Brett Dunbar

Brett Dunbar

  • Commented on Eating the seed corn
    To be exact, an early election can occur either following a two thirds vote in the Commons for an early dissolution, or, if following a lost motion of confidence 14 days have elapsed without a new government being formed. Incidentally...
  • Commented on Seasonal flame bait
    Britain has a higher level of freedom than it did thirty years ago. Since then we have had the Human Rights Act 1998 (incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law), the Police and Criminal Evidence Act...
  • Commented on Cutting their own throats
    The law in European states, such as the UK, that allow a corporate person to be legally the original author treat work for hire the same way as it treats anonymous and pseudonymous works where the author's identity is unknown....
  • Commented on Cutting their own throats
    I'm not sure what you think you disagree with me on either basic type of intellectual property. Copyright Design right, Database right and patent transform artworks, inventions, designs (in practice, mostly wallpaper patterns), databases and other easily copied hard to...
  • Commented on Cutting their own throats
    A bandwidth levy would have material produced treated as a public good (non-rival, non-excludable) rather than, as historically, as a club good (non-rival, excludable). Markets haven't tended to be good at dealing with public goods, they tend to be chronically...
  • Commented on Cutting their own throats
    As I understand most books actually sold are from those titles that stay in print for many years. While most titles are out of print after a couple of years they collectively account for a fairly small part of total...
  • Commented on Cutting their own throats
    Discussion of intellectual property often becomes confused as it serves two quite distinct purposes. Copyright, Patent, Design Right, Database Right &c. are designed to allow the producer of an easily copied product to benefit from the effort required to create...
  • Commented on Cutting their own throats
    There quite a few other categories of intellectual property some such as design right and database right, in those jurisdictions that have them, operate more or less like copyright. There is also the oldest form of intellectual property one which...
  • Commented on Cutting their own throats
    One problem with requiring registration or renewal of copyright is that there are close to 200 separate jurisdictions worldwide, the administrative difficulties of maintaining copyright would be a major problem to individuals. Large businesses would find it a lot easier...
  • Commented on Cutting their own throats
    According to this piece of market research from 2005 with a sample of 2000 adults in the UK. The question used was "In the last 12 months, approximately how many books did you buy for yourself or to give to...
  • Commented on Post-oil ...
    Before the First World War Britain wasn't going to support France in an aggressive war. France wasn't going to launch a war unless she had a decent chance of victory, which meant she needed British support. Basically France could count...
  • Commented on Post-oil ...
    I'm not saying that the second world war was unavoidable, indeed without Hitler it doesn't happen. An alternative German dictatorship is almost inevitably going to pursue a less aggressive foreign policy. What I am saying is that the first world...
  • Commented on Post-oil ...
    Not really. In both cases the war was a German decision. In the first case as a preventative war the Germans decided to start a war before their strategic position deteriorated further. Germany faced no real threat, France and Russia...
  • Commented on Post-oil ...
    You might note that Krugman has suggested that the Fed should increase the inflation target and commit to doing whatever is needed to achieve this. He clearly believes that creating inflation is possible. It isn't that you can't create inflation,...
  • Commented on Post-oil ...
    It isn't really the case that the second world war debt was finally paid off in 2005, what with debt being fungible. What happened was that the last of the second world war debt instruments reached maturity. Britain had issued...
  • Commented on Post-oil ...
    Dealing with deflation is relatively straightforward for any sovereign authority which issues its own currency. As it can expand the monetary base and thereby create inflation sufficient to avoid debt deflation (the situation where the return on holding cash exceeds...
  • Commented on Because I am a glutton for punishment ...
    How about a near future novel set during a major episode of flood volcanism (Deccan Traps scale). The ash cloud would pretty much shut down air transport world wide (like the Icelandic ash cloud orders of magnitude bigger)....
  • Commented on Because I am a glutton for punishment ...
    Maltese Falcon actually has a larger crew than the Thomas W Lawson had initially (18 as opposed to 16) and is a much smaller vessel, being about half the length....
  • Commented on Because I am a glutton for punishment ...
    Late period commercial sailing ships didn't have crews of hundreds schooners especially needed remarkably few crew. The largest ship built as a pure sailing vessel was the steel hulled seven mast Schooner Thomas W Lawson. When launched in 1902 had...
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