Saving the Net 790
An anonymous reader writes "Doc Searls, editor at Linux Journal, has a very insightful editorial that brings it all together - the FCC media consolidation ruling, SCO vs. Linux, why broadband is under attack by telcos and cable systems, why we lost Eldred vs. Ashcroft, what's really interesting about Howard Dean's presidential campaign, and a very astute observation about the vast gulf between Liberals and Conservatives."
Dean for President (Score:5, Insightful)
This was part of what the internet was all about: democratizing the ability of an individual outside the established powers to enter into competition or publication or public recognition. Dean has been smart about this and so far, he certainly has my vote.
liberal (Score:4, Insightful)
Liberal/Convervative mumbo jumbo (Score:3, Insightful)
(As a side note, the raw meaning of the term "conservative" is pretty interesting in regard to his issues. You could say that people who want music and software to be free are "liberal." You could also say that people who think that a UNIX-alike is the pinnacle of operating system design are "conservative.")
Conspiracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's little doubt that there's movements working against what much of the Linux communities believe in, but there's no Big Bad hidden agenda here -- just simple, petty and local greed.
Regards,
--
*Art
The real culprit: money. (Score:1, Insightful)
And who embodies better money and greed than croporations, who themselves are bigger than many countries?
The robber barons of yesteryear must be staring in stupendous awe from hell!!!
Re:liberal (Score:3, Insightful)
Only if you are right wing Republican.
Re:liberal (Score:1, Insightful)
Liberalism is a gateway to communism.
Re:Terminator is trying to (Score:5, Insightful)
Did I miss something? (Score:5, Insightful)
A great example is the quote from the National Review. It is a great quote and specifically attacks the changes that have happened in copyright law. At the end of the quote the article "author" says "National Review is a conservative magazine. John Bloom is a conservative columnist. This is significant." But he doesn't go on to explain WHY this is significant. Is it because the author is surprised that a conservative can have an intelligent thought?
In other things he is just plain wrong. He states that "Liberals often are flummoxed by the way conservatives seem to love big business (including, of course, big media)." Yet it is the democrats who are most in the pocket of big business. Here is a clue - Hollywood is 99.9% liberals. The other 0.1% is Drew Carey. Senator Hollings is a Democrat. DMCA was signed by a Democrat into law. Mary Bono may be a Republican but only in name.
If you think that the internet is failing than this article is a great sign it isn't. The fact that any unintelligent schlub could post an article like this and receive praise for it proves it.
Consumer by Force (Score:5, Insightful)
The word consumer, as a whole, is also a source of aggravation. It implies a notion of being fed, of being given content that you don't necessarily desire. And this is precisely what this notion of "distributors of intellectual property" is demanding of you. Sit down in front of your computer/TV, pay an exorbitant fee, and watch the same old boring content and advertisement barrage over and over again. The great thing about the current computer is its ability to allow for the construction of content, not its ability to supply it. This is further amplified by the Internet, and the accompanying ease of distribution and immense audience. For instance, a musician could record a song onto his computer and sell it via the Internet, or a graphic artist could market his art. In the future, perhaps even an independent film company could market it's wares online. A future dictated by DRM and "property" restrictions allows only a few select companies to digitally "watermark" their media in a manner which the now-crippled computer can read. Does anyone honestly believe that these same companies that desire such immense control will relinquish it in the future to independents desiring to sell to the same market?
Suddenly a person is no longer an individual, but a forced consumer of multiple mega-corporations. The prospect is as disturbing as it is possible. The myth of "intellectual property" is curbing and inhibiting the free expression of ideas and content, precisely what copyright law was intended to promote.
---rhad
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dean for President (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dean for President (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a tool. A thing. It can and will be used by your enemies as effectively as your allies.
You, and people like you, sound like the blithering idiots that would claim that nuclear energy would save the world and usher in a world of peace and prosperity with flying cars.
These are the people to watch (Score:5, Insightful)
The author does an excellent job of synthesizing a number of disparate, troubling issues going on in our society at the moment into a very coherent whole.
If you can understand that democracies are only as good as their voters' information systems, or that markets are only as healthy as the exchange of goods, services, and ideas in them is free, then you should be able to appreciate where the author is going.
The reason esoteric issues like telecom and media regulation, and intellectual "property" law end up commanding such a large amount of attention in the community is because both of these, people are realizing, are not just important, but absolutely essential, to maintaining those very important American principles.
A cheap, ubiquitous communications medium. The free flow of information which respects, but it is not outrageously hobbled by, the rights of authors... It's only our economy, and our democracy, at stake.
I think we need a galvanizing issue. I suggest Saving the Net. To do that, we need to treat the Net as two things:
1. a public domain, and therefore
2. a natural habitat for markets
In other words, we need to see the Net as a marketplace that has done enormous good, is under extreme threat and needs to be saved.
Conspiracy vs Greed (Score:5, Insightful)
I have since unfortunately found the corollary, "Sufficient Stupidity combined with enough Power is effectively indistinguishable from Evil."
Something like that applies here, "Sufficient Greed combined with enough Power/Wealth can effect the appearance of a Conspiracy."
Think "Greedy Lemmings," and it can look like a Conspiracy.
In defense of "conservatives"... (Score:5, Insightful)
The other [factor] is the high regard political conservatives hold for successful enterprises. Combine the two, and you get conservatives eagerly rewarding companies whose primary achievements consist of successful long-term adaptation to highly regulated environments. That's what's happened with broadcasting and telecom.
Lest we forget, it is actually the Democratic Party that is more in the pocket of Hollywood and the media companies, while the Republican Party tends to favor "big business" in general. Both parties have their share of guilt in all this mess. The DMCA was passed with bipartisan (i.e. substantial Democratic) support and was signed into law by a Democrat (Clinton). Trial and IP lawyers also tend to support the Democrats (cf. John Edwards). (Over-)deregulation of the media and telecoms industries took place largely during the Clinton Administration (though it started in the first Bush Administration).
I seriously doubt that Howard Dean is any angel on this, either. He's just as much a politician as any other. His rhetoric about being from the "Democractic wing of the Democratic Party" is a little ironic, given that he's against gun control, is hardly a pacifist (he supported Gulf War I and interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo), etc. etc. etc. I don't see him as being a liberal at all (neither in the modern "leftist" sense nor in the older Jeffersonian sense), but an opportunist like any other.
FWIW given my own political positions I'll probably be voting for "anything but Dubya", but I dislike the idolizing that Dean has been benefitting from of late. And I also dislike disingenuous attacks on one party or the other...
Cheers,
Ethelred
Proprietary Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)
This should really be corrected. The trademark is simply on the name. You can't go write your own software and call it Linux. But the software and code is as far from proprietary as you can get. If Linus started wrecking Linux with patches, you could take the code, rename it, and have your own kernel. This guy should RTFL (license) before he writes an article.
-t
Conservative? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a hardcore conservative, and I'm not sure how much I agree with this definition. To my way of thinking, it's not a matter of "rewarding the strong". It's a matter of incentive --- if people are going to be taken care of no matter whether or not they do any useful work, they simply aren't likely to do any useful work. It's more a matter of rewarding effort than of rewarding strength. Granted, there are some serious problems with the way capitalism works too, and it does often turn out that the "stronger" ones do better. But I think that's the nature of freedom. You can't truly have freedom without the possibility of great success or great failure.
On a side note, as a conservative, I'm very strongly against the modern notion of "intellectual property". I'm all for property rights, capitalism, and the free market. But as the article mentions, copyright isn't a property right and shouldn't be treated as one. I believe in the Constitution above everything else, as far as politics go. And in the thinking of the founders, copyright cannot be a property right. Property is a right that the founders envisionsed as being inherent to mankind --- right up there with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Rights like that cannot be infringed by the state. They are not granted by the state. They are inherent to the people. But, the Constitution allows Congress to GRANT and LIMIT copyright. If copyright were an inherent right, they would have protected it as such --- they certainly wouldn't have given Congress the authority to "grant" it. Therefore I must conclude that the notion of "intellectual property" is thoroughly unconstitutional, and thus I cannot support it.
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:2, Insightful)
Wild generalizations, wrong conclusions, overreaching and simplifications sum up what this "editorial" is.
In the end, it's Armageddon unless we "Save the Net", and btw elect Howard Dean (he's not really endorsing him, but here's a hint).
Re:liberal (Clarification) (Score:0, Insightful)
When socialist ideas took over the Democrats, which FDR perhaps was the culmination of that, "liberal" stuck to the party rather than the ideology. The school of thought that was once called "liberal" then had no word for it as the word then came to be associated with socialistic ideas, which is sort of amusing when you think about Insoc's goals with Newspeak ("1984") to eliminate concepts by eliminating words to express them. Though some invented words like "classical liberal", "market liberal" as the guys at Cato like to say, or the more common "libertarian", which came into popularity when the Libertarian Party was created about 30 years ago and coined the new definition for the word.
So yes, America was founded on liberalism, but not the modern liberalism that is associated with socialic ideas that we see in the Democrat/FDR vision of the Welfare State. It was more of a "libertarian" liberalism. Digging through writing by Jefferson and company strongly reflect this premise. You will find about zero support for socialist ideas in the writings of those "liberals". So to say that America was "founded on the basis of liberalism" is very misleading if you let the reader assume it was modern day liberalism of the Democrats. The liberals of 1776 have little in common with the liberals of 2003.
Re:Interview with Howard Dean (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dean for President (Score:1, Insightful)
I've met a lot of Ph.D.'s who think that, since they have a doctorate, they are instantly an expert in every field.
If your Ph.D. isn't in this field, your mentioning the Ph.D. is basically an attempt to get one up on me by artificially inflating your knowledge in this particular subject.
I may not have a Ph.D., and I'm not stupid enough to fall for the bullshit "I have a Ph.D." tactics.
No, that was Arpanet. It can be argued that the "Internet" is a much different beast.
It can be argued. But it's a stupid argument. Because the Internet is a technological advancement of Arpanet, not an ideological one.
Re:Dean for President (Score:4, Insightful)
>My Ph.D. says otherwise.
Mail me your diploma. In the meantime, you should fear my superpowers.
Re:Dean for President (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're greedy, you vote democrat - that's how you get entitlements that you're not entitled to, and tax refunds where you never paid any taxes, and government subsidies for things that don't deserve to be subsidized.
All the people who want money for nothing - that's greed.
My apologies to the non-extemists out there reading this, but if someone's going to paint a broad, false picture of what it means to vote republican, I'll respond in kind. And NO, I'm NOT a republican.
Re:The internet the big corporation way (Score:4, Insightful)
But it's only the voice of the people who have access to things like electricity, telecommunications infrastructure, etc.
It falls short of being of much value to all the people who don't have those thing (refrigeration, plumbing, surplus food, literacy... much less home computers and cable modems...)
Who is Allowed to Own the Property? (Score:4, Insightful)
They are setting up a sort of feudal system, where they own all the property, and we are merely serfs who get to pay rent to access the property.
It is important to restore some balance in the copyright law between the public and the media companies; but I think it is equally important to define what property rights (i.e. fair use rights) consumers have when they buy a CD or a DVD.
Re:Dean for President (Score:4, Insightful)
IMun-PhDO, the internet was and always has been about establishing the easiest means of connectivity between two points. Since a nuclear bomb could render NYC a void, being able to route around that problem is essential, so the internet is a redundant network. Free speech was a benefit, only because...
1) Suddenly you could talk to groups of people easily, in open forums or on your personal webpage
2) in the early days, nobody cared what the people on the internet were saying, because the people on the internet weren't a large enough body to sway opinion, nor were they the people in power. had certain people had foresight, would it have grown the same way? doubtful.
Arguing that the internet is any sort of ideological being is pointless, it's the content that makes it ideological. The internet itself is just a network, built to ensure communication between point A and point B.
--trb
Re:Dean for President (Score:1, Insightful)
On the other hand, you have groups whose sole purpose is to get government backing/protection for a particular industry (like oil/energy companies). In which the participants only have one real common goal, and that is to use the government as a tool to make more money for themselves and possibly at the expense of others. I would argue the government should not be allowed to be used in this way, and I think many agree. And this is the tricky part of campaign finance reform. How can you make a distinction between lobby groups that are abusing government to make more money for a particular set of companies/individuals and ones that aren't?
Re:Being bought (Score:4, Insightful)
It's funny that the Democratic party is historically [ghg.net] more pro-Slavery compared to [everythingmacosx.com] the Republican party... but I guess that if you don't like history, you get the schools and mass media to revise it until "history" is in your party's favor...
And I agree, I'd love to ban soft money. Let's all bitch about the party of "big business"... So what if Democrats are more dependant [capitaleye.org] on (unregulated) Soft Money contributions than Republicans (Democrats: 61% of their overall funds in soft money, up from 47 percent two years ago. Republicans: 43% of their funds in soft money, increase of 8%).
Since the start of our american congress in 1789, congress has always been paid [senate.gov] for participating. You will also find that even the Ancient Democracies had salaries [democracynature.org]
I would argue that it is not the money that is the problem in our governments, instead the problem is with (1) the philosophies and (2) the beaurocracies of those involved. I have a problem with people who have no regard for other people's money, and do not have the personal restraint when it comes to spending it. This philosophy of socialism has morphed our government into asset reallocation, something the creators of the system never approved of. On top of that, there is so much redundancy, waste, and unaccountability... but we know that already.
Disagree Strongly (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Howard Dean (Score:1, Insightful)
Civilized societies do not carry out executions, because they are barbaric and against basic human rights.
I really liked that article.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea that "property" is the one all-consuming right that we have, quite frankly is self-destructive. Sure, property is important...but copyright is exactly that. IP is bullshit.
To go a step further, the reason for this is the belief that we can all "do it ourselves". That somehow, we can pull ourselves up from the bootstraps and make ourselves successful is frankly...bullshit.
There are more important things than business, and money and profit.
Culture and society.
Those are the most important things we have. Without those things, everything else is meaningless. We need to start to realize that.
I agree with a limited copyright. My idea? Copyright should last for 20 years, or until the commercial aspect is gone. If you take something off the market, put it in the public domain. Allow those that care about the culture to nurture it.
They are conservative ideas however. One of the problem is that nobody can refute them in the current political enviroment. Make a sneeze toward it and you called a commie.
How can you fix it?
I don't know..
Re:liberal (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a confusion based on some odd history. The word "liberal" in the world outside the USA has the meaning that "libertarian" has inside the USA.
For many years Americans had no word for "liberal" because they didn't need one. As an earlier poster said, the USA was founded on the principle of liberalism, and nobody involved in US politics wasn't a liberal. The US constitution is one of the best and clearest statements of liberal principles in history.
Some time later, some Americans started to dislike the liberal principles of the constitution. They therefore tried to say that it meant something other than what it said. This needed a lot of interpretation. Because they interpreted the constitution "liberally", and because the word Liberal wasn't in use in US politics at that point, they called themselves "liberals".
That is why "liberal" means the opposite in the USA of what it means in the rest of the (English and French speaking) world.
Of course, now that liberalism is a matter of political dispute in America, liberals need to call themselves something. They can't call themselves "liberals", as they would elsewhere, because the word has been stolen by their opponents. That is the origin of the term "libertarian".
It's all rather like why private schools in Britain are called "public schools".
Since I'm no longer anonymous, and to justify reposting this with the benefit of my immense karma, I'll put myself in context by saying I'm a generally pro-American Brit with political views which in Britain qualify me as lunatic-fringe liberal and in the US would count as moderate Libertarian.
Re:A rebirth (Score:5, Insightful)
We can run an internet underground, connecting sites via wireless gear, and that would be legislated, not to mention that it does not scale well. We can purchase expensive gear, but we cannot connect it via private lines. We cannot lay fiber or copper. We could buy fibre and copper, but we don't have enough money.
If I understand what you're talking about, QC runs over the existing infrastructure, and therefore can be regulated. Run wirelessly, all communications are self-regulating. Without substantial infrastructure, planning and money, it will never be more than a pet project.
Pot is more dangerous (Score:1, Insightful)
On a societal level, pot is not as dangerous because its abuse is greatly limited by anti-drug abuse laws and prosecution.
On an individual level, pot is a lot more dangerous, with toxins that stay in the body a lot longer than with beer. Also, pot abuse is forced on those who are near by. Smoke a joint, anyone near you smokes it too. Beer consumption in contrast is a private matter.
Re:Dean for President (Score:2, Insightful)
Doubtlessly you will dismiss me for failing to provide you with the requested citation. Since the early network was used almost exclusively by fuzzy-thinking academics, I am not going out on that wild goose chase.
The Heart of the Matter, right here... (Score:5, Insightful)
On such a simple scale, it was clear how the majority of the Court would vote. Not because they are conservative, but because they are Americans. We have a (generally sensible) pro-property bias in this culture that makes it extremely hard for people to think critically about the most complicated form of property out there--what most call "intellectual property." To question property of any form makes you a communist. Yet this is precisely our problem: To make it clear that we are pro-copyright without being extremists either way.
So deep is this confusion that even a smart, and traditionally leftist, social commentator like Edward Rothstein makes the same fundamental mistake in a piece published Saturday. He describes the movement, of which I am part, as "countercultural," "radical," and anti-corporate. Now no doubt there are some for whom those terms are true descriptors. But I for one would be ecstatic if we could just have the same copyright law that existed under Richard Nixon..."
Through history the "there should be no such thing as private property!" movement has been driven by those who simply don't have much private property of their own and thus would like some of yours. This is the perception most of the mainstream has of the "it's our right to download movies and software!" crowd; that they simply want something for free because they lack the resources to pay.
You ask why we middle-Americans side with the big-media companies, but the answer is we don't. We side with the very basic American idea of you not being able to move into my houses with twenty of your hippy friends in the name of "property belongs to everybody!!! Who cares that we didn't build or maintain or earn or buy it!!!"
Someone will shout back that this isn't the argument of the anti-IP side, and I understand; but that's how it sounds to us. You didn't write or film or fund the movie. So why do you claim a "right" to see it free?
The author of the article is absolutely right; if you want to win the debate you must make it more about reforming copyright laws to make them more reasonable (the mainstream can get down with that), and less about "YOU EVIL CAPITALISTS DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT TO KEEP ANYTHING TO YOURSELVES WITHOUT SHARING WITH US!!!" The average American will NEVER come over to that side.
The ability to own property is as fundamental a freedom to this country as free speech or the right to privacy. If you want to change the minds of the masses (and you must if you want the politicians and CEO's to change theirs; bribes or no bribes they will go with the flow of public opinion in order to stay in office) you must re-frame the argument in that way... or watch your movement slowly die as the open-trading technology window closes. And it WILL close.
Re:Dean for President (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, the vast majority of the people you descirbed don't vote [google.com].
The democratic voters are those who care more about others than the republicans do...
Then let me ask you this: (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems that a large number of Americans see politics as some sort of sport or game, where "our team" plays against "their team" with control of the Presidency, House, Senate etc as both goal and a means of keeping score.
As such, it seems that many, many voters look straight past the issues, and instead vote for their "team" regardless of the conduct of the actual players.
A prime example is what happened to Bill Clinton, and what is now (not) happening to Dubya.
Clinton is an articulate, intelligent man. He is also a known philanderer who had an affair on the job and lied about it. And despite this character flaw, during his two terms as President, the US did pretty well.
Yet despite his intelligence and demonstrated competance, he and his wife were the targets of levels of harrassment and abuse, orchestrated by "the other side", to a degree that was downright Orwellian. Once the affair (and the subsequent lie) was exposed, he was hauled in front of an impeachement hearing, ostensibly for lying to the American People.
Now I cannot condone the lie, although I can understand it - the man was trying to protect his private life. Martial fidelity is a deeply personal subject and nobobody wants his dirty laundry aired publically.
But at the end of the day, the issue of if Clinton had an affair or not, or if he lied about it or not, had zero impact on the type of job he was doing as President.
But now....
We have a President who plays for the other team; the team that went to such extrordinary lengths to try and bring down the former President. this President, too, has been caught in a lie, also presented directly to the American people. But unlike the former President's lie, THIS lie was used to justify taking the country to war against another nation. Unlike Clinton's hummer, Dubya's lie about Iraq buying nuclear material resulted in enormous taxpayer expendature and American deaths.
The latter lie is more serious than the former by several orders of magnitude, but is is going unchallenged, from what I can see because the journalists who should be going after Dubya for his misconduct play for his team.
If this isn't corruption, I don't know what is.
So then, I ask you - are you capable of breaking away from your "team" and voting for someone based on concience and consideration of the issues, or are you forever tied to support the candidate with the (R) behind his name?
DG
Re:Dean for President (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dean for President (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh? Gore won the popular vote, and it took a month to decide who won the electoral vote. I wouldn't call that getting "trounced pretty badly." If you're going to include hyper wealthy leftists, makes sure you include the hyper wealthy rightists too - most of big business goes Republican.
But . . . (Score:1, Insightful)
You can follow the Tour de France from your office, but you can't set up your own web cast of your own event.
You can buy books online, but you can't sell them. (Might be pirated! Besides, what about the license agreement in the front cover ?)
You can email pictures to grandma, and maybe she can email pictures to you, but as soon as you or grandma emails a funny snap to half a dozen friends, the account is "temporarily disabled" while a Ashcroftian functionary tries to figure out if you are competeing with Time magazine.
Because of the artificial asymmetry of cable modems (there is no hardware reason why upstream shouldn't equal downstream) much of this is already partly true.
Rob Malda started this site from his dorm room. Sadly, because of port blocking and restrictions on hosting servers, college kids of today can't do the same. The barrier to entry in the web world is slowing being raised to that of a $250 / mo rackspace account.
Re:In defense of "conservatives"... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Consumer by Force (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that the RIAA, MPAA, etc. wish to limit your choice in entertainment to what _they_ provide.
The internet has the potential to give people a choice beyond what the typical outlets have to offer. Ultimately, it has the potential to eliminate the need for entertainers to require a "middle man." There is a potential huge explosion of choice out there.
I'm not saying that all RIAA and MPAA products are bad. Nor am I saying all independent entertainment is good. The -choice- to choose between the two is important, however.
Of course, this threatens the business of the middle men. For once they might have a distribution model that competes with theirs!
That is why they want to use DRM or control the ISPs. They want to regain control of the content distribution mediums so that only they can provide the entertainment.
Sadly, people have grown up in a world of entertainment controlled by the RIAA and MPAA. Many younger people are not true lovers of music, for example, they simply buy the CDs that MTV says to. Years of being barraged with ads have given us an "impulse" to consume. The "impulse" to consume is what drives us to quickly buy up popular music without taking the time exploring alternatives or create music ourselves.
Re:Living wage (Score:2, Insightful)
As a discloser, I am what you would probably classify upper-class (I never can keep it straight). I support tax cuts across the board for people who pay taxes, as a general rule, to stimulate the economy.
With that said, frankly, the taxes I pay are fair. My tax bracket is the highest, but, due to the magic of tax brackets, my effective tax rate is 26% (people forget that your tax bracket is what you pay on the last dollar you earn, not every dollar you earn). At first glance, you think, "wow, paying a quarter of all you make in taxes." But for it, I get defense, police, roads, etc, etc. Easily worth 25%. Not worth 60%, worth more than 10%. I think the 25% I pay is about right. (I also lean toward a flat-tax, but thats a different argument).
I am a major believer in free-market economics. You may think this strange, but I support a living-wage. Yes, economically, it skews the labor market. Yes, it sends some jobs oversees (but not service jobs). Yes, regulation is generally bad. Res, yes yes.
But I grew up in a single-parent family with a mother working 2 minumum wage jobs. She worked very, very hard. She managed money very, very well. I didn't realize how badly out of style her clothes were; she didn't buy ANY new clothes that I can remember. Her kids came first. In short, she did everything right, everything that conservatives support, yet we were still short on money.
We survived. One Christmas there were no presents for me and my sister. My Mom severly cut her finger and did not go to the hospital; we couldn't afford it. No one should live that way, least of all a single-mother with small children doing everything right.
It is said that a society can be judged by its treatment of its old, its young, its poor, its sick, and its criminal. Our criminals get great food and healthcare, yet we let hard-working, honest people struggle to merely survive. While economically a bad idea, for shere humanity, we need a living wage law.
Perhaps community wireless networks relays may... (Score:2, Insightful)
If enough people within a populated area run an open wireless hub, a community 'freenet' can be built across a small city or town.
Re:Dean for President (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not actually true.
The class hurt most by it is non-incumbents. Incumbents get free postage and lots of opportunities to effectively campaign from their official position and get plenty of free media coverage. Incumbents have little difficulty raising enough money to wage an effective campaign, both because they have the advantages mentioned above and so need less money, and also because donors know incumbents are likely to win and thus are better bets.
It's challengers of any party, particularly from third parties of course, that this 'reform' hurts. It forces them to spend even more time and effort raising money, instead of campaigning, and it makes it even harder for them to raise enough money to make a viable campaign effort, particularly in the face of the advantages incumbents hold by default.
The 'reform' is a fraud, whose primary effect is to make both Democratic and Republican incumbents even more safe from challengers, particularly from smaller parties like the Libertarians and the Greens.
Do the math, buddy (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know where you've been, but we currently have a $450bn projected deficit for the year 2003, and that number may grow to $500bn by the end of the year. This number, along with the trillions of debt that Reagan and Bush created, are essentially a loan taken out in your name, and in the name of every taxpayer in the USA.
After the Bush tax cut, the rich still pay a much higher percentage and actual amount than the non-rich.
Ah yes. Because you're one of the millions of people who don't actually look at your paycheck before you cash it. Maybe I can help you, by pointing out the 7.5% Social Security tax that the government withdraws from your check, along with the additional 7.5% that the government demands from your employer (money that you could be getting paid, otherwise.) And even though this isn't "income tax", it's being used to fund the war in Iraq, Congressional Pork, and who knows what else. If it looks like a tax, smells like a tax... Then it's a tax.
But the great thing about Social Security tax is that you only pay that 15% on the first $88,000 of your income. So under Bush's new tax cuts someone who declares $70,000 of income pays 35.03% of their income to the Federal Government, while someone who makes $1,000,000 pays only 33.81%. So much for fair.
And that's without any fancy deductions, which the wealthier earner will almost certainly be better able to take advantage of. Ask George Bush, who only paid 29% in 1999, on $900,000 worth of income. It's without counting the dividend and capital gains tax cuts which are likely to disproportionately benefit the wealthier person (I don't ever make more than a few hundred per year in dividends.)
Basically, anyone who believes this shit is pulling out their wallet and handing it over to someone who makes more than 10 times what they do. They're doing this, while our budget bleeds, because they think it's "fair"-- though they obviously haven't done the math. They're doing this because they feel that making the wealthy wealthier will somehow help our economy, when the problem currently on the demand side, eg it's people like the middle class and working class that we need to have extra cash to burn.
And somehow, the Republican Party is able to raise ever larger amounts of money. Hmm. I wonder where it's coming from. Basically, if you believe any of this is right, just or fair, then you're a sucker.
Re:greedy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny, i doubt the owners of big companies put in that many extra hours. Hell, a lot of them (take Enron for example) don't even get "the deliverable done on time," or whatever applies for their particular industry, yet they still make million. Even if the company as a whole crashes and burns and the workers all get laid off. Those owners then make huge donations to the Republican party so that they can save even more on the tax cuts the Rebuplicans pass once they're in power.
And then there are companies like Disney where the controllers who make the millions of dollars pay lobyists or bribe politicians directly to get laws passed that benefit them while hurting smaller independent companies. (How many small companies and how many employees of those companies could be making money right now by re-imagining Mickey Mouse and all the other things that are restricted by the Sonny Bonno Act, in the same way that Disney has made tons of money off of re-imagining Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and dozens of other stories they apropriated from the commons?)
Those are the people who make the majority of the donations to the Republican cause. In the recent past the Democrats have been trying to emulate that method as well since it worked so well for the Republicans. It seemed that going for the rich who could afford to donate $10,000 or more at a time was more effective. The Democrats were never quite as effective at it though because the rich know who will give them the most return for their bribes.
How is it greedy to want to save money? Your own money?
Yes, saving their own money which they made by imorally at the least and illegaly at the worst restricting the rights of others in the same field, or saving their own money through tax cuts that either increase the defecit which hurts everyone, but the rich less so since they just got their tax cut, or increases the tax burden on the middle and lower classes, taking away money from them.
They want to enjoy the benefits of our society without having to pay to maintain it. Seems greedy to me. Yet somehow they manage to convince everyone that they're just being fair, and all those in the upper-middle class will go along, because it doesn't hurt them to much, and maybe they'll be upper class someday, and the middle and lower classes go along either because they've bought into the "morality" sideline, or because they have dreams of someday being rich and getting to enjoy the same benefits.
I lose about 30% of every paycheck i get to taxes, yet if i had the chance to vote to reduce it i would not, because i make more than enough to live on, and making someone else pay for my tax cut would be greedy. I felt bad when i spent the $300 i got back through the Bush tax cut, because i felt that america would be worse off in the long run because of it. I might have given it back if it weren't for the fact that i didn't know of any easy way to do so and i knew that the small fraction of people who would do so wouldn't even be a drop in the bucket.
Of course on the other hand i ended up donating about $250 to my favorite Democratic candidate, so maybe i shouldn't feel too guilty :)
Re:greedy? (Score:3, Insightful)
You assume that people who can barely afford to eat are in that place due to no fault of their own. Do you really think that all poor people are victims? Do you really think that none of them are suffering the consequences of their poor decision making?
Fuck you if you're rich and don't want to pay taxes.
Thank you for being up front about it. You are not motivated by compassion, reason, or any noble virtue. You are motivated by class envy. You just hate rich people because they have stuff and you don't. But instead of figuring out how to become one of them, you would rather have the government take their money and give it to you.
At least you have money to pay taxes with.
It is my money that I worked for and I earned.
Taxing the wealthy is *not* about punishing them for being wealthy. It is about redistribution of wealth, which is a good thing.
I disagree. The government officials that favor welfare do not want people who are on welfare to get off welfare. They want welfare recipients to stay welfare recipients forever. Why? Becuase those recipients feel like the government is "taking care of them" and will keep voting for those who will continue the income-redistribution scheme. Let me put it bluntly: welfare is NOT about "helping people". It's about buying votes. Social Security is the same thing. All politicians know that old people vote in well-organized droves. It's for this reason that the "small government" Republicans and Democrats are tripping over each other to provide the better prescription drug benefit income-redistribution scheme. You can call the Republicans misguided, but you can't call them stupid. They know where the votes are.
Wealthy people do not move the economy, middle class and poor people in massive numbers do.
The middle class and poor people are looking for jobs. Who employs them?
If wealthy people pay no or little tax, they continue to get wealthy.
As if there were something wrong with this.
When wealthy people amass a fortune and do not have anything to do with it, it's called hoarding (see also "middle ages"). It stagnates the economy and stalls progress.
I think you would hate the wealthy if they didn't hoard. What if all the wealthy people started spending like crazy? You would hate them because they get to buy all that stuff that you don't get to buy. The point is, they have stuff and you don't, and you hate them for that. Class envy, pure and simple.
How is coveting other people's money greedy?
I don't believe in greed. I think it's a sign of immorality that you want money that other people worked for and earned.
I don't think that's what the poor do, sir. I think the poor covet the chance to eat, not your plasma screen TV.
Contrary to Leftist faith, "the poor" in this country are not starving. They may not get lobster and foie gras, but they are not starving.
I think sitting at the top of your world watching pay per view on your plasma screen TV while eating steak in your leather lazyboy chair is greedy.
Thanks for pointing out that the notion of "greed" is purely subjective. Would it be "greedy" to eat chicken on the leather lazyboy while watching the plasma screen TV? What if we downsize the TV to a 27 inch TV -- is that still "greedy"? What if we turn the leather lazyboy into a folding chair? Is that still "greedy"?
My annual income is $7,000.
It shows.
Tonight on Slashdot: more socialist propaganda. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not greedy at all. Take my father as an example--he was born dirt-poor in the sticks of small-town Iowa. He's worked 60-hour weeks ever since he was fifteen years old, save for his law school days, when he was only working 40s so he could "concentrate on school". Once in his life he took a two-week vacation--for his honeymoon--but other than that, he's only taken a maximum of ten days. He joined the Army partially to help cover his college debts; and today he's a respected, esteemed, semi-retired member of the bar... and wealthy.
So. How greedy is it for Dad, who's worked 60-hour weeks for the last fifty years, to say "you know, I want to eat lobster tonight"? I think the man's entitled to it. Of course, you, who know how to spend Dad's money better than he does, and who obviously know how hard Dad has worked for it, have different ideas of what Dad is entitled to.
There's that word, "entitlement". Oooh. Bogeyman. The left thinks the right is allergic to it, that the right wants to shut down all entitlements. Nothing is further from the truth. Conservatives believe there are very few entitlements; the rest is just wishful thinking of the way the world should be.
You're entitled to liberty--entitled to make your own decisions for yourself, not having them imposed upon you by the government. This includes the liberty of making your own economic decisions.
You're entitled to work as hard as you like, or as little as you like. Nobody's cracking a whip over your shoulders. Don't want to work? Don't have to work. Want to work hard? You can work hard.
You're entitled to the fruits of your labors. What you build with your own two hands, you're entitled to own. And you can trade this entitlement--remember the "entitled to economic liberty" thing?--in a fair marketplace; if you want to take RIAA's money and give them the fruits of your labor, you can. The government's not forcing you to do it, nor is it forcing you not to do it.
Those are entitlements, and they all stem from the same basic entitlement: human beings are entitled to political and economic liberty. Everything else that gets swept under the rubric of "entitlement" is just people desperately wishing the world was otherwise than it was.
You have no entitlement to take my money out of my pocket to engage in your own private "redistribution of wealth" schemes. That's not liberty; that's tyranny. That's you making these decisions for me. You can try it if you like, but expect to get socked in the jaw. I don't give a damn about the money; money is a whore. I give a damn about your attempt at turning me into your slave.
If you make $500,000/yr and the government wants 30%, you aren't starving.
In the dot-com boom I was getting paid $100,000 a year. By your logic I was living on easy street, right? The reality is I got evicted from my apartment and was homeless in my car for a few days. Let's look at the math:
From a starting salary of $100,000, take away $50,000 right off the top between California and Federal income taxes. Wham--presto--gone.
From the $50,000 left, take away $36,000 for rent. I was living in a one-bedroom garret in San Francisco and property values were so overinflated that I was paying $3,000 a month just in rent.
From the $14,000 left, take away $3,000 for utilities. California power crisis is a bitch, don't you know.
From the $11,000 left, take away $6,000 for car payments on a five-year-old used car.
From the $5,000 left... that's what you have to live on for a year. That has to put gas in the car, that has to put money
Re:Disagree Strongly (Score:3, Insightful)
Effectively less than: If you hire a person for only a short time, you don't need to pay any benefits. There are many approaches to doing this, and they are currently an area of fertile research. Many companies, however, have decided that the best approach is to make the job so unpleasant that nobody can stand to work there for more than three months.
Exporting jobs: what's to say. Read yesterday's news from IBM.
This doesn't need to happen to all jobs. Even having it happen to a significant number drives down the wages for ALL jobs. I consider myself quite lucky, but this doesn't blind me to the lot of others.
Do some calculations on a spreadsheet to see how bad it is in your area. You need some numbers:
1) the monthly cost of a cheap apartment
2) the hourly rate at the minimum wage
3) an estimated REALLY CHEAP clothing budget
4) a really cheap budget for food
5) forget about health care. Let them hope there's a free clinic.
6) forget about dentists. Let them hope they don't have any trouble.
(etc.)
Now calculate the minimal monthly expenses for one single person.
Divide by the hourly rate.
How many hours do you need to work to earn the minimal budget?
Now figure in taxes, and repeat the calculation.
Now try to estimate how to make it work with a dependant child.
Did you notice that I still haven't included transportation?
Perhaps housing is cheaper in your area. In my area even housing used over 70 hours/week just by itself.
Now it's also true that many jobs pay more than minimum wage, but no rate that's even close to that could be considered adequate by a civilized society.
Do you know the meaning of "employed at will"? Imagine that you are in this kind of an economic bind, and you have a dependant child. Now imagine that your boss asks you for something that you consider repugnant or immoral...
This situation is nearly guaranteed to lead to abuses. And it does.