If you think Democrats and Republicans are the same, just wait and see the damage Bush & Company do if they win again in 2004.
Actually, I expect that either party would wreak havoc, if they won in 2004. To believe that there is a substantial difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, I would have to see one of them get elected and fail to cause damage.
I guess the Republicans won't fail to misbehave in office, given what they're doing at the moment. I'm just not sure that the Democrat's would
All the slashbots constantly whinge about how copywrite is wrong, patents are obsolete.
I don't think that this true. A lot of people believe that copyright gives legal 'rights' that copyright holders ought not to exercise universally, or that action taken to prevent or punish copyright violations is inappropriate. I think that the complaint is not about patents themselves, but about incompetence and about abuse of the legal process.
Of course, some people really do believe that patents and copyrights are not necessary, but they are a small minority. I agree with them in principle, but pragmatically I think all that is needed is a reversal of recent changes to copyright law and a substantial clamp down on bad patents and the power of groundless patent cases to cost the defendant money.
Let's imagine a world where there is *no* IP. Making a living as a programmer is no longer viable. The whole field of software development will grind to a standstill.
The success of Free Software tends to suggest otherwise.
Do you think patents stiffile inovation?
No. I think that copyrights stiffle creativity. In a (to a large extent) free-market economy, patents promote innovation, unless they are awarded to the wrong party, or for a really obvious 'innovation'. Patent holders taking groundless legal action stiffles innovation.
Imagine a world where if you invent something really cool, all the major hardware companies will mass-produce cheap knockoffs within weeks.
How would patents help me? I will probably have to work with many others and and build on past innovations to invent something really cool. If I have many employees and enough money to license the necessary patents (and apply for my own) then how different from a major hardware company do I look?
If I don't have lots of money and expertise (including other people's) will patents 'protect' my innovations? Will I have any innovations to 'protect'?
You have no incentive to design at all.
Actually, the result is that I have no incentive to publish details of my innovation. Patents are supposed to encourage innovators to disclose details of their innovations. I can still maufacture my product without patents and without anyone knowing exactly how it works for some time.
where was the negotiation that led to the agreement
Arguably, your decision to use this ISP rather than another one (with different terms and conditions) was the 'negotiation'. In any case, you probably had to agree to terms and conditions, if so there certainly was an agreement.
I don't think that there is a conflict of interest. The Copyright Office is supposed to represent the interests of the whole country.
However, the RIAA is just supposed to represent its members. It does not speak out for copyright any further than copyright makes its members richer (this is why it dislikes current copyright restrictions and wants them to be stronger). It does not determine copyright law.
No, capitalism would be an environment in which there were no restraints on trade and capital moved freely between markets.
I'm not sure that capitalism is synonymous with free trade. I think that capitalism is just trade that serves the people who have the capital.
Perhaps you could tell me whether it would be closer to free trade if the government intervened to prevent anti-competetive practices. Surely market freedom requires that no one prevents you from doing what you see fit with your property even if that restricts someone else's economic freedom (unless through their own exercising of free trade?).
I don't know anyone stupid enough to make that kind of judgement based on their experience of demonstrations (though if anyone did, surely they would take the side of the demonstrators to avoid future inconvenience). However, I do know people sufficiently poorly informed that they become aware of a problem because of demonstrations.
Exercise is more important than diet (assuming that you don't consume anything that really is bad for you, even in small quantities).
Consistency is important. Don't start a lifestyle that you can't continue.
Don't have unrealistic expectations. The mainstream media promote images of the human body that are neither realistic nor desirable. Having fat is natural and being too thin is to be avoided. Being fat is better than starving or being anorexic.
How much you eat ought to take care of itself, so watch what you eat instead. Don't allow yourself to become obsessed with food. If you can, eat plenty of dull healthy (low in sugar and fat, but perhaps high in other forms of energy) food and keep yourself busy between meals (you'll not be tempted to snack and the work will make you fitter). If you require pleasure from eating, then eat healthy food that is nice. No one needs to consume chocolate, ice cream, sugary drinks, etc.
Don't let it get in the way of things that are important to you. After all, you want to be fit for a reason.
I am a leftist nowadays. I do not believe that anyone should be punished more than in necessary to prevent them from committing crimes (I would not want to punish company directors for their greed or their wealth. As long as they behave well otherwise, they have done nothing wrong).
The point is that companies have killed too many and that they answer to a higher power, the government. Governments do not answer to a higher power, unless they really are democratic (in which case they answer to the people who feel their influence). Governments commit terrible attrocities and we should do all we can to prevent policies like the War on Some Drugs (I believe that I share your views on that issue).
What the story is really about is the role of government-corporate collusion in human rights abuses. I believe that governments behave as badly as they do because of the influence of corporate interests (or 'greed'). The governments of developed nations behave as they do to appease their people and to further corporate interests. Stalin's actions and those of other 'socialist' tyrants can also be attributed to greed (though obviously not to corporate interests, in countries without companies).
That's a matter for the Patent Office, but I don't think that all patents should have the same duration. The duration of a patent ought to depend on how long it will benefit the industry for.
> It's past time for a revamp of the whole system,
I agree. The patent system needs to be changed, not only to prevent bad patents from being awarded, but also to allow (even poor) individuals and small companies to defend and prosecute patent cases and apply for patents. Currently patents are expensive to obtain and use. Patent holders are able to use the cost of court proceedings to punish or frighten those of whom they disapprove (especially weaker competitors), even if they would not win the case.
> make some areas un-patentable again.
This sounds like Richard Stallman's solution to the patent crisis. I used to agree with it, until I was told that the purpose of the patent system is to provide an incentive (in the form of a monopoly or royalties) for the developer of the idea covered by the patent to publish it. Many of the ideas covered by controversial patents don't need to be published for us to understand them. Some are simply too obvious and others can be reverse engineered. These patents have no purpose. Therefore it is not the case that some areas need to be exempt from patents, but that only ideas that would take the rest of the sector the entire term of the patent or longer to understand should be patentable.
I don't think that the original poster was reserving his outrage for corporations rather than governments. I think that the original poster believes that the actions of the mass killers to whom you refer were reprehensible, but realises that nothing can be done to bring them to justice (they are deceased). OTOH, the directors (at the time of the killings) of Firestone could be brought to justice if they are still alive.
> What about Stalin, who killed more people than > Hitler did. Was he held accountable? No.
Stalin was never held to account because he was never caught, not because it was believed that he did nothing wrong. This is not a sound argument for the conclusion that we are not doing enough to prevent the crimes of governments. What could we have done differently with Stalin?
> Also, many of > the leaders of the neo-con movement are Jewish
Most of them are Christian.
> and > that may explain some of their strong support for > big business, at least here in America.
I don't think that Judaism causes people to advocate business or succeed in it more than other people. Non-practicing Jews certainly aren't influenced in this way.
> As many > of these people have socialist and marxist views > it shouldn't come as a suprise that they would > be willing to spy on their own people.
They do not have leftist views. That they are not leftists can be shown by their support for business at any cost and desire for a large military. If they were leftists, it would not lead them to spy on their own people. Even if it would, it should be noted that the people actually doing this are very right-wing.
In some cases (e.g. 'New Labour' in the UK) these people have claimed to be socialists, but I believe that their behaviour shows them not to be. They are, however, liberal. In the US, liberals and leftists are sometimes confused. Perhaps this is why you call them leftists.
> The idea of double jeopardy is kinda wierd to > me,surely there is no harm in re-evaluating a > sentence if there is good reason to do so...
Cases should not be brought to court unless they are carried out properly and until the evidence has been collected. If the defendent is found innocent by a proper trial, then they should be left alone. If there are two different verdicts for the same suspect and the same crime, then at least one of them must be wrong (they may both be wrong in cases with more than two permissable verdicts, e.g not guilty, not proven, guilty of manslaughter, guilty of murder). This is embarrasing for supporters of the legal system and is also unfair on the defendent. If the defendent has been found both guilty and innocent, then why should they be punished (as if guilty), rather than allowed to go unpunished (as if innocent)?
Also it is unfair to try an innocent person twice. As has been mentioned elsewhere, wealthy organisations can tie up in legal proceedings those who they disapprove of and this is not what the courts are for. To remove double jeopardy laws, would increase this sort of thing.
As a resident of Britain I can recommend... Switzerland and Norway. Both are not EU members, so they are free from requirements to implement DMCA-like laws and seem to be quite nice places to live generally. They seem like the kind of technologically advanced and well organised places that would have widespread broadband. Norway is quite far north and a substantial amount of Switzerland is cool due to high altitude.
> 3. *no* change in the rate of serious piracy > because serious pirates just laugh at the stupid > copy protection schemes being used (audio patch > cord and decent soundcard anyone?)
I think it's worse than that. Counterfeitters (the ones who make money selling physical illegal copies, not people uploading on the net) are going to do really well out of this. Having been undercut by illegal internet distribution of compressed music, counterfeitters are now being given a shot at taking over what the legitimate market still has left (quite a valuable market). People who wanted a high quality recording had to find a physical copy, which often meant buying it. Now they have a reason not to: DRM. However, counterfeitters will be selling full quality CDs with the DRM removed. Maybe they can get full price for them now.
> And how stupid will the recording industry look > if their CD sales figures don't immediately soar > to new heights as a result of this copy > protection?
I don't think that the recoding industry is in control of this any more. I think that the DRM industry is making this happen. Won't they lose out if it fails?
> If sales levels remain basically unchanged then > they're going to have to admit that either: > > a) people weren't pirating much anyway > > or > > b) their copyprotection doesn't work.
or
c) that they haven't done enough yet. The copyright violation debate seems to defy the use of evidence to justify claims.
> The free market is about avoiding violence in > human interaction.
This sounds interventionist to me. In the free market, the wealthy make deals that benefit themselves as much as possible. The result can be that even when the poor do the best they can, they get poorer. Eventually, they use violence (for its bargaining power), unless there is some kind of saftey net.
> And this isn't a zero-sum game.
I did not mean to imply this when I said "If the consumer benefits, but the worker loses out, then perhaps no net benefit has been made." What I meant was that if the highest objective is value achieved for the customer (perhaps not a free-market goal, but the original comment mentioned it), then large costs to the workers can be justified by small benefits to the customers. If we all do both, then I can't even justify this as a customer using self interest.
> In the absence of violence, trades occur only if > both parties perceive a benefit. A net loss > occurs only in the presence of coercion, or > because an agent makes a bad decision (in which > case the loss is self-imposed).
The fact that the poor are not well informed, that advertising seeks to confuse them, that unions and companies wield more power (per person they represent) than individuals, that laws chosen by elites for elites are backed up by force, that international trade agreements are backed up by sanctions (and force?) and that disasterous privatisations are forced on countries by international organisations representing the interests of wealthy companies all make the ideals of the free market (which I find questionable) difficut to achieve. I think coercion and bad decisions are very widespread (and will be) even in free market 'paradises'.
> The fact that different currencies have different > values per unit is irrelevant.
I don't that is what was meant. I think the point was that the cost of living (and the cost of labour) is different in different countries.
> And it's not about your rights. It's about the > consumer's rights.
Depends what *it* is. The free market isn't about anyone's rights, it's about the creation of wealth. Morality, on the other hand, is about everone's rights. Market freedom is a tool that might be used to promte people's rights. It is not the be-all and end-all of economics. Wealth created by market freedom is not the only important thing to aim for in an ethical production process.
The distinction (your rights vs consumer's rights) is hardly worth making, because nearly everone is a consumer and most are also workers. I disagree with it, anyway. What matters is the rights of people as people, not the rights of people as consumers, or as workers. If the consumer benefits, but the worker loses out, then perhaps no net benefit has been made.
I couldn't find the rate of tax in China, but I would imagine that it is far higher than that in the US. The US has far lower taxes than most industrialised countries.
If tarrifs of this kind were applied to the import of software, then why not to other goods/services?
Why should Americans be any different?
It seems to me that the American minimum wage is the result of a decision that workers ought to be properly paid, and this should apply to workers everwhere. The tarrifs should be equivalent to the amount saved by imposing on the workers a lower standard of living (in material terms) than an American worker at minimum wage. This would remove all incentive to take work out of the US because of the lack of workers' rights in other countries, but it would still be cheaper to use third world labour because of the of the lower cost of living in the third world. This seems fair to me. If non-Americans can do the job just as well, then they should be given the opportunity to correct economic inbalance by earning money from American imports. If Americans want to maintain the economic inbalance, then they should learn to do something that nobody else can. Of course, the real benefit from software development, like any other commercial production, belongs to the financiers, so even when jobs leave the USA, the wealth probably doesn't. The distribution of wealth within the USA needs to be addressed.
This is a bigger problem for tangible goods that are non-trivial to transport. There is an environmental cost to moving them and there is a strong argument for producing them near where they are used. There should be another tarrif (or existing tarrifs should be increased) to discourage the location of production far from customers. This would discourage the use of cheap foreign labour in some cases, but it does not apply to software (which can be written far away and, if necessary, duplicated near the point of use).
> Were you saying that war is right, because Saddam > wouldn't leave, because Bush made an unfair > request?
I didn't say whether I believe the war to be justified (I assumed, for the sake of argument, that the war is unjustified). It *is* part of the US government line that Saddam caused this war to happen. That is a crucial part of the argument for war. My point was that if the war is wrong, then it cannot be necessary, certainly not in the strongest sense of the word.
> I can understand people who say this war is > necessary: but right?
If it is necessary, then it can't possibly be wrong, unless you meant "...necessary for [some purpose other than achieving maximum utility]".
I understand 'right' as meaning the best possible in the circumstances. If this is the case, then what is necessary is always right.
The war could be necessary as in a necessary consequence of some (not necessary) action. If that action was wrong, then you might say that the war was necessary and wrong, but I would say that that action was responsible for the decision to go to war. The war could have been prevented by the person who chose to carry out the action of which war was a necessary consequence, so the war was not necessary.
I made a horrible mess of that. What I should have said is that what you describe is good and bad (not right and wrong). I believe that right is best and wrong is not best.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think Democrats and Republicans are the same, just wait and see the damage Bush & Company do if they win again in 2004.
Actually, I expect that either party would wreak havoc, if they won in 2004. To believe that there is a substantial difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, I would have to see one of them get elected and fail to cause damage.
I guess the Republicans won't fail to misbehave in office, given what they're doing at the moment. I'm just not sure that the Democrat's would
All the slashbots constantly whinge about how copywrite is wrong, patents are obsolete.
I don't think that this true. A lot of people believe that copyright gives legal 'rights' that copyright holders ought not to exercise universally, or that action taken to prevent or punish copyright violations is inappropriate. I think that the complaint is not about patents themselves, but about incompetence and about abuse of the legal process.
Of course, some people really do believe that patents and copyrights are not necessary, but they are a small minority. I agree with them in principle, but pragmatically I think all that is needed is a reversal of recent changes to copyright law and a substantial clamp down on bad patents and the power of groundless patent cases to cost the defendant money.
Let's imagine a world where there is *no* IP. Making a living as a programmer is no longer viable. The whole field of software development will grind to a standstill.
The success of Free Software tends to suggest otherwise.
Do you think patents stiffile inovation?
No. I think that copyrights stiffle creativity. In a (to a large extent) free-market economy, patents promote innovation, unless they are awarded to the wrong party, or for a really obvious 'innovation'. Patent holders taking groundless legal action stiffles innovation.
Imagine a world where if you invent something really cool, all the major hardware companies will mass-produce cheap knockoffs within weeks.
How would patents help me? I will probably have to work with many others and and build on past innovations to invent something really cool. If I have many employees and enough money to license the necessary patents (and apply for my own) then how different from a major hardware company do I look?
If I don't have lots of money and expertise (including other people's) will patents 'protect' my innovations? Will I have any innovations to 'protect'?
You have no incentive to design at all.
Actually, the result is that I have no incentive to publish details of my innovation. Patents are supposed to encourage innovators to disclose details of their innovations. I can still maufacture my product without patents and without anyone knowing exactly how it works for some time.
Companies will grow ever larger.
This seems to be happening anyway.
Arguably, your decision to use this ISP rather than another one (with different terms and conditions) was the 'negotiation'. In any case, you probably had to agree to terms and conditions, if so there certainly was an agreement.
I don't think that there is a conflict of interest. The Copyright Office is supposed to represent the interests of the whole country.
However, the RIAA is just supposed to represent its members. It does not speak out for copyright any further than copyright makes its members richer (this is why it dislikes current copyright restrictions and wants them to be stronger). It does not determine copyright law.
I'm not sure that capitalism is synonymous with free trade. I think that capitalism is just trade that serves the people who have the capital.
Perhaps you could tell me whether it would be closer to free trade if the government intervened to prevent anti-competetive practices. Surely market freedom requires that no one prevents you from doing what you see fit with your property even if that restricts someone else's economic freedom (unless through their own exercising of free trade?).
I don't know anyone stupid enough to make that kind of judgement based on their experience of demonstrations (though if anyone did, surely they would take the side of the demonstrators to avoid future inconvenience). However, I do know people sufficiently poorly informed that they become aware of a problem because of demonstrations.
Exercise is more important than diet (assuming that you don't consume anything that really is bad for you, even in small quantities).
Consistency is important. Don't start a lifestyle that you can't continue.
Don't have unrealistic expectations. The mainstream media promote images of the human body that are neither realistic nor desirable. Having fat is natural and being too thin is to be avoided. Being fat is better than starving or being anorexic.
How much you eat ought to take care of itself, so watch what you eat instead. Don't allow yourself to become obsessed with food. If you can, eat plenty of dull healthy (low in sugar and fat, but perhaps high in other forms of energy) food and keep yourself busy between meals (you'll not be tempted to snack and the work will make you fitter). If you require pleasure from eating, then eat healthy food that is nice. No one needs to consume chocolate, ice cream, sugary drinks, etc.
Don't let it get in the way of things that are important to you. After all, you want to be fit for a reason.
No. I think that it's grammatically incorrect here in the UK, too. I had assumed that it was a practice that came from the US.
I am a leftist nowadays. I do not believe that anyone should be punished more than in necessary to prevent them from committing crimes (I would not want to punish company directors for their greed or their wealth. As long as they behave well otherwise, they have done nothing wrong).
The point is that companies have killed too many and that they answer to a higher power, the government. Governments do not answer to a higher power, unless they really are democratic (in which case they answer to the people who feel their influence). Governments commit terrible attrocities and we should do all we can to prevent policies like the War on Some Drugs (I believe that I share your views on that issue).
What the story is really about is the role of government-corporate collusion in human rights abuses. I believe that governments behave as badly as they do because of the influence of corporate interests (or 'greed'). The governments of developed nations behave as they do to appease their people and to further corporate interests. Stalin's actions and those of other 'socialist' tyrants can also be attributed to greed (though obviously not to corporate interests, in countries without companies).
That's a matter for the Patent Office, but I don't think that all patents should have the same duration. The duration of a patent ought to depend on how long it will benefit the industry for.
> It's past time for a revamp of the whole system,
I agree. The patent system needs to be changed, not only to prevent bad patents from being awarded, but also to allow (even poor) individuals and small companies to defend and prosecute patent cases and apply for patents. Currently patents are expensive to obtain and use. Patent holders are able to use the cost of court proceedings to punish or frighten
those of whom they disapprove (especially weaker competitors), even if they would not win the case.
> make some areas un-patentable again.
This sounds like Richard Stallman's solution to the patent crisis. I used to agree with it, until I was told that the purpose of the patent system is to provide an incentive (in the form of a monopoly or royalties) for the developer of the idea covered by the patent to publish it. Many of the ideas covered by controversial patents don't need to be published for us to understand them. Some are simply too obvious and others can be reverse engineered. These patents have no purpose. Therefore it is not the case that some areas need to be exempt from patents, but that only ideas that would take the rest of the sector the entire term of the patent or longer to understand should be patentable.
I don't think that the original poster was reserving his outrage for corporations rather than governments. I think that the original poster believes that the actions of the mass killers to whom you refer were reprehensible, but realises that nothing can be done to bring them to justice (they are deceased). OTOH, the directors (at the time of the killings) of Firestone could be brought to justice if they are still alive.
> to find out more grabb your fave p2p client search
> for bbc bush documentary
> 15 min rush
Can't find any mention of the documentary on the BBC website. What format should I be searching for it in? What is its full title?
> What about Stalin, who killed more people than
> Hitler did. Was he held accountable? No.
Stalin was never held to account because he was never caught, not because it was believed that he did nothing wrong. This is not a sound argument for the conclusion that we are not doing enough to prevent the crimes of governments. What could we have done differently with Stalin?
> Also, many of
> the leaders of the neo-con movement are Jewish
Most of them are Christian.
> and
> that may explain some of their strong support for
> big business, at least here in America.
I don't think that Judaism causes people to advocate business or succeed in it more than other people. Non-practicing Jews certainly aren't influenced in this way.
> As many
> of these people have socialist and marxist views
> it shouldn't come as a suprise that they would
> be willing to spy on their own people.
They do not have leftist views. That they are not leftists can be shown by their support for business at any cost and desire for a large military. If they were leftists, it would not lead them to spy on their own people. Even if it would, it should be noted that the people actually doing this are very right-wing.
In some cases (e.g. 'New Labour' in the UK) these people have claimed to be socialists, but I believe that their behaviour shows them not to be. They are, however, liberal. In the US, liberals and leftists are sometimes confused. Perhaps this is why you call them leftists.
> The idea of double jeopardy is kinda wierd to
> me,surely there is no harm in re-evaluating a
> sentence if there is good reason to do so...
Cases should not be brought to court unless they are carried out properly and until the evidence has been collected. If the defendent is found innocent by a proper trial, then they should be left alone. If there are two different verdicts for the same suspect and the same crime, then at least one of them must be wrong (they may both be wrong in cases with more than two permissable verdicts, e.g not guilty, not proven, guilty of manslaughter, guilty of murder). This is embarrasing for supporters of the legal system and is also unfair on the defendent. If the defendent has been found both guilty and innocent, then why should they be punished (as if guilty), rather than allowed to go unpunished (as if innocent)?
Also it is unfair to try an innocent person twice. As has been mentioned elsewhere, wealthy organisations can tie up in legal proceedings those who they disapprove of and this is not what the courts are for. To remove double jeopardy laws, would increase this sort of thing.
As a resident of Britain I can recommend... Switzerland and Norway. Both are not EU members, so they are free from requirements to implement DMCA-like laws and seem to be quite nice places to live generally. They seem like the kind of technologically advanced and well organised places that would have widespread broadband. Norway is quite far north and a substantial amount of Switzerland is cool due to high altitude.
> 3. *no* change in the rate of serious piracy
> because serious pirates just laugh at the stupid
> copy protection schemes being used (audio patch
> cord and decent soundcard anyone?)
I think it's worse than that. Counterfeitters (the ones who make money selling physical illegal copies, not people uploading on the net) are going to do really well out of this. Having been undercut by illegal internet distribution of compressed music, counterfeitters are now being given a shot at taking over what the legitimate market still has left (quite a valuable market). People who wanted a high quality recording had to find a physical copy, which often meant buying it. Now they have a reason not to: DRM. However, counterfeitters will be selling full quality CDs with the DRM removed. Maybe they can get full price for them now.
> And how stupid will the recording industry look
> if their CD sales figures don't immediately soar
> to new heights as a result of this copy
> protection?
I don't think that the recoding industry is in control of this any more. I think that the DRM industry is making this happen. Won't they lose out if it fails?
> If sales levels remain basically unchanged then
> they're going to have to admit that either:
>
> a) people weren't pirating much anyway
>
> or
>
> b) their copyprotection doesn't work.
or
c) that they haven't done enough yet. The copyright violation debate seems to defy the use of evidence to justify claims.
> The free market is about avoiding violence in
> human interaction.
This sounds interventionist to me. In the free market, the wealthy make deals that benefit themselves as much as possible. The result can be that even when the poor do the best they can, they get poorer. Eventually, they use violence (for its bargaining power), unless there is some kind of saftey net.
> And this isn't a zero-sum game.
I did not mean to imply this when I said "If the consumer benefits, but the worker loses out, then perhaps no net benefit has been made." What I meant was that if the highest objective is value achieved for the customer (perhaps not a free-market goal, but the original comment mentioned it), then large costs to the workers can be justified by small benefits to the customers. If we all do both, then I can't even justify this as a customer using self interest.
> In the absence of violence, trades occur only if
> both parties perceive a benefit. A net loss
> occurs only in the presence of coercion, or
> because an agent makes a bad decision (in which
> case the loss is self-imposed).
The fact that the poor are not well informed, that advertising seeks to confuse them, that unions and companies wield more power (per person they represent) than individuals, that laws chosen by elites for elites are backed up by force, that international trade agreements are backed up by sanctions (and force?) and that disasterous privatisations are forced on countries by international organisations representing the interests of wealthy companies all make the ideals of the free market (which I find questionable) difficut to achieve. I think coercion and bad decisions are very widespread (and will be) even in free market 'paradises'.
> The fact that different currencies have different
> values per unit is irrelevant.
I don't that is what was meant. I think the point was that the cost of living (and the cost of labour) is different in different countries.
> And it's not about your rights. It's about the
> consumer's rights.
Depends what *it* is. The free market isn't about anyone's rights, it's about the creation of wealth. Morality, on the other hand, is about everone's rights. Market freedom is a tool that might be used to promte people's rights. It is not the be-all and end-all of economics. Wealth created by market freedom is not the only important thing to aim for in an ethical production process.
The distinction (your rights vs consumer's rights) is hardly worth making, because nearly everone is a consumer and most are also workers. I disagree with it, anyway. What matters is the rights of people as people, not the rights of people as consumers, or as workers. If the consumer benefits, but the worker loses out, then perhaps no net benefit has been made.
> China where the taxes arent so high.
I couldn't find the rate of tax in China, but I would imagine that it is far higher than that in the US. The US has far lower taxes than most industrialised countries.
Why should software developers be any different?
If tarrifs of this kind were applied to the import of software, then why not to other goods/services?
Why should Americans be any different?
It seems to me that the American minimum wage is the result of a decision that workers ought to be properly paid, and this should apply to workers everwhere. The tarrifs should be equivalent to the amount saved by imposing on the workers a lower standard of living (in material terms) than an American worker at minimum wage. This would remove all incentive to take work out of the US because of the lack of workers' rights in other countries, but it would still be cheaper to use third world labour because of the of the lower cost of living in the third world. This seems fair to me. If non-Americans can do the job just as well, then they should be given the opportunity to correct economic inbalance by earning money from American imports. If Americans want to maintain the economic inbalance, then they should learn to do something that nobody else can. Of course, the real benefit from software development, like any other commercial production, belongs to the financiers, so even when jobs leave the USA, the wealth probably doesn't. The distribution of wealth within the USA needs to be addressed.
This is a bigger problem for tangible goods that are non-trivial to transport. There is an environmental cost to moving them and there is a strong argument for producing them near where they are used. There should be another tarrif (or existing tarrifs should be increased) to discourage the location of production far from customers. This would discourage the use of cheap foreign labour in some cases, but it does not apply to software (which can be written far away and, if necessary, duplicated near the point of use).
> Were you saying that war is right, because Saddam
> wouldn't leave, because Bush made an unfair
> request?
I didn't say whether I believe the war to be justified (I assumed, for the sake of argument, that the war is unjustified). It *is* part of the US government line that Saddam caused this war to happen. That is a crucial part of the argument for war. My point was that if the war is wrong, then it cannot be necessary, certainly not in the strongest sense of the word.
> I can understand people who say this war is
> necessary: but right?
If it is necessary, then it can't possibly be wrong, unless you meant "...necessary for [some purpose other than achieving maximum utility]".
I understand 'right' as meaning the best possible in the circumstances. If this is the case, then what is necessary is always right.
The war could be necessary as in a necessary consequence of some (not necessary) action. If that action was wrong, then you might say that the war was necessary and wrong, but I would say that that action was responsible for the decision to go to war. The war could have been prevented by the person who chose to carry out the action of which war was a necessary consequence, so the war was not necessary.
I made a horrible mess of that. What I should have said is that what you describe is good and bad (not right and wrong). I believe that right is best and wrong is not best.