Those are real consequential subversive effects with broad based support for efficient low participation resources (aka, smart). Undercut, Block, Don't Buy. Don't doubt that a message has already been sent and loudly heard with regard to "piracy".
"Status quo" is as vacuous and stale as "change". Maybe once actions are scientifically and epistemologically examined, a strategy can be formed. The best use of resources currently is to cut out the influence of the corrupt mainstream media. Anybody who watched the "D-E-B-A-T-E-S" knows what a propaganda dog and pony show it was with unequal time, different questions, and Jerry Springer-esque 24/7 commentator bullshit. The internet is already having big success in shifting influence. The next step is a big mainstream television network to compete with the likes of Fox, CNN, MSNBC, a Libertarian Television Network (LTN), financed and IPO'd, that is internet streamed. Now, who would be up for investing in something like that?
Nothing will change, if people are still going to be suckered into the same old smoke and mirrors phony pretend political differences. Blaming "corporations" is just as ignorant as attempting to divide people by blaming the "rich". It's *individuals* who act, it's individuals who bribe, it's *individuals* who benefit at the expense of others, it's *individuals* that write laws. But you're right, "the last 8 years" reference shouts clueless partisan hack.
So if you somebody robs a bank, do you call that "getting money"? Your propaganda attempt fails. Big government leftists always lying, always pretending there is no such thing as a difference between voluntary and involuntary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust Rust is a general term for a series of iron oxides formed by the reaction of iron with oxygen in the presence of water. This by definition means oxygen and water are energy sources. No shortage of water.
Yes, if the minimum application fee is raised to at least the 6-figure level. This should occur regardless, as financing for such allegedly valuable ideas which are promoting the progress of innovation would be easily forthcoming). 100k-200k a week bonuses (i'm thinking 50k per rejection to the examiner) would be satisfactory compensation as work as a patent examiner. I'll personally knock a giant chunk out of that 4 year backlog.
Your Grand Unified Crafting skill increases by 1.0
Why would anybody bother doing R&D on any drug in the first place? Answer, because their is a problem to be solved, an ailment to be cured or ameliorated. This is the ultimate epistemological incentive for R&D action. There must first be customers or potential customers to recoup the costs. This means the incentive to act in business is originating from the CUSTOMERS (and their available means to purchase), on behalf of the customers! It matters not WHEN the costs of R&D is paid for, by venture capitalists financing up front along with by customers paying for a product after is has been developed, or by the actual customers financing the research themselves in advance. So you are absolutely incorrect when you claim "what innovation there is in the pharmaceutical industry would disappear overnight." In fact, there is no motivation then actually having an ailment to be cured. That's much more powerful an incentive than even the monetary incentive from starting a business to cure an ailment. Without drug patents anyone who does R&D on a new drugs (hundreds of millions of dollars) would be at a massive competitive disadvantage because their competitors wouldn't have to bare those fixed costs and so could undercut them. And thus, the pharmaceutical industry would and SHOULD compete on the cheapest highest quality means of distribution for pharmaceutical products, and not the third rate research and development of pharmaceutical products. How much R&D is purely wasted when more than one company races to develop a particular drug but only the first to file the patent gets the exclusive delivery monopoly? In fact, in the absence of patent protection, the natural incentive would be for full open source disclosure harnessing the power of motivated decentralized contributors. This would by definition mean more valuable information resources were devoted to every research and development problem, and guarantee that the final product was sold at the absolute best supply and demand deal (freeing up even more savings for future research and development endeavors), unhindered by artificial scarcity monopolies created from political interference in the free market.
Well of course, when they constantly write in themselves all sorts of Santa Clauses, there's never a shortage in their stockings.
Yes, there's been a shortage of innovation. And the innovation which has occurred is priced far far higher than would be the case in a patent-free free market. Part of being risk-averse is by definition avoiding legal minefields, such as patents and copyrights, where any work undertaken can be destroyed or siphoned by parasitic trolls. And now we are literally sinking under bureaucratic overload with tons on new lawyers graduating with licenses to sue every year. Those people are only going in to law because law pays, better than medicine, better than engineering, better than computer science, better than business. And law only pays because of the legal-political interference in the free market. Laws are the new hyper-inflation printing presses. All of this enforcement, payoffs, cartelization reciprocity mutually assured destruction (M.A.D.) non-suit deals between giant corporations, is pure wasted energy which has come at the direct expense of investment, productivity, and innovation. These are massive scale of order costs that effect the level of general wealth of all of society.
For example, though Bill Gates was able to rake in around 50 billion from government interference in the free market preventing competition and further innovation and software robustness, that amount likely pales in comparison to the amount even he himself is personally poorer from lack of technological innovation, whether from lack of environmental technological advancement, or lack of medicine technology that makes his own mortality all the more imminent. A few have benefited at a much larger cost to the rest of society, and even the own general wealth of those few is less than it otherwise would be (if you accurately measure real wealth, not some phony GDP measurement multiplied by counterfeit fiat paper dollars), though short term greed has blinded them to the unseen costs incurred by all of society, including those who use political interference to take a relatively bigger piece of a smaller economic wealth pie than they would otherwise be able to garner without political interference.
There's no epistemological difference between the expression of ideas and the ideas themselves. It's impossible to express an idea in any manner, shape, or form without copying the idea. It doesn't matter if I merely say, "YYAAARRGGHH!" That's copied an idea and an expression of an idea. It doesn't matter if I put a door in my house or in my computer operating system. That's copied an idea and an expression of an idea.
Thus, we see a clear unequal treatment under the law between musicians and architects, between plumbers and writers, between economists and engineers, between mathematicians and software developers. If mathematics can be financed by the private/public academic sector without prohibitions or licensing restrictions against copying the use or implications of mathematical results, then so too can music be similarly financed. We now require NBA players to graduate college or be of certain age; we can do the same for musicians, and make them compete for limited sponsored positions, if that was even necessary.
Or perhaps forcing musicians and writers to show up, punch in, and work at 9-5 government institutions could be mandated for all claiming copyright welfare benefits. If the material is lackluster, not selling, they can join the prisoners picking up garbage, cleaning streets and parks, for as long as they are subsisting on copyright welfare.
Yes, that line of legal attack can easily simultaneously void all the copyright statutes; the Supreme Court can't itself amend the term, it has no choice but to rule the laws unconstitutional.
Anything which is created at time X must by definition be public domain well within the average lifespan term from the moment at which that something is created, in order for it to be promoting the advancement of the arts and sciences, from which the *privilege* of limited distribution comes at the audience expense of sacrificing their natural free speech rights of copying. Of course, there's zero incentive to respect any Copyright when the Copyright term has robbed completely, plus for an additional 70 years, the public domain return benefit of the promotion of the arts and sciences. No way is art more valuable than science; copyright should assuredly be for a length of term well *less* than a patent.
But that's not all. It's also economically provable that all copyright whatsoever actually *hinders* the advancement of the arts and sciences, no matter the violently enforced length of term.
But who knows, perhaps there are some Supreme Court Justices who would like to go on record humiliating themselves for posterity like Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's blatantly racist ruling on affirmative action being Constitutionally guaranteed fresh for a little while longer "limited" time.
Then there's the whole RICO line of attack against the private party copyright police, jail terms for executives, forfeiture of civil assets, shareholder lawsuits. I'm sure we can organize and elect a D.A. at some local level to write her ticket to the U.S. Senate by suing the music and movie industry under RICO: tax evasion, a truckload of differing conspiracies, accounting fraud, interstate extortion, blah, blah, blah.