Kapitalism
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Again, not a problem with IP law, a problem with corporate structure.
It is a problem with the law, corporations should not be allowed to own IP only the creator of the IP
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On related note, Luanti (formerly Minetest) is a platform for playing and developing block mining games a la Minecraft and Vintage story.
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Capitalists say the free market is king then they go and make laws to stifle and restrict it so they can make monopolies and gouge everyone out of their hard-earned income.
Buy everything up so your choice doesnt really latter because the money ends up in theirs either way.
And put hurdles in the way so no one could try to get any funny ideas and make their own thing -
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Yes, Intellectual Property must go down. People often think positively of copyright, thinking that no one would support artists if they weren't forced to, and that artists couldn't possibly make a living if it weren't for copyright. I think we are rich enough that if we were to share it properly we could give everyone, not just the talented, time and resources to create art. And I think the talented would still gain advantages by being talented, people want to support artists that mean a lot to them. But to be fair, limiting or removing copyright is not only not that popular of an idea, it's also the least of our worries, cause it mostly concerns entertainment purposes.
Patent laws is where we need to act. To give a clear example: patent laws mean that excessive amounts of money goes to pharmaceutical companies, This is always defended by saying that they in turn will invest this money into research. The problem is
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They spend far more money on marketing than on R&D, which effectively means that you're often not getting the best medicine, it means your getting the best marketed medicine.
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When money does go to R&D, the research that's being done, is limited to that which benefits the pharmaceutical company. This is an unacceptable limitation. For example it is not in the interest of pharmaceutical companies to to cure disease, it's far more commercially attractive to make it a manageable chronic disease, where you rely on medication for the rest of your life.
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Companies will not share their knowledge. For a company these are trade-secrets that could benefit their competition and if you have to compete obviously sharing knowledge is not in your best interest. But if you want to help humanity forward, obviously you should.
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Drug prices are often excessively high, in part because of the previously mentioned marketing costs that you pay for.
Neither of these problems would exist if R&D was funded by governments and charity. And the pharmaceutical is just one industry that's taken as an example. The way that intellectual property is holding humanity back can not be overstated. Basically we need to go free and open source on IP,
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Yes, Intellectual Property must go down. People often think positively of copyright, thinking that no one would support artists if they weren't forced to, and that artists couldn't possibly make a living if it weren't for copyright. I think we are rich enough that if we were to share it properly we could give everyone, not just the talented, time and resources to create art. And I think the talented would still gain advantages by being talented, people want to support artists that mean a lot to them. But to be fair, limiting or removing copyright is not only not that popular of an idea, it's also the least of our worries, cause it mostly concerns entertainment purposes.
Patent laws is where we need to act. To give a clear example: patent laws mean that excessive amounts of money goes to pharmaceutical companies, This is always defended by saying that they in turn will invest this money into research. The problem is
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They spend far more money on marketing than on R&D, which effectively means that you're often not getting the best medicine, it means your getting the best marketed medicine.
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When money does go to R&D, the research that's being done, is limited to that which benefits the pharmaceutical company. This is an unacceptable limitation. For example it is not in the interest of pharmaceutical companies to to cure disease, it's far more commercially attractive to make it a manageable chronic disease, where you rely on medication for the rest of your life.
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Companies will not share their knowledge. For a company these are trade-secrets that could benefit their competition and if you have to compete obviously sharing knowledge is not in your best interest. But if you want to help humanity forward, obviously you should.
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Drug prices are often excessively high, in part because of the previously mentioned marketing costs that you pay for.
Neither of these problems would exist if R&D was funded by governments and charity. And the pharmaceutical is just one industry that's taken as an example. The way that intellectual property is holding humanity back can not be overstated. Basically we need to go free and open source on IP,
though usually stupid and fucky copyright laws have one advantage - if someone bigger than you steals your idea you can take them to court. without copyright laws we'd have giant corporations just taking shit and using their platform to sell stolen ideas without a single cent going to the original creator.......
which happens anyway, but uh, i guess it'd happen more?
honestly idk, let's do a test run of a year without any copyright laws and see if anything changes like at all
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though usually stupid and fucky copyright laws have one advantage - if someone bigger than you steals your idea you can take them to court. without copyright laws we'd have giant corporations just taking shit and using their platform to sell stolen ideas without a single cent going to the original creator.......
which happens anyway, but uh, i guess it'd happen more?
honestly idk, let's do a test run of a year without any copyright laws and see if anything changes like at all
wrote last edited by [email protected]one advantage - if someone bigger than you steals your idea you can take them to court
I'm against the notion that ideas can be stolen. I mean, you can keep an idea to yourself, choose not to share it, but if you share your ideas in whatever shape or form, it's there for others to do with as they please. Or atleast, despite that not being the case, in my opinion, that's how it should be. You can of course disagree, but in my view the idea that the first one to come up with an idea, can plant a flag on it and then own this idea, is not helpful. Rather it is limiting, it is holding us back. I think humanity as a whole functions better if we can use eachothers ideas as we please. Humanity functions by copying eachothers behavior and ideas and occasionally improving on them. Like with FOSS, if an idea is improperly executed or can be improved upon, even if just according to some, it is helpful, that the idea can be forked.
Like I said, I prefer to focus on patent law first, rather than copyright law. But fundamentally I think there is no difference.
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I mostly agree with you, it's just that historically governments have been really bad at producing some necessities of life.
I really wouldn't want anybody other than a government providing clean drinking water. I think they've proven they're great at that, and private industries just mess it up in various ways. OTOH, governments historically haven't been very good at producing crops. It seems like every time a government wants to fully take over farming, the result is a famine. Having said that, farming subsidies, and programs where governments are guaranteed buyers of farmed stuff is pretty great.
It really pisses me off that some of the most right-wing, most anti-government people in the US are farmers, and farmers are absolutely supported by the government. There are certainly some flaws in the system. The corn subsidy being so high is ridiculous, and results in things like high fructose corn syrup being available nearly free, and so it's in everything. OTOH, it's thanks to government intervention that the US is absolutely secure when it comes to price shocks for food items. Almost everything is made domestically. And, while there can be quirks like egg prices being high (which again is due to unregulated / badly regulated monopolies) the overall system is very stable.
Housing is another thing that is iffy if it's 100% government made. The awful apartment blocks of former soviet republics are an example of that. But, unregulated housing construction is even worse. This is one where you need to find some balance between fully capitalist and fully government run.
Mostly though, right now, the governments of the world just need to start cracking down on capitalist businesses that are harming the public. The EU is at least trying, but the results have been mixed. The US was starting to do something under Biden and then Trump took over and... wowza. I think the recent NYC election shows that the population is well to the left of the democratic party establishment, and that cracking down on big business could be a huge win in future elections.
one of the amazing features of the USA is water companies... providing water to your house... because that's how it's always been done here
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So taxing the rich is an unstable temporary solution, and more fundamental changes are required.
I propose harsher, more lethal, punishments for politicians that accept bribes
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Someone gets it.
Lets instead do this:
Every citizen, irrespective of their nationality, skincolor, gender has the right to:
- living quarters
- work
- maximum of 7 hours of work
- free healthcare
- paid vacation
- equal pay and treatment for women
- freedom of religion and speech
This is directly taken from a 1936 constitution. Today one could improve on it but we're so much worse, everywhere.
Now guess which one.
I did my 7h of work, I'm retiring now.
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Someone gets it.
Lets instead do this:
Every citizen, irrespective of their nationality, skincolor, gender has the right to:
- living quarters
- work
- maximum of 7 hours of work
- free healthcare
- paid vacation
- equal pay and treatment for women
- freedom of religion and speech
This is directly taken from a 1936 constitution. Today one could improve on it but we're so much worse, everywhere.
Now guess which one.
Go check those living quarters they had lol, and food queues, and how well the health care worked if you had nothing to bribe with. Those sweet shortages of everything.
You should talk to someone who actually lived in the "union" and stop slurping kremlin propaganda. But will you? I wouldn't bet on it.
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though usually stupid and fucky copyright laws have one advantage - if someone bigger than you steals your idea you can take them to court. without copyright laws we'd have giant corporations just taking shit and using their platform to sell stolen ideas without a single cent going to the original creator.......
which happens anyway, but uh, i guess it'd happen more?
honestly idk, let's do a test run of a year without any copyright laws and see if anything changes like at all
though usually stupid and fucky copyright laws have one advantage - if someone bigger than you steals your idea you can take them to court. without copyright laws we’d have giant corporations just taking shit and using their platform to sell stolen ideas without a single cent going to the original creator…
It's very difficult for some small independent creator to take a big corporation successfully to court. Imagine going up against The Mouse or someone similar with a lawyer paid for by your legal insurance. You might as well just not do it at all.
The same thing is even worse with patents. I made a few things that I could patent. But for that I'd have to cough up a few thousands per year, roughly 100k over the life-time of the patent, and in turn I only get the right to sue someone violating my patent. I don't even get the guarantee that my patent is valid.
Patents are designed exactly so that big corporations can use them excessively to suppress smaller competitors while they are too expensive and too uncertain for small inventors to use them.
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Capitalists say the free market is king then they go and make laws to stifle and restrict it so they can make monopolies and gouge everyone out of their hard-earned income.
Capitalism is an egotistic not an idealistic movement. Capitalists don't become capitalists because they think it benefits everyone, but because they think it benefits them. That's why someone like Elon Musk is only against government subsidies if he's not the recipient.
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though usually stupid and fucky copyright laws have one advantage - if someone bigger than you steals your idea you can take them to court. without copyright laws we’d have giant corporations just taking shit and using their platform to sell stolen ideas without a single cent going to the original creator…
It's very difficult for some small independent creator to take a big corporation successfully to court. Imagine going up against The Mouse or someone similar with a lawyer paid for by your legal insurance. You might as well just not do it at all.
The same thing is even worse with patents. I made a few things that I could patent. But for that I'd have to cough up a few thousands per year, roughly 100k over the life-time of the patent, and in turn I only get the right to sue someone violating my patent. I don't even get the guarantee that my patent is valid.
Patents are designed exactly so that big corporations can use them excessively to suppress smaller competitors while they are too expensive and too uncertain for small inventors to use them.
wrote last edited by [email protected]yeah at first i wanted to say "corporation" and "individual" but that's not an equal playing field at all. So i just switched my woring to "bigger" thinking of idk, a writer in the same field who has a bigger following than you
i didn't even get into the patents part because i'd be ranting about Adobe for hours again, and i already spend too much time thinking about them
edit: but then i said corporation anyway lol, i blame the fact i just woke up when i was writing that comment
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Patent laws are the reason why I'm reluctant to work on my idea for a mini-joystick (thumbstick) with force feedback, because even if I manage to get it through without violating any patents of the patent troll by the name of Immersion Technologies, I wouldn't want the technology to be locked to a single console manufacturer for a decade, then to be only available to certain manufacturers for yet another 5 years or so.
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Not just having capital, but got a hostage situation where their failure would collapse the economy therefore they are not allowed to fail and must be bailed out by the government they paid (often for far less) for earlier.
I don't buy into the "too big to fail" idea for individuals.
I really think it only applies to banks, mainly because they hold the money of common people. Anyone else should be allowed to fail. Probably the greatest financial policy fuckup of my life was bailing everybody out in 2008 and not holding anyone accountable for their actions. That gets back to risk and reward breaking down. Those companies should have been allowed to fail. The money, workers and demand for services don't disappear, they shift to more stable competitors.
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Go check those living quarters they had lol, and food queues, and how well the health care worked if you had nothing to bribe with. Those sweet shortages of everything.
You should talk to someone who actually lived in the "union" and stop slurping kremlin propaganda. But will you? I wouldn't bet on it.
Even if i dont check and just believe what you wrote, it still beats the shit out of the situation a ton of us are in right now (also that was literally 34+ yrs ago. Life was different then AND the country was recovering from tons of shit). Not to speak of the countries that make our ill gotten comfort possible too. And just to clarify, present day russia is not communist or socialist. they're as capitalist as the western states are. They are no better and no worse in terms of inequality.
The important part, will you have a respectful discussion or do I have to block you?
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And don't forget how one bakery could pay their employees only the bare minimum, cut corners where they can and use the profit to undercut the 'good' bakery until the 'good' bakery goes bankrupt and the 'bad' bakery can simply be a local monopoly and raise prices as they like.
Raise prises and if legally possible even lower wages, hey we are the only bakery in town so it's getting paid peanuts or have no job at al.
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Capitalism only works if it's regulated. Unregulated capitalism just becomes feudalism again. In your example, the owner of the bakery chain no longer has to innovate or compete. They simply own something and wait for money to be delivered to them.
Of course, for the government to be able to regulate things, it needs to be bigger and more powerful than the businesses it's regulating. You can't have Amazon being worth 2.3 trillion because it can easily make itself immune from competition and immune from regulators.
A mixed capitalist / socialist economy is the best solution we've come up with so far that actually seems to work in the real world. Only the most insane would want things like fire services to be fully privatized, or for every road to be a privately owned toll road. But, a fully state owned economy didn't really work either. Trying that caused the USSR to collapse, and it caused China to switch to a different version of a capitalist / communist / socialist setup. The real issue is where to draw the boundaries. Most countries have decided that healthcare is something that the government should either fully control, or at least have a very strong control over. Meanwhile, the US pays more and receives less with its for-profit system. In England, they privatized water, and it seems to have been a disaster, meanwhile the socialist utopia of USA mostly has cities providing water services.
Where do you draw the line? Personally, I think Northern Europe seems to have the best results. Strong labour protections, a lot of essential things owned by / provided by the government, but with space for for-profit private enterprise too.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Exactly, this is why strong laws are needed. In the end we (the people) all benefit. Maybe a small example but when the EU started to push for usbc as the only standard, it made things lot better. If you are older and still have a drawer with 15 chargers all with different plugs, voltages and amps you known what I mean. Back in the day before cheap chargers from aliexpress, just replacing a simple charger from the manufacturer could be a pretty expensive thing.
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My former boss was in a gulag for most of his teens. He was not paid and to this day he has no idea what crime he was convicted of.
Maybe your former boss was bullshitting you. Maybe he knew precisely why he was in prison, but didn’t want to admit his crimes to his employees. It’s pretty common for ex-cons to falsely claim innocence.
He just knows he served time and was targeted by guards because he was Jewish and the Soviets were very bigoted.
There were many prominent Jews in the Bolshevik revolution, and Jews continued to be active members of the Communist Party, in soviets, and in the Politburo.
My degree is in the downfall if the USSR. I have spent a lot of time reading accounts of prisoners. Many never knew because they were not present at their trial.
He has the numbers tattooed on his arm. I know people who knew him in Belarus that I knew separate of him who talked about it.
There were prominent Jews in the politburo. There was also a fuckload of antisemitism as anyone who lived in the USSR could tell you. The USSR was just as racist as every other European nation.
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It isn't common for people to be sent to slave camps as a punishment for years without knowing why they were charged
Ever heard of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo?
That’sthe kind of evil unique to totalitarian shitholes like the USSR.
The Gulag episode lasted less than two decades, by the mid-50s it was a thing of the past and never resurfaced in the country. Almost as if it was a mass hysteria response to Nazi infiltration, and not born out of a desire to oppress people inherently. Again, at the peak of the Gulag system, the prison population was similar to that of modern USA. Much more authoritarian if you ask me
The same nation you are praising
Yes, I'm praising this nation because even if it did mistakes, by industrialising eastern Europe and by eliminating Nazis it saved hundreds of millions of lives.
You wouldn’t be supporting their evil actions in this case if you had any empathy
I'm not supporting the excesses of the Gulag repression, it's something that we can and should criticise. I'm supporting the rest of things of the country, which led to the saving of hundreds of millions of people from hunger, disease and Nazi genocide. The Gulag repression seems horrible until you realize the Nazis murdered 27 million Soviets at that time. It was an extreme measure carried out in extreme times.
You are making a lot of apologies for overt racism
I'm not. If he was jailed for his race that's wrong. You're just making too much criticism of the country thst saved Europe from fascism and which saved hundreds of millions of lives in the process.
I am not talking about WWII at all because it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. WWII was over for years by the time he was imprisoned for no apparent reason without a trial he attended.
You are bringing up WWII because there is no moral ground for you to support and justify the USSR’s evil actions otherwise so you keep hamming your irrelevant claim because otherwise you’ll have to accept the USSR wasn’t a good moral nation bit was really quite racist, evil and oppressive (all of which are true).
