Citation needed. Where are articles or information about these studies or their conclusion?
Seriously? Take five minutes and start searching medical journals. There are literally HUNDREDS of studies (maybe thousands) on vaccine side effects and effectiveness. There are DOZENS of metastudies that have tried and failed to find evidence of a link between autism and vaccines.
If you want just one example, take this study, which compiled data on 14.7 MILLION children who had been given MMR vaccines.
The authors actually are actually really negative about the way side effects are reported for vaccines, and they encourage more rigorous studies with better reporting.
Nevertheless, among the many studies with good data they looked at, they conclusively said that there is no evidence of a link between MMR vaccine and autism.
Why would a group of authors ready to chastise the medical establishment for not being more clear about possible side effects try to hide an autism link? They even identify and specifically discuss a number of known actual side effects to the vaccine.
This is just one. There are dozens of other review studies like it, and hundreds of individual studies on vaccine effectiveness and side effects. I'm terribly sorry for your son and your family, but there's absolutely no evidence of the link you suggest. A few hours looking at actual medical journals and studies, rather than at random websites promoting unjustified links, could easily demonstrate that.
When you start working, you start learning skills and little time building in-depth knowledge. Understanding the theory being the skills can help keeping up with technology better or adapt better.
While I agree with you about the usefulness of "theory," I'm not sure packing it into 4 years with an audience of inexperienced people makes much sense. You can spend 4 years studying all sorts of "theory" about how to ride a bike -- physics, anatomy of the body and its relationship to bike-riding, social and cultural norms that could affect types of bikes and riding style... whatever. But you're still going to fall down the first few times you try.
OR -- you could spend a couple days reading theory AND doing practice and you'll be able to ride. And that theory you read will make a heck of a lot more sense.
Studying extensive theory without and before practical experience is rather dumb. Traditional "liberal arts" taught in college wasn't about practical things, and it wasn't even about detailed theory that would be relevant to your profession. It was more like encounters with various types of knowledge and ways of thinking, the vast majority of which had no direct relevance to your profession. College should be about training you think in general, not a glorified trade school nor 4 years being forced to read technical manuals of the theory for your field... you should read that theory anyway, but only after and while gaining experience -- when there's some chance you might understand it or get something out of it.
That's a direct effect of mass, not because truckers are interested in making traffic better.
The primary motivation is the mass, I agree. But truckers also have a priority to travel efficiently on the roads to make shorter delivery times (and reduce their time spent "working").
Thus, you will generally see truckers exaggerate these behaviors more than necessary just for the sake of mass... because it actually benefits them for traffic to flow better, and, as a side effect, it can benefit you and the rest of the traffic too.
They don't give a shit about traffic flow, they care about maintaining a steady speed because it is tiring and costly to accelerate and decelerate. So they set it and forget it at some speed, and the rest of the traffic can go fuck itself.
A trucker's living depends on being able to travel efficiently, to make delivery on time. If their behavior was actually slowing everyone down and making traffic worse or more inefficient, it would harm them and their livelihood.
Instead, they do this deliberately, and more than they would need to just because of the giant mass they're moving.
It seems pretty illogical that truckers -- who spend their lives on the road and have more empirical driving experience than anyone else -- would adopt behaviors that would actually slow them down, snarl traffic, and make them less likely to make delivery on time.
They aren't trying to "solve" the traffic jam. They do that for a few reasons:
These are all correct as well. But you forget one more thing: truckers often care about getting where they need to go as efficiently as possible. If their behavior actually had a negative impact on traffic flow, it would hurt them all, and they could be slightly more aggressive.
Instead, what I actually see is that truckers exaggerate the behavior we're discussing deliberately, since empirical evidence shows that their behavior has a positive impact on traffic, which raises throughput, which means they can actually make their delivery earlier, rather than sitting in traffic forever.
By the time 10 or so cars go around you, you will have slowed to a complete stop as cars are changing lanes, and merging to get around the car that has 'stalled' in the road.
Unless traffic is actually stopped on the road, this is impossible. The car will not end up "stopping" just to maintain a safe distance.
Let's do the 2-lane case. (I'll leave more lanes as an exercise for the reader.) There are two lanes: A and B, with B on the right (the usual "slow lane").
There are three possible speed situations: in traffic ahead, (1) A is faster, (2) B is faster, (3) both are basically the same speed.
Suppose the hypothetical car maintaining a safe following distance is in lane B.
In situation (1), with A moving faster, all the cars start to move over into lane A. They have no need to merge back into lane B, because A is moving faster. Eventually enough cars will move into lane A so that its effective speed will be reduced, resulting in a situation equivalent to case (3).
In situation (2), they have no need to pass the hypothetical car, and probably can't because the density of cars in lane A would probably be greater due to its lower speed in the normal "passing lane."
In situation (3), there's no advantage to trying to get around the hypothetical car, because the other lane isn't moving faster. If some cars do occasionally cut into the gap, if traffic is moving smoothly otherwise, everyone just adjusts gradually.
The only way the car supposedly comes to a stop is with a massive sudden inflow of aggressive drivers into lane B, continuously. That just doesn't happen in the real world, because such aggressive lane changing to the gap in B will open gaps in A, and the aggressive drivers already in A will stop switching, because their lane now has more gaps and will start moving faster than B. Your scenario could possibly briefly happen in stop-and-go traffic, but in that case, a temporarily stopped vehicle would actually be normal.
I went to your traffic simulator, and it showed that you got traffic jams due to quantity of cars, not because of breaking.
First off, it's not my simulator. Second, you did notice that there are about ten sliders you can vary on each simulation, right? Quantity of cars is only one or two of them. It's the most obvious thing that affects traffic, but the other sliders have effects. The rest mostly tweak various parameters that have to do with how aggressive drivers are.
If you spend even a couple minutes reading the commentary on that site for the simulations, you'll see the explanations about how you can actually get a higher maximum throughput in some situations by having drivers be less aggressive. And once some idiot does something that causes the pattern to break down, everybody suffers.
Basically, for every given speed, there's a maximum possible stable rate that cars can pass through. Usually that occurs when people are driving less aggressively -- leaving a little more distance, not accelerating/braking suddenly, etc. If you increase aggressiveness and/or the number of cars, you may be able to hold things steadly for a little while, but eventually things will break down and you'll get a traffic jam.
With larger numbers of cars, the only way to maintain stable flow is for everyone to drive at a slow, steady pace and not make sudden changes. You can't really test this on the simulator linked there, but this can even work for very high traffic density. It would be often be better ("better" = everyone gets through faster and gets home earlier) if we all coasted through dense traffic at a constant 5 MPH, rather than the normal pattern where everybody accelerates quickly to 15 MPH or so for 15 seconds, then brakes suddenly and comes to a dead stop for 20 seconds.
Why doesn't that happen? Because it's "wrong" to leave a gap. If you're not speeding up to catch up to the next guy's bumper, even if you're only going 10 MPH, then you're not "driving right" (even if it's actually propagating the problem).
But another thing the simulations tend to show is that not everyone has to drive like an angel to improve traffic. That's why truckers adopt their strategies of gradual acceleration/deceleration and big gaps in such situations. With a certain minimum amount of good drivers, these traffic situations can actually improve... alas, most people just simply won't give up that 2 seconds they think they gain by flooring the accelerator only to brake hard a few seconds later in heavy traffic.
By the way, you may want to check out the recommendations of this group at MIT, who have produced traffic models that seem to fit well with real world data.
Their recommendations? Drive a little more slowly in heavier traffic and leave a little more space in front to give you room to react.
I already stated "brake/slow down" which includes your continuum of behavior, it's all the same. Any alteration in speed from a steady state causes ripples behind you.
If the alteration in speed is gradual rather than abrupt, and if drivers behind you respond similarly, traffic jams can be prevented. It's the idiots who accelerate to the last possible moment to close the gap with the guy slowing down in front of them who are causing the ripples. Making gradual adjustments and allowing a gap to make future adjustments is the only way to keep steady flow near a bottleneck.
See details I posted to your previous aggressive crazed response, and try out your fantasies here.
So what you didn't see because you are so totally oblivious to how traffic really works, is that your repeated braking/slowing to get back to a safe distance is causing huge traffic snarls for miles behind you as the effect of slight variations in speed is magnified massively in a ripple effect behind you.
I'll note that the GP already responded and noted that he doesn't generally brake, which is appropriate in this circumstance. He just keeps the distance open.
I don't think you realize how traffic works. The reason why "snarls" and "ripple effects" occur is due to sudden braking, usually caused by people driving too aggressively and changing lanes (causing others to be cut off and brake suddenly) or not gradually slowing when coming up on the driver in front, but instead hitting the accelerator until braking at the last possible moment to end up 6 inches behind the guy's bumper in front of you.
Those are the maneuvers that actually cause ripples and traffice snarls. You want to prevent them? Don't drive aggressively. Leave enough space to brake when needed.
You want to solve them? Drive like the GP. Ever notice how 18-wheelers drive on a highway in heavy stop-and-start traffic? Notice how they generally let giant holes open in front of them? Even though some aggressive people will hop inside those holes, the truckers are actually trying to solve the traffic jam. If they can drive a constant 30 MPH or 20 MPH so that all the traffic is moving, it can actually clear the jam. Instead, if everyone suddenly accelerates to 40 MPH and then slows down to a stop a mile later just to keep on the tail of the person in front of them, it will actually take the jam many times longer to clear.
This is doubly true whenever some sort of lane change or merge is the cause of the traffic problem -- traffic has transition equivalents to laminar and turbulent flow in fluid dynamics. If you try to push through too many cars too fast, things will become turbulent, and soon the flow will be impeded. Instead, if people always maintain a reasonable distance and speed, making small adjustments rather than large accelerations and sudden braking, you can actually push more cars through faster than you would with repeated stops and starts.
In effect, by trying to drive at roughly constant speeds, and by leaving a gap in front to avoid making sudden maneuvers (as well as allowing others to move into that gap if need be rather than abruptly stopping themselves), you can actually increase traffic throughput, even if your top speed is much lower.
If you don't get how this is possible, spend some time with a simulation developed by actual experts in traffic dynamics, such as one here.
This is pissing everyone off, putting many drivers in a bad mood and everyone at greater risk of an accident.
Maintaining a safe following distance with no sudden accelerations, braking, or sudden lane changes is a very safe way to drive. If you are the one changing lanes to get around this guy and get home 10 seconds earlier, you're the one actually causing the traffic problems, not to mention putting everyone at greater risk of accidents.
Oh, and because your maneuvers are more likely to cause jams in the first place, you -- and others like you -- are actually the ones responsible for everyone getting home 15 minutes later by trying to save that 10 seconds.
Tell me, how do the lifestyles of the "worker-slaves" of the United States compare to the those of the "wealthy few" of Mesopotamia?
Call me old fashioned, but I'd rather be a "worker-slave" in contemporary America, where I can work a five-day week, own my own place, travel the world relatively cheaply, communicate at light-speed around the globe, raise a family in relative security, and most likely live to a ripe old age
Umm, aside from light-speed communication around the globe, the "wealthy few" of Mesopotamia actually had those things.** Actually, they had them better, since they didn't have to work a five-day week, because they had plenty of others working to support them... just like modern wealthy folks.
I think you actually helped prove GP's point.
(**I'm not sure light-speed communication around the globe is something that significantly improves anyone's lifestyle -- it just gives us instant access to information about things that mostly have little to do with our lives. Oh, and travel around the known world in the past may have been expensive, but it would have been relatively "cheap" for the wealthy.)
People became more productive due to technology. Now you are able to produce enough for you and your family in 40 hours / week. Before this technology advancement, you needed to work 60-80 hours / week in order to produce enough.
Huh? Come again?
Most of the salaried ("white collar") people I know today work at least 50 and usually greater than 60 hours per week. Only due to labor unions and federal regulations did the "blue collar" week settle at 40 hours/week, and that's been pretty constant for the past 50 years or so.
Meanwhile, productivity has skyrocketed. Quoth Wikipedia:
Using the data provided by the United State Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erik Rauch has estimated productivity to have increased by nearly 400%. According to Rauch, âoeif productivity means anything at all, a worker should be able to earn the same standard of living as a 1950 worker in only 11 hours per week.â
Then why is the 40-hour week still standard, both men and women have to work to support the average family, and white collar workers are working more than ever before? Again from Wikipedia:
In the United States, the working time for upper-income professionals has increased compared to 1965, while total annual working time for low-skill, low-income workers has decreased. This effect is sometimes called the "leisure gap".
I would note that those low-skill, low-income workers usually saw a decrease in pay along with decreased hours, since they are paid by the hour, so they're not being paid more for their productivity... instead, they have to take a part-time job or have their spouse work.
What you say should be true in an ideal world, but the reality is that as productivity has increased at record levels in the past 50 years, pay has actually gone down while necessary working time per family has gone up.
Gee, thanks. Rather than just presenting your argument and assuming good faith, you assume that I'm an idiot from the start... rather than just interpreting things a little differently.
A lot of people are still convinced that there is no other way and that without copyright artists will starve and we'll have no more art. That is of course hysterical nonsense. There are many other ways.
I never said there weren't other ways. But I don't think that means we summarily have to declare copyright to be dead, and that you should make that decision for all artists as some sort of noble belief in the greatness of copying.
Maybe your way will be the way of the future. But for now, just declaring that copying is great and that there is nothing wrong with violating implicit contracts made with creators is not necessarily taking a moral highground.
Patronage is a big one that is centuries old. You express grave doubts that patronage can be effective.
I didn't express any "grave doubts." I said that traditionally it meant that rich people got to determine what art is. That's probably still the case in terms of traditional publishers/distributors, but I thought we could actually have a shot at undermining them with the rise of the internet and the reduced cost of distribution. Just at that moment, when creators are suddenly empowered with the ability to distribute their own works on their own terms with little overhead, you propose that we refuse them the ability to collect money in the traditional way.
There's nothing wrong with patronage, if you like the tastes of rich people.
There's also merchandizing and endorsements, public performances, contests with money prizes, and, one you mentioned, work for hire.
Merchandizing, endorsements, and works for hire are great for people who already have a reputation. They don't work so well for the very people that copyright could work best for -- the little guy just trying to get his first works out there and make a little profit. Offering contests with money prizes -- how does that exactly help an author make money off of his first book again? Public performances may work well for performers, but some people aren't performers. They may write books, for example. The may be composers, but not great performers.
And anyhow, most of these things sound great to a garage band writing a song in an afternoon. These things don't really work well to help a guy invest two years of his life doing reseach to write a really good book, which now is just passed around for free.
It all comes down to the fact that you are completely divorcing any value from the actual creation of the artwork (aside from works for hire/patronage). If we devalue the artwork, why should it be given any value whatsoever? Who wants to invest in making quality publications or compositions when you can't EVER make money off of that? Instead, you'll create works designed to get endorsements or do your prize money thing (however that works) or whatever.
We already have markets to create a lot of crappy pop art. A lot of yahoos would do that in their garage anyway, particularly now that you can set up a home recording studio with such a small investment.
You bring up Mozart. Mozart's father spent decades teaching his son a craft. Mozart could execute that craft of composition with incredible ability, like a master carpenter could build a piece of furniture without any plans that looks like a work of art. But it took decades to cultivate that skill, and the investment of a parent for most of that time teaching it. The kind of stuff you're proposing to fund new works is not something that a person could justify spending a couple decades just getting ready to produce good work... or, as I mentioned, even a writer taking a couple years to do research for a quality book.
If you're trying to address copyright issues, why take up so much of your reply with theft of services?
Because this thread was about theft and its potential relevance to copyright.
The issue is not that you made an illicit copy of the will or song, but that you agreed to pay somebody for producing it,
And that's exactly what an artist who takes advantage of copyright law expects as well. Suppose an author today writes a book and files a copyright registration with the U.S. government (not required to claim copyright, but many people do it anyway... I just mention it to show that the author is explicitly aware of copyright and intends to take advantage of it).
That author has effectively done his work believing that he can maintain control over copies of that work, and if you make copies of it except under fair use, you owe him money.
Thus, if you acquire a copy of that work and make use of it, you are implicitly agreeing to the copyright contract that the creator took advantage of when he registered the copyright. If you make unauthorized copies of that work, you are violating the contract... in the exact same manner as in the examples I gave about theft of services. To deny that is to try to say, "well, I'll agree to some contracts, but I won't agree to others," which isn't consistent.
When making copies of a copyrighted work without permission, you are effectively breaching a contract, effectively committing theft of the service the creator provided.
You don't want to pay? Fine. Don't use the work, and don't make copies of it. The only difference between my examples and common file-sharing is that common file-sharers don't have to look an artist in the eye when they stiff them for their fee. All the rest is just semantics.
The only relevant thing you said assumes that having free copies available reduces the demand for buying the copyrighted work. We know this is false in some cases, and the evidence for the assumption is spotty at best.
As I mentioned in my original post, I freely acknowledge that not all those who take a free copy of something would have paid for a real one. But even if only 10% would have paid, that would be something.
And I will also stipulate to the fact that some artists actually prefer to gamble and release things free in the hope that it might spread their reputation. And then they may be able to make even more money. I bet that works for some artists. But I don't think you or the GP should get to make that decision for ALL ARTISTS, without their permission.
I'm sure that the most famous artists in the world who don't have a lot of overhead can surely make a lot more money by giving out lots of freebies and figuring out other ways of making money. I'm not concerned about them. I'm concerned about the talented guy who puts a lot of effort into his work and just wants to make a few hundred or a few thousand dollars off of it, so he can keep doing it and making a small living... not the multi-millionaire pop star.
And that "little guy" should get to choose the terms for selling his work... or else we'll squeeze all of the talented little guys out of the market and only end up with crap supported by the widest masses or stuff that can attract the interest of rich patrons. It's not an optimal strategy for democratic art.
I think the current copyright system is broken, and I do NOT approve of the actions of the MPAA, RIAA, etc. in these frivolous and ridiculous legal actions. However:
Copying is not stealing no matter how many times others try to equate the 2 actions.
I agree that "copying is not stealing" in a strict sense, but I also don't think copying is always the noble deed you make it out to be.
And, although you don't accept the analogy between copying and stealing, it doesn't mean there aren't some things in common.
Here's a simple hypothetical situation:
Suppose you hire a lawyer to draw up some important legal document for you (a will or something). You need the help of an expert to be sure the language is legally binding. Say you go over to his office, he shows you the will, and then he says, "My fee for this is $500."
He gets up and goes to the bathroom. You go over to his computer and use your USB drive to make a copy of the electronic file of the will. You then get up and leave. Or, you wait for him to come back and say, "Well, I can't pay $500, so no thanks" and then leave. Whatever. You file the legal document.
Is that "stealing"? You only made a copy of an electronic document. Isn't "information supposed to be free"?
If it troubles you that you inappropriately accessed his computer, suppose he (stupidly) sends you the document via email, along with his bill. You mutter something about the fee being too high and refuse to pay and claim to "return" the electronic copy he sent. You then go ahead and use your copy of the document anyway.
In this case, you hired someone to do something for you, and you made an implicit agreement to pay his fee if you want the product. It shouldn't matter whether the form of the product is easily copyable or not: whether you paid a carpenter to build you a new porch or a lawyer to write you a new will, you owe them money for their work.
Is this strictly "stealing"? No. But it does violate an implicit contract, and I don't think it's too far-fetched to consider it to be akin to theft if you go behind your lawyer's back and still use your copy of the document without paying his fee. You effectively "took" his time and work without paying anything, which sounds very much like "stealing."
Now, suppose you do the same thing, except you hire a composer to write a new song for your wedding. Again, you refuse the $500 fee, because you can't afford it or don't like the song that much or whatever... but you take the mp3 and use the song at your wedding anyway. Isn't that also akin to "theft," even if it isn't strictly stealing?
Okay, you might say, but these are clear examples of work-for-hire, so you owe the creator something because you implicitly agreed to pay for their work by asking them to do it.
Now, we get to a real-world copyright example. Now our songwriter decides, rather than only writing single songs for rich guys and their weddings, that he'd rather contribute his work to society at large. He could solicit some sort of "subscription" for his songs, charging prospective buyers a few dollars each. (This sort of thing did and still does happen for certain types of publications, though in the past it wasn't just for periodicals -- large books and even printed song collections were sometimes printed under subscription.)
But a young composer without a "big name" doesn't have that option. So he writes a song and arranges for a recording. Rather than charging someone $500 for writing a single song, he figures if he can get 1000 people to pay him 50 cents each, he'll make the same amount. And the U.S. copyright system seems to back him up on this idea.
But after two guys buy the song (giving him a total of $1 in revenue), you come along and start shouting: "Information should be FREE! Copying is a noble act! Share! Share! Share!"
One of those guys uploads the song somewhere on the internet, and several hundred people g
You don't have to alter the First Amendment. What you need to do is fix Corporate Law that explicitly identifies them as not being people. Then, you should grant corporations every right they have, rather than implicitly giving them every right that actual people have.
Yeah, this idea that "corporations are persons" is the reason why they have free-speech rights has received a lot of press in the past couple years.
But this has nothing to do with the actual text of the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Please note that there is no mention of "people" or of a "person" until the last 1/3 of the text. It simply says that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech." The source of that "speech" is not specified.
The reason why corporations have free speech is because the First Amendment says Congress can't make laws restricting free speech, not because of anything in the definition of what a corporation is, "person" or otherwise.
You would in fact have to change the text of the First Amendment to make the distinction you're trying to make clear. The Supreme Court previously had actually carved out a specific exception to the First Amendment (like the "incitement to lawless action" exception) to prevent corporations from having free political speech. They then recently decided that that exception had some problems and should be removed.
I'm not saying that corporations should have unlimited powers or unlimited free speech. But the First Amendment doesn't say what you think it does.
In 2011, 31,000 people died firearm-related deaths.
In your link, it notes that roughly 20,000 of those gun deaths are due to suicides. A lot of those people (though certainly not all) may have found some other way to kill themselves if a firearm isn't available. (Studies suggest that many do.) It therefore seems a little unfair to count people who are deliberately harming themselves and actively looking for a way to end their lives when comparing it to primarily accidental deaths from drunk driving.
If you subtract those out and only count gun deaths from homicides and gun accidents, the numbers are roughly equal to drunk driving. Some (not I, but some others) might even argue that we should only compare incidents with similar "intent": assuming the vast majority of alcohol-related road fatalities are accidents, the comparable number in your link is about 850 fatalities from "accidental discharge" vs. 10,000 from alcohol-related accidents.
I'm actually in favor of greater gun regulations, but it doesn't help that argument to make apples-to-oranges comparisons.
That's an interesting study, but I'm not sure it answers the GP's assertion directly. From the study:
This study was conducted to examine driver behavior and accident effects of raising and lowering posted speed limits on nonlimited access rural and urban highways. While much research in recent years has focused on the effects of the 55 and 65 mi/h (89 and 105 km/h) speed limits on limited access facilities, the major emphasis of this research is on streets and highways that were posted between 20 and 55 mi/h (32 and 89 km/h)
In other words, this is isn't really a interstate highway speed study. Such studies are out there, but this isn't one of them. They may have drawn similar conclusions, but we should look at a study that actually addresses speed limits like 65 MPH and 75 MPH on limited access roads.
In my experience (which admittedly is just anecdotal), highway drivers are more conscious of speed limits -- and potentially wanting to push them as much as possible -- than random drivers around town. If I'm not on a limited access road and trying to dodge pedestrians and cyclists and random people turning left everywhere, those sorts of things will probably feed into my sense of a "natural speed limit" more than anything else.
Whereas if I'm on an open straight limited access road, the only things preventing my speed from rising are (1) traffic, (2) my willingness to drive at high speeds, and (3) the posted limit.
Also, I would note that the linked study doesn't have details on how long-term any of these changes were. All it says is:
Repeated measurements were made at 14 sites to examine short - and long-term effects of speed limit changes.
I'd expect that driver speed wouldn't adjust that much on lower speed roads for reasons I already mentioned, but even if it could, the "herd mentality" of people used to driving those routes probably would require quite a bit of time (maybe years) for speeds to gradually move as more drivers take the time to notice the new limit. Once a certain percentage of people start noting the new limit that's 10 MPH higher and start driving a little faster, the traffic patterns could change. I've certainly noticed this myself on some interstate highways that raised speed limits. Maybe I missed it, but I can't tell how long-term this study was, so I'm not sure how to evaluate its data. (Furthermore, there's a lot of cherry-picking of numbers -- 85th percentile in this fact, 75th in that fact, 50th in this fact, 99th or 1st in another... it's difficult to get a sense of what the data might really have shown. I'm not saying the study is bad, but it's hard to evaluate based on your link.)
Impossible? It doesn't happen in Britain. I'm not sure if that's because it's banned or just something that's not done.
Well, for one thing the UK doesn't have elections occurring at regular intervals. When one is declared, the campaigns only last for about a month.
In the U.S., campaign season has now lengthened to probably 18 months before an election (which means U.S. representatives, who are elected every 2 years, essentially never stop campaigning or raising money for it).
For presidential races and for large senate seats the area of campaigning is much larger than any MP in the UK, which means that the amount of money necessary to run advertising, campaign travel, staffing, etc. is a heck of a lot larger.
These factors together mean that some U.S. candidates need to raise huge amounts of money for large, long campaigns -- nothing like the UK model.
I'm not arguing in favor of bribery or excessive donations from business interests. But the electoral system is just structured in such a way in the U.S. that it needs constant huge inflows of cash to keep going all the time... which leads to politicians courting various sources of cash. That might need to be changed for it to be realistic for U.S. politicians to stop accepting huge amounts of donations.
I'm betting that this is true for a certain type of child...one who is curious and driven to learn and that many students don't fit into that category.
I'd bet it would be true for lots of children, given a perspective on education at an early age that would shape them toward benefitting from this model.
If you've ever worked with toddlers, you know that the vast majority of them are eager to explore and learn. This sticks with most kids through the early years of primary school.
At some point, though, school becomes a "chore." Social attitudes about "nerds" and "geeks" take over at most schools, kids who don't succeed on particular benchmarks are alienated, and eventually by some point in secondary school you have a majority of kids who have forgotten how to learn and be curious, at least regarding most academic subjects.
Meanwhile, parents force skills in particular ways because they see them as a vehicle for success rather than learning for knowledge's or exploration's sake. But most parents and even most teachers tend to forget that it's not the kid who learns the school material that's necessarily the most successful. It's the kid who has learned how to learn and is self-motivated to continue who will succeed much more than someone who just does what's required in school. If we seek to teach learning itself as the first "skill" in school, rather than a cookie-cutter one-fits-all curriculum of "basic skills" achieved at particular age levels for everyone, we might see a lot more kids who are eager and willing to drive their own education.
Looking at today's educational system, it may seem like only a small number of kids could really be left to their own devices to drive a lot of their learning through curiosity (obviously with some guidance). But I think it could actually work for a lot more kids (though certainly not all) if our attitudes about education were different.
But Harvard is somehow managing to fill 20% of its class w/ kids whose families fall under the $65k/year threshold. So some of these families, at least, are doing "what it takes" to get into Harvard.
I'm not at all criticizing this or the recruiting efforts of top schools. But this statistic doesn't necessarily mean what you claim.
Maybe, some of the kids are doing "what it takes" to get into Harvard, due to natural intelligence, talent, etc. Intelligent kids do occur across all socioeconomic classes.
I find it easy to believe that Harvard could find 400 or so kids per year from across the U.S. who are just naturally intelligent and talented enough -- even without the extra perks a wealthy family could get them -- to compete with rich kids that have SAT coaches, etc.
The issue isn't the 400 super-talented lucky ones who get into places like Harvard with great financial aid, even without the perks of a "rich kid education." The issue is the thousands and thousands of the not-quite-as-talented-but-could-easily-compete-with-rich-kids-if-they-also-had-SAT-coaches kids. Those kids may not "deserve" to go to Harvard any more than the rich kids that only got in due to alumni connections and years of coaching... but they may deserve to go to a really good second-tier school.
But they probably won't have that opportunity, because the second-tier schools don't have the resources or the prestige to find and draw these kids, nor the financial aid packages like Harvard's to make them look affordable to poor people. And instead those second-tier schools mostly get filled up with the rejected coached rich kids from Harvard's pool, as their "safety school."
Gold works when everything fails, everything else fails, gold remains the only true money.
Only because the "gold wackos" hoard it and keep trying to convince everyone else to hoard it.
I completely agree with you that gold has a longer history of being valued as a currency.
Basically, it all comes down to exactly what I said -- if the people in power like "shiny rocks," gold will still be accepted as currency. If they don't, it won't. It's that simple.
I'm NOT saying that it's likely that all the powerful people in the world will suddenly stop liking "shiny rocks." But clearly gold's value has fluctuated over time as people have temporarily changed their investment strategies, both to and from the "shiny rock strategy."
Also, please re-read my comment and note that I specified a RARE type of bottle cap, so it would not be subject to inflation. Choose whatever the heck you want: the first edition of Rush Limbaugh's first book is the new currency. I don't care.
If you have power and control over significant resources, you can dictate what functions as currency. Gold is only a solution as long as you keep convincing those people that it is... otherwise, it has little inherent value. Any other random rare item could function just as well.
(And yes, before you start in about how fiat currencies are not limited in the way that rare bottle caps or the first edition of Limbaugh's book are, let me note that I never said dollars were the SAME as gold in every way. They aren't. However, fiat currencies and gold operate on the same ultimate basis of value, though, in that they are only valuable because people are willing to take them in exchange for other goods that they actually need -- and that requires a collective social "faith" in the inherent value of an item of ultimately little real value.)
By definition money is store of value, means of exchange and unit of account.
Things only have "value" if (1) other people need them, or (2) you can convince them that having those things will allow them to get other things that they need. The first type of value leads to direct barter; the second leads to a medium of exchange... a currency... "money." What form that "money" takes is up to the people in power who hoard it or give it out and can convince other people to accept it.
Gold is the money, gold standard means that there is an equivalent amount of notes (not fiat money, but redeemable bank notes), so you can get the weight of gold back for that paper from the bank. It's like using deposit box keys where you store gold as medium of exchange. Gold as money doesn't 'collapse',
Gold could easily "collapse" if no one wanted it. If I'm starving out in the middle of the desert, and you offered me some food and fresh water or a bag of gold coins with a thousand times the value of the food, which do you think I'd take?
Anything relatively rare can function as money, but only if people actually believe that anyone else would take it. Your "shiny rocks" don't have any more inherent value than someone else's "green pieces of paper," since neither is particularly useful to humans absent some sort of power structure that endows that "money" with value.
Suppose the world economy completely collapses and all of your fiat currencies go in the toilet. You have 17 gazillion tons of gold in your own personal vault, but nothing else. I have a few crates of canned food and a pile of random rare old bottlecaps that I like to collect. I start telling people I'll accept these particular rare bottlecaps in exchange for food. Pretty soon people in my town understand that those bottlecaps have value, because I -- who have control of food, something people actually need -- accept them as currency.
Now you come to town and try to buy food or other essential goods with your gold. Do you seriously think anyone will sell anything to you? Nobody wants your shiny rocks. The person in power likes rare bottlecaps, and that's the only "money" that matters now... aside from actual food.
The idea that "shiny rocks" have any inherent value is just as stupid as the idea that "green pieces of paper" have inherent value. If you can't see that, I don't know else to say.
The problem with this is two-fold: 1) Insects can digest and carry more disease than plants. The fact that insects are animal and not plant allows them to be carriers...like Malaria for mosquitos.
Not all insects carry loads of human-communicable diseases. I think you're probably just as likely (if not more so) to get a serious illness by eating a sick farm animal than by contracting one spread to you from eating your average insect.
2) The insects are actually crawling around in the crap. Plants aren't. Food needs to be prepared carefully.
Umm, plants are often grown in "crap." Vegetables, legumes, and some grains, in particular, often have "soil" (and whatever was put in it as fertilizer) all over them. Meanwhile, excepting coprophages, most insects don't spend their lives wallowing in "crap," unlike many vegetables that are fertilized with animal dung. Oh, and by the way, "normal" farm animals often roll around in unsavory stuff too.
Even if your claims are true (and I've pointed out reasons they probably should qualified), you've only addressed why insects might be less safe than plants. But they have similar risks to other animal products. The GP's point was partly about animals too -- some are acceptable to some cultures, others are not. Insects may seem more "icky" to Westerners, but I'm not sure that they are actually less safe to prepare than what we think of as "normal" animals.
Sorry, but "being on meal assistance" does not in any way whatsoever imply "does not get enough to eat."
That is often true, not always.
America has a serious nutrition problem, but we certainly do not have a systematic hunger problem, and claiming or implying that we do is just diverting attention from the actual problem.
Okay, here are some facts. Child hunger organizations often say something like 15-20% of households in the U.S. don't have "secure" access to food. That's an obvious exaggeration, based on bad assumptions. And most of those households get food assistance, even if their kids aren't going hungry. To that extent, I agree with you.
HOWEVER, more detailed statistics indicate that 1-2% of households actually do cut the size and/or number of meals for children due to poverty. Something around 0.5% of households have children going without food for more than a day at a time sometimes.
I'm not sure what your definition of "systematic hunger problem" is, but when roughly a MILLION children in a wealthy country like the U.S. are in households that actually have to skimp on meals, leaving their children going hungry, that still strikes me as a significant problem.
Even if 90% or more of kids on "meal assistance" are in households that actually do get enough food, talking about the other 10% where kids are actually going hungry isn't merely "diverting attention from the actual problem."
Your point may be valid, but that doesn't take away from the significant number of actual hungry kids out there in one of the wealthiest nations on the planet....
Slashdot Mirror
Citation needed. Where are articles or information about these studies or their conclusion?
Seriously? Take five minutes and start searching medical journals. There are literally HUNDREDS of studies (maybe thousands) on vaccine side effects and effectiveness. There are DOZENS of metastudies that have tried and failed to find evidence of a link between autism and vaccines.
If you want just one example, take this study, which compiled data on 14.7 MILLION children who had been given MMR vaccines.
The authors actually are actually really negative about the way side effects are reported for vaccines, and they encourage more rigorous studies with better reporting.
Nevertheless, among the many studies with good data they looked at, they conclusively said that there is no evidence of a link between MMR vaccine and autism.
Why would a group of authors ready to chastise the medical establishment for not being more clear about possible side effects try to hide an autism link? They even identify and specifically discuss a number of known actual side effects to the vaccine.
This is just one. There are dozens of other review studies like it, and hundreds of individual studies on vaccine effectiveness and side effects. I'm terribly sorry for your son and your family, but there's absolutely no evidence of the link you suggest. A few hours looking at actual medical journals and studies, rather than at random websites promoting unjustified links, could easily demonstrate that.
When you start working, you start learning skills and little time building in-depth knowledge. Understanding the theory being the skills can help keeping up with technology better or adapt better.
While I agree with you about the usefulness of "theory," I'm not sure packing it into 4 years with an audience of inexperienced people makes much sense. You can spend 4 years studying all sorts of "theory" about how to ride a bike -- physics, anatomy of the body and its relationship to bike-riding, social and cultural norms that could affect types of bikes and riding style... whatever. But you're still going to fall down the first few times you try.
OR -- you could spend a couple days reading theory AND doing practice and you'll be able to ride. And that theory you read will make a heck of a lot more sense.
Studying extensive theory without and before practical experience is rather dumb. Traditional "liberal arts" taught in college wasn't about practical things, and it wasn't even about detailed theory that would be relevant to your profession. It was more like encounters with various types of knowledge and ways of thinking, the vast majority of which had no direct relevance to your profession. College should be about training you think in general, not a glorified trade school nor 4 years being forced to read technical manuals of the theory for your field... you should read that theory anyway, but only after and while gaining experience -- when there's some chance you might understand it or get something out of it.
That's a direct effect of mass, not because truckers are interested in making traffic better.
The primary motivation is the mass, I agree. But truckers also have a priority to travel efficiently on the roads to make shorter delivery times (and reduce their time spent "working").
Thus, you will generally see truckers exaggerate these behaviors more than necessary just for the sake of mass... because it actually benefits them for traffic to flow better, and, as a side effect, it can benefit you and the rest of the traffic too.
They don't give a shit about traffic flow, they care about maintaining a steady speed because it is tiring and costly to accelerate and decelerate. So they set it and forget it at some speed, and the rest of the traffic can go fuck itself.
A trucker's living depends on being able to travel efficiently, to make delivery on time. If their behavior was actually slowing everyone down and making traffic worse or more inefficient, it would harm them and their livelihood.
Instead, they do this deliberately, and more than they would need to just because of the giant mass they're moving.
It seems pretty illogical that truckers -- who spend their lives on the road and have more empirical driving experience than anyone else -- would adopt behaviors that would actually slow them down, snarl traffic, and make them less likely to make delivery on time.
They aren't trying to "solve" the traffic jam. They do that for a few reasons:
These are all correct as well. But you forget one more thing: truckers often care about getting where they need to go as efficiently as possible. If their behavior actually had a negative impact on traffic flow, it would hurt them all, and they could be slightly more aggressive.
Instead, what I actually see is that truckers exaggerate the behavior we're discussing deliberately, since empirical evidence shows that their behavior has a positive impact on traffic, which raises throughput, which means they can actually make their delivery earlier, rather than sitting in traffic forever.
By the time 10 or so cars go around you, you will have slowed to a complete stop as cars are changing lanes, and merging to get around the car that has 'stalled' in the road.
Unless traffic is actually stopped on the road, this is impossible. The car will not end up "stopping" just to maintain a safe distance.
Let's do the 2-lane case. (I'll leave more lanes as an exercise for the reader.) There are two lanes: A and B, with B on the right (the usual "slow lane").
There are three possible speed situations: in traffic ahead, (1) A is faster, (2) B is faster, (3) both are basically the same speed.
Suppose the hypothetical car maintaining a safe following distance is in lane B.
In situation (1), with A moving faster, all the cars start to move over into lane A. They have no need to merge back into lane B, because A is moving faster. Eventually enough cars will move into lane A so that its effective speed will be reduced, resulting in a situation equivalent to case (3).
In situation (2), they have no need to pass the hypothetical car, and probably can't because the density of cars in lane A would probably be greater due to its lower speed in the normal "passing lane."
In situation (3), there's no advantage to trying to get around the hypothetical car, because the other lane isn't moving faster. If some cars do occasionally cut into the gap, if traffic is moving smoothly otherwise, everyone just adjusts gradually.
The only way the car supposedly comes to a stop is with a massive sudden inflow of aggressive drivers into lane B, continuously. That just doesn't happen in the real world, because such aggressive lane changing to the gap in B will open gaps in A, and the aggressive drivers already in A will stop switching, because their lane now has more gaps and will start moving faster than B. Your scenario could possibly briefly happen in stop-and-go traffic, but in that case, a temporarily stopped vehicle would actually be normal.
I went to your traffic simulator, and it showed that you got traffic jams due to quantity of cars, not because of breaking.
First off, it's not my simulator. Second, you did notice that there are about ten sliders you can vary on each simulation, right? Quantity of cars is only one or two of them. It's the most obvious thing that affects traffic, but the other sliders have effects. The rest mostly tweak various parameters that have to do with how aggressive drivers are.
If you spend even a couple minutes reading the commentary on that site for the simulations, you'll see the explanations about how you can actually get a higher maximum throughput in some situations by having drivers be less aggressive. And once some idiot does something that causes the pattern to break down, everybody suffers.
Basically, for every given speed, there's a maximum possible stable rate that cars can pass through. Usually that occurs when people are driving less aggressively -- leaving a little more distance, not accelerating/braking suddenly, etc. If you increase aggressiveness and/or the number of cars, you may be able to hold things steadly for a little while, but eventually things will break down and you'll get a traffic jam.
With larger numbers of cars, the only way to maintain stable flow is for everyone to drive at a slow, steady pace and not make sudden changes. You can't really test this on the simulator linked there, but this can even work for very high traffic density. It would be often be better ("better" = everyone gets through faster and gets home earlier) if we all coasted through dense traffic at a constant 5 MPH, rather than the normal pattern where everybody accelerates quickly to 15 MPH or so for 15 seconds, then brakes suddenly and comes to a dead stop for 20 seconds.
Why doesn't that happen? Because it's "wrong" to leave a gap. If you're not speeding up to catch up to the next guy's bumper, even if you're only going 10 MPH, then you're not "driving right" (even if it's actually propagating the problem).
But another thing the simulations tend to show is that not everyone has to drive like an angel to improve traffic. That's why truckers adopt their strategies of gradual acceleration/deceleration and big gaps in such situations. With a certain minimum amount of good drivers, these traffic situations can actually improve... alas, most people just simply won't give up that 2 seconds they think they gain by flooring the accelerator only to brake hard a few seconds later in heavy traffic.
By the way, you may want to check out the recommendations of this group at MIT, who have produced traffic models that seem to fit well with real world data.
Their recommendations? Drive a little more slowly in heavier traffic and leave a little more space in front to give you room to react.
I already stated "brake/slow down" which includes your continuum of behavior, it's all the same. Any alteration in speed from a steady state causes ripples behind you.
If the alteration in speed is gradual rather than abrupt, and if drivers behind you respond similarly, traffic jams can be prevented. It's the idiots who accelerate to the last possible moment to close the gap with the guy slowing down in front of them who are causing the ripples. Making gradual adjustments and allowing a gap to make future adjustments is the only way to keep steady flow near a bottleneck.
See details I posted to your previous aggressive crazed response, and try out your fantasies here.
So what you didn't see because you are so totally oblivious to how traffic really works, is that your repeated braking/slowing to get back to a safe distance is causing huge traffic snarls for miles behind you as the effect of slight variations in speed is magnified massively in a ripple effect behind you.
I'll note that the GP already responded and noted that he doesn't generally brake, which is appropriate in this circumstance. He just keeps the distance open.
I don't think you realize how traffic works. The reason why "snarls" and "ripple effects" occur is due to sudden braking, usually caused by people driving too aggressively and changing lanes (causing others to be cut off and brake suddenly) or not gradually slowing when coming up on the driver in front, but instead hitting the accelerator until braking at the last possible moment to end up 6 inches behind the guy's bumper in front of you.
Those are the maneuvers that actually cause ripples and traffice snarls. You want to prevent them? Don't drive aggressively. Leave enough space to brake when needed.
You want to solve them? Drive like the GP. Ever notice how 18-wheelers drive on a highway in heavy stop-and-start traffic? Notice how they generally let giant holes open in front of them? Even though some aggressive people will hop inside those holes, the truckers are actually trying to solve the traffic jam. If they can drive a constant 30 MPH or 20 MPH so that all the traffic is moving, it can actually clear the jam. Instead, if everyone suddenly accelerates to 40 MPH and then slows down to a stop a mile later just to keep on the tail of the person in front of them, it will actually take the jam many times longer to clear.
This is doubly true whenever some sort of lane change or merge is the cause of the traffic problem -- traffic has transition equivalents to laminar and turbulent flow in fluid dynamics. If you try to push through too many cars too fast, things will become turbulent, and soon the flow will be impeded. Instead, if people always maintain a reasonable distance and speed, making small adjustments rather than large accelerations and sudden braking, you can actually push more cars through faster than you would with repeated stops and starts.
In effect, by trying to drive at roughly constant speeds, and by leaving a gap in front to avoid making sudden maneuvers (as well as allowing others to move into that gap if need be rather than abruptly stopping themselves), you can actually increase traffic throughput, even if your top speed is much lower.
If you don't get how this is possible, spend some time with a simulation developed by actual experts in traffic dynamics, such as one here.
This is pissing everyone off, putting many drivers in a bad mood and everyone at greater risk of an accident.
Maintaining a safe following distance with no sudden accelerations, braking, or sudden lane changes is a very safe way to drive. If you are the one changing lanes to get around this guy and get home 10 seconds earlier, you're the one actually causing the traffic problems, not to mention putting everyone at greater risk of accidents.
Oh, and because your maneuvers are more likely to cause jams in the first place, you -- and others like you -- are actually the ones responsible for everyone getting home 15 minutes later by trying to save that 10 seconds.
Tell me, how do the lifestyles of the "worker-slaves" of the United States compare to the those of the "wealthy few" of Mesopotamia?
Call me old fashioned, but I'd rather be a "worker-slave" in contemporary America, where I can work a five-day week, own my own place, travel the world relatively cheaply, communicate at light-speed around the globe, raise a family in relative security, and most likely live to a ripe old age
Umm, aside from light-speed communication around the globe, the "wealthy few" of Mesopotamia actually had those things.** Actually, they had them better, since they didn't have to work a five-day week, because they had plenty of others working to support them... just like modern wealthy folks.
I think you actually helped prove GP's point.
(**I'm not sure light-speed communication around the globe is something that significantly improves anyone's lifestyle -- it just gives us instant access to information about things that mostly have little to do with our lives. Oh, and travel around the known world in the past may have been expensive, but it would have been relatively "cheap" for the wealthy.)
People became more productive due to technology. Now you are able to produce enough for you and your family in 40 hours / week. Before this technology advancement, you needed to work 60-80 hours / week in order to produce enough.
Huh? Come again?
Most of the salaried ("white collar") people I know today work at least 50 and usually greater than 60 hours per week. Only due to labor unions and federal regulations did the "blue collar" week settle at 40 hours/week, and that's been pretty constant for the past 50 years or so.
Meanwhile, productivity has skyrocketed. Quoth Wikipedia:
Using the data provided by the United State Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erik Rauch has estimated productivity to have increased by nearly 400%. According to Rauch, âoeif productivity means anything at all, a worker should be able to earn the same standard of living as a 1950 worker in only 11 hours per week.â
Then why is the 40-hour week still standard, both men and women have to work to support the average family, and white collar workers are working more than ever before? Again from Wikipedia:
In the United States, the working time for upper-income professionals has increased compared to 1965, while total annual working time for low-skill, low-income workers has decreased. This effect is sometimes called the "leisure gap".
I would note that those low-skill, low-income workers usually saw a decrease in pay along with decreased hours, since they are paid by the hour, so they're not being paid more for their productivity... instead, they have to take a part-time job or have their spouse work.
What you say should be true in an ideal world, but the reality is that as productivity has increased at record levels in the past 50 years, pay has actually gone down while necessary working time per family has gone up.
You are confused on a number of points.
Gee, thanks. Rather than just presenting your argument and assuming good faith, you assume that I'm an idiot from the start... rather than just interpreting things a little differently.
A lot of people are still convinced that there is no other way and that without copyright artists will starve and we'll have no more art. That is of course hysterical nonsense. There are many other ways.
I never said there weren't other ways. But I don't think that means we summarily have to declare copyright to be dead, and that you should make that decision for all artists as some sort of noble belief in the greatness of copying.
Maybe your way will be the way of the future. But for now, just declaring that copying is great and that there is nothing wrong with violating implicit contracts made with creators is not necessarily taking a moral highground.
Patronage is a big one that is centuries old. You express grave doubts that patronage can be effective.
I didn't express any "grave doubts." I said that traditionally it meant that rich people got to determine what art is. That's probably still the case in terms of traditional publishers/distributors, but I thought we could actually have a shot at undermining them with the rise of the internet and the reduced cost of distribution. Just at that moment, when creators are suddenly empowered with the ability to distribute their own works on their own terms with little overhead, you propose that we refuse them the ability to collect money in the traditional way.
There's nothing wrong with patronage, if you like the tastes of rich people.
There's also merchandizing and endorsements, public performances, contests with money prizes, and, one you mentioned, work for hire.
Merchandizing, endorsements, and works for hire are great for people who already have a reputation. They don't work so well for the very people that copyright could work best for -- the little guy just trying to get his first works out there and make a little profit. Offering contests with money prizes -- how does that exactly help an author make money off of his first book again? Public performances may work well for performers, but some people aren't performers. They may write books, for example. The may be composers, but not great performers.
And anyhow, most of these things sound great to a garage band writing a song in an afternoon. These things don't really work well to help a guy invest two years of his life doing reseach to write a really good book, which now is just passed around for free.
It all comes down to the fact that you are completely divorcing any value from the actual creation of the artwork (aside from works for hire/patronage). If we devalue the artwork, why should it be given any value whatsoever? Who wants to invest in making quality publications or compositions when you can't EVER make money off of that? Instead, you'll create works designed to get endorsements or do your prize money thing (however that works) or whatever.
We already have markets to create a lot of crappy pop art. A lot of yahoos would do that in their garage anyway, particularly now that you can set up a home recording studio with such a small investment.
You bring up Mozart. Mozart's father spent decades teaching his son a craft. Mozart could execute that craft of composition with incredible ability, like a master carpenter could build a piece of furniture without any plans that looks like a work of art. But it took decades to cultivate that skill, and the investment of a parent for most of that time teaching it. The kind of stuff you're proposing to fund new works is not something that a person could justify spending a couple decades just getting ready to produce good work... or, as I mentioned, even a writer taking a couple years to do research for a quality book.
If you're trying to address copyright issues, why take up so much of your reply with theft of services?
Because this thread was about theft and its potential relevance to copyright.
The issue is not that you made an illicit copy of the will or song, but that you agreed to pay somebody for producing it,
And that's exactly what an artist who takes advantage of copyright law expects as well. Suppose an author today writes a book and files a copyright registration with the U.S. government (not required to claim copyright, but many people do it anyway... I just mention it to show that the author is explicitly aware of copyright and intends to take advantage of it).
That author has effectively done his work believing that he can maintain control over copies of that work, and if you make copies of it except under fair use, you owe him money.
Thus, if you acquire a copy of that work and make use of it, you are implicitly agreeing to the copyright contract that the creator took advantage of when he registered the copyright. If you make unauthorized copies of that work, you are violating the contract... in the exact same manner as in the examples I gave about theft of services. To deny that is to try to say, "well, I'll agree to some contracts, but I won't agree to others," which isn't consistent.
When making copies of a copyrighted work without permission, you are effectively breaching a contract, effectively committing theft of the service the creator provided.
You don't want to pay? Fine. Don't use the work, and don't make copies of it. The only difference between my examples and common file-sharing is that common file-sharers don't have to look an artist in the eye when they stiff them for their fee. All the rest is just semantics.
The only relevant thing you said assumes that having free copies available reduces the demand for buying the copyrighted work. We know this is false in some cases, and the evidence for the assumption is spotty at best.
As I mentioned in my original post, I freely acknowledge that not all those who take a free copy of something would have paid for a real one. But even if only 10% would have paid, that would be something.
And I will also stipulate to the fact that some artists actually prefer to gamble and release things free in the hope that it might spread their reputation. And then they may be able to make even more money. I bet that works for some artists. But I don't think you or the GP should get to make that decision for ALL ARTISTS, without their permission.
I'm sure that the most famous artists in the world who don't have a lot of overhead can surely make a lot more money by giving out lots of freebies and figuring out other ways of making money. I'm not concerned about them. I'm concerned about the talented guy who puts a lot of effort into his work and just wants to make a few hundred or a few thousand dollars off of it, so he can keep doing it and making a small living... not the multi-millionaire pop star.
And that "little guy" should get to choose the terms for selling his work... or else we'll squeeze all of the talented little guys out of the market and only end up with crap supported by the widest masses or stuff that can attract the interest of rich patrons. It's not an optimal strategy for democratic art.
Copying is not stealing no matter how many times others try to equate the 2 actions.
I agree that "copying is not stealing" in a strict sense, but I also don't think copying is always the noble deed you make it out to be.
And, although you don't accept the analogy between copying and stealing, it doesn't mean there aren't some things in common.
Here's a simple hypothetical situation:
Suppose you hire a lawyer to draw up some important legal document for you (a will or something). You need the help of an expert to be sure the language is legally binding. Say you go over to his office, he shows you the will, and then he says, "My fee for this is $500."
He gets up and goes to the bathroom. You go over to his computer and use your USB drive to make a copy of the electronic file of the will. You then get up and leave. Or, you wait for him to come back and say, "Well, I can't pay $500, so no thanks" and then leave. Whatever. You file the legal document.
Is that "stealing"? You only made a copy of an electronic document. Isn't "information supposed to be free"?
If it troubles you that you inappropriately accessed his computer, suppose he (stupidly) sends you the document via email, along with his bill. You mutter something about the fee being too high and refuse to pay and claim to "return" the electronic copy he sent. You then go ahead and use your copy of the document anyway.
In this case, you hired someone to do something for you, and you made an implicit agreement to pay his fee if you want the product. It shouldn't matter whether the form of the product is easily copyable or not: whether you paid a carpenter to build you a new porch or a lawyer to write you a new will, you owe them money for their work.
Is this strictly "stealing"? No. But it does violate an implicit contract, and I don't think it's too far-fetched to consider it to be akin to theft if you go behind your lawyer's back and still use your copy of the document without paying his fee. You effectively "took" his time and work without paying anything, which sounds very much like "stealing."
Now, suppose you do the same thing, except you hire a composer to write a new song for your wedding. Again, you refuse the $500 fee, because you can't afford it or don't like the song that much or whatever... but you take the mp3 and use the song at your wedding anyway. Isn't that also akin to "theft," even if it isn't strictly stealing?
Okay, you might say, but these are clear examples of work-for-hire, so you owe the creator something because you implicitly agreed to pay for their work by asking them to do it.
Now, we get to a real-world copyright example. Now our songwriter decides, rather than only writing single songs for rich guys and their weddings, that he'd rather contribute his work to society at large. He could solicit some sort of "subscription" for his songs, charging prospective buyers a few dollars each. (This sort of thing did and still does happen for certain types of publications, though in the past it wasn't just for periodicals -- large books and even printed song collections were sometimes printed under subscription.)
But a young composer without a "big name" doesn't have that option. So he writes a song and arranges for a recording. Rather than charging someone $500 for writing a single song, he figures if he can get 1000 people to pay him 50 cents each, he'll make the same amount. And the U.S. copyright system seems to back him up on this idea.
But after two guys buy the song (giving him a total of $1 in revenue), you come along and start shouting: "Information should be FREE! Copying is a noble act! Share! Share! Share!" One of those guys uploads the song somewhere on the internet, and several hundred people g
You don't have to alter the First Amendment. What you need to do is fix Corporate Law that explicitly identifies them as not being people. Then, you should grant corporations every right they have, rather than implicitly giving them every right that actual people have.
Yeah, this idea that "corporations are persons" is the reason why they have free-speech rights has received a lot of press in the past couple years.
But this has nothing to do with the actual text of the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Please note that there is no mention of "people" or of a "person" until the last 1/3 of the text. It simply says that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech." The source of that "speech" is not specified.
The reason why corporations have free speech is because the First Amendment says Congress can't make laws restricting free speech, not because of anything in the definition of what a corporation is, "person" or otherwise.
You would in fact have to change the text of the First Amendment to make the distinction you're trying to make clear. The Supreme Court previously had actually carved out a specific exception to the First Amendment (like the "incitement to lawless action" exception) to prevent corporations from having free political speech. They then recently decided that that exception had some problems and should be removed.
I'm not saying that corporations should have unlimited powers or unlimited free speech. But the First Amendment doesn't say what you think it does.
In 2011, 31,000 people died firearm-related deaths.
In your link, it notes that roughly 20,000 of those gun deaths are due to suicides. A lot of those people (though certainly not all) may have found some other way to kill themselves if a firearm isn't available. (Studies suggest that many do.) It therefore seems a little unfair to count people who are deliberately harming themselves and actively looking for a way to end their lives when comparing it to primarily accidental deaths from drunk driving.
If you subtract those out and only count gun deaths from homicides and gun accidents, the numbers are roughly equal to drunk driving. Some (not I, but some others) might even argue that we should only compare incidents with similar "intent": assuming the vast majority of alcohol-related road fatalities are accidents, the comparable number in your link is about 850 fatalities from "accidental discharge" vs. 10,000 from alcohol-related accidents.
I'm actually in favor of greater gun regulations, but it doesn't help that argument to make apples-to-oranges comparisons.
This study was conducted to examine driver behavior and accident effects of raising and lowering posted speed limits on nonlimited access rural and urban highways. While much research in recent years has focused on the effects of the 55 and 65 mi/h (89 and 105 km/h) speed limits on limited access facilities, the major emphasis of this research is on streets and highways that were posted between 20 and 55 mi/h (32 and 89 km/h)
In other words, this is isn't really a interstate highway speed study. Such studies are out there, but this isn't one of them. They may have drawn similar conclusions, but we should look at a study that actually addresses speed limits like 65 MPH and 75 MPH on limited access roads.
In my experience (which admittedly is just anecdotal), highway drivers are more conscious of speed limits -- and potentially wanting to push them as much as possible -- than random drivers around town. If I'm not on a limited access road and trying to dodge pedestrians and cyclists and random people turning left everywhere, those sorts of things will probably feed into my sense of a "natural speed limit" more than anything else.
Whereas if I'm on an open straight limited access road, the only things preventing my speed from rising are (1) traffic, (2) my willingness to drive at high speeds, and (3) the posted limit.
Also, I would note that the linked study doesn't have details on how long-term any of these changes were. All it says is:
Repeated measurements were made at 14 sites to examine short - and long-term effects of speed limit changes.
I'd expect that driver speed wouldn't adjust that much on lower speed roads for reasons I already mentioned, but even if it could, the "herd mentality" of people used to driving those routes probably would require quite a bit of time (maybe years) for speeds to gradually move as more drivers take the time to notice the new limit. Once a certain percentage of people start noting the new limit that's 10 MPH higher and start driving a little faster, the traffic patterns could change. I've certainly noticed this myself on some interstate highways that raised speed limits. Maybe I missed it, but I can't tell how long-term this study was, so I'm not sure how to evaluate its data. (Furthermore, there's a lot of cherry-picking of numbers -- 85th percentile in this fact, 75th in that fact, 50th in this fact, 99th or 1st in another... it's difficult to get a sense of what the data might really have shown. I'm not saying the study is bad, but it's hard to evaluate based on your link.)
Impossible? It doesn't happen in Britain. I'm not sure if that's because it's banned or just something that's not done.
Well, for one thing the UK doesn't have elections occurring at regular intervals. When one is declared, the campaigns only last for about a month.
In the U.S., campaign season has now lengthened to probably 18 months before an election (which means U.S. representatives, who are elected every 2 years, essentially never stop campaigning or raising money for it).
For presidential races and for large senate seats the area of campaigning is much larger than any MP in the UK, which means that the amount of money necessary to run advertising, campaign travel, staffing, etc. is a heck of a lot larger.
These factors together mean that some U.S. candidates need to raise huge amounts of money for large, long campaigns -- nothing like the UK model.
I'm not arguing in favor of bribery or excessive donations from business interests. But the electoral system is just structured in such a way in the U.S. that it needs constant huge inflows of cash to keep going all the time... which leads to politicians courting various sources of cash. That might need to be changed for it to be realistic for U.S. politicians to stop accepting huge amounts of donations.
I'm betting that this is true for a certain type of child...one who is curious and driven to learn and that many students don't fit into that category.
I'd bet it would be true for lots of children, given a perspective on education at an early age that would shape them toward benefitting from this model.
If you've ever worked with toddlers, you know that the vast majority of them are eager to explore and learn. This sticks with most kids through the early years of primary school.
At some point, though, school becomes a "chore." Social attitudes about "nerds" and "geeks" take over at most schools, kids who don't succeed on particular benchmarks are alienated, and eventually by some point in secondary school you have a majority of kids who have forgotten how to learn and be curious, at least regarding most academic subjects.
Meanwhile, parents force skills in particular ways because they see them as a vehicle for success rather than learning for knowledge's or exploration's sake. But most parents and even most teachers tend to forget that it's not the kid who learns the school material that's necessarily the most successful. It's the kid who has learned how to learn and is self-motivated to continue who will succeed much more than someone who just does what's required in school. If we seek to teach learning itself as the first "skill" in school, rather than a cookie-cutter one-fits-all curriculum of "basic skills" achieved at particular age levels for everyone, we might see a lot more kids who are eager and willing to drive their own education.
Looking at today's educational system, it may seem like only a small number of kids could really be left to their own devices to drive a lot of their learning through curiosity (obviously with some guidance). But I think it could actually work for a lot more kids (though certainly not all) if our attitudes about education were different.
But Harvard is somehow managing to fill 20% of its class w/ kids whose families fall under the $65k/year threshold. So some of these families, at least, are doing "what it takes" to get into Harvard.
I'm not at all criticizing this or the recruiting efforts of top schools. But this statistic doesn't necessarily mean what you claim.
Maybe, some of the kids are doing "what it takes" to get into Harvard, due to natural intelligence, talent, etc. Intelligent kids do occur across all socioeconomic classes.
I find it easy to believe that Harvard could find 400 or so kids per year from across the U.S. who are just naturally intelligent and talented enough -- even without the extra perks a wealthy family could get them -- to compete with rich kids that have SAT coaches, etc.
The issue isn't the 400 super-talented lucky ones who get into places like Harvard with great financial aid, even without the perks of a "rich kid education." The issue is the thousands and thousands of the not-quite-as-talented-but-could-easily-compete-with-rich-kids-if-they-also-had-SAT-coaches kids. Those kids may not "deserve" to go to Harvard any more than the rich kids that only got in due to alumni connections and years of coaching... but they may deserve to go to a really good second-tier school.
But they probably won't have that opportunity, because the second-tier schools don't have the resources or the prestige to find and draw these kids, nor the financial aid packages like Harvard's to make them look affordable to poor people. And instead those second-tier schools mostly get filled up with the rejected coached rich kids from Harvard's pool, as their "safety school."
Gold works when everything fails, everything else fails, gold remains the only true money.
Only because the "gold wackos" hoard it and keep trying to convince everyone else to hoard it.
I completely agree with you that gold has a longer history of being valued as a currency.
Basically, it all comes down to exactly what I said -- if the people in power like "shiny rocks," gold will still be accepted as currency. If they don't, it won't. It's that simple.
I'm NOT saying that it's likely that all the powerful people in the world will suddenly stop liking "shiny rocks." But clearly gold's value has fluctuated over time as people have temporarily changed their investment strategies, both to and from the "shiny rock strategy."
Also, please re-read my comment and note that I specified a RARE type of bottle cap, so it would not be subject to inflation. Choose whatever the heck you want: the first edition of Rush Limbaugh's first book is the new currency. I don't care.
If you have power and control over significant resources, you can dictate what functions as currency. Gold is only a solution as long as you keep convincing those people that it is... otherwise, it has little inherent value. Any other random rare item could function just as well.
(And yes, before you start in about how fiat currencies are not limited in the way that rare bottle caps or the first edition of Limbaugh's book are, let me note that I never said dollars were the SAME as gold in every way. They aren't. However, fiat currencies and gold operate on the same ultimate basis of value, though, in that they are only valuable because people are willing to take them in exchange for other goods that they actually need -- and that requires a collective social "faith" in the inherent value of an item of ultimately little real value.)
By definition money is store of value, means of exchange and unit of account.
Things only have "value" if (1) other people need them, or (2) you can convince them that having those things will allow them to get other things that they need. The first type of value leads to direct barter; the second leads to a medium of exchange... a currency... "money." What form that "money" takes is up to the people in power who hoard it or give it out and can convince other people to accept it.
Gold is the money, gold standard means that there is an equivalent amount of notes (not fiat money, but redeemable bank notes), so you can get the weight of gold back for that paper from the bank. It's like using deposit box keys where you store gold as medium of exchange. Gold as money doesn't 'collapse',
Gold could easily "collapse" if no one wanted it. If I'm starving out in the middle of the desert, and you offered me some food and fresh water or a bag of gold coins with a thousand times the value of the food, which do you think I'd take?
Anything relatively rare can function as money, but only if people actually believe that anyone else would take it. Your "shiny rocks" don't have any more inherent value than someone else's "green pieces of paper," since neither is particularly useful to humans absent some sort of power structure that endows that "money" with value.
Suppose the world economy completely collapses and all of your fiat currencies go in the toilet. You have 17 gazillion tons of gold in your own personal vault, but nothing else. I have a few crates of canned food and a pile of random rare old bottlecaps that I like to collect. I start telling people I'll accept these particular rare bottlecaps in exchange for food. Pretty soon people in my town understand that those bottlecaps have value, because I -- who have control of food, something people actually need -- accept them as currency.
Now you come to town and try to buy food or other essential goods with your gold. Do you seriously think anyone will sell anything to you? Nobody wants your shiny rocks. The person in power likes rare bottlecaps, and that's the only "money" that matters now... aside from actual food.
The idea that "shiny rocks" have any inherent value is just as stupid as the idea that "green pieces of paper" have inherent value. If you can't see that, I don't know else to say.
The problem with this is two-fold: 1) Insects can digest and carry more disease than plants. The fact that insects are animal and not plant allows them to be carriers...like Malaria for mosquitos.
Not all insects carry loads of human-communicable diseases. I think you're probably just as likely (if not more so) to get a serious illness by eating a sick farm animal than by contracting one spread to you from eating your average insect.
2) The insects are actually crawling around in the crap. Plants aren't. Food needs to be prepared carefully.
Umm, plants are often grown in "crap." Vegetables, legumes, and some grains, in particular, often have "soil" (and whatever was put in it as fertilizer) all over them. Meanwhile, excepting coprophages, most insects don't spend their lives wallowing in "crap," unlike many vegetables that are fertilized with animal dung. Oh, and by the way, "normal" farm animals often roll around in unsavory stuff too.
Even if your claims are true (and I've pointed out reasons they probably should qualified), you've only addressed why insects might be less safe than plants. But they have similar risks to other animal products. The GP's point was partly about animals too -- some are acceptable to some cultures, others are not. Insects may seem more "icky" to Westerners, but I'm not sure that they are actually less safe to prepare than what we think of as "normal" animals.
Sorry, but "being on meal assistance" does not in any way whatsoever imply "does not get enough to eat."
That is often true, not always.
America has a serious nutrition problem, but we certainly do not have a systematic hunger problem, and claiming or implying that we do is just diverting attention from the actual problem.
Okay, here are some facts. Child hunger organizations often say something like 15-20% of households in the U.S. don't have "secure" access to food. That's an obvious exaggeration, based on bad assumptions. And most of those households get food assistance, even if their kids aren't going hungry. To that extent, I agree with you.
HOWEVER, more detailed statistics indicate that 1-2% of households actually do cut the size and/or number of meals for children due to poverty. Something around 0.5% of households have children going without food for more than a day at a time sometimes.
I'm not sure what your definition of "systematic hunger problem" is, but when roughly a MILLION children in a wealthy country like the U.S. are in households that actually have to skimp on meals, leaving their children going hungry, that still strikes me as a significant problem.
Even if 90% or more of kids on "meal assistance" are in households that actually do get enough food, talking about the other 10% where kids are actually going hungry isn't merely "diverting attention from the actual problem."
Your point may be valid, but that doesn't take away from the significant number of actual hungry kids out there in one of the wealthiest nations on the planet....