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Cake day: August 22nd, 2023

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  • Or add more competition to the market by having government provide cheap alternatives to food/shelter.

    That’s the solution I think all civilized nations will land at, plus universal basic income.

    So everyone has an option for effectively free (since their UBI covers it) water, food, shelter, and transportation. But standard free market sources can compete to outdo the public options in any ways the public desires.

    There’s plenty still to do, since anyone invotating can outdo the public option, and make some extra money for their effort. While, at the same time, no one has to be quite as dragged down by an aunt with failing health who cannot work, anymore.

    And any mega corporations that try to force everyone into closed lousy situations have to at least compete with the public option.

    Of course, any mega corporations allowed to thrive will immediately try to kill off public options, which we do already see happen.


  • Well the baker, knowing that everyone has twice as much money, puts his prices up because he knows the market can bear it. That’s the way I reason it.

    The good news is this simply doesn’t happen (in civilized modern countries).

    People with more money don’t buy twice as much bread, they buy other things.

    The bread maker is still competing with milk producers and video game makers and artists.

    You can read about price elasticity for more details (and to not just take my word for it.)

    Highly inelastic goods (water, transportation, eggs) are the most likely to have runaway price increases.

    But civilized countries already have public options to supply these items at cost :public water, public transport, food stamps.

    This means we already have the necessary buffers against any impact by UBI. Any provider of an inelastic good who raises their price too far loses business to the public option.

    Schwinn and Ferrari will all see slightly more sales with UBI as a few people use their additional income to purchase a bicycle or a supercar, but the bus lines must still run to keep them honest.

    The risk is minimal because we already know what public consumption of these goods looks like, when they’re free or heavily subsidized, in each civilized country.









  • Voiding all IP law would cause a huge loss in the creative community.

    I agree. I wouldn’t be in favor of “burn it down” if I thought we could negotiate better terms with our current IP oligarchs.

    If people can no longer pay their bills by creating then they stop creating and work.

    I’ll still be available to do creative work. It wouldn’t change my current work-for-hire efforts.

    Very little valuable IP is held by actual creators, today.

    Why dump years and your heart and soul into a great book just to have it distributed for free and be poor.

    Are you an actual published creator, or a temporarily embarrassed future billionaire? Is there a version of success for you that isn’t just selling to a big IP company to get enough money to retire? That’s what it looks like, to me. The peak of my possible success would be to write something that threatens/tempts the big IP holders enough to force them to buy me out. If I don’t take the buy out, they eventually bury my thing with their advertising power.

    I don’t really disagree with you. I’m actually in favor of keeping and fixing IP laws, if that’s possible.

    But I believe the IP laws we have now only serve our billionaire employers. So, as a creator, I won’t fight to keep our current IP laws.


  • Your utopia is every creator’s nightmare.

    I didn’t say “utopia”. We need IP laws. But since we continue to let Disney (and other mega corporations) dictate the entire terms of engagement - we need to bring “burning the whole thing down and starting over” into the list of options under consideration. It’s the only way to bring Disney back to the bargaining table, at minimum.

    Edit: A more practical approach would be to disolve every company that has engaged in an illegal merger (most large US companies). But I think that’s actually harder to accomplish, today, than voiding all IP law. It’s a better option, if we can swing it. The necessary laws are already on the books, they’re simply un-enforced.







  • I’ve created lots of things. The moment I finish creating it, I sign over my IP rights in exchange for money for food, and never have a right to it again.

    Without IP law, the thing I created would at least be in the commons where I can still legally use it.

    (I agree with your point, some IP law could be better than none. But I’ll assert that a total void of all IP law would be better than what we have now.

    And we need to theaten to void it all, to get the current rights holders to negotiate. Frankly, I don’t think they will. I think we need to void all IP law and then encourage the next generation to create some new IP law after we starve our current billionaires.)

    (All this is in spite of my objection to being on the same side of any argument with Jack Dorsey. I have no illusion that his motives are pro-social.)