Slashdot Mirror
Americans And Chinese Internet Censorship
chowbok writes: "The Weekly Standard writes that despite expectations, the Chinese Government has been very successful in suppressing free internet access for their citizens. Key to this success was the assistance of Cisco, who built a giant firewall tailored to the state's needs, Yahoo (who helpfully censors search results and monitors online chats), and other Western companies."
It always amazed me why China connected to the public internet anyways if they are going to censor everything except the stuff _they_ want their citizens to see. Wouldn't it have been much more efficient to build the network and not connect it to the public internet? All they would have to do then is place information on their network they want their citizens to see. In any even, it's pretty screwed up.
Of all the rhetoric in this very disturbing piece of how western companies are helping censorship overseas, I found this comment most interesting:
"We don't care about the [Chinese government's] rules. It's none of Cisco's business."
Similar to how Mercedes or BMW didn't care much for what those giant ovens were used for in NAZI Germany, because it was none of their business. Oh how the ashes fall.
Disgusting. I can say I will never think of Cisco the same way again. What if the US decided they needed to "monitor" citizen Internet communications? Would Cisco step up with one of their enterprise level solutions?
Right next to Oracle with bids for a national ID card...
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
I am Chinese, and frankly, you don't make a lot of sense. To further extend your argument, when China becomes "free", Chinese citizens will blame the Russians for selling them tanks and warplanes that fill the arsenal of the People's army, blame the Chinese newspaper editors for writing articles that spread Communist Party ideology and blame the Chinese factory workers that manufactured the bullets that shot the democracy protesters at Tianenmen Square.
I may have grown up in a foreign culture, but I can spot someone with an axe to grind when I see one. Your disgust at "Big Business" and "Big Government" has nothing to do with the rights or attitudes of the Chinese people, but rather with you wanting to blame the what's wrong with the world on those that you don't agree with.
The Chinese nation will sort themselves out over a long time, and probably peacefully, too - that's the Chinese way, to take the long, nonconfrontational view. The best thing that Clinton and Bush have done, and what you seem so opposed to, is to allow US businesses to continue to invest in China, further stimulating the economy and slowly raising living standards for the Chinese people. With increased living standards, more power to the middle class and greater education, the people of China will ask for more freedom and representation incrementally, and the government of China will grant the inevitable.
The average Chinese citizen does not want your revolution. They want orderly, nonviolent change. The US companies are just doing business, no more and no less, and that business helps along that change.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
First of all, yes, I can luckily read Slashdot from my office & home here in Beijing. I've been living in different cities in China for two-and-a-half years now & I've seen many (kinds of) blocks come and go.
Sure, CNN.com is blocked & so is BBC.co.uk. No, NYT.com & BBCWORLD.com aren't blocked. So yes, I also don't understand the logic behind the specific blocks themselves. What I do understand, however, is that the blocks unfortunately are not the real issue.
The real issue is that the majority of people (in this case, internet users) themselves are not interested to actually access this information. If you have a peek into one of the many internet cafes around, the majority of users are merely playing games.
If they are on the internet, they are always either on Chinese news sites or chatting with each other. If I talk to my colleagues in the office, and ask them why they're not interested in information from a different perspective, they tell me that they simply don't care too much about international opinions. If they do visit international sites they'd rather visit other kinds of sites, mostly of expensive brands like BMW, Gucci & Rolf Benz, just to check out the latest styles. They are also interested in international universities, how to get their MBA & required visas.
Please remember that this applies to the *majority* of users in China. Obviously there is a group of users that is interested in the information, but I believe people on Slashdot are realistic enough to know that if you want to access the information, there is *always* a way.
For those of you in China who want to access CNN, simply go to http://robots.cnn.com
I have at least 10 Chinese people on my LICQ contact list. I've already turned 5 of them. So what if Beijing contracted Cisco to make a giant firewall. If the only way they could allow access was to put restrictions in place, they still screwed up by allowing access. You can't censor the whole internet, and freedom is contagious. Get this folks: Cisco enabled information acces to 1 billion otherwise oppressed and ignorant people who would have no informational resource outside of what Beijing prints on posters and pastes on walls.
If anyone out there thinks that the Chinese couldn't have done this on their own, that only Americans can build routers... Well, the seriously need to reevaluate their assumptions.
China could have done this without outside help, China should have free speech. They don't. Not building firewalls for them isn't going to open their society.
Since Mao died, the living standards of the average Chinese person has skyrocketed. Deng Xiao Peng created a lot of reforms, economically (saying "It's not bad, to be rich"), and even in terms of free speech and political expression. After Tiananmen they clamped back down. I don't really know if you can blame them either, if you just lived through the cultural revolution, you would probably be very afraid as well. Mid-century China was a veritable case study in how 'harmless' politics and mass youth movements can cause huge problems.
Maybe Tiananmen was do soon, and the students really blew it. They should have stuck with Op-Ed pages, and built support that way, protesting only set them back, a lot. China today doesn't allow anywhere near the political expression that existed in the 1980s.
But that said, people who's lives are getting better and better every year are not going to really want to revolt.
And keep in mind that democracy and freedom of speech is an exception in all of human history. Maybe someday, but don't think it will happen anytime soon. Happy citizens don't revolt.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
economic development and a strong middle class needs to develop in a country before democracy can succeed
Balls. The U.S. was more or less a third world country when it got started, and it succeeded.
A country that believes it must have a controlled society and few freedoms until it can "afford them," will never NEVER be able to "afford" them.
Once they have economic development, if they ever do on a wide scale, they will point to their success under a repressive regime and say, "see, it works!" I don't think it will work.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
And I'll probably get modded down -1 flamebait. But anyway: what is the problem with this? In the democratic world at large we have many standard freedoms including chosing who we do business with.
I cringe when I read these posts that say "how the hell can they do this?" and "this is just another example of big business...".
Frankly that is the result of allowing all people to act as they wish. This is not a thought socialist state: you cannot command someone to act a certain way with their freedoms. Cisco and Yahoo seem to think there is nothing wrong with the People's govt of China.
And what is wrong with this? I saw someone comparing these companies to BMW et al during the Nazi years in Germany. Um, as far as I know Cisco isn't using "subhumans" as slavelabor here.
Personally there are many things about the Chinese government that I don't like and I'm kind of sad that these companies helped them out. But with or without their help the same paranoia state regime will still be in charge.
Heck probably the "revolution" that everyone asks for will happen without any one of us knowing. The Chinese middle class will expand, they will wish for a) more leisure and b) more freedom to spend their money. And the government will comply to them because they are the sweet tax center. Hell, that's how all of the US Terrorism law got passed.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Balls. The U.S. was more or less a third world country when it got started, and it succeeded.
The U.S. was nothing of the sort. First of all, the U.S. got its independence before the Industrial Revolution, which is what made the modern world's economic divisions. (In fact, the U.S. was a full participant in the Industrial Revolution when it happened.) Also, we were a solid part of the transatlantic trade, not as producers of raw materials (although we did that too -- cotton), but as traders. We had much more in common with small trading nations of Europe (like Holland) than we did with other European colonies, which became the modern third world.
And will we see these products for controlling access marketed for similar purposes in the "free world"? Maybe restricting employee Internet access? Blocking objectionable sites from public library terminals? Maybe even monitoring sites with "terrorist" connections and the folks viewing them?
Is the PRC a giant test market (in effect) for some things that will come home to roost back home?
I don't mean this in the most literal paranoid sense, more that "jee we developed all this for them. Maybe we can sell it into other markets"
I laugh whenever I'm in a situation where someone tells me "Hey! It's a free country".
No it isn't. You don't have the freedom to do a lot of things. Sure we're freer than a lot of other countries but that's changing.
I recently read a great essay called "The Rise of the Fourth Reich" which compares G.W Bush to Hitler.
Read it for yourself here
Anyway I fear a country where people are given the constitutional right to own a firearm at the age of 12 but if you're caught smoking a harmless joint you'll go to jail.
Or where a gang of white police offers can be caught red handed on video tape beating a black man with billy clubs but they're set free to go.
Or where a forieng programmer can be thrown in jail for 5 months without a trial for writing a program that may cost a rich company a few dollars.
That's not freedom and I won't pretend that it is. I refuse to be ignorant and complacent. In fact, what I fear even more than the country itself is it's ignorant and complacent citizens that let it be that way.
--
Garett
there is still a role for government (non-Enronized that is) in the 21st century.
Yes, obviously. In this case it's to order equipment and services to be used for oppressing their citizens.
The market (i.e. the Chinese people) is what will liberate China.
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
"Having traveled through much of western China, where Muslim Turkic Uighurs (who despise the Chinese) often predominate, I find it hard to imagine a truly democratic China without at least a partial breakup of the country. Such a breakup would lead to chaos in western China, because the Uighurs are poorer and less educated than most Chinese and have a terrible historical record of governing themselves."
:-)
Keep this in mind, when reading about Uyghur history, especially in the Xinjiang province: The history is very politically charged. There are Uyghurs who wish to see an East Turkestan established, the Chinese, and the Russians both have interests in not seeing an independent nation established. The history of both sides is tailored to meet these needs. China maintains that Xinjiang was, and always has been, a part of China. The Uyghurs maintains that this is false. I tend to fall on the side of the Uyghurs, but I also believe that they are little better than the communists in manipulating historical record. Thus, the history has become, I think, permanently distorted, at least until archeologists can get into the region and do some serious excavating.
A couple of points to your otherwise insightful post. 1) The Uyghurs are poorer, but they have a very interesting history and, at least in the Northwestern Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region, actually managed to establish a kingdom that was at relative peace for 1000 years, aside from a brief 200 year voluntary stint under the Mongul empire. China was attempting an annexation of Xinjiang since 104BC, and each time was expelled until 1867 when the Manchurians finally firmly implanted themselves. Even at this juncture, they were expelled in 1933 and Xinjiang was never really taken over until 1949. I most certainly doubt that the Uyghurs were an exceptionally poor people during this time, considering the Silk Road runs right through their land. I am not sure about this last statement, that is speculation on my part. 2) The Uyghurs are the majority ethnic group in Xinjiang. Just to make sure people realize that they aren't a minority with dense pockets here and there.
3) China will never willingly give up Xinjiang. The region is far too rich in natural gas and oil. Look up the gas pipeline. It's the second largest infrastructure project next to the three gorges dam project. China has sunk an amazing amount of capital in terms of utilizing it's vast stores there, and is set to recieve a tremendous amount of foreign investment into the region because of this. A split in China? Don't hold your breath.
Humorless sig goes here.
Cisco and Yahoo etc. are doing a good thing here!
If every related company would tell the chinese govt. "No, we will not do such blocking system. It's impossible/immoral/bad/[insert your favourite reason here].", what do you think chinese govt. would do? It would decide that they cannot control the internet, so they won't allow any internet traffic in/out of the country. They are control freaks, so they need to have the warm and fuzzy feeling of 'controlling' the net.
Cisco & friends are providing them (at an immense cost, mind ya) a 'filtering system' that gives them that warm & fuzzy feeling that they are 'controlling' their citizen's internet access. It's an illusion at best, but they seem to want it, and are willing to pay for it. You know - the saying about fool and their money... :)
We all know that there are ways around such blocks. This is nothing but your average broken censorware application with goverment approved blocklist, built into bunch of high end routers. Having somewhat crippled internet connection to the world is by far a better option than no internet at all. You can always work around the blocks, and get what you need, if you really want it.
Longer those chinese leaders are happily smiling in their ivory towers and thinking 'the citizens have their internet, but only those parts we want - we are in control', the better.
Yes, it does... The article does not talk about censorship only. One of the applications of the monitoring is persecution of people who seek freedom. The hairs on my neck stood on end when I read this.. this is _exactly_ the kind of application that IBM was helping with, when the Germans were using IBMs to count Jews. Whether it's by race or by belief, in both instances innocent people are persecuted. The Chinese don't outright kill the dissidents, but I am confident this is happening - the world for a long time was in denial of the use of western counting machines by the Germans. Nobody believed they were actually used to label people for extermination. The Chinese application is horrifyingly close if not exactly the same!
I used to live in a commie country. In such a regime, the government uses propaganda to spread some positive.. and beatiful message. This is invariably a sophism. In the Chinese case, the message is, "we are all for peaceful change." Killing and persecuting dissidents is NOT peaceful (as some earlier post pointed out). This message is an outright lie; it is easy to believe though..
Many Chinese believe it. What's even more dangerous is that people in the Western world believe it too. They are often idealists and really like to hear declarations of peaceful change and gradual way to freedom. And that they can help those poor people in China by helping with that change.
An example of similar such behaviour is how scientists on the Manhattan project during WWII helped the Russians obtain info on how to make the bomb. They believed no single country shoud have the bomb. They gave this secret to Stalin on account of his "socialism"... That was a mistake - as history now tells us, Stalin was a worse murderer than Hitler - if they gave the bomb to Hitler, fewer innocent people would have died (maybe I'm exaggerating, but my point is that it is possible).
Further, these intelligent people who like the "Chinese way" are placed very high in Western businesses. The guy from Cisco in the article no doubt wants the good of the Chinese people, but this is a fatal mistake on his part. On a large scale (as it is, unfortunately, happening) this behaviour will lead to a China ready to go to war with the west and win.
Few want to believe this. It is easy to put it out of your mind too. This is not the Chinese way.. right? Wrong. We are talking about China with a legacy of imperialism here - just look at the way they deal with internal problems.
Forget national ID card, most free countries in the world have them; forget about big evil Microsoft, their crimes are petty. The real threat is collecting its billion people strength on the other side of the globe. This is not too far to consider.
It is every free person's duty to help the Chinese people and NOT the Chinese government. By supplying the country (and thereby the ruling government) with money, the West is not helping the people. This way, the Chinese government has more and more reasources to continue being the way it is... And this is definitely not good, because as much as they talk about it, these guys do not want to change the balance of power over there.
So wake the @#$% up!
Damn, I never thought I would sound like a doomsayer or be one, but with stuff like this goig on, it's difficult not to be.
"While what you say is more or less true, let's not forget that in the hands of bad people, the US system is not as happy and carefree as you suggest."
I like to point out to my friends that any government --- democratic, republican, socialist, communist, etc --- is run by people. Made out of the same flesh and blood as the average citizen; and subject to the same idiosyncracies, greed, and lust for power that seems to be a part of every human. To expect that government be good automagically is folly because people get corrupted. The entire POINT of the United States system is some sort of attempt to mitigate these basic truths of human nature by having a system that checks itself. Sure it aint perfect, but it's alot better than in other places.
My $.02
Humorless sig goes here.
Now, I value my right to free speach as much as you, but I don't feel I have the right to critisize the Chinese way of doing things. After all, China is the oldest state in the world -- they must have been doing something right.
The interactive way to Go -- http://www.playgo.to/iwtg/en/
I disagree. Speech and information are fundamental. They are so fundamental that The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution is Freedom of Expression. Not the second, not the tenth.
If you don't have freedom of speech and of the press, how can you spread information about corruption and violence that is taking place under the auspices of the government? Preventing that information from getting out is just a shelter for other human rights violations to continue. Speech is a fundamental and important human right that people must have in order to protect themselves from the tyranny of evil governments.
-Kevin
Let me start out by saying that I am about as capitalist as a human being can be. I love capitalism and think it's a great idea. I hold alot of respect for big business. I have a huge amount of respect for Bill Gates. I think anyone who can make $40B selling crap deserves a pat on the back. But I still use linux. Because I don't want to help him sell crap. And I won't help cisco build jails either. I'll vote with my dollars.
And as for the chinese people who posted to say "it's not so bad", it would be alot worse if you had any un-popular thoughts. The government of any country is formed by the people of said country. And all those peoples are responsible for the actions of the government. I don't know, I've never studied Chinese politics (I've got enough problems with my government), but when I read that, I've got to wonder "how many people were killed or imprisoned because they held un-popular beliefs? IIRC, I've read about at least one incident of a Chinese person being imprisoned for disagreeing with the governemt. One is far too many. But you don't care. You think it's "not that bad"?! That's a real person. Going through REAL SUFFERING! Sitting in a real jail, with bars and shitty food and not enough warmth. Dealing with real boredom and real loneliness. And you sit in your nice office with a hot cup of coffee saying "it's not that bad"!? It is that bad. I believe that compassion and empathy are a part of humanity. For you to sit there and not even care degrades us all. You can be apathetic, that's your opinion, here's mine: Not giving a damn about anothers suffering, and in fact helping it along, makes you scum. You are the lowest of the low. I hope you choose to disagree one day and rot in a cell for it.
Well, you might not care, but I damn well do.So I will now refrain from using cisco products, because I will not help them limit freedom. If I thought that I had in helped them find one more dissident to put in jail, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. If I bought a cisco catalyst, I would have problems sleeping. I'd be kept awake thinking "they spent my money to build a jail". They are capitalists, and I expect them to act in the interest of profit, But anyone who expects me not to act in the interest of freedom is insane. To that end, I will try and make their interest in profit and my interest in freedom coincide. By never using their products (and I was gonna be a CCNA).
We live in a capitalist society, and in a capitalist society money controls everything. That's good, because money doesn't discriminate, and if we want to make a change, all we have to do is with-hold our money. Fuck Cisco. Fuck their products. Let _them_ do it. I won't help. I'll boycott cisco. Will my change help anything? Maybe not, but it's a start. And 20 years from now, when we're all presenting our national ID's for minimal access to _our_ national cisco firewall, I'll look back and think " I tried". You can look back and think "I helped them do it."
"The system doesn't care because the system is you. Nothing ever changes because that's what _you_ choose." -- A//Political
Don't beg for the right to live - take it.
Because the West relies on a democractic government and a capitalist market they are often seen as indivisible.
In reality they are very much seperate. Capitalism is a system in which the purpose of business is wealth creation. Businesses make decisions necessary to make cash for their owners, and we hope that a side-effect of this is innovation, employment and general welfare.
Democracy, on the other hand, is a system for managing society and government. At it's heart, democracy is the principle that all the people of a state should have a meaningful contribution to how it is governed. No more and no less.
It is quite possible to have a non-capitalist democracy and a capitalist dictatorship.
You cannot expect western businesses to defend democracy, when it is completely outside their purview. Very few of Cisco's customers are democracies, the vast majority are other corporations - about as undemocractic as you can get.
They have no reason to care, and that is how it should be. If you want China to become a democracy, then go tell the Chinese. Ultimately, it is up to them.
To say that X is not a right had no other meaning than saying "It's acceptable and proper that other people, at their whim, may deprive me of X and that not only do I have no say in the matter, it is improper for me to have a say in the matter."
"All representatives are busy. The estimated hold time is one..hundred..sixty..four..minutes." Detroit Edison, 02/01/02
I know at least I have said it and many many others. Communisim is good in Theory. The second you forget about the asshole factor though is when you get in trouble.
Socialistic and communistic systems seem to work well in a small group, no larger than a large family and assumes many of the same rules as a family. The second you get "Joe Schmo(ski)" to realize he doesnt have to work as hard as everyone else, hes still going to get paid the same anyways is the second communism fails.
even more dangerous to the system is when the general person realizes no matter how hard they work at a meanial job they are not going to advance over their peers for a long long time. thats the buety of a capitalistic system which tends to go hand in hand with a democratic system.
#include sig.h
I must take issue with this staement, on several grounds. Taking them in order:
The 13 States of western America were definitely *not* a Third World Nation when they started down what I believe you think of as the road to Democracy in 1789. There are two issues with that contention. The first is that the concept of 'third world' didn't exist at the time. If you mean 'medieval economy', then you are wrong: certainly the northern four states (aka. the place where the Revolutionary War started: the Boston "Massacre" is not a co-incidence) were not medieval at all at this stage in their history. They compared well with a lot of the states of Europe; technological and social process structures in the US were as well developed if not better developed than in the UK. Secondly, the 'road to democracy' followed by the United States began neither in 1789 nor in the United States. It began with the Restoration in 1688 of the monarchy of the United Kingdom to a constitution under which Parliament proposed and the King disposed. The precepts which developed into the Constitution, frequently touted as the First Democratic Document of the modern era, were proposed by an Englishman, and based on his analysis of the previous 80 years of British constitutional history.
Thus, your first contention is not supportable by the facts at hand. Now to your second contention.
America succeeded in becoming deomcaratic? Only for a very limited use of the word democratic. It is no more democratic than, at random, the United Kingdom or New Zealand. All three states operate effective two-party systems, where the voters are offered little or no choice in policy packages; right and left, or more usually far right and centre right.
To return to the point you were contesting, that 'economic development and a strong middle class' are necessary pre-requisites for democracy: first, lets define democracy. The word was coined for a Greek state of 300 citizens, where every voting citizen sat in the governmental body. Clearly, we aren't discussing that.
So-callled 'modern' democracy, typified by the slogan 'One man, One vote', developed from a number of roots and social pressures in Britain, France and the United States. At a local governmental level it existed de facto if not de jure in the United States prior to the Revolutionary War. As a system, that style of democracy absolutely requires two conditions to operate successfully. First, the economy must support craft labour and/or cottage industry on a commercial rather than local scale. This was true of the States prior to the War. Secondly, the 'caste system' (a medieval concept based on feudal land distribution, in which ones caste is predetermined by birth and is virtually impossible to alter) must have eroded into a 'class system', the modern concept that ones class is means-based and anyone who accumulates the means can travel either up or down the classes. This system had devloped in the United Kingdom over the previous two hundred years and was exported to the United States along with the pilgrims. It was much easier to get ahead in the New World, as there was no remaining immediate aristocracy.
Examining China under these criterion: the first is quite clearly true. China has an industrial system. The second, however, is not true. China has a numerous but not a strong middle class, and it does not have a sufficiently coherent internal social structure for such a class to develop peacefully. There are too many internal conflicts and tensions in Chinese society. Thus, free market democracy would, were it introduced to China today, be running a race with the altering social system. If the social system didn't win, democracy would lose.
Thus, there is certainly reason in the contention made by the original poster. I personally wouldn't like to argue it: I have no particular stake in the 'Democracy good/Communism evil' debate, I just couldn't let pass such an arrantly inaccurate historical statement.
~cHrisCorporations exist to increase the wealth of shareholders, period. All other considerations are secondary. To increase shareholder wealth, new markets are constantly sought out and developed. Once they are exhausted or saturated the search begins again. I remember reading a quote in a college textbook from a CEO of a major multinational (it may have been GM), where he basically said his biggest wish was that his company could exist outside the boundaries of any sovereign government authority. The goal of these multinationals is to exist wholly as entities unto themselves. Their allegiance is to the bottom line, not to the greater good of the country where they happen to be headquartered in. To me that is amoral - not an inherently evil or bad thing, simply a moral vacuum that exists when the overarching goal isn't tethered to any motive other than profit. This story (a great one by the way) is a perfect example of this. Its hard to blame Cisco if you look at this from the corporate point of view. What is aggravating to me is the U.S. government's silent complicity - where was the outrage when Cisco and company decided to climb in bed with the Chinese leadership?
8 bit computing - It may be 2007 out there, but it's 1983 in here!!
I am a overseas student in US from China now. And I experienced the censorship of China the days in my country. And I can not log on www.washingtonpost.com etc. from Beijing. I really do not think this is a good thing. however, what we have to know is that China is changing. And it is better, more open, more dermostic every day.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
People who dont live in a democracy often seem to wish they do. How many people living in a democracy wish they were living in a dictatorship?
Also, if people living under a democracy want to do things for the common good, they would. Manifestly they dont - they want to look out for themselves. Imposing a dictatorship on such people will hardly make them happier.
Here's my token response, that I feel inclined to write everything discussions of governmental systems arises.
1) The United States is still on course for Marx's communisum. Witness the anti-globalisation protests, and the prospect if increased worker protections because of better communication. The Soviet Union did not follow Marx's theory, and Lenin was rebuked by Marx.
2) Socialism can (and I believe should) be defined in a manner that has nothing to do with communism: socialism is a system which places society above the individual, i.e. the good of the many versus the good of one. There are many socialist systems of various sizes (including nations whose town populations rival our state populations) surviving quite well. Socialism is a statement about priorities, not a blueprint for an economy. Americans (like myself) have a tough time separating society and economy, because in the United States they are joined at the hip.
3) Greed and sloth (laziness) occur in every culture. Capitialism in the US is fairly robust to sloth, but suffers hugely because of greed. Socialist systems are more likely to resist greed (which depends on individualism), but less likely to resist sloth.
4) Capitalism does not guarantee, or even make stipulations, that a hard worker will advance over his peers. Fairness is not built-in to capitalist economies. "The American Dream is only a dream," to quote Gordon Gano.
5) The asshole factor is clearly at work in both the US capitalist economy, as well as the US Federal Republic governmental system.
In short, the parent post doesn't hold water, and is libelous to Socialist and Communist systems. Furthermore, it similarly propogates ridiculous stereotypes about Capitialist economies.
-Paul Komarek