[ExI] Forensic evidence emerges that European e.coli superbug was bioengineered to produce human fatalities

spike spike66 at att.net
Mon Jun 13 23:51:19 UTC 2011


Am I getting close to my daily post quota?

I'll shut up until tomorrow just in case.  Rafal



Ja, both of us are getting a bit yakkity yakky today.  I have decided to sit tight until tomorrow.  I don't want to hafta put myself on moderation and scold me.  That would be a pain, write the post, go into the moderators box, review what I wrote, sit on it a while, let myself through, warn myself to not post too much, oy vey.  Then if I didn't stop it, I would need to give me a spanking, and although mildly titillating, I am getting a little too old for those kinds of games.

spike












-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2011 4:21 PM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] Forensic evidence emerges that European e.coli superbug was bioengineered to produce human fatalities

Am I getting close to my daily post quota?

I'll shut up until tomorrow just in case.

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 6:56 PM, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 06:32:53PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>
>> ### In the ideal libertarian world, that is the Golden Oecumene, 
>> absolutely everything, including thoughts and memories, would be 
>> subject to well-enforced property laws. If an inventor or his assigns
>
> Such a glorious world of freedom you paint!  Who needs Big Brother and 
> thoughtcrime, when big business can enforce EULAs against your very 
> thoughts?

### Yeah, why not? Maybe people would be less willing to buy Windows?

---------------

>
> Hmm, I'd pay more for a drug I could use at my discretion, rather than 
> one I had to verify use of with a corporate bureaucracy.

### If the use-at-your-discretion drug was crap (because millions of non-experts destroyed its efficacy by profligate use), would you sing the same tune?

---------------

 How altruistic
> of the company to unprofitably undertake such restrictions, vs. a 
> competitor that sold drugs outright and didn't have to pay the costs 
> of an enforcer staff.  True, in the very long run the enforcement 
> approach might pay off, as competing drugs lose their effectiveness, 
> but that's a huge capital cost to carry.  Human businesses tend not to 
> jump at "and we'll start making profits 30 years from now."

### If the legal system works, and you get full restitution, honesty pays for itself and crime doesn't. The direct-sale competitor would soon find himself unable to sell anything, because his drug would stop working.

For a more mundane example, look at the case of lasik surgery. The company that developed the technology commercially uses a tracking system built into the machines they make - they charge a fee for every use, rather than simply selling the machines outright. The enforcement of property rights is built into the hardware of the machine, and as long as encryption is not broken, their rights are secure, at the trivial cost of a few lines of code in their program.


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