Non Sequitur cartoon. FIXED!
So there’s this awful cartoon doing the rounds that attempts to ZING free-market proponents. You can view it here. Obviously it’s absolutely atrocious and misinformed but it still somehow made the front page of reddit.com and so I thought it reasonably worthwhile to knock up this alternative version.
Edit: Seeing as there are some accusations that I’m somehow trying to take credit for David Horsey’s artwork (apparently a link to the original and the explicit explanation that I’ve “knocked up an alternative” isn’t clear enough), I’ve updated the image with his website included. I’ve also changed a few typos and taken out the tea-bagger cartoon in the final panel (because it made no sense) and replaced it with a different character from Horsey’s website that fits the punchline.
November 8th, 2010 at 11:27 pm
It horrifies me to think that I am from the same genus as people like this. I almost want to cry about it.
November 9th, 2010 at 12:23 am
I hope you get sued by the Editorialist for using his graphic without permission.
November 9th, 2010 at 12:32 am
Yeah makes sense you would feel that way… Parodies of political cartoons with links back to the original should definitely be violently prevented. Viva Big Government!
November 9th, 2010 at 12:38 am
If it was a parody in a forum rather than a commercial webpage then I wouldn’t have an issue with it. Don’t defend the free market system and then take away the ownership of a persons work product. Had he done anything more imaginative than replacing the words I might forgive it. But the link is not a link to the author. the link is to a file server that is not controlled by the author of th original cartoon. There is absolutely no reference to the author. and by putting this up on the web it has the risk of making the image part of the public domain
November 9th, 2010 at 12:44 am
1. This isn’t a commercial website
2. I don’t believe in IP & copyright laws, nor do I accept your premise that I can “take away his work” by altering it. By leaving his name on the edited comic he would be attributed to views he does not hold.
3. As the original creator of this comic is clearly a gigantic douchebag who spends his time trying to ridicule people he disagrees with I actually couldn’t give a flying fuck anyway.
4. I have plenty of original images on this website that you, or anybody else are free to take, alter, or do what you want with. I’m not inconsistent here.
[edit: I'd be happy to link to the original comic in its original context, but I don't know what that is. I've only seen the image on its own as it was posted on Reddit]
November 9th, 2010 at 12:48 am
“2. I don’t believe in intellectual property”
You don’t believe in the value of architecture, landscape architecture, design, graphic design, etc etc?
Bye bye credibility.
November 9th, 2010 at 1:05 am
Well I should clarify that I don’t believe in intellectual property LAWS.
That said, many of the examples you just listed don’t make a lot of sense. Architecture isn’t intellectual property it’s physical property. I don’t think you can own the *idea* of your cathedral. If I see the cathedral on holiday and then go and built a replica in my home town I have not stolen anything tangible from anybody. Copying something is not the same as stealing.
I believe that the person who created something first created it first, and that can easily be proven so the original creator gets the kudos. That said, once that person puts their work out there into the world they have no *right* to prevent other people from copying, altering, or improving on that original.
This is a contentious topic in libertarian circles. There was a thread on the forums you might be interested in here. Some people agreed with you.
November 9th, 2010 at 1:31 am
So, you’re saying that Wall Street was just an innocent bystander in 2008 and had nothing to do with the housing bubble blowing the fuck up? Really? Just dirty Franny and Freddy and that bugaboo, the Federal Reserve? Wow, I want what you’re smoking, that’s some good shit.
November 9th, 2010 at 1:43 am
Well “Wall Street” isn’t exactly the most free-market of places. Most of those firms are so in bed with the government it’s ridiculous. But that’s another topic.
November 9th, 2010 at 1:45 am
Forgive my posting this here. I have been checking out this site a few times a week since it launced (thanks to its Adds on FTL). Almost always there are between 0 and 3 people online. Tonight, its 120. Is this some new thing, or did I just not notice it before? Also, it seems that like myself, the majority of users are in America (some cliches about libertarians seem to be true). Also is there an online chat? When I click “join chat” it just redirects me to my facebook page.
November 9th, 2010 at 1:54 am
brilliant. good job. Fellow libertarian here. I think that fighting IP is one of the hardest arguments you can make, but I’m on your side. I’m trying to figure out better ways, but I guess if people don’t understand and respect real property rights then they’ll defend IP till the day they die.
November 9th, 2010 at 2:25 am
Nice job! Love it. It definitely needed fixing, and the comments are so ridiculous in the Reddit threads, only a tweaking of the original would get the statist tweens there to stop and think, if only for a moment…
November 9th, 2010 at 2:34 am
“As the original creator of this comic is clearly a gigantic douchebag who spends his time trying to ridicule people he disagrees with I actually couldn’t give a flying fuck anyway”
Haha, someone got butthurt.
Also, using that font makes your comic damn near unreadable.
November 9th, 2010 at 2:36 am
The orignal was much better, and more honest.
You have shown yourself to be a plagiarist and not coherent, either economically or politically.
Also, please get off of my reddits, hack.
November 9th, 2010 at 2:49 am
Is it plagiarism if I explicitly declare what it is I’m parodying right above the image with a link to the original?!
Why do I keep feeding the trolls…
November 9th, 2010 at 3:39 am
Just a quick fact check: Enron’s manipulation of the power supply in California was possible to the newly-deregulated energy market.
November 9th, 2010 at 3:47 am
I’m just gonna hammer a little bit on the Enron thing because I just finished up a unit on them in class: Enron could do what it did in California because of the deregulated market, and could do what it did with its stock price because of lax government monitoring of profit reporting. Stronger regulations would have exposed the imaginary bookkeeping immediately, but because gov’t interference was non-existent the deep cracks in Enron’s financial structure were not apparent to the outside world until the company had already crashed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis
System of false reporting Enron used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_to_market
November 9th, 2010 at 4:54 am
I don’t know a ton about the Enron situation, but I’ll just post this up here for some free-market perspective:
Myths About Enron
November 9th, 2010 at 4:59 am
Davy,
Great comic! In the USA you have probably heard that we have “fair use”, which explicitly says you can reproduce content to parody or comment on it. Doesn’t the UK have this? I just can’t believe some of the comments I’m reading. Some of your readers are really awful.
November 9th, 2010 at 7:12 am
Seems to me that regulation and deregulation are specifically tweaked to favor corporations. Furthermore, corporations are by definition products of regulation and government intervention. The concept of corporate personhood is absurd. Corporations are not a free-market concept. They should not exist.
November 9th, 2010 at 8:50 am
Wow Davy you are being flooded with quite a nice herd of socialists today aren’t you :)
Scarab you should really look into the details of “partial deregulation” sounds like its actually MORE regulation in many ways. It is common knowledge that pro-government people have a history of calling things nearly the opposite of what they are in fact doing. Really it was the transient between complex “partial deregulation” and the old “regulation” that amplified the opportunity for corruption and shady bookkeeping.
“Stronger regulations would have exposed the imaginary bookkeeping immediately”… really? you should probably stay in school a bit longer, friend :)
November 9th, 2010 at 9:06 am
I just read a few more of these comments and wow… it’s like these people have never been on the internet before. Everything out there is a modified version of something else… keep screaming plagiarism and praising copyright laws, no one is listening to your silliness :(
Hats off to the “statist tweens” label studmuffin, very fitting.
November 9th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Davy: “I don’t know a ton about the Enron situation”
- but you’ll re-write someones comic to shift blame away from lax regulation to further your own agenda. Guess truth is less important eh?
November 9th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Very good point Rat, “Deregulation” is a government buzz-word that never means what it sounds like it means.
It’s a bit like “privatisation”… it’s rarely exactly what it sounds like. When they “privatised” the railways over here they didn’t really do any such things. They just auctioned out 4 year leases to private firms to run their trains on the, still government owned, railways.
November 9th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Rat, I would have to respond that the heavily regulated California energy system worked perfectly for forty years, and once it started to privatize (which, while still partially regulated, was now deregulated) corporate interests stepped right in and started yanking California on a chain.
And you’re right, I probably should stay in school: I need that diploma :D Tell me, though, why you think stricter regulations would not have exposed Enron sooner? One of the consequences of Enron was the creation of SOX, which has so far been effective.
SOX:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act
November 9th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Hi Davy, that myths on enron link was interesting. I had never heard of the university that put the blog post up, so I google it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises_Institute
Not the strongest reference.
November 9th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
The Mises Institute is probably the most famous anti-state organisation in the world. I frequently post their material to my blog. You haven’t discovered anything here.
If you wanted to disagree with some of the arguments they made that would be more worthwhile. Usually when there is some contentious issue and you want to know the free-market/anti-state arguments (whether you agree or not) the Mises institute is a good place to go. They have some of the best speakers and thinkers in the world lecturing and writing there.
November 9th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Sarbanes-Oxley: another fantastic example of how government regulations have disasterous unintended real-world consequences:
Ron Paul vs Sarbanes-Oxley
How has Sarbanes-Oxley affected your business?
November 9th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
You are worthless, way to waste 30 seconds of my life. The original was genius, yours makes no sense (still). Dont’ quit your day job
November 9th, 2010 at 4:57 pm
And writing that you just wasted another 30 seconds :)
November 9th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Regarding Enron, I feel I know enough about the energy markets to know they’re extremely regulated. I’m just not an expert on the inner workings of Enron in particular.
November 9th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Nice to see so many new faces around here :)
November 9th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Much more accurate modification!
lol@ the “statist tweens”/ cradle to grave/stockholme syndromed statist trolls from reddit
lol@ the one’s accusing the Austrian schooled of “not knowing economics”
it’s so funny how ”atheism” and abolishment of relgious authority is so popular
yet the need to believe in an imaginary, intangible, paternal & benevolent state persists.
It’s like substituting crystal meth to get off of crack.
November 9th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Its so funny how all of these people seem to think that there is NO connection between government and evil corporations.
I think the fact that after 20,000 pages of psycho government babble, the only thing your current administration does is allow the heads of these companies to keep their bonuses, and create a direct link from the tax-payer wallets, to the CEO bank accounts.
Then they make it illegal to NOT own health insurance, conveniently as health insurance rates skyrocket. This way they can fine you to take your money, or you are forced to buy health insurance, which you cant afford anyway.
THEN they tell you that saving your money is foolish, and you should be spending it to help the economy, even though they took half your check for social security and medicare that you won’t ever get to collect, and 10 percent went to your ridiculous health plan from Kaiser-Permanente.
Then next year, they pay their favorite politicians to get everyone on board and run fake-ass campaigns that make people think that they are apart from each other.
Your delusion of freedom is a joke to me.
Government, big business, regulators… they all work together to create the illusion of choice and freedom, all the while exploiting your foolish, borderline retarded trust. The effects of brain-washing show so well in your ilk, progressives.
And by the way, communist ideas aren’t progressive.
November 12th, 2010 at 3:50 am
Would someone explain to me how deregulation was a good thing in the case of the California energy market? It still looks like a textbook example of “EvilCorp” taking advantage of Joe McAverage, but you guys allude to it being somehow different. How?
P.S. I just want to understand this crazy world that I’m going to inherit. Your knowledge and input is greatly appreciated.
November 12th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Well the thing about “deregulation” is it’s mostly just a government buzzword that isn’t anything like what it sounds like. Kind of like “Operation Iraqi Freedom” or “Inland Revenue Service“.
Read the following article: Enron’s Long Shadow.
November 12th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
http://mises.org/daily/872
November 14th, 2010 at 12:11 am
Hmmm – except Panel One should have something about Enron being able to financially rape the ratepayers of California due to its relentless pressure on the government to deregulate energy markets, allowing it to effectively tell power plants it owned to create artificial market shortages drastically increasing the price. Or that the Mortgage crisis had very little to do with Fannie and Freddie and much more to do with the overturning of Glass-Steagall. Or the fact that BP’s well was so catastrophically unfit for purpose due to the evisceration of the Minerals dept. under the Bush administration – oh and that Barack Obama convinced BP to escrow a large amount of cash to clean up its little ‘negative externality’ ensuring that very little of the cleanup cost will be borne by taxpayers, much to the chagrin of Libertarians everywhere at the time IIRC.
November 26th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
“due to its relentless pressure on the government to deregulate energy markets.” again, quit acting like the government are poor little guys being bullied by the big corporations. government and business as a team are the issue. they all have the same goals, and theyre not to help the world. and obama dragged out the BP oil crisis as long as he could to distract people from real issues, much like the publicity that “dont ask dont tell” got, even though it is still very much in place. “ensuring that very little of the cleanup cost will be borne by taxpayers.” sorry but the cleanup should not be a part of taxpayer responsibility at all, but you, sounding like a douche bag neo-liberal, would think otherwise im sure.