Not *that* big a step, I think. It's the same logic on which the GPL is based. Plain copyright law doesn't give you the right to make any copies at all. The license gives you certain rights beyond that, but only if you agree to and follow its terms.
I believe that the GPL restricts you from distributing copies, not making them. Big difference.
I dunno, if Texas starts hauling all their garbage to the border and firing thousands of tons a day out of a cannon at Oklahoma (which I'm sure many Texans would consider a fine idea), that would certainly fall under the federal government's jurisdiction.
As a Texan, I cannot endorse this idea.
On the other hand, I believe it would be hilarious.
I have been in this situation. It starts off well (welcome to one big happy family), but it goes down hill very quickly. 2 years after we were absorbed, the support my site provided was off-shored to KL, India, and Manila. The retained staff was cut and the people who were left, were moved into other jobs. My boss did a good job of saving those he wanted to save but no one is happy.
I've had it worse. The company I used to work for got bought out by another. The new company put on this huge presentation about how they were excited about the new direction blah blah blah.
TWO WEEKS later they took us en masse into a few rooms and told us that they were moving most of the operations to Canada, including my entire division.
Technically, ALL business models only work because they are backed by the barrel of a gun.
/dons crazy libertarian hat
After all, why is it the GOVERNMENT'S place to enforce contracts? If your business model requires a MAN WITH A GUN to force me to do what I said I'd do, then your business model is FASCISM!
When you have a voting system where you effectively support your least favorite candidate with a chance of winning by voting for one that doesn't have a chance to win, you end up with two parties who are very similar to each other. The voting system has to change first, and it's actually more feasible to do so.
Essentially, this is what has to happen - get involved in a local campaign, and push to change to something like approval voting. Once you've managed to do this (a difficult task, but far easier than "make every single voter in America start to vote third party"), start supporting other localities to do the same.
After enough cities are using approval voting, you can go up the ladder and start pushing for your state to do it, since people have already seen that it works. And so on.
If you're looking for a long-term solution to the two party problem, this is it.
But they actually wanted Bush. Whether they were misinformed, stupid, or downright insane is not the point. Assuming that the Nader voters ranked Nader first, Gore second, and Bush last, by voting for their first choice, they actually wound up with their least preferred candidate in power.
If Obama's elected his stance on these issues won't matter - all the President can do when it comes to making laws is jawbone and either sign or veto.
I think you underestimate the president's "jawboning" influence. If the president says "If this bill comes to my desk, I will sign it", Congress just needs to get a simple majority, and on-the-fence Reps and Senators will be more likely to support it.
If, on the other hand, he says he will veto the bill, it jumps to a 2/3rds requirement, and in a situation where Congress is split such as we have now, that will convince a lot of Reps and Senators that the fight isn't worth it and it will die quickly.
I have to wonder, if there really is a god, will he/she/it/they be laughing their ass off when we perfect a method to live forever and never get into an afterlife?
Don't worry, eventually the heat death of the universe will end it all.
Unless we figure out a way to break the laws of thermodynamics. In which case, who's the real god?
The resisters are quite often targeting civilians themselves, or each other. The failure of the US military to prevent those deaths just further bolsters my point.
As a European I must sincerely ask whether that is something you really, absolutely 100 % fear and consider possible if gun ownership is restricted? Your own government?
I have gotten the impression that Americans justify their need to own a gun by it deterring crime but the fear of your own government seems pretty bizarre to me.
Our country was founded after we threw out the previous government (in reality, foreign invaders). We don't trust the government, but we realize we need one. The idea is to keep it on a short leash so it does what we want it to, rather than the other way around.
The "rag-tag resisters" fighting in Iraq are a proxy army with the backing of another government. In fact, the revolution which provides the backdrop of the US Constitution was won with the aid of a foreign government. Would there be a nation willing to support your putative insurgency?
A better question would be, are there any nations willing to cause problems for the US and weaken it?
The colonists didn't have tanks and bombers to contend with. The Britains didn't have the capability of completely flattening any arbitrary colonist city from afar to make the others fall in line.
I'm a liberal, but I'm from Texas. Gun rights are about the only opinion I share with the right wing, though likely for different reasons.
There are tons of arguments against guns, such as safety in the home or availability to criminals. But in my mind it comes down to just one thing -
The availability of guns to the general public is the last safeguard against tyrrany. It becomes much easier to fight an oppressive government if you have the weapons to do it with.
And let me preempt a few arguments right here - a few of you might ask how a bunch of rag-tag resisters can fight against the most powerful, technologically advanced military in the world?
Darwin doesn't care how comfortable your life is. Darwin cares whether, overall, you meet the requirement of passing on your genes. This whole "valued part of society, died at 80" thing is meaningless to Darwin if your competitor has happily bred with your wife at 20 and you've spent the next sixty years raising three generations of someone else's genetic line that are now populating the planet and passing on their traits.
Darwin's dead. As are the two people in your example. Does it really matter to either of them whether they have more or less copies of their DNA floating around in a world where they don't exist anymore?
Hint: no they don't, because they're incapable of caring - they're dead.
When people say "survival of the fittest", what they don't realize is that they're not talking about survival of people - they're talking about survival of their genes. The people are simply hosts for a sequence of self-replicating proteins.
To anthropomorphize a bit, your DNA only cares how long you live or how happy you are in terms of how that aids it in copying itself.
I'm not saying that someone else should make the call. I'm saying that they may, in fact, be engaging in behavior that is bad for them. That's their right.
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I believe that the GPL restricts you from distributing copies, not making them. Big difference.
"The power to tax involves the power to destroy." McCulloch v. Maryland
And if you have the ability to destroy something, you pretty much control it.
As a Texan, I cannot endorse this idea.
On the other hand, I believe it would be hilarious.
I've had it worse. The company I used to work for got bought out by another. The new company put on this huge presentation about how they were excited about the new direction blah blah blah.
TWO WEEKS later they took us en masse into a few rooms and told us that they were moving most of the operations to Canada, including my entire division.
Which means this was not the case, or Bush is pushing this just to protect himself.
If he really "ordered" you to do it, that's called entrapment.
I think we can look back at the last eight years and see that those people are wrong.
Technically, ALL business models only work because they are backed by the barrel of a gun.
/dons crazy libertarian hat
After all, why is it the GOVERNMENT'S place to enforce contracts? If your business model requires a MAN WITH A GUN to force me to do what I said I'd do, then your business model is FASCISM!
When you have a voting system where you effectively support your least favorite candidate with a chance of winning by voting for one that doesn't have a chance to win, you end up with two parties who are very similar to each other. The voting system has to change first, and it's actually more feasible to do so.
Essentially, this is what has to happen - get involved in a local campaign, and push to change to something like approval voting. Once you've managed to do this (a difficult task, but far easier than "make every single voter in America start to vote third party"), start supporting other localities to do the same.
After enough cities are using approval voting, you can go up the ladder and start pushing for your state to do it, since people have already seen that it works. And so on.
If you're looking for a long-term solution to the two party problem, this is it.
But they actually wanted Bush. Whether they were misinformed, stupid, or downright insane is not the point. Assuming that the Nader voters ranked Nader first, Gore second, and Bush last, by voting for their first choice, they actually wound up with their least preferred candidate in power.
I think you underestimate the president's "jawboning" influence. If the president says "If this bill comes to my desk, I will sign it", Congress just needs to get a simple majority, and on-the-fence Reps and Senators will be more likely to support it.
If, on the other hand, he says he will veto the bill, it jumps to a 2/3rds requirement, and in a situation where Congress is split such as we have now, that will convince a lot of Reps and Senators that the fight isn't worth it and it will die quickly.
Yes, and that's how people who voted for Nader instead of Gore got us Bush as president.
I'm afraid I must give credit to Dogbert for that one.
Exactly. Mortality, like trust, is an excellent quality for other people to have.
Don't worry, eventually the heat death of the universe will end it all.
Unless we figure out a way to break the laws of thermodynamics. In which case, who's the real god?
I think it's called history.
The resisters are quite often targeting civilians themselves, or each other. The failure of the US military to prevent those deaths just further bolsters my point.
The colonists didn't have tanks and bombers to contend with. The Britains didn't have the capability of completely flattening any arbitrary colonist city from afar to make the others fall in line.
I'm a liberal, but I'm from Texas. Gun rights are about the only opinion I share with the right wing, though likely for different reasons.
There are tons of arguments against guns, such as safety in the home or availability to criminals. But in my mind it comes down to just one thing -
The availability of guns to the general public is the last safeguard against tyrrany. It becomes much easier to fight an oppressive government if you have the weapons to do it with.
And let me preempt a few arguments right here - a few of you might ask how a bunch of rag-tag resisters can fight against the most powerful, technologically advanced military in the world?
For your answer, take one look at Iraq.
Seems like this would be a better strategy for dealing with your enemies than your friends.
Hint: no they don't, because they're incapable of caring - they're dead.
When people say "survival of the fittest", what they don't realize is that they're not talking about survival of people - they're talking about survival of their genes. The people are simply hosts for a sequence of self-replicating proteins.
To anthropomorphize a bit, your DNA only cares how long you live or how happy you are in terms of how that aids it in copying itself.
I'm not saying that someone else should make the call. I'm saying that they may, in fact, be engaging in behavior that is bad for them. That's their right.