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Plenty of artists have removed their music from Spotify because they pay next to nothing.

How is the article class warfare or leftist? The article seems banal and centrist to me.

Kicking in open doors and saying we should help poor people not go hungry and invest in education is what every politician does.

How does this work for countries with different copyright laws?

If you're feeling very John Galt take a deep breath. Remember that you're not a fictional character in a fictional society. You're a real person in real society where Entrepreneurs(with a big E) get subsidized security, roads, mail, water, food, electricity, education, health care, etc.

Ayn Rand was a very disturbed individual.

"In her notebooks Ayn Rand worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand used this killer as an early model for the type of "ideal man" she promoted in her more famous books."

"What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'" "

In some cases, yes.

Is the pursuit of equality really something you think of as strange or outdated?

Economics used to be called political economics. Why Valve can't stay out of politics is because a lot of things worth doing are political in nature or related to politics. Politics is not a different sphere from everyday life.

One way to cure this symptom of patriarchy is to try to stop being a 'troglodyte' as you put it. What would a non-'troglodyte' do?

If you shrug, accept the status quo and say meh, it's a cultural problem you're functionally no different than someone who is completely ignorant of the issue.

Humans see patterns where there are none.

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strang...

Investing in infrastructure during a recession is what you're supposed to do. It creates jobs temporarily which increase consumer demand which drives the economy and increases revenue which reduces government debt AND you get the infrastructure you built. It's a clear win-win-win.

On the other hand high bandwidth prices slow down adoption, usage and evolution for all other industries which uses these telecom services. The rest of the economy is held back by these prices.

I would argue that the benefits of low bandwidth prices for the rest of the economy outweighs the benefits from the current telecom profits.

The world does not revolve around you :-(

A "little funding", are you serious? DARPA is part of the freaking DoD.

Are you really going to criticize the government for investing in American companies of which a couple ones failed on a VC news site.

Yeah, companies fail. Yeah, the American government invests in American companies. Yeah, the American government can afford it. Right now the US treasury bonds that are indexed to inflation have negative interest rates[1]. Investors are _paying_ Uncle Sam money to take care of their money. The market is telling the government: invest, invest, invest.

1. http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/in...

Not so much two-party adversarial politics so much as big business and the 0.01% funding and controlling the two viable parties. The center-right party and the right party used to compromise. The system wasn't always this dysfunctional but one party has been hijacked by fringe groups who refuse to compromise.

Does anyone know what something similar would cost a large private corporation?

“In civil cases it’s guilty until proven innocent and in a previous case I declined to give the details who I transfered the site to. They say if it’s not me, then I could easily say who it is.”

That's kind of a weird legal system.

I would call it black hat hacking, hacktivism or sabotage. I wouldn't call it a terror attack unless you feel terror when you realize you have to call your credit card provider.

Lets save the word terror for things that terrify people like say bodily harm or death.

He only charged too little if his goal was to extract as much profit as possible from his customers.

I would imagine that employees would get training for the software they use so the benefits of the software being easier to learn on your own isn't an issue for government workers or really any place where they train their employees.

People who work at corporations have consciences. They are not run by robots yet. Corporations consist of people with kids of their own. They are human beings. They are not without blame just like the parents.

I agree that the feedback loop between corporations who contribute to political campaigns with money and politicians that can regulate/deregulate and who need money to run their campaigns to get (re)elected is corrupting. They are extorting each other for money and regulatory influence. This does not mean that rich corporations, regulation or money in political campaigns are inherently corrupting.

It just means that the way it works need to be adjusted.

"For example, to borrow an idea from Yale’s Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres, if elections were funded by what we could call “democracy vouchers,” where citizens could allocate up to $50 to any candidate and candidates could receive money only from citizens in their districts, then a dependency upon voters might well be the same as, or close enough to, a dependency upon contributors." http://bostonreview.net/BR35.5/lessig.php

If you google it you'll find some more lists I'm not sure if the one I linked is the most comprehensive one.

If you're one of the 95% of humans who live outside the US and Canada and you want to talk here is a list of numbers to call: http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html

Kooky is the wrong word to describe Ron Paul. Lets be clear about what Ron Paul's principles are. Ron Paul wants to eliminate the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Internal Revenue Service.

Or, these "kids" understands copyright and did some economical analysis and figured out that the increased spending power that comes from the money saved by copying content at zero cost was more beneficial to the economy than any benefits gained by having content protectionism.

There's Buddy Roemer. He's better than pretty much all other candidates including Ron Paul when it comes to campaign reform. No superpacs. 100 dollar donation limit. It's in every citizens interest(regardless of party affiliation) to make money less influential in politics.

Buddy Roemer on MSNBC's Morning Joe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oMoAMnFczY

Then there's Lawrence Lessig. He's not a politician but he's also working to limit systemic political corruption.