TechDirt responds. Laughably.

In one of the grandest traditions of this grand new techie utopia -- punching down -- it happens that one Mike Masnick of TechDirt thought it would be a good idea to take time out of his busy day to respond to my fifty-pageview blog column about the chilling effect of decreased intellectual property protection on the lives and livelihoods of professional writers.

Here is the complete, un-edited text of Mr. Masnick's reply:

Interesting critique. Could do with fewer ad homs, plus a *bit* more actual knowledge of economics.

Nearly everything you state is in error, and provably wrong via historical evidence, but going through bit by bit is a waste of time, clearly, but I'll just highlight the one clear fallacy in your claims:

"Without economic incentives to make cheeseburgers, there are no cheesburgers"

I made myself a cheeseburger yesterday because I was hungry.

People make music because they want to make music. Sometimes it's for *monetary* reasons, but quite often it is for lots of other reasons: because they can't not make music, because they like to make music, because it's easier today to make music, because they want to get laid (this is a common one), because they have something to say and music is the best way to say it. And on and on and on.

The other error, of course (and it's a glaring one for someone supposedly informed about economics) is that not getting paid directly means you have no economic incentives. That's hogwash. There may be indirect economic incentives. People who make music and give it away for free can, and often do, make tons of money other ways, including direct support from fans, concerts, etc.

To argue that we need intellectual property to get paid is simply not consistent with reality. We recently highlighted a study that showed a musician, on average, makes 6% of their income via copyright. There are plenty of revenue streams that don't involve copyright. Your argument seems (bizarrely) based on the idea that the only way to make money is via copyright.

It is difficult to take an economic criticism seriously when it appears to have such faults.

Hell, if your argument were accurate, then we would see a corresponding decrease in the production of music over the last ten years as infringement increased. We've seen the opposite. In the past decade, we've seen more recorded music produced than all of history prior to that combined. If your "incentive" theory were accurate, we wouldn't see that.

Stick with us, and you may learn that there are economics that go beyond simplistic theories that assume there is only one reason why people do things, and only one way to get paid.

My first impulse was to reply in the comment field below my original column on the subject -- which I did -- but when the second of my office colleagues came over to find out what all the cackling was about it began to seem to me that the gaping errors in the above argument merit consideration by the other eighteen people who follow the blog, so I've decided to respond using a second column here instead. 

The short version is that Mr. Masnick's comments are sigh-inducingly predictable. It's absolutely customary for the person whose economics is this far off to turn around and say, "Oh yeah, well you're the one with the bad economics." (The Federal-Reserve-deniers do this all the time.)

The slightly longer version is that Masnick's response is self-contradictory, off-topic, conspicuously non-responsive, fallacious, and, at all events, wrong. To aid in the digestion of what is sure to be a lengthy column, I've taken the liberty of explicitly organizing my response to Masnick's response using a conventional outline-style hierarchy. Please feel free to skim.
Click Here to Read More...

Alas, Professional Writers, We Hardly Knew Ye

As a professional economics teacher I am rarely surprised these days when I find laypeople practicing my profession without a license. The exceptions only come when the specious fallacies being splashed around are authored by people with enough technocratic education that they really ought to know better. Rick Perry saying we ought to do away with the Federal Reserve is dog-bites-man; Dennis Kucinich saying it is another matter. This is why I was so startled to discover an entire, impressively large and active internet community -- techdirt.com -- consisting of apparently highly educated and thoughtful people who are all, apparently, totally and completely wrong. Specifically they are wrong as pertains to basic intellectual property protection, which the authors, webmasters, and commentators of techdirt seem to think we'd all be better without.

Permit me to cut to the chase: We wouldn't.
Click Here to Read More...

It's Not How McCain Said It; It's What He *Said*

As you will no doubt be aware, last Wednesday Senator John McCain called a press conference to denounce the Obama Administration's lack of forthrightness on the subject of the Benghazi attack, at the same precise moment that the Obama Administration was briefing the senate on the subject of the Benghazi attack. At the end of the press conference the senator did not take questions, but the following morning CNN producer Ted Barrett managed to catch up with him and ask why he would express outrage over an apparent cover-up by the White House, instead of attending a meeting in which the facts as we know them were being presented by the White House.

As you will no doubt be aware, the senator's reaction was blistering and profane. McCain refused to comment about why he missed the briefing -- which was conducted by top diplomatic, military and counter-terrorism officials -- instead becoming increasingly testy when pressed to explain why he wasn’t there. “I have no comment about my schedule and I’m not going to comment on how I spend my time to the media,” McCain said. Asked why he wouldn’t comment, McCain grew agitated. “Because I have the right as a senator to have no comment and who the hell are you to tell me I can or not?” When CNN noted that McCain had missed a key meeting on a subject the senator has been intensely upset about, McCain said, “I’m upset that you keep badgering me.”

This story has been all over the political news, from mainstream outlets to amateur bloggers and back again, with withering coverage of McCain's once-again-proven inability to contain his emotions. Comment threads below the various stories about this incident have described Mr. McCain as a sore-headed old crank, and even some members of his own party have apparently wondered aloud at his judgment, with Senator Susan Collins referring to the proposed formation of a special investigative committee by noting that the existing Select Committee on Intelligence is already co-chaired by "Senator Carl Levin, who was at the White House briefing on Wednesday, and by Senator John McCain, who was not."

The admittedly unflattering narrative of this event, we are to believe, is that Mr. McCain is too short-tempered for either his own good or that of his party.  It's a fun story to see covered this way, not least because journalists are finally beginning to wonder -- albeit implicitly, at least for the most part -- what the Administration would stand to gain by misrepresenting what it knew and when it knew it regarding an attack on one of our consulates. Mostly, however, the coverage has been conspicuously confined to the emotional temperature of McCain's reply to Barrett. There's only one small problem with journalists covering the McCain outburst in this fashion, which is that is misses the point as completely as if they'd reported on a show-jumping competition instead.
Click Here to Read More...

Yeah, Well, That's All I Got; Sorry.

Lately I've been thinking even more than usual about my own judgement -- at least some of which is, to put it charitably, ad hoc. I'm a paid expert on the subject of money, who hasn't had a meaningful insight into shrewd financial decision-making more than a few times in his whole life. I am profoundly, sometimes astonishingly klutzy. I take insufficient care of myself (in much the same way that there is insufficient peace in the Middle East, I suppose). I have had arguments that make very little sense.

There would've been a time when I'd have said these things with shame, or frustration, or self-loathing, but these days it feels something more like entertaining: as if I had a free subscription to a 3D sitcom in which the irregularly competent hero with the tourette's syndrome of the hands is played by someone who looks and talks and falls down a lot like I do. If nothing else, it has made for a lot of unanticipated stimuli. There's really only one major decision-making tool I've perfected, but lucky for me it's been a pretty doggone important one, too: My entire life, going back to early childhood, I've always made it a point to have a project.
Click Here to Read More...

Final Predictions, Part Two

With the benefit of a couple of extra days of dust-settling (to say nothing of one last, momentous call for President Obama in the Sunshine State), the postmortem on the 2012 election has hit its stride, with some pretty interesting results: Republicans, for the most part, are in less of a de-legitimizing frame of mind than I might have predicted, and not independently the White House seems poised to flex a little bit of its post-electoral muscle. Both outcomes are worthy of a few thoughts here.
Click Here to Read More...

Here's a Must-Watch, Must-Share Video

Rachel Maddow, explaining to Republicans what it will take for them to be nationally competitive in future elections and -- perhaps surprisingly -- why the rest of us are depending on it.

Click Here to Read More...

Stay Tuned

Yesterday afternoon and evening several loyal readers logged in or privately expressed "welcome back" sentiments, and I am truly grateful for the thought. Over the next few days I plan to digest a few reactions and few more predictions for the future of the country (and of both parties' agendas). For now, let's all enjoy the moment.

Click Here to Read More...