"Who is going to pay for a full UBI in a third world nation? "
That's not the problem. Even the poorest nation on Earth has enough resources to print all the money they want.
The problem, of course, is that money on itself means nothing so just printing money and giving it away leads nowhere else than inflation.
What you need is, of course, creating wealth and sharing that wealth on a way that, at the same time, is fair in a social way and doesn't disincentive those creating that wealth.
In the last two centuries or so, capitalism has been the best (or the less bad) way we found to achieve that -other systems, namely fascism or communism, has been tried without good results.
But it seems capitalism has found its limits: on one hand, it depends on government controls governments can't offer anymore (capitalism has a natural tendency of capital accruement that leads to inequality and big fortunes that presses governments to lean the statu quo even more to their side -this has already crossed the no return point, starting in the 80's: we are no more on a industrial capitalism but on a financial capitalism), and a dependence on human labour to redistribute the profits which is on the verge of a crisis.
So it's time to go back to the roots: no matter if human or automated/robotic labour, the one that owns the means of production (the land, the oil, the machinery...), gets the big bite on the profits. Thus the answer becomes obvious: socialize the means of production.
But this is communism! you will cry (well, that's not such a bad thing, unless you are American, but that's a different issue). So yes, what's the problem with that? That it has already been tried and showed itself a fiasco! don't you even read what you yourself wrote in the previous paragraph?
No: what were failures were dictatorships that came after a revolution on empty stomachs, but nowhere is said that ownership of the means of production *have* to come after a revolution leading to a dictatorship. In fact, starting after WWI and specially obvious after WWII a lot of big infrasctructure companies (telco, energy, transportation...) were publicly owned even in first world capitalist countries showing it's possible and profitable and it was not till 80's when those possed to get the big gains pressed for the "privatize everything" movement (see on the limits of capitalism above).
Forget about UBI which can't bring but inflation and ask for strong state-owned companies. They can even compete with privately-owned ones for a while with the only difference that you won't need to extra-tax them: all their net benefits go right to the public purse on their own. Then progressively move the gross of taxes from work gains to capital gains. Finally, expand on the services the state offer "for free" to cover for what a country deems "basic welfare", from "just" army, police and justice to schooling, healthcare (most civilized countries except USA already do it), then shelter and food, etc. You don't need a revolution leading to a dictatorship for that, just a concienced electorate (but that's, of course, why the big fortunes have such a big interest in controlling mass media: they don't want you to know how comparatively easy it's in fact moving the world in the direction of *your* interest, not theirs).
"Mortality is what keep us from living under Genghis Khan, Hitler or Pol Pot forever."
There two "kinds" of mortality: natural and violent. Even if we can avoid natural causes, nobody here is arguing to have a cure for a head chopped off so, bye, bye Hitler and Genghis Khan. Also given the violent traits of the lives of the ones like them, the longer they live, the most probably they find a wacky end (either violent or by letting them out of the healing procedures).
"Death grants us as a species to opportunity to renew and evolve."
Another argument could be that many of the problems we, as species and civilization, affront is because we die too soon and the ones that come after us repeat the same mistakes, since they are new for them. The most obvious may be war: how many (mainly male) teenagers either explicitly or implicitly see war as a romantic gest full of epic and worth of looking after (if only for the right causes) and then, how many veterans think the same (and even for those that still think that war is needed when it's needed, aren't the required standards set much, much higher?). It can be said that youngsters are naive and full of it and then, the elders that know better have lost the strength to be heard and/or make things happen they way they should. Maybe things would be different if that trend were reversed.
"Aging is genetic. You need to die for evolution to do its thing."
That's not exactly true. Death is needed only on steady populations (i.e.: on systems at their carrying capacity). Evolution is still capable of doing its thing without deaths as long as population is allowed to grow (i.e.: immortality plus space travel).
I don't know what roots are for (rethoric) but, certainly, not for foraging.
forage ËfÉ'rÉdÊ'/ verb gerund or present participle: foraging
(of a person or animal) search widely for food or provisions.
"the birds forage for aquatic invertebrates, insects, and seeds" obtain (food or provisions) by searching.
"a girl foraging grass for oxen"
search (a place) so as to obtain food.
Why they shouldn't? Within this context at least? They need another "really living" thingie to take advantage of their metabolic machine, so what?
- Hey, boss, I think that's interesting... - What's up, Minion? Minion: look at this. It comes from our probe at X37-ZirgggK exoplanet and looks exactly like phage T4. Boss: Oh, no! Do you know what will happen when I present this discovery to our Science Academy? Years, if not decades, of discussions about this being a living form or not. I don't want to go through all that... again!...if you only had noticed *first* the Cthuluh-like creature that phagus is preying upon... by the way, what's that on its forehead? Isn't it a fricking laser aiming at our cameras? Minion: yes, it seems so. Boss: OK, take the probe out this planet ASAP and to the next exoplanet on the list. And, please, pay more attention next time! Minion: Yessir.
Another non-explicitly presented aspect of the question is that NASA is not interested in finding living forms (not it has the ability to do so) but living systems. While we can argue the exact place of virus within a living-non living spectrum, there's no argument that virus-host form a living system.
"The line between life and not-life is already indistinct here on Earth. Viruses? Not-life...quite. Kinda life?"
Quite spot on... and shows how the question is the wrong one.
Of course, this is some of a click-bait as the question is not precisely recent, up to the point of guiding our search of exoplanets.
Of course we'll know life when we see it -that's not the question. The question is "will we know *any* kind of life when we see it?" And the answer is, of course too, we don't really know. That's why we look for "goldilocks planets", because we know we'll know life... at least as long as it looks like life here. And since our first goal (on this realm) is not finding *all* forms of life but *any* form of life over there, it's a good enough starting point we can start building from.
"...those entities that benefit the most from open source software - be they large commercial enterprises or government agencies - should be the ones to contribute the most."
In fact they do. The problem is that corporations are such pathological structures that they can't help themselves.
Some years ago, it came into fashion the term "coopetition": companies identify where are they really competing and what's just scaffolding (i.e.: infrastructure software) where they could cooperate instead.
They idea is sound, it's simply corporations are so toxic they can't develop on it themselves alone so they require another company to do that for themselves. I currently work for a big bank which, in turn, pays high bills for in-house Red Hat consultors. The biggest value those consultors bring to the table is that they talk to their colleagues that are doing exactly the same for other banks of the competition and share problems, tricks and solutions. If we were sane, we could do exactly the same and save the steep profit Red Hat is making out of it, but, you know, we just can't (I would probably be fired if tried to do what those Red Hat consultors are doing, and payed for doing).
"You no longer reward the person who is best able to develop a new idea, but the person who is best able to execute on an idea"
You see that you are making my point, right?
Patents are NOT, and NEVER were meant to reward ideas but the abililty to execute ideas.
The trend to protect mere ideas (like granting too generic patents, or granting patents on pure ideal fields, like maths) is a recent one, and one against what patents are for, both technically (it is not about ideas) and in spirit (they are coercing innovation, not promoting it).
"I just don't know what it necessarily means for the pace of innovation in other sectors (especially those where once the idea exists it's trivial to understand and copy) and what that means for humanity in the long term."
Just look and see. Whatever your model of patent/copyright is, you know something for certain: it is a recent addition to human History. But then, humankind seemingly went just OK without them for more of its History, so maybe the coolaid that without patents we can't go nowhere (or even, well, yeah, but at a much slower pace) is nothing but that: coolaid. Of course I don't have here the time and inclination to go for a long essay, but the more you look at patents/copyright evolution the more clear it becomes something smells (very) rotten there. Just for an example:
Bill Gates (1991): "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." No need to say how dear to patents Microsoft came less than a decade later. So, when Microsoft was an innovative company, his leader was very skeptic on patents; once his company was a behemoth, he was strongly in favour (oh, and now that he's pushing his charity, he changed his mind again and now, violating patents when fits his interests is not that bad again).
But you can think Bill Gates is "just" an individual... now go and look at USA History and its stance on copyright/patents: they were against them, when USA needed to advance itself, but strongly in favour once it was others which reclaimed the same right.
"Yeah, I see laws abused every time there's a crime and I think, "maybe we should cancel those laws, they don't work, and it would make the criminal's lives easier"."
For a proper comparation you should say "The *current* laws pretending to stop crime doesn't seem to stop the crimes they say because back when those laws weren't in place there were less of those crimes they pretend to avoid". And yes, if that were the case, I would question their value and I would want them repelled.
"The problem with removing them entirely is that it's going to be quite hard for any inventor to function independently."
While your argument seems to make sense, let's check it against reality.
Back in the early days of XX century, the ability to enforce patents was much less than it is today, both domestically and abroad, still, it was a period of franctic innovation in all kind of business.
Back in the 50's, business process were not patent-encumbered, but USA companies grew orders of magnitude out of better comprehension on who to optimize them.
Back in the 80's 90's software development was practically not patent-encumbered (certainly much less than today). And yet, the 80's 90's made some of the richest men on earth, at the quickest pace we've ever seen, out of humble garage investments.
So, it seems, something along your argument doesn't hold water, after all.
"A "Pythagorean triangle" is a right-angled triangle where the sides all have integer length. This guy claims to have found some of those"
Which is an explendid way to show they did *not* know the Pythagorean theorem. Aegyptians, for instance, knew the nice trick that you can form a right-angled triangle with a 12 units rope, so integer length triangles are expected. We know the Pythagorean theorem, therefore we have no need to limit ourselves to "nice" right-angled triangles: we can build anyone that pleases us no matter the lenght of the resulting hypothenuse.
Note that non-integer ratio triangles does not cast any light on their knowledge (i.e. you can also build right-angled triangles with an hypothenuse of any length using the diameter of a circle) but having triangles of "nice" side-to-side ratio is an obvious proof of them not knowing the underlying maths.
"If the stones are determined by the calendar events, that's the reason why they have those proportions, not Pythagoras' theorem."
"If the relation really was consensual, I'm inclined toward being a bit tolerant. "
Is it possible that I'm the only sane round here!?...
ÂHow have you in USA reached to the position of accept -and even support, a company policy saying nay about the private life (and I mean private, as in it's no fucking issue for anybody but for those directly involved) of their employees?
See? *Employees*. Not slaves, not serfs, not minions.
"And so instead a great deal of intuition and gut reactions goes into the selection process as well"
Probably you are right here but then, why they don't publicly provide the facts, just as they provide their internal statistics? How many CVs by gender (or whatever other group); how many after first, second, first interview? I think it can't be too fair, say, having 80% males when 40% of valid CVs came from women (but I open to see the arguments).
But it also seems the whole issue is badly scoped -twice.
On one hand, it seems very difficult to change society at the top of the chain: by the time a CV reaches HR, candidates already have been through the system for too many years. Initiatives should start much, much early and responsibility requested where is due.
On the other hand, the whole USA society seems to have an deeply ingrained problem: it is not integrationist but ghettoist. Just contrast a photo from, say, New York city, where you can see a great "plurality" -all kinds of skin colors, dress styles... but, in general terms, here you have a white male, there a black woman, an Asian child overthere... now, get a similar photo from, say, Sao Paulo: at first glance doesn't seem to be that many diversity; on closer inspection what you have is a full gradient of human phenotypes with no gaps in-between: that *is* integration. You can't bias on color skin when there are no color skins but just shades, when basically everybody is at the same time black, and white, and yellow and red.
"Unfortunately they failed to predict that population would grow as expected so the younger generation may be saddled with more cost than they could tolerate."
Which it's still a shit truck upon a shit load. The one on the hyperlink below is USA's population pyramid. You sum up the bars between 20 to 64 and then you sum up the bars over 64. Make all the projections you want... the end result is the same: there is NO fucking problem population-wise. Much less when you compound it with the per-capita productivity increase involved along all these years.
No man: the problem is not -and it has never been, population, so you can start looking in other places.
"Yeah but new works are generally created by people with a passion for their crap they get creative and find a way to do it regardless of financial status"
Exactly that. I really love the way the copyright clause is worded in USA Constitution: "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Any regulation should *first* offer a clear reason on how it will "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" o else shouldn't pass. And even then, once passed, it should be checked every (add here a reasonable period, say, three to five years) that it does in fact "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" in the exact way it was claimed when presented for approval, and rejected as soon as it fails to support their claims.
Slashdot Mirror
"Who is going to pay for a full UBI in a third world nation? "
That's not the problem. Even the poorest nation on Earth has enough resources to print all the money they want.
The problem, of course, is that money on itself means nothing so just printing money and giving it away leads nowhere else than inflation.
What you need is, of course, creating wealth and sharing that wealth on a way that, at the same time, is fair in a social way and doesn't disincentive those creating that wealth.
In the last two centuries or so, capitalism has been the best (or the less bad) way we found to achieve that -other systems, namely fascism or communism, has been tried without good results.
But it seems capitalism has found its limits: on one hand, it depends on government controls governments can't offer anymore (capitalism has a natural tendency of capital accruement that leads to inequality and big fortunes that presses governments to lean the statu quo even more to their side -this has already crossed the no return point, starting in the 80's: we are no more on a industrial capitalism but on a financial capitalism), and a dependence on human labour to redistribute the profits which is on the verge of a crisis.
So it's time to go back to the roots: no matter if human or automated/robotic labour, the one that owns the means of production (the land, the oil, the machinery...), gets the big bite on the profits. Thus the answer becomes obvious: socialize the means of production.
But this is communism! you will cry (well, that's not such a bad thing, unless you are American, but that's a different issue). So yes, what's the problem with that? That it has already been tried and showed itself a fiasco! don't you even read what you yourself wrote in the previous paragraph?
No: what were failures were dictatorships that came after a revolution on empty stomachs, but nowhere is said that ownership of the means of production *have* to come after a revolution leading to a dictatorship. In fact, starting after WWI and specially obvious after WWII a lot of big infrasctructure companies (telco, energy, transportation...) were publicly owned even in first world capitalist countries showing it's possible and profitable and it was not till 80's when those possed to get the big gains pressed for the "privatize everything" movement (see on the limits of capitalism above).
Forget about UBI which can't bring but inflation and ask for strong state-owned companies. They can even compete with privately-owned ones for a while with the only difference that you won't need to extra-tax them: all their net benefits go right to the public purse on their own. Then progressively move the gross of taxes from work gains to capital gains. Finally, expand on the services the state offer "for free" to cover for what a country deems "basic welfare", from "just" army, police and justice to schooling, healthcare (most civilized countries except USA already do it), then shelter and food, etc. You don't need a revolution leading to a dictatorship for that, just a concienced electorate (but that's, of course, why the big fortunes have such a big interest in controlling mass media: they don't want you to know how comparatively easy it's in fact moving the world in the direction of *your* interest, not theirs).
"Does ghosting show a lack of professionalism, or is it simple payback for the way corporations treated job-seekers in the past?"
Yes to both.
Next question?
"Mortality is what keep us from living under Genghis Khan, Hitler or Pol Pot forever."
There two "kinds" of mortality: natural and violent. Even if we can avoid natural causes, nobody here is arguing to have a cure for a head chopped off so, bye, bye Hitler and Genghis Khan. Also given the violent traits of the lives of the ones like them, the longer they live, the most probably they find a wacky end (either violent or by letting them out of the healing procedures).
"Death grants us as a species to opportunity to renew and evolve."
Another argument could be that many of the problems we, as species and civilization, affront is because we die too soon and the ones that come after us repeat the same mistakes, since they are new for them. The most obvious may be war: how many (mainly male) teenagers either explicitly or implicitly see war as a romantic gest full of epic and worth of looking after (if only for the right causes) and then, how many veterans think the same (and even for those that still think that war is needed when it's needed, aren't the required standards set much, much higher?). It can be said that youngsters are naive and full of it and then, the elders that know better have lost the strength to be heard and/or make things happen they way they should. Maybe things would be different if that trend were reversed.
"Aging is genetic. You need to die for evolution to do its thing."
That's not exactly true. Death is needed only on steady populations (i.e.: on systems at their carrying capacity). Evolution is still capable of doing its thing without deaths as long as population is allowed to grow (i.e.: immortality plus space travel).
"A mature cryptocurrency would be one whose value didn't keep fluctuating wildly week by week."
But then, how a constant-rate/constant volume currency can cope with demand fluctuations?
I don't know what roots are for (rethoric) but, certainly, not for foraging.
forage
ËfÉ'rÉdÊ'/
verb
gerund or present participle: foraging
(of a person or animal) search widely for food or provisions.
"the birds forage for aquatic invertebrates, insects, and seeds"
obtain (food or provisions) by searching.
"a girl foraging grass for oxen"
search (a place) so as to obtain food.
"By that definition, viruses would count"
Why they shouldn't? Within this context at least? They need another "really living" thingie to take advantage of their metabolic machine, so what?
- Hey, boss, I think that's interesting... ...if you only had noticed *first* the Cthuluh-like creature that phagus is preying upon... by the way, what's that on its forehead? Isn't it a fricking laser aiming at our cameras?
- What's up, Minion?
Minion: look at this. It comes from our probe at X37-ZirgggK exoplanet and looks exactly like phage T4.
Boss: Oh, no! Do you know what will happen when I present this discovery to our Science Academy? Years, if not decades, of discussions about this being a living form or not. I don't want to go through all that... again!
Minion: yes, it seems so.
Boss: OK, take the probe out this planet ASAP and to the next exoplanet on the list. And, please, pay more attention next time!
Minion: Yessir.
Good luck finding a tree foraging that much.
Another non-explicitly presented aspect of the question is that NASA is not interested in finding living forms (not it has the ability to do so) but living systems. While we can argue the exact place of virus within a living-non living spectrum, there's no argument that virus-host form a living system.
"The line between life and not-life is already indistinct here on Earth. Viruses? Not-life...quite. Kinda life?"
Quite spot on... and shows how the question is the wrong one.
Of course, this is some of a click-bait as the question is not precisely recent, up to the point of guiding our search of exoplanets.
Of course we'll know life when we see it -that's not the question. The question is "will we know *any* kind of life when we see it?" And the answer is, of course too, we don't really know. That's why we look for "goldilocks planets", because we know we'll know life... at least as long as it looks like life here. And since our first goal (on this realm) is not finding *all* forms of life but *any* form of life over there, it's a good enough starting point we can start building from.
"Today, those agreements are illegal. So why should a company invest in you if they don't know if they can recoup the cost?"
Because they think of the consequences of *not* training you?
They can have a productive worker that *may* go, or a inefficient worker that *will* stay.
"...those entities that benefit the most from open source software - be they large commercial enterprises or government agencies - should be the ones to contribute the most."
In fact they do. The problem is that corporations are such pathological structures that they can't help themselves.
Some years ago, it came into fashion the term "coopetition": companies identify where are they really competing and what's just scaffolding (i.e.: infrastructure software) where they could cooperate instead.
They idea is sound, it's simply corporations are so toxic they can't develop on it themselves alone so they require another company to do that for themselves. I currently work for a big bank which, in turn, pays high bills for in-house Red Hat consultors. The biggest value those consultors bring to the table is that they talk to their colleagues that are doing exactly the same for other banks of the competition and share problems, tricks and solutions. If we were sane, we could do exactly the same and save the steep profit Red Hat is making out of it, but, you know, we just can't (I would probably be fired if tried to do what those Red Hat consultors are doing, and payed for doing).
"You no longer reward the person who is best able to develop a new idea, but the person who is best able to execute on an idea"
You see that you are making my point, right?
Patents are NOT, and NEVER were meant to reward ideas but the abililty to execute ideas.
The trend to protect mere ideas (like granting too generic patents, or granting patents on pure ideal fields, like maths) is a recent one, and one against what patents are for, both technically (it is not about ideas) and in spirit (they are coercing innovation, not promoting it).
"I just don't know what it necessarily means for the pace of innovation in other sectors (especially those where once the idea exists it's trivial to understand and copy) and what that means for humanity in the long term."
Just look and see. Whatever your model of patent/copyright is, you know something for certain: it is a recent addition to human History. But then, humankind seemingly went just OK without them for more of its History, so maybe the coolaid that without patents we can't go nowhere (or even, well, yeah, but at a much slower pace) is nothing but that: coolaid. Of course I don't have here the time and inclination to go for a long essay, but the more you look at patents/copyright evolution the more clear it becomes something smells (very) rotten there. Just for an example:
Bill Gates (1991): "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." No need to say how dear to patents Microsoft came less than a decade later. So, when Microsoft was an innovative company, his leader was very skeptic on patents; once his company was a behemoth, he was strongly in favour (oh, and now that he's pushing his charity, he changed his mind again and now, violating patents when fits his interests is not that bad again).
But you can think Bill Gates is "just" an individual... now go and look at USA History and its stance on copyright/patents: they were against them, when USA needed to advance itself, but strongly in favour once it was others which reclaimed the same right.
"Yeah, I see laws abused every time there's a crime and I think, "maybe we should cancel those laws, they don't work, and it would make the criminal's lives easier"."
For a proper comparation you should say "The *current* laws pretending to stop crime doesn't seem to stop the crimes they say because back when those laws weren't in place there were less of those crimes they pretend to avoid". And yes, if that were the case, I would question their value and I would want them repelled.
"The problem with removing them entirely is that it's going to be quite hard for any inventor to function independently."
While your argument seems to make sense, let's check it against reality.
Back in the early days of XX century, the ability to enforce patents was much less than it is today, both domestically and abroad, still, it was a period of franctic innovation in all kind of business.
Back in the 50's, business process were not patent-encumbered, but USA companies grew orders of magnitude out of better comprehension on who to optimize them.
Back in the 80's 90's software development was practically not patent-encumbered (certainly much less than today). And yet, the 80's 90's made some of the richest men on earth, at the quickest pace we've ever seen, out of humble garage investments.
So, it seems, something along your argument doesn't hold water, after all.
"Centimetres in metric countries is mainly a school thing"
No, it isn't.
"not used much beyond who do not do much educating beyond high school"
Where do you exactly live? Elbonia?
"there is more water at the equator pushing down the plates the water floats on."
Definitively, Elbonia must be.
"A "Pythagorean triangle" is a right-angled triangle where the sides all have integer length. This guy claims to have found some of those"
Which is an explendid way to show they did *not* know the Pythagorean theorem. Aegyptians, for instance, knew the nice trick that you can form a right-angled triangle with a 12 units rope, so integer length triangles are expected. We know the Pythagorean theorem, therefore we have no need to limit ourselves to "nice" right-angled triangles: we can build anyone that pleases us no matter the lenght of the resulting hypothenuse.
Note that non-integer ratio triangles does not cast any light on their knowledge (i.e. you can also build right-angled triangles with an hypothenuse of any length using the diameter of a circle) but having triangles of "nice" side-to-side ratio is an obvious proof of them not knowing the underlying maths.
"If the stones are determined by the calendar events, that's the reason why they have those proportions, not Pythagoras' theorem."
"German beer makers have to capture their own Co2 to use later during bottling."
Which only makes sense.
Everybody knows natural CO2 is much better than the artificial one. Who wants chemicals into his beer!?
"It's generally true of any country that the stuff that's exported isn't the best."
No, it isn't.
It is generally true of any country that the best stuff goes to the highest bidder. For a lot of countries that means foreign market.
"If the relation really was consensual, I'm inclined toward being a bit tolerant. "
Is it possible that I'm the only sane round here!?...
ÂHow have you in USA reached to the position of accept -and even support, a company policy saying nay about the private life (and I mean private, as in it's no fucking issue for anybody but for those directly involved) of their employees?
See? *Employees*. Not slaves, not serfs, not minions.
It ain't ghetto if there's only one.
"And so instead a great deal of intuition and gut reactions goes into the selection process as well"
Probably you are right here but then, why they don't publicly provide the facts, just as they provide their internal statistics? How many CVs by gender (or whatever other group); how many after first, second, first interview? I think it can't be too fair, say, having 80% males when 40% of valid CVs came from women (but I open to see the arguments).
But it also seems the whole issue is badly scoped -twice.
On one hand, it seems very difficult to change society at the top of the chain: by the time a CV reaches HR, candidates already have been through the system for too many years. Initiatives should start much, much early and responsibility requested where is due.
On the other hand, the whole USA society seems to have an deeply ingrained problem: it is not integrationist but ghettoist. Just contrast a photo from, say, New York city, where you can see a great "plurality" -all kinds of skin colors, dress styles... but, in general terms, here you have a white male, there a black woman, an Asian child overthere... now, get a similar photo from, say, Sao Paulo: at first glance doesn't seem to be that many diversity; on closer inspection what you have is a full gradient of human phenotypes with no gaps in-between: that *is* integration. You can't bias on color skin when there are no color skins but just shades, when basically everybody is at the same time black, and white, and yellow and red.
"Unfortunately they failed to predict that population would grow as expected so the younger generation may be saddled with more cost than they could tolerate."
Which it's still a shit truck upon a shit load. The one on the hyperlink below is USA's population pyramid. You sum up the bars between 20 to 64 and then you sum up the bars over 64. Make all the projections you want... the end result is the same: there is NO fucking problem population-wise. Much less when you compound it with the per-capita productivity increase involved along all these years.
No man: the problem is not -and it has never been, population, so you can start looking in other places.
https://www.indexmundi.com/gra...
"Yeah but new works are generally created by people with a passion for their crap they get creative and find a way to do it regardless of financial status"
Exactly that. I really love the way the copyright clause is worded in USA Constitution: "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Any regulation should *first* offer a clear reason on how it will "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" o else shouldn't pass. And even then, once passed, it should be checked every (add here a reasonable period, say, three to five years) that it does in fact "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" in the exact way it was claimed when presented for approval, and rejected as soon as it fails to support their claims.
It's really *that* easy.
"Michael Crichton began writing his novel Sphere in 1967 and did not publish until 1987"
Therefore, any copyright claim, under no matter what law, wouldn't start but by 1987. You point is, again?