@renatojj

Politicians don't have their hands all over businesses, it's the opposite. Businesses have their hands in the strings that direct the politicians. Which means politicians are not serving society, but serving businesses. There are many examples of things happening that you know are wrong and can see are wrong, but nothing ever happens...why? Because businesses are either making money on them or mitigating money loss by it happening.

Look at nuclear power regulations, they have been loosened and the inspectors are actually limited in what they can inspect so much so that they don't actually see more than 5 or 10% of the workings of a nuclear plant. How can they say something is safe if they see less than 10% of it and those 10% don't even allow them to do tests they used to do?

Oil company regulation, why did the BP oil spill happen? It was because they are not held to standards damn near every other country on the planet holds them to. And when you see more into it, many times the oil inspection agents were going to work for the oil company when they retired. And yet they rarely busted their balls on questionable things and got caught with their pants down many times with not catching violations.....so they probably weren't hired for their inside knowledge on how to best keep the existing equipment up to standards....since they aren't being held to them.


And as for the last post you made...you can't just drop regulation on all of these things. There's countless reasons for it but I'll try to list a few.

1) They basically hold a monopoly in many industries or a small number of very large companies that end up basically being a monopoly, so there would be no counter balance of a free market because the market has never been free to begin with. If it were truly free there'd be 100/1000/10000/100k/1mil businesses in these industries all competing on either features or price because they should all be about as reliable as one another...since we always have to picture the "perfect" free market. I'll bet you can name a couple people who have shit internet service pretty easy or pay a lot for very little.

2) You are putting the policing of industries in the industry hands if you dial back regulation. They already can not regulate themselves. How many companies supported SOPA and now how many more support CISPA? They do what's best for them and they do it cooperatively not independently. That's why you have groups formed of these companies putting bills forward that are basically passed nearly word for word if edited at all by congress critters.

3) We hear all the time about businesses only responsibility is to make money. We don't even hold a person to that standard, an individual has more responsibilities than that...earning a living is probably in the top ten but it's not your sole major responsibility as a member of society. Number 1 could arguably be "obey the law" or "don't be a dick". Business number 1 should probably be don't negatively impact people as your business model....this could be not polluting, keeping a safe work environment, not overworking people, making underhanded deals in the name of profit, making deals you know you will back out of or have no intention to honor, etc. Yes shit happens, but you shouldn't make your business model based on making shit happen to profit. Banks and financial institutes arguably did this with bad mortgages and false rating of these mortgages when selling them.

@messenger

It's not just bribing politicians, but businesses openly courting people for employment after their term of service or the people regulating them. It makes it more profitable to be lenient and not enforce regulations or laws on companies when you'll be making 3x your salary when you go to work for them after kissing their ass for a decade or two. Both the bribes and the business tie ins with Haliburton made the early days of the current war seem pretty shady when you look specifically at Dick Cheney. But it happens with advisors to people in office as well, it's something that really should be stopped because government should be about public service and not service with the intention of landing a sweet gig at some company you helped make a few billion dollars for awhile a public servant.

You can't stop it entirely, but there should definitely be some lawful punishments put in place to make it have to cost the companies exorbitant amounts to court people to court them with the severe punishments placed on people who stray too far from the path. Like prison terms or fines to the tune of percentages of their life savings and 25% of a company's value if they are caught. Unfortunately, the people who would put forth these laws are the same people who would be directly affected by them....because they are all business owners anymore...it costs too much money to get into office and rich people are the only people who tend to have the wealth/power to pull it off.

So......regulations on companies it the best you can hope for, make it so politicians can't offer them anything worth the huge donations they make to these people because regulations would make the attempts worthless, unless of course it was deregulation. Which they've already done and continue to do, to the detriment of all. Profits are up for all the big companies sometimes higher than pre-crash, and yet they employ less people than they did 5 years ago. How are they pulling THAT off....they are cutting corners or doing something shady somewhere to keep earning like that despite being less capable of producing like they did prior when a lot more people had disposable income.

>> ^Enzoblue:
How many of these can we fight? They'll keep coming until some loosely worded, (exploitable) whatever gets passed - or they'll attach a rider on some other christmas tree bill and go under our noses. I don't see 'getting the word out' as being effective in the long hall.


You're right, though we shouldn't be discouraged. Having said that, while we're constantly fighting off legislation (not just in the USA, but worldwide) such as SOPA, ACTA, and CISPA you just know they're going to use the fact we're distracted to get other legislation in place.

It's weird that as a teenager I believed fully in the power of our vote and couldn't possibly comprehend why Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up parliament in the UK. Now I understand fully although I hasten to add I'm not encouraging it. Simply understand where Guy Fawkes was coming from.

You're missing Cenk's point, that this legislation, once again, is overly-broad in its application. It's unnecessary for it to cover all private entities. It could be limited to government and utility companies, but it isn't. Protection isn't the problem. It's that this bill introduces too much protection, and it will be used to shut down websites that don't pose a serious threat.>> ^Edgeman2112:

Private Entity = utilities, networks, phone companies, banks, etc. For example, hackers can today get into utility networks and manipulate the function and output of that facility. That represents a public danger to which the government should have an interest in protecting. The private utility should protect itself, but many can scantly afford it.

Laws catching up to technology? Here's a thought: let technology solve the problem, leave the law out of it. This is the kind of lube that allows things like SOPA/PIPA to slip right in.

Why are they using the word "coercive" so carelessly? Nobody owes you a job. If you don't get a job for not disclosing your password, that's awful, really, but I don't see any coercion going on there.

It doesn't matter how bad the job market is, laws like these have the best intentions towards the employee, but they just add to the already huge burden of hiring people, and establish a bad precedent of letting government overregulate every aspect of job relationships.

And people wonder why the job market sucks.

The dumbest thing since the last time a guest schooled him, and the dumbest thing until the next time a guest schooled him.

That didn't take long.>> ^EvilDeathBee:

I like Bill Maher, he raises a lot of interesting points quite often, but that was the dumbest thing I've heard anyone say in a while.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'fred wilson, piracy, sopa, pipa, drm, copyright' to 'fred wilson, piracy, sopa, pipa, drm, copyright, yarrgh' - edited by Fusionaut

Soooo...instead of trying to pass laws that limit corporate power, we should stop bothering and give corporations unlimited ability to do whatever they like with the internet they claim they own, and the intellectual property they claim to own?

>> ^xxovercastxx:

In the long run giving government more control over the internet is just giving corporations control over the internet plus legal muscle to enforce their chosen censorship. Where do you think SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, DMCA, etc came from?

>> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

FYI, governments have bad track records with keeping things open and free, ask Bradly Manning.

Yeah, we should entrust the web and free speech to corporations. Can't see any problems with that....


Since they are the same corporations that run the government, I don't see how it makes a whole lot of difference.

In the long run giving government more control over the internet is just giving corporations control over the internet plus legal muscle to enforce their chosen censorship. Where do you think SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, DMCA, etc came from?

Lots of religious discussion in the last half dozen years or so. Maybe notice it more because I'm older, but it seems more prevalent.

I saw a quote somewhere else by Napoleon Bonaparte, so I looked up his quotes and found two I thought were interestingly applicable to the current climate.

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
Napoleon Bonaparte

We're coming off of the biggest financial crime of our lifetimes, with no one being punished. And they aren't even trying to stop it from happening again, they are fortifying the regulations that made it possible for it to happen in the first place and attempting to add more craziness with SOPA/PIPA to solidify control over the only location everyone can have a say and organize -- the internet.

So, I have to call into question all of this religious posturing that is becoming the forefront of the debates and "hot topics" in most traditional media coverage. Anything regarding rights of gays = religion based arguments, abortion = religion based, etc......everyone is affected by the economic meltdown and financial theft that occurred. And they address it by skipping back to "Those damn gaaaaaaayyyyss" or "ABORTION --- RAWRRR" and anytime they can't flip over to those we get the piracy! and It's your fault for buying a house during the bubble! oh and OWS rapes people so you can't believe in any of that.

And the OWS argument makes me laugh, because they'll have you believe the whole movement is made up to allow rape to occur and it's a legitimate reason to call their ethics and argument into question. But when Gingrich was asked a question in the debate allowing him to respond to his cheating on his wives and leaving at least one of them in a bad situation, it was applauded when he refused to answer and how that was bad form to question his morality based on those acts. When you could say, he just wants to be President so he can get more on the side with the secret service to facilitate or some other overly dismissive thing they do to the OWS.

The whole process is insulting, they speak of stability but create controversy to take focus away from issues that going unaddressed whom 70% or more of the citizenry agrees needs to be addressed. And I suspect it's not because they don't see there's issues, it's because they want those issues to remain....it makes it easier to stay rich if you can exploit them.

Yeah--except SOPA he is spot on...except when he isn't...

and regardless of whether White Supremecists like to piggy back on states rights issues, the fact remains that the initial balance of power between federal and states (not too mention between the 3 branches of fed gov) as vaguely envisioned by the framers, has been rather seriously fucked.

and

@aurens

indeed, our constitution is incapable of handling complex modern issues never contemplated by the framers. This is all too clear in the recent SOPA issue.
It is thus prone to the best "interpretation" money can buy.

>> ^bareboards2:

Your profile page is the black hole of Calcutta! It's like SOPA protest day in there!
Thanks for the promote. Don't usually do the thanks on the vid itself... But. The Blackness. Mein Gott!

>> ^alien_concept:
Hah! promote



It's fine from this end. However just now for about 10 minutes I wasn't able to get into the sift, so maybe it was that

Your profile page is the black hole of Calcutta! It's like SOPA protest day in there!

Thanks for the promote. Don't usually do the thanks on the vid itself... But. The Blackness. Mein Gott!



>> ^alien_concept:

Hah! promote

>> ^kymbos:

And another thing - someone called 'billpayer' says he's never going to pay Bill for anything, and I make a clever quip about it, and I get nothing!
You people.


EH !@ ! !

WHADDYA MEAN "YOU PEOPLE ? ? "

Ok here's some of my ideas. The first thought of course is that there needs to be a revolution. But what would that achieve - the people that have the money and the power would still be there to influence the new Government. So the only way to achieve real change (not ObamaChange) is to get rid of the people making this mess and also stop the mechanisms that allow it to happen. So serious thought needs to go into listing all the major ways by which corruption is occurring and may occur (legal and non-legal) and then even more serious thought needs to go into better alternatives or proposals. This list of changes then needs to be put forward and if the changes are not made by the existing Govt., then the people need to demand that the Govt. steps down and be replaced by one that will make the changes. Until people are willing to put their lives on the line for this, things will just continue to escalate downwards.

In my opinion the first change that needs to happen is with the media. All of these millions and billions of dollars that get raised/spent to fund campaigns have one major purpose - to buy time with the media outlets to spread a message. Staggering sums of money are being given to mainstream media outlets by the GOP/Dems to spread there propaganda, how on earth can we expect those same media outlets to provide honest coverage of events when they are taking hundreds of millions of dollars from people that don't want honest coverage. So no matter what happens in terms of election funding, the first and most important step is to break this connection between political parties and media channels so there can be honest rather than 'balanced' reporting.

So of course, the next major change that needs to happen is to switch to a publicly funded election system.

Then other issues/resolutions should include at the very least:
Lobbyist influence : An outright ban on lobbyists making donations
Lack of accountability : There needs to be a direct link between what people vote for and what is delivered, i.e. the platform that a candidate runs on cannot be changed or watered down once they take office.
Corrupting influence of power : There needs to be a better way of restricting the time groups or individuals can stay in power/office.
Environmental degradation : Environmental laws need to be improved and updated with assistance from experts, scientists and community members.

Also, one issue that is close to my heart, but others may find silly is the issue of advertising. Advertising has allowed for the widespread popularity and adoption of fast food. The fast food industry needs to be looked at in a similar way as the smoking industry, and the costs of advertising for a fast food business need to matched by the public health cost that the business will have on the population at large. So in other words, advertising for Mickey D's, Wendy's and other chains that sell rubbish needs to become prohibitively expensive, because the damage they are causing to the people in the way of obesity, diabetes etc is of epic proportions. This approach should really be applied to most aspects of industry, so for example the oil and gas industry provide an energy dense product, which by comparison to other forms of energy is quite efficient - however if the cost to the environment is taken into account, it becomes less attractive, so I think more thought needs to go into sustainability in policy making.

Anyway, that's just a couple of examples, my main point is that a systematic look at corruption in the system needs to be completed and documented and then the well thought out and logical changes need to be implemented. I mean, protesting individual issues is good, and sometimes it even works, e.g. with the SOPA 'win' and the Keystone XL 'win', but in the long term it's just not enough to have anything but a delaying effect.