It's not just you, though it sounds like his reasoning is based around the ideological context of conflating "democratic choice" with "choice in a market". The role of price is a principal guarantor of democracy, after all. /sardonic
The part about "democratic choice" should be handled by our "democratically elected leaders." But I don't think I really understand your point at all. What does selling the IP v. giving it away have to do with democratic choice?
My point was that selling the IP instead of giving it away is revenue neutral to society (and, in fact, a positive to the taxpayers who are not buying the IP) and so selling it does not decrease welfare and may well improve it if it provides some data to the agency on what the users of their research value. This is entirely unlike what happens with NSF-funded research which is given away to journals who charge a fortune to read it. In this latter case (unless you think that peer-review is incredibly valuable, which no one besides the publishers seem to believe) the overall effect is welfare reducing.
It's fine to read these for the literature and/or a peek into how earlier people saw their world, but beware of ideas whose underpinnings are still touted as fact - such as those from the Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith may have been among the intelligentsia of his time, but he made claims far outside of his expertise which have long since been shown to be fantastical imaginings. And if you've ever seen A Christmas Carol, you'll have passing familiarity with the debtor prisons and Irish potato famines justified by classical liberalism (economic theory, not to be confused with the popular modern term) which has today become neoliberalism (which contains justification for neoconservatism, so let's not get partisan about it) since about 1980 with Reagan in the USA, Thatcher in the UK, and Deng in China and isn't any better for reasons I won't currently go in to. (Crosby, Harvey)
For instance, Adam Smith argued that barter was an inefficient way to make transactions because it required a dual coincidence of wants by both parties. Nevermind that communities simply didn't function this way, instead giving what they had now in a system of credit rather than debt. This is one of many examples undermining Smith's ideas, so be careful if you decide to read such books. Unless your degree concerns historiography, your time would be much better spent elsewhere. (Graeber)
Smith is easy to debunk, but ideas contained within many classical novels provide popular justification for cultural imperialism. They're not so easy to address. (Said)
There was absolutely no need to inject such politics into a seemingly innocent post about a collection of old books. Your topic sentence claimed that you disputed the wisdom of old classics (notice the plural) but really your extended post was a diatribe against The Wealth of Nations and classical free market economics. Save your politics for a political topic.
I would suggest a charitable reading of the Wealth of Nations on its own terms, rather than focusing on narrow Marxist critiques of it. Further, I would suggest reading Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiment for a fuller understanding of his ideas.
Justifying bad things with a book is not the same as the book advocating bad things.
I suspect you haven't even read it because Smith gives specific warnings in the text as to where the ideas can come into conflict with social benefit, proposing limits on payable interest for instance.
I didn't say the bad things were done on purpose (when is that ever the case?) and didn't mean to ever suggest such a thing. And I understand your suspicions, but I've read more than just The Wealth of Nations by Smith.
The other comments are such a trainwreck of assumptions that it's not worthwhile to respond, so you've got that going for you.
garric does have a point. Reading The Origin of Species is a fine and dandy thing, but you shouldn't expect to learn too much relevant to modern biology.
If you're reading Darwin as a biology textbook, you're blowing it from the start, though. It's much more valuable as a primary document in the history of biology. That and from what I understand, it's pretty interesting reading.
He's not saying that we shouldn't. But the U.S. is overwhelmingly focused on punishment, retribution, and incapacitation rather than rehabilitation. Essentially victim blaming, if you want to look at it like that. Opinion: It's going to take system-wide reform to accomplish anything meaningful.
I was specifically trying to avoid making a judgement on particular nations' systems because I didn't particularly want to bring that in to it. You are right however and that's touched on in the article, where the German federal police say that he was lucky they got to him before their US equivalents did. The US system is far more punitive than many European equivalents.
> some people are past the point of rehabilitation and should be in prison.
If we made a serious effort of rehabilitation in the US penal system, then this might be fair. We don't. Prisoners, especially those who commit the crimes in their youth, are screwed under our current system. The younger criminals, like their non-criminal youth counterparts, just don't know or don't appreciate the options available to them regarding education and learning trade skills. We put them into an environment with other people we've given up on and somehow expect that when they get out a year or a decade later they'll be ready to reintegrate into society. They didn't have the skill set going in, and they won't have it coming out. Many of them will continue to live on the fringes of our society, perhaps making a meager living as unskilled laborers. Others will fall into a crowd that keeps them involved in crime or other "antisocial", or however you want to describe it, behavior.
As harsh as this sounds, I agree. My brother is my personal example. He had 4-5 chances at rehabilitation. First it was small stuff like pawning my mom's jewelry then it was breaking and entering to the neighbors or my dad's truck or whatever as I've not heard all of the charges. The system gave him several breaks and it would last 6 months (or less) before he was at it again each time worse than the last. I am only grateful that he is in for the next 20 years so he cannot be even worse. Also as a juvenile the book was not thrown at him and was always released back to custody of my father who was very welcoming and tried his best but some people are beyond hope.
The only good thing that came from him was my nieces and even they didn't really turn out that great due to probably a twisted childhood and weird relation with dad.
As I understand it, that's very outdated information. These designs have been passively safe as of twenty years ago when they were pioneered by the integral fast reactor. The plant can lose all power and will not ever melt down; liquid metal reactors just don't work that way.
One of the key advantages that recommends fourth generation nuclear reactor technology is that the design eliminates much of the existing "waste" (it's really just ~$50T worth of unspent fuel we have laying around that could power the entire world for ~1000 years) that's been produced by past and current light water reactors. A better estimate would be in the 200 to 400 year range now. That's right; we're actually capable of getting rid of nuclear waste with nuclear reactors.
Yes that's still a good number of years, but estimates for global deaths per year caused just by particulate pollution from coal power plants range from a conservative 100,000 up to 3,000,000. How many people per year is nuclear currently killing? I was pretty incredulous to find this out, but the answer is zero. And given that they produce negligible CO2 as compared with fossil fuels, they are recommended by the climatologist who is largely responsible for drawing attention to climate change since the 1980s, James Hansen. The conclusion (begins on page 116 of this .rtf file) in his 2009 book is worth reading:
Ironically, traditional environmentalist movements that indiscriminately protested and continue to protest against any nuclear power technologies have effectively greenwashed the "clean coal" (wtf) mantra into existence because fossil fuel plants are the only other alternative for baseload. To me, this seems eerily similar to the protestation of tobacco companies that their products were causing cancer. We're still building coal power plants, but the CO2 sequestration they're currently talking about would require burning ~25% more coal to power the process, making it so uneconomical that it won't ever happen.
And since sodium-cooled fast reactors can also run on decommissioned nuclear weapons, decreasing the risk of nuclear proliferation, we have every reason to be using these technologies for baseload power and zero reasons not to. Given the choice, I'd rather live near a nuclear power plant than any other type. Perhaps I'd finally be able to get an electric car that would then be functionally carbon neutral, though maybe not avoiding the ecological damage externalized in the building such massive batteries. (That's something I still need to look into for myself. Anyone have any academic sources other than the Union of Concerned Scientists/Lobbyists?)
See NASA scientist, "the father of climate change," James Hansen's 2009 book entitled Storms of My Grandchildren. He's highly critical of models, though notes that they may be useful in certain specific scenarios. What he focuses more on is the geological record because models can only be as accurate as the information that goes into them.
I want to keep this brief, but I also want to quickly note that the cap and trade for greenhouse gases is business as usual for energy producers. Don't believe a word of it; the short story is that it worked poorly in preventing acid rain and won't work for combating climate change. We need a fee and dividend system that doesn't come back to us in tax breaks. I should note that Hansen comes across as very credible and apolitical; I don't trust anyone else when it comes to climate science.
