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I don't see how your position is any less childish or black-and-white. You make blanket statements about people you couldn't even name and you take complex economic issues and simplify them to the point of "itz all cauzed by teh greedy banksters!". Do you honestly claim to understand the complexities of the events you just listed... or are your "facts" based in populist sentiment? (it's a rhetorical question, the answer is obvious).

You mean, it's obvious that I track economic developments and read economics related news articles?

Good, I was worried you were being a hyperbolic, presumptive ass.

Do we put the government in charge of distributing wealth? If you think that rich greedy people are a problem now, just wait until their money/power is controlled by a bureaucrat who not doesn't care about wasting huge sums of money, and has even less consequences for wrongdoing.

Don't follow the news, do we?

Isn't it interesting that you have so much hatred for people with more money than you...

I don't hate anybody. I hate the way people let their greed blind them to the suffering they cause others, but I don't hate the people themselves.

do you care about the 98% of the worlds population that has far less than you do?

Indeed. I would love to live in a world where those with the most willingly and happily share their excess wealth with the less fortunate so that everyone can live a better life. Did you even read my OP, or were you so amped up about posting your argumentum ad hominem that you didn't bother?

How would you feel if someone told you that you had to give up 75% of your property to make society more fair?

short answer: I'm a survivalist :) material possessions (outside those necessary for survival) mean nothing to me.

Long answer: It wouldn't bother me in the least, although I would question the intent of the person telling me that, as I personally own very little; save the house and the car (which one would assume would be part of the 25% I keep, as we're trying to lessen poverty here, not increase it) might bring a few thousand dollars if you could manage to get retail out of my old, used junk...

I'm not defending the super-rich here, just pointing out that the threshold for how much is too much is conveniently above what *you* think it should be.

And what, precisely, do "I" think it should be?

Oh please, I seriously doubt you understand the true complexity of the world around you.

Considering all the baseless accusations and speculation you've offered thus far, I'm somehow not surprised.

I know it's much easier to understand a half-truth that appeals to emotion than to put in the effort required to really understand something.

See response above.

The idea that the "elites" must be overthrown to get "justice" for the "people" is not new, it has been tried many times but always fails miserably.

Yea, just look what happened in 1776; no good came of that, did it mate?

As soon as group X overthrows group Y, group X then becomes just as greedy and selfish (many times more so) than group Y was.

Change "as soon as" to "eventually" and I have to agree with that one.

The altruistic utopian world view where everyone is equal *and* prosperous is a fantasy that has never existed.

A guy can dream, can't he? (Answer: Yes, b

Sure, but i'm guessing you left college with either an MS in something marketable, or you otherwise independently had marketable skills.

Most people who leave college with such degrees... Don't. Fareeh Zakaria had a great piece about the state of American higher ed. While I think we do need musicians, artists, philosophers, writers, poets, and the humanities... There's a hard reality that going into those fields isn't profitable unless you're insanely lucky or you have career aspirations elsewhere(having a Philosophy or English degree would be a great starting point for someone who'd be going into post-graduate work in law for instance).

And how are we to know that?

Well, you could just ask them, if it was sufficiently anonymous. According to a poll by the University of Maryland, Hu Jintao recently had a 93% approval rating (http://www.newsweek.com/id/141764/). There's also the issue of if public support is a source of political legitimacy in the absence of free speech.

Of course, these ideas of political legitimacy were pioneered by western philosophers such as John Locke in the 17th century. There's that "cultural" thing.

An interesting read that touches on these issues is this interview of Lee Kuan Yew, the prime minister of Singapore for 30 years.

http://www.fareedzakaria.com/articles/newsweek/101 501_why.html

The Politics of Rage: Why Do They Hate Us?

To dismiss the terrorists as insane is to delude ourselves. Bin Laden and his fellow fanatics are products of failed societies that breed their anger. America needs a plan that will not only defeat terror but reform the Arab world

By Fareed Zakaria

To the question "Why do the terrorists hate us?" Americans could be pardoned for answering, "Why should we care?" The immediate reaction to the murder of 5,000 innocents is anger, not analysis. Yet anger will not be enough to get us through what is sure to be a long struggle. For that we will need answers. The ones we have heard so far have been comforting but familiar. We stand for freedom and they hate it. We are rich and they envy us. We are strong and they resent this. All of which is true. But there are billions of poor and weak and oppressed people around the world. They don't turn planes into bombs. They don't blow themselves up to kill thousands of civilians. If envy were the cause of terrorism, Beverly Hills, Fifth Avenue and Mayfair would have become morgues long ago. There is something stronger at work here than deprivation and jealousy. Something that can move men to kill but also to die.

Osama bin Laden has an answer--religion. For him and his followers, this is a holy war between Islam and the Western world. Most Muslims disagree. Every Islamic country in the world has condemned the attacks of Sept. 11. To many, bin Laden belongs to a long line of extremists who have invoked religion to justify mass murder and spur men to suicide. The words "thug," "zealot" and "assassin" all come from ancient terror cults--Hindu, Jewish and Muslim, respectively--that believed they were doing the work of God. The terrorist's mind is its own place, and like Milton's Satan, can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell. Whether it is the Unabomber, Aum Shinrikyo or Baruch Goldstein (who killed scores of unarmed Muslims in Hebron), terrorists are almost always misfits who place their own twisted morality above mankind's.

But bin Laden and his followers are not an isolated cult like Aum Shinrikyo or the Branch Davidians or demented loners like Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber. They come out of a culture that reinforces their hostility, distrust and hatred of the West--and of America in particular. This culture does not condone terrorism but fuels the fanaticism that is at its heart. To say that Al Qaeda is a fringe group may be reassuring, but it is false. Read the Arab press in the aftermath of the attacks and you will detect a not-so-hidden admiration for bin Laden. Or consider this from the Pakistani newspaper The Nation:

"September 11 was not mindless terrorism for terrorism's sake. It was reaction and revenge, even retribution." Why else is America's response to the terror attacks so deeply constrained by fears of an "Islamic backlash" on the streets? Pakistan will dare not allow Washington the use of its bases. Saudi Arabia trembles at the thought of having to help us publicly. Egypt pleads that our strikes be as limited as possible. The problem is not that Osama bin Laden believes that this is a religious war against America. It's that millions of people across the Islamic world seem to agree.

This awkward reality has led some in the West to dust off old essays and older prejudices redicting a "clash of civilizations" between the West and Islam. The historian Paul Johnson has argued that Islam is intrinsically an intolerant and violent religion. Other scholars have disagreed, pointing out that Islam condemns the slaughter of innocents and prohibits suicide. Nothing will be solved by searching for "true Islam" or quoting the Quran. The Quran is a vast, vague book, filled with poetry and contradictions (much like the Bible).

You can find in it condemnations of war and incitements to struggle, beautiful expres

The difficulties in the Middle East aren't to do with `modernization`, whatever that means.

http://www.fareedzakaria.com/articles/newsweek/101 501_why.html

You need to study the history of the region again, with open eyes, this time. It's been a western plaything for some time now. Pay particular attention to western oil companies.

It appears that it is you who is in need of further study. Your comment about "western oil companies" is particularly telling, as the problems of the mideast are rooted in times much earlier than any in which any oil company, western or otherwise, was ever an influence. See above.

Look at the definition of terrorism:

First line from this article, ironically:

There is no universally accepted definition of terrorism.

These attacks are in revenge for actions against groups that have long been persecuted by those who would take their countries natural resources just to make a quick buck. You can deny this if you like, but you'll have to wake up sooner or later.

Another area you unfortunately misunderstand. You seem to believe that it's all about "making a quick buck", and that if only the West was somehow friendlier or less greedy with regard to the mideast, then Islamic radicalism and Western democracy could peacefully coexist.

There would be untold suffering - not just inconvenience, but all-out suffering and death - of likely millions of people if there was a wholesale collapse of the US (and, in turn, European) economies if there was an interruption in our ability to obtain energy in a stable, secure, predictable, and reasonably priced manner. There would be massive unemployment, massive poverty (by global, not Western, standards), starvation, suffering, and deaths. This is a very real probability in the event of a cascading economic collapse.

Yes, the US and West need to find alternative energy sources. But it also doesn't want to become extinct in the meantime. If you find no value in general Western ideals of freedom, democracy, equality, and liberty, then I am saddened for you. There are no absolutes here. Certainly there have been Western abuses, corruption, and all manner of evil deeds or even inattention at one time or another. But if you believe that Arabs blowing up their Arab brothers and sister and terrorists attacking innocent civilians is a rational, sensible course of action, then our views our fundamentally different.

You may also be interested in knowing that, contrary I'm sure to your belief, the US is not interested in indiscriminately killing Iraqis, and in fact has gone to great lengths to reduce innocent civilian death. However, death is an effect of war. While no solid numbers are available due to infrastructure, accounting, administrative, and other various issues, there has very likely been a significant net preservation of Iraqi life since March 2003, when compared with the 100,000 Iraqis who died each year under sanctions, as a direct result of sanctions, according to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. This preservation includes all Iraqis accidentally killed during the invasion, and Iraqis killed by suicide attacks within Iraq. And this is just from the improvements to infrastructure, sanitation, food and water distribution, and so on, made (primarily) by the Army Corps of Engineers as a matter of course during the process of securing and rebuilding the country. Just because you can cherry-pick examples of deficient rebuilding, errant bombs, or US mistakes resulting in civilian deaths, does not make it the norm, nor does it even represent in even a small way the general US activity in Iraq.

I'm glad you can sit so smugly in your position that the US is wrong for wanting to spread democratic ideals, and those of freedom, including the critical free flow of information - even if the reasoning for some in the US/West is to en

Fareed Zakaria had some things to say about that. It appears that the Supreme Court, out of all US governmental institutions, is considered the most trustworthy by the general populace. In spite of it being the least democratic, and not without good reason if I may say so. A case for technocracy if I ever saw one.

On the other hand, consider this article too. The last paragraph is quite interesting.

For an excellent article on the impact of rejecting foreign students to American acadamia, see here. It ran in Newsweek just last week.

(Oh, and take the title with a grain of salt.)

- shadowmatter

I am assuming that one of the reasons that HP intends to market these in developing countries is that the prices they will ask will be lower than what they could expect to get in developed countries. So, even with a discount from the purchase price after a year of use, there is a possibility that the computers could be resold to purchasers in developed countries (hobbyists, user groups, etc.) at a price point close to what was originally paid for the machines or sold at a point below the purchase price to neighboring countries even less well off. The money earned from the sale of the "old" computers goes to buying newer computers (perhaps from HP if they do their marketing right and don't stifle the resale market). In the meantime, the computers help to establish an educated populace (possibly with world access via the Internet) and the business processes involved in the export work in a small way to help establish a middle class. It has been argued that both of these factors, an educated populace and a middle class, are instrumental in the development and preservation of constitutional liberal democracy.