"But in water, where every 10 m or so is an additional atmosphere of pressure, going down the same distance is a Big Frelling Deal."
It is not the pressure itself. The body has no problem going down to 100 or even 200 meters -in fact, it is the first 10 meters the only ones that you will notice, it is everything else: coldness, oxygen toxicity, nitrogen narcosis, air consumption speed... that makes it a technical challenge -of course, all of them are related to pressure, but still, it is not pressure as in "it'll crush you" the main concern.
Now you mention Calypso, remember Cousteau and his team went down to the Andrea Doria's wrekage, 77m down, and it was quite a feat back in, I think, 1967, still using aqualungs and the old stuff (it happens that I cut my teeth on scuba using twin-hose, aqualung-type equipment too).
"All that will do is inflate the currency accordingly."
Quite right. If all you do is "freeing money" one way or another, offer will just adjust prices accordingly. This, in a society like ours organized to syphon more and more percentage of capital to less and less hands is not what average joe should ask for.
The solution is obvious but much disliked by American society: don't provide free money but free services, this way, the excess can't become inflation.
"There are PLENTY of folks with no drive which would leech on said system and not be self motivated enough to try to better themselves above it in any significant way."
So they would stay exactly where they are now but with a lower "TCO" for the country that hosts them. So, what's the problem, then?
"And if you could get a basic living from not working, why work? That would drive the GDP way down, and ruin the economy."
And if you could get a basic living out of 40h/w from flipping burgers, why study, or go into management, or entrepeneurship just to end up working 60-plus hours/week? Flipping burger jobs would drive the GDP way down, and ruin the economy.
"Richer and far more successful than my parents -- and -- my apologies, I consider myself quite successful."
Yes, of course. But you should be *proud* of your achievements instead, and "quite" is a good adjective here.
The first post was about "success" and "rich", no qualifications. You are probably American, so I'll try to put it in American terms (sorry if there are any inaccuracies; I'm not American, but I you'll get the idea): I think there were about 30 teams in the American Professional Football League. Without other qualifications, "success" is winning the Superbowl, "quite successful" reaching to the Superbowl. Ranking 12th out of 30 is *not* success, even if it can be quite an achievement to be proud of if that's the case for one of the semi-professional teams.
"As as far as being "rich", what do you consider 'rich'?"
While the exact amount of money required changes with time, there has always been a valid definition: Rich is the one that doesn't need to consider how much money owns nor needs to think about how is he going to feed himself and his beloved ones for the rest of hims and their lives . Do you need to do your numbers in order to make ends meet? You are not rich. Note that this definition can be "abused" as the old saying goes: "rich is not the one who has the most, but the one who needs the least". Again, this bears no meaning in a non-qualified context: there are people who own private jets and there are people without. Guess who are the rich ones?
"Or is your measure of "success" measured not in providing for your family and teaching THEM how to provide for themselves but in how must "stuff" you can accumulate?"
Again that's something to be proud of, specially if earned against rough conditions, but that's not success. On one hand, success -in this context, should be a very limited thing or it bears no meaning -it's the gold medal, or at least getting a medal; simply being in the middle of the pack can't count. On the other, success is your ability to get your will accomplished without hindrances. The more successful you are, the less limits for your will (how do you make use of that power is quite a different business). I bet your will stomps against walls each and every day, just like mine and almost everybody else's: your boss, your inability to buy that gift you know your son would love, or sending him to the school or university that best matches his abilities and the provides the easiest future for him...
But it disturbs me the recent discourse about the one-percenters and the redefinition of success and richness: it's not only that the gap between the rich and powerful and everybody else has been constantly growing in the last 30 years or so, but that middle class is starting to accept in the last two-three years that's the new order of things so they feel lucky, and successful and rich when that's not only far from true but farther each day that goes by. That's still mainly an American-only event, but I have no doubt it will spread to other occidental nations in the near future.
"Sorry. Disagree."...and then follows an explanation about how Jhon, coming from a poor household, despite of his awareness of the situation, his strong will to go out of it and his long hours worked all of his life, is neither rich nor successful.
If I wanted to reinforce my point, I wouldn't be able to do a better job than you, mate!
"wouldn't canada (or anybody) be safer without a friend who goes around the world stirring shit at every possible opportunity?"
Well, it depends. Our current world is only big enough for a limited set of military bullies, and it can be argued that the current set has a cardinality of one. So, if you happen not to be friend of the bully... what do you think is the alternative?
"Cars have become universal, yet the ability to fix them decreases with every generation."
I basically agree with you, but your comparation is wrong. The ability to fix cars decreases with every generation among other things, because cars are -on purpose, no less, more and more difficult to fix, not even by amateurs but for professionals too, the last iteration trying to lock you out not only technically but legally too.
This could potentially be different about programing: 1) The computer world could still be more and more open. 2) From a very low level, all people do is programing (aplying logics to data sets to get an intended output), so it would only take for everybody to program to first, understand this fact and, second, the will to do it.
Of course, it won't happen because the capitalism works agains point 1 above and lack of curiosity and will works against two.
"Hmm, what happens when you have no customers left in the "high-cost countries" to buy your kit?"
Well, you'll sell them to the high-grow countries, which happen to be those where you outsourced to.
Think of it: where would you want to be selling printers in ten years? A country already full of printers, where you can only sell for those that break and less paper is used at home, or to a country which is growing and basically doesn't have one?
Do you think HP gives a damn if it's selling devices and services to USA or the new generation of growing companies and middle class in India?
And even if it ended up utterly wrong in ten years, do you think the high executives that will get their ginormous bonuses in less than five will give a damn?
"What evidence do you have that "the system" of moviemaking and distribution killed opera or the symphony, or that they were any more profitable than they are today?"
Press, for one. Aida's premier, for instance, was first page and a social issue back on its day, and it was not an isolated case. You are also wrong assuming that it was a wealthy-only issue as it was a middle class one. I also said current business practices basically killed *all* of them. You seem to be American, you'll probably find the case of vaudevil or living performances at bars nearer to your culture.
"And the Superbowl is a moronic example. It's a single event per year that is the culmination of hundreds of games over 5 months."
So what? It obviously shows that big media entertaiment has more than one face and that Hollywood superproductions are not the be-it-all for that business niche, even if we forget about the very basic premise that copyrights are not there in order to push forward industries but in order to push forward arts and not even all kinds of arts but specifically "useful arts".
"I'm claiming that copyright and patent laws are very useful."
While I'm claiming that (maybe) copyright and patent laws *were* useful, but that's the case no more.
"You seem to be pushing for a world in which large classes of people are not paid for their endeavors."
No, I don't. I am not pushing for a world were contracts are not honored, for instance. Any one with a signed contract to be payed for a product or service should certainly be payed as agreed upon.
"For many creative people, copyright is what they use to get paid"
Even if that's true (which I doubt, as I already said, since much of the copyright-related retribution is moved from the creative people to the companies that hire them), so what? In the world of yesterday they used to be payed in a specific way, tomorrow it certainly be a different one. I don't see any problem on that as I -nor, it seems anybody else, seems to see any problem on street ice sellers to move to somewhere else, or IT people that used to do something in a case by case basism doing things by hand, now get payed for automating things out. World changes and no one deserves to be payed simply because he used to be payed in the past.
"Copyrights make it possible for certain creative people to make a living"
Again, so what? The most basic premise here is that the privileges granted to a few by means of patents and copyrights are the proper way to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. Even if a billion of people were added to the disemployment queue it would still be the proper thing to be done. Just to show the naivety of your argument, just change the target: Slavery made it possible for a lot of people to make a living trading "niggers", so let's think it twice before abolishing slavery. See? The "but a lot of people earn a life out of it" is never an argument on itself.
"You've mentioned people we know did some creative works without copyright, but that's just the people we know."
Anticipating your argument I already said "and those are the guys we know" already adding an example of all other people whose names we don't know but that we do know also made a life out of artistic creation without copyrights. So, again, you have a non-argument here.
"Shakespeare made money by putting on plays, not by writing them"
No, sir, no. Shakespeare made money by putting on plays that he wrote because he wrote them. His 12.5% share on The Globe was not because his ability counting tickets at the door nor acting, but because his ability on writing.
"You also seem to be pushing for a world in which most movies just don't get made."
You also seem to play the "True Scotsman" fallacy in a quite peculiar way. Of course current state of affairs is finely tuned to produce exactly the output it produces, which doesn't mean others worlds are not possible and even obviously possible. In this current world were big media companies suck an undeserved amount of money from anybody else is no wonder they can spend tones of money on the products they deliver in order to rise the barrier of entry and *maybe*, just *maybe* under a different state of affairs the industry will offer different outputs. I don't see a classical picture from the 30's or 40's being at a lesser artistical degree than current movies despite their budgets being orders of magnitude shorter and you should remember copyrights are there to promote Arts, not Industries.
"In short, you're making claims about copyright that seem to be based on ideology"
Of course yes! defining which privileges we should secure -or not, to whom, and under which conditions is basically what ideologies are for.
My ideology is that everybody is born equal, that no business should be offered legal privileges but on the most extreme conditions and under the strongest scrutiny, and that you being privileged yesterday by whatever reason, shouldn't be a secure that the privilege will stay there tomorrow just because.
"You're just hand-waving to assume that the war would just "go away" by being ignored once the enemy is sufficiently weakened. [...] Your position is ignorant, and not defensible."
Ignorant? yeah, sure...
It can't possibly be that USA has lived in a lie, feeded by their government and blindly believed by their citizens because it allowed for an easy scape from their part of guilt in the horrors of those days.
There are *lots* of documents showing that Truman outright lied the population about the need of the A-Bomb to end the war and about the chosing of their targets because of its military value, as there are lots of documents showing USA was fully aware that Japan was seeking a path for peace at least since the end of 1944, but I'll focus instead in just one document: 1946' United States Strategic Bombing Survey. The 306 volume official USA report on the evolution of the war. Is it "defensible enough" for your likings?
1) "The first and crucial question about the atomic bomb thus was answered practically and conclusively; atomic energy had been mastered for military purposes and the overwhelming scale of its possibilities had been demonstrated".
Wow! even in the red-tape days following the end of the war, those in the know, including obviously government, clearly understood that the atomic bomb was not about ending the war on Japan in the less crude way but about the "Hey! *WE* have the Bomb, now you all, tremble with fear, because we are the almighty US of A"
2) "it seems clear that, even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
You see... and that's back from 1946. USA has known all this time, it's only USA citizenship prefer to look the other way.
"All serious analysis of the choices that US military commanders were making (nuke or ground assault) shows that more civilians would have been killed in a ground assault than were killed in the nuclear strikes. [...] There was not a choice between "nuke and people die, or don't and have nobody die."
Of course there was.
You seem to forget that Japan was -and still is, a series of islands. By the time the nukes were thrown over Japan, those islands were already in complete isolation, with no navy, no commerce channels, no iron to build more ships (or planes) and the standing troops at Manchuria broken by the soviets. Yes, of course US command could have chosen just sitting on their pants and wait for Japan to surrender (which most scholars now accept they were already looking for and USA knew about it).
Japan nukes were not thrown to end the war against Japan but to show the world (specially USSR) who the new world overlord was going to be starting there (and, also probably, to avoid the chance of USSR invading Japan). It easily can be said that the nukes dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki but they were aimed at Yalta and Postdam.
"Use third world people, get third world morality."
I don't think you understood, but it is the other way around: have third world morality at the directors' board and third world employees will follow soon enough.
"Fine. Explain in reasonable detail how a $100M movie can be made and recoup the cost"
You are asking me how well would do an artifact fine-tuned to the current rules if we change the rules. The proper answer would be "I don't give a damn; it's not my business". A more subtle answer could be "the current system that fine-tunes to produce big profits out of film making killed basically all older profitable shows like operas or symphonic concerts without giving a damn about it; why then, should I care about current artifacts if the system changes again?" or even "what makes you think that a film being available for free wouldn't attract any viewer to cinemas? If we give credit to the media producers that's *exactly* what's happening right now! all films get pirated and reachable at the likes of bittorrent the very same day they get premiered and still people go to the cinemas. Film makers *might* need minor adjustements to the way they do business as they do whenever the ecosystem changes for any other reason, like mute to sound, b&w to color, analog to digital... so, what's the problem again"
But I'll show you how it can be done instead, both to show you it can be done and to show you the problem is not the lack of alternatives but your lack of incentive and imagination to find them: Superbowl. It's also a mass entertaiment product, with costs in the same order of magnitude than a Hollywood superproduction and still renders most of its profit upon first view.
"As far as I can tell, the "implicit social contract" currently allows for copyrights and patents."
Yes, of course. But that's only half of the story. The other half is, in US words, copyrights and patents are there "...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
So patents and copyrights are *privileges* granted specifically to Authors and Inventors over "mere mortals", as long as they are the optimal means to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. Once they are the optimal means for that promotion no more, the privileges should be revoked. Patent trolls and media corps -at least, cast powerful doubts on this to be the case.
"Creative people don't copyright stuff so they can live on it for the rest of their lives, typically."
Nor they shouldn't since copyrigths are not there to give a free pass to anybody but to promote the kind of thing they are doing.
"They copyright stuff so they can get paid for it."
That's theory. In practice, more time than not they either get the payment for their works on a single payment (i.e.: selling a painting) or by means of more or less exclusive contract to a bigger company that get the bulk of the benefits in compensation (i.e.: pop musicians, film makers, all kind of inventors on companies' payroll).
"Cutting off copyright would be like stealing my next paycheck: it's payment for work already done that isn't paid for yet."
And here comes again the fart comparation: nobody deserves anything for their work unless it's been written down and signed on a contract before the fact.
"The problem with paying somebody directly to create something is that it's generally impossible to know how much it's worth."
And despite of this, programers get payed by the hour. You can say that's not a "true" artistic endevour, but then, TV script writers get payed by the hour too. And Dumas, Poe and other serialized novel writers got payed by the page. As a general matter everybody else not in the copyright market are payed in front an amount that is composed of both the percieved value of the future output and the reputation of the author.
My point is that looking at pros and cons, it is time to heavily modify the current system because it's working no more "to the Progress of Science and useful Arts" but to take works of art and progress of Science out of the public domain, were they, by default, belong, for the benefit of a very short number of big corporations. Provided you accepted this part, you shouldn't require me the "oh, well, but then it's on you the onus to produce a new viable model" because getting rid of undeserved privileges is a good thing on itself but even then, I already provided you with a lot of other viable models since all that's needed is looking at the present and past: Homer, Bach, Mozart, Michellangelo... did make a living on a world without strong copyrights (and that are the famous names, the stonemakers that carved the gargoyles of Amiens Cathedral also made a living out their craftmanship without copyrights); Kant, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Dumas, Poe... did make a living, even in a world with fair strong copyrights without resorting to them; modern day script writers, painters, sculptors... do make a living, even in a world with very strong copyrights without resorting to them; most workers, blue and white collar along, do make a living without any copyright considerations. The privileges we concede, theoretically to authors and inventors, and to a bunch of corporations in practice, don't make sense anymore.
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"I had not considered the possibility that it would to inform the entire branch that is has been fired."
What!? Why the hell are you doing working on the heat shield design, then?
"But in water, where every 10 m or so is an additional atmosphere of pressure, going down the same distance is a Big Frelling Deal."
It is not the pressure itself. The body has no problem going down to 100 or even 200 meters -in fact, it is the first 10 meters the only ones that you will notice, it is everything else: coldness, oxygen toxicity, nitrogen narcosis, air consumption speed... that makes it a technical challenge -of course, all of them are related to pressure, but still, it is not pressure as in "it'll crush you" the main concern.
Now you mention Calypso, remember Cousteau and his team went down to the Andrea Doria's wrekage, 77m down, and it was quite a feat back in, I think, 1967, still using aqualungs and the old stuff (it happens that I cut my teeth on scuba using twin-hose, aqualung-type equipment too).
"Or filled with Nazi gold or dead bodies?"
My bet is on Nazi gold-plated dead bodies.
"I'll bet you could make it to the surface if you had to"
I'll bet ten to one you wouldn't.
I base my case in my free and scuba diving experience, and the obvious lack of experience from your side.
"I would actually like to see a live action movie where effort is made into the accuracy of the effects of nuclear weapons."
I'd say Baltimore's ~20KT explosion in "The sum of all fears" film was quite spot on.
"All that will do is inflate the currency accordingly."
Quite right. If all you do is "freeing money" one way or another, offer will just adjust prices accordingly. This, in a society like ours organized to syphon more and more percentage of capital to less and less hands is not what average joe should ask for.
The solution is obvious but much disliked by American society: don't provide free money but free services, this way, the excess can't become inflation.
"There are PLENTY of folks with no drive which would leech on said system and not be self motivated enough to try to better themselves above it in any significant way."
So they would stay exactly where they are now but with a lower "TCO" for the country that hosts them. So, what's the problem, then?
"And if you could get a basic living from not working, why work? That would drive the GDP way down, and ruin the economy."
And if you could get a basic living out of 40h/w from flipping burgers, why study, or go into management, or entrepeneurship just to end up working 60-plus hours/week? Flipping burger jobs would drive the GDP way down, and ruin the economy.
"Richer and far more successful than my parents -- and -- my apologies, I consider myself quite successful."
Yes, of course. But you should be *proud* of your achievements instead, and "quite" is a good adjective here.
The first post was about "success" and "rich", no qualifications. You are probably American, so I'll try to put it in American terms (sorry if there are any inaccuracies; I'm not American, but I you'll get the idea): I think there were about 30 teams in the American Professional Football League. Without other qualifications, "success" is winning the Superbowl, "quite successful" reaching to the Superbowl. Ranking 12th out of 30 is *not* success, even if it can be quite an achievement to be proud of if that's the case for one of the semi-professional teams.
"As as far as being "rich", what do you consider 'rich'?"
While the exact amount of money required changes with time, there has always been a valid definition: Rich is the one that doesn't need to consider how much money owns nor needs to think about how is he going to feed himself and his beloved ones for the rest of hims and their lives . Do you need to do your numbers in order to make ends meet? You are not rich. Note that this definition can be "abused" as the old saying goes: "rich is not the one who has the most, but the one who needs the least". Again, this bears no meaning in a non-qualified context: there are people who own private jets and there are people without. Guess who are the rich ones?
"Or is your measure of "success" measured not in providing for your family and teaching THEM how to provide for themselves but in how must "stuff" you can accumulate?"
Again that's something to be proud of, specially if earned against rough conditions, but that's not success. On one hand, success -in this context, should be a very limited thing or it bears no meaning -it's the gold medal, or at least getting a medal; simply being in the middle of the pack can't count. On the other, success is your ability to get your will accomplished without hindrances. The more successful you are, the less limits for your will (how do you make use of that power is quite a different business). I bet your will stomps against walls each and every day, just like mine and almost everybody else's: your boss, your inability to buy that gift you know your son would love, or sending him to the school or university that best matches his abilities and the provides the easiest future for him...
But it disturbs me the recent discourse about the one-percenters and the redefinition of success and richness: it's not only that the gap between the rich and powerful and everybody else has been constantly growing in the last 30 years or so, but that middle class is starting to accept in the last two-three years that's the new order of things so they feel lucky, and successful and rich when that's not only far from true but farther each day that goes by. That's still mainly an American-only event, but I have no doubt it will spread to other occidental nations in the near future.
"Sorry. Disagree." ...and then follows an explanation about how Jhon, coming from a poor household, despite of his awareness of the situation, his strong will to go out of it and his long hours worked all of his life, is neither rich nor successful.
If I wanted to reinforce my point, I wouldn't be able to do a better job than you, mate!
"And actually, Microsoft isn't very good at marketing. They are good at corruption and on playing on peoples fear and ignorance"
Why do you think corruption and FUD are not marketing tools along many others?
And given current corporate ethos, as dignified as any other, I should add.
"wouldn't canada (or anybody) be safer without a friend who goes around the world stirring shit at every possible opportunity?"
Well, it depends. Our current world is only big enough for a limited set of military bullies, and it can be argued that the current set has a cardinality of one. So, if you happen not to be friend of the bully... what do you think is the alternative?
"your kids' success is mostly dependent on the kind of person you are"
Yes. Either rich or poor.
"The vast majority of poor people in America aren't anywhere close to starving. In fact, most of them are obese and eat way more than necessary."
Most of them are obese and eat way *worse* than necessary.
There, corrected for you.
"Note that the easiest ways parents can convince you to want to learn is to want to learn themselves."
Yes. There's the old saying about educating being what you do to your offspring when you are looking the other way. Example, not lessons.
"Cars have become universal, yet the ability to fix them decreases with every generation."
I basically agree with you, but your comparation is wrong. The ability to fix cars decreases with every generation among other things, because cars are -on purpose, no less, more and more difficult to fix, not even by amateurs but for professionals too, the last iteration trying to lock you out not only technically but legally too.
This could potentially be different about programing:
1) The computer world could still be more and more open.
2) From a very low level, all people do is programing (aplying logics to data sets to get an intended output), so it would only take for everybody to program to first, understand this fact and, second, the will to do it.
Of course, it won't happen because the capitalism works agains point 1 above and lack of curiosity and will works against two.
"Just because you know how to write, doesn't mean you have anything worthwhile to write about."
Quite true, but still irrelevant in shaping a future. Geocities, Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress... all be my guest.
"Hmm, what happens when you have no customers left in the "high-cost countries" to buy your kit?"
Well, you'll sell them to the high-grow countries, which happen to be those where you outsourced to.
Think of it: where would you want to be selling printers in ten years? A country already full of printers, where you can only sell for those that break and less paper is used at home, or to a country which is growing and basically doesn't have one?
Do you think HP gives a damn if it's selling devices and services to USA or the new generation of growing companies and middle class in India?
And even if it ended up utterly wrong in ten years, do you think the high executives that will get their ginormous bonuses in less than five will give a damn?
"What evidence do you have that "the system" of moviemaking and distribution killed opera or the symphony, or that they were any more profitable than they are today?"
Press, for one. Aida's premier, for instance, was first page and a social issue back on its day, and it was not an isolated case. You are also wrong assuming that it was a wealthy-only issue as it was a middle class one. I also said current business practices basically killed *all* of them. You seem to be American, you'll probably find the case of vaudevil or living performances at bars nearer to your culture.
"And the Superbowl is a moronic example. It's a single event per year that is the culmination of hundreds of games over 5 months."
So what? It obviously shows that big media entertaiment has more than one face and that Hollywood superproductions are not the be-it-all for that business niche, even if we forget about the very basic premise that copyrights are not there in order to push forward industries but in order to push forward arts and not even all kinds of arts but specifically "useful arts".
"I'm claiming that copyright and patent laws are very useful."
While I'm claiming that (maybe) copyright and patent laws *were* useful, but that's the case no more.
"You seem to be pushing for a world in which large classes of people are not paid for their endeavors."
No, I don't. I am not pushing for a world were contracts are not honored, for instance. Any one with a signed contract to be payed for a product or service should certainly be payed as agreed upon.
"For many creative people, copyright is what they use to get paid"
Even if that's true (which I doubt, as I already said, since much of the copyright-related retribution is moved from the creative people to the companies that hire them), so what? In the world of yesterday they used to be payed in a specific way, tomorrow it certainly be a different one. I don't see any problem on that as I -nor, it seems anybody else, seems to see any problem on street ice sellers to move to somewhere else, or IT people that used to do something in a case by case basism doing things by hand, now get payed for automating things out. World changes and no one deserves to be payed simply because he used to be payed in the past.
"Copyrights make it possible for certain creative people to make a living"
Again, so what? The most basic premise here is that the privileges granted to a few by means of patents and copyrights are the proper way to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. Even if a billion of people were added to the disemployment queue it would still be the proper thing to be done. Just to show the naivety of your argument, just change the target: Slavery made it possible for a lot of people to make a living trading "niggers", so let's think it twice before abolishing slavery. See? The "but a lot of people earn a life out of it" is never an argument on itself.
"You've mentioned people we know did some creative works without copyright, but that's just the people we know."
Anticipating your argument I already said "and those are the guys we know" already adding an example of all other people whose names we don't know but that we do know also made a life out of artistic creation without copyrights. So, again, you have a non-argument here.
"Shakespeare made money by putting on plays, not by writing them"
No, sir, no. Shakespeare made money by putting on plays that he wrote because he wrote them. His 12.5% share on The Globe was not because his ability counting tickets at the door nor acting, but because his ability on writing.
"You also seem to be pushing for a world in which most movies just don't get made."
You also seem to play the "True Scotsman" fallacy in a quite peculiar way. Of course current state of affairs is finely tuned to produce exactly the output it produces, which doesn't mean others worlds are not possible and even obviously possible. In this current world were big media companies suck an undeserved amount of money from anybody else is no wonder they can spend tones of money on the products they deliver in order to rise the barrier of entry and *maybe*, just *maybe* under a different state of affairs the industry will offer different outputs. I don't see a classical picture from the 30's or 40's being at a lesser artistical degree than current movies despite their budgets being orders of magnitude shorter and you should remember copyrights are there to promote Arts, not Industries.
"In short, you're making claims about copyright that seem to be based on ideology"
Of course yes! defining which privileges we should secure -or not, to whom, and under which conditions is basically what ideologies are for.
My ideology is that everybody is born equal, that no business should be offered legal privileges but on the most extreme conditions and under the strongest scrutiny, and that you being privileged yesterday by whatever reason, shouldn't be a secure that the privilege will stay there tomorrow just because.
"You're just hand-waving to assume that the war would just "go away" by being ignored once the enemy is sufficiently weakened. [...] Your position is ignorant, and not defensible."
Ignorant? yeah, sure...
It can't possibly be that USA has lived in a lie, feeded by their government and blindly believed by their citizens because it allowed for an easy scape from their part of guilt in the horrors of those days.
There are *lots* of documents showing that Truman outright lied the population about the need of the A-Bomb to end the war and about the chosing of their targets because of its military value, as there are lots of documents showing USA was fully aware that Japan was seeking a path for peace at least since the end of 1944, but I'll focus instead in just one document: 1946' United States Strategic Bombing Survey. The 306 volume official USA report on the evolution of the war. Is it "defensible enough" for your likings?
1) "The first and crucial question about the atomic bomb thus was answered practically and conclusively; atomic energy had been mastered for military purposes and the overwhelming scale of its possibilities had been demonstrated".
Wow! even in the red-tape days following the end of the war, those in the know, including obviously government, clearly understood that the atomic bomb was not about ending the war on Japan in the less crude way but about the "Hey! *WE* have the Bomb, now you all, tremble with fear, because we are the almighty US of A"
2) "it seems clear that, even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
You see... and that's back from 1946. USA has known all this time, it's only USA citizenship prefer to look the other way.
"All serious analysis of the choices that US military commanders were making (nuke or ground assault) shows that more civilians would have been killed in a ground assault than were killed in the nuclear strikes. [...] There was not a choice between "nuke and people die, or don't and have nobody die."
Of course there was.
You seem to forget that Japan was -and still is, a series of islands. By the time the nukes were thrown over Japan, those islands were already in complete isolation, with no navy, no commerce channels, no iron to build more ships (or planes) and the standing troops at Manchuria broken by the soviets. Yes, of course US command could have chosen just sitting on their pants and wait for Japan to surrender (which most scholars now accept they were already looking for and USA knew about it).
Japan nukes were not thrown to end the war against Japan but to show the world (specially USSR) who the new world overlord was going to be starting there (and, also probably, to avoid the chance of USSR invading Japan). It easily can be said that the nukes dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki but they were aimed at Yalta and Postdam.
"Use third world people, get third world morality."
I don't think you understood, but it is the other way around: have third world morality at the directors' board and third world employees will follow soon enough.
"Fine. Explain in reasonable detail how a $100M movie can be made and recoup the cost"
You are asking me how well would do an artifact fine-tuned to the current rules if we change the rules. The proper answer would be "I don't give a damn; it's not my business". A more subtle answer could be "the current system that fine-tunes to produce big profits out of film making killed basically all older profitable shows like operas or symphonic concerts without giving a damn about it; why then, should I care about current artifacts if the system changes again?" or even "what makes you think that a film being available for free wouldn't attract any viewer to cinemas? If we give credit to the media producers that's *exactly* what's happening right now! all films get pirated and reachable at the likes of bittorrent the very same day they get premiered and still people go to the cinemas. Film makers *might* need minor adjustements to the way they do business as they do whenever the ecosystem changes for any other reason, like mute to sound, b&w to color, analog to digital... so, what's the problem again"
But I'll show you how it can be done instead, both to show you it can be done and to show you the problem is not the lack of alternatives but your lack of incentive and imagination to find them: Superbowl. It's also a mass entertaiment product, with costs in the same order of magnitude than a Hollywood superproduction and still renders most of its profit upon first view.
"As far as I can tell, the "implicit social contract" currently allows for copyrights and patents."
Yes, of course. But that's only half of the story. The other half is, in US words, copyrights and patents are there "...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
So patents and copyrights are *privileges* granted specifically to Authors and Inventors over "mere mortals", as long as they are the optimal means to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. Once they are the optimal means for that promotion no more, the privileges should be revoked. Patent trolls and media corps -at least, cast powerful doubts on this to be the case.
"Creative people don't copyright stuff so they can live on it for the rest of their lives, typically."
Nor they shouldn't since copyrigths are not there to give a free pass to anybody but to promote the kind of thing they are doing.
"They copyright stuff so they can get paid for it."
That's theory. In practice, more time than not they either get the payment for their works on a single payment (i.e.: selling a painting) or by means of more or less exclusive contract to a bigger company that get the bulk of the benefits in compensation (i.e.: pop musicians, film makers, all kind of inventors on companies' payroll).
"Cutting off copyright would be like stealing my next paycheck: it's payment for work already done that isn't paid for yet."
And here comes again the fart comparation: nobody deserves anything for their work unless it's been written down and signed on a contract before the fact.
"The problem with paying somebody directly to create something is that it's generally impossible to know how much it's worth."
And despite of this, programers get payed by the hour. You can say that's not a "true" artistic endevour, but then, TV script writers get payed by the hour too. And Dumas, Poe and other serialized novel writers got payed by the page. As a general matter everybody else not in the copyright market are payed in front an amount that is composed of both the percieved value of the future output and the reputation of the author.
My point is that looking at pros and cons, it is time to heavily modify the current system because it's working no more "to the Progress of Science and useful Arts" but to take works of art and progress of Science out of the public domain, were they, by default, belong, for the benefit of a very short number of big corporations. Provided you accepted this part, you shouldn't require me the "oh, well, but then it's on you the onus to produce a new viable model" because getting rid of undeserved privileges is a good thing on itself but even then, I already provided you with a lot of other viable models since all that's needed is looking at the present and past: Homer, Bach, Mozart, Michellangelo... did make a living on a world without strong copyrights (and that are the famous names, the stonemakers that carved the gargoyles of Amiens Cathedral also made a living out their craftmanship without copyrights); Kant, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Dumas, Poe... did make a living, even in a world with fair strong copyrights without resorting to them; modern day script writers, painters, sculptors... do make a living, even in a world with very strong copyrights without resorting to them; most workers, blue and white collar along, do make a living without any copyright considerations. The privileges we concede, theoretically to authors and inventors, and to a bunch of corporations in practice, don't make sense anymore.