No.

I just bought some chinese knock-off rapha shorts to go with my ralpha jersey.

They're gonna put you in the Gulag :mad:

I do want that Ralpha jersey though lol

You make is sounds like companies need profits to write checks to their employees, or something.

It's well established that profits are not tied to employee pay in any meaningful way.

If profits don't benefit people, what do they benefit?

Tisn't, though. If a company loses money it usually goes out of business and stops paying employees. And employees aren't the only people involved. Investors are people, too.

Not for the purposes of designing a healthy society, they aren't.

Increased profits have never, ever been shown to lead to higher employee pay.

So where do those profits go?

And how do you pay employees if you lose money?

To investors, obviously. And as I said, I don't acknowledge them as people for the purposes of this discussion.

Regarding the second question, the company either loses more money, or they lay them off. Just like they would if they decided they wanted to absorb the employees salary as additional profit.

edit: Seeing as how we've ventured well into P/R territory, might as well just go whole hog and attempt to resolve it.

Essentially, you are arguing from a perspective that assumes the idea of trickle down economics, supply side theory, whatever you want to call it, is a legitimate form of economic thought. It is not. It has been disproved numerous times over the decades through data looking at the impact of economic policy. It just is not valid - period. Assisting corporations does not benefit workers in any meaningful way.

So really, it comes down to who do you want to be the beneficiary of our economic system? I will always side with the working people of the country, over investors of corporations.

Those are some sweet moving goalposts ya got there.

Unless, of course, those people are artists, writers, musicians, software engineers, graphic artists, or anyone else who earns their living from their intellectual property.

That's a fair point.

However, can you point to anyone who has actually personally suffered because their own intellectual property was degraded through copyright infringement? I'd be genuinely interested in seeing an example.

You're just saying that because for-profit hospitals have demonstrably worse outcomes than not-for-profit hospitals.

You sir, are what I think they call a 'pot stirrer.' :)

I was reading an article yesterday about how more people die at for-profit hospitals for any given procedure.

Profit and executive pay are large expenses. Quality has to go down to make room for them, at least at a given price point.

My mom worked as a teacher in Texas for 30 years or so. Texas teachers aren't allowed to participate in Social Security. Their retirement is handled by TRS, which invests their money deducted from their paychecks. My mom is a person for the purposes of any discussion.

But if the company fails to profit, the workers will stop being paid. There is no free lunch. Ultimately someone has to sell something. If that thing can't be sold because it is easy to copy and laws don't exist to protect it or aren't enforced then that thing won't be made and the people who make it won't have jobs. This may seem very abstract to you but it's as concrete as eating.

No I'm not. I'm arguing that information can have value, and that the effort expended to produce that information should also have value. This has nothing to do with supply side theory.


Corporations will exist with or without supply side economics. The two are orthogonal.

This isn't black and white. My mom is both.

Someone Stole My Book! - Manning Wolfe

I downloaded a .pdf of Jobst Brandt's wheel building book from the internet after he died and didn't pay a nickel for it.

In the US, copyright on a book lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. Anyone care to defend that arbitrary and ridiculously long term?

Why don't you ask that of his heirs?

Why? They didn't write the book.

That's up to you to decide, but since you ask my opinion yes it's very foolish waste of money for most people, even for most avid cyclers. Still not as foolish as buying 3000 dollar bag or piece of jewelry you only wear once or twice, if EVER. My mom does that all the time. Of course it is not much money to her I guess, so whatever.

Awesome. I am not a fool. I don't feel it was a waste of my money because I got just what I wanted. And I am hoping it will be the last rode bike I ever buy. Knock on wood, if course. I am not really a collector of things. I have two functional bikes that serve different purposes. One is an off- the-shelf bike for commuting and loaded touring. The other is for road rides. I do have a old folding bike in the basement that serves as my backup commuter when the other one is whisking its way out west for the start of a tour.

"The family didn't make the money - why should they get it after ________ dies?"

"The family didn't build the company - why should they get it after ________ dies?"

:rolleyes:

There is something to be said for the argument that copyright protection was not originally intended to create an income stream for you, your children and your grandchildren. Are there really writers out there who are not going to write books unless that is the case?

The argument goes that sometimes/often, great works (works worthy of protection) are not appreciated as such during the lifetime of the author/creator.

That "great work" aspect is something that's a bit missing from all but Abe's comments here.

The grant of IP protection is the grant of an anticompetitive monopoly.

If you're a free market kind of guy, then economically/policy-basis, you don't want to be giving monopolies as a general matter--monopolies are generally inefficient--and so we should allow monopolies only on a case-by-case basis if there's some overriding concern.

Thank you for the rolleyes emoji. It's a sure sign that I'm not making my point very clearly. I'll try again.

People on this thread have argued that we need IP protection so innovators can make a living. If that's the argument, how do you reconcile that with the actual law which grants protection for 70 years after the innovator dies? [MENTION=186391]indyfabz[/MENTION] sums it up nicely.