He claims that you have a right to use your property, including your vocal cords as you see fit. Since you, and no one else, owns your speech organs, or your hands, you are free to say or write whatever you want.
You call that elitist? You think that's a bad thing? What do you support?
Forcing people to say things they don't agree with? Forcing them to write things they would prefer not to write? Mandatory loyalty oaths?
This column, An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State by capital-O Objectivist Robert Tracinski makes some insightful points, if you can get past the giggle-inducing Objectivist stock-phrases like "sense of life".
I've noted before Randians' bizarre practice of "officially" "breaking" with one another (other comments on this).
Now some Objectivists who actually have a sense of humor have made up an "Official Solo Schism Form Letter". Funny stuff. The letter is lampooning Objectivist nobody Diana Mertz Hsieh, who felt compelled to Officially, Publicly Break with a former Objectivist friend, the brilliant Chris Sciabarra (who is a decent, sincere, honest person who did not deserve to be treated like this), and to justify it by printing his private correspondence to her and a set of charges to any normal person would appear very bizarre (strange for a Randian, eh?).
...
Update: Just came across the latest Official Objectivist Denunciation: Andrew Bernstein of the Ayn Rand Institute has apparently been pestered into apologizing for having =gasp= published a short piece in the "Journal of Ayn Rand Studies". Bernstein's apology states "I deeply regret my thoughtless decision to contribute to this journal, and hereby irrevocably repudiate any and all association with it."
Well, then, Dr. Bernstein--it's official--and more than that, irrevocable! Thanks for letting us know!
He goes on: "To all who are sincerely concerned with Objectivism, I apologize, and recommend a complete repudiation and boycott of this journal and of any and all of Mr. Sciabarra's work."
Okay! I hereby repudiate and boycott Sciabarra.
And now I take it back! ha ha, I forgot to make it irrevocable!
A government employee is shielded from liability for damages caused by their official actions.
So if you sue them, you will help pay for their defense (their lawyers are paid for with tax money) and if you win, you will pay part of the judgment as it is paid with tax money.
So, it costs them absolutely nothing, and they even will use some of your money to pay for their propaganda to the effect that thanks to the greedy telecom company refusing to pay its fair share, the people will face higher taxes and reduced services.
Bottom line: governments are protectionist rackets par excellance. There is little that one can do to threaten them.
I don't think the dolphins are equipped with their arms while living in the holding tanks. Such weapons, if they still exist, would be typically strapped on at the beginning of a patrol.
Of all the so called "third parties", the libertarian party has the most elected officials.
They aren't stupid, they're for the most part being ignored, and fighting an uphill battle to get on ballots in the face of deliberate collusions by the Republican and Democratic parties to keep them off.
The democrats were the second political party to be formed by those disagreeing with the first political party, Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Party. The democrats first called themselves the AnitFederalist party, then changed their name to the Democratic-Republicans.
The liberarian party has far more in common with the Anti-Federalist party than the current Democratic party. I think Thomas Jefferson would be horrified to see what has been done by the party he helped found.
No, but a parent has much more control over the curriculum of hs or her child at a private school than a public school.
So, if you don't like the agenda of one school, you try another.
We spend more per pupil on education today and get worse results than when univeral compulsory education was finally, fully instituted accross the U.S, mainly because the curriculum is centrally controlled, and being subject to state control, and is inflecible when confronted with evidence that it is failing or that better methods are available.
In first grade I had a serious hiking accident and was bedridden for four months. It was the best thing that could have happened to me; I learned more at home than I would have at school, and I continued to learn more outside of school than in school while I was in the Massachusetts Public School System
Einstein once said something along the following lines:
Testing theories is a very thankless task, because nature never says "yes." Usually nature says "no," meaning that a measurement contradicts a theories predictions. Sometimes, nature says, "maybe," indicating that while the measurements are consistent with the theory. But nature never says "yes," because your theory could be incomplete or erroneous but your instruments are either too inaccurate to detect the error, or you are not doing the right experiment.
Newtonian dynamics makes good enough predictions for alot of phenomena.
General Relativity is more precise in its predictions.
Given our difficulties in unifying it with quantum mechanics, it is likely that we don't have the right theory. As our instruments get more precise and we conduct more experiments, eentually we'll get a hint as to where we are going wrong.
There are quite a variety of PBS shows out there that are pretty authoratative.
Yes, at times their vaguely socialist emotional bias pops up pretty heavily, but they actually do indepth exploration of issues and interview many people ignored by the mainstream press.
And, even though the P stands for "Public" the government funding they get is miniscule to non-existent. Their customers are not advertisors, not some mega-conglomerate owner, but their audience. If people don't value their coverage, they don't pay for it, and thus their quality is relatively high.
In his book "Why We Age" Steven Austead points out that places like the Ukraine and Central America where there was a claim for people living routienly for >100 years, invariably there were poor birth records. Invariably, those whose births are documented in those regions seem to have a life-sapn that is much shorter.
The likely cause? People inflate their ages to gain respect. He even uncovered proof of this in one of his examples.
The human body wears out at approximately ~80 years age. Based on Austeads studies of Opposums, he has developed a hypothesis that the period of female fertility is evolutionarily controlled by an organisms life expectancy in the face of predators and a hostile environment, which in turn drives the rate at which the organism "wears out"
Thus, our life expectancy is hard-wired into our genes, and is the product of the ~35 years of life that a prehistorical homo sapiens could expect to survive.
Yes, it is possible to manipulate gene expression, or even replace genes entirely with a retro-virus (despite what they said in the pseudo-scientific babble in Blade Runner). However, I expect that I will be long dead or rotted by the time the medical arts have gotten that good.
Helium is monatomic and thus has a smaller "cross-section" and thus leaks through pores more easily.
Blimps do not necesarily crash due to leaks
on
Blimps... In... Space...
·
· Score: 3, Informative
People have a misconception that if you put a hole in a blimp, that it crashes. If properly designed it will not.
It all comes down to the pressure difference between the insides and the outsides of the blimp.
Reading their promotional literature, they do not maintain much of a pressure difference between the insides of the blimp and the outsides. Thus, a hole will not really result in the helium being replaced with the heavier atmospheric gases.
Most blimps can manage a safe emergency landing if even significantly damaged.
Last but not least, I suspect that their choice of helium was more due to the dramatic reduction in safety precautions they have to take with the stuff on the ground. There are real advantages to using diatomic gases over monotomic gases (for example, they leak much more slowly through micro-pores). But the advantages do not make up for the disadvantage of the risk of explosion on the ground or at low altitudes.
SCO has made a major tactical error; they sued Novell alleging slander of title because Novell filed for the copyrights on Unix System V shortly after SCO fled for the same copyrights.
Essentially, to allege a slander of title, you have to come to the court with
1) Evidence that you won the title being slandered,
2) Evidence that the slanderer knew it,
3) and that you suffered damages as part of the slander.
The problem is that SCO not only has failed to show evidence of 1 and 2, Novell is waving the letter around where SCO asked Novell for the copyrights.
Now, if the court dismisses the suit stating that SCO's ownership of the copyrights is in doubt, their case against Autozone collapses, and Red hat can get summary judgement that Linux does not infringe on SCO's copyrights.
Meanwhile IBM's counterclaims, once litigated will leave SCO in bakrupcy and the GPL will have had its day in court (IBM is suing SCO, among other things, for distributing IBM's copyrighted code while violating the terms of the GPL by forbidding the creation of derivative works).
Free/Open Source software has been helped rather than hurt by this lawsuit; it is more famous, and its opponents are displaying themselves to be incompetent bufoons. It has educated many of us about the field of intellectual property law.
Warren Buffett refuses to invest in any company that pays a dividend. He is the most famous of a large number of serious investors who recognize the poorer return caused solely by the taxation of dividends.
The problem is not so much the rise of a megacorp, but rather the rise of inefficcient megacorps. If I invest $1,000 in company A and it produces a dividend of $50.00, I can choose to invest my profits in another company or enterprise. However, if they reinvest the $50.00 by moving into a new market, then my investment is tied up in the same company.
Large companies to enjoy economies of scale in certain industries that give them an advantage over smaller ones. On the other hand, Enron and MCI and, for that matter, GE all are or were conglomerations of widely disparate industries and bussinesses with little or no synergy.
This essentially translates into two negatives, the investor in the large company gets a poorer return on his investment because it is harder for him to target his investments on the most efficient performers in a particular market.
The larger companies tend to be less efficient at providing customers with what they, the customers, want.
The sad thing is that many people who are bothered by the existence of poverty think that the problem is one of distribution, that we need to take money away from the rich and give it to the poor.
Rather, the saner approach is to focus on wealth creation, growing the pie so to speak. As long as people are permitted to engage in entrepeunurial economic activity without onerous burdens of excessive regulation, things will work out well.
A case I like to cite is the luxury tax that was passed in the early 1990's during the presidency of Bus hthe elder. The idea was that rich people buying yachts and othe rtoys would be better able to pay taxes, and no poor person would be harmed. The yacht manufacturing industy in the U.S> effectively ceased to exist within a few months. The rich were not too inconvenienced, but alot of carpenters and shipwrights foudn themselves looking for other work...
Much of our tax code in the U.S. was designed from a perspective of social activism, to act as a wealth redistribution system. In the end, it does far more harm than good.
ACtually, the rise of the megacorps is due to the insane way we tax investments in the U.S.
Read Milton Friedman's analysis for the details, but essentially since investors are taxed more heavily for investing in companies that pay dividends than for investing in companies that plow their profits into expansion, naturally the investors invest in companies that keep reinvesting their income in favor of growth. This is why Enron and MCI were so popular, they kept growin dramatically by acquiring companies left and right.
The best way to end this troubling trend is to dramatically reduce the taxation of dividends like was done by Bush the younger ( I didn't vote for him, don't like his policies much, but occasionally he does something sensible).
Of course most people who oppose the dominance of huge corporations seem to oppose the very steps required to gently bring about the end to their dominance...
Since when has the draft stopped a war? The only thing the draft ensures is that politically unconnected people are forced to fight and die for causes supported for the politically connected, while their kids get cushy jobs in the Air National Guard, where no one cares if they show up or not.
The draft is slavery. I am a veteran, and I proudly volunteered. But if they were to show up claiming they had a right to my life and time - I'd go to jail first.
I fund the stuff I want, you fund the stuff you want, and everyone is better off.:-)
Personally, I think establishing extraterrestrial colonies is a fine idea, and would be very happy to support a scheme towards that end.
I just don't think I, or anyone else for that matter, should force you to fund stuff you don't approve of, or vica-versa.
Simmilarly, I do not believe that people who do things I don't approve of are unproductive. Britney Spears is apparently quite productive;-). My attitude is that using government funding to provide "jobs" that there is no demand for is a losing game. The people funding the "jobs" are not getting what they want (otherwise the government wouldn't be required to intervene) and the people being employed are really wasting their talents.
Thus the aerospace engineer working on designing the a lightweight mating collar for a docking station could instead be working on buildign a personal aircar, or becoming a doctor, or architect, a dancer/singer/model or something where he is creating wealth by providing a service in demand.
The current system does nto create wealth. It just leaves all of us, on the average poorer.
It is widely known, but little commented on, that the manned space program being conducted by the U.S. and Russia is a collosal waste of money that is producing little in the way of meaningful scientific or technological research. Rather the I.S.S. is primarily justified within the policy making organs of the U.S. government as a means to keep experienced Russian engineers employed and thus minimize the risk of them being employed by a nation with a desire for interconinental balistic missile technology and who are reckless enough to use it.
Basically, the manned space program in the U.S. and the USSR has become a giant welfare project for aerospace engineers.
While in the short term this is a cheap way to slow the inevitable acquisition of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems by increasinlg underdeveloped and recklessly led nation states, in the long run it is a losing game:
First, because the spread of technology is inevitable, and secondly because the field of aerospace engineering is distorted, with many more engineers seeking training in schools than there is a true economic demand for. These people are not only diverted from turning their talents to more productive areas, but later in life will lobby to keep the pork coming.
President Bush's proposals are an even bigger waste. I wouldn't mind if they were to be funded by voluntary donations, but the thought that people will be taxed to fund this boondogle when they already have to work so hard to make ends meet irritates me. I would like to see government getting out of the fields of scientific research & space travel. Let us keep our tax dollars and spend it on the charities that we want to fund. Let us pick our priorities. I think the results would be quite surprising to people who think that government support is required for these projects.
I stand corrected. You are right that the BPI are immorally restraining trade, and that any laws that would allow them to do this would be unjust.
I still disagree with you concerning the morality of dowloading a song without reimbursing the copyright holder. Guess we'll have to agree to disagree...
2) Demanding too high a price for something you want = cheating you.
3) Therefore it's OK to take/copy the ware.
Umm, that's an interesting bit of ratioanlization.
Nobody owes you a song or a written work. You may want it, but the copyright holder is not obligated to make it available to you, just as you may want my car, but I am not obligated to sell it to you.
You say it is unethical to tolerate unjust laws, but how are copyright laws unjust ?!?
Certainly as Eldred proved in Eldred vs. Ashcroft the U.S. copyright law in its later incarnation does not promote the creation of new works as well as the law it replaced, so I would not argue that it is an optimal law, but unjust?
Nobody is stealing anything from you. There is no leveling of the playing field required. They want more money than you are willing to pay. Fine, don't buy the damn thing.
It seems to me that you want your music cheaply, just as I do. However, your arguments that you are being cheated are absolutley specious. They are no more cheating you than Microsoft is cheating me when they demand $500 (or whatever it is, I don't care) for a copy of MS Office. I don't pirate it, I use an alternative or do without.
It's the right thing to do, and believe me, it hasn't been that hard or painful, even in the days before Open Office.
If I understand you correctly, you are arguing that you are not hurting anyone by downloading the copyrighted material without paying for it, because you would not under any circumstances pay for it.
I understand that a copyrighted item, particularly one stored in electronic form, is not a physical item like, for example, an automobile; if you download it, the original copy remains and the author is no poorer than before.
However, this argument is not only legally wrong, but morally wrong. The author, or those whom he or she sold the rights to, is making this work available on the condition that they will be reimbursed according to the terms they set out. You do not have a right to their work. They do not owe you a copy. If it is overpriced, you don't buy it, and they lose out on a potential sale. Not only is it illegal, but under any moral system respects property rights, no matter how minimally, it is absolutely immoral.
This concept of making works available for reimbursement is the central concept behind the GPL by the way - it need not be monetary.
You are correct in your comment that it is up to the individual to decide wether they should break the law or not. However, I have a perfect right to try to persuade them to do the right thing and I will exercise it.:-)
The people you are railing against, by definition are not "free-market ideologues."
No, they are people who demand regulations that are most fovrouble to them in the short term, and allow them to "earn" money hand over fist without having to exert themselves or be efficient.
This is not and indictment of believers in allowing market forces to set prices for goods and labor, but rather an example of how counterproductive the distortion of markets can be.
I don't like the R.I.A.A. or analogous organizations outside the U.S., and as a free-market ideologue:-), I fight them by not buying their overpriced wares. I highly urge everyone to do the same. If it costs too much, don't buy it! But please, if you are unwilling to pay for it, don't download it and enjoy it without the copyright owners consent. Fair is fair.:-)
1) It's his money, and he can spend it on what he wants.
2) Where do you think the innovative treatments are tried first? That's right, on household pets! Most treatments are developed and refined first on animals before being tried on human beings. So by treating his cat for cancer, there's a good chance he is helping improve the medical arts!
I read your recent article on "the dark side of Free Software" with considerable amusement. The authors of software that is available under the Gnu Public License allow us to use their copyrighted work with one proviso. If we make a derivative work based on their work, we too must release it under the GPL.
No one is forced to use products containing Linux as the basis for their software. If one is concerned that releasing a product will allow "anyone to make cheap knockoffs" one is free to write their own software and keep it close to their chest.
I find it rather ironic that the author implies that the developers of open source software are communists with no respect for private property, when in fact he seems outraged that Cisco cannot take someone else's work and use it in violation of their license much the way the Marxists advocate siezing people's private property by force for the good of the state.
Slashdot Mirror
He claims that you have a right to use your property, including your vocal cords as you see fit. Since you, and no one else, owns your speech organs, or your hands, you are free to say or write whatever you want.
You call that elitist? You think that's a bad thing? What do you support?
Forcing people to say things they don't agree with? Forcing them to write things they would prefer not to write? Mandatory loyalty oaths?
No, Stephen Kinsella is not a follower of Ayn Rand. In fact, I think he gets a great deal of pleasure out of mocking them:
http://blog.mises.org/archives/004065.asp
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/010779.html
A government employee is shielded from liability for damages caused by their official actions.
So if you sue them, you will help pay for their defense (their lawyers are paid for with tax money) and if you win, you will pay part of the judgment as it is paid with tax money.
So, it costs them absolutely nothing, and they even will use some of your money to pay for their propaganda to the effect that thanks to the greedy telecom company refusing to pay its fair share, the people will face higher taxes and reduced services.
Bottom line: governments are protectionist rackets par excellance. There is little that one can do to threaten them.
I don't think the dolphins are equipped with their arms while living in the holding tanks. Such weapons, if they still exist, would be typically strapped on at the beginning of a patrol.
I smell some fear-mongering here
Of all the so called "third parties", the libertarian party has the most elected officials.
They aren't stupid, they're for the most part being ignored, and fighting an uphill battle to get on ballots in the face of deliberate collusions by the Republican and Democratic parties to keep them off.
The democrats were the second political party to be formed by those disagreeing with the first political party, Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Party. The democrats first called themselves the AnitFederalist party, then changed their name to the Democratic-Republicans.
The liberarian party has far more in common with the Anti-Federalist party than the current Democratic party. I think Thomas Jefferson would be horrified to see what has been done by the party he helped found.
they can cast it for whatever reason they want.
Thus, if people want to be so moronic as to make their choice based on Michael Moore's filmaking that is their right, and it should not be tramelled.
In the end the voters get what they deserve.
No, but a parent has much more control over the curriculum of hs or her child at a private school than a public school.
So, if you don't like the agenda of one school, you try another.
We spend more per pupil on education today and get worse results than when univeral compulsory education was finally, fully instituted accross the U.S, mainly because the curriculum is centrally controlled, and being subject to state control, and is inflecible when confronted with evidence that it is failing or that better methods are available.
In first grade I had a serious hiking accident and was bedridden for four months. It was the best thing that could have happened to me; I learned more at home than I would have at school, and I continued to learn more outside of school than in school while I was in the Massachusetts Public School System
Einstein once said something along the following lines:
Testing theories is a very thankless task, because nature never says "yes." Usually nature says "no," meaning that a measurement contradicts a theories predictions.
Sometimes, nature says, "maybe," indicating that while the measurements are consistent with the theory.
But nature never says "yes," because your theory could be incomplete or erroneous but your instruments are either too inaccurate to detect the error, or you are not doing the right experiment.
Newtonian dynamics makes good enough predictions for alot of phenomena.
General Relativity is more precise in its predictions.
Given our difficulties in unifying it with quantum mechanics, it is likely that we don't have the right theory. As our instruments get more precise and we conduct more experiments, eentually we'll get a hint as to where we are going wrong.
It's called PBS.
There are quite a variety of PBS shows out there that are pretty authoratative.
Yes, at times their vaguely socialist emotional bias pops up pretty heavily, but they actually do indepth exploration of issues and interview many people ignored by the mainstream press.
And, even though the P stands for "Public" the government funding they get is miniscule to non-existent. Their customers are not advertisors, not some mega-conglomerate owner, but their audience. If people don't value their coverage, they don't pay for it, and thus their quality is relatively high.
In his book "Why We Age" Steven Austead points out that places like the Ukraine and Central America where there was a claim for people living routienly for >100 years, invariably there were poor birth records. Invariably, those whose births are documented in those regions seem to have a life-sapn that is much shorter.
The likely cause? People inflate their ages to gain respect. He even uncovered proof of this in one of his examples.
The human body wears out at approximately ~80 years age. Based on Austeads studies of Opposums, he has developed a hypothesis that the period of female fertility is evolutionarily controlled by an organisms life expectancy in the face of predators and a hostile environment, which in turn drives the rate at which the organism "wears out"
Thus, our life expectancy is hard-wired into our genes, and is the product of the ~35 years of life that a prehistorical homo sapiens could expect to survive.
Yes, it is possible to manipulate gene expression, or even replace genes entirely with a retro-virus (despite what they said in the pseudo-scientific babble in Blade Runner). However, I expect that I will be long dead or rotted by the time the medical arts have gotten that good.
Yes, sorry I should have been more explicit.
Hydrogen is diatomic.
Helium is monatomic and thus has a smaller "cross-section" and thus leaks through pores more easily.
People have a misconception that if you put a hole in a blimp, that it crashes. If properly designed it will not.
It all comes down to the pressure difference between the insides and the outsides of the blimp.
Reading their promotional literature, they do not maintain much of a pressure difference between the insides of the blimp and the outsides. Thus, a hole will not really result in the helium being replaced with the heavier atmospheric gases.
Most blimps can manage a safe emergency landing if even significantly damaged.
Last but not least, I suspect that their choice of helium was more due to the dramatic reduction in safety precautions they have to take with the stuff on the ground. There are real advantages to using diatomic gases over monotomic gases (for example, they leak much more slowly through micro-pores). But the advantages do not make up for the disadvantage of the risk of explosion on the ground or at low altitudes.
SCO has made a major tactical error; they sued Novell alleging slander of title because Novell filed for the copyrights on Unix System V shortly after SCO fled for the same copyrights.
Essentially, to allege a slander of title, you have to come to the court with
1) Evidence that you won the title being slandered,
2) Evidence that the slanderer knew it,
3) and that you suffered damages as part of the slander.
The problem is that SCO not only has failed to show evidence of 1 and 2, Novell is waving the letter around where SCO asked Novell for the copyrights.
Now, if the court dismisses the suit stating that SCO's ownership of the copyrights is in doubt, their case against Autozone collapses, and Red hat can get summary judgement that Linux does not infringe on SCO's copyrights.
Meanwhile IBM's counterclaims, once litigated will leave SCO in bakrupcy and the GPL will have had its day in court (IBM is suing SCO, among other things, for distributing IBM's copyrighted code while violating the terms of the GPL by forbidding the creation of derivative works).
Free/Open Source software has been helped rather than hurt by this lawsuit; it is more famous, and its opponents are displaying themselves to be incompetent bufoons. It has educated many of us about the field of intellectual property law.
Warren Buffett refuses to invest in any company that pays a dividend. He is the most famous of a large number of serious investors who recognize the poorer return caused solely by the taxation of dividends.
The problem is not so much the rise of a megacorp, but rather the rise of inefficcient megacorps. If I invest $1,000 in company A and it produces a dividend of $50.00, I can choose to invest my profits in another company or enterprise. However, if they reinvest the $50.00 by moving into a new market, then my investment is tied up in the same company.
Large companies to enjoy economies of scale in certain industries that give them an advantage over smaller ones. On the other hand, Enron and MCI and, for that matter, GE all are or were conglomerations of widely disparate industries and bussinesses with little or no synergy.
This essentially translates into two negatives, the investor in the large company gets a poorer return on his investment because it is harder for him to target his investments on the most efficient performers in a particular market.
The larger companies tend to be less efficient at providing customers with what they, the customers, want.
The sad thing is that many people who are bothered by the existence of poverty think that the problem is one of distribution, that we need to take money away from the rich and give it to the poor.
Rather, the saner approach is to focus on wealth creation, growing the pie so to speak. As long as people are permitted to engage in entrepeunurial economic activity without onerous burdens of excessive regulation, things will work out well.
A case I like to cite is the luxury tax that was passed in the early 1990's during the presidency of Bus hthe elder. The idea was that rich people buying yachts and othe rtoys would be better able to pay taxes, and no poor person would be harmed. The yacht manufacturing industy in the U.S> effectively ceased to exist within a few months. The rich were not too inconvenienced, but alot of carpenters and shipwrights foudn themselves looking for other work...
Much of our tax code in the U.S. was designed from a perspective of social activism, to act as a wealth redistribution system. In the end, it does far more harm than good.
ACtually, the rise of the megacorps is due to the insane way we tax investments in the U.S.
Read Milton Friedman's analysis for the details, but essentially since investors are taxed more heavily for investing in companies that pay dividends than for investing in companies that plow their profits into expansion, naturally the investors invest in companies that keep reinvesting their income in favor of growth. This is why Enron and MCI were so popular, they kept growin dramatically by acquiring companies left and right.
The best way to end this troubling trend is to dramatically reduce the taxation of dividends like was done by Bush the younger ( I didn't vote for him, don't like his policies much, but occasionally he does something sensible).
Of course most people who oppose the dominance of huge corporations seem to oppose the very steps required to gently bring about the end to their dominance...
Since when has the draft stopped a war? The only thing the draft ensures is that politically unconnected people are forced to fight and die for causes supported for the politically connected, while their kids get cushy jobs in the Air National Guard, where no one cares if they show up or not.
The draft is slavery. I am a veteran, and I proudly volunteered. But if they were to show up claiming they had a right to my life and time - I'd go to jail first.
No, I think you missed the point:
:-)
;-). My attitude is that using government funding to provide "jobs" that there is no demand for is a losing game. The people funding the "jobs" are not getting what they want (otherwise the government wouldn't be required to intervene) and the people being employed are really wasting their talents.
I fund the stuff I want, you fund the stuff you want, and everyone is better off.
Personally, I think establishing extraterrestrial colonies is a fine idea, and would be very happy to support a scheme towards that end.
I just don't think I, or anyone else for that matter, should force you to fund stuff you don't approve of, or vica-versa.
Simmilarly, I do not believe that people who do things I don't approve of are unproductive. Britney Spears is apparently quite productive
Thus the aerospace engineer working on designing the a lightweight mating collar for a docking station could instead be working on buildign a personal aircar, or becoming a doctor, or architect, a dancer/singer/model or something where he is creating wealth by providing a service in demand.
The current system does nto create wealth. It just leaves all of us, on the average poorer.
It is widely known, but little commented on, that the manned space program being conducted by the U.S. and Russia is a collosal waste of money that is producing little in the way of meaningful scientific or technological research. Rather the I.S.S. is primarily justified within the policy making organs of the U.S. government as a means to keep experienced Russian engineers employed and thus minimize the risk of them being employed by a nation with a desire for interconinental balistic missile technology and who are reckless enough to use it.
Basically, the manned space program in the U.S. and the USSR has become a giant welfare project for aerospace engineers.
While in the short term this is a cheap way to slow the inevitable acquisition of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems by increasinlg underdeveloped and recklessly led nation states, in the long run it is a losing game:
First, because the spread of technology is inevitable, and secondly because the field of aerospace engineering is distorted, with many more engineers seeking training in schools than there is a true economic demand for. These people are not only diverted from turning their talents to more productive areas, but later in life will lobby to keep the pork coming.
President Bush's proposals are an even bigger waste. I wouldn't mind if they were to be funded by voluntary donations, but the thought that people will be taxed to fund this boondogle when they already have to work so hard to make ends meet irritates me. I would like to see government getting out of the fields of scientific research & space travel. Let us keep our tax dollars and spend it on the charities that we want to fund. Let us pick our priorities. I think the results would be quite surprising to people who think that government support is required for these projects.
I stand corrected. You are right that the BPI are immorally restraining trade, and that any laws that would allow them to do this would be unjust.
I still disagree with you concerning the morality of dowloading a song without reimbursing the copyright holder. Guess we'll have to agree to disagree...
If I understand you correctly:
1) If someone cheats you, it's OK to cheat back.
2) Demanding too high a price for something you want = cheating you.
3) Therefore it's OK to take/copy the ware.
Umm, that's an interesting bit of ratioanlization.
Nobody owes you a song or a written work. You may want it, but the copyright holder is not obligated to make it available to you, just as you may want my car, but I am not obligated to sell it to you.
You say it is unethical to tolerate unjust laws, but how are copyright laws unjust ?!?
Certainly as Eldred proved in Eldred vs. Ashcroft the U.S. copyright law in its later incarnation does not promote the creation of new works as well as the law it replaced, so I would not argue that it is an optimal law, but unjust?
Nobody is stealing anything from you. There is no leveling of the playing field required. They want more money than you are willing to pay. Fine, don't buy the damn thing.
It seems to me that you want your music cheaply, just as I do. However, your arguments that you are being cheated are absolutley specious. They are no more cheating you than Microsoft is cheating me when they demand $500 (or whatever it is, I don't care) for a copy of MS Office. I don't pirate it, I use an alternative or do without.
It's the right thing to do, and believe me, it hasn't been that hard or painful, even in the days before Open Office.
If I understand you correctly, you are arguing that you are not hurting anyone by downloading the copyrighted material without paying for it, because you would not under any circumstances pay for it.
:-)
I understand that a copyrighted item, particularly one stored in electronic form, is not a physical item like, for example, an automobile; if you download it, the original copy remains and the author is no poorer than before.
However, this argument is not only legally wrong, but morally wrong. The author, or those whom he or she sold the rights to, is making this work available on the condition that they will be reimbursed according to the terms they set out. You do not have a right to their work. They do not owe you a copy. If it is overpriced, you don't buy it, and they lose out on a potential sale. Not only is it illegal, but under any moral system respects property rights, no matter how minimally, it is absolutely immoral.
This concept of making works available for reimbursement is the central concept behind the GPL by the way - it need not be monetary.
You are correct in your comment that it is up to the individual to decide wether they should break the law or not. However, I have a perfect right to try to persuade them to do the right thing and I will exercise it.
The people you are railing against, by definition are not "free-market ideologues."
:-), I fight them by not buying their overpriced wares. I highly urge everyone to do the same. If it costs too much, don't buy it! But please, if you are unwilling to pay for it, don't download it and enjoy it without the copyright owners consent. Fair is fair. :-)
No, they are people who demand regulations that are most fovrouble to them in the short term, and allow them to "earn" money hand over fist without having to exert themselves or be efficient.
This is not and indictment of believers in allowing market forces to set prices for goods and labor, but rather an example of how counterproductive the distortion of markets can be.
I don't like the R.I.A.A. or analogous organizations outside the U.S., and as a free-market ideologue
Two things:
1) It's his money, and he can spend it on what he wants.
2) Where do you think the innovative treatments are tried first? That's right, on household pets! Most treatments are developed and refined first on animals before being tried on human beings. So by treating his cat for cancer, there's a good chance he is helping improve the medical arts!
I read your recent article on "the dark side of Free Software" with considerable amusement. The authors of software that is available under the Gnu Public License allow us to use their copyrighted work with one proviso. If we make a derivative work based on their work, we too must release it under the GPL.
No one is forced to use products containing Linux as the basis for their software. If one is concerned that releasing a product will allow "anyone to make cheap knockoffs" one is free to write their own software and keep it close to their chest.
I find it rather ironic that the author implies that the developers of open source software are communists with no respect for private property, when in fact he seems outraged that Cisco cannot take someone else's work and use it in violation of their license much the way the Marxists advocate siezing people's private property by force for the good of the state.