If all ideas have to be bought, then you have an intellectually regressive system that will assure you have a highly knowledgeable elite and an ignorant mass.
The more you’ve got, the shorter it feels.
Hope does not always require probability.
Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales.
I have always felt that no matter how inscrutable its ways and means, the universe is working perfectly and working according to a greater plan than we can know.
In Cyberspace, the First Amendment is a local ordinance.
The real issue is control. The Internet is too widespread to be easily dominated by any single government. By creating a seamless global economic zone, anti-sovereign and unregulatable, the Internet calls into question the very idea of a nation-state.
I don’t know that I believe in the supernatural, but I do believe in miracles, and our time together was filled with the events of magical unlikelihood.
One can imagine the government’s problem. This is all pretty magical stuff to them. If I were trying to terminate the operations of a witch coven, I’d probably seize everything in sight. How would I tell the ordinary household brooms from the getaway vehicles?
New solutions win by virtue of adoption, and they don’t get adopted if they’re bad solutions.
I mean I look forward to the day when I can be Republican again.
I’m still strongly opposed to antismoking laws, strongly opposed to any law that regulates personal behavior.
Most libertarians are worried about government but not worried about business. I think we need to be worrying about business in exactly the same way we are worrying about government.
Everyone seems to be playing well within the boundaries of his usual rule set. I have yet to hear anyone say something that seemed likely to mitigate the idiocy of this age.
I personally think intellectual property is an oxymoron. Physical objects have a completely different natural economy than intellectual goods. It’s a tricky thing to try to own something that remains in your possession even after you give it to many others.
The one thing that I know government is good for is countervailing against monopoly. It’s not great at that either, but it’s the only force I know that is fairly reliable.
But generally speaking, I felt to engage in the political process was to sully oneself to such a degree that whatever came out wasn’t worth the trouble put in.
If you’re not lost, you’re not much of an explorer.
The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops.
So I’m just waiting until one party or the other actually gets a moral compass and a backbone.
TV in America created the most coherent reality distortion field that I’ve ever seen. Therein is the problem: People who vote watch TV, and they are hallucinating like a sonofabitch. Basically, what we have in this country is government by hallucinating mob.