Yeah, um, the idea that Wal Mart is able to exist and pay so little to employees only because we are all supporting Wal Mart and their employees with our tax dollars makes me extremely uncomfortable.

It just hit me. Why would pro-copyright people claim that pirates want to take ownership of other peoples' IP (you're not the first) if pirates don't believe in the concept of intellectual property in the first place?

Summarized:


Or "it's this or that, maybe having to do with politics, and discussion is ongoing, but we think it comes from law or Constitution."

As I said, no understanding of what rights are or where they come from. Or rather, believe rights are things just generally agreed on based on the whims of contemporary culture, and which we commit to paper.

I wouldn't consider joining mid May as "early adopted" but I did put in more than $10k

Maybe you should be more specific as to what you are trying to ask? The items listed on the pol are more "what are components of a bitcoin type protocol," not necessarily cryptocurrency. We may end up with cryptocyrrency that doesn't rely on the things Bitcoin does today.

Phewh! You made me worry for a sec. Having furries behind this thing would give a bad name to furries XD

I still want to set something up, but... Sonic Generations and Mongrels... so later.

That's a stupid question to ask those people. Only because after 100+ pages on another thread it's been pretty thoroughly established that they don't understand what rights are, let alone where they come from.

China has an enormous amount of national and cultural pride, mainly stemming from being kicked around by the rest of the world so much in their more recent history. That is their biggest driver for building up their current economy, and is the current driver for them wanting to change from manufacturers to innovators. I have no doubt that will happen (unless their economy crashes due to current currency issues).

You do realize that driving is actually a substitution for taking a train, right? No one imagined that an infrastructure like railroad tracks can be replaced. Yet it was, even despite the massive changes in lifestyle. Personally I still prefer trains, and hope someday they will replace cars again. Or at least that cars will not be necessary, because work could be done from anywhere online, and so few people need to travel that trains will be more than enough.



Again, you are only focusing on internal combustion engines, and the need for an engine, period. Sure, many businesses have generators, but only for emergencies. Barely any depend on them for their main source of power, and barely any personal houses have generators. Once generators become something people actually buy for their home as a main source of power, we will likely look at today's tech same way we look at typewriters now. Japan is working on a personal nuclear plant the size of a trailer that can be buried in the back yard. My university is working on a gassificator that turns garbage into combustible gas to generate power. Solar powered stirling engines are getting more research and may be becoming more efficient than photovoltaic cells. Houses are using more tech that lets them stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer without generating power. And that's just for electricity.
I am not arguing that there isn't a semi-monopoly on gasoline and internal combustion engines, I am arguing that this monopoly is as relevant as a monopoly on land lines, type writers, and horse buggy whips.



But according to your argument, the high barrier to entry for running a monopoly like the post office would not have allowed email to even exist!


But that's exactly what you have been doing: defending the modern equivalent of a horse by saying there are no substitutes for "horses," and the barrier to entry for "horses" is too high, ignoring the fact that within a few years, the modern equivalent of a horse monopoly is irrelevant.

Cryptography, and being used as a store of value in exchanges (like a currency). I don't see either of those on your list.

Extreme example is Wall Mart using cameras in stores and parking lots to keep an eye on employees meeting, and at the first threat of possible unionization, laying off all workers and closing the store.

It's true that there are barriers that can't be invalidated, but I don't see why we should care about those monopolies when much alternatives arise.
Phone land lines we're government controlled/subsidised monopolies. Other large infrastructure monopolies I can think of (and things disrupting them): Cable TV (Web based tv, satellite), Railroads (trucks and highways), MS Windows and IE (browser based OS independent cloud services and Chrome)... actually, I'm having trouble thinking up of any actual true monopolies. Even the US Military is out sourcing to private mercenaries. I can't think in black&white of monopoly or not. Every "monopoly" I can think of isn't one really.

How much of a barrier to entry did email have to overcome to overtake the Post Office. How much of a barrier to entry is there for an electric plug in car you can charge at home? How much of a barrier to entry is there for Google Docs or MS Exchange to overcome for bringing your office home to you? Or for Skype or Magick Jack, or even cell phones to take out the phone land line monopoly? High barriers to entry only make sure that entering that specific technological nieche is difficult, but even then there are lots of parallel infrastructures that already exist, and many we haven't even thought of yet, that tend to allow monopolies a temporary existance at most. Actually, barriers to entry still follows the same "monopolies can only be replaced with similar stuff" thinking I was trying to address in my OP. Hell, I've been enjoying touring cities and museums around the world for free using Google Street view recently, and historic landmarks and museums are seemingly obvious monopoly infrastructures you can't move or replace. Who would've thought that Google's cameras would be a substitute for jet fuel, hotels, and museum tickets.

You may be right, and wait and see is likely the best course regarding China

Substitutions for gasoline:
Ethanol
Electric battery
Biodiesel
Compressed air
Hydrogen
Solar
Driving less
Taking the bus
Taking the train
Carpooling
Walking
Biking
Teleworking
Just not driving

Hope you get the picture. If you don't, substitution doesn't mean equivalent/similar thing. Email is substitution for paper letters through post office. The two are entirely unrelated technologies.


Before you lol, ask, what is the point of having a more efficient generator or a cheaper solar/wing generator if electric power grids are good enough? No one is putting money into those technologies because everyone is happy with gov subsidised current ... uh... current (electricity). Only market for those technologies are fringe or specific needs users. If electricity goes up in price, those technologies will get a lot of cash dumped into them, and will quickly become cheaper and more efficient.
It's like, "lol! Computer mainframes are so massive, expensive, and inefficient! The idea that anyone would waste money on them instead of keeping records with pen and paper is hillarious."
Or, "lol! This is hillarious because self powered horse buggies are horribly noisy and inefficient, and are prohibitively expensive compared to a horse you just feed, plus 99% of the people don't have access to motor fuel"
By laughing without thinking, you only demonstrated how much of an idiot you are.

Evidence shows China is on the brink of kicking our collective buts with innovation. Companies that abandon their IP rights in exchange with being able to do business in China (one of their prerequisites) tend to still do extremely well, too.

It does the opposite of speeding it up, since it puts a 10 year halt on anyone playing around with that invention to make it better.

My point with this is that intellectual property is the only type of product that once you absorb, can not be returned, and only one that can not be described objectively. Once you've read a book or heard a song, you can't pull it back out of your eyes and ears and return it like you can with physical goods. And once you have read a book, even if for free, there is no reason to acquire it any more, other than for reference, since you already know what it's like. You also can't describe it, especially with more objective terms, and instead have to rely on opinions. So while someone can falsely advertise how great a car is, if it's broken and sucks, and that's easily provable,  I can return it and demand my money back. With intellectual property, if someone falsely advertizes a great movie or song, by simply experiencing it I have already absorbed it and can't undo the experience, and it sucking can only be a matter of opinion, since others might like it. So, with intellectual "property" I am not even subject to the same set of rules for property exchange as I am to real property.
(Which is why I often ignore the rules, experience the "property" first, and pay for an actual product if it doesn't "suck" and is something I'd like to own)

Even if it was inferior, people switching away would force the monopolist to lower prices until they are more reasonable again, and there is a big risk that people will not switch back from the inferior product, and new support for it would give it the funds to be much better. Kodak and digital cameras is an example. Kodak had a massive market share for camera stuff (wasn't a monopoly, but was close), but people started switching to digital cameras, even if they only took 640x480 pics and stored them on floppies. Kodak really should have lowered prices to compete, or better, adopt the new digital camera technology, but they ignore it. With new money going into digital, Kodak was quickly overtaken and pretty much lost the camera market entirely.