Why Is Piracy Illegal?

Saturday 20 December 2008 at 1:55 pm Piracy is no less ethical than the very deliberate efforts of corporate executives and other "entrepreneurs" to manipulate, mis-educate, misinform, and generally disadvantage large groups of people to disproportionately benefit themselves.  The only reason that the one activity (piracy) is illegal and the others aren't is because it's yet another successful example of that manipulation.  The "victors" not only write the histories, they also write the laws, not only including laws that benefit them but also excluding laws that would lessen their advantages over others.

It is this dynamic that drives some people, who observe this ethical favoritism, to consider variations of socialism as an altruistic solution (never mind that socialism can't work as long as entrepreneurs and pirates exist at all). In pure Darwinian terms, though, none of those activities would be "unethical"; any old trickery is fine if it gets the job done (leads to successful reproduction).  That's "competition" in its purest form.  "Cooperation", however, demands an artificial ethical framework not found in nature. Capitalists, Libertarians, and Socialists disagree on how much cooperation and "fairness" to legislate into a system of ethics, and so we have much infighting and a mish-mash of laws that still winds up benefitting the very wealthy just a bit more than it does the rest of us.

Misunderstanding Recession

Tuesday 02 December 2008 at 08:22 am Neither average citizens nor even economists really grasp the true cause of a recession; it's certainly not what they have been indoctrinated to believe that it is.  Perhaps some economists actually do know the ugly truth, but are unwilling to admit it publicly. Here's the dirty little Darwinian secret about the origin of recessions: (more)

"Nobody Has a Right"

Tuesday 11 November 2008 at 10:02 am

Someone wrote elsewhere today:

No, you can thank the drug warriors for our loss of rights. We drug users are simply engaging in our right to pursue happiness. Nobody has a right to decide what does and doesn't go into my body except for me.

 Here's delusional thinking again.

(more)

As Good As It Gets?

Sunday 09 November 2008 at 3:47 pm

I know how Melvin Udall feels... or how the un-medicated Melvin felt.

I have this fantasy that there is another pasture somewhere that is greener - and less populated by mindless, munching, farting bovines - than the one in which I've chained myself. I was told today by a non-American that "trust me, you live in one of the best managed countries in the world"¹.

I really hope that person is wrong, because I need that fantasy to come true some day.  I need to find my own Carol Connelly, too.

(more)

FTC Says It Wants to Fix Intellectual Property Law

Sunday 09 November 2008 at 09:03 am

The Federal Trace Commission intends to hold a series of hearings and examine the methods we call "intellectual property" law, with the intention to straighten it all out; they've already held hearings regarding copyright and so-called "digital rights management" (DRM).  That's all fine and good on the face of it, but...

I doubt if the FTC intends to abolish it altogether, and that's the only egalitarian way to "straighten out" this collection of wealth-concentrating tactics. Too bad the general population is too unaware, uneducated, and distracted with their nine-to-fives and other minutia to even know or care how they're being disadvantaged by it. It's mostly the very same minority who stands to gain from it, in one fashion or another, which has any real influence in its existence. That's why IP law exists in the first place; those who are not egalitarian sought to cement and further increase their gains, and they succeeded because of general ignorance (again). We've been stuck with it ever since (centuries), in one fashion or another and to varying degrees.

We're not yet ready to be the egalitarian Land of the Free that our ancestors alleged.  The People are still incapable of standing up to the minority that seeks to disadvantage them at every turn. The very existence of IP law and DRM and all the rest of it is testament to that unreadiness and incapability.

Messiah Obama can't fix this, either, in large part because he's part of that minority and thinks it's fixed already.

Obama Wants Change, Indeed

Friday 07 November 2008 at 11:27 am The most substantive change that Obama could make would be the successful promotion and adoption of electoral lotteries to replace our current travesty of democracy (and even republicanism).  He won't do that, however, because it would cut him and his political friends out of the political landscape in the future.  Even if he dared to try, our political Good Old Boys network would shoot him down, just as they did Dennis Kucinich when he tried to propose finally doing the ethical thing and impeaching our current treasonous executives.

A Proposition for California

Thursday 06 November 2008 at 5:48 pm

Speaking of broken political processes, California's proposition system is the poster child for Machiavellian manipulation.  The apparent passage of Proposition 8 is a spectacular example, since it will require voiding other fundamental sections of the State constitution in order to be valid and enforceable.  The people who crafted the public campaign for it knew this, but also knew that most California residents are completely ignorant of their own state's constitution (among so many other things).

I think it's time the State revised the proposition system such that passage of any proposition would require a three fourths majority of popular votes.  It's far too easy to find a simple majority of stupid gullible easily manipulated Americans, California residents included.

The American Voter's Constant Companion

Monday 03 November 2008 at 8:10 pm

No matter what cherished candidate gets his chad punched by you tomorrow, there is one constant on which you can count: the certain knowledge that neither/none of them will make any substantive change.  American politics and society as a whole has stagnated; nothing resembling actual sociopolitical evolution has occurred here in a very long time.  Anything resembling actual progress is quickly undone and the process repeated ad nauseum.  The system itself is too broken to allow progress, nor even allow the involvement of people who could enact positive progress and make it stick. America has devolved to something so Darwinian and self-centric that We The People has become an irrelevant historical footnote.

American politics: rinse, lather, and repeat.

Electoral Messiah Complexes

Wednesday 29 October 2008 at 2:45 pm

Self-Delusion Enacted

Tuesday 14 October 2008 at 11:18 pm

Sometimes I wonder why I continue to watch some television programs; one such program is Law & Order: SVU.  Tonight I was reminded why I still do.  Ellen Burstyn made a guest performance, as Elliot Stabler's bipolar mother, that was a perfect portrayal of a person in complete denial and self-delusion.

I encounter people constantly who are suffering from real-life versions of that complete self-delusion.  Worst of all is when the delusions pervert people's ethics and become a justification for all sorts of ethical trespass, both major and minor.  I wish I could force those people to sit down and watch Burstyn's performance; hopefully holding that mirror up to their own behavior would help them finally divorce themselves from it.  It's my conclusion that the human race will not be able to progress or evolve further until it can leave such bizarre and irrational neurology behind.  I'm accused of being "disordered" myself, and it's true that I seem incapable of making a success of myself in this particular screwed-up illogical world; nevertheless I often feel like the only sane person standing, like Burgess Meredith in an old Twilight Zone episode. They call me crazy merely because I'm too damned sane to fit into the insane world in which I have been unwillingly thrust.

I'm just a Vulcan tourist who desperately needs to find that return ticket home that was taken from me.