The definition of winning & losing a war isn't cut & dry. The Korean War was never "won," there is just an amistice in place. The Vietnam war was not "lost," given the US withdrew under the Paris Peace Accords. The Iraq war could have been considered "won" as soon as Saddam was removed from power, but most people thought the US was "losing." In the War of 1812 the US was essentially the Black Knight from Monty Python & the Holy Grail. No arms, no legs... but the fight was officially a draw.
You would destroy the whole idea of "works for hire." Most creative works are not the result of one person; it takes a large number of people, if each retained the copyright for their portion you would create a bigger legal mess. People should be allow to sign away their copyright. It's a fair exchange where they get a firm return and not deal with the risk if their product is a commercial failure. The **AA doesn't go to the artist and ask for millions of dollars if their song/movie bombs.
I would like to see a good study on this as well. At least on the surface if you look at employment, a greater percentage of the population is involved in "creative" tasks compared to the past. Historically people were involved in purely labor intensive tasks (eg farming, construction); automation and mass production have rendered these types of tasks obsolete.
Many people seem to be unaware of the fact that games, music, films, etc. are all part of popular culture -- a talking point amongst friends, a common thing to bond around, etc. There's a (certainly ignorable, but nonetheless real) need to buy these things at the same time as everyone else, if you want to share the experience.
And yes, this is part of why information should be free to all, if it can be copied at no cost.
Interesting, I never thought of "fitting in" as a fundamental human right. By saying that information needs to be free for cultural unity, you promote a society of mediocrity. People won't invest in making something better, or different, because there's no way to make that investment back. Instead of companies innovating to make products to compete, they'll just cheaply copy the designs of the market leader. Look at the crappy television monoculture, with execs making copy cats of any hit show. Now think how much worse it would be if instead of just copying ideas, they could just rebroadcast the same exact show at no cost. American Idol on every single station so that you won't need to feel left out. While intellectual property laws lock down access, they also promote innovative alternatives. When it's too expensive to compete for mainstream customers, you get alternatives created to capture parts of the market that are ignored.
How does the similarity of 'netbook' to the generic 'notebook' enter into this?
Wouldn't it fall in the same category as 'iBook', 'PowerBook', or 'MacBook'. Back when first registered it would have been a unique moniker while still associated with the notebook style form factor.
How do you figure the massive destruction of war "helped" them do anything? Seems to me they had to waste a lot of resources just to get back to where they started in the first place.
Because it's not about physical resources, it's about people, knowledge, economic, and social structure. The first three existed prior to WWII. After the war, the US imposed a change in leadership, and social structures of Korea and Japan were transformed to better match the those of the west. The opening of China's market and industrialization is the first step, but as has been demonstrated before, the social structures that promote worker rights won't change quickly without war.
The people who would be working in electronics manufacturing if those jobs remained, are doing something else right now. They are programmers, designing ipods, cell phone techs, etc. If the industry staged a comeback in the US it would have to attract those people away from their current jobs. The same "race to the bottom" argument has been made for over a hundred years against globalization and automation. But history has shown that standards of living have increased, not decreased.
The difference is that our workers had enough freedom to protest, unionise and vote, and that was our way out.
The government "by the people, for the people" didn't facilitate such change as easily as you think. For decades government blocked unionization and labor protests. It was also responsible for hundreds of deaths during the struggle for the labor movement to get recognized.
I'm crossing my fingers for a post scarcity society
Will not happen because people aren't programmed that way. We will always find something that is scarce and compete for it. Virtual worlds are a good example, even when there is no physical scarcity, time, knowledge, and imagination have been demonstrated to be scarce tradable resources.
Then we get to the stage where people start asserting themselves and improve conditions for themselves and colleagues through effort, and then someone will say 'I'll do that for a dollar instead of two dollars' And then the whole cycle starts again... Recession every twenty(ish) years
You make the mistake of assuming the amount of work is fixed. When things come full circle, often there are other opportunities for workers. Cheap electronics made elsewhere opened up a huge number of jobs in programming and services. If electronic manufacturing came back to the US it would be competing with those other job opportunities. Companies have to compete for labor, just as workers compete for jobs.
What's more important, someone's working conditions, or access to cheap electronics?
The latter can solve the problem of the former. Social and economic structures don't change dramatically overnight without war. Incremental progress, which is being seen in China, is the best you can hope for without millions of people dying.
I'm not sure how big that chance is, as long as union protest run the risk of being overrun with tanks. Let's face it, one of the reasons we've got it better is because workers have the right to vote and the freedom to unionize.
Throughout the Industrial Revolution unionization in the US was repressed (sometimes violently) by those in power. Police and National Guard troops were called in on several occasions to break unions.
Just because people have rights, doesn't mean that corrupt officials will recognize them.
R&D takes a while to turn into a product. We're talking 10 years or more. Consider lasers as an example. How long from the invention until they were making real money? 20-30 years.
Yes, but who was making the real money 20-30 years later? If it wasn't the people who paid the R&D capital, or if that capital could have turned a greater profit elsewhere it would be an investment failure.
At such time as "angry shareholders" produce their own useful technology, I'll listen.
It isn't about producing "technology," it's about getting a return on investment. Even if Microsoft is creating amazing advances with all it's spending on R&D, it's clearly not capitalizing on it to create marketable products (like Bell Labs, Google, etc). So from an investor standpoint the money is being wasted.
When one poor, desperate country starts to get wealthy, corporations will simply move to the next one, and let the first slip back into poverty.
You're making the mistake of thinking it's a zero-sum. The first country may not necessarily slip back into poverty, in fact if you look at the US and Europe, they've actually improved by utilizing cheap foreign made products to grow their internal economies.
You make spreading out risk sound like a benefit. Maybe if risk wasn't spread out to the point where billions could be lost in poor decisions by a few people -- because those few people would be the only ones harmed by it, we wouldn't see it as much.
Without spreading out risk we wouldn't see the hundreds of trillions in industrial growth as well as enabling wealth generation by a greater portion of the population. The billions lost through mismanagment would have been lost no matter if the companies were privately or publicly owned. On the bright side, the people who properly balanced their investments (rather than put everything into a single company as you would want), didn't lose everything.
if someone truly fracked up (like the induhviduals responsible for those companies) they alone should bear the burden or at the very least removed from consideration in any future business decisions where significant amounts of money is involved by rule of law.
There are laws in place to try to stop fraud and other illegal activities; you, can't put people in jail or seize their assets for bad decisions made in good faith. Businesses grow and collapse, sometimes its through internal mismanagement, sometimes it's because the world changes. Do you think the oil companies who were making so much when oil prices were sky high are keeping their shareholders happy with the collapse in oil prices? And unlike privately owned businesses, corporations allow the shareholders to remove those who are mismanaging the company.
Economic problems predate the creation of corporations, what has happened recently is a reflection of standard business practices for thousands of years, not some new form of impovershment created by the ability to enable liability free ownership of businesses.
Again you confuse opportunity with operations. All those companies and industries likely would not have been started without the lowered individual capital risk associated the corporate structure. In fact the entire intent of a corporation, was to start businesses where the risk to the individual is high, but capital can be raised by spreading out the risk. As for your examples poor operations with corruption, stealing from partners, exist in any business structure, corporate or not. Furthermore, the ability for individual investors to own small pieces as shareholders rather than putting all their wealth into a single business venture, means that such huge industry failures doesn't completely bankrupt the many.
Corporations are what take from some people to give to others, as a social construct. And this is why they're evil, not because a corporation steals (it cannot do such a thing because it's an intangible), but because a corporation as a social construct enables a few to steal and profit from the work of the many.
They create opportunities by preventing the many from bankrupting themselves through failure. Corporations are merely a means to reduce risk - attaching the idea of good or evil is really just passing along the blame of basic human nature to a structure rather than the individuals. It's like saying computer clubs are evil.
Our rights derive from our humanity. They are inalienable in who we are, and exist because we exist. Whether or not you believe in a creator, or Nature, it matters not... our rights still exist either way. Some people believe they were given to us by God, others believe they are the result of Nature.
Rights do not come from magical beings or some vague concept, they come from people. If you put together a list of "fundamental" rights, I'm sure if the person next to you when asked the same question would have a different list. The rights we have come from the list we put together and all agree to through force and compromise; and as such is subject to change.
Which? Rights are derived from social agreement, not from some magical being or mystical higher purpose. We have rights because you and I agree we have them... debate and war are tools in helping establish such an agreement.
Slashdot Mirror
Not after you get married, the wife takes over that job
The definition of winning & losing a war isn't cut & dry.
The Korean War was never "won," there is just an amistice in place. The Vietnam war was not "lost," given the US withdrew under the Paris Peace Accords. The Iraq war could have been considered "won" as soon as Saddam was removed from power, but most people thought the US was "losing."
In the War of 1812 the US was essentially the Black Knight from Monty Python & the Holy Grail. No arms, no legs... but the fight was officially a draw.
You would destroy the whole idea of "works for hire."
Most creative works are not the result of one person; it takes a large number of people, if each retained the copyright for their portion you would create a bigger legal mess.
People should be allow to sign away their copyright. It's a fair exchange where they get a firm return and not deal with the risk if their product is a commercial failure. The **AA doesn't go to the artist and ask for millions of dollars if their song/movie bombs.
I would like to see a good study on this as well.
At least on the surface if you look at employment, a greater percentage of the population is involved in "creative" tasks compared to the past. Historically people were involved in purely labor intensive tasks (eg farming, construction); automation and mass production have rendered these types of tasks obsolete.
Interesting, I never thought of "fitting in" as a fundamental human right.
By saying that information needs to be free for cultural unity, you promote a society of mediocrity. People won't invest in making something better, or different, because there's no way to make that investment back. Instead of companies innovating to make products to compete, they'll just cheaply copy the designs of the market leader.
Look at the crappy television monoculture, with execs making copy cats of any hit show. Now think how much worse it would be if instead of just copying ideas, they could just rebroadcast the same exact show at no cost. American Idol on every single station so that you won't need to feel left out.
While intellectual property laws lock down access, they also promote innovative alternatives. When it's too expensive to compete for mainstream customers, you get alternatives created to capture parts of the market that are ignored.
Wouldn't it fall in the same category as 'iBook', 'PowerBook', or 'MacBook'. Back when first registered it would have been a unique moniker while still associated with the notebook style form factor.
Yeah, replacing an existing government is really easy; just look at Iraq
Because it's not about physical resources, it's about people, knowledge, economic, and social structure.
The first three existed prior to WWII. After the war, the US imposed a change in leadership, and social structures of Korea and Japan were transformed to better match the those of the west.
The opening of China's market and industrialization is the first step, but as has been demonstrated before, the social structures that promote worker rights won't change quickly without war.
The people who would be working in electronics manufacturing if those jobs remained, are doing something else right now. They are programmers, designing ipods, cell phone techs, etc. If the industry staged a comeback in the US it would have to attract those people away from their current jobs.
The same "race to the bottom" argument has been made for over a hundred years against globalization and automation. But history has shown that standards of living have increased, not decreased.
The government "by the people, for the people" didn't facilitate such change as easily as you think.
For decades government blocked unionization and labor protests. It was also responsible for hundreds of deaths during the struggle for the labor movement to get recognized.
Define "exploited."
Would this mean EA products made in the US wouldn't qualify? Heck, compared to Europe all workers in the US are exploited.
Will not happen because people aren't programmed that way. We will always find something that is scarce and compete for it.
Virtual worlds are a good example, even when there is no physical scarcity, time, knowledge, and imagination have been demonstrated to be scarce tradable resources.
You make the mistake of assuming the amount of work is fixed. When things come full circle, often there are other opportunities for workers.
Cheap electronics made elsewhere opened up a huge number of jobs in programming and services. If electronic manufacturing came back to the US it would be competing with those other job opportunities.
Companies have to compete for labor, just as workers compete for jobs.
The latter can solve the problem of the former.
Social and economic structures don't change dramatically overnight without war. Incremental progress, which is being seen in China, is the best you can hope for without millions of people dying.
Throughout the Industrial Revolution unionization in the US was repressed (sometimes violently) by those in power. Police and National Guard troops were called in on several occasions to break unions.
Just because people have rights, doesn't mean that corrupt officials will recognize them.
Yes, but who was making the real money 20-30 years later?
If it wasn't the people who paid the R&D capital, or if that capital could have turned a greater profit elsewhere it would be an investment failure.
It isn't about producing "technology," it's about getting a return on investment. Even if Microsoft is creating amazing advances with all it's spending on R&D, it's clearly not capitalizing on it to create marketable products (like Bell Labs, Google, etc). So from an investor standpoint the money is being wasted.
You're making the mistake of thinking it's a zero-sum. The first country may not necessarily slip back into poverty, in fact if you look at the US and Europe, they've actually improved by utilizing cheap foreign made products to grow their internal economies.
Without spreading out risk we wouldn't see the hundreds of trillions in industrial growth as well as enabling wealth generation by a greater portion of the population.
The billions lost through mismanagment would have been lost no matter if the companies were privately or publicly owned. On the bright side, the people who properly balanced their investments (rather than put everything into a single company as you would want), didn't lose everything.
There are laws in place to try to stop fraud and other illegal activities; you, can't put people in jail or seize their assets for bad decisions made in good faith. Businesses grow and collapse, sometimes its through internal mismanagement, sometimes it's because the world changes. Do you think the oil companies who were making so much when oil prices were sky high are keeping their shareholders happy with the collapse in oil prices? And unlike privately owned businesses, corporations allow the shareholders to remove those who are mismanaging the company.
Economic problems predate the creation of corporations, what has happened recently is a reflection of standard business practices for thousands of years, not some new form of impovershment created by the ability to enable liability free ownership of businesses.
What makes you think it's broken? Just because the results aren't exactly what you like, doesn't mean that the system is horribly broken.
Again you confuse opportunity with operations.
All those companies and industries likely would not have been started without the lowered individual capital risk associated the corporate structure. In fact the entire intent of a corporation, was to start businesses where the risk to the individual is high, but capital can be raised by spreading out the risk.
As for your examples poor operations with corruption, stealing from partners, exist in any business structure, corporate or not. Furthermore, the ability for individual investors to own small pieces as shareholders rather than putting all their wealth into a single business venture, means that such huge industry failures doesn't completely bankrupt the many.
They create opportunities by preventing the many from bankrupting themselves through failure.
Corporations are merely a means to reduce risk - attaching the idea of good or evil is really just passing along the blame of basic human nature to a structure rather than the individuals. It's like saying computer clubs are evil.
Rights do not come from magical beings or some vague concept, they come from people.
If you put together a list of "fundamental" rights, I'm sure if the person next to you when asked the same question would have a different list. The rights we have come from the list we put together and all agree to through force and compromise; and as such is subject to change.
Which? Rights are derived from social agreement, not from some magical being or mystical higher purpose. We have rights because you and I agree we have them... debate and war are tools in helping establish such an agreement.
Only if you believe that they were endowed by the "creator"