>Macroeconomic policy is chaos theory. You can make up all these models that say it's going to cause inflation, and then people use the extra money to pay down debts which cancels the inflation (because debt creates money and paying debt destroys money). If they then use some of the money they would otherwise have paid in interest on the debt to pay down even more principal then you've printed money and caused deflation. Butterfly = hurricane.
Come on, every human observation of reality is a macro observation of billions of atoms interacting with each other. We don't need to dive into chaos theory to observe that there are singular macro results arising from the chaotic effects of zillions of atoms interacting with one another. We build planes and cars out of the macro phenomena of billions of atoms. Economically speaking, Macro effects are evident for this: When you print money you inflate the economy, it's a pretty fundamental concept.
>You've never seen Adobe or Microsoft? Students pirate the software and then businesses have to buy it because it's what the graduates know how to use. Network effects. Mindshare. Economies of scale. Developers developers developers. Support contracts. The first hit is free.
That's called free trials in which the product is rendered useless once the trial period is up. It's taken back so the supply was only increased temporarily. It's more like a loan then QE.
>I see what you're misunderstanding. Lowering interest rates is the same thing as printing money. In order to cause interest rates to go down, The Fed has to put money into the economy. QE is what they call it when the federal funds rate is effectively zero but they still want to add more money to the economy, so they have to pour it in from a different spigot. It's fundamentally the same thing as lowering interest rates, people just notice it more because they don't do it as often.
You're the one misunderstanding. Dude printing money is different from loaning money. QE is rare because printing money is bad. Lowering interest rates is the primary method for jump starting the economy when there is a recession anyone who knows what they're talking about knows this. This is off topic anyway, but it's evident to me that you lack certain knowledge about the banking system.
>The law of supply and demand is broken in monopoly markets. The price is whatever the monopoly says it is. The Fed sets the interest rate.
You're digressing off topic. Either way this statement makes no sense. Monopolies control price because they control supply. The law of supply and demand is NEVER broken. What does the Fed have to do with this? Nothing.
>The law of supply and demand is broken in monopoly markets. The price is whatever the monopoly says it is. The Fed sets the interest rate.
But the real reason the analogy fails is that counterfeiting currency creates no value, so when you exchange counterfeit currency for something of value, the thing you take away from the seller has value and the thing you give does not. It has cost society something to give you that thing. The thing you're "stealing" when you counterfeit currency isn't the money, it's what the money buys. (This is perhaps easier to understand when you forge a gift certificate rather than currency.)
But when you make a copy of information, "he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." You aren't taking anything away from society, you're only gaining something for yourself.
It's the difference between stealing a loaf of bread and causing the baker to lose a potential sale because you bake your own bread using his recipe.
Cash is a medium for bartering. It's an intermediary instrument. Selling a banana for $1 then using that $1 to buy an apple is roughly the same trading that banana for an apple. The same concept applies to copying information and counterfeiting money. If I copy a music track then sell it for $1 then use that dollar to buy an apple it's equivalent to counterfeiting a dollar to buy an apple. Superficially speaking copying software seems like it doesn't harm anyone just like how printing money "seems" like it doesn't hurt anyone.
Heck imagine this ludicrous example: if I give a counterfeit dollar to the baker for some bread he wasn't "hurt" because he can spend that counterfeit dollar on something else and that "someone else" can also spend the counterfeit dollar... and so on and so on... the chain can continue so no one is hurt! Obviously, this is not the case and it's the same thing when you copy information. It only seems like no one was hurt.
>The whole deal with the baker is clearly irrelevant in that case because that transaction is real currency for real goods. The people most clearly being shafted are the customers because they're paying money for pirated goods (which they presumably think are legitimate). And then the software vendor is being shafted to the extent that any of those customers would otherwise have paid for the real version.
Dude the baker was your example, it came from you, you can't just call it irrelevant because it contradicts your statements. The main point is, someone gets shafted when you copy software, you said it yourself and I quote: "The people most clearly being shafted are the customers because they're paying money for pirated goods (which they presumably think are legitimate). And then the software vendor is being shafted to the extent that any of those customers would otherwise have paid for the real version."
>Theft is something people viscerally understand. Copyright infringement can be meaningfully distinguished from that thing. Cloning a thing is not the same as taking it.
It's easy to fall into some meaningless etymological argument where nobody is right because words only mean what people understand them to mean. But if you're trying to have a discussion about copyright, calling it theft clouds the issue when the discussion inevitably turns to the characteristics of copyright that distinguish it from physical goods.
I have no intention of making this an etymological argument. I use physical examples in reality to illustrate contradictions. By your statement cloning money is not a form of theft? Fine. Lets call cloning money what the government calls it: a crime. I can clone software, music and sell it for money. According to you, doing this however is not a crime, which is categorically wrong.