Guns are one safeguard against a totalitarian government that will cause disproportionate pain, suffering, and death. As such they are quite possibly valuable as a strategic move.
Several points. One, I find it unlikely that an untrained and disorganized bunch of citizens is going to stop a modern, highly trained, and highly equipped army from imposing their will. Two, if you truly believe this, then citizens should also own machines guns, tanks, high-explosives, landmines, RF communications gear, and other weapons that are an essential part of the evolution of modern conflict. Three, if civil defence is the aim, then all people should have mandatory military training. Four, civil defense does not require anyone to keep a concealed weapon on them--the weapon could be required to be stored in the house at all times (and it could be sealed and inspected).
Instituting a 90% inheritance tax on all assets inherited by an individual that total more than 1 million dollars
Still at this eh? Besides the reasons I've already listed for the absurdity of this idea...
Why 1 million dollars? Why not 10 dollars? If it is "wrong" for children to benefit from most of their parents hard work, then why should the less wealthy be able to pass on so disproprionately more of their wealth?
Why is the mid-level sales guy that makes 100K/year and saves just 5% of his income exempt for any estate tax, but the guy that goes into business for himself, that forgoes a handsome salary at a big corp, that plows most of his life savings into his business, that works his ass off every day for decades, and plows profits right back into the company, subject to an effective tax rate of 75% on a 6 million dollar business?
Why should the IRS basically effectively require a moderately prosperous closely-held business to be sold off (especially in a near fire-sale) to pay the tax bill? Alternatively, why should the children be forced to assume great personal risk just to prevent this from happening?
Why would a 65 year old man with a $20M networth continue to invest his money in high tech startups when he has plenty enough to support his lifestyle? The risk/reward relationship of any serious investment would no longer make sense for his loved ones--the expected return for his loved ones would be seriously negative after taxes.
Why wouldn't a middle-aged entrepreneur whose company has reached a certain stage (well in excess of 1M) choose to sell the company? She could do it when she knows there is a ready buyer (even though that buyer is sub-optimal for the employees and for growth of the business). By divesting, she would eliminate downside risk for her children and liquidate her assets to allow her to conduct much more advantageous tax planning (e.g., gifting, trusts, etc).
If you have you are elderly and have 10M in diversified investments, why not just pull that money out of the market and spend it on expensive yacht, if you'll only be able to transfer 10% marginally to your loved ones after you pass (the ultimate f* you to a government that is f*g you back)?
If you're young and you're building a promising tech startup, why not gift much of your equity share to your children when it is valued at a few pennies a share? Sure, you might give up some ability to choose how much in absolute weath is transfered ultimately and limit your financial flexibility, but when and if your company makes it big at least the tax man won't get it (of course, neither will the charities you care about).
You seem to assume that anyone that stands to inherit substantial sums of money is merely the beneficiary of pure dumb luck. Although it may have nothing to do with the heirs (not always the case though), it almost always has a lot to do with the parent working very hard and taking risks. I can tell you, from personal experience, that many rich people (I'm talking anywhere from 800M to 5M networth) continue to w
This is a strawman argument. I'm arguing for greatly increased inheritance tax on the high end and I'm arguing for revamping how we direct our socialism, not particularly for an increase in it at all.
It is not a strawman argument as I spent the majority of my efforts on your actual premises and your arguments. I only mentioned at the end that I had to infer that you were also in favor of other forms of tax on wealth and income. The reason I think this is that you clearly believe there would be much less disparity of wealth today but for the transference of vast sums of money between generations of the ultra-rich (which is contradicted by the current facts). If your sole aim is to limit any large wealth disparity for its own sake and you want to be blind to many critical contrary facts, then it is hardly unreasonable for me to think that you might want to go one further: to do something that would ensure greater equality (though at the expense of progress and absolute wealth for the majority of the country).
Some food for thought: If the wealthiest.01% of the country, whose wealth starts at 24M and is "only" 63M on average, has roughly 4% of the country's wealth (fact), then how is merely increasing estate taxes on these people after they die (a much smaller proportion in any given year), going to do much to reduce the wealth gap? Even if you assume you're taking their estate taxes from 0% (in reality, it's already well upwards of 40% for most of this group) to 100% (assuming you'd tax a $24M estate the same way you'd tax a $1B estate), you wouldn't even make a 4% difference overtime. Put another way, if you were to simply execute the top %.01, liquidate their estates at 100%, and then redistribute their wealth to the 150M least wealth people, they would only get about $8500 in cash (Note: the Forbes data can be misconstrued as it includes in its calculations assets owned by spouses, trusts, and a bunch of paper wealth of billionaires at their apex that is rarely realized) Even in this extreme hypothetical, this money is unlikely to go far.
The irritating this is, I agree with the gun nuts, only they don't agree with me. I'm largely libertarian, and I largely oppose gun control. But they're still nuts, because they can marshall these cogent, well-reasoned, well-documented arguments against gun control, and tell you why the 2nd Amendment is necessary for freedom, but they consider anyone who supports any of the other nine amendments to be godless liberal hippies who hate America.
If the gun nuts brought the same passion for freedom, the same skepticism for government intrustion, and the same unflagging vigilance to the other nine amendments as they do to the 2nd one, our country would be a much better place. But try getting them riled up about torture-induced confessions or preventing school-mandated prayer and that skepticism towards government vanishes. They're not really anti-government, but anti-anti-gun. They're very articulate and impressive one-trick ponies. So I give my money to the ACLU. It isn't perfect, but 9/10 is 9 times better than 1/10.
Even though I support increased gun-control* and disagree strongly with their 2nd Amendment arguments, I fail to see the contradiction with the issues you point out. For instance, a local public school with mandated prayer actually does not run directly afoul of the 1st amendment. The relevant portion reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;". This is restriction of the Federal governments' ability to establish or prevent the practice of religion--it says NOTHING of the state or local governments rights to establish a religion, let alone do anything that can even be remotely construed as encouraging it (e.g., opposing vouchers being used by individuals to send their kids to parochial schools, kids forming prayer groups at school, etc). In fact, state governments at the time had and maintained for a long time official state religions and many other laws which regulated religious practice. It is only with a rather tortured legal reasoning that this has been Constitutionally applied to states and any other government entity. Whether you agree or disagree with this reasoning, one can logically support all of the bill of rights, yet still reject the ACLU's often over aggressive stance on school prayer of any sort.
The gun advocates may be wrong, but they are not necessarily inconsistent in their reading of the Constitution just because they disagree with the ACLU on school prayer (or other issues).
*I support allowing rifles for hunting & target practice and perhaps very limited private ownership of handguns (if someone can prove that they require protection)
You surely raise valid points why it makes sense to have copyrights. What I am disputing is something very else: Why do they work, and when are they to break? With different publishers competing and having a vital interest in keeping the competition from publishing the same works, they will come to a kind of gentlemen agreement too keep from each others turf, independently of a legal framework for copyright. In this case copyright and the interest of a publisher go nicely together. Publishers have to take care that the publishing market allows them to make a profit (which they have to share with the creators of the work, but more important is the fact that there is a profit at all).
It seems that you are attempting set up a strawman argument. Publishers do not behave independently of copyright. To the contrary, publishers behavior very much revolves around obtaining a license agreement for the copyright and always has since copyright has been signed into law in the US and other enlightened countries. No publisher can publish a work without the permission of the author (or their assignees). If authors only allows one publisher the ability to publish their work (as is usually the case--the publishers want exclusivity in exchange for publishing and promoting said work), then the publisher can set their price without having to take into account that competitors might publish the same work for less. Competing publishers cannot publish other publishers work (99.999% of the time) without serious legal repercussions. This, however, does not mean that they can set the price without consequences--they may have agreements with the author, bookstores, distributors, not to mention customer backlash, etc.
Put differently, the exclusive right of the authors over their work, by way of copyright law, is what gives the publishers, by extension, wide latitude to set prices and thus make a profit. The author needs the publisher to publish and promote their work (and often provide editing and other services) so in exchange for these services, they give the publishers exclusive rights to their work. The two parties are interdependent one each other and this relationship is supported by copyright.
People who copy just for themselves don't have a direct interest in a working publishing market because they aren't in the business to make a profit there. Their interest is at most indirect: they might be interested in keeping the creators compensated as an incentive to create more works, but they never negotiate with the authors directly, and they don't have any say in how much of their payment actually goes to the authors.
Whether the end users have a direct short-term interest or not is almost besides the point. Both copyright law and government and industry recognition of the importance of the support of it through various means does, in fact, prevent blatant violations. Besides which the truly enlightened reader would realize that the author is at least partially dependent today on the publisher to create a market for them. You can theorize all day long about not needing publishers, but the fact is that they DO and none of this changes the fundamental issues of recognizing, supporting, and enforcing the ownership rights of IP.
Markets might shift a bit. Publishers might become a little less important (less so because publishing and distribution is apt to become less important with the advant of digital distribution). If we're going to make predictions about what might be, then I predict that authors of works that are readily digitized will simply refuse to publish in formats that are easily copied. These people will publish in Digital Rights Management (DRM) formats and these formats will constantly be changing faster than end-users can break it. In addition, aggressive enforcement of those that serve to break DRM or distribute copyright materials (e.g., P2P networks, Media Players, etc) will keep piracy at low enough levels that copyrighted works continue to remain viable.
First: I am not talking about a rationale for copyright. I am talking about the economic forces that allowed copyright actually to work. There surely is a rationale to build a perpetuum mobile. There are just no physical laws which allow them.
I can only guess that English is not your first language as your prior statements and your current ones are far from easy to read. As for your updated argument, it does not follow. Both Patents and Copyrights are economically enforceable today in the first world. The fact that, say, Microsoft makes BILLIONS of dollars in profits every year is testament to this fact. The only way you might be able to debate this, say, is if you could prove that various government entities have had to raise their law enforcement dollars by so many billions of dollars each year to protect Microsoft's IP. This case simply cannot be made.
Besides which, if copyrights are merely "uneconomical" to enforce, this problem is the IP owners, not yours and it is certainly not a reason to abolish the legal protections of IP. Additionally, you have to remember the costs of printing and editing have reduced dramatically for publishers so they have additional savings to compensate for now that they did not have before (not to mention a MUCH larger overall market).
You seem to forget that reasonably strong copyright protections are possible at several choke points (copying tools, DRM, original media formats, distribution networks, etc). Intellectual property is so hugely important to the success of overall economic success of the first world that there is almost no price tag too high -- even if enforcement is largely conducted by governments so as to pool costs effectively -- we can't afford NOT to have adequate protections.
Second: Copyright is older than the U.S. The reasons why the Founding Fathers took an idea and put them into their work is a completely different topic from the question why this idea was coming up in the first place. Without the invention of the printing press (for works of art) or the industrial production (for inventions) there was no economic need for copyrights, patents or trademarks. A hypothetical U.S. founded in 1450 wouldn't have had copyrights.
Adam Smith was a contemporary of the Founding Fathers and he only published his seminal work, The Wealth of Nations, a few years before the Constitution was promulgated. It is difficult to say who this idea came from originally, though England passed the first known copyright law in 1710 (Statute of Anne). Regardless, it makes little difference. The motivations and the economic factors are the same, only the price points are somewhat different.
A hypothetical US founded in 1450 may not have had copyrights, but nor would the US (or Europe) have an viable book writing industry to protect in the first place or enough literate customers to write for. So I fail to see your point...
Today everyone can (in general) create a copy of any information completely on his own, because even the cost of generating the master copy is fastly approaching zero. With scanners, photocopiers, burners, computers and the thorough digitalizing of any information you can get information in any form you like, and you are instantly able to create a master copy which in turn can be copied without limit. Today everyone is a printing press owner (ok... some people have still to rent it in a copy shop or internet cafe), and the necessity to sell some of your copies afterwards to pay for your initial costs has disappeared. People who have to get paid for operating a printing press to earn a living are in competition with billions of people who don't need payment for it, but can also operate a printing press. Thus the very base of copyright has disappeared. The competitor of the printing press owner is no longer in danger to get bankrupt just because the first printing press owner starts to copy the same works of art. The treat of mutual destruction has dissappeared and thus the finely spun system of copyrights and licenses is hollow and no longer based on economics, there is just some morality left in it. From an economic point of view paying a creator for his work of art is now purely voluntarily, because no one can force you with economic means (e.g. the treat of competing with you).
You are either very much confused or you are being willfully ignorant. The rational for intellectual property rights in US law has always been fundamentally about securing the rights of creators of ideas (authors, inventors, etc) in order to advance the interests of society. The publishers (or copiers) themselves were never seriously contemplated as being the reason for creating or continuing to support IP law (only by proxy--if the rights are assigned to them). Don't believe me?
Read Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution (1787):
The Congress shall have Power... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
If the Founders had concerns for the actual act of publishing itself, they would referred to this directly and they would not have used words like "exclusive" rights being assigned to authors and inventors.
Your argument does not even make logical sense in that time and place in history. The printing press was invented hundreds of years before and newspapers were in circulation at the time (a clear indicator of relatively cheap printing). They did not have copy machines at the time or any similar labor saving machines that would allow you make copies from the printed page itself. In other words, the simple act of destroying the plates, say, would have been sufficient to prevent would-be competitors from taking shortcuts (if, in fact, the setup costs were all that significant in the first place). The followers-on would be in the same boat (in your imaginary world that ignores the cost of invention) and would thus be unlikely to crowd out the market for publishing (if anything, it would simply drive down costs to its most economical point).
The Founders recognized that the authors/inventors ability to profit from their efforts was threatened by the ability of 3rd parties to readily produce copies at marginal costs roughly equal to that of the author/inventor (or their agents/publishers) and thus remove any incentive to create since they would consequently have no ability to command a premium for their work. That copying has only gotten easier (for more people), cheaper, and faster does nothing to change the underlying rational. Most books and software still require a major commitment of time and energy to produce (more $$$/time chasing often smaller markets). Both the ideas and the actual implementations themselves are the hard part, not merely distributing them.
I agree - hard work should be rewarded. I have no problem with people who start a company with a great idea and become very wealthy - I'm very glad for them when it happens. What irks me is that some horde their wealth and effectively take it out of circulation. The only reason anyone would want to hold on to over $1Billion (US) is for POWER, not living well
I'm glad you're not opposed to entrepreneurs (like me), but your understanding leaves much to be desired.
First, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but it is almost impossible for anyone to take large sums of their money out of circulation. Almost anything you do with that money is, in fact, putting it right back into circulation. Whether you spend it, save it, or invest it, the money is ultimately going in someone elses hands (unless you do a scrouge mcduck and horde it in your money bin).
Second, wealthy individuals have most of their wealth invested in securities, startups, and closely-held companies. In fact, most startups are funded heavily by wealthy investors at their earliest and most risky stages of development. Ignoring for a minute that the government basically prohibits non-wealthy (non-qualified investors) from investing in private corporations, the majority of middle class people do not only have much less money to invest, they have even less that they can afford to loose in a non-diversified high-risk class investment. Though you might argue the entrepreneur could get investments from 1000x as many middle-class investors instead this would make it MUCH harder to raise capital and would require a lot more hand-holding (especially since these investors would tend to be less financially savy). In other words, concentrated wealth is actually beneficial to startups and other high-risk investments which tend to benefit society most.
Third, a great percentage of the "wealth" of the wealthiest part of society is invested in one investment (e.g., the company they founded...and these are often very closely held). This "wealth" is often very much paper wealth that is not liquid in practice. For instance, Bill Gates is worth billions of dollars, but most of this is in MSFT and he could not sell it for anywhere near the current market price without causing Microsoft's stock to plummet. Many other wealthy individuals also own private companies where selling off a stake of their ownership is very difficult to do (especially without risking losing control, valuation, waste time talking to new investors, etc).
To me, "Social Justice" means that some reasonable limits should be placed on the accumulation of wealth, otherwise you end up with an Aristocracy.
This is just another way of saying you want the government to forcibly redistribute income and wealth for its own sake (not just for revenue purposes). You might at least consider the impact of what this forcible redistribution of wealth might mean to society. For instance, if you would propose, say, taxing people worth 50M or more at, say, 80% marginally, you should at least understand that these people are not going to risk additional capital to say, fund a high-tech biotech company (90% chance of losing everything), let alone personally start said biotech with greater personal risk, tremendously hard work, stress, and so on.
As for your comment about wealth accumulation, the truth is not so cut and dried. For instance, there is serious academic research that has shown that the wealthiest individuals (top 2%, 1%,.1% and even.01%) have actually lost significant shares of their share of wealth relative to the rest of society and that an increasing proportion of their income is being derived from work (e.g., salary, business income, etc.... not merely passive investments). Please see: http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/estateshort.pdf
Scientists work hard, harder than you probably realize, and what do they do with their results? They give them away to the entire world in journal articles.
But then, everything the scientists built on was published by previous scientists.
Everybody winds up better off than they would if someone were to impose artifical scarcity on knowledge in order to make it work more like a naturally scarce resource such as land.
This is a flawed analogy.
First, most universities these days are, in fact, patenting and copyrighting these academic scientists' technology if it is deemed to be of commercial value. Both the schools and often times researchers make money by licensing this technology or spinning off companies (Billions of dollars worth).
Second, the scientists are being paid substantial sums of money to perform research (much of which is further subsidized) regardless of the results (this money is coming from wealth tax payers, alumni, students, corporations, etc). This is not free and they are far from self-sustaining. Their position is more akin to that of an employee than that of an entreprenuer/tech. company. They take almost no risk--they get paid regardless of what happens and they live a pretty comfortable lifestyle while doing so.
Third, the scientists do not live in a scientific vacuum. Much of their research depends or benefits greatly from commercial products and innovations. Consider the word processor, the spreadsheet, super-computers, high speed networking gear, fiberoptics, various motors, PCs, modern microscopes,... you name it. You might argue some of these core "ideas" came from academia, but they are not using the original academic brainstorm, they are using highly evolved products and services that are orders of magnitude better (generally actually involves making it practicable) than what might have been "invented".
In any event, my point is not that university research is worthless or that its "openness" is always inherently bad. To the contrary, I assert that both fundamental/open research and closed/IP systems should exist and that they can and do benefit each other. However, the notion that we can convert our economy over to a largely "open" one in which all ideas are freely shared is foolish. These few scientists exist and do what they do largely because we can afford to pay them to do so. We simply cannot afford to subsidize the great mass of self-titled software developers to produce in the same way so that they can produce a bunch of free and open software. We must instead support a system that rewards intelligent risk-taking behavior, so that those that actually make contributions actually profit, and this system generally requires some significant degree of closedness (usually as enforced by IP rights).
Yes... where is the economy in giving birth to children? Where is the economy in giving a present to loved ones? Where is the economy in giving education to minors? Where is the economy in giving directions to a stranger in your town? Where is the economy in giving playing cards to someone who is sitting with you at a table? Where is the economy in giving advise or stating opinions on Slashdot?
As you can see: We are giving for completely uneconomic reasons all the time. Does that make us bad people
All these things happen, yes, but they are not the "economy". You do not put food on the table by giving birth to children, giving free directions to strangers, playing cards, or giving free advice. They do not lead to a productive economy. To the contrary, if anything the healthiest expression of them is dependent on there being a productive economy that allows people to benefit (almost always DIRECTLY) from the fruits of their labor. If you work hard and produce, say, corn, you can sell it in a viable economy (barter or cash) which in turn allows you to provide for your family, to have time to help strangers, and so on. If you look at, say, Communist Russia it was not want of desire to share that led to their privation, it was the forced redistribution of wealth and income that all but eliminated your ability to do so. Even if the individual wanted to be more productive in order to give more, their potential to do so was greatly reduced as a consequent of the fundamentally flawed economic system imposed by the regime... The individual lacked both the inputs (tools, labor, better crops, irrigation, fertilizer) and output (selling) ability.
Which returns us to the point at hand. You can't base an economy off of something that is 100% free. There MUST be exchange as a general rule. Yes, you can give and share with people within this world part of the time, but this secondary to your ability to actually earn a living. The mere fact that some software is produced "for free" and that a very small number of them are even remotely competetive with the non-free alternatives does not mean that this system is self-sustaining or that it will work elsewhere.
Because blogs are a way to reach audiences that are not reached through traditional marketing outlets, they increase the amount of feedback you receive from your customers, and they provide a way to mine your user base for ideas.
That is one motivating factor to use a blog. However, this is not sufficient reasoning to justify it. There are reasons not to as well.
First, if your product developers blog, they may be giving your competition advanced notice of what you are up to much sooner than you otherwise might.
Second, the bloggers do not necessarily represent the average user. In fact, in my experience those that read and respond to blogs often have widely divergent needs from the targeted customer. If your responders are largely hard-core geeks, say, they may be pushing for more advanced features instead of what the other 90% of your customers most want (e.g., usability). Advanced feature requests are rarely appropriate for a product at an early stage of development and that time is generally better spent on more fundamental issues.
Third, what someone asks for and what they actually most need as a real world customer are often very different. Having been involved in product development, it has been my experience that most people can't articulate what they most want. They often do not understand, for instance, that the current products out there are horendously and unnecessarily hard to use. Even if they "feel" frustrated with usability, they can rarely identify what frustrates them exactly, let alone propose a better way to solve it. Often times their requests actually hamper what they need (e.g., add this feature as the expense of greatly increasing UI complexity).
Lastly, I believe you can actually increase negative publicity about your product by blogging. If your blog readers are heavily exposed to your product and expect that their suggestions will be taken seriously, you have to also remember that they may represent the bulk of the first users when you launch. They may take for granted what you have already accomplished and their expectations may be out of line with what you can or will deliver. Instead what you may get for your troubles is negative publicity coming from a bunch of people that really don't represent your target base and yet these same people might serve to steer a good number of your target customers away.
I'll admit that I didn't RTFA. However, I would argue that Apple and companies like them are perhaps the best arguments not to blog. I would assert that their products are far more focused on usability (and ultimately their customers) and have tended to be far better recieved on a marginal basis than any of their competitors. If you were to read many of the modern blogs on, say, the ipod and other portable players you would get the impression that customers prefer anything but and that they really want a ton more features. In practice, most people still prefer the latest iterations of the ipod and I would argue that apple's marginal efforts are still better directed than most...
Blogging probably makes sense sometimes (depending on: the stage of development, user base, type of product, etc) but I also think there are many where it is very much counter-productive. You might argue that management might simply, say, ignore certain input, but this kind of input can also serve as a distraction for your developers and may be bad for morale.
Later he came up with the idea of loaning tiny amounts to 5 individuals with no interest in a locality and then when they repaid it, the money was loaned to someone else in the same place. This provided them with social pressure from their neighbors to pay off the loans. It has worked amazingly well.
To the contrary, they charge interest rates well in excess of what is charged in the West -- these same rates are labeled as usurious in the US. For instance, if someone borrows money from the Grameen Bank to invest in their small farm, they're looking at more than 20% annual interest in practice. It's also worth noting that they're generally not giving money to the poorest members of society, but almost exclusively to women and to those with some capacity to make good on the loan. I believe that they're doing a good and unique thing, but the actual story is a whole lot more nuanced than what you describe.
I described my economics earlier and $20K to start out would easily save me $60K in interest over my lifetime.
You can't simply aggregate your payments together to determine the real cost of interest, you have to take into account inflation and the time value of money (depreciating your cash flows accordingly). Also, I'm curious how you arrive at a figure 3x more than the principle unless you're a bad credit risk and/or choose your credit poorly. A 30 year fixed mortgage at, say, 6% on 20K comes out to about 18K in real interest over 30 years (subtracting inflation ~2%, ignoring TVM). Yet you somehow are paying 3x more than this reasonable interest. This is also ignoring the fact that the government subsidizes your interest payments in the form of tax deductions (and ignores the fact that your equity in your home is probably appreciating in value more quickly than the interest)
150 years seems like a cherry picked number. It coincides with the end of slavery in the US, which was a revolution of sorts and one of the violent upheavals where wealth was forcibly redistributed. It was followed by quite a bit of progress as the descendants of the freed gained on the rest of society. If you look at the last 50 years, however, you'll see most estimates show wage disparity has about doubled and wealth disparity tripled.
Wrong. Whatever timeframe you want to look at that includes a reasonably large amount of time over the past century actually shows relative decreases in the share of wealth amongst the top 2%, top 1%, top.1% and even top.01%. http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/estateshort.pdf Please look at page 13 of the PDF. For instance, in 1913 the top %.01 of the country owned about 10% of the overall wealth and now they own about 4% (with some relatively small increases over the past decade).
The first point you bring up is a myth, long ago put to rest, I'd thought. As for the economies, they vary quite a bit as does the nature of their stance on technology and employment.
I studied economics and I disagree. Please enumerate the countries that demonstrate your point that are so similar to the US that a reasonable person couldn't disagree. If you can't or won't, then you really can't reasonably assert, against the status quo, that this is simple myth.
Since we have historical records of numerous localities that have changed their economic policies over time we have some pretty well normalized ideas about how certain economic policies are likely to effect other "quality of living issues."
Name them. You are the one that is stidently arguing for change and asserting that it is somehow obvious, certainly this must be a trivial exercise then.
For example, if you are looking at violent crime you'll see the single strongest correlation between it and any other factor anyone has documented is wealth disparity. I don't know a serious sociologist that has even argued this in decades.
I can only assume you are referring to the correlation between poverty and crime. However, even if you take for granted that less poverty means less crime, that does not mean that social transfer programs will actually achieve, over the long run, either less poverty or less crime. If these social programs cause a net loss in wealth overtime, increased unemployment, etc, then the benefits of the transfer are easily outstripped by the losses. For instance, France has a huge social welfare system, and yet they have hundreds of thousands of Arabs in their streets that have been essentially rioting for a long time now (long since before the US press picked up on it) despite it (likely due to the fact that they can't find jobs, and so on).
The US has practiced socialism in the form of education, police, roads, industry subsidies, welfare, social security, prisons, and military for a long time. The level of this socialism is not particularly low, but it is directed in different ways than seem ideal.
You are essentially arguing that any form of taxation is socialism. This is just plain ridiculous. Socialism is essentially about wealth redistribution for its own sake. Taxation, as has been practiced in our economy (by and large) and others long before "socialism" was even an invented, is about recognizing that there are certain costs that have to be pooled. The intent of them as well as the degrees of taxation are very different.
Actually, the majority of the wealth in the US is held by a small number of people, not necessarily billionaires but a very small percentage. Almost all of these people inherited this wealth.
Worse yet, from an economics perspective, in a purely capitalist system this disparity continually increases. Historically, this increases until the majority are in such bad shape they revolt, kill the wealthy and redistribute it.
Actually no. If you look at the US over the past 150 years it has gone up and down between decades. In point of fact, the disparity is about the same today as it was 100 years ago.
Modern economies have established a better balance of capitalism, socialism, and communism. In some of the places with the highest standards of living you'll find socialism that effectively negates the wealth condensation principal. That is to say, wealth disparity is not increasing in those places. This is usually accomplished by socialized healthcare, education and progressive inheritance taxes.
Not so fast.
First, these countries with "higher standards of living" are small, essentially homogoneous, and have economies that are largely dependent on extraction of natural resources (and much less so with developing new technologies, medicines, services, etc).
Second, the "higher standards of living" are essentially defined by arbitrary equations and do not necessarily tell you the complete picture (such as the fact that many of the young in these same countries have to go abroad to find employment).
Third, just because you think it "works" for them, does not mean they did better under these systems.
Fourth, you seem to assume that equality itself should be the end goal and not actual absolute improvement overtime. I, for one, would rather have a smaller piece of a much larger pie than a larger (or more "equal") piece of a smaller pie.
Lastly, none of this demonstrates that the US can or even should try to replicate what these socialist governments have done.
In the above extreme example, imagine if instead of inheriting 8 billion dollars, our privileged child inherited 50 million dollars. The rest of the wealth was redistributed to those born incredibly poor. So now you have one person still obscenely wealthy who never has to work a day in their life and 100 million people who would have been born into perpetual debt, each with a sufficiently large stake to begin life with a small farm to work or a little shop.
Your example is very much detached from reality. The great majority of wealth does not lie with the uber-uber-rich (billionaires), but from the lesser known multi-millionaires and millionare variety. There are only about 700 billionaires in the US (with an average networth of ~3.2b). Presuming your wet-dream could materialize and you could liquidate the assets of these billionaires at 100% all at once (ignoring for a minute that they'd have to die and that most of their wealth is just on paper), that would only give those 100m "poor" about 22K per person. This is hardly enough for anyone to even buy anything even resembling a farm, let alone enough to try to live off of. And, of course, this ignores the fact that: they're already being taxed (capital gains, inheritance, state, etc), that many have multiple heirs, charities, etc.
The problem being, the laws are not actually created democratically by and for the people, in most cases, but instead are created by the ultra wealthy.
Wrong. The "problem" is that most Americans, especially those that actually take the trouble to vote, don't agree with your point of view.
The principal is hard to argue against, it is simply a matter of establishing the ideal balance.
Again, a gross over-simplification. The principle is highly contentious and many highly informed people disagree with this point of view. Besides which, taxing inheritances would do relatively little to "level" this since the richest have not inherited most of their wealth by and large. What you are obviously implying (but not actually saying) is higher capital gains, dividends, and income/salary taxes... which is actually quite easy to argue with.
No no no. It's not a question of over-reaction. It's a question of whether or not the term "natural" is well-defined. It's not. Therefore it's useless. I don't think you get any additional mileage by substituting "artificial". Please present me with a definition of artificial, then we can start to talk about it. Again: it's not a question of degree. It's a question of coherence
A term does not have to be perfectly well defined to be useful, particularly when there is not a term that is an obviously superior substitute. As for the definition of artificial, dictionary.com defines it as "made by human skill; produced by humans (opposed to natural)". This is a pretty clear definition and the context in which it is used brings greater meaning (like almost ALL language). That some people might abuse the term does not mean it is useless.
There are degrees of artificiality. Very few people would be confused if I said, a 1m-line-of-code computer program that tries to replicate the world, that can only run on a state of the art computer, is a whole lot more artificial than, say, regular-old butter. Both are man-made and are thus artificial, yes, but one is a whole lot further down the chain of human interference.
You're using the label "natural" but you're actually referring to an altogether different concept: newness
Well, no. First, I would assert that things that are highly artificial are by definition new to society (though the reverse is not necessarily true). They are highly correlated in this context. Second, the word "new" itself is not any more precise unless you consider degree. Any item created is bound to be new whether artificial or natural. There will almost always be subtle variations in composition. If I bake a batch of cookies my actual implementation is bound to be slightly off from the recipe I was given and will therefore be "new" -- just not necessarily meaningfully so. If I were to buy a steak, the odds are that the cattle had unique DNA and possibly even appreciable differences from the cattle found generations before (with or without human interference). It is usually only those things that are human-engineered that can be dramatically new or novel in human experience.
In any event, the discussion is the same regardless of semantics, that an elaborate reality constructed by humans just might represent a unique threat to individuals and that it is its degree of removal from the natural world itself that is a significant distinguishing factor from other activities. That does not mean that it is necessarily bad, but that it is not unreasonable not to take assurances that it is just like playing soccer, chess, or any number of other activities.
By anybody's definiton, improving the error messages in Internet Explorer is NOT innovation
I presume Scoble is referring to the new "error messages" in IE7. If this is the case, this is an example of merely changing sh*t around--not innovation. I personally find this "feature" annoying (and I fail to see how it will help a newbie). It obscures any kind of meaningful message and dumbs it down without actually helping the average user.
Why is it if I type in a website URL with DNS entry that simply does not exist, that it can't show me anything meaningful? This is an example:
Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage
Most likely causes: You are not connected to the Internet. The website is encountering problems. There might be a typing error in the address.
Well, I am connected to the internet--it should be able to test for this pretty easily!
There is no website--it can't even find the domain.
Finally, at the end they mention that maybe I typed the wrong address.
They shouldn't have changed the interface unless it offered a clear advantage. Maybe if they gave me a less dumbed down answer I could decipher this much more quickly. Why not give a short meangingful error first and then give some likely explanations? Why not, if they really want to help the less-technical user, automatically perform some simple tests automatically or on-demand? For instance, see if it can http/ping a highly redundant MS site? Check their search engine/DNS records for existence of the domain/host? Maybe even try to search for a likely match?... Bleh.
Ok, I'm bitching and I haven't done extensive testing, but it strikes me as a pretty poor attempt at improvement. It does _not_ help me (as an advanced user) and I'm sure it will only make things more difficult when I try to walk less-advanced users through these things over the phone in the future....
You're kind of missing the point. The whole concept of "natural" is a giant cultural myth.
No, I'm not missing the point. I agree that there are a lot of people out there that have an irrational view of what is "natural" and overplay the importance of it despite all evidence to the contrary. It is one of my pet peeves too. ("grocery store produce is engineered/bad, eat local/natural".... completely missing the point that 95% of the stuff they eat wouldn't be available were it not for modern and historical technological advancements)
On the other hand, like any other contentious issue, it is also possible to over-react to it. More specifically, some people completely fail to acknowledge that the degree of artificiality of a thing can be highly relevant. Humans have largely adapted to that which exists in nature (without the assistance of humans) and, to a lesser degree, that technology that humans been created, modified, exploited by mankind for thousands of years (e.g., heat, man-made shelter, clothing, agriculture, etc). Therefore, it stands to reason that that which is highly novel, i.e., highly artificial, may represent an increased risk in practice.
Those people on slashdot, for instance, that spew out knee-jerk reactions against concerns over abuse of these massively-multiplayer games and dismiss it by saying it is just like playing sports or anything else may, in fact, be missing the point (especially when there are many real examples of abuse).
Gravity is natural too. Try jumping off a cliff. See how that works for you. Black holes are natural. If you ever have a chance, why don't you pop inside and have a look around one. I can't state this firmly enough: this naive belief in "nature" (as in "natural") is a ridiculous myth with no ratinoal basis in reality. Rattlesnkaes and bunny rabbits are both natural
Yes, there are dangerous natural items abound (very few rational people would dispute this if asked a pointed question about it). However, we humans have a natural fear of most of those things that are dangerous items in the natural world (or, if not, we're taught to fear it or avoid it). Most humans don't jump off cliffs unless they mean to kill themselves. Most humans run away from snakes. Most people don't eat foods that we don't know to be safe and edible. We have never and will never encounter blackholes, so we don't need to fear them.... We don't have these mechanisms to regulate our usage of these games.
I am simply advocating a balanced view. My point is not that artificial items are necessarily bad, but that they can be. The degree artificiality is relevant and, I would argue, makes it more likely to be harmful than, say, Grandma's cookie recipe. We don't need to worry about that which has existed for millenia to nearly the same degree--we know the risks, we are programmed to avoid/control them, we are taught how to respond, etc.
In my opinion there's more to evolution than genetics
I agree that societies evolve and that this is highly important. However, most scientists would take great exception to conflating and expanding the theory of evolution to areas outside of biology.
Behavioral adaptation may be sufficient (and would probably operate on a much shorter time scale).
Is not society's shifting fear of that which is artificial just another example of behavioral adapation?
There's no rational basis for calling the actions or creations of human beings un-natural without recourse to superstition.
Cool!! So you mean I can safely smoke all the crack I want because it is natural?
In all seriousness, I think what the previous poster that you attacked meant is that it is very much artificial. Highly artificial things, especially that which we have only been exposed to over a decade or two at most (never mind thousands and millions of years), is perhaps best approached with some degree of wariness.
If you wish to look at these sorts of games from an evolutionary point of view, then you might consider that humans do not have any adaptations to deal with it appropriately since we have not been exposed to it for generation after generation. We might enjoy sex to the exclusion of all else, say, but our organs simply won't allow us to go at it for very long. We might enjoy sports, but our bodies are apt to give out on us first (and send you warning signs well before you collapse). We possess no such mechanisms to inhibit abusive behavior such as this (especially in the modern world where enough food and shelter can be had by many if not most Americans with none to relatively little effort)
He's brilliantly intelligent, with an amazing ability to run a company.
I'll grant you that Gates is intelligent, but I disagree with the assessment that he is a particularly good businessman. Obviously Microsoft is a hugely successful company, but it doesn't necessarily follow that this was the result of excellent management at Microsoft or even excellent (technical) execution. The vast majority of Microsoft's financial success owes their exclusive license on MSDOS (which they themselves failed to see the value of early on). This provided them with a tremendous infusion of capital, a large and virtually perpetual annuity, and great leverage over the PC Operating System market to which they were able to hitch their wagon (it would have grown despite them). It allowed them to make a lot of mistakes (both technical AND business) and buy their way into a great many markets (only a handful of which can really be shown to be profitable and significant contributors to their revenue). Those markets where they have succeeded (excepting perhaps SQL Server) are essentially winner-take-all due to defacto standards (e.g., Windows/PC, Office, etc). In short, the quality of Microsoft's management has been at best mixed imho.
It's also worth noting that Bill Gates' role at Microsoft through out its history has been much less "businessman" than it has been "chief technologist". Gates certainly shaped many of Microsoft's critical decisions (for better and for worse) and things might have turned out differently if it weren't for his raw determination or if he completely lacked insight, but I hardly think it qualifies him as a great leader.
Sometimes waiting for the release of a perfect app is suicide. They should take a page from Google's book and allow beta versions to be constantly tweaked and hammered on. A flowing model might have a better chance than a rigid once-every-five-years plan.
With all due respect, while I believe Microsoft has some significant organizational problems, what you are suggesting is recipe for disaster. Google and Microsoft are developing very different kinds of software.
Google is almost entirely web-based for all intents and purposes. Google can bring all of their users up to the latest version and state easily and almost instantaneously. Microsoft, by contrast, has to support these platforms in a very distributed environment. Thousands of seperate desktops that may or may not get updated for months or years and updates that may not be properly installed (these, after all, are controlled largely by users -- not their employees) As they release additional updates, these difficulties compound on themselves.
Additionally, Microsft is developing an OPERATING SYSTEM which is far more complex and upon which thousands of seperate critical applications depend on. It would not be acceptible to most of Microsoft's customers if MS were to suddenly break their favorite application with an update. The level of interaction is much greater than anything Google has to contend with.
I respect Google. They are good and what they do, better perhaps that Microsoft is at what they do (their core business: Windows, Office, SQL, etc). These companies are, however, largely engaged in seperate businesses and are at very different stages of maturity.
You might argue that Linux uses this rapid-release model. However, the distributions are a total mess as far as the average user is concerned, i.e., overall usability, installing applications, etc.
Posting this article as if it were some brilliant nugget of wisdom is just plain retarded.
First, these tools truly do not anonymize your P2P activity. All they do is block whole groups of IP addresses. The blocked addresses are presumably the record labels and other alleged "bad actors".
Second, the assumption that this is an effective means of blocking the record labels or other entities from finding out what you are up to is seriously flawed. The breadth of the IP groups that these tools block are bound to yield many false positives (many innocent and unrelated sites get blocked). Additionally, they are fundamentally flawed because they presume that RIAA/MPAA/etc will confine their activity to obvious named entities and not one or several cable modems leased from comcast. Even when this monitorer has been active reporting copyright violations and such, there is generally no reliable means for these list-makers to establish which IP actually was responsible for the original observation/evidence gathering. Even if the list-makers could presumably establish that, they would need to ban whole blocks of IPs on dynamic networks (e.g., all of Comcast in LA) to just to block that one account...
Third, using these tools as akin to admitting you are committing piracy because the only concievable utility is to attempt to hide from industry. Though I personally believe that almost all of these P2P systems are used almost exclusively, in practice, for various forms of copyright infringement, with the exception of BitTorrent (which has clear legit uses), using these tools basically just reinforces that you are trying to hide your actions from a particular set of people, namely, RIAA, MPAA, and other related organizations that are trying to enforce copyright.
You might argue that the powers that be are misreporting violations, but I, for one, do not buy into the notion that users would go through the trouble of installing this tool (and all the pains that go with it) just to try to escape the very remote chance that RIAA/MPAA will falsely report your linux distro download as a piracy.
For young children, its burdensome, sure but everybody that has to do it gets used to it, just like anyone who has to take any kind of medicine- regardless whether its IM, IV or PO. I wasn't saying that what people go through isn't troublesome, and everyone needs shots at different intervals- everyone is different.
I respectfully disagree. Having worked for an insulin pump manufacturer and having spoken with hundreds of doctors, patients, and educators, I can tell you that managing diabetes is fundamentally and vastly different than the management of almost any other disease. Diabetes management, whether through shots and pumps, is fundamentally different because it is largely a patient managed disease. The patients or their guardians are required to make important day to day decisions about their treatment and must be able to exercise judgement. Unlike most other diseases, the patient is not just taking a prescribed dose, but is required to to constantly balance their insulin requirements against their carb intake. To achieve even remotely tight control the patient must understand: what they're eating; when they're eating it; how their habits impact their bodies (e.g., exercise, sleep, sex, etc); accurately measure their BGs; and be able to adjust accordingly (which, itself, is not that simple) through-out their waking and sleeping hours. The level of patient awareness and the implications of that awareness (or lack thereof) set diabetes far apart from virtually anything else. This difficulty becomes especially apparent when dealing with less mentally aware, less mature, and less educated parts of society.
Achieving tight control is actually a fairly complicated task. It is difficult to do as well as a non-diabetics (close perhaps, but not quite the same). While I agree that the pump simplifies things dramatically and that most pump users achieve fairly tight control on average such that their complications are much more in line with non-diabetics, most still suffer significant highs and lows with some regularity and they still must structure their life around the disease to some extent. Unfortunately recent research has shown that while average blood sugars (as represented by a1cs) are important, the degree of volatility is perhaps even more a important predictor of long term health complications... In other words, the volatility that virtually all pump users suffer to some extent (non-pump users even more so) or other is still suggests significant complications over the long term.
Patents that were filed by Microsoft itself should be able to be found on the USPTO Web site by searching for their name. You might even find some patents by searching for the names of well-known Microsoft employees (e.g., Bill Gates), if they were filed under their names and not Microsoft. However, patents that were assigned to Microsoft -- by employees under Microsoft's direction, by purchasing patents, or by acquisitions of firms holding patents -- will be much more difficult to unearth. Microsoft's done quite a few deals and has had tens of thousands of employees in its history. A dedicated research team might be able to put together a close-to-definitive database of Microsoft patents, but might never get them all.
You are wrong. First, all US patents are filed under the individual inventors names under the "inventor" section -- never the name of the company. Second, the US patent office maintains an "assignee" section that describes the company or entity to which the patent has been assigned. Virtually all companies have their patent assigned to them at the date of filing, because if they don't, the named inventors are assumed to have ownership. (Yes, they may have contracts or licensing, but this complicates things dramatically).
Almost Six Thousand Microsoft patents. Now it is certainly possible Microsoft has a handful of patents assigned indirectly through their acquisitions and licensing agreements, but there can be little doubt that most are assigned directly.
Why is MySQL's justification of claiming the GPL applies to the MySQL wire level protocol itself?
Please mod this up. I wish to understand the rational for this decision as well as a potential commercial, closed source, software developer. Though I can appreciate MySQL's need to make money, I fail to see how this is consistent with GPL, as I understand it. MySQL apparently demands that I either pay up or open source my software simply because it packages and uses the MySQL database (no modifications to any GPL code). From what I've been able to gleen, this is derived from the fact that MySQL changed their client libraries from LGPL to GPL, which essentially asserts that any software that uses its libraries essentially becomes a derivative work and thus must also be GPL'd. Is this the argument?
Is there anything to stop someone from:
a) reverse engineering the protocols and creating their own closed source libraries to access the database (As a corollary to this, if GPL software can claim this, what is to stop, say, Microsoft from imposing punative costs on 3rd party software that attempts to interoperate with its own servers and/or clients?)
b) modify the older LGPL library to bring it up to date with the current database? Though the changes would have to be released, the code that accesses it would not... if I understand it correctly.
c) using one of the existing modified-LGPL or Closed Source libraries?
If it is not possible to do this, why? If the mere deployment of the database or inter-operability with it becomes grounds for being compelled to open source everything (or potentially be compelled to pay exorbitant fees) which in any shape, way, or form builds upon GPL software, then is there not a real danger for any more conventional (closed source) software company to potentially have their business model be destroyed overnight at the whim of the open source developers or the dual-licensed software/support company? How is a commercial software company supposed to port their software to, say, the Linux platform without facing this kind of risk?
To be clear, I am not opposed to a hybrid licensing model. I can see the advantages for various parties, namely, Open Software developers and the MySQL AB. Providing everyone behaves reasonably and consistently, I see this as being a workable system. However, I can also see great risk for businesses that wish to build upon open source software if a reasonable licensing structure is not available (or continued) that permits closed source development.
It's good that you keep a healthy perspective on work and leisure. We'd all be better off if more did that.
I disagree with this popular and overly simplistic sentiment. The fact is that the "balance" that you strive for in your life is only possible because you live in a society that is wealthy enough to allow you to work a relatively small number of hours and still provide comfortably for your family. While working less hard may be the optimal choice for your family, it does not follow that all of society can do this and be better off (or even maintain a decent quality of life). Many of the career paths of people that talk most of "balance" are those that are only really possible in wealthy societies like our own.
If it weren't some of the hardest working members of our society, namely entrepreneurs and those that participate in such ventures, there would be fewer jobs and fewer technologies available for society (many of which, fyi, are labor/time/life saving products/services). Likewise, if a large swath of America were to decide to live modestly suddenly, this would have tremendous consequences for jobs in a large number of industries, e.g., retail, travel, entertainment, restaurants, construction, technological devices, etc. Changes like these would increase unemployment dramatically and reduce overall wages. These unemployed and underemployed people would also secondarily reduce the demands for all sorts of other goods and services (e.g., law, medicine, engineering, programming, etc).... The balance that you seek may suddenly become impossible.
It is really only in the last 100-200 years that large swathes of our society has even had enough time away from producing the bare necessities for their families (esp. food and shelter) to seriously consider "quality of life" issues. Meanwhile most of the world is still living like that and is rapidly trying to catch up...
So...while yes, I do believe certain people work too hard and may be able to make better decisions for themselves, I also believe that it would be equally, if not more damaging, if we were to fundamentally change our goals en masse.
You only make what is core to your business. Ford's methods of buying parts/inventory tracking wasn't too unique, so there would have been no reason to make the software unique.
However, if all you do is buy, you give yourself no competive advantage over the other guy who has access to the same resources as you.
I disagree. Whether you're buying software or producing it in-house, the actual act of obtaining functional code is barely even half the battle. Putting the code to proper use, i.e., implementing it within an existing business and/or changing business processes to take advantage of the software is a HUGE hurtle for most companies. It is generally very hard to get managers to change their ways in a way that enhances efficiency. You simply can't buy this "talent" from a software vendor (or from your own in-house developers). It often takes hard work and real management talent to realize real improvements in efficiency and quality of service. [And doing this without a lot of wasted effort is even harder]
Think of the great companies that are known for their outstanding support and customer service (which DOES differentiate and tends keep customers coming back). The secret to their success is rarely a secret formula or a training process. The "secret" is generally plenty of good management, good front-line workers, hard work, and a certain attention to detail. The method may not be proprietary, but proper execution (read: good and consistent service) is a rare thing in this world. Software can be a very helpful, even necessary, tool for improvement and it can help further differentiate even if the competition is theoretically able to copy it.
Slashdot Mirror
Several points. One, I find it unlikely that an untrained and disorganized bunch of citizens is going to stop a modern, highly trained, and highly equipped army from imposing their will. Two, if you truly believe this, then citizens should also own machines guns, tanks, high-explosives, landmines, RF communications gear, and other weapons that are an essential part of the evolution of modern conflict. Three, if civil defence is the aim, then all people should have mandatory military training. Four, civil defense does not require anyone to keep a concealed weapon on them--the weapon could be required to be stored in the house at all times (and it could be sealed and inspected).
Still at this eh? Besides the reasons I've already listed for the absurdity of this idea...
Why 1 million dollars? Why not 10 dollars? If it is "wrong" for children to benefit from most of their parents hard work, then why should the less wealthy be able to pass on so disproprionately more of their wealth?
Why is the mid-level sales guy that makes 100K/year and saves just 5% of his income exempt for any estate tax, but the guy that goes into business for himself, that forgoes a handsome salary at a big corp, that plows most of his life savings into his business, that works his ass off every day for decades, and plows profits right back into the company, subject to an effective tax rate of 75% on a 6 million dollar business?
Why should the IRS basically effectively require a moderately prosperous closely-held business to be sold off (especially in a near fire-sale) to pay the tax bill? Alternatively, why should the children be forced to assume great personal risk just to prevent this from happening?
Why would a 65 year old man with a $20M networth continue to invest his money in high tech startups when he has plenty enough to support his lifestyle? The risk/reward relationship of any serious investment would no longer make sense for his loved ones--the expected return for his loved ones would be seriously negative after taxes.
Why wouldn't a middle-aged entrepreneur whose company has reached a certain stage (well in excess of 1M) choose to sell the company? She could do it when she knows there is a ready buyer (even though that buyer is sub-optimal for the employees and for growth of the business). By divesting, she would eliminate downside risk for her children and liquidate her assets to allow her to conduct much more advantageous tax planning (e.g., gifting, trusts, etc).
If you have you are elderly and have 10M in diversified investments, why not just pull that money out of the market and spend it on expensive yacht, if you'll only be able to transfer 10% marginally to your loved ones after you pass (the ultimate f* you to a government that is f*g you back)?
If you're young and you're building a promising tech startup, why not gift much of your equity share to your children when it is valued at a few pennies a share? Sure, you might give up some ability to choose how much in absolute weath is transfered ultimately and limit your financial flexibility, but when and if your company makes it big at least the tax man won't get it (of course, neither will the charities you care about).
You seem to assume that anyone that stands to inherit substantial sums of money is merely the beneficiary of pure dumb luck. Although it may have nothing to do with the heirs (not always the case though), it almost always has a lot to do with the parent working very hard and taking risks. I can tell you, from personal experience, that many rich people (I'm talking anywhere from 800M to 5M networth) continue to w
Some food for thought: If the wealthiest
The gun advocates may be wrong, but they are not necessarily inconsistent in their reading of the Constitution just because they disagree with the ACLU on school prayer (or other issues).
*I support allowing rifles for hunting & target practice and perhaps very limited private ownership of handguns (if someone can prove that they require protection)
Put differently, the exclusive right of the authors over their work, by way of copyright law, is what gives the publishers, by extension, wide latitude to set prices and thus make a profit. The author needs the publisher to publish and promote their work (and often provide editing and other services) so in exchange for these services, they give the publishers exclusive rights to their work. The two parties are interdependent one each other and this relationship is supported by copyright.
Whether the end users have a direct short-term interest or not is almost besides the point. Both copyright law and government and industry recognition of the importance of the support of it through various means does, in fact, prevent blatant violations. Besides which the truly enlightened reader would realize that the author is at least partially dependent today on the publisher to create a market for them. You can theorize all day long about not needing publishers, but the fact is that they DO and none of this changes the fundamental issues of recognizing, supporting, and enforcing the ownership rights of IP.
Markets might shift a bit. Publishers might become a little less important (less so because publishing and distribution is apt to become less important with the advant of digital distribution). If we're going to make predictions about what might be, then I predict that authors of works that are readily digitized will simply refuse to publish in formats that are easily copied. These people will publish in Digital Rights Management (DRM) formats and these formats will constantly be changing faster than end-users can break it. In addition, aggressive enforcement of those that serve to break DRM or distribute copyright materials (e.g., P2P networks, Media Players, etc) will keep piracy at low enough levels that copyrighted works continue to remain viable.
Besides which, if copyrights are merely "uneconomical" to enforce, this problem is the IP owners, not yours and it is certainly not a reason to abolish the legal protections of IP. Additionally, you have to remember the costs of printing and editing have reduced dramatically for publishers so they have additional savings to compensate for now that they did not have before (not to mention a MUCH larger overall market).
You seem to forget that reasonably strong copyright protections are possible at several choke points (copying tools, DRM, original media formats, distribution networks, etc). Intellectual property is so hugely important to the success of overall economic success of the first world that there is almost no price tag too high -- even if enforcement is largely conducted by governments so as to pool costs effectively -- we can't afford NOT to have adequate protections.
Adam Smith was a contemporary of the Founding Fathers and he only published his seminal work, The Wealth of Nations, a few years before the Constitution was promulgated. It is difficult to say who this idea came from originally, though England passed the first known copyright law in 1710 (Statute of Anne). Regardless, it makes little difference. The motivations and the economic factors are the same, only the price points are somewhat different.
A hypothetical US founded in 1450 may not have had copyrights, but nor would the US (or Europe) have an viable book writing industry to protect in the first place or enough literate customers to write for. So I fail to see your point...
Read Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution (1787):
If the Founders had concerns for the actual act of publishing itself, they would referred to this directly and they would not have used words like "exclusive" rights being assigned to authors and inventors.
Your argument does not even make logical sense in that time and place in history. The printing press was invented hundreds of years before and newspapers were in circulation at the time (a clear indicator of relatively cheap printing). They did not have copy machines at the time or any similar labor saving machines that would allow you make copies from the printed page itself. In other words, the simple act of destroying the plates, say, would have been sufficient to prevent would-be competitors from taking shortcuts (if, in fact, the setup costs were all that significant in the first place). The followers-on would be in the same boat (in your imaginary world that ignores the cost of invention) and would thus be unlikely to crowd out the market for publishing (if anything, it would simply drive down costs to its most economical point).
Read this: http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/firsts/c
The Founders recognized that the authors/inventors ability to profit from their efforts was threatened by the ability of 3rd parties to readily produce copies at marginal costs roughly equal to that of the author/inventor (or their agents/publishers) and thus remove any incentive to create since they would consequently have no ability to command a premium for their work. That copying has only gotten easier (for more people), cheaper, and faster does nothing to change the underlying rational. Most books and software still require a major commitment of time and energy to produce (more $$$/time chasing often smaller markets). Both the ideas and the actual implementations themselves are the hard part, not merely distributing them.
First, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but it is almost impossible for anyone to take large sums of their money out of circulation. Almost anything you do with that money is, in fact, putting it right back into circulation. Whether you spend it, save it, or invest it, the money is ultimately going in someone elses hands (unless you do a scrouge mcduck and horde it in your money bin).
Second, wealthy individuals have most of their wealth invested in securities, startups, and closely-held companies. In fact, most startups are funded heavily by wealthy investors at their earliest and most risky stages of development. Ignoring for a minute that the government basically prohibits non-wealthy (non-qualified investors) from investing in private corporations, the majority of middle class people do not only have much less money to invest, they have even less that they can afford to loose in a non-diversified high-risk class investment. Though you might argue the entrepreneur could get investments from 1000x as many middle-class investors instead this would make it MUCH harder to raise capital and would require a lot more hand-holding (especially since these investors would tend to be less financially savy). In other words, concentrated wealth is actually beneficial to startups and other high-risk investments which tend to benefit society most.
Third, a great percentage of the "wealth" of the wealthiest part of society is invested in one investment (e.g., the company they founded...and these are often very closely held). This "wealth" is often very much paper wealth that is not liquid in practice. For instance, Bill Gates is worth billions of dollars, but most of this is in MSFT and he could not sell it for anywhere near the current market price without causing Microsoft's stock to plummet. Many other wealthy individuals also own private companies where selling off a stake of their ownership is very difficult to do (especially without risking losing control, valuation, waste time talking to new investors, etc).
This is just another way of saying you want the government to forcibly redistribute income and wealth for its own sake (not just for revenue purposes). You might at least consider the impact of what this forcible redistribution of wealth might mean to society. For instance, if you would propose, say, taxing people worth 50M or more at, say, 80% marginally, you should at least understand that these people are not going to risk additional capital to say, fund a high-tech biotech company (90% chance of losing everything), let alone personally start said biotech with greater personal risk, tremendously hard work, stress, and so on.
As for your comment about wealth accumulation, the truth is not so cut and dried. For instance, there is serious academic research that has shown that the wealthiest individuals (top 2%, 1%,
First, most universities these days are, in fact, patenting and copyrighting these academic scientists' technology if it is deemed to be of commercial value. Both the schools and often times researchers make money by licensing this technology or spinning off companies (Billions of dollars worth).
Second, the scientists are being paid substantial sums of money to perform research (much of which is further subsidized) regardless of the results (this money is coming from wealth tax payers, alumni, students, corporations, etc). This is not free and they are far from self-sustaining. Their position is more akin to that of an employee than that of an entreprenuer/tech. company. They take almost no risk--they get paid regardless of what happens and they live a pretty comfortable lifestyle while doing so.
Third, the scientists do not live in a scientific vacuum. Much of their research depends or benefits greatly from commercial products and innovations. Consider the word processor, the spreadsheet, super-computers, high speed networking gear, fiberoptics, various motors, PCs, modern microscopes,
In any event, my point is not that university research is worthless or that its "openness" is always inherently bad. To the contrary, I assert that both fundamental/open research and closed/IP systems should exist and that they can and do benefit each other. However, the notion that we can convert our economy over to a largely "open" one in which all ideas are freely shared is foolish. These few scientists exist and do what they do largely because we can afford to pay them to do so. We simply cannot afford to subsidize the great mass of self-titled software developers to produce in the same way so that they can produce a bunch of free and open software. We must instead support a system that rewards intelligent risk-taking behavior, so that those that actually make contributions actually profit, and this system generally requires some significant degree of closedness (usually as enforced by IP rights).
Which returns us to the point at hand. You can't base an economy off of something that is 100% free. There MUST be exchange as a general rule. Yes, you can give and share with people within this world part of the time, but this secondary to your ability to actually earn a living. The mere fact that some software is produced "for free" and that a very small number of them are even remotely competetive with the non-free alternatives does not mean that this system is self-sustaining or that it will work elsewhere.
First, if your product developers blog, they may be giving your competition advanced notice of what you are up to much sooner than you otherwise might.
Second, the bloggers do not necessarily represent the average user. In fact, in my experience those that read and respond to blogs often have widely divergent needs from the targeted customer. If your responders are largely hard-core geeks, say, they may be pushing for more advanced features instead of what the other 90% of your customers most want (e.g., usability). Advanced feature requests are rarely appropriate for a product at an early stage of development and that time is generally better spent on more fundamental issues.
Third, what someone asks for and what they actually most need as a real world customer are often very different. Having been involved in product development, it has been my experience that most people can't articulate what they most want. They often do not understand, for instance, that the current products out there are horendously and unnecessarily hard to use. Even if they "feel" frustrated with usability, they can rarely identify what frustrates them exactly, let alone propose a better way to solve it. Often times their requests actually hamper what they need (e.g., add this feature as the expense of greatly increasing UI complexity).
Lastly, I believe you can actually increase negative publicity about your product by blogging. If your blog readers are heavily exposed to your product and expect that their suggestions will be taken seriously, you have to also remember that they may represent the bulk of the first users when you launch. They may take for granted what you have already accomplished and their expectations may be out of line with what you can or will deliver. Instead what you may get for your troubles is negative publicity coming from a bunch of people that really don't represent your target base and yet these same people might serve to steer a good number of your target customers away.
I'll admit that I didn't RTFA. However, I would argue that Apple and companies like them are perhaps the best arguments not to blog. I would assert that their products are far more focused on usability (and ultimately their customers) and have tended to be far better recieved on a marginal basis than any of their competitors. If you were to read many of the modern blogs on, say, the ipod and other portable players you would get the impression that customers prefer anything but and that they really want a ton more features. In practice, most people still prefer the latest iterations of the ipod and I would argue that apple's marginal efforts are still better directed than most...
Blogging probably makes sense sometimes (depending on: the stage of development, user base, type of product, etc) but I also think there are many where it is very much counter-productive. You might argue that management might simply, say, ignore certain input, but this kind of input can also serve as a distraction for your developers and may be bad for morale.
You can't simply aggregate your payments together to determine the real cost of interest, you have to take into account inflation and the time value of money (depreciating your cash flows accordingly). Also, I'm curious how you arrive at a figure 3x more than the principle unless you're a bad credit risk and/or choose your credit poorly. A 30 year fixed mortgage at, say, 6% on 20K comes out to about 18K in real interest over 30 years (subtracting inflation ~2%, ignoring TVM). Yet you somehow are paying 3x more than this reasonable interest. This is also ignoring the fact that the government subsidizes your interest payments in the form of tax deductions (and ignores the fact that your equity in your home is probably appreciating in value more quickly than the interest)
Wrong. Whatever timeframe you want to look at that includes a reasonably large amount of time over the past century actually shows relative decreases in the share of wealth amongst the top 2%, top 1%, top .1% and even top .01%. http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/estateshort.pdf Please look at page 13 of the PDF. For instance, in 1913 the top %.01 of the country owned about 10% of the overall wealth and now they own about 4% (with some relatively small increases over the past decade).
I studied economics and I disagree. Please enumerate the countries that demonstrate your point that are so similar to the US that a reasonable person couldn't disagree. If you can't or won't, then you really can't reasonably assert, against the status quo, that this is simple myth.
Name them. You are the one that is stidently arguing for change and asserting that it is somehow obvious, certainly this must be a trivial exercise then.
I can only assume you are referring to the correlation between poverty and crime. However, even if you take for granted that less poverty means less crime, that does not mean that social transfer programs will actually achieve, over the long run, either less poverty or less crime. If these social programs cause a net loss in wealth overtime, increased unemployment, etc, then the benefits of the transfer are easily outstripped by the losses. For instance, France has a huge social welfare system, and yet they have hundreds of thousands of Arabs in their streets that have been essentially rioting for a long time now (long since before the US press picked up on it) despite it (likely due to the fact that they can't find jobs, and so on).
You are essentially arguing that any form of taxation is socialism. This is just plain ridiculous. Socialism is essentially about wealth redistribution for its own sake. Taxation, as has been practiced in our economy (by and large) and others long before "socialism" was even an invented, is about recognizing that there are certain costs that have to be pooled. The intent of them as well as the degrees of taxation are very different.
Prove
Not so fast.
First, these countries with "higher standards of living" are small, essentially homogoneous, and have economies that are largely dependent on extraction of natural resources (and much less so with developing new technologies, medicines, services, etc).
Second, the "higher standards of living" are essentially defined by arbitrary equations and do not necessarily tell you the complete picture (such as the fact that many of the young in these same countries have to go abroad to find employment).
Third, just because you think it "works" for them, does not mean they did better under these systems.
Fourth, you seem to assume that equality itself should be the end goal and not actual absolute improvement overtime. I, for one, would rather have a smaller piece of a much larger pie than a larger (or more "equal") piece of a smaller pie.
Lastly, none of this demonstrates that the US can or even should try to replicate what these socialist governments have done.
Your example is very much detached from reality. The great majority of wealth does not lie with the uber-uber-rich (billionaires), but from the lesser known multi-millionaires and millionare variety. There are only about 700 billionaires in the US (with an average networth of ~3.2b). Presuming your wet-dream could materialize and you could liquidate the assets of these billionaires at 100% all at once (ignoring for a minute that they'd have to die and that most of their wealth is just on paper), that would only give those 100m "poor" about 22K per person. This is hardly enough for anyone to even buy anything even resembling a farm, let alone enough to try to live off of. And, of course, this ignores the fact that: they're already being taxed (capital gains, inheritance, state, etc), that many have multiple heirs, charities, etc.
Wrong. The "problem" is that most Americans, especially those that actually take the trouble to vote, don't agree with your point of view.
Again, a gross over-simplification. The principle is highly contentious and many highly informed people disagree with this point of view. Besides which, taxing inheritances would do relatively little to "level" this since the richest have not inherited most of their wealth by and large. What you are obviously implying (but not actually saying) is higher capital gains, dividends, and income/salary taxes... which is actually quite easy to argue with.
There are degrees of artificiality. Very few people would be confused if I said, a 1m-line-of-code computer program that tries to replicate the world, that can only run on a state of the art computer, is a whole lot more artificial than, say, regular-old butter. Both are man-made and are thus artificial, yes, but one is a whole lot further down the chain of human interference.
Well, no. First, I would assert that things that are highly artificial are by definition new to society (though the reverse is not necessarily true). They are highly correlated in this context. Second, the word "new" itself is not any more precise unless you consider degree. Any item created is bound to be new whether artificial or natural. There will almost always be subtle variations in composition. If I bake a batch of cookies my actual implementation is bound to be slightly off from the recipe I was given and will therefore be "new" -- just not necessarily meaningfully so. If I were to buy a steak, the odds are that the cattle had unique DNA and possibly even appreciable differences from the cattle found generations before (with or without human interference). It is usually only those things that are human-engineered that can be dramatically new or novel in human experience.
In any event, the discussion is the same regardless of semantics, that an elaborate reality constructed by humans just might represent a unique threat to individuals and that it is its degree of removal from the natural world itself that is a significant distinguishing factor from other activities. That does not mean that it is necessarily bad, but that it is not unreasonable not to take assurances that it is just like playing soccer, chess, or any number of other activities.
Why is it if I type in a website URL with DNS entry that simply does not exist, that it can't show me anything meaningful? This is an example:
Well, I am connected to the internet--it should be able to test for this pretty easily!
There is no website--it can't even find the domain.
Finally, at the end they mention that maybe I typed the wrong address.
They shouldn't have changed the interface unless it offered a clear advantage. Maybe if they gave me a less dumbed down answer I could decipher this much more quickly. Why not give a short meangingful error first and then give some likely explanations? Why not, if they really want to help the less-technical user, automatically perform some simple tests automatically or on-demand? For instance, see if it can http/ping a highly redundant MS site? Check their search engine/DNS records for existence of the domain/host? Maybe even try to search for a likely match?... Bleh.
Ok, I'm bitching and I haven't done extensive testing, but it strikes me as a pretty poor attempt at improvement. It does _not_ help me (as an advanced user) and I'm sure it will only make things more difficult when I try to walk less-advanced users through these things over the phone in the future....
On the other hand, like any other contentious issue, it is also possible to over-react to it. More specifically, some people completely fail to acknowledge that the degree of artificiality of a thing can be highly relevant. Humans have largely adapted to that which exists in nature (without the assistance of humans) and, to a lesser degree, that technology that humans been created, modified, exploited by mankind for thousands of years (e.g., heat, man-made shelter, clothing, agriculture, etc). Therefore, it stands to reason that that which is highly novel, i.e., highly artificial, may represent an increased risk in practice.
Those people on slashdot, for instance, that spew out knee-jerk reactions against concerns over abuse of these massively-multiplayer games and dismiss it by saying it is just like playing sports or anything else may, in fact, be missing the point (especially when there are many real examples of abuse).
Yes, there are dangerous natural items abound (very few rational people would dispute this if asked a pointed question about it). However, we humans have a natural fear of most of those things that are dangerous items in the natural world (or, if not, we're taught to fear it or avoid it). Most humans don't jump off cliffs unless they mean to kill themselves. Most humans run away from snakes. Most people don't eat foods that we don't know to be safe and edible. We have never and will never encounter blackholes, so we don't need to fear them.... We don't have these mechanisms to regulate our usage of these games.
I am simply advocating a balanced view. My point is not that artificial items are necessarily bad, but that they can be. The degree artificiality is relevant and, I would argue, makes it more likely to be harmful than, say, Grandma's cookie recipe. We don't need to worry about that which has existed for millenia to nearly the same degree--we know the risks, we are programmed to avoid/control them, we are taught how to respond, etc.
I agree that societies evolve and that this is highly important. However, most scientists would take great exception to conflating and expanding the theory of evolution to areas outside of biology.
Is not society's shifting fear of that which is artificial just another example of behavioral adapation?
In all seriousness, I think what the previous poster that you attacked meant is that it is very much artificial. Highly artificial things, especially that which we have only been exposed to over a decade or two at most (never mind thousands and millions of years), is perhaps best approached with some degree of wariness.
If you wish to look at these sorts of games from an evolutionary point of view, then you might consider that humans do not have any adaptations to deal with it appropriately since we have not been exposed to it for generation after generation. We might enjoy sex to the exclusion of all else, say, but our organs simply won't allow us to go at it for very long. We might enjoy sports, but our bodies are apt to give out on us first (and send you warning signs well before you collapse). We possess no such mechanisms to inhibit abusive behavior such as this (especially in the modern world where enough food and shelter can be had by many if not most Americans with none to relatively little effort)
It's also worth noting that Bill Gates' role at Microsoft through out its history has been much less "businessman" than it has been "chief technologist". Gates certainly shaped many of Microsoft's critical decisions (for better and for worse) and things might have turned out differently if it weren't for his raw determination or if he completely lacked insight, but I hardly think it qualifies him as a great leader.
Google is almost entirely web-based for all intents and purposes. Google can bring all of their users up to the latest version and state easily and almost instantaneously. Microsoft, by contrast, has to support these platforms in a very distributed environment. Thousands of seperate desktops that may or may not get updated for months or years and updates that may not be properly installed (these, after all, are controlled largely by users -- not their employees) As they release additional updates, these difficulties compound on themselves.
Additionally, Microsft is developing an OPERATING SYSTEM which is far more complex and upon which thousands of seperate critical applications depend on. It would not be acceptible to most of Microsoft's customers if MS were to suddenly break their favorite application with an update. The level of interaction is much greater than anything Google has to contend with.
I respect Google. They are good and what they do, better perhaps that Microsoft is at what they do (their core business: Windows, Office, SQL, etc). These companies are, however, largely engaged in seperate businesses and are at very different stages of maturity.
You might argue that Linux uses this rapid-release model. However, the distributions are a total mess as far as the average user is concerned, i.e., overall usability, installing applications, etc.
Posting this article as if it were some brilliant nugget of wisdom is just plain retarded.
First, these tools truly do not anonymize your P2P activity. All they do is block whole groups of IP addresses. The blocked addresses are presumably the record labels and other alleged "bad actors".
Second, the assumption that this is an effective means of blocking the record labels or other entities from finding out what you are up to is seriously flawed. The breadth of the IP groups that these tools block are bound to yield many false positives (many innocent and unrelated sites get blocked). Additionally, they are fundamentally flawed because they presume that RIAA/MPAA/etc will confine their activity to obvious named entities and not one or several cable modems leased from comcast. Even when this monitorer has been active reporting copyright violations and such, there is generally no reliable means for these list-makers to establish which IP actually was responsible for the original observation/evidence gathering. Even if the list-makers could presumably establish that, they would need to ban whole blocks of IPs on dynamic networks (e.g., all of Comcast in LA) to just to block that one account...
Third, using these tools as akin to admitting you are committing piracy because the only concievable utility is to attempt to hide from industry. Though I personally believe that almost all of these P2P systems are used almost exclusively, in practice, for various forms of copyright infringement, with the exception of BitTorrent (which has clear legit uses), using these tools basically just reinforces that you are trying to hide your actions from a particular set of people, namely, RIAA, MPAA, and other related organizations that are trying to enforce copyright.
You might argue that the powers that be are misreporting violations, but I, for one, do not buy into the notion that users would go through the trouble of installing this tool (and all the pains that go with it) just to try to escape the very remote chance that RIAA/MPAA will falsely report your linux distro download as a piracy.
Achieving tight control is actually a fairly complicated task. It is difficult to do as well as a non-diabetics (close perhaps, but not quite the same). While I agree that the pump simplifies things dramatically and that most pump users achieve fairly tight control on average such that their complications are much more in line with non-diabetics, most still suffer significant highs and lows with some regularity and they still must structure their life around the disease to some extent. Unfortunately recent research has shown that while average blood sugars (as represented by a1cs) are important, the degree of volatility is perhaps even more a important predictor of long term health complications... In other words, the volatility that virtually all pump users suffer to some extent (non-pump users even more so) or other is still suggests significant complications over the long term.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P
Almost Six Thousand Microsoft patents. Now it is certainly possible Microsoft has a handful of patents assigned indirectly through their acquisitions and licensing agreements, but there can be little doubt that most are assigned directly.
Is there anything to stop someone from:
a) reverse engineering the protocols and creating their own closed source libraries to access the database
(As a corollary to this, if GPL software can claim this, what is to stop, say, Microsoft from imposing punative costs on 3rd party software that attempts to interoperate with its own servers and/or clients?)
b) modify the older LGPL library to bring it up to date with the current database? Though the changes would have to be released, the code that accesses it would not... if I understand it correctly.
c) using one of the existing modified-LGPL or Closed Source libraries?
If it is not possible to do this, why? If the mere deployment of the database or inter-operability with it becomes grounds for being compelled to open source everything (or potentially be compelled to pay exorbitant fees) which in any shape, way, or form builds upon GPL software, then is there not a real danger for any more conventional (closed source) software company to potentially have their business model be destroyed overnight at the whim of the open source developers or the dual-licensed software/support company? How is a commercial software company supposed to port their software to, say, the Linux platform without facing this kind of risk?
To be clear, I am not opposed to a hybrid licensing model. I can see the advantages for various parties, namely, Open Software developers and the MySQL AB. Providing everyone behaves reasonably and consistently, I see this as being a workable system. However, I can also see great risk for businesses that wish to build upon open source software if a reasonable licensing structure is not available (or continued) that permits closed source development.
If it weren't some of the hardest working members of our society, namely entrepreneurs and those that participate in such ventures, there would be fewer jobs and fewer technologies available for society (many of which, fyi, are labor/time/life saving products/services). Likewise, if a large swath of America were to decide to live modestly suddenly, this would have tremendous consequences for jobs in a large number of industries, e.g., retail, travel, entertainment, restaurants, construction, technological devices, etc. Changes like these would increase unemployment dramatically and reduce overall wages. These unemployed and underemployed people would also secondarily reduce the demands for all sorts of other goods and services (e.g., law, medicine, engineering, programming, etc).... The balance that you seek may suddenly become impossible.
It is really only in the last 100-200 years that large swathes of our society has even had enough time away from producing the bare necessities for their families (esp. food and shelter) to seriously consider "quality of life" issues. Meanwhile most of the world is still living like that and is rapidly trying to catch up...
So...while yes, I do believe certain people work too hard and may be able to make better decisions for themselves, I also believe that it would be equally, if not more damaging, if we were to fundamentally change our goals en masse.
Think of the great companies that are known for their outstanding support and customer service (which DOES differentiate and tends keep customers coming back). The secret to their success is rarely a secret formula or a training process. The "secret" is generally plenty of good management, good front-line workers, hard work, and a certain attention to detail. The method may not be proprietary, but proper execution (read: good and consistent service) is a rare thing in this world. Software can be a very helpful, even necessary, tool for improvement and it can help further differentiate even if the competition is theoretically able to copy it.