Slashdot Mirror
National Phone in Sick Day?
bor xitwise writes "i dont know if anti-capitalist sentiment
and the open source community necessarily
go hand in hand (cough), but i thought you
might want to mention
"world phone in sick
day", which is coming up on the 6th of april.
hopefully we can get a larger participation in the u.s. this
year!! " Thats strange. I wish I wasn't my own company- could
use a sick day.
What's open software anything but socialism?
This is such a moronically syupid European-Labor idea. Thank God in America so many people appreciate the opportunity they have.
'Call-in-sick-day' to protest Capitalism, or whatever, is so much Euro-weenie socialist bullshit. I hope you love your inflexible labor markets, lame economies, and 11 percent unemployment rates. Whheee!!
Keep your stupid stupid ideas to yourself. We'll be over here working.
Damn, another brainwashed by the US propaganda that doesn't even know the difference between socialism and communism, except that "it's evil and they must all die die die !!!".
Get an education man !
AMEN to that brother! They can keep their socialist paradise.
so, since when was capitalism ever based on goodwill, decentralization and oriented wholly on quality, (think of the biggest example of capitalism in software today: Micro$oft...)?
>How did you get to be so wrong, and so stupid?
hmmm. well, how did YOU get to be so cock-sure and ignorant?
you're just another brainwashed american sheep, led astray by corporate amerika.
Is watching other people play a sport really all that important to you? I sit and watch baseball and I find it excruciatingly boring. Playing it may be fun, but to sit and watch other people run around and scream at the team you favor? It just doesn't make sense.
Capitalism isn't the only system that preserves freedom. Communism a la free software movement preservers much more freedom, and is much more economically effecient.
Overall, capitalism, despite all the US propaganda, is a pretty shitty system. We just hadn't chanced on anything too much better yet (and in fact, we couldn't even TRY anything else over the past 100 years, because if we did, the US would kick our asses).
- pmitros
Capitalism is about finding the most efficient way of doing things in order to surpass your competitors and make more money. Open Source Software does that. Just because some of it's principles passingly resemble socialist principles does not mean that Open Source Software is socialist.
RMS, on the other hand, is pretty damn Red.
But isn't socialism better? A lot of countries seem to be doing very well with it.
Or are you the same kind of person who thinks that the US has a democratic government? (Hint - look up the word).
Conventional economics does not apply to software, because it cost approx the same to produce 1 copy as 1 million copies. It is this principle that allows open source; it costs nothing to let everyone benefit from your idea.
Socialism is a "much more economically effecient", eh? Yeah, it's obvious it would be, what with you getting the same benifits if you do a great job or a shitty job, no increase in the quality of your life if you produce an amazing new product, no freedom to choose the things that make you happy...
Hmm, that argument seems to be used a lot in Slashdot discussions. When you don't want to actually argue with a point someone's made, simply write their 'wrongness' off on brainwashing by [EVIL CORPORATE AMERIKKKA!!!!|The Pink Punk Eurotrash Second-Handers].
hahahaha!
you are so pathetic...
if it is such a better, more efficient, freedom maximizing system, why does it need to kick anyones asses? it should be able to stand on its own merits. but it can't... amerika won past wars by reading other peoples secret codes, and because it had endless supplies of oil.
read david yergin's "The Prize." actually, on that note, you should read a heck of a lot. your understanding of the world is severely LIMITED.
This is rather typical of a socialist-type. By the 'kicking of asses' you automatically assume that he meant war-wise. Only someone with a Statist philosophy, or that of a 14 year-old*, would see war as the way a philosophy 'kicks ass'.
I mean, figure it out. Unless you're a munitions company, or something related, war is bad for business.
* Okay, so that's a pretty lame excuse for stupidity. I've known plenty of smart 14 year-olds.
heck yeah, kill two birds with one stone
If communism is, as you seem to claim, inherently A Good Thing, why should any nation have to 'be ready for it'?
The only preparation I could see is the gradual removal of all freedom so that people wouldn't riot in the streets after they all became equally poor.
And claiming that Russian communism didn't work because it was badly managed is mixing up causes and effects. The order of events wasn't Bad Management->Bad Communism, it was Communism->Bad Management. Abuses of power and authority are inherent in communism. Everyone is made 'equal', but a few people need to be 'more equal' to run the government that needs to exist (sorry anarchists, both of the socialist and capitalist persuasions, I think we do need a government). These people who have extra equality end up running a dictatorship.
You mean, like France, where there are people rioting in the streets, huge unemployment rates, and a government that's trying to cut back on the work week in order to cause more people to be employed?
Oh yeah, I'm leaving this dump, it's booming economy and high employment rate to move *there*! Or better yet, why don't we take away everyone's rights and try that *here*!
It seems to me you're one of those people who, at a young and idealistic age, read a book that painted socialism in a very positive light, and have based your world-view around it, much like Ayn Randoids.
Speaking of Her High Priestfulness of the Cult of Objectivism, you might want to read Atlas Shrugged anyway. If you tone down her 'A is A' philosophy and strange interpersonal views a little bit, it's a good introduction to capitalist thought.
Another reason this is a dumb idea is that job security in the US is at record lows according to recent polls. Even apart from the polls, among many people I know there is fear that stunts like this are a nice excuse (one too many sick days -- legit or not) to get laid off.
It is shameful how these politicians like Clinton take credit for an economy that has little to do with their policies, and when there are such troubling properties to it like the job insecurity!
For a minute, ignore which politics OSS "subscribes" to, and look at the process it goes through: accelerated natural selection. I, for one, am pretty darn glad the Linus has a good sense of control over the kernel-- he takes the best updates, not the worst.
Same with other projects-- you don't want J.Random Loser(tm) monkeying around with your *libc code modifying lines without a clue. Yes, I have the freedom to make my own modifications to code on my systems, but if you're going to make something public, it must be GOOD first.
There's a lot of code out there that sucks rocks, and it deserves to die by neglect from the author(s). No artificial support mechanisms keeping something alive for no good reason, no government "code welfare" projects keeping around things well past their expiration date.
So, after all this, where do I think OSS fits politically? With the system that allows cr** to die the death it should: capitalism. Capitalism doesn't mean some Ayn Randian notion that everything is paid for; some things can be free if the author *chooses*. Capitalism gives that choice, as well as the choice to charge for things. Other political systems (both the Randian and the communist/socialist) try to deny me that choice, and thus they have nothing to do with OSS or what I want around me.
they seem to be trying to point out things that people do normally which are anarchist. this fits in to a much larger tradition. if you took it seriously you're on crack.
as the man says, the anarchist enjoys a socialist critique of capitalism and a capitalist critique of socialism. they piss everyone off.
I thought *that's* when it would be ;-). I'd participate, but then I already have that day off. Whoo-hoo!
anti-capitalism != communism
holy shit, i wish you geeks would stop pontificating about all that stuff you studied computers INSTEAD of learning about. it's called the history of western culture, you might want to look into it.
I personally do not think that "destroy(ing) the monetary system" is any kind of action that can result in improving our system.
it's a new piece of software that hasn't been debugged yet, so to speak.
Russia, having turned to capitalism, is now many times poorer than it was under communism. And Belorussia, which has held on more than any other former soviet state to communist principles, is now the richest of the former soviet states. People have jobs, and are payed on time.
How does this fit into your capitalist ideal?
Maybe it's because those are the only types that have ever managed to get into power? Oh, and please don't tell me that the Soviets, the Chinese under Mao, Pol Pot and all the rest were just somehow "doing it wrong." They were no more doing Socialism/Communism wrong then Hitler was doing his variant, National Socialism, wrong. Deal.
open source software OSS is a tribute to hard work, not laziness. much of OSS is paid for by corporations who let their programmers contribute on company time. where in the world did this socialist propoganda come from? Taco, why don't u call in sick on May Day and go dance around the mayflower pole in moscow if that's how you feel... or perhaps this was just a one-time slip-up of an otherwise hard-working capitalist?
any great change causes hardship as infrastructure is taken down. communism -> capitalism is quite a huge change.
For years before the fall of their Bolshevik government, the U.S.S.R. had a HUGE black market. The only regulation that exists in black markets is the fear of a larger competitor that can slit your throat or have you shot in the street. When the old government fell, all of these little Al Capones came crawling out of the woodwork and immediately bought up all of the newly privatitized means of production. They also had the means to buy politicians to an extent not possible most other places in the world. Hardly anybody else had the money and the politicos were deprived of most of their perks. Outside investors wanting to get in this quickly found themselves burned in this environment. Where else but in Russia can one buy a majority share of stock in a corporation and be denied a seat on the board of directors? It happened several times in the early nineties until the rest of the world got wise. Other investors were robbed outright. There is no protection from Russian courts for outsiders screwed in a business deal. Nobody in his right mind risks his money in such an environment. There are no anti-trust laws, few or no protections for employees, the banking laws are completely circumventable, etc. etc. There are no rules whatsoever. Even the most grunting of 'capitalist pigs' in the West acknowledges that some sort of rules are necessary.
By contrast look at another changing Communist economy. China is doing it very slowly and only in limited areas. There are very tight controls and strange but at definite set of rules. If one wants to invest in China's small private sector at least there is a set of rules to go by. China's experiments with free markets aren't going to send them to hell. In time, China could very well be a much larger version of Singapore. Authoritarian as hell but at least you won't have to stand in line four hours to get a roll of John Wayne toliet paper (rough and tough and doesn't take shit from anybody).
And create a new currency. Emperor Norton had the right idea.
Ah, I kind of like those people that learned the meaning of socialism watching Rambo III (oh, those commies are baaad and evil, they want to hurt the brave, noble and good christian American guy. Ever read Marx ? I bet no, so basically you are speaking about something you don't even knoe except fron those 50s and 60s US propaganda movies.
Microsoft has proven that capitalism doesn't work that much. It's not "the best win", it's "the biggest kills the smallest". This is the philosophy of capitalism, and I don't like it.
Typical US reply : economy is everything, people doesn't matter. Because the economy is good doesn't mean people are happy. SURE - Bill Gates is happy, but the people that live in poor neighbourhoods and get shot but Gangs might have a different opinion...
I'd rather live in France than in the US, life is better there. I'd rather work 35h/week there with lots of taxes than 80h with lots of money and no time to spend it. Quality of life has the price that isn't known in Wall Street. If you think that money is everything in life, I feel sorry for you.
A new holiday for slackers and wankers! Why not just call it "International lazy bastard day!"
You don't seem to know much about countries outside the US obviously. You have lived in Europe anyway.
As for the hospital, I would rather be in Europe where doctors are thinking about my health first rather than checking my insurance to see if I am a profitable customer. As for the "people always get what they deserve" ideaologie, it's plain stupid (but typical of chrisitan countries : "God give people what they deserve, so if this guy has cancer than it's his fault, so I don't care whatever happen to him")
Try north Europe. They managed to mix capitalism and socialism and life is much better than in the US.
You clearly know nothing about Ayn Rand.
Let's say I was a doctor in a socialist country where my pay scale is dictated by how much everyone could afford. What reason would I have for making myself a better doctor if I'm still going to make the same amount?
wouldnt doing a good job and helping ppl be enough? i would certainly think so, but then again i will admit that i make enough money to be able to comfortably work at some place i enjoy even though i could make much more money someplace else doing something that might not be as fullfilling. i suppose that makes me an evil comunist in your eyes right?
Now you have a country full of people who may advance themselves in their field, but have no encouragement to do so. Would you choose a hospital in america or europe knowing this?
well with the rosey picture you paint the answer is obvious, europe! i certainly would rather be operated on ppl who were doing what they wanted because they enjoyed it rather than trusting my life to ppl who are more worried about their stock portfolios than me.
Of course it could be that you don't have any money (in america) because you simply can't do anything of any value to anybody. Then you start thinking it's unfair that someone else who has more money gets a better doctor than you (in denial of the fact that that person did something more valuable than you).
you get your self in a really sticky situation when you start claiming that some ppl are worth more than others.
Next thing you know, you're talking about how we should all have the same access to the same things, regardless of our status in life.
see what i mean, sticky, sticky, sticky! i am quite sure that most black ppl would disagree with you here. there are many that still remember the fight for equal rights in the 60's, maybe you should talk to somebody who whas there and learn something about being human. and dont tell me it isnt the same thing, segregation is still segregation whether it is based on race, creed, religion, or wealth!
we should also stop wasting are time and money on public schools, public libraries, and public parks too right? after all they are giving equal access to all ppl regardless of their standing in life and that, buy your comments, is the wrong thing to do.
Now, go back and think about the doctor who isn't encouraged to perform better. Now society just coasts along not progressing. Why do you think all of the inventions and progress comes from our country?
have you ever read a book? a newspaper? a magazine? why do you think that the US has invented everything? i can assure you that we have not, infact many of the things ppl believe were invented here were not, they were just popularized and perfected here.
Face it, socialism is a system that is desired by people who don't have any means to better themselves under capitalism.
you are too kind. so just because somebody is unlucky or unfortunate enough to be delt a bad hand in life they should just be swept out to sea with the rest of the refuse?
I mean, figure it out. Unless you're a munitions company, or something related, war is bad for business.
wrong! it is a fact that as long as you win, war is good for all business! the main reason the US has gotten in volved in many wars is because it was more an economical threat than any other.
Indeed, but aren't the two in competition with one
another? You speak of open-source software as though
it had this terrible omniscient power to stamp out
commercial software; this I do not believe, especially
not with M$ supporters as commonplace as they are.
If anything, the two different forms of software
will compete with each other, to the mutual improvement
of both. This is not undesirable, indeed it is an
inherently good thing.
- Eternal Darkness
Anyone who thinks the goal of free software is the end of getting paid for coding isn't thinking very clearly. The enemy is *proprietary* software that we can't fix, reuse, or learn from. Get paid for writing the code, not for only allowing certain people to use it.
Want to talk about victims of capitalism ? Natives american forced to give their territories to farmers ? Oil compagny polluting the world for the benefit of their shareholders ? Iraq population hostage of a greedy dictator and a greedy US (where everybody wants big truck because "gas is soooo cheap"). Want to speak of the CIA operations in south America to protect the US interest (read US company interest). One day somebody is going to count the victims or capitalism too, and you won't be so proud of your ideas anymore.
Another person that that thinks communism=USSR. Wrong, but I don't think there's anyway to make people understand this after years of anti-USSR propaganda...
McCarthy was a stupid paranoid, who was not so much concerned about spies but rather about getting rid of liberal peoples that didn't shared his backwards ideology. He was better than Stalin, arresting people because of their beliefs and without any proof of some sort. Anybody can believe in communism if he wants to and the so called "country of freedom" should let him do so. Isn't it what democracy is all about ?
And don't mix USSR and communism. Communism is a concept, USSR was an implementation. Programmers know that a good concept doesn't imply a good implementation....
One last thing : if the USSR hadn't fought the Nazis, you would be writing your post in Goethe's language... so a little of respect please.
It is? How so?
Your assumption is that there is/will be software that does everything concievable & that there is nothing new under the sun.
If you make yet another web server/ftp server/whatever, yeah, informed people will scoff at you if you try to charge & have a proprietary licence.
If you truly innovate, and you feel the need to charge people money & copyright your stuff, feel free. You'll make your money.
If you don't innovate, don't whine when noone buys your crappy proprietary web server for $300 when there's Apache. I'm not sure why you were expecting otherwise.
I have an idear:
let's all phone in sick on the 6th.
Capitalism is only freedom in the theory. In pratice, big corporations emerge, crush smaller competitors and individuals, become lobbying groups that have more power than the citizen themselves. Then policians become just some puppets of the market. I'm affraid Texaco has more power than any US senator. Is this freedom ? Is this democracy ? I don't think so.
Beside, US interest might not be the other nations interest. I'm sorry but US is only a small percentage of the world global population. Enforcing it's economic interest by force and killing civilians is certainly not a honorable thing. The US is not better than any dictatorial country, except that it gots a big army. "Only the winners decide what were war crimes". I hope someday some US policians will be judged for the crimes they commited into other countries. Then this will be democracy...
Less violence, less poverty, less guns, less teen mothers, less lawyers. Most of it because people don't have a blind faith into capitalism, and also because they are little more practical. Sure it's not perfect, but given the choice I would choose a scandinavian country rather than the US anytime.
But then the US people are so arrogant about themselves that they always think their country is the best, that they invented everything and that their life is soooo much better than anywhere else.
This "anticapitalist" pseudo-protest is the lamest thing to cross my screen in ages.
Capitalism is a way of life folks, and it *is* open source friendly.
If you want to be a communist, move to Communist China or N.Korea and get the hell out of the States.
If such stupid and ignorant person like you hate so much communists, then it must be good. Is there a US communist party nowadays ? Do they have a web site ? I'd really like to piss all those backward thinking biggots off !
Anyway, you seem to say that communist==USSR secret agent. Plenty of people are communist and don't have anything to do with making a revolution in the US. Is it too difficult to understand for your little brain or what ?
You've just done me and my efforts to promote Free Software a tremendous disservice.
You have helped to build the association between Free Software and something that
ol)
Has NOTHING to do with Free Software
Further promotes the image that Free Software
is anti-Capitalist
Is probably contrary to the beliefs of MOST
users and proponents of Free Software?
You perfectly made the point ! (yes, another meaningless post, who cares, bandwidth cost nothing nowadays ;-)
>Ultimately I agree with you - OSS has an intrinsic darwinian evolutionary
>mechanism that lets the "best code win" - but capitalism by itself does NOT always
>mean that the best product wins. As Microsoft has shown us, there are plenty of
>artificial ways of ensuring the success of very mediocre products.
Capitalism doesn't mean the instant success of the best product-- things may take some time. For example, see the oil crisis in the 70s-- not every gas-guzzling American oceanliner of a car was replaced by an efficient import instantly; it took several years for the market to swing around. Very few people switch (as opposed to upgrade) OSs on their machines, so you need to look at new installations, despite the fact that there's millions of old bloated cars|OSs running right now.
It's only in the past 3 or so years that Linux has really gotten "good" (stable, supporting lots of HW, decent selection of apps), and Linux's marketshare is going way up because of that. Before that, it was the lesser of 2 evils: MS software on cheap PCs, or Apple software on $$$ PCs. The market went cheap.
As Linux and other OSs get a *good* "office suite" (WP, SS, etc), roughly feature-compatible with MS stuff, I think more and more people will switch over. However, things will take time. Linux will not conquer the world tomorrow, or by the end of this year, but in several, it'll be quite powerful.
HUH? I though the regular season doesn't start until
the end of October - you guys just call it 'the playoffs'
Why don't you just do it like in football, you take the best
two teams from the season and play ONE game...
None of this sissy best-of-SEVEN crap...l
---
Reason #1 of why Great Britain is better than America:
"When we hold a tournament to decide the world champions of
a sport, we invite teams from other countries."
- John Cleese
Thank you for blatently pointing out the hypocrisy of the definition of freedom in the United States. Love it or leave it baby... the only freedom you have is freedom to be a consumer. This type of attitude just proves it.
And keep your capitalist paradise. Just be carefull not to get shot, the US is such a nice country where everybody is either heavy armed or in jail. And if you are a woman, remember 1 woman out of 4 is raped during her life. The US are such a nice place to live in !!!
u got it wrong.. its dego day.
stand around like a punk and stick motor oil in ur hair day.
stupid greazers.
Hahahahaha! ROTFL... I just hope you weren't being serious? Please tell me you weren't... please...
Anarchism just delimits Capitalism (not that Capitalism doesn't find ways to delimit itself anyways). I read Bakunin's critique of Marx, and found it rather shallow. But then again, I found Marx's response to Bakunin rather trite as well (such is the case with arrogant philosophers).
Ah, but you just defined socialism in Marx's terms. A movement that truly comes from the people (ie. productive people => working class) and is driven by the people. Do you honestly think Stalin's leadership was driven by the people? Stalinism != socialism
The revolution in the Soviet Union may have started out as a Socialist revolution (debateable), but the product of it certainly wasn't Socialism.
Never figured out why people get so upset because
:)
people in other countries pay attention to different
sports. Maybe you feel that people from the US
try to shove their sports down your throat. If that
is the case then just ignore US sports and they will
go away (at least in your country.) And if they don't
you won't care cause you will be ignoring them.
I think an important sports day in ANY country is
a good reason to call in sick
Well, since the word "communist" is used in the US, I'm not surprised to read those comments... maybe they are right, maybe they implant a controlling chip into US citizen brain to control their thoughts :
"the communist are evil, you must KILL them" "capitalism is good" "politicians are always honest" "my country is the best in the world" "syndicalism is bad" etc.... pretty scary (oh wait, that's not a braim controlling chip, it's on US TV !).
Here's a posting from ChiChi that I think sums up his capacity for critical analysis:
In the universe there is only freedom and degrees of unfreedom. By definition there are no victims of capitalism, since capitialism is freedom. Unfortunately, when dealing with regimes that are unfree, one must resort to less-than-honorable tactics to secure one's interests. Not that the US is all that capitalist anymore, anyway.
Now I ask you... why bother?
huh?
capitalism is what puts food on the tables of most Americans.
"freedom to be a consumer" is a very ignorant statement.
So you're saying the only reason people do stuff is for money? Then why is the Free Software movement so popular?
You are joking right? I suppose you think the Reform party is moderately socialist as well. I always get a good laugh when I hear them defending family values when it was Capitalism that destroyed the "traditional family" to begin with.
The conservatives in Alberta cut funding to health care and education, privatized the phone company (which was about the only thing the government was involved in that was turning a profit), and that's Socialist? uh-huh...
> Exactly how do big corporations emerge and exactly how do they crush those weaker?
See Microsoft. As for individuals, if you are fighting any big corporation you might as well give up because they have more money to pay their lawyers than you do. If they can't win, they'll give you a lot of money to keep your mouth shut.
> Exactly how do lobbying groups have more power than citizens?
They pay the political campaign, legally or not. They buy some "gift" to politicians. Or do you think they are all honest and nice ? Why do you think food and environemental regulation is looser in the US than in Europe ? Because corporation saves money that way. Not because its good for the health of the consummers. In England the mad cow disease appeared because the british conservatist were financed buy the agricultural lobby, so they removed some regulations in the agricultural industry and the catastrophe happened. Here again, the corporations were first before citizen health.
> Exactly how does Texaco (or any large corp) have more power than a member of Congress?
If Texaco can presure many congessmen to vote into something that is in its favor. So Texaco can buy the votes of several congressmen, and therefor has more power in the governement than one. Everybody has a price, and any large corporation has loads of money... why do you think some senator are trying to stop the anti-trust suit against Microsoft ? Because they like Windows ?
And if you can't buy the senator, you can buy or help another lobbying group. Smith & Wesson can help the NRA presure senators.
Money IS power. Most internationnal intervention made by the US is :
a) because Europe is presuring the US to do something (see Kosovo)
b) because some US corporations has some interest at stakes (so Koweit oil, south america)
People who think corporations has no or little role in the US politic field just don't know politic enough (or are completely naive - "what, a politician lied to me ? how can it be ?").
I work, I make money, I go buy whatever I want, whenever I want, and however much I want.
Too bad much of it is at the expense of the rest of the world. I always love computer geeks who have grown up in suburbia, with middle class families, never known poverty, got a decent education, and have a lot of job prospects generalizing about how good Capitalism is. Isn't it easy to see things in a vacuum?
I have never known hard times myself, but I do read a lot of books about the history of countries other than my own, and pay attention to what else is going on in the world. I read stories about how Shell took a bunch of oil from Nigeria, polluted their country, paid a corrupt government peanuts for the right to do so. I then understand why I find it easy to afford a tank of gas. I see children and families working in disgusting Nike factories in Southeast Asia for peanuts and understand why I can afford a pair of nice running shoes. I read about how the US government has *directly* supported corrupt governments in South America that have been responsible for the deaths of millions of people. The reason? Because the corrupt governments are anti-Communist and the local industries provide the US with cheap fruit and vegetables (due to slave labour). Now I understand why bananas are so cheap at Safeway.
The list goes on... So you see, I can understand why a lot of people love Capitalism, because they don't take the time to consider why their country has so much relative to their neighbors to the south. Or maybe they do, and just don't care (even scarier).
Wherever you see the US, oil wars and drugs are never far behind.
...in fact, you're soaking in it.
Yes. It is all an evil plot. You cannot resist. You will be assimilated. The AllMighty American Men in Black are coming for you even as I type.
The UK and Europe are snow-white and blameless. There is no evil in the Third World. The internet was invented by Egyptians and stolen by the Greeks. If only we would abandon evil technology, like Linux.
Destroy Capitalism! Show your intelligence! Believe in Lysenko genetics!
That's a too big question... You seem to be the kind of people that prefer ideas to fit into a 20 second TV commercial, but I'm affraid you'll have to read Marx to know really what is communism. As long as you rely on what other people told you, including myself, you will never know what communism is all about.
Ignorance generate hatred, and you seem to be pretty ignorant of communism as well as hating it a lot, so go and buy the book. You can never go wrong getting some education. And if you still hate communism after reading it, then you'll really know why you hate it and you'll have some real arguments to support your ideas (because up to know what you have been using as arguments are pretty much the same biased cold-war propaganda that was in use in the 50s).
Actually, uh, the extraordinarily socialistic national highway system is what puts the food on most tables. Unless you think that Sysco and Dole built their own interstate highway system?
Yeah, did you get this kind of education on TV or what ? Do you really believe this crap ? Do you think Europe is the second economic power of the world just by "sitting" and watching other country do something ? Do you think Nokia, Erricson, Alcatel and the likes don't have R&D ?
:-)
Do you know who has 70% of the commercial sattelite lunching market ? Nasa ? Wrong - French space agency. Ever heard of the Concorde ? Airbus ? Boeing planes are pathetic in comparison. Am sorry but you don't seem to know much of what's happening outside of your country.
And Linux... was "invented" in Europe too
Hey! Look! It's Ayn Rand, she's back from the dead and boy is she pissed.
and where is my damn password?
Err... would rather say "communism subset of anti-capitalism". Keep it precise, anarchists are definitively anti-capitalist too (well, anti-everything in fact).
The US invents damn near everything.
Aren't all of your examples past tense? As in, back in the days when the Federal government gave out huge socialistic subsidies and government supported monopolies were rampant?
Ever notice how much "Stallman" sounds like "Stalin"? ;p
Well, duh....
go read a book and quit watching your elitist news shows
why don't you look at the 'developing' countries which are fucked over by capitalism constantly, real effective (for the 3% of Christian Caucasian blond-haired blue-eyed males)
the USSR was a totalitarian state, just like Nazi Germany was. it is not socialist, contrary to what they say. I could say that I am black while I am white, that doesn't mean it's true
Hey, don't lump us all together like that
"But then the US people are so arrogant about themselves that they always think their country is the best, that "
if you have to lump lump "conservatives" or "republicans" or "brain-washed wage earners"
I'm USian and I think capitalism blows (it is probably the most efficient economic system we know, but I think competition and making money and being the 'most' do not = best life) and agree with most what you say.
Because sometimes you need the governement to do some things... Texaco cannot raise it's own private army to enforce it's interest into a foreign country. I wonder how long will it takes before we see the "Texaco Army" fighting "Exxon Army" over an african oil well.
Also even in the US there are still a few laws that prevent corporation from doing everything they want, so they have to keep an eyes on that.
You are right, but in the US people are keen to show only the problems of communism because they have been tought a carricature of communism made by anti-communists. Most US citizen don't know what communism is, and consider "communist" as an insult. That's just plain ignorance to me and ignorance must be fighted, because it is never good, no matter the subject.
The fear of communism is usually used by extrem right-wing policitian who use it to their own profit.
Not anarcho-capitalists. Check out David D. Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom for this model in a nutshell.
OK, sorry for that, there are truly some open-minded US peoples too. But I'm affraid you are small minority, and there's still a majority of people in the US that are short minded person that are ready to shoot at whatever is labeled "communist". Most foreigners that have been to the US describe Americans as "arrogants" (their words - I did a small poll around me with people from different nationality, they all agree on this one).
;-)
So I just hope you guys will take over, but meanwhile you have to deal with the "Jerry Springer show"
Actually the WWW was created by a Swiss... and many W3C members are Europeans... usually the Europeans make the theory and the USA find practical use of it and sell it.
(In fact, it's happening already. Ithaca, NY issues Ithaca Hours. Long-distance calling cards are close.)
Read lots of books, discard them and think for yourself.
-kojak
Wanton spending?
Going into to debt over luxury items you don't need?
Shopping all the time?
It's my wife, she's working undercover for them.
John Waalkes
jwaalkes@edge.net
What an idiot. If RMS were communist, he would not go out of his way to point out that he supports commercial distribution of free software. End of discussion.
One question... how does Capitalism put food on the table for someone? I always thought that good hard labour did it, but I guess if I just think about Capitalism, I won't be hungry anymore. Yay... I never have to work again! Silly people cultivating crops for a living when all they have to do is think about Capitalism...
...
Now, being serious, I'll explain my point in simple terms (I'll see if I can dumb it down to the level of television). Your original statement was that if someone chooses to believe and fight for Communism, they should move elsewhere ("get the hell out of the United States" was the precise set of words). Yet I thought that in a free country, one is free to hold and express any beliefs they so choose. So why should all Communists get the hell out of the United States? They are merely expressing a differing opinion (and exercising their right to do so). If the majority of Americans believed in Communism, would you tell them all to get the hell out of the United States? What if they didn't? Should they all be thrown in jail? Executed? Deported? Just a hypothetical situation, but something to consider
And that brings me to the freedom to be a consumer issue. Seems like everything is peachy keen in the US if you don't bother to think for yourself, never express a dissenting opinion, just sit back and be a nice little "consumer" in order to keep the system going. But express a differing opinion, and you are told to "get the hell out of the country" or "love it or leave it". Seems hypocritical to me.
Well, the first step is acknowledging it. After that, it is up to each and every one of us.
I personally have been involved in public awareness campaigns and mass protests. The Capitalist ratrace keeps many of us too busy making ends meet to do anything about it (and too busy dealing with our own domestic poverty problems), but I think that if people are educated about these problems and how they can participate in a solution to them, then that is a good start.
Unfortunately, many feel that the solution is to simply give monetary aid to third world nations. What they don't realize is that these nations need control of their own natural resources so that they can generate a continuous source of income from them. The problems are more complex than this, but if one takes the time to analyze them, it basically boils down to who is profiting from the natural resources (including labour) in these contries. In most cases, it isn't the people who live there.
Hmmm, I always like it when people defending Capitalism resort to the old human natur argument. Most of the time, their analysis of human nature is based on looking at everyone else around them.
There is no proof that humans have any nature whatsoever, and my personal feeling is that we are shaped by the world around us (reactionary if you like). Our world is what we make of it. If we are born into a Capitalist system, then we are bombarded with notions of individuality, the importance of self, and tend to measure our success in self worth. This is not to say that everyone follows this, but it is the predominant philosophy that guides many of our lives (whether we are conscious of it or not).
All one needs to do is to study the diversity of cultures in the world, and the relative importance placed on different values to see that human nature is not as "concrete" as Thomas Hobbes made it out to be.
Ah, so I see you get your "facts" from Encyclopedia Britannica. Now I see why you think the Nazi Party was Socialist.
Reminds me of an old Dennis Miller line:
Something about knowing nothing about the Russians other than the stock parade footage seen on TV....
"I imagine that's all they see about us as well, which means they must think our ultimate weapon is a 50 foot Underdog balloon, sent to hump the Kremlin into submission. The greatest minds in Russia are probably working on a Simon Bar Sinister balloon to counteract our first strike capabilities..."
Sorry for straying (this is gonna get a -10).
But freaking soccer or football or whatever you Euro's call it now is a spectator sport? Yeah, lets go sit 80 minutes and watch an action packed 0-0 tie. Fun. Then we can riot afterwards when our team ties. At least we riot only on special occasions like when we actually outscore the opponent.
You people equate Socialism with Evil. Lenin Got socialism right in the 20's: The right mix of personal ownership and free enterprise, but still with some property owned by the people. Then Lenin died. And Stalin fucked everything up. He took away free enterprise, and destroyed the concept of personal ownership. If we all lived under Lenin idea of socialism, I can assure you the world would be a much better place to live. Aric Johnson jjohnson@reachNoSpamToday.net
Boeing airplanes are quite oldtechnology compared to airbus. Boeing kept working with the same old technologies for years while Airbus made a clean fresh start with moderne technologies. While Boeing has slowly increased electronic in their planes, all Airbus are fully computerised. All Airbus cockpits are the same, while a pilot has to learn every different cockpit of Boeings.
Basically, Boeing is Windows NT. Airbus is BeOS. More modern.
I suppose the US thinks they are the world (e.g. world series baseball, etc) ;) Hey, we let the Canadians play...
25% percent women raped : official US statistics. Yeah, it's weird. But not everywoman is walking with a "I was raped" sign on her back. US is violent country.
If you'd live in Europe you wouldn't have ever seen a gun at all, less heard a shooting. Capitalism is increasing crimes because it increase the competition spirit amongst idividuals. All foreigners that have been to the US think people are overly aggressive. It seems the country is in a permanent latent civil war. Win-win situations and cooperations are not favored in capitalism, it's more "I win, the others loose". There can be only one Bill Gates !
Well, anarchists certainly prefer capitalism over socialism since it removes the state from the economy. Yet a "true" anarchist is supposed to be against all forms of organisation, as capitalism generate big corporation it is somewhat not that an anarchist thing after all.
Lenin was a mass murderer! Anyone who
disagreed with him disappeared.
Even the "former" soviet "government"
has had to acknowledge this (by pretty
much making Mr. Lenin disappear).
The ability of people to embrace the
evil of socialism is directly proportional
to their ignorance of it.
given the (capitalist) choice of working
(- for YOUR OWN benifit -) or NOT, a true
capitalist will go to work every day. Only
socialists get paid when they don't work.
This is one of the major distortions of modern
capitalism: too many people are working for
OTHERS (who pay them poorly, and even if they
don't work) instead of for themselves (who will
pay them WELL, but only if they WORK)!
If you're the one making the money, the rewards
are worth the effort.
As to Rob's motivation in posting this nonsense,
I don't understand it any more than the nonsense
itself!
I saw a cloud that looked like a ducky yesterday...that leads to socialism too!
Why is it May 19th? Why are most of the geeks of the world going to take that day off work? Think about it...
hmmm... you accuse one of "assuming"...
and then you yourself make assumptions: "Only someone with a Statist philosophy, or that of a 14 year old"
so, who is being overly simplistic? YOU ARE.
war is bad, except for the munitions business? damn naive, babe, you are damned naive. for the economy of the winning nation, ALL their businesses will benefit from a war (not just those munition-related. Yeah, FIGURE IT OUT YERSELF, BUB). for example, america's economy went gangbusters for 20 years after WWII mainly because of the huge demand for US goods and services created by the need to rebuild war-torn europe and asia.
"It seems to me..."
well: you're wrong. just because someone does not see things your way does not mean you know their past or even how they got to think the way they do.
if you think other people are so easy to judge, that reflects on the simplicity of your own mind and world-view.
why don't you listen to your own words regarding the High Priestess: basically, when you take any rabid capitalist, once you look past their simplistic philosophy and their severe lack of interpersonal skills, you will then see the frightened lonely little human being underneath it all, trying desperately to find justification for their selfishness.
Hahahaha!
excuse me, but lets take WWII as an example: that "market economy" you mention actually COLLAPSED in 1929. and that "socialist" FDR got it back on its feet during the 1930's with his "socialist" New Deal, just in time to combat the Nazi's. (whose economic ideas are frighteningly similar to the direction that the US economy is drifting towards: big-business in symbiosis with the government, and the rest of society's needs subordinate to that ideal...)
oh, yeah, and "capitalism gives EVERYONE an incentive to do something useful for society"
...oh what a fricking JOKE!
why is there such a drug problem in the US? because so many people feel superfluous. why do so few people vote? dont try to ignore these facts. why is unemployment deemed necessary for capitalism to work?
and why do you assume that socialism (or any alternative to capitalism) automatically means that no one will be able to choose what their jobs will be? Good God, its so silly...
its a wrong assumption: get over your unwarranted fears. other systems have not worked well, because the capitalists CRUSH all economic alternatives.
I couldn't agree more - communism is by definition a government that gives greater value to the mob than to the individual. You can believe what you want, you can express what you want - but to think for a moment that you have a right to turn this country into a state-first, citizen-last communist society is outright wrong. The concept of democracy (as seperate from capitalism) has failed when people start thinking that it means "whatever the majority wants is right" - the majority wants to take the money of others - it's to their benefit, so why not? But this is not a free society. Capitalism is the business side of freedom. It states you are free to do business - free to engage in any contract you like - and the state is not involved.
... but it is perhaps the closest thing (though not close) to a capatilist society - to a free society - that any major country in this world has presently.
And no, I don't believe for a minute that the US is a model of this - it likes to claim it is while it imposes laws that deride the whole concept
Well, some trade agreement are not made on a fair basis... People buy software from Microsoft, yet they get screwed. Sometimes getting screwed in a deal is better than nothing, yet it is not good either. Poor country prefer to sell their resources for well below their real value because they can't sell it at a fair price and they need the money to survive anyway. They get screwed in the deal but have to accept it anyway.
But some people have no other choice than to live in gettos ! Thats what is sick with capitalism : rich deserve the right to good health and security, poor life has no value and nobody cares of what happen. Capitalism is based on the assumption that nature (or god) gives everybody what they deserve. It's just wrong.
Well, you've obviously read Marx... I'll not waste my time arguing with people who think they know political science because they watch the nightly news.
Here's something for thought... you more than likely have heard the stories about Russians being fed propaganda by their media... I'll bet most of them never questioned it either...
I didn't grow up in suburbia, nor am I from the middle class, I've known poverty both as a child and an adult. I dragged my ass, kicking and screaming through an education, and have fought tooth and nail for every freakin' scrap I own.
ok, so why did you grow up in poverty in the first place? We're your parents (or their parents) too lazy to make a living? By your own definition, everyone has the ability to make enough money for themselves, so those who don't must just be lazy. This is the big fallacy of Capitalist reasoning.
On top of that, our 1/2 socialist govt takes 43% of EVERYTHING I earn.
Well, it's either pay 43% of your income to the government, or pay 43% (or more) of it to private individuals for running the services your government provides. Nothing is free... I'd think a proponent of Capitalism would recognize this. And yes, I know most Capitalists think that everything should be privatized, but I tend to support the notion that one has a right to basic things such as health care and education. No one is going to provide these services for free, so should lives be sacrificed to keep Capitalism going? That's no better than enforcing Socialism by "scare tactics".
Charity can easily handle (esp. with lower/no tax burden) the few in any society that simply can't work.
But this contradicts our inherently individualistic nature (which is one of the founding assumptions Capitalism is based on). Who is to be charitable without proper incentive?
Last thought on socialism: What would you do when the Worker's Generosity Party tells you that you cannot be a programmer anymore, that you have to go and work in the fields, harvesting grain, for the "good of the people"?
This sounds more like Marx's definition of the division of labour under Capitalism rather than Socialism. To quote: "For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in a communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production, and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic." - Karl Marx, The German Ideology
You are correct. Lenin and the Bolsheviks did murder many people. I am a socialist, but I don't agree with what was done. That said, can you imagine what lengths the Russian bougeousie would go to in order to protect their ill-gotten wealth and power? I'd imagine is was basically a "them or us" scenario. This isn't to say that many others weren't murdered for lesser reasons (my father's parents were kicked off of their land by the Bolsheviks, and fortunately not murdered), but just raise some thoughts about the circumstances.
This debate has gone on since we invented money/capitalism. But a few points to the original post. It is not just those with money/power who believe in capitalism. Many of the worlds greatest socialists had power and money. A knee-jerk socialist standpoint is that those who have must be capitalists and those without are oppressed by capitalists. There a functioning socialist countries and organizations. Many of them have power most have money.
Money is simply a handy way to trade for goods or services in a capitalistic genre. Socialism, not needing to trade, as all goods and services are shared equally, simply doesn't need money. When a socialist meets a capitalist, however, the capitalist will not share their goods/services. This results in the socialist having either to do without the capitalist market or trading goods/services for goods/services. Money is, granted a handy way of doing this, but not the only.
Assuming the socialist will stay pure and not trade, only share, how then, do the socialist and capitalist interact? Does the socialist share with the capitalist and try to show them the benefits of socialism through deed and action? Or, does the socialist close themselves from the capitalist world and make due without?
Both points of view will create slanderous propaganda about the other. Neither will be entirely accurate. It might be considered naive to think that everyone will want to be socialist or capitalist. We must, therefore, assume that these two systems will continue to interact. It is only by watching that interaction carefully, not the propaganda of each, that we may find a common ground that might work.
My point is that both are extremes and extremes never workout anywhere but on paper.
Donovan Acree
Altered.state@usa.net
I can't participate because I used a sick day for Monday on the grounds that I lost an hour during the weekend when we switched to Daylight Savings Time. I liked it so much I think I will make the first Monday of DST as a "tired day" into an annual tradition.
If you are going to call in sick, do it monday. :)
That is when the baseball season starts in the US.
It should be a national holiday IMO
Oh Hell, in fact, there are dozens of critical differences. Capitalism gives us the freedom and leisure time to do open source. Note Linus' employer.
How did you get to be so wrong, and so stupid?
Claiming that detractors of socialism don't know its differences from communism doesn't wash. In a socialistic state, you are most definitely not allowed to not pay taxes to support what you don't want. Unfortunately, every day we seem to be moving more toward socialism in the U.S. Socialism (and any sort of 'benevolent' government) is the moral equivalent of pointing a gun in your neighbor's face and forcing them to pay your bills. The only material difference is that you elect people to hire police to point the guns and run the tax courts and you avoid the distasteful experience of having to do it yourself.
ugh. This is why nerds (and everyone else) who don't know two shits about political theory should just shut the hell up and keep their ignorant opinions from poisoning those who really want to learn and not be spoon-fed proaganda.
Socialism definitely == bad.
Communism isn't about central control. It's just that Russian Communism degenerated into a simple dictatorship under Stalin. Under real Communism, each person would contribute what he thought society needed. The catch: production has to be efficient enough that if even a small percent of the population contributes, everyone still survives (marginal cost of production in software is zero, so it works there; it'll work elsewhere once elsewhere is much more automated).
As far as providing computers to 50% of the households, what country that had a completely backwards economy 100 years ago can provide computers to everyone? The US can do it because it was in a kick-ass position at the end of WWII. Even a fairly mismanaged economy could keep itself in a decent position. The problem is that a Communist revolution occured in most countries far before they were ready for it. The US is just now getting to the point where it's ready, and the revolution is happening in the ready industries (software, and soon, other information). Information became ready with the Internet, when the marginal cost of production fell to zero.
Hmm... while I certainly agree that most communist governments have failed to achieve their stated goals, it's not fair to claim that capitalism is winning any prizes either. The United States has had to resort to heavy subsidies of its core businesses (agriculture, manufacturing, and education), Canada has had to implement socialist programs to provide the services its people need, many Central and South American countries are unable to stimulate their own economies, and Europe has formed their economic union in order to compete. It would seem that capitalism has its flaws.
Actually, I'd say its anarcho-socialism, socialism without an enforced hierarchy of power. I don't see why people are so blind to think there is no socialism but totalitarian and bureacratic socialism.
Hitlers National Socialism had nothing to do with socialism at all, Hitler was vehemently anti-socialist, and had socialists killed. National Socialism = right wing totalitarianism, communism = left wing totalitarianism. Equating all socialism with totalitarian socialism makes about as much sense as equating all capitalism to fascism.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
How does May 19th sound? :)
Posted by Dean Collins:
Read the texts. Look at the sites on their "Links" page. It's primarily a prank, folks. They're performance artists. That doesn't mean some people aren't going to really phone in sick, just that their purpose is less political and more like a pie in a billionaire's face.
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
Let's say DA has their way and the economy collapses. Then what? What usually happens when an economy collapses? You get fascism, totalitarianism, and war. What does DA have to say about that? Will everyone just magically become socialist if a capitalist economy collapses?
This is an idea you might expect to hear from a seventh grader.
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
I don't think this quote really has much to do with what DA is about. There is the freedom to be sick- one that everyone supports- and then there is shirking responsibility. I'm sure franklin has another insipid quote about this. At any rate by acting responsibly and understanding that if everyone followed the DA's "ideals" of laziness then society would collapse, one certainly does not give up freedom. If anything he preserves it, for in anarchy a lot more freedom would be lost than having to go to work every day (if you can consider this oppression under the working conditions for most of the people who post to this site and would participate in such an event)- how much freedom would you have if there were no food, or internet connection
As far as the US economy being good because of oppression, etc. you may be right to an extent, but this has little to do with the argument that you present.
It's Easter Sunday (Happy Easter to all! He is risen indeed, etc, etc...), a very special day to some people. So it's interesting to see all the offended reactions at a bunch of performance artists who dare to poke some fun at what is apparently the Great Y*hw*h of the West -- El Capitalismo!
Browse through the site. Read the articles and the press clippings. Enjoy! The best humor often contains a grain or two of truth. (I also recommend Petreley's April Fools column, if you haven't seen it yet).
--
--
=8^
It is a lesson to be learned. If the mainstream press hadn't kow-tow'd to the meme-hypers of the day, but instead had challenged their various inane assertions, we wouldn't have gone through those dark days. The lesson has yet to be learned.
--
--
=8^
--
--
=8^
These "communist subversives, infiltrators, and fellow travelers" were just human beings. They may have been socialists or communists during the Great Depression, or had friends and relatives who were -- it was not all that uncommon back then. And the name-calling of the day was only a hair's breadth away from the taunts of "liberal" and "socialist" today, to put it in a more modern context; what was different then was the widely-held belief that these people were somehow agents of Stalin (99.9% of them were, in fact, not). Even the flouridation of the water supply was thought by some to be a Soviet plot; take Joe's opportunist hype with a grain of salt, keeping in mind the political and cultural climate.
How old are you? I'm old enough to have had neighbors and babysitters who had first-hand stories to tell. Grow the fsck up, and get your history from books, not pamphlets. Hell, at least grab some of Herblock's books that touch upon that era -- lots of nice pictures for you to look at, if the text is a bit too much for you.
--
--
=8^
I still stand by every single word I've uploaded. Including the admonition that you should take the time to study the era (circa 1930-1955).
It's opening night for baseball. You go hunting witches if you want; I'll just sit and watch some stud paint the corners. You'll have to wait 'til tomorrow to catch some Reds.
Say "good night", Gracie.
--
--
=8^
"Kinder, Kirche, Küche" was, IIRC, a big slogan of theirs (though my German sucks nowadays -- someone can correct me). If anything, the slogan isn't far removed from all those "family values" and "God-and-Country" US pols. Socialists? Come on.
--
--
=8^
Alger Hiss
That's a person, not an accomplishment.
The Bomb
I don't see what Stalin's German scientists have to do with a bunch of ordinary State Department employees (they wouldn't have known a Klaus Fuchs from a Klaus Flouride). You're confusing the issue of a list of people (the "Wheeling List") with the very real activities of a bunch of very real spies. McCarthy's "commies" had as much to do with the bomb as they did with Truman's German scientists.
12hr notice of the invasion of Korea at Inchon
See previous riposte.
notice of the Berlin Airlift
See previous paragraph.
The knowledge that Marshall told Chang Kai-Shek we weren't going to intervene militarily in China
See previous. Chiang was a bastard, but he was our bastard, eh?
Pre-knowledge of the creation of West Germany
Like that one was a big surprise. East and West Germany were essentially created from day one, just like the Koreas and the Vietnams. It was a secret only in the sense that Double-U Bush's presidential candidacy is. The Berlin Wall was a surprise; the Federal Republic was not.
Notice that none of the witch hunts did anything to eliminate spying. That's probably because the "witches" by and large weren't the spies. The "they" that achieved this list of "accomplishments" are not the "they" that McCarthy were after. Only paranoiacs (and, at the time, cheap publicity-starved opportunists) will take the time to connect the dubious dots.
I know how stubborn pride can make you stand by your incorrect assertions. I was a communist once, too.
I was always a conservative, and I've never much liked being lumped in with morally and ethically challenged "conservatives" like McCarthy, Reagan, and Gingrich -- that's why this is a big issue to me. And I stubbornly stand by my correct assertions. We were off topic to begin with, and now you're saying a bunch of cowed deer-in-the-headlights government employees were the master spies of the age. I don't think so.
--
--
=8^
It's crap, just like your posts (I've read all of the above). Where was Saint-Simon in '33? Where was he during Peron's heyday? Until he writes his accounts of the reigns of Hitler, Peron, Pinochet, Suharto, Franco, and Franjo, your parrotings are no better than those of a Nostradamus freak. "Socialism" the word and "socialism" the 20th Century reality are two different things, especially in the hands of someone so virulently and irrationally anti-"socialist" like you. Given that Saint-Simon was dead long before Marx published a single word and long before Keynes, Lenin, and Harrington were born, maybe you shouldn't drag him into this without his permission. Learn to do your own thinking and learn to write in your own words, not half-assed misappropriations of vaguely tangentially-relevant dead Frenchmen.
--
--
=8^
No it isn't. This is very stupid.
All modern socialism sprang from Saint-Simon. He was the first to coalesce (sp?) all the fragments of envy and hatred under one philosophical roof. He even coined the term "Socialism." Understand this, and understand history better.
This is also very stupid. If you're going to reduce socialism to "envy" and "anger", then there's a hell of a lot of stuff that you need to understand.
It is very common these days for socialists to marginalize Saint Simon, since he openly endorsed the horror that socialism would eventually spring upon the earth. In this, he was not only the father of socialism, but it's greatest adversary, since he flamed other socialists for their dishonesty.
Dishonesty comes in all political flavors. I would refer Saint-Simon to Matthew 7:3-5. I'm sure there's many reasons for people to marginalize Saint-Simon. Your post does nothing to change what I wrote in the previous post; the guy who coined the word "television" would probably not be the best person to manage the hardware at an HDTV station.
To quote someone else: "Signs are signs, and some of them are lies."
--
--
=8^
No. I'm just not a big fan of mindless anti-communism.
You make a lame assertion with no backup, I supply facts which deny your assertion, you slander and make new lame assertion.
Your scattershot "facts" have little to do with the argument. Yes, there were -- and are -- spies afoot. No, I don't think McCarthy was being honest; like many politicians these days, he demagogued the surfaces of a popular issue without wasting time with relevant facts. It was extremely successful until enough people from both parties called him on the pointlessness of his "quest".
Sen. McCarthy wanted to know why there were communist agents working at the State Department. He was stonewalled. His personality didn't help matters, but he understood the brevity of the situation. He understood that communism seeks the violent enslavement of productive people. He understood that communism kills. He understood that communism lies. He understood that communism was (and still is) the single greatest threat to life and liberty.
Communists, real or imagined, have some sort of monopoly on lies? You make it sound like some sort of alien virus. If Communism is so uniquely a threat, then why is life and liberty threatened all around the world today without the help of communists? There haven't been riots in Paraguay and Indonesia because of communist oppression -- it was good old "democratically elected" governments that were at fault. American governments have enslaved and "ethnic cleansed" their own populace without the help of some sort of "Agenda from Moscow". It's not about ideology; it's about people. An anti-communist like Hitler did as much damage as a "communist" like Stalin. An anti-communist like Chiang was every bit the toxic despot that Mao was. Do you get it now? They all summoned their boogie men as a means of getting or holding onto power, but it would be ludicrous to take their words seriously.
There were communists in the State Department. There were communists in the Defense Department. There were even communists in the White House staff. Are we to believe your assertion that they were simply doing their jobs and minding their own business? Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs proved that they weren't. KGB documents proved that they weren't. The HUAC proved that they weren't.
I'm sure there were "communists" in those places before, during, and after this era. It's just name-calling in your hands and in McCarthy's. You even labeled me a communist just because I point out McCarthy's making use of the era's hysteria to advance his career.
To the communists, every little bit helped. Every communist government employee, every communist labor leader, every communist school teacher, and every communist film director meant as much to the cause of communism as any pair of scientists or any Undersecretary of State, because a twisted mind means with influence over others means as much a tidbit of information.
The United States and Western Europe was in serious danger in the 40s and 50s from a communist insurgency, and it took the Red Scare and the help of the Kruchschev report for that danger to subside.
For that Joe McCarthy was a hero.
Geez! You're sounding like Frank Burns and J Edgar. To equate the popularity of a Communist Party in Western Europe with some sort of impending Soviet takeover is just paranoid; in a sane person, that popularity might be cause to be wary, but it's not the same thing as actual guerrillas like there must have been in Greece or Turkey. This silly line of thought led to all those corrupt Italian governments, among many other things, like the "redistribution of wealth" that was the Marshall Plan, the rape of East Timor, the murderous governments of Pinochet and Videla, and the utter sham known as the "Vietnam War".
Give it a rest, Major Burns. Joe McCarthy is a dead two-bit politician, not a martyr.
--
--
=8^
--
--
=8^
--
--
=8^
--
--
=8^
Then why can you spell Marcuse? Or Khrushchev, for that matter?
--
--
=8^
--
--
=8^
They changed the numbers to be much larger and clearer (sans-serif, bold font), to be more easily readable to those with poor eyesight. They also used some more special, glittery ink, and new watermarking designs and interwoven metallic strips to stop counterfeit operations.
Since there are well over 140 regular season games I think you'd have trouble scheduling them all so they fall on a weekend.
I've yet to see a place where socialism has worked. I've NEVER seen any place successfully implement communism. The USSR tried but failed miserably as their fat cat Big Brother government got too power hungry to actually give a shit about the people. Sorry, but if communism means waiting in lines that stretch around the corner to pick at bare grocery store shelves for stale bread then I'll happily stick to my money-grubbing capitalist system. I work, I make money, I go buy whatever I want, whenever I want, and however much I want.
youre gonna call in sick on saturday? remember that the 6th is a tuesday :)
Too bad I can not participate:
1: I am unemployed,
2: I am sick for real. =)
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
--
I suspect that this is due (on all sides) primarily to frustration with repeating oneself over and over and over to people who refuse to listen past the first word, which is fairly common here. (although less so since the new moderation system went into effect)
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
That's what it's about.
-- The unsig...
I can work 20 hours a week and spend the rest on charities or at my daughter's softball games because most of my income is generated by investments that I made 20 years ago. Thankfully, my taxes are low enough that I get to keep most of what I make and spend/invest it as I see fit rather than waste it on the whim of some 'crat in DC. It's not too bad being a semi-retired 40 year old lamer that never graduated. ;-)
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
dollars are pretty lame looking. They are going to stick with the "greenback" motif because it is "classic". Oh well. AFAIK, they have never addressed the size or texture issue. Probably there would be some problem with changing too many cash register drawers and automatic money changers for that to ever fly.
I wonder, do those folks with varied bill sizes have changers?
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Perhaps redhat.com should apply some of slashdots new preference features to customise the content that appears on their site so only relavant slashdot information gets published.
I don't think this news item is very techie-oriented, it's more of an ideological nature, so it's arguable why it's on Slashdot.
But it's here, so it's there at Red Hat's portal as well, which I think is a good policy: Mirror Slashdot without filtering out any articles. If they would censor the news, there wouldn't be much point to it, it would raise suspicion. Since they do not censor, I made Red Hat's portal my starting homepage. Gives me a great overview over all of my favorite sites which I visit afterwards when I noticed some interesting stuff. Saves me the time to visit several sites if they haven't updated or interesting news, so if they would limit their mirrors, I'd have to go there all the time. Personally, I think the advantage of making this kind of comfortable surfing possible outweighs the disadvantage of a few unrelated items on their site. Of course it would be nice if we could customize Red Hat's portal just like Slashdot, but still, the uncensored overview is what counts.
Regarding unrelated news, well, get a Slashdot account and filter it out. Maybe we'll get a score system for topics as well. Would be nice, but I'm happy as it is. Thanks to all who made this possible, both here at Slashdot and there at Red Hat, keep up the good work.
-- Eavy (: Linux Is Not UniX
Agreed. I have no idea what they're trying to accomplish except possibly publicity (hoorah for the media). I can just see some PHB sitting in his office thinking "Damn, 1/3 of my people didn't show up today. Maybe capitalism is all wrong after all."
Uhh I hate to burst your bubble, but there's more to the world than capitalism and communism. This article makes no mention of communism...it just seems to take a strong stance against capitalism. For all I know these guys could be communists, but it's darn near impossible to tell for sure.
:P), but this seems like the kind of "cheap-shot" that communists are known to do to bring down capitalism. I agree capitalism is pretty heinous, but organising meaningless "protests" like this just makes things worse. And quite frankly I'd rather have capitalism or whatever the hell this is called than have communism.
Although (hopefully I won't offend any communists here
And free software isn't necessarily communist-like. Communism was still just an oligarchy trying to control one big-ass nation of far too many people, and being mighty restrictive as well. It was still based on currency and money, but the government had control over it. Money doesn't factor in at all with free software -- communism, socialism, capitalism, feudalism, monarchy, you name it, any political system that's been devised doesn't really lend itself to or away from free software as far as I can see.
It's a shame that the philosophy of liberty is only understood in the US, and even then by so few. We should have listened to Pres. Washington and left Europe to destroy itself.
BTW, if you would stop throwing that McCarthy moniker around as if it were some sort of slander and bother to research Sen. McCarthy's actual beef with the State Department at that time, you would actually realize that HE WAS RIGHT!
That list was surpressed by both the Speaker of the House (a Republican!), the committee chairmen (Democrat in '50, Republican in '47) and in executive orders by Truman himself (in '47 and again in '50).
McCarthy was in over his head, but only because the Truman (and later Eisenhower) administrations put politics above national security.
Sen. McCarthy demanded answers as to why these people were still working at State after three years, and he was fsck'd for it.
Get your facts straight.
umm... over 100 Million people slaughtered by communist governments, with over 60 million in that wonderful "socialist paradise," the Soviet Union?
I guess you've resorted to the typical tactic of bashing the messenger, ignore the message. Let me set you straight with some more "unusual assertions" known by so many to be FACTS.
KGB documents demonstrated that McCarthy's original Wheeling list(i.e. the '47 list) was extraordinarily accurate WRT who were communist agents. In fact, the KGB docs show that the '47 list was not only VERY accurate as far as WHO was a Red in State, but it was also very accurate as far extent of involvement these individuals had with Moscow. There are only two or three instances where the House findings differ from the KGB docs.
Now, are you going to slander me some more, or are you going to get some facts yourself? Oh, but wait! The facts support Sen. McCarthy and my position! I guess you have to bash me and bash YAF some more!
Well here are some of the things they accomplished...
Alger Hiss
The Bomb
12hr notice of the invasion of Korea at Inchon
notice of the Berlin Airlift
The knowledge that Marshall told Chang Kai-Shek we weren't going to intervene militarily in China
Pre-knowledge of the creation of West Germany
... and lots of other fun little tidbits.
I know how stubborn pride can make you stand by your incorrect assertions. I was a communist once, too.
I will grant you that nazism was significantly more virulent than other implementations of national socialism (mussolini, franco, peron, tudjman in modern croatia) but all of the horrible activities of Nazi Germany are philosophically supported by pre-existing national and international socialist philosophy, as are the horrors of Stalin.
I would encourage you to read the works of the Comte de Saint Simon. His frankness about the realities of socialism (in all its forms) will turn your hair white. His explanation of his plan and the variants of his socialism is extraordinarily prophetic.
I appear to be getting under your skin... good.
Your irrationality is getting the best of you, because you missed several points.
You are right that Saint-Simon was dead long before Marx, Keynes, Lenin or Harrington were on the scene. However, it was very helpful for him to have already published his work when the more modern socialists began forming their opinions, otherwise he would not have been the influence he was on them. You seem to think that people come up with ideas in a vacuum. Well they don't. The socialists immediately after Saint-Simon frequently cited him, and those after those cited them, and so on.
All modern socialism sprang from Saint-Simon. He was the first to coalesce (sp?) all the fragments of envy and hatred under one philosophical roof. He even coined the term "Socialism." Understand this, and understand history better.
Saint-Simon talked about the Terror, he talked about touchy-feely socialism, he talked about nationalistic socialism, he talked about internationalistic socialism, and he even talked about how every form of socialism requires the violence of the Terror and that to deny the violence is to deny the basic nature of socialism itself.
It is very common these days for socialists to marginalize Saint Simon, since he openly endorsed the horror that socialism would eventually spring upon the earth. In this, he was not only the father of socialism, but it's greatest adversary, since he flamed other socialists for their dishonesty.
That is something you can't run away from, no matter how hard you slander. The Comte de Saint Simon talked about what would become all the forms of socialism we know of today, he exposed the lies they would tell to get power, and what they will do when they got that power. He hasn't been wrong yet.
Waiting for the next slander...
I wonder if you are not just arguing for the hell of it, because you are acting like you are. You make a lame assertion with no backup, I supply facts which deny your assertion, you slander and make new lame assertion.
Sen. McCarthy wanted to know why there were communist agents working at the State Department. He was stonewalled. His personality didn't help matters, but he understood the brevity of the situation. He understood that communism seeks the violent enslavement of productive people. He understood that communism kills. He understood that communism lies. He understood that communism was (and still is) the single greatest threat to life and liberty. There were communists in the State Department. There were communists in the Defense Department. There were even communists in the White House staff. Are we to believe your assertion that they were simply doing their jobs and minding their own business? Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs proved that they weren't. KGB documents proved that they weren't. The HUAC proved that they weren't.
To the communists, every little bit helped. Every communist government employee, every communist labor leader, every communist school teacher, and every communist film director meant as much to the cause of communism as any pair of scientists or any Undersecretary of State, because a twisted mind means with influence over others means as much a tidbit of information.
The United States and Western Europe was in serious danger in the 40s and 50s from a communist insurgency, and it took the Red Scare and the help of the Kruchschev report for that danger to subside.
For that Joe McCarthy was a hero.
After reading your website, I realize I'm wasting my time with you. I'm sorry, but I hope you don't fall as hard as I did when I realized that socialism = death.
In the universe there is only freedom and degrees of unfreedom. By definition there are no victims of capitalism, since capitialism is freedom. Unfortunately, when dealing with regimes that are unfree, one must resort to less-than-honorable tactics to secure one's interests. Not that the US is all that capitalist anymore, anyway.
Exactly how do big corporations emerge and exactly how do they crush those weaker?
Exactly how do lobbying groups have more power than citizens?
Exactly how does Texaco (or any large corp) have more power than a member of Congress?
What is power?
Who has it?
How did they get it?
Who gave it to them?
Just to be fair, I'm not setting you up, but trying to get you to understand the hidden fallacy of your statement.
Aside from your beautiful, unbiased, factually based assessment of Sen. Joe McCarthy, and your highly knowledgeable indications that Stalin actually cared who he put to death, I have to ask you...
What is the concept of communism?
You didn't quite get my point.
Why does it matter to a corporation whether to influence governments?
Been there, done that. from Marx to Marcusa.
What do you know of national socialist philosophy that leads you to this conclusion?
Did you know that national socialism claims the same philosophical roots as international socialism (i.e. communism)?
Did you know that modern euro-socialism (what so many refer to as socialism today) also has the same philosophical roots as both national and international socialism?
Did you know that the term "Socialism" was first coined by the Comte de Saint Simon during the French Revolution and was the philosophical basis for "the Terror"?
Do you know what are the philosophically determined end results are for international socialism, national socialism, modern euro-socialism, and the socialism first described by the Comte de Saint Simon? (Quick answer: The exact same thing.)
Do you know the differences in tactics for implementation of the various different types of socialism as philosophically described by each? (Quick Answer: nothing but for degree.)
Did you know that the tactic of equating capitalism with fascism and with the "right wing" came from Stalin himself?
Did you know that fascism's anti-communism is not derived from differences with communism, but with similarities with communism and competition for the same people in the marketplace of ideas, and that this was routinely refered to by fascist philosophers and by Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco?
I wish I wasn't my own company- could use a sick day.
I bet youve never been employed the old fashioned way, have you?
The trasition of some set of assumptions in the past does not guarentee the trasition of all assumtptions in the future.
Anarchy gets in the way of me getting rich.
Honestly this is pretty sad. If you're not happy in your current job to this extent, perhaps you need to consider trading off some pay for a job you really enjoy.
There are a lot of elementary schools out there that could use some dedicated people. Does your system need an experienced technology person to set up Internet access in schools (and spread a little Free OS lovin' along the way)?
Even if you're not ready to quit your job, you might find yourself a little happier if you do something worthwhile.
In the end it's not really your PHB's fault you don't quit and leave his ass in the dust.
Well, if russia had switched to capitalism *before* their economy went down the toilet you might have a point but they didn't. The argument you are presenting is the logical equivalent of: "My wife told me yesterday she was going to divorce me so I immediately switched from christianity to buddhism but sure enough today she divorced me so I now conclude that buddhism does not work".
there are two kinds of people in this world - those who divide people into two groups and those who don't
Rob I can tell you're an American because the event is meant to be a 'World Call in Sick day' from the body of the article even though the title called it a NATIONAL call in sick day. I suppose the US thinks they are the world (e.g. world series baseball, etc) ;)
Well more seriously. I take these ideas with a sense of humour because if everyone was to call in sick then what would happen is they'd probably get sacked as the bosses would know something is going on and there's plenty of people just willing to take a job. It'd probably be bad for people who were *really* sick on that day as the boss would just think they were staying off for the sake of it.
Anyway talk about this day - but don't be serious about it.
It should have been on a Monday. As a jingle on a local radio station goes:
It's a Monday and you know it call in sick
Got a cold a flu a fever take your pick
If you want to ditch the day and still collect your pay
It's a Monday and you know it call in sick
--
Baseball isn't what I'd consider a spectator sport, but then what appeals to the US in the way of sport is usually different to what appeals to the rest of the world. But if they enjoy it so be it but why have major sporting events on days that many people work? If they didn't hold the FA Cup on a Saturday so I could watch it I'd be annoyed.
All our football (soccer) matches are played outside of normal working hours (Saturday/Sunday afternoons or weekday evenings) so it's very rarely we need to find an excuse to call in sick in the name of sport.
It's the best way to have it.
--
Q. What does this article have to do with opensource?
t ml
A. It's publicised on the RedHat website!! http://www.redhat.com/
At this present moment you'll find this article listed on the RedHat.com website as part of their stupid policy of blindly copying slashdot articles. RedHat have a massively supportive policy of supporting open source software and as their site is promoting the event it could be bad for RedHat as well as the open source community in general when these sort of articles are mirrored on a website.
Perhaps redhat.com should apply some of slashdots new preference features to customise the content that appears on their site so only relavant slashdot information gets published.
RedHat aren't doing themselves any good with this portal. A few days ago it mentioned that Rob had switched slashdot over to Debian!!
http://www.redhat.com/news/slashdot/archive/0.h
(on the JWZ article!!)
--
Yeah tha almighty buck! The currency designed so all the notes look different so you can easily tell them apart and are different sizes to help the blind and people with no eyesight!
Seriously does the US still have banknotes that all look the same or have they changed since I was last there 8 years ago?
--
- Positioned the site at http://www.redhat.com/ - the site where people go to look for info on RedHat (this includes people who know nothing about Linux and want to find out more)
- Dumped the raw articles (spelling mistakes and all) onto the front page of their site - and most importantly there's no way to just click on the article and view the comments - part of the fun of slashdot
- Related to not being able to view the comments - the articles about slashdot improving it's moderation and comments system are still printed. Someone who reads redhat.com and not slashdot will be thinking 'What comments system - I can't comment to these!'
Slashdot is 'news for nerds' people in the know about computers. Some of these articles are irrelavent to Linux/Open Source but Rob may want to include them for public interest (it's his right to). They look stupid on RedHat's site. Some articles can be damaging to RedHat such as the 'Is RedHat the next Microsoft?' and the fact Rob admits to changing to Debian in an article.RedHat need to do something to improve that site or at least move it to a location more appropriate e.g. www.linux-news.com but that seems to have been taken - RedHat think they must be some more suitable domains around.
--
I wouldn't put it past them to spread fud like that. The question is: as RedHat are promoting this call in sick event by displaying the slashdot article on their page does this mean that RedHat support the event. Well would you announce on your home page an event you didn't agree with - particulary if you weren't paid to do so?
--
Especially given that I'm a temp, and while I can take all the days off I want, I never know when I _will_ have work. Ergo, I work whenever I can, and in fact, was lucky to get to work on Easter weekend for more money.
However, here in the US at least, National Call In Sick Day is May 19th. We were just talking about it a day or two ago.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
You realize, of course, that 40% of all sick days are taken on either Friday or Monday. Obvious long-weekend goldbricking. I know this is true 'cuz I saw it in Dilbert.
Seems to work as well as anything else up here in Canada. Even our consevatives are socialist.
> I can just see some PHB sitting in his office thinking "Damn, 1/3 of my people didn't show up today. Maybe capitalism is all wrong after all."
Well, if one person understands this, we have done our part.
Remember - What was the wild fantasy of lunatic communists yesterday becomes the accepted standard today (progressive income tax, anyone?), so what is a wild fantasy of a lunatic communist today, _will_ be the accepted standard tomorrow.
that's right-it has nothing to do with linux and actually hurts Redhat's reputation in the business world. Linux is the only non-MS OS that actually has a chance in the corporate world and these guys are blowing it
---
I think it's more about the slashdot First! kiddies
---
but George Lucas will make it all up
---
Too bad much of it is at the expense of the rest of the world. I always love computer geeks who have grown
up in suburbia, with middle class families, never known poverty, got a decent education, and have a lot of job
prospects generalizing about how good Capitalism is. Isn't it easy to see things in a vacuum?
I didn't grow up in suburbia, nor am I from the middle class, I've known poverty both as a child and an adult. I dragged my ass, kicking and screaming through an education, and have fought tooth and nail for every freakin' scrap I own. On top of that, our 1/2 socialist govt takes 43% of EVERYTHING I earn.
The "slave labor" practices in South American and PacRim nations is abhorent. However, those are the same conditions that most of our ancestors, in the U.S., went through to get where we are. My greatgrandparents all worked in factories (in Maine and New Jersey), in terrible conditions, to make lives for themselves and their families.
The people, and especially children, in those nasty factories now, will grow up with better access to capital than their parents, and eventually, will be able to pay for educations for themselves and their children. Now, point taken on the factories that actually impliment slave labor: boycott the companies that support that sort of economics. Don't buy Nike or Reebok (they use the same factories). Part of the beauty of capitalism, is that YOU have a CHOICE as to what you buy, and that choice equals a "vote" that hits companies right where they feel it - their income. Use that power if you don't like the conditions those companies allow.
The U.S. influences in other countries, esp in South America, are so far from what capitalism is supposed to be as to be indistinguishable from totalitarian solcialism. Just because our experiment in capitalism is failing, fast, doesn't mean that capitalism is a bad thing. Capitalism is the most fair economic system possible: if you work, you benefit; if you don't, you suffer. Charity can easily handle (esp. with lower/no tax burden) the few in any society that simply can't work.
The list goes on... So you see, I can understand why a lot of people love Capitalism, because they don't take the
time to consider why their country has so much relative to their neighbors to the south. Or maybe they do, and
just don't care (even scarier).
I do take that into consideration, in my purchases and my thinking. I try not to buy from companies that use bad labor practices, both in and out of the States. I don't own a car (BIKE!), for a number of reasons. I don't support the American meat habit, for health and global economic reasons.
However, I am a capitalist. I like earning money for my labors, and like supporting others with that money. I don't like other people telling me what I can and cannot do with my earnings, esp. with the implied violence of our current tax system.
Last thought on socialism: What would you do when the Worker's Generosity Party tells you that you cannot be a programmer anymore, that you have to go and work in the fields, harvesting grain, for the "good of the people"?
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
This is not a call for censorship but should ethnic "humor" be getting bumped up to a +1?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
They've severely uglified the hundred, fifty, and twenty dollar bills and supposedly incorporated new anti-counterfeitting(sp) technology. Somehow they just don't seem like "real money".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Remember - What was the wild fantasy of lunatic communists yesterday becomes the accepted standard today (progressive income tax, anyone?), so what is a wild fantasy of a lunatic communist today, _will_ be the accepted standard tomorrow.
Two things:
One, I would hardly call a progressive income tax a resounding endorsement of Communism. It's just an easy way for the government (any government, Communist or otherwise) to extort more money out of the citizenry.
Two, even if the ideas of people who were once considered radicals have become acceptable now, it's very faulty logic to assume that the same must always be true for the future. Maybe today's radicals will be considered wacko idiots by future generations. Just being against the status quo does not guarantee anyone eternal hero status. History is littered with a million nutcases for every Galileo...
The World Is A Very Big Place, as they would say in alt.folklore.urban.
Here in the U.S., the fiscal year begins 1 July, not 6 April.
Happy Easter, to those /.ers of the Christian persuasion.
Interesting to see someone other than an American think the world revolves around their nationalistic ways. The significance of the date is that it is the first day of the financial new year -- in Britain, that is.
In the US at least, it won't cost your employer a dime usually. Most jobs have a certain number of sick days allowed per year. Take one, so what? Employer had to allow for it anyway.
--
Infuriate left and right
"What's Open Software but Socialism?"
It's *auto*socialism. As in everybody involved is doing it 'cause they believe in it and want to. Nobody is forced to work for the state and give all of their (oh, sorry, "the people's") stuff to the same.
Let me see if I can dumb this down to _your_ level, moron. You _are_ free to believe whatever you want as a United States Citizen, provided you don't transgress the rights of other citizens. Unfortunately communism _demands_ that I give up every right I have for the good of your state-rights which are guaranteed to me by the Constitution, making communism and the US entirely at odds with each other.
hopefully we can get a larger participation in the u.s. this year!!
If you do, it'll be because of the tremendous commercial success of the Internet.
BTW, where'd the computer you posted that come from? Built by a capitalist company, or did a "benevolent" government just pull it out of their ass?
But due to communism being the form of life in most of the countries today that US citizens see as bad (Russia, China) it just proves unless you have an uncorrupt government, it fails.
There are flaws and benefits of any system. Pointing out all the flaws is not the way to make anyone here happy, or willing to consider other things. Instead of pointing to capatilism as bad sue to Microsoft or other examples, find the good things about other systems.
Why do so many people see the US as everyone getting shot by gangs and such? Every country has problems like this, but the fact that I live in a fairly decent sized city in the US and have never herd a gun shot except at a firing range should prove alot against this. No I don't live in a rich suburbia area, I live in an area where about 5% of the cities welfare people live 3 blocks away.
Also, don't blame crime on capitalism or socialism or any form or government.
And finaly, revevber what you see on the news is bad. The news does not represent the way of life in a country. If it did, I would think of any country as a bad place due to riots and terrorist attacks and other "news making stories".
Here we have a few reasons. No one system is perfect.
/.'s can understand:
Also, changing from communism to capitalism or vice versa would take alot of work in a country the size of Russia. Let me put this is terms
Take a poorly running Windows system and all it's programs, and try to convert this to a Linux system, witl all functions from the windows programs covered in Linux (including Indeo 5 codecs, IE bookmark importing, etc...) This would take time, and result in a sizeable down time. Now apply this example to communism to capitalism or capitalism to communism.
Yep, US money is still the same size and color. Just all the new things added to prevent counterfitting.
The one thing that I couldn't understand was the bills in Scotland and England. It was nice to see varity, but the fact there is no standard for the bills drove me nuts. Having several 10 pound bills that looked completly different was hard to get used to. What would be nice to see for bills anywhere is different size, and somethign that looks the same. I could even deal with every bank having their own design as long as say the corners or the outer rectangle is the same for bills of the same amount.
...cuz I was sick. I agree with the general sentiment thus far: screwing over your employer doesn't help anyone.
Queens of the Stone Age - they rule
F*cked over by capitalism? Please explain.
Do we have an item in the federal budget called "Foreign Aid" because of money they loan to us? Is it their technology and resources that are helping us to improve our standard of living?
communism: a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed
This hasn't ever worked, and never will.
But once that happens, the choice is gone -- when you create software, you'll have to give it up, or it doesn't get used.
I don't think this will ever happen. Let's say you have a business problem that my software can solve TODAY, but for a fee. You, as the consumer, have two choices: Assuming it doesn't already exist, you can wait until someone in the open source community decides that it's important enough to THEM to put in the time required, or you can hire a programmer to do it for you. What do you think the most likely choice would be?
While oil is an excellent example of a valuable resource supplied by foreign countries, do we "take" it from them? And how many of those who supply us with oil are considered "developing" countries?
Here's what I don't understand - if foreign aid and military defense are exchanged as part of a TRADE agreement, how is it that these foreign countries are getting screwed (which is what was suggested in the original post)?
Why are you people so afraid of oss being called communistic? What's so bad about being communist? Are you people still believing everything you're told in school? There are other socio-economic models that are proven effective other than capitalism.
-lx
Sweden is pretty darn socialist, I think, and they seem to be doing ok. And frankly, in the case of N. Korea, Russia, etc., most of the damage has been done by capitalists trying to destroy them. Yup, Russia seems to be doin ok with its brand new capitalist system. Fixed 'em right up.
-lx
They're changing them. They increased the size of the person's picture on the bill, but that's all (still green, black, and white).
How about all the /.'ers out there make our own call in sick day, and hey, how about we just happen to make it the day of the oppening of the new Star Wars movie. Does that idea sound good to anyone else out there? We could have purpose to ditch work, and have a great time while we do it.
This isn't anticapitalism. If you don't like your employer, then change jobs. At least in the U.S. this should be easy.
Hey, I have an idea--why not just fudge our billable hours on the sixth? We can all get $50 extra and donate it to worthy causes!
Uggh. Having this sort of thing associated with good things like freed software makes me ill.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
The Concorde is a huge economic mess. That is why Boeing never produced their SST, it is not profitable. You blow all your funds on fuel, forcing you to charge a ridiculous amount of money, but then you get no passengers. You get there in a hurry though.
The Concorde is way ahead of its time, an SST won't be feasible until someone invents a better engine.
What is so pathetic about Boeing planes anyway?
Q.
I thought Marx himself made no distinction between "communism" and "socialism" and that the distinction was only later introduced as the Leninists tried to legitimize their revolution of state controlled capitalism in the eyes of the people?
I saw a program on tv about these poeple,
they are quite fanatic.
their purposes are to legaly fuck all the banks and credit card companies,
phone services and every other capitalist company,
by owing money to them.
but when nobody cooporates (most of the world is lazy otomatron window-using suits),
it really is useless...
(if i remeber correctly,
during a visit to london i heard one of them at speakers' corner
he attracted a crowd,
and had many good points,
he even trashed bill gates and windows,
and recommended linux,
but I dont know if he's affiliated with them)
---
---
I'm going to live forever, or die in the attempt.
This is great!!! I'm calling in sick on the 6th.
And the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th....
Do the obvious to e-mail me.
While capitalism may not be perfect, I personally do not think that "destroy(ing) the monetary system" is any kind of action that can result in improving our system. Really, if you want to change the system, propose and work for something better, don't just attack the existing state(and those who dwell within)!
... which is funded in a large part by tax-payers!
In my case, as I work at a University, if I take an unnecessary sick-day, there is a cost to the institution
And what about the poor schmoes that DO work while their "consumer terrorist" coworkers call in sick? Is punishing them by making them carry a bigger workload part of this whole plan?
YS
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
Good grief! I think maybe it is YOUR reading that begs for more breadth. America has won its most recent wars because of her industrial might -- a thing built by a market economy in a land rich with natural resources.
Capitalism is effective because it gives everyone an incentive to do something useful for society. People tend to be rewarded for thinking of thngs or services that other people want. Folks with useless ideas fiind those ideas bring no rewards. So, they apply themselves towards finding a way to be useful in some way. Over time, the better ideas succeed and everyone is better off for it. It's basically social darwinism. No one has demonstrated a better system for motivating people to be productive. It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn good.
Yeah, lets teach the television industry a lesson. Or those hospitals. Wait, maybe we should show the food industry who's in control. Second though, let's protest all the companies that respond to public demand!
Get a grip guys. This crap leads to socialism.
_______
2B1ASK1
The problem is in the opensource attitude that all commercial software is bad, any any use of commercial software is evil. By practicing boycotts of commercial code, people hope to create a 100% non-commercial, free opensource world. In this all-or-none opensource world, opensourcers have stripped ME of my right to gain financially from my creative talents. But if I really really want to produce software in that perfect opensource world, I have to involuntarily create without financial reward.
I don't want to write software because I enjoy it; I want to create software that otherwise wouldn't exist, in exchange for a paycheck.
_______
2B1ASK1
If it weren't for us brainwashed american sheep let astray by corporate amerika, you and the rest of the country would be living in some shanty commune where your food and clothing would be given to you out of goodwill (if you were lucky).
I'd much rather rely on getting my [food|clothing|computer software] from a company based on self-preservation (which is what capitalism boils down to) than relying on someone to give me handouts.
I'm a proud sheep. Bhaaaaa... Bhaaaaa.....
_______
2B1ASK1
"As in everybody involved is doing it 'cause they believe in it and want to."
That's the point -- not everybody want's to do it because the believe in it. Some of us choose to make money because we feel that we should be rewarded for creating something that never existed before. Attitudes in the opensource community perpetually try to drive commercial software out of business. But once that happens, the choice is gone -- when you create software, you'll have to give it up, or it doesn't get used.
_______
2B1ASK1
"But isn't socialism better? A lot of countries seem to be doing very well with it."
Oh, yeah, I'd really want to live in a socialist country that dictates the value of my work. Let's say I was a doctor in a socialist country where my pay scale is dictated by how much everyone could afford. What reason would I have for making myself a better doctor if I'm still going to make the same amount? Now you have a country full of people who may advance themselves in their field, but have no encouragement to do so. Would you choose a hospital in america or europe knowing this?
Of course it could be that you don't have any money (in america) because you simply can't do anything of any value to anybody. Then you start thinking it's unfair that someone else who has more money gets a better doctor than you (in denial of the fact that that person did something more valuable than you). Next thing you know, you're talking about how we should all have the same access to the same things, regardless of our status in life. Now, go back and think about the doctor who isn't encouraged to perform better. Now society just coasts along not progressing. Why do you think all of the inventions and progress comes from our country?
Face it, socialism is a system that is desired by people who don't have any means to better themselves under capitalism.
_______
2B1ASK1
My company offers floating protest-days, so I can reschedule whenever I want. I can also carry those protest days over each year. I've got about 5 saved up so far, so I can take a small protest vacation.
_______
2B1ASK1
Let's sue them for wasting our time talking about this.
_______
2B1ASK1
I think U2 should perform an illegal concert from the top of a microsoft building.
"Where the source has no name.... Where the source has no name..."
_______
2B1ASK1
Just realized -- It'll have to be an acoustic show since all the sound engineers will probably want to protest that day too.
_______
2B1ASK1
Yeah good idea! Call it Baseball-palooza.
_______
2B1ASK1
He's refering to the polish protest day.
_______
2B1ASK1
Open Source software isn't socialism, as it is totally voluntary. No one is forcing you to pay taxes into some kind of 'software collective' which is then redistributed. People write Open Source because they enjoy it, not because they have to.
their resources helping us? of course not? the united states would never consider taking resources -- like, for instance, oil -- in exchange for foreign aid, military defense, or other such favoritism! it's unheard of.
-n
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Logged-in comments start at +1.
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
And for the record, no one in my family, or among my friends or their families has a single weapon (except the police officer), nor has anyone I know ever been in jail. And 25% of women will be raped? That's ridiculous. Where'd you get that?
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
And the US is not that violent. In addition to my original statement about my friends/family, no one I know has ever been attacked, robbed, or in any other way been the overt victim of a crime. Why do people think it's so bad here?
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Free software follows the free-market economic model perfectly. Now, I might have a gripe with centrally controlled capitalist economies, but at least they're better than centrally controlled socialist economies. And if you don't have centralized control, you end up with free-market capitalism, linux, GNU, perl, apache, etc.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
ChiChi, your arguements only hold if all players play on a level playing field. They do not. Not all people have equal access to money and/or power. The homeless guy you step over on your way to class every morning (I've been to your YAF site, so I know your not in the real world) has no access to wealth (money) and therefore no power under a capitalist system. Would he or any of the other people who staved to death in US streets be considered 'victims' of capitalism? How about the situation in the old South Africa - millions of blacks subjected to poverty, death and torture due to racism and the good capitalist whites getting rich off of them. Would you then not consider Steven Biko a 'victim' of capitalism?
When the playing field is not a fair one, it really doesn't matter if your economic system is 'capitalist' or 'socialist' - people are oppressed all the same. So instead of giving us URLS to dogmatic right-wing propoganda sites, try thinking for yourself. Ask Karen Silkwood what happens when you try as in individual to stand up to the power of a corporation with the backing of the so-called democratic government...oh, sorry I guess you can't ask her, now can you?(hey I guess she's another 'victim' of you 'freedom').
I don't pretend to be a super-red loving socialist - Marx had some good ideas and he was full of it on a lot of other things (he missed the rise of the service economy for instance), J.J Rouseau had some intersting things to say as well. Wasn't it John Locke who said that no one should have so much land (read this as wealth/money since land was wealth in Locke's time) that another would starve to death. Is Locke now a 'communist' or a 'socialist'? If he were alive I think he'd beg to differ.
Capitalism does not equal freedom. The ends do not justify the means (defeating totalitarian communism in the USSR does NOT make it ok for the US to murder a democratically elected leader of a foriegn nation and replace hime with a brutal dictator who is friendly to US "interests"/companies - see Salvadore Allende, so far victim #4 of you idea of 'freedom').
A good socialist ideal of modern times is that everyone be given an equal chance to succeed - a level playing field. If the choose (see this is freedom) to become Ross Perot or Bill Gates, that's their choice. If they choose to do nothing and live on the poverty line, then that is also their choice. But don't force them to live at that poverty line becasue the don't have access to the tools (money, education, food or power) or because it doesn't fit into the 'maximization of profit' ideas.
Is an unemployed auto worker more free than a cane cutter in Cuba simply because they live in a capitalist, 'free' country? Niether can feed their kids properly and niether can do much about it since they are pretty much powerless - and don't say the auto worker can get another job - where? MacDonalds? Can the economy of the US stand it if everyone has a job and there is no supply/demand tension in the labour market? No. for comapnies to make money and keep wages low, there must always be a greater demand for jobs than supply. So the poor autoworker is stuck as one of the unemployed persons needed so Chrysler can make profits. Is this freedom? Ask the autoworker, s/he may not agree with you.
Freedom is about having the POWER to choose. When you graduate and finally enter the real world think about it in your daily life. That impoverished crack user/dealer who broke into your house or shot you sister during a robbery, they 'must resort to less-than-honorable tactics to secure one's interests' in dealing with a system that is unfree. That's life outside the ivory tower.
Now take all this and apply it to OSS...
God you make me ill with you illogical dogma...I think I have to call in sick tommorow!
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
I appreciate your sentiments, but what can we do about it? This is not a flame or snide remark; I genuinely wish there were some way to improve this situation. The best I can think to do is agitate against our wrongheaded interventions in other countries...
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
RWD wrote:
Also, destroying the most powerful army that had ever been, largely without help for most of the time, required some exertion, or so I am told.
Actually, one can hardly say that they "Destroyed" the German army. 20 million casualties doesn't even make for a pyrhic victory. The Germans made a lot of really bad decisions, otherwise they should have subjugated a portion of the USSR and then dealt with their Western Front.
However, they did manage to survive and hold out while the Germans were playing havoc in their country and certainly there were many amazing acts of bravery. However, I wonder how much of the hard work was encouraged by the purges of Stalin who had upwards of 60 million of his own country men executed.
Yes, 60 million. It's a disgusting figure - and the price paid for Soviet Communism.
It is 25%, however, a vast majority of that is date rape. Any situation where a woman doesn't consent is considered rape. It doesn't have to be violent, there doesn't even have to be a struggle or arguement. violent rape percentage is much much lower.
As for the US being all crime ridden, sure there's crime, but if a person has any common sense at all they can avoid it. A good start is to not live in the ghetto. A majority of violent crimes occur in these places. Regardless of where you are though, trouble will find you if you look for it.
Marge: "Mr. Burns said if you don't come in Friday you shouldn't bother to come in Monday."
Homer: "Whoo-hoo! Four day weekend!"
Capitalist haters fear not. The US economy is going to come to a crawling halt when most of the workforce goes to see Star Wars :O
Deepak Saxena
1999 - Year of the Penguin
Linux Demo Day '99 - http://www.linuxdemo.org
My access to a T1 and a rocking game machine are at work :)
Can you just imagine the FUD ZDNET could spread after reading the front page of RedHat.com:
MAJOR LINUX DISTRIBUTOR SUPPORTS CALL IN SICK DAY
Major Linux distributer RedHat has encouraged the Linux users and developers to participate in a national call in sick day in an attempt to get more people off work so they can help with the Linux kernel. Mr R. Sole from Microsoft says, 'RedHat will go to any level to disrupt the process of capitalism - they expect to disrupt the economy by this event and encourage sales of their OS developed in open source methods simialr to communism'. Mr Sole also adds that this action by RedHat can cause disruption to many business and is a bigger threat to the millennium bug (Mr Sole also points out that Linux suffers tremendously from the Y2K problem). The only way to solve the problem is to have all machines running Windows 98 or NT with the new IE5.1 which is designed to eradicate all Linux content preventing your employees getting any ideas.
Cool Linux PC Badges!
Apologies for the convoluted grammar in parts of my posting - I finished it in a hurry. "Why Software Should Not Have Owners" is here. Also, see "Why Don't You Move to Russia?" in "Why Software Sould Be Free", where RMS asserts that he is not a "cawmunist".
Firstly, you do know that Communism is no longer in power in Moscow (and will probably stay out at least until the next election, if there is one)?
Secondly, you should realise that the Soviet leaders and ideologues were far from being apostles of slacking-off. In fact hard work held a central place in their ideology: hard work, and lots of it, was going to build the glistening paradise of Socialism. Their official art was full of farm-girls driving tractors and burly miners rejoicing at record coal-production figures. You may have heard of the Five-Year Plans? How about the Trans-Siberian Railway? Also, destroying the most powerful army that had ever been, largely without help for most of the time, required some exertion, or so I am told.
No, the problem with the ol' USSR wasn't that the powers that be thought work was a bad thing. One problem was that so much of all that effort was completely wasted due to things like poor co-ordination and outright stupidity. Another problem was perverse incentives. The Party told the people to work ever harder - increasingly, the people thought "What's in it for me? I won't get paid any more if I do, and I won't get fired if I don't". In this the people were being perfectly good capitalists. They saw it wasn't in their self-interest to work hard, and so they didn't. And indeed, absenteeism and slacking off were chronic problems in the latter days of the Soviet Union. This drove the leaders and the ideologues wild, but what could they do without returning to Stalin-style mass terror or giving up on Communism?
Capitalism doesn't work because it fosters a work ethic. It works because having lots of people allocating resources and planning things for their own selfish ends actually produces better results for society than the government trying to work out what would benefit society generally and then having to try to persuade or force everyone to do their bit. In capitalism, people only work because and when they want to (generally, in order to make money) and only employ people because they want to (generally, because they reckon they can make money out of it). Economic theory says that when they would rather take it easy than get paid, they take it easy. Capitalism goes with the flow of self-interest, which is sometimes hardworking, sometimes lazy. The problems return when people calculate that it is in their interests to steal or break contracts - by pulling sickies, for instance.
The Marshall Plan is generally credited with having played a major part in reviving Western Europe after the war. I'm no expert, but I'm willing to bet that the return the US has reaped from financing the more rapid revival of Western Europe's economy has covered the cost of the Marshall Plan many times over by now. In any case it's probably a little much to put in the same league as Pinochet or East Timor, don't you think?
Where does open source have the slightest connection with anti-capitalist sentiment? Through the head of OSI, Eric S. Raymond, a packin' Libertarian? Is it through RMS, the father of ideological opposition to proprietary software? Read the GNU Manifesto. Is that a work of anti-capitalism? Is it Linus Torvalds, now working for big bucks in Transmeta, an archetypal example of that icon of contemporary capitalism, the Silicon Valley start-up? Is Larry Wall a Marxist? Is Sendmail, Inc. a front for anarchist agitation?
Some Open Source figures have objections, on principle or on pragmatic grounds, to the intellectual property system. That is NOT a rejection of the right to private property. The very argument that Stallman uses to assert that there is no intellectual property right (at, for example, the "Natural Rights" bulletpoint in his "Why Software Should Not Have Owners" essay), by arguing the contrast between ideas and physical things, implicitly accepts private physical property. (And incidentally, not even RMS argues that operating "intellectual property" systems is wrong in all circumstances).
But I may have somewhat misinterpreted what was meant. There are pockets of anti-capitalist sentiment around the "open-source community": among the old GNU Usenet hangers-on (or so I'm told), and on Slashdot now (as well as loudmouths of opposing persuasions, too). But neither the heavyweight thinkers of free software (eg. Stallman, Raymond, Wall), nor most people who do serious work for it, endorse that sentiment. Let alone do the supporters of the Open Source program! It is after all thanks to the wealth generated by the scarcity economy of capitalism that the "gift economy" of Open Source can exist at all.
I'm sure most of the people against this don't have a problem with calling in sick to work when star wars comes out. And don't say star wars is a better excuse! :)
-John
Secondly, there's a very good reason that the world has not and will not see any such thing as "democratic" communism. "To each according to his need" -- who decides? Leave it up to individuals and they will take more than they "need" or deserve. Put it to a democratic vote and those who achieve most will be ripped off by the less able, resulting in "brain drains" that will destroy any country that adopts such folly. What if a totalitarian regime decides -- hmm, we've already seen what happens in that case. Communism is dead, which is fitting because it was never geared towards life on this planet anyway.
-Noodle
"... the system that allows cr** to die the death it should: capitalism"
How does this statement tie in with the success of Microsoft Windows? :)
Ultimately I agree with you - OSS has an intrinsic darwinian evolutionary mechanism that lets the "best code win" - but capitalism by itself does NOT always mean that the best product wins. As Microsoft has shown us, there are plenty of artificial ways of ensuring the success of very mediocre products. Sure, capitalism allows OSS to be successful, but capitalism by itself doesn't filter good code from bad. It *should* - but hey, it isn't perfect.
This whole thing sounds to me like a bunch of schoolkids - with no real clue about social systems - trying to show everyone how rebellious and "cool" they are.
I'm not sure why I would want to overthrow capitalism anyway. I don't always like capitalism - it's cold, greedy, fiercely competitive (divides the world into "winners" and "losers"), and places money above humanity - but it has shown itself to be the most successful system we have.
Is this group offering a practical alternative to capitalism for when they've destroyed the current system? Or are we supposed to just die when we suddenly finds there is no food in the stores, no medicine, no hospitals, no transport system etc?
Their whole manifesto can be summed up as "let's show everyone how cool we are by 'fighting the system'". What sort of philosophy is that? These kids should grow up, maybe read some books on sociology and history, and come back when they've actually reasoned this whole thing out.
With regard to the 'phone in sick' day, the organizers wish to 'bring down capitalism'. Even socialist systems rely on capitalism and private property. Only pure communist governments dispose of capitalism completely. Even anarchies and dictatorships can have capitalist economies; however, communism is inherently anti-capitalism.
Therefore, for the purpose of this discussion, anti-capitalism == communism!
http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/declaration
http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/declaration/d
http://www.nara.gov/exhall/char
Open Source software may reflect the ideals of communism in as much as authors 'contribute according to their means', and everyone is free to 'take what they need', in the truest spirit of communism.
However, software is nothing without hardware to run on. We have seen how every (so-called) communist regime has failed at providing goods and services to its people. What communist government is capable of achieving the 50% household penetration of computers that we currently see in the United States and similar free-market based economies?
Secondly, open source software is about choice. Open source software is the antithesis of monopolies like Microsoft, which control the source code. Well, the communist party has a monopoly on power (we have yet to see any democratic communist countries, the true communist ideal, and likely never will for many years to come). A communist government would be very unlikely to resist trying to control the future of software development. Do you want to be told what to program, when and why?
A truly free market will allow people to contribute what they like to software community, and to exploit their work for profit. It will resist controls put on it by communist and monopolistic dictatorships.
I read the article calling for the 'sick-out', and find that perhaps it shouldn't be taken so seriously. However, my curiousity was piqued when the submitter of this story made a relationship between communism and open source, and I felt it necessary to respond.
http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/declaration
http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/declaration/d
http://www.nara.gov/exhall/char
Just for the sake of argument, let's take a couple of traditional capitalist tenets -- it is a religion, after all -- and think about them, taking them to their logical extremes. (There's little danger of them not reaching their logical extremes, since society has agreed that money is a one-dimensional metric of power and those with power/money believe in capitalism.) "It takes money to make money" (which on its face is quite true) predicts a compounding exponential shift upwards of a finite pool of wealth. "Charge what the market will bear" predicts a large body of people working for subsistence wages with no marginal income to MAKE money with.
(Feel free to find some other tenets and try it for yourself. Post the results.)
There's a reason the United States has reacted violently toward any flavor of socialism, to the extreme of replacing socialist officials in other countries with hand-picked leaders friendly to U.S. business interests. (These leaders, coincidentally or not, tend to attack civil liberties and social policy in favor of wild enterprise. Free is simply not the right word). The United States' national interest is fundamentally incompatible with democracy.
-jhp
Wherever you see the US, oil wars and drugs are never far behind.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
As for fascism, totalitarianism, and war, the US economy is good precisely because of these things.
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
I'm assuming National Phone in Sick Day has nothing to do with not liking your boss/job, but a lot to do with other national events such as "Buy Nothing Day" and so forth in which we, as the "little people" take back what is our - freedom and rights... By enough of us not appearing at work, it'll force the industry to start thinking about how we feel and not go rampant on firings, lay-offs and so on (ie, going on as if we don't matter and not caring about what we think and feel)...
... They have a lot on stuff like that.
I'm a student and work for an alternative/anarchist newspaper, and so I'll definitely be going to "work", but I hope enough of you understand what it's all about...
By the way, if you're interested in anti-capitalist sentiments (er, more like "anti-big-mean-businesses") check out http://www.adbusters.org
What other economic models have survived in the long run, other than capitalism or a modified capitalism based on some osrt of barter market? I don't want to tell you you're wrong, but I also feel like I should let you get away with a lie that obvious. Because there is no non-capitalist market in the world that has so far lasted more than 50-60 years. China, Cuba, and N Korea are the only ones I can think of at the moment, and all of them are moving more and more towards some variation on capitalism and free trade. Sure, there are many countries that have socialist health care or such, but that doesn't make a nation socialist. Look at the majority of communist or socialist experiments this century. The end result is far too many cases is economic ruin, suffering, and bloodshed. Take a look at the former Yugoslav states, Russia, N Korea, or so many others.
itachi
Statistically? I'm curious, I mean, if you have some sort of figures you can show us for quality of life, life expectancy, happiness, all that jazz, I would really have to agree with you. But I do really think that you can say that most of northern europe is both capitalist and socialist. i mean, the two systems involve such different ways of operating. It's sort of like trying to run a computer with half of one OS and half of another, you know? Maybe capitalism with a lot of socialist touches - such as healthcare - might be a better description.
itachi
> wouldnt doing a good job and helping >ppl be enough? i would certainly think so, but >then again i will
Let's just pretend for a moment that not everyone is nice, that there are people in the world who rip others off because they can, who act like jerks, and who don't help other people because it isn't convenient for them for whatever reason. Taking that into account, I'd much rather live in a capitialist nation.
The US invents damn near everything. We invented
the LCD display, RAM, and FAX machines. These
things were perfected in Japan and are now made
in Japan. Europe doesn't do anything.
I'm not kidding. I talked with him at MIT when
he showed up for a Linux user group meeting.
(we refused to change the name to GNU/Linux...)
This was around 1994 or 1995.
Anyway, he is a real communist. No joke.
"them" being the pranksters or "them" being those who don't get the joke? Some people here could use a good pie in the face.
We seem to be stuck working with outdated ideas. Espousing the virtues of systems that have failed. Every point of view will create slanderous propaganda about the other. Neither will be entirely accurate. It might be considered naive to think that everyone will want to be socialist or capitalist. Each of these systems has good points as well as bad. Capitalism does a poor job of distribution of wealth and health, as well as being inherently confrontational and violent. Communism doesn't not promote innovation and leads to stagnation of growth. Socialism does not address the issues of group focus and reward for creation. We all like to be rewarded and recognized for our work. We also like new ideas. We like possibilities. We like to disagree. It might be considered naive to think that everyone will want to be socialist, communist, or capitalist.
We must, therefore, assume that these two systems will continue to interact. It is only by watching that interaction carefully, not the propaganda of each, that we may find a common ground that might work. Be original. Pay attention to what does work, not how the other systems don't jive with your ideas. Be careful to pay close attention to how each system fails it's people. Make sure we don't repeat those mistakes.
I don't pretend to have a system of government or non-government that does work, but, I won't pretend that any of those in use today does work. When the United States where formed, it was a great experiment. This experiment has failed in as many ways as it has succeeded. As a citizen of this country it is my duty, in exchange for the freedom given me, to help make this country what it should be, an equitable and free country for all of us. We can make it work. It is not by slandering others or pretending failures are caused by those opposed to the current system that it will happen. But, by using the open system first created by our founders, which demands responsibility from each citizen, to actively make it work.
To all of those who think they can't make a difference. I say, you can't. You have already been defeated. To those who are still free in mind, I say, this country needs an overhaul. You can make a difference. We need new ideas and yours is just as good as theirs.
Or does it mean that CmdrTaco doesn't want to sacrifice his own money, but he thinks it's ok to do it on the expense of someone else?
-- Abigail
And _why_, pray tell, do you think the U.S. capitalistic system would "kick [y]our ass?" Maybe because capitalism wins because it is a more efficient, better system because it allows the maximum amount of freedom while encouraging merit-based advancement? maybe? just a little?
Come on, at least try not to shoot yourself in the foot.
This kind of article really irritates me. Faking sick is stealing from the company. Not that we all havent done it from time to time, but it's not something to be proud of, never mind promote!
-KZ