"House Approves New Property Seizure Law"
"If you boil it down to brass tax, this legislation allows the U.S. government to lawfully seize your computer if it has one unauthorized mp3 file on its hard drive. It also provides the authorization for the creation of offices within the executive branch to enforce a law that is impossible to enforce."
"So, an mp3 file which now costs 90 cents will soon cost $2.00 because of the costs for all this new enforcement and legal process.
This seems to continue a trend in which the United States makes less and less and compensates for it by adding more and more pointless layers to each product to run up the price.
So, the owner of the cattle farm decides he wants to sell the manure for fertilizer, but the government imposes a ban in just shoveling it into a sack and requires testing the cows for contagious pathogens, then the manure itself for parasites, then to make certain that the manure contains the USDA minimum required things that manure is supposed to have, then OSHA stops by to make certain the correct shovels are being used to harvest the product and that the bags are "up to code" for the estimated weight of the manure they will carry. Lawyers then stop by to inspect the manure and make certain that it does not conflict with the intellectual property rights of the farm down the road which sells a similar product. Great care is exercised in regards to the "look and feel" of the product and that it conform, to industry standards! Finally, the graphics and design on the bags are checked to make certain they represent the contents accurately and do not offend any recognized minority groups.
And in the end, the product is still the exact same thing. It is a sack of shit. But because of all the tinkering added to it in order to employ a bunch of lawyers and bureaucrats who otherwise would be on the unemployment lines, it is now an OFFICIAL (and very much more expensive) sack of shit. And the farmers who need to buy that sack to fertilize their own crops will pay a higher prices, which must then be passed onto their customers (along with all the overhead from the lawyering and plastering of government stickers they themselves must endure).
This is why American products cost so much more without being any better, and why you pay far more for prescription medicines than the Canadians do, or why dentists in Mexico can do a better job but cost far less than here in the US. You are not paying for just the medicine, or the dental bridge, or the sack of shit; you are paying a huge markup for all the regulatory jobs created out of thin air to conceal the fact that the United States just doesn't manufacture much of anything any more. We are a nation running in circles and trying to look busy, without actually getting much of anything done.
This new law on mp3s will not stop the pirates. It is just a way of conning the law-abiding consumer into forking over more money for their products under the illusion that paying $20 for a $5 bag of shit makes them morally superior to the rest of the world." -- Mike Rivero of whatreallyhappened.com
