On Terrorism – Part 2: How to Eliminate Terrorism Without Eliminating Liberty

We fight our so-called War on Terror as if we had only one ambition in our entire existence: to destroy terrorism at all costs. In reality, we have many goals, such as economic growth, personal and cultural development and many others, including maintenance, and expansion, of our civil liberties. So the real question is how do we stamp out terrorism without stamping out freedom?

On Greed: How to Not Take the Bad With the Good?

Greed is the spur to action for many of our businesses and leaders Without their greed, we wouldn’t have as much production or as high a standard of living. Greed has been recognized as a good thing going back,at least, to the English and Dutch mercantilism of the 1500s, if not earlier. Since then, influential people such as Increase Mather extolled what Max Weber later called the Protestant Work Ethic, and Adam Smith who implicitly praised greed and its role along with the invisible hand of markets.

But sometimes, greed goes too far. The events of recent years show us the need for reforms:

On Intellectual Property Part 2: How Can It Be Fixed?

In the decade before the American Civil War, the South worked furiously to strengthen the position of slavery in the law. They forced several compromises that required a new slave state be added to the country with every new free state. They passed, and several times strengthened, the Fugitive Slave Act, that made it illegal for anyone to assist slaves in escaping. They considered slaves to be ‘their property,’ and they inserted this into the law of the land. They clung to this, even though mechanization and other advances were making their labor-intensive style of agricultural uneconomical anyways. Their position was plainly wrong, and slavery was abolished after our civil war.

In the last decade, the music and similar industries have worked furiously to strengthen the position of intellectual property in the law. They have forced many changes to the copyright law (especially the Copyright Acts of 1976, and 1998) to prevent anyone from stealing ‘their property’. While the Music Industry isn’t treating the music artists and consumers, quite nearly as badly as slaves, bold action is needed to restore justice in the land.

Today’s Scandal – 4/08/2010: Police Prevent Citizens from Video-recording Police Misconduct

This article in The Christian Science Monitor raises a great question: ‘Reality shows routinely tail US police officers, filming them tangling with miscreants. Cops regularly film themselves from cameras mounted on cruiser dashboards – and now special hats. But if the state uses cameras for its own purposes and defense, why are so many citizens getting in trouble for pointing their cameras at the police?’  It then presents some examples of police treating photographers badly, confiscating pictures, equipment, etc.

Today’s Scandal – 3/15/2010: The First Corporation to Run for Congress

When I saw this article Corporate entity becomes ‘candidate’, kicks off bid for Congress I hoped it was a cruel joke.  Then I started seeing additional coverage of the same story in other places, such as, The Washington Post, and NBC.  This an extremely bad idea for the following reasons:

(1) The only possible use of a congressional seat to a company is to further its own financial interests, which results in a conflict of interest between what is best for the corporation and what is best for the country.   This is why many public servants divest their assets, or put them into a blind trust before assuming office.

(2) If the company does not use its congressional seat to influence policy in its own favor (either by divesting or abstaining on certain votes), then the it is not servicing its fiduciary responsibility to provide the shareholders a good return on their investment.

(3) The reach of special interests, including large abusive corporations is unprecedentedly large and needs to be rolled back, most especially due to how much legal protection they have already obtained for their egregious customer service (think of banks and record labels).

How can this be stopped?

On the Record? An Open Letter to President Obama

Dear Mr. President,

I am writing an open letter to you today, to ask you to renew your focus on those things that inspired the nation to elect you.

On Intellectual Property – Part 1: What Needs to be Fixed?

Lately a lot of attention has been placed on the issues of infringement, of music and software pirates, or competing companies infringing on patents, and the actual people who do the creating don’t get paid much. The artists want to make a fair living (or better) off of their labor, and have the satisfaction of knowing their work is valued by their fans. Consumers contend that they want control over how they consume the work, want to not overpay (or pay at all if they are pirates), and furthermore some may have further concerns around online payment and Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies. Both sides raise some fair and good points.  Both sides also have some major weaknesses in their positions.