Human Advancement

Response to J Neil Schulman on Copyright

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:16:25 -0700

J Neil Schulman writes

For now I would be entirely satisfied if libertarians and anarchists recognized my property rights in the things I create and respected my right to license copies, using no other enforcement mechanism than social preferencing.

"Rights" to me, and I think to a lot of people, implies things that are legitimately addressed by force.

Here's what I do recognize: the creator of a work has moral ownership of it, at the very least the link between his name and the creation should not be severed. (And every one of the alternative business models that have been proposed, some of which I think are very viable, rely on that link being maintained.)

Copies made and sold under false pretenses, such as a claim that the author authorized the copy, is fraud.

Modified work presented as the author's own work is fraud.

Unmodified work presented as the product of someone other than the original author is fraud.

Modified work, such as parody, commentary, or other fair use should maintain the link between the author and the original work, as well as to acknowledge the modifications as not the original work.

It is immoral to try to make money from another's work at the expense of sales by the original author, but this does not preclude all copying nor distribution as immoral.

It is immoral, and ultimately self-destructive, to always seek value for nothing.

None of this has clear lines, and much of how these principles apply to a given concrete situation will always remain subjective.

Enforcement of any of this is immoral, both by the above, and because enforcement in any but small numbers of edge cases, is not possible without prior restraint or a requirement to prove innocence. Social sanctions are the only way to discipline behavior toward those principles, and that relies on how people evaluate the behaviors.

Libertarians will generally tolerate casual copying, convenience copying, sampling, parodying, previewing, and transient copying....

But, they should have a very low tolerance for abusive copying, such as seeking to parasitize an author's sales, changing the work in such a way as to undermine its original intent without being blazingly clear it is a parody, or just seeking to take a lot of value without giving any in return. They should be ready and willing to use social sanctions to address this. It should be uncool to admit that you torrented 500 songs and never sent a dime to any of the artists.

Artists, on the other hand, should, though obviously cannot be forced to, do several things:

Make it easy to pay for something. Often the price of a movie or song in money pales in comparison to the indirect costs involved in buying it legitimately, such as figuring out how to actually effect payment, DRM and other "protect my computer from me" BS, and arcane pointless rules about copies for backups, car vs work vs home, multiple computers, and time-shifting. Just stop. If I buy a copy of something the copy is mine to do with whatever I please.

Stop expecting the market price of work to be maintained anywhere near the level that the media companies, with the help of their captured legislatures, have set. Those days are long gone, and will not come back. So long as artists and media companies try to hold on to them, crass pirating will continue and expand, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Social pressure works both ways, if you expect people to pay on the honor system, start charging honorable prices and cut out the dishonorable middle men.

Stop threatening casual copiers, and work on converting them to paying customers through incentives and persuasion. Accept that there will be free-riders, that nothing you could ever do will stop that, except to stop producing. Understand that people who become fans from free downloads are likely to eventually become paying customers of not just the music, but live performances, special packages, merchandising, etc., especially after they get out of high school and get jobs. (BTW, Microsoft has admitted that they are a 12-figure company *because of* pirating. It locked in millions of people to Windows products. )

Stop expecting artistic work to be a possible golden ticket to untold wealth without ever lifting a another finger. The Beatles and Michael Jackson were a fringe side-effect of a state granting of IP privilege that never existed as rights, back when there was no internet to call their bluff.

There are viable non-IP business models that can allow good artists to make a living, and mediocre artists to make some money.
Find one that does not rely on state-enforced IP. IP, for the arts at least, is a dead letter regardless of what libertarians say. It's a buggy whip, and the only market for it ten years from now will be sado-masochists. Deal with it and move on, or expect to keep getting smacked around. There is no "safe word" for economic pain.

Stop looking at fans of your work as enemies. And fans, stop looking at the producers of the art you love as milch cows or mindless automotons who are and always will be just categorical "artists". They can always become plumbers if the pay is better. But hey, maybe John Mayer will whistle a tune while he is unclogging your sink some day.

Autodidactic and Alternative Schooling Meta-Learning

Sun, 6 Jun 2010 18:12:52 -0700

In self-teaching a variety of subjects (including the one I am currently employed with), I�ve come across several common obstacles. Even the best self-learning materials fail to address all of these consistently, and it is one of the most difficult things about learning a subject on one�s own.

For just about any subject out there, a wealth of information can be found on the internet and the bookstore. Finding sufficient material is not usually a problem, even for relatively obscure subjects. For instance, I learned how to disassemble and clean a pre-WWII Czechoslovakian rifle via a YouTube video.

It is not in the actual material about the subject where the difficulty comes in. The difficulty is in the mata-information that is needed in order to systematically learn a complex subject. Learning the subject is easy, learning how to learn the subject can be daunting, and in some cases has been difficult enough to discourage or delay my taking on that subject.

This is a difficulty faced by homeschoolers as well as self-learners. It is, in my opinion, one of the most valuable services a good school provides. Perhaps the most valuable service. It is something that has to be given up when teaching is taken out of the hands of professionals and those with direct experience in a subject. Because the public school system is failing us in so many regards, it is also a business opportunity for those who can provide it.

I would like to systematize the approach to meta-learning. Though I won�t be able to do so fully here, I hope to at least start the effort, and/or to draw out information that I might not be aware of from those reading this. My hope is that materials can be developed, aimed at both self-learners and homeschoolers, that can aid in getting past these obstacles so that the learners and teachers can move on to the main business of learning and teaching the subject at hand.

This would allow the self-learner to more fully self-direct his learning. Rather than being bound to the path set by a book or an online course, he could choose from among all the available materials those that suit his needs and preferences best. Additionally, he could better coordinate his learning of multiple subjects that might depend on one another, or have overlapping fields of knowledge.

The obstacles I have come across fall into four categories. Not all of them are a problem for all self-learning efforts. Some available materials do address some of them fairly well, and few fail to address any of them. But I can�t think of any that I have encountered that cover all of them well, nor in a systematic way. Anyone entering into the study of a given subject would do well to recognize that he will have to address each of these categories, and to take the time before beginning study to understand them as they apply to his subject.

1. Prerequisites and Ordering

Pre-requisites are those things that must be mastered or at least known casually in order to productively study a given subject. Ordering is how the ideas within a given subject build upon one another. Nothing is more frustrating than getting to section 6 of a subject, and realizing that it requires knowledge of an entirely different, but more fundamental subject, or that what one thought was section 8 actually should have been done first.

In the case of ordering, this is often closely tied to learning the subject itself. A good book or well put together course will naturally address this issue. Someone picking and choosing from a variety of materials will find this to be one of the major challenges in tackling a subject. In that case, a thorough skimming of various materials might be in order prior to detailed study.

Prerequisites are more frequently left out of study materials. Since pre requisites are not part of the subject itself, it is understandable to leave them out. Since this relationship of one subject to another is not part of any subject, it is not unusual to find that the information is seemingly nowhere to be found. However, this is something that anyone with solid experience in a subject could probably answer off the top of his head with no effort at all.

2. Scope

Scope is simply the question of what is an is not within a given subject. This can be a tricky issue, and will often blindside a prospective self-learner. There is no one answer to this question, it depends on large part what purpose one has for taking on the subject. In academia, there are clear, if ultimately arbitrary, divisions between various subjects. A book on a subject will necessarily have its own scope determined by how the author and publisher view the needs of their target audience. Courses of any kind will have a limited scope as well. Someone who is completely self-directing will often find it quite difficult to decide what to include in his study, and what to leave for later study.

Part of the decision of scope will be based on things that the given subject is prerequisite for. Others will be guided by the assumed demands of a profession. Sometimes it is driven by fashion, or by a given instructor or writer�s persona preferences. Too narrow a scope may leave the learner unprepared for future study, or professional work. Too much scope might hamper the overall effort by making the subject appear larger than it needs to be, or by making the process of studying go on and on seemingly without end.

It is important to note that scope also applies to collections of subjects as well as individual subjects. Someone setting out to �learn math� could have more than a lifetime of study ahead of him if he is not selective. Somebody studying computer programming could easily find that learning merely the syntax rules of a given language leaves him woefully unprepared for any job in the real world. Matching the scope to the purpose is a very difficult thing for someone who does not yet know the subject.

3. Terminology and Unknown Unknowns

Terminology is the actual words used for ideas within a subject. Unknown unknowns are those areas of a subject that a learner is often completely unaware of prior to actual study. Both of these are, of course, part of the study of a subject itself. The problem arises when a self-learner is using a variety of materials and looking for information on his own via a web search or browsing book titles. If he does not know the terminology, such a search can be quite difficult. If he is not even aware of the idea he needs to learn, he will not be able to look for resources for learning it. This is a chicken and egg problem. If he is completely unaware of a subject, or knows no term for it, it is not likely that he will be studying it in the first place. If he knew all the ideas and terminology, he would not likely need to study it.

It is the person who knows some of the terms, and some of the ideas, but wants to learn more fully or systematically that will find difficulty in the process of looking for resources. I have often started a course of study by simply reading, cover to cover, a book such as �C++ for Dummies�, not because I think it will teach me C++, but because it will teach me enough to begin learning the subject. Organized courses are often very helpful in this as well, and even just browsing the names in the course catalog will provide insight to this (and the course descriptions can help with the scope question as well.)

5. Tools

Every field of study has tools it uses, except perhaps subjects like philosophy, or... well, I can�t think of another offhand. The way the question of tools is addressed in learning materials varies very widely. In some cases, the use of a particular tool is so closely related to the subject that a large bulk of the course or book is taken up describing it. In others, it is mentioned in an offhand way, or not at all. Often, the tools mentioned are so specific - such as a specific brand or model - and the instruction is geared toward the use of that specific tool. In this case, it can be very difficult to extrapolate the information to a more general case of the category of tool, or to uses and techniques that are integral to the subject, but not part of the use of the particular tool addressed.

This is especially prevalent in computer programming subjects. Often, the tool chosen will be very specific (usually Microsoft), and the information so detailed that it is almost impossible to engage the subject with any other tool. Often, the tool is obsolete, hard to find, or not compatible with new hardware once the study materials are even a couple of years out of date - even if the subject itself is still viable.

It is vitally important to any course of study that the learner know the tools he will need to use, and to understand how they work. Merely knowing the use of a specific tool is not enough, he must know how the function of that category of tool fits in with the subject matter in a general way. He must be able to adapt the subject matter to a variety of tools because once away from a given course, or as time goes by, he may no longer have access to the specific tool, or may find that others fill his needs better.

Meta learning

A learner beginning a course of study has a unique problem in that he is aware of what he wants to know, but does not know enough about it to direct his study to the best and most efficient use of resources. Among all the resources on various subjects that are available, fairly little is devoted to the meta-learning of the subject. This is a great opportunity to provide such resources to the exploding home- and un-schooling movements, and to create more opportunities for autodidacts to increase the scope of learning open to them in the limited time they have.

Often, the kinds of problems listed above can be bypassed with a small amount of expert knowledge. Anyone who is very familiar and experienced in a subject can often answer the questions about prerequisites and ordering, scope, and terminology and unknown unknowns in a matter of minutes, off the top of his head. Instruction on tools would usually take more effort, but if the resources were available, a self-learner could acquire that knowledge in the same way he does the actual subject. Those resources are often available, but are not always connected to the information about a specific subject. What would be valuable in that case would be expert knowledge about the tools themselves as questions of prerequisites, scope, and unknown unknowns, so that a learner could see that for a particular course of study, he will need to also study certain tools, either prior or in parallel.

This information is out there, but not collected in any systematic way. If it were, it could be the backbone of a system for self learning and alternative schooling that could truly empower those looking for alternatives to public or private formal education, and those who want to take control of their education, or that of their children, back from institutions that are failing in their mission, are too expensive, or that are not flexible enough to meet the rapidly changing needs of today�s world.

tags: autodidact, homeschooling, unschooling, education

An Agorist Manifesto in 95 Theses

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 16:30:51 -0800

Suitable for nailing to an appropriate door near you...

agora (1) - n. A place of congregation, an ancient Greek marketplace.
agora (2) - n. A market free of forceable regulation, taxation, and government
(The) Agora - The aggregate of all such markets of any size.

95 Theses

1. Free, unregulated, untaxed, and unmonitored trade is the natural right of all human beings
2. In a voluntary trade, both parties receive more than they give up, otherwise neither would trade.
3. Nobody gets taken advantage of through mutually voluntary trade.
4. Taxation forces people to pay for things that aren't worth the cost
5. Government regulation forces people to abstain from trades they would otherwise voluntarily make.

6. Markets collect, organize, and distribute information more rapidly, accurately, fairly, and efficiently than any central authority could ever do, even with superior resources.
7. Prices are information.
8. Force distorts market information.
9. Governments' only means of action is force.
10. Governments operate blindly because they only see information distorted by force. The more information they gather, the less clear their vision becomes.
11. Aggression is a reaction to unpleasant or unwanted information. It's motto is "kill the messenger".
12. A market is smarter than any of it's participants. A government is stupider than most of it's participants.

13. Governments require markets for their survival; markets thrive in the absence of government.
14. The more efficient a government is, the more dangerous it is.
15. Markets improve the material well-being of all people. Governments improve the material well-being of some people at the expense of other people.
16. Markets are more powerful than governments.
17. Human survival and well-being require free markets.
18. Human survival and well-being require the absence of government.
19. The best humanitarian aid that can be brought to impoverished people is to allow them access to the Agora, usually by removing their governments.

20. Productivity is the application of intelligence to labor for creating something of value to someone.
21. Labor is equivalent to value in the same way crude oil is equivalent to a vacation.
22. The non-productive have always and will always try to live off the value created by the productive.
23. The productive will by right decide how much, if any, to allow it.
24. Charity is offered and received face-to-face, or it is no longer charity.

25. Wealth is the natural and honorable reward from trading value for value.
26. Wealth is a store of productivity, not a store of value.
27. In the Agora, the rich have already given back far more than they received. That's the only way to get rich in the Agora.
28. Those who get rich outside the Agora could never give back all they have taken.

29. Money laundering is an invented crime, the concept cannot exist in the Agora.
30. Price gouging is an invented crime, the concept cannot exist in the Agora.
31. Unfair competition is either not one, or not the other, or not in the Agora.

32. Market price is an observation of history.
33. Market price is related to value in the same way news photographs are related to current events.
34. "Intrinsic value" is a lie told by parasites to try to steal from producers.
35. Companies advertising their product as "an $XX value" are lying to you.

36. Fiat currency is theft by fraud.
37. Gold and silver are usually the bases for real money because they have properties that best serve that purpose.
38. Paper is the basis for fiat currency because it has properties that best serve that purpose.

39. Communication strengthens markets and undermines governments.
40. Markets are the way communities stay organized when they are too large for face-to-face interaction.

41. All resources are human. The term "human resources" is demeaning to the nature of both humans and resources.
42. Competition is not the purpose of a market, it is one of its methods.
43. Natural selection in the Agora is more Lamarckian than Darwinian.
44. Natural selection in the Agora does not destroy resources, it reallocates them.
45. Natural selection in the Agora does not kill people, it frees them to be more productive.
46. "Dog eat dog" is a feature of governments, not of markets.
47. Monopolies can only be created and sustained by governments.

48. Freedom to fail is every bit as important as freedom to succeed.
49. The Agora guarantees neither, and resists the perpetuation of both.
50. Markets don't have goals, values, or ambitions. Markets are a tool for human beings to pursue those things.
51. "Market Failure" is an oxymoron. People sometimes fail to use markets properly.

52. Innovation is an inherently Agorist activity, even when it happens outside the Agora.
53. A primary goal of government is to restrain innovation.

54. Raw materials in the ground are not resources until they are brought to market.
55. The owners of private property tend not to destroy it. Commons are routinely destroyed or exhaustively consumed.
56. Agorist exploitation of the environment increases resources, and protects the environment. Government "protection" of the environment reduces resources, and harms the environment.
57. No species is endangered when it is owned. The best way to keep a species from extinction is to allow it to be property in the Agora.

58. "Public property" is an oxymoron, and privatization of profits is not privatization.
59. Property is authority. It's not a market without private property and private authority.
60. Where there is private property authority, there is an agora..
61. Private property let open to the public is not a commons.

62. Shortages do not exist in the free market, government obfuscation of price information is the only way to acheive a general shortage.
63. Being unable to buy something at the price you want to pay is not a shortage.
64. Markets are, in part, a process of voluntary rationing.

65. Corporations are evil only to the extent they rely on government power. Corporations with a monopoly are branches of government.
66. Markets rely on trust. Markets rely on suspicion.
67. Individuals in the Agora expect suspicion and earn trust. Governments demand trust, and earn suspicion.
68. A government truly of the people, by the people, and for the people would have no powers whatsoever.
69. If the measure of virtue for a society is how it treats the least among it, then the Agora is the most virtuous society ever known to man.

70. Governments thrive on opposition, antagonism, provocation, confrontation, and defiance. What they cannot tolerate is to be ignored.
71. The central idea behind the Agora, and one of the things it does best, is to ignore governments.
72. The effectiveness of the Agora's self-regulation is proportional to the extent to which external regulation is absent.
73. The Agora cannot be managed, controlled, regulated, or destroyed. It can only be interfered with.
74. Voting is nothing more than an expression of the voter's preferred way to interfere with the Agora.
75. The Agora is a network, and like all networks, it routes around damage.
76. Government is damage.

77. Public education is an oxymoron.
78. One of government education's primary functions is to instill fear of the Agora.
79. The Agora is all around you. It's nothing to be afraid of.
80. The Agora is peaceful. Violence and war are results of failure to embrace the Agora.
81. Guns are often required to deal with people who operate outside the Agora, because guns are the primary way people outside the Agora operate.

82. The Agora does not require permission.
83. Anyone with the power and inclination to grant the Agora permission is a threat to all honest men.
84. Anyone offering the Agora permission will be ignored.
85. Most true heroes end up in prison or murdered. This is even more true for Agorist heroes.

86. The Agora ignores creed and color.
87. When it comes to markets, black is beautiful.
88. Wherever there are human beings, there is an agora. It may be hiding, but it is there.
89. The Agora is a select community - the strict qualification for membership is to want it. Most people don't.
90. The Agora does not recognize borders or artificial boundaries. It is everywhere, and it is no where.
91. The Agora welcomes you, but does not need you.
92. You need the Agora. Even if you oppose it, you benefit from it.
93. An Agorist movement is an oxymoron. Agorism is the natural state of humanity.
94. Practicing agorism is the only way to achieve agorism. Isolated networks will eventually find each other.

95. Governments are on notice the world over: your days are numbered.

Also posted here.

Idiocracy

Tue, 2 Jun 2009 13:13:36 -0700

Timmy Geithner, who plays Obama's Secretary of the Treasury on TV, was laughed out of China yesterday. Here's a quick summation of some of Timmy's other recent public appearances:
.

It would appear that the Chinese are taking my advice seriously.

They've Tried Everything, Everything...

Fri, 15 May 2009 17:08:27 -0700

So, my local fishwrap is going out of business. It�s no big loss, as I long ago found them unequal to the task of wrapping fish properly. You�d think they would at least try to get that right.

Kate Marymont, Gannett Co. vice president for news, told the newspaper's staff Friday that the paper will continue with a Web site edition providing commentary and opinion but no news coverage.

So, really, nothing at all has changed. I can�t remember the last time I looked at one of the local newspapers - or any newspaper, for that matter - but if I had found some honest news in it, I probably would have kept buying it on occasion.

It seems that even in a desperate bid to find creative ways to remain in business, that approach was just too crazy to consider.

Seeds of Doubt

Sat, 2 May 2009 16:17:07 -0700

A pair of Jehova's Witnesses left my doorstep just now, one of them having promised to read Atlas Shrugged. It took about 20 minutes. He may never read it - I have no idea how seriously Witnesses take such promises - but if not, he may just keep wondering whether he should.

The one before that was a 17 year old kid, a few months ago. He told me, after more than an hour, that I was a good teacher. To which I responded "that's the best way to learn". I must have used up his entire time allotment at the park, since the van came by shortly after to pick him back up. Watching him climb into the van, I'm convinced that he'd be asking some tough questions, if not of his handlers, then of himself.

Either, Both, It Doesn't Matter

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:23:20 -0700

Billy, it doesn't matter.

Are Waxman and Markey evil or retarded?

Any sufficiently stupid idea is indistinguishable from malice.

A Note to the Uninformed

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 10:24:22 -0800

Blaming the current financial crisis on the failure of markets is like blaming an airplane crash on the failure of gravity.

The markets didn't fail, you demanded they do something impossible. This crash is the predictable and correct result of the inputs you provided. If you let an airplane turn into an ice-covered flying brick, gravity continues to do exactly what it will do - your flight plan might as well be a parabola - and people die. The NTSB never, in its investigations, asks "What went wrong with gravity?" What makes you think markets are any different?

You might think that we can find an alternative to markets, that markets are a political tool that can be chosen or rejected. They're not. They operate at all times and in all places, and always by the same laws. They are the given that your political positions are tested against.

You have failed.

Auntie Checkers

Fri, 6 Feb 2009 06:04:03 -0800

The people trying to politically destroy Obama (a just and noble cause), have made a tactical error bad enough that if you told me that Obama himself had put them up to it, I might believe you. They're claiming that his aunt is in the country illegally, and if he doesn't deport her, he will have no more credibility.

New Checkers Speech in.... 3... 2.... 1....

This will make it easier for the camp guards to sort them

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 05:08:05 -0800

Billy gets at the apparent double-meaning for the word "brand", which isn't really a double meaning at all. To save even more time, these people might want to go ahead and get the bar-code upgrade right now, while it is still optional.

He continues ably live-blogging the execution, in all its varied and colorful aspects.