On August 22, 1995, the U.S. government granted some person authority over the usage of all laser pointers throughout the country. I don't know the name of the person, but I do know that this decision was neither reviewed by Congress, nor the President. Likewise, the person granted this authority was neither elected by the people of the U.S., nor by any representative subset of the people of the U.S. The authority was arbitrarily granted by previously approved U.S. law.
The specific authority granted to this person was the authority to grant or withhold permission for people in the U.S. to use their laser pointers to entertain and exercise cats. Since this date, it has been illegal for any person residing within the United States of America to use a laser pointer to cause a cat to exercise, without the express permission of this person. The U.S. laws that grant this person the right to control how other people use their personal property are none other than the patent laws.
I am guilty of patent infringement. I got my first laser pointer in 1999. The first thing I did with it when I got home was to torment our cat with it, infringing on patent number 5,443,036. Of course, I was not aware that anyone had patented this practice, but according to the law, I am still guilty of patent infringement. Since then, I have infringed on this patent many more times. I learned of my infractions only a year ago, and while I have not had time to commit any more, I would happily do so if I had the time.
I do not intend on ever requesting permission to use the so called intellectual property of the person who has this patent. This example makes it clear that patent law infringes on the right to ownership of tangible property. Besides that, I would submit that patent law infringes on another of the fundamental rights that our nation was founded upon. Patent law infringes on the right to fair representation in government. The authority granted to the above mentioned person was approved by a patent clerk, not by any elected representative. Right, ultimately the law that granted the clerk the authority to make the judgment can be traced through representatives of the people, but I do not think it is just to allow any person to seize authority over the physical property of others merely by inventing something that can be made with that property, or by inventing a process that requires the use of that property. The process of granting such extensive power over the personal property of others should require at least the direct vote of elected representatives, if not the direct vote of the people themselves, on a per case basis. Any government that grants such arbitrary power over the property of others without the explicit consent of those governed can reasonably be considered an oppressive government. Admittedly, the U.S. government is still one of the most free and least oppressive on Earth, but when it comes to ownership rights of physical property, it is doing a very poor job of effectively protecting them.
Lord Rybec
25 November 2012
16 November 2012
Welfare
I would like to start with a disclaimer: I am not trying to bash the idea of welfare. As I have stated before, I find it morally wrong to sentence people to pain and suffering (starvation) for not being able to earn a living wage, and I would even submit that it is morally wrong to allow people to starve because they are unwilling to work to earn a living, unless there is not enough to go around. That said, I would like to explain some of the problems with our implementation of welfare in the U.S.
The first problem with U.S. welfare, and possibly the most corrupting, is that promise of welfare benefits can be used by political candidates to bribe the middle and lower classes. This is essentially buying votes. Many Americans, especially conservatives, think that the lower class is composed mostly of people who are too lazy to work. This is not true. A significant portion of the lower class have jobs, and many of them have multiple jobs. These people are working to earn a living, but their wages are so low that they still need welfare to survive. What can they do when offered an obviously corrupt political candidate that promises to feed them immediately, or a rather less corrupt candidate who promises to make better jobs available sometime in the next 4 years?
The second problem is based on the above statement that lower class wages are so low that even full time work is not enough to live on. Besides the obvious cause of greedy employers, part of the cause is welfare itself. Welfare causes inflation. This is primarily true of welfare given to people who are not working for any income. Economists often recognize this, but they miss something more insidious. Welfare also decreases wages. This may seem absurd at first, but consider this: If employers do not pay enough for an employee to survive, that employee will either find a better job, or will starve and die. Neither of these scenarios is good for employers, as either way they will have to hire and train new employees, or they will be understaffed. This is a fairly strong incentive to pay fair wages. Now though, the government is covering some of the slack with welfare. If a household of three is getting $350 a month in food stamps, that is $4,200 a year less that the employer has to pay for that family to survive. Businesses benefit more from food stamps than individuals because of this. Even worse though, the businesses benefiting are not the high end businesses that are advancing technology and improving civilization. The businesses benefiting are businesses like WalMart, McDonald's, and Home Depot. They are the businesses that already underpay their employees. So really, the U.S. welfare system is driving inflation and subsidizing the lowest, most depraved businesses.
The third problem is one that most people are already aware of. The U.S. welfare system is a trap. To get on welfare, a person has to be below a certain level of poverty. This level of poverty is low enough that people can be above it, but still not be able to support themselves. Getting onto welfare is easy for people in that gap. They can just quit their jobs or cut their availability so they get less hours of work. Getting out is extremely difficult. Much of the lower class has discovered that as they try to get out of poverty they reach that point where they no longer qualify for welfare, but they still cannot survive without it. So they carefully skate the line so they have the largest income they can without loosing their welfare benefits. Many people accuse these members of the lower class of taking advantage of the welfare system. What else can they do though? Should they keep trying to get out of poverty, and starve to death for the next two or more years that it takes?
The forth problem is cost of living. The Federal government has no business administrating welfare, because it is impossible for them to do it effective at a reasonable cost. State governments have the resources to determine fair welfare for their residents at a fairly low cost. The Federal government does not have these resources, because they do not operate at a state level and cannot do so efficiently. Since cost of living varies widely across the U.S., it is necessary that welfare benefits be determined regionally to be fair and effective. The cost of doing this, for the Federal government, is is extremely high compared to the states.
These are only a few of the problems with the U.S. welfare system, but they are the worst, and they are the ones that are causing our welfare system to fail. The conservatives are right that our welfare system needs fixed, but their solutions are often very short sighted. Liberals say that there is nothing wrong with our welfare system, or that it can be fixed merely by increasing its scope; they are wrong. Each of these problems needs to be dealt with individually. There is no single fix-all solution to this problem. And, there is a problem.
Lord Rybec
The first problem with U.S. welfare, and possibly the most corrupting, is that promise of welfare benefits can be used by political candidates to bribe the middle and lower classes. This is essentially buying votes. Many Americans, especially conservatives, think that the lower class is composed mostly of people who are too lazy to work. This is not true. A significant portion of the lower class have jobs, and many of them have multiple jobs. These people are working to earn a living, but their wages are so low that they still need welfare to survive. What can they do when offered an obviously corrupt political candidate that promises to feed them immediately, or a rather less corrupt candidate who promises to make better jobs available sometime in the next 4 years?
The second problem is based on the above statement that lower class wages are so low that even full time work is not enough to live on. Besides the obvious cause of greedy employers, part of the cause is welfare itself. Welfare causes inflation. This is primarily true of welfare given to people who are not working for any income. Economists often recognize this, but they miss something more insidious. Welfare also decreases wages. This may seem absurd at first, but consider this: If employers do not pay enough for an employee to survive, that employee will either find a better job, or will starve and die. Neither of these scenarios is good for employers, as either way they will have to hire and train new employees, or they will be understaffed. This is a fairly strong incentive to pay fair wages. Now though, the government is covering some of the slack with welfare. If a household of three is getting $350 a month in food stamps, that is $4,200 a year less that the employer has to pay for that family to survive. Businesses benefit more from food stamps than individuals because of this. Even worse though, the businesses benefiting are not the high end businesses that are advancing technology and improving civilization. The businesses benefiting are businesses like WalMart, McDonald's, and Home Depot. They are the businesses that already underpay their employees. So really, the U.S. welfare system is driving inflation and subsidizing the lowest, most depraved businesses.
The third problem is one that most people are already aware of. The U.S. welfare system is a trap. To get on welfare, a person has to be below a certain level of poverty. This level of poverty is low enough that people can be above it, but still not be able to support themselves. Getting onto welfare is easy for people in that gap. They can just quit their jobs or cut their availability so they get less hours of work. Getting out is extremely difficult. Much of the lower class has discovered that as they try to get out of poverty they reach that point where they no longer qualify for welfare, but they still cannot survive without it. So they carefully skate the line so they have the largest income they can without loosing their welfare benefits. Many people accuse these members of the lower class of taking advantage of the welfare system. What else can they do though? Should they keep trying to get out of poverty, and starve to death for the next two or more years that it takes?
The forth problem is cost of living. The Federal government has no business administrating welfare, because it is impossible for them to do it effective at a reasonable cost. State governments have the resources to determine fair welfare for their residents at a fairly low cost. The Federal government does not have these resources, because they do not operate at a state level and cannot do so efficiently. Since cost of living varies widely across the U.S., it is necessary that welfare benefits be determined regionally to be fair and effective. The cost of doing this, for the Federal government, is is extremely high compared to the states.
These are only a few of the problems with the U.S. welfare system, but they are the worst, and they are the ones that are causing our welfare system to fail. The conservatives are right that our welfare system needs fixed, but their solutions are often very short sighted. Liberals say that there is nothing wrong with our welfare system, or that it can be fixed merely by increasing its scope; they are wrong. Each of these problems needs to be dealt with individually. There is no single fix-all solution to this problem. And, there is a problem.
Lord Rybec
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)