You are basing your entire argument on the false premise that the millions of people who rip off movies and music would never otherwise pay for their entertainment if they didn't have a convenient way to rip it off. You know this is false, and yet you're pretending it's not while building a philosophical house of cards on top of it. Get over that junior high school debate class weakness (along with your absurdly bad analogies, like road use), and then you can try again.
No, it's not. It's a ridiculous way to express things like that, and it's actually misleading. To say that something is ten times less massive means that you consider the thing to which it's being compared to already be not very massive (compared to what?). That leaves a bunch of implications dangling open and unanswered. Saying it's "a tenth the size" is far more appropriate, and doesn't imply anything about the larger item to which you're comparing it. If you mean to say that the ten-times-larger thing isn't very big either, then be specific.
It's not that we don't get that the smaller thing is a tenth the size. It's that nobody can infer anything useful from the suggestion that the original is already small. Is it? When you say "A is ten times smaller than B," what you're really saying is "B is small, and A is even smaller." What is the meaning of B's smallness in this context? Why add extra, distracting words that convey nothing but which imply meaning at which you can only guess?
No, the GP isn't the only one who doesn't like this, and anyone with an interest in useful communication should feel the same way.
Be specific. Was the web site you mention only selling music with legit licenses from the people who created the music? Were they advertising "bling" or other logo-ware (apparel, jewelry, etc) along side of being a legit music retailer? Were all of those goods legit? I'm betting not, and hence the inclusion in that sweep. Can't tell, since you're not being specific.
"Smuggling" in the broad sense of sneaking fake goods across the border. By definition, they're lying about what they're shipping, what it's worth, and about its provenance. A lot of what's sold in the way of, say, fake designer goods made in China, enters the country as container loads labeled as completely different (of course!) stuff. That's smuggling.
People who smuggle in and fraudulently sell counterfeit goods are exactly their area of authority. It's true if the scammers sell the goods out the back of a van, and it's true if they sell them using an ad in the back of a magazine, and it's true if they use a web site. Siezing the web site isn't any different than siezing the warehouse where they stack up the counterfeit goods.
The child porn stuff is also their turf if those "services" are being sold from over the border. And of course, most of those operations are based overseas, taking credit cards from domestic (US) customers. If the sites are registered within reach of US law enforcement, those registrations are fair game, just like the warehouse full of fake Nike products.
If a person believes the concept of copyright to be incoherent or immoral, how is the action of file sharing inconsistent with such belief?
No, the question is: why would you want to consume (or how could possibly enjoy) the work of artists that you consider to be immoral? For example, I generally will not purchase art from people who I consider to be actively promoting irrational world views. Art is communication. I don't want to celebrate or enhance the voice and world view of people that I consider to be destructive. So I don't pay them money. But nor do I rip them off.
You seem to be implying that the idea behind pirating the works of people who don't share your world view is to punish for their views. Most people are satisfied by simply ignoring artists with whom they disagree. I don't hear too many people suggesting a moral crusade to actively interfere with an artist's trade with their fans in the way you mention. Piracy as philosophical punishment for embracing the market as a place for art sales is pretty harsh, but at least you're being honest about your motivations.
So, don't do business with artists you don't like. If they choose to exercise their copyrights, they're conducting business in a way you don't like, which means they are operating under a world view with which you disagree. Show the intellectual integrity of ignoring the writers, musicians, film makers, etc that you think are scam artists, and stick with those that want to give their stuff away. Stick with moves that are only shown in the theater. Stick with musicians who only perform live. Ignore any recording that it tooks years to make in twelve different studios... those artists are obviously out to rip you off by risking their own time and money in advance when they created the work. I'm sure you can find other artists who agree that copies of their work should be considered free. Stick with them.
Way to only half-way get Jefferson, there (though I think you know you're missing the point, and you're hoping other people will think you're being clever, and won't think it all the way through).
Jefferson considered, say, free speech and assembly to be natural rights. Thus the founders made a point (via the first amendment) of explicitly saying that the government can't mess with it.
He and the other founders considered the practical necessity of intellectual property protections to be paramount to furthering the society, and so enumerated the powers of copyright granting/protection as one of the things that the goverment must do. Most of the constitution is about what the government may not do, but protecting intellectual property - in the interests of those who create it - is one of the things (like protecting borders, running a legislature, etc) that the founders explicitly said the government must do.
Nice context-free cherry picking there, though. Who do you think you're talking to, fellow junior high school students?
The reason they think of that stuff as intangible is because they can't wrap their heads around the very tangible risks, cash, and time that goes into creating it in the first place. Which is entirely their parents' fault, for leaving them intellectually incurious enough to have never thought it through. It's the same sort of thing that makes young idiots unable to connect their vandalism with the time it takes someone else to make (or clean up) the thing they're vandalizing. Young people (most of 'em) are jackasses, that way. When you're young and fancy yourself immortal, you don't place a value your time, or on anyone else's.
Most credit card companies force stores to accept returns
Which has nothing to do with the law. That's a business arrangement between the merchant and the processing company that they're paying to handle your credit card. They (the retailer) wants to have more opportunities to sell things, so they enter into an agreement with one or more card processing companies in order to have that option. Part of that agreement is to support the card processing companies' OTHER agreements, which are with the card-issuing banks and their customers, the card holders. Plenty of retailers only take their own credit cards, or will take Visa, but not AmEx or Discover, etc., exactly so that they can pick an choose which policies they consider viable for their business model.
You are being duped if you think you can trust reviews to make purchasing decisions.
No, it means you're too lazy to bother taking five minutes to understand what you're reading, or to put it into any sort of context. Which also explains why you keep making so many factually incorrect statements (about the law, banking, retailing, etc) that you could simply look up and accurately understand if you were so busy watching sitting on the couch watching ripped off entertainment and lamely trying to excuse it away by pretending that you, and only you, have good taste. You might be surprised at how transparent you are, seen from outside of your mom's basement. Maybe if you asked her for a bigger allowance, you could actually pay for some of what you're desparately trying to come up with ways to justify rippipng off. Your "I had no idea that a movie wasn't going to be a masterpiece" excuse is utterly pathetic. Of course, you know that. You're just making the mistake of assuming that you're smarter than you actually are, and that we aren't on to you. Which is typical of kids like you. You'll grow out of it.
the player doesn't have S-video output like advertised
Are you really so obtuse that you don't understand the difference between a factual error (or lie) on the box or ad selling the device, and the qualitative assessment of whether or not a movie is "good?" I saw tons of reviews telling me that particular movie was bad, bad, bad. Your attempt to pretend there is no such information available so that you can justify ripping off your entertainment is embarassingly juvenile. What are you, eleven?
If that's the real answer (college kids rip stuff off because they're short on cash), why isn't this considered a reasonable tactic for getting better beer than they can afford? If they don't like the price an artist is asking for their work, we'll all just shrug our shoulders at a culture of piracy, but if they don't like the price that a chef or a brewer or a parking lot operator asks for what they do, we should continue to hold people accountable for ripping them off when the only excuse is, "I'm short of cash" ? Of course we shouldn't. Giving people a pass at ripping off frivalous things because they've spent their money on other things is morally toxic. You may want to give the GP a +5 for explaining what is happening, but that ignores the why (a sense of entitlement to others' work) and the consequences of that (an entire generation of whiny parasites that won't understand how destructive they are until they're in their 30's and actually creating something themselves, if they can pry themselves away from Facebook long enough to do so).
i.e. "This mower is sold as is," and the mower does not work, and there was no opportunity to try it before hand, then the Seller is required to refund the money or else face jailtime. That is the law.
I begin to see that your entire understanding of reality is just... incorrect. That explains a lot, like your inability to find a single movie review blog, on the entire internet, that's written by someone who shares your tastes.
Your statement of "the law" is simply wrong on the face of it. When something is sold "as is," that's exactly what preserves the sale as-is. If the seller doesn't say that it works, and simply says "as-is," that's it, period. If you're projecting, in your mind, the image of a perfectly working lawnmower, and can't get your head around the meaning of "as-is," then I suppose it's possible that you're just irrational enough to think that, indeed, your disappointment with one movie makes it OK to rip off another movie. You really don't need to explain any more, thanks. You're quite clear.
So your point is that you dislike some products (for which you can see and hear ample, legit clips online before buying, as well as thousands of reviews by people from every possible perspective and level of taste), and you thus feel morally righteous in ripping off your entertainment. Here's a thought: if you don't like the way an artist offers their work for sale, and the terms under which they offer them, show an ounce of intellectual integrity and walk away. It's what you do if you are at the register in a retail shop, buying other sorts of products, where there's a sign that says "All Sales Are Final," right? Or are you still insisting that there is no such thing? Never mind, anyway. You're just having a typical junior high school kid's I'm-entitled-to-everything-I-want-on-my-own-terms-for-free tantrum. I get that.
I admire the way you've cited good solid research in your rebuttal. If you hadn't backed up your statements about why "people do it," your comments would have come across like just another angry sounding, defensive opinion from someone who likes to pirate entertainment.
You are putting up an elaborate straw man argument based on faulty premises and a fundamental misunderstanding of American history and culture.
I've stated my point clearly and more than once
And repeating over and over it doesn't make it any more based in reality.
The United States was born out of not only a distrust of, but an actual rejection of the government that was running it. In shrugging off European rule, the people who framed the US constitution set it up specifically so that government's reach and influence was minimized and could be checked by intentionally adversarial forces within its deliberate structure and through the powers left to the individual states and their citizens. The whole point of the US constitution is to prevent the government from getting in the way of its people. The constitution is set up to cause government not to trust itself, and to give as many opportunities as possible for citizens to straighten it out when it veers towards ruling instead of serving.
Many US citizens do indeed harbor deep-seated frustration over "government," because in the last several decades (and thus, for the entirety of most people's lives), the people who have had the legislative power for the longest stretches of that period (the left) have systematically sought to alter the government's role in private lives. Because this is counter-constitutional, doing so requires feats of legislative deceit, and routine acts of spectacular disengenuousness and BS on the part of the people pitching such changes. Of course people are suspicious of legislatures that resort to outright lies in order to - at every opportunity - increase the depth of the government's role in their lives.
The recently passed health care legislation is essentially the pinacle of such deceit, with the three people pushing it the hardest doing the most overt, easily debunked lying about it as they proceeded to ram it through agains the will of the majority of Americans. As more come to understand what's been done, ever more want to see it undone. Of course you're sensing distrust: the left was caught BSing about virtually every aspect of a law they said that they hadn't even read before votiing on it, and which they said must be passed before people could see what was in it. Are you suggesting that Americans should not recoil at that sort of governance? And before you pretend that it's that particular session of congress that caused that mistrust, you need to put it in the context of decades of the same stuff, aimed at the same leftist goals. The pendulum has occasionally swung back the other way, as people see what's really going on, and it has just swung very hard the other way, because enough people have recognized the destructive, oppressive motivations and idealogies that recently manifested themselves in that piece of legislation and the tactics used to force it through.
There will be sustained mistrust of those who aspire to divert the government from its chartered purpose for as long as they keep trying to pull Nanny State stuff like that. And since it's been going on (with a few happy interruptions) since FDR, it has a long track record. It has nothing to do with disliking the institution of government per se, it's the dislike for the sustained, decades-long efforts of the far left to distort the government's role. It's much better to talk about it, out loud and non-stop, in an effort to de-fang that movement's grip on liberty and on the few taxpayers who are actually asked to pay for it all, than it is to simply wait for it all to turn into a Greece, a Spain, an Ireland, or a Portugal. It's not about distrust, it's about the surety that allowing a government and its relationship to the people to be modified in that way will result in exactly that sort of trouble. Because there seems to be an endless supply of at least a few Nanny State types, the vigilance against them will never go away. You're confusing an accurate judgement of the far left's intentions (with regard to government power) with distrust of the necessary institution of government itself.
That's because even with a two party system, the US government has checks and balances. So even if the president wants to do something or wants to change something, congress has to, also. The executive branch cannot effect significant change without congress and vice-versa. The president can issue executive orders, but those do not hold the same power as legislation.
You have this so wrong it's not even wrong. When people refer to a "two party system." they're talking about the politcal dominance of two groups of people (who identify themselves as Democrats and Republicans at the moment). These are groups of people who are using their First Amendment rights to speak and assemble. There is no constitutional guidance, nor should there be, regarding the forming of political parties. You could ban them outright, but what would stop two (or two hundred) like-minded congressional representatives from forming another caucus and voting together? That's all a politcal party is, when it comes right down to it. It's not a "system," it's a natural byproduct of people gathering together in order to have strength of numbers on issues that are important to them. If an important enough issue wasn't embraced by either of the two big parties, a third would step right up. The Tea Party types, fed up with suicidal deficit spending, are an example. The Republicans realize that those people are closer (on most issues) to them than to the Dems, so they've largely embraced that core message.
The checks and balances you're talking about are a result of the THREE part government established by the founders and defined in the constitution. There's the legislative branch - congress - (which is broken up in the House Of Representatives and the Senate), there's the judiciary (with the Supreme Court at the top), and the executive (the president and all of the people that he appoints to his cabinet and the various agencies they control). It's the intentional tension between these three branches that provide the opportunity for checks and balances.
As for doing things that will get them re-elected... if YOU were in congress and thought it was important that you were there in order to vote as you think best serves your conscience, your constituents, and your nation - wouldn't you take steps to get re-elected, too? So that you could continue to do what you think is important? Should a president in his first term sit idly by and not worry about being re-elected for a second term if he thinks that it's important to continue what he's doing with his presidency? Do you think that "real change" will happen only during one term? And, what "real change" did you actually have in mind? Are you talking about structural changes to the constitution?
Because that would never even begin to approach the economies of scale present in something mass-market like Microsoft's sensor widget. Or are you also arguing that "the way to go" would involve avoiding commercially manufactured mircroprocessors, too? Use the mass market leverage, and get on with the projects, already. Yeeesh.
You're so clever, using that dollar sign in "M$" - did you come up with that by yourself, or did you you get it from one of your junior high school friends? And what's your point, exactly? That Nokia, up until now, was running a charity, didn't attach a monetary value to or promote and push their own stagnating phone OSes? Grow up.
This is not the job or purpose of the federal government.
And I suppose the next thing you're going to say is something crazy like it's also not the federal government's job to use the IRS to sieze your wages because you haven't paid the penalties you've racked up for refusing to buy the insurance that you will now be required to buy so that you can use that to get your constitutionally enshrined human right to services from a podiatrist because your feet hurt from standing in line for your new iPhone.
Does that mean if there's a power outage people's rights are being violated by the power company?
Yes, yes it does. Which means that the person who has lost internet access should be able to sue the person who swerved to avoid a cow in the road and hit the utility pole that was carrying the lines that provide the power. Also, good health is a human right, and you can't be healthy without food, which is why the constitution involves itself in the important enumerated government power of forcing once citizen to provide food for other citizens. And 4G service, of course. And a nice house.
Why? To the extent that the government makes anything happen in this regard, that's exactly who gets to pay for it (well, their grandhildren do, actually). What does this have to do with unemployed people, other than the indirect prospect of it involving a few more jobs?
I just wonder why gathering oil was so interesting when it was priced $30 a galon, and now at $90 people don't bother with it.
Don't bother with it? It's one of the largest industries in the world, and all the rest of the industries (and the world's economies) would grind to a complete halt without "gathering" oil. And it's going to be that way for a long, long time.
Slashdot Mirror
You are basing your entire argument on the false premise that the millions of people who rip off movies and music would never otherwise pay for their entertainment if they didn't have a convenient way to rip it off. You know this is false, and yet you're pretending it's not while building a philosophical house of cards on top of it. Get over that junior high school debate class weakness (along with your absurdly bad analogies, like road use), and then you can try again.
Don't worry, it's only you.
No, it's not. It's a ridiculous way to express things like that, and it's actually misleading. To say that something is ten times less massive means that you consider the thing to which it's being compared to already be not very massive (compared to what?). That leaves a bunch of implications dangling open and unanswered. Saying it's "a tenth the size" is far more appropriate, and doesn't imply anything about the larger item to which you're comparing it. If you mean to say that the ten-times-larger thing isn't very big either, then be specific.
It's not that we don't get that the smaller thing is a tenth the size. It's that nobody can infer anything useful from the suggestion that the original is already small. Is it? When you say "A is ten times smaller than B," what you're really saying is "B is small, and A is even smaller." What is the meaning of B's smallness in this context? Why add extra, distracting words that convey nothing but which imply meaning at which you can only guess?
No, the GP isn't the only one who doesn't like this, and anyone with an interest in useful communication should feel the same way.
Be specific. Was the web site you mention only selling music with legit licenses from the people who created the music? Were they advertising "bling" or other logo-ware (apparel, jewelry, etc) along side of being a legit music retailer? Were all of those goods legit? I'm betting not, and hence the inclusion in that sweep. Can't tell, since you're not being specific.
"Smuggling" in the broad sense of sneaking fake goods across the border. By definition, they're lying about what they're shipping, what it's worth, and about its provenance. A lot of what's sold in the way of, say, fake designer goods made in China, enters the country as container loads labeled as completely different (of course!) stuff. That's smuggling.
People who smuggle in and fraudulently sell counterfeit goods are exactly their area of authority. It's true if the scammers sell the goods out the back of a van, and it's true if they sell them using an ad in the back of a magazine, and it's true if they use a web site. Siezing the web site isn't any different than siezing the warehouse where they stack up the counterfeit goods.
The child porn stuff is also their turf if those "services" are being sold from over the border. And of course, most of those operations are based overseas, taking credit cards from domestic (US) customers. If the sites are registered within reach of US law enforcement, those registrations are fair game, just like the warehouse full of fake Nike products.
What the fuck does counterfeit goods and child porn have to do with the DHS?
ICE is a part of DHS. You do understand what the "C" stands for, right? Right?
So, basically you agree with me now? Got it.
If a person believes the concept of copyright to be incoherent or immoral, how is the action of file sharing inconsistent with such belief?
No, the question is: why would you want to consume (or how could possibly enjoy) the work of artists that you consider to be immoral? For example, I generally will not purchase art from people who I consider to be actively promoting irrational world views. Art is communication. I don't want to celebrate or enhance the voice and world view of people that I consider to be destructive. So I don't pay them money. But nor do I rip them off.
You seem to be implying that the idea behind pirating the works of people who don't share your world view is to punish for their views. Most people are satisfied by simply ignoring artists with whom they disagree. I don't hear too many people suggesting a moral crusade to actively interfere with an artist's trade with their fans in the way you mention. Piracy as philosophical punishment for embracing the market as a place for art sales is pretty harsh, but at least you're being honest about your motivations.
So, don't do business with artists you don't like. If they choose to exercise their copyrights, they're conducting business in a way you don't like, which means they are operating under a world view with which you disagree. Show the intellectual integrity of ignoring the writers, musicians, film makers, etc that you think are scam artists, and stick with those that want to give their stuff away. Stick with moves that are only shown in the theater. Stick with musicians who only perform live. Ignore any recording that it tooks years to make in twelve different studios ... those artists are obviously out to rip you off by risking their own time and money in advance when they created the work. I'm sure you can find other artists who agree that copies of their work should be considered free. Stick with them.
Way to only half-way get Jefferson, there (though I think you know you're missing the point, and you're hoping other people will think you're being clever, and won't think it all the way through).
Jefferson considered, say, free speech and assembly to be natural rights. Thus the founders made a point (via the first amendment) of explicitly saying that the government can't mess with it.
He and the other founders considered the practical necessity of intellectual property protections to be paramount to furthering the society, and so enumerated the powers of copyright granting/protection as one of the things that the goverment must do. Most of the constitution is about what the government may not do, but protecting intellectual property - in the interests of those who create it - is one of the things (like protecting borders, running a legislature, etc) that the founders explicitly said the government must do.
Nice context-free cherry picking there, though. Who do you think you're talking to, fellow junior high school students?
The reason they think of that stuff as intangible is because they can't wrap their heads around the very tangible risks, cash, and time that goes into creating it in the first place. Which is entirely their parents' fault, for leaving them intellectually incurious enough to have never thought it through. It's the same sort of thing that makes young idiots unable to connect their vandalism with the time it takes someone else to make (or clean up) the thing they're vandalizing. Young people (most of 'em) are jackasses, that way. When you're young and fancy yourself immortal, you don't place a value your time, or on anyone else's.
Most credit card companies force stores to accept returns
Which has nothing to do with the law. That's a business arrangement between the merchant and the processing company that they're paying to handle your credit card. They (the retailer) wants to have more opportunities to sell things, so they enter into an agreement with one or more card processing companies in order to have that option. Part of that agreement is to support the card processing companies' OTHER agreements, which are with the card-issuing banks and their customers, the card holders. Plenty of retailers only take their own credit cards, or will take Visa, but not AmEx or Discover, etc., exactly so that they can pick an choose which policies they consider viable for their business model.
You are being duped if you think you can trust reviews to make purchasing decisions.
No, it means you're too lazy to bother taking five minutes to understand what you're reading, or to put it into any sort of context. Which also explains why you keep making so many factually incorrect statements (about the law, banking, retailing, etc) that you could simply look up and accurately understand if you were so busy watching sitting on the couch watching ripped off entertainment and lamely trying to excuse it away by pretending that you, and only you, have good taste. You might be surprised at how transparent you are, seen from outside of your mom's basement. Maybe if you asked her for a bigger allowance, you could actually pay for some of what you're desparately trying to come up with ways to justify rippipng off. Your "I had no idea that a movie wasn't going to be a masterpiece" excuse is utterly pathetic. Of course, you know that. You're just making the mistake of assuming that you're smarter than you actually are, and that we aren't on to you. Which is typical of kids like you. You'll grow out of it.
the player doesn't have S-video output like advertised
Are you really so obtuse that you don't understand the difference between a factual error (or lie) on the box or ad selling the device, and the qualitative assessment of whether or not a movie is "good?" I saw tons of reviews telling me that particular movie was bad, bad, bad. Your attempt to pretend there is no such information available so that you can justify ripping off your entertainment is embarassingly juvenile. What are you, eleven?
If that's the real answer (college kids rip stuff off because they're short on cash), why isn't this considered a reasonable tactic for getting better beer than they can afford? If they don't like the price an artist is asking for their work, we'll all just shrug our shoulders at a culture of piracy, but if they don't like the price that a chef or a brewer or a parking lot operator asks for what they do, we should continue to hold people accountable for ripping them off when the only excuse is, "I'm short of cash" ? Of course we shouldn't. Giving people a pass at ripping off frivalous things because they've spent their money on other things is morally toxic. You may want to give the GP a +5 for explaining what is happening, but that ignores the why (a sense of entitlement to others' work) and the consequences of that (an entire generation of whiny parasites that won't understand how destructive they are until they're in their 30's and actually creating something themselves, if they can pry themselves away from Facebook long enough to do so).
i.e. "This mower is sold as is," and the mower does not work, and there was no opportunity to try it before hand, then the Seller is required to refund the money or else face jailtime. That is the law.
I begin to see that your entire understanding of reality is just ... incorrect. That explains a lot, like your inability to find a single movie review blog, on the entire internet, that's written by someone who shares your tastes.
Your statement of "the law" is simply wrong on the face of it. When something is sold "as is," that's exactly what preserves the sale as-is. If the seller doesn't say that it works, and simply says "as-is," that's it, period. If you're projecting, in your mind, the image of a perfectly working lawnmower, and can't get your head around the meaning of "as-is," then I suppose it's possible that you're just irrational enough to think that, indeed, your disappointment with one movie makes it OK to rip off another movie. You really don't need to explain any more, thanks. You're quite clear.
So your point is that you dislike some products (for which you can see and hear ample, legit clips online before buying, as well as thousands of reviews by people from every possible perspective and level of taste), and you thus feel morally righteous in ripping off your entertainment. Here's a thought: if you don't like the way an artist offers their work for sale, and the terms under which they offer them, show an ounce of intellectual integrity and walk away. It's what you do if you are at the register in a retail shop, buying other sorts of products, where there's a sign that says "All Sales Are Final," right? Or are you still insisting that there is no such thing? Never mind, anyway. You're just having a typical junior high school kid's I'm-entitled-to-everything-I-want-on-my-own-terms-for-free tantrum. I get that.
I admire the way you've cited good solid research in your rebuttal. If you hadn't backed up your statements about why "people do it," your comments would have come across like just another angry sounding, defensive opinion from someone who likes to pirate entertainment.
I've stated my point clearly and more than once
And repeating over and over it doesn't make it any more based in reality.
The United States was born out of not only a distrust of, but an actual rejection of the government that was running it. In shrugging off European rule, the people who framed the US constitution set it up specifically so that government's reach and influence was minimized and could be checked by intentionally adversarial forces within its deliberate structure and through the powers left to the individual states and their citizens. The whole point of the US constitution is to prevent the government from getting in the way of its people. The constitution is set up to cause government not to trust itself, and to give as many opportunities as possible for citizens to straighten it out when it veers towards ruling instead of serving.
Many US citizens do indeed harbor deep-seated frustration over "government," because in the last several decades (and thus, for the entirety of most people's lives), the people who have had the legislative power for the longest stretches of that period (the left) have systematically sought to alter the government's role in private lives. Because this is counter-constitutional, doing so requires feats of legislative deceit, and routine acts of spectacular disengenuousness and BS on the part of the people pitching such changes. Of course people are suspicious of legislatures that resort to outright lies in order to - at every opportunity - increase the depth of the government's role in their lives.
The recently passed health care legislation is essentially the pinacle of such deceit, with the three people pushing it the hardest doing the most overt, easily debunked lying about it as they proceeded to ram it through agains the will of the majority of Americans. As more come to understand what's been done, ever more want to see it undone. Of course you're sensing distrust: the left was caught BSing about virtually every aspect of a law they said that they hadn't even read before votiing on it, and which they said must be passed before people could see what was in it. Are you suggesting that Americans should not recoil at that sort of governance? And before you pretend that it's that particular session of congress that caused that mistrust, you need to put it in the context of decades of the same stuff, aimed at the same leftist goals. The pendulum has occasionally swung back the other way, as people see what's really going on, and it has just swung very hard the other way, because enough people have recognized the destructive, oppressive motivations and idealogies that recently manifested themselves in that piece of legislation and the tactics used to force it through.
There will be sustained mistrust of those who aspire to divert the government from its chartered purpose for as long as they keep trying to pull Nanny State stuff like that. And since it's been going on (with a few happy interruptions) since FDR, it has a long track record. It has nothing to do with disliking the institution of government per se, it's the dislike for the sustained, decades-long efforts of the far left to distort the government's role. It's much better to talk about it, out loud and non-stop, in an effort to de-fang that movement's grip on liberty and on the few taxpayers who are actually asked to pay for it all, than it is to simply wait for it all to turn into a Greece, a Spain, an Ireland, or a Portugal. It's not about distrust, it's about the surety that allowing a government and its relationship to the people to be modified in that way will result in exactly that sort of trouble. Because there seems to be an endless supply of at least a few Nanny State types, the vigilance against them will never go away. You're confusing an accurate judgement of the far left's intentions (with regard to government power) with distrust of the necessary institution of government itself.
That's because even with a two party system, the US government has checks and balances. So even if the president wants to do something or wants to change something, congress has to, also. The executive branch cannot effect significant change without congress and vice-versa. The president can issue executive orders, but those do not hold the same power as legislation.
You have this so wrong it's not even wrong. When people refer to a "two party system." they're talking about the politcal dominance of two groups of people (who identify themselves as Democrats and Republicans at the moment). These are groups of people who are using their First Amendment rights to speak and assemble. There is no constitutional guidance, nor should there be, regarding the forming of political parties. You could ban them outright, but what would stop two (or two hundred) like-minded congressional representatives from forming another caucus and voting together? That's all a politcal party is, when it comes right down to it. It's not a "system," it's a natural byproduct of people gathering together in order to have strength of numbers on issues that are important to them. If an important enough issue wasn't embraced by either of the two big parties, a third would step right up. The Tea Party types, fed up with suicidal deficit spending, are an example. The Republicans realize that those people are closer (on most issues) to them than to the Dems, so they've largely embraced that core message.
... if YOU were in congress and thought it was important that you were there in order to vote as you think best serves your conscience, your constituents, and your nation - wouldn't you take steps to get re-elected, too? So that you could continue to do what you think is important? Should a president in his first term sit idly by and not worry about being re-elected for a second term if he thinks that it's important to continue what he's doing with his presidency? Do you think that "real change" will happen only during one term? And, what "real change" did you actually have in mind? Are you talking about structural changes to the constitution?
The checks and balances you're talking about are a result of the THREE part government established by the founders and defined in the constitution. There's the legislative branch - congress - (which is broken up in the House Of Representatives and the Senate), there's the judiciary (with the Supreme Court at the top), and the executive (the president and all of the people that he appoints to his cabinet and the various agencies they control). It's the intentional tension between these three branches that provide the opportunity for checks and balances.
As for doing things that will get them re-elected
Why not build an open-source kinect instead???
Because that would never even begin to approach the economies of scale present in something mass-market like Microsoft's sensor widget. Or are you also arguing that "the way to go" would involve avoiding commercially manufactured mircroprocessors, too? Use the mass market leverage, and get on with the projects, already. Yeeesh.
You're so clever, using that dollar sign in "M$" - did you come up with that by yourself, or did you you get it from one of your junior high school friends? And what's your point, exactly? That Nokia, up until now, was running a charity, didn't attach a monetary value to or promote and push their own stagnating phone OSes? Grow up.
This is not the job or purpose of the federal government.
And I suppose the next thing you're going to say is something crazy like it's also not the federal government's job to use the IRS to sieze your wages because you haven't paid the penalties you've racked up for refusing to buy the insurance that you will now be required to buy so that you can use that to get your constitutionally enshrined human right to services from a podiatrist because your feet hurt from standing in line for your new iPhone.
Does that mean if there's a power outage people's rights are being violated by the power company?
Yes, yes it does. Which means that the person who has lost internet access should be able to sue the person who swerved to avoid a cow in the road and hit the utility pole that was carrying the lines that provide the power. Also, good health is a human right, and you can't be healthy without food, which is why the constitution involves itself in the important enumerated government power of forcing once citizen to provide food for other citizens. And 4G service, of course. And a nice house.
Great for middle-class employed people
Why? To the extent that the government makes anything happen in this regard, that's exactly who gets to pay for it (well, their grandhildren do, actually). What does this have to do with unemployed people, other than the indirect prospect of it involving a few more jobs?
I just wonder why gathering oil was so interesting when it was priced $30 a galon, and now at $90 people don't bother with it.
Don't bother with it? It's one of the largest industries in the world, and all the rest of the industries (and the world's economies) would grind to a complete halt without "gathering" oil. And it's going to be that way for a long, long time.