Politicians don't get educated. They get bought. Do you have as much money as copyright industry? No? Then, no, you can't have your sensible laws. You'll have theirs. The only action you can take is to ignore those unenforcible.
Or, they get threatened with loss of their seats. Which is accomplished by educating the population.
It's a lot more gratifying to live in this conspiratorial world where a romanticized resistance against our corporate overlords is the only way, but it's not a useful mental model for actually succeeding at anything.
> Or, they get threatened with loss of their seats.
They get seats by spending money on campaigns. Public is easily manipulated by political marketing. The only thing that could put them out of there seats would be more money spent for a smear campaign against them.
> It's a lot more gratifying to live in this conspiratorial world where a romanticized resistance against our corporate overlords is the only way, but it's not a useful mental model for actually succeeding at anything.
As opposed to romanticized world where money (got from industry) put into political marketing has no effect on votes and you achieve political goals by educating voters (at no cost other than your sincere effort)?
Let's play a game. It's called "NAME! YOUR! REPRESENTATIVES!!!!".
We'll start with the easiest and work our way up (subjectively):
1) Who's the President?
2) Who's your Governor?
3) Who's your Mayor?
4) Who are your Senators?
5) Who's your Representative?
6) Who's your State Senator?
7) Who's your State Representative/Assembly member?*
I ask these questions every time someone brings up their "The system is rigged, maaaaan". I've only found a handful of people that could name their Representative. Most people can't even name their senators. I always find it fascinating how people are able to trash talk their representatives when they don't even know who they are.
The way system is setup, there is no way someone who cares for me is in any of those positions, because I did nothing to put them there, and nor did anyone who voted for them. They did it themselves and got help from people who they can help back.
You can waste your time knowing about these people and trying to get them to do something which you think is good for everyone even though there are powerful people who pay him to not do it, or spend the time to be one day in a position to get them to do something good for you by paying them.
I think the latter will be much more effective and long term that you don't need to know anything or anyone. You just need to find the person who has that power. When that person is no longer in power, just find the next one who is. If you never need those people, even better that you didn't spend time on any of those shitheads.
But you have the power to vote and that is the power which puts them there eventually, directly or indirectly. Even if you did nothing, your power to vote DOES influence that entire chain of people. So, next time you decide to vote for your local politician, do a thorough research about him/her and make sure you are choosing the right candidate, for your decision affects others too. Imagine how many reviews, ratings, articles, research papers you read on the internet before buying a laptop or an iphone or android phone! Even if you spend a tenth of that effort in researching the politician, the whole country will benefit from that!
There are already people to do this - League of Women Voters and their voter guide, for example. But another voter guide specifically aimed at illuminating issues not covered by other guides is always a worthy endeavor.
Yep. It doesn't even need to be in depth. "Here's who I voted for and why" in a blog post is enough to give even the most basic of information about a candidate, as well as just remind people it's voting season.
Only three of those people have influence over copyright law. And what does it matter if I know their names? Despite the propaganda, one vote doesn't make a difference.
I still vote, but I'm also pretty sure it's a waste of my time. It's one of those game theory things. If everyone got out to vote it would be good, but my individual contribution is unimportant.
The point was that if you can't answer, many others can't either. And all of their votes can make a difference.
Even the people who turn out for Presidential elections (when their votes arguably make the least difference) usually don't know enough and their legislative representatives to make an informed decision, and tend not to show up for the off-year elections when it's only those offices up.
> and tend not to show up for the off-year elections when it's only those offices up
In 2014, Senator Jeff Sessions R-Ala. was "elected" without an opponent. In that same year, 32 other Representatives were "elected" without any opposition, my own Representative included. 28 more didn't have a "major party" opponent. That means ~14% of all Representatives had little or no competition.
>They get seats by spending money on campaigns. Public is easily manipulated by political marketing. The only thing that could put them out of there seats would be more money spent for a smear campaign against them.
This is overly simplistic. If it were exclusively about cash resources, the most cash-rich candidates would win every time. We know that doesn't happen. Yes, money does play an important role (because it costs money to run ads, print signage, get people to hang said signage, staff phone banks, etc. -- not because there's some reptilian overlord that has to be paid before he lets you become POTUS), but it's not the only role.
More important than money is to control a media outlet that the general public trusts. Pundits have more power than politicians because it's so easy for them to generate outrage. ABC, CBS, NBC, and the cable channels really hold the bulk of political sway in this country. They can frame not only the political discourse, but all significant social discourse, in the terms that they prefer. The internet is dampening and decentralizing their power a bit, which is why non-establishment candidates like Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders were able to gain any traction at all, but their influence is still massive.
>If it were exclusively about cash resources, the most cash-rich candidates would win every time.
Correct me if I'm wrong but haven't the past 3 presidential elections been won by the candidate with the biggest cash flow?
And yes, of course it is not the only factor as you noted, media coverage is crucial and information via the internet is rapidly becoming a more important factor. But the problem is: the same people who own and operate these massive media corporations also own the internet infrastructure and are also the ones who are pouring massive amounts of bribes/funding into the elections.
>Correct me if I'm wrong but haven't the past 3 presidential elections been won by the candidate with the biggest cash flow?
First, correlation is not causation. Second, this chart [0] shows Romney and Obama were neck-and-neck as far as dollars raised, and that Romney actually had spent slightly more than Obama. This chart says it covers through September 2012, so maybe Obama did end up spending a bit more (or maybe he didn't), but the difference in spending is very small.
When you ask why Romney lost in 2012, there are a couple answers that get cited. First, Romney's leaked "47% comment" was disastrous for him. Second, Obama's team used technology much more effectively to get out the vote. Apparently there was a group working on software on Romney's side, but it wasn't managed correctly and the software was not usable by election day.
Only in the same way law of conservation of energy is overly simplistic.
All the people that say "It's not only about money!" then give examples which boil down to "Tt's also how you spend it!" to which I can only reply "Duh!"
The fact of the matter is we've always lived in a 50/50 conspiracy world. Sure, its never as bad as the worst extreme we can think of, but its always half as bad. Not even Stalin's dictatorship, which is what 1984 is based on, was as bad as 1984.
1984 was not based on Stalin's dictatorship. There seems to be a common misconception among too many people who've heard this parroted, erroneously assuming that because Orwell was strongly wary of, and frequently wrote about, totalitarianism, this must mean he was writing about Stalin specifically. He was not. In fact, 1984 was written just as much about the UK and USA as it was totalitarian fascism and Stalinism. This is borne out in his letters. 1984 was focused on what Orwell believed might happen to the world if the atomic showdown was inconclusive (a rough paraphrase of one of his remarks in a letter). It was written as a tale of what would happen when the West—specifically the UK and USA—would find themselves challenged and take the attractive slide away from democratically operated [socialist] society toward strengthening and worshipping millionaires and "petty fuhrers", leading to outright totalitarianism that offered stability, predictability, and controlled externalities, all of which would provide simpler, thoughtless, controlled selves.
For more directly from Orwell in one of his letters considered to foreshadow 1984's thesis, see here:
1984 is definitely influenced from the state propaganda Orwell saw coming out the Soviet Union such as the book character Emmanuel Goldstein who is quite obviously Trotsky, and the state rewriting history by editing Goldstein out of party photographs is Trotsky again, the idea of loving a leader and hating the party, many more parallels.
It's written as a warning of how futile it will be to resist totalitarianism in a future advanced technological state
To your first paragraph, we are not in disagreement. Parallels and influences found in particular plot points is not the same thing as the GP's statement that 1984 was based on Stalin. It was not. Read Orwell's letters.
> It's written as a warning of how futile it will be to resist totalitarianism in a future advanced technological state.
You fundamentally misunderstand 1984 and Orwell himself. The notion of the futility of resisting totalitarianism never would have been uttered or thought by Orwell. He absolutely and tirelessly championed resisting totalitarianism. He wrote a great many words on the subject. He never warned anyone of the futility of resistance in his prior works, and he certainly didn't push himself to death to deliver 1984 as such a warning. There is a vast difference between you, the reader, determining that Winston's resistance is futile—particularly in the hindsight of O'Brien's exposé at the end—and suggesting that Orwell was warning the reader that resistance is futile.
I've read the letters, Hitchens books on Orwell, listened to his lectures on Orwell, read Orwell's essays, and his books. The message is to me, that resistance is hopelessly futile once totalitarianism is firmly entrenched and the state has absolute power over humanity itself. That's why Winston is broken and loves Big Brother at the end of the book, because there was no other possible outcome.
It's a warning that if you don't stop it by recognizing it's rise through dictatorship over language, over emotions, and finally over thought it will be impossible to resist. Well, that is what I (and apparently Hitchens) see in his writing. I also see plenty of parody, especially towards Emmanual Goldstein and his book (Trotsky), purges blaming foreign conspiracy, and the illogical party slogans.
Well, now you've actually elaborated with enough description to qualify your statement that, again, we are not in disagreement. It's quite odd to me that your first statement carried the tone of disagreement, while this reply offers enough substantive explanation to indicate we agree. Substance is key. The appeals to Hitchens, however, do read as an unnecessary argument to authority. There's a clear distinction between stating resistance is futile generally, and arguing it is futile against a thorough totalitarianism that has gained control over humanity itself.
Money doesn't override voters, but it can make decisions that the voters don't care about. How many voters care enough to check up on their Congressional representatives' views on copyright? And how many lobbyists do?
And this cynicism about the system only makes the problem worse. Why check up on votes on banking regulations if you think the donors are going to decide it anyway?
If you take the low road every time, then the best you can hope for is a world in which everyone takes the low road all the time. I don't want to live in that world. In this case, the low road probably won't even get you where you want to go, so you're not even reaping a tangible benefit from it.
It is fairly self-evident that we can't get purely self-interested and sufficiently coordinated with anyone who could displace them from their positions (in the sense that they value keeping their own bribes over denying their opponents bribes) politicians to support any measure that would actually make them no longer receive bribes.
If one of the two assumptions above fails: assuming we can legally define what exactly constitutes a bribe (and I imagine this is not a solved problem), it probably would be possible to pass a law that says that if you can prove as a politican that you were offered or given a bribe (for a sum n), the bribe-offering party gets fined (say) 100n (aiming for their economic destruction), of which 5n is given to you (thus incentivising you to report bribes) and some token amount is given to everyone else serving in the same elected body as you (to incentivise everyone to vote for the law).
The potential problem is that now you've created one of those loophole things. Now publically bribe the official n/105 of what you actually want, and it's totally legal!
> The potential problem is that now you've created one of those loophole things. Now publically bribe the official n/105 of what you actually want, and it's totally legal!
That would still reduce the influence by >95% because you have to pay 105x and the politician only gets 5x.
The actual problem is that if a politician is known for reporting bribes then they won't be offered any, so taking 1x every time is still more profitable than taking 5x once.
Well, if the law is set up in such a fashion that you can "keep receipts" and report retroactively to enjoy the full benefits, you would still have an incentive to dredge everything up the moment you retire (and put the extra 4x lifetime bribe earnings into your retirement fund or bequeath them to your kids), and while the crackdown would be delayed, the bribing parties would still eventually come under the hammer (so unless there is some way for them to take and run with their short-term earnings leaving a shell company to be punished, there would not be an incentive for them to bribe in the first place).
1) How can we build more resilient technologies so that copyright law becomes irrelevant? (And note that we already have some candidates - like IPFS)
2) What technologies do we need so that we do not need politicians? For example, is it possible to create nation-states that are small (think hundreds of thousands of people) and allow people to create their own easily?
If we could reliably track politicians' money flows, their opinions, their comments and their actual actions in a system that's easily queriable, it might just be easy enough for the common people to be more aware of their rulers.
1 - If you make them more expensive then only the truly wealthy will be able to buy them. Yes, they exist
2 - Corruption is a matter mainly of personal ethics and perception of things around you. Of course it's hard to turn down heavily compensated engagements or other types of 'incentives' given by big players. Especially when everybody does it. It's really an issue of Game Theory
But seriously. Starting idea: Build a website that does some well analytics and makes it clear when politicians chose profit and special interests over the good of the people. I know some sites do this, but I haven't seen any executed well enough to reach the right people.
Really 'good of the people' is a very dangerous concept. And what exactly is a special interest? People interested in copyright reform is a special interest just as people interested in copyright preservation is a special interest.
Lenin was obstesibly starting a revolution for the 'good of the people.' Cuba did as well.. The good of the people there has resulted in an average monthly income of $20.
Don't knock the special interests.. EFF and Wiki are both examples of special interests just as much as the special interests of the publishing industry.
The book Economics in One Lesson is certainly worth reading..
>> "Politicians don't get educated. They get bought. Do you have as much money as copyright industry? No? Then, no, you can't have your sensible laws. You'll have theirs. The only action you can take is to ignore those unenforcible."
Then you need to fix your political system before you can fix the law. As an outsider looking in it seems like sorting out how campaigns are financed would be a good first step and that seems like something Bernie Sanders wants to and probably can fix. So the opportunity is there for you to take if the issue is important enough to you.
