You equate one type of growth with success. Given that we are living through a period of relatively high unemployment and social inequity in the US and Europe the onus is on you to explain why you equate growth with success. Maybe this type of growth isn't politically/economically/environmentally stable?
> 40+ years of trade sanctions and who is still in power? I would not call that effective.
Again, what is your measure? You seem to be measuring the wrong thing.For example, with the current sanctions against Iran[1] the Office of Foreign Assets Control[2] aims to do what? You claim it would be to effect political change in Iran. Regime change. In what other context have we heard this expression used? The Military overthrow of Saddam in Iraq. With this view economic sanctions are used in lieu of military force. These sanctions seem to hurt the average man, woman and child on the street however causing hardship and misery. Saddam was still in power when we rolled in. Mugabe is. The Ayatollahs in Iran are still going strong. Fidel appears to be handing power over to Raúl. So by your reckoning they have been effective nowhere. So why still use them? To me they look a lot like collective punishment.
> I don't think so: Germans invent a lot of stuff too, write books, software, compose music, make movies, and so on, and are not going to throw out Intellectual Property as a means of promoting those activities, lock, stock, and barrel.
Dismantle is perhaps too strong, too rhetorically strident. Reform would be better, yes - you use the term yourself. Remember copyright has only been around to a serious extent† since the Queen Anne statute[3] of 1710. Patents are younger still. The tide has flowed one way so far, maybe it's time to flow the other. The current state of affairs seems to favour the few of the multitude.
> bad propaganda
These guys were elected to European Parliament, I know we all have a rather dim view of politicians but somebody seems to be buying their PR. :)
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† Excluding a judgment in the 6th century in Celtic Brehon law enunciated thus, “As to every Cow its Calf, so to every Book its Copy"
[1] http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/D...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Foreign_Assets_Contro...