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In the light of the new copyright bill introduced in Canada yesterday, I had this thought:
Copyright has frequently been described as an incentive for creators to produce new works. If that is true, why does copy protection on a work extend for decades after the death of the creator (70 years in USA, 50 years in Canada)? What possible incentive could that be after the creator is dead?
Bruce on 06.13.08 @ 07:35 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
The Saskatoon StarPhoenix opinion column has observed that a vacuum in federal politics leaves the provinces fighting to fill in. Somehow this has been misconstrued as a bad thing.
While apparently "most federations recognize that the best way to attack such large issues ... is for the federal government to take the leadership and direct policy", this is really not as effective as it sounds. There are innumerable instances where federal policies have benefited one group only to completely cheat everybody else. Since the federal government is effectively constrained to "one size fits all" type policies, this will always be the case.
For comparison, let's look at some other large issues where the federal government took leadership and directed policy. First up, the energy crisis of the 1970s. The result of the federal government's "leadership" was the National Energy Program, a name that is still cursed nearly universally in western Canada.
What about the problem of disparities between so-called have and have-not provinces? That is supposedly solved by another federal system, the equalization program that punishes successful economies and reduces motivation for poor and underachieving economies. It has been the cause of all kinds of fighting, even to the point of near lawsuits by the provinces against the federal government, a rather ludicrous prospect.
It is true, as they say, that the provinces have "disparate interests". That is precisely why the provinces should be left to solve the problem in their own way rather than having the federal government dictate their choices. In fact, given the tension between the cities within each province, having the provincial government dictate solutions to the cities may even be too large a division. Having lived in both cities, there are problems for which Regina and Saskatoon would have offered completely different solutions if the provincial or federal governments had not made their decision for them.
Truly, decisions are best made as locally as possible to provide the best results for the disparate people groups we have in Canada.
Bruce on 06.11.08 @ 06:58 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
In the news today, Republican John McCain is quoted as saying oil companies should return some profits to consumers.
What on earth for? By definition, consumers are the ones that are buying the oil companies' products. Also by definition, said consumers have already profited by buying the products. We have made the decision that the products are more valuable to us than other uses of the money, and so are better off for purchasing the products. That's profit.
See, there are only a handful of people in the world who could possibly produce the kinds of products that oil companies produce on their own. Even then, they would have to purchase billions of dollars of equipment, land rights, employees, and so on. For all the rest of us, we benefit from the incredible investment these companies have made in offering us a valuable product.
In fact, given all the competition in the oil product market, these products are being offered at razor thin margins. John Gormley, a local talk show host, calculated all the costs involved in delivering gasoline to the pumps. Despite all kinds of complaints that we are being gouged, or that oil companies are colluding to charge us more, the end number he comes up with is within a few pennies of the actual price at the pump.
No, companies are only obligated to return their monetary profits to those people who have shared in the risks they take. That would be the investors that have given the companies their money to use. That's right, the same shareholders that they already return profits to. Thanks to the wonders of modern investing, pretty near everybody who owns shares in a mutual fund probably is an effective shareholder in at least one oil company.
So, we can all profit from companies by sharing in their risk. Or we can profit by purchasing their products that we value. Either way, we can profit from companies without those companies being coerced to do something so counterproductive as what McCain is suggesting.
Bruce on 06.11.08 @ 06:09 PM CST [link] [No Comments]