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Comment Re:Internet Archive is theft [Re:Copyright] (Score 3, Insightful) 61

I understand the distinction you're making. What I'm saying is people don't care about the distinction, because it burdens readers unnecessarily, which is why people circumvent it. If the only way you can make money is to limit a reader's ability to access the book, it's not the reader who's wrong for circumventing your limits, it's you that's wrong for trying to impose them to begin with.

Your business model needs to adapt. You need to learn to attract more flies with honey than vinegar. Use carrots, not sticks. Your strict whack-em-with-the-stick enforcement attitude just leads people to ignore your distribution channels entirely and pirate things. You can't stop it, but you can adapt to it and stop screaming into the void about a reality that won't change.

Comment Re:Copyright (Score 5, Interesting) 61

We should legalize noncommercial infringement fully.

We created copyright law to stop people from selling the work of others as their own, not to force people to pay a toll every time they read a book, listen to music, or watch a movie.

We created free public libraries so that people could consume as much culture as they want for free.

What the Internet Archive did and the very idea of the internet itself basically is a global free public library.

We need to accept that as the reality we live in and business models need to adapt to that reality. Legal prohibitions to deny reality don't work. File sharing is widespread and inevitable. Adapt.

Comment Monopoly is the problem, not political ads (Score 1) 177

Public debate about banning on political ads on Twitter vs. not on Facebook has gone fully off the rails. Both Dorsey and Zuckerberg are wrong about it, but--counter intuitively--Zuckerberg has it less wrong than Dorsey.

Where Zuckerberg's instincts are kinda right is I think he recognizes on some level that when one company has control over like 90% of a media market and can make decisions about what speech is or isn't allowed, we might want to consider applying 1st amendment protections.

Yes, there is a "bUt pRiVaTe pLaTfOrMs aRe eXeMpT fRoM tHe FiRsT aMeNdMeNt oBLiGaToRy xKcD https://xkcd.com/1357" trope. Spare me.

Companies with monopolies are effectively the same thing as governments because they replace government as the de facto public square.

As such, speech on such platforms should either be subject to 1st amendment protections, or the company should be broken up into federated platforms that set their own speech rules. Zuckerberg seems to prefer the former. We should prefer the latter.

The root of the problem is Facebook's/Twitter's monopoly, not political advertising. Break up Facebook/Twitter into a bunch of independently-owned, federated services (e.g. Diaspora / Mastodon) that each set their own speech rules.

TL;DR:

Dorsey: Preserve my monopoly and I want to censor things on it with impunity.

Zuck: Preserve my monopoly but I'm skeptical of censorship.

What we should actually want: No monopolies, so the question of regulating speech on these platforms is fully moot.

Comment Re:Let's do some math (Score 4, Informative) 432

What are you on about? The vast majority of that federal budget you're talking about is already paid for. Federal revenue in 2018 was around ~$3t. That's not a one time asset seizure, that's more or less what we collect every year. Deficits lately have been in the ~$700b range on roughly $4t of federal spending.

If we want to close the deficit and/or find money for new spending on top of that, all we have to do is drum up another one or two trillion in additional recurring revenue, which isn't even remotely as hard to do as you're making it sound. U.S. GDP is ~$20t. Federal spending is currently around 20% of GDP.

If we upped the tax revenue to GDP ratio to 30%, there's your extra two trillion in tax revenue. Up it to 40% and you can double the federal budget. Even at 40%, we'd still be spending less on the federal budget as a percentage of GDP as Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway.

The money is out there if we're willing to tax it.

Comment Re: VAT vs. UBI question was dumb (Score 1) 432

Yang managed to compress an actual answer to that question in what little time he was given to speak. His team has calculated that they need to raise some of it from taxes (they like a VAT) and some of it will come indirectly from existing taxes generating higher revenue than before due to additional GDP growth that is downstream from the UBI scheme.

Comment VAT vs. UBI question was dumb (Score 5, Insightful) 432

I found the question from the moderator asking if the proposed VAT would eat up the gains from the UBI to be remarkably idiotic. As did Yang, judging by the look on his face.

This stuff isn't hard.

If I raise your taxes by $100 but give you back $1k in refunds, you come out ahead. Under Yang's scheme, well more than half of people would come out ahead. Only high income people would not.

Comment Re:So you're saying there's a chance? (Score 1) 212

Single payer hasn't happened in one of the states yet for two reasons:

1. The Democratic party is still too conservative. This is generally supported only by leftmost faction.

2. Setting aside political will, it's even harder to roll out in a state than it is federally for technical reasons, such as A. the federal government would have to permit it (this administration would not), B. if it were rolled out nationally, the federal government doesn't necessarily have to pay for it right away (the Fed can print money, but states cannot), C. larger populations generally make for a more stable insurance pool, so states (especially smaller states) are less ideal than going national from a stability perspective.

Thus, the preference for rollout among single payer advocates is:

1. National.
2. Failing that, a large state. (New York has a well organized pro-single payer movement. The state became fully Democratically controlled for the first time in many years recently and is actively pursuing this now. There are similar efforts in California but AFAIK not as well organized.)
3. Failing that, a small state. (This was tried in Vermont, but Vermont is too small and they couldn't make it work.)

Also the notion that the ACA is an "authoritarian" imposition on red states is pretty wacky seeing how the whole thing basically redistributes wealth from blue states to red states. If I PayPaled you ten bucks, would you call me an authoritarian? haha

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