Gov Dayton

[Big Dave2]

Instead, maybe they should focus on the REALISTIC things that might be done. Like maybe patent reform (so that someone can't patent such obvious things like round corners on a smartphone -- and yes it has been done, just hasn't been enforced). Or cap the patent on a particular investment-recouping profit amount rather than a static timetable. I don't know there are tons of workable ideas.

[aanderud]

With all that is going on in the world, these are the hard hitting issues you want your legislature focusing on?

No. What I'm saying is that unless the LP gets their extreme views out of the way, they won't get my vote (or plenty of others). That's true even if they line up (for the most part) with my views on things like reduced spending, (generally) balanced budgets, education, isolationism and staying out of the world-police business, gay marriage, abortion, etc.

For instance, I've already said that I agree that deficits suck -- but making an amendment that requires a balanced budget won't cut it, because there are times when a deficit is unavoidable. WW2 comes to mind. In an IDEAL world, there would be no wars. And the LP wants to live in that ideal world and they make their platform as if they do. I live in reality, and so I can't vote for them because they aren't realistic.

Back to the patent thing....Abolishing patents? Come on. I'm an engineer, I'm not going to vote for any party that says they want to do this, even if I agreed with EVERY other thing they said. Period. I guess in a way it's sort of like a large percentage of women that won't vote for any GOP or DFL candidates because of their views on abortion (there are different groups on each side of course). Get realistic and talk reform rather than just being so idealistic all the time.

They'll get my vote when they show that they're a serious party by giving workable viewpoints on their platform, instead of saying they'll do things that can't possibly work in a country with 300 million folks that aren't all like-minded (or in some cases even civilized).

[swamptiger]

Quote:

Back to the patent thing....Abolishing patents? Come on. I'm an engineer, I'm not going to vote for any party that says they want to do this, even if I agreed with EVERY other thing they said. Period. I guess in a way it's sort of like a large percentage of women that won't vote for any GOP or DFL candidates because of their views on abortion (there are different groups on each side of course). Get realistic and talk reform rather than just being so idealistic all the time.

Just curious, if you are an engineer, do you work for a large corporation?

If so, have you ever came up with any inventions that were patented? And if you did, were you awarded the patent personally?

The reason I ask is because in most cases you would forfeit your right to any intellectual property through employment with the corporation. Your paper entity employer has just stolen/purchased your property rights, admittedly through a consensual agreement. But how can a paper entity really have any intellectual property rights?

[aanderud]

Back to the patent thing....Abolishing patents? Come on. I'm an engineer, I'm not going to vote for any party that says they want to do this

[delcecchi]

Just curious, if you are an engineer, do you work for a large corporation?

If so, have you ever came up with any inventions that were patented? And if you did, were you awarded the patent personally?

The reason I ask is because in most cases you would forfeit your right to any intellectual property through employment with the corporation. Your paper entity employer has just stolen/purchased your property rights, admittedly through a consensual agreement. But how can a paper entity really have any intellectual property rights?

The same way they have other property rights. Why are some of you guys so resistant to according intellectual property the same status as other property?

[Big Dave2]

No. What I'm saying is that unless the LP gets their extreme views out of the way, they won't get my vote (or plenty of others). That's true even if they line up (for the most part) with my views on things like reduced spending, (generally) balanced budgets, education, isolationism and staying out of the world-police business, gay marriage, abortion, etc.

[aanderud]

No. What I'm saying is that unless the LP gets their extreme views out of the way, they won't get my vote (or plenty of others). That's true even if they line up (for the most part) with my views on things like reduced spending, (generally) balanced budgets, education, isolationism and staying out of the world-police business, gay marriage, abortion, etc.

[swamptiger]

Quote:

I agreed to do the work required to obtain said patents for the corporation, and was paid a salary to do that work. It was a contract and both sides honored their agreement. They haven't 'stolen' anything from me. I guess you could say that they 'purchased' them via my salary. I wouldn't argue that description.

I would say if you are satisfied trading your ideas in exchange for a salary, that's a fair exchange. But in my mind, the corporation still benefits the most, since the length of your employment is limited, and the corporation could potentially benefit into eternity from your ideas, and those of your fellow employees, unless you received a royalty on the ideas for however long the idea was being used.

You probably had to sign a waiver of some sort, correct?

Quote:

But, that's different than abolishing all patents altogether, so that said inventions could be copied by anyone, anywhere, for free -- which is what the LP proposes

Where are you finding that? Not a member of the Libertarian Party, but just went to their HSOforum, and couldn't find that in their platform.

Maybe you could point it out to me.

http://www.lp.org/platform

[PurpleFloyd]

So, how do you feel, as someone with Libertarian tendencies, about Copyright and Patents? Or about Intellectual Property rights in general?

That there is already laws regulating them and that any disagreements should be handles by the court and not by legislators making more laws.

[Big Dave2]

Where are you finding that? Not a member of the Libertarian Party, but just went to their HSOforum, and couldn't find that in their platform.

Maybe you could point it out to me.

http://www.lp.org/platform

I was just about to ask the exact same thing.

[PurpleFloyd]

Instead, maybe they should focus on the REALISTIC things that might be done.

Or, in the case of the other two parties maybe you would be happier if they focused on things that never get done no matter who is in control or how realistic they are.

Congress doesn't have a low teen approval rating year after year because they get lots of realistic things done.

[Big Dave2]

Why are some of you guys so resistant to according intellectual property the same status as other property?

Because theoretically they are not necessarily the same.

http://freenation.org/a/f31l1.html

[aanderud]

Quote:

I agreed to do the work required to obtain said patents for the corporation, and was paid a salary to do that work. It was a contract and both sides honored their agreement. They haven't 'stolen' anything from me.

I would say if you are satisfied trading your ideas in exchange for a salary, that's a fair exchange. But in my mind, the corporation still benefits the most, since the length of your employment is limited, and the corporation could potentially benefit into eternity from your ideas, and those of your fellow employees, unless you received a royalty on the ideas for however long the idea was being used.

You probably had to sign a waiver of some sort, correct?

[PurpleFloyd]

Where are you finding that? Not a member of the Libertarian Party, but just went to their HSOforum, and couldn't find that in their platform.

Maybe you could point it out to me.

http://www.lp.org/platform

[Big Dave2]

No, the problem is because they line up with my ideals FOR THE MOST PART. Where they diverge is in their extreme stances that can't be realistically implemented and still keep our society functional. FDA should not be abolished. They should be reined in. Along with basically every other government entity.

So in other words, you are happy with the way things have been done for the last 40 years. That's fine. It's definitely your right to keep voting for Republicans.

[PurpleFloyd]

OK Maybe I exaggerate a bit. The platform doesn't necessarily explicitly say what I said, but plenty of mainstream Libertarians out in the wild propose it. It's all about unicorns and rainbows and freedom, man.

[swamptiger]

Quote:

You're dwelling on the patent thing, while I was only using intellectual property as ONE example of the MANY ways that Libertarians go to the extreme. I've mentioned several others (budgets, FDA, isolationism) as well. Beating a dead horse here isn't going to get me anywhere.

The question in regards to intellectual property was posed by Del, and I was attempting to answer it.

But I admit I do have a little hang-up with the wholesale exploitation of creative ideas in order to perpetrate/perpetuate a corporate monopoly. Maybe that's just me.

[PurpleFloyd]

If you are going to take talking points literally:

George Bush Sr- Read my lips... NO new taxes.

The 94 congress- Contract with America

George Bush Sr- We are not nation builders

Obama- If you like your policy......

[Big Dave2]

OK Maybe I exaggerate a bit. The platform doesn't necessarily explicitly say what I said, but plenty of mainstream Libertarians out in the wild propose it. It's all about unicorns and rainbows and freedom, man.

[PurpleFloyd]

Edit: Purple Floyd beat me to it I see.

He did throw it right over the plate.

[swamptiger]

There are extremes in every part of the political spectrum.

I think the reason the establishment and corporate collectivists view libertarians in general with suspicion is because of people like Noam Chomsky, who actually questions the validity of their existence in the present form. Chomsky identifies himself as a (left) libertarian socialist and anarcho-syndicalist.

Nancho: There are currently a lot of people in the States, people like Richard Grossman, David Korten, people at the International Forum on globalization, who have been focusing on big corporations as entities competing with human beings in the new ecology, entities that have overtaken our institutions, our media, our educational systems, and obviously taken over our political system. To counter this, they are trying to come up with new tactics and strategies that would essentially deprive corporate beings of the Bill of Rights protections they have acquired over the last century, like their right to free speech or political participation. What do you think of this particular approach to disempowering corporate bodies?

Noam Chomsky: Well, the questions that they and many others are raising are very appropriate and legitimate questions. Corporations were given the rights of persons around the beginning of this century not by legislation but by radical judicial activism: by decisions of courts and lawyers and intellectuals. There was no legislation. Radical courts just made new decisions that gave corporations the rights of persons which is outrageous.

The reasons for that were that in the latter part of the nineteenth century there were radical market failures which convinced everyone including business that free markets can't possibly function without destroying society and destroying their own profits. That is why many huge corporations were formed: to administer markets. Business wanted to do it itself so it did it internally through collectivist structures. That is what these corporations are, collectivist entities for administering markets and preventing market mechanisms from destroying everyone. They were given the rights of persons so that they could carry out these operations.

At the time this was bitterly attacked by the working class movements, who wanted to take over control of production themselves, and it was also bitterly attacked by conservatives, that is the classical liberals, people who were then called conservatives in English. There is no one any more who is a conservative though they still use the term. But a century ago there were conservatives, people who believed in classical liberal ideals and markets and human rights and that kind of thing, but now there is no one left, just the word. But a century ago there were people, real conservatives and they attacked the new corporate rights as a form of communism and that was basically accurate.

If you look at the intellectual origins of corporations, they lie in Hegelian ideas about the rights of organic entities over and above individuals. These are the same ideas that underlie fascism and bolshevism, so the conservative criticism was accurate. The idea was to eliminate individual rights in favor of the rights of great organic entities and administer markets, because markets cannot be allowed to run freely or they will destroy everything.

So a corporation is an organic entity which has rights as against the rights of real people, like people of flesh and blood. These are collectivist entities which are granted the rights of persons, though they of course overwhelm all individual persons, and their purpose is first of all to administer markets and also to transfer public power into private hands. That is what big corporations are and do.

There is now finally much talk about corporations getting too many rights, you know, being granted rights that go too far. Which is true - the new trade agreements and so on, which are not "free trade" agreements at all, are efforts to assign even greater rights to collectivist entities which are unaccountable to the public. They are tyrannies, in effect, big tyrannies.

Take a big corporation like General Electric, internally it is a tyranny. It is about as tyrannical as any human institution has ever been. It is a dictatorship run from the top down like a fascist state and it is as close to the totalitarian ideal as any body humans has created, and the same is true of every other big corporation. It also has the nice feature that the public doesn't know what it is doing and has nothing to say about what it is doing, so it is not accountable. And current international agreements, trade agreements, for example, are an attempt to give them even more power.

Now when these corporations, these tyrannies, were given the rights of persons -- which they never had before -- that meant they were given the right of free speech which means the right to advertise, the right to carry out massive propaganda, the right to buy elections, the right to control your mind, and so on. That is what it means to give free speech to a huge collectivist tyranny.

There is currently protest about these entities being given too many rights, but that is not really the right approach. It is like saying a slave owner is too brutal and he should be nicer to his slaves. Or that a tyranny is too oppressive and it should be a little less oppressive. That is not the right demand. Regarding tyrannies or slave owners, we should not say they should be nicer, we must say that the institution itself should not exist.

The proposals that are being made are good in that they are opening up these questions for discussion. But there are two things that should be kept in mind. First, the problem is not that these corporations have too many rights, it is that they have any rights at all. The second point is that there is no use just saying let us put an end to these tyrannies. You have to have an alternative that is ready to operate. There have to be organized popular movements in the work force and in the communities that are ready to take over from these bodies and run the society in a free and democratic fashion.

[Big Dave2]

Quote:

The 98 Percent of Americans Who Don’t Vote Libertarian Spoil Elections for Everyone Else.

The major parties are the true problem.

A. Barton Hinkle | November 12, 2014

Conventional wisdom maintains that Republicans tend to steal the most votes from Libertarian Party candidates. After all, Republicans usually talk a good game about economic freedom. GOP candidates routinely praise job-creating entrepreneurs, denounce the heavy burden of government regulation, and—like libertarians—contend economic growth does more to alleviate poverty than redistributing wealth does.

Come election time, the conservative effort to siphon the libertarian vote sometimes grows explicit. When Sarvis ran for governor of Virginia last year, some voices on the right tried to argue he was an imposter. The true libertarian in the race, they said, was Republican nominee Ken Cuccinelli.

“Sarvis a libertarian?” asked National Review. “Nope. The Virginia gubernatorial candidate is a social liberal.” (But a libertar—oh, never mind.) The conservative Red State blog concurred, calling Sarvis a “phony libertarian.” “Ken Cuccinelli’s policies show a strong libertarian streak,” argued a piece in the Washington Examiner. An item in The Daily Caller agreed, accusing libertarians of “running a sacrificial lamb candidate as a spoiler” who would help elect “a real crony capitalist,” Democrat Terry McAuliffe.

“It is now clear,” the piece continued, that “the majority of Robert Sarvis’ votes will come at the expense of Cuccinelli.”

As National Review would say: nope. According to exit polls, only 3 percent of self-described conservatives voted for Sarvis. By contrast, 7 percent of self-described liberals voted for him. If Sarvis had dropped out of the race, then McAuliffe would have won even bigger. On the other hand, if conservatives, especially those professing to care about libertarian values, had voted for Sarvis instead of Cuccinelli, then McAuliffe would have lost. Way to blow the election, guys!

Funny thing about those professing to care about libertarian values. This year the Republican candidate, Ed Gillespie, came from the more establishment wing of the GOP, and could not be mistaken for a libertarian even on a moonless night. This made Sarvis the undisputed libertarian in the race. Yet those conservatives who last year urged support for Cuccinelli because he was ostensibly the real libertarian did not, this year, urge support for Sarvis. You can’t help thinking their unctuous concern last year for the cause of pure libertarianism might not have been wholly sincere. (It is of course dismaying to contemplate the prospect that not everything in politics is always wholly sincere. But we must be grown-ups and admit the possibility, however remote.)

Democrats also compete for the libertarian vote. Like libertarians, they favor less military action abroad. They also talk a good game on social issues such as gay marriage, civil liberties, and the war on drugs. When he ran for president, Barack Obama was particularly emphatic on the need to restore those constitutional rights that had been eroded by the war on terror. Once in office, though, he became an enthusiastic supporter of the Patriot Act and other tools of the leviathan state.

Mark Warner seems to find this less troubling than some other Democrats do, just as he is untroubled by market interventions such as the Export-Import Bank—for which he voiced support earlier this year. And because Gillespie was less strident on social issues than Cuccinelli—but also less forceful in support of economic freedom—Warner and Gillespie took votes from Sarvis in more equal measure. According to exit polls, Sarvis got 3 percent of the vote among self-described conservatives, 3 percent of the vote among self-described moderates, and 3 percent of the vote among self-described liberals.

On the other hand, while zero percent of self-identified Democrats voted for Sarvis, 3 percent of self-identified Republicans did. This has led to some of the same recrimination on the right as last year. While conceding Sarvis is “a serious, well-qualified guy,” for instance, Power Line—a prominent conservative blog—spoke for many when it accused him of becoming “a professional spoiler.”

But a spoiler of what? A spoiler of GOP hopes, is the implication. The response to that is twofold. First, that premise is often wrong. And second: Even when it is right, so what?

The reason libertarians don’t vote for candidates from the two major parties is not because they suffer from a false consciousness that leads them to misapprehend their own political preferences. The reason they don’t vote for Republicans or Democrats is because—brace yourself now—they don’t want either Republicans or Democrats to win.

As far as libertarians are concerned, the 2 percent of Americans who vote libertarian don’t spoil an election. Rather, the 98 percent of Americans who don’t vote libertarian are the ones who spoil it for everyone else.

[swamptiger]

[delcecchi]

You, BigDave and Jonathan Gruber seem to be united in your contempt for the American voter.

What is your solution, given that you think the voters are too stupid to know what is good for them?

Are you also against jury trials, since the jury pool comes from those same voters?

[PurpleFloyd]

You, BigDave and Jonathan Gruber seem to be united in your contempt for the American voter.

What is your solution, given that you think the voters are too stupid to know what is good for them?

Are you also against jury trials, since the jury pool comes from those same voters?

Ask Ron Goldman

[Uncle Bill]

Someone should inform Dave that the Libertarian party is dead.

Flat-line.

Toast.

Ka-put.

Sorry, Dave.

[Big Dave2]

You, BigDave and Jonathan Gruber seem to be united in your contempt for the American voter.

What is your solution, given that you think the voters are too stupid to know what is good for them?

I'll remember that and ask you the same question the next time you post about "low information voters".

[Big Dave2]

Someone should inform Dave that the Libertarian party is dead.

Flat-line.

Toast.

Ka-put.

Sorry, Dave.

If you think that Libertarianism isn't gaining ground, you are as wrong as you have ever been. Some Republican politicians are slowly changing stances to be more in line with the values of Libertarians. Ever heard of the Tea Party?

[delcecchi]

Sorry, you must have me confused with someone else.

[PurpleFloyd]

Someone should inform Dave that the Libertarian party is dead.

Flat-line.

Toast.

Ka-put.

Sorry, Dave.

No, that is the Tea Party.