Capitalists Behaving Badly

The goal of any (for profit) enterprise is to make money.  This is written into law in the United States (it’s called “fiduciary duty”, and it exists to protect the shareholders.)  Under the traditional scheme of things, the normal process is that you build a better mousetrap (or lots of really cheap mousetraps), then you sell it at a price that will make you the most money: a single $1000 mousetrap and a thousand $1 mousetraps will have the same impact on your bottom line, so you need to find the happy medium that will make the most money.

The software industry has adopted a different model, however, one that other entertainment and digital content industries are trying hard to emulate.  In 1908, the Supreme Court recognized the so-called First-sale doctrine, which was later codified in copyright law in 1976.  In essence, the doctrine allows someone who has purchased a copyrighted work to sell that particular copy of the copyrighted work without the copyright holder’s permission and without the copyright holder gaining any further compensation.  This is why publishers are unable to halt the legal trade of used books, movies, music and some software (especially games, console games in particular.)  The software industry managed to do a partial end-run around the first-sale doctrine by changing the verbiage from one of a “sale” to one of a “license”.  Even there, however, they couldn’t completely subvert the 1976 law, they could only make it more cumbersome.

 

On Moral Cowardice

I happen to be in the unique position of being a civil libertarian who also happens to be a practicing Catholic.  In practical terms, that means that my sense of right and wrong, of ethics and morality, is shaped by my faith and by Catholic teaching.  It also means I’m a firm believer in the separation of church and state, and that I am opposed to legislation born exclusively of faith-based morality.  This bears some explanation.

 

Promises Broken or Kept?

Late last week, Senate Republicans successfully filibustered President Obama’s nomination of Goodwin Liu to the federal bench.  This marked the first Republican block of one of Obama’s judicial nominees, and the first block of any judicial nominee since 2005.  Democrats, obviously, are quite upset by this, claiming that Liu deserved a straight up-or-down vote.

 

The Optional Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

What exactly does the Fourth Amendment mean?  Historically, that has meant that certain places and items were considered “private”, and that the state has no authority to enter, search or seize anything from that area without a judicial warrant that explains, with specificity, what is to be searched and seized (and possibly whom to arrest.)  In other words, you have a Constitutional right to deny law enforcement access to your home unless they can produce a search or arrest warrant.  Now, in certain cases, the warrant requirement can be waived, but only under a very specific set of circumstances, all of which involve urgency and immediacy and a response that simply cannot wait for a warrant (one thinks of gunshots or frantic screams for help.)

 

Intellectual Property and Such

The semester is over, and I had more fun than I thought I would.  In fact, I’m signed up to take another photography course next fall.  Yay!

Before I continue, those of you who follow the political side of my blog know that I’ve got certain leanings and opinions and such, and I’m fairly live-and-let-live regarding what I post.  I also know that a lot of people (and corporations) are not.  Therefore, to make sure there is no confusion about anything, every black and white photo on this blog under the “Photography” category was taken by me (Joe Reimers), in most cases in the context of furthering my education.  But those pictures are definitely my intellectual property, and are, in fact, copyrighted to me, except to the extent required by my instructor and educational institution for the sole purposes of furthering my education.

 

Choosing Wisely

Our final projects are due next Wednesday.  Because my wedding anniversary is coming up (yay!) my last chance to do any printing is this evening.  I’ve got to choose 6 San Francisco pictures, and I have to choose my top 10 prints for the semester (meaning I’ll need to have between 10 and 16 prints total.)  Narrowing things down is going to be difficult.  I’ve already decided on 2 items to print, but am I happy with the rest?

I’ll post some of my choices later on.

 

A very brief update

I’ve been intending to update my photography section a lot more frequently, but it just hasn’t happened as planned.  Life kinda gets in the way, you know?  At any rate, my class is coming to an end, but I might be taking another photography class next fall.  I had a lot more fun with it than I thought I would.

 

Wisconsin: Anatomy of a Legislative End-Run

Within the past couple of hours, the Wisconsin State Senate (or, more accurately, the Republicans in the Wisconsin State Senate) found a procedural way to bypass the Democratic walkout and pass the bill that would all but eliminate collective bargaining for Wisconsin public employees.  Governor Walker campaigned on this premise, and wasted no time in pushing it through the (heavily Republican) state legislature.  Because they didn’t have the votes to block or even delay the bill, the Senate Democrats chose to leave the state, denying the Senate the quorum needed to pass the bill.  The two sides had been at an impasse for nearly three weeks, preferring to stare each other down rather than engage in any sort of meaningful negotiation (the governor’s effective “neener neener” didn’t help matters much.)  But at the end of the day, the Republicans found a loophole and exploited it.

 

Railroaded

In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama called for spending $53,000,000,000 to develop high-speed railroad networks in certain parts of the country, with a long-term goal of offering high-speed railroad access to 80% of Americans.  In fact, this is something Obama has been pushing from very early in his administration.  My question is, why?  For most Americans, trains won’t replace automotive travel.  If anything, it would “replace” air travel.  On top of that, train travel has the additional benefits of being both slower and more expensive while not offering notable ecological benefit.  High-speed railroads in France and Japan are struggling to break even, much less be profitable.

In his Newsweek op-ed piece, George Will claims it’s part of a bigger, progressive behavior-modification plan.  I’m not sure I’d go that far.  I do think there’s a certain romance to the rails, and there’s a long national history tying railroads with progress.  For moving freight, railroads are fine, but they’ve become woefully outmoded as mass people-movers.  Local and regional trains are one thing: spending $22 round-trip to get from South Bend to downtown Chicago and back in around 2 hours isn’t bad at all, especially considering you’d spend a lot more time and money dealing with airports.  But once you get beyond commuter distances, it stops being worthwhile.  When I was going to school in Washington, DC, I had the option of flying home or taking the train.  I took the train once and flew the rest of the time.  Flying was faster, cheaper and more comfortable by a wide margin.

High-speed rail won’t appeal to people in a hurry because airplanes travel much, much faster, often for the same or somewhat lower cost.  And it won’t appeal to people on a budget because buses are much, much cheaper and don’t take that much longer (usually.)  So why do we want to dump $53B into it, on top of other money the government tried to hand out to states as development grants (which were rejected by WI, OH and FL?)  I just don’t get it.

 

My personal experience with unions

Those of you who know me know I’m no friend of labor unions, although I do readily support the right of workers to organize.  What you may not know is that I was once actually involved in a (failed) effort to organize, and that involvement has gone a long way in forming my overall opinion of the labor movement.  Having said that, I’ve never actually been a member of a union, nor have I worked for an employer with an active labor union (to my knowledge, anyway.)