I totally believe that if you produce something you should be paid for your efforts
- and you should follow the link in my comment and then leave your comments there, where I explained why this is an untenable position.
Generating content is not different from any other business, and since other businesses that do not necessarily generate content do not get this preferential treatment by government (nor should they), neither should content generating businesses get this preferential treatment.
Saying that you must have government standing on your side for some reason and protecting your business model is ridiculous on its face, when no other businesses (except those who own the government, so big banks, big insurance, bigt pharma, big energy, big food, military and such) get the same treatment.
So a restaurant owner does not get bailed out, nor does car mechanic, nor should they. Nobody should be in a position to use government to subsidise their business model.
As to getting paid - you only get paid for your businesses by willing participants, and just as people may not go to your new restaurant, no matter how much of your life's savings or other people's savings you put into that business, same people may not buy your stuff from you.
As to others using your material freely (as in beer) and putting it on torrent or even selling it at lower price - set the right price. I have an example there, Louis C.K., who is not going after torrents and other sites sharing his show, but he priced it properly and the revenue is over 1 million USD and counting.
Nobody should be in a position to subsidise their businesses and risks that they take when they choose a business model with government money and power.
One cannot be pro-copyright and pro-patent and simultaneously be anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA without a serious case of hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty.
Can we print xkcd in our magazine/newspaper/other publication?
If it's a not-for-profit publication, you need no permission -- just print them with attribution to xkcd.com. If it's a for-profit operation, I will probably give you permission if you email me to let me know. You can post xkcd in your blog (whether ad-supported or not) with no need to get my permission.
I am posting the links to the comments here, because they apply to each and every situation and you can follow those threads if you are wondering as to how/. crowd responds to the idea, and it's not favourable here.
The reason why/. crowd doesn't like the idea of abolishing copyrights and patents is due to high degree of hypocrisy. How many people want to see government picking up the bills for other types of failing businesses, like stores, manufacturers, miners, medical clinics, transport companies, telecoms, banks, insurance, etc.etc.?
The point is that copyrights and patents are standing on the way of innovation and invention and economic progress rather than helping it in any way.
In one of the threads I mentioned the case of Louis C.K. - he didn't need the copyright laws to protect him from anything, he is not going after people downloading his show for free, but he is offering to download his show from his site for $5 a pop and he made over million bucks by now. In that thread people argued that copyright still applies to Louis C.K. work, but they missed the point - he specifically offered a non-DRMed version and he said that he understood that people would be sharing his show on torrents and download sites, and it didn't bother him, it was a business risk he was willing to take.
Just like a new restaurant owner takes a business risk of opening his business in some specific location, sinking his capital into it (or borrowed capital) and risking losing the investment and time it took to build up that investment capital. Same thing with somebody writing a book or a play or a song or a shooting a movie or a show or painting a picture, whatever, it takes time to build up capital to open a restaurant, it takes time to write a book, it takes time (money) to make a show.
It does not matter to the market how you do it - you shouldn't be protected from failure in the market by government, nobody should be protected that way, it distorts the market, and just like with protections of money (default on gold promise in 1971), protection of mortgages (insurance by FHA, F&F,) FDIC, any type of protection by government, it all turns sour and goes bad and hurts the economy.
The only correct way is to let the market function, those who can rely on trade secrets should do so, but this encourages competition if there is no government protection against failure.
If Louis C.K. sucked and his shows weren't popular, he would have lost his investment. SO WHAT? Instead he proved that his shows are worth paying $5 for even with many people downloading the shows for free he still made enough money to continue working that way. His business model is sound, the people who believe their business model must be protected by government regulations are wrong and the government shouldn't be serving any company. Government for the people, by the people, of the people, right?
So it's hight of hypocrisy to be PRO-copyright and PRO-patent while complaining about bank bailouts also with public money! After all, the copyright police (FBI and such), that's also public money. The prison system where people can go for violation of copyright also is public money.
Many don't see the problem with their hypocrisy, but they also do not want SOPA and PIPA.
Well you can't have copyrights and patents and NOT have SOPA and PIPA eventually.
Copyrights and patents prevent speech, prevent innovation, prevent progress.
The only real free market approach to protecting your ideas is a trade secret, that's all. Government must not be allowed to meddle with businesses and protect business models and practices.
When somebody uses his savings to start a woodshop, as an example, if they fail and business dies out and they are out of their investment, there won't be government standing there with a handout, and it shouldn't be - it's personal risk.
Same with copyrights and patents - these are government handouts at the expense of the larger free market economy and it makes no sense to protect one type of investment over any other type. Government shouldn't be subsidising any businesses at all ever (banks, insurance companies and Solyndra come to mind).
Abolish copyrights and patents and check out the link I posted in this comment, it leads to my other comment on the same topic, but it's not my comment that is of interest, it's the response to my comment, with/. readers being vehemently opposed to the idea.
Why are/. readers opposed to this? Because they think that their business model is more important than a woodshop founder's business model. So the woodshop or a restaurant founder can go eat shit if his business fails (and a woodshop and especially a restaurant is a very location based heavy business, if you are in the wrong location, your business will fail, while on the Internet, businesses have access to near global markets, so there is a huge advantage for the software/book/movie/audio, etc. types of businesses there).
It's hypocrisy, it's short-sightedness, it's hubris and it shows the true colours (as in character) of the crowd.
The most crucial of those protections are automatic, and are entirely outside his control.
- no, it's irrelevant to my point. What is relevant is that he can put up original content and make money on it while competing with FREE (as in beer) copies of his show being downloaded at the same time.
The primary purpose of copyright is not to prevent piracy. That's at best an externality, and at worst, a minor annoyance. The main purpose of copyright is to prevent people from selling your work without your permission.
- except that the real competition is FREE (again, as in beer) copies being downloaded.
If people didn't want to pay Louis C.K. for his original work, why would they pay anybody else instead of him when they could just get a free copy? That's the problem with government solutions - it's trying to solve a non-existing problem and hurting the CONSUMERS at the end.
Government should not be allowed to meddle with business, this includes subsidising business models, and copyrights and patents are subsidies to business models.
There is no reason for Louis C.K. to bother going after people who distribute his show for free, there is even less incentive to go after people who could potentially sell his show without paying him a dime. Seriously, there is absolutely no reason to go after anybody, he is making the money he didn't even think he'd make, because what is obvious to the market is not immediately obvious to him and people like you, but he took a chance on an expensive piece of material (it cost him around 200K to produce or so) and it paid back.
So again - no reason for Louis C.K. either to go after anybody either distributing his show free of charge or those who would charge for it. After all, undercutting beneath a FREE is pretty hard. So if somebody is leaving 5 bucks for Louis C.K., it's not because they can't download this for free. It's because they want him to keep making more shows, thus MARKET is VALIDATING Louis C.K.'s business model as opposed to government trying to tell the market what's what and what's going to cost what.
As to kindness of strangers - ANY FUCKING NEW BUSINESS depends on "kindness of strangers".
There is nothing, nobody standing behind a new restaurant that will open and has overwhelming chances of being shut down with a huge loss and no profit, the only people who'd take a hit would be whoever invested into that new business privately.
Do you want government to come in and subsidise failing businesses?
Well, they do. One of those businesses was called 'Solyndra'.
It's none of governments' fucking business to prop up investors or business models.
It's not about whether the work is copyrighted or not, the AC's implication was that he wouldn't see return on investment without copyright laws, because people would just take his work and not pay for it.
Well, the show Louis C.K. produced is on torrents and other download sites and enough people paid that he still made over a million. And all of this without using RIAA, MPAA, FBI and other entities to protect his content from being distributed through other channels.
However the implication of the AC I replied to was that he could not make money by selling his content without copyright laws, and Louis C.K. went against all of his advisors, who were insisting on using DRM and not using an open way to sell the show because it would show up on torrents and other sites.
They were proven wrong, though the show IS on torrents, they were proven wrong that Louis C.K. could not SELL his original video and make enough money to cover expenses.
He did sell over million dollars worth of the videos, 5 bucks a pop, he is NOT going after anybody who downloads his video on torrents and such.
Copyright is about using GOVERNMENT protection against people distributing your original work (or a derivative) without a license from the original content owner.
Louis C.K. showed that he can make money by selling his original content without resorting to any of the government protection schemes. Of-course were it legal for others to re-sell his show and re-distribute it legally, he might or might not have gotten over 1 million, we don't know. What we know is that he can sell his content on his site at $5 a download and he does not protect it with any scheme and he is not going after people who download his show online via torrents and such. RIAA/MPAA wouldn't be going after people downloading his content as an example, because he didn't license it with any of the labels.
You are wrong by example. And if you can't provide the same value that Louis C.K. provided with this show that he sold exclusively over the Internet without any copyright protection scams, then your work isn't worth the effort as far as the market is concerned.
Let market work, put government out of business by prohibiting it from meddling with business and taking sides, taking literally, role of Mafia organisation with protection racket.
Trade secrets are the way of the free market. Copyrights and patents are protectionist measures used by those with close government ties to prevent competition and it's a ploy by politicians to get money out of the economy into their own campaigns and pockets.
Of-course a real trade school would have real masters of trade teaching, and since masters of trade prefer to do trade, rather than to waste time teaching doofuses, there won't be any real masters in that 'trade school', which automatically means it won't be worth it.
The real way to do this is to allow apprenticeship to happen again, but this means that government would have to step out of the people's way. If somebody doesn't want to go to school, they must not be forced to. But then there must be no laws making it impossible for companies/people to hire apprentices, and this means hiring them without government interference in the employment and labour practices.
Literally this means that a company should be able to hire/fire apprentices and pay them whatever (0 to any amount) without government interference.
You can't have apprentices that are not actually learning from real masters of the trade, and you can't have masters of the trade teaching anybody if it's a liability and an expense on their part.
It's all about making it beneficial for both sides - the kids and the employers to come together to some form of an agreement - I teach you this and this and this over such a period of time, you get paid this small amount and as you learn something you can get paid more, maybe you have to sign that you will work for the company for no less than say 5 years, so you can't quit until that time is over, but maybe you will be fired anyway.
But this comes with territory - you want to learn actually to do something as a trade - you have to be willing and reliable and initiative, nobody is there to make your life easier all of a sudden, you have to work.
Let market work, put government out of business by prohibiting it from meddling with business and taking sides, taking literally, role of Mafia organisation with protection racket.
Trade secrets are the way of the free market. Copyrights and patents are protectionist measures used by those with close government ties to prevent competition and it's a ploy by politicians to get money out of the economy into their own campaigns and pockets.
Patents and copyrights must be abolished. They are just going to be the last nail in the coffin of US economy.
The Free Market solution must be used - Trade Secrets.
You want to protect your business for a while? You must not be able to use government force to protect your business model, so use trade secrets. Of-course/. crowd doesn't understand the principle behind trade secrets, so I have to spellitout.
Trade secrets are much more fair business practice, it does not lock any potential competitor out off the market, it does not prevent others from trying to understand how your product works and build their own. In case of patents it does not prevent others from discovering the ideas independently and implementing them on their own the way patents do.
I thought it should be clear at least on/., but obviously it's not.
As to Canada - they have a real economy, they have surpluses, they should trade with countries WHO CAN PAY. I mean they should sell their oil and other products to countries who produce something and can exchange products with Canada, and obviously USA looks like less and less a country that can pay for products it consumes. It can print, but printing isn't paying. Paying is working and giving some PRODUCTS back in exchange for products delivered.
Don't be so sure that California isn't going anywhere. The federal gov't is becoming more and more dictatorial, the US wasn't built with people who love dictators.
Of-course it is. You are forgetting that the State is competing for the same tax base that the federal government is taxing, so it's completely false to say that the problems of States that pay federal taxes cannot be solved by getting rid of those taxes. Once the federal taxes are abolished, then it's up to the State either to reduce spending or to tax more, and given that the people will see much more of their money in their own pockets that the federal gov't didn't steal, they can be persuaded to pay down the State debt in exchange for reduction in spending.
Ha ha ha, when was the last time you could infiltrate a mafia organisation and then convince them that they are doing something immoral and make them change their ways from inside.
The only way to change the system is for the people to throw the government out, fix the Constitution to prevent the further power grab, return power to the people and reset the government.
As I said - patents and copyrights are attributes of the corrupt system. Trade secrets is a free market solution to the question of making money from your work and it promotes competition rather than preventing it with government force.
If there is any, it's very little and inconsequential. Certainly more people are writing open source code and are building 3d printers than looking at nuclear power.
Nuclear research is made illegal by government controlling the sources of nuclear materials. Even as a part owner of a uranium mine, I can't actually hold physical uranium.
The idea that government of the people for the people by the people must protect business models is obnoxious. Buying politicians is only useful when people are ready to give up their rights to the government, which then re-packages and sells this power to control the freedoms of people.
Patents and copyrights should never have existed and they are now being abolished de-facto by people who actually manufacture stuff, and it's a good thing. Buying a politician only makes sense when politician has something to sell, and that's the problem that needs to be addressed - power of politicians to steal liberties from people and sell control over those liberties.
I am against copyrights and patents and against government subsidised protectionism, which means trade secrets are the only proper solution.
Of-course I am against government meddling with business, regulating with departments like FDA, this means (in case of pharma) that to bring a drug or a medical device to the market there would be actual competition, because FDA adds an upward of a half a billion dollar cost to almost any drug/device, which means only the largest protected monopolies/oligopolies can be in that business.
As to drugs being reverse engineered - good. That's what would drive competition, and the government must not be there to protected business models, if anything, protecting business models hurts the customers, doesn't help them.
Somehow people survived without government protecting business models for hundreds of thousands, even millions of years, we can do it.
Besides, it's not enough to know the formula in most cases, the production process is more important than the formula and that's where the trade secrets still exist obviously, while the formulas themselves are protected with patents (obnoxiously by the governments, that are completely corrupt and are putting their own political and economic well being above the lives of people they are supposedly representing.)
Patents and copyrights must be abolished, and eventually they will be, they don't matter anymore anyway, where it counts - producing countries, like China, who doesn't give a crap (rightfully so) about your patent and copyright, especially for the internal market.
Trade secret is the only real free market solution and it keeps everybody working rather than seeking rent and preventing others from competition, which means Trade secrets promote competition unlike patents and copyrights, which stifle the competition and cause economic stifling.
The choices are: patent and copyright the stuff and use government provided way to monopolise the solution and license it to others or do what I think is right, skip gov't monopoly, skip patenting and copyrights (and that is my consistentposition) and use the only real free market tool - trade secret.
Using trade secret as opposed to gov't monopoly of patents / copyrights allows the market to continue research in this area, in fact pushes the market into more research, hopefully finding new and different ways of doing the same thing, so it promotes competition, and at the same time it means I have to bring the product to the market to make it, otherwise somebody else will.
Then it's up to my abilities - can I do better with trade secrets rather than patents and government subsidy/protection or not? Maybe, it's more of a risk, but it's definitely more appropriate for the market and if it works out (and it's a risk), then the reward is much greater as it should be.
Slashdot Mirror
You can start with stopping being hypocrites.
hypocrite
I totally believe that if you produce something you should be paid for your efforts
- and you should follow the link in my comment and then leave your comments there, where I explained why this is an untenable position.
Generating content is not different from any other business, and since other businesses that do not necessarily generate content do not get this preferential treatment by government (nor should they), neither should content generating businesses get this preferential treatment.
Saying that you must have government standing on your side for some reason and protecting your business model is ridiculous on its face, when no other businesses (except those who own the government, so big banks, big insurance, bigt pharma, big energy, big food, military and such) get the same treatment.
So a restaurant owner does not get bailed out, nor does car mechanic, nor should they. Nobody should be in a position to use government to subsidise their business model.
As to getting paid - you only get paid for your businesses by willing participants, and just as people may not go to your new restaurant, no matter how much of your life's savings or other people's savings you put into that business, same people may not buy your stuff from you.
As to others using your material freely (as in beer) and putting it on torrent or even selling it at lower price - set the right price. I have an example there, Louis C.K., who is not going after torrents and other sites sharing his show, but he priced it properly and the revenue is over 1 million USD and counting.
Nobody should be in a position to subsidise their businesses and risks that they take when they choose a business model with government money and power.
I think this topic is so much more than just SOPA and PIPA, it's much more broad, it goes to the very question what is government for?
One cannot be pro-copyright and pro-patent and simultaneously be anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA without a serious case of hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty.
Here is a policy statement from XKCD
Can we print xkcd in our magazine/newspaper/other publication?
If it's a not-for-profit publication, you need no permission -- just print them with attribution to xkcd.com. If it's a for-profit operation, I will probably give you permission if you email me to let me know. You can post xkcd in your blog (whether ad-supported or not) with no need to get my permission.
I am not sure if this is reliance on copyright itself or just assuming moral rights over the original work, but I don't think one can be pro-copyright and anti-SOPA, anti-PIPA and not be a hypocrite at the same time.
The only correct thing to do is to abolish all copyrights and patents and to prevent complete decay and decline of the political and economic systems.
more
comments
on this same
topic
I am posting the links to the comments here, because they apply to each and every situation and you can follow those threads if you are wondering as to how /. crowd responds to the idea, and it's not favourable here.
The reason why /. crowd doesn't like the idea of abolishing copyrights and patents is due to high degree of hypocrisy. How many people want to see government picking up the bills for other types of failing businesses, like stores, manufacturers, miners, medical clinics, transport companies, telecoms, banks, insurance, etc.etc.?
The point is that copyrights and patents are standing on the way of innovation and invention and economic progress rather than helping it in any way.
In one of the threads I mentioned the case of Louis C.K. - he didn't need the copyright laws to protect him from anything, he is not going after people downloading his show for free, but he is offering to download his show from his site for $5 a pop and he made over million bucks by now. In that thread people argued that copyright still applies to Louis C.K. work, but they missed the point - he specifically offered a non-DRMed version and he said that he understood that people would be sharing his show on torrents and download sites, and it didn't bother him, it was a business risk he was willing to take.
Just like a new restaurant owner takes a business risk of opening his business in some specific location, sinking his capital into it (or borrowed capital) and risking losing the investment and time it took to build up that investment capital. Same thing with somebody writing a book or a play or a song or a shooting a movie or a show or painting a picture, whatever, it takes time to build up capital to open a restaurant, it takes time to write a book, it takes time (money) to make a show.
It does not matter to the market how you do it - you shouldn't be protected from failure in the market by government, nobody should be protected that way, it distorts the market, and just like with protections of money (default on gold promise in 1971), protection of mortgages (insurance by FHA, F&F,) FDIC, any type of protection by government, it all turns sour and goes bad and hurts the economy.
The only correct way is to let the market function, those who can rely on trade secrets should do so, but this encourages competition if there is no government protection against failure.
If Louis C.K. sucked and his shows weren't popular, he would have lost his investment. SO WHAT? Instead he proved that his shows are worth paying $5 for even with many people downloading the shows for free he still made enough money to continue working that way. His business model is sound, the people who believe their business model must be protected by government regulations are wrong and the government shouldn't be serving any company. Government for the people, by the people, of the people, right?
So it's hight of hypocrisy to be PRO-copyright and PRO-patent while complaining about bank bailouts also with public money! After all, the copyright police (FBI and such), that's also public money. The prison system where people can go for violation of copyright also is public money.
Many don't see the problem with their hypocrisy, but they also do not want SOPA and PIPA.
Well you can't have copyrights and patents and NOT have SOPA and PIPA eventually.
Just like you can't have abolition of the Cons
No, abolish all copyrights and patents.
Copyrights and patents must be abolished.
Copyrights and patents prevent speech, prevent innovation, prevent progress.
The only real free market approach to protecting your ideas is a trade secret, that's all. Government must not be allowed to meddle with businesses and protect business models and practices.
When somebody uses his savings to start a woodshop, as an example, if they fail and business dies out and they are out of their investment, there won't be government standing there with a handout, and it shouldn't be - it's personal risk.
Same with copyrights and patents - these are government handouts at the expense of the larger free market economy and it makes no sense to protect one type of investment over any other type. Government shouldn't be subsidising any businesses at all ever (banks, insurance companies and Solyndra come to mind).
Abolish copyrights and patents and check out the link I posted in this comment, it leads to my other comment on the same topic, but it's not my comment that is of interest, it's the response to my comment, with /. readers being vehemently opposed to the idea.
Why are /. readers opposed to this? Because they think that their business model is more important than a woodshop founder's business model. So the woodshop or a restaurant founder can go eat shit if his business fails (and a woodshop and especially a restaurant is a very location based heavy business, if you are in the wrong location, your business will fail, while on the Internet, businesses have access to near global markets, so there is a huge advantage for the software/book/movie/audio, etc. types of businesses there).
It's hypocrisy, it's short-sightedness, it's hubris and it shows the true colours (as in character) of the crowd.
The most crucial of those protections are automatic, and are entirely outside his control.
- no, it's irrelevant to my point. What is relevant is that he can put up original content and make money on it while competing with FREE (as in beer) copies of his show being downloaded at the same time.
The primary purpose of copyright is not to prevent piracy. That's at best an externality, and at worst, a minor annoyance. The main purpose of copyright is to prevent people from selling your work without your permission.
- except that the real competition is FREE (again, as in beer) copies being downloaded.
If people didn't want to pay Louis C.K. for his original work, why would they pay anybody else instead of him when they could just get a free copy? That's the problem with government solutions - it's trying to solve a non-existing problem and hurting the CONSUMERS at the end.
Government should not be allowed to meddle with business, this includes subsidising business models, and copyrights and patents are subsidies to business models.
There is no reason for Louis C.K. to bother going after people who distribute his show for free, there is even less incentive to go after people who could potentially sell his show without paying him a dime. Seriously, there is absolutely no reason to go after anybody, he is making the money he didn't even think he'd make, because what is obvious to the market is not immediately obvious to him and people like you, but he took a chance on an expensive piece of material (it cost him around 200K to produce or so) and it paid back.
So again - no reason for Louis C.K. either to go after anybody either distributing his show free of charge or those who would charge for it. After all, undercutting beneath a FREE is pretty hard. So if somebody is leaving 5 bucks for Louis C.K., it's not because they can't download this for free. It's because they want him to keep making more shows, thus MARKET is VALIDATING Louis C.K.'s business model as opposed to government trying to tell the market what's what and what's going to cost what.
As to kindness of strangers - ANY FUCKING NEW BUSINESS depends on "kindness of strangers".
There is nothing, nobody standing behind a new restaurant that will open and has overwhelming chances of being shut down with a huge loss and no profit, the only people who'd take a hit would be whoever invested into that new business privately.
Do you want government to come in and subsidise failing businesses?
Well, they do. One of those businesses was called 'Solyndra'.
It's none of governments' fucking business to prop up investors or business models.
For the people, by the people, of the people?
Wake up. It's not funny how blind you are.
you are confusing the point I was making.
It's not about whether the work is copyrighted or not, the AC's implication was that he wouldn't see return on investment without copyright laws, because people would just take his work and not pay for it.
Well, the show Louis C.K. produced is on torrents and other download sites and enough people paid that he still made over a million. And all of this without using RIAA, MPAA, FBI and other entities to protect his content from being distributed through other channels.
Correct.
However the implication of the AC I replied to was that he could not make money by selling his content without copyright laws, and Louis C.K. went against all of his advisors, who were insisting on using DRM and not using an open way to sell the show because it would show up on torrents and other sites.
They were proven wrong, though the show IS on torrents, they were proven wrong that Louis C.K. could not SELL his original video and make enough money to cover expenses.
He did sell over million dollars worth of the videos, 5 bucks a pop, he is NOT going after anybody who downloads his video on torrents and such.
Copyright is about using GOVERNMENT protection against people distributing your original work (or a derivative) without a license from the original content owner.
Louis C.K. showed that he can make money by selling his original content without resorting to any of the government protection schemes. Of-course were it legal for others to re-sell his show and re-distribute it legally, he might or might not have gotten over 1 million, we don't know. What we know is that he can sell his content on his site at $5 a download and he does not protect it with any scheme and he is not going after people who download his show online via torrents and such. RIAA/MPAA wouldn't be going after people downloading his content as an example, because he didn't license it with any of the labels.
You are wrong by example. And if you can't provide the same value that Louis C.K. provided with this show that he sold exclusively over the Internet without any copyright protection scams, then your work isn't worth the effort as far as the market is concerned.
Same answer applies.
Let market work, put government out of business by prohibiting it from meddling with business and taking sides, taking literally, role of Mafia organisation with protection racket.
Trade secrets are the way of the free market. Copyrights and patents are protectionist measures used by those with close government ties to prevent competition and it's a ploy by politicians to get money out of the economy into their own campaigns and pockets.
Abolish copyrights and patents - this same answer goes back for years.
Of-course a real trade school would have real masters of trade teaching, and since masters of trade prefer to do trade, rather than to waste time teaching doofuses, there won't be any real masters in that 'trade school', which automatically means it won't be worth it.
The real way to do this is to allow apprenticeship to happen again, but this means that government would have to step out of the people's way. If somebody doesn't want to go to school, they must not be forced to. But then there must be no laws making it impossible for companies/people to hire apprentices, and this means hiring them without government interference in the employment and labour practices.
Literally this means that a company should be able to hire/fire apprentices and pay them whatever (0 to any amount) without government interference.
You can't have apprentices that are not actually learning from real masters of the trade, and you can't have masters of the trade teaching anybody if it's a liability and an expense on their part.
It's all about making it beneficial for both sides - the kids and the employers to come together to some form of an agreement - I teach you this and this and this over such a period of time, you get paid this small amount and as you learn something you can get paid more, maybe you have to sign that you will work for the company for no less than say 5 years, so you can't quit until that time is over, but maybe you will be fired anyway.
But this comes with territory - you want to learn actually to do something as a trade - you have to be willing and reliable and initiative, nobody is there to make your life easier all of a sudden, you have to work.
Abolish
copyrights and patents.
Let market work, put government out of business by prohibiting it from meddling with business and taking sides, taking literally, role of Mafia organisation with protection racket.
Trade secrets are the way of the free market. Copyrights and patents are protectionist measures used by those with close government ties to prevent competition and it's a ploy by politicians to get money out of the economy into their own campaigns and pockets.
Patents and copyrights must be abolished. They are just going to be the last nail in the coffin of US economy.
The Free Market solution must be used - Trade Secrets.
You want to protect your business for a while? You must not be able to use government force to protect your business model, so use trade secrets. Of-course /. crowd doesn't understand the principle behind trade secrets, so I have to spell it out.
Trade secrets are much more fair business practice, it does not lock any potential competitor out off the market, it does not prevent others from trying to understand how your product works and build their own. In case of patents it does not prevent others from discovering the ideas independently and implementing them on their own the way patents do.
I thought it should be clear at least on /., but obviously it's not.
As to Canada - they have a real economy, they have surpluses, they should trade with countries WHO CAN PAY. I mean they should sell their oil and other products to countries who produce something and can exchange products with Canada, and obviously USA looks like less and less a country that can pay for products it consumes. It can print, but printing isn't paying. Paying is working and giving some PRODUCTS back in exchange for products delivered.
Don't be so sure that California isn't going anywhere. The federal gov't is becoming more and more dictatorial, the US wasn't built with people who love dictators.
Of-course it is. You are forgetting that the State is competing for the same tax base that the federal government is taxing, so it's completely false to say that the problems of States that pay federal taxes cannot be solved by getting rid of those taxes. Once the federal taxes are abolished, then it's up to the State either to reduce spending or to tax more, and given that the people will see much more of their money in their own pockets that the federal gov't didn't steal, they can be persuaded to pay down the State debt in exchange for reduction in spending.
Ha ha ha, when was the last time you could infiltrate a mafia organisation and then convince them that they are doing something immoral and make them change their ways from inside.
The only way to change the system is for the people to throw the government out, fix the Constitution to prevent the further power grab, return power to the people and reset the government.
As I said - patents and copyrights are attributes of the corrupt system. Trade secrets is a free market solution to the question of making money from your work and it promotes competition rather than preventing it with government force.
This is just a proof positive that it makes sense to decentralise and get away from government monopolies of utilities. Small nuclear in everything.
If there is any, it's very little and inconsequential. Certainly more people are writing open source code and are building 3d printers than looking at nuclear power.
Nuclear research is made illegal by government controlling the sources of nuclear materials. Even as a part owner of a uranium mine, I can't actually hold physical uranium.
Trade secrets promote competition and patents and copyrights destroy competition.
The idea that government of the people for the people by the people must protect business models is obnoxious. Buying politicians is only useful when people are ready to give up their rights to the government, which then re-packages and sells this power to control the freedoms of people.
Patents and copyrights should never have existed and they are now being abolished de-facto by people who actually manufacture stuff, and it's a good thing. Buying a politician only makes sense when politician has something to sell, and that's the problem that needs to be addressed - power of politicians to steal liberties from people and sell control over those liberties.
I am against copyrights and patents and against government subsidised protectionism, which means trade secrets are the only proper solution.
Of-course I am against government meddling with business, regulating with departments like FDA, this means (in case of pharma) that to bring a drug or a medical device to the market there would be actual competition, because FDA adds an upward of a half a billion dollar cost to almost any drug/device, which means only the largest protected monopolies/oligopolies can be in that business.
As to drugs being reverse engineered - good. That's what would drive competition, and the government must not be there to protected business models, if anything, protecting business models hurts the customers, doesn't help them.
Somehow people survived without government protecting business models for hundreds of thousands, even millions of years, we can do it.
Besides, it's not enough to know the formula in most cases, the production process is more important than the formula and that's where the trade secrets still exist obviously, while the formulas themselves are protected with patents (obnoxiously by the governments, that are completely corrupt and are putting their own political and economic well being above the lives of people they are supposedly representing.)
Patents and copyrights must be abolished, and eventually they will be, they don't matter anymore anyway, where it counts - producing countries, like China, who doesn't give a crap (rightfully so) about your patent and copyright, especially for the internal market.
Trade secret is the only real free market solution and it keeps everybody working rather than seeking rent and preventing others from competition, which means Trade secrets promote competition unlike patents and copyrights, which stifle the competition and cause economic stifling.
Who is this magical unicorn, 'giving me choices'?
The choices are: patent and copyright the stuff and use government provided way to monopolise the solution and license it to others or do what I think is right, skip gov't monopoly, skip patenting and copyrights (and that is my consistent position) and use the only real free market tool - trade secret.
Using trade secret as opposed to gov't monopoly of patents / copyrights allows the market to continue research in this area, in fact pushes the market into more research, hopefully finding new and different ways of doing the same thing, so it promotes competition, and at the same time it means I have to bring the product to the market to make it, otherwise somebody else will.
Then it's up to my abilities - can I do better with trade secrets rather than patents and government subsidy/protection or not? Maybe, it's more of a risk, but it's definitely more appropriate for the market and if it works out (and it's a risk), then the reward is much greater as it should be.