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Stop voting in capitalistic assholes who value intelectual and property rights over everything else.

by satao 3y ago

cscurmudgeon 3y ago
In a true free market, there won’t be govt enforcement of IP.
- raincole 3y ago
  In a true free market we'll be hiring militias to protect our properties. Or more likely, be hired as one.
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    Glad we agree we are not in a pure capitalistic society.
kmeisthax 3y ago
Unfortunately you can't vote None of the Above :/ Support among the US political class for copyright and patent law runs so deep that the main argument for untangling our economy from China's is not "they undercut US labor" or "they manipulate their currency" but "they steal our IP". An interesting choice of words, because that's an exclusive 'we'[0]. US voters have little need for copyrights and patents beyond ensuring that creative works get made. But the US political class is utterly dependent on their continued existence. BTW, this even extends to Trumpism. Trump was very vocal about China stealing "our IP." The US economy is structured such that you cannot become rich without owning copyrights, patents, oil fields, or real estate. Everything else will be thrown into the abyss of partial post-scarcity. [0] In some languages (not English) there's an inclusive 'we' and an exclusive 'we'. The latter would be used with the same implication as, say, "We've won the lottery - except for you."
- sidlls 3y ago
  I'm not sure if you meant "you cannot become rich without owning copyrights, patents, oil fields, or real estate" literally or not, but it's not really true in any case. There are plenty of people (doctors, dentists, lawyers, software engineers, small business owners) who become wealthy without owning any of those things. Not as wealthy as those who do, perhaps, but wealthy nonetheless. I'm one of them--a lucky IPO that occurred a few years after I started working at my current employer turned me from an indebted paycheck-to-paycheck engineer into someone who could retire tomorrow and still live a decent middle-class lifestyle on my investments. I didn't own real estate until I after I got rich.
  - jachee 3y ago
    You benefitted from that IPO likely because you owned (shares of) profitable IP which, given the company went public, were likely protected by copyright and/or patents.
  - b800h 3y ago
    > doctors, dentists, lawyers, software engineers, small business owners Felix Dennis would contend that such people aren't "wealthy". They're comfortable.
    - sidlls 3y ago
      Being in that class of people, I’d contend Felix Dennis’ view of what wealth is is poor. It may take a decade or two, but individuals in these professions who work at top tier roles will be wealthy by any reasonable measure (7-figure investment portfolios and no bad debt is “wealthy” to anyone without a very uninformed understanding of what the word means).
      - kmeisthax 3y ago
        I'll rephrase the above comments: having seven figures of assets or income confers material wealth but not political control. Political capital is far more expensive. At a minimum, you need so much money that hiring a team of lobbyists to confuse your local congresscritter is a petty cash drawer expense. Ideally you will also want to forefeit your right to privacy and become some kind of a public figure. A case study here would be Louis Rossman: rich enough to run a MacBook repair business but not rich enough to bribe/tip Congress into passing a right-to-repair law.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
The only way to start on this path is to support ranked choice voting.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  Then we'll be free of copyright like Australia must be.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Start on this path <> guaranteed to achieve the desired results in X years, especially when Australia is not a big player on the global scene.
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      Australia has ranked choice voting and it has not resulted in Australia making better decisions. I'd argue that in muddling the level of preference between options by overquantizing things, it biases elections towards the status quo and a complete lack of change, and motivates the two main parties to minimize (or eliminate) their differences. It can be better to pick the one you like most rather than to sort a bunch of candidates, some of which will be inauthentic and strategic, evenly along a continuum. In a field of nine, that transforms the number one candidate from being preferred over the number nine candidate to being nine times better than the number one candidate. I think there's a reason that Australia requires that you rank all choices. If you don't, it spoils your vote. If you intentionally spoil your vote, that's actually a crime in Australia (don't listen to people who tell you that the least Australia requires is that you turn in a blank ballot; Australia disagrees.) You're not even allowed to ask people not to rank certain candidates. It is a jailable offense: > In 1986 Albert Langer wrote a conference paper entitled Don't Vote, examining possible electoral strategy for the left, aiming to bring down the Labor government and to target ALP candidates in marginal seats. In 1987 and 1990 there were instances where Victorian voters were urged to take advantage of section 270 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act and give less preferred parties equal last preferences (now known as a Langer vote), so as not to express a choice for either major party. > As a result of his imprisonment, Amnesty International declared him the first Australian prisoner of conscience for over 20 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Langer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Langer Ranked choice (and obligatory) voting inflates the support for status quo parties. It's also a way to make that pesky 40% who don't vote because they hate both parties disappear.

Stop voting in capitalistic assholes who value intelectual and property rights over everything else.

by satao 3y ago

Stop voting in capitalistic assholes who value intelectual and property rights over everything else.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago

In a true free market, there won’t be govt enforcement of IP.

raincole 3y ago
In a true free market we'll be hiring militias to protect our properties. Or more likely, be hired as one.
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  Glad we agree we are not in a pure capitalistic society.

kmeisthax 3y ago

Unfortunately you can't vote None of the Above :/ Support among the US political class for copyright and patent law runs so deep that the main argument for untangling our economy from China's is not "they undercut US labor" or "they manipulate their currency" but "they steal our IP". An interesting choice of words, because that's an exclusive 'we'[0]. US voters have little need for copyrights and patents beyond ensuring that creative works get made. But the US political class is utterly dependent on their continued existence. BTW, this even extends to Trumpism. Trump was very vocal about China stealing "our IP." The US economy is structured such that you cannot become rich without owning copyrights, patents, oil fields, or real estate. Everything else will be thrown into the abyss of partial post-scarcity. [0] In some languages (not English) there's an inclusive 'we' and an exclusive 'we'. The latter would be used with the same implication as, say, "We've won the lottery - except for you."

sidlls 3y ago
I'm not sure if you meant "you cannot become rich without owning copyrights, patents, oil fields, or real estate" literally or not, but it's not really true in any case. There are plenty of people (doctors, dentists, lawyers, software engineers, small business owners) who become wealthy without owning any of those things. Not as wealthy as those who do, perhaps, but wealthy nonetheless. I'm one of them--a lucky IPO that occurred a few years after I started working at my current employer turned me from an indebted paycheck-to-paycheck engineer into someone who could retire tomorrow and still live a decent middle-class lifestyle on my investments. I didn't own real estate until I after I got rich.
- jachee 3y ago
  You benefitted from that IPO likely because you owned (shares of) profitable IP which, given the company went public, were likely protected by copyright and/or patents.
- b800h 3y ago
  > doctors, dentists, lawyers, software engineers, small business owners Felix Dennis would contend that such people aren't "wealthy". They're comfortable.
  - sidlls 3y ago
    Being in that class of people, I’d contend Felix Dennis’ view of what wealth is is poor. It may take a decade or two, but individuals in these professions who work at top tier roles will be wealthy by any reasonable measure (7-figure investment portfolios and no bad debt is “wealthy” to anyone without a very uninformed understanding of what the word means).
    - kmeisthax 3y ago
      I'll rephrase the above comments: having seven figures of assets or income confers material wealth but not political control. Political capital is far more expensive. At a minimum, you need so much money that hiring a team of lobbyists to confuse your local congresscritter is a petty cash drawer expense. Ideally you will also want to forefeit your right to privacy and become some kind of a public figure. A case study here would be Louis Rossman: rich enough to run a MacBook repair business but not rich enough to bribe/tip Congress into passing a right-to-repair law.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

The only way to start on this path is to support ranked choice voting.

pessimizer 3y ago
Then we'll be free of copyright like Australia must be.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Start on this path <> guaranteed to achieve the desired results in X years, especially when Australia is not a big player on the global scene.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    Australia has ranked choice voting and it has not resulted in Australia making better decisions. I'd argue that in muddling the level of preference between options by overquantizing things, it biases elections towards the status quo and a complete lack of change, and motivates the two main parties to minimize (or eliminate) their differences. It can be better to pick the one you like most rather than to sort a bunch of candidates, some of which will be inauthentic and strategic, evenly along a continuum. In a field of nine, that transforms the number one candidate from being preferred over the number nine candidate to being nine times better than the number one candidate. I think there's a reason that Australia requires that you rank all choices. If you don't, it spoils your vote. If you intentionally spoil your vote, that's actually a crime in Australia (don't listen to people who tell you that the least Australia requires is that you turn in a blank ballot; Australia disagrees.) You're not even allowed to ask people not to rank certain candidates. It is a jailable offense: > In 1986 Albert Langer wrote a conference paper entitled Don't Vote, examining possible electoral strategy for the left, aiming to bring down the Labor government and to target ALP candidates in marginal seats. In 1987 and 1990 there were instances where Victorian voters were urged to take advantage of section 270 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act and give less preferred parties equal last preferences (now known as a Langer vote), so as not to express a choice for either major party. > As a result of his imprisonment, Amnesty International declared him the first Australian prisoner of conscience for over 20 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Langer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Langer Ranked choice (and obligatory) voting inflates the support for status quo parties. It's also a way to make that pesky 40% who don't vote because they hate both parties disappear.