My bigger concern is not sticking our nose into the affairs of other countries, it is sticking it into the lives of individuals in said countries (after all, protectionism is taking their jobs for us).
If a person choses to have their children work, who are we to say "no", it's not like we had to make the choice of food vs education. As long as there is open and honest discussion fo what is going on in the factory things will improve just as they did here. Perhaps 3 children in a family work, so the third can get more schooling, everybody wins.
If the first three are treated unfairly though, and not paid as promised for example, it is the free press above all else that will fix that.
Protectionism in the guise of altruism (an ant-globalization theme)leads only to the family not having any say in the matter, and I bet there are a lot of Americans that would be in worse positions if their 18th and 19th century relatives were not given the choice in the matter. It was only the good results from that choice being answered correctly that put us in a strong enough position to abolish the practice altogether (and many probably harped about how that would destroy us too).
Protectionism, that's the word I should have used.
I do think an argument can be made for restricting trade to places without a free press though. If people can be put in prison for protesting their treatment then there is no longer freedom, and you have essentially soft indentured servitude.
I played Rome Total Realism, and felt that the game was more "fun" by default. But I have not played in years (due to converting over to Linux).
The unrealistic, but overpowered calvary, and the overall faster units lead to a game I enjoyed more. Perhaps a faster pace with a happy medium on calvary strength would have been more fun for me (I got great joy from charging the flanks and watching large armies fall).
Also, I don't know that essentially more greeks in egypt would be more fun.
I pretty much play Quake Wars:ET, and kblackbox now. I played Lincity for a while, but got sick of it after winning.
All of these things that are significantly more than marginal cost are examples of products being scarce, or kept artificially so.
The extra profit in a Lexus vs Toyota is because no one but Toyota can make them,, so they can set the price and keep them scarce. The ability to do that is a gift from society in exchange for making a nice car that we want (enforced by the guns of various governments).
Governments raid mass producers of illegal copies, I can only imagine that they do so using guns. The guns are being used to keep supply low and prices artificially high.
The value argument is just as ridiculous, since everyone has a different value. The fact that there is an asymmetric value determination is what makes people purchase things, and those purchases make everybody better off. This is with or without an inflated price.
Macs cost more than PCs because nobody but Apple can make a Mac, and this is backed by guns (Try running a large operation making fake Apple products and see if you get raided or not).
I am not arguing against copyright, my initial post was against using it as Social Security (it makes far more sense to use Social Security for that), and the last one was pointing out that money sent to big corporations for stuff at an inflated price is not better than it not being sent to them.
When trying to create a system for compensating artists society as a whole must be taken into account. Society loses when prices are higher than they need to be for an item (marginal cost + some percentage), or if people cannot make any money on artistic endeavors and stop doing them (no copyright at all leads to the non-marginal cost + return on investment never being attained).
In both the Toyota/Lexus and Apple vs PC (though it could be argues Toyota/Lexus is closer to Mac Book/Mac Book pro) case the brand image and design are enforced at gunpoint (again, try making fakes and see what happens), but everybody would be better off if you could get either for a few percentage over marginal cost (except those that reap the rewards of the inflated price).
The house in the nice neighborhood truly is scarce, not artificially so, but if it is being purchased there are 2 different values at play, and the buyers is higher than the sellers.
I understand the benefits of copyright, but I also understand the damages of monopoly, which is what a copyright is. The argument that monopoly is somehow not bad when it is not stuff we need seams wrong-headed to me. A balance needs to be struck between the 2 and I don't think Social Security for artists should play into it.
We grow richer when we buy things for less than we value them (and hopefully the seller grows richer getting more than they value the item). This means that if something can be sold for $1, and 100 people value it averaging $5 and buy it we have a $400 gain there. If the seller only valued one of said item for $.50 we have another $50 gain.
If now we decide to let the seller set a price, and they choose to maximize their profit (having a monopoly) they can sell the item for $20 while still valuing it at $.50
If they make 5 sales (to people who value the item at $25 from the previous example) the created value is $122.50. The creator gets more, but society is worse off. Perhaps the creator needs to make at least $100 to keep on creating, in which case the second example is better in the long term, but if they only needed $25 to keep going the second example is worse.
We clearly need copyright to push the value of creating up some (since there will always be someone willing to sell copies at marginal cost leaving no room to inflate price to cover creation, but that is all we need from it, and anything more is damaging.
The value (as defined by what people pay) is propped up at gunpoint.
If artificial scarcity was created for water, would it be fair to say people willingly pay 90% of their pay for water? Why is it that the value of art should intrinsically be charged, while other things get charged something much closer to matching their cost?
Copyright is a gift given to artists/corporations by the people as a thank-you for producing the work. The gift amount should be set to such a level that it maximizes artistic output while minimizing price. That will allow for the richest culture while draining the least from society.
Than the anti-copyright crowd can do all those things too.
The society benefit (value - cost) is improved as the cost for artistic works is lowered we all win (as in anyone not an artist/company producing art. This would allow the cost of art to approach the marginal cost of a copy, freeing money for more useful things.
Why is it that art should inherently cost as much as it's value, while everything else approaches marginal cost?
What you are advocating is copyright to act as social security.
I would argue that doing so is placing an undue cost to society (in the loss of public domain).
It would make more sense, and be far less expensive to let works enter the public domain, and provide social security for artists who make a few hits. This can be a special social security pool that allows basic needs to be met for people who have contributed to the arts, while they can continue to supplement that with less popular art. A fair way to decide who is eligible is a problem though. Perhaps if a certain amount is made through art you become eligible, and if you make over a certain amount you are not anymore (different thresholds for year/lifetime).
Of course the added burden of keeping track of that leads to a lot of waste to society, which may in the end outweigh the benefit of free flowing art.
I am willing to bet he is unhappy with BSD the same way he is with Debian, Ubuntu and pretty much every other Linux distro. Not their license, which he does not like as much as the GPL, but is still fine with.
I am also curious, in a non-competitive market, why does a company keep the price below the highest one with large sales volume?
I would think that without competition you set the price to maximize profit, and cost of manufacturing has less of an impact. If your costs go up a few percent, you keep the same price, since your customers are already paying as much as they can.
It is competition that brings price below that magic maximum price point and down to a barely profitable amount. It is this same competition that causes taxes to get passed onto the consumer (though as you point out, not directly).
Without competition the price is always set at what the consumers will bear, with it is is set to what is the minimum profitable price, though sometimes it is a little above that, and other times below.
It is poorly thought out. It is not my job, nor will it ever be, to think these things through.
It will only eliminate one type of investment though. It will eliminate investment in creating efficiencies in a non-competitive market.
There will still be incentive to come out with new products, or getting existing ones into new markets (growing overall gross, allowing for more profit in raw numbers, for example Exxon's 9% is a huge number, and would be 100% tax free under that proposal).
In a competitive market there would be incentive to add efficiency to lower price and grow market share.
Companies that are making huge profits are usually (I am making this up, I am sure there are other scenarios that lead to huge profits, that do not get there from co-operation of the masses) doing so with monopolies that we as the people have granted them as a reward for inventing, or designing something we want. Those companies will be the ones that are hit by the additional tax.
Apple for example, designs products that people really like, and is rewarded by us for doing so. We choose to let them be the only ones to make iPods (through patents, and copyright). Because they have a monopoly on iPods they get to charge some of the extra value an iPod has vs a simple mark-up of the cost of making one.
Apple still profits under 15% (using the first result I got googling which was Q2 2007), and still would not be taxed. 15% is a huge return on sales, and very few companies would pay any tax. The fact that most companies are willing to invest money when the return is likely to be far less than 15% leads me to believe that there would be investment in growth even if you took 100% of everything past 15%.
I didn't say they were paying more. I said they were paying a larger percentage. That would be true with a smaller government too (what did ab out mean, probably that I am too stupid to proof read).
Giving benefits to a type of company you want while not extending them to other companies you apparently don't want (small businesses I guess?) is affirmative action, weather you approve or not.
I will say that taxing corporate profits is kind of silly for most companies. If a company is in a competitive market (or playing nice by not returning much more than 10-15 percent) a tax on them is just a tax on customers. You could argue that this provides a local benefit by spreading the tax burden from those that are outside of equivalent jurisdiction (as those foreign to the local become customers and help the profits), but it is really more a strategy to help government tax people that are too dumb to realize it, since everyone hates corporations (except the one that pays them).
I also think there is an argument to tax large profits for the sake of encouraging re-investment (for example a 50% tax on all profit over 15% of gross would encourage some of that extra profit to be spent on R&D (or salaries, probably for those who need it least). You could even allow years where profits ate 10% to allow the extra 5% to be deducted from future years.
All of that could still be bad, because in new fields people relay on better than 15% return (VC's), I don't know how much of what they make is capitol gains, and how much true profit.
Assuming the state runs on an ab out balanced budget it does mean citizens are taking a larger percentage of the taxes. It could still be better for them though. The fact that Corporate taxes are essentially a tax on customers of that corporation, and that most Google and MS customers are not from Iowa, would mean that the citizens of Iowa are paying taxes that in a normal (for that state) structure would be paid by people world wide.
If the power is really so cheap why the need for tax breaks?
This is really more like corporate affirmative action (for advantaged corporations) than welfare though.
Last week either means the last 7 days, or the week before the week we were in (last Saturday through the Sunday before last).
So it does not preclude earlier this week, but I would say it is a less common usage to mean the last seven days without a qualifier (such as within the last week).
Actions like this by the IOC need to hurt (or at least make fear hurt) the sponsors of the events.
Here is a sample letter I am sending (I will customize it for each business I actually work with, listing what I will now longer be purchasing.
It is a rough draft, so if you use it, edit it.
I just wanted to let you know, that as a freedom loving citizen of the world, your sponsorship of the 2008 olympic games, and more importantly, proud display of association with the International Olympic Committee is going to prevent me from using your product until any of the following happens:
1) Your company issues an official statement condemning the abuses to freedom by the IOC (this includes, but is not limited to claiming copyright infringement on a critical video that used a clearly satirical alteration of their logo, blocking/allowing to be blocked free internet access to international journalists, and allowing people to be kicked out of their homes in tremendously huge quantities).
2) The IOC behaves better at the next Olympic games.
3) The IOC officially apologizes for the same reasons mentioned in item one.
I hope that my voice is one of many (though I fear I am but one of a few) and that your companies inconsiderate pursuite of a new market ends up costing both prophits and shareholders for years to come.
Woops, almost left my sig that includes my phone number from that email.
Slashdot Mirror
You already changed your sig.
Makes me look kind of silly.
My bigger concern is not sticking our nose into the affairs of other countries, it is sticking it into the lives of individuals in said countries (after all, protectionism is taking their jobs for us).
If a person choses to have their children work, who are we to say "no", it's not like we had to make the choice of food vs education. As long as there is open and honest discussion fo what is going on in the factory things will improve just as they did here. Perhaps 3 children in a family work, so the third can get more schooling, everybody wins.
If the first three are treated unfairly though, and not paid as promised for example, it is the free press above all else that will fix that.
Protectionism in the guise of altruism (an ant-globalization theme)leads only to the family not having any say in the matter, and I bet there are a lot of Americans that would be in worse positions if their 18th and 19th century relatives were not given the choice in the matter. It was only the good results from that choice being answered correctly that put us in a strong enough position to abolish the practice altogether (and many probably harped about how that would destroy us too).
Protectionism, that's the word I should have used.
I do think an argument can be made for restricting trade to places without a free press though. If people can be put in prison for protesting their treatment then there is no longer freedom, and you have essentially soft indentured servitude.
Funny,
I played Rome Total Realism, and felt that the game was more "fun" by default. But I have not played in years (due to converting over to Linux).
The unrealistic, but overpowered calvary, and the overall faster units lead to a game I enjoyed more. Perhaps a faster pace with a happy medium on calvary strength would have been more fun for me (I got great joy from charging the flanks and watching large armies fall).
Also,
I don't know that essentially more greeks in egypt would be more fun.
I pretty much play Quake Wars:ET, and kblackbox now. I played Lincity for a while, but got sick of it after winning.
Rome total war kind of had this for me.
With the turn based unit building and setting up your units it had that kind of feel.
It was lacking resource management in the fighting though, and except for city defense there were not too many choke points.
It was by far my favorite strategy game ever though (perhaps because I didn't over-play it before going full time Linux).
Your Sig:
anti-globalization is obviously pro-mercantilism.
Or perhaps there are more nefarious motives than that.
When someone costs you money through negligence (i.e giving away or sloppily handling your data) you can sue them.
This would apply at the very least to Credit Cards (if used) and social security numbers (if they are used).
If the cost to you is nothing it is definitely a different issue.
All of these things that are significantly more than marginal cost are examples of products being scarce, or kept artificially so.
The extra profit in a Lexus vs Toyota is because no one but Toyota can make them,, so they can set the price and keep them scarce. The ability to do that is a gift from society in exchange for making a nice car that we want (enforced by the guns of various governments).
Governments raid mass producers of illegal copies, I can only imagine that they do so using guns. The guns are being used to keep supply low and prices artificially high.
The value argument is just as ridiculous, since everyone has a different value. The fact that there is an asymmetric value determination is what makes people purchase things, and those purchases make everybody better off. This is with or without an inflated price.
Macs cost more than PCs because nobody but Apple can make a Mac, and this is backed by guns (Try running a large operation making fake Apple products and see if you get raided or not).
I am not arguing against copyright, my initial post was against using it as Social Security (it makes far more sense to use Social Security for that), and the last one was pointing out that money sent to big corporations for stuff at an inflated price is not better than it not being sent to them.
When trying to create a system for compensating artists society as a whole must be taken into account. Society loses when prices are higher than they need to be for an item (marginal cost + some percentage), or if people cannot make any money on artistic endeavors and stop doing them (no copyright at all leads to the non-marginal cost + return on investment never being attained).
In both the Toyota/Lexus and Apple vs PC (though it could be argues Toyota/Lexus is closer to Mac Book/Mac Book pro) case the brand image and design are enforced at gunpoint (again, try making fakes and see what happens), but everybody would be better off if you could get either for a few percentage over marginal cost (except those that reap the rewards of the inflated price).
The house in the nice neighborhood truly is scarce, not artificially so, but if it is being purchased there are 2 different values at play, and the buyers is higher than the sellers.
I understand the benefits of copyright, but I also understand the damages of monopoly, which is what a copyright is. The argument that monopoly is somehow not bad when it is not stuff we need seams wrong-headed to me. A balance needs to be struck between the 2 and I don't think Social Security for artists should play into it.
We grow richer when we buy things for less than we value them (and hopefully the seller grows richer getting more than they value the item). This means that if something can be sold for $1, and 100 people value it averaging $5 and buy it we have a $400 gain there. If the seller only valued one of said item for $.50 we have another $50 gain.
If now we decide to let the seller set a price, and they choose to maximize their profit (having a monopoly) they can sell the item for $20 while still valuing it at $.50
If they make 5 sales (to people who value the item at $25 from the previous example) the created value is $122.50. The creator gets more, but society is worse off. Perhaps the creator needs to make at least $100 to keep on creating, in which case the second example is better in the long term, but if they only needed $25 to keep going the second example is worse.
We clearly need copyright to push the value of creating up some (since there will always be someone willing to sell copies at marginal cost leaving no room to inflate price to cover creation, but that is all we need from it, and anything more is damaging.
PS.
My apologies to anyone who has read this far.
Look, he needs to keep up the cheating Indians. It's not his fault.
Sounds to me like a broken window fallacy.
The value (as defined by what people pay) is propped up at gunpoint.
If artificial scarcity was created for water, would it be fair to say people willingly pay 90% of their pay for water? Why is it that the value of art should intrinsically be charged, while other things get charged something much closer to matching their cost?
Copyright is a gift given to artists/corporations by the people as a thank-you for producing the work. The gift amount should be set to such a level that it maximizes artistic output while minimizing price. That will allow for the richest culture while draining the least from society.
Than the anti-copyright crowd can do all those things too.
The society benefit (value - cost) is improved as the cost for artistic works is lowered we all win (as in anyone not an artist/company producing art. This would allow the cost of art to approach the marginal cost of a copy, freeing money for more useful things.
Why is it that art should inherently cost as much as it's value, while everything else approaches marginal cost?
What you are advocating is copyright to act as social security.
I would argue that doing so is placing an undue cost to society (in the loss of public domain).
It would make more sense, and be far less expensive to let works enter the public domain, and provide social security for artists who make a few hits. This can be a special social security pool that allows basic needs to be met for people who have contributed to the arts, while they can continue to supplement that with less popular art. A fair way to decide who is eligible is a problem though. Perhaps if a certain amount is made through art you become eligible, and if you make over a certain amount you are not anymore (different thresholds for year/lifetime).
Of course the added burden of keeping track of that leads to a lot of waste to society, which may in the end outweigh the benefit of free flowing art.
I am willing to bet he is unhappy with BSD the same way he is with Debian, Ubuntu and pretty much every other Linux distro. Not their license, which he does not like as much as the GPL, but is still fine with.
See http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/
Modified BSD license.
I am also curious, in a non-competitive market, why does a company keep the price below the highest one with large sales volume?
I would think that without competition you set the price to maximize profit, and cost of manufacturing has less of an impact. If your costs go up a few percent, you keep the same price, since your customers are already paying as much as they can.
It is competition that brings price below that magic maximum price point and down to a barely profitable amount. It is this same competition that causes taxes to get passed onto the consumer (though as you point out, not directly).
Without competition the price is always set at what the consumers will bear, with it is is set to what is the minimum profitable price, though sometimes it is a little above that, and other times below.
In a competitive market companies fail until the supply goes down enough to adjust the price upwards, it can take time, but it happens.
It is poorly thought out. It is not my job, nor will it ever be, to think these things through.
It will only eliminate one type of investment though. It will eliminate investment in creating efficiencies in a non-competitive market.
There will still be incentive to come out with new products, or getting existing ones into new markets (growing overall gross, allowing for more profit in raw numbers, for example Exxon's 9% is a huge number, and would be 100% tax free under that proposal).
In a competitive market there would be incentive to add efficiency to lower price and grow market share.
Companies that are making huge profits are usually (I am making this up, I am sure there are other scenarios that lead to huge profits, that do not get there from co-operation of the masses) doing so with monopolies that we as the people have granted them as a reward for inventing, or designing something we want. Those companies will be the ones that are hit by the additional tax.
Apple for example, designs products that people really like, and is rewarded by us for doing so. We choose to let them be the only ones to make iPods (through patents, and copyright). Because they have a monopoly on iPods they get to charge some of the extra value an iPod has vs a simple mark-up of the cost of making one.
Apple still profits under 15% (using the first result I got googling which was Q2 2007), and still would not be taxed. 15% is a huge return on sales, and very few companies would pay any tax. The fact that most companies are willing to invest money when the return is likely to be far less than 15% leads me to believe that there would be investment in growth even if you took 100% of everything past 15%.
I didn't say they were paying more. I said they were paying a larger percentage. That would be true with a smaller government too (what did ab out mean, probably that I am too stupid to proof read).
Giving benefits to a type of company you want while not extending them to other companies you apparently don't want (small businesses I guess?) is affirmative action, weather you approve or not.
I will say that taxing corporate profits is kind of silly for most companies. If a company is in a competitive market (or playing nice by not returning much more than 10-15 percent) a tax on them is just a tax on customers. You could argue that this provides a local benefit by spreading the tax burden from those that are outside of equivalent jurisdiction (as those foreign to the local become customers and help the profits), but it is really more a strategy to help government tax people that are too dumb to realize it, since everyone hates corporations (except the one that pays them).
I also think there is an argument to tax large profits for the sake of encouraging re-investment (for example a 50% tax on all profit over 15% of gross would encourage some of that extra profit to be spent on R&D (or salaries, probably for those who need it least). You could even allow years where profits ate 10% to allow the extra 5% to be deducted from future years.
All of that could still be bad, because in new fields people relay on better than 15% return (VC's), I don't know how much of what they make is capitol gains, and how much true profit.
Assuming the state runs on an ab out balanced budget it does mean citizens are taking a larger percentage of the taxes. It could still be better for them though. The fact that Corporate taxes are essentially a tax on customers of that corporation, and that most Google and MS customers are not from Iowa, would mean that the citizens of Iowa are paying taxes that in a normal (for that state) structure would be paid by people world wide.
If the power is really so cheap why the need for tax breaks?
This is really more like corporate affirmative action (for advantaged corporations) than welfare though.
Last week either means the last 7 days, or the week before the week we were in (last Saturday through the Sunday before last).
So it does not preclude earlier this week, but I would say it is a less common usage to mean the last seven days without a qualifier (such as within the last week).
best firefox extension ever.
Very likely that they do in the GPU area.
I mean patents can be vague, and I suspect they have a lot of them in that area.
1) are Hitman and Manhunt non-violent games?
2) I want this
They caught on, you can't do that anymore.
But you don't want the imitators coming out before you.
A crappy "We Like to Get Fit" Game coming out before Wii Fit could damage sales.
yeah, didn't spell check yet.
Whatever youtube does is hardly the issue.
Actions like this by the IOC need to hurt (or at least make fear hurt) the sponsors of the events.
Here is a sample letter I am sending (I will customize it for each business I actually work with, listing what I will now longer be purchasing.
It is a rough draft, so if you use it, edit it.
I just wanted to let you know, that as a freedom loving citizen of the world, your sponsorship of the 2008 olympic games, and more importantly, proud display of association with the International Olympic Committee is going to prevent me from using your product until any of the following happens:
1) Your company issues an official statement condemning the abuses to freedom by the IOC (this includes, but is not limited to claiming copyright infringement on a critical video that used a clearly satirical alteration of their logo, blocking/allowing to be blocked free internet access to international journalists, and allowing people to be kicked out of their homes in tremendously huge quantities).
2) The IOC behaves better at the next Olympic games.
3) The IOC officially apologizes for the same reasons mentioned in item one.
I hope that my voice is one of many (though I fear I am but one of a few) and that your companies inconsiderate pursuite of a new market ends up costing both prophits and shareholders for years to come.
Woops, almost left my sig that includes my phone number from that email.
Hackers, terrorists, commies, and un-americans.
everyone else should be perfectly happy saying only what they should.