Oh, I didn't mean to imply we got involved in the interest of helping other people. But we do get involved in their little wars and political machinations.
Ron Paul is correct, sort of. The problem is there are points at which intervention now is going to save a much bigger intervention later. Kuwait in 1991 may have been one of those inflections, maybe not. Everything else flowed from that invasion.
There is more than JUST luck, but luck is required.
I don't see any evidence this is true. I know multimillionaires who didn't get any more or less lucky than average. The difference between them and me (definitely not a multimillionaire) is the spent their 20s and 30s living on someone's couch, working 20 hours a day, and failing over and over until they figured out what you need to do to start a successful business. Most successful businessmen have a few BKs under their belt, and it wouldn't have been surprising if Tesla had failed and Musk still ended up a billionaire.
It may be you have to get lucky to be Elon Musk rich, but I wouldn't bet money on it either.
Well, that may be true, but for the time being we do have draconian copyright laws, and the copyright holders are well within their rights to have unauthorized copies taken down. Whether or not the legal environment make sense is another question.
But in doing trying to do so, the labels will do harm to the artists they represent, and shoot themselves in the foot for acquiring future customers by getting rid of several major sources of music discovery.
I'm pretty sure the labels only worry about the artists when their own interests aren't involved. You're right about the music discovery, but from a label's perspective discovery is only worthwhile if it leads to a sale. If people just listen to youtube whenever they have the itch to hear a song without ever buying the track, that looks a lot like parasitism to the people who produced it.
Traditionally the labels did a few things for you: Marketing, production, advances, and shelf space. By "shelf space" I mean getting your album in to record stores, which was a bit of rent seeking you really couldn't get around as an artist.
Today you can do your own marketing, borrow money, and control over shelf space is a commodity of dwindling (if not entirely nonexistent) value. But record labels can still add value by bringing together the facilities and technical expertise you need to make professional-quality music. I think they make way too much money for this service based almost purely on inertia, but that's likely to change.
Out of curiousity, when an artery is blocked with plague...
"Plaque", not "plague". An artery blocked with plague sounds very scary.
It even forms biofilms.
I'm jealous.
It's a fun lifestyle. I don't have time for some woman who needs constant attention, wants to do things I have no interest in, needs things buying for her so she can feel loved. The reward simply isn't worth the time and money you have to invest.
That's really what it boils down to for me. Women go through a sexual "rock star" period in their 20s which leads them to expect every waking moment of a man's time. Sex is great, but it's not that great, and I don't see that modern women bring much else to the table.
Right now fuel is cheap, and fuel is on the order of 50% of flight cost. That can't last forever, though.
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
