Socialism means that the poor old crippled lady who lives next door is denied the freedom of carrying her own trash out to the nearest dump, and is forced to rely on Evil Government employees to demean her by helping.

That depends on your definition of "socialism". The USSR is not the same as Sweden or the UK in the 1940s.

I really don't see what is stopping you from trying it, there are already Russian oligarchs who basically live on their yachts and pay no tax anywhere.

I think GP understands libertarianism pretty well. It is a system where the rich and powerful have absolute freedom to do what they want, in precisely the same way that an adolescent dreams of being freed from the constraints of his parents.

The word "illegal" applies only to sheeple. This guy's a fucking Randian superman: he's going to live forever, he's paid his guys to find a cure for cancer and his primary residence is almost certainly inside a hollowed out volcano.

What, including the Paleolithic Era? I'm impressed.

For those of us not in the US, name-dropping Ayn Rand is analogous to saying you've read the great philosophers like Norman Vincent Peale (in Tom Lehrer's words).

That's right, the security/intelligence services here in the UK just do all that wiretapping and spying for the lulz, they have no intention of ever using it in court.

The following are all self-evident facts to the slashdot hive mind: all software should be free as in beer as well as free in freedom; communism and socialism are evil; the US is the best place to live in the world; any form of space exploration is automatically a Good Thing, no matter the cost; NASA is evil; The Government is evil; Microsoft is evil; there is no such thing as racism in the US any longer; all Cops are psychopathic murderers; anyone in the Military is a hero; all Muslims are basically terrorists-in-waiting; abortion is a terrible thing; rape is almost entirely imaginary, except when it happens to heterosexual men, when it is appalling; women just aren't good at maths and computer science; anyone who isn't a well off Western computer programmer has only themselves to blame; cars lend themselves well to analogies; Europe is an homogenous socialist bloc; Uber is a great service; Sony Pictures deserve to die even though they're nothing to do with Sony who make the Playstation; everyone should be armed at all times; Africans are genetically inferior or else they wouldn't catch Ebola; libertarianism is a sensible political philosophy.

Anyone who disagrees with any of these is simply lying and/or a troll.

You are perfectly free to learn to play the piano as well as Claudio Arrau and record your own version of the Moonlight Sonata, you know.

I could train to be an automotive engineer, design and build my own car, and not have to pay Ford ten grand, but guess what's easier?

Where by "pay through the nose" you mean "pay".

If culture should be free, so should everything else. Otherwise, it's just artists who have to work for nothing, and not computer programmers or burger flippers.

That would be an incredibly easy thing to solve by not allowing the transfer of copyrights at all, either to corporations or your own children.

Although to be fair, most arts aren't run by such blatant crooks as the music industry.

No one's forcing you to buy the out-takes are they?

If people find them interesting enough, good luck to them.

It's like reading the original manuscript of a poem or novel, and seeing what was changed before publication. Unless you're a really dedicated fan, it probably wouldn't be of much interest, but for scholars it can be fascinating.

Having said that, you'd only normally do this after the artist was dead.

All scarcity is artificial. There is no logical reason why all physical and non physical things should not be shared equally.

"Ownership" is an entirely man-made concept: it's just human beings deciding how to organise themselves, not a law of nature or God.

But on slashdot capitalism's wonderful because it lets a few code monkeys become billionaires.