You ARE Being Conned!

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by TheNightFly, May 15, 2017.

  1. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    You think corporations pay taxes? No, they just pass the cost on to consumers. Consumers pay all taxes. Taxing corporations is just a sneaky way of double taxing workers while convincing us that the rich are "paying their fair share". There's actually no such thing as paying a fair share of taxes on income when the taxation of income amounts to extortion. Federal taxes on income ought to be unconstitutional under the 4th amendment (protection from unreasonable search and seizure). We need to eliminate income taxes.

    What really matters is why we feel the need to tax corporations and the rich. Perhaps it's because we know the market system is rigged. Public schools and colleges teach us to believe that we live in a free market but the lack of direct competition says the opposite- that we live in a captive market. The main difference between a free market and a captive market is monopolism. Direct competition is encouraged in free markets but is illegal in captive markets, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $50,000 fine (deja vu). This is why we don't see multiple sources for similar or identical goods. All goods are clearly separated into niches. Most small businesses are focused on aftermarket products and services or the production of cheap substitutes based on work-arounds that are usually less efficient and less reliable than the name brand technology they're based on. Consumer choice has little impact on the success or failure of established manufacturing and publishing monopolies which is why their customer service is so terrible.

    The most important point though is how the captive market legally prohibits most individuals from gainfully employing themselves. A lot of Americans employ themselves every day but not gainfully. It takes three to five years to build a business up to the point where it's making a profit but 90% of small upstarts fail within a year or two either because they can't compete with established monopolies or they get shut down over red tape. This is why most Americans are so dependent on jobs. It is our high job dependency that keeps job markets persistently saturated and, in turn, depresses wages by giving employers a monopsonistic advantage over wage negotiations, thus necessitating minimum wage laws, unemployment programs, unions, welfare and all kinds of ridiculous employer regulations to prevent abuse. Lawmakers support monopolism despite the obvious injustice because it helps the companies they're invested in make profits on a regular basis while simplifying the collection of income taxes. But a nation is only as free as it's market. America's captive market has turned us into a captive nation.

    So what's the solution? We need to legalize direct competition. That means eliminating all exclusive rights over the use of technology and the copying of art and literature and that means passing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution repealing the 'copyright' clause- article 1, section 8, clause 8. Now don't get me wrong. My dad was an accomplished engineer so I have great respect for artists and inventors. They deserve plenty of recognition but nobody deserves a monopoly. There is no such thing as 'piracy' in a free market. Most lawmakers won't support such an amendment as long as they're invested in the companies that would be negatively impacted by it. Securities are a major source of corruption in the legislature so, before we can expect lawmakers to repeal the copyright clause, we must get them to pass an amendment that prohibits legislators from trading securities while they're in office. Once we have a free market, both the poverty rate and the disparity of wealth will begin to shrink as people quit their jobs and turn to self employment. The saturation of job markets will reverse and level the playing field for those who still need jobs. Eventually we won't need minimum wages or unions or welfare and therefore no need to tax anyone to pay for it. We can get rid of the federal income tax code and repeal the 16th amendment. To recap, get Congress to pass three amendments to the U.S. Constitution in this order:
    1. an amendment to prohibit legislators from trading in securities while in office
    2. an amendment to repeal the copyright clause- article 1, section 8, clause 8
    3. an amendment to repeal the 16th amendment
     
    Last edited: May 15, 2017
  2. J.Idallian

    J.Idallian Well-Known Member

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    Apologies, I'd like to be certain I'm understanding your thesis.

    You are stating that the only way to bring back a truly free market is to completely eliminate the concept of copyright, copyright infringement, and essentially, and establishment of trademark and intellectual property. Is this correct?

    Edit: Furthermore, a complete elimination of Federal Income Tax?
     
    Last edited: May 15, 2017
  3. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    Yes but, it's not to eliminate the flawed concept of intellectual property, just the laws that are based on it, and it's not to "bring back" a free market since America never really had one.
     
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  4. J.Idallian

    J.Idallian Well-Known Member

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    Interesting. Without stating my position on this, how do you solve the issue of music or the entertainment industry?

    For example, if someone today decided they wanted to redo Metallica's black album, word for word and note for note, what would the justification for allowing that be? Again, not necessarily for or against, but how would that play out in your market?
     
  5. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    The protection of real (physical) property rights. All of us should be free to utilize our land, tools, and materials to produce whatever we think we can sell, limited only by consumer safety and environmental protection regulations. That's the fundamental basis of capitalism.
     
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  6. J.Idallian

    J.Idallian Well-Known Member

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    So you state that what would essentially be currently known as Intellectual Property would be moved into a classification of physical property, and be protected under those statutes?

    Where would designs fall into this? I assume the same category, correct? By that of course, I mean anything from building designs to ingredients for a specific chemical mixture.
     
  7. Sanskrit

    Sanskrit Well-Known Member

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    I agree with much of OP's rationale, but not the substantive policy. Crooked politicians make a piddling of their ill-gotten gains trading securities, most of it is made on sweetheart deals with other countries and domestic related interests, they get their payback down the road when out of office and under minimal scrutiny...or in flat out brown bag equivalents. For example, the Clintons made the vast bulk of their graft money in speaking and publishing fees, just like Obama is now getting his quid pro quo the same way. If anything is curtailed, it should be ANY compensation paid during or after public office other than compensation for active skilled employment. Soft dollar type compensation should be outlawed. A politician who is middle or upper middle class when entering national politics, then inexplicably a multimillionaire down the road should become a thing of the past, as it is all too common in the status quo.

    As far as copyrights and patents? There needs to be protection to fuel the profit motive and balance reward with the significant expense and risk of innovation and creativity. Whether the protection is too extensive now or not? A fair question, but outright repeal? No.

    As far as income taxation? I disagree with Amendment repeal, but would agree with outlawing tax withholding that is foisted onto employers and taxpayers. The government has the right to tax, but NOT to force the private sector into the role of tax collector for it. This one simple change would have tremendous impact on the small business climate and the size and power of central US government.

    Regulatory bodies, other than a few bearing on enumerated national interests and interstate/international matters, should be turned ENTIRELY back to the states. Hyperregulation is the main way that crony capitalists prevent inconvenient competition, and have so ravaged our small business climate that it may be beyond repair. We are way too regulated in this country, and people are seeing through the "but you must want unclean air and water and rampant crime!!" bullshit of statists and people with definite conflicts of interest.

    I'd be happy with a less democratic voting franchise. People who do not or have not paid a certain amount of federal taxes should not be allowed to vote in federal elections. People who work for the government outright, or derive a certain percentage of their income from contracting or grants should not be allowed to vote in the applicable elections. People on public support past a certain age and to a certain degree likewise (with reasonable exceptions for disabilities, veterans, etc.) People who cannot read and write English fluently should not be allowed to vote. The same discrimination analysis used by courts to end segregation and Jim Crow should not apply to voting rights in 2017. The mechanism that allows a corrupt gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-trial lawyer-MSM Complex to breed perpetual dependent underclasses as "vote farms" towards the purpose of voting itself more and more private sector money needs to end immediately.
     
    Last edited: May 15, 2017
  8. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    No, all intellectual property would be come public domain. The only property would be real property.

    Public domain. If you want to keep your ideas secret, you can keep them to yourself but, if you want to make money from them, you have to sell them, which gives all buyers the right to back-research and duplicate them.
     
  9. Conviction

    Conviction Well-Known Member

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    I would highly advise we do not do that. I recognize that patents and copyrights essentially create monopolies for the period of time, but if someone creates something, they should be rewarded.
     
    The Mandela Effect likes this.
  10. J.Idallian

    J.Idallian Well-Known Member

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    So this then begs the question... without protection of copyright or IP, would that not add chaos to the market and remove the incentive for invention and innovation?

    Take a pharmaceutical company, for example. We'll even use a drug everyone knows, Viagra.

    If I'm a drug company, what's my incentive to pour millions and millions into research and development, when the second I release my drug, some other company could make a far cheaper version of it, without the same level of overhead that I had to risk for this. I now have spent millions and millions, and I might get 4-5 months of use out of it before other companies reverse-engineer it and are able to sell it for much lower, BECAUSE of that reduced RnD/Overhead. It turns the market into something that's purely reactive, stifling creativity, does it not?
     
    Last edited: May 15, 2017
  11. DarkDaimon

    DarkDaimon Well-Known Member

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    :roflol:Good luck getting that by Disney, Hollywood and the music industry. Disney spent millions just to have their copywrites extended for almost a century, how much do you think they will spend to save their lively hood?
     
  12. VietVet

    VietVet Well-Known Member

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    Let me guess.
    Never took an economics class, right?
    Hated math, right?
    What is the government supposed to do for income, or are you opposed to having government?
    I assume you also want no laws on corporations, no FDA, etc? The "free market" will take care of products that kill you, because if it kills you, you won't buy it again, right?
     
  13. J.Idallian

    J.Idallian Well-Known Member

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    There's no reason to be openly hostile in there. You don't know anything about the guy, near as I know. I'm hoping he continues to justify his position so the conversation can continue. This is one of the more interesting things to come across PO&B today.
     
  14. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    Companies desire protection to fuel their massive IP mining operations but they don't need it or deserve it.

    But it shouldn't. The federal government should only have the power to tax the states, not the private sector. And the states should only have the power to raise revenue through selling commercial services that compete with the private sector such as public housing, utilities, transportation, distribution, and telecommunications.

    I think we have too many layers of government in America resulting in over-complicated state laws full of logical fallacies and contradictions. Regulatory power has become concentrated at the federal level in an effort to simplify the law and keep it consistent across all jurisdictions but what we really need is to replace our union of multiple states with a single state. One constitution, one jurisdiction, one legislature, one set of laws for everyone. But a republic is not a democracy unless you're a legislator. We need to create a real democracy by opening the lower House of Congress (The House of Representatives) and permit all citizens to vote directly on all legislation. Participation is educational and would go a long way to keeping voters informed.
     
  15. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    Producers should be rewarded by consumer choice, not by government mandate.
     
  16. yiostheoy

    yiostheoy Well-Known Member

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    None of those proposals is worthy of an Amendment.

    Ordinary Federal legislation can take care of it.

    I am guessing that you are not very familiar if at all with the U.S. Code.

    By the way, since the corporate tax is on their pretax income they cannot pass it on to consumers. The corporate income tax is a tax on the person of the incorporated business.
     
  17. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    Of course not.

    Your cost of R&D can be recuperated over time so that's not the real issue here. The real issue is your per unit cost of production. As long as you've made every effort to maximize the efficiency of your production pipeline, nobody is going to whip up a cheaper version overnight, if such a thing even exists. You will probably need FDA approval before you can sell your drug so you're going to enjoy a natural monopoly for quite some time before you see any competition while you popularize your drug brand. If, after all that, I find a way to produce your drug cheaper than you, it's your fault and you deserve to lose marketshare to me.

    That's assuming your R&D actually produces anything of value. What's my incentive to pour tens of thousands into back-researching your drug product without know the potential side effects and the risks of recalls and lawsuits?
     
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  18. Sanskrit

    Sanskrit Well-Known Member

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    I like my tiny handheld supercomputer, my internet, 100 other innovations, and I -really- like having the real possibility of 10 more years of healthy lifespan. Without IP protection, those innovations and those of the future would be significantly retarded. Argue for lesser terms of protection and no renewals, sure I'm with you to a degree.

    I'm afraid that ship has sailed. If you want to have a dorm bull session, sure, we can talk theory in works like Epstein's "Takings" that are extremely compelling. I do it all the time here and elsewhere, but if we are talking about policy remotely likely to ever happen, there's going to be an income tax. It's remotely -possible- to do away with withholding, though, which would be a gigantic sea change and accomplish many of the goals you seek to accomplish.

    Couldn't agree with the above. One reason we aren't suffering some of the dire problems of socialist Europe is dual sovereignty. Central sole sovereignty will always be corrupted in favor of the government and its bureaucratic and other lackeys. And no, most certainly do not agree with infusing more democracy into what is already way too democratic. That's a straight path to Idiocracy. Go work in some kind of job where you deal directly with the nitty gritty public on a daily basis for awhile, clerk in a gas station convenience or grocery store, you will likely drop the "one state democracy" talk pretty quickly.
     
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  19. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    It's completely absurd to believe that a captive market could ever advance technology faster than a free market. By restricting the profit motive of research and development to specific companies or individuals, IP invariably slows the advancement of technology. Without IP, everyone is free to research anything and technology advances as fast as possible.

    I don't know what dire problems socialist Europe is suffering but the three of four layers of government we have in America isn't doing us any favors.

    All forms of government other than democracy are corrupt because they restrict legislative power to a subset of the citizenry. Democracy is the only form of government that avoids corruption because legislative power is equally distributed. So there's no such thing as too democratic, and it's not a sliding scale. We either have a democracy or we have a corrupt dictatorship.

    That's all I've ever done. The reason I strongly support a one state democracy is because most people would either be educated or purged from it.
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2017

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