

Why don't they get it? - Garbage
http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/07/technology-people-bias-predictions.html

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Benjo
>Rather than take the knee-jerk response that politicians must just be in the
pocket of big media, I'm going to look at how some aspects of human behavior
make this kind of highly damaging legislation more likely.

Maybe I'm too cynical or listen too much to the Lessig crowd, but I think
ignoring campaign contributions is naive. The government _does_ see the
problem, or at least individuals in the government do. But what politician
wants to stand up for this and risk potential campaign contributions, knowing
they are unlikely to garner enough support to pass legislation anyway?

One can look at this conflict two ways: 1) the politician's personal gain
versus the overall benefit to the country or 2) short term benefit of
immediate legislation versus long term benefit of future legislation versus
reelection. Viewpoint 1 is more cynical and viewpoint 2 is more naive. In
reality, it's a spectrum and each legislator has to make both tradeoffs in
addition to their personal beliefs and understanding of the system. But, in my
opinion both these tradeoffs are bad for the efficiency of an economy. This
conflict of interest is the root cause of problems like this and discussion of
solutions is almost pointless if we're not trying to address that root cause.

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rglover
Some excellent points made here, but they still don't dismiss what Tim
O'Reilly tweeted. The legislation that broadcasters are trying to put in place
is down right greedy. Placing intellectual property copyrights on content
_they didn't even create_? It's a defensive act to block anyone and everyone
out and it's difficult to watch. If something like this were successful,
content creators could lose the right to have their work on anything but the
original broadcasters network (in this case cable, satellite, and some
Internet outlets). There may be a lack of understanding for why this isn't ok,
but that doesn't make it alright.

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ameasure
Excellent post. Technology doesn't propagate throughout society
instantaneously, people have to invest in learning to use it first.
Unfortunately many people aren't willing to do that, even when the immediate
costs are very low relative to the future rewards
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_discounting>, thanks for that list
of cognitive biases).

Nonetheless, I am continuously astounded by the number of typewriters still in
use.

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jpr
> human beings are "endlessly complicated and interesting."

Couldn't disagree more. Human beings en masse are endlessly boring and not
interesting at all. Just because the soil of the earth contains a few diamonds
doesn't make all the soil interesting.

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billswift
Soil is _much_ more interesting than diamonds, just ask any gardener or
ecologist. Don't confuse economic value (scarcity) with being interesting.

