1) It doesn't matter if most people make IP because they love it. Again, many people love their jobs but would stop doing them if not paid. Furthermore, the fact that some people do make IP for money reveals the social loss that would occur if their IP "rights were not protected."
2) You're assuming away the revenue problem. If anyone can copy an ebook, you're not going to be able to make much if any money off of it. Make sure to consider the full effect of liberating written works.
3) I would be sad if A.S. didn't get $20 million to do a movie. He is paid that much because (a producer believe that) he will produce that much value, aggregated over consumers. If his return were "only" $100,000, he may not do it, and society is all the worse off because of it, since people generally don't work unless the compenstion is large relative to their savings.
4) Yes, you lose some utility from the restrictions placed on media, but this must be weighed against how much more will be produced it the DRM works. It's not at all clear to me which side is best.
5) What did you think of my idea for making money from inventions without patents? And why don't you register, you seem to have some interesting thoughts to offer.
So, Mr. Geeste, free yourself from addiction! All you have to do is not
You argument is basically: Government produced X. Ergo, we would not have X or something better than X if not for government. That's such an absurd claim I'm not sure if it needs refutation, but I'll humor you anyway. When government funds something, no one specifically made the decision to spend their own money on it. When private agencies do, they rely on people "putting their money where their collective mouth is". Thus, voluntarily funded project necessarily satisfy the desires of the participants. Government projects may not, and in general, do not. If the government(s) hadn't done any of those things, and also had not hampered economic growth, we would have the same and, most likely, better.
If you couldn't follow that, your argument is like taking $100 from me, buying a candy bar, giving it to me, and saying "SEEE!!!! SEEE!!!! without theft, you wouldn't have candy! Rant about theft all you want, the fact is you benefit from it. Society benefits from it. If you're really against theft, you'd never eat candy!"
The fact is that there are some projects (including the ones above) that are either too large, too basic or too far reaching political scope that only the government can and should fund and run them.
The fact is, that's your unsupported assertion and by no means a "fact", just your prejudice.
me:Surely, reasonable people can see a big difference between "not funding" and "actively impeding".
you:Yes, there is a difference. However, why not lower funding for all medical research? By selectively prohibiting Federal funding on stem-cell research (as opposed to other medical research), the Bush Administration effectively has hamstrung national research on stem-cell reasearch.
Government should not fund research. Currently, government funds some research, but not others. So it gets it partway right. The remedy? Get rid of the part it does right, or make it do it all wrong?
Fine - here are some government programs that I would like to be convinced on:... If you support thses programs, please tell me why these deserve Federal funding so much more than stem-cell research that may lead to tremendous medical advances.
Obviously I don't support those either. I don't know where you got that I did. I'll join with you in opposing them. Maybe those programs give you some perspective on government funding. Sure, you find those wasteful. And a lot of people find your pet projects wasteful. They should fund yours, but you shouldn't fund theirs. Hm...
me:Oh, and I don't need to hear the "corporations are short-sighted" argument either. You're short-sighted too in that you spend money consuming things you don't really need rather than saving it or investing it in new technology.)
you:Translated into a syllogism:
Premise #1: Corporations are short-sighted when it comes to basic research Premise #2: People are short-sighted about stem-cell research Conclusion: The government shouldn't fund stem-cell research
Now tell me again how the conclusion follows? Because I sure don't see it.
That wasn't the argument. I didn't even invoke Premise #2; it had nothing to do with the argument if you read it; that you deem it relevant shows you totally misunderstood the argument. I was rejecting shortsightedness in itself as a reason to deny or disparage the contribution of any one class. If there is a more elaborate argument (i.e., one usually not given when the "shortsightedness" of corporations is invoked), let's hear it
This is an attempt at reverse psychology, and a pathetic show of egocentric defensiveness. Please refrain from using this Slashdot cliche. Either stand up for your ideas or refrain from posting.
Hey, I've gotten modded down before for stating the obvious. It doesn't hurt to appeal to conscience.
Much as I'd like to tear you a new one about the "greatness" of the FDA, my specific point was about federal funding, not federal regulation, so that point is entirely irrelevant. The rest of your post is flat out wrong. The federal government does not fund most coporartions' drug research. (And please, please don't insult my intelligence by arguing that an unrelated tax break constitutes "the federal government funding corporations' research".) And drug research is already high risk, and still draws LOTS of investors that want that kind of portfolio. That "a few dozen have gone out of business" is therefore irrelevant. Nor need a pharmaceutical startup be small. Investors are fully capable of raising such funds. If they can't, society has other priorities.
WAH! I can't force taxpayers to pay for my research! I'm being oppressed!
Are people so addicted to government now that for the government simply not to fund something means it's standing in the way? This is not a "I hate the government" vs "I love the government" issue. Surely, reasonable people can see a big difference between "not funding" and "actively impeding". Whatever happened to the days of actually convincing people to voluntarily spend their money on your schemes? Maybe there's... no demand for what you're doing? (Before you give me an emotional speech about "my research would save dying babies..." understand that we have to make tradeoffs. Yes, saving more dying babies is a good goal. So are a dozen other things I can think of. My point is that people may have different aims than you would like. Oh, and I don't need to hear the "corporations are short-sighted" argument either. You're short-sighted too in that you spend money consuming things you don't really need rather than saving it or investing it in new technology.)
Go ahead, mod me down, I'd gladly take the karma hit if people could just consider my point.
I'm sick and tired of telemarketing. Why do we tolerate it at all? If I announce to the world I don't want sales calls, I have explicitly voiced that I do not want your intrusion. If you continue to try to con me into giving you money I don't want to give after I have specifically told you not to contact me, that is harassment. Somehow, we have huge punishments for stalkers, but not for these sociopaths who do basically the same thing. I don't know why we tolerate them at all.
And this isn't an issue about profits. There's nothing wrong with trying to make a profit. There is something wrong with violating people's rights to do it. If you want me to listen to your spiels, PAY ME TO DO SO. Otherwise, go away.
Scarcity of intellectual works is not artificial; it is totally natural. Yes, an idea, ONCE PRODUCED, is not scarce. But before that time, it is infinitely scarce, and the greatest anti-capitalistic revolution won't change that.
Your next error is to fail to think on the margin. It's not a question of "Do all people produce intellectual works for money?" vs. "Does no one produce intellectual works for money?" Some do, some don't. Absent IP laws, the ones that don't do it for the money will, correct, probably still crank out the goods (er, as much as their need to earn an income in other ways allows). And the freer flow of information will increase this incentive slightly. (I say slightly because most people who produce content for the love of it already give it away.) What IP laws do is move the margin that separates content producers and non-producers. It diverts and encourages investment that would have otherwise been idle or gone elsewhere to go into producing intellectual works. And indeed, there are benefits to be gained from the absence of IP laws that need to be weighed against the drop in content creation. But most people see all the money that has to be spent to produce a good movie or book, and reason that their lives would be far less fulfilling without them. That is why copyright is so popular and hasn't been abolished. I'm not saying these people are right, just that they're not idiots, and they've generally considered the alternatives. If you want to convince the masses to give it up, you'll have to find something better to offer, not just narrowly focus on marginal cost of copying IP (zero) while ignoring the average cost (huge).
(Sidebar: How much did the second pill of any major medicine cost to make? Five cents. How much did the first cost? Billions.)
And on a final note, no, it's not unreasonable to ask that content creators get compensated in proportion to how popular their creations are. Yes, they "love their work" but you could say this about many if not most workers. I love my job. Would I come here everyday for free?... no.
Oh, and a second final note. I'm not a big fan of government or state-sponsored capitalism either. That doesn't mean I have to be wildly ignorant of the impact of abolishing copyrights.
I think you're missing the point of this technology. Yes, the data would have less value to the consumer. However, the better the copy protection technology is, the more certain the creator of that content is that they won't lose sales through mass piracy. That would in turn encourage people to produce more and better content and bring it to market (at least, the people who are motivated by money). Yes, I know that some content producers turn a blind eye to the small amount of piracy because it gives them free advertising and future sales. But many would simply stop creating, or create at a much slower rate if pirating substantially increased. I think it would be in error to attribute this to greed. Wanting to get paid for content you created and/or marketed (yes, marketing is a vital function in that it connects content consumers with what they want) is not "greed" in any meaningful sense of the word. In my mind, it's like calling a worker who gripes about his boss withholding his paycheck greedy. Yes, he's greedy in that he wants money, but he earned it!
Now, if you want to propose a way to compensate (and thereby encourage) content creation without copyrights or copy protection, I'M ALL EARS! And so is the rest of the world struggling with this difficult issue. And if you come up with a solution, I will personally attend your Nobel Prize award ceremony. (Sorry, Bank of Sweden Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel.)
I have an idea that would work for inventions, that is, a way to compensate inventors without patents. It goes like this: People invent things to increase efficiency (satisfy the same or higher desires with the same or less effort). That means an invention is useful if and to the extent that it alters market prices. But (as a fundamental insight of economics) if you know a price is going to change before it changes, you can profit from that information, whether the price goes up or down (as long as you know the direction). So, an inventor can just speculate in the markets his invention is going to distort (for example, if you invent a cheaper way of making orange juice, that will probably bid up the price of oranges and orange futures). Since he invented it, he has the information before others, and can thus profit. It would be in his interest to give it away for free, because that will accelerate the price shifts. Note that he doesn't necessarily need money to do this: he can go to people who do have money and offer to tell them when he's going to release the invention in exchange for a cut of their speculative profits.
I don't yet see how this idea applies to written works, but it's a start. So, if you can come up with one, then you can justifiably rant about copyrights and copy protection. But not until.
You really don't need to make people pay a net tax in order to fund public tranportation system. A public transportation is going to push up property values because of (for residents) the ease of getting where you want and (for businesses) the ease of customers getting to you. Thus, you can just tax the gain in value of the properties as a result of the public transportation system (which is generally referred to as a ground rent). This is much less punishing to citizens since property value stay the same (after taxes) and you only pay away the value that wouldn't be there if not for the public transportation system.
The English grammatical structure was primarily taken from early Germanic languages (probably from early Scandinavian), whereas our core vocabulary is mainly derived from Latin (a good deal of it comes via French, thanks to the Normans). Although English has become quite a bit removed from its Germanic origins, our grammatical structure still greatly resembles German in many aspects.
What the hell are you talking about? If you want to translate a German sentence directly to English, it would be like this:
English grammar: I hope that I can go with you to the movies tomorrow.
German grammar: I hope that I with you tomorrow to the movies go can. (Ich hoffe, dass ich mit dir morgen ins Kino gehen kann.)
also:
English grammar: I would like to read the newspaper.
German grammar: I would like to the newspaper read. (Ich moechte die Zeitung lesen.)
I don't know where you got that the grammar is the same.
One thing I don't get about that: the open doc format still looks like garbled crap when you try to read it directly. What if I don't have a reader and I don't have access to the internet? At least with xml markup you can make some sense of it.
Racist comments like that aren't worth dignifying with a response.
Truth no longer dignifies a response? Look, if you want to show the world how tolerant and "understanding" and hey, even "progressive" you are, so you can get a pat on the back, you don't have to be condescending to people who make factual statements. There are smart(er) people who hold the same political beliefs you do, yet manage to advocate their positions without denying the obvious. You even made some inroads in your next comments (arguing that focusing on high-risk groups will not increase safety)! So here's a tip: when you're arguing, don't deny obvious facts. It just costs you credibility.
Hey genius: Terrorists aren't that stupid. Such an obvious pattern would be quickly detected and worked around. If we only search big dark-skinned guys with beards, the next bomber they send will be a tiny, redheaded goth girl.
Phew! Good thing I didn't advocate searching only Middle Easterners and no one else! And your logic is faulty anyway. If they "send a goth", they have to pick a goth already predisposed to terrorism. Since fewer (by percentage) goths are predisposed to terrorism, it still would make sense to search them disproportionately less. And even if we did search Middle Easternerns very disproportionately, this would still force them to have to recruit non-Middle Easterners, which increases their costs and stems terrorism.
Are you denying the utility of random searches? If so, you're saying everyone who meets conditions X, Y, and Z should be searched, or none should. You probably don't advocate that. So you agree with random searches. In that case, all I'm claiming is that all else equal, they should search more Middle Easterners. You reject even this. Therefore, you advocate waste of resources and lower safety.
I know Indians are not Middle Easterners; I was giving a typical example of a higher-risk class. Of course the overwhelming majority of Middle Easterners are not terrorists. However, you should divert scarce resources to where they yield the highest returns first. In this case, that means spending more on searching Middle Easterners who, ceteris paribus, are more likely to be terrorists.
Hey genius: a Middle Easterner is more likely to be a terrorist than you are. Focusing on Middle Easterners is an efficient way to use scarce resources. If you prefer they be less effective regarding things like, you know, your life and stuff like that, go ahead and start a campaign for costlier, less safe security procedures. Just know what you're starting.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me try to go over your major points here:
1) It doesn't matter if most people make IP because they love it. Again, many people love their jobs but would stop doing them if not paid. Furthermore, the fact that some people do make IP for money reveals the social loss that would occur if their IP "rights were not protected."
2) You're assuming away the revenue problem. If anyone can copy an ebook, you're not going to be able to make much if any money off of it. Make sure to consider the full effect of liberating written works.
3) I would be sad if A.S. didn't get $20 million to do a movie. He is paid that much because (a producer believe that) he will produce that much value, aggregated over consumers. If his return were "only" $100,000, he may not do it, and society is all the worse off because of it, since people generally don't work unless the compenstion is large relative to their savings.
4) Yes, you lose some utility from the restrictions placed on media, but this must be weighed against how much more will be produced it the DRM works. It's not at all clear to me which side is best.
5) What did you think of my idea for making money from inventions without patents? And why don't you register, you seem to have some interesting thoughts to offer.
Your points considered and rejected.
...
... If you support thses programs, please tell me why these deserve Federal funding so much more than stem-cell research that may lead to tremendous medical advances.
Consider major government spending projects:
So, Mr. Geeste, free yourself from addiction! All you have to do is not
You argument is basically: Government produced X. Ergo, we would not have X or something better than X if not for government. That's such an absurd claim I'm not sure if it needs refutation, but I'll humor you anyway. When government funds something, no one specifically made the decision to spend their own money on it. When private agencies do, they rely on people "putting their money where their collective mouth is". Thus, voluntarily funded project necessarily satisfy the desires of the participants. Government projects may not, and in general, do not. If the government(s) hadn't done any of those things, and also had not hampered economic growth, we would have the same and, most likely, better.
If you couldn't follow that, your argument is like taking $100 from me, buying a candy bar, giving it to me, and saying "SEEE!!!! SEEE!!!! without theft, you wouldn't have candy! Rant about theft all you want, the fact is you benefit from it. Society benefits from it. If you're really against theft, you'd never eat candy!"
The fact is that there are some projects (including the ones above) that are either too large, too basic or too far reaching political scope that only the government can and should fund and run them.
The fact is, that's your unsupported assertion and by no means a "fact", just your prejudice.
me:Surely, reasonable people can see a big difference between "not funding" and "actively impeding".
you:Yes, there is a difference. However, why not lower funding for all medical research? By selectively prohibiting Federal funding on stem-cell research (as opposed to other medical research), the Bush Administration effectively has hamstrung national research on stem-cell reasearch.
Government should not fund research. Currently, government funds some research, but not others. So it gets it partway right. The remedy? Get rid of the part it does right, or make it do it all wrong?
Fine - here are some government programs that I would like to be convinced on:
Obviously I don't support those either. I don't know where you got that I did. I'll join with you in opposing them. Maybe those programs give you some perspective on government funding. Sure, you find those wasteful. And a lot of people find your pet projects wasteful. They should fund yours, but you shouldn't fund theirs. Hm...
me:Oh, and I don't need to hear the "corporations are short-sighted" argument either. You're short-sighted too in that you spend money consuming things you don't really need rather than saving it or investing it in new technology.)
you:Translated into a syllogism:
Premise #1: Corporations are short-sighted when it comes to basic research
Premise #2: People are short-sighted about stem-cell research
Conclusion: The government shouldn't fund stem-cell research
Now tell me again how the conclusion follows? Because I sure don't see it.
That wasn't the argument. I didn't even invoke Premise #2; it had nothing to do with the argument if you read it; that you deem it relevant shows you totally misunderstood the argument. I was rejecting shortsightedness in itself as a reason to deny or disparage the contribution of any one class. If there is a more elaborate argument (i.e., one usually not given when the "shortsightedness" of corporations is invoked), let's hear it
This is an attempt at reverse psychology, and a pathetic show of egocentric defensiveness. Please refrain from using this Slashdot cliche. Either stand up for your ideas or refrain from posting.
Hey, I've gotten modded down before for stating the obvious. It doesn't hurt to appeal to conscience.
Much as I'd like to tear you a new one about the "greatness" of the FDA, my specific point was about federal funding, not federal regulation, so that point is entirely irrelevant. The rest of your post is flat out wrong. The federal government does not fund most coporartions' drug research. (And please, please don't insult my intelligence by arguing that an unrelated tax break constitutes "the federal government funding corporations' research".) And drug research is already high risk, and still draws LOTS of investors that want that kind of portfolio. That "a few dozen have gone out of business" is therefore irrelevant. Nor need a pharmaceutical startup be small. Investors are fully capable of raising such funds. If they can't, society has other priorities.
WAH! I can't force taxpayers to pay for my research! I'm being oppressed!
Are people so addicted to government now that for the government simply not to fund something means it's standing in the way? This is not a "I hate the government" vs "I love the government" issue. Surely, reasonable people can see a big difference between "not funding" and "actively impeding". Whatever happened to the days of actually convincing people to voluntarily spend their money on your schemes? Maybe there's... no demand for what you're doing? (Before you give me an emotional speech about "my research would save dying babies..." understand that we have to make tradeoffs. Yes, saving more dying babies is a good goal. So are a dozen other things I can think of. My point is that people may have different aims than you would like. Oh, and I don't need to hear the "corporations are short-sighted" argument either. You're short-sighted too in that you spend money consuming things you don't really need rather than saving it or investing it in new technology.)
Go ahead, mod me down, I'd gladly take the karma hit if people could just consider my point.
I'm sick and tired of telemarketing. Why do we tolerate it at all? If I announce to the world I don't want sales calls, I have explicitly voiced that I do not want your intrusion. If you continue to try to con me into giving you money I don't want to give after I have specifically told you not to contact me, that is harassment. Somehow, we have huge punishments for stalkers, but not for these sociopaths who do basically the same thing. I don't know why we tolerate them at all.
And this isn't an issue about profits. There's nothing wrong with trying to make a profit. There is something wrong with violating people's rights to do it. If you want me to listen to your spiels, PAY ME TO DO SO. Otherwise, go away.
Scarcity of intellectual works is not artificial; it is totally natural. Yes, an idea, ONCE PRODUCED, is not scarce. But before that time, it is infinitely scarce, and the greatest anti-capitalistic revolution won't change that.
... no.
Your next error is to fail to think on the margin. It's not a question of "Do all people produce intellectual works for money?" vs. "Does no one produce intellectual works for money?" Some do, some don't. Absent IP laws, the ones that don't do it for the money will, correct, probably still crank out the goods (er, as much as their need to earn an income in other ways allows). And the freer flow of information will increase this incentive slightly. (I say slightly because most people who produce content for the love of it already give it away.) What IP laws do is move the margin that separates content producers and non-producers. It diverts and encourages investment that would have otherwise been idle or gone elsewhere to go into producing intellectual works. And indeed, there are benefits to be gained from the absence of IP laws that need to be weighed against the drop in content creation. But most people see all the money that has to be spent to produce a good movie or book, and reason that their lives would be far less fulfilling without them. That is why copyright is so popular and hasn't been abolished. I'm not saying these people are right, just that they're not idiots, and they've generally considered the alternatives. If you want to convince the masses to give it up, you'll have to find something better to offer, not just narrowly focus on marginal cost of copying IP (zero) while ignoring the average cost (huge).
(Sidebar: How much did the second pill of any major medicine cost to make? Five cents. How much did the first cost? Billions.)
And on a final note, no, it's not unreasonable to ask that content creators get compensated in proportion to how popular their creations are. Yes, they "love their work" but you could say this about many if not most workers. I love my job. Would I come here everyday for free?
Oh, and a second final note. I'm not a big fan of government or state-sponsored capitalism either. That doesn't mean I have to be wildly ignorant of the impact of abolishing copyrights.
I think you're missing the point of this technology. Yes, the data would have less value to the consumer. However, the better the copy protection technology is, the more certain the creator of that content is that they won't lose sales through mass piracy. That would in turn encourage people to produce more and better content and bring it to market (at least, the people who are motivated by money). Yes, I know that some content producers turn a blind eye to the small amount of piracy because it gives them free advertising and future sales. But many would simply stop creating, or create at a much slower rate if pirating substantially increased. I think it would be in error to attribute this to greed. Wanting to get paid for content you created and/or marketed (yes, marketing is a vital function in that it connects content consumers with what they want) is not "greed" in any meaningful sense of the word. In my mind, it's like calling a worker who gripes about his boss withholding his paycheck greedy. Yes, he's greedy in that he wants money, but he earned it!
Now, if you want to propose a way to compensate (and thereby encourage) content creation without copyrights or copy protection, I'M ALL EARS! And so is the rest of the world struggling with this difficult issue. And if you come up with a solution, I will personally attend your Nobel Prize award ceremony. (Sorry, Bank of Sweden Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel.)
I have an idea that would work for inventions, that is, a way to compensate inventors without patents. It goes like this: People invent things to increase efficiency (satisfy the same or higher desires with the same or less effort). That means an invention is useful if and to the extent that it alters market prices. But (as a fundamental insight of economics) if you know a price is going to change before it changes, you can profit from that information, whether the price goes up or down (as long as you know the direction). So, an inventor can just speculate in the markets his invention is going to distort (for example, if you invent a cheaper way of making orange juice, that will probably bid up the price of oranges and orange futures). Since he invented it, he has the information before others, and can thus profit. It would be in his interest to give it away for free, because that will accelerate the price shifts. Note that he doesn't necessarily need money to do this: he can go to people who do have money and offer to tell them when he's going to release the invention in exchange for a cut of their speculative profits.
I don't yet see how this idea applies to written works, but it's a start. So, if you can come up with one, then you can justifiably rant about copyrights and copy protection. But not until.
The point of an open letter is to convince the public, not the person it's ostensibly written to.
You really don't need to make people pay a net tax in order to fund public tranportation system. A public transportation is going to push up property values because of (for residents) the ease of getting where you want and (for businesses) the ease of customers getting to you. Thus, you can just tax the gain in value of the properties as a result of the public transportation system (which is generally referred to as a ground rent). This is much less punishing to citizens since property value stay the same (after taxes) and you only pay away the value that wouldn't be there if not for the public transportation system.
Oh, I believe you. I was just disputing that English grammar was remarkably similar to German's, like the GGP was trying to rook us into thinking.
The English grammatical structure was primarily taken from early Germanic languages (probably from early Scandinavian), whereas our core vocabulary is mainly derived from Latin (a good deal of it comes via French, thanks to the Normans). Although English has become quite a bit removed from its Germanic origins, our grammatical structure still greatly resembles German in many aspects.
What the hell are you talking about? If you want to translate a German sentence directly to English, it would be like this:
English grammar: I hope that I can go with you to the movies tomorrow.
German grammar: I hope that I with you tomorrow to the movies go can. (Ich hoffe, dass ich mit dir morgen ins Kino gehen kann.)
also:
English grammar: I would like to read the newspaper.
German grammar: I would like to the newspaper read. (Ich moechte die Zeitung lesen.)
I don't know where you got that the grammar is the same.
One thing I don't get about that: the open doc format still looks like garbled crap when you try to read it directly. What if I don't have a reader and I don't have access to the internet? At least with xml markup you can make some sense of it.
Tell that to the 9/11 victims whose attackers weren't searched because of sensitivity. Oh, and learn what a "probability" or "proportion" is.
Racist comments like that aren't worth dignifying with a response. Truth no longer dignifies a response? Look, if you want to show the world how tolerant and "understanding" and hey, even "progressive" you are, so you can get a pat on the back, you don't have to be condescending to people who make factual statements. There are smart(er) people who hold the same political beliefs you do, yet manage to advocate their positions without denying the obvious. You even made some inroads in your next comments (arguing that focusing on high-risk groups will not increase safety)! So here's a tip: when you're arguing, don't deny obvious facts. It just costs you credibility. Hey genius: Terrorists aren't that stupid. Such an obvious pattern would be quickly detected and worked around. If we only search big dark-skinned guys with beards, the next bomber they send will be a tiny, redheaded goth girl. Phew! Good thing I didn't advocate searching only Middle Easterners and no one else! And your logic is faulty anyway. If they "send a goth", they have to pick a goth already predisposed to terrorism. Since fewer (by percentage) goths are predisposed to terrorism, it still would make sense to search them disproportionately less. And even if we did search Middle Easternerns very disproportionately, this would still force them to have to recruit non-Middle Easterners, which increases their costs and stems terrorism.
Fishing where there are more fish "doesn't actually work"? Insurance companies charging women (who are less likely to file a claim) less is sexist?
Are you denying the utility of random searches? If so, you're saying everyone who meets conditions X, Y, and Z should be searched, or none should. You probably don't advocate that. So you agree with random searches. In that case, all I'm claiming is that all else equal, they should search more Middle Easterners. You reject even this. Therefore, you advocate waste of resources and lower safety.
I know Indians are not Middle Easterners; I was giving a typical example of a higher-risk class. Of course the overwhelming majority of Middle Easterners are not terrorists. However, you should divert scarce resources to where they yield the highest returns first. In this case, that means spending more on searching Middle Easterners who, ceteris paribus, are more likely to be terrorists.
Hey genius: a Middle Easterner is more likely to be a terrorist than you are. Focusing on Middle Easterners is an efficient way to use scarce resources. If you prefer they be less effective regarding things like, you know, your life and stuff like that, go ahead and start a campaign for costlier, less safe security procedures. Just know what you're starting.