How does it go? A million monkeys typing a million random words per minute for a million years will eventually produce Shakespeare.

This editorial appeared in todays Las Vegas Review Journal welcoming Obama to Vegas

Welcome back, Mr. President

Your economic policies suck

Wow.

A right-wing newspaper published an editorial critical of the President?!?! You don't say! If only people had listened to them when they endorsed McCain!!

Extra lols for this line:

Glenn Greenwald on Octavia Nasr's firing

Yeah, this is ******ed.

It's a fairly common response from people who want to justify their own illicit downloading. "I'm not taking anything from them", etc. I dunno why crypto-libertarians decided to randomly latch onto that particular argument there are a handful of better arguments against intellectual property laws(a few have been made ITT), but you'd be dumbfounded at how many people honestly think it's not bad so long as you aren't affirmatively making the victim worse off than they were prior to your act(i.e. drawing a line between $20 physically taken and $20 that would've been made but for my thievery).

I wish that argument worked in court. "I know I said that I'd deliver that load of potatoes on the 3rd, but I didn't feel like doing it. I'll give him back his money so obviously we're even, right?"

Copyright law makes the most sense if you believe that the profit motive primarily motivates production of artistic works.

But in reality, copyright vastly underestimates the true enormous supply of artistic works given the non-economic incentives for the production of art. Yes, time and effort etc. are scarce but ending the analysis there stops short of a true account of how artistic production is tied into leisure and self-fulfillment which are intrinsically net beneficial to the producer regardless of the pecuniary proceeds of the investment. Think about all the production that occurs which never recoups the initial costs and contrast that with the very few that recoup fantastically outsized gains (i mean lol if you think Jay-Z needed the promise of billions to record his first mix tapes instead of spending that time working overtime w/e ****ty job he would have had). If you argue that the EV of production is higher under copyright even though people constantly produce without earn because of that 1 in 1M shot of "dreams come true omg i'll be a star", I'd say most people who make art don't think that way and are way too risk adverse to make that calculation make sense to them. They make their money not by copyright but usually by live performance or with work that is not valuable enough for general discovery and reproduction (e.g. a local artist's oil paintings). Copyright also does not account for patronage and other philanthropic promotion of art through e.g. monetary prizes and awards or gratuitous donations which goes beyond just the leisure value of the production.

Copyright also vastly overestimates the fixed costs to produce the initial work with our current technology. You rarely need a big budget studio to make good music or even good movies now, but you could create a more limited copyright for such works with high capital requirements.

Copyright also imposes quite a few dead weight costs to society like inhibiting the development of a culture of sharing and reproducing because it chills transformative, satirical or parodic works. It also makes interacting on the internet in ordinary ways a potential crime which inhibits technological development and access. We also invest in enforcement quite heavily, both privately and publicly. And things like Disney's infinite copyright extensions are not something weird but rather something super intrinsic to the public choice situation creates when copyright holders have massive stakes in the extension of copyright and any random person only loses a very small benefit.

Most importantly given the near zero cost of reproduction in the digital era I would say the social surplus lost in the capture of monopoly profits far outweighs the surplus generated by incentivizing production. This is especially true in an era where we need fewer dedicated gatekeepers due to the proliferation of media.

Copyright also gets extra lols for being a backdoor lockout for 3rd party improvements to industrial goods (e.g. printer ink cartridges).

In general, the need for copyright protection for professional artists has declined in an era where leisure has increased, the cost of reproduction has decreased, and some patronage system still remains throughout the world. I mean Jane Austen could make her work because she had huge wealth and had surplus labor she could devote to leisure, not because she was counting on book sales to pay her bills and thus could afford to not take a "real" job.

So, yes, time and effort and the acquisition of the erudition to produce a major artistic work of value all involve the input of scare resources. I mean I guess it is a net benefit to have Jay Z and Kayne dedicated to putting out sick beats 24/7 instead of just on the side. Copyright does incentivize more production on the margin and may produce better art. But this fact alone does not justify its existence.


/back to work.

People are and remain free to give their intellectual property away, Big Law. I think that single sentence is sufficient response to your entire post, lolz.

Like what does this even mean? Come on.

Bill gates with some comments on state accounting fraud today at the Aspen ideas festival that are on point. Saw it on Bloomberg Rewind which will be replayed later. I recommend looking for it.

-budgets are fraudulent
--full pension costs and early retirements not accrued transparently
--no pain shows up on budgets for legislatures giving more benefits to public employees
--it's undermining the future of public education as the current contracts are unsustainable

There's like a gazillion articles I could post from a lot of folks that are economically savvy, a lot of them who voted for Obama, who believe he's totally screwed up on the economy and doesn't have a clue. I don't have a linky and too lazy to produce it now but Rahm Emanuals defense of his economic policies today is absolutely pathetic. Also take a look at Bob Herbert's NY Times columns over the past 6 months. He's no right winger. Inflation was the wrong word, prices artificially high is a better one. People reading this have to read the article to put in context. My sense from this article that it's lot more than just partisan politics. Obama has a taken a few swipes at Vegas (don't go spending your money there), Vegas has IIRC an over 14% unemployment rate, besides a significant commercial real-estate "hang over" referred to in editorial that you find so funny, and the residential housing market in Vegas is a disaster with unbelievable price declines. Just go see what houses are going for in Vegas now. My understanding is that a lot of houses in Vegas are selling below replacement costs. I think anger is justified.

Obama prattles on about moving forward with his economic policies and not moving backward because the policies of the past got the USA into the current economic situation.

How do you sell Obama's policies in the state with highest unemployment?

So as a Dem supporter can you enlighten me on this:

Over 750,000 jobs in January of 2009 alone -- the consequence of a decade of misguided economic policies; a decade of stagnant wages; a decade of falling incomes.

What specifically policies is he referring to?

Greenwald is awesome. And I say this as a self-proclaimed conservative.

yeah, Vegas has a right to attack Obama
for instance, lots of banks had to cancel conventions in Vegas due to the grief Obama gave such groups for having Vegas conventions when using TARP. I believe it was the Encore that laid off many workers when Wells Fargo canceled. How many other groups canceled less visibly?

Obama has really hurt the Vegas economy. In picking winners and losers, this is an area he has chosen as a loser.

Should the latest falling truck rafter accident spur legislation for trucker canyon rafting reform?

http://www.theonion.com/video/truck-...n-spark,17697/

1. Of course it was partisan politics.

2. I don't know what Obama had in mind, although I would hazard a guess that it includes policies of targeting tax cuts to the rich and lax regulation coupled with public support of the financial sector.

Now that I've answered your questions, why don't you, as a Republican supporter, answer this one:

Were they in power, what specific economic policies would the Republican party be pursuing that are materially different than Obama's policies, and how specifically would the current economic situation be different because of those policies.

Bonus question: Whose economic policies were better, Clinton's or GW Bush's?

Agree with you on this. The way the shooting went down it's pretty clear he thought he was tasing the dude (not that there was anything in the video justifying even that level of force, but he almost certainly didn't mean to shoot the guy.)

It's been pretty clear for a while this was probably going to be the result, pretty crappy of the community leadership not to have prepared people for this outcome, and in fact many of them have been doing the exact opposite.

wat

I have an overwhelming urge to vote for Mike Weinstein.

ImprovEverywhere

I like the HomeDepot slowmotion video.

Deserves got nothin to do with it.

There's nothing normative to discuss when we're talking about whether something is or is not scarce.

Fwiw, I'm 100% ok with artists using voluntary contracts with people they share their output with. This still doesn't change the facts about the scarcity of the output in question.

If we could copy someone else's car, should it be illegal?

if we can copy some else's homework should it be forbidden?

wait what

Nielsio always poses random questions in the failed attempt to prove a point.

Should it be illegal to buy property from a fence? (Assume the buyer knows the property was obtained/sold illegitimately.)