[PLUG-TALK] Fair Use, etc.

Jeme A Brelin jeme at brelin.net
Sat Mar 30 02:15:23 UTC 2002


On Fri, 29 Mar 2002, Craighead, Scot D wrote:
> You assume all capitalist are immoral and take everything to the
> ultimate extreme.  Only some are.  Some people actually want to make
> the world a better place.  Even some capitalists.

I don't disagree with you.

However, the system actively rewards evil and actively punishes good.

A person that would like to do good does so against the sole capitalist
motivator of higher profits.

And what with all the laws regarding shareholder responsibility, it's
quite possible that a company that chooses to do the right thing over the
more profitable thing will be sued.

> >I do believe that happy workers produce more, but the capitalist weighs
> >that gain in productivity against the gain in profit margins caused by
> >that restriction of freedom.
> >
> >And if you have the right PR, you can spin it to get both... reduce the
> >freedom of your workers and make them like it.  That's essentially what
> >the police and copyright industries do.
> 
> What companies have you worked at?  They sound nothing like the
> companies I have worked for.

I wasn't describing a company that has employed me.  I was describing the
motivations and effects of the system.

For example, the copyright industry tries to tell us that we need all this
technological protection because it helps our artists and someday one of
us might do something original and creative and surely we want to make a
big profit on it, don't we?  They work to convince the public that the
restriction in freedom is good for us... we'll feel safer and more secure
and therefore be happier, less free workers.

Another example is, of course, the war against terrorism.  Subjecting
one's self to random searches of our persons to federal agents has now
become a requirement of international travel and practically a requirement
of interstate travel (via the airlines).  The basic respect that our
public agencies should have for us, the public, is replaced with suspicion
and we smile and nod (as a whole, not you or me specifically) and agree
that it's a great thing that they do this for us.

> Then why did the public schools I went to teach me these things (or
> try to anyway)?

Because they're public schools.

> One of our founding fathers (I don't remember which) said that a
> republic can only survive if we have an educated public.

I'll tell you that he was a Democratic Republic and not a Federalist.

> Why is financial aid given to college students?

Gauranteed student loans and Pell grants (the only financial aid that
isn't merit based) is given as a public service, from the people to the
people.  It's not done by a capitalist agency.

> >Depends on who you're fighting.
>
> >Capitalists make it a point of declaring war against enemies that
> >don't have the power to seriously impact trade.
>
> Nazi Germany was a weak, third world nation?  Imperial Japan?  Soviet
> Union?

No, those were wars against non-capitalists.  I enumerated three kinds of
wars that capitalists like (i.e. that are good for capitalism and
capitalists that don't actually have to fight).  Weak, third-world nations
are just one of the several groups that a capitalist can engage in war
without significantly impacting trade.

It's also arguably true that the U.S. didn't enter WWII in the European
theater until it started hurting trade and the ideological reasons were
not relevant to those in power.  It is also arguable that Roosevelt was at
least forewarned, if not complicit, in the attack on Pearl Harbor in order
to galvanize the american people for war and permanently set aside the
Neutrality Act.

> (Cold War)  I'll give you that the war on drugs is a sick joke.  The
> war on Terror?  There are a bunch a crazy fanatics that want to kill
> us.  I think we need to fight this one.

Who are those crazy fanatics?  Is it The Taliban?  Then why didn't the
U.S. declare war on The Taliban?  Is it Al Queda?  Then why didn't the
U.S. declare war on Al Queda?  Is it Islam?  What?

The answer to the first question is, of course, "whoever we want them to
be."

The primary reason for TWAT (the war against terror) is to stop domestic
insurrections fighting oppressive capitalist regimes (WTO, WorldBank/IMF,
GATT, etc.) and corrupt domestic politics (see the activities in
Philadelphia and Los Angeles at 2000's Republican and Democratic national
conventions, repsectively).  It's an excuse to crack down on civil rights
and crank up the war machine (thus spoon-feeding profits from public
coffers into the mouths of the waiting oil and military industries).

> >Does E=MC^2 say nothing?  What about f=ma?
> 
> These are very specific.  Math is just great for compacting large
> concepts into short formula's.

I think "Suffering is opportunity" is very specific, given that
opportunity represents profit opportunity.  Same goes for "Scarcity is
value", given that value is value in blind trade rather than inherent
value.

The point is that capitalism has no mechanism for rewarding cures, only
band-aids.  And capitalism has no mechanism for rewarding the creation of
abundance, only scarcity.

> (I have a BS in Mathematics, BTW)

Well, you're at least eight credits ahead of me, then.

J.
-- 
   -----------------
     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
   -----------------
 [cc] counter-copyright
 http://www.openlaw.org





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