It is shared. Look at the lowest class in America. They all have refrigerators, color TV's, cars, etc, etc. They live like richest people did 50 years ago. The rich get rich by making the poor better off. How do you think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs got rich? By putting computers and iPods in the hands of millions of middle and lower class people instead of just the richest.

Since rights, liberties, and laws are all based on personal values, which are ultimately just opinions, there is no factual basis for any of those things. They all stem from emotions. I have empathy. Whenever I do something to someone else, I put myself in their shoes and ask myself, "How would I like to be treated that way?" If the answer is, "I wouldn't like it" then I don't do it. At some point, we might disagree because we don't all have the same opinions and there's nothing we can do other than agree to disagree when our beliefs can coexist or commit violence against each other when our beliefs cannot coexist. There's no shortcut, I'm afraid.


Genocide is a direct refutation of utilitarianism. I'm sorry if you were offended. I really respect you because, even though we disagree, you are respectful. So, I regret offending you. However, my point was only that it doesn't matter how many people want something, if it's wrong, it's wrong.

I was going to debate this with you since you were making a decent argument but now I'm just going to add you to my ignore list. If someone with some manners wants to take up your argument, I'll debate it with them instead. Don't bother responding to me because I won't be able to see it. Unless, of course, you just like talking to yourself.

It's not emotional rhetoric when it directly relates to the issue at hand. If I suggest that we kill all people with blue eyes and you say that would be genocide, is that emotional rhetoric? No. It's a fact. That would be genocide.

Exactly right. We have a winner!

If you are in the desert and you are offered a gallon of water or an ounce of gold. You'd take the water. Repeat the process enough times and eventually you'd get to the point where you'd say, "let me take a look at that gold". The 1st gallon of water is worth more than the 1st ounce of gold. The 1,000th gallon of water might not be.


The only bad thing about slavery was that you couldn't quit. You got to sing songs, pick cotton, you got fed, you had a roof over your head, etc. However, when the whip comes out and you say "I quit!" and you can't quit. That's when it becomes a bad deal.

I'm being slight facetious but you get the point.

Do you think that an hour worth of pushing a broom is of the same value as an hour worth of brain surgery?

Fairness is a good thing. What's fair about you sitting in the shade and watching me felling a forest, clearing the stumps, plowing the soil, sowing the seeds, tending the crops, harvesting the corn and then you coming to claim some of it? You did nothing. I did all the work. That hardly seems fair.

I'm sorry you don't understand it. Tell me what's confusing about it and I'll walk you through it.

Thanks you've made your stance perfectly clear. That form of socialism I reject.


No, it doesn't.


Democracy is three people on an island and two of them vote to rob the third.

I'm not forcing you to produce intellectual property and I'm not forcing you to give it to me. You're perfectly free to write a novel and then lock it away in a safe. You also don't necessarily own the products of your labor. If you still my lumber and build a chair, do you own the chair just because it's the product of your labor? No, it's my chair and you also owe me for damages to my wood.


I reject utilitarianism. You can't measure happiness. There are no units. Therefore, you cannot compare it. Also, if you accept utilitarianism as a first principle then, since there were 90 million Germans in Nazi Germany and only 6 million Jews, as a utilitarian you must accept that the Jewish holocaust was "perfectly valid". That's a reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism. Murder is wrong, regardless of how many people will be happy.

Do me a favor. Go see the movie "Watchmen". It's entertaining but also shows utilitarianism in all its glory. The villain is a true utilitarian. Ultimately, utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism which says that "results matter first". I disagree. If 90 million Germans will be unhappy unless 6 million Jews are exterminated. Guess what? I want there to be a lot of unhappy Germans.

Don't get me wrong. Consequences do matter, but not first before anything else. They matter in determining how you apply your moral principles.

It's kind of annoying when you don't answer my questions. What kind of socialist are you? A peaceful and voluntary socialist or a coercive and mandatory socialist? In your world would myself and others be free to opt out of your socialist paradigm? These are direct questions which require direct answers.

It would be chaos for a while but once people settled on a new sound monetary system we'd recover. Of course, it would be a smart move to already adopt sound money before anything happens. Someone should invent some kind of electronic money that could store value and be transmitted digitally without it being easily counterfeited. Then we could use that instead of money created by arbitrary fiat and not have to worry about these problems.

That would be terrible because we all know that when GDP drops to zero, all the machinery, labor force and natural resources magically vanish.

I'm denying that you have the right to tell me what information can be shared freely. I'm also denying that you have exclusive right to a name. You're still free to make movies and computer games. You're still free to name your goods whatever you like.

This is getting repetitive. Unless you say something new, I'm going to stop responding.


I'm glad you admit it was a cheap shot.

Other than when someone demands that I provide my labor to them against my will, which is slavery, the only time I mention slavery is when someone tries to imply that "X is legal therefore X is moral" or "society decides X therefore X should be legal". In which case, I'll definitely be sure to point out that slavery is completely immoral yet was legal according to society. That's not trivializing it at all. That's showing it exactly for what it is, immoral and barbaric.

That slavery comment is so inflammatory and absurd that it doesn't even merit debate. I also think it's offensive that you would trivialize slavery, a barbaric and immoral institution, by comparing it to not being able to see "Star Wars".


I should have the right to share information freely. You shouldn't have the right to stop me. End of story. I'm not stopping you from doing anything other than denying me my rights.

That's the USPS.

I'm proposing we do away with intellectual property laws, consequences be damned. I've already explained how we can have brand names. Consumers will be able to sue business for fraud if they are misled into thinking that this "Burger King" is the same as that other "Burger King". It has to be made clear that they aren't the same. Just as if my name was Bill Gates and I sold you some software, I couldn't lead you to believe you were buying software from that other Bill Gates. A name is a name and nobody should have exclusive rights to them. I've also explained how commercially viable music, movies and games will still be possible. Perhaps the budgets will have to be scaled back if people refuse to pay money for them but that's just too bad. They clearly weren't worth their price to enough people. I'm not removing anything from you in the sense that I'm not preventing you from doing these things. I'm simply reclaiming my legal right to share information freely. If your business model can't survive, again, that's just too bad.

A hammer won't work if you hold it wrong. Clearly, hammers are prone to failure.

You said, "if we want entertaining movies, we have to have intellectual property laws".

Now you're saying, "if we want Star Wars, we have to have intellectual property laws".

Those are two very different claims. I'm not really interested in arguing about Star Wars because even if it never existed, we would still have other entertaining movies. You might be able to get me to feel torn about losing all forms of art unless we stomp all over personal freedom but the fact we won't have Star Wars doesn't even make me pause. I think The Lord of the Rings trilogy is an even better example to use on me as I love those movies. I think they are gorgeous, amazing, etc, etc. However, it's still not worth the price of admission, if that price is the loss of the ability to share information freely.

That's like saying that a hammer fails if you smash your thumb with it. Hammers don't smash thumbs. People do. It's just a tool and it can be used poorly or wisely. Hammers aren't people either.