Politics.html

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  16     <h1>Do Not Accept the Weak State of Mind in Our Time</h1>
  17    <div class="contents">
  18 <dl>
  19 <dt>
  20 <a href="#sec1">The Basis of My Philosophy</a>
  21 </dt>
  22 <dt>
  23 <a href="#sec2">The Current Economic and Political Structure Is Broken</a>
  24 </dt>
  25 <dd>
  26 <dl>
  27 <dt>
  28 <a href="#sec3">The Government of the Unites States</a>
  29 </dt>
  30 <dt>
  31 <a href="#sec4">Capitalism is Intrinsically Evil</a>
  32 </dt>
  33 </dl>
  34 </dd>
  35 <dt>
  36 <a href="#sec5">Misc</a>
  37 </dt>
  38 <dd>
  39 <dl>
  40 <dt>
  41 <a href="#sec6">Long Term Copyright Causes Harm to Society (<code>Draft Revision 2</code>)</a>
  42 </dt>
  43 <dt>
  44 <a href="#sec7">Fewer Laws Are Better</a>
  45 </dt>
  46 <dd>
  47 <dl>
  48 <dt>
  49 <a href="#sec8">Individuals should not have their actions regulated</a>
  50 </dt>
  51 <dt>
  52 <a href="#sec9">Corporations must have their actions heavily regulated</a>
  53 </dt>
  54 </dl>
  55 </dd>
  56 </dl>
  57 </dd>
  58 <dt>
  59 <a href="#sec10">Social Ills</a>
  60 </dt>
  61 <dd>
  62 <dl>
  63 <dt>
  64 <a href="#sec11">Mass Culture</a>
  65 </dt>
  66 <dt>
  67 <a href="#sec12">The Automobile</a>
  68 </dt>
  69 <dt>
  70 <a href="#sec13">Learned Ignorance and Weakness</a>
  71 </dt>
  72 </dl>
  73 </dd>
  74 </dl>
  75 </div>
  76
  77
  78 <!-- Page published by Emacs Muse begins here --><p>I have views that could perhaps be seen as odd. Do note that I am <strong>not</strong>
  79 a liberal; nor am I a conservative. I do not buy into the traditional
  80 socieconomic dipole scale, and I also reject the <em>political compass</em> two
  81 dimensional scale; my political belief system could best be described
  82 as <em>curmudgeonly bastard</em> if you must have a label for it. This is only
  83 because being a curmudgeonly bastard isn't an ideology, but rather a
  84 broad set of ideas centered around the rejection of traditional
  85 political and social structures (<em>i.e</em> hating everything). I reject the
  86 <em>ressentiment</em> (lookit I'm Nietzsche) of traditional anarchism and
  87 believe not that every man should have no master (for then <em>all</em> would
  88 be weak), but rather that he should be his own master.</p>
  89
  90 <p>These short essays are mere stubs I wrote a long while ago, and each
  91 will perhaps be extended in the future.</p>
  92
  93 <h2><a name="sec1" id="sec1"></a>
  94 <a href="Wisdom.html">The Basis of My Philosophy</a></h2>
  95
  96 <p class="first">I read some things and thought they were cool. Now I can make people
  97 think I'm smarter than I really am.</p>
  98
  99
 100 <h2><a name="sec2" id="sec2"></a>
 101 The Current Economic and Political Structure Is Broken</h2>
 102
 103 <h3><a name="sec3" id="sec3"></a>
 104 The Government of the Unites States</h3>
 105
 106 <p class="first">I feel that the government in the United States is very close to being
 107 broken beyond repair (perhaps this is a bit conservative, but one must
 108 hope). As it stands the government above the local level (and even
 109 there!) ignores the individual citizen and instead is only forced to
 110 do anything by large scale action. As far as the individual is
 111 concerned we no longer live in a Republic, but rather in an Plutocracy
 112 which is quickly descending into something far worse.</p>
 113
 114
 115 <h3><a name="sec4" id="sec4"></a>
 116 Capitalism is Intrinsically Evil</h3>
 117
 118 <p class="first">Cooperation is better than exploitation. How can one justify an
 119 economic system based upon paying others as little as possible in an
 120 attempt to make the most profit from their labor so as to make some
 121 profit?</p>
 122
 123 <p>But then again, what does <em>evil</em> mean?</p>
 124
 125
 126
 127 <h2><a name="sec5" id="sec5"></a>
 128 Misc</h2>
 129
 130 <h3><a name="sec6" id="sec6"></a>
 131 Long Term Copyright Causes Harm to Society (<code>Draft Revision 2</code>)</h3>
 132
 133
 134
 135
 136
 137 <p>It is straightforward to calculate a fair cost for material goods. The
 138 material cost follows from the materials, and the labor cost generally
 139 derives from the complexity of construction. The fixed price for each
 140 item consists of both of these factors. Thus it is trivial to ensure
 141 that a craftsman is fairly compensated for his effort.</p>
 142
 143
 144
 145
 146 <p>Creative works must have their value calculated via a more circuitous
 147 route. The physical form of a creative work is of little importance;
 148 the ideas it represents are. The material and direct labor costs
 149 (printing, binding, etc.) are thus so small as to be of negligible
 150 importance when calculating value. There is effectively no objective
 151 way to place value on abstract work; all the value judgements we can
 152 make are subjective. We must then rely on irrational human valuations
 153 to determine the value on their own.</p>
 154
 155
 156
 157
 158
 159
 160
 161
 162
 163 <p>Creative works are fundamentally different from concrete works. A
 164 painting may inspire others start a new stylistic movement, the
 165 structure of a story may cause the formation of a new literary form,
 166 an essay may incite a new political movement, etc. Creative works
 167 weave themselves into the mental fabric of each individual exposed to
 168 them in a way that material goods cannot. A book may change your life;
 169 a table will never do that. This suggests that the abstract concepts
 170 which compose a work have a strange nature and great value. Those who
 171 control the distribution of creative works wield great power as a
 172 result of the ability of ideas to change the individual.</p>
 173
 174 <p>After a certain period of time the physical manifestation of a
 175 creative work loses commercial value. New art is being created
 176 continually, and no one can be expected to read every important book
 177 written, see every film, and so on for other areas. When a work ceases
 178 to be profitable to publish distribution ceases. Allowing abstract
 179 works to simply drop from the market creates a serious problem. New
 180 ideas are built upon old ones, and after ideas have assimilated into
 181 the collective concious it is important to be able to go back to the
 182 old ideas and analyze them to understand the present culture. If a
 183 work is no longer available it is impossible to do this. Thus works
 184 that are no longer being commercially exploited should become the
 185 property of the public so that any worth preserving will be preserved
 186 by <em>someone</em> and avoid death.</p>
 187
 188
 189
 190
 191 <p>Copyright manages to work fairly well for ensuring creators are
 192 compensated for their effort, preventing abuse of creator rights to
 193 the detriment of society, and ensuring that works will become public
 194 property after they are commercially unprofitable. Irrational human
 195 judgements over time often work well, and so giving exclusive right to
 196 copy a work makes sense for a period of time to allow society to
 197 determine its monetary value. The fair use provisions of copyright
 198 give society reasonable leeway in the use of the ideas contained
 199 within a work while the work is protected, and this allows society to
 200 continue enriching its creative culture. The limited term of copyright
 201 and ensuing reversion to the public domain prevents the cultural
 202 stagnation and the loss of history that would result from works
 203 becoming unavailable.</p>
 204
 205
 206
 207
 208
 209
 210 <p>The term of copyright must be finely balanced between the need to
 211 ensure creators have enough time to receive fair compensation for
 212 their effort, and the desire to avoid cultural stagnation from
 213 unavailable works. The term must be short enough that a work will not
 214 be unavailable for too long after commercial interest dies. Every year
 215 that passes where the work isn't being published tends to reduce the
 216 number of copies in existence. It must also be long enough that a
 217 creator can profit according to the value that society puts upon his
 218 work.</p>
 219
 220 <p>A term should be just long enough that a work will fall out of
 221 copyright when physical copies are still likely to exist. A man may
 222 keep his book collection unto his death, but his children may simply
 223 sell them off or discard them after he departs the mortal
 224 coil. Intuitive judgement says that things that are worth entering the
 225 public domain will be preserved by someone for at least his life. A
 226 person who has creative works in his posession is often attached to
 227 them and will keep the ones he likes the most for as long as possible
 228 (e.g. my music collection is backed up in flac so that I will be able
 229 to listen to my music forever). After he dies there is a large
 230 increase in the chance that the works will perish unless he by chance
 231 made special arrangements to have them preserved.</p>
 232
 233 <p>A generation then seems to be a reasonable term; how many things are
 234 really commercially viable after thirty years? Some works may be
 235 relevant to the children of the generation who created them; it seems
 236 reasonable then that if a work is still commercially viable after a
 237 generation then the creator deserves to retain copyright for a second
 238 generation. It is questionable whether more terms would be good
 239 (issues of supression of information, right to profit, etc. come into
 240 play), but they can't quite be ruled out. A renewal system with a span
 241 of roughly thirty years ensures that a work will be out of publication
 242 for at most a generation's time. This appears to be a good balance
 243 between the right of the creator and the desire to keep knowledge from
 244 dying (from my eyes).</p>
 245
 246 <p>The works of the current generation, their parents, their
 247 grandparents, and their great-grandparents are still copyrighted in
 248 the US. Works created in the present will be copyrighted for the
 249 lifetime of the author and seventy years after; a span of roughly six
 250 generations.</p>
 251
 252
 253 <h3><a name="sec7" id="sec7"></a>
 254 Fewer Laws Are Better</h3>
 255
 256 <h4><a name="sec8" id="sec8"></a>
 257 Individuals should not have their actions regulated</h4>
 258
 259
 260 <h4><a name="sec9" id="sec9"></a>
 261 Corporations must have their actions heavily regulated</h4>
 262
 263 <p class="first">Corporate power disrupts the functioning of a free society. If the
 264 power wielded by a corporation were merely the sum of the individuals
 265 that composed it there would be little issue; the fundamental problem
 266 is that the benefits of gaining access to mass production facilities
 267 and a huge workforce that can be forced to cooperate on certain goals
 268 gives a large corporation much more than this.</p>
 269
 270 <h5>Corporate Personhood should be revoked</h5>
 271
 272
 273 <h5>Corporations should not be allowed to influence politics</h5>
 274
 275
 276
 277
 278
 279 <h2><a name="sec10" id="sec10"></a>
 280 Social Ills</h2>
 281
 282 <h3><a name="sec11" id="sec11"></a>
 283 Mass Culture</h3>
 284
 285 <p class="first">American culture in the early 1900s began to homogenize, and now there
 286 is a single massive culture that almost all three hundred million
 287 people in the country share. This presents problems to those who do
 288 not fit in; in the days of the self sufficient village one could move
 289 to another location to find people similar to him, but now there is
 290 nowhere to go. Everywhere a <em>social deviant</em> goes he will feel alienated
 291 and have his social options severely limited.</p>
 292
 293 <p>A monoculture reduces the rate of idea formation, and ours is actively
 294 hostile toward anything not falling in line with the
 295 mainstream. People are trained to act as a mass instead of as
 296 individuals; this results in far less creative people. Critical
 297 thinking is not encouraged; no, it is far worse! Critical thinking is
 298 discouraged, and those of us who wish to argue our points with logic
 299 are met with the undefeatable enemy of a closed mind that has been
 300 exposed to propaganda from birth.</p>
 301
 302
 303 <h3><a name="sec12" id="sec12"></a>
 304 The Automobile</h3>
 305
 306
 307
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 328
 329
 330
 331 <h3><a name="sec13" id="sec13"></a>
 332 Learned Ignorance and Weakness</h3>
 333
 334 <p><a href="Old%20Viewpoints.html">obsolete</a></p>
 335
 336 <p><a href="TRUTH.html">TRUTH</a></p>
 337
 338
 339
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 365
 366 <p class="cke-footer">                       No seed of hope nor ray of light,
 367                     Scant succour from the blighted epoch.
 368                          Rise like Socrates and fight;
 369                     Take hate's chalice laced with hemlock.
 370 </p>
 371 <p class="cke-timestamp">Last Modified:
 372     December 11, 2008</p>
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