At Slashdot,
your down home stupidity channel.
"This is an excellent point. If anyone should be running business (or
society in general), it should be the scientists, artists and academics.
They are typically not blinded by avarice in the sameway that the average
businessman is. Profit is useful, but it should never be the main motivation
for doing something. The main motivation should be the further development
of mankind so that the totality of the species may expand beyond the
confines of our primitive solar system. The improvements to our cultures
should not only be in the technology arena, but also in social and
behavioral aspects. The goal should be to stamp out fear, greed and
selfishness and replace them with a thirst for knowledge, a deeper
understanding of the benefits of cooperation over competition, and a strong
awareness of our responsibility to those around us." –
quote
in context
Did you ever wonder how this sort of ignorance gets around? It’s because it
passes for intellectualism these days. The idea that the pursuit of profit is
bad, and that competition is bad…. or that those who make money are doing it
for the money exclusively. We have now within the "online" community the
ignorant revival of communism. The belief that no one shoudl own anything, that
no one has thought of anything themselves and that no one should be able to (in
effect) benefit from advances.
This is the old "each according to his ability, to each according to his
need" crap. If you spend the money, spend the will, take the time to create
something (say a new type of program) according to idiots like
eno2001 you should have no
protection. The instant you create this via your own talent and will they should
be able to take it, copy it and sell it as there own… with no recourse from
you and no reason for them to have to pay you.
"Sadly, we have let our society be taken over by the common criminal’s
desire for material wealth with no reasonable limits. Fortunately, not
everyone thinks this way and many of us attempt to rise above that archaic
mode of thinking. We see the value in cooperation and how making top dollar
does little to further the species. Capitalism has served it’s purpose, but
it is not scaling well as the means of information production becomes
ubiquitous. IP laws and software patents are not there to protect you unless
you are a big enough software business to afford the lawyers. This is not
right or just. Source code is merely the analogue to a recipe, the
compilers, linkers, etc… are the cooking utensils. No one has set out to
restrict what you can cook, so why should they restrict what you write for
your computer? Is it illegal to make a hamburger at home? Did McDonald’s set
out to keep people from stealing the hmburger from their virttual monopoly?
No. So all this talk of software patents is pure rubbish and legal tacticsto
keep the power inthe richest hands. The time has come to destroy this system
of control." –
quote
in context
So if your talented then you should work hard and create something – so that
all those who lacked the skills, intelligence or will to create it can steal it
from you, all the while calling you a "criminal" and evil. Give them the results
of your labor, and the better at it you are the more they will despise you. Yet
almost every advance in society worth mentioning that lifted man from beast to
master of his environment was the result of some "common criminals desire for
wealth" – someone who had the intelligence to see a need and the ability to
supply the thing needed.
"All wealth is produced by somebody and belongs to somebody. And "the
special virtue that enabled capitalism to outstrip all prior economic
systems" was freedom (a concept eloquently absent from the Britannica’s
account), which led, not to the expropriation, but to the creation of
wealth.." – from "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal" by Ayn Rand, page 15.
Contrast this to the desire of the parasite to effectively steal what is
yours, in this case your invention, your idea and the result of your effort.
Why? Because he feels left behind, left out. And because he wants to remind you
that, somehow, you owe him the results of your brain.