Remember there was more than one explosion caused by criminals last week. Is "privacy off the table" for fertilizer plants too? Fifteen people died in West, Texas. Why have there been no arrests yet?
Police work in any country is more about the appearance of security than actual security. It doesn't matter if it works. It only matters if it keeps people calm.
I'm not advocating this as the way it should be, just the way it is. We'd all actually be safer if we switched to evidence based policing. But then the government couldn't get away with shit like the War on Drug Users.
Funding the production of a cancer cure is not immoral. Withholding resources from a researcher unless you get a cut is immoral.
As for your assassin comment, the morality of a job itself is unrelated to the morality of the economics behind the job. If you take my statement in context (iow, read the parent post), it's clear by "anything" I mean "any amount". If my comment was unclear, I apologize.
Taking a risk isn't a productive act either, I don't see why it should be so highly valued. Perhaps we'd have more successful business if it weren't so risky to start a business. Deciding where to start businesses should be just another job where if you're good at it you get a raise, and if you're bad at it you lose your job.
As for your first question, I think the market is a pretty good mechanism for determining the value of jobs. I mean actual jobs, where you work for a wage or salary. Both coal mining and neurosurgeons are actual jobs and they should get paid whatever the market will bear. I'd just apply one hack to prevent the coercive potential of starvation from forcing people into exploitative positions when there are no alternatives. That hack would be a basic income guarantee.
The result of that would be that you'd have to pay coal miners enough to make them *want* to mine coal, instead of deciding that it's better than starvation. Would this increase the price of coal? Yes, to the point where it matches the actual costs of mining it. Whereas today we unjustly force miners to absorb most of the burden because they have no other choice.
People get paid more for owning than for working. Money is not simply a proxy for labor. Someone who lends a million dollars and gets $50,000 in interest has not worked as hard as someone who earned $50,000 by virtue of his labor.
An undercover agent saw the books when you were interacting with someone but didn't get a look at the whole book.
In which case the undercover agent should testify that he saw me with the book. That's all they know, that's all they get.
That's an example where they can compel you to produce the books even though they don't know what's in the books.
*can* in the sense that it is possible, not in the sense that it is permissible.
Or, an officer pursues you into your house, and sees you throw something in a wall safe and lock it. You can be compelled to open the safe in that case.
If it's a combination lock, then producing the combination is an act of testimony. If there is incriminating data that act of testimony is incriminating. We are protected against giving incriminating testimony by the 5th amendment.
It's that simple. If you don't want to be protected by the 5th amendment anymore, you should work on repealing it. It's not OK to simply invent exceptions because the 5th amendment is inconvenient.
In the absence of obscenity laws that define pornography as harmful a priori, I'm not sure much would happen at all. Parents might freak out, but I'm pretty sure the parental reaction would be more harmful to the children than the pornography.
Yes, that's exactly government censorship. It boggles the mind that you could consider it anything else. The idea that "community standards" should govern a communication medium is backwards and dangerous. The communication medium should deliver the information the users want.
If DRM had never actually prevented anything from being copied, people wouldn't give a shit about it.
People give a shit about DRM despite the fact that it does not prevent copying because it makes the paid experience worse than the pirate experience. You're right, in that I don't like DRM. You're wrong, in that DRM makes it absolutely no harder to make copies of anything. Just visit the pirate bay.
The difference is that gun control has actually been shown to reduce gun violence, whereas DRM has never actually prevented anything from being copied.
So let's call a spade a spade, and admit that it *is* about copy protection
If it was about copy protection, you would expect DRM to actually protect things from being copied. But I can find copies of anything I want easily, no matter how much DRM has been piled on. Therefore, it cannot actually be about DRM. QED.
Slashdot Mirror
I know. What if they want some and you can't come through for them?
Apparently, you do, based on how many TV shows utterly fail due to poor ratings.
Poor ratings are no indication that the show sucked. And the approval of millions of people is no indication of quality.
Remember there was more than one explosion caused by criminals last week. Is "privacy off the table" for fertilizer plants too? Fifteen people died in West, Texas. Why have there been no arrests yet?
Police work in any country is more about the appearance of security than actual security. It doesn't matter if it works. It only matters if it keeps people calm.
I'm not advocating this as the way it should be, just the way it is. We'd all actually be safer if we switched to evidence based policing. But then the government couldn't get away with shit like the War on Drug Users.
Funding the production of a cancer cure is not immoral. Withholding resources from a researcher unless you get a cut is immoral.
As for your assassin comment, the morality of a job itself is unrelated to the morality of the economics behind the job. If you take my statement in context (iow, read the parent post), it's clear by "anything" I mean "any amount". If my comment was unclear, I apologize.
The nearest thing to what you're talking about are venture capitalists
What I'm talking about is nationalizing venture capitalism.
You're holding up 'labour' and 'ownership' like holy talismans but they're about as relevant as the old testament these days.
You can call it irrelevant if you want, but every item of value exists only because someone worked to create it.
What change of subject? I addressed the concern raised.
If someone with a plausible chance to cure cancer can't get public funding, there's something seriously wrong with society.
Taking a risk isn't a productive act either, I don't see why it should be so highly valued. Perhaps we'd have more successful business if it weren't so risky to start a business. Deciding where to start businesses should be just another job where if you're good at it you get a raise, and if you're bad at it you lose your job.
As for your first question, I think the market is a pretty good mechanism for determining the value of jobs. I mean actual jobs, where you work for a wage or salary. Both coal mining and neurosurgeons are actual jobs and they should get paid whatever the market will bear. I'd just apply one hack to prevent the coercive potential of starvation from forcing people into exploitative positions when there are no alternatives. That hack would be a basic income guarantee.
The result of that would be that you'd have to pay coal miners enough to make them *want* to mine coal, instead of deciding that it's better than starvation. Would this increase the price of coal? Yes, to the point where it matches the actual costs of mining it. Whereas today we unjustly force miners to absorb most of the burden because they have no other choice.
XFS doesn't checksum, support copy-on-write, etc.
People get paid more for owning than for working. Money is not simply a proxy for labor. Someone who lends a million dollars and gets $50,000 in interest has not worked as hard as someone who earned $50,000 by virtue of his labor.
Thank you. Web 2.0 is so easy to use!
Anything you can earn through labor is moral. Anything you acquire through investment is immoral.
Capitalism: you take a risk with money
And that's the problem with capitalism. Taking a risk with money is non-productive. Labor is productive.
At no point is wealth witheld from anyone
Executives and shareholders take a share of the profits earned off of the backs of labor.
An undercover agent saw the books when you were interacting with someone but didn't get a look at the whole book.
In which case the undercover agent should testify that he saw me with the book. That's all they know, that's all they get.
That's an example where they can compel you to produce the books even though they don't know what's in the books.
*can* in the sense that it is possible, not in the sense that it is permissible.
Or, an officer pursues you into your house, and sees you throw something in a wall safe and lock it. You can be compelled to open the safe in that case.
If it's a combination lock, then producing the combination is an act of testimony. If there is incriminating data that act of testimony is incriminating. We are protected against giving incriminating testimony by the 5th amendment.
It's that simple. If you don't want to be protected by the 5th amendment anymore, you should work on repealing it. It's not OK to simply invent exceptions because the 5th amendment is inconvenient.
In the absence of obscenity laws that define pornography as harmful a priori, I'm not sure much would happen at all. Parents might freak out, but I'm pretty sure the parental reaction would be more harmful to the children than the pornography.
Yes, that's exactly government censorship. It boggles the mind that you could consider it anything else. The idea that "community standards" should govern a communication medium is backwards and dangerous. The communication medium should deliver the information the users want.
Government censorship is a lot more likely to hurt people than icky videos.
Uh...wut? How the fuck has gun control been shown to reduce violence?
It seems to have worked in Australia.
The point is not to make it impossible to pirate content but to make it inconvenient enough that the average consumer wont do it.
DRM makes piracy MORE convenient than the legitimate purchase.
If DRM had never actually prevented anything from being copied, people wouldn't give a shit about it.
People give a shit about DRM despite the fact that it does not prevent copying because it makes the paid experience worse than the pirate experience. You're right, in that I don't like DRM. You're wrong, in that DRM makes it absolutely no harder to make copies of anything. Just visit the pirate bay.
There's a difference between being opposed to porn in public and being in favour of government-mandated censorship.
No, there is no such difference.
The difference is that gun control has actually been shown to reduce gun violence, whereas DRM has never actually prevented anything from being copied.
If they provided me with good cheap DRM free service, they'd have my dollars.
So let's call a spade a spade, and admit that it *is* about copy protection
If it was about copy protection, you would expect DRM to actually protect things from being copied. But I can find copies of anything I want easily, no matter how much DRM has been piled on. Therefore, it cannot actually be about DRM. QED.