So how do you see the Chinese opium trade in light of your belief in free markets? Are you aware right now, that elements of the chinese military has promoted the idea of ramping up the heroin trade to weaken the USA?
Poor immigrants have enormous incentives to vote themselves socialism
Education will cure that.
Well, given that education is usually controlled by governments, how do you expect to create a free-market utopia via education? Are you supposing that once vouchers are in place, folks will gradually choose free-market types of education? You seem to have a lot of faith here. Just FYI, I was educated at the U of Chicago-I guess it didn't work well in my case.
>so you have a choice her: abandon democracy, restrict immigration or abandon free market economics. I know, it is a hard choice isn't it?
Democracy is not endangered.
The folk that got large industry donations voted 91-1 for H-1b even though 82% of the public opposed it. Is that the kind of government you want?
Absolutely! I want the government to get off people's backs even if the majority favor meddling in the people's economic affairs like this.
I opposed NAFTA/WTO(voted for Perot both times). H-1b is the major factor in making me politically active. Before H-1b, my US citizenship was the most valuable piece of property I had. IMHO H-1b disenfranchised me as surely as if I had share ownership in a condominium and someone started running a rooming house there.
Even Milton Friedman, calls H-1b a "corporate subsidy"--basically because it turns a shot at a green card into a corporate perk.
If 90% voted to make Christianity the official religion of the country, would that be OK?
Strict interpretation of the constitution says "Congress shall make no law" around religion. I personally have no objection if the people of individual states want to do things that might seem theocratic(even Randian!)-I don't think the central government of a diverse population should be a theocracy.
Democracy is a way to choose government. It is not away to take away people's rights because a majority wish to do so.
sometimes the most folks can hope for is the right to vote with their feet. Folks with money do have that opportunity-and over 100 governments to choose from.
No, I do not favor open immigration. I favor very tight border controls: seal the border, have a few crossing places, and screen every immigrant to keep out the Al Quada's, the Zapatistas, and other terrorists. If they are coming here to work, let them apply for citizenship. If they are coming here to laze on the welfare hammock, they can stay home and siesta all day in Mexico.
how do you propose to weed out/identify the terrorists? BTW one of the better proposals I've seen is to require posting of bonds. Anyhow, Trotsky was admitted to NYC-which shows judgement in that era wasn't terribly good.
I see no inclination for corporations to want to take responsibility for such risks-or for that matter the risk of immigration introducing another epidemic(epidemics have been a major risk of mass migration historically-just ask the native americans).
www.outlander.com/policy/h1b.htm details some of the security concerns around H-1b.
Wages in any developed country have a substantial component of what classical economists would call monopoly rent(due to immigration laws)-
Does this work out in the end? Have wages inb New York City always been depressed at times it was immigrant-flooded?
New York City has long had one of the most rent-intensive economies in the US. This is largely due to the concentration of key infrastructure there that dates to the founding of the GOP and the aftermath of t
"Open borders will drive wages in the US down to the level of surrounding countries?"
This only shows Nader's contempt for American workers (which is also shown by his approval of forcing workers to join unions and pay for union political activity even if it is against the interests of the worker).
For this to be true, every Mexican would have to be able to do every job better than every American
No, this is just classical economics ala David Ricardo,JS Mill and Henry George.
"Wages" in any developed country have a substantial component of what classical economists would call monopoly rent(due to immigration laws)-and have little direct bearing on the marginal productivity of each worker added to the system. Most Americans can't earn similar wages anyplace else in the world(the exception right now being probably engineers that compete against Indians and day laborers that complete against Mexicans).
Prices in India and the US are _way_ different. That is why folks like Paul Craig Roberts, Reagans economic advisor, are backpeddling on free trade-that and that fact that international players _can_ sacrifice profits for reasons of national objectives.
I _would_ like to do a better study than we did with that bond piece-but that was done by myself and another amateur. We don't have the resources of a Cato-or their backers that bought congress to open US borders. Just check out opensecrets.org--the money trail is pretty dang obvious. The folk that got large industry donations voted 91-1 for H-1b even though 82% of the public opposed it. Is that the kind of government you want?
The simple fact is: Your libertarian utopia isn't going to happen when accompanied with democratic government _except_ possibly in a frontier situation. Poor immigrants have enormous incentives to vote themselves socialism-and they do--so you have a choice her: abandon democracy, restrict immigration or abandon free market economics. I know, it is a hard choice isn't it?
Fact is, you sound like a Libertarian(I'm not). You might want to read about what Ayn Rand had to say about "handing the greatest nation of the earth over" to "rabble""
I'm no Randist. However, I wonder why you said "you sound like a Libertarian" in response to my opposition to racism of any kind. Ayn Rand herself was immigrant "rabble"; a refugee from the USSR.
I'm quoting rand. I'd suspect she didn't think of herself as rabble-more like a necessary reaction to the "rabble"(Which included quite a few communists remember). Ayn, whatever her limitations, was trying to "fit in".
"Agreed. They made Stalin into a scapegoat."
I disagree on this. Far from being a scapegoat, Stalin was someone who extended and strengthened the brutality of programs (pogroms?) he inherited from Lenin.
As soon as Stalin's body was cold, the decontruction of Stalin's "machine" started--and folks in Russian politics started trying to appear the least associated with Stalin:
The real question here: was the system in Russia such that anyone other than a Stalin(or someone much like him) could have assume political authority? I personally think that is the case-if Trotsky had by some luck risen to the top, about as many folks would have died.
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/la_causa_or_la_raza.ht m
Only a third of Hispanics want increased immigration: http://www.numbersusa.com/text?ID=64 9
Nader said it best: Open borders will drive wages in the US down to the level of surrounding countries?
Who will benefit: those that can isolate themselves from market forces-and have the political abilities to avoid a backlash. Well, the backlash _is_ coming. Maybe Bush is right, the future of America is to be more like Mexico(low taxes there-only 18% of the GNP goes to taxes last I checked) or Brazil. I doubt very, very much though that the folks that lead the GOP today-let alone libertarian lackeys-will be among the ruling elites of that kind of country--if a transformed America of that type even stays united as one country.
I honestly think it would be interesting for the Libertarians to try their experiment someplace, but I see no evidence that they can combine Libertarianism with popular democracy nor do I see any autocratic monarchs, dictators or even corporate oligarchs sincerely inclined towards libertarianism(the latter just might take a stab towards it someday).
How so? Of course they can't, as I am not one, and oppose all policies which punish and reward anyone based on race. Equal protection for all. No, I can make the accusations stick, especially with Sharpton, of racism.
Then why do you post anonymously? Fact is, you sound like a Libertarian(I'm not). You might want to read about what Ayn Rand had to say about "handing the greatest nation of the earth over" to "rabble" (this isn't quiet an exact quote but close).
Other thing you need to come to grips with: Libertarians haven't really made substantial inroads outside the white community-and are perceived by many people of color as opportunistic closet racists(i.e. Republicans that Smoke Dope-and maybe head down to TJ to visit a brothel).
Al Sharpton is better lumped in with Pat Robertson.
I would tend to agree-but I'm not one to bash either. Lots of people love both these men. I do tend to dislike the mediums that give rise to egotistical figures as "heros" but these guys didn't make the rules-they just played the game.
That said, Sharpton really is IMHO quite a fine public speaker-the other Dems can learn a few things from Al.
I was referring to Leninism-Stalinism. Were these predecessors so quick to distance themselves from Lenin (whom you also blame for a lot of Stalin's rule?) No, they were not.
Agreed. They made Stalin into a scapegoat. Asner was saying the truth is somewhere in between-and I honestly think that depicting Stalin theatrically is an interesting project-and a good role for Asner.
They are racist surely as those who strongly favored "Jim Crow" are racist.
Go right ahead. Fact is, Sharpton and Gunthier both have substantial followings-and they aren't going away-and they can make accusations that _you_ are a racist stick much more easily than you can the reverse.
Gunthier in particular gave America the chance to remove a lot of hypocrisy from politics-and for that I applaud her.
As far as Asner and Stalin: When stalin died, Stalinism died with him-his successors were quick to distance themselves from Stalin. That said, I think Lenin and Trotsky deserve a lot of the blame for what happened under Stalin's rule. I tend to think that whole chapter of history deserves more attention-it shows how murderous PC types can be.
I don't believe that the problems H-1b has caused are the fault of Asians-but of the corporate elites that bought congress(donations from the electronics industry went up by a factor of 6 from 1990-2000 according to OpenSecrets.org).
I personally feel that folks dislocated through changes to US immigration policy deserve compensation paid for at the expense of their employers-and that H-1b workers and illegal immigrants both deserve increased rigtht to sue their employers if they choose to go home for any reason.
Now, Kucinich tends to bow to the Democratic party authorities on the topic of Mexican immigration-and I support him in spite of that not because of that.
Between 1433 and 1945, China experienced the utter humiliation and degradation of the opium trade. Imagine for a moment living in a country where 1/4 people are junkies-that is what China was like--and that is a major factor that changed after the communist revolution.
At this point population control laws (the one child rule) has weighted the Chinese population heavily towards males. That means that in China there is by historical standards an enormous incentive for Chinese men to attain social status-the number of men in the bottom rung who can never hope to marry has increased rather markedly.
It is my contention that these two factors combine to make it plausible that China may display behavior that is uncharacteristic of China.
My sincere hope is that the Chinese continue to succeed with their space program-and that this serves to wake up the American people how poorly their own government and corporate elites have acted in facilitating the development of space. A lot of major political and corporate leaders in America deserve to be replaced-and the Chinese space effort just might help make that happen.
This mission isn't quite a "Chinese Sputnik"--but a successful, large Chinese space station just might wake a few folks up--as might some visibly successful chinese space industries.
At the time that H-1b expansion took place, about 82% of the American public opposed that legislation: http://www.ieeeusa.org/releases/1998 /pr091698.html
Now, just the premise that popular government is a good idea implies H-1b was a bad idea
That is sure to warm the cockles of the hearts of Pat Buchanan and others who like Kucinich want to those inferior brown workers from coming here. I guess it was OK for their ancestors: they were white.
Support someone who supports free trade, because free trade is fair trade (each person trading decides what is fair for that person). Support someone who opposes "campaign finance reform" which is designed solely to censor political speech. Support someone who opposes Proportional Representation, which is a darling of racists who want to elect people based on skin color (Lani Guinier is a big advocate of it).
You're now calling Lani Gunthier a racist? Next thing you know, you'll be claiming that Sharpton is a racist too.
We don't need "PR": it is fine to weed out the fringe nuts at the ballot box instead of having them junk up the legislatures. Besides, it would require a Constitutional Convention
Any state can theoretically start using PR-some cities like Cambridge Mass and NYC already have tried it. There was a judicial decision that said a state can't use PR to elect its congressional delegation-but that was a controversial ruling. My take is that PR is a better approximation of what the founding fathers had in mind for the House than what we have now-a PR based house and State based senate would create even greater checks and balances.
"I also tend to favor withdrawal from NAFTA and WTO-given the enormous trade imbalance those policies have created in the US"
I don't. While they are flawed, the flaws are that they still regulate too much. If a Mexican can do a job better, let him work. Also, there is no trade imbalance. Everything traded is paid for: it is not given away across the borders.
WTO more or less mandates stuff like the tax structure you probably think is a bad idea. You might want to check out Paul Craig Robert's stuff on this general topic.
Ed Asner? Recently he expressed great admiration for Josef Stalin, claiming he was "so badly misunderstood".
I'm not an Asner fan, but the guy is an actor-and he's basically saying the story of Stalin deserves to be told and he'd like to play that part--I tend to agree, the story of Stalin's Holocaust deserves more attention.
Asner: "Well, you know something, they've played Hitler, nobody has ever really touched Stalin, it just occurred to me. It's not because I am a liberal or anything like that. Stalin is one big damn mystery, I wonder why nobody has tried it? Many people, you know, speak of the fact that he killed more people than Hitler - why does nobody touch him? It's strange. So, and he was about my size, my height - with a wig I probably could do it."
I plan to caucus for Kucinich for one big reason: he's the only candidate that voted against H-1b expansion.
I also support Kucinich's views on decreasing corporate influence in government and improving democratic representation through Instant Runoff Voting, campaign finance reform and Proportional Representation. I also tend to favor withdrawal from NAFTA and WTO-given the enormous trade imbalance those policies have created in the US. However, I disagree with Kuninich on quite a few other issues. Still, politics usually involves making some hard choices. Given the sympathies above, who else would you suggest I support? I don't see much else to choose from.
In this case, the odds of Kucinich actually getting elected are quite small. Still, given even a few delegates, I think he'll give some pause to the current powers-that-be. If he actually did get elected and made good on his voting reform promises, I might actually get a chance to vote for a representative that doesn't digust me-which would be a novel experience.
As far as "anti-semetic overtones"-do you want to include Richard Stallman, Ed Asner,Ben&Jerry in your list of "anti-semites"? New York and LA are the main place where Kucinich is getting funds outside his home base of Ohio-is that because of the high rate of Anti-Semitism there?
Anyhow, this article is just another example of the plutocracy with which the Forbes family has been associated with for decades. Basically, the corporate interests Forbes serves are all for enforcement of contracts/licenses which benefit corporate elites-but want to change the rules when it suits them.
My great-grandfather James O. Stark was a political activist that opposed creation of the Federal Reserve(he was a friend/supporter of Champ Clark the man that almost beat Woodrow Wilson for the Democratic nomination in the strangest convention ever)-which centralized a lot financial power in the United States. It turns out, the great-grandfather of Steven Forbes was the secretary of the Jekyll Island meeting where the Federal Reserve plan was hatched.
The XP guys _have_ made a mark in the world. Now, how that is going to work out longer term, remains to be seen. XP _is_ influecing stuff like IBM's Rational Unified Process.
I tend to like XP. I haven't worked in an XP shop, but I have used it in class projects and some project of my own.
Right now, lots shops have processes that are non-existant or chaotic--that is what XP really needs to be compared against. XP isn't "the emperor" more like an upstart prince edging in on the territory of being eyed(but not governed) by Emperor RUP.
My gut is that was is motivating books like this: is the fact that XP is being adopted in places where stuff like RUP just would never get a toe in the door in its present state.
The major stages of the opponents of an invention: a) it won't work b) its evil c) its not really new d) we invented it
This stuff strikes me as somewhere between stage a-b.
Just FYI, my own system is a small scale hydro electric system. I may add some solar cells at some point. I have a gasoline generator for backup but I've never used it.
More important is that medical education has at times been very difficult to get in the US(see the literature on the "Flexner" report which shut down all but one historically black medical school). With lawyers, that profession is more a welfare program for the upper middle class. Lawyers dominate congress and state legislatures and pass laws that create more of a demand for legal services. Japan gets along fine with 1/50th as many attorneys per capita than the US has.
Actuaries are another example of a profession with strong protection in place(the exams effectively regulate the supply and the lobbying of that organization regulates the effective demand).
Even with existing prices, it is about as cheap to buy cheaper land in outlying areas and generate your own power as it is to pay a power company _and_ pay higher prices for land. The main problem is you have to have a fair degree of mechanical aptitude to keep one of these systems running reliably.
Cheap solar cells would open up quite a bit of land for human use that is accessible by road but has no power access. When you combine that with WiFi/sattellite access the infrastructure advantages of cities become far less pronounced.
A lot of major elements of communications/transportation infrastructure are inordinately expensive and can be bypassed using information technology. For examples, in Britain, there are free internet services being created using MeshAP boxes-that has the potential to dramatically improve communications/security in rural areas and keep a lot of money in those communities that would otherwise go to large companies in urban areas. That is the type of thing that would give folks a wider range of economic options and mean more satisfying/productive employment.
IBM has better lawyers than SCO-China has nukes
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SCO's Plan Examined
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Is this really a contest? The People's Republic of China wants Linux. IBM wants Linux. Both IBM and the PRC have more experience buying judges/politicians than SCO/Microsoft. The PRC has a lot more money than Microsoft/SCO-and IBM is no slouch.
Maybe SCO may have some success for a while buying off the US GOP-but that just isn't going to happen in the EU or the rest of the world. Do you really think the EU is going to dis the leading techie to come out of that region in ages on behalf of a greedy US corporation? That just doesn't get votes.
Worse case scenario here: SCO manages to force some folks off Linux and onto BSD. More likely, SCO just make themselves, their stooges in Washington DC and much of the US corporate leadership look like fools.
A big chunk of the reason for Java's momentum is that it appears to be a "standard". The introduction of C#/.Net seriously muddies the waters here. Personally, I think C# and Java will beat each other bloody in the world of perception/marketing. The winner? Scripting languages.
Sun has already acknowledged that Java's lack of scripting capability is a major deficit in their current offering and plan to correct that. A while back, Ted Hseih did an analysis of the language market. What was obvious in his results: Java gained market entirely at the expense of C++ : the market for various scripting languages never budged.
The war between Java/C# means that scripting languages have a chance to improve their standardization. Personally, I think the leading candidates for a new king of scripting languages include Python and Jscript/Javascript. Python is mature and can co-exist with every major development environment out there(Java/JVM(Jython), C#/.NET(still a little weak, but getting there) and Unix/C). JavaScript is a true multi-vendor standard(ECMA) that even Microsoft supports, can be compiled, is assured longevity due to its use in browers-and with stuff like TIBET(www.technicalpursuit.com) is getting some real programming functionality.
I foudn this on The blog and thought is was worth reposting here: ------- I read with interest the findings of a recent Standish Group report aptly named 'Chaos 2003', which regularly diagnoses the health of IT projects in the US. I was flabbergasted by what I read. Project overruns have increased from a 'low' of 63% in 2000 to a staggering 82% in 2003. Over 51% of these projects are in serious trouble with 15% of them failing outright. And of those that complete, only 52% deliver on customer feature expectations. Jean-Georges Schwartz
Basically China is well on the way to becoming a larger economy than either the US or EU. Other regional powers like India and Indonesia have a strong incentive to go along with a China/Japan/South Korea backed standard---quite simply it will be cheaper. There are also quite a few places in the world that would rather no rely on US based technology(i.e. The Islamic world and some of Latin America/Africa fit that category)
Now, I suspect that at first, this new Asian/Linux standard won't be markedly higher performance or more visually attractive than the Wintel standard. However, if this Asian consortium honors its copyleft obligations, we'll see a large block of mission critical applications running under Linux that can be evaluated by a recompile on radically different hardware. (i.e. we will see stuff like decent, enterprise level database applications on this Linux platform-and the Chinese government may find it in their interests to just fund the existing open source projects rather than going to folks like Oracle).
There is already magic sitting around that has the potential to eat Intel's lunch. In particular, I like the stuff that Chuck more has done with Colorforth and his Forth processors. Those designs are at present taylored for very low power applications-but given proper incentives, someone might figure out how to do something with a lot more power than current desktop designs. This Asian initiative means that the the software for real, mission-critical applications could be available for an appropriate recompile.
China is just the ultimate "big customer". They are big enought that they don't have to cater to Intel or Microsoft. By choosing Linux, China is empowering a software constituency that is capable of beating Wintel technologically. The likely end result is that Wintel will find themselves as the technological backwater. I suspect Microsoft is in a better position to adapt to these changes, but Intel has a serious problem ahead.
I think this is an interesting idea particularly if you apply with the concept that the government is using this mechanism to fund _infrastructure_.
Right now, tax dollars pay for substantial amounts of material(i.e. textbooks) that is not freely available. That same money could be focused on materials that would become freely available.
I can see why the major information monopolies(i.e. Microsoft/Intel) would want something like this if they were to consider it carefully. Much of the value of this type of free information would eventually get capitalized as higher values for their property(i.e. as the web becomes more rich, more folks buy computers).
Personally, I'd like to see this idea tried in a pilot program first funded by a major foundation or as an adjunct to the National Endowment for the Arts.
I have my hesitations here, but this strikes me as a worthwhile experiment.
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So how do you see the Chinese opium trade in light of your belief in free markets? Are you aware right now, that elements of the chinese military has promoted the idea of ramping up the heroin trade to weaken the USA?
Poor immigrants have enormous incentives to vote themselves socialism
Education will cure that.
Well, given that education is usually controlled by governments, how do you expect to create a free-market utopia via education? Are you supposing that once vouchers are in place, folks will gradually choose free-market types of education? You seem to have a lot of faith here. Just FYI, I was educated at the U of Chicago-I guess it didn't work well in my case.
>so you have a choice her: abandon democracy, restrict immigration or abandon free market economics. I know, it is a hard choice isn't it?
Democracy is not endangered.
The folk that got large industry donations voted 91-1 for H-1b even though 82% of the public opposed it. Is that the kind of government you want?
Absolutely! I want the government to get off people's backs even if the majority favor meddling in the people's economic affairs like this.
I opposed NAFTA/WTO(voted for Perot both times). H-1b is the major factor in making me politically active. Before H-1b, my US citizenship was the most valuable piece of property I had. IMHO H-1b disenfranchised me as surely as if I had share ownership in a condominium and someone started running a rooming house there.
Even Milton Friedman, calls H-1b a "corporate subsidy"--basically because it turns a shot at a green card into a corporate perk.
If 90% voted to make Christianity the official religion of the country, would that be OK?
Strict interpretation of the constitution says "Congress shall make no law" around religion. I personally have no objection if the people of individual states want to do things that might seem theocratic(even Randian!)-I don't think the central government of a diverse population should be a theocracy.
Democracy is a way to choose government. It is not away to take away people's rights because a majority wish to do so.
sometimes the most folks can hope for is the right to vote with their feet. Folks with money do have that opportunity-and over 100 governments to choose from.
No, I do not favor open immigration. I favor very tight border controls: seal the border, have a few crossing places, and screen every immigrant to keep out the Al Quada's, the Zapatistas, and other terrorists. If they are coming here to work, let them apply for citizenship. If they are coming here to laze on the welfare hammock, they can stay home and siesta all day in Mexico.
how do you propose to weed out/identify the terrorists? BTW one of the better proposals I've seen is to require posting of bonds. Anyhow, Trotsky was admitted to NYC-which shows judgement in that era wasn't terribly good.
I see no inclination for corporations to want to take responsibility for such risks-or for that matter the risk of immigration introducing another epidemic(epidemics have been a major risk of mass migration historically-just ask the native americans).
www.outlander.com/policy/h1b.htm details some of the security concerns around H-1b.
Wages in any developed country have a substantial component of what classical economists would call monopoly rent(due to immigration laws)-
Does this work out in the end? Have wages inb New York City always been depressed at times it was immigrant-flooded?
New York City has long had one of the most rent-intensive economies in the US. This is largely due to the concentration of key infrastructure there that dates to the founding of the GOP and the aftermath of t
This only shows Nader's contempt for American workers (which is also shown by his approval of forcing workers to join unions and pay for union political activity even if it is against the interests of the worker).
For this to be true, every Mexican would have to be able to do every job better than every American
No, this is just classical economics ala David Ricardo,JS Mill and Henry George.
"Wages" in any developed country have a substantial component of what classical economists would call monopoly rent(due to immigration laws)-and have little direct bearing on the marginal productivity of each worker added
to the system. Most Americans can't earn similar wages anyplace else in the world(the exception right now being probably engineers that compete against Indians and day laborers that complete against Mexicans).
Prices in India and the US are _way_ different.
That is why folks like Paul Craig Roberts, Reagans economic advisor, are backpeddling on free trade-that and that fact that international players _can_ sacrifice profits for reasons of national objectives.
I _would_ like to do a better study than we did with that bond piece-but that was done by myself and another amateur. We don't have the resources of a Cato-or their backers that bought congress to open US borders. Just check out opensecrets.org--the money trail is pretty dang obvious. The folk that got large industry donations voted 91-1 for H-1b even though 82% of the public opposed it. Is that the kind of government you want?
The simple fact is:
Your libertarian utopia isn't going to happen when accompanied with democratic government _except_ possibly in a frontier situation. Poor immigrants have enormous incentives to vote themselves socialism-and they do--so you have a choice her: abandon democracy, restrict immigration or abandon free market economics. I know, it is a hard choice isn't it?
I'm no Randist. However, I wonder why you said "you sound like a Libertarian" in response to my opposition to racism of any kind. Ayn Rand herself was immigrant "rabble"; a refugee from the USSR.
I'm quoting rand. I'd suspect she didn't think of herself as rabble-more like a necessary reaction to the "rabble"(Which included quite a few communists remember). Ayn, whatever her limitations, was trying to "fit in".
"Agreed. They made Stalin into a scapegoat."
I disagree on this. Far from being a scapegoat, Stalin was someone who extended and strengthened the brutality of programs (pogroms?) he inherited from Lenin.
As soon as Stalin's body was cold, the decontruction of Stalin's "machine" started--and folks in Russian politics started trying to appear the least associated with Stalin:
The real question here: was the system in Russia such that anyone other than a Stalin(or someone much like him) could have assume political authority? I personally think that is the case-if Trotsky had by some luck risen to the top, about as many folks would have died.
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/la_causa_or_la_raza.ht m
4 9
Only a third of Hispanics want increased immigration:
http://www.numbersusa.com/text?ID=6
Nader said it best:
Open borders will drive wages in the US down to the level of surrounding countries?
Who will benefit: those that can isolate themselves from market forces-and have the political abilities to avoid a backlash. Well, the backlash _is_ coming. Maybe Bush is right, the future of America is to be more like Mexico(low taxes there-only 18% of the GNP goes to taxes last I checked) or Brazil. I doubt very, very much though that the folks that lead the GOP today-let alone libertarian lackeys-will be among the ruling elites of that kind of country--if a transformed America of that type even stays united as one country.
I honestly think it would be interesting for the Libertarians to try their experiment someplace, but I see no evidence that they can combine Libertarianism with popular democracy nor do I see any autocratic monarchs, dictators or even corporate oligarchs sincerely inclined towards libertarianism(the latter just might take a stab towards it someday).
Then why do you post anonymously? Fact is, you sound like a Libertarian(I'm not). You might want to read about what Ayn Rand had to say about "handing the greatest nation of the earth over" to "rabble"
(this isn't quiet an exact quote but close).
Other thing you need to come to grips with:
Libertarians haven't really made substantial inroads outside the white community-and are perceived by many people of color as opportunistic closet racists(i.e. Republicans that Smoke Dope-and maybe head down to TJ to visit a brothel).
Al Sharpton is better lumped in with Pat Robertson.
I would tend to agree-but I'm not one to bash either. Lots of people love both these men. I do tend to dislike the mediums that give rise to egotistical figures as "heros" but these guys didn't make the rules-they just played the game.
That said, Sharpton really is IMHO quite a fine public speaker-the other Dems can learn a few things from Al.
I was referring to Leninism-Stalinism. Were these predecessors so quick to distance themselves from Lenin (whom you also blame for a lot of Stalin's rule?) No, they were not.
Agreed. They made Stalin into a scapegoat. Asner was saying the truth is somewhere in between-and I honestly think that depicting Stalin theatrically is an interesting project-and a good role for Asner.
IF you think immigration is an unmitigated boon:
why do states with high rates of immigration tend to have poor bond ratings?
www.outlander.com/policy/bonds.htm
You also might want to check out how Caeser Chavez felt about illegal immigration.
Sorry guy, you are on the loosing side on this issue-which is part of why you are posting anonymously.
Go right ahead. Fact is, Sharpton and Gunthier both have substantial followings-and they aren't going away-and they can make accusations that _you_ are a racist stick much more easily than you can the reverse.
Gunthier in particular gave America the chance to remove a lot of hypocrisy from politics-and for that I applaud her.
As far as Asner and Stalin:
When stalin died, Stalinism died with him-his successors were quick to distance themselves from Stalin. That said, I think Lenin and Trotsky deserve a lot of the blame for what happened under Stalin's rule. I tend to think that whole chapter of history deserves more attention-it shows how murderous PC types can be.
I don't believe that the problems H-1b has caused are the fault of Asians-but of the corporate elites that bought congress(donations from the electronics industry went up by a factor of 6 from 1990-2000 according to OpenSecrets.org).
I personally feel that folks dislocated through changes to US immigration policy deserve compensation paid for at the expense of their employers-and that H-1b workers and illegal immigrants both deserve increased rigtht to sue their employers if they choose to go home for any reason.
Now, Kucinich tends to bow to the Democratic party authorities on the topic of Mexican immigration-and I support him in spite of that not because of that.
Between 1433 and 1945, China experienced the utter humiliation and degradation of the opium trade. Imagine for a moment living in a country where 1/4 people are junkies-that is what China was like--and that is a major factor that changed after the communist revolution.
At this point population control laws (the one child rule) has weighted the Chinese population heavily towards males. That means that in China there is by historical standards an enormous incentive for Chinese men to attain social status-the number of men in the bottom rung who can never hope to marry has increased rather markedly.
It is my contention that these two factors combine to make it plausible that China may display behavior that is uncharacteristic of China.
My sincere hope is that the Chinese continue to succeed with their space program-and that this serves to wake up the American people how poorly their own government and corporate elites have acted in facilitating the development of space. A lot of major political and corporate leaders in America deserve to be replaced-and the Chinese space effort just might help make that happen.
This mission isn't quite a "Chinese Sputnik"--but a successful, large Chinese space station just might wake a few folks up--as might some visibly successful chinese space industries.
http://www.ieeeusa.org/releases/199
Now, just the premise that popular government is a good idea implies H-1b was a bad idea
That is sure to warm the cockles of the hearts of Pat Buchanan and others who like Kucinich want to those inferior brown workers from coming here. I guess it was OK for their ancestors: they were white.
Support someone who supports free trade, because free trade is fair trade (each person trading decides what is fair for that person). Support someone who opposes "campaign finance reform" which is designed solely to censor political speech. Support someone who opposes Proportional Representation, which is a darling of racists who want to elect people based on skin color (Lani Guinier is a big advocate of it).
You're now calling Lani Gunthier a racist? Next thing you know, you'll be claiming that Sharpton is a racist too.
We don't need "PR": it is fine to weed out the fringe nuts at the ballot box instead of having them junk up the legislatures. Besides, it would require a Constitutional Convention
Any state can theoretically start using PR-some cities like Cambridge Mass and NYC already have tried it. There was a judicial decision that said a state can't use PR to elect its congressional delegation-but that was a controversial ruling. My take is that PR is a better approximation of what the founding fathers had in mind for the House than what we have now-a PR based house and State based senate would create even greater checks and balances.
"I also tend to favor withdrawal from NAFTA and WTO-given the enormous trade imbalance those policies have created in the US"
I don't. While they are flawed, the flaws are that they still regulate too much. If a Mexican can do a job better, let him work. Also, there is no trade imbalance. Everything traded is paid for: it is not given away across the borders.
WTO more or less mandates stuff like the tax structure you probably think is a bad idea. You might want to check out Paul Craig Robert's stuff on this general topic.
Ed Asner? Recently he expressed great admiration for Josef Stalin, claiming he was "so badly misunderstood".
I'm not an Asner fan, but the guy is an actor-and he's basically saying the story of Stalin deserves to be told and he'd like to play that part--I tend to agree, the story of Stalin's Holocaust deserves more attention.
Asner: "Well, you know something, they've played Hitler, nobody has ever really touched Stalin, it just occurred to me. It's not because I am a liberal or anything like that. Stalin is one big damn mystery, I wonder why nobody has tried it? Many people, you know, speak of the fact that he killed more people than Hitler - why does nobody touch him? It's strange. So, and he was about my size, my height - with a wig I probably could do it."
I plan to caucus for Kucinich for one big reason: he's the only candidate that voted against H-1b expansion.
I also support Kucinich's views on decreasing corporate influence in government and improving democratic representation through Instant Runoff Voting, campaign finance reform and Proportional Representation. I also tend to favor withdrawal from NAFTA and WTO-given the enormous trade imbalance those policies have created in the US. However, I disagree with Kuninich on quite a few other issues. Still, politics usually involves making some hard choices. Given the sympathies above, who else would you suggest I support? I don't see much else to choose from.
In this case, the odds of Kucinich actually getting elected are quite small. Still, given even a few delegates, I think he'll give some pause to the current powers-that-be. If he actually did get elected and made good on his voting reform promises, I might actually get a chance to vote for a representative that doesn't digust me-which would be a novel experience.
As far as "anti-semetic overtones"-do you want to include Richard Stallman, Ed Asner,Ben&Jerry in your list of "anti-semites"? New York and LA are the main place where Kucinich is getting funds outside his home base of Ohio-is that because of the high rate of Anti-Semitism there?
Anyhow, this article is just another example of the plutocracy with which the Forbes family has been associated with for decades. Basically, the corporate interests Forbes serves are all for enforcement of contracts/licenses which benefit corporate elites-but want to change the rules when it suits them.
My great-grandfather James O. Stark was a political activist that opposed creation of the Federal Reserve(he was a friend/supporter of Champ Clark the man that almost beat Woodrow Wilson for the Democratic nomination in the strangest convention ever)-which centralized a lot financial power in the United States. It turns out, the great-grandfather of Steven Forbes was the secretary of the Jekyll Island meeting where the Federal Reserve plan was hatched.
Support Kucinich in 2004 - www.kucinich.us
I was doing a small, non-work project with a couple friends.
The XP guys _have_ made a mark in the world. Now, how that is going to work out longer term, remains to be seen. XP _is_ influecing stuff like IBM's Rational Unified Process.
I tend to like XP. I haven't worked in an XP shop, but I have used it in class projects and some project of my own.
Right now, lots shops have processes that are non-existant or chaotic--that is what XP really needs to be compared against. XP isn't "the emperor" more like an upstart prince edging in on the territory of being eyed(but not governed) by Emperor RUP.
My gut is that was is motivating books like this:
is the fact that XP is being adopted in places where stuff like RUP just would never get a toe in the door in its present state.
The major stages of the opponents of an invention:
a) it won't work
b) its evil
c) its not really new
d) we invented it
This stuff strikes me as somewhere between stage a-b.
Just FYI, my own system is a small scale hydro electric system. I may add some solar cells at some point. I have a gasoline generator for backup but I've never used it.
More important is that medical education has at times been very difficult to get in the US(see the literature on the "Flexner" report which shut down all but one historically black medical school). With lawyers, that profession is more a welfare program for the upper middle class. Lawyers dominate congress and state legislatures and pass laws that create more of a demand for legal services. Japan gets along fine with 1/50th as many attorneys per capita than the US has.
Actuaries are another example of a profession with strong protection in place(the exams effectively regulate the supply and the lobbying of that organization regulates the effective demand).
I've lived off the grid for over 6 years now.
Even with existing prices, it is about as cheap to buy cheaper land in outlying areas and generate your own power as it is to pay a power company _and_ pay higher prices for land. The main problem is you have to have a fair degree of mechanical aptitude to keep one of these systems running reliably.
Cheap solar cells would open up quite a bit of land for human use that is accessible by road but has no power access. When you combine that with WiFi/sattellite access the infrastructure advantages of cities become far less pronounced.
A lot of major elements of communications/transportation infrastructure are inordinately expensive and can be bypassed using information technology. For examples, in Britain, there are free internet services being created using MeshAP boxes-that has the potential to dramatically improve communications/security in rural areas and keep a lot of money in those communities that would otherwise go to large companies in urban areas. That is the type of thing that would give folks a wider range of economic options and mean more satisfying/productive employment.
Is this really a contest? The People's Republic of China wants Linux. IBM wants Linux. Both IBM and the PRC have more experience buying judges/politicians than SCO/Microsoft. The PRC has a lot more money than Microsoft/SCO-and IBM is no slouch.
Maybe SCO may have some success for a while buying off the US GOP-but that just isn't going to happen in the EU or the rest of the world. Do you really think the EU is going to dis the leading techie to come out of that region in ages on behalf of a greedy US corporation? That just doesn't get votes.
Worse case scenario here: SCO manages to force some folks off Linux and onto BSD. More likely, SCO just make themselves, their stooges in Washington DC and much of the US corporate leadership look like fools.
At what point would you switch from say Jython to Java in your experience?
Thanks!
A big chunk of the reason for Java's momentum is that it appears to be a "standard". The introduction of C#/.Net seriously muddies the waters here. Personally, I think C# and Java will beat each other bloody in the world of perception/marketing. The winner? Scripting languages.
Sun has already acknowledged that Java's lack of scripting capability is a major deficit in their current offering and plan to correct that. A while back, Ted Hseih did an analysis of the language market. What was obvious in his results:
Java gained market entirely at the expense of C++
: the market for various scripting languages never budged.
The war between Java/C# means that scripting languages have a chance to improve their standardization. Personally, I think the leading candidates for a new king of scripting languages include Python and Jscript/Javascript. Python is mature and can co-exist with every major development environment out there(Java/JVM(Jython), C#/.NET(still a little weak, but getting there) and Unix/C). JavaScript is a true multi-vendor standard(ECMA) that even Microsoft supports, can be compiled, is assured longevity due to its use in browers-and with stuff like TIBET(www.technicalpursuit.com) is getting some real programming functionality.
I foudn this on The blog and thought is was worth
reposting here:
-------
I read with interest the findings of a recent Standish Group report aptly named 'Chaos 2003', which regularly diagnoses the health of IT projects in the US. I was flabbergasted by what I read. Project overruns have increased from a 'low' of 63% in 2000 to a staggering 82% in 2003. Over 51% of these projects are in serious trouble with 15% of them failing outright. And of those that complete, only 52% deliver on customer feature expectations.
Jean-Georges Schwartz
Basically China is well on the way to becoming a larger economy than either the US or EU. Other regional powers like India and Indonesia have a strong incentive to go along with a China/Japan/South Korea backed standard---quite simply it will be cheaper. There are also quite a few places in the world that would rather no rely on US based technology(i.e. The Islamic world and some of Latin America/Africa fit that category)
Now, I suspect that at first, this new Asian/Linux standard won't be markedly higher performance or more visually attractive than the Wintel standard. However, if this Asian consortium honors its copyleft obligations, we'll see a large block of mission critical applications running under Linux that can be evaluated by a recompile on radically different hardware. (i.e. we will see stuff like decent, enterprise level database applications on this Linux platform-and the Chinese government may find it in their interests to just fund the existing open source projects rather than going to folks like Oracle).
There is already magic sitting around that has the potential to eat Intel's lunch. In particular, I like the stuff that Chuck more has done with Colorforth and his Forth processors. Those designs are at present taylored for very low power applications-but given proper incentives, someone might figure out how to do something with a lot more power than current desktop designs. This Asian initiative means that the the software for real, mission-critical applications could be available for an appropriate recompile.
China is just the ultimate "big customer". They are big enought that they don't have to cater to Intel or Microsoft. By choosing Linux, China is empowering a software constituency that is capable of beating Wintel technologically. The likely end result is that Wintel will find themselves as the technological backwater. I suspect Microsoft is in a better position to adapt to these changes, but Intel has a serious problem ahead.
I think this is an interesting idea particularly if you apply with the concept that the government is using this mechanism to fund _infrastructure_.
Right now, tax dollars pay for substantial amounts of material(i.e. textbooks) that is not freely available. That same money could be focused on materials that would become freely available.
I can see why the major information monopolies(i.e. Microsoft/Intel) would want something like this if they were to consider it carefully. Much of the value of this type of free information would eventually get capitalized as higher values for their property(i.e. as the web becomes more rich, more folks buy computers).
Personally, I'd like to see this idea tried in a pilot program first funded by a major foundation or as an adjunct to the National Endowment for the Arts.
I have my hesitations here, but this strikes me as a worthwhile experiment.
It isn't here yet-but the effort seems pretty active.