3 ms·

> Wow. Thomas Massie is fucking insane. This has to be one of the worst ideas I've ever heard, and I've heard some real whoppers in my time. I'm pretty sure if

> Wow. Thomas Massie is fucking insane. This has to be one of the worst ideas I've ever heard, and I've heard some real whoppers in my time. I'm pretty sure if you look through all the bills proposed by every Representative in Congress, you'll find a lot of insane stuff, but almost all of it has zero chance of going anywhere.

mistrial9 5y ago
why does it exist if it has zero chance? I will answer, it does have a chance, just a small one.. and the rewards are so large, it keeps happening. I stood vocally against software patents in the early 90s California, only to have Barbarians from the North make the World's Richest Man for twenty years straight. How is Chapter XXIII going? guess what...
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > why does it exist if it has zero chance? I will answer, it does have a chance, just a small one.. and the rewards are so large, it keeps happening. Not necessarily, a bill can have value that's computed from something other than its expected chance of passing: 1. an inexpensive sop [1] to some constituency or interest group, 2. a psychologically-pleasing expression of genuinely-held beliefs that are out of step with the consensus, 3. a decoy meant to make some other bill look more reasonable in comparison, 4. legislative make-work, 5. etc. [1] "something of little importance or value that is offered to stop complaints or unhappiness" https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sop https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sop
  - mistrial9 5y ago
    ok good call -- but I think number three there is most likely in practice here.. monetary license bills don't seem like a candidate for "sincerely held beliefs" to me
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > ok good call -- but I think number three there is most likely in practice here.. Then what's the other bill then? I think it's more likely something 1., 2. or 5. (which I just added after your comment), given the backers of the bill are in the minority and likely have little influence on anything, given the current levels of political polarization. > monetary license bills don't seem like a candidate for "sincerely held beliefs" to me Looking at the sponsors (Massie (R-KY), Gohmert (R-TX), Gosar (R-AZ), and McClintock (R-CA)), they seem like they're on the right wing of the Republican party. It's totally believable this might be some kind of reflection of "sincerely held beliefs" in property rights. Edit: Sayeth the Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Massie#Other https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Massie#Other > Massie describes himself as a constitutional conservative. He believes in intellectual property and thinks it is necessary for incentivizing innovation. Massie has remarked that this is one of the areas where he is not a libertarian.
      - mistrial9 5y ago
        hmm .. well I can say that as a US citizen, I was really shocked and upset a very long time ago, to find that some non-English speaking countries were completely and utterly throwing out copyright law on English language works. I was raised in an environment where an individual author could make a living (and own a home). This seems to be less-and-less true over the decades in the West. Meanwhile, software patents were always, from the beginning, a tool of very large corporate interests to secure revenue from "soft" implementations. No individual author of software that I encountered, gained in a meaningful way from Software Patents. At the same time, certain companies you know now as the largest in the world, aggressively added engineers and rewards for filing software patents. Even with strongly conservative, even Libertarian views, I do not see how these representatives and their close constituents, adhere to anything but the advancement of corporate interests, especially in thriving bio-tech of today. The circumstantial evidence here does make the outsider judgement a bit murkier, definitely.

mistrial9 5y ago

why does it exist if it has zero chance? I will answer, it does have a chance, just a small one.. and the rewards are so large, it keeps happening. I stood vocally against software patents in the early 90s California, only to have Barbarians from the North make the World's Richest Man for twenty years straight. How is Chapter XXIII going? guess what...

tablespoon 5y ago
> why does it exist if it has zero chance? I will answer, it does have a chance, just a small one.. and the rewards are so large, it keeps happening. Not necessarily, a bill can have value that's computed from something other than its expected chance of passing: 1. an inexpensive sop [1] to some constituency or interest group, 2. a psychologically-pleasing expression of genuinely-held beliefs that are out of step with the consensus, 3. a decoy meant to make some other bill look more reasonable in comparison, 4. legislative make-work, 5. etc. [1] "something of little importance or value that is offered to stop complaints or unhappiness" https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sop https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sop
- mistrial9 5y ago
  ok good call -- but I think number three there is most likely in practice here.. monetary license bills don't seem like a candidate for "sincerely held beliefs" to me
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > ok good call -- but I think number three there is most likely in practice here.. Then what's the other bill then? I think it's more likely something 1., 2. or 5. (which I just added after your comment), given the backers of the bill are in the minority and likely have little influence on anything, given the current levels of political polarization. > monetary license bills don't seem like a candidate for "sincerely held beliefs" to me Looking at the sponsors (Massie (R-KY), Gohmert (R-TX), Gosar (R-AZ), and McClintock (R-CA)), they seem like they're on the right wing of the Republican party. It's totally believable this might be some kind of reflection of "sincerely held beliefs" in property rights. Edit: Sayeth the Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Massie#Other https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Massie#Other > Massie describes himself as a constitutional conservative. He believes in intellectual property and thinks it is necessary for incentivizing innovation. Massie has remarked that this is one of the areas where he is not a libertarian.
    - mistrial9 5y ago
      hmm .. well I can say that as a US citizen, I was really shocked and upset a very long time ago, to find that some non-English speaking countries were completely and utterly throwing out copyright law on English language works. I was raised in an environment where an individual author could make a living (and own a home). This seems to be less-and-less true over the decades in the West. Meanwhile, software patents were always, from the beginning, a tool of very large corporate interests to secure revenue from "soft" implementations. No individual author of software that I encountered, gained in a meaningful way from Software Patents. At the same time, certain companies you know now as the largest in the world, aggressively added engineers and rewards for filing software patents. Even with strongly conservative, even Libertarian views, I do not see how these representatives and their close constituents, adhere to anything but the advancement of corporate interests, especially in thriving bio-tech of today. The circumstantial evidence here does make the outsider judgement a bit murkier, definitely.