Why? because those businesses all employ minimum wage workers; when their costs go up, they increase prices. They either can't afford (as is usually the case with most small businesses), or they aren't willing to make less profit so they pass the cost onto the consumer. What's that mean? It means everyone that's making more than minimum wage gets totally screwed. Their paycheck didn't increase and now they're paying more for the exact same crap they bought yesterday. And of course, everyone that's still making minimum wage can't buy any more garbage than they could the day before because the cost of everything increased just as much as their paycheck. WAKE UP PEOPLE. Minimum wage is NOT the solution to any question unless it's "how do we devalue the dollar?"
1) I don't think that an increase in wage levels leading to an increase in prices in general is a surprise to anybody (at least, not to anybody making a meaningful contribution to the minimum wage debate).
2) I think that your assessment of the numbers is off. It's very unlikely to be the case that the people making minimum wage gain nothing while the people who make more than minimum wage get screwed. If that were happening, you'd be describing a net increase in profit margins for most firms, caused by nothing more than an increase in the price of cheap labor. The net result is more likely to be that goods whose input is cheap labor increase in price slightly while minimum wage laborers end up being better off (if they don't lose their jobs). That money comes out of some combination of the profit margins of the firms that employ them and (as you pointed out), non-minimum wage workers paying more for the same goods.
What's wrong with my post, may I ask? Why should it be modded down?
You clearly haven't been on the Internet very long if you haven't noticed that "The US isn't a democracy, it's a republic!" is almost always a pointless distinction that's really nothing more than tiresome pedantry that typically starts an avalanche of pointless highschool civics bickering over definitions. I know that slashdotters that being technically correct is, to quote Futurama, "the best kind of correct you can be" but really, give it a rest. Your post isn't wrong, and in an ideal world, it wouldn't have been modded down. It just wouldn't have been posted in the first place. We'll give you a call when we need somebody to derail a conversation by pointing out that "shooting stars" aren't really stars at all.
America is not a democratic nation. The founders of our nation and the writers of the Constitution knew that a true democracy, which entails direct rule by the people, wouldn't work. They formed a republic.
There should really be some sort of mod category for these posts so we can filter them and the tiresome, pedantic posturing that invariably follows them. Add to that an automatic filter for posts that begin with "I know I'll be modded down for this, but..." and anything that uses the word "groupthink" and I think we could make real progress.
I think the main rule that you are looking for is efficiency toward the completion of the mission. This is important to military leadership. It simply serves no purpose to take someone from their home in the dead of night, fly them to an "undisclosed" location and torture them for no apparent reason. It is a waste of time and resources.
All of that makes great sense in theory, but there's plenty of evidence that they're not doing a very good job of avoiding that waste. In fact, it looks to me like they're doing a great job of rounding up a bunch of people who shouldn't have been picked up at all. The Seton Hall link I posted above has some classic examples of this. Let's go where you're going with this: If people can't be made to be sympathetic to an innocent guy who has just had his life thrown away because we've removed the safeguards from our process, they should at least be concerned about the fact that a huge portion of the people we're sweeping up and holding as enemy combatants appear to be non-threatening individuals who we're housing at great cost for no real intelligence benefit. On top of that, we're pissing off their friends and families and confirming to their paranoia that the US really is an evil empire whose all-powerful CIA will snatch them up for being Muslim.
The idea that the military / intelligence community wouldn't do something inefficient or make poor decisions with its resources seems to me to be a myth along the same lines as the one that private industry is always a model of efficiency. Sure, it works out in theory, but the reality is much uglier than that. I've done contract work developing gizmos for the intelligence folks, and while they're sharp people and professionals at what they do, they also have a ridiculously hard job and in the end, they're only human. It's a safer bet to throw somebody in the can and let him rot than risk the possibility that they're throwing away something useful. That's why we typically implement safeguards to keep bad things from happening: systems like that one are rigged in favor of keeping you forever once they've picked you up.
This is why there are no hard and fast rules about who gets picked up and who doesn't. Well, that and the fact that it would bog down soldiers to have to work their way through a checklist of who is a terrorist and who isn't.
I'm not really concerned about who gets picked up and who doesn't. I'm more concerned about whether they'll be let out later if they turn out to be of minimal importance or threat. And if they are let out, I'm also concerned about them going home and telling their friends that as it turns out, the Americans really are out to get them and they should all take up arms to stop us. We should never take our eyes off the fact that while this is both a shooting war and a law enforcement problem, it's above all else a PR war, and we're doing an abysmal job on that front.
It's like pornography, they can't really define it, but they know it when they see it.
To some extent, that's true. But I would hope that if the penalty for possession of pornography was execution or a short life in a 4x6 cell in Syria, we'd have at least some reasonably objective measurement of what pornography is. As I see it, "I know it when I see it" is good enough for parking tickets but not nearly good enough when we're sending people off to be beaten with speaker wire.
The ACLU sometimes fights the good fight. But I think the harm they do to liberties, especially the liberty to run a public school and for the community to teach its children as they see fit, far outweighs the good.
Well, we're probably coming at this from different perspectives, but I tend to think that the harm done by preventing the government from posting religious idols on the public dime is outweighed by things like protecting due process and defending free speech. I suppose that it's all a matter of priorities, though.
True. Call it an unintended consequence of Slick Willie. Slick DID lie under oath, and it was found to be inadequate grounds for impeachment, or at least removal from office. So any statement not made under oath is not actionable at all.
That's an interesting interpretation. Not that I'm a big proponent of lying under oath, but I should point out that in most circumstances, the severity of perjury is not a simple binary calculation (you lied or you didn't). The severity and frequency are important as well. Lying about one's ice cream flavor preference under oath may be technically illegal, but probably not high enough to warrant a long sentence (or removal from office). Falsely providing an alibi for a serial killer probably would be.
Terrorists hiding in civilian populations and as often as not attacking those same civilians deserve no protection. Catch em, give some minimal justice where needed to try to make sure the Mohammad you caught really is the same Mohammad that blew up a marketplace last week and then shoot the bastard.
Rather than fly further off topic and quibble on points where I have minor disagreements, I'm going to key in on this. I honestly have no qualms about summary execution or even brutal interrogation of terrorists--provided that they're actually terrorists and there's reason to believe that those tactics are effective. In fact, I have a hard time dealing with the fact that war has "rules" at all. War is what you do when the rules no longer work.
My major problem is the question you didn't answer: What's the appropriate burden of proof for executing an unarmed person in the field or disappearing him to a prison site for the rest of his natural life? I'll accept for the sake of argument that these things are effective ways of dealing with the problem, but I'd like to see some serious rules applied before I give the nod to classifying somebody as a person with no rights, locking him up, and throwing away the key. So far, I haven't seen a lot of evidence that we're doing a good job of figuring out who we should be disappearing, and I've seen enough evidence that we aren't to be hesitant to give the government an "arbitrarily disappear, torture, and execute whoever you want as long as it's not me" card. When you combine death / permanent imprisonment with accusations and evidence that look like a scene out of The Crucible, I get nervous.
Why? Our government derives it's powers FROM US. By definition we hold a claim for our government to respect (and defend) our rights. Think of government as a mutual defense pact.
Hmmm... I think that we look at the world in a fundamentally different way, then. I tend to think that in all but the most extreme circumstances, it is universally wrong to deprive somebody of life or liberty without a way of meaningfully defending himself. To me, that principle isn't just a convenient legal fiction that happens to work out well for me. It's a fundamental concern about the unfairness of being kidnapped in the middle of the night and shipped off to be held incognito in the middle of nowhere until you die. Add to that the fact that it's bad PR at a time when we're losing a PR war to the types of people who blow up hospitals, and I think that you have the makings for a policy we'll be embarrassed about in the hindsight of history.
You mean the CIA non-spy? Who in fact was never going to get handed any undercover ops ever again after being posted at an embassy?
Errr... I'm sure you have great insight into what the CIA would and would not do with its agents, but the fact remains that her affiliation with the CIA was classified information. I don't know how they operate in other departments, but I and everybody I know who has ever had a security clearance has generally had the impression that leaking classified information is a bad idea--even illegal.
After her husband had already through several public instances outed the fact that his husband was a CIA agent?
Not surprisingly, I'm forced to ask, where do people get this shit?
There was a reason that the only crime charged was over perjury. Which was a complete bullshit charge btw. It was over the exact day of something being said...
...and this shit too, for that matter?
Not to mention the fact that the judge denied the defenses use of a memory expert to testify that in fact it is perfectly plausible that he wouldn't remember the exact day.
Did you take a look at the sheer volume of things that Mr. Libby managed to forget? This wasn't a case of "You said it was 3:55 pm when it was really 4:05 pm." It was more like, "You said you never discussed X, but more than one person claims to have spoken to you on more than one occasion about it." Of course, all this is quite a bit like debating whether or not Al Capone was technically doing is taxes incorrectly.
They aren't US citizens so US law doesn't and shouldn't apply, thus speaking of things like habeas corpus is just proof of your ignorance. Same for your parroting stock Kos/moveon about the Geneva Convention. Sorry Charlie, terrorists must NEVER be given the protections of the GC or it becomes worthless. I'm serious.
I see where you're coming from, but then how do you propose that we prevent our government from simply permanently disappearing people? If you're not a prisoner in a criminal case with rights afforded by the criminal justice system, and you're not a prisoner of war, then what are you, exactly? Further, let's say we do create a third classification of people--a classification that's special enough that we're allowed to drop you down a deep dark hole forever more. What is the burden of proof that we should apply to allow people to be dropped in? Is "we paid a guy in the badlands of Afghanistan $5000 to bring us a terrorist and he brought us this guy" enough?
Yes, it can be debated that there's a legal distinction between me as a US citizen sitting at my desk and a farmer in Afghanistan with respect to the provision of rights under US law. What I don't understand is that most people also seem to think that there's a valid moral distinction as well. Frankly, that creeps me out. "They're not people like the rest of us," is a very scary philosophy for people who are debating basic human rights to hold, but it seems to be the prevailing one. Why do I deserve a fair trial when foreigners do not?
I'll leave the rest of your post as is simply because I don't think that there are strong constitutional grounds to disagree with it, except in as much as sanctioning one particular religion above others could legitimately be construed as an attempt to establish a favored religion.
However, demanding that government officials do not show any kind of religious feeling is not only stupid, since the feeling doesn't go away just because you're not allowed to show it and may still affect impartiality of said official's judgement, but may well be illegal too; after all, surely demanding lack of religion falls under the religious test part of the Constitution ?
I don't think that anybody is demanding that public officials don't show any kind of religious feeling. In fact, a dangerously large voting block seems to be demanding that public officials engage in as much religious nut baggery as possible. Talking about religious tests is just rhetoric akin to the nonsense that people spout about "banning the Bible" every time the courts reaffirm that you're not allowed to lead kids in prayer time in public schools. I don't even think that it's unreasonable for a judge's office to be as full of religious trinkets and idols as he likes. That's his workspace and he can decorate it as he sees fit. I think that one may reasonably draw the line when it comes to a monument in a common area. The common area is the Court's space, not the judge's.
The distinction is important, because things displayed in common areas of government buildings carry with them an implied government sanction. At that point, I think you've crossed the line between a personal expression of religion (perfectly OK) and using the office to express support for a religion (decidedly not OK). I think that's how the Supreme Court saw it as well. That's why I referred to it as an abuse of his office. Using one's position as an officer of the government to create implied government support for one's personal religion is abuse of power. There's a difference between the person and the office. Asking the person not to be religious is wrong. Asking that the office not be used to promote a religion is reasonable.
And they're made out of superconducting adamantium. As a result, all games played on these processors will have higher quality storylines. It's a little known fact that copper causes destructive interference with the story's sine wave.
The fact that this was modded "interesting" rather than "funny" should serve as a reminder to all of us that the people at Monster Cable have a very viable business model.
Yes, he'd be biased. So is every judge on the planet, by the virtue of being human. A judge who makes his particular believes public knowledge is to be commended for his honesty, because such openness makes it easier to determine whether he will be impartial in a particular case or not.
So somebody abusing his government office by creating the appearance of a government sanction for a particular religion is a good thing because it lets people know that they're not going to get a fair shake? Excellent.
Furthermore, you implication that a muslim cannot be a judge is contrary to the US Constitution, which clearly states that no religious test can be demanded for holding a public office.
Did you seriously miss the point by that wide of a margin, or are you just throwing up a straw man to score some rhetorical points? In case you really missed it, here's what the GPP meant: The people who think it's just fine and dandy for the government to endorse religion usually mean that it's good for the government to endorse their religion and often go completely nuts when the government endorses somebody else's religion. That's why those of us who think that things work better when the government remains neutral on the topic often use this example. One needs only look at the shitstorm that ensued when Congress had its opening prayer lead by a Hindu in July. Suddenly, people who were all for government sponsored prayer and religious idols on display decided that in that particular instance, the government's right to religious spectacle extended only to their preferred sect.
Of course, that's the fundamental point of keeping the government neutral. As long as you allow the government to rain sunshine down on the majority's preferred religion, you'll always have unrest from disenfranchised minorities. We've known that for hundreds of years, but plenty of people still act like they'll always be the ones in charge and that fairness just means pandering to their particular religious sensibilities. I don't know that the Constitution is a strict on the separation of church and state as many (and I) would like it to be, but I do know that it's a matter of smart governance and fair policy to err on the side of neutrality when faced with the possibility of favoritism, and there's plenty of evidence that a number of the founders understood that.
Its called our history for some reason the ten commandments are ok in the supreme court but dang it if we don't have to start hauling away monuments around state courts.
That amounts to persecution? It's a wonder you guys survived the Romans. I suppose that the poor persecuted Christian majority in this country will just have to make do with the fact that they only run every branch of government. I just don't know how they survive working in the offices from which they run the country when they can't even surround themselves with monuments reminding themselves of their greatness.
So like why I watch O'Reilly...because he's fun to laugh at?
My problem is that I need to see stuff like that in the context of "Look! It's funny! Laugh!" Watching the show without that is torture for me. I don't know about anybody else, but I feel embarrassment on behalf of people who can't seem to feel it for themselves. Watching Bill O'Reilly take himself seriously (or, at least, pretend to take himself seriously) triggers that.
No, it means they want to force the government to pass laws so that all of America has to live the way that they want them to live.
These are state laws. They're not suing to get the implemented nationwide. They're suing to be allowed to pass laws within their own states.
Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that they put a weight limit on cars for all who do not require trucks to do their jobs, like farmers.
Your thought experiment involving a law that doesn't really resemble anything that's actually being debated here is fascinating, and I agree that the law you suggest would probably be a bad thing.
So let the people in LA and Manhattan make the rules for LA and Manhattan and leave those of us that live between the two cities make our own damn rules and live how WE want to live. We shouldn't have to suffer when we are neither the ones making the pollution nor the ones complaining!
Are you saying that a truck owned by somebody outside a city pollutes less per mile than a truck owned by somebody inside a city? Your argument seems to be that certain special people shouldn't have to pay for the marginal costs of their externalities. I know that anything that smells remotely like environmental regulation makes some people foam at the mouth, but there's a harsh reality that you're missing. You don't pollute less than the city folks you dislike so much. There are just fewer people like you than there are of them. A regulation that effectively taxes the marginal pollution produced by an individual is perfectly equitable. "I shouldn't have to worry about how much I pollute, because if only I and a few of my friends do it, it's not a big deal," isn't exactly a devastating argument to show the self-centeredness of those crazy environmental nuts in LA.
No, the post I responded to defined a biological purpose for sexuality. Using something for a purpose other than its intended purpose is the definition of "perversion."
...then all you've lost is some of your reputation and the moral high ground.
Which is pretty much all you have when you're trying to convince millions of people that the terrorists are crazy people and not freedom fighters doing battle against an evil empire. You don't win that PR war by disappearing people or threatening their families.
Frankly it pisses me off just as much when someone like you maintains they should just be able to shoot whoever the hell enters their house without bothering to verify their target first, as when the cops shoot an innocent person.
You don't have to shoot (with or without verifying your target) for a situation like that to end in disaster. If you're armed at all (which is pretty reasonable if you're concerned about your safety in the middle of the night) when the cops come through the door, the odds of it being a really bad night increase dramatically.
I've actually been through this. You can tell me how hard it is to figure out the situation until you're blue in the face, but I've been there, and it actually isn't hard to figure out at all, even when you've done absolutely nothing wrong. (In fact, if you've done nothing wrong, you're facing 20 people whose vests are printed "POLICE" in extremely visible yellow, and you still can't figure it out, then maybe there's a second reason to remove you from the breeding population.)
Were you asleep at the time? Were the house lights on? Were you in a room where the only way in was through 1 door, allowing you to see only the first person? Yes, the majority of the time, these things work out. Don't think for a minute, though, that there isn't a long list of people who are dead because they responded incorrectly when they were startled out of bed in the dark.
resisting arrest is a strict liability crime. there is no excuse for resisting arrest.
That depends. Do you know you're resisting arrest, or are you simply engaging in the natural response to having armed masked men charge into your bedroom in the middle of the night? If you're not expecting SWAT, I bet it's a pretty big surprise to wake up with a bunch of guys trying to break down your bedroom door. I don't know for sure, but I'd probably engage in one or more activities that might be construed as "resisting arrest" before the facts of the situation become clear.
Perhaps the USPTO ought to revert to Jefferson's practice of asking to see a working model of whatever the patent is for? This might be something worth contacting your congressman about.
Something like that may be useful, if cumbersome. An alternative that puts less of a burden on the USPTO (which, based on some of the silly things they approve and how long it takes to get silly things approved, they really don't have the resources to handle) might be an alternative way of challenging the validity of a patent. It's already acceptable to mount a legal challenge based on prior art, for example. An equivalent option might be allowing a challenge based on chronic non-use. It could simply be considered abandoned IP and returned to the public domain.
My fundamental point is that regarding intellectual property as some sort of moral right rather than an artifice adopted out of economic convenience makes it much harder to make useful policy decisions like that one. If we look at IP as an effective way of promoting the useful arts, then the decision about whether or not to implement my suggestion would be a simple cost/benefit analysis. The cost would be some additional complexity to the system and the potential that it would slow down innovation by companies that tend not to make use of their inventions. The benefit would be preventing useful ideas from being languishing and prevents the patent system from being used to achieve ends that are exactly the opposite of what it was intended to do. If IP is some sort of inherent moral right that's 100% analogous to rival physical property rights, then that discussion is a non-starter. In that framework, an organization has every right to register IP left and right for the sole purpose of preventing it from ever being used. This seems to me to be an impractical and unproductive way of looking at it.
Economists are snake oil salesmen anyway. Nobel prize winners routinely have 50% of their "theories" or models disproved by real life. How about a physicist that has one theory disproved? Nobel prize?
That depends. Did the theory, while flawed, improve our understanding of the topic in a significant way? How many of the most brilliant physicists in history have been wrong? Depending on your standard of wrongness, Newton was a snake oil salesman when he wrote his Principia.
Well, we can all plow your farm... I mean hell, you can't use every inch of it, right?
Property rights aren't about USE, they are about TAKING. In countries without property rights, the government will often come and TAKE from its citizens, properties that are valuable for its purposes.
The key point here is that patents are all about use. This is a fundamental failure of how the patent system is being abused now. If you come up with an idea, patent it, and then never use it for anything, essentially all you've done is taken an idea that existed in the space of "ideas that might be used for the betterment of the world" and erased it for the duration of the patent. The point of granting artificial scarcity to a nonrival good is that the good wouldn't have existed at all had the IP right not been granted. Granting IP rights to organizations who simply hoard them has exactly the opposite effect of what the system intends. Perhaps it grants some emotional validation to people who believe that ownership of all things tangible and intangible is the highest good, but it's certainly not an efficient system, economically or otherwise.
I'm all for patents if they're implemented in such a way that they actually encourage enough useful production to offset the inefficiency they bring into the equation. I'm not sure that lengthy patent terms for a naturally fast moving industry combined with the industry's tendency to file for "defensive" patents has proved to be such a system.
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2) I think that your assessment of the numbers is off. It's very unlikely to be the case that the people making minimum wage gain nothing while the people who make more than minimum wage get screwed. If that were happening, you'd be describing a net increase in profit margins for most firms, caused by nothing more than an increase in the price of cheap labor. The net result is more likely to be that goods whose input is cheap labor increase in price slightly while minimum wage laborers end up being better off (if they don't lose their jobs). That money comes out of some combination of the profit margins of the firms that employ them and (as you pointed out), non-minimum wage workers paying more for the same goods.
HTH.
The idea that the military / intelligence community wouldn't do something inefficient or make poor decisions with its resources seems to me to be a myth along the same lines as the one that private industry is always a model of efficiency. Sure, it works out in theory, but the reality is much uglier than that. I've done contract work developing gizmos for the intelligence folks, and while they're sharp people and professionals at what they do, they also have a ridiculously hard job and in the end, they're only human. It's a safer bet to throw somebody in the can and let him rot than risk the possibility that they're throwing away something useful. That's why we typically implement safeguards to keep bad things from happening: systems like that one are rigged in favor of keeping you forever once they've picked you up.
I'm not really concerned about who gets picked up and who doesn't. I'm more concerned about whether they'll be let out later if they turn out to be of minimal importance or threat. And if they are let out, I'm also concerned about them going home and telling their friends that as it turns out, the Americans really are out to get them and they should all take up arms to stop us. We should never take our eyes off the fact that while this is both a shooting war and a law enforcement problem, it's above all else a PR war, and we're doing an abysmal job on that front.
To some extent, that's true. But I would hope that if the penalty for possession of pornography was execution or a short life in a 4x6 cell in Syria, we'd have at least some reasonably objective measurement of what pornography is. As I see it, "I know it when I see it" is good enough for parking tickets but not nearly good enough when we're sending people off to be beaten with speaker wire.
My major problem is the question you didn't answer: What's the appropriate burden of proof for executing an unarmed person in the field or disappearing him to a prison site for the rest of his natural life? I'll accept for the sake of argument that these things are effective ways of dealing with the problem, but I'd like to see some serious rules applied before I give the nod to classifying somebody as a person with no rights, locking him up, and throwing away the key. So far, I haven't seen a lot of evidence that we're doing a good job of figuring out who we should be disappearing, and I've seen enough evidence that we aren't to be hesitant to give the government an "arbitrarily disappear, torture, and execute whoever you want as long as it's not me" card. When you combine death / permanent imprisonment with accusations and evidence that look like a scene out of The Crucible, I get nervous.
Hmmm... I think that we look at the world in a fundamentally different way, then. I tend to think that in all but the most extreme circumstances, it is universally wrong to deprive somebody of life or liberty without a way of meaningfully defending himself. To me, that principle isn't just a convenient legal fiction that happens to work out well for me. It's a fundamental concern about the unfairness of being kidnapped in the middle of the night and shipped off to be held incognito in the middle of nowhere until you die. Add to that the fact that it's bad PR at a time when we're losing a PR war to the types of people who blow up hospitals, and I think that you have the makings for a policy we'll be embarrassed about in the hindsight of history.
Not surprisingly, I'm forced to ask, where do people get this shit?
Yes, it can be debated that there's a legal distinction between me as a US citizen sitting at my desk and a farmer in Afghanistan with respect to the provision of rights under US law. What I don't understand is that most people also seem to think that there's a valid moral distinction as well. Frankly, that creeps me out. "They're not people like the rest of us," is a very scary philosophy for people who are debating basic human rights to hold, but it seems to be the prevailing one. Why do I deserve a fair trial when foreigners do not?
I don't think that anybody is demanding that public officials don't show any kind of religious feeling. In fact, a dangerously large voting block seems to be demanding that public officials engage in as much religious nut baggery as possible. Talking about religious tests is just rhetoric akin to the nonsense that people spout about "banning the Bible" every time the courts reaffirm that you're not allowed to lead kids in prayer time in public schools. I don't even think that it's unreasonable for a judge's office to be as full of religious trinkets and idols as he likes. That's his workspace and he can decorate it as he sees fit. I think that one may reasonably draw the line when it comes to a monument in a common area. The common area is the Court's space, not the judge's.
The distinction is important, because things displayed in common areas of government buildings carry with them an implied government sanction. At that point, I think you've crossed the line between a personal expression of religion (perfectly OK) and using the office to express support for a religion (decidedly not OK). I think that's how the Supreme Court saw it as well. That's why I referred to it as an abuse of his office. Using one's position as an officer of the government to create implied government support for one's personal religion is abuse of power. There's a difference between the person and the office. Asking the person not to be religious is wrong. Asking that the office not be used to promote a religion is reasonable.
Did you seriously miss the point by that wide of a margin, or are you just throwing up a straw man to score some rhetorical points? In case you really missed it, here's what the GPP meant: The people who think it's just fine and dandy for the government to endorse religion usually mean that it's good for the government to endorse their religion and often go completely nuts when the government endorses somebody else's religion. That's why those of us who think that things work better when the government remains neutral on the topic often use this example. One needs only look at the shitstorm that ensued when Congress had its opening prayer lead by a Hindu in July. Suddenly, people who were all for government sponsored prayer and religious idols on display decided that in that particular instance, the government's right to religious spectacle extended only to their preferred sect.
Of course, that's the fundamental point of keeping the government neutral. As long as you allow the government to rain sunshine down on the majority's preferred religion, you'll always have unrest from disenfranchised minorities. We've known that for hundreds of years, but plenty of people still act like they'll always be the ones in charge and that fairness just means pandering to their particular religious sensibilities. I don't know that the Constitution is a strict on the separation of church and state as many (and I) would like it to be, but I do know that it's a matter of smart governance and fair policy to err on the side of neutrality when faced with the possibility of favoritism, and there's plenty of evidence that a number of the founders understood that.
Your thought experiment involving a law that doesn't really resemble anything that's actually being debated here is fascinating, and I agree that the law you suggest would probably be a bad thing.
Are you saying that a truck owned by somebody outside a city pollutes less per mile than a truck owned by somebody inside a city? Your argument seems to be that certain special people shouldn't have to pay for the marginal costs of their externalities. I know that anything that smells remotely like environmental regulation makes some people foam at the mouth, but there's a harsh reality that you're missing. You don't pollute less than the city folks you dislike so much. There are just fewer people like you than there are of them. A regulation that effectively taxes the marginal pollution produced by an individual is perfectly equitable. "I shouldn't have to worry about how much I pollute, because if only I and a few of my friends do it, it's not a big deal," isn't exactly a devastating argument to show the self-centeredness of those crazy environmental nuts in LA.
I'm a dirty dirty boy...
My fundamental point is that regarding intellectual property as some sort of moral right rather than an artifice adopted out of economic convenience makes it much harder to make useful policy decisions like that one. If we look at IP as an effective way of promoting the useful arts, then the decision about whether or not to implement my suggestion would be a simple cost/benefit analysis. The cost would be some additional complexity to the system and the potential that it would slow down innovation by companies that tend not to make use of their inventions. The benefit would be preventing useful ideas from being languishing and prevents the patent system from being used to achieve ends that are exactly the opposite of what it was intended to do. If IP is some sort of inherent moral right that's 100% analogous to rival physical property rights, then that discussion is a non-starter. In that framework, an organization has every right to register IP left and right for the sole purpose of preventing it from ever being used. This seems to me to be an impractical and unproductive way of looking at it.
I'm all for patents if they're implemented in such a way that they actually encourage enough useful production to offset the inefficiency they bring into the equation. I'm not sure that lengthy patent terms for a naturally fast moving industry combined with the industry's tendency to file for "defensive" patents has proved to be such a system.