Players that have more time than money can grind everything,
Unfortunately, due to how the currency system is setup, that grind involves repeatedly creating and deleting characters, as the amount of a currency a single character can earn is limited.
I should feel sorry for the smaller artists, for whom copyright is designed to help thrive
It is? From my viewpoint copyright has always been designed to help the big companies that can profit by using superior advertising and distribution skills to mass produce and collect high margin profits. Smaller artists always have and always will make their money by hands on sales and are therefore far less dependent on copyright to function.
With a weaker copyright, smaller artists has a larger chance of getting their hand on the entertainment budget of consumer. Remember, the small artists and the big companies are competing for the same money. And it is the big companies that is selling the non-personal material that is most easy to copy.
Ideally a copyright would be exactly the bare minimum that was required to get the author to create his work
Why is it that one question is always forgotten when talking about copyright incentives. And that would be, "Do we need to have that specific work created in the first place?". Do we need xxxxx number of songs produced yearly, or could we make do with less, in favor of spending more resources elsewhere instead.
Always remember that the real cost of copyright is the reduced spread of information. Sure, we may get more information produced, but the total spread of that information goes down. Is the information that gets produced via copyright so much better that it is worth the cost?
The 14 years is, curiously enough, considered the optimal length of copyright by some recent study
14 years was simply the median value in the study. The error margin was quite large. Actually, the study itself keeps repeating "around 15 years", and I don't think it even mentions the number 14 at all. That number came from a newspaper interview. (in general, it is funny how studies and what you actually read in newspapers always seem to differ)
There are of course also some things you can question about the study, especially the definition of "optimal". The study was more or less the construction of a mathematical formula to fit the authors definition of optimal, which then used real world values to find a result.
Not that I don't appreciate the efforts of the author. It is a great piece of work. I just think the number 14 has been overly repeated by constitutionalists. The really funny part of that though is that if the same study were conducted at the time that the constitution were written, the results would be completely different as the input values to the formula would differ by a lot.
and the Internet will be dominated by garage bands offering stuff for free in hopes of landing a gig.
And fortunately for them, people who love music will have more money to spend on going to concerts as they don't have to spend it on buying easily reproducible data.
You want a theatrical release? It is going to have to be in theaters only, for years
For years? Have you seen the numbers that the big movies take in, in the first few weeks. It is more than enough to pay for any movie. Well, at least when the people producing it are working at normal salaries. Especially when people don't have to spend as much money on DVDs, so they can afford to go to the theater.
What most people don't understand is we've grown an entire generation that believes it all should be free and will never, ever pay
Your whole post is based on lies. Entertainment spending hasn't been going down as piracy has gone up. At most it has shifted a bit between the different entertainment industries. So tell me, why should I take you, or the entertainment company executives who claim much the same, seriously.
I don't think that word means what you think it does. The socialist solution would be to create a public newspaper, or in the case of extreme socialism, confiscating private newspapers companies. But you rarely here about socialist solutions nowadays, because there hardly are any real socialists in politics. Instead it is all about the government hiring private contractors, or the government paying money to private companies so they can build infrastructure. Or the government selling its property to private owners. There is nothing socialist at all about it.
Where is the public or worker ownership? It simply isn't there. The public and working class ownership has been going downhill for 30 years in pretty much all western countries. In fact, governments and worker class people are mostly in debt nowadays. Anyone calling that socialist has been listening too much to Fox News. It is simply modern credit and banana republic capitalism intertwined.
And beyond ownership. Lets look at salaries and taxes. A socialistic system aims to ensure that individuals get compensated roughly based on the amount of labor they put in. The quality of the labor is of secondary consideration, and while it can be used as an incentive it should be kept in control. What that means in practice, is a tax system with high top margin taxes, to ensure that a single individual doesn't greedily grab everything. Again, those margin taxes have been completely negated in the last 30 years, in a strong anti socialist movement.
Of course, most people are gullible and think social welfare is socialism. It isn't. Social welfare is simply a way to keep a dysfunctional society (a society with huge wage differences and high unemployment) under control. As for wealth redistribution in general, it is not socialism either. It is simply sound economic policy to keep the economy balanced, ensuring that wealth doesn't get over concentrated. It does fit well with a socialistic tax system, but that is because modern capitalistic ideas simply have no idea at all of balance.
Did it refund that improperly charged VAT for Irish customers when it finally relented?
Of course not, because that money had already been paid along to the government.
You are talking like Amazon actually benefits from collecting higher VAT. They don't. VAT money is a tax, which is paid along to the government. Of course, if Amazon has been charging VAT while keeping the money, then we are talking about large scale tax fraud. Claiming that something is VAT on the receipt and than not treating it as such in accounting is highly illegal.
Fractional reserve banking by definition causes debt levels to rise faster than income levels since it is ultimately income which provides the reserve which is only a fraction of the lending. Allowing banks to create chequebook money out of nothing and lend it out at usury causes a transfer of wealth to them from the lower and middle classes.
Bullshit, bullshit and bullshit.
The reserve is a multiplier of the base money supply which varies depending on the current economy's demand for money. The multiplier also has a cap which is dependent on the reserve ratio, but it rarely comes into play, as it is the demand of the economy that dictates everything, and not the other way around. Banks can at most be more or less leisurely with how they lend out money, and as such what risks they take. But that is it.
Btw, It is only in the last 30 years with consumer borrowing that debt has gone out of control, and not in every country. And that has little to do with FRB, and more to do with insanity of everyone involved. Consumption debt is bad, plain and simply.
But they aren't creating money out of nothing. They are lending out the same money you deposited. No different than if I have borrow 100 dollars from you and lend it to my friend. Of course, I did it without keeping any reserves at all. If you deposit money into an account, then you should be aware of that. Otherwise you truly are an idiot. Because, how else did you think the banks created that interest. It wasn't by letting your money sit in the bank vault was it.
Oh, and if you think the constant inflation through the 20th century has anything to do with FRB, then you are wrong. Constant inflation is about the government using fiat money to tax people. Nothing more, nothing less. Over time 2% tax a year does add its toll, so it looks like a huge degradation of worth in money. But compared to the total tax pressure, it is actually not that big of a tax.
I think you're confusing cause and effect. For example, in hyperinflation, it's true that people will tend to spend their depreciating money very quickly. However, the currency is not losing value because people are spending their money quickly; the currency is losing value because the government is rapidly expanding the money supply.
Inflation: Supply decrease, demand increase, money supply on main street increase Deflation: Supply increase, demand decrease, money supply on main street decrease
Did you ever notice that bubbles tend to grow when the fractional reserve banks are quickly expanding the money supply, and bubbles tend to pop when the rapid expansion finally slows or stops? There certainly seems to be a connection.
Cause and Effect. Why is the fractional reserve banks expanding money supply. Simple, because there is demand.
They said, "Don't inflate the money supply."
The M1 supply has always lagged behind the market, not the other way around. But austrian economists are just as little interested in facts as the keynesian economists.
" But, unlike in previous panics, Hoover did not listen. He intervened, and the economy grew worse. Then Roosevelt intervened even more, and things got so bad that we now call it the Great Depression. And then there was WW2, which further devastated the economy. Finally, when the government lifted the war-time price controls, prosperity returned.
Talk about rewriting history.
But now, Hoover is remembered as a non-interventionist, when he in fact intervened more than any president before him. Perhaps Bush will be remembered as a non-interventionist as well, because, just as Hoover did not intervene as much as Roosevelt, Bush did not intervene as much as Obama.
No, Obama would be Hoover. He is intervening, but in all the wrong ways. Just like Hoover. And he probably thinks the worst is over. You can't fix the problem until you face reality. And most people haven't faced reality yet.
Here we are in the 21st century, and we still haven't learned out lessons. Look at what the Fed has done to the monetary base since October. That's a ticking time bomb.
Yeah, just like it was when Japan did the same. Or to take your favorite example, the US during the great depression. Of course, this time they have added quite a big and quite quickly. But it won't help.
Also, we were told that if we didn't pass the stimulus, unemployment would go all the way to 9%. Well, we passed the stimulus, and now unemployment is 9.8% and still climbing! We've increased the minimum wage (i.e. made low-paying jobs illegal), extended unemployment insurance (i.e. took money from employers and used it to pay people to stay unemployed) and now teenage unemployment is over 20%. Isn't fucking with the economy fun?
Fucking with the economy? During the 90s and 00s, the economy had the least regulation since the great depression. Reagan and the following presidents all saw to that. The Austrians got what they wanted. Of course, they forgot to include the corruption that comes with it. They always do, because Austrians economy is like a game economy. Totally unrealistic when actually implemented in reality.
The money supply is hyper inflating? M1 yes, but not everything else that is used as money. Printed money is up a lot as the federal reserve is trying to compensate the loss in debt and asset money (which they can't without really causing hyperinflation. But that money is mainly sitting in bank vaults so far, acting as little but deleveraging money.
If it actually started getting out to the population, then we could start seeing inflation. But as companies aren't borrowing, and consumers aren't borrowing, and banks aren't lending, the only way that will happen is through the government. Well, make that the federal government, because the states are broke also.
There is simply no demand to buy anything as everyone is trying to get out of their debts at the same time. When demand is lower than supply, prices go down, not up. You can't just force people and companies to start buying stuff when they don't want to.
You say that it is sustainable, please elaborate. Because unless you're ignoring the presence of interest rates, the money owed will always exceed money existing. This ends with people or businesses going bankrupt unless there is perpetual growth
This is basic economics, and has little to do with FRB. But anyway, the answer is that money circulates. As long as those who lent out money uses the interest they collect to buy stuff from those in debt, everything remains balanced. Theoretically I can pay back a $100 loan with a single dollar bill, as long as I pay it back $1 at a time, and the one I pay it back to keeps buying stuff from me.
Of course, the real problem here is that borrowing to consume is bad as you won't have anything that the borrower will want to buy after you consumed, so you won't be able to pay him back. Borrowing to buy something at bubble prices is also bad for the same reason. You won't be able to pay back what you borrowed.
Borrowing is best done on actual stuff that increases productivity. Specifically, when the interest on the loan is less than the productivity increase. In that case both parties of the transaction profit by getting part of the productivity increase.
for every X dollars in circulation there is always X+Y debt. This system is just not sustainable. How could it ever do anything but ultimately fail?
There is nothing unsustainable about it. The X dollars in circulation just have to circulate fast enough. If fractional reserve banking has a flaw, it is the same thing that is its main advantage, and that is that it adepts to the demands of the economy. It amplifies both good and bad intentions of making use of money.
In the last 30 years there has been a lot of bad intentions going on, building on bubble after bubble. But blaming it on FRB is just plain wrong. There are real things in the economy that are unsustainable. Having the debt levels rise faster than the income levels would be one such thing. Having the lower and middle class owning a lesser and lesser percentage of the wealth would be another. And it isn't difficult to find more examples.
Having said all that, there are of course faults in how FRB is implemented in the US. There is for example no reason why a government should need to get in debt just to create money. That has nothing to do with the basic idea of FRB. Having a private institution running the money supply is another very stupid idea. Finally, you need regulators and law makers who generally aren't corrupt to ensure that the FRB system isn't abused. And that last thing is something that doesn't exist in the US right now, or most banks would have been shut down already, just by looking at their balance sheets. The only thing keeping the banks alive is corruption.
is that this system as we know it came from the Great Depression
Yes and no. The system today mostly has its origin in the 1980s. It may look similar to the old system, but all safeguards and general ideas of sanity has been removed as an ongoing process to promote "modern" capitalistic principles. The idea of balance has been totally abandoned and instead the concept that anything is right as long as it produces higher numbers has been promoted.
Which makes it even worse. Some of the hardest working US citizens, and they spend all their time doing unproductive stuff. So yes, most of that trillion was basically set on fire.
And that is where everyone is so wrong about stimulating the economy. There is no point spending money on doing unproductive work A, just so the worker can buy productive work B. In that case you should just buy productive work B immediately and avoid work A. Stimulating the economy only works if you can spend the money on something actually productive.
This is btw very similar to the (intentional) "mistake" that the US government has been doing with the bank bailouts. They claim that they have to pump the money into those bad banks so that they can lend to main street. But in that case, the government would be better off just pumping the money directly into main street. Everyone knows it, but very few actually says it out loud. Financial industries are never worth saving by the government for the simple reason that they don't do any productive work. They are simply conduits that help other sectors do productive work, and as such are easier to just replace.
Intention: To funnel money into the hands of those who own capital. Method: Restricting the spread of information, making the common man less wealthy. Excuse: Increasing the creation of information. (Note the exchange between creation and spread, which mostly benefits the rich at the cost of the poor) Way of Profit: Ensure that the common man spends most of his entertainment budget on highly marketed low margin cost items, leaving less money for artists who make their money on non-copyrighted sales, such as performances or other services.
Why don't you READ THE PAPER before passing your omniscient judgement upon it from on high? Perhaps it would be too difficult to actually provide relevant criticism of the author's methods and research?
OK. I did. And my conclusion remain the same. The 14 year number is bullshit. Not in that is 100% wrong. It just happens to be the standard journalistic bullshit.
Of course, the author never even uses it in the paper, which you would have known if you had actually read it. My criticism was never at the author, but at the number itself. Which is just the usual kind of journalistic distortion of truth. Not something new. You see it again and again, with journalists latching on to numbers that have no meaning by them self. And if the number sounds nice (like being the original US copyright length), some fools will propagate it like it is the single truth. (The funny thing is that you wouldn't get the same number if you used the formula back in the days, as the parameter values of the formula would be different)
Also, I don't see what bad critique I had in my post. I started by saying that there is no way to evaluate accurately the best length of copyright. And considering the margin of error in the paper, I am definitely right on that one. I continued by saying that length is not all that constitutes copyright, and that other factors would change the optimal length. I see nothing in the essay that would contradict that.
Then I continued with an opinionated assertion regarding the zero year phenomena where you get special properties as there is a big jump between no law and some law. I didn't read the essay in enough detail to see if it discussed that, but I don't think so. In that case, it is a valid remark. The difference between free and almost free is a very interesting economic subject, as there are many special properties there.
Next, I gave my perspective of balance. I agree that it isn't as well researched and mathematically interesting as his paper. I simply base my estimate on observations about the general turnaround of products on the market, noting that most businesses plan to get their expenditure back within a few years, after which it gets written off. But to add some real criticism against the paper. I found that it relies too much on real world data, that in itself is dependent on the current copyright system. That could easily cause a feedback that can create chaotic (as in math) distortions in the application of the formula.
Finally, I ended with a few common answers to complaint from those who want to keep the long copyright. Which I guess didn't have anything to do with the paper. I just felt like writing it, as it was on topic.
A bullshit number of course. There is simply no accurate way to evaluating neither the positive nor negative effects of copyright and patents. And that is before taking into considering stuff like fair use, legal private copying or compulsory licensing. All of which have been tried in different forms in different countries.
From a pure societal economic perspective, copyright is probably best at zero years. Even if less media gets produced (an assumption in itself), letting the whole population have access to everything that has ever been created unmeasurable huge economic benefits. Not the least that you don't have to deal with it in the first place, which creates new levels of freedom. (just like legal private copying makes citizens more free in a real sense)
From a more balanced perspective, I am extremely skeptic of any copyright length over 10 years, and I consider even that quite long. If you can't make a profit over that many years, then you simply suck at business. Of course, there are always a few arguments brought up.
After X years, the big companies could come in and scope up unknown works and make profits with them. To which I answer. Yes, they could. And really, they should. If you suck so badly at distributing your own work, then society doesn't have any use of your services. Of course, as it will no longer be under copyright, they can't really profit that much. Another argument is that people will wait until it runs out of copyright. But then I just have to wonder. People in general simply don't have the patience to wait years for something to run out of copyright. Which leads to the final argument, that old works will compete with the new ones. To which I say, damn right!! If the old works are good enough to satisfy everyone, then we don't need any new ones produced and are better off allocating the workforce elsewhere.
Living in a market economy means that margin costs are brought down by competition and informed customers. But I forget. We don't live in a market economy. We live in an aristocratic fraudulent brainwashing driven plan economy, where margin costs are kept artificially high by bought laws and products are sold based on deception and lies.
Really. If you expect the ordinary people to sit back and behave "lawfully" when they don't believe in the laws them self, then you are naive. And yes, ordinary people are perfectly able to see the conceptual difference between taking something scarce from someone which is a wealth neutral act and sharing something non-scarce with someone which is a wealth increasing act.
In general, piracy just seems to moves sales around in the entertainment market. Specifically, away from massmarketed hyped products towards cheaper impulse buy products and products with percieved real value (concerts).
Either way a game company needs to make enough profit that their company is a profitable investment. Given that Profit = Sales - Costs and Sales = Price * Volume, and that piracy reduces the sales volume, then there would seem to be a pretty straightforward case that higher piracy means that in order to continue to be profitable a company will have to raise prices to make up for the lower sales volume.
Raise prices because of lower sales volume? That doesn't make sense. The real formula is Profit=F(MarginProfit)*MarginProfit-OneTimeCosts where F(X) is volume and represents the supply/demand curve, where F(X) decreases as X increases. Maximizing profit is not about making things more or less expensive, but simply about finding the optimium price level.
Raising prices beyond or below the optimum point won't make you any more money. However much you need it to.
piracy shifts the demand curve
This is of course right. But your claim would mean that it changes in a way such that OPTIMUM_PRICE=X Where Max(F(X)*X) would tend to a higher value with more piracy. But reality doesn't seem to support that. In fact, the opposite is happening. Platforms with higher piracy rates, have lower prices. Piracy is basically acting as a competitor, forcing down the optimum price point.
But it does take gobs of money if you want to develop a very slick-looking game that, besides its graphics, is the most basic regurgitation of a previously innovative and hugely successful game.
True, but it takes even more money marketing it. Of course, that shouldn't come as a surprise. You have a (non-free) market with an abnormally high margin profits and relativly big initial costs compared to production cost. Marketing is the obvious tool to earn money here.
But that is only the start. Now ask yourself, where does the money come from to pay the marketing. The answer should be obvious. The consumer, or more accuratly, the consumer's entertainment budget. Which means what? He will have less money to spend on less marketed entertainment.
So the ones hurt the most,economically, by strong copyright (and patent) enforcement are those that rely less on marketing to sell their digital productions. That would be those who are selling cheaper impulse buys or who are getting most of their income from selling things with some perceived real value (concerts, paper books, movie theater seats, signed cd's, etc).
at an average of 8 songs/CD is 51,176 infringing songs,
Sorry, but you fail. The big companies may be evil, but they aren't stupid. You may only count the 8 songs once. Scratch that. As those song were distributed as one unit, so you can make a good argument for a total count of 1 infringement.
The reason for the $150,000 number in the law was exactly because it was aimed against large scale infringement like the one we are talking about here, but that has just made it even more effective (cruel and unjust) against small scale distributed infringment.
Because the sound isn't part of the phonetic makeup of the language. It is no different than how english can't use the click sounds that some languages use.
You don't even need to go to the preferences menu, unless you want to edit any of the existing entries. To add a new entry, just right click the search textbox and select "Create Search".
Slashdot Mirror
Players that have more time than money can grind everything,
Unfortunately, due to how the currency system is setup, that grind involves repeatedly creating and deleting characters, as the amount of a currency a single character can earn is limited.
I should feel sorry for the smaller artists, for whom copyright is designed to help thrive
It is? From my viewpoint copyright has always been designed to help the big companies that can profit by using superior advertising and distribution skills to mass produce and collect high margin profits. Smaller artists always have and always will make their money by hands on sales and are therefore far less dependent on copyright to function.
With a weaker copyright, smaller artists has a larger chance of getting their hand on the entertainment budget of consumer. Remember, the small artists and the big companies are competing for the same money. And it is the big companies that is selling the non-personal material that is most easy to copy.
Ideally a copyright would be exactly the bare minimum that was required to get the author to create his work
Why is it that one question is always forgotten when talking about copyright incentives. And that would be, "Do we need to have that specific work created in the first place?". Do we need xxxxx number of songs produced yearly, or could we make do with less, in favor of spending more resources elsewhere instead.
Always remember that the real cost of copyright is the reduced spread of information. Sure, we may get more information produced, but the total spread of that information goes down. Is the information that gets produced via copyright so much better that it is worth the cost?
The 14 years is, curiously enough, considered the optimal length of copyright by some recent study
14 years was simply the median value in the study. The error margin was quite large. Actually, the study itself keeps repeating "around 15 years", and I don't think it even mentions the number 14 at all. That number came from a newspaper interview. (in general, it is funny how studies and what you actually read in newspapers always seem to differ)
There are of course also some things you can question about the study, especially the definition of "optimal". The study was more or less the construction of a mathematical formula to fit the authors definition of optimal, which then used real world values to find a result.
Not that I don't appreciate the efforts of the author. It is a great piece of work. I just think the number 14 has been overly repeated by constitutionalists. The really funny part of that though is that if the same study were conducted at the time that the constitution were written, the results would be completely different as the input values to the formula would differ by a lot.
and the Internet will be dominated by garage bands offering stuff for free in hopes of landing a gig.
And fortunately for them, people who love music will have more money to spend on going to concerts as they don't have to spend it on buying easily reproducible data.
You want a theatrical release? It is going to have to be in theaters only, for years
For years? Have you seen the numbers that the big movies take in, in the first few weeks. It is more than enough to pay for any movie. Well, at least when the people producing it are working at normal salaries. Especially when people don't have to spend as much money on DVDs, so they can afford to go to the theater.
What most people don't understand is we've grown an entire generation that believes it all should be free and will never, ever pay
Your whole post is based on lies. Entertainment spending hasn't been going down as piracy has gone up. At most it has shifted a bit between the different entertainment industries. So tell me, why should I take you, or the entertainment company executives who claim much the same, seriously.
socialist
I don't think that word means what you think it does. The socialist solution would be to create a public newspaper, or in the case of extreme socialism, confiscating private newspapers companies. But you rarely here about socialist solutions nowadays, because there hardly are any real socialists in politics. Instead it is all about the government hiring private contractors, or the government paying money to private companies so they can build infrastructure. Or the government selling its property to private owners. There is nothing socialist at all about it.
Where is the public or worker ownership? It simply isn't there. The public and working class ownership has been going downhill for 30 years in pretty much all western countries. In fact, governments and worker class people are mostly in debt nowadays. Anyone calling that socialist has been listening too much to Fox News. It is simply modern credit and banana republic capitalism intertwined.
And beyond ownership. Lets look at salaries and taxes. A socialistic system aims to ensure that individuals get compensated roughly based on the amount of labor they put in. The quality of the labor is of secondary consideration, and while it can be used as an incentive it should be kept in control. What that means in practice, is a tax system with high top margin taxes, to ensure that a single individual doesn't greedily grab everything. Again, those margin taxes have been completely negated in the last 30 years, in a strong anti socialist movement.
Of course, most people are gullible and think social welfare is socialism. It isn't. Social welfare is simply a way to keep a dysfunctional society (a society with huge wage differences and high unemployment) under control. As for wealth redistribution in general, it is not socialism either. It is simply sound economic policy to keep the economy balanced, ensuring that wealth doesn't get over concentrated. It does fit well with a socialistic tax system, but that is because modern capitalistic ideas simply have no idea at all of balance.
Did it refund that improperly charged VAT for Irish customers when it finally relented?
Of course not, because that money had already been paid along to the government.
You are talking like Amazon actually benefits from collecting higher VAT. They don't. VAT money is a tax, which is paid along to the government. Of course, if Amazon has been charging VAT while keeping the money, then we are talking about large scale tax fraud. Claiming that something is VAT on the receipt and than not treating it as such in accounting is highly illegal.
Fractional reserve banking by definition causes debt levels to rise faster than income levels since it is ultimately income which provides the reserve which is only a fraction of the lending. Allowing banks to create chequebook money out of nothing and lend it out at usury causes a transfer of wealth to them from the lower and middle classes.
Bullshit, bullshit and bullshit.
The reserve is a multiplier of the base money supply which varies depending on the current economy's demand for money. The multiplier also has a cap which is dependent on the reserve ratio, but it rarely comes into play, as it is the demand of the economy that dictates everything, and not the other way around. Banks can at most be more or less leisurely with how they lend out money, and as such what risks they take. But that is it.
Btw, It is only in the last 30 years with consumer borrowing that debt has gone out of control, and not in every country. And that has little to do with FRB, and more to do with insanity of everyone involved. Consumption debt is bad, plain and simply.
But they aren't creating money out of nothing. They are lending out the same money you deposited. No different than if I have borrow 100 dollars from you and lend it to my friend. Of course, I did it without keeping any reserves at all. If you deposit money into an account, then you should be aware of that. Otherwise you truly are an idiot. Because, how else did you think the banks created that interest. It wasn't by letting your money sit in the bank vault was it.
Oh, and if you think the constant inflation through the 20th century has anything to do with FRB, then you are wrong. Constant inflation is about the government using fiat money to tax people. Nothing more, nothing less. Over time 2% tax a year does add its toll, so it looks like a huge degradation of worth in money. But compared to the total tax pressure, it is actually not that big of a tax.
I think you're confusing cause and effect. For example, in hyperinflation, it's true that people will tend to spend their depreciating money very quickly. However, the currency is not losing value because people are spending their money quickly; the currency is losing value because the government is rapidly expanding the money supply.
Inflation: Supply decrease, demand increase, money supply on main street increase
Deflation: Supply increase, demand decrease, money supply on main street decrease
Did you ever notice that bubbles tend to grow when the fractional reserve banks are quickly expanding the money supply, and bubbles tend to pop when the rapid expansion finally slows or stops? There certainly seems to be a connection.
Cause and Effect. Why is the fractional reserve banks expanding money supply. Simple, because there is demand.
They said, "Don't inflate the money supply."
The M1 supply has always lagged behind the market, not the other way around. But austrian economists are just as little interested in facts as the keynesian economists.
" But, unlike in previous panics, Hoover did not listen. He intervened, and the economy grew worse. Then Roosevelt intervened even more, and things got so bad that we now call it the Great Depression. And then there was WW2, which further devastated the economy. Finally, when the government lifted the war-time price controls, prosperity returned.
Talk about rewriting history.
But now, Hoover is remembered as a non-interventionist, when he in fact intervened more than any president before him. Perhaps Bush will be remembered as a non-interventionist as well, because, just as Hoover did not intervene as much as Roosevelt, Bush did not intervene as much as Obama.
No, Obama would be Hoover. He is intervening, but in all the wrong ways. Just like Hoover. And he probably thinks the worst is over. You can't fix the problem until you face reality. And most people haven't faced reality yet.
Here we are in the 21st century, and we still haven't learned out lessons. Look at what the Fed has done to the monetary base since October. That's a ticking time bomb.
Yeah, just like it was when Japan did the same. Or to take your favorite example, the US during the great depression. Of course, this time they have added quite a big and quite quickly. But it won't help.
Also, we were told that if we didn't pass the stimulus, unemployment would go all the way to 9%. Well, we passed the stimulus, and now unemployment is 9.8% and still climbing! We've increased the minimum wage (i.e. made low-paying jobs illegal), extended unemployment insurance (i.e. took money from employers and used it to pay people to stay unemployed) and now teenage unemployment is over 20%. Isn't fucking with the economy fun?
Fucking with the economy? During the 90s and 00s, the economy had the least regulation since the great depression. Reagan and the following presidents all saw to that. The Austrians got what they wanted. Of course, they forgot to include the corruption that comes with it. They always do, because Austrians economy is like a game economy. Totally unrealistic when actually implemented in reality.
the money supply is hyper-inflating
The money supply is hyper inflating? M1 yes, but not everything else that is used as money. Printed money is up a lot as the federal reserve is trying to compensate the loss in debt and asset money (which they can't without really causing hyperinflation. But that money is mainly sitting in bank vaults so far, acting as little but deleveraging money.
If it actually started getting out to the population, then we could start seeing inflation. But as companies aren't borrowing, and consumers aren't borrowing, and banks aren't lending, the only way that will happen is through the government. Well, make that the federal government, because the states are broke also.
There is simply no demand to buy anything as everyone is trying to get out of their debts at the same time. When demand is lower than supply, prices go down, not up. You can't just force people and companies to start buying stuff when they don't want to.
You say that it is sustainable, please elaborate. Because unless you're ignoring the presence of interest rates, the money owed will always exceed money existing. This ends with people or businesses going bankrupt unless there is perpetual growth
This is basic economics, and has little to do with FRB. But anyway, the answer is that money circulates. As long as those who lent out money uses the interest they collect to buy stuff from those in debt, everything remains balanced. Theoretically I can pay back a $100 loan with a single dollar bill, as long as I pay it back $1 at a time, and the one I pay it back to keeps buying stuff from me.
Of course, the real problem here is that borrowing to consume is bad as you won't have anything that the borrower will want to buy after you consumed, so you won't be able to pay him back. Borrowing to buy something at bubble prices is also bad for the same reason. You won't be able to pay back what you borrowed.
Borrowing is best done on actual stuff that increases productivity. Specifically, when the interest on the loan is less than the productivity increase. In that case both parties of the transaction profit by getting part of the productivity increase.
for every X dollars in circulation there is always X+Y debt. This system is just not sustainable. How could it ever do anything but ultimately fail?
There is nothing unsustainable about it. The X dollars in circulation just have to circulate fast enough. If fractional reserve banking has a flaw, it is the same thing that is its main advantage, and that is that it adepts to the demands of the economy. It amplifies both good and bad intentions of making use of money.
In the last 30 years there has been a lot of bad intentions going on, building on bubble after bubble. But blaming it on FRB is just plain wrong. There are real things in the economy that are unsustainable. Having the debt levels rise faster than the income levels would be one such thing. Having the lower and middle class owning a lesser and lesser percentage of the wealth would be another. And it isn't difficult to find more examples.
Having said all that, there are of course faults in how FRB is implemented in the US. There is for example no reason why a government should need to get in debt just to create money. That has nothing to do with the basic idea of FRB. Having a private institution running the money supply is another very stupid idea. Finally, you need regulators and law makers who generally aren't corrupt to ensure that the FRB system isn't abused. And that last thing is something that doesn't exist in the US right now, or most banks would have been shut down already, just by looking at their balance sheets. The only thing keeping the banks alive is corruption.
is that this system as we know it came from the Great Depression
Yes and no. The system today mostly has its origin in the 1980s. It may look similar to the old system, but all safeguards and general ideas of sanity has been removed as an ongoing process to promote "modern" capitalistic principles. The idea of balance has been totally abandoned and instead the concept that anything is right as long as it produces higher numbers has been promoted.
Liberty can be reclaimed. Not so for a life.
The only problem with that idea is that reclaiming liberty costs many lives. So if you go down that path, you aren't being very efficient.
some of the hardest working US citizens
Which makes it even worse. Some of the hardest working US citizens, and they spend all their time doing unproductive stuff. So yes, most of that trillion was basically set on fire.
And that is where everyone is so wrong about stimulating the economy. There is no point spending money on doing unproductive work A, just so the worker can buy productive work B. In that case you should just buy productive work B immediately and avoid work A. Stimulating the economy only works if you can spend the money on something actually productive.
This is btw very similar to the (intentional) "mistake" that the US government has been doing with the bank bailouts. They claim that they have to pump the money into those bad banks so that they can lend to main street. But in that case, the government would be better off just pumping the money directly into main street. Everyone knows it, but very few actually says it out loud. Financial industries are never worth saving by the government for the simple reason that they don't do any productive work. They are simply conduits that help other sectors do productive work, and as such are easier to just replace.
Copyright
Intention: To funnel money into the hands of those who own capital.
Method: Restricting the spread of information, making the common man less wealthy.
Excuse: Increasing the creation of information. (Note the exchange between creation and spread, which mostly benefits the rich at the cost of the poor)
Way of Profit: Ensure that the common man spends most of his entertainment budget on highly marketed low margin cost items, leaving less money for artists who make their money on non-copyrighted sales, such as performances or other services.
Why don't you READ THE PAPER before passing your omniscient judgement upon it from on high? Perhaps it would be too difficult to actually provide relevant criticism of the author's methods and research?
OK. I did. And my conclusion remain the same. The 14 year number is bullshit. Not in that is 100% wrong. It just happens to be the standard journalistic bullshit.
Of course, the author never even uses it in the paper, which you would have known if you had actually read it. My criticism was never at the author, but at the number itself. Which is just the usual kind of journalistic distortion of truth. Not something new. You see it again and again, with journalists latching on to numbers that have no meaning by them self. And if the number sounds nice (like being the original US copyright length), some fools will propagate it like it is the single truth. (The funny thing is that you wouldn't get the same number if you used the formula back in the days, as the parameter values of the formula would be different)
Also, I don't see what bad critique I had in my post. I started by saying that there is no way to evaluate accurately the best length of copyright. And considering the margin of error in the paper, I am definitely right on that one. I continued by saying that length is not all that constitutes copyright, and that other factors would change the optimal length. I see nothing in the essay that would contradict that.
Then I continued with an opinionated assertion regarding the zero year phenomena where you get special properties as there is a big jump between no law and some law. I didn't read the essay in enough detail to see if it discussed that, but I don't think so. In that case, it is a valid remark. The difference between free and almost free is a very interesting economic subject, as there are many special properties there.
Next, I gave my perspective of balance. I agree that it isn't as well researched and mathematically interesting as his paper. I simply base my estimate on observations about the general turnaround of products on the market, noting that most businesses plan to get their expenditure back within a few years, after which it gets written off. But to add some real criticism against the paper. I found that it relies too much on real world data, that in itself is dependent on the current copyright system. That could easily cause a feedback that can create chaotic (as in math) distortions in the application of the formula.
Finally, I ended with a few common answers to complaint from those who want to keep the long copyright. Which I guess didn't have anything to do with the paper. I just felt like writing it, as it was on topic.
About 14 years, apparently.
A bullshit number of course. There is simply no accurate way to evaluating neither the positive nor negative effects of copyright and patents. And that is before taking into considering stuff like fair use, legal private copying or compulsory licensing. All of which have been tried in different forms in different countries.
From a pure societal economic perspective, copyright is probably best at zero years. Even if less media gets produced (an assumption in itself), letting the whole population have access to everything that has ever been created unmeasurable huge economic benefits. Not the least that you don't have to deal with it in the first place, which creates new levels of freedom. (just like legal private copying makes citizens more free in a real sense)
From a more balanced perspective, I am extremely skeptic of any copyright length over 10 years, and I consider even that quite long. If you can't make a profit over that many years, then you simply suck at business. Of course, there are always a few arguments brought up.
After X years, the big companies could come in and scope up unknown works and make profits with them. To which I answer. Yes, they could. And really, they should. If you suck so badly at distributing your own work, then society doesn't have any use of your services. Of course, as it will no longer be under copyright, they can't really profit that much. Another argument is that people will wait until it runs out of copyright. But then I just have to wonder. People in general simply don't have the patience to wait years for something to run out of copyright. Which leads to the final argument, that old works will compete with the new ones. To which I say, damn right!! If the old works are good enough to satisfy everyone, then we don't need any new ones produced and are better off allocating the workforce elsewhere.
Living in a market economy means that margin costs are brought down by competition and informed customers. But I forget. We don't live in a market economy. We live in an aristocratic fraudulent brainwashing driven plan economy, where margin costs are kept artificially high by bought laws and products are sold based on deception and lies.
Really. If you expect the ordinary people to sit back and behave "lawfully" when they don't believe in the laws them self, then you are naive. And yes, ordinary people are perfectly able to see the conceptual difference between taking something scarce from someone which is a wealth neutral act and sharing something non-scarce with someone which is a wealth increasing act.
Doesn't the EULA also forbid you from distributing executables made with Visual Studio Express editions?
No. There are no restrictions on what you can do with programs developed with the express editions.
piracy reduces the sales volume
In general, piracy just seems to moves sales around in the entertainment market. Specifically, away from massmarketed hyped products towards cheaper impulse buy products and products with percieved real value (concerts).
Either way a game company needs to make enough profit that their company is a profitable investment. Given that Profit = Sales - Costs and Sales = Price * Volume, and that piracy reduces the sales volume, then there would seem to be a pretty straightforward case that higher piracy means that in order to continue to be profitable a company will have to raise prices to make up for the lower sales volume.
Raise prices because of lower sales volume? That doesn't make sense. The real formula is Profit=F(MarginProfit)*MarginProfit-OneTimeCosts where F(X) is volume and represents the supply/demand curve, where F(X) decreases as X increases. Maximizing profit is not about making things more or less expensive, but simply about finding the optimium price level.
Raising prices beyond or below the optimum point won't make you any more money. However much you need it to.
piracy shifts the demand curve
This is of course right. But your claim would mean that it changes in a way such that OPTIMUM_PRICE=X Where Max(F(X)*X) would tend to a higher value with more piracy. But reality doesn't seem to support that. In fact, the opposite is happening. Platforms with higher piracy rates, have lower prices. Piracy is basically acting as a competitor, forcing down the optimum price point.
But it does take gobs of money if you want to develop a very slick-looking game that, besides its graphics, is the most basic regurgitation of a previously innovative and hugely successful game.
True, but it takes even more money marketing it. Of course, that shouldn't come as a surprise. You have a (non-free) market with an abnormally high margin profits and relativly big initial costs compared to production cost. Marketing is the obvious tool to earn money here.
But that is only the start. Now ask yourself, where does the money come from to pay the marketing. The answer should be obvious. The consumer, or more accuratly, the consumer's entertainment budget. Which means what? He will have less money to spend on less marketed entertainment.
So the ones hurt the most,economically, by strong copyright (and patent) enforcement are those that rely less on marketing to sell their digital productions. That would be those who are selling cheaper impulse buys or who are getting most of their income from selling things with some perceived real value (concerts, paper books, movie theater seats, signed cd's, etc).
and I would if it didn't cost me a decent seat
Here in Sweden, seats are numbered and reserved on the ticket. Is it different in the US?
at an average of 8 songs/CD is 51,176 infringing songs,
Sorry, but you fail. The big companies may be evil, but they aren't stupid. You may only count the 8 songs once. Scratch that. As those song were distributed as one unit, so you can make a good argument for a total count of 1 infringement.
The reason for the $150,000 number in the law was exactly because it was aimed against large scale infringement like the one we are talking about here, but that has just made it even more effective (cruel and unjust) against small scale distributed infringment.
Why not?
Because the sound isn't part of the phonetic makeup of the language. It is no different than how english can't use the click sounds that some languages use.
In Opera: tools, preferences, search.
You don't even need to go to the preferences menu, unless you want to edit any of the existing entries. To add a new entry, just right click the search textbox and select "Create Search".