Re: A time for action...

["**** ****" <***@***.com>]

Roy and/or Janet Miller wrote in message <3983C088.A3E86A86@inetnebr.com>...

>Interesting idea. However, the overwhelming number of people who use
shareware
>never pay, so I doubt that this idea will work either.


Roy,
    I'm only offering a 'solution'. If people choose to ignore it, well
then, QC just might be right about those who choose to ignore it. I've never
claimed that those who 'pirate' music/software/whatever were all righteous
crusaders for freedom or anything, as a matter of fact, most are probably
crud. I won't deny this, I'm only pissed off that people could believe that
this somehow means that copyright is some kind of great thing. We will live
to regret it greatly, and by that I mean you too. The day is close enough at
hand, that it won't be our grandchildren who suffer for it, it'll be us.

Some clarifcations:
There are many gradations to necessity, so that while you need
food/clothing/shelter, I'll also not deny that you might need 'Choplifter'
in some lesser sense. Marxism/communism/socialism all look at people almost
as if they are robots, and that is the true flaw, both moral and logical, in
their philosophies. 'Choplifter' isn't as important a need, say, as insulin
for a diabetic, but all people are entitled to some form of entertainment,
of their choosing. That said,a $2500 beanie baby isn't entertaining because
of its beanie babyness, it's entertaining to see how far out of whack you
can manipulate prices. Same thing with the stock market, I'll not begrudge
those owning stock portfolios, but when you start selling/buying for any
other reason than how beneficial you believe the companies product/service
is, then you aren't acting very ethically. One too many people worrying
about what the stock price is, and not what the stock's value is, and the
system crashes. And then a parade of idiots wonders what went wrong. Even in
the pinnacle of captialism, no one falls for the lie that value=market
price, that is why we have the terms 'undervalued' and 'overvalued'.

The man that builds his own house indeed has something valuable. The fact
that he won't put a price on it, makes my point, I do believe. I only meant
that market price approximates value fairly well most of the time, but it
has its shortcomings. In this case effort/necessity actually reflect a far
more accurate value of the house.

I don't deny that 'more cerebral' efforts/labors have zero value, what I had
meant is I have no clearcut way of measuring them. Measurement in man-hours
is even a bit misleading, only 'as a whole' do they tend to approximate it.
If you can think of a fair way to measure how much 'work' goes into
software, let me know, I'd be interested. I mean, even if one hour of coding
can be thought of as a 'man-hour', is that equivalent to a physical labor
man-hour?

Doctors often don't get paid so well, to my knowledge. Often, it is
comaprable to any other profession, in that they hover around the 30-50k per
year mark for a long, long time. Only those who specialize and manage to
establish a large practice might ever make 'alot'. Of course there are
exceptions, hotshot surgeons, or cosmetic surgery in hollywood can be
lucrative... In any event, they deserve to have their first decade of work
called 'sacrifice' any more than your first decade of work, or me mine. If
theirs was especially grueling, for whatever reason, then that just shows
that there needs to be some improvements to that system also.

Petty-assed insults do indeed fly in both directions, and I have no respect
for those who hurl them, on either side.

One could no more influence politics with their vote, than they could
'assemble a beach' one grain of sand at a time. Trying to lobby for whatever
reforms you believe in is a fools errand.

I shudder to think how well a current day robot might clean a toilet. But in
50 years? What if I'm wrong, and it takes 150 years, should I then not worry
about the direction we are going? The day will come when physical labor is
something performed by machines, and in a capitalistic economy, there is
only one possible owner of those machines. The longer it takes to get there,
the more likely it will be a single individual, and not a small group of
individuals. You'd just better hope they are nice.

John