Slashdot Mirror
The Politics of Technology
airrage writes "An interesting Washington
Post article today, concerning technology's voice on Capital Hill, talks about how the high-tech sector is no longer the belle of the congressional ball. Apparently, circa 2000, politicos were simply tripping over themselves to be seen as pro-technology. Currently, it's much harder to get congressional leaders to embrace pro-technology initiatives. Seems like technology in general is trending towards more regulation as the industry is seen as staid as railroads, coal, or shipping."
If you are one of the companies that can line their pockets with cash.
Some things never change.
I suppose you are also going to tell me that congress allows 181 Fortune 500 companies loopholes so they don't pay any federal taxes just because these corporations fill up their war chests.
Nothing is new under the sun.
---
When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra--
I don't think it's about the dot com bubble, at least not completely. There are a lot of conflicting viewpoints, and lobbying dollars at the moment. The entertainment industry wants to castrate some technologies, so they can't be used for piracy. The manufacturors want fewer restrictions, because restrictions will lower demand, and restrict possible international exports. The open source communities, the ACLU, etc, want fewer restrictions on principal. And so on like that. In an environment like that, strong support for any given position is likely to get a politician in trouble from someone, so they probably think it's better to be seen as indifferent or neutral.
When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
Why do comments like this still get modded as "funny," or indeed anything but the trolls they are? The "Gore claimed he invented the internet" thing was bullshit propaganda two years ago; now it's just a dead horse. Give it up, people.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Perhaps you've forgotten your history, or maybe you never looked it up... but the United States has had marginal tax rates exceeding 90%; and during the Carter years, the highest marginal rate was 70%; it took the Reagan tax cuts to bring things down to a saner place on the Lasser curve. See this table.
As for the wealthy, according to a CBO report in 1999, the top 5% of US taxpayers pay 50% of all taxes, while the top 1% pay 29%. Hmmm, that doesn't sound like "little or no tax" to me.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
He did not say he invented the Internet, but he did say "I took the initiative in creating the Internet". From snopes.com:
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."
Now sure the "urban legend" uses the word invent instead of create, but the point is the same. Al Gore seemed to be taking credit for something that was *MUCH* larger that he was---even as Vice President. Especially for a project that had been going on since the late 60's. What about Vint Cerf the developer of TCP/IP? Or Tim Berners-Lee, developer of the World Wide Web. Or Ray Tomlinson founder of e-mail? Heck, if we are going to talk about politicans what about LBJ since the DARPA project that became the Internet was started during his administration?
There are a thousand people more deserving to proclaim they "took the initiative in creating the Internet". Sure Al may take credit in helping to promote it, but his statement was way too broad and arrogant. He didn't even acknowledge anyone else. It is everything I dislike about a powerful person taking credit for the work of the "little guy".
Brian Ellenberger
You mean China? I didn't know we were on the virge of war with China. Ohhh, you mean Iraq. The very same country that took a week to devastate in Desert Storm?
You mean the Civil War was last year?
Mmmm. That's why everyone on Slashdot is buying Pentium IV 3GHz PCs, SUVs, and 50" digital televisions.
Right, that's why the dockworkers in California have guaranteed job security lined up. Not to mention all those people recruiters in California who are desperately trying to find (here's the big one, folks) QUALIFIED tech workers. Sorry, if you were part of the dot-com boom, your services are no longer required. Unfortunately, that does, in a round-about way, mean I lost my job, too. But I can get a new one easily enough... I'm just choosy.
Same thing as any other year. More money to build the war machine, less money for science and education.
Good troll.
>any government regulation of industry is bad and damages free markets
Nonsense, Mr Gates. All sorts of things fall into the category of regulation like anti-trust laws, environmental laws, labor laws, etc. It would behoove the pie-in-the-sky libertarians and other lassiez faire types to acknowledge that free markets do a poor job of remaining free and also consolidate power in a way which defeats the purpose of a market to begin with. Regulation should be judged individually, not generalized as being bad because it counters what your conservative professor told you in Economics 101.