I've read through the discussion in it's entirety and I'm dissatisfied with the responses you were given.
"Right, because libertarianism is a religion that revolves around the believer being the center of the universe."
Libertarians are individualists. Individualists are selfish. That cannot be contested. What can, and should be contested is whether or not that is a "bad thing".
Individualism is derived from the axiom "existence exists". From that two corollary axioms are implied. First that something exists which we perceive and secondly that, since we perceive it, consciousness exists (existence without consciousness is a contradiction in terms).
Thus we are all conscious beings. The axiom that thus follows is that it is impossible for one conscious being to possess another. (I can try to influence your decisions through persuasion, coercion or by manipulating your surroundings but ultimately you are a volitional being. Thus I cannot "own" you).
Not only are we conscious beings, but we exist in time and spice. Existence without the element of time and space is inconceivable. A conscious being is the sole occupant of his body. As such he owns his body as well as his mind.
The individual is given the "gift of life", but is not given the means to sustain it. Reason is our basic tool for survival. The question "to be or not to be" becomes "to think or not to think".
Through the process of reason we proceed to manipulate our environment to promote favourable conditions for our survival. We construct tools and "goods" that make our conditions more favourable. Thus individual "ownership" of property is a condition for the individual's survival. If an individual could not appropriate materials and manipulate resources the individual would not be able to employ reason and would not be able to obtain the means to sustain his life.
What is morality ? It is a code of conduct which guides the individual to "proper behaviour". What is "proper behaviour?" That which sustains life. The individualist's standard of morality is life itself.
This is what we are talking about when we discuss "inalienable rights". Rights are all of the actions required to sustain life. The ability to reason, to appropriate land and materials necessary to manipulate our environment in ways that support life. Thus all rights are "property rights". Rights allow humans to be humans.
All that which supports life is "good" and all that which hinders life is "evil".
Collectivists believe in some higher mystical power or purpose that is greater than the individual. This could be "getting into heaven", "the environment", "the state" or "the good of society" etc. As such every individual becomes a tool to be employed as a means to the ends of others. A collectivist believes that he has a claim to every other person. People only exist to serve others.
This is the "moral" doctrine of altruism. The opposite of selfishness. Altruism demands sacrifice. Sacrifice of all of your wants and desires. Sacrifice of your own happiness for the sake of others. The result of such a doctrine is guilt and resentment. Collectivists resent those who have more than others. The wrong becomes the right. Those who employ reason to produce material goods are attacked for being selfish. Those who sacrifice are rewarded. This creates the very class conflicts that collectivists are always accusing individualists of creating! The entire notion of a "class" is a collectivist construct. Any measure of what constitutes "upper", "middle" and "lower" class must necessarily be arbitrary.
Collectivists must appeal to the emotions rather than reason. They use argument from intimidation rather than elucidating an argument. Case in point:
"Stop trying to use logic to appeal to libertarians. If they understood logic they wouldn't be libertarians."
"Any -good- lib recognizes the need to compromise."
By "lib" do you mean Libertarian or Liberal ?
Either way I strongly disagree.
Let me quote Ayn Rand:
A compromise is an adjustment of conflicting claims by mutual concessions. This means that both parties to a compromise have some valid claim and some value to offer each other. And this means that both parties agree upon some fundamental principle which serves as a base for their deal....
There can be no compromise between a property owner and a burglar; offering the burglar a single teaspoon of one's silverware would not be a compromise, but a total surrender - the recognition of his right to one's property. What value of concession did the burglar offer in return ? And once the principle of unilateral concessions is accepted as the base of a relationship by both parties, it is only a matter of time before the burglar would seize the rest...
There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept "just a few controls" is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of government's unlimited, arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement....
Today, however, when people speak of "compromise," what they mean is not a legitimate mutual concession or a trade, but precisely the betrayal of one's principles - the unilateral surrender to any groundless, irrational claim. The root of that doctrine is ethical subjectivism, which holds that a desire or whim is an irreducible moral primary, that every man is entitled to any desire he might feel like asserting, that all desires have equal moral validity, and that the only way men can get along together is by giving in to anything and "compromising" with anyone. It is not hard to see who would profit and who would lose by such a doctrine....
A "compromise" does not consist of doing something one dislikes, but of doing something one knows to be evil.
- Ayn Rand "Does Life Require Compromise?" (1962) (also in her collection of essays "The Virtue of Selfishness").
Assuming that a Libertarian is not an anarchist (many are, one of the more prominent being the late Murray Rothbard) then one must ask "What is the role of government?" Any "good" Libertarian would answer "to protect individual rights". Stealing from the productive public in order to fund "education" is a blatant violation of such limitation.
Many Libertarians (who in my opinion are not "good" libertarians) take a purely utilitarian view. While Milton Friedman may not have been a "Libertarian" he justified compulsory education on the grounds that "society as a whole benefits if everyone is educated". The moral issue with such a premise is that it assumes that people are tools to be used in the attainment of the ends of others. Using such an immoral platform would allow us to make arguments like, for example: "99% of the public despises redheads. While it would be wrong to murder all redheads, the benefits to society as a whole would be clear. And it's only 1% of the population. The ends justify the means." Any "good" (and by "good" I mean moral) libertarian would find that to be deplorable.
When government exceeds it's role of protecting and enforcing rights then it has to take from one group and give to the other. If government were to purchase advertising for free software then a few things would happen:
1) All of a sudden every single citizen would be forced to use their productive efforts to promote a product (free or not) whether they like it or not.
2) The for-profit companies, as well as every single applicable free software group that the government chose NOT to use tax-payer money to promote, would be also be placed at an unfair disadvantage.
If free software programmers, companies, whomever want to "compete" with for-profit software then that's fine. They are perfectly within their rights to do so. USING THEIR OWN RESOURCES. But no one can have a right to the productive efforts of others. No one can have a claim to the productive efforts of another unless the debtor entered into a contract voluntarily. Using government guns to expropriate from producers to play favourites with one group at the expense of all others is extremely immoral.
Without going into a very detailed philophical rationalization (I can if you want me to, but for brevity I'll skip it), when it comes to government the only thing that Libertarians concern themselves with is "what is the role of government?" Assuming they are not anarchist (many Libertarians are, one of the more famous being the late Murray Rothbard), the answer is "to protect property rights. No less, no more." If you protect property rights you protect human rights, because all human rights are property rights.
How does that translate to pollution ? A Libertarian does not believe that there can be such a thing as "public property". Note: not that there SHOULDN'T be such a thing, but that there CAN'T be. The oversimplified rationalization is that no two people can occupy the same physical space at the same time. Just like no two people can eat the same apple unless they divide it and then they're not eating the same thing, they're eating two separate things that have something in common.
If you protect property rights then pollution becomes a non-issue. If you own property then you can treat it however you want. But if you pollute the property of another then the other person has been wronged and can act accordingly.
Pollution / "the environment" is one of those subjects that Libertarians love to use in order to point out the ineffectiveness of the state. During the industrial revolution this issue came up and many judges decided not to enforce property rights in order to "promote economic growth". To a Libertarian that is a clear boundary violation of the state. It is the legalized infringement of the rights of others.
"So, selfishly, I'd rather you ignore the rational basis for this post."
There's no shred of rationality in anything that you presented.
First of all, all human rights are property rights. If the government makes a claim to a person's property, even a percentage of it, then there is no more basis for individual rights. In other words, you can not claim to protect rights while at the same time infringing on them. A person cannot have a "right" to the productive efforts of others. Thus taxes are irrational and immoral.
Secondly, there is a demand for advertising. Not just as a consumer good (information) but as a higher order good (a factor of production). So long as there is demand there is value, and I ask you: who are you to make the claim that every individual that finds value in advertising is an irrational fool ?
Advertising does create demand for a consumer good, but only in the sense that people cannot desire something that they do not know exists. With regards to truth in advertising, I argue that deception in advertising is fraud and thus an infringement of property rights, since it's the transfer of ownership under false pretenses (coercive deception).
Very little production would be possible without advertising. Only those goods absolutely essential for basic survival would be produced, and then competition would be impossible since there would be no vehicle to inform the public of a competitor. Less competition and less production would lead to a lower standard of living for absolutely everyone. Not just in the sense that we would have to forgo "creature comforts", but under the premise that abundance lowers costs, giving people more for less and freeing them to discover and pursue further wants never before imagined. I question the moral sanctity of anyone who asserts that this is "a bad thing".
I will add that I sympathize with everyone who is annoyed by intrusive advertising. There are far more appropriate, and effective ways to deliver information to a consumer who is seeking it than by bombarding them with ads for products that they're not interested in while they're doing activities that are not consistent with learning about new products. Condemning advertising in general, however, is a total logical absurdity. Even if it is demonstrable that under certain circumstances people find that a product was misrepresented or that they did not do adequate research before making a purchasing decision.
"5) In case you haven't gotten the theme here, there is a difference between a bad teacher and someone who is ill. There is a difference. You should get to know it."
There's also a difference between a free society and one which attempts to grant a "right" to the productive effort of others.
"Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long preserved in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends. This is demonstrably true; nor could it occur otherwise. The percentage of positively malignant, vicious, or depraved persons is necessarily small, for no species could survive if its members were habitually and consciously bent upon injuring one another. Destruction is so easy that even a minority of persistently evil intent could shortly exterminate the unsuspecting majority of well-disposed persons. Murder, theft, rapine, and destruction are easily within the power of every individual at any time. If it is presumed that they are restrained only by fear or force, what is it they fear, or who would turn the force against them if all men were of like mind? Certainly if the harm done by willful criminals were to be computed, the number of murders, the extent of damage and loss, would be found negligible in the sum total of death and devastation wrought upon human beings by their kind. Therefore it is obvious that in periods when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object. When they are not the immediate executants, they are on record as giving approval, elaborating justifications, or else cloaking facts with silence, and discountenancing discussion."
That's a short-sighted way to look at it. The readers are customers as well. Especially if they pay for the news paper. But even if it is free they will cease to read the paper if it fails to provide them with valuable reading material.
In other words, the news paper provides a service and has two customers: the readers and the advertisers. If either one goes away the paper fails. It must continuously service both. Therefore they are both customers.
"Clinton, though, was helped by the dot-com boom, which was entirely NOT his doing (it's one of those things that just evolved, IMO, and Clinton was in office at the right time)"
I'm currently studying economics as a hobby. It's been an interest of mine since the NASDAQ bubble exploded. I was working for a dot-bomb at the time and I was curious about what economists had to say about the subject.
I used to think that the NASDAQ bubble was all about "Internet Fever" and was one of those rare occurrences where government intervention was not a factor. I've since discovered that I was wrong.
During every inflationary boom the specific areas of the economy where the bubble occurs will vary. It's certainly accurate to say that people had "Internet Fever" in the 90's, and so that's where the investment took place and the bubble occurred. However, without the element of credit expansion the vast majority of these companies would have had no way to acquire capital for their stupid ideas. In other words, if the central bank was not increasing the money supply (which forces interest rates down), the capital for all of these projects simply would not have existed. The bubble could not have have grown. There would have been much fewer dot-com start-ups, because an increased demand for loans would have driven interest rates way up and banks would have started to turn down loans since they wouldn't have had the money to lend. Unprofitable start-ups would not have been able to keep getting loans, and so they would have failed much more quickly and would have defaulted on their loans. Further driving interest rates up to the point where virtually no one could get a loan and people would have had to start saving in order to create their businesses.
I also suspect that no one would have spent ridiculous amounts on stock if they couldn't borrow to do so. Many investors probably misguidedly spent their own money, but with interest rates low and stock prices constantly rising it was VERY tempting to borrow money to buy stock. You would also think that most wealthy speculators have their wealth because they understand how business works and invested wisely in the past, in companies that had really good ideas and satisfied their consumers and made a lot of money. While some of those successful speculators may have purchased IPOs with the intention of selling fast and making a quick buck, I don't think the stock prices could have been driven up to the point that they were if everyone was using their own money. Imagine someone with a $50,000 line of credit with their bank. They could spend it on 2,500 shares valued at $20 / share with the expectation of selling at $100 / share, thus making a $200,000 overnight. That's tempting for almost anyone. So not only did we have all of these so-called "entrepreneurs" with really dumb ideas who were able to get massive amounts of venture capital money on-loan to start businesses (with no hope of ever making a profit), we also had people investing in stocks using borrowed money.
What does this have to do with Clinton ? Credit expansion is only possible when the central bank (a branch of the government) is able to create new money out of thin air. You could argue that the Federal Reserve acts on it's own, but congress created it and congress can abolish it. If you believe the Austrian theory of the business cycle to be correct then government's inflationary policies is always responsible for the boom / bust cycle. Even the dot-com bubble.
Also don't forget that Clinton also kept the military industrial complex propped up by bombing Baghdad and Kosovo. I know that by comparison, Bush Jr. made Clinton look like Gandhi, but Clinton was just as much a war monger as Reagan and Bush Sr and pretty much every President since the end of WWII. These wars are costly and are usually paid for by inflation. Since raising taxes to fight a war with no support is almost sure to fail, politically.
People talk a lot about greed these days, but greed refers to self interest and a man who's interested in his own self interest is not going to gamble his money on wild speculation.
An entrepreneur does need to anticipate future consumer demand and since we cannot know exactly what will happen in the future there is an element of risk. However, the smoke and mirrors are not the means used to anticipate consumer demand. Market research is pretty sound, and it doesn't even have to be intrusive or an invasion of privacy. Simply paying attention to your customers and finding ways to make your goods and services better and cheaper falls under "market research" and becomes "speculation" when it comes time to employ capital into production.
The smoke and mirrors is market manipulation, and more importantly money manipulation. Whenever there is a change in the supply of money, prices change. Prices then become those "invented numbers", because they become irrelevant historical facts and not a reliable prediction of future events. Entrepreneurs are excellent at accounting. When a new project is started all costs are accounted for. A plan is created complete with market research to back it up etc. Included in the cost are interest that must be paid on borrowed capital.
When there is an increase in the supply of money it happens through the banks. The central bank prints new money and uses it to purchase bonds from the commercial banks. The commercial banks have more in their reserves and they do what comes naturally to them. They lend it out. In order to encourage people to borrow they lower their interest rates.
Lower interest rates cause more projects to be undertaken. However, with an increase in the supply of money also comes distortions in market prices for commodities. People have more to spend so they bid higher until the money spreads throughout the economy. Those projects that looked profitable on paper really aren't. It was smoke and mirrors.
That is Keynesian economics in a nutshell. It's the cause of the boom / bust cycle. It has a little to do with speculation, but it has even more to do with encouraging stupid speculation through well-intended but logically void market intervention.
It should also be noted that increases in the supply of paper money does not have to occur because of deliberate market manipulation on the part of the government. Traditionally governments use inflation as a way to fund wars and to debase the national debt. Governments also avoid deflation because when prices go down, wages go down and people feel like they have less. Any change in the supply of money will be felt but deflation is a lot less harmful because it doesn't encourage malinvestment. It would have the opposite effect of keeping speculation limited to the more reasonable.
"OK he hasn't been threatened with prison, but its clear from incidents like this the world over that those that run the economy..."
I know I'm so late that this will probably never be read, but I have to respond to that.
One of the biggest reasons that things are so messy, and arguably the reason that your business editor example got hauled into Parliament, stems from a complete lack of understanding of basic economics.
No ONE, and EVERY one, "runs" the economy!
Not the stock market traders, not the banks, not the government. "The economy" refers to the sum of all economic activity within the referred to jurisdiction. Thus the "global economy" refers to all economic activity around the world and the "American economy" to all economic activity in the US etc.
Economic activity simply refers to all rational action. That is, all action that is aimed at improving personal conditions. In an social environment this involves the division of labour, which involves exchange.
So when you go to work in the morning that's "the economy". When you go to the grocery store that's "the economy". When a pro fisherman invents a new fishing rod that enables him to fish more efficiently that's "the economy". No one runs the economy.
The most shining spark of intelligence in your post was when you said "they don't know what they're doing". You're almost there. Production entails anticipating consumer demand, which is constantly changing. Investors are those who own capital and are looking to lend it to entrepreneurs who anticipate consumer demand and produce goods and services to fill those demands. The element of risk comes from the fact that no one can anticipate the future with full accuracy. However, don't fall into the trap of believing that investing is just like gambling. In gambling the bigger the risk is, the more the gambler stands to win on chance. With investing, on the other hand, the less the investor is able to know about future consumer demand (ie: the more the risk), the less the potential for reward and the greater the potential for loss.
When anyone steps in and attempts to "run the economy", THAT is when the market becomes more like a casino. When the banks issue more money (inflation) they raise commodity prices and lower interest rates. They can only do this with government creating a central bank and giving it the power to create and control the supply of money. Only THEN do investors and entrepreneurs not know what they're doing because all kinds of otherwise irrational behaviour is going on. Projects that would normally look unaffordable all of a sudden look affordable because of low interest rates. Yet once the project is underway prices rise and the entrepreneur needs to keep borrowing and borrowing and they never make any money. Eventually they realize what's going on and cut their losses. Then you have a depression when all of these companies default on their loans, declare bankruptcy and lay off their employees giving the banks possession of all of their worthless assets.
The market is democratic in the sense that it's the ultimate vote. When you buy something you are endorsing that product and the company that makes it. If you don't like it, if it doesn't make your life better in some way, then you don't buy it. Plain and simple.
So yes, the producer has every right to do what it wants with it's property and the consumer has every right likewise. The two statements are not different at all (in reality everyone is a producer and a consumer anyway). You're both making the same point.
I'm Canadian and I always get a chuckle when Americans point to our health care system as "health care done right".
First of all (and bare with me, the relevance will come in a second), our unemployment rate is equal that to the USA right now (around 8 or 9%). It's been pretty constant for the last decade or two. In 1999 8% was double the USA national unemployment rate.
Canada is a borderline mercantilist state. We have very strict trade regulations (import tariffs mostly to "encourage" or "protect" national industries against foreign competition) and extremely high taxes. Our health care system costs us greatly. It costs us in terms of taxes and it costs us in terms of doctors. Our best doctors are constantly fleeing the country to better conditions. High taxes and heavy market intervention lead to institutional unemployment. But at least we can see a doctor every time we sneeze right ?
My oldest daughter was 5 years-old before we had a family doctor. That was not due to lack of looking.
We do have walk-in clinics where you can see a doctor for free. However, there is a trade-off. Because health care is free people go see a doctor for every minor little sniffle. The waiting rooms are usually packed, the doctors take a quick look at your throat and in your ears and send you out very quickly without taking a single glance at your medical history (they don't have it). So misdiagnoses are very high. The increased demand for medical services raises the costs of the entire system. This tends to push taxes and inefficiency way up. Of course, the government doesn't want to allow the costs to rise, so the quality of the health care suffers greatly, as many doctors leave the country and the remaining ones try to squeeze as many patients through during the day as they possibly can, since it's the only way to earn more. Not to mention the fact that the list of medical ailments that are covered gets lower and lower every year.
Specialists are even harder to come by. If you need a major life-or-death surgery you will get it right away, but if you need something minor (and by minor I mean not life-or-death, it could be affecting your ability to walk and/or work etc.) you're put on a waiting list for months at best to years at worst. If you can afford to pay to have the surgery right away you're out of luck unless you fly to the US to get it done.
Of course, there is so much anti-American sentiment in Canada and we get our fare share of American health care horror stories up here. So most Canadians praise the hell out of our system, because everything is black and white and they think the alternative is the US system. They couldn't imagine not being able to go see the doctor whenever they sneeze.
So this is not to say that the American system is not screwed up. However, most economists that I read blame government health insurance and intervention. If you listen to elder doctors and politicians like Dr. Ron Paul, they talk about the good ol' days when doctors charged different rates that varied depending on the patient's ability to pay. Non-profit hospitals were set up (and these tend to pull down the cost of for-profit hospitals since they have to lower their prices to compete). No one was turned away because they couldn't pay. And even today, the vast majority of new medical "breakthroughs" occur in the USA.
If you want to do right by health care then get the government 100% the hell out of it. This means get rid of the American Medical Association and mandatory licenses (I know I know, those unqualified evil greedy doctors would then be able to become rich by killing all of their customers!/sarcasm). With all of the health care regulation it's very difficult for non-profits and charities to get set up, and the cartel of doctors that gets to decide who is granted a medical license has a vested interest in their competition. This holds back medical research as well as raises costs. Get rid of government sponsored insurance because as it is, hospitals do business with the insurance companies, not the individuals. So there is no flexibility in payment. You either have insurance or you're screwed. The more government gets involved the worst health care will get.
Does anyone actually believe that global warming / climate change is not occurring ?
I was always under the impression that what was at issue was not whether or not climate change was occurring, but whether or not humans were to blame. Historical data suggests that far more extreme / abrupt climate changes have occurred as recently as a couple of hundred years ago, but today people are blaming CO2 and methane emissions, saying that we're all going to die.
I'm all for government transparency. But people wouldn't need this quite as much if the government wasn't spending as much to begin with.
I'm especially in disagreement about Federal mandates. If people in their states are unhappy with how their states are handling things, it's much easier for them, in theory, to make changes on the state level. The more the federal government gets involved the more states have to tax and spend just to comply with federal mandates.
Ideally, this kind of thing should be done on the municipal level the most. The cities that do it best attract people and incite change in other cities by setting an example. Then the states can provide their own systems for state-level projects that are inline with their residents demands.
As far as government is concerned, the more local the better. If you don't like what your government does on the local level it's much easier to change public opinion or, if that fails, move elsewhere. The broader the jurisdiction becomes, the less able the government is to truly represent people and the less efficient things become. The fed should exist to protect people's rights and freedoms. States and municipalities should be the ones spending according to their residents demands.
The real issue is that song-writers are not distributors or promoters. I've spent weeks at a time trying to promote my music and it's really hard work. That's time that I could have spent producing. So there isn't anything preventing me from distributing on the Internet, the point is that copyright prevents new distributors from entering the market. It forces companies that are really efficient at promoting and distributing to cut through red tape. If companies did not have to bother with copyright they would distribute and give the artists more exposure. It's true that the artists would not earn royalties or have any say over this, lots of artists are not comfortable with that idea, but they would gain many more fans without having do anything, and their ability to earn money producing would be enhanced, not hindered.
I did not say that artists would not be able to make a living, or that they shouldn't be able. What I'm arguing is that copyright actually makes it much harder for you to make a living creating.
Think of things from the fan's perspective for a moment. I'm sure this will be easy given that everyone has other artist's who's creations they consume. Would you rather download a few of their albums on bit torrent sites or would you rather get a packaged CD with cover art, a personalized autograph, a t-shirt and be entered into contests that could get you free tickets to their shows ?
As a creator, the artist will always have more credibility among the fans than the distributors. And as the producer, the artist will always have the competitive advantage when it comes to the fans. But the artist can not get fans without distributors. Copyright aids a certain cartel of distributors, it keeps other distributors out of the market, and it never helps the artists financially.
"Assuming I ever hit the big time with my writing (unlikely) I'd like to be able to profit off of it. I'd like to be able to control the distribution to such an extent that some internet fucktard couldn't copy the whole thing to his website and use it to drive traffic."
If you want to take control of the distribution aspect of the business then you just gave yourself that "day job" that you didn't want to begin with!:)
The law of the division of labour says that you would be shooting yourself in the foot if you did this. As a song writer you are efficient at writing songs. As distributors, the various companies who distribute music are efficient at distributing. If you concentrate on writing and they concentrate on distribution then more writing and distribution will take place. You will write more songs, and better songs. They will distribute more efficiently, because of added competition in the market.
My argument is that copyright impedes the distribution of your work, which impedes your ability to write songs. New distributors are kept out of the market and existing distributors (who have managed to use copyright as a tool to secure their share of the market) have direct say over which artists they distribute and which they don't. So you actually need those distributors to give you permission to "hit the big time". Rather than the market (the fans) deciding which musicians they want to hear more of.
The market is democratic in the sense that it's the ultimate vote. When you spend money on a product you are endorsing it. A musician who doesn't appeal to people will never be able to earn a living anyway, and musicians who do appeal have to go through a cartel of big businesses who have a vested interest in keeping competition out of their market. The Internet has weakened their position, but copyright still doesn't help artists.
As an artist, the only way that you earn a living is with fans. You can not get fans without exposure. You can not get exposure in a world of copyright without either diverting production from song-writing in order to labour inefficiently as a distributor / promoter (ie: distribute yourself by spending days and weeks promoting your stuff on the Internet), or convincing one of the big members of the cartel of distributors to distribute your work, signing over your rights to copy protection in the process.
So you're deluding yourself on three points. 1) that it's easier to "make it big" with copyright rather than in a world without copyright 2) that if you did "make it big" you could take control over distribution without shooting yourself in the foot and 3) that without copyright you would not be able to earn any money as a musician.
To elaborate on the 3rd point more (which is where I think you're coming from the most, by thinking that if someone downloads your albums that they won't ever give you money), if a music lover is able to get more music for free, he/she will buy more music (if you don't believe this th
"Copyright is not forced on you. You have the right to opt-out of copyright. You can go creative commons. You can declare that your work is public domain. There are even some publishers trying to make this system work (i.e. the musicians give-away their music for free; you can pay if you want, companies cannot use it for free - which is a creative commons licence). You can't use "musicians would be helped with no copyright" as an argument against copyright - because musicians *choose* whether or not they want their work under copyright."
You missed my point entirely. Copyright IS forced on business. A DJ can not play someone's music without obtaining royalties or permission. It's not that I'm prevented from sharing my music, and of course I can waive my rights to copy protection. The point is that in a world without copyright businesses (radio stations, DJs, music sharing web-sites etc.) would not have to jump through all of the red tape, which adds to the costs of production tremendously, and the artists trying to figure out how to earn a living doing what they love would be aided, not hindered.
With regards to musicians defending copyright. I think you also just skimmed my post there too. I never said that artists by and large DON'T defend copyright. My point was that usually they think that they can't make money in music unless they have copyright. This is simply false. If you really look at the big picture, and imagine a world without copyright, then the world might work a lot differently, but it wouldn't hurt artists at all. It would help them. They would earn a name for themselves much more easily and then business prospects would open up for them (selling directly to the consumer, having more people come to shows etc.)
With regards to software, you're also looking things through the lens of a world that has copyright. If copyright never existed to begin with then software would have evolved much differently. I think it would have started out how IBM was looking at it in the 80's (ie: "the value is in the hardware"). But obviously the software plays an enormous role in the usability of devices. So companies would have continued to invest in software but they would have adopted different business models. The world would be different for sure, but that's not to say that it would be worse. OSS would have still evolved, companies would still guard their source code as trade secrets, they would continue to act as companies, defending against sharing as much as possible, but the government would be powerless to put 17 year-old kids in jail for sharing video games with his friends. Companies would probably adopt subscription models. In fact, lots of the "good" things that companies are starting to do now, that they realize that the law isn't helping them as much as they hoped it would, would have been done a lot sooner and all of this capital that could have been invested in production that fills people's needs would not have been wasted in litigation and lobbying (well, they'd probably still lobby for legislation but arguably not as much).
The majority will always rule, regardless of whether the system is democratic or not.
If you want to change how the system works you have to change public opinion. You don't need to run for office, you don't need to vote, you most certainly don't need to write your representative (right away anyway). You need to get out and change public opinion. Then, as a group, you can approach your government and demand change. If the group represents the majority of the people then the government is faced with a revolution and it will be up to all of the people (government and law enforcement included) to decide the shape it will take.
Every campaign for any kind of governmental reform will always be a campaign for public opinion.
Every single good or service that has ever been invented has been done to satisfy some kind of need or desire.
When you buy something, you are acting to relieve some form of uneasiness. Maybe it's just boredom or to be part of a fad (the pet rock comes to mind), or maybe it's for survival (food, clothing, shelter etc.). But every single product or service has only existed because people, at the time they were consuming that product, felt that it made their lives better.
So if people are staying home to watch movies, then either the need that going to the theater once satisfied is being better satisfied by other means, or the cost of going to the theater is no longer in line with their subjective valuations regarding what doing so is worth to them, or the need has vanished all together.
Assuming the need is being filled by something better (or cheaper or both), we now have some new invention that replaces the utility of a movie theater. If movie theaters all go out of business then those entrepreneurs, capitalists and employees will go into production that fills more urgent needs.
This process always involves a restructuring and people will be temporarily unemployed. But any attempt to force conditions to remain the same will be futile in the long run, and will only prolong the restructuring process. It's thus better for everyone if the movie theaters either go out of business or shrink to satisfy a smaller market.
This line of thinking confuses the creative genius with the entrepreneur.
The entrepreneur anticipates consumer need and employs capital in production to satisfy that need. He does so for the sake of profit. The creative genius, on the other hand, is rewarded through the process of creating itself.
To dispense with economic theory, I fall into both categories. I run a business, but I'm also a musician and an artist. I've written, recorded, and released an album. I've written stories and painted pictures etc. First of all, I have never met a single musician who writes music with any kind of expectation of profit. Profit is never the motive. I've met and jammed with lots of people who perform for profit, or teach for profit etc. In these cases they see the value of their product or service and will exchange that product or service. However, when they sit down to write a song, they never consider exchange. They write for the sake of writing.
If you ask any of them, myself included, if copyright has ever aided them financially they will think for a moment and then, reluctantly, answer "no". However, that is not to say that they are against copyright. Usually, they like the idea of copyright because morally they dislike the idea of some "greedy capitalist" being able to copy / redistribute and make money using their creation. However, I then ask them whether their status as a musician, and consequently further prospects as a musician and song-writer, would be aided or hindered if others distributed their work for them ?
Then they pause and think.
As a song-writer our biggest challenge is distribution. Getting radio play is nearly impossible for an independent artist. The Internet has helped tremendously, but we still have to labour really hard to get our songs up on all of the music sharing sites. Even then, few people bother to listen to us because there's so much out there that people put up their filters and wait for their friends to recommend new stuff etc.
To go back to the economic argument, if radio stations and Internet start-ups did not have to worry about copyright then web-sites, and DJs and radio stations would play and share much more music than they do now. People probably wouldn't share much more, since most people share copyrighted music in spite of the law, but in theory artists would get much more exposure while having to do less. As a result, the better musicians could conceivably get a fan-base much more easily, doors would open for them and their prospects as a professional musician would widen.
In conclusion, the only people who actually benefit from copyright are the distributors. Musicians are not distributors. It's a hard business to distribute music, and it's much harder thanks to copyright. That's it's whole point. To keep competition out. Disturbingly, competition in the mainstream music industry almost always includes the artists themselves.
You might be interested in reading about a guy named "Gandhi", before you condemn it as "moral relativistic BS". He spearheaded an entire revolution and gained India's independence from Great Britain without shedding a single drop of blood. For what it's worth, he would (and did) refuse to press charges when physically assaulted because whether it is direct or indirect, it would still be the initiation of force.
Yes. It should. And if that means that the UN dissolves then so be it. I would rather see no UN than a world government restricting the sovereignty of all nations, even if they're not voluntary members. In fact, you can argue that under such a system membership becomes involuntary. That is in conflict with the ideas of peace, freedom and democracy.
I don't like the idea of any country not being able to tell the UN to go pound sand. A country's sovereignty is extremely important for freedom, and war is directly at odds with freedom and prosperity. If Sudan is a member country they could be denied membership unless they comply with the UN's charter. I don't like the use of force, especially by a foreign power, to spread an ideology. If the ideology is peace and freedom then force is in conflict with the ideology anyway. Instead set an example; send in peaceful, lawful aid and volunteer educators; publicly deplore the government's actions and try to change public opinion in Sudan. Apply diplomatic pressure to the government and do whatever is possible to peacefully persuade them to change.
Ultimately it is up to the people to change their government, and employ force if they feel it necessary. Not an external force.
Slashdot Mirror
I've read through the discussion in it's entirety and I'm dissatisfied with the responses you were given.
Libertarians are individualists. Individualists are selfish. That cannot be contested. What can, and should be contested is whether or not that is a "bad thing".
Individualism is derived from the axiom "existence exists". From that two corollary axioms are implied. First that something exists which we perceive and secondly that, since we perceive it, consciousness exists (existence without consciousness is a contradiction in terms).
Thus we are all conscious beings. The axiom that thus follows is that it is impossible for one conscious being to possess another. (I can try to influence your decisions through persuasion, coercion or by manipulating your surroundings but ultimately you are a volitional being. Thus I cannot "own" you).
Not only are we conscious beings, but we exist in time and spice. Existence without the element of time and space is inconceivable. A conscious being is the sole occupant of his body. As such he owns his body as well as his mind.
The individual is given the "gift of life", but is not given the means to sustain it. Reason is our basic tool for survival. The question "to be or not to be" becomes "to think or not to think".
Through the process of reason we proceed to manipulate our environment to promote favourable conditions for our survival. We construct tools and "goods" that make our conditions more favourable. Thus individual "ownership" of property is a condition for the individual's survival. If an individual could not appropriate materials and manipulate resources the individual would not be able to employ reason and would not be able to obtain the means to sustain his life.
What is morality ? It is a code of conduct which guides the individual to "proper behaviour". What is "proper behaviour?" That which sustains life. The individualist's standard of morality is life itself.
This is what we are talking about when we discuss "inalienable rights". Rights are all of the actions required to sustain life. The ability to reason, to appropriate land and materials necessary to manipulate our environment in ways that support life. Thus all rights are "property rights". Rights allow humans to be humans.
All that which supports life is "good" and all that which hinders life is "evil".
Collectivists believe in some higher mystical power or purpose that is greater than the individual. This could be "getting into heaven", "the environment", "the state" or "the good of society" etc. As such every individual becomes a tool to be employed as a means to the ends of others. A collectivist believes that he has a claim to every other person. People only exist to serve others.
This is the "moral" doctrine of altruism. The opposite of selfishness. Altruism demands sacrifice. Sacrifice of all of your wants and desires. Sacrifice of your own happiness for the sake of others. The result of such a doctrine is guilt and resentment. Collectivists resent those who have more than others. The wrong becomes the right. Those who employ reason to produce material goods are attacked for being selfish. Those who sacrifice are rewarded. This creates the very class conflicts that collectivists are always accusing individualists of creating! The entire notion of a "class" is a collectivist construct. Any measure of what constitutes "upper", "middle" and "lower" class must necessarily be arbitrary.
Collectivists must appeal to the emotions rather than reason. They use argument from intimidation rather than elucidating an argument. Case in point:
Neither of th
By "lib" do you mean Libertarian or Liberal ?
Either way I strongly disagree.
Let me quote Ayn Rand:
- Ayn Rand "Does Life Require Compromise?" (1962) (also in her collection of essays "The Virtue of Selfishness").
Assuming that a Libertarian is not an anarchist (many are, one of the more prominent being the late Murray Rothbard) then one must ask "What is the role of government?" Any "good" Libertarian would answer "to protect individual rights". Stealing from the productive public in order to fund "education" is a blatant violation of such limitation.
Many Libertarians (who in my opinion are not "good" libertarians) take a purely utilitarian view. While Milton Friedman may not have been a "Libertarian" he justified compulsory education on the grounds that "society as a whole benefits if everyone is educated". The moral issue with such a premise is that it assumes that people are tools to be used in the attainment of the ends of others. Using such an immoral platform would allow us to make arguments like, for example: "99% of the public despises redheads. While it would be wrong to murder all redheads, the benefits to society as a whole would be clear. And it's only 1% of the population. The ends justify the means." Any "good" (and by "good" I mean moral) libertarian would find that to be deplorable.
Why should they buy ads for anyone ?
When government exceeds it's role of protecting and enforcing rights then it has to take from one group and give to the other. If government were to purchase advertising for free software then a few things would happen:
1) All of a sudden every single citizen would be forced to use their productive efforts to promote a product (free or not) whether they like it or not.
2) The for-profit companies, as well as every single applicable free software group that the government chose NOT to use tax-payer money to promote, would be also be placed at an unfair disadvantage.
If free software programmers, companies, whomever want to "compete" with for-profit software then that's fine. They are perfectly within their rights to do so. USING THEIR OWN RESOURCES. But no one can have a right to the productive efforts of others. No one can have a claim to the productive efforts of another unless the debtor entered into a contract voluntarily. Using government guns to expropriate from producers to play favourites with one group at the expense of all others is extremely immoral.
It all comes down to property rights.
Without going into a very detailed philophical rationalization (I can if you want me to, but for brevity I'll skip it), when it comes to government the only thing that Libertarians concern themselves with is "what is the role of government?" Assuming they are not anarchist (many Libertarians are, one of the more famous being the late Murray Rothbard), the answer is "to protect property rights. No less, no more." If you protect property rights you protect human rights, because all human rights are property rights.
How does that translate to pollution ? A Libertarian does not believe that there can be such a thing as "public property". Note: not that there SHOULDN'T be such a thing, but that there CAN'T be. The oversimplified rationalization is that no two people can occupy the same physical space at the same time. Just like no two people can eat the same apple unless they divide it and then they're not eating the same thing, they're eating two separate things that have something in common.
If you protect property rights then pollution becomes a non-issue. If you own property then you can treat it however you want. But if you pollute the property of another then the other person has been wronged and can act accordingly.
Pollution / "the environment" is one of those subjects that Libertarians love to use in order to point out the ineffectiveness of the state. During the industrial revolution this issue came up and many judges decided not to enforce property rights in order to "promote economic growth". To a Libertarian that is a clear boundary violation of the state. It is the legalized infringement of the rights of others.
"So, selfishly, I'd rather you ignore the rational basis for this post."
There's no shred of rationality in anything that you presented.
First of all, all human rights are property rights. If the government makes a claim to a person's property, even a percentage of it, then there is no more basis for individual rights. In other words, you can not claim to protect rights while at the same time infringing on them. A person cannot have a "right" to the productive efforts of others. Thus taxes are irrational and immoral.
Secondly, there is a demand for advertising. Not just as a consumer good (information) but as a higher order good (a factor of production). So long as there is demand there is value, and I ask you: who are you to make the claim that every individual that finds value in advertising is an irrational fool ?
Advertising does create demand for a consumer good, but only in the sense that people cannot desire something that they do not know exists. With regards to truth in advertising, I argue that deception in advertising is fraud and thus an infringement of property rights, since it's the transfer of ownership under false pretenses (coercive deception).
Very little production would be possible without advertising. Only those goods absolutely essential for basic survival would be produced, and then competition would be impossible since there would be no vehicle to inform the public of a competitor. Less competition and less production would lead to a lower standard of living for absolutely everyone. Not just in the sense that we would have to forgo "creature comforts", but under the premise that abundance lowers costs, giving people more for less and freeing them to discover and pursue further wants never before imagined. I question the moral sanctity of anyone who asserts that this is "a bad thing".
I will add that I sympathize with everyone who is annoyed by intrusive advertising. There are far more appropriate, and effective ways to deliver information to a consumer who is seeking it than by bombarding them with ads for products that they're not interested in while they're doing activities that are not consistent with learning about new products. Condemning advertising in general, however, is a total logical absurdity. Even if it is demonstrable that under certain circumstances people find that a product was misrepresented or that they did not do adequate research before making a purchasing decision.
"5) In case you haven't gotten the theme here, there is a difference between a bad teacher and someone who is ill. There is a difference. You should get to know it."
There's also a difference between a free society and one which attempts to grant a "right" to the productive effort of others.
- Isabel Paterson "The God of the Machine"
That's a short-sighted way to look at it. The readers are customers as well. Especially if they pay for the news paper. But even if it is free they will cease to read the paper if it fails to provide them with valuable reading material.
In other words, the news paper provides a service and has two customers: the readers and the advertisers. If either one goes away the paper fails. It must continuously service both. Therefore they are both customers.
"Clinton, though, was helped by the dot-com boom, which was entirely NOT his doing (it's one of those things that just evolved, IMO, and Clinton was in office at the right time)"
I'm currently studying economics as a hobby. It's been an interest of mine since the NASDAQ bubble exploded. I was working for a dot-bomb at the time and I was curious about what economists had to say about the subject.
I used to think that the NASDAQ bubble was all about "Internet Fever" and was one of those rare occurrences where government intervention was not a factor. I've since discovered that I was wrong.
During every inflationary boom the specific areas of the economy where the bubble occurs will vary. It's certainly accurate to say that people had "Internet Fever" in the 90's, and so that's where the investment took place and the bubble occurred. However, without the element of credit expansion the vast majority of these companies would have had no way to acquire capital for their stupid ideas. In other words, if the central bank was not increasing the money supply (which forces interest rates down), the capital for all of these projects simply would not have existed. The bubble could not have have grown. There would have been much fewer dot-com start-ups, because an increased demand for loans would have driven interest rates way up and banks would have started to turn down loans since they wouldn't have had the money to lend. Unprofitable start-ups would not have been able to keep getting loans, and so they would have failed much more quickly and would have defaulted on their loans. Further driving interest rates up to the point where virtually no one could get a loan and people would have had to start saving in order to create their businesses.
I also suspect that no one would have spent ridiculous amounts on stock if they couldn't borrow to do so. Many investors probably misguidedly spent their own money, but with interest rates low and stock prices constantly rising it was VERY tempting to borrow money to buy stock. You would also think that most wealthy speculators have their wealth because they understand how business works and invested wisely in the past, in companies that had really good ideas and satisfied their consumers and made a lot of money. While some of those successful speculators may have purchased IPOs with the intention of selling fast and making a quick buck, I don't think the stock prices could have been driven up to the point that they were if everyone was using their own money. Imagine someone with a $50,000 line of credit with their bank. They could spend it on 2,500 shares valued at $20 / share with the expectation of selling at $100 / share, thus making a $200,000 overnight. That's tempting for almost anyone. So not only did we have all of these so-called "entrepreneurs" with really dumb ideas who were able to get massive amounts of venture capital money on-loan to start businesses (with no hope of ever making a profit), we also had people investing in stocks using borrowed money.
What does this have to do with Clinton ? Credit expansion is only possible when the central bank (a branch of the government) is able to create new money out of thin air. You could argue that the Federal Reserve acts on it's own, but congress created it and congress can abolish it. If you believe the Austrian theory of the business cycle to be correct then government's inflationary policies is always responsible for the boom / bust cycle. Even the dot-com bubble.
Also don't forget that Clinton also kept the military industrial complex propped up by bombing Baghdad and Kosovo. I know that by comparison, Bush Jr. made Clinton look like Gandhi, but Clinton was just as much a war monger as Reagan and Bush Sr and pretty much every President since the end of WWII. These wars are costly and are usually paid for by inflation. Since raising taxes to fight a war with no support is almost sure to fail, politically.
You're almost there.
People talk a lot about greed these days, but greed refers to self interest and a man who's interested in his own self interest is not going to gamble his money on wild speculation.
An entrepreneur does need to anticipate future consumer demand and since we cannot know exactly what will happen in the future there is an element of risk. However, the smoke and mirrors are not the means used to anticipate consumer demand. Market research is pretty sound, and it doesn't even have to be intrusive or an invasion of privacy. Simply paying attention to your customers and finding ways to make your goods and services better and cheaper falls under "market research" and becomes "speculation" when it comes time to employ capital into production.
The smoke and mirrors is market manipulation, and more importantly money manipulation. Whenever there is a change in the supply of money, prices change. Prices then become those "invented numbers", because they become irrelevant historical facts and not a reliable prediction of future events. Entrepreneurs are excellent at accounting. When a new project is started all costs are accounted for. A plan is created complete with market research to back it up etc. Included in the cost are interest that must be paid on borrowed capital.
When there is an increase in the supply of money it happens through the banks. The central bank prints new money and uses it to purchase bonds from the commercial banks. The commercial banks have more in their reserves and they do what comes naturally to them. They lend it out. In order to encourage people to borrow they lower their interest rates.
Lower interest rates cause more projects to be undertaken. However, with an increase in the supply of money also comes distortions in market prices for commodities. People have more to spend so they bid higher until the money spreads throughout the economy. Those projects that looked profitable on paper really aren't. It was smoke and mirrors.
That is Keynesian economics in a nutshell. It's the cause of the boom / bust cycle. It has a little to do with speculation, but it has even more to do with encouraging stupid speculation through well-intended but logically void market intervention.
It should also be noted that increases in the supply of paper money does not have to occur because of deliberate market manipulation on the part of the government. Traditionally governments use inflation as a way to fund wars and to debase the national debt. Governments also avoid deflation because when prices go down, wages go down and people feel like they have less. Any change in the supply of money will be felt but deflation is a lot less harmful because it doesn't encourage malinvestment. It would have the opposite effect of keeping speculation limited to the more reasonable.
"OK he hasn't been threatened with prison, but its clear from incidents like this the world over that those that run the economy..."
I know I'm so late that this will probably never be read, but I have to respond to that.
One of the biggest reasons that things are so messy, and arguably the reason that your business editor example got hauled into Parliament, stems from a complete lack of understanding of basic economics.
No ONE, and EVERY one, "runs" the economy!
Not the stock market traders, not the banks, not the government. "The economy" refers to the sum of all economic activity within the referred to jurisdiction. Thus the "global economy" refers to all economic activity around the world and the "American economy" to all economic activity in the US etc.
Economic activity simply refers to all rational action. That is, all action that is aimed at improving personal conditions. In an social environment this involves the division of labour, which involves exchange.
So when you go to work in the morning that's "the economy". When you go to the grocery store that's "the economy". When a pro fisherman invents a new fishing rod that enables him to fish more efficiently that's "the economy". No one runs the economy.
The most shining spark of intelligence in your post was when you said "they don't know what they're doing". You're almost there. Production entails anticipating consumer demand, which is constantly changing. Investors are those who own capital and are looking to lend it to entrepreneurs who anticipate consumer demand and produce goods and services to fill those demands. The element of risk comes from the fact that no one can anticipate the future with full accuracy. However, don't fall into the trap of believing that investing is just like gambling. In gambling the bigger the risk is, the more the gambler stands to win on chance. With investing, on the other hand, the less the investor is able to know about future consumer demand (ie: the more the risk), the less the potential for reward and the greater the potential for loss.
When anyone steps in and attempts to "run the economy", THAT is when the market becomes more like a casino. When the banks issue more money (inflation) they raise commodity prices and lower interest rates. They can only do this with government creating a central bank and giving it the power to create and control the supply of money. Only THEN do investors and entrepreneurs not know what they're doing because all kinds of otherwise irrational behaviour is going on. Projects that would normally look unaffordable all of a sudden look affordable because of low interest rates. Yet once the project is underway prices rise and the entrepreneur needs to keep borrowing and borrowing and they never make any money. Eventually they realize what's going on and cut their losses. Then you have a depression when all of these companies default on their loans, declare bankruptcy and lay off their employees giving the banks possession of all of their worthless assets.
You're both right.
The market is democratic in the sense that it's the ultimate vote. When you buy something you are endorsing that product and the company that makes it. If you don't like it, if it doesn't make your life better in some way, then you don't buy it. Plain and simple.
So yes, the producer has every right to do what it wants with it's property and the consumer has every right likewise. The two statements are not different at all (in reality everyone is a producer and a consumer anyway). You're both making the same point.
I'm Canadian and I always get a chuckle when Americans point to our health care system as "health care done right".
First of all (and bare with me, the relevance will come in a second), our unemployment rate is equal that to the USA right now (around 8 or 9%). It's been pretty constant for the last decade or two. In 1999 8% was double the USA national unemployment rate.
Canada is a borderline mercantilist state. We have very strict trade regulations (import tariffs mostly to "encourage" or "protect" national industries against foreign competition) and extremely high taxes. Our health care system costs us greatly. It costs us in terms of taxes and it costs us in terms of doctors. Our best doctors are constantly fleeing the country to better conditions. High taxes and heavy market intervention lead to institutional unemployment. But at least we can see a doctor every time we sneeze right ?
My oldest daughter was 5 years-old before we had a family doctor. That was not due to lack of looking.
We do have walk-in clinics where you can see a doctor for free. However, there is a trade-off. Because health care is free people go see a doctor for every minor little sniffle. The waiting rooms are usually packed, the doctors take a quick look at your throat and in your ears and send you out very quickly without taking a single glance at your medical history (they don't have it). So misdiagnoses are very high. The increased demand for medical services raises the costs of the entire system. This tends to push taxes and inefficiency way up. Of course, the government doesn't want to allow the costs to rise, so the quality of the health care suffers greatly, as many doctors leave the country and the remaining ones try to squeeze as many patients through during the day as they possibly can, since it's the only way to earn more. Not to mention the fact that the list of medical ailments that are covered gets lower and lower every year.
Specialists are even harder to come by. If you need a major life-or-death surgery you will get it right away, but if you need something minor (and by minor I mean not life-or-death, it could be affecting your ability to walk and/or work etc.) you're put on a waiting list for months at best to years at worst. If you can afford to pay to have the surgery right away you're out of luck unless you fly to the US to get it done.
Of course, there is so much anti-American sentiment in Canada and we get our fare share of American health care horror stories up here. So most Canadians praise the hell out of our system, because everything is black and white and they think the alternative is the US system. They couldn't imagine not being able to go see the doctor whenever they sneeze.
So this is not to say that the American system is not screwed up. However, most economists that I read blame government health insurance and intervention. If you listen to elder doctors and politicians like Dr. Ron Paul, they talk about the good ol' days when doctors charged different rates that varied depending on the patient's ability to pay. Non-profit hospitals were set up (and these tend to pull down the cost of for-profit hospitals since they have to lower their prices to compete). No one was turned away because they couldn't pay. And even today, the vast majority of new medical "breakthroughs" occur in the USA.
If you want to do right by health care then get the government 100% the hell out of it. This means get rid of the American Medical Association and mandatory licenses (I know I know, those unqualified evil greedy doctors would then be able to become rich by killing all of their customers! /sarcasm). With all of the health care regulation it's very difficult for non-profits and charities to get set up, and the cartel of doctors that gets to decide who is granted a medical license has a vested interest in their competition. This holds back medical research as well as raises costs. Get rid of government sponsored insurance because as it is, hospitals do business with the insurance companies, not the individuals. So there is no flexibility in payment. You either have insurance or you're screwed. The more government gets involved the worst health care will get.
Well, look on the bright side. At least convincing people to play with "real" money at Sunday-night-card-night won't be so challenging :)
Does anyone actually believe that global warming / climate change is not occurring ?
I was always under the impression that what was at issue was not whether or not climate change was occurring, but whether or not humans were to blame. Historical data suggests that far more extreme / abrupt climate changes have occurred as recently as a couple of hundred years ago, but today people are blaming CO2 and methane emissions, saying that we're all going to die.
I'm all for government transparency. But people wouldn't need this quite as much if the government wasn't spending as much to begin with.
I'm especially in disagreement about Federal mandates. If people in their states are unhappy with how their states are handling things, it's much easier for them, in theory, to make changes on the state level. The more the federal government gets involved the more states have to tax and spend just to comply with federal mandates.
Ideally, this kind of thing should be done on the municipal level the most. The cities that do it best attract people and incite change in other cities by setting an example. Then the states can provide their own systems for state-level projects that are inline with their residents demands.
As far as government is concerned, the more local the better. If you don't like what your government does on the local level it's much easier to change public opinion or, if that fails, move elsewhere. The broader the jurisdiction becomes, the less able the government is to truly represent people and the less efficient things become. The fed should exist to protect people's rights and freedoms. States and municipalities should be the ones spending according to their residents demands.
I typed out a reply to one of the other comments in response to my post. I think it answers your question:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1186039&cid=27457775
The real issue is that song-writers are not distributors or promoters. I've spent weeks at a time trying to promote my music and it's really hard work. That's time that I could have spent producing. So there isn't anything preventing me from distributing on the Internet, the point is that copyright prevents new distributors from entering the market. It forces companies that are really efficient at promoting and distributing to cut through red tape. If companies did not have to bother with copyright they would distribute and give the artists more exposure. It's true that the artists would not earn royalties or have any say over this, lots of artists are not comfortable with that idea, but they would gain many more fans without having do anything, and their ability to earn money producing would be enhanced, not hindered.
You missed my point entirely.
I did not say that artists would not be able to make a living, or that they shouldn't be able. What I'm arguing is that copyright actually makes it much harder for you to make a living creating.
Think of things from the fan's perspective for a moment. I'm sure this will be easy given that everyone has other artist's who's creations they consume. Would you rather download a few of their albums on bit torrent sites or would you rather get a packaged CD with cover art, a personalized autograph, a t-shirt and be entered into contests that could get you free tickets to their shows ?
As a creator, the artist will always have more credibility among the fans than the distributors. And as the producer, the artist will always have the competitive advantage when it comes to the fans. But the artist can not get fans without distributors. Copyright aids a certain cartel of distributors, it keeps other distributors out of the market, and it never helps the artists financially.
"Assuming I ever hit the big time with my writing (unlikely) I'd like to be able to profit off of it. I'd like to be able to control the distribution to such an extent that some internet fucktard couldn't copy the whole thing to his website and use it to drive traffic."
If you want to take control of the distribution aspect of the business then you just gave yourself that "day job" that you didn't want to begin with! :)
The law of the division of labour says that you would be shooting yourself in the foot if you did this. As a song writer you are efficient at writing songs. As distributors, the various companies who distribute music are efficient at distributing. If you concentrate on writing and they concentrate on distribution then more writing and distribution will take place. You will write more songs, and better songs. They will distribute more efficiently, because of added competition in the market.
My argument is that copyright impedes the distribution of your work, which impedes your ability to write songs. New distributors are kept out of the market and existing distributors (who have managed to use copyright as a tool to secure their share of the market) have direct say over which artists they distribute and which they don't. So you actually need those distributors to give you permission to "hit the big time". Rather than the market (the fans) deciding which musicians they want to hear more of.
The market is democratic in the sense that it's the ultimate vote. When you spend money on a product you are endorsing it. A musician who doesn't appeal to people will never be able to earn a living anyway, and musicians who do appeal have to go through a cartel of big businesses who have a vested interest in keeping competition out of their market. The Internet has weakened their position, but copyright still doesn't help artists.
As an artist, the only way that you earn a living is with fans. You can not get fans without exposure. You can not get exposure in a world of copyright without either diverting production from song-writing in order to labour inefficiently as a distributor / promoter (ie: distribute yourself by spending days and weeks promoting your stuff on the Internet), or convincing one of the big members of the cartel of distributors to distribute your work, signing over your rights to copy protection in the process.
So you're deluding yourself on three points. 1) that it's easier to "make it big" with copyright rather than in a world without copyright 2) that if you did "make it big" you could take control over distribution without shooting yourself in the foot and 3) that without copyright you would not be able to earn any money as a musician.
To elaborate on the 3rd point more (which is where I think you're coming from the most, by thinking that if someone downloads your albums that they won't ever give you money), if a music lover is able to get more music for free, he/she will buy more music (if you don't believe this th
"Copyright is not forced on you. You have the right to opt-out of copyright. You can go creative commons. You can declare that your work is public domain. There are even some publishers trying to make this system work (i.e. the musicians give-away their music for free; you can pay if you want, companies cannot use it for free - which is a creative commons licence). You can't use "musicians would be helped with no copyright" as an argument against copyright - because musicians *choose* whether or not they want their work under copyright."
You missed my point entirely. Copyright IS forced on business. A DJ can not play someone's music without obtaining royalties or permission. It's not that I'm prevented from sharing my music, and of course I can waive my rights to copy protection. The point is that in a world without copyright businesses (radio stations, DJs, music sharing web-sites etc.) would not have to jump through all of the red tape, which adds to the costs of production tremendously, and the artists trying to figure out how to earn a living doing what they love would be aided, not hindered.
With regards to musicians defending copyright. I think you also just skimmed my post there too. I never said that artists by and large DON'T defend copyright. My point was that usually they think that they can't make money in music unless they have copyright. This is simply false. If you really look at the big picture, and imagine a world without copyright, then the world might work a lot differently, but it wouldn't hurt artists at all. It would help them. They would earn a name for themselves much more easily and then business prospects would open up for them (selling directly to the consumer, having more people come to shows etc.)
With regards to software, you're also looking things through the lens of a world that has copyright. If copyright never existed to begin with then software would have evolved much differently. I think it would have started out how IBM was looking at it in the 80's (ie: "the value is in the hardware"). But obviously the software plays an enormous role in the usability of devices. So companies would have continued to invest in software but they would have adopted different business models. The world would be different for sure, but that's not to say that it would be worse. OSS would have still evolved, companies would still guard their source code as trade secrets, they would continue to act as companies, defending against sharing as much as possible, but the government would be powerless to put 17 year-old kids in jail for sharing video games with his friends. Companies would probably adopt subscription models. In fact, lots of the "good" things that companies are starting to do now, that they realize that the law isn't helping them as much as they hoped it would, would have been done a lot sooner and all of this capital that could have been invested in production that fills people's needs would not have been wasted in litigation and lobbying (well, they'd probably still lobby for legislation but arguably not as much).
The majority will always rule, regardless of whether the system is democratic or not.
If you want to change how the system works you have to change public opinion. You don't need to run for office, you don't need to vote, you most certainly don't need to write your representative (right away anyway). You need to get out and change public opinion. Then, as a group, you can approach your government and demand change. If the group represents the majority of the people then the government is faced with a revolution and it will be up to all of the people (government and law enforcement included) to decide the shape it will take.
Every campaign for any kind of governmental reform will always be a campaign for public opinion.
Every single good or service that has ever been invented has been done to satisfy some kind of need or desire.
When you buy something, you are acting to relieve some form of uneasiness. Maybe it's just boredom or to be part of a fad (the pet rock comes to mind), or maybe it's for survival (food, clothing, shelter etc.). But every single product or service has only existed because people, at the time they were consuming that product, felt that it made their lives better.
So if people are staying home to watch movies, then either the need that going to the theater once satisfied is being better satisfied by other means, or the cost of going to the theater is no longer in line with their subjective valuations regarding what doing so is worth to them, or the need has vanished all together.
Assuming the need is being filled by something better (or cheaper or both), we now have some new invention that replaces the utility of a movie theater. If movie theaters all go out of business then those entrepreneurs, capitalists and employees will go into production that fills more urgent needs.
This process always involves a restructuring and people will be temporarily unemployed. But any attempt to force conditions to remain the same will be futile in the long run, and will only prolong the restructuring process. It's thus better for everyone if the movie theaters either go out of business or shrink to satisfy a smaller market.
This line of thinking confuses the creative genius with the entrepreneur.
The entrepreneur anticipates consumer need and employs capital in production to satisfy that need. He does so for the sake of profit. The creative genius, on the other hand, is rewarded through the process of creating itself.
To dispense with economic theory, I fall into both categories. I run a business, but I'm also a musician and an artist. I've written, recorded, and released an album. I've written stories and painted pictures etc. First of all, I have never met a single musician who writes music with any kind of expectation of profit. Profit is never the motive. I've met and jammed with lots of people who perform for profit, or teach for profit etc. In these cases they see the value of their product or service and will exchange that product or service. However, when they sit down to write a song, they never consider exchange. They write for the sake of writing.
If you ask any of them, myself included, if copyright has ever aided them financially they will think for a moment and then, reluctantly, answer "no". However, that is not to say that they are against copyright. Usually, they like the idea of copyright because morally they dislike the idea of some "greedy capitalist" being able to copy / redistribute and make money using their creation. However, I then ask them whether their status as a musician, and consequently further prospects as a musician and song-writer, would be aided or hindered if others distributed their work for them ?
Then they pause and think.
As a song-writer our biggest challenge is distribution. Getting radio play is nearly impossible for an independent artist. The Internet has helped tremendously, but we still have to labour really hard to get our songs up on all of the music sharing sites. Even then, few people bother to listen to us because there's so much out there that people put up their filters and wait for their friends to recommend new stuff etc.
To go back to the economic argument, if radio stations and Internet start-ups did not have to worry about copyright then web-sites, and DJs and radio stations would play and share much more music than they do now. People probably wouldn't share much more, since most people share copyrighted music in spite of the law, but in theory artists would get much more exposure while having to do less. As a result, the better musicians could conceivably get a fan-base much more easily, doors would open for them and their prospects as a professional musician would widen.
In conclusion, the only people who actually benefit from copyright are the distributors. Musicians are not distributors. It's a hard business to distribute music, and it's much harder thanks to copyright. That's it's whole point. To keep competition out. Disturbingly, competition in the mainstream music industry almost always includes the artists themselves.
You might be interested in reading about a guy named "Gandhi", before you condemn it as "moral relativistic BS". He spearheaded an entire revolution and gained India's independence from Great Britain without shedding a single drop of blood. For what it's worth, he would (and did) refuse to press charges when physically assaulted because whether it is direct or indirect, it would still be the initiation of force.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha
Yes. It should. And if that means that the UN dissolves then so be it. I would rather see no UN than a world government restricting the sovereignty of all nations, even if they're not voluntary members. In fact, you can argue that under such a system membership becomes involuntary. That is in conflict with the ideas of peace, freedom and democracy.
I don't like the idea of any country not being able to tell the UN to go pound sand. A country's sovereignty is extremely important for freedom, and war is directly at odds with freedom and prosperity. If Sudan is a member country they could be denied membership unless they comply with the UN's charter. I don't like the use of force, especially by a foreign power, to spread an ideology. If the ideology is peace and freedom then force is in conflict with the ideology anyway. Instead set an example; send in peaceful, lawful aid and volunteer educators; publicly deplore the government's actions and try to change public opinion in Sudan. Apply diplomatic pressure to the government and do whatever is possible to peacefully persuade them to change.
Ultimately it is up to the people to change their government, and employ force if they feel it necessary. Not an external force.