Lets agree to define shit as signifcantly worse off than you are now. If you distributed existing "wealth" equally among all, most people's standard of living would either not improve much (the multitudes that are living in poverty) or drop drastically (those who are either a little bit worse off or significantly worse off0.
To create better living conditions than all you need self-sustaining communities able to produce their own basics or other things of equivalent value to trade. You need to produce more, and make things sustainable. If you did it well I believe that over the long term everyone's standard of living could be maintained at a level that all but the wealthy wouldn't call shit.
Sorry but that's not true. The essence of what you're saying is that every deal is a good deal for everyone. You're looking at the individual deals without looking at the impact they have on others and the environment.
By your argument weapons trade is a good thing. There's a supply of weapons. There's demand by terrorists.
By your argument whether or not it is proven that there are real quality of life issues with destroying biodiversity and killing species, as long as you can sell the damn trees for a profit cut them down.
By your logic if something you're producing is killing people you should continue to sell it until the risk to yourself is too high in terms of being jailed or sued or people refusing to buy yoru product.
I don't think so. Blind capitalism is sheer folly.
You're assuming that the majority of consumers are ALWAYS intelligent enough that when faced with a micro-decision (eg. what soap to buy) with large scale implications (eg. what ecosystem that soap will destroy) that they'll always make the correct decision for themselves and everyone else. That's simply not true particularly when it benefits large corporations to twist the truth to suit themselves.
I'm not suggesting a socialist approach at all. In a socialist approach you rely on everyone to do the right thing because it is the right thing for everyone. I'm talking about modifying capitalism so that the individual/company achieves great benefits for themselves first and foremost when they do the right thing for the whole of society. Rewarding good behaviour and retaining the capitalist infrastructure is much more achievable than total social upheval.
You're right. If you consider democrasy a failure, then you'll consider every system a failure. Capitalism and democrasy have lasted longest and worked best. That's because rewarding individual/group effort and empowering individuals works. We agree on this point.
What we don't agree on is whether or not government intervention has a part to play. Leaving it to market forces is like expecting a car to work without a driver. What we also don't agree on is whether or not a balanced budget equals a balanced approach to everything else. Money is an abstract concept of our own making and we need to make sure it represents value in real terms rather than letting the abstract concept have a life of its own.
You're saying every time goods or services are provided, there's a benefit to society, particularly if its priced competively? So if a company burns 10 times the fossil fuel to produce a computer that's $50 less that's a good thing?
My argument is that the chief responsibility should be to no small group but society as a whole. Not the shareholders. Not the consumers. If you just aim to satisfy either group you can always cut corners and make more money by screwing up the environment, or other parties not directly involved.
Anyway if you look at the way advertising runs these days I don't beleive that companies truely care about any consumer too much. They're happy to play to the weakness of consumers in order to move product. Anything ranging from plain stupidity to inexperience to psychological illnesses are all fair game.
Time we all learned that we live on one planet. It doesn't matter whose pool you're pissing in, it can only ever be a few thousand kilometres away.
So your goal would be fulfilled if the standard of living was shit for everyone?
Thanks for your input, but I don't want to live in a world where everyone's diseased and starving. That's certainly not MY goal.
As for my "grand" ideas, I'd rather have grand ideas and hope and work towards them than set my standard so low that disease and starvation wouldn't disappoint me.
Under a capitalist system the chief responsibility of a company is to make money for its shareholders. Looking after the rest of society is a very secondary issue and currently most companies only look at this to comply with legislation or when running marketing campaigns (profit again being the main motivator).
The fundamental problem here is that companies are able to make money in ways that do not benefit society. We need to ensure this is not the case by changing a lot of fundamental systems, and this is itself fundamentally difficult.
So any move towards lowering the standard of living in a country, for example by outsourcing to a third world country should not be rewarded. I don't know what the answer is. Taxation and legislation are the only two ways I see this happening but I'm no expert in this area.
We should definitely be striving to raise standards of living worldwide, otherwise you have large groups of people with nothing to lose wanting to take the wealth out of wealthier nations. Never a good plan no matter how good the technology you defend yourself with is.
The micro-organisms you're talking about are natural and have evolved slowly. The organisms in which they residehave had a chance to evolve with them. The larger organisms either aren't harmed by them, or depend on them for their very existence. If they had been harmful and widespread the two would not have co-existed, with one or both species dying off or becoming rare.
In comes mankind. Able to make multiple gigantic changes to ecological environments large and small in an evolutionary blink of an eye... changing balances here and there for reasons that are far removed from that natural system. Yeah sure the systems might establish a new equlibrium...but do you want to risk your life or the life of the species on it. That's exactly what we do when we allow profit to come before saftey with new fundamental technologies.
Faster simply isn't always better. Taking the time to study the effects of what we're doing to ourselves and our environment is worthwhile.
Just like virtual sex?
on
SimChurch
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Is this gonna be just like virtual sex? Vaguely satisifying but in the end its all just a w_nk. (That's Aussie slang for masturbation for those of you who don't know).
Think of all the benefits. Just think of all the sacraments: Virtual communion - zero calories, and won't put you over the limit for when you drive
Virtual marriage - When it goes sour you can always claim it wasn't you on the other end of the computer and keep half your stuff.
Virtual baptism - Only your avatar will get wet.
Virtual last rites - Not as depressing when its an avatar not a real person.
Some things will always be better in person no matter how emmersive the virtual reality. This is totally wasted on me completely. I'm not religious. Religion has in some ways been the bane of my existence. I'd just love it if those that are would just leave me alone and I don't look forward to the prospect of increased net evangelism though I know its bound to happen.
Have you watched any reality TV? It may be reality but its reality for stupid people.
Anything intellectual means immediate ellimination. Dumb as a brick eye-candy stays and rates highly. Hypocrisy, backstabbing, lack of general knowledge and an overinflated ego equate to bonus points.
Yep and if you don't take this into account you're designing a machine that will behave badly, or perhaps you're just programming on a machine you don't understand. You can blame the computer all you like but it ain't gonna help you much (except maybe with stress relief).
The fact is there are algorithms in operating systems and hardware design that rely on statistical probability, or that have been proven reliable through trial and error. The ones that work well enough end up in widespread use. So what? Did you think it was a perfect world?
Its a machine. I'll trust it to obey the laws of physics every time. If someone doesn't design the machine to behave correctly, writes a buggy or flawed piece of code, builds a flawed model, or feeds it bad data, then its the person you can't trust.
Machines don't make mistakes. People make mistakes.
*singing*
You canno' change the laws of physics, laws of physics, laws of physics!
There's klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow, Jim.
We come in peace. Shoot to kill! Shoot to kill! Shoot to kill men!
I own a digital camera and bought the underwater diving case for it because I was too worried about it taking a swim to take it boating. I've attached floats and a strap to the case in case it ever does go overboard. I look like a dork, and it is harder to use with the case and floats but I already have some spectacular nature shots and my blood pressure isn't as high as it would be if I just took the camera and risked it.
* Waterproof, as this one is. * Great battery life. * REAL digital camera with 10x optical zoom and 4 megapixel or more resolution plus fully manual controls. * Built-in mobile phones. * Inbuilt TV tuner and radio. * Runs off 4-8 AAA batteries. * Real audio and video in. * An OS with plenty of loadable software. * Wifi.
Then I could be rid of my laptop, mobile phone, digital camera, and maybe my tele....And several thousand dollars. Oh and if anything did go wrong I could groan for weeks while I missed all of those things till it was fixed. *chuckle*
Have you never been fishing man? Or just boating for that matter? Or to the beach? (Yes sand and salt might scratch up the best PDA at the beach but still at least a little drop wouldn't send all your geek gadget dollars to geek gadget heaven).
For goodness sake! Why not take a pair of scissors and go around running with them until you fall over and stab yoruself and then come out with an article "The Subtle Tyranny of Scissors". Same for power tools etc.
Give me a break! Spreadsheets are a tool, and a good one at that. Don't be the tradesman that goes around misusing the tool and then blaming it for your cockups. If you're in a position in a company where you're expected to use a spreadsheet to do your job you should know your job first and that includes knowing how to correctly use the tools to do it.
I've used this tool to do astrophysics homework for my Astronomy masters. I've used it to work out what my most cost effective computer backup medium would be based on my expected usage. I've used them to keep track of dates and annaversaries. I've used Excel to implement a simple world time calculator and clock. I would NEVER go back to a hand calculator for anything less trivial than a 3 step calculation.
This tool does not prevent you from being too optimistic and does not hold your hand. You can do simple stats with them and you can certainly input values and work out maxiums and minimums based on an uncertainty. I grant you they're not Mathematica, and they're not a stats package, but a lot of people don't want to deal with undertanding the complexities of calculus or statistics. They put a lot of power into the hands of anyone who has access to a PC and the software. They're fantastic.
Some of the conclusions are dubious. Most of this looks like fairly standard business practices.
For example xxxx CEO of blah said yyyy may simply be the result of the employee drawing up the report not knowing the full name or title of the person who made the statement.
As for exact facts and figures about a customer being included, this looks like they got asked not to include them, or decided against it, and complied.
Where's the story here? There's plenty of more interesting things that go on. This is just pure MS bashing. Bashing any company you dislike for genuinely bad business practices this way is a fantastic way to come across as a lunatic with a chip on your shoulder, but not a good way to be taken seriously when pointing out a company's flaws.
I'm sure this won't be popular but I don't see the point of this hypothetical. Like it or hate it Microsoft is very big on the landscape of computing at the moment. You might as well ask what if I won a billion dollars.
A better question is where do we want to be tomorrow, as oppossed to where the hell did you want to be today. (Sorry I couldn't resist).
...isn't any one company or research centre closing or being made ineffective. Single institutions grow, evolve and die - they have their golden eras and their stagnant eras. When they're no longer useful or vibrant a new research centre crops up. Innovative scientific progress comes in jumps and spurts and doesn't follow a project plan.
The real tragedy is rather that with the.COM bust there's not been any funding for new research centres. There is therefore no chance for a new centre to have its creative spurt, and nowhere for today's creative minds to go.
I don't think we should be trying to revive dying scientific centres at all, or singling out individual ones. Instead money should be going into research and development in general based on the merits of the research. Fix the general problem and give our best thinkers the chance to do their stuff.
That singular 12-year-old was named on the paperwork because her mother chose to put her name on the bill when she signed up for broadband. This has nothing to do with copyright law.
How can you possibly say this had nothing to do with copyright law? It doesn't matter whose name was on her net bill or how they got it at all. All that matters is that she was sued for violating copyright.
If, say, you're a car mechanic and you have to take a customer to court for failing to pay a bill -- and this sort of thing happens much more frequently than the RIAA suits -- does it imply that the law that requires customers pay for goods isn't working?
It simply isn't the same thing. You can't copy the person's work 40 times with a simple action on a PC now can you? Your confusing ideas with effort - thoughts with labour.
This is hardly limited to the world of IP, copyright or trademark. Copyright reform would have no effect on this. Big companies will continue to buy, or attempt to buy, our elected officials.
On this we agree. But does that mean if we are able to remove this reason for buying a politician, that we shouldn't? One less reason is a good thing.
Companies are generally in business to make money. If there is not sufficient financial incentive to pursue something, there's a good chance that it won't be pursued. Whether we like it or not, the race to deliver cures for AIDs, cancer, and other ills is largely being led by companies who expect a financial reward to offset the thousands of person-years and millions of dollars they are investing into research.
...and what if its more profitable to just keep treating the patients than to develop the cure? What if a cure were already available and drug company decided it would put their other divisions that provide other treatment out of business? Is this okay with you that not only would they not develop or sell the cure, but that they'd hinder other companies from doing it? Its not okay with me. The mighty dollar and the well being of the public are most certainly not always served by serving the interests of big business.
Copyright law protects us all.
Tell me that if ever either of us ends up in a legal dispute with a large company over copyright.
I disagree with your blind faith in market forces ultimately benefiting eveyrone and the legal system providing justice for all in all cases.
They aren't working because they've led to legal nonsenses such as 12 year olds being sued for breaking laws that they either don't understand or that are ignored by the great majority of people.
They aren't working because large companies can buy representation in the the legislature and fund inefficient and wasteful law suits to attempt to scare the majority into laws that most consider unjust.
They aren't working because right now a company could make a major breakthrough and prevent anyone else from using that breakthrough.
I believe they aren't working for anyone but companies who can afford to put their weight behind them.
I'd say I'm glad that my tax dollars aren't used to fund this sort of thing because I don't live in America but I'd be living in a fools paradise. We here in Aus seem to copy what you Americans do whether its good or not. And our politicians are no more moral than yours.
Except that right now Microsoft can refuse to sell windows altogether and Intel can refuse to license 5-wire USB cables if it chooses. For all practical purposes they won't, but that's not the case with all products and inventions
The next invention may depend on the use of the last. If that use is restricted so is the ability to innovate. Which is exactly how it works right now as you put it.
Slashdot Mirror
Lets agree to define shit as signifcantly worse off than you are now. If you distributed existing "wealth" equally among all, most people's standard of living would either not improve much (the multitudes that are living in poverty) or drop drastically (those who are either a little bit worse off or significantly worse off0.
To create better living conditions than all you need self-sustaining communities able to produce their own basics or other things of equivalent value to trade. You need to produce more, and make things sustainable. If you did it well I believe that over the long term everyone's standard of living could be maintained at a level that all but the wealthy wouldn't call shit.
Sorry but that's not true. The essence of what you're saying is that every deal is a good deal for everyone. You're looking at the individual deals without looking at the impact they have on others and the environment.
By your argument weapons trade is a good thing. There's a supply of weapons. There's demand by terrorists.
By your argument whether or not it is proven that there are real quality of life issues with destroying biodiversity and killing species, as long as you can sell the damn trees for a profit cut them down.
By your logic if something you're producing is killing people you should continue to sell it until the risk to yourself is too high in terms of being jailed or sued or people refusing to buy yoru product.
I don't think so. Blind capitalism is sheer folly.
I could have come up with many more examples.
You're assuming that the majority of consumers are ALWAYS intelligent enough that when faced with a micro-decision (eg. what soap to buy) with large scale implications (eg. what ecosystem that soap will destroy) that they'll always make the correct decision for themselves and everyone else. That's simply not true particularly when it benefits large corporations to twist the truth to suit themselves.
I'm not suggesting a socialist approach at all. In a socialist approach you rely on everyone to do the right thing because it is the right thing for everyone. I'm talking about modifying capitalism so that the individual/company achieves great benefits for themselves first and foremost when they do the right thing for the whole of society. Rewarding good behaviour and retaining the capitalist infrastructure is much more achievable than total social upheval.
You're right. If you consider democrasy a failure, then you'll consider every system a failure. Capitalism and democrasy have lasted longest and worked best. That's because rewarding individual/group effort and empowering individuals works. We agree on this point.
What we don't agree on is whether or not government intervention has a part to play. Leaving it to market forces is like expecting a car to work without a driver. What we also don't agree on is whether or not a balanced budget equals a balanced approach to everything else. Money is an abstract concept of our own making and we need to make sure it represents value in real terms rather than letting the abstract concept have a life of its own.
You're saying every time goods or services are provided, there's a benefit to society, particularly if its priced competively? So if a company burns 10 times the fossil fuel to produce a computer that's $50 less that's a good thing?
Is this flaimbait? Come on!
My argument is that the chief responsibility should be to no small group but society as a whole. Not the shareholders. Not the consumers. If you just aim to satisfy either group you can always cut corners and make more money by screwing up the environment, or other parties not directly involved.
Anyway if you look at the way advertising runs these days I don't beleive that companies truely care about any consumer too much. They're happy to play to the weakness of consumers in order to move product. Anything ranging from plain stupidity to inexperience to psychological illnesses are all fair game.
Time we all learned that we live on one planet. It doesn't matter whose pool you're pissing in, it can only ever be a few thousand kilometres away.
So your goal would be fulfilled if the standard of living was shit for everyone?
Thanks for your input, but I don't want to live in a world where everyone's diseased and starving. That's certainly not MY goal.
As for my "grand" ideas, I'd rather have grand ideas and hope and work towards them than set my standard so low that disease and starvation wouldn't disappoint me.
Under a capitalist system the chief responsibility of a company is to make money for its shareholders. Looking after the rest of society is a very secondary issue and currently most companies only look at this to comply with legislation or when running marketing campaigns (profit again being the main motivator).
The fundamental problem here is that companies are able to make money in ways that do not benefit society. We need to ensure this is not the case by changing a lot of fundamental systems, and this is itself fundamentally difficult.
So any move towards lowering the standard of living in a country, for example by outsourcing to a third world country should not be rewarded. I don't know what the answer is. Taxation and legislation are the only two ways I see this happening but I'm no expert in this area.
We should definitely be striving to raise standards of living worldwide, otherwise you have large groups of people with nothing to lose wanting to take the wealth out of wealthier nations. Never a good plan no matter how good the technology you defend yourself with is.
Its not the same.
The micro-organisms you're talking about are natural and have evolved slowly. The organisms in which they residehave had a chance to evolve with them. The larger organisms either aren't harmed by them, or depend on them for their very existence. If they had been harmful and widespread the two would not have co-existed, with one or both species dying off or becoming rare.
In comes mankind. Able to make multiple gigantic changes to ecological environments large and small in an evolutionary blink of an eye... changing balances here and there for reasons that are far removed from that natural system. Yeah sure the systems might establish a new equlibrium...but do you want to risk your life or the life of the species on it. That's exactly what we do when we allow profit to come before saftey with new fundamental technologies.
Faster simply isn't always better. Taking the time to study the effects of what we're doing to ourselves and our environment is worthwhile.
Is this gonna be just like virtual sex? Vaguely satisifying but in the end its all just a w_nk. (That's Aussie slang for masturbation for those of you who don't know).
Think of all the benefits. Just think of all the sacraments:
Virtual communion - zero calories, and won't put you over the limit for when you drive
Virtual marriage - When it goes sour you can always claim it wasn't you on the other end of the computer and keep half your stuff.
Virtual baptism - Only your avatar will get wet.
Virtual last rites - Not as depressing when its an avatar not a real person.
Some things will always be better in person no matter how emmersive the virtual reality. This is totally wasted on me completely. I'm not religious. Religion has in some ways been the bane of my existence. I'd just love it if those that are would just leave me alone and I don't look forward to the prospect of increased net evangelism though I know its bound to happen.
I'm not a troll either though.
Nahhhh.
Have you watched any reality TV? It may be reality but its reality for stupid people.
Anything intellectual means immediate ellimination. Dumb as a brick eye-candy stays and rates highly. Hypocrisy, backstabbing, lack of general knowledge and an overinflated ego equate to bonus points.
Pretty + dumb + egotistical + hypocrit + backstabbing = "reality"
And just how is this the machine's fault?
Yep and if you don't take this into account you're designing a machine that will behave badly, or perhaps you're just programming on a machine you don't understand. You can blame the computer all you like but it ain't gonna help you much (except maybe with stress relief).
The fact is there are algorithms in operating systems and hardware design that rely on statistical probability, or that have been proven reliable through trial and error. The ones that work well enough end up in widespread use. So what? Did you think it was a perfect world?
Its a machine. I'll trust it to obey the laws of physics every time. If someone doesn't design the machine to behave correctly, writes a buggy or flawed piece of code, builds a flawed model, or feeds it bad data, then its the person you can't trust.
Machines don't make mistakes. People make mistakes.
*singing*
You canno' change the laws of physics, laws of physics, laws of physics!
There's klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow, Jim.
We come in peace. Shoot to kill! Shoot to kill! Shoot to kill men!
And only 1 date late for an April fools joke
Yes I did forget to add large screen to the list didn't I :-)
I own a digital camera and bought the underwater diving case for it because I was too worried about it taking a swim to take it boating. I've attached floats and a strap to the case in case it ever does go overboard. I look like a dork, and it is harder to use with the case and floats but I already have some spectacular nature shots and my blood pressure isn't as high as it would be if I just took the camera and risked it.
* Waterproof, as this one is.
* Great battery life.
* REAL digital camera with 10x optical zoom and 4 megapixel or more resolution plus fully manual controls.
* Built-in mobile phones.
* Inbuilt TV tuner and radio.
* Runs off 4-8 AAA batteries.
* Real audio and video in.
* An OS with plenty of loadable software.
* Wifi.
Then I could be rid of my laptop, mobile phone, digital camera, and maybe my tele....And several thousand dollars. Oh and if anything did go wrong I could groan for weeks while I missed all of those things till it was fixed. *chuckle*
Have you never been fishing man? Or just boating for that matter? Or to the beach? (Yes sand and salt might scratch up the best PDA at the beach but still at least a little drop wouldn't send all your geek gadget dollars to geek gadget heaven).
For goodness sake! Why not take a pair of scissors and go around running with them until you fall over and stab yoruself and then come out with an article "The Subtle Tyranny of Scissors". Same for power tools etc.
Give me a break! Spreadsheets are a tool, and a good one at that. Don't be the tradesman that goes around misusing the tool and then blaming it for your cockups. If you're in a position in a company where you're expected to use a spreadsheet to do your job you should know your job first and that includes knowing how to correctly use the tools to do it.
I've used this tool to do astrophysics homework for my Astronomy masters. I've used it to work out what my most cost effective computer backup medium would be based on my expected usage. I've used them to keep track of dates and annaversaries. I've used Excel to implement a simple world time calculator and clock. I would NEVER go back to a hand calculator for anything less trivial than a 3 step calculation.
This tool does not prevent you from being too optimistic and does not hold your hand. You can do simple stats with them and you can certainly input values and work out maxiums and minimums based on an uncertainty. I grant you they're not Mathematica, and they're not a stats package, but a lot of people don't want to deal with undertanding the complexities of calculus or statistics. They put a lot of power into the hands of anyone who has access to a PC and the software. They're fantastic.
Whine whine whine. That's all this article does.
Sammy
Some of the conclusions are dubious. Most of this looks like fairly standard business practices.
For example xxxx CEO of blah said yyyy
may simply be the result of the employee drawing up the report not knowing the full name or title of the person who made the statement.
As for exact facts and figures about a customer being included, this looks like they got asked not to include them, or decided against it, and complied.
Where's the story here? There's plenty of more interesting things that go on. This is just pure MS bashing. Bashing any company you dislike for genuinely bad business practices this way is a fantastic way to come across as a lunatic with a chip on your shoulder, but not a good way to be taken seriously when pointing out a company's flaws.
I'm sure this won't be popular but I don't see the point of this hypothetical. Like it or hate it Microsoft is very big on the landscape of computing at the moment. You might as well ask what if I won a billion dollars.
A better question is where do we want to be tomorrow, as oppossed to where the hell did you want to be today. (Sorry I couldn't resist).
...isn't any one company or research centre closing or being made ineffective. Single institutions grow, evolve and die - they have their golden eras and their stagnant eras. When they're no longer useful or vibrant a new research centre crops up. Innovative scientific progress comes in jumps and spurts and doesn't follow a project plan.
.COM bust there's not been any funding for new research centres. There is therefore no chance for a new centre to have its creative spurt, and nowhere for today's creative minds to go.
The real tragedy is rather that with the
I don't think we should be trying to revive dying scientific centres at all, or singling out individual ones. Instead money should be going into research and development in general based on the merits of the research. Fix the general problem and give our best thinkers the chance to do their stuff.
How can you possibly say this had nothing to do with copyright law? It doesn't matter whose name was on her net bill or how they got it at all. All that matters is that she was sued for violating copyright.
If, say, you're a car mechanic and you have to take a customer to court for failing to pay a bill -- and this sort of thing happens much more frequently than the RIAA suits -- does it imply that the law that requires customers pay for goods isn't working?
It simply isn't the same thing. You can't copy the person's work 40 times with a simple action on a PC now can you? Your confusing ideas with effort - thoughts with labour.
This is hardly limited to the world of IP, copyright or trademark. Copyright reform would have no effect on this. Big companies will continue to buy, or attempt to buy, our elected officials.
On this we agree. But does that mean if we are able to remove this reason for buying a politician, that we shouldn't? One less reason is a good thing.
Companies are generally in business to make money. If there is not sufficient financial incentive to pursue something, there's a good chance that it won't be pursued. Whether we like it or not, the race to deliver cures for AIDs, cancer, and other ills is largely being led by companies who expect a financial reward to offset the thousands of person-years and millions of dollars they are investing into research.
Copyright law protects us all.
Tell me that if ever either of us ends up in a legal dispute with a large company over copyright.
I disagree with your blind faith in market forces ultimately benefiting eveyrone and the legal system providing justice for all in all cases.
They aren't working because they've led to legal nonsenses such as 12 year olds being sued for breaking laws that they either don't understand or that are ignored by the great majority of people.
They aren't working because large companies can buy representation in the the legislature and fund inefficient and wasteful law suits to attempt to scare the majority into laws that most consider unjust.
They aren't working because right now a company could make a major breakthrough and prevent anyone else from using that breakthrough.
I believe they aren't working for anyone but companies who can afford to put their weight behind them.
I'd say I'm glad that my tax dollars aren't used to fund this sort of thing because I don't live in America but I'd be living in a fools paradise. We here in Aus seem to copy what you Americans do whether its good or not. And our politicians are no more moral than yours.
Except that right now Microsoft can refuse to sell windows altogether and Intel can refuse to license 5-wire USB cables if it chooses. For all practical purposes they won't, but that's not the case with all products and inventions
The next invention may depend on the use of the last. If that use is restricted so is the ability to innovate. Which is exactly how it works right now as you put it.