A quote from their press release:

“Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation – but we can clearly do better,” Warren Adelman, Go Daddy’s newly appointed CEO, said. “It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.”

Lets run down the list of things wrong with this policy:

• There are many things that should be far more important than fighting online piracy.
• Who wants to vote for legislation that Go Daddy helped craft?
• ALL ‘Internet stakeholders’ includes the billions of users who deserve the freedom to transact content they own in any manner they see fit.
• ‘Getting it right’ is never worth the wait, the perfect is always the enemy of the good, and if they feel that SOPA is better than the status quo, they should support it, even if I don’t.
• Waiting for the ‘Internet community’ to support something is not good policy considering that one of the most vocal segments of Internet contributors is the legendary troll corps that never supports anything and just likes to hate. If Go Daddy is willing to stand down until the ‘Internet community’ will support it, then they have no business supporting legislation and should just keep their mouths shut.

Go Daddy is making the calculation that the content industry groups have the upper hand with the law and anything that strengthens the status quo they figure will be good for them. The point that they are missing is that in the new economy, it is not the information itself that is valuable, but the ability to create it. Content spread to the 4 corners of the earth serves as samples of the creator’s ability to render entertainment.

The only scarcity constraint that truly exists on the supply of entertaining information is the artificial protection of law. To pretend that the law is a force of nature is to perpetuate a fiction that is just waiting to blow up in the faces of everyone who buys into into the fantasy. SOPA is a bad idea and poses a real risk to the free exchange of idea by law abiding members of the human race. Whatever your thoughts on piracy, the nature of information has changed, and to ignore that is to invite a shock to an economy based on misunderstood reality.

At the same time, there exists a real economic need for information creators to be able to retain some level of ownership over what they have created. Capitalism is rooted in the value of property rights as a means of incentivising citizens to continue contributing to the knowledge base of society. Something real and difficult must be done, but more vigorous enforcement of  outdated paradigms isn’t the answer.

I recognize that I’m not being fair. I’m pointing a finger at SOPA and saying “that’s wrong!” but I don’t have anything to recommend. All I can say in my defense is that SOPA would serve to persecute the vulnerable of society who recognize the role that technology is taking in the world, for the benefit of a wealthy few whose support for it are only rooted in their investment in the realities of the past. To them I say, the world is different, find your new role.

Money is NOT wealth. Many things that increase wealth can be bought with money. Even the wealth of options that are available to somebody with lots of money can be highly valued in and of itself, but even then, it is the opportunity, not the money, that is valued. Wealth is time spent doing things you enjoy with people you love, like surfing, or walking, or simply talking. But money can buy many tools that make these actions easier to do, or more enjoyable while doing them.

I recently declared that ‘My preference is to avoid a government driven economy even if it were to lead to greater overall wealth, which I still do not believe is accurate.’ This was in response to a James Galbraith interview by Ezra Klein stating that there is nothing to fear from large government deficits. (to those who may find the argument convincing, I’d like to point to the role inflation plays in Galbraith’s analysis)

If the government were to decide that X is better for the wealth of the country than Y, but X is worse for your wealth, then the amount of money taken from you to accomplish X should be minimized to afford you the option of securing Y for yourself. (that’s very poorly written, I’ll have to revise it later, but that’s how my brain is working right now.)

Wealth is good, but only insofar is it is created by Freedom and Law. Freedom is the good, wealth is the result, hard work and vision under law is the means.

I call Freedom the good because life is not just a finite series of events during which one enjoys either luxury or a lack thereof. Life is not even a roller coaster of hills and turns that you have no control over. Life is a jungle of challenges and opportunities that can pop up and disappear in the blink of an eye. The choices you make affect your life and the lives all around you.

Money plays a key role in this because money provides access to an array of opportunities that are not afforded to less endowed individuals. More importantly, money tends to flow to those who provide value to others while it flows away from those who detract from that value. Government distorts that flow though when it redirects money to flow for political purposes.

Sarcasm: Real bad ass, man. Killing shepherds & taxi drivers. Hardcore.

Wait, bulls can be pretty scary too, will he save us from that too?

That said:

THIS PICTURE IS MESSED UP —>

I would like to completely disassociate myself with anyone who thinks this image is even remotely funny, innocent, or otherwise not worthy of condemnation.

1. No matter how misleading his rhetoric, no matter how wrong his ideas, Barack Hussein Obama is a highly educated and seemingly intelligent modern American man. And to cover this in the same post, making fun of his name is mean spirited and ignorant, he was born (and presumably named) in 1961, a full 18 years before Saddam Hussein came to power. Making fun of his name is like making fun of a guy named Adolph that was born when nobody had heard of Hitler.

2. The public health insurance plan, while it is socialist, is not communist. Requiring payment from most of its subscribers is supposed to cover most of the costs of the program, the substantial costs left over would be covered with government subsidy taken from taxes. I don’t like this plan, but there is plenty about it to be attacked without discrediting our cause by making up stuff that isn’t true.

3. About all these town hall disruptions, there are thousands of reasons to be just as upset at your elected representatives; but lashing out in shouting matches can sometimes incite violence and generally degrades the reputation of everyone who agrees with you. It is good for representatives to go home for town hall meetings, encourage that. If you verbally abuse them everytime they try for civil discussion, a rational person wouldn’t have town halls anymore. And they are rational, no matter how wrong their ideas are. See Public Choice economics for details.