I don't think Warren Buffet is particularly interested in not paying taxes since he specifically campaigned to up his own tax rate, whatever other advantages he may or may not have over others, he's not insanely and cynically greedy, just good at a certain type of investing- value investing (the good kind) , which is not a crime.
However you're right that the rich certainly know how to lobby Congress to get laws passed that favor themselves. Think of Bush's tax cuts or software patents or the non-bankruptability of student loans or the capital gains tax rate or the explicit prohibition on entities from pooling their buying power and negotiating a lower price for drugs or a million other ways that the followiong chain of causation results in ordinary people getting fucked by the super-rich:
Running for public office is incredibly expensive--> Candidates need Big Money--> Rich People give Big Money to Candidates --> Rich people get back legislation that pays many times over for the Big Money they gave to Candidates--> Candidates pass laws that keep Rich People rich / Candidates kill bills that would help regular people--> Congressperson is running for office again OR Congressperson is going to work for Rich people's company now.
If you want to break that cycle you need to have publicly funded elections.
"They" that want to kill us have generally been a small number that
a) actually want to kill us
b) have the means to kill us
c) have the will to do it
d) have the opportunity arise
Generally, I think all four factors must be in play.
I can't reply to this right now but it's good and I will this afternoon. Briefly, your a) becomes less important as your b) trends up. Your c) is just a restatement of your a) and your d) is what we're fighting to prevent.
WRT to b, you need to break it our further because the exact details of your b) are operational here. It ahs to be :
b1) the number of people they can effect with their action
b2) the degree of damage to each person they can do with said action
b3) the number of people required to achieve said action
b4) the ease with which such action can be achieved.
as degree of damage and ease of achieving that damage trends upwards, and technological progress assures us they will, and as the number of people it takes trends disturbingly down, as technological progresses also ensures it will, and as the ease of achieving such action also trends down under the same forces, then society has greater and greater legitimate interest in spending coin and attention stopping them, since he alternative is much more costly in both coin and other ways.
Bin Laden told us expressly why he attacked us and it wasn't because we set the Saudi family up with ARAMACO or toppled Iran in '54. He is not interested in democracy of freedom or any of that stuff and as contemptible as Europeans may think our FP in the ME WRT sanctions was, that wasn't the reason either. Facts have to be let alone to be facts.
I will answer mo' better later but let me leave you with a question. If you thought our ME policy was a relic of the cold war - as I did - then are you not all about intervening now on the side of democracy when asked to, as some significant part of the Syrians have asked us to now ? Or is that "interventionism" ? Because I am all about flying sorties of Damascus and stopping the slaughter of innocents today, right now, yesterday. Would this not an example of us using our might to free people from oppression and generally defining and restarting our relationship to the long suffering peoples in the ME, which, as you said you believe was the cause of 9-11?
The answer is, it's an empirical question, always.
Is X best achieved through Y means or will more , better, or just as good X be achieved through other means?
So, do software patents promote or impede software development? In this case, we actually have the answer to that question because we have an A/B comparison. Prior to 1990 and especially prior to 2000 or so software patents did not exist as a significant force in the market place. Yet All Good Things got created anything, just the smallest tip of which includes :
all kinds of data structures (each one now patentable) ,
file systems and all their parts (each one now patentable) ,
operating systems all their moving parts (each one now patentable) ,
UIs and every twit and twitter of a detail contained therein (each one now patentable) ,
whole categories of programs including:
word processors and their associated algorithms (piece table, gap buffer etc etc ) and the end effects achieved by those algorithms (now a separate patent) and abstract relationships to end users, spreadsheets and databases and everything associated with them including record structures, indexing techniques, the every implementation of every detail of every normal form, their associated UIs, literally just a few hundred million discrete, individual little partlets,each of which is now patentable.
Does anyone here care to argue that I could go on extending this list for the rest of all our lives and still not be close to finishing?
So given that we already did the experimental condition of "no patenting software" and all the really important stuff got conceived of, created, refined, and companies were built around such and those companies suffered various fates, both good and bad, under market forces, no one but an IP lawyer or one who pays them can possibly argue we need software patents for software to thrive, and none one at all can argue that in good conscience.
With respect to drug creation, I am not an expert and that's what matters, I am the merest of spectators. No one should ask me this question and expect an good answer, but I CAN tell them how the question has to BE answered, and that is by applying as closely as possible the principles of the scientific method where you have one treatment and it yields a set of results and you have another treatment and it yields a set of results.
It's not practical to do that with an industry in a society (is it? Maybe we can experiment somehow ) but arguing that patents are apriori always the best way to achieve the production of complex goods in a free market ( I know it's around here somewhere..) society is just being an ideologue, a so called "IP maximalist" which is a fancy term for "lawyer".
Especially when that society is rapidly changing in all its relevant dimensions including - relative cost and power of technology, funding techniques, available ways to solicit and reward contributions and knowledge from experts, barriers to market entrance and barriers to participation for all parties including access to knowledge and in fact expertise itself.
So, exactly, I wouldn't argue that because I would first disqualify myself as a qualified expert and it's an empirical question seeking an empirical answer.
Your asking a normative question.. Why do we , in fact, do X if we say we want to do Y? The answer to your question is because pars of our system sometimes fails to live up to its intended purpose and needs to be brought back into line. The way this typically happens is educated people, people directly effected by the system, keepers and influencers of the system- lawyers , judges politicians- all have a conversation (a knock out drag down fight royale) and changes are made. The Civil Rights Movement was exactly this kind of societal shift . What the Constitution meant was being re-adjudicated by members of society.
I also ask "why do we allow software patents?" Right now, this whole issue is under very very active review by society, meaning by thinkers, writers, inventors observers, lawyers, judges and anyone involved, effected and aware of how dysfunctional our patent system is are slugging it out.
The point is, the Constitution is clear and furthermore the rulings are clear. The point of contention now is- does the patent system actually function to promote the useful arts and sciences or is some parts of it actually impeding same?
Obviously programmers know that in software, patents do not promote progress, they impede it. When software patents are rolled back, as they will be (or else the system will collapse completely) the reason will be because they failed to live up to the requirement that such government issued monopolies "advance the useful arts and sciences".
Look, it's not even in dispute. That is the stated purpose of the patent system; take it up with the Constitution. Further, your argument is vacuous. It's one thing to assert that YOU THINK that if my statement were true (it is) that the government would pay for patents. It's another thing for OTHER PEOPLE to agree with you , specifically the government.
The three branches of government decide what laws mean and how the Constitution is to be interpreted, not you, irrespective of how "obvious and logical" you think your argument is.
It's like saying that because SCOTUS decided that in Citizens United that speech is a form of money and we all have an equal right to free speech that we all should have the same amount of money. So what if I think that SCOTUS has said that ( I don't ) ? It's irrelevant unless and until I convince SCOTUS to interpret its decision that way or Congress to write it into law.
You have an idea about what the Constitution implies . That's interesting. Perhaps you have a future as a lawyer of some sort.
Utter nonsense from the economically illiterate and ideologically ignorant. Counterargument is a simple look at history in what increases in productivity, standard of living and profits. Pure profit comes from innovation. It is the entrepreneurs risk in applying resources in a different configuration. This simple fact completely destroys your claim. Consider a more detailed investigation of it here:
Dude, if you're going to accuse me of being ideologically blinded, you can 1) talk in a normal conversational tone instead of plucking the nearest peacock for his feathers and strutting around talking like something that just popped in from the 19th century and 2) do other than link me to the Mises.org website whose regular readers and adherents have proven themselves time and again to be amongst the MOST ideologically blinded twerps in all of econo-land.
Here , let me destroy your argument using merely logic. Just because it can happen that innovation leads to greater profits , doesn't mean that greater profits always come from innovation.
That wasn't very hard and it's a more formal restatement of my original point. Sure, innovation is good (well, innovation of a kind, financial ""innovation" seems to be determined to except itself from this rule) but innovation isn't the only way to goose your profits.
That's one point. A separate point is that so what if in some theory it all works out for the best (where the best is circularly defined as "how things work out" if the theory is adhered to) if 99% of the time 99% of the people are getting fucked over?
Economics is not a natural system waiting to be described by an economist-Newton. It's a purely human invention, economic systems are free creations of the human mind, just like money and freedom and all other values. There is no "way things are or have to be" . There's what DOES happen and there's our response to it. What we want to have happen is we want to create an equitable society. How we achieve that is not clear and not described by Ludwig von Mises or anyone else. The sad fact for the doctrinaire and ideological enthusiasts is that steadily economics is growing up and out of it's adolescent love affair with "systems" and starting to test the hypotheses of neoclassical frameworks to see if they're, you know, true
Giving deals to your cronies is a form of political corruption punishable by law, at least in theory.
Giving deals to corporations who then turn around and give you campaign contributions is enshrined in law as a form of free speech by the Citizens United decision
We need publicly funded elections and we need to amend the Constitution to make it so.
Ohh.. you're a nasty poster. You get the treatment.
Well, our entire system of justice descends from English common law if it comes to that, but we're not ruled by English common law, we're ruled by the Constitution. In fact, the essential quality of the Constitution, what is IS is the breaking away from previous systems of political organization and re-creating a new one carrying forward only those things we explicitly decide to and leaving the rest behind.
So we aren't ruled by a King, even though we were for centuries before that. We have a three branches of government and did away with the Divine Right of Kings.
Your argument is the same one the christian fundies use to try to ram their religion down our throats. It was always that way before, it's our heritage, so it must be that way now. Wrong.
It's amusing to hear someone way that the Constitution is irrelevant on a subject matter of which t directly and explicitly speaks. If the Constitution were irrelevant on arbitrary topics because of what was true before the Constitution was written, as your (stupid) argument attempts to establish, then the government wouldn't 'be constrained to have elections or or even be prevented from reconstituting a monarchy.
And you're telling me I need to read a little history?
there will never be an end to enemies especially when we make more with every one we kill.
This is our essential difference I think because we both agree that funds are not unlimited etc etc (in fact that's why I like he drone program)
Here's the thing. You know the kinds of people who unilaterally want to wage holy war because they're in this country too. The abortion clinic bombers, the christian dominionists. They're never going to back down, no matter what. If we give them an inch, they'll take a mile. They're fighting a holy war on a cosmic plane. You can't reason with people like that. All you can do is put them in jail (here) or kill them (there). They're definitely NOT going to stop, change, compromise, set down their arms, live and let live, let up, back off, change their minds or otherwise reconcile themselves to the fact of our way of life. Their whole purpose in life is to conquer, submit and rule as unlikely as that outcome sounds to us.
So for me the right problem to begin thinking about is- what are we going to do about them and how are we going to do it and what is the worst they can do. Unfortunately, that last one is a on a continually ascending trajectory which eventually know no bounds. This is a serious problem with the power to completely restructure the society we live in.
Something that fits that description bears careful sustained and serious thought.
I thnk we are on the same side of this debate 9for me, software patents are a joke) but factually, on this one point, you're quite wrong.
It states in the Constitution that the purpose of issuing a patent is "to promote the useful arts and sciences". This is the raison d'etre and is taken quite at face value by judges juries and Congress.
In fact it's the reason why patents aren't issued on artistic creations. Art is not a "useful" art or science in that sense. Art in the above sentence translates to, approx, "manufacturing process" today.
What were we doing to them when they hit us on 9-11 ? Did we know then we were at war with them, because they knew they were at war with us? What did we do to Afghanistan other than unceremoniously leave after repelling the Soviets?
My point is, they, unilaterally and for reasons that have to do with their interpretation of their religion - are determined to kill us or convert us (bin Laden's second option for us). These are their own words. The fact that they're "over there" means not that much. They know how to get over here.
None of the above was meant in a sarcastic of dismissive tone.
As far as the quotes from unnamed national security experts, that's the kind of thing that only sounds good if you already agree with the premise. If you don't, like me, you might prefer to have a debate on this topic with people putting their names and reputations on the line. When I reflect on the looseness of what can constitute a "national security expert", basically anyone form either side of the political partisan divide who works for one of their side's perspective so called "think tanks" or anyone who is a reporter for some yellow journalistic newspaper like, say, Fox News., I am unimpressed.
Some of this is by design. Creators should be able to profit from their work for a while, which is why we have patent / copyright laws.
This is a misconception. Patents don't exist to help inventors profit from their invention. They exist to encourage inventors to reveal the technical brilliance behind their inventions to the rest of society, thus benefiting society at large. That's why they exist. In order to lure the brilliant people at Angry Boids to tip the hand of their overwhelming genius to the eternal benefit of a grateful society, they are offered by the government a time-limited monopoly. Not all inventors opt in, e.g. Google.
Patents are not issued to help inventors make money or profit from their invention. They're issued to further progress in the useful arts and sciences.
It's an important distinction. If the patent system doesn't have the effect of advancing the useful arts and sciences, then the patents should not be issued and the inventor be damned.
This goes to the heart of the software patent debate. Do software patents advance the useful arts and sciences? In fact, they impede them. So they should stop being issued and those issued should be nullified. What about the inventors profiting from their work? That is not the concern of the government or the patent system.
Increased profits are typically achieved through restructuring manufacturing to a third world nation or other anti-worker means. If driving down prices at worker's expense was a magic pathway to increased prosperity for all (a rising tide lifts all boats... ) , then Walmart would have achieved this by now. Instead, the rich are getting fabulously richer and the poor and middle class are being systematically destroyed.
It's not surprising. They're going to try to pocket that money they save for themselves alone at least as hard as they're going to try to save it in the first place.
The magic bunny, er I mean invisible hand, of of laissez faire capitalism as espoused by Ayn Rand and Mitt Romney or to speak more precisely Mitt's handlers, puppet masters and soon to be policy makers Paul Ryan and Grover Norquist benefits, as a matter of historical fact, the top 1% as we all know by now:
That's right. Defect from the country that provided you with outstanding developers who were the end product of the best k-12 (and 12- 16 AND into adulthood) educational systems in the world
and who were willing to work for start-up wages and take risks because they weren't burdened with student loan debt:
From Wikipedia:
The Finnish education system is an egalitarian system, with no tuition fees and with free meals served to full-time students.
The present Finnish education system consists of well-funded and carefully thought out daycare programs (for babies and toddlers) and a one-year "pre-school" (or kindergarten for six-year olds); a nine-year compulsory basic comprehensive school (starting at age seven and ending at the age of sixteen); post-compulsory secondary general academic and vocational education; higher education (University and Polytechnical); and adult (lifelong, continuing) education.
The Nordic strategy for achieving equality and excellence in education has been based on constructing a publicly funded comprehensive school system without selecting, tracking, or streaming students during their common basic education.[1]
Part of the strategy has been to spread the school network so that pupils have a school near their homes whenever possible or, if this is not feasible, e.g. in rural areas, to provide free transportation to more widely dispersed schools. Inclusive special education within the classroom and instructional efforts to minimize low achievement are also typical of Nordic educational systems.[1]
Yes defect from that system you benefited from so you can save a measly 12.5% on taxes:
FTA:
The corporation tax rate in Finland is 24.5 per cent, while Ireland's rate is 12.5 per cent.
Yes do defect . Because that's coke n' whore money you could be putting up your fucking nose instead of giving it to the most effective and civic minded governments the world has ever known and supporting one of the most egalitarian societies the world has ever achieved. .
In truth, this happens all to time to Finland . Sports stars, recording stars etc etc defect to a low taxation country. They know about it and build in an allowance for it. They STILL like their society better , and as far as the loss of "talent" goes, they know how to print that shit on demand:
"Finland has reached number 1 or number 2, with very high rankings in reading literacy, mathematics and science. If one could make a calculation of the total, comparing different fields, Finland would be number 1. The country received very high marks in this international comparison of students," Finnish Ambassador to Thailand Sirpa Maenpaa told The Nation recently.
"Furthermore, the results that come from Finland are uniform. They do not come from some top students, but from the performance of all of the students," she said.
For anyone interested in how the Scandinavians think about taxes, this is a great listen from Planet Money:
Quotable quote- an incredulous interviewer asks a woman "would you like your taxes to be even higher??" to which she replies "...mmmm.. what will I get for my money?"
I agree. The stability of Pakistan and making sure the progressives there remain dominant over the conservative movement there is paramount. The forces for civil society and the rule of law- what we'll cal "civilization" - as opposed rule by a religious theocracy are very strong there though you wouldn't know it by reading the headlines. The educated people, the people who live in cites, the lawyers and journalists and professors and scientists want al Queda and the jihadis destroyed as much as we do. If Pakistan goes, if it ever fell to the religionists, that's a worse case scenario. I can't even guess what the appropriate US response would be... and it could well involve the use of tactical nuclear weapons.. nothing would be off the table.
We're doing everything conceivable to strengthen the secular forces in Pakistan. People who think we should just leave the jihadis "over there" to their own devices and let Pakistan sort it out have no idea what they're asking for. They aren't religious fanatics capable of starting thermonuclear war because we've antagonized them and they just can't take it anymore (that would be Iran if it were anyone, but in fact it's not... ). They're that way because they've been that way since time immemorial and conservatism has no way of progressing or changing with changing times.
Read Sam Harris's The End of Faith and tell me that the specific, publicly admitted and publicly owned tenets of religion aren't a disease we need to inoculate the population against.
Hey I am not anxious to avoid wondering if a 9-11 every so often is not preferable to some alternatives, including rolling back civil rights and spending obscene amounts of money. In other forums, and maybe this one I have said as much and even gone so far as attempt to quantify how many people (myself included of course) I'd be willing to risk dying in terrorist attacks in exchange for continuing our form of government and preserving civil liberties. As I recall, that number was quite higher than a 9-11 every five years. It's somewhere in the history of my posts here on slashdot I talk about this.
So if I gave the impression ( I think I did not) that I am not interested in dealing in a realistic way with choosing selections from a palette of bad choices, let me straighten that out right now.
I have no man-love for anyone that I am aware of. I think the drones are low cost, effective and as good as it gets to limiting the deaths of innocents. I also think that killing these people is mandatory because I know they're at war with us and were before we ever droned anyone and would be if we never droned anyone and will continue to be if we stop droning anyone.
I truly strive to interpret the world I live in using my best judgment. If I come down on one side's camp- and mostly it's the liberal side of things I come down on- it's because I'm not the only one who can think clearly so of course I find myself joined by others. That's not man-love. That's just the the natural result of like minds reasoning independently.
Whether the idiot is 23 or 53 or one person or a group, the abiding reality is that terrorism via whatever you can manage, is here to stay. As time passes "whatever you can manage" is going to be quite impressive because technological progress has the effect of putting into the hands of smaller and smaller groups of people greater and greater destructive force. That's a fact about the world that is no ones fault. I blame exactly no one that one day I will have to live in a world whose geopolitical and domestic politics are being defined by the fact that five guys can kill half a continent.
Seriously, just setting aside your initial reaction to my post, you obviously care about these things. You're just the type of person who ought to join in the conversation about civil liberties and security and the fate of our democratic institutions in the face of a future filled with facts like the hypothetical five guys cited above.
I am in complete agreement that some unthinkable things- like accepting the fact that terrorists will get through- are going to have to be discussed with a public that is not prepared to accept even that possibility exists.
The piece is a hatchet job IMO, for just the reasons I cited. But maybe we can agree that our insisting that our current President, or any future administration, must keep us all perfectly safe or the administration has failed is an unrealistic expectation. We absolutely have to have a non-partisan, national dialog on just this topic and I am only too happy to continue this topic with you.
What a hatchet job that is. They paint a picture of a President whose only concern is the next election and the effect of a successful terror plot on it.
Is Obama sacrificing America's long-term security for short-term political gain?
Christ what an asswipe. So stopping terrorism is a now just something a sitting President does for "short term political gain" ?
I have two words for the author of the below quoted excerpt- prove it.
Across the vast, rugged terrain of southern Yemen, an escalating campaign of U.S. drone strikes is stirring increasing sympathy for al-Qaeda-linked militants and driving tribesmen to join a network linked to terrorist plots against the United States.
These tribesmen were not previously sympathetic to al Queda? Is that what you're saying? Or they were sympathetic but that sympathy has "increased"... as measured by by what previously existing measure of "sympathy" ? And no, the vividness with which you imagine such a thing being true doesn't count.
I love this bit of fucking loose-associational "causation"
Across the vast, rugged terrain of southern Yemen, an escalating campaign of U.S. drone strikes is stirring increasing sympathy for al-Qaeda-linked militants and driving tribesmen to join a network linked to terrorist plots against the United States.
Hmm let's see might something else transpired in Yemen to effect the number of active participants in AQAP since 2009-2010? Well there's this:
The 2011-2012 Yemeni revolution followed the initial stages of the Tunisian Revolution and occurred simultaneously with the Egyptian Revolution and other mass protests in the Arab world in early 2011. The uprising was initially against unemployment, economic conditions and corruption, as well as against the government's proposals to modify the constitution of Yemen. The protestors' demands then escalated to calls for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to resign.
And oh, fuck, he also forgot about the civil war the north and south had been fighting which finally culminated, in 2007, with a split of the country and the establishment of the South Yemen Movement.
Yeah events on that scale sure can bring factions out of the woodwork and release previously occupied energy and attention or previously suppressed hatreds .
Of course the article doesn't recommend any alternative, equally effective course of action and the author, Robert Wright, isn't going to take responsibility or even be associated with it if a terrorist plot materializes because we backed drone strikes off in Yemen....
Here's some more:
If the strikes have such a big downside, why has President Obama accelerated their use, first in Pakistan, then in Yemen?
The answer: These strikes do, in the short run, impede the operational capabilities of al Qaeda, and Obama is scared to death of the fallout from a single successful al Qaeda strike.
The foiled airliner bombing on Christmas of 2009, which originated in Yemen, apparently freaked him out big time. At a meeting in its aftermath, Obama was "simmering about how a 23-year-old bomber had penetrated billions of dollars worth of American security measures."
Just what sentiment would you like POTUS to display given these events? I mean, is this guy serious?
I know this view is sincerely held by people who have only the best interests of the US at heart. But look, you have to consider the real-world alternatives and likely consequences of those alternatives or your analysis is coming up short.
To be sure, the US would like to have a weapon that causes people to just drop dead, or better yet, be whisked into US jurisdiction for a proper trial. That magic weapon is not available to us, and drone strikes are the closet thing we have right now. We don't want collateral damage- i.e. dead people- and we spend billions on weapons systems research to make them smarter, more precise and more flexible for just this reason.
The people who hate us would hate us just as much if we intervened in any other way which was equally effective at stopping people who are actively planning to kill us. If we sneak into the country and kill them, they'd still hate us as much and be just as motivated to harm us. They'd just have a different back story when interrogated. Why did bin Laden hate us? Because he wanted to be the one in Saudi to protect it and expel Saddam from Kuwait. And there we were, on HIS holy sand, doing what HE was meant to do.
So are we going to decide that we shouldn't do anything until they show up here with the biological agent / terror plot / suitcase nuke? Because if that's your defensive strategy, as everyone form Clinton to Bush to Obama has realized once they've had a few daily briefs from the CIA, it's not going to work.
We have to intervene earlier in the pipeline. Terrorism is going to be an ongoing reality that we have to face and deal with. There are no really good options, only less bad ones.
The fact of war is some individual personalities are critical to the enemy. Sorry to say but even in terrorism there's a thing called talent. Drone strikes such as the one that took out al Awlaki or al-Libi are a huge win that sets the enemy back. Until we understand the roots of terrorism, and I am not saying that US foreign policy has always been benign (why don't all Iranians just automatically hate us? Because they don't. Not the young people. ), until then we have to face the fact that people want to kill us and we need to stop them before they can succeed.
We are working on weapons systems even more precise than drones. We COULD go the other way and turn NW Pakistan into a sea of glass. That's not who we are. Drone strikes piss people off and incite, anything goes, suicidal rage in people. That was always baked into the equation from the start. This is a war, and the enemy doesn't like seeing their side's heroes dying. This is not news.
I am all about looking giving a thorough, searching and honest look our own actions in the ME . I myself think we should be in Syria right now, tipping that scale, hard. I am deeply concerned with how the rest of the world will perceive our inaction on global warming.. This is something that could galvanize and unite our enemies and coalesce neutrals against us. It's a huge propaganda weapon we're turning on ourselves; a massive unforced error our guys will ultimately end up dying for. That's why it's an act of patriotism and in fact our duty to wage a cultural war on deniers and bring it to them.
Drones are not good , they're just better than all the alternatives right now, that's all.
Slashdot Mirror
What you're saying not even hypothetical, its just the way it is.
References please; most things in life are subject to conclusion modifying details. References please.
I don't think Warren Buffet is particularly interested in not paying taxes since he specifically campaigned to up his own tax rate, whatever other advantages he may or may not have over others, he's not insanely and cynically greedy, just good at a certain type of investing- value investing (the good kind) , which is not a crime.
However you're right that the rich certainly know how to lobby Congress to get laws passed that favor themselves. Think of Bush's tax cuts or software patents or the non-bankruptability of student loans or the capital gains tax rate or the explicit prohibition on entities from pooling their buying power and negotiating a lower price for drugs or a million other ways that the followiong chain of causation results in ordinary people getting fucked by the super-rich:
Running for public office is incredibly expensive--> Candidates need Big Money--> Rich People give Big Money to Candidates --> Rich people get back legislation that pays many times over for the Big Money they gave to Candidates--> Candidates pass laws that keep Rich People rich / Candidates kill bills that would help regular people--> Congressperson is running for office again OR Congressperson is going to work for Rich people's company now.
If you want to break that cycle you need to have publicly funded elections.
"They" that want to kill us have generally been a small number that a) actually want to kill us b) have the means to kill us c) have the will to do it d) have the opportunity arise Generally, I think all four factors must be in play.
I can't reply to this right now but it's good and I will this afternoon. Briefly, your a) becomes less important as your b) trends up. Your c) is just a restatement of your a) and your d) is what we're fighting to prevent.
WRT to b, you need to break it our further because the exact details of your b) are operational here. It ahs to be :
b1) the number of people they can effect with their action
b2) the degree of damage to each person they can do with said action
b3) the number of people required to achieve said action
b4) the ease with which such action can be achieved.
as degree of damage and ease of achieving that damage trends upwards, and technological progress assures us they will, and as the number of people it takes trends disturbingly down, as technological progresses also ensures it will, and as the ease of achieving such action also trends down under the same forces, then society has greater and greater legitimate interest in spending coin and attention stopping them, since he alternative is much more costly in both coin and other ways.
Bin Laden told us expressly why he attacked us and it wasn't because we set the Saudi family up with ARAMACO or toppled Iran in '54. He is not interested in democracy of freedom or any of that stuff and as contemptible as Europeans may think our FP in the ME WRT sanctions was, that wasn't the reason either. Facts have to be let alone to be facts.
I will answer mo' better later but let me leave you with a question. If you thought our ME policy was a relic of the cold war - as I did - then are you not all about intervening now on the side of democracy when asked to, as some significant part of the Syrians have asked us to now ? Or is that "interventionism" ? Because I am all about flying sorties of Damascus and stopping the slaughter of innocents today, right now, yesterday. Would this not an example of us using our might to free people from oppression and generally defining and restarting our relationship to the long suffering peoples in the ME, which, as you said you believe was the cause of 9-11?
The answer is, it's an empirical question, always.
Is X best achieved through Y means or will more , better, or just as good X be achieved through other means?
So, do software patents promote or impede software development? In this case, we actually have the answer to that question because we have an A/B comparison. Prior to 1990 and especially prior to 2000 or so software patents did not exist as a significant force in the market place. Yet All Good Things got created anything, just the smallest tip of which includes :
all kinds of data structures (each one now patentable) ,
file systems and all their parts (each one now patentable) ,
operating systems all their moving parts (each one now patentable) ,
UIs and every twit and twitter of a detail contained therein (each one now patentable) ,
whole categories of programs including :
word processors and their associated algorithms (piece table, gap buffer etc etc ) and the end effects achieved by those algorithms (now a separate patent) and abstract relationships to end users, spreadsheets and databases and everything associated with them including record structures, indexing techniques, the every implementation of every detail of every normal form, their associated UIs, literally just a few hundred million discrete, individual little partlets ,each of which is now patentable.
Does anyone here care to argue that I could go on extending this list for the rest of all our lives and still not be close to finishing?
So given that we already did the experimental condition of "no patenting software" and all the really important stuff got conceived of, created, refined, and companies were built around such and those companies suffered various fates, both good and bad, under market forces, no one but an IP lawyer or one who pays them can possibly argue we need software patents for software to thrive, and none one at all can argue that in good conscience.
With respect to drug creation, I am not an expert and that's what matters, I am the merest of spectators. No one should ask me this question and expect an good answer, but I CAN tell them how the question has to BE answered, and that is by applying as closely as possible the principles of the scientific method where you have one treatment and it yields a set of results and you have another treatment and it yields a set of results.
It's not practical to do that with an industry in a society (is it? Maybe we can experiment somehow ) but arguing that patents are apriori always the best way to achieve the production of complex goods in a free market ( I know it's around here somewhere..) society is just being an ideologue, a so called "IP maximalist" which is a fancy term for "lawyer".
Especially when that society is rapidly changing in all its relevant dimensions including - relative cost and power of technology, funding techniques, available ways to solicit and reward contributions and knowledge from experts, barriers to market entrance and barriers to participation for all parties including access to knowledge and in fact expertise itself.
So, exactly, I wouldn't argue that because I would first disqualify myself as a qualified expert and it's an empirical question seeking an empirical answer.
I also ask "why do we allow software patents?" Right now, this whole issue is under very very active review by society, meaning by thinkers, writers, inventors observers, lawyers, judges and anyone involved, effected and aware of how dysfunctional our patent system is are slugging it out.
The point is, the Constitution is clear and furthermore the rulings are clear. The point of contention now is- does the patent system actually function to promote the useful arts and sciences or is some parts of it actually impeding same?
Obviously programmers know that in software, patents do not promote progress, they impede it. When software patents are rolled back, as they will be (or else the system will collapse completely) the reason will be because they failed to live up to the requirement that such government issued monopolies "advance the useful arts and sciences".
That should have have been money is a form of speech. Obviously.
The three branches of government decide what laws mean and how the Constitution is to be interpreted, not you, irrespective of how "obvious and logical" you think your argument is.
It's like saying that because SCOTUS decided that in Citizens United that speech is a form of money and we all have an equal right to free speech that we all should have the same amount of money. So what if I think that SCOTUS has said that ( I don't ) ? It's irrelevant unless and until I convince SCOTUS to interpret its decision that way or Congress to write it into law.
You have an idea about what the Constitution implies . That's interesting. Perhaps you have a future as a lawyer of some sort.
Utter nonsense from the economically illiterate and ideologically ignorant. Counterargument is a simple look at history in what increases in productivity, standard of living and profits. Pure profit comes from innovation. It is the entrepreneurs risk in applying resources in a different configuration. This simple fact completely destroys your claim. Consider a more detailed investigation of it here:
Dude, if you're going to accuse me of being ideologically blinded, you can 1) talk in a normal conversational tone instead of plucking the nearest peacock for his feathers and strutting around talking like something that just popped in from the 19th century and 2) do other than link me to the Mises.org website whose regular readers and adherents have proven themselves time and again to be amongst the MOST ideologically blinded twerps in all of econo-land.
Here , let me destroy your argument using merely logic. Just because it can happen that innovation leads to greater profits , doesn't mean that greater profits always come from innovation.
That wasn't very hard and it's a more formal restatement of my original point. Sure, innovation is good (well, innovation of a kind, financial ""innovation" seems to be determined to except itself from this rule) but innovation isn't the only way to goose your profits.
That's one point. A separate point is that so what if in some theory it all works out for the best (where the best is circularly defined as "how things work out" if the theory is adhered to) if 99% of the time 99% of the people are getting fucked over?
Economics is not a natural system waiting to be described by an economist-Newton. It's a purely human invention, economic systems are free creations of the human mind, just like money and freedom and all other values. There is no "way things are or have to be" . There's what DOES happen and there's our response to it. What we want to have happen is we want to create an equitable society. How we achieve that is not clear and not described by Ludwig von Mises or anyone else. The sad fact for the doctrinaire and ideological enthusiasts is that steadily economics is growing up and out of it's adolescent love affair with "systems" and starting to test the hypotheses of neoclassical frameworks to see if they're, you know, true
sds.hss.cmu.edu/media/pdfs/loewenstein/BehavioralEconomics.pdf
Giving deals to corporations who then turn around and give you campaign contributions is enshrined in law as a form of free speech by the Citizens United decision
We need publicly funded elections and we need to amend the Constitution to make it so.
You make the assumption that patents began and end with the US Constitution.
You make the assumption that I make the assumption that patents began and end with the Constitution. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Well, our entire system of justice descends from English common law if it comes to that, but we're not ruled by English common law, we're ruled by the Constitution. In fact, the essential quality of the Constitution, what is IS is the breaking away from previous systems of political organization and re-creating a new one carrying forward only those things we explicitly decide to and leaving the rest behind.
So we aren't ruled by a King, even though we were for centuries before that. We have a three branches of government and did away with the Divine Right of Kings.
Your argument is the same one the christian fundies use to try to ram their religion down our throats. It was always that way before, it's our heritage, so it must be that way now. Wrong.
It's amusing to hear someone way that the Constitution is irrelevant on a subject matter of which t directly and explicitly speaks. If the Constitution were irrelevant on arbitrary topics because of what was true before the Constitution was written, as your (stupid) argument attempts to establish, then the government wouldn't 'be constrained to have elections or or even be prevented from reconstituting a monarchy.
And you're telling me I need to read a little history?
Thanks for playing.
there will never be an end to enemies especially when we make more with every one we kill.
This is our essential difference I think because we both agree that funds are not unlimited etc etc (in fact that's why I like he drone program)
Here's the thing. You know the kinds of people who unilaterally want to wage holy war because they're in this country too. The abortion clinic bombers, the christian dominionists. They're never going to back down, no matter what. If we give them an inch, they'll take a mile. They're fighting a holy war on a cosmic plane. You can't reason with people like that. All you can do is put them in jail (here) or kill them (there). They're definitely NOT going to stop, change, compromise, set down their arms, live and let live, let up, back off, change their minds or otherwise reconcile themselves to the fact of our way of life. Their whole purpose in life is to conquer, submit and rule as unlikely as that outcome sounds to us.
So for me the right problem to begin thinking about is- what are we going to do about them and how are we going to do it and what is the worst they can do. Unfortunately, that last one is a on a continually ascending trajectory which eventually know no bounds. This is a serious problem with the power to completely restructure the society we live in.
Something that fits that description bears careful sustained and serious thought.
It states in the Constitution that the purpose of issuing a patent is "to promote the useful arts and sciences". This is the raison d'etre and is taken quite at face value by judges juries and Congress.
In fact it's the reason why patents aren't issued on artistic creations. Art is not a "useful" art or science in that sense. Art in the above sentence translates to, approx, "manufacturing process" today.
My point is, they, unilaterally and for reasons that have to do with their interpretation of their religion - are determined to kill us or convert us (bin Laden's second option for us). These are their own words. The fact that they're "over there" means not that much. They know how to get over here.
None of the above was meant in a sarcastic of dismissive tone.
As far as the quotes from unnamed national security experts, that's the kind of thing that only sounds good if you already agree with the premise. If you don't, like me, you might prefer to have a debate on this topic with people putting their names and reputations on the line. When I reflect on the looseness of what can constitute a "national security expert", basically anyone form either side of the political partisan divide who works for one of their side's perspective so called "think tanks" or anyone who is a reporter for some yellow journalistic newspaper like, say, Fox News., I am unimpressed.
Some of this is by design. Creators should be able to profit from their work for a while, which is why we have patent / copyright laws.
This is a misconception. Patents don't exist to help inventors profit from their invention. They exist to encourage inventors to reveal the technical brilliance behind their inventions to the rest of society, thus benefiting society at large. That's why they exist. In order to lure the brilliant people at Angry Boids to tip the hand of their overwhelming genius to the eternal benefit of a grateful society, they are offered by the government a time-limited monopoly. Not all inventors opt in, e.g. Google.
Patents are not issued to help inventors make money or profit from their invention. They're issued to further progress in the useful arts and sciences.
It's an important distinction. If the patent system doesn't have the effect of advancing the useful arts and sciences, then the patents should not be issued and the inventor be damned.
This goes to the heart of the software patent debate. Do software patents advance the useful arts and sciences? In fact, they impede them. So they should stop being issued and those issued should be nullified. What about the inventors profiting from their work? That is not the concern of the government or the patent system.
It's not surprising. They're going to try to pocket that money they save for themselves alone at least as hard as they're going to try to save it in the first place.
The magic bunny, er I mean invisible hand, of of laissez faire capitalism as espoused by Ayn Rand and Mitt Romney or to speak more precisely Mitt's handlers, puppet masters and soon to be policy makers Paul Ryan and Grover Norquist benefits, as a matter of historical fact, the top 1% as we all know by now:
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
That's right. Defect from the country that provided you with outstanding developers who were the end product of the best k-12 (and 12- 16 AND into adulthood) educational systems in the world
http://www.oecd.org/document/60/0,3343,en_2649_201185_39700732_1_1_1_1,00.html
and who were willing to work for start-up wages and take risks because they weren't burdened with student loan debt:
From Wikipedia:
The Finnish education system is an egalitarian system, with no tuition fees and with free meals served to full-time students.
The present Finnish education system consists of well-funded and carefully thought out daycare programs (for babies and toddlers) and a one-year "pre-school" (or kindergarten for six-year olds); a nine-year compulsory basic comprehensive school (starting at age seven and ending at the age of sixteen); post-compulsory secondary general academic and vocational education; higher education (University and Polytechnical); and adult (lifelong, continuing) education.
The Nordic strategy for achieving equality and excellence in education has been based on constructing a publicly funded comprehensive school system without selecting, tracking, or streaming students during their common basic education.[1]
Part of the strategy has been to spread the school network so that pupils have a school near their homes whenever possible or, if this is not feasible, e.g. in rural areas, to provide free transportation to more widely dispersed schools. Inclusive special education within the classroom and instructional efforts to minimize low achievement are also typical of Nordic educational systems.[1]
Yes defect from that system you benefited from so you can save a measly 12.5% on taxes :
FTA:
The corporation tax rate in Finland is 24.5 per cent, while Ireland's rate is 12.5 per cent.
Yes do defect . Because that's coke n' whore money you could be putting up your fucking nose instead of giving it to the most effective and civic minded governments the world has ever known and supporting one of the most egalitarian societies the world has ever achieved. .
In truth, this happens all to time to Finland . Sports stars, recording stars etc etc defect to a low taxation country. They know about it and build in an allowance for it. They STILL like their society better , and as far as the loss of "talent" goes, they know how to print that shit on demand:
"Finland has reached number 1 or number 2, with very high rankings in reading literacy, mathematics and science. If one could make a calculation of the total, comparing different fields, Finland would be number 1. The country received very high marks in this international comparison of students," Finnish Ambassador to Thailand Sirpa Maenpaa told The Nation recently.
"Furthermore, the results that come from Finland are uniform. They do not come from some top students, but from the performance of all of the students," she said.
from:
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2009/09/28/national/national_30113177.php
For anyone interested in how the Scandinavians think about taxes, this is a great listen from Planet Money:
Quotable quote- an incredulous interviewer asks a woman "would you like your taxes to be even higher??" to which she replies "...mmmm .. what will I get for my money?"
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/01/podcast_tax_me_please.html
We're doing everything conceivable to strengthen the secular forces in Pakistan. People who think we should just leave the jihadis "over there" to their own devices and let Pakistan sort it out have no idea what they're asking for. They aren't religious fanatics capable of starting thermonuclear war because we've antagonized them and they just can't take it anymore (that would be Iran if it were anyone, but in fact it's not... ). They're that way because they've been that way since time immemorial and conservatism has no way of progressing or changing with changing times.
Read Sam Harris's The End of Faith and tell me that the specific, publicly admitted and publicly owned tenets of religion aren't a disease we need to inoculate the population against.
Seriously. I don't get why this same description doesn't apply to the internet itself, a thing known to work reliably?
Don't MAKE me RTFA.
So if I gave the impression ( I think I did not) that I am not interested in dealing in a realistic way with choosing selections from a palette of bad choices, let me straighten that out right now.
I have no man-love for anyone that I am aware of. I think the drones are low cost, effective and as good as it gets to limiting the deaths of innocents. I also think that killing these people is mandatory because I know they're at war with us and were before we ever droned anyone and would be if we never droned anyone and will continue to be if we stop droning anyone.
I truly strive to interpret the world I live in using my best judgment. If I come down on one side's camp- and mostly it's the liberal side of things I come down on- it's because I'm not the only one who can think clearly so of course I find myself joined by others. That's not man-love. That's just the the natural result of like minds reasoning independently.
Whether the idiot is 23 or 53 or one person or a group, the abiding reality is that terrorism via whatever you can manage, is here to stay. As time passes "whatever you can manage" is going to be quite impressive because technological progress has the effect of putting into the hands of smaller and smaller groups of people greater and greater destructive force. That's a fact about the world that is no ones fault. I blame exactly no one that one day I will have to live in a world whose geopolitical and domestic politics are being defined by the fact that five guys can kill half a continent.
Seriously, just setting aside your initial reaction to my post, you obviously care about these things. You're just the type of person who ought to join in the conversation about civil liberties and security and the fate of our democratic institutions in the face of a future filled with facts like the hypothetical five guys cited above.
I am in complete agreement that some unthinkable things- like accepting the fact that terrorists will get through- are going to have to be discussed with a public that is not prepared to accept even that possibility exists.
The piece is a hatchet job IMO, for just the reasons I cited. But maybe we can agree that our insisting that our current President, or any future administration, must keep us all perfectly safe or the administration has failed is an unrealistic expectation. We absolutely have to have a non-partisan, national dialog on just this topic and I am only too happy to continue this topic with you.
Thanks for the tip!
I really encourage anyone interested to click on Todd's name and review some of the posts he's made.
Yeah. That should do it.
Is Obama sacrificing America's long-term security for short-term political gain?
Christ what an asswipe. So stopping terrorism is a now just something a sitting President does for "short term political gain" ?
I have two words for the author of the below quoted excerpt- prove it.
Across the vast, rugged terrain of southern Yemen, an escalating campaign of U.S. drone strikes is stirring increasing sympathy for al-Qaeda-linked militants and driving tribesmen to join a network linked to terrorist plots against the United States.
These tribesmen were not previously sympathetic to al Queda? Is that what you're saying? Or they were sympathetic but that sympathy has "increased"... as measured by by what previously existing measure of "sympathy" ? And no, the vividness with which you imagine such a thing being true doesn't count.
I love this bit of fucking loose-associational "causation"
Across the vast, rugged terrain of southern Yemen, an escalating campaign of U.S. drone strikes is stirring increasing sympathy for al-Qaeda-linked militants and driving tribesmen to join a network linked to terrorist plots against the United States.
Hmm let's see might something else transpired in Yemen to effect the number of active participants in AQAP since 2009-2010? Well there's this:
The 2011-2012 Yemeni revolution followed the initial stages of the Tunisian Revolution and occurred simultaneously with the Egyptian Revolution and other mass protests in the Arab world in early 2011. The uprising was initially against unemployment, economic conditions and corruption, as well as against the government's proposals to modify the constitution of Yemen. The protestors' demands then escalated to calls for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to resign.
And oh, fuck, he also forgot about the civil war the north and south had been fighting which finally culminated, in 2007, with a split of the country and the establishment of the South Yemen Movement.
Yeah events on that scale sure can bring factions out of the woodwork and release previously occupied energy and attention or previously suppressed hatreds .
Of course the article doesn't recommend any alternative, equally effective course of action and the author, Robert Wright, isn't going to take responsibility or even be associated with it if a terrorist plot materializes because we backed drone strikes off in Yemen....
Here's some more:
If the strikes have such a big downside, why has President Obama accelerated their use, first in Pakistan, then in Yemen?
The answer: These strikes do, in the short run, impede the operational capabilities of al Qaeda, and Obama is scared to death of the fallout from a single successful al Qaeda strike.
The foiled airliner bombing on Christmas of 2009, which originated in Yemen, apparently freaked him out big time. At a meeting in its aftermath, Obama was "simmering about how a 23-year-old bomber had penetrated billions of dollars worth of American security measures."
Just what sentiment would you like POTUS to display given these events? I mean, is this guy serious?
I know this view is sincerely held by people who have only the best interests of the US at heart. But look, you have to consider the real-world alternatives and likely consequences of those alternatives or your analysis is coming up short.
To be sure, the US would like to have a weapon that causes people to just drop dead, or better yet, be whisked into US jurisdiction for a proper trial. That magic weapon is not available to us, and drone strikes are the closet thing we have right now. We don't want collateral damage- i.e. dead people- and we spend billions on weapons systems research to make them smarter, more precise and more flexible for just this reason.
The people who hate us would hate us just as much if we intervened in any other way which was equally effective at stopping people who are actively planning to kill us. If we sneak into the country and kill them, they'd still hate us as much and be just as motivated to harm us. They'd just have a different back story when interrogated. Why did bin Laden hate us? Because he wanted to be the one in Saudi to protect it and expel Saddam from Kuwait. And there we were, on HIS holy sand, doing what HE was meant to do.
So are we going to decide that we shouldn't do anything until they show up here with the biological agent / terror plot / suitcase nuke? Because if that's your defensive strategy, as everyone form Clinton to Bush to Obama has realized once they've had a few daily briefs from the CIA, it's not going to work.
We have to intervene earlier in the pipeline. Terrorism is going to be an ongoing reality that we have to face and deal with. There are no really good options, only less bad ones.
The fact of war is some individual personalities are critical to the enemy. Sorry to say but even in terrorism there's a thing called talent. Drone strikes such as the one that took out al Awlaki or al-Libi are a huge win that sets the enemy back. Until we understand the roots of terrorism, and I am not saying that US foreign policy has always been benign (why don't all Iranians just automatically hate us? Because they don't. Not the young people. ), until then we have to face the fact that people want to kill us and we need to stop them before they can succeed.
We are working on weapons systems even more precise than drones. We COULD go the other way and turn NW Pakistan into a sea of glass. That's not who we are. Drone strikes piss people off and incite, anything goes, suicidal rage in people. That was always baked into the equation from the start. This is a war, and the enemy doesn't like seeing their side's heroes dying. This is not news.
I am all about looking giving a thorough, searching and honest look our own actions in the ME . I myself think we should be in Syria right now, tipping that scale, hard. I am deeply concerned with how the rest of the world will perceive our inaction on global warming.. This is something that could galvanize and unite our enemies and coalesce neutrals against us. It's a huge propaganda weapon we're turning on ourselves; a massive unforced error our guys will ultimately end up dying for. That's why it's an act of patriotism and in fact our duty to wage a cultural war on deniers and bring it to them.
Drones are not good , they're just better than all the alternatives right now, that's all.