On 1/22/12 9:02 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
The recent success of the populist response to SOPA and PIPA gives one
some hope that we can steer our ship of state at least on very
particular and concrete issues, at least. I was absolutely astounded
that both of my senators and my representative in congress were for
them both.
There is a feeling I often have these days which I describe as "shocked
but not surprised" and I apply that to this situation. It is not unlike
what I felt when the Congress nearly unanimously approved the invasion
of Iraq.
The problem is not (merely) with our (specific) legislators, but rather
with the *nature* of our legislators in general. We paradoxically
demand that they be well educated (indoctrinated?) in systems like Law
and Politics and have strong wills of their own, while also responding
to our every whim. We expect them to have strong drives and strong
principles, yet we also expect them to throw both of those over to
serving us on any given topic.
Alternatively we could ask for strong leaders who share our values, but
we would first have to have sorted our own values more clearly and not
allow clever salesmen (aspiring politicians) to sell us their snake-oil,
no matter how much we want the goodies without paying any real price for
them. We have all been seduced into various multi-level marketing
systems of politics where we are standing AmWay up against Shaklee or
MaryKay up against Avon and pretending we believe in their products when
really we are just hoping to get rich ourselves. (Pity the fool who
first suckered ME into an AmWay pitch!).
On the surface, "stopping online piracy" and "protecting IP" sound like
*good things*... and from our technorati perspective, one would think
that any educated/intelligent person (which describes many though not
all of our political leaders) could see the second order consequences,
but in fact they are trained not to look beyond the first order effects
(or second if the law in question is promoted by their rivals).
Few if any laws under consideration are easily questioned on their
first-order merits, it is always second or third order implications
which make them horrible laws. I suspect our legislators are masters at
crafting laws whose real impact are neither in their first nor their
second-order effects. Those are too easy to rally support against. And
those that fit that profile are probably there to distract us from the
ones that really matter, being passed quietly in the shadow of the high
profile ones, or as riders on the ones they *can* bully through.
Theirs is a war of attrition for us to lose, and we do.
It seems that the proponents of the laws craft them with obvious
first-order effects that are at least delectable to their own
constituents and probably to most of the population but whose second or
third order effects are carefully crafted to result in power shifts
toward themselves personally, or at least to their political party (i.e.
Dem/Pub) or sub-party (e.g. tea-baggers)and/or various partially hidden
agendas.
All (at least Dem/Pub) are interested in what big business is interested
in. I personally don't want to see the individual artists (musicians,
actors, writers, directors, maybe even producers) lose their livelihood
over online piracy. On the other hand, I really would like the same
people NOT to be beholden to large corporations to maintain their
viability in the first place. Did Capitol Records make the Beatles or
vice-versa? And why would the Beatles form Apple Records themselves?
And where did all the money flow? And what of Capitol Media Group (or
Apple Records) today? And what of the Stones, Decca and the Universal
Media Group? Who cares? Just get offa my cloud!
So I (and obviously our legislators) are quick to support actions which
protect the interest of the artists even though those interests have
already been subordinated to large media conglomerates. Do any of the
legislators crafting (or supporting) PIPA/SOPA understand that they are
undermining some important things beyond the piracy of intellectual
property? Surely many understand it very well and promote it anyway...
their interests are apparently somehow furthered by undermining the
interests of "we the people", if not also the true creators of the
intellectual property they claim to be protecting. Could they admit
that? Why would they (except in the smoke-filled back rooms where they
and their kind broker these things)? And if they manage to give us
what we think we want on the surface, why would we shine a light into
those rooms? Occupy seems at least be getting out their flashlights and
practicing with them, if not yet cracking open those doors.
How do our own representatives stand in this game? I am less interested
in whether my representatives align with me on all principles, but
rather that they be truly principled in their alignments. The
non-partisan self-styling of Occupy seems to support this. The many
liberal/progressives who are not afraid to question Obama's actions
support this. In a very lame way, the mud-slinging the conservatives
are festing with right now supports this.
All is not lost... yet.
- Steve
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