Slashdot Mirror
Billionaire Boys Cup (America's Cup 2003)
morpheus 2001 writes "Wired has a story on
the fight to win the America's Cup
2003, a sailing race held every 3 years. The story carries the
title 'Billionaire Boys Cup', referring to both the competitors and the millions of dollars that it now takes to field a team. This time around the two US teams pit Craig McCaw and Larry Ellison against each other using their respective technological prowess to beat each other and the rest of the world.
The story mentions that all of the teams competing will drop collectively over $700 million, with $30 - 40 million to be spent on R&D (per team)
alone. The story gives an excellent description of how the use of technology and massive databases work in concert to give a team an edge of mere seconds, which can be the difference between winning and losing a race."
I agree. I think infinity is a legitimate upper limit. The solution to poverty is not stealing from Peter to pay Paul but to bring captialism and democracy to all countries. You will notice that poor nations are those with dictators and tyrants not Presidents and Prime Ministers.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
No, Capitalism happens in the real world. No idealism is necessary for it. That's one of the big differences between it and communism. Its robust, it is not based on any assumptions about human nature, only on market forces.
Market forces happen in a lillypond with no human involvement-- too many flys means too many frogs, next season there are not enough flies.
Capitalism HAPPENS IN NATURE.
The reason you see tones of poor people in western countries is all the efforts to cure poverty. In the US they've spent 3 trillion dollars with the excuse of curing poverty and they have only made it worse. Eliminate the taxes and poverty will go away in a generation. Counter intuitive, but true. The only way to eliminate poverty is to have people have JOBS. Giving them money only makes the situation worse. and taxing others to get the money to give them, just removes money from the economy that would otherwise be CREATING JOBS.
The proof that capitalism doesn't require an ideal world is that it still survives quite well in our country run by neo-communist liberals and neo-fascist conservatives-- both of whom oppose freedom and deomocracy. Hell, capitalism worked in russia-- it was always breaking out. And China has found that its the only solution to their economic woes and so they are embracing it. Now if they'd only embrace freedom as well.
This idea that Capitalism only works in an ideal world is just as stupid as insisting that the earth is flat, and should not be tolerated.
Don't be stupid. Study economics.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
the teams competing will drop collectively over $700 million
thats $100Million more than the United States gives to all of Africa in Aid each year... (but less than a quarter of the aid to Isreal... odd that.. most of wich is spent on good-old-yankee arms and such anyway...)
hmmmm, priorities...