Surely you mean any of a thousand small towns in the midwest who rely on county and state police to maintain law and order?
As for the counties in South Dakota, did you have a specific one in mind? Are these counties in such a state of abject wilderness that no government is even feasible, there being nothing to govern? Or are these counties that defer to the state government, whenever governing is necessary? Or are these truly zones of anarchy, counties in name only, within the borders of which no law, rule, or regulation is ever proposed, adopted, or enforced?
Whatever it is, it doesn't appear to be a model that scales well...
So what happens when someone converts an old microwave to an EMP blaster and shorts out the joystick, then sends thier own signal to the bot?
The bot operators bomb the fuck out of the grid the EMP blast came from? The bot operators bomb the fuck out of the grid the hacker signal is coming from?
I imagine this thing is going to be extremely tactical.
It's not going to be a regular grunt, slogging across the battlefield.
It's going to be used in close-quarters urban combat, supervised by squads of Marines or Rangers at close range.
You're not going to see a lot of these things get scooped up for the same reason you don't see a lot of soldiers get kidnapped during a firefight.
I think for the most part, you're going to see it used in variations of the Talon's current role: bomb disposal.
It's going to be the point man on a forced entry mission. The building is already surrounded, where would the bot-napper run to?
It's going to take the lead whenever biological or chemical agents have been used.
Probably easier to steal one from the storage facility, stateside.
Hell, the core components are already easily available on the open market, why would a droid thief want to go to the trouble of snatching one out from under the noses of some very attentive soldiers?
I mean, it's just a machine. The minute shenanigans are perpetrated, there'd be no reason not to shell the entire grid. A stolen or turned bot would be a big neon sign saying "cluster bomb here, please".
No, I think people will want to stay very far away from these guys. And we haven't even gotten to the part where they're armed with deadly weapons.
I'm suggesting that civilization depends in part on the ability of Policemen of Good Will to keep legitimate secrets. (Which is, in fact, exactly what I said, although I've rearranged the order of the words, here.)
I should think your un-policed locations had police of a form you were unfamiliar with, and therefore did not recognize. But I could be wrong. Care to elaborate? (I mean, I'm all for charming anecdotes about bucolic villages deep in the woods, where no one knows the face of Evil, but if you're working your way around to an argument that policemen are not necessary for civilization, I'd much rather have that instead.)
These are good reasons why the U.S. would want to be involved--and it is involved, very much so--but not necessarily responsible.
In fact, given what happened the last time the U.S. took responsibility for negotations with North Korea, we ended up in the mess we're in now. And that mess was only exacerbated by the willingness of the regional powers to let the U.S. do all the work, and take all the blame when North Korea didn't play fair.
Indeed, there seems to be a tendency amongst the regional powers to pass the buck early and often, when it comes to North Korea. It seems clear to me that the current U.S. policy is based on the assumption that unilateral talks with NK don't work. This assumption is borne out by recent history. Thus, the preferable course of action would be to establish a negotiating framework that forced the regional powers to accept some responsibility, for the stability of the region, and hold them jointly accountable for the outcome of the negotiations. This probably would not happen so long as there were unilateral negotiations in progress.
And you still haven't explained the contradiction implied at the beginning of this thread, between Bush the Incompetent and Bush The Only Man Who Can Negotiate Peace With North Korea.
You may be denied access because people wanted in connection with gunshots are generally considered suspects. And it's often customary to keep a suspect's identity confidential, while the investigation is still in progress.
Your concern is, in principle, a fine thing. But keep in mind that Policemen of Good Will have some thoroughly legitimate reasons to keep secrets, and civilization depends in part on their ability to do so.
Riiight. Because introducing surveillance tapes as evidence in a court of law just isn't done. And evidence that makes the cops look bad is never allowed in a trial.
But the first time an undercover LAPD officer is involved in a shooting during the course of an ongoing investigation, I'm sure you'll be the first to demand that his identity be revealed.
Yes, but why?
Why the U.S.? South Korea shares a language, a culture, and an extensive network of family ties with North Korea, why shouldn't they take the lead in brokering an agreement?
China is the most powerful nation in the region, and North Korea is a much more immediate problem to China than to the U.S., no matter how you figure it. Why shouldn't China take the lead?
And--again--given America's past failures to broker a sincere agreement with North Korea, why should China, South Korea, or any of the other powers in the region trust the U.S. as North Korea's proxy?
Why would the U.S. want the responsibility?
And why, again, do you think that Bush is the man best qualified to negotiate with North Korea, when you've already explained in detail how incompetent he is, and when Bill Clinton has already demonstrated that even allegedly skilled American negotiators are incompetent where North Korea is concerned?
Finally, on another note, what makes you think there's even something to negotiate here?
If you're unwilling to convince me that privacy is a good thing, then you cannot expect me to take your side when The Man oppresses you.
Also, unless the community as a whole reaches a consensus on what our rights are, then your own personal definition of human rights is meaningless.
Well, maybe it means something to you. A bit of fantasy to comfort you as you hide under your blankets from The Man. But until you're both willing and able to convince your friends and neighbors that your personal view of the world is accurate and worthwhile, you're not going to get very far.
Obviously, many people actually do agree with you--more or less, at least. And yet you cannot explain why you agree on this thing, what its value is and why I should also agree with you. Hardly an impressive example of deep thought, there.
I see little clarity in this passage, only a vague reference to "unreasonable" activities. This is wide open to interpretation, and indeed might be interpreted differently by different societies, or even by the same society at different points in its history.
Hardly a definitive right to privacy, assuming such a thing even exists in nature in the first place.
Actually, I suspect that privacy isn't in fact a natural human right.
But if privacy isn't a human right, then the Constitution can only grant it as a convenience, as a useful rule for maintaining order and justice in society. But if the Constitution doesn't spell out such a right anywhere, explicitly or implicitly, then such a "right" can't properly be applied as a law in this land.
And while the Constitution does explicitly leave all un-enumrated rights firmly in the hands of the citizenry, we still haven't even touched the question of whether or not privacy is a right at all.
At best, a good argument could convince me that protection of personal privacy is a good rule for a society to have, but you have yet to advance such an argument.
Oh, please.
Please re-read the blurb, if not the actual article, for one thing.
The judge ruled that this instance of keystroke logging was not a wiretap.
He based his ruling in part on a prior ruling that keystroke logging is not a wiretap, which is why the FBI in that prior case were allowed to use keystroke logging without a wiretap warrant.
This is stated explicitly in the introductory paragraph for this story.
Far from having it both ways, you're getting it the same way both in both cases.
Once again, from the top: As the intro makes clear, keystroke logging is not a wiretap. It's not a wiretap for the FBI, and it's not a wiretap for this guy. That is why this guy isn't being charged with illegal wiretapping, and why the FBI doesn't need a wiretap warrant to log keystrokes.
Oh, I'm familiar with the 9th Amendment, that "[t]he enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
My actual question had nothing to do with what rights the Constitution may or may not enumerate. Please re-read my original post, and see if you get it this time around.
(Hint: The Declaration of Independence makes refrence to certain universal truths that the Declaration's authors believed to be objectively, absolutely true, independent of the Declaration or any other temporal law or custom. My actual question had to do with elements in that absolute class. Good luck!)
Two hundred years ago, there was no way that Americans could live the "American way of life"--at least, not for very long. Between now and the time China "catches up" with America, the "American way of life" will most likely have moved on to something vastly more expensive and yet vastly more efficient. I suspect that the "Chinese way of life" will do something similar, and similarly sustainable. Human history has a lot of stories of civilizations adapting and advancing as conventional resource exploitation methods result in "unsustainable" population growth. On the other hand, the number of stories about civilizations that advance themselves into extinction for lack of resources is quite small.
Some cultures don't succeed as well as others. I wouldn't count India amongst the failures, though.
Consider the Aztecs, on the other hand. Human sacrifice, institutionalized slavery... in the end, not even their cool calendars carved in stone made the Aztec culture truly viable. In the end, the Aztecs failed miserably.
I note with sadness that the Arab culture has also passed quite a few hundred years without any notable successes.
Interesting points, all, but this one struck me most forcefully:
True, he is incompetent for not dealing unilaterally with NK. That is not to say INSTEAD OF multilaterally, but in addition to.
How would that work? Would Bush say one thing to Kim Jong Il in the private unilateral meetings, and another thing in the multilateral meetings? Which talks--the unilateral or the multilateral--would take precedence? How would China react, if it was pressured to participate in multilateral talks, while at the same time it knew that the U.S. was making a seperate deal with North Korea on the side?
And keep in mind that in North Korea, China has a neighbor with nuclear weapons, a failed economy, a madman for a ruler, and a starving, brainwashed, and desperate populace. What are the chances of China continuing to ignore this problem and blame the U.S. for every setback, so long as the U.S. is engaged in unilateral negotiations?
Indeed, under what possible scenario would we even want to cut off North Korea's neighbors from the peace process? It's to China's everlasting shame, and the shame of South Korea, Japan, and others in the region, that the U.S. has to take the lead on this at all.
Finally, let's not forget what happened the last time the U.S. tried unilateral negotiations with North Korea. After explaining just how incompetent Bush really is, how are you going to convince me that he's also a better negotiator than Bill Clinton? I should think you'd prefer China handled this one, really.
To me, distributors forcing producers of movies to give up rights solely because they hold the keys to the theaters is no different than all automobile manufacturers keeping interest in our cars after we paid for them.
I see you have completely missed my point.
Movie producers have no right to movie distribution. Nobody is required to market, transport, or show their movie. If the producer cannot afford to do it himself, then he's going to have to team up with people who can. That's just the way it is.
You seem to think that the vast network of movie theaters and distribution channels is there for the benefit of the movie producers. This is not true. That network belongs to the people who put in the time and effort and money to create it. Those are the people who have the right to use it, however they see fit.
The right to distribution you're talking about simply does not exist. No director--not Smith, not Raimi, not even you or I--has any basis for demanding access to that network, except on the terms given by the people whose network it is.
Take Raimi, for example. He was not satisfied with simply making the movie. He also desired an audience for the movie. But fulfilling desires costs money. Money he did not have. So he faced the dilemma we all face, every day: "Can I afford to fulfill my desires, or not?" You seem to think that somebody else should fulfill his desires, on his behalf, on his terms. This is madness.
Since you like silly examples so much, how about this one:
I need money to pay the rent this month. You have money. Therefore, I propose the following arrangement: You give me money, and I may or may not pay rent with it. I won't pay you back--not even the principal. If you don't agree to these terms, then you're being unfair. You're giving me no choice but to walk away. And as you've so eloquently argued, the choice to walk away is no choice at all. So when can I expect your money?
So in your view, the choices available to the film maker is to not make films or to give up all rights to the films.
Actually, I was thinking of musicians, so thanks for getting me back on topic.
I'm not sure how that is a choice?
Actually, it's a pretty clear choice. It's not the only choice, though. For example, there's the choice I described quite clearly in my original post: Get a job and fund their own movies with their own money. Consider the case of Clerks, over which Kevin Smith has complete control, because he paid for it himself.
But I can see you're going to have trouble understanding this. Let's draw an analogy with home ownership, shall we?
Let's shall!
Would you "chose" home ownership if EVERY mortgage company or EVERY realtor kept the title to the property? Using your argument, you could simply choose to be homeless.
Or I could choose to build my own house, on my own land, using money I earned myself by doing work of some kind.
How about a car ownership analogy?
Would you "chose" to buy a car if EVERY car dealership kept ownership of the car. Using your argument, you could always choose to walk. And if the car dealerships bought all the roads and forbid walking. You could "choose" to stay in one spot and never leave.
Hrm. Okay, maybe not a car ownership analogy.
Just as the hypothetical automotive scenario you describe is so far from reality as to be stupendously silly, so too is your attempted parallel with the movie industry stupendously silly.
There are many different ways to make, fund, and distribute films. Many of them are quite friendly to the artist. Many others are not. There are, however, plenty of choices. And remember, 100 years ago, it was very difficult to make movies, and impossible to make movies of the quality available today. But what hasn't changed at all in 100 years is the artist's complete lack of any human right or privilege to make movies easily or cheaply. There are many more choices and opportunities available to the aspiring young filmmaker today, than there were 100 years ago. But that doesn't entitle the artist to the easy answers. Quite the opposite: making movies still costs money. And the people that provide the money are entitled to impose whatever conditions they want. Don't like it? Don't take their money. Make movies within your own budget. Or--once again--get a job, and use your own money. Suffer for your art!
If that's your world, I sure in heck hope you get it one day because you deserve it.
Oh, make no mistake: It's your world, too. The world where the default state is, you suffer and die. Anything good in your life is the direct result of hard work or dumb luck. Don't kid yourself that artists have any special rights, to be successful and happy on somebody else's dime. They're people just like you and me, and if they want something worthwhile, they have the same two choices you and I have: work hard to secure it, or submit to the demands of whoever is willing to give it to them.
The reason the powers that be get away with it is, again, merely because we tolerate it. I certainly wish we didn't!
Actually, they "get away with it" because they are willing to pay for art. Their subsidy comes with a lot of conditions, which can be easily avoided simply by not taking their money.
If these artists were serious, they'd get day jobs, work hard, and fund their art themselves. Then they wouldn't have to put up with any conditions at all on their art or its ownership. The only thing we should stop tolerating is no-talent assclowns who sold their souls for a ride in a limousine, and then came whining to us that they have no money and the evil corporations were mean to them. Get a real job, asshat.
I think that if the theoretical parameters of the ideal scramjet play out in practice, they'll be a very efficient motor for getting things into low earth orbit.
Sure, they don't work outside the atmosphere, but what about a next-gen shuttle that develops most of its thrust during the scramjet phase, uses a small rocket motor to get that extra bit of velocity at the upper end, and still has enough room left over for some worthwhile payload?
I imagine that's the kind of thing NASA's interested in.
Better than what came before, I'm willing to grant you.
There could be other factors besides Keynsian economics at work here. For all your argument tells me, Keynsian economics may be the final obstacle between us and true prosperity.
Regarding the growth in income disparity, it is also true that both ends of the scale have also grown. The super-rich may have gotten super-richer, but the poor have also gotten much less poor, since the advent of Reganomics. The low end of the scale keeps rising, but you're hung up on the fact the high end keeps rising, too. You even explain why: It's easiest to make money by having money. Hardly a surprise, or a social evil, yes? Squint differently, indeed.
I do think you're right about at least one thing, though: It is indeed sad that the easiest way to make money is to have money. This is sad because it tempts people to become wealthy through means other than discipline, hard work, and dedication to their own well-being. There are many on the welfare rolls who could not survive without such assistance. But how many more are collecting welfare because having that money mailed to them every month is certainly easier than getting a job?
Progressive taxation is a result of extending your principle: the easiest way to make money is to take it from somebody else. I don't think the easiest solution is necessarily the best one. Reducing tax revenues would force our society to make some real choices about what we really need to be spending our money on. They'd be hard choices to make, but I think they'd be good choices ones. Progressive taxation is an easy choice (after all, the rich are a minority, and obviously have a hard time voting such measures down, for all their vast wealth), and I think for that very reason it's a bad one.
People like what's easy more often than they like what's right--probably because what's right is also often hard.
About the best thing that can be said for progressive taxation is that it works--for now, at least. But what works is not always best, and the status quo isn't always desireable in the long term.
I'm sorry, but "it's okay, they can afford it" isn't actually the same as "fair".
Also, requiring people to pay more is not the same as asking them to pay more. Don't characterize a compulsory measure, that carries stiff penalties for noncompliance, as a favor humbly asked and generously granted.
Other than that, I think you make some good points.
However, idealism and mathematics aside, I strongly suspect that compulsory redistribution of wealth (which is what a progressive income tax is) is not a good way to improve society. Certainly history has given such schemes a mixed record at best.
Viewing the rich as a pod of whales or a herd of bison, to be exploited at will for the common good, only serves to provide society with an easy source of money. And as long as we have an easy source of money, we will keep throwing money at the problem, instead of trying to solve it.
Finally, this thought: Since the rich have more invested in our society than the rest of us do, shouldn't they have more authority over how our society is run? They're the ones paying for it, after all.
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Surely you mean any of a thousand small towns in the midwest who rely on county and state police to maintain law and order?
As for the counties in South Dakota, did you have a specific one in mind? Are these counties in such a state of abject wilderness that no government is even feasible, there being nothing to govern? Or are these counties that defer to the state government, whenever governing is necessary? Or are these truly zones of anarchy, counties in name only, within the borders of which no law, rule, or regulation is ever proposed, adopted, or enforced?
Whatever it is, it doesn't appear to be a model that scales well...
The bot operators bomb the fuck out of the grid the EMP blast came from? The bot operators bomb the fuck out of the grid the hacker signal is coming from?
I imagine this thing is going to be extremely tactical. It's not going to be a regular grunt, slogging across the battlefield. It's going to be used in close-quarters urban combat, supervised by squads of Marines or Rangers at close range. You're not going to see a lot of these things get scooped up for the same reason you don't see a lot of soldiers get kidnapped during a firefight. I think for the most part, you're going to see it used in variations of the Talon's current role: bomb disposal. It's going to be the point man on a forced entry mission. The building is already surrounded, where would the bot-napper run to? It's going to take the lead whenever biological or chemical agents have been used. Probably easier to steal one from the storage facility, stateside. Hell, the core components are already easily available on the open market, why would a droid thief want to go to the trouble of snatching one out from under the noses of some very attentive soldiers? I mean, it's just a machine. The minute shenanigans are perpetrated, there'd be no reason not to shell the entire grid. A stolen or turned bot would be a big neon sign saying "cluster bomb here, please". No, I think people will want to stay very far away from these guys. And we haven't even gotten to the part where they're armed with deadly weapons.
Not at all!
I'm suggesting that civilization depends in part on the ability of Policemen of Good Will to keep legitimate secrets. (Which is, in fact, exactly what I said, although I've rearranged the order of the words, here.)
I should think your un-policed locations had police of a form you were unfamiliar with, and therefore did not recognize. But I could be wrong. Care to elaborate? (I mean, I'm all for charming anecdotes about bucolic villages deep in the woods, where no one knows the face of Evil, but if you're working your way around to an argument that policemen are not necessary for civilization, I'd much rather have that instead.)
These are good reasons why the U.S. would want to be involved--and it is involved, very much so--but not necessarily responsible. In fact, given what happened the last time the U.S. took responsibility for negotations with North Korea, we ended up in the mess we're in now. And that mess was only exacerbated by the willingness of the regional powers to let the U.S. do all the work, and take all the blame when North Korea didn't play fair. Indeed, there seems to be a tendency amongst the regional powers to pass the buck early and often, when it comes to North Korea. It seems clear to me that the current U.S. policy is based on the assumption that unilateral talks with NK don't work. This assumption is borne out by recent history. Thus, the preferable course of action would be to establish a negotiating framework that forced the regional powers to accept some responsibility, for the stability of the region, and hold them jointly accountable for the outcome of the negotiations. This probably would not happen so long as there were unilateral negotiations in progress. And you still haven't explained the contradiction implied at the beginning of this thread, between Bush the Incompetent and Bush The Only Man Who Can Negotiate Peace With North Korea.
You may be denied access because people wanted in connection with gunshots are generally considered suspects. And it's often customary to keep a suspect's identity confidential, while the investigation is still in progress.
Your concern is, in principle, a fine thing. But keep in mind that Policemen of Good Will have some thoroughly legitimate reasons to keep secrets, and civilization depends in part on their ability to do so.
But the first time an undercover LAPD officer is involved in a shooting during the course of an ongoing investigation, I'm sure you'll be the first to demand that his identity be revealed.
Yes, but why? Why the U.S.? South Korea shares a language, a culture, and an extensive network of family ties with North Korea, why shouldn't they take the lead in brokering an agreement? China is the most powerful nation in the region, and North Korea is a much more immediate problem to China than to the U.S., no matter how you figure it. Why shouldn't China take the lead? And--again--given America's past failures to broker a sincere agreement with North Korea, why should China, South Korea, or any of the other powers in the region trust the U.S. as North Korea's proxy? Why would the U.S. want the responsibility? And why, again, do you think that Bush is the man best qualified to negotiate with North Korea, when you've already explained in detail how incompetent he is, and when Bill Clinton has already demonstrated that even allegedly skilled American negotiators are incompetent where North Korea is concerned? Finally, on another note, what makes you think there's even something to negotiate here?
If you're unwilling to convince me that privacy is a good thing, then you cannot expect me to take your side when The Man oppresses you.
Also, unless the community as a whole reaches a consensus on what our rights are, then your own personal definition of human rights is meaningless.
Well, maybe it means something to you. A bit of fantasy to comfort you as you hide under your blankets from The Man. But until you're both willing and able to convince your friends and neighbors that your personal view of the world is accurate and worthwhile, you're not going to get very far.
Obviously, many people actually do agree with you--more or less, at least. And yet you cannot explain why you agree on this thing, what its value is and why I should also agree with you. Hardly an impressive example of deep thought, there.
Really?
I see little clarity in this passage, only a vague reference to "unreasonable" activities. This is wide open to interpretation, and indeed might be interpreted differently by different societies, or even by the same society at different points in its history.
Hardly a definitive right to privacy, assuming such a thing even exists in nature in the first place.
Actually, I suspect that privacy isn't in fact a natural human right.
But if privacy isn't a human right, then the Constitution can only grant it as a convenience, as a useful rule for maintaining order and justice in society. But if the Constitution doesn't spell out such a right anywhere, explicitly or implicitly, then such a "right" can't properly be applied as a law in this land.
And while the Constitution does explicitly leave all un-enumrated rights firmly in the hands of the citizenry, we still haven't even touched the question of whether or not privacy is a right at all.
At best, a good argument could convince me that protection of personal privacy is a good rule for a society to have, but you have yet to advance such an argument.
This is stated explicitly in the introductory paragraph for this story.
Far from having it both ways, you're getting it the same way both in both cases.
Once again, from the top: As the intro makes clear, keystroke logging is not a wiretap. It's not a wiretap for the FBI, and it's not a wiretap for this guy. That is why this guy isn't being charged with illegal wiretapping, and why the FBI doesn't need a wiretap warrant to log keystrokes.
Is that clearer, now?
My actual question had nothing to do with what rights the Constitution may or may not enumerate. Please re-read my original post, and see if you get it this time around.
(Hint: The Declaration of Independence makes refrence to certain universal truths that the Declaration's authors believed to be objectively, absolutely true, independent of the Declaration or any other temporal law or custom. My actual question had to do with elements in that absolute class. Good luck!)
Other arguments in this thread have already swayed me, but yours has not.
"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech." So far, so good.
But where's your argument that laws about anonymity would abridge free speech?
You can't just flail the Constitution around like a kid with a toy lightsaber, and then claim you've made an argument.
While I freely and unconditionally grant the right to free speech, I'm curious to know how you arrived at a universal human right of anonymity...
Two hundred years ago, there was no way that Americans could live the "American way of life"--at least, not for very long. Between now and the time China "catches up" with America, the "American way of life" will most likely have moved on to something vastly more expensive and yet vastly more efficient. I suspect that the "Chinese way of life" will do something similar, and similarly sustainable. Human history has a lot of stories of civilizations adapting and advancing as conventional resource exploitation methods result in "unsustainable" population growth. On the other hand, the number of stories about civilizations that advance themselves into extinction for lack of resources is quite small.
Some cultures don't succeed as well as others. I wouldn't count India amongst the failures, though.
Consider the Aztecs, on the other hand. Human sacrifice, institutionalized slavery... in the end, not even their cool calendars carved in stone made the Aztec culture truly viable. In the end, the Aztecs failed miserably.
I note with sadness that the Arab culture has also passed quite a few hundred years without any notable successes.
True, he is incompetent for not dealing unilaterally with NK. That is not to say INSTEAD OF multilaterally, but in addition to.
How would that work? Would Bush say one thing to Kim Jong Il in the private unilateral meetings, and another thing in the multilateral meetings? Which talks--the unilateral or the multilateral--would take precedence? How would China react, if it was pressured to participate in multilateral talks, while at the same time it knew that the U.S. was making a seperate deal with North Korea on the side?
And keep in mind that in North Korea, China has a neighbor with nuclear weapons, a failed economy, a madman for a ruler, and a starving, brainwashed, and desperate populace. What are the chances of China continuing to ignore this problem and blame the U.S. for every setback, so long as the U.S. is engaged in unilateral negotiations?
Indeed, under what possible scenario would we even want to cut off North Korea's neighbors from the peace process? It's to China's everlasting shame, and the shame of South Korea, Japan, and others in the region, that the U.S. has to take the lead on this at all.
Finally, let's not forget what happened the last time the U.S. tried unilateral negotiations with North Korea. After explaining just how incompetent Bush really is, how are you going to convince me that he's also a better negotiator than Bill Clinton? I should think you'd prefer China handled this one, really.
I see you have completely missed my point.
Movie producers have no right to movie distribution. Nobody is required to market, transport, or show their movie. If the producer cannot afford to do it himself, then he's going to have to team up with people who can. That's just the way it is.
You seem to think that the vast network of movie theaters and distribution channels is there for the benefit of the movie producers. This is not true. That network belongs to the people who put in the time and effort and money to create it. Those are the people who have the right to use it, however they see fit.
The right to distribution you're talking about simply does not exist. No director--not Smith, not Raimi, not even you or I--has any basis for demanding access to that network, except on the terms given by the people whose network it is.
Take Raimi, for example. He was not satisfied with simply making the movie. He also desired an audience for the movie. But fulfilling desires costs money. Money he did not have. So he faced the dilemma we all face, every day: "Can I afford to fulfill my desires, or not?" You seem to think that somebody else should fulfill his desires, on his behalf, on his terms. This is madness.
Since you like silly examples so much, how about this one:
I need money to pay the rent this month. You have money. Therefore, I propose the following arrangement: You give me money, and I may or may not pay rent with it. I won't pay you back--not even the principal. If you don't agree to these terms, then you're being unfair. You're giving me no choice but to walk away. And as you've so eloquently argued, the choice to walk away is no choice at all. So when can I expect your money?
Actually, I was thinking of musicians, so thanks for getting me back on topic.
I'm not sure how that is a choice?
Actually, it's a pretty clear choice. It's not the only choice, though. For example, there's the choice I described quite clearly in my original post: Get a job and fund their own movies with their own money. Consider the case of Clerks, over which Kevin Smith has complete control, because he paid for it himself.But I can see you're going to have trouble understanding this. Let's draw an analogy with home ownership, shall we?
Let's shall!
Would you "chose" home ownership if EVERY mortgage company or EVERY realtor kept the title to the property? Using your argument, you could simply choose to be homeless.
Or I could choose to build my own house, on my own land, using money I earned myself by doing work of some kind.
How about a car ownership analogy?
Would you "chose" to buy a car if EVERY car dealership kept ownership of the car. Using your argument, you could always choose to walk. And if the car dealerships bought all the roads and forbid walking. You could "choose" to stay in one spot and never leave.
Hrm. Okay, maybe not a car ownership analogy.Just as the hypothetical automotive scenario you describe is so far from reality as to be stupendously silly, so too is your attempted parallel with the movie industry stupendously silly.
There are many different ways to make, fund, and distribute films. Many of them are quite friendly to the artist. Many others are not. There are, however, plenty of choices. And remember, 100 years ago, it was very difficult to make movies, and impossible to make movies of the quality available today. But what hasn't changed at all in 100 years is the artist's complete lack of any human right or privilege to make movies easily or cheaply. There are many more choices and opportunities available to the aspiring young filmmaker today, than there were 100 years ago. But that doesn't entitle the artist to the easy answers. Quite the opposite: making movies still costs money. And the people that provide the money are entitled to impose whatever conditions they want. Don't like it? Don't take their money. Make movies within your own budget. Or--once again--get a job, and use your own money. Suffer for your art!
If that's your world, I sure in heck hope you get it one day because you deserve it.
Oh, make no mistake: It's your world, too. The world where the default state is, you suffer and die. Anything good in your life is the direct result of hard work or dumb luck. Don't kid yourself that artists have any special rights, to be successful and happy on somebody else's dime. They're people just like you and me, and if they want something worthwhile, they have the same two choices you and I have: work hard to secure it, or submit to the demands of whoever is willing to give it to them.
Actually, they "get away with it" because they are willing to pay for art. Their subsidy comes with a lot of conditions, which can be easily avoided simply by not taking their money.
If these artists were serious, they'd get day jobs, work hard, and fund their art themselves. Then they wouldn't have to put up with any conditions at all on their art or its ownership. The only thing we should stop tolerating is no-talent assclowns who sold their souls for a ride in a limousine, and then came whining to us that they have no money and the evil corporations were mean to them. Get a real job, asshat.
Okay, but what rights are artists supposed to have, that they currently do not, that they should therefore reclaim?
I think that if the theoretical parameters of the ideal scramjet play out in practice, they'll be a very efficient motor for getting things into low earth orbit.
Sure, they don't work outside the atmosphere, but what about a next-gen shuttle that develops most of its thrust during the scramjet phase, uses a small rocket motor to get that extra bit of velocity at the upper end, and still has enough room left over for some worthwhile payload?
I imagine that's the kind of thing NASA's interested in.
Space Ship Two, anyone?
Better than what came before, I'm willing to grant you. There could be other factors besides Keynsian economics at work here. For all your argument tells me, Keynsian economics may be the final obstacle between us and true prosperity. Regarding the growth in income disparity, it is also true that both ends of the scale have also grown. The super-rich may have gotten super-richer, but the poor have also gotten much less poor, since the advent of Reganomics. The low end of the scale keeps rising, but you're hung up on the fact the high end keeps rising, too. You even explain why: It's easiest to make money by having money. Hardly a surprise, or a social evil, yes? Squint differently, indeed. I do think you're right about at least one thing, though: It is indeed sad that the easiest way to make money is to have money. This is sad because it tempts people to become wealthy through means other than discipline, hard work, and dedication to their own well-being. There are many on the welfare rolls who could not survive without such assistance. But how many more are collecting welfare because having that money mailed to them every month is certainly easier than getting a job? Progressive taxation is a result of extending your principle: the easiest way to make money is to take it from somebody else. I don't think the easiest solution is necessarily the best one. Reducing tax revenues would force our society to make some real choices about what we really need to be spending our money on. They'd be hard choices to make, but I think they'd be good choices ones. Progressive taxation is an easy choice (after all, the rich are a minority, and obviously have a hard time voting such measures down, for all their vast wealth), and I think for that very reason it's a bad one. People like what's easy more often than they like what's right--probably because what's right is also often hard. About the best thing that can be said for progressive taxation is that it works--for now, at least. But what works is not always best, and the status quo isn't always desireable in the long term.
Point taken. I'll slink away now.
I'm sorry, but "it's okay, they can afford it" isn't actually the same as "fair".
Also, requiring people to pay more is not the same as asking them to pay more. Don't characterize a compulsory measure, that carries stiff penalties for noncompliance, as a favor humbly asked and generously granted.
Other than that, I think you make some good points.
However, idealism and mathematics aside, I strongly suspect that compulsory redistribution of wealth (which is what a progressive income tax is) is not a good way to improve society. Certainly history has given such schemes a mixed record at best.
Viewing the rich as a pod of whales or a herd of bison, to be exploited at will for the common good, only serves to provide society with an easy source of money. And as long as we have an easy source of money, we will keep throwing money at the problem, instead of trying to solve it.
Finally, this thought: Since the rich have more invested in our society than the rest of us do, shouldn't they have more authority over how our society is run? They're the ones paying for it, after all.