I overheard a conversation today on how machines are reducing the number of available jobs. Based on what I heard, I guess the idea being discussed was that automating processes reduces available jobs, which causes harm. A second question was brought up about whether automation is reducing the opportunity for people to grow and progress. The conclusion seemed to be that automation should be limited, because it is harmful to people. I would like to discuss why this is not so and how the potential harm can be mitigated.
Ultimately all costs can be broken down to labor costs. Even transportation costs are ultimately labor costs. Here is how it works: When you buy something from the store, it had to be created, packaged, and shipped. It is obvious that the cost of a cashier or stocker is a labor cost. Transportation costs are also labor costs. The obvious part is the driver, pilot, or captain. I won't go into fuel costs, because it should be clear that that is also a labor cost when I finish. Packaging may be done entirely by machine, but it is still only a labor cost. If the machines require maintenance, that is labor. Creating the product required labor, again, if there were machines involved, all of their costs break down to labor. Now, how were the raw materials of the product obtained? Through human labor. Now for the machines: If there were machines involved, how did they get there? We can go through the same steps to see how machine costs all come down to labor. Human life started with nothing. Everything we have is the result of labor. Even when machines are building machines, there was at one point an original machine that was built using labor. And further back, there were the original tools that were built with human labor. Every cost ultimately originates with human labor.
How do machines fit in then? They reduce labor. Thinking about it at this very basic level, it is hard to see how that can be bad. The reason it is viewed as bad is because we have an expectation of labor for our sustenance. Reducing labor reduces jobs, and we see jobs as necessary to provide for our survival. Thus, reducing labor reduces survival.
On the other side, however, we can see that reducing labor must reduce cost. If cost is reduced, then the amount of labor required for survival should also be reduced. From this perspective, we can follow a logical progression, where in the end everything is automated, thus no labor is required, there is no cost, and everything is produced for free. Why then is reducing labor viewed as bad?
It is all in our heads. Reducing labor is not bad. In fact, without a reduction in labor, we would never have had the free time to learn advanced sciences and mathematics, nor would we have had time to develop all of the modern technologies that depend on those things. Where, then, is the problem?
The problem is not in reducing labor. The problem is where the benefits of reduced labor are going. Production costs for food, housing, clothing, technology, and everything else are the lowest they have ever been in the history of the world. The U.S. alone produces enough food to feed itself and have over 60% left over for export. Further, of the 40% of food used to feed ourselves, half is wasted. We are producing 5 times the food we need. Why are there beggars in every large city in the U.S. who only eat one meal a day and that only when they are lucky? If we are producing that much food, why are people in our country starving?
The problem is greed. Companies buy machines to reduce costs and consequently have to lay off those workers whose labor is being automated. This reduces production costs dramatically. Instead of lowering prices to share the savings, however, the company keeps all of the additional profits. This reduces labor without reducing prices. This causes an imbalance in value of labor to cost of goods. The result is 659% inflation in the last 50 years and an average increase in wages of only 75% (for most of the population). The problem is not automation, it is greed. So, what is the solution?
There are many potential solutions. The one I overheard was regulating automation. The problem with this solution is that it does not allow progress. It will ultimately result in stagnation. It will limit innovation and creativity. If this is seen as a valid solution, then why not go further? We can eliminate unemployment entirely by destroying all of technology. When we are all reduced to hunter/gatherers, we can all have jobs, because anyone who does not work will starve to death. Why should we allow greed to reduce us to poverty when the means to provide for everyone exist? Regulating automation might hide the symptoms, but it will not cure the disease.
I don't know if there is an ideal solution, and I am certain there is no solution that everyone will agree with. What I do know is that if it is possible that we can get to a point where automation can do everything for us with little or no labor, if we do not do something about this problem, it will destroy our civilization. Consider, over the flow of time, if things are slowly automated until everything that can be automated is. Now, our current policy seems to be to automate processes and then lay off the workers and keep the profits for ourselves. If this occurs at each point where a process is automated, eventually all but a select few laborers will be laid off, unable to make any money to support themselves. A vast majority of civilization will be jobless, unable to generate enough income to survive. At the same time, we will be producing absurd amounts of every product imaginable, at almost no cost. This is the logical progression that we are currently following.
I have two potential solutions, one that we are currently trying and one that a friend suggested. I prefer the second. The first is welfare. As more and more processes become automated and fewer and fewer people are needed to provide labor, the government puts those laid off on welfare. This is what we are currently trying, only there is one fatal flaw. For this solution to work, the funds must be taken from the other side of the imbalance. Namely, the money used to provide welfare must come from the businesses. This is essential, because that is where all of the money is going. If all of the money goes to the businesses, but the welfare funding comes from other sources, there will eventually be no money to fund welfare. Currently, the government gives large businesses (which happen to be the ones with large scale automation) extensive tax breaks. All of the welfare money comes from the very small number of extremely wealthy individuals and the middle class. As automation increases and labor decreases, the middle class will be eliminated. The very rich avoid high taxation by keeping most of their money in their businesses (stock options and such). If everyone in the country is either on welfare, or rich but avoiding taxes, the government will have no source of income to pay for the welfare. This is already a very controversial solution, but it would work. There are certain ethical questions regarding the power of government, with reference to our natural rights, however.
The second solution, suggested by a friend, is less centralized and less prone to corruption, in my opinion. First, reduce the work week to 20 hours a week, and raise minimum wage to a point where people can survive on 20 hours a week of work. This would cause businesses to reduce hours per employee, to avoid paying overtime. It would double the number of full time jobs available, practically eliminating unemployment. It would also generate enough income for the employed to survive on. This would essentially spread out the very reduced need for labor. Profit margins for businesses would drop dramatically, but only the most poorly run businesses would be destroyed (leaving room for new businesses). The rest of the businesses would have to reduce their rapid expansion as well as their research and development (the loss of jobs due to this would be insignificant compared to the dramatic increase). This solution is ideal, because the reduction in labor provided by automation would actually reduce labor, instead of making less than a percent of the population filthy rich ripping off everyone else. In addition, everyone would still have the opportunity for work, and the government would not have to be heavily involved, like it would for a huge welfare system. The only limitation of this system is that it would need periodic adjustment, as more processes are automated and less labor is required.
As for the suggestion that reducing labor might reduce opportunity for progression, as well as creativity and innovation, I doubt that this is the case. Historically, reducing labor has done just the opposite. When the Greeks employed cheap slave labor to produce their food, the reduction in labor for the general Greek population resulted in so much leisure time that they managed to develop advanced mathematics and philosophy, both of which have had an indispensable role in the development of modern science and technology. I can see that reducing labor will make some people lazy, but I think that a government campaign encouraging people to take up a hobby or two in their free time would counter this and then some. With this much free time, imagine how quickly technology and science could advance.
Automation is not dehumanizing. Greed is dehumanizing. Automation reduces the need for labor. If we can overcome the artificial need for labor created by greed, we would be the most prosperous civilization to live on this Earth. We already produce enough to do this, as least in the U.S., but so long as we allow it to only benefit a few, we will continue to struggle with economic problems like unemployment and poverty.
Lord Rybec
17 August 2012
14 August 2012
Reflection on "Caritas in Veritate:" Chapter 1
I started reading the synopsis of "Caritas in Veritate" found on Wikipedia. This document was written by Pope Benedict XVI of the Catholic Church, the current Pope at the time of this writing. Now, if you follow my blog, you are probably aware that I am not Catholic (I am in fact LDS aka Mormon). The fact that there are many religious beliefs that I do not share with the Pope does not, however, mean that I consider his opinion invalid. I am not so insecure in my beliefs that I will not listen to the reasoning of others, and further I recognize that in spite of differences in beliefs, truth can come from many sources. I chose to look into this document when I came across an article by another religious minister (who happens to be protestant) suggesting that all Christians could benefit from reading it.
The synopsis of the first chapter (this is as far as I have gotten; as such, this may be the first in a series), found on Wikipedia says that it begins where "Populorum progressio" (a document written by a previous pope) ends. It discusses poverty and charity. Specifically, it discusses an idea from the previous document, that the primary causes of poverty are not disaster or other material things, but "the lack of brotherhood among individuals and peoples." He quotes "Populorum progressio" again later, "the peoples in hunger are making a dramatic appeal to the peoples blessed with abundance." He also points out that those working for the benefit of others, which I interpret as those employed by businesses or other people, need a sense of fulfillment.
The first part, discussing poverty and hunger gave me pause for reflection. In the past, it has been common for civilizations to allow people to go hungry when they chose not to earn their keep. This was seen as fair, because it put undue strain on society and its ability to provide enough for everyone. In the past, people were barely capable of providing for themselves and their families, let alone anyone else. If one person refused to work, or even was unable to work, the cost on society to care for this person could be disastrous. Natural conditions that reduced food supply were common. It was natural and fair that those who did not produce or otherwise provide useful labor should starve. This is no longer the case, however.
One of the major points of Christian teaching is charity. Jesus spent most of His recorded life giving care to those in need. Many times, He helped people without the ability to help themselves, but there were also cases where He helped those who needed help because they had placed themselves in bad situations due to their own poor choices (generally with a plea to choose better in the future). He never passed judgement on these people, and He never refused to help them, even when their situation was obviously their own fault.
This is what the first chapter of Caritas in Veritate is speaking of. When Pope Benedict XVI quotes "Populorum progressio" saying that the primary cause of hunger and poverty is "the lack of brotherhood among individuals and peoples," he is pointing out that the problem is not laziness or the fault of those in poverty. The fault lies with those who have plenty, but are too judgmental or greedy to share when needed. Now, I admit that poverty is a natural consequence of laziness, but we are no longer a society where scarcity dictates that the lazy must starve so that the rest of society can survive. The argument that since poverty is the natural consequence of laziness, it is just to withhold necessities from the lazy is no longer valid. Would we allow the murderer to be put to death by starvation and exposure to the elements? I hope we would recognize this as cruel and unusual punishment. Is laziness such a bad crime that it justifies such a cruel punishment? If our culture is so heartless that those with abundance will allow such suffering for such an insignificant crime, then we are worse than savages and barbarians.
Further, the teachings of Christ do not differentiate between the naked and hungry who are at fault for their situations and those who are not. As I have mentioned, He did not judge those He helped. He helped them because it was the right thing to do. He recognized, far better than most people in our modern culture, that regardless of fault, allowing people to suffer in such ways is wrong, when you have the means to provide relief.
The second thing that impacted me was the part about how those who work for the benefit of others deserve fulfillment. This is the difference between slavery and fair employment. Employers who treat their employees like robots who should be able to do anything they are commanded to are treating them like slaves, not like human beings. This includes employers who pay their employees only enough to survive and no more, or who do not even pay that much. If a job is not worth enough to generate enough income to survive and have at least a little left over (employees deserve to profit as much as anyone else), then it is not worth being done at all. When employers pay only enough to survive, they are treating their employees like machines that have regular maintenance and fuel costs, but who have no other needs or wants. This is humiliating and unfulfilling to employees. Disrespect of employees is equally wrong, and I would like to include in this requiring more labor than is reasonable for a single person, as well as deadlines that are excessively difficult to meet. This also includes rating performance of an employee based on the performance of others. If one employee performs better than the rest, it does not mean that the rest are lazy. Often it means that the one employee has a higher capacity for work, or that that employee is taking credit for the work of others. If an employee is not earning his keep, then it is reasonable to request higher performance or to dismiss him. If most or all of the employees are not earning their keep, then maybe you have chosen a business that is not profitable enough to justify paying for labor. Instead of demanding unreasonable performance, or paying wages that are disrespectfully low, you should get out of that business entirely and try something else.
Our world produces enough to feed every person on it. If some people are lazy, there is no risk that the rest of society will suffer if we continue to support them. I don't want to sound like I am justifying laziness. The lazy should not be given every convenience without any labor. Neither should they be allowed to starve or suffer from lack of necessities either, as long as there is enough excess to go around. Even the lazy deserve sanitary living conditions, shelter from harsh weather, clothing, and sufficient water and nutrition. This may be as limited as studio apartments with two people to an apartment, the cheapest thrift store clothing, clean water that is merely warm instead of hot, and healthy food from soup kitchens that does not always taste great, but provides all of the necessary nutrients. Are we so cruel and uncaring that we will not even provide this little bit to reduce suffering?
I would like to briefly make a statement to all of the celebrities I hear say that they wish for world peace, or to end world hunger: What are you doing to fix this problem? Yes, I see that many of you donate money to charities to cure breast cancer and AIDs, to fly food to starving people in Africa, that ultimately gets confiscated by their governments to be used to fuel hate wars, or to save some endangered animal, but what are you really doing? There are people in New York, L.A., Chicago, Seattle, and every other large city in our nation (replace these with cities for your own country, if you do not live in the U.S.) who need food, shelter, and medical care, who cannot afford it, and you are pouring millions of dollars into charities to help minorities or people in other countries. How do you think that we can eliminate world hunger by sending money to other countries, when we have not even managed to eliminate hunger in our own country? When you get up in front on millions of people and say you want to end world hunger, and then go to the expensive after party and then your billion dollar mansion and never think about those starving people again, that is hypocrisy, which is the one thing that Jesus did judge people for.
I don't care if you do not believe in God, or Jesus, all of the principals still stand. Society is only strong when those with excess help support those in need. The stories of Jesus, true or not, are the single best example of this that we have. Natural laws do not care if you choose to believe in God or not, if a civilization refuses to support its poor, it will eventually loose its civility.
This is a very controversial battle. This is because most of the rich ignore their responsibility to the poor. It appears that the majority of Americans recognize that there is a responsibility there, otherwise we would not have any welfare systems, but the rich are throwing huge amounts of money and influence into convincing people that no responsibility exists and that civilization is every man for himself. If we can see that the rich have a responsibility to make sure the poor have sufficient resources to survive, and if we can see that a majority of the rich will do everything in their power to escape this responsibility, what do we think should be done about it? Should we allow the poor to die in one of the cruelest ways possible, because we believe that the rich have a natural right to shirk the responsibilities that come with excess resources? We claim to be a country dedicated to justice. Is this truly justice, to allow people to suffer to death because they cannot or will not find a way to support themselves? What rights are so important that the will of the majority should not be enough to allow the government to step in and right this wrong? Are not all of our laws somehow based on religion (and Christian religion at that)? How then is it so wrong to make laws that enforce this commandment (that those with excess help support those in need), when it is right to make laws that prohibit murder, theft, and other highly religious principals? Ironically, the strongest opponents of these laws are those conservatives who claim to be Christians.
I do understand the argument that charity should be a personal choice, and really it is. The problem is, where is the point where law should override personal choice (because that is specifically what law is designed to do)? I would argue that when thousands or millions of people are suffering and dying, it is way past the point where law should override personal choice. If we were still a nation of virtuous people, this would not even be an issue. I agree that the government should not be involved in this. Unfortunately, when the people refuse to fulfill their own responsibilities, and others suffer as a result, someone has to take that responsibility. There is no one else as uniquely qualified to do this as a government, if the people will not do it themselves. However, once the government has to take the place of individual charity, it is no longer charity, and the people giving no longer receive the benefits of charitable actions. Even if you do not believe in God, if you have any ethics you must admit that giving to the poor because the government forces you to does not give you the good feeling you get when you do it entirely voluntarily without being compelled to.
I will continue reading the synopsis of "Caritas in Veritate." I would suggest, as the protestant minister who's writings encouraged me, that all Christians would benefit from at least reading the synopsis of this document, if not the document itself. Even non-Christians would likely benefit from reading it, as even in a non-religious sense, the principals make good sense. I may choose to write more on this document, if I feel so inclined, as I continue to read through the synopsis. I may eventually read the document itself, if I can find a translation and if I can find enough time.
Lord Rybec
The synopsis of the first chapter (this is as far as I have gotten; as such, this may be the first in a series), found on Wikipedia says that it begins where "Populorum progressio" (a document written by a previous pope) ends. It discusses poverty and charity. Specifically, it discusses an idea from the previous document, that the primary causes of poverty are not disaster or other material things, but "the lack of brotherhood among individuals and peoples." He quotes "Populorum progressio" again later, "the peoples in hunger are making a dramatic appeal to the peoples blessed with abundance." He also points out that those working for the benefit of others, which I interpret as those employed by businesses or other people, need a sense of fulfillment.
The first part, discussing poverty and hunger gave me pause for reflection. In the past, it has been common for civilizations to allow people to go hungry when they chose not to earn their keep. This was seen as fair, because it put undue strain on society and its ability to provide enough for everyone. In the past, people were barely capable of providing for themselves and their families, let alone anyone else. If one person refused to work, or even was unable to work, the cost on society to care for this person could be disastrous. Natural conditions that reduced food supply were common. It was natural and fair that those who did not produce or otherwise provide useful labor should starve. This is no longer the case, however.
One of the major points of Christian teaching is charity. Jesus spent most of His recorded life giving care to those in need. Many times, He helped people without the ability to help themselves, but there were also cases where He helped those who needed help because they had placed themselves in bad situations due to their own poor choices (generally with a plea to choose better in the future). He never passed judgement on these people, and He never refused to help them, even when their situation was obviously their own fault.
This is what the first chapter of Caritas in Veritate is speaking of. When Pope Benedict XVI quotes "Populorum progressio" saying that the primary cause of hunger and poverty is "the lack of brotherhood among individuals and peoples," he is pointing out that the problem is not laziness or the fault of those in poverty. The fault lies with those who have plenty, but are too judgmental or greedy to share when needed. Now, I admit that poverty is a natural consequence of laziness, but we are no longer a society where scarcity dictates that the lazy must starve so that the rest of society can survive. The argument that since poverty is the natural consequence of laziness, it is just to withhold necessities from the lazy is no longer valid. Would we allow the murderer to be put to death by starvation and exposure to the elements? I hope we would recognize this as cruel and unusual punishment. Is laziness such a bad crime that it justifies such a cruel punishment? If our culture is so heartless that those with abundance will allow such suffering for such an insignificant crime, then we are worse than savages and barbarians.
Further, the teachings of Christ do not differentiate between the naked and hungry who are at fault for their situations and those who are not. As I have mentioned, He did not judge those He helped. He helped them because it was the right thing to do. He recognized, far better than most people in our modern culture, that regardless of fault, allowing people to suffer in such ways is wrong, when you have the means to provide relief.
The second thing that impacted me was the part about how those who work for the benefit of others deserve fulfillment. This is the difference between slavery and fair employment. Employers who treat their employees like robots who should be able to do anything they are commanded to are treating them like slaves, not like human beings. This includes employers who pay their employees only enough to survive and no more, or who do not even pay that much. If a job is not worth enough to generate enough income to survive and have at least a little left over (employees deserve to profit as much as anyone else), then it is not worth being done at all. When employers pay only enough to survive, they are treating their employees like machines that have regular maintenance and fuel costs, but who have no other needs or wants. This is humiliating and unfulfilling to employees. Disrespect of employees is equally wrong, and I would like to include in this requiring more labor than is reasonable for a single person, as well as deadlines that are excessively difficult to meet. This also includes rating performance of an employee based on the performance of others. If one employee performs better than the rest, it does not mean that the rest are lazy. Often it means that the one employee has a higher capacity for work, or that that employee is taking credit for the work of others. If an employee is not earning his keep, then it is reasonable to request higher performance or to dismiss him. If most or all of the employees are not earning their keep, then maybe you have chosen a business that is not profitable enough to justify paying for labor. Instead of demanding unreasonable performance, or paying wages that are disrespectfully low, you should get out of that business entirely and try something else.
Our world produces enough to feed every person on it. If some people are lazy, there is no risk that the rest of society will suffer if we continue to support them. I don't want to sound like I am justifying laziness. The lazy should not be given every convenience without any labor. Neither should they be allowed to starve or suffer from lack of necessities either, as long as there is enough excess to go around. Even the lazy deserve sanitary living conditions, shelter from harsh weather, clothing, and sufficient water and nutrition. This may be as limited as studio apartments with two people to an apartment, the cheapest thrift store clothing, clean water that is merely warm instead of hot, and healthy food from soup kitchens that does not always taste great, but provides all of the necessary nutrients. Are we so cruel and uncaring that we will not even provide this little bit to reduce suffering?
I would like to briefly make a statement to all of the celebrities I hear say that they wish for world peace, or to end world hunger: What are you doing to fix this problem? Yes, I see that many of you donate money to charities to cure breast cancer and AIDs, to fly food to starving people in Africa, that ultimately gets confiscated by their governments to be used to fuel hate wars, or to save some endangered animal, but what are you really doing? There are people in New York, L.A., Chicago, Seattle, and every other large city in our nation (replace these with cities for your own country, if you do not live in the U.S.) who need food, shelter, and medical care, who cannot afford it, and you are pouring millions of dollars into charities to help minorities or people in other countries. How do you think that we can eliminate world hunger by sending money to other countries, when we have not even managed to eliminate hunger in our own country? When you get up in front on millions of people and say you want to end world hunger, and then go to the expensive after party and then your billion dollar mansion and never think about those starving people again, that is hypocrisy, which is the one thing that Jesus did judge people for.
I don't care if you do not believe in God, or Jesus, all of the principals still stand. Society is only strong when those with excess help support those in need. The stories of Jesus, true or not, are the single best example of this that we have. Natural laws do not care if you choose to believe in God or not, if a civilization refuses to support its poor, it will eventually loose its civility.
This is a very controversial battle. This is because most of the rich ignore their responsibility to the poor. It appears that the majority of Americans recognize that there is a responsibility there, otherwise we would not have any welfare systems, but the rich are throwing huge amounts of money and influence into convincing people that no responsibility exists and that civilization is every man for himself. If we can see that the rich have a responsibility to make sure the poor have sufficient resources to survive, and if we can see that a majority of the rich will do everything in their power to escape this responsibility, what do we think should be done about it? Should we allow the poor to die in one of the cruelest ways possible, because we believe that the rich have a natural right to shirk the responsibilities that come with excess resources? We claim to be a country dedicated to justice. Is this truly justice, to allow people to suffer to death because they cannot or will not find a way to support themselves? What rights are so important that the will of the majority should not be enough to allow the government to step in and right this wrong? Are not all of our laws somehow based on religion (and Christian religion at that)? How then is it so wrong to make laws that enforce this commandment (that those with excess help support those in need), when it is right to make laws that prohibit murder, theft, and other highly religious principals? Ironically, the strongest opponents of these laws are those conservatives who claim to be Christians.
I do understand the argument that charity should be a personal choice, and really it is. The problem is, where is the point where law should override personal choice (because that is specifically what law is designed to do)? I would argue that when thousands or millions of people are suffering and dying, it is way past the point where law should override personal choice. If we were still a nation of virtuous people, this would not even be an issue. I agree that the government should not be involved in this. Unfortunately, when the people refuse to fulfill their own responsibilities, and others suffer as a result, someone has to take that responsibility. There is no one else as uniquely qualified to do this as a government, if the people will not do it themselves. However, once the government has to take the place of individual charity, it is no longer charity, and the people giving no longer receive the benefits of charitable actions. Even if you do not believe in God, if you have any ethics you must admit that giving to the poor because the government forces you to does not give you the good feeling you get when you do it entirely voluntarily without being compelled to.
I will continue reading the synopsis of "Caritas in Veritate." I would suggest, as the protestant minister who's writings encouraged me, that all Christians would benefit from at least reading the synopsis of this document, if not the document itself. Even non-Christians would likely benefit from reading it, as even in a non-religious sense, the principals make good sense. I may choose to write more on this document, if I feel so inclined, as I continue to read through the synopsis. I may eventually read the document itself, if I can find a translation and if I can find enough time.
Lord Rybec
09 August 2012
Intellectual Property Ethics & Piracy
I had an interesting discussion today about media production, distribution, and pricing. Some of those present expressed a belief that the free market system controls prices sufficiently for media. The argument was that we pay the prices demanded, thus it is fair that we should pay that much. I know I have discussed this idea before, on a general level, but I would like to discuss it again, with its relationship to intellectual property and media piracy.
First I would like to submit that the argument that "we pay the demanded prices, thus the prices must be fair" is false. As I have said, I have addressed the fairness issue previously. I would now like to address the assertion that we pay the demanded prices.
First let's look at piracy. Initially, piracy was only defined as maritime theft. If the crew of one ship overpowered and seized the goods carried by another ship, this was piracy. Besides the fact that it was specific to sea travel, it defined theft. Now, theft is most generically defined as someone taking something that does not belong to them and sometimes more specifically as taking something which belongs to someone else, without permission. There are, however, some underlying assumptions. First, we assume that the item taken has some value, either monetary or emotional, to the owner. Second, we assume that the deprivation of the item will cause significant harm or hardship to the owner. Thus, taking money, a valuable item, or even a worthless item with sentimental value to the owner would clearly be defined as theft.
Media piracy does not take place on the seas, but given that we often use comparable terms for air travel, one might argue that it is not entirely unfair to call it piracy if it has the potential to be transmitted wirelessly (I wouldn't buy it, but the semantics here are not the ones in question). The concept of media theft however, is rather questionable. First, could media piracy be construed as taking something of value? Given the quality of modern media, this is debatable, but I will give the benefit of the doubt and assume that if it were not of value, no one would want to take it. Second, does the deprivation of the item cause significant harm or hardship? Well, given that modern media can be copied and distributed for almost no cost, the supposed theft of media does not actually deprive the owner of it. So, really media piracy does not fit the normal understanding of theft. There are, however, some that argue that it does still cause significant loss, which could be considered hardship or harm.
Now, let's quantify the loss caused by media piracy. Unless the stolen item was a book, CD-ROM, or other physical media, there is no value lost directly from the media. If the pirate managed to hack the owner's computer and download it directly from there, the taking of the media might cost the owner a few cents in electricity and network fees, if they pay based on bandwidth used. As nearly all media piracy takes place through copying physical media at home, transferring files using personally owned physical media, or through networks in ways that never touch the owner of the media, the pirates generally pay the entire cost of distributing the media. In short, media piracy does not incur a direct cost on the owner. This is extremely different from physical media; in fact it is so substantially different that trying to apply the same laws to it has proven absurd.
The actual loss caused by media piracy is not quantifiable. Media companies make guesses, but how are they counting physically copied media? Does someone tell them every time anyone uses their DVD burner to copy a DVD? How do they know the number of times their media has been transmitted over the internet? What about encrypted connections; do they know what gets transferred on those? So, they actually try to quantify it using guesses based on what little data they can collect. Besides being a guess, this method ignores other pertinent facts. They do not take into account how many of those pirates would have paid full price for the media if they had not been able to obtain it for free. They cannot reasonably claim that they have lost money because someone was able to obtain the media for free, if the person would not have paid for it even if they could not obtain it for free. In essence, the media companies are calculating imaginary losses that cannot even be estimated to within an order of magnitude.
Let's return to the original assertion: "we pay the demanded prices, thus the prices must be fair." I don't believe we pay the demanded prices. Let's put aside the ethics of piracy for a moment. There has been no time in history where such a large number of people took what was perceived to belong to another person without permission or payment. (I would like to note here that our nation's founders did not believe that information of any type should belong to a person. They implemented the patent and copyright systems as a means of encouraging inventors and artists to disclose their work to the general public, so that technology could advance more quickly. They also recognized that without reward, people would quit creating new things, so they created a system intended to allow a reasonable profit, if the invention/media was of value. There was no implication of property rights for media.) I submit that this is how we refuse to pay the demanded prices for media. When the media prices are higher than we are willing to pay, we obtain it from a competitor that charges less.
In reality, there is no evidence that media companies are loosing significant money from piracy. All of the figures that can be found on the internet are made up, including the ones attributed to government agencies (who, when questioned, said that they have neither obtained nor published such figures). In short, they are lies. Media companies are still making absurd profits on their products, in spite of high piracy rates. The real question is one of fairness.
The media companies are benefiting from the ability to effortlessly transfer digital media. In the past, they have had to rely on physical media to transport media. The first large scale media (ie, mass produced) was books. These were initially expensive to produce (the invention of the printing press did not reduce the cost of making paper or ink). Even now, a majority of the production cost of a book is the physical creation. Then we invented CDs (I am skipping some of the less wildly popular physical media; cassette tapes were pretty big at one point and were the first easily copyable media). CDs can be copied easily and cheaply. Still, the physical media distribution is most of the cost. When we started transferring files over the internet though, the cost per copy was reduced to almost nothing. This has been an enormous boon to the media companies, because now the biggest cost of selling their product is gone. Why then have media prices stayed pretty much the same? Right, so rental costs for movies and games are lower now, and some distributors give discounts for download versions, but nothing significant. I also understand that you can buy songs at $1 a piece, but as music CDs with 15 or so songs cost around $15, this is not actually a price reduction at all. The vast majority of the cost per unit has been eliminated, but the price has not gone down significantly.
So, where is the fairness? The cost of production has dropped to almost nothing. Why have the prices not dropped? I understand that these companies need to make money, but this amounts to millions or even billions of dollars unaccounted for. How then is it fair for them to complain about piracy, when the very medium that allows it is making them greater profits than they could have ever imagined? Wide spread media piracy is the consumer rebellion against unfair prices. We are not willingly paying what they are demanding. Many of us are refusing to pay what they are demanding. The market is speaking. This is how a truly free market works. If these companies want our business, they will have to charge prices that reflect all of the savings that these new mediums are bringing.
What should the government do? Do these businesses need protection? To answer the first question, we must first answer the second. Is there evidence that the media companies are suffering due to piracy? According to them, they need protection. If you look at their profit margins, even with piracy, they are still raking in the cash. I don't think they need any protection. They are doing perfectly fine. As such, I don't think the government has any business protecting them. Further, if there is a reason for the government to intervene, I would submit that it should be in the opposite direction. Looking at the profit margins (try popular movies, and only look at opening day for a surprise), I would say that these companies are charging prices that amount to extortion. If anyone needs protection it is the consumers. That said, I think that we have found a fairly good solution: piracy. Not only is this a perfectly fair free market solution, it requires no government action at all. We have already seen it work. The iTunes store finally dropped the oppressive DRM built into all of its products. This generated further evidence that people are more willing to pay than pirate if it is a fair deal, when their sales shot up as a result. That aside though, the government is supposed to represent the people, and if piracy rates are as high as the media companies claim, then the people have spoken. At this point, the government has no business intervening in behalf of the media companies.
I don't think most media pirates are greedy people who are unwilling to pay fair prices when they can easily get it for free instead. I think most media pirates are either unwilling to pay the unfair prices, or are unable to. There was a time when convenience was also a major issue. The iTunes store and other vendors found ways to make purchasing media more convenient, and sales went up. DRM has been a huge issue, and when iTunes dropped it, we saw their sales go up again. I think that if prices were reduced to a fair amount, we would again see an increase in sales and a drop in piracy. There will still be people who want free stuff and will not be willing to pay if they can get it for free, but I don't think this describes most media pirates.
The American people are demanding fair prices. The government can try to prevent media piracy, but we will always find a way around it (PIPA and SOPA did not even get passed, but the very fact that the bills got to Congress resulted in more means of circumventing internet censorship). Piracy may be illegal, but evidently, most Americans do not see it as ethically wrong, when the only alternative is to be treated unfairly by media companies. When the ethical dilemma of piracy is compared to the ethical dilemma of extortion, it looks like piracy wins. The only way to reduce piracy is for the media companies to listen to the people and begin treating them fairly.
First I would like to submit that the argument that "we pay the demanded prices, thus the prices must be fair" is false. As I have said, I have addressed the fairness issue previously. I would now like to address the assertion that we pay the demanded prices.
First let's look at piracy. Initially, piracy was only defined as maritime theft. If the crew of one ship overpowered and seized the goods carried by another ship, this was piracy. Besides the fact that it was specific to sea travel, it defined theft. Now, theft is most generically defined as someone taking something that does not belong to them and sometimes more specifically as taking something which belongs to someone else, without permission. There are, however, some underlying assumptions. First, we assume that the item taken has some value, either monetary or emotional, to the owner. Second, we assume that the deprivation of the item will cause significant harm or hardship to the owner. Thus, taking money, a valuable item, or even a worthless item with sentimental value to the owner would clearly be defined as theft.
Media piracy does not take place on the seas, but given that we often use comparable terms for air travel, one might argue that it is not entirely unfair to call it piracy if it has the potential to be transmitted wirelessly (I wouldn't buy it, but the semantics here are not the ones in question). The concept of media theft however, is rather questionable. First, could media piracy be construed as taking something of value? Given the quality of modern media, this is debatable, but I will give the benefit of the doubt and assume that if it were not of value, no one would want to take it. Second, does the deprivation of the item cause significant harm or hardship? Well, given that modern media can be copied and distributed for almost no cost, the supposed theft of media does not actually deprive the owner of it. So, really media piracy does not fit the normal understanding of theft. There are, however, some that argue that it does still cause significant loss, which could be considered hardship or harm.
Now, let's quantify the loss caused by media piracy. Unless the stolen item was a book, CD-ROM, or other physical media, there is no value lost directly from the media. If the pirate managed to hack the owner's computer and download it directly from there, the taking of the media might cost the owner a few cents in electricity and network fees, if they pay based on bandwidth used. As nearly all media piracy takes place through copying physical media at home, transferring files using personally owned physical media, or through networks in ways that never touch the owner of the media, the pirates generally pay the entire cost of distributing the media. In short, media piracy does not incur a direct cost on the owner. This is extremely different from physical media; in fact it is so substantially different that trying to apply the same laws to it has proven absurd.
The actual loss caused by media piracy is not quantifiable. Media companies make guesses, but how are they counting physically copied media? Does someone tell them every time anyone uses their DVD burner to copy a DVD? How do they know the number of times their media has been transmitted over the internet? What about encrypted connections; do they know what gets transferred on those? So, they actually try to quantify it using guesses based on what little data they can collect. Besides being a guess, this method ignores other pertinent facts. They do not take into account how many of those pirates would have paid full price for the media if they had not been able to obtain it for free. They cannot reasonably claim that they have lost money because someone was able to obtain the media for free, if the person would not have paid for it even if they could not obtain it for free. In essence, the media companies are calculating imaginary losses that cannot even be estimated to within an order of magnitude.
Let's return to the original assertion: "we pay the demanded prices, thus the prices must be fair." I don't believe we pay the demanded prices. Let's put aside the ethics of piracy for a moment. There has been no time in history where such a large number of people took what was perceived to belong to another person without permission or payment. (I would like to note here that our nation's founders did not believe that information of any type should belong to a person. They implemented the patent and copyright systems as a means of encouraging inventors and artists to disclose their work to the general public, so that technology could advance more quickly. They also recognized that without reward, people would quit creating new things, so they created a system intended to allow a reasonable profit, if the invention/media was of value. There was no implication of property rights for media.) I submit that this is how we refuse to pay the demanded prices for media. When the media prices are higher than we are willing to pay, we obtain it from a competitor that charges less.
In reality, there is no evidence that media companies are loosing significant money from piracy. All of the figures that can be found on the internet are made up, including the ones attributed to government agencies (who, when questioned, said that they have neither obtained nor published such figures). In short, they are lies. Media companies are still making absurd profits on their products, in spite of high piracy rates. The real question is one of fairness.
The media companies are benefiting from the ability to effortlessly transfer digital media. In the past, they have had to rely on physical media to transport media. The first large scale media (ie, mass produced) was books. These were initially expensive to produce (the invention of the printing press did not reduce the cost of making paper or ink). Even now, a majority of the production cost of a book is the physical creation. Then we invented CDs (I am skipping some of the less wildly popular physical media; cassette tapes were pretty big at one point and were the first easily copyable media). CDs can be copied easily and cheaply. Still, the physical media distribution is most of the cost. When we started transferring files over the internet though, the cost per copy was reduced to almost nothing. This has been an enormous boon to the media companies, because now the biggest cost of selling their product is gone. Why then have media prices stayed pretty much the same? Right, so rental costs for movies and games are lower now, and some distributors give discounts for download versions, but nothing significant. I also understand that you can buy songs at $1 a piece, but as music CDs with 15 or so songs cost around $15, this is not actually a price reduction at all. The vast majority of the cost per unit has been eliminated, but the price has not gone down significantly.
So, where is the fairness? The cost of production has dropped to almost nothing. Why have the prices not dropped? I understand that these companies need to make money, but this amounts to millions or even billions of dollars unaccounted for. How then is it fair for them to complain about piracy, when the very medium that allows it is making them greater profits than they could have ever imagined? Wide spread media piracy is the consumer rebellion against unfair prices. We are not willingly paying what they are demanding. Many of us are refusing to pay what they are demanding. The market is speaking. This is how a truly free market works. If these companies want our business, they will have to charge prices that reflect all of the savings that these new mediums are bringing.
What should the government do? Do these businesses need protection? To answer the first question, we must first answer the second. Is there evidence that the media companies are suffering due to piracy? According to them, they need protection. If you look at their profit margins, even with piracy, they are still raking in the cash. I don't think they need any protection. They are doing perfectly fine. As such, I don't think the government has any business protecting them. Further, if there is a reason for the government to intervene, I would submit that it should be in the opposite direction. Looking at the profit margins (try popular movies, and only look at opening day for a surprise), I would say that these companies are charging prices that amount to extortion. If anyone needs protection it is the consumers. That said, I think that we have found a fairly good solution: piracy. Not only is this a perfectly fair free market solution, it requires no government action at all. We have already seen it work. The iTunes store finally dropped the oppressive DRM built into all of its products. This generated further evidence that people are more willing to pay than pirate if it is a fair deal, when their sales shot up as a result. That aside though, the government is supposed to represent the people, and if piracy rates are as high as the media companies claim, then the people have spoken. At this point, the government has no business intervening in behalf of the media companies.
I don't think most media pirates are greedy people who are unwilling to pay fair prices when they can easily get it for free instead. I think most media pirates are either unwilling to pay the unfair prices, or are unable to. There was a time when convenience was also a major issue. The iTunes store and other vendors found ways to make purchasing media more convenient, and sales went up. DRM has been a huge issue, and when iTunes dropped it, we saw their sales go up again. I think that if prices were reduced to a fair amount, we would again see an increase in sales and a drop in piracy. There will still be people who want free stuff and will not be willing to pay if they can get it for free, but I don't think this describes most media pirates.
The American people are demanding fair prices. The government can try to prevent media piracy, but we will always find a way around it (PIPA and SOPA did not even get passed, but the very fact that the bills got to Congress resulted in more means of circumventing internet censorship). Piracy may be illegal, but evidently, most Americans do not see it as ethically wrong, when the only alternative is to be treated unfairly by media companies. When the ethical dilemma of piracy is compared to the ethical dilemma of extortion, it looks like piracy wins. The only way to reduce piracy is for the media companies to listen to the people and begin treating them fairly.
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