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Comment Re:They'll follow Florida (Score 1) 60

good gods, your trump-addled minds don't bother with facts or data AT ALL, do they?

If your dear leader "won the trade war" ... then biden is STILL winning it:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/26/politics/china-tariffs-biden-policy/index.html

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-04/biden-extends-trump-solar-tariffs-with-key-exemption

But then, your minds don't get much past "(R) == GOOD!, (D) == BAD!", now do they?

Even when the people with the different letters behind their names are doing THE EXACT SAME THING, apparently.

*eyeroll*

Comment Re:Mmmhmm, I smell something bad. (Score 1) 758

actually increases in crop yields for the human food supply -- from any source -- lead to increases in human population, not increases in the numbers of "lives saved".

people are made of food after all ... without MORE food to make more people, they would simply not exist. a biologist will tell you this with certainty: if, when there were 6 billion people on earth, we had kept on growing just enough food for those 6B people, we would not now have 7B. we had to start growing more food (enough for 7B) to make more people before they could come into existence. population follows food production, not the other way 'round.

the food distribution system being what it is, the percentage of people starving seems to stay relatively constant in our world.

viewed through the lens of logic, then, rather than emotion, intentionally increasing production of food for human consumption, by whatever means, is actually more like a sadistic attempt to cause a larger number of people to die of starvation, not an attempt to "save lives".

the fact that the IP system (in the US, at least) means that using GMO's to accomplish an increase in food production turns ownership of the means to feed ourselves over to a few already-very-rich corporations just seals the deal that we shouldn't do it.

Comment Re:Come on (Score 1) 525

"So I can steal GPL code then?"

Sure. Abolish copyrights, and there'll be no NEED for the GPL.

" ... but culture can't survive in the long term if its creators don't get rewarded for their work ... "

1) Bullshit. "Culture" did, can, and will survive if there were NO payments for artistic creation. Artists create because they're DRIVEN to it; they'll do it regardless of payment. Jerry Bruckheimer "creates" because he gets PAID.
2) Your fevered histrionics aside, allowing copying doesn't mean creators will NEVER EVER EVER EVER make another cent. There are other business models. There may never be another Madonna, Garth Brooks, or Beiber, but who cares?

"Would you like it if your boss withheld your paycheck and told you your code "wanted to be free" and that you were a casualty of technology changing the world?"

Sure, because they don't pay me for my code, they pay me for my working on THEIR code. They stop paying, I stop keeping their shit working, and find somebody else who wants their code improved, rewritten, or otherwise changed and still working afterwards, to pay me.

A better analogy for the copyright industries would be if I wrote code for my boss, got paid for it, agreed to let them own it, then went and bribed Congress to change the law so that my boss had to continue to pay me my full salary for as long as they wanted to keep using the code I AGREED TO LET THEM OWN in the first place.

Anything else you need explained?

Comment Re:Nation-states no friend to liberty (Score 1) 213

its how humanity is 'wired' and its always, always been this way.

it most certainly is NOT how "humanity" is wired. endemic to this *culture*, yes, but not "humanity".

Aside: by "culture", i mean: the totality of "civilized" cultures, Eastern and Western, that share a common parent in the totalitarian agriculturists that got their start somewhere inside what anthropologists call "The Fertile Crescent".

99.9% of the time "humanity" has existed on this planet, it's been in the form of hierarchy-less, law-less, ruling-class-less ethnic tribal units ...

it may be that there is no way to have what we call a "civilized" culture WITHOUT it adhering the the golden rule you refer to ... no way to know, since your golden rule is so intrinsically written into the workings of OUR particular kind of "civilized" culture. but to insist such behavior is inherent to human existence is to *willfully* don the blinders those 1% would request you to wear ...

Comment Re:Stop (Score 3, Insightful) 694

s/green technology/fossil fuel companies/

============

are you aware that, compared to this relative pittance of $0.5B, the US government subsidizes the fossil fuel industries to the tune of upwards of $700B ... per YEAR?

how profitable would those companies be without taking THAT money from taxpayers and giving it to them?

what about if we stopped spending ($3.5Trillion+ / 10 years) for the war machine to provide us first-in-line status at the MidEast Gas Pump?

does your invisible-hand-of-the-almighty-free-market ideology apply equally to all comers, or just those new corps that pollute less and aren't owned by already-rich guys with CongressCritters in their pockets?

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