I totally misread ‘good viable’ as good vibes, and immediately agreed despite having no substantive idea what that would be. Fleet of Magic School buses driven by assorted Ms. Frizzle’s? Cheech and Chong’s Uber service? Limo service where you get to answer suggestive Family Feud surveys with Steve Harvey? I don’t know, but I’m totally down for good vibes alternatives to driving.

Absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. I guess it depends on the country. Here, a lot of students pirate their books anyway. Personally, I didn’t buy a single book during my bachelors/masters.

I am glad this practice apparently isn’t universal. Basically the idea is that because pirating books is possible and they don’t get paid again for used books, the publishers have created DRM through the use of web portals that are required to turn in assignments and in some cases even tests. Access to these is provided with a new copy of their books in the school book store, or for the same/more price as the book sold separately. Without the portal, you cannot pass the class because they lobbied the school to make it illegal for teachers to accept your work any other way. The school gets a kickback from the publisher and they both make tons of money

Good point out, and I should have said not unique to either conservatism or hard leftism there. The “extremities” of the spectrum really highlight it obviously, but I think almost everyone is guilty of and/or capable of the same rationalizing over anything that forms a part of core identity, consciously or not. The stakes are just higher when it comes to politics than something like an odd food preference, and thus get stronger reactions both from external observers and the person holding that viewpoint. I try to apply a “never attribute to malice that which can be explained by something else (I know incompetence usually goes here but in this context comes off maliciously)” for most people. Everyone is the hero of their own story, yada yada.

I fall into the same trap advocating for left leaning libertarianism never being implemented with the correct mix of government guardrails (both from and against the government), and it will be funny when we all surprised Pikachu face when it turns out 500 years from now it was the Anarcho-syndicalists who were right all along ala South Park Mormonism.

Also I haven’t heard the Professional Left Podcast before but I’m definitely going to check it out, thank you for mentioning it.

I very much appreciate your input and point of view, it is very enlightening. I will fully admit that academia is notoriously cutthroat for funding and I was definitely not trying to say it even comes close to anything like a UBI, just that the publishing portion is a necessary secondary to the primary job of research. Publishing helps secure grants and funding, and is very important, just not the end-all be-all like a literary author. Holding IP/patents is also still a huge draw/money maker for those at the “top” of academia, and there are plenty who advocate for the current IP-based model because it is their primary form of income. I am not saying this is right or wrong, just that academia is not as altruistic as a whole as you appear to be making it out to be

I am also not sure how you can look at the deals publishers and journals make with colleges to ecosystem lock students with things like portal codes you can only get by buying the textbook/resources new from the school and think that the loss of IP protection would do anything to the publishers besides remove the cost they pay the authors. It’s already a scam/racket, and that won’t change without legislation making that illegal.

I also believe that scientific discovery from research universities and any institution getting Federal or State funding should be public domain anyway, both because we the people are paying for it (all or in part), and there is a vested interest in furthering mankind through scientific knowledge and achievement. This is different than entertainment, and even philosophy to a degree.

I think we need to do away with our current system of social support/welfare systems and implement a UBI to offset automation and the changing economy anyway so 100% on board there, and grants for the arts would be great. Crowdsourcing would also be great, and universal healthcare would allow crowd funding to pivot from medical bankruptcy prevention to the intended use of financing creators. I just don’t see IP abolition working without major steps into post-scarcity first.

I think I found the disconnect between your argument and the other person’s. You are not paid as an author, you are paid as an academic or researcher who also writes. Your creation is contractual, like the Disney artist animating the movie and not the author of the fairytale Disney got the idea from.

An author who’s income solely comes from their writing having their work stolen by a company like the academic publishing companies do right now would starve in those conditions, and thus have to find other work instead of writing. A UBI or equivalent is required to support an IP-less state.

The scientific journal industry currently acts as if they exist in an IP free world, and take all the profit from other people’s work. They then enforce IP on others to monopolize that profit, but in a IP-less world they would still act the same and use their size to capture the lion’s share of the market.

Left when 3rd party apps were killed, stayed because I believe in the concept of the fediverse.

Still have my Reddit accounts, but just hardly use them. There is still a much larger active user base there for a bunch of stuff so I haven’t gone scorched earth yet, but Lemmy is my social media home now.

This is a holdover from Reagan, and the boom times through the 80s and into the 90s. Deregulation works… until everything implodes/explodes. Revenue was up alongside the tax cuts because of the huge gains across the board, it just wasn’t sustainable.

The economy is like an engine, you can squeeze massive horsepower out of it for a few races or regulate it to run for millions miles. There is a happy spot that produces the highest output with acceptable longevity, but since Reagan the Republican strategy has been to crank it to the max.

The Democrats also continued the deregulation and government has abdicated it’s duty to enforce anti-trust laws, protect the commons, and ensure level playing fields. Add to that the lag time between government action and results, and you have the “Republicans do economy good”.

We have been a runaway diesel for decades, and the engine is close to detonation.

True, but sadly not unique to conservatism. It’s a human condition, lots of psychology involved with self-identity and worldview. See “communism just hasn’t been actually implemented properly yet, and the Soviet Union and China were/are actually capitalists pretending to be socialists/communists” for examples on the “opposing” spectrum.

If this doesn’t belong here, nothing does.