Hacker News Reader

Comment by revelation | Hacker News Reader

What a joke. So good to see the president is finally tackling the patent abuses, by protecting local trolls from a taste of their very own medicine.

(The justification here being that this ban is not "in the interest of the public". If this was considered in ay other cases, we'd all be paying cents for generics from India instead of thousands of millions for the brand version)

View on HN

This is what increasingly bothers me lately about the decisions they make. They're sacrificing a lot of stuff "in the interest of public good". It seems like a lot of collectivism.

"We can't put bankers in prison because this way it's better for the public/the economy"

"We can't punish any corporation with more than a relatively minor fine, because that would hurt the public"

"We can't let a judge's decision about banning Apple's product for losing a patent battle in war they started, be implemented, because that would hurt the public".

The worst part is that they must be thinking these are really good decisions. It's probably why Obama convinced himself and did a 180 on the mass spying, too "because it's in the interest of the public".

Actually, the justification for not going after banking or corporate malfeasance, according to Eric Holder, is that they're "Too Big to Jail".

I have to say, as a committed small r republican wary of executive power, this kind of crap makes me crave Teddy Roosevelt.

Eric Holder admitted that he can't do his job. He needs to be fired.

To be fair, he's been busy leading brave soldiers against Washington's pot dispensaries, and running guns for Mexican gangs.

I think they're following the theories of Consequentialism here, where you're trying to maximise the different consequences instead of aiming for one single maximised consequence - even if that means violating an established ethical rule:

" The consequentialist analysis can take the form of a utility function, where the expected utility of an action is determined by the sum of the utility of each of its possible consequences, individually weighted by their respective probability of occurrence. Therefore, the correct action is always the one which maximizes o total value of positive consequences, even if it violates some established moral rule. Consequentialism is based on a cost and benefits analysis and measure goodness by calculating the total expected good." [1]

I don't presume to be able to say whether that's right or wrong, but it certainly feels like the underlying theory with which the government currently acts.

[1] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Consequentialism

>This is what increasingly bothers me lately about the decisions they make. They're sacrificing a lot of stuff "in the interest of public good". It seems like a lot of collectivism.

That's nothing like "collectivism". Notice how in all this cases you state "the public" is just a pretext, and those who would indeed lose are the fat cats: bankers, corporations, Apple, etc.

That's plain and simple market capitalism: the big money gets its own laws (aka "the golden rule": those with gold make the rules).

In "collectivism" (in the USSR sense) the power lies in the state/government, for the benefit of the party officials.

In market capitalism, the power lies in the big money, and the government works for the benefit of large private interests.

It's really just about the money/power and influential people sharing it among them and protecting it.

Don't forget that 9/11 didn't just affect 3000 people and their families and friends, it was attack on us all.

EDIT: guess I touched a nerve.

Neither Apple, nor Samsung or Google invented patents. It's a government's creation made before they came to the scene. Once you build a company in a framework of patents and police enforcing them (by threatening to take your property by force), you have to play by the rules. And the rules are: grab first to protect yourself against others. In absence of brutal enforcement, companies would have to find peaceful ways to agree on "merchant's code" (which was always happening in history where the state did not intervene too much). E.g. Apple could come to a voluntary agreement with BestBuy that they won't sell "copycat" products, or Apple wouldn't sell iPhones there. And everyone would try to find a balance where certain business practices are acceptable or not. And ultimately customers would judge if the companies serve them well enough. But when government introduces a paperwork for violence, then business gets ugly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com