Can you accept that MAYBE just MAYBE there is use in the world for these two terms to have different meanings in this context? Is that so hard?
Wow, hostile much? All I asked for was an explanation of the difference between the terms. I didn't say anything about the validity of using one or the other.
Guns don't kill people -- people kill people. On the other hand, a lot more people kill people when there are guns everywhere and there's no societal desire to train people how to properly use and respect guns. I'm perfectly happy to allow everyone in the U.S. to own as many guns of any caliber as they want, as long as everyone is required to take a mandatory gun safety and training class before they can own one.
Flaming rocks DO fall from the sky, Elephants DO startle at small rodents, the Viking experiments DO need to be followed up, and 'skeptical' scientists who use mockery need to be publicly humiliated by being forced to wear Dunces caps with the words "Rocks don't fall from the sky!" stenciled on them.
If you think that by threatening skeptics you can get us to do what you want... Well, that's where you're right. But -- and I am only saying this because I care -- there are a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market that are just as tasty as the real thing.
On June 6th, 2012, Slashdot will post a story about the transit of Venus, and some schmuck will complain that it's a dupe... and then link to this story.
Can anyone explain why copyright laws should have anything to do with the criminal court system, and not be handled in civil court, like patents and trademarks are? Why is there a difference?
I've recently begun to wonder why patent and trademark infringement lawsuits are entirely handled in civil court, but copyright infringement has become a criminal matter. Why shouldn't copyright be handled strictly in civil court, just like patent and trademark?
Basically, the reason why Hollywood is looking at a Spy Hunter movie is because the 3D, modern Spy Hunter game is so much fun.
No, the reason they're looking at a Spy Hunter movie is because it's already an established brand. It's become exceedingly (some would say excessively) common to look for projects that already have mindshare, rather than trusting that some new material, however good, will be able to capture peoples' attention. This is pissing off many screenwriters, as you might imagine, and not working as well as the studios keep hoping (there are a great many non-film properties out there, like Spy Hunter, that are not good source material for a film).
Imagine you are a member of a microgovernment (let's call it A) which has members who live exclusively in the area currently known as Rhode Island. Then imagine that there is another microgovernment (let's call it B) that occupies much of the same area. And perhaps 24 other microgovernments, let's call them C through Z.
An external force (say, France) starts murdering members of microgovt B. But they don't touch anyone who's a member of A. Would A help B? If so, why? If not, why not?
you have a hundred governments fighting against it to defend the liberty of their citizens.
A hundred small, disconnected, disorganized governments, which will probably spend a lot of effort arguing about how to fight back and who should have authority in their collective military force, vs. a monolithic government with a focused army that will trample over those smaller governments.
Here's another scenario to ponder. Imagine a collection of microgovernments (for that is what I shall call them) occupying the area currently known as Maine. Now imagine that the Canadian government decides it wants to possess Maine. Rather than using force, the Canucks spend a bunch of money to buy up all the grocery stores in Maine. No force is used, merely offers of a great deal of money. Now Canada owns the Maine grocery industry. Then they start raising prices, so that eventually nobody living in Maine can afford to buy groceries. Once again, no force is being used. People start moving out of Maine because it's too expensive to live there. Canada buys up all the rest of the land -- dirt cheap, because everyone's selling so it's a buyer's market -- and Canadians move in, subsidized by their massive government. And the microgovernments have nothing to say about it, because of their policy of live and let live. What would prevent something like this from happening? Not a single shot was fired, no threats were made. Canada simply buys everything (because it can afford to), and changes the economic situation so that Maniacs can't afford to live there anymore. There are many kinds of oppression that do not require the use of force.
What if Canada did invade Maine by force? Sure, the local microgovts would fight back. Of course, people in New York and Pennsylvania and California wouldn't be concerned, being so far away. But the local Maine govts, being so small compared to the mighty Canadian military (work with me here, this is a hypothetical future), can't effectively resist. And most people don't really want to get shot over changes that might not really affect them all that much -- one westernized industrial government is pretty much the same as another these days. So a large external force would be able to take over, little by little, until it owned the entire territory that the microgovernments used to control. (Of course, they never really "controlled" that territory.)
The answer to all of your objections is that the citizens in this society must as a whole desire their own liberty and be willing to fight for it.
If everyone in the world decided to play fair with each other (which is what your solution basically entails), it would be fantastic and wonderful. That is never going to happen; you're always going to have people who will to abuse and take advantage of the system, and your system makes it easier, not harder, for them to do that.
NO free form of government can compensate for a lack of that in its citizens.
There's no such thing as a "free form of government." A government exists to protect its members not only from external threats, but also from each other. The entire point of a goverment is to be able to exercise force in order to achieve the goals of its people. In a government of a half million people, you're not going to have a complete consensus at all times (in fact, you never will), but most of the time, people in that government will agree enough with the others, that they'll go along with things and not split off to form their own government. For one thing, doing so is a nontrivial effort; it requires a lot of time and energy that the average person simply does not have. Joe Random isn't going to be forming his own government.
And in fact, if the whole policy is "live and let live," if people can just do whatever they want (except initiate force), then why even have the pretense of governments? Why would an
One of the basic principles of libertarianism is that the right of self-defense can be delegated, and that is why we have governments that defend us
See Hobbes or Rousseau. This is actually one of the basic principles of sociology; pretty much all governments have practiced it since long before the advent of libertarianism.
a government, as we currently understand it, is simply an organization that claims a monopoly on the use of force in a particular geographic area.
And this organization just springs out of thin air? Governments are created out of the collective will of the people. And the nature of governments essentially requires that they have a monopoly on the use of force in a particular geographic area. If "governments" were geographically intermingled, you'd end up with incessant violence due to conflicting laws.
Imagine two overlapping governments: one where everyone has the right to their own sexual choices, and one where only men have that right, and women are treated as property. Now imagine that a man from the second government rapes a woman from the first government. Under his laws, it was legal; under her laws, it was illegal, and so her government retaliates against the guy. But from his government's point of view, this is unjustified use of force, and so they retaliate against the woman's government. Yay! War! With geographic separation, these people would never have come into contact in the first place.
And any number of small, loosely-organized governments, no matter how well-armed, is going to be any kind of match for a large, unified army like the ones fielded by modern governments. Unless, of course, those small governments band together in order to defeat that threat... which makes them into a single government for practical purposes.
Then suppose five or ten or twenty or even a thousand different groups sprung up, all with completely voluntary participation, each considered to be the government of its members. These might all take radically different forms; some would be elective democracies; some might even be monarchies. Some might allow membership (citizenship) in additional governments; some might require exclusive citizenship.
This might be feasible, if every person in every one of those governments agrees to live by this system... which is brain-meltingly unlikely to happen. As soon as you get one rogue government which will stop at nothing to consolidate its power...
As long as people practice a "live and let live" policy toward each other, they have no cause for concern.
This is true. But in real life, people don't practice a "live and let live" policy, and that's why we have governments! One of the primary reasons governments exist (especially more recent democratic governments) is to protect the weak from being abused, oppressed, or simply exterminated by the strong.
What an incredible world to imagine -- and all of it is based on voluntary agreement.
Yes, it is an incredible world. In the original sense meaning "unbelievable."
Anarcho-libertarians do not believe a basic government is needed, at all, or believe that government itself should be demonopolized (allowing a choice between any number of independent governments in a geographic area, or starting your own).
I've never quite understood, so I'm asking: how do anarcho-libertarians plan to enforce this system of government demonopolization, if they're committed to non-coercion? How does a "number of independent governments in a geographic area" differ from the current situation? E.g. Spain, Portugal, and France seem like a number of independent governments in a geographic area. Do you mean that the governments' area of influence would overlap? They wouldn't really be governments then, would they? How would they prevent a "traditional" government from invading and enslaving everyone?
Nor should I care, unless that company outright says what its proceeds benefit (like a charity or something). I don't wish to exert that control over anyone.
But you're perfectly okay with companies exerting control over you? And I disagree -- you most definitely should care what people do with the money you give them. It's an excessive corner case, sure, but what if a company you gave money to (because of their excellent products) was lobbying for legislation that would directly oppress your particular ethnic/social/religious group? Presumably you'd stop giving them money in that case, no matter how good their products, because every dollar you spend allows them to oppress you that much more.
So then what if that company doesn't do anything quite so heinous -- what if their oppression is less severe, but oppression nonetheless? (E.g. abusing the public trust by buying bad copyright legislation.) How gentle does the blow have to be before it becomes okay to take it without complaint?
How do you know that that money does not, at some point along the chain, fund some activity you find illicit or immoral? You don't.
I've had this same thought. But I don't think this justifies not taking action when you do know that they're doing smoething you don't like. It's clearly infeasible to make sure that every employee of every company you give money to agrees with your political and moral beliefs; there's not even enough time in the day, without even considering the difficulty of getting that information. But if you (for one reason or another) do find out that a particular company's policy is to do things you find immoral, it's perfectly justifiable to stop giving any more money to that company.
Nobody's saying you have to go out of your way to establish a detailed dossier of every company's spending habits; it's not practical. But there are people out there who already do that for us, and we can use the sum of their research to inform our decisions. In other words, you don't have to do it all yourself. And even if you never actively seek out that information, if you happen across it, it's fine to act on it.
My point, however, is that I wish to reward the good that Disney does and condemn their wrongs in other, possibly more productive ways (letter writing, etc.). Thus, the remark about "dissociating the product from the producer's politics". To me, it is morally right to pay people money when they produce something good, and complain when they do something bad.
The problem with this M.O. is that no matter what horrible evil Disney does, as long as they produce great products, you'll keep funding them. Even if you blister Disney and your congresscritter with letters, run huge grassroots campaigns to get them censured or whatever, but still knowingly give them the very money they use to do bad things, you are morally responsible for what they do (at least in some small part -- naturally you personally can't be entirely to blame for Disney's actions).
If you give them lots of money, then tell them you don't like what they're doing (but are still going to give them lots of money), that's sending mixed signals. They're going to assume you're a Disney-addicted whiner and ignore your letters. But if you stop paying them, and tell them why you're no longer giving them any money, that will have some small effect.
I actually don't think I've bought anything from them since Kingdom Hearts) are large enough that my boycotting their products, no matter how large a boycott it may be, will have any effect.
No single drop of rain believes it's to blame for the flood. You don't get to absolve yourself of responsibility by saying that your individual action has no measurable effect. That's exactly the same as saying that there's no point in voting, because your single vote doesn't make a measurable
Show me hard evidence that a Disney production-- not a law they endorsed, not a bill they lobbied for against, but an actual, released to the public (or not) work with the Disney name-- was harmful to the people at large and children in particular, and I'll immediately destroy anything of theirs I own. Till then, keep your psychotic viewpoint away from my cousins, nieces, and nephews.
If you're saying what I think you're saying, then... What the hell? This isn't even remotely rational. People who avoid giving money to Disney do so usually because they object to what Disney does with that money. Even if the content they produce is wonderful and beautiful and wise and perfect, it doesn't make it morally right to give them money when what they do with that money is buy bad laws, abuse the concept of intellectual property, and deny people their fair use rights.
Now I might misunderstand -- it's possible that your point is, "I won't buy any more stuff from Disney, because I don't like what they're doing with my money, but I'm certainly not going to stop watching/playing the movies/games they produced that I *already* own." I can't argue with that, not really. (The best I could do would be to say that allowing your kids to experience that content might impel them to want more of it, which puts at odds your desires to A) give your kids what they want and B) not give money to Disney, but the connection is tenuous, since your kids would probably get a lot more of their desire for Disney stuff from external influences (friends, advertising) than they would from watching stuff you already own.)
But from the way you phrased your post, it sounds like you're saying what I thought you were originally saying, so perhaps you could clarify?
Slashdot Mirror
...but apparently an iPod should!
Why, that would be just after the election. Neat coincidence, that.
Don't mod him down because he's a creationist. Mod him down because he's an idiot.
It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Then, it's just a game: Find the Eye.
Perhaps you could explain the difference between a defect and a bug for those of us who don't understand it?
Guns don't kill people -- people kill people. On the other hand, a lot more people kill people when there are guns everywhere and there's no societal desire to train people how to properly use and respect guns. I'm perfectly happy to allow everyone in the U.S. to own as many guns of any caliber as they want, as long as everyone is required to take a mandatory gun safety and training class before they can own one.
Microsoft develops its software?
On June 6th, 2012, Slashdot will post a story about the transit of Venus, and some schmuck will complain that it's a dupe... and then link to this story.
Can anyone explain why copyright laws should have anything to do with the criminal court system, and not be handled in civil court, like patents and trademarks are? Why is there a difference?
I've recently begun to wonder why patent and trademark infringement lawsuits are entirely handled in civil court, but copyright infringement has become a criminal matter. Why shouldn't copyright be handled strictly in civil court, just like patent and trademark?
Imagine you are a member of a microgovernment (let's call it A) which has members who live exclusively in the area currently known as Rhode Island. Then imagine that there is another microgovernment (let's call it B) that occupies much of the same area. And perhaps 24 other microgovernments, let's call them C through Z.
An external force (say, France) starts murdering members of microgovt B. But they don't touch anyone who's a member of A. Would A help B? If so, why? If not, why not?
A hundred small, disconnected, disorganized governments, which will probably spend a lot of effort arguing about how to fight back and who should have authority in their collective military force, vs. a monolithic government with a focused army that will trample over those smaller governments.
Here's another scenario to ponder. Imagine a collection of microgovernments (for that is what I shall call them) occupying the area currently known as Maine. Now imagine that the Canadian government decides it wants to possess Maine. Rather than using force, the Canucks spend a bunch of money to buy up all the grocery stores in Maine. No force is used, merely offers of a great deal of money. Now Canada owns the Maine grocery industry. Then they start raising prices, so that eventually nobody living in Maine can afford to buy groceries. Once again, no force is being used. People start moving out of Maine because it's too expensive to live there. Canada buys up all the rest of the land -- dirt cheap, because everyone's selling so it's a buyer's market -- and Canadians move in, subsidized by their massive government. And the microgovernments have nothing to say about it, because of their policy of live and let live. What would prevent something like this from happening? Not a single shot was fired, no threats were made. Canada simply buys everything (because it can afford to), and changes the economic situation so that Maniacs can't afford to live there anymore. There are many kinds of oppression that do not require the use of force.
What if Canada did invade Maine by force? Sure, the local microgovts would fight back. Of course, people in New York and Pennsylvania and California wouldn't be concerned, being so far away. But the local Maine govts, being so small compared to the mighty Canadian military (work with me here, this is a hypothetical future), can't effectively resist. And most people don't really want to get shot over changes that might not really affect them all that much -- one westernized industrial government is pretty much the same as another these days. So a large external force would be able to take over, little by little, until it owned the entire territory that the microgovernments used to control. (Of course, they never really "controlled" that territory.)
If everyone in the world decided to play fair with each other (which is what your solution basically entails), it would be fantastic and wonderful. That is never going to happen; you're always going to have people who will to abuse and take advantage of the system, and your system makes it easier, not harder, for them to do that.
There's no such thing as a "free form of government." A government exists to protect its members not only from external threats, but also from each other. The entire point of a goverment is to be able to exercise force in order to achieve the goals of its people. In a government of a half million people, you're not going to have a complete consensus at all times (in fact, you never will), but most of the time, people in that government will agree enough with the others, that they'll go along with things and not split off to form their own government. For one thing, doing so is a nontrivial effort; it requires a lot of time and energy that the average person simply does not have. Joe Random isn't going to be forming his own government.
And in fact, if the whole policy is "live and let live," if people can just do whatever they want (except initiate force), then why even have the pretense of governments? Why would an
Imagine two overlapping governments: one where everyone has the right to their own sexual choices, and one where only men have that right, and women are treated as property. Now imagine that a man from the second government rapes a woman from the first government. Under his laws, it was legal; under her laws, it was illegal, and so her government retaliates against the guy. But from his government's point of view, this is unjustified use of force, and so they retaliate against the woman's government. Yay! War! With geographic separation, these people would never have come into contact in the first place.
And any number of small, loosely-organized governments, no matter how well-armed, is going to be any kind of match for a large, unified army like the ones fielded by modern governments. Unless, of course, those small governments band together in order to defeat that threat... which makes them into a single government for practical purposes.
This might be feasible, if every person in every one of those governments agrees to live by this system... which is brain-meltingly unlikely to happen. As soon as you get one rogue government which will stop at nothing to consolidate its power... This is true. But in real life, people don't practice a "live and let live" policy, and that's why we have governments! One of the primary reasons governments exist (especially more recent democratic governments) is to protect the weak from being abused, oppressed, or simply exterminated by the strong. Yes, it is an incredible world. In the original sense meaning "unbelievable."But you're perfectly okay with companies exerting control over you? And I disagree -- you most definitely should care what people do with the money you give them. It's an excessive corner case, sure, but what if a company you gave money to (because of their excellent products) was lobbying for legislation that would directly oppress your particular ethnic/social/religious group? Presumably you'd stop giving them money in that case, no matter how good their products, because every dollar you spend allows them to oppress you that much more.
So then what if that company doesn't do anything quite so heinous -- what if their oppression is less severe, but oppression nonetheless? (E.g. abusing the public trust by buying bad copyright legislation.) How gentle does the blow have to be before it becomes okay to take it without complaint?
I've had this same thought. But I don't think this justifies not taking action when you do know that they're doing smoething you don't like. It's clearly infeasible to make sure that every employee of every company you give money to agrees with your political and moral beliefs; there's not even enough time in the day, without even considering the difficulty of getting that information. But if you (for one reason or another) do find out that a particular company's policy is to do things you find immoral, it's perfectly justifiable to stop giving any more money to that company.
Nobody's saying you have to go out of your way to establish a detailed dossier of every company's spending habits; it's not practical. But there are people out there who already do that for us, and we can use the sum of their research to inform our decisions. In other words, you don't have to do it all yourself. And even if you never actively seek out that information, if you happen across it, it's fine to act on it.
The problem with this M.O. is that no matter what horrible evil Disney does, as long as they produce great products, you'll keep funding them. Even if you blister Disney and your congresscritter with letters, run huge grassroots campaigns to get them censured or whatever, but still knowingly give them the very money they use to do bad things, you are morally responsible for what they do (at least in some small part -- naturally you personally can't be entirely to blame for Disney's actions).
If you give them lots of money, then tell them you don't like what they're doing (but are still going to give them lots of money), that's sending mixed signals. They're going to assume you're a Disney-addicted whiner and ignore your letters. But if you stop paying them, and tell them why you're no longer giving them any money, that will have some small effect.
No single drop of rain believes it's to blame for the flood. You don't get to absolve yourself of responsibility by saying that your individual action has no measurable effect. That's exactly the same as saying that there's no point in voting, because your single vote doesn't make a measurable
Now I might misunderstand -- it's possible that your point is, "I won't buy any more stuff from Disney, because I don't like what they're doing with my money, but I'm certainly not going to stop watching/playing the movies/games they produced that I *already* own." I can't argue with that, not really. (The best I could do would be to say that allowing your kids to experience that content might impel them to want more of it, which puts at odds your desires to A) give your kids what they want and B) not give money to Disney, but the connection is tenuous, since your kids would probably get a lot more of their desire for Disney stuff from external influences (friends, advertising) than they would from watching stuff you already own.)
But from the way you phrased your post, it sounds like you're saying what I thought you were originally saying, so perhaps you could clarify?