wow
Modus I didn't know about that companies would actually go that far with the law..
sorry to bring this up, but:
Our blend of capitalism and socialism remains the strongest economy and standard of living in the world, and has been standing for over 200 years.
the United States considers itself a BLEND of capitalism and socialism??
I mean, sure there are some elements of both, but what the United States has, is basically a Capitalist based system. The economy is based on competition (the Free Market Economy), which is what affects people the most.
anywho I'm glad that argument (pointless IMHO) is over..
I agree with Madrat. Society cannot get much better unless some fundamentals in Human Nature are changed. however, just sitting there and saying that we can't change it is not the way to solve the problem!
I'm surprised no-one actually noticed my extremely long post above, so I'll reiterate!
pm:
If I create/build something does everyone have the right to use it for free?
If I build a house, should anyone who wants to use it be able to use it? What effort did they put into the creation of this house? What gives them the right to benefit from my hard work?
sure, let others use your house! their right to use your house should not be based on how rich they are, or what race they are. Simply because they are HUMAN, and that you are no better, or worse then anyone else as a Human.
I actually spend a lot of my time in the evening tinkering with small engines that are custom made. If I find a way to dramatically improve these engines (which is unlikely) and spend a lot of my time improving on my idea until it's ready for everyone to use it, why should General Motors be able to walk away with my design/idea for free? Why should everyone else profit from my hard work while I get nothing in return? What motivation is there to spend a lot of R&D developing something if everyone else can copy it as soon as you release it?
my opinion on this, is that the whole system that General Moters, and the other car companies run on is simply to entrenched in the money system that it cannot be taken out (though I could be wrong on this). the reason being, they DO things like this (though not to such extent I think):
For example, the oil industry has been buying patents for high-efficiency carbs and motors for years just to destroy them and make certain gas-guzzling vehicles remained the norm.
The only thing that giving them technology for free would do, would be either reduce the money they need to spend, or absolutely nothing (they could prevent the idea from reaching the market).
What would solve some problems then in this area? creating a new car company that works on free Patented technology (preventing others from patenting it after you create it first) would do the trick.. The problem though is that you wouldn't see much of an improvement in terms of quality or features that the cars provides, except for, say, Fuel Cell technology (Canada's Ballard has had fuel cell technology ready for the road for a year or so now, but they haven't hit the market, partly because they're building a plant to mass produce these stacks, but also because the companies are reluctant to go that route).
Boeing spent US$4 billion on the development and testing of the Boeing 777, but in a world where IP is freely exchanged without compensation, a company could simply buy one, figure out how to mass manufacture it (which isn't that hard compared to actually inventing and testing it), and then start selling it for substantially less than Boeing because they have no R&D investment. A $4 billion investment in R&D requires a lot of planes to be sold to start making a profit.
in todays system yes, that's the only way to do things, HOWEVER if you work in a system where money is not the driving force, this statement would be invalid.
If I spent time and effort building something and then donate it to the greater good of humanity, then that's a whole different thing. I could build my house and then donate it to the greater good. I have donated my time to build houses for Habitat for Humanity and received nothing but satisfaction as payment, but that was my choice. Linux and Open Source software are donations.
EXACTLY. You can still have a driving force, whether it be satisfaction, or simply devoting things to make our world a better place, or even simply to improve ourselves, as long as it's not a driving force based on money, or power, or property.
wyvrn
Now let us hypothesize that all countries become capitalist, for example. Then are we not all competing against one another for resources? The average pay of labor would go up, as it has with competition in the US, and overall quality of living would be higher everywhere because of it. Wealth would be more evenly distributed. Don't blame capitalism for working, blame other systems for NOT working 
in the United States, you compete, for money. When you compete with others, there are ALWAYS losers. The more competitors there are, the more losers there are. When you race a car against 15 others, is there always 15 losers? ABSOLUTELY!
solution to that? no competitors. wait, that means a monopoly! boy do we ever have a problem here, don't we??
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