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Agreed. It amazes me when people see a bad result and insist that there must be a bad person behind it all somewhere. Do people not realize that more evil will
by DanielBMarkham 15y ago
Agreed.
It amazes me when people see a bad result and insist that there must be a bad person behind it all somewhere. Do people not realize that more evil will come from a bad system full of good people than will ever come from a few bad people in a good system? Germany wasn't bad in WWII because of Hitler -- there are a million little Hitlers running around the world at any given moment. Germany went bad because the Weimar republic was in such a state of disarray [insert long discussion here] that armed political gangs thrived.
People see the problems with the patent laws and content industry and they insist on "attack!" when the only thing that will do is make the system less stable and open to more of the same exact kinds of things they're upset with in the first place.
Why do we insist that every story have a villain?
- nate_meurer 15y agoAbsolutely, I agree. That diffusion of culpability is what makes social ills like this so damned difficult to change. I would say, though, that identifying a villain is immensely helpful in mobilizing opposition, even if the villain is more caricature than reality. Hitler is a great example; no one cared that the reality of the Nazi state was a diffuse and dreary bureaucracy of Eichmanns and Speers. It was Hitler's face that went on war posters.
- jbooth 15y agoI don't think those of us blaming lobbying are hung up on the MPAA/RIAA lobbyists here as a villain so much as upset at the general state of the system as it regards lobbying.