'Socialism' implies subjugation of the individual to the collective.
No, that's communism. Socialism means everyone is well taken care of. The rich still get richer, but the poor get less poor. It is harder to get it to work because it requires balancing everyone's interests, but it works, and leads to societies which are better by most metrics.
Patents are racket. Human knowledge doubles every 12 months, soon to be even shorter. So for every patent, on average the idea would be replicated independently in the first year. IF we needs patents, they should be valid at most for one cycle, and only if the requester can document that their development required several cycles, or a substantial monetary investment. One cycle should be ample time to recoup your investment, then make way for other innovators.
we have the technology and resources to do so before people, animals, and plants start dying
People have started dying long time ago. See this article (among many others).
My heart hurts, man, when I realize that, I, as an American, can't do shit to change the course of my own country
Those problems exist because most people are misinformed by the mainstream media. Something you can do is convince people you know to tune instead to alternative media like Al Jazeera, RT, DemocracyNow or The Nation, and care enough to want to talk to their friends etc. Probably don't count on social media, twitter censored #OWS so who knows how else those big corps could be gaming the system.
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
Edmund Burke
Why doesn't everyone use SRP instead?
- User proves it has password without divulging any data.
- Man in the middle obtains zero information.
- Generates encryption key for rest of the connection.
I don't see how AI could ever be a threat.
Mammoths probably didn't see how puny humans could ever be a threat either.
There is literally nothing you personally can do that will stop China, India, Brazil, Russia, and every other second or third world nation that is only beginning to industrialize from releasing a billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air. Short of declaring war and invading them, there's nothing your government can do about it either.
Do you also beat up your wife, kids, co-workers, etc when you want them to do something?
And what about the reinforced helplessness, increased dependency on the almighty state? That breeds the kind of people unable to wipe their own ass. American prosperity was not built by entitled whiny bitches who expect free obamaphone every week, was it?
If there's still an ounce of humanity left in you, you would probably like to read an article by Jeremiah Goulka called "Confessions of a Former Republican".
2. Nobody said get rid of patents. At least in this culture, the original purpose of patents was to spur invention by protecting an inventors rights to his own creation for some fair period of time, allowing to benefit from his creativity and productivity. These laws were instrumental to the explosion of ideas and technologies that made the United States an industrial and economic force in the 19th century.
Has this link ever been seriously researched? What is the evidence?
Life is not prisoner's dilemma. It's iterated prisoner's dilemma because people can actually build up reputations. It's been shown that the best stable strategy is tit-for-tat plus forgiveness.
Do you have a reference? I would be super-thankful.
StanfordU lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Oa4Lp5fLE
Even if the darkest and most remote corners of Africa, they are cracking open beetles the size of your head to drink the living nectar within as a tasty alternative to water.
Tasty alternative? Would you like to try it?
they would figure you were some kind of genetic freak and cut your head off so as not to pollute the jungle or gene pool with your particularly acute form of mental derangement.
Brutal killing, obsession with the gene pool... no, you should look closer to home.
I put up my thumb... and it blotted out the planet Earth. -- Neil Armstrong
