Bernie Sanders is finally demonstrating what the Republican party has understood for a long time, and what the Democrats either don't seem to care about or else just aren't very good at: it's as important- or more important- to shape the social discussion as it is to present good facts or write good law.

Ted Cruz:

In both law and politics, I think the essential battle is the meta-battle of framing the narrative[...] as Sun Tzu said, 'Every battle is won before it’s fought. It’s won by choosing the terrain on which it will be fought.' So in litigation I tried to ask, What’s this case about? When the judge goes home and speaks to his or her grandchild, who’s in kindergarten, and the child says, ‘Paw-Paw, what did you do today?’ And if you own those two sentences that come out of the judge’s mouth, you win the case.

from this article.

In the liberal democratic tradition, it's actually a pretty old idea (I mean, ignoring the Sun Tzu reference)- think Rousseau had a few things to say about culture-shaping- but up to now, I've only ever seen it effectively utilized by the right. Not to say that Democrats don't use it, but their track record at using it effectively is a lot more checkered than that of the Republicans. I see this most prominently in the gun debate, in the framing of the weird "industry versus environment" dichotomy, in abortion politics, and of course in the immigration clusterfuck, which seems to gain traction no matter how many times one points out that immigrants are in fact voluntarily moving back across the border these days, or else not effectively crossing, or else getting booted out in greater numbers now than ever before. Even the fact that I have to type that out as some sort of positive argument is infuriating, and a good illustration of the point.

Bernie Sanders, god bless 'im, is a fantastic framer-of-the-debate. He's arguably at his best when he's tugging from the outside. That's where he can be polarizing without having to make all the necessary concessions to compromise. That's the correct position from which you effectively frame the narrative.

I'll say it again as I've said a thousand times: for the duration of this primary, Sanders hasn't demonstrated any of the qualities necessary for strong, effective executive leadership. But he's got pretty much a goddamn monopoly on the qualities required of a strong, effective culture warrior, and that's what I applaud him for. I hope he keeps on pushing, both in this contest and afterward, no matter what office he achieves.

So just to be clear, are you denying the "anti-piracy" side their argument on grounds of moral simplicity? Of course there are shades of nuance, as many people here have already established. BFV and wasoxygen both have valid points within their discussion, as does thenewgreen when he mentions that stealing for need inhabits a different space on the moral spectrum as stealing something from desire.

In light of all that, it looks like you've oversimplified the argument a few shades. I've seen very few people other than, I dunno, ad men for "The 20" portion of my movie theater experience ever argue that "stealing is stealing, period." I've seen plenty more people supply the below arguments, pro and con. Don't dismiss one side of the argument based on (don't say it don't say it I'm gonna say it) strawman.

You know what else I've seen? The effects from the supply side. This isn't something I talk about often here for various reasons, but for the sake of my stance I think it's useful to clarify: I was once a relatively successful supplier of the kind of IP you're talking about. You know why I'm not anymore? Because more people, by orders of magnitude, decided that they valued my IP enough to copy, share, experience and talk about it, than people did enough to attach a dollar value to that IP the same way they would, say, a sandwich (and at much the same price, I should point out).

I remember being initially flattered by the numbers I was seeing vis a vis filesharing of my IP. Hey, this is great exposure! People like this stuff! This is awesome! That feeling deflated over time as I realized that:

a) A lot of the support I saw at shows was at least as much due to extensive label-side promotion, savvy product placement, licensing exposure, and good ol' fashioned elbow grease from me and mine than from support garnered from the fleeting online hype cycle. We worked our asses off, on the road, for the better part of the year, for several years in order to see the returns we did. Filesharing? It's great for immediate exposure, but it also facilitates a culture of consumers with very low attention span and an insatiable appetite for new stuff faster than you can possibly supply it.

b) Roughly ten times as many people just downloaded our shit over the period of five years than bought it. Resulting in

c) Our label not being able to afford more publicity support due to always having to dig themselves out of the red. Less publicity and general support from label = less exposure = less money for us.

Now, min_wage brought up the tour support thing below (by the way, I have quite a lot of respect for _wage's argument sheerly by virtue of owning it- steal for want, steal for need, but if you're going to do it, tie it to larger philosophy rather than some small-minded moral equivocation). In response: said live purchases are enough to support touring costs- transportation, upkeep, room & board, merch reorders, equipment repair, theft mitigation, management percentage, booking percentage... list goes on. Whatever net profit was left over, that was split anywhere between five and seven smelly, hungry performers. It was often enough to get us through a few months with some pocket change left when we got home... but not always. Money made on the road supports the road.

Interesting tangent: you know where we got the most money? Huge corporate interests that wanted to use our stuff to add "hip" cred to their product. The Man everybody loves to rail against? He was the only one willing to assign value to and then compensate that value for our work.

Wasn't enough, though. Now, if those that had downloaded our IP for free had instead paid for it- and it was pretty cheap, all things considered- I can say with confidence that I'd still be working at it.

I stopped doing what I was doing on the scale that I was doing it because I was broke and tired and finally had to find something that would support my family. So quit and stop whining about it. I did. I bring it up not to cry in my beer, but to highlight a simple point: the less you're willing to pay for the product you choose to consume, the less the producer of said product gets. The less that producer gets, the less incentive there is to supply product.

So if you value the IP you're consuming, it might be worth doing a little more empathizing and a little less justifying. Or else, jesus, have the stones to own up to what you're doing rather than trying to snake your way out of culpability. Is stealing sometimes morally justified? Yeah, fine, but you'd be hard pressed to apply those circumstances to this arena. Sure, you're not stealing a physical thing, you're making a copy. But each free unauthorized copy means less food in the producer's mouth. That's taking something you want at the expense of what she needs. And there will come a time when your very favorite product just doesn't exist, because there's no incentive to produce it.

I think the problem is more that ISIS is an existential threat to the US definition of the region. Right now, we're kind of reliant on the western-defined state of Iraq as a vital balance of power in a region where there are otherwise vanishingly few stopgaps between US allies and... everybody else. Without a clearly-bordered, stably-governed Iraq, US interests are in big trouble. And it looks like that's kind of where things are headed without any further US intervention of some sort. Maliki is a bastard, but he's a convenient bastard, or was before he demonstrated a complete ineptitude for either fair governance or effective autocracy. But he looked so good on paper! Strong academic background, good wartime stats and a history of fighting our enemies while at the same time staying reasonably detached from anti-American actors, and his Shia pedigree gave him both a legit distance from the old Iraqi governing forces and a diplomatic line to Iran.

Without Maliki or somebody like him (and past star searches have proven a marked lack of those), and without the Iraq as we've come to understand it on a geographic level, US regional interests will fall into deeper trouble. And in that respect, ISIS is every bit as dangerous as people have been crowing about.

I like this article a lot, but I'm not sure I understand the basic premise- "ISIS isn't as bad as everybody is saying, they're just really good at de-legitimizing weak governments through show of force!" That's, like, exactly as bad as it gets for all intents and purposes. A government is only as strong as its monopoly on power- or at very least the illusion of a monopoly on power. If ISIS continues to dominate the Sunni-heavy regions of Iraq with impunity- and all things being equal there's no reason to think that they won't- then the Maliki government will crumble. At which point, the state of Iraq either falls back into the hands of those with markedly less interest in the comfort of US regional allies, or else the whole region falls back into an official state of fractious tribalism. Either way, bad news for American interests.

FWIW, I think there's close to no chance that we'll actually waltz into Iraq for round three. Domestic appetite for war is too depressed, our military forces are already stretched too thin in a time that we're supposed to be "pivoting" towards Asia, our budget is too strained to support the cost of another ground war, and Obama's official doctrine has been clearly painted as one of less direct intervention. Drones and air support, sure. Money poured into the Maliki pit, wouldn't be surprised. But Iraq III? Unlikely.

Tell me about it. I think I'm one of the few Seattlites that hates this idea.

The focus has been put on what it'll do to employment in the food service sector (e.g. this article). It might kill some jobs, it might not. Who knows. But the food service sector is only once piece of the proverbial pie (bad pun intended).

Much less focus has been drawn towards what it'll do to non-profit jobs, esp. in the social services sector. Such as DESC. For the record, the director of the DESC has been vocal in his opposition. But not vocal enough, apparently. Anyhow, it's pretty clear that without the city providing greater subsidies for non-profit organizations, $15/hr. wages for workers at said organizations will require cutbacks across the board, severely curtailing the services they can provide, and the quality of the same.

And then there are the other non-profit businesses. Like my second job at the local radio station, which doesn't pay great, but scratches so many of my creative itches in a way my higher-paying job doesn't. They can barely afford to give me hours as it stands. They're down to a skeleton production crew- they've already diverted pretty much every available resource into development staff. Pretty sure my job goes down the shitter once the $15/hr thing kicks into full effect.

Not to mention that at this point it's goddamn near impossible to find affordable family housing at even a $15/hr level in Seattle. Low income folks will still be scrambling. So where do they place their $15/hr band aid? Where does city council expect them to spend the extra money? Will sound investments be made that help raise individuals past the local poverty level? Doubtful, given that it'll be a lot harder to find sound counsel and cheap services from social welfare organizations. So what, low-wagers spend more on disposables? The local economy rises as businesses bring in more customers? What about inflation? You know, from the absurd, arbitrary minimum wage hike?

For a self-proclaimed socialist, Kshama Sawant is putting a lot of faith in free-market capitalism. If she were really serious, wouldn't she be lobbying for more taxes to bolster social services? Instead of placing the onus of equality and social welfare squarely on the shoulders of private business?

And on more of a gut level- some jobs just aren't worth $15 an hour. Why should the guy at the fry-o-lator get as much as the guy managing a group home for folks with Autism? And where will the incentive go to move from the one job to the other? Won't we end up with a glut of minimally-trained workers in low-skill, low-impact jobs, and an even greater shortage of workers in the dirty-but-desperately-necessary sector?

The whole thing kind of grosses me out. Seattle minimum wage was already one of the highest in the country, and it was already chained to inflation. This $15/hr move is more politically popular than it is sensible, and I suspect not as risk-free as they're painting it. It's being touted as the most progressive possible move, but it actually feels regressive. Trading a strong social safety net in for a wage bump. It's like taking away the fishing pole and just giving everybody a couple more fish.

I can't take this seriously, given that the first 3/4 of the article is the author just kind of bragging about how smart and so very current her son is. That's what the article felt like. A vehicle for bragging about her great kid. Which couldn't she have just made a Facebook post or something?

Also, if you're going to write an article ostensibly about teaching kids the whole sex-for-pleasure principle, what kind of sense does it make to only refer to your husband/partner as your "mate?" Doesn't that send a mixed signal?

Also, what was with the weird dig at the beginning about "there goes the government, all up in our kids' business again, bringing sex into the classroom earlier than we want," and then following it up with a long polemic about how kids don't have enough basic info about sex?

Also, just ugh.

Besides all of that, I'm not entirely sure where she's coming from. I started sex ed somewhere around the fifth or sixth grade I think, and I remember the class spending a lot of time focusing on how people can derive pleasure from sex. HIV/AIDS transmission was mentioned under the general rubric of STD's, and wasn't any sort of code for the evils of gay sex. It was code for "sex feels good, but if you do it too early and improperly, your genitals will shrivel up and fall off and you will die." Which was regressive in its own way, but more benignly regressive than the author is painting it. Especially since nobody took that part of it seriously- neither kids nor teachers.