I don’t know where my posting options are…
Okay so read this post. Someone posted it there i followed it in ‘stats’
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=31977144&posted=1#post31977144
At first i thought it was funny cause i got ranted on by some dude saying “free shit” over and over.
but, i think these people actually agree with him. Go there and decide. What do you guys think?
“Mises is fail”
What a jamoke.
“The internet isn’t “free” and information isn’t “free” unless the creator of the information wants it to be free.”
I’d personally give him this link and move on. But here’s my bit:
The reason that there is an economy is because there is scarcity in the world. That’s an objective fact. Creating information (ideas) is limited only to the extant that one thinks. By writing this sentence, I’m not stealing information from the first english scribes; I’m rearranging the alphabet to communicate my ideas to you. Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks protect the expression of the idea, not the underlying idea itself. The concept of scarcity doesn’t apply to ideas. Everyone has them and (the best part, imo) they are always evolving. Furthermore, the periods of time for which ideas may not be copied under copyright et al. is totally arbitrary.
Thought experiment: Picture a world where shelter has not yet been invented. One day a man named Legendkiller lays the foundation of a structure he calls “a house.” There’s a removable entrance, walls, and a cover on top.
He goes to the patent officer and gets a patent on his “house.”
You walk by his “house” and are immediately interested. You currently live under a tree. So, you go deep into the forest (owned by no one at all) with your tools. You cut down several thick trees, cut them up, lay them and build your foundation. You build a “house!” However, you don’t copy his design exactly; you add a few holes and lay thin sheets of glass in them, you add a stone column on top of the cover, you lay wood across the threshold of your entrance and outside the “house” with a cover over it.
For a few weeks, you and your family live comfortably with fires every night and long days outside reading, knitting etc on what you call a “porch.” Legendkiller walks by one day and doesn’t like what he sees. Not one bit. So he goes to the patent officer and complains. 4-6 weeks later and you’re answering your “front door” to an officer and Legendkiller:
PO: Sir are you aware that LK has a patent on his invention “the house”?
J: No? Why?
PO: Well, your structure here is impressive but LK created it.
J: No, I built this house.
PO: Well, LK put a lot of effort into the design.
J: No, I laid the wood.
PO: Well, LK came up with the idea of the house.
J: I did too.
PO: Well, LK’s patent states that his design may not be copied.
J: I didn’t copy his design; I added some personal belongings. For instance, I can burn a fire inside the house during the winters for warmth. I can enjoy sunlight inside, saving me candles and money.
PO: Unfortunately, you didn’t receive permission to build this structure.
J: But this was made on my property, using my property, with my ingenuity, my dexterity, and my care.
PO: Regardless, you don’t have the permission to build this structure. You may attempt again 20 years from LK’s filing of patent, should he choose not to extend protection. Good day.
The point is that a patent is a monopoly on your use of your property. And that 20 years bit is true (cf. 35 USC § 154 (a)(2)) after having been for 17 years- why the change? Who knows? But then again, who knows why the government tries to hinder growth in the first place. Maybe companies would be more innovative if they didn’t rely on 20 year old monopolies for their revenue.
Hope this helps!
thanks man.
Those are tech people and they won’t even give the real evidence a shake.
I posted this as away to demonstrate the underlying issue: “Think about international balance of payments. The Chinese workers average around 7500 $USD per YEAR. Can anyone here imagine working for that little? No? That’s because the value of your labor is heavily overpriced. We don’t produce, all we do is consume. There is the pesky trade deficit, and how is it financed? The Chinese loan us the money we spend on their goods back to us so we can buy more goods from them. (Physical media is in here) And people think this is how trade works.”
note my signature 
Meh, they could be worse, here’s Lou Dobbs’ stint of “free trade” See the next part too, hard to think that this guy wrote a book, AND speaks for probably 16 minutes without saying much substantively. When he does speak, it’s hard to discern as to whether he’s actually coming to a realization or if he’s just being facetious.
I don’t know much about it, but the trade deficit seems to be meaningless in terms of possible economic hardship.
Most people just have no concept of what trade means. I think Friedman asked it best in his book: Can you eat what food you export? Would you rather spend more and get less or the reverse? How much wealthier are you with pieces of paper stamped with the words “legal tender” versus physical goods? Stossel also makes handy points with simple exchange (for instance, his concept of double thank-yous).
Finally there’s Hazlitt’s point that: don’t worry, over time, imports and exports equal each other.
As for China? They’re going to have one big mess by the time their market corrects. For all the rhetoric about “The World’s Next Super Power?” China’s gonna get hit pretty hard. And the standard of living in China is abysmally low.
Your last point
Peter Schiffs take is that it is better to be a producing nation that needs consumer markets than be a consumer market in need of productive markets. The converse of your point is that the China correction will be quicker and easier and that the currencies will unpeg and the USD will collapse in value around the world. Our standard of living drops and theirs goes up.
Schiff’s point is well taken, but it doesn’t hurt to buy cheap. Why buy a meal from McDonald’s for $15 plus a “take-out tax” when you can get a Triple Whopper meal from BK for $8? What you choose is purely subjective, but I’d choose BK (personal fave- plus, offers a lot more for a lot less). I don’t know much about the current situation with China, but they’ve got a huge housing bubble in the works from the looks of that video. If we get more goods for less money, our standard of living goes up.
I don’t understand your reasoning. Care to explain? 
I thought that their Yuan was tied to the US$. As in, what happens to our dollar matters to their Yuan and what happens to their Yuan doesn’t affect our dollar. Friedman’s take here and here. Brief videos, the first goes into my standard of living spiel and the next goes into what happens in a free trade scenario. What’s mucked it up? I don’t know too much about the situation with China.
Well the deal with China is that when they untie their currency from ours the true value of each countries economies will show. We run giant deficits in every regard. and china has many surpluses. Their excess production will be evident when the US can no longer import their goods. So the Chinese will either become war hungry like the US and Britain did and look for export markets, or allow their own people to purchase the goods they produce for drastically reduced prices (again, because we cannot import them they stay in their market.
China will be an example of the failure of planned economies from those ghost cities. Obviously the market did not produce those hahaha. they are a result of our inflation that China eats for us.
but on the real that is really sad. That dude trying to sell toys in a ghost town… People live under terrible circumstances.