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The Great Firewall of China, Continued
rcs1000 writes "Slate (no longer owned by Microsoft, and therefore an acceptable place to find stories...) has a terrific article on The Filtered Future and how China's censorship is changing - for the worse - the Internet. The piece makes a few points: firstly, China is really trying (largely succefully) to seperate its Internet from the rest of the World; secondly, it may be possible to use technology to circumvent restrictions, but that makes them no less onoreous; thirdly, the sheer invisibility of the restrictions makes them worse (when Google doesn't even show up articles about democracy, that's no good thing); and finally, some Western companies are actively co-operating with the Chinese government in their censorship. Is this the beginning of the end for the global, unregulated, uncensored, Internet?"
> Slate (no longer owned by Microsoft, and therefore an acceptable place to find stories...)
Thats what the world needs, more stupid black&white idiots like the story submitor.
Like they swapped all people when the mag sold
there are morals. there is the law. they are different things.
companies follow the law not morality. one part of corporate law is that they are answerable to their shareholders. ignoring a market with 1 billion people in it will not go down well with those shareholders.
if you don't like this then either change the law or don't encourage transferring power from government to corporations.
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Have to agree with you. Child labour is a much more complex situation than the NGOs/Left-wingers would have you believe. The best way to stop child labour is not to ban products from the companies that use child labour, but to find ways to imrpove the primary education systems in the countries where child labour is taking places. Countries with lousy primary education systems are the ones with highest amounts of child labour. When I say improve the primary education system, I mean ensure that ALL primary schools conform to a basic, high standard, and that admission is open to all. Boycotting Nike Shoes (if they're using child labour) just means 2 things: More expensive Nike shoes, and a lot of children who will starve to death due to no money, or abused to death because they didn't bring enough money back to support their drunken no-good parents.
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Wtf? Get a sense of fucking realism here, why is the shit spewed by Bill Gates puppet company of any less value than the shit spewed by Rupert Murdochs company? Well probably because Mr Gates is the biggest fucking philanthropist in the world and not interested in directing editorial content.
Honestly, I swear you people would worship Mugabe if he was under the fucking GNU license.
Okay, I'll bite.
Thank you very little for opening up with the most trite and least respectful opening on Slashdot. I am fully capable of debating and discussing every bit of your ideology and value system provided that you are able to maintain at least a base level of politeness.
Capitalism rewards the lazy and stupid, too. What world do you live in where this isn't painfully obvious?
If capitalism rewards the lazy and the stupid, then why are so many poor people lazy and stupid? Perhaps this ugly truth is too painful for you to bear, so you pretend that it isn't true. My sister, a Leftist, steadfastly refuses to believe that some people don't want to work. Do you share that belief?
This is where you start arguing that any results you don't like are because people aren't practising "real" capitalism. I love how both sides resort to that.
You exhibit your black-and-white thinking with your "both sides" comment (as if there were only two sides to this issue).
Your accusation of "no true Scotsman" is false because I never define the taking of property by force as capitalism. The two are mutually exclusive. Whether others share my view is immaterial. We are debating *my* philosophy, after all. (And we'll debate your nasty philosophy, too.)
Some other points about your painfully cliche libertarian post. "Seized taxpayer income"?!? Ever heard of the social contract? If you don't like paying taxes go live in a cave and don't use any of the things that my tax dollars paid for, you cheapskate. Or move out of the country and go found your own.
That's actually one point, not plural "points," to which you raised an objection. Perhaps you were in a rush when you typed this. It doesn't appear that you tried very hard, that's for sure.
The phrase you're looking for is "ugly truth," not "cliche." If taxes weren't seized then why is there an IRS (yes, I'm a USian)? If taxes weren't seized, then what happens to me if I don't want to pay for pork? And if you find me one person who actually likes paying taxes, then I'll show you a person who's actually paying tithes to his God (the State) to be managed by the Priests (his Leftist represenatives) and stands testament to my belief that Leftism, for some, is more of a religion than it is a philosophy.
As to your "social contract" point, yes I've heard many such garbage from many such Leftists and I reject quite a bit of it. The way that I understand social contract is the means by which all humans understand morality. Social contract used to forbid interracial marriages, used to promote lynchings, and currently maintains me and my family as second-class citizens because we're gay, so I don't choose to follow it blindly, much less use it as an excuse for you to denigrate me as you do. Are you going to argue, "That's not 'true' social contract!" now?
The Free Market isn't perfect. Communism isn't perfect. Hell, even Democracy isn't perfect.
First, we don't live in a Democracy. In fact, no governments in the world are Democracies. My country (the USA) is a Constitutional Republic. And yes, Democracy sucks as a form of government. I know it's probably "uncool" to quote the founding fathers of the USA to you, but the government was set up in many cases to usurp the "Tyranny of the Majority," which, of course, is the deciding factor of the ugly government known as Democracy.
Second, I never argued that that Capitalism was "perfect" or that Communisim was "imperfect." Instead, I offer that Communism is immoral and Capitalism is moral (according to my values of course). That you somehow equate Capitalism with Communism by labeling them both "not perfect" is shallow. Are the sins of Capitalism equivalent to the sins of Communism? That's a value judgement, of course, and I probably think your values suck as badly as you think mine do.
We would
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.