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1 | #title Do Not Accept the Weak State of Mind in Our Time |
2 | |
3 | I have views that could perhaps be seen as odd. Do note that I am **not** |
4 | a liberal; nor am I a conservative. I do not buy into the traditional |
5 | socieconomic dipole scale, and I also reject the *political compass* two |
6 | dimensional scale; my political belief system could best be described |
7 | as anarchism if you must have a label for it. Naturally this is only |
8 | because anarchism isn't an ideology, but rather a broad set of ideas |
9 | centered around the rejection of traditional heriarchial political and |
10 | social structures. |
11 | |
12 | These short essays are continually evolving, and each will be split |
13 | into its own page as the ideas contained within it are fleshed out in |
14 | my mind. Writing things down tends to help me to do this for there are |
15 | limits to how much information the top of my head can hold limiting |
16 | the usefulness of internal thought once an idea becomes complex |
17 | enough. Political and social beliefs are perhaps the most complicated |
18 | ideas a man can have because of our complex intertwined social |
19 | structures. |
20 | |
21 | * [[Wisdom][The Basis of My Philosophy]] |
22 | |
23 | It is often helpful to know what someone considers as the basis of his |
24 | philosophy when interpeting what he has written. As such I have |
25 | compiled a page of links and quotations to reveal the inner secrets of |
26 | my mind. |
27 | |
28 | * The Current Economic and Political Structure Is Broken |
29 | |
30 | ** The Government of the Unites States |
31 | |
32 | I feel that the government in the United States is very close to being |
33 | broken beyond repair. As it stands the government above the local |
34 | level ignores the individual citizen and instead is only affected by |
35 | large scale action. As far as the individual is concerned we no longer |
36 | live in a Republic, but rather in an Oligarchy which is quickly |
37 | descending into something far worse. |
38 | |
39 | I do feel that there is still some reform that could be made in the |
40 | near (ten years perhaps) future that could allow the government to |
41 | become tolerable again. We are, however, quite close to the edge where |
42 | there will be no fixing it. If that threshold is passed we are in for |
43 | terrible times. |
44 | |
45 | ** Capitalism is Intrinsically Evil |
46 | |
47 | Cooperation is better than exploitation. How can one justify an |
48 | economic system based upon paying others as little as possible in an |
49 | attempt to make the most profit from their labor so as to make some |
50 | profit? |
51 | |
52 | * Misc |
53 | |
54 | ** Long Term Copyright Causes Harm to Society (=Draft Revision 2=) |
55 | |
56 | ; maybe reinsert intro [[clintons-plans#Writing]] |
57 | |
58 | ; - Craft work compensated directly |
59 | |
60 | It is straightforward to calculate a fair cost for material goods. The |
61 | material cost follows from the materials, and the labor cost generally |
62 | derives from the complexity of construction. The fixed price for each |
63 | item consists of both of these factors. Thus it is trivial to ensure |
64 | that a craftsman is fairly compensated for his effort. |
65 | |
66 | ; - Creative work indirectly |
67 | ; - Harder to regain effort spent on creating |
68 | |
69 | Creative works must have their value calculated via a more circuitous |
70 | route. The physical form of a creative work is of little importance; |
71 | the ideas it represents are. The material and direct labor costs |
72 | (printing, binding, etc.) are thus so small as to be of negligible |
73 | importance when calculating value. There is effectively no objective |
74 | way to place value on abstract work; all the value judgements we can |
75 | make are subjective. We must then rely on irrational human valuations |
76 | to determine the value on their own. |
77 | |
78 | ; - Works contain ideas |
79 | ; - Focus on written works |
80 | ; - Inherent nature of ideas |
81 | ; - Absorbed into the mind of the reader |
82 | ; - Freely copied orally, libraries, ... |
83 | ; - Absorbed into the culture |
84 | |
85 | |
86 | Creative works are fundamentally different from concrete works. A |
87 | painting may inspire others start a new stylistic movement, the |
88 | structure of a story may cause the formation of a new literary form, |
89 | an essay may incite a new political movement, etc. Creative works |
90 | weave themselves into the mental fabric of each individual exposed to |
91 | them in a way that material goods cannot. A book may change your life; |
92 | a table will never do that. This suggests that the abstract concepts |
93 | which compose a work have a strange nature and great value. Those who |
94 | control the distribution of creative works wield great power as a |
95 | result of the ability of ideas to change the individual. |
96 | |
97 | After a certain period of time the physical manifestation of a |
98 | creative work loses commercial value. New art is being created |
99 | continually, and no one can be expected to read every important book |
100 | written, see every film, and so on for other areas. When a work ceases |
101 | to be profitable to publish distribution ceases. Allowing abstract |
102 | works to simply drop from the market creates a serious problem. New |
103 | ideas are built upon old ones, and after ideas have assimilated into |
104 | the collective concious it is important to be able to go back to the |
105 | old ideas and analyze them to understand the present culture. If a |
106 | work is no longer available it is impossible to do this. Thus works |
107 | that are no longer being commercially exploited should become the |
108 | property of the public so that any worth preserving will be preserved |
109 | by *someone* and avoid death. |
110 | |
111 | ; - Copyright helps authors |
112 | ; - Gives reasonable period for ideas to be commercially exploited |
113 | |
114 | Copyright manages to work fairly well for ensuring creators are |
115 | compensated for their effort, preventing abuse of creator rights to |
116 | the detriment of society, and ensuring that works will become public |
117 | property after they are commercially unprofitable. Irrational human |
118 | judgements over time often work well, and so giving exclusive right to |
119 | copy a work makes sense for a period of time to allow society to |
120 | determine its monetary value. The fair use provisions of copyright |
121 | give society reasonable leeway in the use of the ideas contained |
122 | within a work while the work is protected, and this allows society to |
123 | continue enriching its creative culture. The limited term of copyright |
124 | and ensuing reversion to the public domain prevents the cultural |
125 | stagnation and the loss of history that would result from works |
126 | becoming unavailable. |
127 | |
128 | ; - Copyright should be short |
129 | ; - Purpose is to give the creator time to compensate himself for the |
130 | ; effort spent writing |
131 | ; - Works often have short commercial life (cite) |
132 | |
133 | The term of copyright must be finely balanced between the need to |
134 | ensure creators have enough time to receive fair compensation for |
135 | their effort, and the desire to avoid cultural stagnation from |
136 | unavailable works. The term must be short enough that a work will not |
137 | be unavailable for too long after commercial interest dies. Every year |
138 | that passes where the work isn't being published tends to reduce the |
139 | number of copies in existence. It must also be long enough that a |
140 | creator can profit according to the value that society puts upon his |
141 | work. |
142 | |
143 | A term should be just long enough that a work will fall out of |
144 | copyright when physical copies are still likely to exist. A man may |
145 | keep his book collection unto his death, but his children may simply |
146 | sell them off or discard them after he departs the mortal |
147 | coil. Intuitive judgement says that things that are worth entering the |
148 | public domain will be preserved by someone for at least his life. A |
149 | person who has creative works in his posession is often attached to |
150 | them and will keep the ones he likes the most for as long as possible |
151 | (e.g. my music collection is backed up in flac so that I will be able |
152 | to listen to my music forever). After he dies there is a large |
153 | increase in the chance that the works will perish unless he by chance |
154 | made special arrangements to have them preserved. |
155 | |
156 | A generation then seems to be a reasonable term; how many things are |
157 | really commercially viable after thirty years? Some works may be |
158 | relevant to the children of the generation who created them; it seems |
159 | reasonable then that if a work is still commercially viable after a |
160 | generation then the creator deserves to retain copyright for a second |
161 | generation. It is questionable whether more terms would be good |
162 | (issues of supression of information, right to profit, etc. come into |
163 | play), but they can't quite be ruled out. A renewal system with a span |
164 | of roughly thirty years ensures that a work will be out of publication |
165 | for at most a generation's time. This appears to be a good balance |
166 | between the right of the creator and the desire to keep knowledge from |
167 | dying (from my eyes). |
168 | |
169 | The works of the current generation, their parents, their |
170 | grandparents, and their great-grandparents are still copyrighted in |
171 | the US. Works created in the present will be copyrighted for the |
172 | lifetime of the author and seventy years after; a span of roughly six |
173 | generations. |
174 | |
175 | ** Fewer Laws Are Better |
176 | *** Individuals should not have their actions regulated |
177 | *** Corporations must have their actions heavily regulated |
178 | |
179 | Corporate power disrupts the functioning of a free society. If the |
180 | power wielded by a corporation were merely the sum of the individuals |
181 | that composed it there would be little issue; the fundamental problem |
182 | is that the benefits of gaining access to mass production facilities |
183 | and a huge workforce that can be forced to cooperate on certain goals |
184 | gives a large corporation much more power than the simple sum of its |
185 | members. |
186 | |
187 | **** Corporate Personhood should be revoked |
188 | **** Corporations should not be allowed to influence politics |
189 | |
190 | * Social Ills |
191 | |
192 | ** Mass Culture |
193 | |
194 | American culture in the early 1900s began to homogenize, and now there |
195 | is a single massive culture that almost all three hundred million |
196 | people in the country share. This presents problems to those who do |
197 | not fit in; in the days of the self sufficient village one could move |
198 | to another location to find people similar to him, but now there is |
199 | nowhere to go. Everywhere a *social deviant* goes he will feel alienated |
200 | and have his social options severely limited. |
201 | |
202 | A monoculture reduces the rate of idea formation, and ours is actively |
203 | hostile toward anything not falling in line with the |
204 | mainstream. People are trained to act as a mass instead of as |
205 | individuals; this results in far less creative people. Critical |
206 | thinking is not encouraged; no, it is far worse! Critical thinking is |
207 | discouraged, and those of us who wish to argue our points with logic |
208 | are met with the undefeatable enemy of a closed mind that has been |
209 | exposed to propaganda from birth. |
210 | |
211 | ** The Automobile |
212 | |
213 | ; How far is your average trip in a car? If you don't often go further |
214 | ; than twenty miles have you thought about getting rid of your car? |
215 | ; Twenty miles! Quite the distance, isn't it? In reality it is a short |
216 | ; [[Bicycle][bicycle]] ride that is often under or only slightly longer than an hour |
217 | ; long! If this pathetic nerd can do it so can you! |
218 | |
219 | ; We have finite natural resources, and oil is a resource that we have |
220 | ; foolishly exploited to the point of exhaustion. Ethanol and other |
221 | ; biofuels are pipe dreams, and you **shall** have no choice but to learn to |
222 | ; live without a car as oil is going to increase in cost substantially |
223 | ; over the next twenty years. Why wait until you are forced to give up |
224 | ; your car to do so? It makes more economic sense to give it up now |
225 | ; rather than spend more and more of your income every year just to |
226 | ; travel. Even ignoring that aspect the confidence it fills you with is |
227 | ; quite wonderful; there was a time when I walked staring at the ground |
228 | ; fearful of the world, and now I stand tall and can stare a driver in |
229 | ; the eyes and tell him to go ahead and try to run into me because I'm |
230 | ; not giving up my ground. |
231 | |
232 | ; Try self transport; it is good for your body and mind. The relative |
233 | ; low cost of automobiles has forced us into a false sense of needing to |
234 | ; be transported by machine. We are humans; the lone bipedal upon this |
235 | ; planet. We were born to transport ourselves! |
236 | |
237 | ** Learned Ignorance and Weakness |
238 | |
239 | [[Old Viewpoints][obsolete]] |
240 | |
241 | [[TRUTH]] |