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The more I read about it, the less I am convinced that capitalism is all ponies and manna from heaven, like some here believe. And it's close to its end, anywa

The more I read about it, the less I am convinced that capitalism is all ponies and manna from heaven, like some here believe. And it's close to its end, anyway, at least as we know it. No, I am not some raving conspiracy theorist. Automation and innovation almost guarantee that the world in 100 years will look drastically different than it does now.

unalone 18y ago
So Eric Bauman makes a site that profits from stealing other people's content. A song is written insulting him. An entire website blames their mayhem on him in revenge. He is caught altering watermarks and removing citations. He gets enough money to buy an apartment building and sponsor a boxer. His father writes insulting emails. Then suddenly another shady company buys him out and ruins his company, and it's proof that capitalism is bad? On the contrary. This is excellent evidence that the system regulates itself.
- TooMuchNick 18y ago
  Except, I'd think, for the bit where Eric Bauman makes even more money in the sale and faces no charges for a decade of illegal business that funneled capital away from the creators who deserved it. Dear lord, I think I just gave myself enough cognitive dissonance to stop using Bittorrent for hours. But my point is that Bauman hasn't really repaid his debt to society. He's been shamed, and a lot of us are glad for that, but only by yet another corporate raider who will likely not redeem Ebaum's World the way College Humor redeemed itself after the IAC purchase.
  - astrodust 18y ago
    With Bittorrent and the like, your usual garden variety piracy, you at least know who you're stealing from and you know that everyone involved is simply supplying bandwidth, information alone, and that no money is changing hands. If at any point in time you prefer to purchase a legitimate copy of what you have obtained, you are free to do so, and many people often do. What Ebaum did was claim the content as their own and act as a gateway to it, in effect making a buck off of the piracy of others. Since the original creator is no longer known, there's no way to provide compensation even if you want to.
    - randallsquared 18y ago
      You cannot steal anything with Bittorrent. Stealing necessarily involves the previous owner being a previous owner, but Bittorrent and other copying methods don't remove the item from the owner. Refusing to let someone get their files from a computer is more like stealing (though since the computer itself is rightfully owned by the new owners of ebaumsworld, it's certainly arguable that it's just rude, not stealing). A file is part of the computer it's on.
      - likpok 18y ago
        Downloading a file with bittorrent (lets assume a illegal one) is copyright infringement, which is illegal, and still a crime. One issue is that most copyright infringement cases these days are civil rather than criminal, but the criminal proceedings do exist.
        jfoutz 18y ago
        I thought it was the other way round... If you ask me for a copy of Serenity, and i give it to you, then I have infringed on universal studio's copyright. You however have done nothing wrong, because unless you broke into my computer, you would be unable to make a copy without my consent. Your way makes the whole internet ... broken. anybody can ask for anything, but the guy in control of the resource does not have to honor the request.
        deleted 18y ago
        [deleted]
        likpok 18y ago
        I should clarify: technically this is the case. However, it is technically illegal to purchase/receive stolen goods (and you can't really argue that you were under the impression that torrented files were legit, at least for the most common torrents). I oversimplified because it is tiresome hearing the "But it's not stealing because you don't deprive them of anything" argument.
        18y ago
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
  - unalone 18y ago
    No, that whole decade bit was pretty icky. But my point was, this wasn't a nice guy getting completely screwed by a corporation. It's a slimy corporation backstabbing a slimy guy. The initial bit... I think it would have regulated itself if somebody'd brought publicity to the people getting ripped off and made lawsuits a primary goal. I was always surprised Lowtax from Something Awful never thought it worth it to declare copyright on his Photoshop Phridays and sue Bauman until he stopped.
  - ensignavenger 18y ago
    Punishing people for breaking the law is the role of Government- not business. This is not an example of failed capitalism, but of failed government.
- quoderat 18y ago
  "This is excellent evidence that the system regulates itself." As it regulated itself with the current financial and economic crisis? Like AIG regulated itself? Like Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, et al.?
  - manny 18y ago
    are people still seriously thinking that this economic crises was because of greedy CEOs and capitalism? Jesus Christ. :|
    - quoderat 18y ago
      I personally don't think it was caused by those things, though I am sure that there are those who do. I think the five major factors that contributed to it, in rough order of importance: 1) Too much leverage, without understanding the risks. 2) Trade imbalances causing capital flow imbalances. 3) Complete lack of regulation and lack of enforcement of existing regulation. 4) A culture of "gotta have it now." 5) Productivity surge that couldn't last. As for greedy CEOs, many of them were non-productive parasites on the system (John Thain, etc.), but it wasn't their fault. And as for capitalism, my observation was that it's going to change drastically, not that it was at fault.
      - kirse 18y ago
        I would agree with most of your reasons, but for each of them you need to ask "why" until you get to the real source of the problem. For the most part, the greediness of people is why we had such ridiculously leveraged financial securities and special-purpose vehicles etc. designed to stuff as many fistfuls of cash as possible into the pockets of those who could game the system the best. Greed was the cause, and insane levels of leverage were the flimsy supports for this recent collapse of the financial house of cards. Of course, that's not to say leverage is inherently bad, but in excess it clearly points the way to financial ruin.
        quoderat 18y ago
- rsheridan6 18y ago
  Bottom line: Eric Bauman got rich by stealing other people's content. I don't know how this provides evidence that the system regulates itself. Of course, in a truly self-regulated system, there would be no such thing as copyright, so Eric Bauman wouldn't have been stealing in the first place.
jacquesm 18y ago
Capitalism I think is as much a necessary evil as democracy, we know it isn't perfect but we've found it to be very very hard to come up with a working alternative. The best way to prove your point of course is to live it, and I'm very curious what proposal you have to replace capitalism. Socialism has been tried in the sovblock countries and it failed (due to greed and incompetence), so it seems that capitalism is better capable of dealing with those two human qualities. The financial crisis - as bad as it is - is not nearly as bad as the situation that existed in the former USSR and its satellite states. China may come to some middle ground between capitalism and communism/socialism but they have some way to go before they can call themselves an open society. What is your alternative ?
- electromagnetic 18y ago
  Do you even know what socialism, capitalism and communism are? You appear to be stuck in the dogmatic anti-communist teachings that date back to the cold war. All western countries are socialist, capitalism simply doesn't exist. There is a varying degree of socialism in the west, the US notoriously the least and its citizens suffer for it. A study showed that the UK's poor is healthier than the US's richest and pay less for the privilege. An American citizen pays twice as much as a UK citizen yet is sicker. The US does have better cancer treatment rates, but awful care for basic conditions like heart disease because you have to pay for it. I moved to Canada and I've noticed one thing, everyone here is happier than people back in the UK and there's still free health care to boot. I would never live in the US because they don't have free health care, I'm a naturally healthy person, but I don't want to worry about falling off my ladder when I'm working. You site the USSR, however they didn't have a financial crisis, they stopped themselves developing it's a completely different thing. The USSR was a perverted form of communism, they believed that everyone should have a job and then stopped allowing people to lose their job, this meant that when combine harvesters were becoming widespread in the west, the USSR refused because it would cost people jobs. Ironically, most of the people who would have lost their job could have been trained to fix the machines that replaced them! Similar problems exist in the west. There was mass complaints here in Canada about the closure of a GM plant that produced 4 speed gearboxes. I found this absolutely absurd because I didn't even know 4 speeds existed, I thought they went the way of the dodo! I learnt on a 5 speed, my dad had a 6 speed and Volkswagen is bringing out a 7 speed. People wanted the plant to stay open, producing something that was nearly half as efficient as modern technology! That's exactly why the USSR failed, and exactly why the Chinese are succeeding, because the Chinese are working for the improvement of the whole and if it had to be done the government would close down entire industries. Thankfully the GM plant is closed, sadly some people are out of their jobs but either they'll begin working in the plants producing 5/6 speeds, in a new plant producing 7 speeds or they'll move to another business. It's like the phone companies trying to block VoIP usage. VoIP is the next step, instead of trying to block it phone companies should be embracing it, offering 'digital phone' for free when you subscribe to high-speed internet! It'd nail skype and give them great business. Thankfully our system isn't going the way of the USSR and governments are preventing phone companies from blocking VoIP traffic, meaning technology advances even if it will end up costing jobs in the short term. If you haven't realised, you're already living in the alternative to capitalism!
jfarmer 18y ago
Look what you started.

unalone 18y ago

So Eric Bauman makes a site that profits from stealing other people's content. A song is written insulting him. An entire website blames their mayhem on him in revenge. He is caught altering watermarks and removing citations. He gets enough money to buy an apartment building and sponsor a boxer. His father writes insulting emails. Then suddenly another shady company buys him out and ruins his company, and it's proof that capitalism is bad? On the contrary. This is excellent evidence that the system regulates itself.

TooMuchNick 18y ago
Except, I'd think, for the bit where Eric Bauman makes even more money in the sale and faces no charges for a decade of illegal business that funneled capital away from the creators who deserved it. Dear lord, I think I just gave myself enough cognitive dissonance to stop using Bittorrent for hours. But my point is that Bauman hasn't really repaid his debt to society. He's been shamed, and a lot of us are glad for that, but only by yet another corporate raider who will likely not redeem Ebaum's World the way College Humor redeemed itself after the IAC purchase.
- astrodust 18y ago
  With Bittorrent and the like, your usual garden variety piracy, you at least know who you're stealing from and you know that everyone involved is simply supplying bandwidth, information alone, and that no money is changing hands. If at any point in time you prefer to purchase a legitimate copy of what you have obtained, you are free to do so, and many people often do. What Ebaum did was claim the content as their own and act as a gateway to it, in effect making a buck off of the piracy of others. Since the original creator is no longer known, there's no way to provide compensation even if you want to.
  - randallsquared 18y ago
    You cannot steal anything with Bittorrent. Stealing necessarily involves the previous owner being a previous owner, but Bittorrent and other copying methods don't remove the item from the owner. Refusing to let someone get their files from a computer is more like stealing (though since the computer itself is rightfully owned by the new owners of ebaumsworld, it's certainly arguable that it's just rude, not stealing). A file is part of the computer it's on.
    - likpok 18y ago
      Downloading a file with bittorrent (lets assume a illegal one) is copyright infringement, which is illegal, and still a crime. One issue is that most copyright infringement cases these days are civil rather than criminal, but the criminal proceedings do exist.
      - jfoutz 18y ago
        I thought it was the other way round... If you ask me for a copy of Serenity, and i give it to you, then I have infringed on universal studio's copyright. You however have done nothing wrong, because unless you broke into my computer, you would be unable to make a copy without my consent. Your way makes the whole internet ... broken. anybody can ask for anything, but the guy in control of the resource does not have to honor the request.
        deleted 18y ago
        [deleted]
        likpok 18y ago
        I should clarify: technically this is the case. However, it is technically illegal to purchase/receive stolen goods (and you can't really argue that you were under the impression that torrented files were legit, at least for the most common torrents). I oversimplified because it is tiresome hearing the "But it's not stealing because you don't deprive them of anything" argument.
      - 18y ago
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- unalone 18y ago
  No, that whole decade bit was pretty icky. But my point was, this wasn't a nice guy getting completely screwed by a corporation. It's a slimy corporation backstabbing a slimy guy. The initial bit... I think it would have regulated itself if somebody'd brought publicity to the people getting ripped off and made lawsuits a primary goal. I was always surprised Lowtax from Something Awful never thought it worth it to declare copyright on his Photoshop Phridays and sue Bauman until he stopped.
- ensignavenger 18y ago
  Punishing people for breaking the law is the role of Government- not business. This is not an example of failed capitalism, but of failed government.
quoderat 18y ago
"This is excellent evidence that the system regulates itself." As it regulated itself with the current financial and economic crisis? Like AIG regulated itself? Like Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, et al.?
- manny 18y ago
  are people still seriously thinking that this economic crises was because of greedy CEOs and capitalism? Jesus Christ. :|
  - quoderat 18y ago
    I personally don't think it was caused by those things, though I am sure that there are those who do. I think the five major factors that contributed to it, in rough order of importance: 1) Too much leverage, without understanding the risks. 2) Trade imbalances causing capital flow imbalances. 3) Complete lack of regulation and lack of enforcement of existing regulation. 4) A culture of "gotta have it now." 5) Productivity surge that couldn't last. As for greedy CEOs, many of them were non-productive parasites on the system (John Thain, etc.), but it wasn't their fault. And as for capitalism, my observation was that it's going to change drastically, not that it was at fault.
    - kirse 18y ago
      I would agree with most of your reasons, but for each of them you need to ask "why" until you get to the real source of the problem. For the most part, the greediness of people is why we had such ridiculously leveraged financial securities and special-purpose vehicles etc. designed to stuff as many fistfuls of cash as possible into the pockets of those who could game the system the best. Greed was the cause, and insane levels of leverage were the flimsy supports for this recent collapse of the financial house of cards. Of course, that's not to say leverage is inherently bad, but in excess it clearly points the way to financial ruin.
      - quoderat 18y ago
rsheridan6 18y ago
Bottom line: Eric Bauman got rich by stealing other people's content. I don't know how this provides evidence that the system regulates itself. Of course, in a truly self-regulated system, there would be no such thing as copyright, so Eric Bauman wouldn't have been stealing in the first place.

jacquesm 18y ago

Capitalism I think is as much a necessary evil as democracy, we know it isn't perfect but we've found it to be very very hard to come up with a working alternative. The best way to prove your point of course is to live it, and I'm very curious what proposal you have to replace capitalism. Socialism has been tried in the sovblock countries and it failed (due to greed and incompetence), so it seems that capitalism is better capable of dealing with those two human qualities. The financial crisis - as bad as it is - is not nearly as bad as the situation that existed in the former USSR and its satellite states. China may come to some middle ground between capitalism and communism/socialism but they have some way to go before they can call themselves an open society. What is your alternative ?

electromagnetic 18y ago
Do you even know what socialism, capitalism and communism are? You appear to be stuck in the dogmatic anti-communist teachings that date back to the cold war. All western countries are socialist, capitalism simply doesn't exist. There is a varying degree of socialism in the west, the US notoriously the least and its citizens suffer for it. A study showed that the UK's poor is healthier than the US's richest and pay less for the privilege. An American citizen pays twice as much as a UK citizen yet is sicker. The US does have better cancer treatment rates, but awful care for basic conditions like heart disease because you have to pay for it. I moved to Canada and I've noticed one thing, everyone here is happier than people back in the UK and there's still free health care to boot. I would never live in the US because they don't have free health care, I'm a naturally healthy person, but I don't want to worry about falling off my ladder when I'm working. You site the USSR, however they didn't have a financial crisis, they stopped themselves developing it's a completely different thing. The USSR was a perverted form of communism, they believed that everyone should have a job and then stopped allowing people to lose their job, this meant that when combine harvesters were becoming widespread in the west, the USSR refused because it would cost people jobs. Ironically, most of the people who would have lost their job could have been trained to fix the machines that replaced them! Similar problems exist in the west. There was mass complaints here in Canada about the closure of a GM plant that produced 4 speed gearboxes. I found this absolutely absurd because I didn't even know 4 speeds existed, I thought they went the way of the dodo! I learnt on a 5 speed, my dad had a 6 speed and Volkswagen is bringing out a 7 speed. People wanted the plant to stay open, producing something that was nearly half as efficient as modern technology! That's exactly why the USSR failed, and exactly why the Chinese are succeeding, because the Chinese are working for the improvement of the whole and if it had to be done the government would close down entire industries. Thankfully the GM plant is closed, sadly some people are out of their jobs but either they'll begin working in the plants producing 5/6 speeds, in a new plant producing 7 speeds or they'll move to another business. It's like the phone companies trying to block VoIP usage. VoIP is the next step, instead of trying to block it phone companies should be embracing it, offering 'digital phone' for free when you subscribe to high-speed internet! It'd nail skype and give them great business. Thankfully our system isn't going the way of the USSR and governments are preventing phone companies from blocking VoIP traffic, meaning technology advances even if it will end up costing jobs in the short term. If you haven't realised, you're already living in the alternative to capitalism!

jfarmer 18y ago

Look what you started.