Government + Corporations
If a U.S. company has a patent & a company in a different country copies that technology, how does that get resolved? Is this a part of America playing global police? Is it "good" for inventions to be kept to a single company, in a single country?
I suppose Intellectual Property "theft" can lead to undercutting on sale price (especially where labor is cheaper), which can then flood the market. If America were exporting a product in exchange for other stuff we needed, then a foreign company undercutting American prices with cheap labor would prevent us from being able to export said product. If we cannot export product, we cannot import product, yea?
(On reread: This sounds a bit entitled. Are we Americans entitled to accessing goods that other countries export? I don't think so. But fuck that would suck.)
So what if we don't have bananas any more? Or rice? Or silicon chips? We could still grow actual food here, or agricultural products to export. We have oil, and probably lots of metals and lumber. But still, losing a product export due to being undercut on the global market could have a negative impact on everyday Americans.
(On reread: If we didn't have enough food to feed our people, or not enough medicine, I do think we're entitled to surpluses of those goods. I think any people of any country are. I know that gets complicated though, for some countries have been subjugated by western powers and like why should they help us? I guess because we should be united globally as people, and not blame citizens for the horrors that governments enact. But, maybe we enable those governments? I don't know. This was supposed to be a quick aside.)
It constantly boggles my mind just how the world works. All this trade, the global economy, market-driven access to food and shelter, and how it can all be exploited, and ... idk. tired.
It's just all a lot.
I think about what we all need: food, shelter, water, community, culture, activity.
(on reread: I don't know what you need)
Somebody has to clean the water. Somebody has to grow and ship and cook the food. Somebody has to build the homes and fix the furnaces. Someone has to restock the shelves at the library and brew coffee at the local hangout spot. Someone has to clean and repair and maintain basketball courts, tennis courts, and so many other things. Somebody has to make the balls and rackets etc etc.
(on reread: "has to" is another hint of entitlement, but now I guess I'm not even listening to myself because I'm being overly critical of the specific wording I used to communicate my idea.)
Somebody has to make the music, organize the theater, write and print the poetry, and so on.
(on reread: Like, if we're going to have the stuff that I listed as being important. i guess we don't have to have that stuff, but if we ARE going to have that stuff, then this other stuff has to happen. I'm being so cumbersome)
Starting with the farmer. What do they want in exchange for their labor growing food?
What about the lumberjack getting us 2x4s?
So there will be servers to make meals for the farmers and jacks, and then the servers will have wishes, perhaps beyond the food and shelter they're getting. Why should the farmer get such extravagant wishes met and I only get this measly stuff? (The farmer was humble in my mind but idk i'm rambling)
And it just goes around and around in my mind. I want to know what it would take to make the farmer happy. Then I want to know, the people who serve the farmer... what will make them happy?
And the people who serve them ... and so-on.
Just, like ... can we organize it better than this? Are we just bad at societal tetris? How smart do we need to be?
(on reread: Or are we really good at societal tetris? Am I being a pessimist and not seeing how good we have it? Again I'm not listening to myself because I'm focusing too much on wording.)
Are we learning extensively because we actually care, or because it's what we need to do to make money and live? Are we producing new models of cars every year because people need it? Or is manufacturing just how workers get access to food and shelter?
How many people really want to produce the products and services they do? How many Walmart electronics employees want to sell wifi routers? How many electricians or line workers at car factories really care about putting more cars into the world? How many truck drivers really care about creating more plastic toys themed after kids TV shows? How many programmers really care about creating another software product?
But maybe we need to be busy with all this stuff we do for work. Like, as a species, does it keep us happy? or content? or like, non-violent? I don't know. I'm glad I was able to get dairy queen after selling my blood plasma.
My chicken strip basket came with fried & breaded chicken, bread, french fries, and two cups of gravy.
It came in a box, on top of parchment paper. The gravy came in paper cups with plastic lids.
I drove a truck, built out of metals and plastics and glass and fabrics, running on gas, having a radio, made out of ... and so on.
For the food:
- Fried Chicken: dead chicken, flour, salt, egg (dead unborn "chicken"), oil it was cooked in
- flour: made from a crop grown on a farm with massive farm equipment, shipped in a semi truck, sold by ... well Dairy queen probably has some corporate supplier or something, but there's still probably a sales person for that. For regular people, it's a clerk in a store (or a machine). The farm equipment needs to be stored in a barn, made of materials farmed from the earth and refined and shipped.
- salt: I don't know where salt comes from ...
- i'm over it
It's crazy how this shit all works dude. How many people are involved in the long process of me getting fried chicken at dairy queen? And is it efficient? Does the current process of making that all happen reduce overall labor?
Like having factory and industrial processes ... versus having local chicken farms and wheat farms for flour (idk if we can grow wheat in my area). I feel like if you go try to re-solve this problem to make it simpler, it will very quickly get ridiculously complex again.
but simpler might not be important. I just want us, as a global society, to move away from ideas of people being the underclass. Do I really need this laptop, if it depends on somebody being exploited in order for me to have it? Like is that worth it?
If we don't have some kind of underclass (people doing labor for low wages, for poor quality of life), then can anybody live the kind of "middle" class lifestyle? Can anyone have a medium quality of life without people living worse lives to support them?
I think so, but honestly I don't know enough to answer this question, and perhaps I should go to college about it if I'm super interested. Or maybe read some books, like about socialism and communism and other ideas about how to organize society and labor and land and yeah ... I could learn from people who know more about this stuff than me.
Books! Okay. I think I'm done.