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