“I can’t comprehend how a person could be so completely ignorant of the internet and its huge benefits as to suggest this type of legislative monstrosity.”

Our government is against ANYTHING socially beneficial. That’s why the government grants taxi-cab monopolies, much of the food you eat is monopolized in one way or another (ie: by Monsanto through patents and other government established monopolies thanks to a legal system that allowed them to obtain patents and sue independent farms because their plants just so happen to have a particular gene), the hotel industry benefits from anti-competitive laws, heck, even some cities require permits to sell coffins in a way that effectively ensures that there is only one seller in the city. (I can go on, such as many cities being lobbied by incumbent restaurants like Pizza Hut in a ways designed to stifle competition in the restaurant industry). There exists government established broadcasting monopolies, cableco monopolies, mailbox delievery monopolies, laws that deter restaurants and other venues from hosting independent performers without paying a parasitic third party a licensing fee under the pretext that someone might infringe, to sell liquor or host a slot machine you need a license (which substantially reduces competition in a way that only helps incumbents).

When I visited Chili you actually have freedoms. I visited a house with a single slot machine in the back yard and neighbors and passer by’s came into the back yard to play the slot machine. It was perfectly legal. Taxi cabs are ubiquitous, many people don’t drive. The people who picked us up at the airport went to the airport in a taxi cab to pick us up and we went to their house in a taxi-cab, we took the ‘freeway’ and everything. People frequently go to work and back every day in taxi cabs, many of whom don’t even drive, it’s not unusual at all. It’s affordable. Here, driving is practically mandatory. Taxi cab monopolies serve as a subsidy to the auto industry (and they help the taxi-cab monopolists of course).

So many things you buy here are covered by multiple, often redundant and obvious, patents, many of which have little to no regard for prior art. Copy protection lengths keep getting extended because a public domain is socially beneficial and would compete with monopolized content. Government funded R&D often ends up copy protected by private publishers for 95+ years and nothing ever enters the public domain anymore anyways do to constant extensions regardless. and the NIH is like the only entity that requires their government funded research to be made public after a year yet Congress is now trying to pass a bill to forbid the NIH from having such requirements. and much of the results of publicly funded R&D becomes patented anyways in such a way that only a few private entities can get licenses to use the technology or create a drug based on the R&D, which helps those businesses at the expense of everyone else.

This government is plutocratic to the core. Every aspect of this government is plutocratic. It takes away our rights and, unlike other governments (ie: that at least pretend to give its citizens something back, such as in the form of universal healthcare, which I’m not really in favor of) our government gives us little in return. Our government aims to make our lives as miserable as possible at every turn possible. You would be hard pressed to find an industry that doesn’t suffer anti-competitive laws in one way or another, anti-competitive laws are everywhere.