[Have they not heard ] of AdBlock?
Yes we have.
Why would anyone pay for this?
Because some people appreciate the value that YouTube and (some of) the content creators that post there provide and would like a safe and convenient way to kick back a few bucks to ensure that everyone involved is able to pay their rent.
Getting people who know what they are talking about to agree how good a piece of art is usually works best.
And how do we decide which people do and don't "know what they're talking about"? At best that's a circular definition. The criteria you've proposed for judging the quality of art is that some group of people have judged it to be good.
Sure, but there has to be a level of complexity to it, otherwise it evokes no feeling.
So again, how much complexity is required? By what metric are you judging Justin Bieber's work to be insufficiently complex? Does it not have enough different notes in it or something? If the evocation of feeling is the important part then that's a subjective reaction on the part of the audience not an objective measurement criteria.
Impact anyone. Whether it's a positive or negative impact doesn't matter. Poor art won't have any impact and will be easily forgotten.
Justin Bieber seems to have had a strong negative impact on you and a strong positive impact on lots of other people (judging by the level of screaming at least).
Exactly. If it's so worthless as to be quickly forgotten, then it's crap.
I think you have your cause and effect backwards here. Great art is not great because it's remembered, it's remembered because it's great.
It's good that you admit it. Perhaps one day you'll acquire a sense of taste.
You're making a lot of snide comments about my personal preferences for someone that knows absolutely nothing about them.
Complexity
So simple elegant things can't be art? How complex does it need to be before it counts? Is more complexity always better or is there a diminishing return?
refinement
Let's see...refinement, noun: "cultured elegance in behavior or manner.". Hmmm....elegance, noun: "the quality of being pleasingly ingenious and simple ". So art must embody complexity and ingenious simplicity. Gotcha. Can't see any issues so far.
impact
Impact on who? How is impact measured? Sounds to me like impact is a function of entirely subjective reactions of the audience.
staying power
So something that is obscure and thus quickly forgotten about can't be art because it has no staying power?
The only reason Bieber is more popular is because most people are uncultured mooks and you appear to be one of them.
Perhaps. Or perhaps I just understand the difference between a subjective opinion and an objective fact and I'm not arrogant enough to assume that my opinions are somehow more worthy than anyone else's. But no, I'm sure you're right. It's probably the mook thing.
Popularity doesn't equate to quality and you're an idiot for thinking that it does.
Please list the objective criteria for rating the quality of a piece of art. We'll wait.
It's a zero-loss game for creators and a zero-profit game for backers.
I don't think it's entirely zero-profit for backers. If the project succeeds then I get a thing that I wanted that might not otherwise have been created. That's a benefit for me.
Because there is such a thing as reputation, and concealed carry.
Reputation only works as a behavior modifier if the people I have to do business with in some way give a crap about the people I'm screwing over. And concealed carry only works if your gun is bigger than mine.
Also, I didn't say get rid of governments, I said get them out of the markets. The only possible purpose of a government is to reduce aggression (ie murder, assault, theft, and their derivatives like rape and fraud).
You didn't say get rid of them but you did say they were "the root of the problems we have in the marketplace", which I took to mean you thought there would be no problems in the marketplace if we got rid of the government. IMHO you can't have a functioning marketplace without things like protection of property rights, protection against fraud and enforcement of contracts, and I've yet to hear of a credible proposal for how we maintain those things without some form of government.
The scarcity of a natural resource does not cause a monopoly to naturally occur.
It's certainly not guaranteed to to happen but are seriously suggesting that it's impossible for it to happen?
The scarcity of radio spectrum would not result in a single radio broadcast corporation monopolizing the spectrum.
What are you basing that assertion on?
Now, if it wasn't regulated, there would be some chaos - but the steady state equilibrium result may not be all that bad.
Who's to say the "steady state equilibrium" wouldn't be the one guy with the most powerful transmitter drowning out every other signal?
The fact that many are unhappy with cable companies and desire more competition shows that granting them government monopolies has downsides. Do you think the US would be better off if Google Fiber efforts were banned because "natural monopoly" and "duplication" and it might not be cost effective?
Don't get me wrong. I am in no way saying that government granted monopolies are good or desirable. I was merely trying to point out it was possible for monopolies to form without a specific government mandate.
Physics doesn't enforce monopolies
Depends what you mean by enforce I guess. eg there is a limited radio broadcast spectrum. That's not government enforced, that just physics. If everyone just broadcast indiscriminately on whatever spectrum they felt like signal interference would render it useless.
Take cable - natural monopoly? Except it relies on government enforcement to create the actual monopoly.
Not really. Even if you removed all government regulation from building cable networks (which would in practice be next to impossible to do, but for the sake of argument) you'd still never see 27 different cable providers running wires into your house because it's simply not cost effective to duplicate that infrastructure. You'd end up fragmenting the market to the point where it's impossible to recover the capital costs of building the network. You may not see a strict monopoly with only one player (although you might), but the natural barriers to entry can be sufficient that normal "free market" solutions don't necessarily apply.
Currently these places are getting internet piggybacked on utility infrastructure. The costs are spread over the entire service area and traditionally, access to that service area was limited in exchange for servicing areas not profitable to serve.
Sure, but what I'm still not getting is how net neutrality rules change any of that?
[The unprofitable areas] will have to bear the costs of their connections when 5 different companies saturate the apartment complex
How does net neutrality magically give us 5 companies serving the profitable market when we've never had that before?
Who else has that power to restrict the competition?
The laws of physics?
He likely wouldn't have internet af all. These rules allow service providers to flood the profitable markets and ignore the unprofitable ones. Expect rate increases in those unprofitable markets like low income areas and places where yhe population density isn't high.
Forgive my ignorance, but what regulation has been requiring ISPs to provide cheap access in unprofitable market up until now? If the answer is "none" then what makes you think these new rules will cause unprofitable markets to be any more undeserved than they currently are?
People don't realize that literally all evils in the marketplace are due to initiation of aggression, and in government we have an agency that claims that it has the right and moral obligation to initiate aggression at any time and in any place. Is it really a surprise that they are at the root of the problems we have in the marketplace?
What makes you think that, in the absence of government, all other actors would magically refrain from the "initiation of aggression"? After all, why would I want to engage in trade with you if it's easier for me to just club you over the head and take your stuff? If there's no recognized legal authority what's to stop me from doing so?
UNIX is hot. It's more than hot. It's steaming. It's quicksilver lightning with a laserbeam kicker. -- Michael Jay Tucker
