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Brazil is trying that and getting a bad look from the USA. Can you imagine a smaller nation doing the same? What would the USA do?
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The US is fighting wars with everyone on everything at the same time. They don't have the resources to do anything about it. Every country will develop their own independent payment networks.

China was right to block US tech companies to promote their own, most large and capable countries will do the same over time.

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I wouldn't cite China as the example. If they had their way, every country would have its own firewall just like them, giving them significant control over information flow to their citizens. It works very well. That's why they have been pushing "internet sovereignty" for years.
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Meanwhile the US who currently has their way will block European judges from using banks, credit cards and all online services after they investigate Israel for war crimes.
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Doctorow's point is that the USA's trade policy is unilaterally capricious and malevolent toward the best of its allies, so other nations' actions ultimately cannot be said to have any mitigating causal effect. Might as well just go for it. F the DMCA.
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All due respect, but how would anyone survive, no less find a way to make anything like the average income of any of us on HN, in a world that made not just some 'patents' free but removed property and invention such as the extremities Doctorow's fiction often espouses? America is sorta known for pretense of mutual benefit. We sorta fumbled things after we, to put it bluntly, nuked the Japanese twice. Don't get me wrong, if you read my comments elsewhere you will see how I feel about people/companies claiming swathes of things for themselves too.

Everyone seems to think they either deserve more or they fall for believing people are inherently willing to remunerate fairly for what they use... Def. not my experience, at all... like what if people were all just assuming since your ideas exist, they were for sale or free, or 'offering' things you dont want or arent getting in return...? what if you dont want what they do with it in the first place? what if (heh) you just don't like the end user and you know they will irk you with it?

Doctorow is the furthest from a fair or good example, imho.

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> find a way to make anything like the average income of any of us on HN

a) This is not about trying to protect the incomes of people working in Big Tech

b) In his talk Doctorow gives examples of business opportunities that are actually being repressed by the laws against reverse engineering

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For a very brief window of time, USA did a little bit more good than bad.

Those of us wanting to believe USA was more better than not have struggled to recalibate our beliefs.

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> We sorta fumbled things after we, to put it bluntly, nuked the Japanese twice

What?

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I believe OP is saying that the US has not been reliably sane in its public policy since ending WW II via nuclear warfare.

I don't know if I agree with the claim overall, but I certainly think nuking civilian populations was an execrable choice (even if the official targets were technically military ones).

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