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China Bans Running Your Own Email Server
Erwin_D writes "Under the guise of banning spam, China has ruled that running your own e-mail server has been banned, unless you have a license. To qualify for such a license, an 'e-mail service provider' must abide by some chilling rules: all e-mail must be stored for two months, and e-mail with discussing vaguely defined subject as network security or information security may not be transmitted. While the rules contains all the good measures we would all like to see to combat spam, such as prohibiting open relays and outlawing zombie network, the law is also geared toward controlling free speech. From the article: 'I believe that the intent to have an antispam regulation was a good one ... Unfortunately, it seems like during the policy formulation process, it got hijacked and went to one extreme.'"
Chinese dissidents switch to communicating by instant messages, private messages on forums, in the worst case american webmail...
That's how it is in China. There are many, many people there who have no idea that Tienamen Square ever happened...
Altough this raises several other issues, this is THE SOLUTION to spam.
200GB/2TB $7.95 Coupon: SAVE90DOLLAR
Soo, if I hack some unsuspecting Chinese's machine and install some MTA on it, will the owner go to jail? Sweet.
Why should this surprise anyone?
... is the need for a license to run a mail server in a personal environment. Don't most ISPs in the western world have similar government imposed retention and intrusion legislation that they have to abide by? I see old emails delivered to courts from ISPs on a regular basis in the press US and European press.
Maybe somebody could clarify US and UK law for me.
This shouldn't come as a suprise to anyone. Remember this Wikipedia Blocked
I'm not fat, just big boned...
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
they can still use Gmail.
i am sure we can eventually come up with a smarted way to eliminate/control spam. outright banning of any personal email servers is just ridiculous.
before we know it, they would start banning sending snail mail, sending faxes, using phones - all in the name of quality control and eliminating spam.
Normally I've found myself to be tolerant of China's wierd internet policies .. but this one is just really boneheaded .. Hey PRC, You arent winning any fans with this shit!
... why, WHY wont sweden take over the world?!
One of the downsides of having a tech-saavy government is that in addition to trying to provide the fabled "broadband for all" you also often get crap like this
From the article
"China's new rules also prohibit use of email to discuss certain vaguely defined subjects related to 'network security' and ' information security', "
From the regulation that the article links to
taking advantage of emails to engage in activities which are detrimental to network and information security is strictly prohibited in accordance with related laws.
There is a big difference between "engaging in activities that are detrimental to information security" and "discussing information security"
But with a title like "China Outlaws Outlook" are you really surprised that they are sensationalizing it.
SecurityPub.com
I don't find this surprising for China at all...they've been doing things like this forever. I am, however, surprised that nothing like this has shown up in America yet. Granted, it's impossible to ban e-mail servers in America - but if the government thought they could (ie - they had the power instilled in citizens like China does), would they? The same logic is used by America and China to justify invasions of free speech. They both use a utilitarian viewpoint and say the ends justify the means. We all know about the search engine subpoenas - how long until we crack down on e-mail to fight terrorism, like China did to fight spam? China's doing this because (from TFA) "spam cost the country at least $760m in lost productivity last year". Granted, it's a really extreme measure for such a problem, and I'm not saying that America is as crazy as China, but we have some very similar philosophies about government intervention.
I don't like spam. Its people trying to sell me stuff get my attention and distract me from my work. The world would be great if no one had a need to spam.
Free speech is an even more powerful concept. This means that everyone has the right to express themselves. EVEN IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, THEY STILL HAVE THE RIGHT. Spam is a great example defining whose responsibility is it to determine what you hear? Email addresses are effectively public domain - like standing out in public. It's the inbox owner who must decide what they want.
All that said, effective spam filtering works really, really well. I get 200+ spam/day and see 3-5/week in my inbox, and virtually 0 false positives. I use vanilla spamassassin and regularly update the ruleset (with 1 keystroke in mutt) for each false negative.
Posts like this on China makes me realize that even with the lying criminals running the US - they are still (for now) better off than the Chinese.
Why not just use instant messaging when dealing with a "touchy" subject? Or is that monitored also?
Anonymous Cowards are at -6...
So, if my domain is hosted out of Hong Kong and I have a mail account set up there, am I subject to their laws?
The differance here between the PRC way of internet-boneheading and the USA way of internet-boneheading isnt so much one of more fear/control in china ... its more an issue of that in china they dont have an equivilient entity (in terms of capability) to the NSA which can monitor/mingle without setting off too many alarms out in the field... Simply put, the US government doesnt NEED to subpoena emails as much/often since our domestic intelligence community has the capability to provide the information without the court order tipping off $VICTIM to the fact his email is being read by the feds .... In China, they lack this capability and need to take more open and publicised measures to both discourage communication they cant intercept, and also to intercept communication less sneaky-like ...
That China is a sovereign country with its own set of rules & customs. It has the right to determine it's own destiny without need of approval from the West.
FOR GREAT JUSTICE
...and e-mail with discussing vaguely defined subject as network security or information security may not be transmitted.
What you say? China set us up the bomb?
Seriously though, is this a big surprise. No doubt it's a sad day for liberty in China, but with the Chicoms' history when it comes to the Internet, we had to see stuff like this coming.
This sig rocks the casbah.
Sure, it must've been hijacked somewhere along the way. The Chinese government would never want to curb free speech jsut for the sake of curbing free speech.
Under the guise of preventing spam, most US ISPs have decided that running your own e-mail server must be banned, unless you pay extra for a commercial account. They enforce this by blocking SMTP connections except to their own servers, which they do not provide SLA or privacy guarantees on.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
There are many, many people in the USA who still believe Saddam had WMDs and was going to nuke the USA with his al-qaeda terr'ist network...
...whereas us, with all our "freedom", find out that our government is spying on us only when some whistleblower exposes it. What, we've just learned that at AT&T, NSA has the potential to spy on ANY communications that go through the switches there. Does anyone really feel 100% shielded from our own government here in the US? Atleast it's all out in the open there, pretty much. Ignorance is bliss, I guess.
Since when is it a shock to see the Chinese government limit free speech?
You need an orange mocha frappuccino.
The Chinese government doesn't recognize any rights to protect, except everyone's right to give their life for the enrichment of the government mafia.
It's encouraging that the mafia Chinese government recognizes the great threat to its tyranny is the power of individual Chinese to control their own communications. Because there are so many Chinese, and they've got their government surrounded.
--
make install -not war
with a mailserver by default like most distros?
Kinda funny how the state's endorsed products violates its own laws
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
why do *WE* keep financing these people?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
On topic, I think this is horrible. What about internal-only email servers? Are those legal? Could that be enforced? Could you be prosecuted for being infected with a piece of SMTP-spewing malware?
You are not the customer.
This is china remember. This is how things work over there.
2 points for them trying to combat spam.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...the United States government has ruled that driving your own car has been banned, unless you have a license.
Your company advocates a
( ) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to you
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(X) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(X) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(X) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(X) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
(X) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(X) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(X) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Microsoft
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Yahoo
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(X) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(X) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
(X) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid company for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
You are not the customer.
Sounds good to me. I'll pass this info to my MInister of Propaganda.
Don't call us. We'll call you.
Have a peace_free weekend,
George W. Bush
So is instant messaging outlawed then? Or must IM's be archived for two years too? Also, does anybody know whether company VPN's are allowed in China? China is semi-pro corporation, but not pro-individual-rights... If VPN's are allowed, are internal emails covered by this?
I wonder if Chinese users will start significant adoption of gpg or other encryption technologies to try to keep their communications secure. Of course then the Chinese government will just ban all use of mail encryption if they haven't done so already...
Whatever, it's their country and if they want to oppress themselves all the power to them. More so this is a draft n'est pas? How many american bills when drafted seemed daffy?
It's entirely possible that this is
[ ] Incorrect news
[ ] Making the wrong conclusions
[X] Jumping to conclusions
[X] Flamebait
[X] Copying another post, sorry I had to
Personally I look forward to getting back to Canada and out of the USA so I can get the icky feeling off myself.
Because Canada
[ ] Is so much better
[ ] Has less immigrants
[X] Doesn't have Bush
[X] Can tolerate more than one point of view
[ ] A nation which enjoys equal protection under the law
[ ] Has quality politicians
[ ] Has Effective journalism
[X] Has poutine
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
No, under the policy of "One Country, Two Systems" Hong Kong retains its own legal system, currency, customs policy, and immigration laws (mostly leftover system from the British) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_country%2C_two_sy stems So this is no difference than running a server in America....at least that's what's going on for now and the Chinese government do increasingly influence the Hong Kong government these days.
No. Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China and operates independently of PRC law in all areas except foreign policy and defense. See http://www.gov.hk/
Guys, before we decry this outright as loss of rights, evil dictatorishipness, a stupid move, think. This isn't a stupid move, merely the start of the END OF SPAM! Sure, on their own China won't end spam, but with all nations acting together to ban email servers, there'll be no more email servers left! No servers means no email! Finally salvation for my inbox!
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
Is this a sign of the increasing freedoms that politicians argue(d) liberalised trade with China would bring about?
> all e-mail must be stored for two months
except here it is part of an "anti-terrorism" law package.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/13/214122 1
After all, they don't have the resources that the Bush administration does, that would allow them to let their equivilent of the NSA intercept all domestic internet traffic without a court order.
And that trumps the rights of the Chinese government. I think all people have a right to a certain amount of privacy and freedom of speech, and I think China violates those rights. Obviously China is still going to do what it likes, and the United States shouldn't and can't directly interfere with that. But going to the other extreme with an isolationist mentality ignores the fact we live in a global world. Trade policies of the US should certainly be influenced by how China treats its people. China doesn't need anyones permission to act like a totalitarian regime. But then again the US doesn't need anyones permission to suspend favored nation trading status either. China lives in the global world too, and with that comes being influenced in the choices it makes.
AccountKiller
In many countries using encryption is itself a crime. It is considered military hardware. Heh, in some of these places you may be better off owning an AK-47 than being caught using encryption. If I recall correctly Cuba bans GPS. Don't worry, if there is a loop-hole to protect your freedom any government will close it.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
because nobody in America wants to make that crap. It's called specialization. You pay for things so that you don't have to waste your time doing them yourself, like manufacturing textiles or computer parts. Garaunteed you're running Chinese hardware or at least contributing to the sale of it by posting on slashdot.
I suppose I just have too much faith in the internet and freedom. The weirdest thing is how insignificant this law is. First we can compare it to more effective regulations on internet communications, then we could compare it to the various human rights violations. Then if we remember how insecure and non-private email is, we see that this is the government grasping at straws.
Lets think about email for a second. If I send an email out, how many webservers does it pass through? How many cache it? If I decide its private but my recipient (or my recipient's boss) decides its not, sucks for me! Plain text email feels private but its far from it. Here in Florida I could use Sunshine laws to get all emails from any school account, since I attend a state school. I think email would be the last place to put sensitive information if you know what you were doing in the slightest. Maybe if you were using encryption on the text, and with that the level of security you have wont change with who is running the email server.
The way I look at China is that the government is losing the war on information just like the feds here are losing the war on drugs. They have their firewall and now their email control, but they cannot stop the disseminating of information. Forums and IMs fire off whenever there is something interesting banned. Only a small fraction of the country is wired as of yet, the rest are too poor. While their economy continues on the rise I am betting that their freedoms will grow.
In the mean time we can all sit here and bitch about how terrible their attacks on civil liberty are and not do anything about the reckless disregard for the constitution by both parties here.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
How is this comment informative? Besides being wrong it has no substance.
"That's how it is"
What kind of contribution is that? It doesn't even make sense, requiring a license for an email server is how it is?
It is a stupid law that does nothing to help free speech, but its most definately not "the way it is"
"The way it is" is that those internet users mostly play video games and read up on entertainment, just like their valiant counterparts in the West. The way it is is a few dissidents trying to get information who are techsavvy enough not to use plaintext email in the first place (except for that Yahoo blogger, hmm American run...)
The way it is is not what you say it is, things are much more complicated than most people are comfortable with discussing, but we can try if you want.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
That China is a sovereign country with its own set of rules & customs. It has the right to determine it's own destiny without need of approval from the West.
Not a great defense of systematic oppression. You speak of the Maoists and the citizens they oppress as one unit. They are not. The Maoists dream of taking their place with other western nations in economic achievement and world influence. They wish to imitiate the material success of these societies while ignoring the values that achieved them. They deserve all of the critism that can be heaped on them.
an ill wind that blows no good
Just FYI, here is how China handles eminent domain
Support the FairTax
For the vast majority of US households lucky enough to have better than dial up, the ISP forbids running "servers" of any kind. So there's no difference on that front except the penalties. In China, you will be put under then jail and your organs sold to the highest bidder for running anything like a press. In the US, right now, you will simply lose your connection to the network.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Islam is no more a threat than Christianity, Buddism, etc. The problem is intolerent extremists who force their beliefs upon others. Sadly, this fringe element of lunatics and extremists is not unique to any major religion. Sorry, but your "kill 'em all - let God sort them out" mentality hasn't worked in the thousands of years it has been tried. I say put all of these blood-thirsty morons from all sides togather and let them fight to the death. Then execute the survivors for world peace.
However, it's only because bills are so long that things like this are passed through. The Read the Bills Act is a good remedy to the double-edged sword nature of many US Bills. Unfortunately, the people in China have to deal what they're given, but I have no doubt they'll fight back somehow. We've seen it before, and I'm sure we'll see it again and again.
Slashdot, the only place where intellectuals can act like idiots... and still sound intellectual.
Difference is in Islam it's not a lunatic fringe.
Find coupons in Greeley
OK, that's chopped way down to fit in the title, but Article 51 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China reads, in full:
"Article 51. The exercise by citizens of the People's Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society and of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens."
So no, it's not sensationalism.
If there is anyone in this world that has the willpower to stand against Islam, it's going to be the Chinese.
Wow. People will grasp at any argument, no matter how ridiculous, to keep Americans onside of the China Slave Labour Racket.
May the Maths Be with you!
Does China block VPNs? If not, the free world should setup remote email gateways for them.
Your .sig sits oddly with the content of your message.
Wikileaks, no DNS
"What happens in China stays in China, or else"
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Nothing follows.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
I am in the middle of a red state/bush country area, and I have yet to meet any bubbas who don't think Iraq wasn't behind 9-11 and had nukes and biologicals, etc. They just "hid them" presumably in syria or sudan or someplace, and saddam along with his partner osama bin laden pulled off 9-11.
People really believe that, fervently, if you try to even bring the subject up that they might be wrong you are instantly a "communist" and "liberal" and "traitor" and so on. And they also more or less feel we should just "wipe out all them filthy raghead ay-rabs" along with some choice cuss words.
After the first few times I just shut up about it around here, too freaking dangerous with the brownshirts.
I can see why the military loves recruiting redneck young guys, pretty easy to get them to go in and wipe folks out, they actually *like* that idea. They get to be jocks with an attitude. Swaggering bullies. It doesn't matter what the reason might be, as long as they have "orders" from "superiors". That's the mindset they start out with, so it is easier to get them to go over the top. Then they demand "support our troops" or else, you are back at square one, you must be a traitor and liberal if you don't, etc.
Unfortunately, it seems like during the policy formulation process, it got hijacked and went to one extreme.
I think it is a little naive to think that this suppression of free speech is anything but purposeful and planned.
... for controlling free speech, in this case. Face it.
I see you are an American.
Dictatorship!=Communism
China is now Captialist.
It's still a dictatorship, though.
Please take a look at your own political system. I am appalled at mine (UK) and yours. It's not so different. I hope you are too.
More beer...
Stick Men
If america requires data retention by ISPs in the name of "child pornography" or genereally determining if you are "bad", it would amount to the same thing as what china is doing. Nothing to see here - move on hypocrites. It might be true that many chinese dont know about the Tianmenen square incidents, but the whole world has been kept in dark about the massacre that is going on in Iraq that is being perpetrated by America and its buddies.
Slashdotters need to get a life.
China is obviously an authoritarian and totalitarian state. Instead of putting on this facade of "the Peoples' Republic" they ought to just say, "don't piss Hu off". They arbitrarily incarcerate, punish, and execute people. Why have the false pretenses about it? If they did that, maybe we wouldn't hate them as much.
This would be precisely why, according to their testimony before Congress, they are explicitly avoiding storing email and blogs on servers in China:
People will grasp at any argument, no matter how ridiculous, to keep Americans onside of the China Slave Labour Racket.
Very true, very unfortunate. Just so I know, we *did* win the Cold War, right? I mean, at least that's what I remember being told in brainwashing camp.
Math is math. Regular expression is regular expression. The tools are there. The future is now.
Subsitute "U.S." for "China" in the article, and you may have a /. subject a few years hence.....
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
China is beta testing their Orwellian methods and software so that when they're perfected, the U.S. government can suddenly impose these same measures on us overnight.
I guess that means they either can't coerce the ISPs to deliver transient traffic in realtime the way AT&T does to the NSA or they can't handle the parsing in realtime. But it's a mistake to think that they are the only govenment that wants to snoop on everything.
When you run to Big Brother to solve your problems, you should expect to get fucked in the ass.
But Americans are still worse, right?
... and only.
Please just make sure we blame America first
I wouldn't doubt that this is at the specific request of Google.
But Americans are still worse, right?
... and only.
Please just make sure we blame America first
.
Approximately 110 million Chinese citizens are on the Internet. This represents roughly 10% of their total population. Assuming this 10% represents the percentage of the population who has enough disposable income to afford computers and/or Internet access, why is everyone making China out to be 'the' place to invest in? Just because there are over a billion Chinese citizens, does not mean the potential to market and sell to a billion Chinese citizens exists or will ever exist. China's affliction for near-complete control over its people, its desire to maintain strict control over what information the populace sees and its lack of ability to innovate any new idea, product or service greatly reduces future sales and investment potential in that country! Western businesses cannot ignore the existing consumer market of over 110 million people; however these businesses that operate and/or market their products in China need to remember one thing: If the Chinese can figure out how you do it (and they eventually will), they'll not only do it themselves, they'll do it a lot cheaper, using the other 1 billion or so Chinese citizens who remain oppressed. The Chinese government knows that the only reason they've made the financial gains they have is due to the incredibly large pool of cheap labor they can offer to manufacturers. In turn, they use these large cash inflows not on their citizenry, but on building up their military and industrial complexes, not on research and development. The Chinese government knows that knowledge is power and that a spread of knowledge will diminish their cheap labor pool and decrease their usefulness to the rest of the world. Everytime I read an article about the Communist Chinese government restricting access to information, I breathe a sigh of relief. It just means that they haven't smartened up enough to take their collective heads out of their collective asses and realize what the potential of having 1 billion plus educated, informed and knowledgeable citizens could really mean to the rest of the world.
Fortunately for the rest of the world is a Chinese Politburo formed of thirteen old men who are so afraid of losing their power that they will go to any length to keep as many of their citizens as oppressed and uninformed as possible.
You give the Chinese government an inch and they'll take the equivalent of the Great Wall in length. It's time for Western business to review their positions on China.
Data retention legislation is being considered in the US also. And there are all kinds of people who can't run email servers. It's the corporate oligarchs rather than the government imposing the restrictions, but who's really in charge around here anyway?
Great, here goes the whole Free Speech crap again. Get over it people, its China, not the US. They are a soverign government and can do whatever they damn well please. Damn egotistical Americans (yes, I too am an American).
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
It's not a draft, it's a law which is already in effect.
That's true where you live, maybe, but not so in China. The words 'engaging in activities' and so on are deliberately unclear in the law. So it can make all sorts of things illegal, including discussion.
That's how they make laws in China, write it with those big, vague phrases then your judges interpret it anyway you want. They call them laws, but they're not really laws in the western sense, just justifications for the ruling elite to do what it wants.
But agree with you the title's sensational! China Outlaws Outlook Server could be better
I don't know if I should laugh or cry when I hear this kind of oversimplified nonsense - it displays the same level of understanding as the average Hollywood movie's understanding of history, science and reality in general (ie. whatever sells the movie or sounds good in a slogan must be true).
Let's take Marx - he lived in an era where belonging to the working class meant that you were desperately poor, and where the middle and upper classes believed that different classes were almost different species; rich people in general would treat their dogs, cats and horses with more kindness and respect than they would a worker. This is the proper background for his ideas - in that age the only way to improve the conditions for the poorest people seemed to be violent revolution, and democracy certainly didn't seem to be something to rely on; it was only available to the top of society anyway. So the options seemed to be either the dictature of the wealthy or the dictature of the proletariat.
The problem with communism has never been that the ideas were wrong - only a heartless egotist would say that helping those in need is wrong, and only and idiot would say that there should be no restrictions in place for big business (unless you ARE one of those big businesses - only Microsoft thinks it is OK for Microsoft to be a monopoly). The real problem with communism has been that the writings of Karl Marx have been turned into a bible, a fundamental truth that can never, never change, and that has been seized by the reactionaries and is being used to promote a scary image of anything that smacks of limiting the profits of the few small segment of society that owns almost everything.
Meanwhile the communist idea has evolved and keeps evolving; the parts that are wrong, outdated or simply stupid are being thrown out and new parts come in. This is what you see in China - yes, they have some sort market economy and you can own property, but the system is fundamentally communism, a communism that evolves and improves. They are doing the right thing.
Are you one of those people who think that no one will ever need more than 640k of RAM?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I live in The Netherlands, (this is a very tolerant country) for 8 years now, and I thought the word "tolerance" was a good thing.... Let me tell you something, it sucks. I would rather be accepted. When you tolerate something, you don't necessarily like it. Are you too much of a coward to let it be known that you don't like it, or is tolerance the Politically Correct way of saying you don't like it and don't care enough to change it? When will you say, "I've stands all I can stands and can't stands no more!"?
In the end how you feel is just a United State of mind.... icky or other wise.
Sig Hansen?
Marx was the single most influential economists of all times. He is the most widely read economist. His theories have penetrated just about all aspects of modern business.
... then they went bankrupt.
The primary theme of Das Kapital was the various ways in which the market undermines itself. A large number of business books have picked up on this theme and essentially teach business leaders that their goal is to undermine the market (or bust). In the dotcom market, you saw a large number of dotbombs play this game. To dominate the market, they sold goods at below cost
I loved MP3.com. This company had a great product for distributing music from independent musicians. They were even starting to attract big time musicians. The wanks in charge of the company decided that they had to dominate the music industry or perish. MP3.com bet the company on an idiotic "beam up" program that clearly violated copyrights of other publishers. The company was given a choice between turning off the program, or paying a $200m fine.
Having been taught to dominate or die in business schools. MP3.com chose "to die".
The primary theme of Marx's writings is the various ways that business undermines itself. When adapted to business schools, these writings become a recipe book on ways to undermine the market. Marxist thinking leads immediately to a Machiavellian market where business leaders spend their days trying to find ways to undercut their competition, their customers and employees.
Das Kapital is not about they way that you structure a utopian society. The book is about the various ways businesses tend to undermine their market and their community.
I am not saying that business leaders are Marxists, but that Marx has had a negative influence on the way we view business.