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> Manufacturing continues to grow in the US. What has declined are the number of people employed in that sector, just as the number of farmers once declined. Y

> Manufacturing continues to grow in the US. What has declined are the number of people employed in that sector, just as the number of farmers once declined. You equate one type of growth with success. Given that we are living through a period of relatively high unemployment and social inequity in the US and Europe the onus is on you to explain why you equate growth with success. Maybe this type of growth isn't politically/economically/environmentally stable? > 40+ years of trade sanctions and who is still in power? I would not call that effective. Again, what is your measure? You seem to be measuring the wrong thing.For example, with the current sanctions against Iran[1] the Office of Foreign Assets Control[2] aims to do what? You claim it would be to effect political change in Iran. Regime change. In what other context have we heard this expression used? The Military overthrow of Saddam in Iraq. With this view economic sanctions are used in lieu of military force. These sanctions seem to hurt the average man, woman and child on the street however causing hardship and misery. Saddam was still in power when we rolled in. Mugabe is. The Ayatollahs in Iran are still going strong. Fidel appears to be handing power over to Raúl. So by your reckoning they have been effective nowhere. So why still use them? To me they look a lot like collective punishment. > I don't think so: Germans invent a lot of stuff too, write books, software, compose music, make movies, and so on, and are not going to throw out Intellectual Property as a means of promoting those activities, lock, stock, and barrel. Dismantle is perhaps too strong, too rhetorically strident. Reform would be better, yes - you use the term yourself. Remember copyright has only been around to a serious extent† since the Queen Anne statute[3] of 1710. Patents are younger still. The tide has flowed one way so far, maybe it's time to flow the other. The current state of affairs seems to favour the few of the multitude. > bad propaganda These guys were elected to European Parliament, I know we all have a rather dim view of politicians but somebody seems to be buying their PR. :) --- † Excluding a judgment in the 6th century in Celtic Brehon law enunciated thus, “As to every Cow its Calf, so to every Book its Copy" [1] http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/iran.pdf http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/D... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Foreign_Assets_Control http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Foreign_Assets_Contro... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne

davidw 13y ago
Manufacturing: I was stating that his assertion was wrong, nothing more than that. Trade sanctions: I'm having difficulty following your train of thought, but my point was that the Castros are still in power, so the sanctions have not worked, contrary to his assertion that they were 'effective'. > The current state of affairs seems to favour the few of the multitude. The number of people creating stuff is likely to always be lower than the number of those who consume. The whole point of the system is to encourage that production by giving the creators a means to extract some money from the consumers - thus ensuring a supply of things to consume. I agree that the balance is currently too far in favor of producers.
- igravious 13y ago
  Ah, I did not see it was you I was replying to. Thanks for the clarification. Sometimes I have difficulty following my own train of thought :) I meant to say 'favour the few over* the multitude' in case it was not clear from my typo. Regarding production/consumption ratio: perhaps the new thing in the mix in the internet era is peer-to-peer technologies which break the hierarchical model. Hence Tor and Bittorrent come under legal scrutiny even though they are ethically neutral?
  - davidw 13y ago
    > Regarding production/consumption ratio: perhaps the new thing in the mix in the internet era is peer-to-peer technologies which break the hierarchical model. How do they do that? To me, those are pretty much entirely distribution technologies. Sure, it's easier then ever to produce more kinds of content and distribute it, but it still takes a lot of skill and effort to produce high quality content. To really get good at something, you'd need to treat it something like a full time job. And therefore, at a certain point, you'd want to be able to rely on it for an income...
rayiner 13y ago
Before Queen Anne's statute of 1710, but after the printing press had been introduced into England in the mid 1500's, printers in the country were licensed by the Crown. So restrictions on copying have existed literally for as long as it has been feasible to copy on a mass scale.

davidw 13y ago

Manufacturing: I was stating that his assertion was wrong, nothing more than that. Trade sanctions: I'm having difficulty following your train of thought, but my point was that the Castros are still in power, so the sanctions have not worked, contrary to his assertion that they were 'effective'. > The current state of affairs seems to favour the few of the multitude. The number of people creating stuff is likely to always be lower than the number of those who consume. The whole point of the system is to encourage that production by giving the creators a means to extract some money from the consumers - thus ensuring a supply of things to consume. I agree that the balance is currently too far in favor of producers.

igravious 13y ago
Ah, I did not see it was you I was replying to. Thanks for the clarification. Sometimes I have difficulty following my own train of thought :) I meant to say 'favour the few over* the multitude' in case it was not clear from my typo. Regarding production/consumption ratio: perhaps the new thing in the mix in the internet era is peer-to-peer technologies which break the hierarchical model. Hence Tor and Bittorrent come under legal scrutiny even though they are ethically neutral?
- davidw 13y ago
  > Regarding production/consumption ratio: perhaps the new thing in the mix in the internet era is peer-to-peer technologies which break the hierarchical model. How do they do that? To me, those are pretty much entirely distribution technologies. Sure, it's easier then ever to produce more kinds of content and distribute it, but it still takes a lot of skill and effort to produce high quality content. To really get good at something, you'd need to treat it something like a full time job. And therefore, at a certain point, you'd want to be able to rely on it for an income...

rayiner 13y ago

Before Queen Anne's statute of 1710, but after the printing press had been introduced into England in the mid 1500's, printers in the country were licensed by the Crown. So restrictions on copying have existed literally for as long as it has been feasible to copy on a mass scale.