This is not what the patent system was intended to do, this is madness.

On the contrary, this is precisely the intended effect i.e. elevation of power and profits of the only group that really matters in this: the lawyers. You will take note that irrespective of what comes out of this (Apple loses, Samsung loses, whatever) the lawyers (and bankers - all that money has to get deposited somewhere - also just think of the magnitude of "transaction fees") get their money. A huge pile of money.

In a society run by lawyers the only people who really count are lawyers. Every other activity (such as producing something actually useful) must somehow benefit the true power holders. Thus "rules" are made, which from your perspective might appear "insane", which advertise themselves as "justice" or "promotion of this or that noble goal" to make them defensible to and palatable by the plebs, but simply say "you shall suck a lawyer's dick" once you decipher all the implications of the lawyerly priesthood's "legalise" code in which these "rules" were written.

And since most Western societies are overrun with a whole pyramid of classes of parasites such as lawyers or "financial industry" creatures the pooch is pretty much screwed - at least until the next Great Fuckup (probably an economic collapse the way things are going but its anyone's guess really).

It is only a "fallacy" until comes true.

First of all economics is not a science but something akin to a bunch of voodoo followers and witch doctors trying to find "scientific" justification for their pre-conceived ideologies so one must take their opinion on what is and what is not a "fallacy" with a sizeable grain of salt.

And then it is quite obvious that growth in "productivity" in the last 30 years in the most industrialized countries actually lowered (the actual as opposed to superficially perceived) standard of living. Sure on the surface things are more shiny, everyone has an i-dinky, a mcMansion and a car with a GPS. But what most people do not think about is that everyone is up to their ears in debt, one paycheque away from bankruptcy, most of that shiny stuff they think as "theirs" actually belongs to banks/credit card companies and what was once the standard "american dream" - a single income household with a mortage paid in 10 years, fully paid car, children educated without student debt, a stable for-life job and generous pension afterwards, etc -is now something available to the denizens of Wall Street only - if that.

Is this "progress"? Well the concentration of wealth in much fewer hands surely progressed. And workers in China got a lot of menial jobs they did not have before...

But from the perspective of the US worker the "lump of jobs" "fallacy" is looking less "fallacious" by the minute.

Also, closer to 100% automation we get, more broken the assumptions of economists become. At 100% automation a singularity occurs in their equations and the outcomes become unpredictable for average member of society. Given the whole of human history and the nature of people I bet on total dystopia. I don't think I am in a very great danger of losing that bet.

Did you even read his post? Did the "offer unconditional base income (generated from those automated low-level jobs)" part somehow go over your head or did all the foam coming from your mouth block your vision?

That is the standard "carrot on the stick" cop-out offered by various apologists.

Use your head! If Germany actually did it they would make Greece look like a maven of fiscal responsibility and frugal governance in a very short order.

Also how would those "base income" recipients look like? Think "the housing projects" ghettos in the US, complete with burning garbage heaps and graffiti-covered concrete jungles. That is because providing a "base income" in a greed-driven economy instantly devalues everything until that "base income" only guarantees absolute shits for a "life-style".

But most importantly the OP and you ignore the pivotal issue: who gets to control these 100% automated factories of this Brave New Future? Given the current trend of concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands and the mechanics of access to mass-scale advanced technology it will be the plutocratic owners of mega-pan-national corporations who will leave everyone else dirt poor and begging for life's necessities instead of being "liberated from menial tasks" and free to be "creative".

Also, all these language translators who all complained about "soul-sucking" jobs are nearly extinct from ... tongue cancer, surely?

The goal here is, to free humanity from primitive low-level jobs, so that they can concentrate on cool and interesting challenges.

Like diving through dumpsters for your next meal....

Newsflash:

a) the opportunities for truly "cool and interesting challenges" - as opposed to desperate rat-races with ever exponentially increasing demands for "education" and "retraining" and ever exponentially diminishing returns disguised as "challenges" - are orders of magnitude less than the population size. Only those who wish to establish a slavery system based on stratification of the society into "thinkers" and "the rabble" where the gap between the two is unbridgeable (say 40 years of "education" and minimum 12 PhD titles to get your first paying job) are trying to pretend otherwise .

b) most people are unable to deal with, unwilling to and uninterested in "interesting challenges" because these "interesting challenges" usually disrupt their lives beyond repaior and destroy their families,

c) many of those who can deal with these "challenges" when forced to do so find them far less "interesting" and find their lives becoming miserable, unhappy and begin to question the point of this whole societal exercise that trades simple, boring but secure and predictable lives for chaotic, psychotic, insecure, stressful, hand-to-mouth existence in a sadistic competition to meet "interesting challenges" or perish.

And so on.

Your position is that of a corporate shill who tries to pretend that the so-called "progress" (as long as accompanied by vast wealth increases for very few "right people") is self-justifying and that any social cost is acceptable, especially when the cost is placed on the backs of everyone but those select few.

Technocrats and corporatists have stood the whole thing on its head! It is "happiness" that is the goal of the whole exercise and "progress" and "technological advancement" are to be only used in service to attaining happiness. Forcing everyone to meet "interesting" (in the opinion of the few privileged individuals) challenges so that "progress" (for these same individual's bank accounts) can be achieved is only going to in the long run result in "interesting challenges" for the likes of you that involve guns and lining up against walls....

Not that I agree that it is a bad thing. A line should be drawn somewhere, and age 18 seems as good a place as any.

18?!! What, are you a pervert?! Its 80 that's reasonable and not a second younger.

Everyone knows people one second younger then 80 cannot make reasoned decisions as to sex (or anything else for that matter). Proof? Why, just look at the daily Google news around the globe! QED.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is a sick pedophile who is only arguing otherwise so he can have sex with immature people to ruin their young, innocent lives. Are you a sick pedophile? Are you? Are you? Yes? Yes?!

Actually the "process" is the primary method by which powerful tyrants deny justice to meaningless peasants.

He was supposed to file in DC wasn't he? Why exactly? Does the court in Florida belong to a different nation? The moon was in an incorrect astral sign? Wind was coming from the wrong compass point?

When he files in DC (at his own expense of course and on his own time - but I am sure everyone gets many days free time fully paid from his/her job to proudly challenge an entire multi-trillion dollar agency in any state of the agency's choosing) he will promptly find out that while DC was the correct court, the "process" requires him to wait 2 years for a decision, which will be that he "does not have standing" (being a mere peasant) or that he is "not a party" (not being a member of the government) etc and so on.

Due process my ass.

The whole point of this exercise is the pretense that average citizens have any say whatsoever in what the government or other wealthy powers do to them. The US courts have been rubber-stamping the aristocracy's decisions for a long time now, all the while creating ever more byzantine "process" in order to insure that the lower classes have to jump through so many hoops as to make participation of anyone without 40 lawyers and 100 paralegals pointless.

The beauty of this system is that technically everyone can participate but in practice only the very wealthy can do so effectively. And bonus: more byzantine the rules, higher paid and numerous becomes the priesthood that attends to them: the lawyers.

Everyone wins, well except the average peon who gets to pay for this fun in more ways than one.

Oh so now we are at the "But, but, they did it too!" kindergarten-level argument.

But then again by switching to that old canard it seems that you gave up on the idea of pretending that Christians are somehow less violent, less greedy, less power-hungry, less hypocritical or more charitable than everybody else and that they are miraculously immune to ideology-motivated insanity, unlike everybody else and that everybody who does something despicable is magically not a "true" Christian, even though he/she self-identifies so.

Progress, sort of.

That would depend on your definition of "atheist".

Some who I would describe as "agnostics" think themselves "atheists" for example.

Some of those for example believe in God but insist that his existence is by definition unknowable, undetectable and that God once having created the Universe never again interacted with it and does not care nor sustain sentient beings after death. Are they "atheists"? They would say so since their position is that for "practical purposes" God does not exist and that from our perspective God existing and not are indistinguishable.

As to self-declared Christians, the problem with religions is that not only are they muddled piles of self-contradictory goobledey-gook to begin with, there are also no objective authorities that can arbitrate between people believing themselves this or that. This however apparently does not stop avery member of every obscure spinoff of every religion calling everyone else "Heretics! Apostates!" and themselves "the only true adherents of {fill in your wacky religion name here}".

And so if Breivik calls himself a "Christian", then he is one pretty much by definition, no more or less than "reverend" Jones or one Adolf from Austria were.

... because of how they self-identified ...

and...

Breivik does identify himself as Christian, but ...

Auuughaaah! Warning! Warning! Cognitive dissonance alert! Auuughaaah!

FYI, that "but" is what makes your argument into a classic manifestation of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. Wikipedia could append it to the official example list.

Its only "paranoia" if the fear is irrational and unjustified.

Unfortunately recent history is full of examples of abuse of governmental power and the "civilized" ways for the governed (courts, elections) to obtain justice for which have been rendered largely useless for a large portion of the victims.

The court system is not only guaranteed to bankrupt one being persecuted (not to mention that when facing a group of thuggish government officials on a power trip the first step is usually freezing/confiscation of all assets of the victim) but the courts themsevles have proven to be easily manipulated by the government bureaucrats and officials and are consistently siding with various three letter agencies. Even if they are not, their rulings are ignored (such as the recent TSA rulings), until such time when a new, more favourable ruling can be managed or in more extreme cases where the "law" can be reworked post-facto to the power-holder's advantage (such as the "legality" of torture and indefinite detention without trial of Guantanamo detainees).

Similarly, elections are largely meaningless since the US (and increasingly all the other "Western democracies") feature gigantic 2-way, gaudy sporting matches where the spectacle of personality cults and insane exaggerations of minutia differences between two or three facets of the ruling elite are meant to hide the fact that no real (in practical terms) differences exist between the team "red" and team "blue" and they are all working with/for the same elite and its ideology. You are just supposed to paint your face one of these colours and go screeching - spittle flying - at the supporters of the other team, a model successfully borrowed from the Football (or Soccer) scene. Just make sure you do not actually pause to think what you are doing and who benefits from this madness.

Now top it with the obvious trend of the governments expanding their power by leaps and bounds (TSA, extra-judiciary powers of the President to drone-assassinate American citizens he deems "enemies", etc and so on) and instead of making the poster you are replying to look like a paranoiac, you are making yourself look to be - at best - an uncurious, inattentive, "it can't happen here", "I can't hear anything lalalalalala", individual so desperate to believe that everything is "all right" that he is willing to ignore every second news item for a decade or so, or - at worst - an autocratic shill who actually likes the idea of "putting the malcontents in their place" and who worships naked, raw power and believes those who wield it deserve it and therefore can do no wrong.

Incidentally, 3D printed guns are not even a factor in the equations of power and constitute a negligeable "threat", but never the less will be dealt with harshly using hugely overreaching, draconian powers because even a tiny "threat" to the power-holders has to be neutralized immediately or else in can blossom into a much larger one and an unthinkable situation of a significant untraceable group of citizenry capable of physically resisting their government (to however a small degree) would possibly result. And thus the rulers would have to start actually be wary of the ruled, instead of just the other way around. And so "at 3am came balaclava-clad ATF knocking, with battering rams and bags to put on our heads, one for me, one for my wife and two wee ones for our kids, for I was guilty of an Unlicensed Possession of a 3D Printing Device and Printing an Unapproved Object".

America is the hope for the better world.

If America is truly the "hope" for "the better world" then we are all fucked beyond help.

I for one want nothing to do with all the self-serving hypocrisy, proud, smug celebration of ignorance, barely veiled supremacist philosophy, ever-expanding authoritarianism backed by ever-more byzantine laws that is slowly evolving into something resembling Fascism and mindless worship of greed that America represents.

Libya. 2011. Not just the everyday people of Libya, but the Arab League of Nations.

You guys crack me up. Libya's "revolution" is was driven by a bunch of Al-Queda affiliated radical islamists hell bent on overthrowing the secular thug whom they despised in order to establish Sharia law and put uppity women back in burkas (see also: Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood is about to win the first-and-last "elections").

You and NATO helped in (absolutely misplaced) hopes of getting on their "good side" and getting access to Libyan oil fields. But that was just a long-odds gamble, the real profit was to be had in spent munitions, military gear donated and other ways to transfer money from your taxes to the members of the 1%.

Also, I am not sure if you are aware, but Arab League is composed of a bunch of absolute monarchs with a decided Islamist bent whose sole concern is to have more influence on countries previously run by secular dictators, hence their support only for "revolutions" in places where such a secular dictator is under threat from the Islamists: Egypt, Libya, Syria etc.

You can also very accurately claim that the people of Syria are at this very moment asking for the same action, but have not yet been successful in convincing the United States (and/or others) to do so.

You can't be that naive, can you? You surely jest. Radical, vicious Islamists are the foreign-sponsored "revolutionaries" in Syria and are set to take power if Asad falls. They already have an impressive record of persecution and murder of anyone who is not them in the areas they managed, however briefly, to control. Go help them, the great exporters of "freedom" that you are! I am sure that you will find some way for your 1% to profit from it, whichever way it goes.

Libya last year. Serbia before, Kuwait, Korea,

You gotta be kidding. This is why I asked for anyone who is not a self-serving jackal asking you for "help". And so you list prime examples of the very thing I pointed out!

Libya: a bunch of radical islamists trying to overthrow a secular thug in order to establish Sharia law and persecute everyone who is not them. You and NATO helped in hopes of gaining preferential access to Libyan oil fields. Next.

Serbia: a bunch of power-hungry "separatists" who would exploit any possible division to split their country into a buch of city-states if they could get away with it as long as it put them in charge. Not to mention that some of them used a clever strategy of breeding like rabbits to gain control of territory of their neighbours, which you and NATO whole-heartedly endorsed. So you stepped in and gave them "freedom" to be dependent on you and your allies! And oppress the Serbs. Then there is a whole litany of fabricated "war crimes" that you try to pin on the Serbs to bring them to heel (never you mind that NATO killed far more civilians in far more criminal fashion, like bombing passenger trains, etc). An exercise in disgusting, self-serving "righteousness" for profit. Next.

Kuwait: an absolute monarchy invaded by a next door thug over them syphoning his oil using lateral oil wells running under Iraq's border built by US corporations (you knew the reason for the invasion, didn't you?) and so you went and ... restored absolute, oppressive monarchy back into its "rightful" place, the great purveyors of "freedom" and "democracy" that you are! Oh and the lies and propaganda that went along with it! The tear inducing (and totally fake) "eye witness" testimony by an incognito daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador before the Senate about babies murdered in their incubators... just priceless. Next.

Korea: you propped up a dictator so bloody and corrupt that half of his country preferred Soviet-style thuggery to his exploits! Or did you think that all these North Koreans who fought against you did it just for kicks? It was not until the 1990s when the last South Korean dictator was ousted, all the previous ones having been untouchable due to your whole-hearted support, the great lovers of "freedom" and "democracy" that you are. Next.

WW2: you ignored all the pleas for help while trying to profit from the war by strategically supplying both sides until you were outright attacked by the Axis, Japan having bombed Pearl Harbour and 4 days later Nazi Germany having declared war on you. You did not join out of any good will. Next.

WW1: a bunch of blood-thirsty empires fighting over which royal dick is going to be sucked by whom. There were no "good guys" in this war and so you cannot count it as "helping" anyone (other then yourself). Next.

the list goes on.

Indeed, the Spanish American war, the subjugation of Philippines, etc etc. A long list of selfish, self-centered exploits of a greedy empire.

Some US military actions are deplorable and indefensible, but some of them are legitimate attempts to help defend freedom and democracy

Actually the distinction is quite different. All of the military actions of the US are (with the possible exception of WW2) self-centered profit and expansion of power seeking excercises but because of the chosen "national narrative" and "national mythos" of the USA, i.e. "brave defenders of freedom and democracy" that your power elites use to hold the thing together, they are forced to pretend that the actions are to give liberties of the oppressed etc and so on to keep the populace appropriately opiated. Sometimes the mirage thus formed is more successful then other times. This is what is confusing you.

US = Imperialist and Everyone Else = Innocent Victims is a naive way of viewing the problem.

That is not the view. The view is far more straightforward: empires = imperialist, be they Roman, British, French, Russian or American.

What makes the difference however is all the hypocrisy of the US empire trying to paint itself as a peddler of "freedom" which makes it a particularly odious specimen.

So you agree. Most of the 100,000 deserved to die. They were already our enemies. Deluded too.

I will quote you to anyone who has ever expressed any sympathy for the US after 9/11. That will cure them of any misconceptions rather quick.

Come to think of it, your logic of "the uppity foreigners actually want to hold us to all the bullshit we've been spewing and then refuse to lick our boots worshipfully and to cower in fear before us - kill these ingrates all!" expresses a world-view straight out of Mein Kampf. You know, that book so revered by your other supremacist ideological brothers of yesteryear. Same ideas, different übermenschen. They sported more bloody results of their insane lust for global domination, but the hour is young yet. Then, on the other hand, they did not have Internet and so they all had to go and be belligerent jackasses in the real world, instead of being online "tough guys" - like you - who cower in their basements while cheering on the mercenaries in foreign lands.

Settled.

Agreed! Your medication has indeed settled at the bottom of your stomach ... where it unfortunately failed to dissolve and thus has no effect. Probably too much alcohol in the surrounding contents.

You might try stopping chewing on the furniture for a bit and try lying down instead - at least until this episode of yours passes. To put you to sleep you can count bloody corpses of all the "enemies" you are going to kill! Since there are at least a good 5 billion of them, you are not likely to run out before midnight...

For everyone 1 person that hates the US there's 5 that wish we'd come in and fix whatever crap is going on in their community.

This is a perfect example of the root cause of everything that is wrong with the USA: supremely arrogant, utterly self-deluded, smugly imbecillic and profoundly ignorant feeling of the Universe revolving around your ass.

From what I've seen traveling around the world (something that I am sure you did not deem necessary to form your opinion) is that if anything, your numbers are actually reversed: for every naive goofus who sees USA as a potential saviour, 5 see it for what it is: a self-important empire whose distinguishing feature is hypocritical pontification about "freedom" and "democracy" while depriving anyone who has something it wants of freedom, property and frequently life all the while propping up convenient dictators and absolute monarchs (see also: Saudi Arabia) all over the world.

And your general attitude just illustrates the point gloriously.

America isn't perfect but we're the best hope for the World and everyone knows it, that's why they loan us money until they're starving because they know if there's ever a problem we're the ones they can call.

Comedy gold. What was the last time anyone other than thieves and would-be robber barons hoping to profit from misery of their fellows actually asked you to show up and blow their country to smithereens in the name of "saving" it?

Or were you trying to be sarcastic by pointing out how USA rigged the world financial markets for its own benefit? Or more precisely for the benefit of its top 1%, who - amusingly enough - are these days busy abandoning what they sense is soon to be a rotting corpse of a has-been empire for some greener pastures...