Copyright Protection - Who Does It Help?

Great piece by Ezra Klein on the fashion industry and the cost/benefit of extending copyright protections (link).  Here is a quote that captures the nub of the issue:

And companies love copyright. They love it so much they persuaded Congress to pass the Sonny Bono Act, which extended individual copyright protections to the life of the author, plus another 70 years; and corporate copyrights to 120 years from creation, or 95 years from publication, whichever is earlier. That’s an absurdly long time, and it belies the original point of patents: does anyone seriously believe that a 40-year-old with a money-making idea is going to hold back because someone can mimic it 20 years after he dies?


At a certain point, copyrights stop protecting innovation and begin protecting profits. They scare off future inventors who want to take a 60-year-old idea and use it as the foundation to build something new and interesting. That’s the difficulty of copyrights, patents, and other forms of intellectual protection. Too little, and the first innovation won’t happen. Too much, and the second innovation—the one relying on the first—will be stanched.


Which is why we have to be careful when one industry or another demands more copyright protection for itself. “Intellectual property is legalized monopoly,” says James Boyle, a professor at Duke Law School. “And like any monopoly, its tendency is to raise prices and diminish availability. We should have a high burden of proof for whether it’s necessary."

I'm going to add one more concept in here.  Monopolies are really just a way to collect rents.  Effectively, you don't have to do anything of value other than allow the use of your property in order to collect income.  The hard part is protecting that monopoly.  And the way to do that is politically.  You need to get some lawmakers on your side and you're off and running.  Is it any wonder that the copyright protections in this country are absurdly long, far longer than what would be required for to encourage content production?  The politicians running for office have a friend in the content owners who are seeking rents from their monopoly.  Disney is not #70 on the highest all-time 1989-2010 donor list (link) for fun.  They are protecting their rent.  Here's a link with more on rent seeking and its consequences.

If it was up to me, I'd reduce the protection significantly.  Life of author, plus seventy years goes from rent collection, to theft from society.

The Non-Recovery

Ezra gets depressed (link):

If states have to cut $120 billion from their budgets, that money -- and the things it does -- will just leave the economy. There will be fewer jobs, higher taxes, less financial aid. None of that is speculative. There's no theory in which it doesn't happen. This is a large economic contraction that we've decided to allow, because we would prefer to allow it than to put down the money -- much less money, incidentally, than it will cost to extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich -- necessary to prevent it.

Of everything that's happened since the financial crisis, this is, to me, the most frustrating. It is a decision we, as a polity, are making to prolong our economic pain and slow our economic recovery. It is needless and senseless and largely the result of political, rather than economic, disagreement. And when it happens, we will all look around at one another and lament our slow recovery, and our terrible economy, and our inept political leaders, who have clearly done something wrong, even if we're not sure exactly what.

How Much Would It Hurt To Be Specific?

Just a quicky post linking to something from Yglesias' blog (link).  Here's the key quote:

To which I ask, if “the whole idea is to cut spending,” then why not propose spending cuts? It’s a lot easier to pass a budget than to pass a constitutional amendment. Surely, if a majority Americans are clamoring for “robust spending cuts” as DeMint claims, then the GOP would benefit in the midterms by proposing such cuts. Instead, the GOP either cannot or will not propose anything specific; rather, they continue to push for extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy without any spending offsets. That really should end any serious consideration of what this balanced budget amendment is all about.

But the larger point here is that the Republican Party is refusing to detail an actual agenda in advance of the November elections. There are plenty of things a Speaker Boehner really might do if the GOP were to regain the House majority in the fall. But instead of talking about which of those things they’ll attempt, Republican leaders continue to play to their base with notions of ACA repeal and radical changes to the constitution that require 2/3 majorities and approval of 38 states. The answer of the pundit class seems to be to sort of laugh off this talk of amending the constitution since it “won’t happen” — to which the follow-up should be, what will happen if the GOP takes over Congress? Voters should probably hear the answer before going to the polls.

This fits in very nicely with my complete disdain for the Tea Party/GOP.  When pressed, the answer seems to be, "We'll figure out the spending cuts, so can I have my tax cut now, please?"  The weighty manner in which the government deficit is discussed is a front.  We'd see serious answers otherwise.  Why be specific and risk ideas being discussed, when my political position is improved by transparent pandering and fear-mongering.

As a side point;  I'm with Krugman, Klein, and Silver on how Ryan's blueprint is bogus, with the effect of spending cuts taken credit for but not showing the deficit worsening impact of his tax cuts.  But at least, Ryan is showing the government programs he wants to gut (Primarily Medicare).  A constitutional balanced budget amendment requiring a super-majority to pass a tax is not only fantasy land (And bad economics), it's also completely disingenuous.  But then again, what was I expecting?.

The Ugly Truth

Ezra Klein nails it on his blog (link).

Democrats won their massive majority because of an economic collapse. They've passed so much legislation because they have a massive majority based on an economic collapse. But the economic collapse isn't over. And having a lot more seats than the other party means 1) voters blame you for the condition of the country, and 2) you have a lot of seats to lose. What the bad economy and the huge majority giveth, the bad economy and the huge majority taketh away. Om. 

If there's a tension here, it's in the way that public opinions and the system interact -- or, more specifically, the way they don't. You can look at this and ask why Democrats passed all this legislation that made them unpopular. But if Democrats had sat around and done nothing after the stimulus, does anyone think they'd be more popular? On some level, Democrats understand that if people's incomes had gone up over the last year, their agenda would be popular enough, but that in the presence of persistent joblessness, they're going to lose the election. The only thing to do in the meantime is try and pass legislation that'll make the country better off. That's what they've done, or at least what they think they've done.

It's ugly in the sense that policy is irrelevant to the outcome of most elections.  I'd really like to believe that this isn't true, and political parties would be rewarded and punished on the basis of the policies that they enacted or blocked.  But, as usual, the relationship is much clearer than that.  Here's the chart Ezra uses to demonstrate the correlation:

Why not pay more for less?

First, three points:

1.  Health care costs will drive the long-run federal deficit.
2.  Our current health care system is one of the lowest international performers.
3.  We spend more on health care than anybody.

For more on that second point , here's Ezra Klein (link) quoting from the most recent commonwealth fund report (link):

But even with all that spending, "the U.S. ranks last overall, as it did in the 2007, 2006, and 2004 editions of Mirror, Mirror. Most troubling, the U.S. fails to achieve better health outcomes than the other countries, and as shown in the earlier editions, the U.S. is last on dimensions of access, patient safety, coordination, efficiency, and equity. The Netherlands ranks first, followed closely by the U.K. and Australia."

The issue isn't just that we don't have universal health care. Our delivery system underperforms, too. "Even when access and equity measures are not considered, the U.S. ranks behind most of the other countries on most measures. With the inclusion of primary care physician survey data in the analysis, it is apparent that the U.S. is lagging in adoption of national policies that promote primary care, quality improvement, and information technology."

As we begin to see health care change over the next five years, it will be very important to keep an eye on these metrics.  If the US doesn't find a way to improve, more change will absolutely be necessary.

Here are some illustrative charts from Ezra's post:

Ding Ding Ding

Ezra has it right (link).  The 'lone Republican' strategy has worked very well for the GOP.

It's further evidence that the "lone Republican" strategy doesn't work. Time and again, Democrats have ended up in a room with a single Republican who seemed willing to cut a deal. It was Olympia Snowe on health care, Bob Corker on financial regulation and Lindsey Graham on climate change. In every case, the final bill looked a lot like what that Republican helped negotiate. And in every single case, the Republican realized that he or she couldn't get more support from their party and so they eventually bolted the effort.

If you think this has all been a cynical strategy, it's been brilliantly successful. On the one hand, Republicans have had a major role in shaping these bills. On the other hand, they haven't had to vote for these bills, and so they could cleanly campaign against legislation that a member of their party helped write. And as an added bonus, Democrats are stuck trying to defend a bill that their base doesn't like very much and that's thick with compromises that annoy political elites.

It has to be a cynical strategy, right?   If I was in the minority and I thought it would trip up the ruling party, I'd give it a shot.

Meet the new boss. It's the same as the old boss.

Ezra captures the strange irony of the political results so far this cycle (link):

Part of the narrative that's emerged is that these primaries show an anti-incumbent, anti-Washington, year. That's right, but it's mixed, incoherently, with pro-party -- which is to say, pro-Washington establishment -- results. The different bases are eliminating politicians who've been insufficiently dedicated to holding their party's line. The result will be much more significant than merely the election of three new senators. Rather, surviving senators will upgrade the threat an unhappy base poses to their reelection and trim their independence accordingly. The moderates and compromisers who are left will stop acting like moderates and compromisers. This election looks, if nothing else, like it's going to be a big step forward in bringing strong party discipline to the Senate.

Of course, The Who would see nothing strange about this (link).

I'm in the "Don't Gut Regulation" camp...

Ezra captures the key point on the oil spill (link).

It strains credulity to suggest that presidents will enter office and zero in on failures at tiny regulatory agencies. But their underlings should. And they appoint their underlings. So insofar as Ken Salazar fell down on the job, it's Obama's fault in a "buck stops here" sort of way.

But this is also evidence of what a bad idea it is to routinely elect people who make it a point to degrade the capacity of regulatory agencies. If your regulators are going to be effective, the commitment to their effectiveness has to be continuous, not episodic. If every other administration has to come into office and nurse a sabotaged bureaucracy back to health, they're going to miss some of the problems, and much of the damage will already have been done.

(Emphasis mine).

Note: He's Up By 25 Points

Rand Paul, the GOP primary winner put his foot in mouth yesterday (link) and its unclear to me if it will matter at all.  However, if it does, then Ezra Klein knows why (link):

What's gotten Paul in trouble, however, is that he's so skeptical of government power that he's not even comfortable with the public sector telling private businesses that they can't discriminate based on race. That, I fear, does have public policy implications.

For instance: Can the federal government set the private sector's minimum wage? Can it tell private businesses not to hire illegal immigrants? Can it tell oil companies what safety systems to build into an offshore drilling platform? Can it tell toy companies to test for lead? Can it tell liquor stores not to sell to minors? These are the sort of questions that Paul needs to be asked now, because the issue is not "area politician believes kooky but harmless thing." It's "area politician espouses extremist philosophy on issue he will be voting on constantly."

Interestingly, Rasmussen has him up over Conway (D) in the polls by 25 (link).

As a side note, Rasmussen is a very reputable polling company that has a strong 'house effect'.  Their polls have leaned more towards the GOP during this cycle than all the other pollsters.  This doesn't mean that their polls are wrong, but has more to do with how they are modeling for likely voters.  For more on this, here is Nate Silver (link).  And for those who like a good conspiracy, here is Daily Kos on the Rasmussen house effect (link).