Re: Java and avoiding software piracy?

Bent C Dalager wrote:


You addressed it, but did not resolve it.

The argument is flawed in that it deems reproduction cost as the only cost
worthy of consideration. Basic accounting practices factor in the amortized
cost of development and overhead costs, like maintaining a physical plant,
that you conveniently ignored. There is also the desire side of the equation
- value is not merely a function of cost, but of desire on the consumer side.
  You seem to feel that people should not pay for what benefits they receive,
and that not paying will benefit society. That latter is not addressed but
merely asserted in your post.

If people don't pay for the software, or other goods that have low
reproduction costs (but possibly high other costs), then how will those
corporations who are magically going to take care of the inventors going to
pay those inventors? This was not addressed in the "text [I] did not quote",
but hand-waved as to where that revenue will arise for them to pay the inventors.

The rhetorical device of saying, "it will benefit society", is assertion of a
conclusion to support the argument, a.k.a. "circular reasoning". I disagree
that your plan to give away software will benefit society; I conclude that it
will harm society by reducing the feedback from sales of one's labors as a
psychological incentive to perform those labors. As the former Soviet Union
and the People's Republic of China's experiences indicate, arbitrary policies
of "this should benefit society, therefore it does, and we aren't going to pay
the worker" don't work. Capitalism does, even in its imperfect forms as
practiced today.

As support, I indicate that the most capitalistic economies produce the
largest amount of innovation and material well being. The profit motive
actually is a motive. The only examples I can find of your ideas lie in
political and economic ruin.

--
Lew