pathjumper's comments

The problem with the game theory's ideas on voting is that people do not always behave as game theory predicts.

Free will is great way to avoid stagnation if we were to but use it.

Funny, I was just talking about this...

Political parties are a bad idea. George Washington himself went to great pains to explain why in his farewell address.

The gist of it is, political parties divide us, and the goals and motives of the party start to take precedence over the goals and motives of the people the party is supposed to represent. To bring this home, if you think the choice between two political candidates amounts to a choice between the lesser of two evils, then the parties have failed us completely and ought to be ousted. Both of them.

I highly recommend every American read it. The prose is beautiful. [Here's the full text.](http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp)

A couple of excerpts concerning the warning against political parties:

>One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.

Political parties are deceptive and divisive...

>They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

Parties can get co-opted by those with the time and means to do so. For example, the 0.01%. The Koch brothers, etc. And government becomes a fight between the parties instead of an operating government. Sound familiar?

>However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

People who control the parties may become ladder kickers. Removing the things that helped them rise to power, so that they cannot be easily usurped once ensconced. Like the Romney family. Mitt's father was a beneficiary of the social programs Romney claims to want to terminate. The very definition of a ladder kicker.

>The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.

Democrat vs. Republican.

>The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Yeah, he saw [this](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2nzBwb5Cea4/T9KJYicYRFI/AAAAAAAARt...) coming too. Parties take precedence over the people themselves, and when coopted by special interests, such as our 0.01%, or big business, turn into a nightmare.

>Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

Keep an eye on political parties.

>It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

[These are now called wedge issues.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_issue#Wedge_politics_in_t...) Ostensibly issues everyone cares about, but really a tool to separate us into chunks and have us at each others' throats while those actually in power do as they please while we are fighting amongst each other over issues that ought not be the government's business.

A glass of orange juice from a store contains as more calories as an equivalent amount of soda:

Calories in OJ: http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-orange-juice-i14425 Calories in soda: http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-carbonated-beverage-i...

Adjusted for the same volume, the soda has 109, while the orange juice has 122.

Which kind of slavery? Wage slavery is alive and well. It is the slavery of the 21st century, and continues today. Or can you quit your job without going bankrupt due to debt unlike me and millions of others like me?

I am sure you have thought of this already, but [Alt]+[PrtScn] -> Paste -> print

That is because, right at its heart, the _universe_ does not respect owning information. Therefore it makes no sense that some subcomponent of the universe, say a person, or other entity could either. Sure, you can own a book on which information is printed, or multiple "copies"; that is, multiple physical books. But to the universe they are not copies, they are discrete physical entities. But when you are only splitting energy streams, that is making electronic copies; those are true copies. And this is where the lie that is "copyright" steps in. Literally, "the right to copy". As in, some entities, typically people, have it, and some do not. The fact that a new term had to be made up to give this fictitious idea a reality illuminates how baseless it is in the actual universe outside human society. Since the entire thing is predicated on a lie - the lie that the act of copying electronically can truly be controlled - it is intrinsic that it cannot last, since it has no basis in reality outside our minds. The would-be copyright owners sort of admit this when they try and use scare tactics to keep people from infringing on their so-called copyright. They do this with big FBI warnings (which the FBI had no hand whatsoever in creating), and those stupid "you wouldn't steal a car, would you?" ads. It sounds almost like someone is trying to convince _themselves_ of the veracity of owning information and the right to copy it. I, for one, think that the sooner the human race gets the hell over the idea that information can be owned, the better. There are other, better ways to make money through entertainment, and the entertainment industry is sooner or later going to have no choice but to face the music. It has been happening for decades, and the ubiquity of computers is making it worse for them, and better for everyone else, at last.

None of his arguments are invalid save the "early adopter wins" scenario.

On every other count he either misunderstands current banking systems, bitcoin, presents a pseudo-argument, or some combination of all three. Honestly, except for the early adopter winning part, the whole thing reads like a shill post designed to do nothing but defame bitcoin. He even calls it a scam. By that measure The Fed is the biggest scam that ever invented if you look at who receives the "printed money" first. They are the "early adopters" in his "bitcoin is a scam" analogy. And they are still in power. So does that really make it any worse?

Here's a different perspective for you guys that is more or less in agreement with Chomsky's:

The universe does not recognize our artificial restrictions on information.

This is inherently why people generally think it's ok to violate the copyrights of others. Because we know, and the universe knows that nothing was taken away from them. The restrictions are entirely artifical and designed to do nothing except create an enormous inequality between the the "owner" of the information, and everyone else. That's the sole purpose. These Imaginary Stuff owners then use this disparity (a legal fiction entirely) to generate massive wealth based on entirely contrived circumstances.

Since the dawn of speech nothing like this has existed because it never made sense. Anything one person said could be repeated by anyone who could remembered it. So when did information suddenly become ownable? It's a nonsensical legal fiction of epic proportions.

I contend that if the information is publicly available, you no longer own it. This is how the universe operates. Fans of Imaginary Stuff rights will not be able to get their way for long. Or rather, they shouldn't be allowed to use the legal system to enforce their artificial disparity. If you want to own information, keep it a secret. Otherwise, it's everyone's.

Another way of looking at it is, if you want to get paid for good information/content/art production, you're going to have to do what every other human does, continue working even after producing great works. You should be valued for your talent, and ability to produce from it over and over - just like everyone else. A bricklayer doesn't lay one brick really well and then charge everyone to use it daily. The value should be placed on the ability, not the product, since there's no physical product at all really. The slight exception being physical works of art etc, but then they're not just information, so the rules I'm talking about do not entirely apply. Photographic reproductions are information, but an original work in physical form is still valuable for being the first and physical.

What do you other smart folks think about this? I know a lot of us work in information production in some form. I myself am a software engineer, so I'm not just trying to take from everyone else and pretend the rule doesn't apply to me because I'm not an information/content producer. I actually am. So this hits me hardest too.