There is a feel component to this type of surgery. I'm not saying that a remote controlled device won't provide benefits or may not be used in certain circumstances. However, there are parameters such as it is easy for foreign objects to form clots in the brain that will kill you, aneurysms are filled using platinum coils (so it would have to be able to deliver them in small spaces with blood flow), some techniques like spinal vertebroplasty require a significant amount of glue that tends to set fairly quickly, etc.
Things get complicated quickly and you have a smaller margin of error as soon as you start getting into the brain. Anyone that has used a remote controlled device knows how much more difficult it is (even for the skilled operator) than using your own hands.
For example, the microrobot might deliver a payload of expandable glue to the site of a damaged cranial artery -- a procedure typically fraught with risk because posterior human brain arteries lay behind a complicated set of bends at the base of the skull beyond the reach of all but the most flexible catheters.
Getting beyond the "bends at the base of the skull" through the arteries is a surgical field called Neuroendovascular Surgery that has been in development since the 1960s and is used on everyone from babies to the old to people with cocaine habits and so forth. If I had an illiness that required it, I'd take a surgeon who performs several hundred of these operations a year over a remote controlled robot.
There is a difference between information and food. You can share information and you still have exactly what you started with. You can't do the same for food. As for making the case for a different model, I'd rather not get wrapped up in the details. I simply made the assertion that it was possible and suggested that people might do things for reasons other than revenue that would make the point moot.
You and I disagree on the open issue. It's not really a matter of proof. It's more of a matter of worldview. Also, it is probably worth mentioning that there are people trying different models for news. I mentioned Indymedia, which some might say is a failure, but there needs to be some experiment for something new to be developed - and as your argument illustrates, developing a new model for news is not a trivial problem.
I do analysis and contract information for business organizations for a living. My experience is that access and the ability to use information is something even large firms often don't do well. Most aren't even aware what is out there and why they need it (which to be fair the products are continually changing and you do need someone that specializes in this sort of thing to provide the balance you speak of).
It gets back to metrics. How do you define "success"? If you define it as market share in a market where you can't even buy a free software system from many standard vendors such as Dell or as revenue when free software doesn't work on the software as product model, you have a point. I think free software is nascent and in the short term, it works as a skunk works that is building a foundation that will eventually eat proprietary software's lunch. You can disagree that free software doesn't contribute ideas, and it would be difficult for either one of us to make the case definitively.
I think the problem with metrics in evaluating success is that it is confined to the here and now. If I had to use a metric, I'd probably use something like awareness. How many people have heard of free software? Have used it (not use it primarily or exclusively)? Any new technology takes time to mature and achieve a high penetration rate - TVs, VCRs, DVDs, Internets, computers, etc. Free software is fragmented, so this penetration issue with free software will take longer.
You also keep making this argument about forced openness. No one is forcing anyone to do anything. The GPL is using IP - namely copyright law - and it is licensing the work under specific conditions. If you don't like the license, you don't have to use or develop the software - just like you have the option not to use it when faced with another program's EULA.
Personally, I think the IP model is completely broke. I think the GPL is a stop-gap measure designed to restore the idea at the center of IP - which at least in the United States was "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". The idea was to promote these things for the common good - not for the good of a few. There needs to be a complete rethinking of copyright, patent and other IP laws that puts the common good and promoting progress as the key considerations. In the meantime, GPL just creates a new concept of copyright within the current framework. It may serve as a spark for the larger discussion necessary.
Which brings us to your arguments about net benefits of openness. I think your arguments on the negatives are weak. The development of Linux and practically every other free software project is done on volunteer work that is given freely - and it is only given freely because of the open model. It's called cooperation, and it is something that is difficult to understand if you put your faith in the concepts of capitalism, the rational consumer and finance. These models tend to forget that people also do things for love (not to mention fame, joy of solving problems or whatever) and not just, prima
It is interesting that your list fails to include any of my real arguments. Since you have forgotten (or failed to understand but instead talked about what you thought I implied), I'll do a quick recap:
Information that has no costs and no barriers to use, gets used more.
Open information models have the potential to be more accurate that traditional proprietary ones.
Restrictions on information negatively impacts decision making capabilities in business.
I don't think any of these are particularly controversial. I then went on to say this was analogous to software and that your arguments were weak - specifically, I questioned that free-software has been out-competed, your metrics and your assertion of the proprietary software model is better by pointing out that proprietary software benefits from the ideas of the free-software community - if not from the code base.
You are obviously unaccustomed to having civil discourse with people that disagree with your point of view. A suggestion: start with the supposition that you might not have understood something correctly rather than pursuing a path of intellectual arrogance and focus a lot less on what was implied and more on what was actually said. Who knows, you might actually learn something (read the executive summary).
Fox News, the channel, is cable. However, there are Fox owned broadcast TV stations that feature Fox News for the local area. So, your comment is not entirely correct.
While you are at it, continue the straw man arguments like "if the relationship between funding and journalistic quality are totally unrelated" (not a claim I made), your challenge of the prediction figures quoting other sources at $672 million (in 2004, RHAT by itself had revenue of $125 million, they must be one of the only ones making money right?), whether the different was 1000:1, 500:1, 1:500, 1:1000 (apparently facts are only the order of the day when there is a counter-argument in play - for you it is okay to totally make things up) and so forth.
I'll make one final comment in the hope it will be instructive. I said, "continue the straw man arguments like 'if the relationship between funding and journalistic quality are totally unrelated' (not a claim I made)", then I went into other problems in your argumentation like weak challenges to my facts that do not present much of a challenge to the substantive point I was making (money is being made and people are using the software), and the double standard that seems to apply to supporting premises you make versus those I present (you make facts up that could just as easily be reversed because you don't have any support for them at all - not to mention the facts change from being products to being revenue depending on which post you read when you use your made up ratios).
You read the above sentence and construed it as saying these were all illustrative examples of strawman arguments, rather than what I said. Instead of assuming something might be unclear in the argument as I expressed it or that you might be missing something, you instead went your interpretation, it's implications and concluded that I do not understand what a strawman argument is because obviously the second two points aren't strawman arguments.
By doing this, you create a strawman because you are attacking an argument which I did not make and you can't be bothered to figure out what I was saying. Much easier for you to assume I am uninformed and know nothing about "business and finance", strawman arguments and whatever else may be the topic of discussion. It's a consistent pattern throughout this thread.
By misrepresenting what I have said into a much more facile argument, drawing in what I seem to imply (from your misreading of my arguments) that misrepresent them further, and then making an argument on this position, pretty much defines strawman, and you have done it quite a few times here. Every now in again, you move to the blatant, like the ad hominum attack here (which I'm sure even if you were to find I was a major developer, you'd find some reason to argue I wasn't supporting it enough because my mother uses Windows or whatever). To be fair, I've used a false dichotomy for rhetorical purposes as well and probably could have been more charitable to some of your arguments. I'll be better about this in the future.
The only comment that seems appropriate at this point is to say that it seems like you have definitely caught the free market religion. I don't happen to share that particular faith - which also apparently means I don't understand finance or economics. I can only hope that you have more of a basis for making assertions on this topic than you do for the assertions about my knowledge on finance and economics, or supposed lack thereof.
While you are at it, continue the straw man arguments like "if the relationship between funding and journalistic quality are totally unrelated" (not a claim I made), your challenge of the prediction figures quoting other sources at $672 million (in 2004, RHAT by itself had revenue of $125 million, they must be one of the only ones making money right?), whether the different was 1000:1, 500:1, 1:500, 1:1000 (apparently facts are only the order of the day when there is a counter-argument in play - for you it is okay to totally make things up) and so forth.
I'm supporting the rule of law and the fundamental principle of competion.
Monopolies granted by government, which you call IP, are fundamentally anti-competitive. This is one example of half-assed thinking, on your part.
Without the fundamental institution of IP journalism will be a shadow of itself when and if it moves online (where rapid piracy can be facilated).
Or perhaps IP in journalism and the need to sell advertising space is exactly why so much journalism is so bad. We have alternative models, such as public broadcasting, collaborative efforts like Indymedia and so forth. It would mean it would have to change, but being a "shadow of itself" is merely hyperbole and is not "fact". It should not be a shadow of itself. IIt should be totally different.
It's been 20+ years...basically have almost zero pressure being applied on proprietary companies.
I know you believe this to be true. It does not however qualify as a fact. For example, all you have to do is consult some proprietary information sources on Linux revenues and adoption to...Oh, what is that? You don't have access to Gartner, IDC, Forrester or other companies doing research on technology adoption because you are a strong proponent of the IP rights of those companies and therefore, do not have access to their facts. No problem, you can go over to Wikipedia and look at the article on Linux and see quotes from publically available newspaper articles that republish bits of their reports in barely disguised efforts to shill for these companies which say: "The Linux market is rapidly growing and the revenue of servers, desktops, and packaged software running Linux is expected to exceed $35.7 billion by 2008." That $35.7 billion dollars is quite a few proprietary software companies' lunch.
Nor, for that matter, do the small successes mean that for every 1 success of open source, you don't have 1000 more for proprietary software.
Since you are so interested in facts, could you explain why you offer this completely baseless conjecture? You don't know what this ratio is now or might be in the future.
I'm saying that the anti-ownership claims of Stallman's were a total failure.
Claims can be either true or false. They can't fail. Now, you could claim that his anti-ownership efforts were a total failure. I think if you take something like the GPL, the most significant example of his anti-ownership efforts, you have to agree that - taken on its own terms, it has been successful. You might not like what it is doing, but that is besides the point. I think you are really trying to say that you think his claims are false, which you have argued for here. However, I disagree - because I don't find your argument compelling (more exactly, I take some of your underlying premises to be false) and I don't share the set of assumptions that are at the center of your worldview.
It's just not something that's going to scale unless there is a real economic motivator behind it.
Free software is built on a service model, not a product model. You give away the product to sell the service. There are plenty of businesses that use this model - cell phones are the first example that comes to mind. I think many more businesses could use that model - even industries where it might seem counter-intuitive, like high end computer games. They would be designed differently because of this need, but it is possible.
People that use the extremely limited success of their open/free pursuits to support the destruction of IP.
I think you are missing the larger argument here. The current model for IP is broken (e.g., Disney's ownership of Winnie the Pooh). The notion of a single creator of a work is becoming obsolete (e.g., Wikipedia). There are other reasons for contributing that have nothing to do
There is a lot of group-think that exists here on Slashdot. I intend to challenge it -- to be the Gadfly to slashdot's facile solutions.
This is true. However, you should be as much a gadfly to your own arguments as to others. You are basically taking a pro-status quo position that cannot imagine other circumstances that would support intellectual businesses. The newspaper industry needs to change just like the record and movie industries need to change. Software is one area where businesses have had to adapt because of the power of the free software model. You are saying it is a failure. I am saying not only is it not a failure, it is a model that can be applied to other areas (whether the current business models can support them or not). This is something on which reasonable people can disagree. However, you need to be careful of "pulling out "facts" to support their agenda that are anything but" yourself - which you have surely done here.
I am familiar with the industry. I don't disagree with the bulk of what what you have said on how newspapers operate.
I was making a simple argument from analogy. One of the key points of the argument was that proprietary information is less used than information that has fewer barriers or is freely distributed. It is the difference say between AP and a piece of investigative journalism by a specific paper. The license for these different sources impacts their use - which is basically the same argument RMS makes.
Now, you can argue that the analogy is flawed and you could point out salient differences. However, talking about newspaper business models is a straw man. It wasn't my argument. Having a relative in the business isn't a compelling grounds for an argument from authority. Your technical assessments seem to be shaped by the needs of your argument more than an honest assessment. For example, your assessment of the most popular web server as "a relatively simple product and a platform" forces anyone that is trying to be charitable to your argument to question your competence to make technical judgments - and there are many here.
But, I think the real difficulty is your style of communicating. Here, you are coming across like a bit of a know-it-all rather than someone interested in a conversation. Perhaps my previous posts (and perhaps even this one) had/have a bit of that element in them and was instrumental in bringing that out. If so, accept my apologies. However, with that said, I'm going to move on to a more civil dialogue that might be worth the time it takes to have it. This conversation doesn't meet that criteria any longer.
Newspaper content is by its very nature only valuable if it is timely and any one copy only represents a fraction of their capital investment...
If this is true, can you explain why companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to access newspaper articles as far back as the 1980s? You are looking at newspapers from only one perspective - the perspective of a person buying a single, paper copy of a newspaper. It does not reflect other aspects of the business.
For example, suppose I am a writer or a business analyst that wants to research past brand integration efforts in the white goods industry by the likes of Whirlpool or in related industries say Black & Decker. I am very much interested in articles contemporary with when these efforts took place. If I cannot access those articles because of the licensing terms by which those older articles are made available, then I cannot use them to write new articles or do an analysis regarding a business decision.
Your argument is that they are not analogous both because newspapers only have value when they are current and they have a different business model. I think I have demonstrated that newspapers have value beyond their use for timely information.
The second point you raise is that they are different financial models. I don't think that are that different. You are basically using the anomoly that you can buy single issues of a newspaper, but you are ignoring the fact that newspapers make their money from subscribers. The only real difference between Adobe and the NYT is that the NYT has the luxury of staging the subscription costs over several years where Adobe has to get it all at once and hope for some additional upgrade revenue. The analogy would be perfect if it were possible to buy one day passes to the Photoshop application - but alas, there are some difference- not enough to say it is not analogous to my mind.
The other issue is that you think of the NYT times as a single issue of the paper. I tend to think of it as all NYT articles available electronically - which poses the same risks to the NYT that Adobe's has with its object code.
However, all of this is besides the point, I think the real issue is that people (including yourself) still think of newspapers as something that is delivered as paper and sits on downsteps rather than a database of information. All the content of the NYT is in a database, people just don't know about it because it costs a lot of money. Thefore, they don't use it. It's an illustration on Stallman's point.
Stallman himself offered usage of the program as the measure of its social benefit...
Apache, MySQL, Samba, Perl, Firefox, Open Office, etc. The bottom line is that free software tends to be fragmented. You have various flavors of operating systems (Linux, BSD and so forth), databases (MySQL/Postgres), browsers, office suites, etc. Most of the examples you use are consumer applications that have been in the market for at least twice as long as the free software alternative. I think places where the time differencial is less, like in browsers, you see less of a difference. The advantage of legacy proprietary code will disappear over time, and I think you will find that free software will be the standard. There will be a point in each area where there is not that much difference in things such as usability, features, documentation that will justify the premium for common applications - such as a spreadsheet. I think proprietary software will continue to have a place, but its place will be defined by where they can get away with charging a premium and that space is going to get smaller over time.
I would argue that, while there is some truth to his last two points, the incentive which is destroyed by the open source model far outweigh the theoretical benefits bestowed by them (lateral code sharing and project modification).
Let's do a thought experiment shall we? Let's assume your rendering of his argument is correct and let's change "software" to "information" - as a concrete example, newspaper information available in sources such as the New York Times (NYT), Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and free (no cost) versions available through Yahoo or other services.
Fewer people do use the WSJ versus the NYT. It costs money to get the WSJ. NYT requires registration. Now compare Yahoo and other sources that have no cost and no barriers such as registration. What gets used more? What is a more competitive product?
It is clear that WSJ is referred to and used less than free or registration only services - which basically supports his first point. The competitiveness - however you define it - is besides the point.
I think you can make the argument that the Wikipedia, the trend for online publications to provide discussion forums attached to specific articles and so forth basically supports Stallman's second point. These resources are more useful because they can be updated in a timely fashion and errors and corrections can be made. Compare that to the old newspaper model - which works much like proprietary software and where the publisher can publish bug fixes in the form of "corrections" on a page no one sees.
However, I think his strongest point is the third one. Proprietary information is less valuable because people in lateral areas can't learn from it. The best example for these and newspapers is the ability to aggregate them. Let's say you are doing research on a topic and want to be able to do a search across the NYT, WSJ, Yahoo free services like AP Newswire and so forth. Right now, there is only one service that provides this capability - Factiva - which owns the WSJ. If you used a service like Nexis, you would not be able to search the Wall Street Journal as well. Factiva itself has troubles keeping other sources in their database like the Financial Times.
I can tell you that this has negative effects on the business decision making ability of organizations because they cannot look at all the relevent press coverage on a topic. The ability to do this kind of search is contingent on companies being willing to license their aggregate content so that it can be searched through one source. The more restrictive and proprietary the information becomes because the companies that own it won't license it, the less useful these aggregating search database becomes and I would argue it has a negative impact on business overall.
Now, I think you can basically make many of the same arguments when you change "information" back to "software". I think your premise that proprietary software has outcompeted free software is questionable at best. Based on what metric, presence on the desktop? Code quality? Anywhere you look you don't have a particularly strong argument. I also think that you that advantages of free software are ones that are realized over time that you are not accounting for.
You second point about users is also a bit dubious. His argument is geared toward developers. Do most developers prefer closed source software and how has that tracked over time? I'd argue that it has increased, but I don't have a source handy that supports me. I also think that as companies attempt to assert more control over the desktop, you will see users making choices about using products that don't unnecessary restrict them over those that do. Again, this is something that will manifest itself over time.
I'm not sure I'm following the last part of your argument. I think you are using users when you should be talking about developers. The ability to reuse code mostly impacts the development cycle. Users will ultimately follow a development cycle that gives them tools that enable them to use their computer the way they want to use it.
You can see the impact today in product releases like IE7. You think IE7 would look and work the way it does without Firefox blazing the trail? You think this might b
I've read your original post and this one, and I think the difficulty is the same: your expectations.
The expectation that what you do in a public forum will remain private or that you somehow can control it an expectation you can have only if you can create or rely on an environment of negative network effects. If there are resource limitations, such as disk drive space to hold Usenet posts or the combination of limited personal connections with limited interest in what you do or say, then you have "privacy" that is created by these limitations.
I can understand not liking the fact that networks and capabilities evolve. However, I do not understand why you don't simply change your expectations rather that propose creating artificial means of maintaining your "privacy" that if you think of all the implications will result in a great deal of harm and will likely not maintain your "privacy" anyway.
Using the DMCA to protect privacy is a bad idea. It is not the purpose of the law. Creating a law specifically for this purpose will have the effect of killing useful resources (or introducing a lot of ridiculous waivers) such as access to Usenet through Google. Technological means such as DRM have many of the same problems as legal means. Etc.
You can control what you say in public forums. You cannot control how other people might relate what you say to others, how this may be aggregated in the future (one day I may be able to just click on your Slashdot Id and find all your Usenet posts), how other people moderate what you say or what have you. Doing things in public means you have to deal with public consequences, such as moderations, that may not always be fair. But then again, life isn't fair. Deal with it.
If you work in management for a telco or a cableco, look for Federal indictments to come to your office before the decade is out.
Yes, because we all know that executives at large companies pay the ultimate price if they swindle the public. I know I'd be very worried given the punishment given in the highest profile example: Enron.
Enron - The Crime: A group that wiped out thousands of jobs, more than $60 billion in market value and more than $2 billion in pension plans. The Punishment: Lay: No punishment. He had the nerve to die first. Skilling: 24 years, 4 months of prison. Fastow: 6 years. Causey: 5 1/2 years, he will also have to serve two years' probation and pay a $25,000 fine that will be distributed to Enron's victims. Several other executives are serving prison terms of between 18 months and five years.
Skilling was the only one that recieved any kind of major punishment. Now, take a look at the sentencing statistics for the 5th Circuit Court (the court in which Skilling's trial occurred). If you look on page 14, you'll notice the mean number of months people get for fraud nationally (21.3) and in the 5th circuit (24.2) and the medians are significantly lower.
So, the lesson here is that unless it is a high profile case, you are looking at two years or less. Even in high profile cases such as Enron, most people involved will get less than 5 years. Do you think FTTH is really be a high profile case - given most people don't even understand what it means?
More to the point, if you are a c-level executive making millions once your total compensation is calculated, do you think you are really going to worry about a 2 year prison sentence? Also consider that c-level executives tend not to stay at any particular company for long, giving most executives plausible denyability that any fraud was their fault. I don't think this is something that is keeping these folks up at night.
You, ah, ARE aware that the Constitution sets up three branches of government, and explicitly grants the Courts a rough third of aggregate power, right?
You are aware that the Supreme Court is the only court mentioned by the U.S. Constitution and that this court did not have any real power until Marbury vs. Madison in 1803? The notion of judicial review is not explicit in the U.S. Constitution and was developed over time as a tradition. It certainly wasn't there right out of the gate. Just thought that needed to be clarified.
You must be using a definition of liberal that is very different from mine. I think the Wikipedia description of Liberalism and Social Liberalism is adequete in that it identifies individual liberty as the primary political value of liberalism and the social liberal's view of the role of government in increasing the liberty of the poor and those discriminated against.
I don't see anything anti-Christian in having liberty as a primary political value. I am not sure what you mean by Christian heritage. To my mind, Cornel West has a good way of thinking about Christian heritage that he talks about in his book Democracy Matters. Cornel talks about two types of Christianity - Constantinian Christianity and prophetic Christianity, and he makes a rather damning assessment:
Imperial [Constantinian] Christianity, market spirituality, money-obsessed churches, gospels of propserity, prayers of let's make a deal with God or help me turn my wheel of fortune have become the prevailing voice of American Christianity...And there is hardly a mumbling heard about social justice, resistence to institutional evil, or courage to confront the powers that be -- with the glaring exception of abortion.
I would agree that Constantian Christianity has some of the features you describe and that it is the prevaling voice in the U.S. However, I wouldn't paint all Christianity with that brush.
I also think you make a number of unwarranted assumptions in your post. I think it is demonstratably false that all religions are intolerant. For one example, take Hinduism. There is no way to convert and there is no damnation (in the sense of eternal damnation). Are there intolerant fundamentalist Hindus? Of course, just as there are intolerant fundamentalist Christians. It still doesn't mean that is typical of the religion as a whole.
I think you also make the mistake of thinking all Christians have scripture as their ultimate authority. Even the Catholic church acknowledges tradition has a role to play in faith along with scripture. There are also those that believe in an unfolding revelation. Then, there is always the scripture itself, which says even the devil can quote it for his own purposes. Personally, I think that scripture is a tool for dialogue with God, and the idea of misreading it is not even one that makes sense to me. The truth isn't in scripture, the truth is something that can be obtained from a relationship with God.
I find your comments on Robertson simply confusing. Let's look at what I said in my post:
I think it is a legitimate discussion to talk about how these limits might be changed to encourage a diversity of viewpoints that better reflect the ideas of the U.S. population. However, the other side of that coin is that people like Newt and certain types on the left might use it as an opportunity to limit points of view that differ - which goes against the whole idea of doing it from my point of view.
I'm trying to look at it from your point of view. But, your comment that "not everyone has that much to say" is particularly weak. There is no shortage of people with something to say, and I personally would like to hear from more of them - perhaps especially those I disagree with beyond Robertson.
You assume that advocating for more diverse voices means silencing Robertson altogether - not a very charitable rendering of my argument but I suppose I could have been clearer on that point. I'm not interested in shutting up Robertson. I like the fact that he is out there. Also, I think he is a very useful as a bad example - as he was here. I'm not even sure that I'm arguing for less Robertson (my answer depends on whether we assume that broadcast time is finite or not). However, these are minor points to the
You could point to other factors as well. There has also been a shift to service jobs, which also includes retail, hospitality and so forth. These are not higher paying, more productive jobs. They are also jobs that people in higher economic strata need.
We have a progressive tax because people that benefit more from society (e.g., they can spend their time being a surgeon rather than cleaning their house) should pay more tax. I don't agree with the idea that a progressive tax is penalizing people for success. It is contributing some of the income to society, so everyone can share in the benefits - including the person cleaning their house. It is in no way punishing success. It is sharing the benefits with all the people that have made success possible.
As for the other point, discrimination is widespead. Everything from women being paid.75 cents for every dollar a man earns to country of origin bias. An obvious example, think of the government and the media's response to Katrina. Racism is institutional, you think it is a coincidence that the U.S. population is 12.3% black and the population of federal and state inmates is 43.9% black? I call it what it is - racism. Ever think of what your income potential is as an ex-prisoner? If it exists in such an obvious way in our justice system, do you think it might exist, but be slightly less obvious, on the job - especially since corporations, like government, tend to be run by older white men? I think it is safe to assume it is there - even if we personally might not see how it manifests itself (since we aren't the target).
You have made some good points. I do think education opportunity is important. However, I don't think it alone will solve the larger problem - which is poverty. I also think that trying to use education to address poverty is problematic public policy since poverty itself is a barrier to education.
Regulation (or deregulation) is redistribution. It is clear from the previously cited chart that the Top 5% have benefited from a redistribution of income since 1980. I don't think this redistribution of more income to the top 5% is a function of their increased education, for their working harder, based on merit, because the other groups are less educated or for any other reason other than an economic structure has been changed to benefit those at the top - to use your terminology, it was/is a "forcible resdistribution" that the government facilitated.
It seems appropriate that public policy should address this issue. While people may not agree what constitutes equity or even what policies might help create it, it would be easy enough to target giving the lower 40% a greater share of the income and track it over time and balance it against other measures like productivity, GDP or what have you - with the understanding that maximizing these other measures is actually secondary to other concerns (such as maintaining a clean environment, making sure citizens aren't living in poverty, etc.)
I agree with you on the structural point. However, I don't think the problem is primarily education. I think the primary problem is concentrated wealth. If you start out in life with a $1 million dollar trust fund, you are going to have different opportunities than someone that has to earn money to put food on their parent's table - irrespective of your education level.
I'd also say that there is subtle sexism and racism in play. Let's use your example. If there are 10,000 applicants to Harvard and 2,000 openings. Let's say that there are roughly 2,500 applicants with roughly the same profile (that is qualified to attend the school) and 1000 of them are minority candidates. Affirmative action should be showing a preference for candidates that are members of traditionally discriminated against groups when all else is equal. I don't have any issue with that - but people that talk against affirmative action typically assume that this is not the case. Why? Why assume they attended poor schools at all?
It's one thing to talk about a specific instance and say that people were giving opportunity they didn't deserve. I think that is the exception. However, can we agree, in principle, that affirmative action as I described it is not a bad thing?
It does not seem fair. Those who sacrifice, save and work hard should be rewarded. Those who do not, should not.
Are you saying that we live in a meritocracy? So, the trend since 1980 that you can see in this chart (Table 680) showing that the top 5% of people had an increase in their percentage of all earnings move from 14.6% to 20.5% must be because the top 5% must have started working harder since then, right? George Bush is president because he was the guy most deserving to be president in the country?
Social justice is simply the idea that there are structures in place in our society that benefit some at the expense of others - irrespective of individual effort. Even if you believe that market economies are the most efficient (which is a dubious assertion because market economies fail to account for externalities like pollution in their price), you have to acknowledge that the U.S. does not have a market economy. Subsidies and government controls in all their myriad varieties exist because certain things (agricultural production, industrial capacity, etc.) need to be maintained to mitigate the unfortunate highs and lows (which are highly inefficient) that are built into free markets.
So, the question is that if you are going to have controls, then you need to make sure that the distribution of the benefits are equitable and designed to reward behaviors you approve of like sacrifice, saving and hard work. The simple fact is the current system is not set-up that way, and it is clear from looking at the progression of income distribution (unless you want to make a classest argument that somehow the distribution of hard working people is more highly clustered in the upper regions of income).
I'm a Quaker, and I believe in non-violence. However, I have to allow that there may be circumstance where I might be wrong and armed revolt might actually have a restraining effect on a group that would otherwise be more violent. I don't think this is the case, but I have to allow for the possibility. I certainly don't think it is appropriate to compel you to agree with me on this issue - as George Fox once said to William Penn, "Wear thy sword as long as thou canst."
I do think you are right that people use it as a way of determinng in/out groups. People that I agree with on most other issues find it most distressing that I don't support gun control. I agree there is a bit of a paradox of being a Quaker that doesn't support gun control, but I think my reasoning is sound. I am open to hearing what others have to say either direction on it.
I'm about as left on the political spectrum as any person you are likely to meet in the U.S. I'm part of what I like to think of as the Christian Left. In this post, you are making the common mistake of assuming that secularism is what drives the left. It's a factor, but I wouldn't call it a defining characteristic.
My experience is that what people have trouble with when it comes to religion, specifically Christianity, is the hypocrisy and hate of those that claim to be Christians and who have a significant following or media presence. If your primary experience with Christians is based on the words of people like Pat Robertson who say things like:
When you see L-O-R-D in caps, that is the name. It's not Allah, it's not Brahma, it's not Shiva, it's not Vishnu, it's not Buddha. It is Jehovah God. They don't have a relationship with him. He is the God of all Gods. These others are mostly demonic powers. Sure they're demons. There are many demons in the world.
You can't escape the fact that this is an intolerant statement. Beliefs such as this drive people to do hateful and terrible things in God's name. I think this is what many secular people take issue with - and I agree with them. However, some also make the mistake of assuming all religious people are like this - which shows another form of intolerance that can also drive people to do hateful and terrible things.
However, you can't escape the fact that Pat Robertson has more free speech than either you, I, or the vast majority of people have. The issues you raise: campaign finance reform, speech codes, and so forth are simply efforts to deal with this issue. At its heart, individual political autonomy depends on a diversity of voices in the political landscape. We need to be aware that there are limits on free speech in place (for example, why does Pat get network time? why has the FCC supported network consolidation?) and that the current limits appear transparent because we are used to them. I think it is a legitimate discussion to talk about how these limits might be changed to encourage a diversity of viewpoints that better reflect the ideas of the U.S. population. However, the other side of that coin is that people like Newt and certain types on the left might use it as an opportunity to limit points of view that differ - which goes against the whole idea of doing it from my point of view.
I find the other crowd more interesting. You know, those that get upset about free speech rights but think that guns should be outlawed. The U.S. was founded on the notion that the population has the right to revolt against an unjust government. It's the last resort, the baseline that guarantees the other rights.
The problem is that many people have forgotten that it could happen here. They fear the freedom of individuals (speaking or with weapons) more than they fear the government taking away their freedom. It's the reason both sides fail to support both 1st and 2nd amendment rights - and pick one over another. Whenever either one of these ceases to mean anything, it will be the inescapable sign that there is trouble in the republic.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a feel component to this type of surgery. I'm not saying that a remote controlled device won't provide benefits or may not be used in certain circumstances. However, there are parameters such as it is easy for foreign objects to form clots in the brain that will kill you, aneurysms are filled using platinum coils (so it would have to be able to deliver them in small spaces with blood flow), some techniques like spinal vertebroplasty require a significant amount of glue that tends to set fairly quickly, etc.
Things get complicated quickly and you have a smaller margin of error as soon as you start getting into the brain. Anyone that has used a remote controlled device knows how much more difficult it is (even for the skilled operator) than using your own hands.
Human feel can make a huge difference too, and samurais can do many things that F-14s cannot.
Getting beyond the "bends at the base of the skull" through the arteries is a surgical field called Neuroendovascular Surgery that has been in development since the 1960s and is used on everyone from babies to the old to people with cocaine habits and so forth. If I had an illiness that required it, I'd take a surgeon who performs several hundred of these operations a year over a remote controlled robot.
There is a difference between information and food. You can share information and you still have exactly what you started with. You can't do the same for food. As for making the case for a different model, I'd rather not get wrapped up in the details. I simply made the assertion that it was possible and suggested that people might do things for reasons other than revenue that would make the point moot.
You and I disagree on the open issue. It's not really a matter of proof. It's more of a matter of worldview. Also, it is probably worth mentioning that there are people trying different models for news. I mentioned Indymedia, which some might say is a failure, but there needs to be some experiment for something new to be developed - and as your argument illustrates, developing a new model for news is not a trivial problem.
I do analysis and contract information for business organizations for a living. My experience is that access and the ability to use information is something even large firms often don't do well. Most aren't even aware what is out there and why they need it (which to be fair the products are continually changing and you do need someone that specializes in this sort of thing to provide the balance you speak of).
It gets back to metrics. How do you define "success"? If you define it as market share in a market where you can't even buy a free software system from many standard vendors such as Dell or as revenue when free software doesn't work on the software as product model, you have a point. I think free software is nascent and in the short term, it works as a skunk works that is building a foundation that will eventually eat proprietary software's lunch. You can disagree that free software doesn't contribute ideas, and it would be difficult for either one of us to make the case definitively.
I think the problem with metrics in evaluating success is that it is confined to the here and now. If I had to use a metric, I'd probably use something like awareness. How many people have heard of free software? Have used it (not use it primarily or exclusively)? Any new technology takes time to mature and achieve a high penetration rate - TVs, VCRs, DVDs, Internets, computers, etc. Free software is fragmented, so this penetration issue with free software will take longer.
You also keep making this argument about forced openness. No one is forcing anyone to do anything. The GPL is using IP - namely copyright law - and it is licensing the work under specific conditions. If you don't like the license, you don't have to use or develop the software - just like you have the option not to use it when faced with another program's EULA.
Personally, I think the IP model is completely broke. I think the GPL is a stop-gap measure designed to restore the idea at the center of IP - which at least in the United States was "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". The idea was to promote these things for the common good - not for the good of a few. There needs to be a complete rethinking of copyright, patent and other IP laws that puts the common good and promoting progress as the key considerations. In the meantime, GPL just creates a new concept of copyright within the current framework. It may serve as a spark for the larger discussion necessary.
Which brings us to your arguments about net benefits of openness. I think your arguments on the negatives are weak. The development of Linux and practically every other free software project is done on volunteer work that is given freely - and it is only given freely because of the open model. It's called cooperation, and it is something that is difficult to understand if you put your faith in the concepts of capitalism, the rational consumer and finance. These models tend to forget that people also do things for love (not to mention fame, joy of solving problems or whatever) and not just, prima
It is interesting that your list fails to include any of my real arguments. Since you have forgotten (or failed to understand but instead talked about what you thought I implied), I'll do a quick recap:
I don't think any of these are particularly controversial. I then went on to say this was analogous to software and that your arguments were weak - specifically, I questioned that free-software has been out-competed, your metrics and your assertion of the proprietary software model is better by pointing out that proprietary software benefits from the ideas of the free-software community - if not from the code base.
You are obviously unaccustomed to having civil discourse with people that disagree with your point of view. A suggestion: start with the supposition that you might not have understood something correctly rather than pursuing a path of intellectual arrogance and focus a lot less on what was implied and more on what was actually said. Who knows, you might actually learn something (read the executive summary).
Fox News, the channel, is cable. However, there are Fox owned broadcast TV stations that feature Fox News for the local area. So, your comment is not entirely correct.
This pretty much sums it up. Making up bogus arguments on my behalf while failing to address the real ones. Good day.
I'll make one final comment in the hope it will be instructive. I said, "continue the straw man arguments like 'if the relationship between funding and journalistic quality are totally unrelated' (not a claim I made)", then I went into other problems in your argumentation like weak challenges to my facts that do not present much of a challenge to the substantive point I was making (money is being made and people are using the software), and the double standard that seems to apply to supporting premises you make versus those I present (you make facts up that could just as easily be reversed because you don't have any support for them at all - not to mention the facts change from being products to being revenue depending on which post you read when you use your made up ratios).
You read the above sentence and construed it as saying these were all illustrative examples of strawman arguments, rather than what I said. Instead of assuming something might be unclear in the argument as I expressed it or that you might be missing something, you instead went your interpretation, it's implications and concluded that I do not understand what a strawman argument is because obviously the second two points aren't strawman arguments.
By doing this, you create a strawman because you are attacking an argument which I did not make and you can't be bothered to figure out what I was saying. Much easier for you to assume I am uninformed and know nothing about "business and finance", strawman arguments and whatever else may be the topic of discussion. It's a consistent pattern throughout this thread.
By misrepresenting what I have said into a much more facile argument, drawing in what I seem to imply (from your misreading of my arguments) that misrepresent them further, and then making an argument on this position, pretty much defines strawman, and you have done it quite a few times here. Every now in again, you move to the blatant, like the ad hominum attack here (which I'm sure even if you were to find I was a major developer, you'd find some reason to argue I wasn't supporting it enough because my mother uses Windows or whatever). To be fair, I've used a false dichotomy for rhetorical purposes as well and probably could have been more charitable to some of your arguments. I'll be better about this in the future.
The only comment that seems appropriate at this point is to say that it seems like you have definitely caught the free market religion. I don't happen to share that particular faith - which also apparently means I don't understand finance or economics. I can only hope that you have more of a basis for making assertions on this topic than you do for the assertions about my knowledge on finance and economics, or supposed lack thereof.
While you are at it, continue the straw man arguments like "if the relationship between funding and journalistic quality are totally unrelated" (not a claim I made), your challenge of the prediction figures quoting other sources at $672 million (in 2004, RHAT by itself had revenue of $125 million, they must be one of the only ones making money right?), whether the different was 1000:1, 500:1, 1:500, 1:1000 (apparently facts are only the order of the day when there is a counter-argument in play - for you it is okay to totally make things up) and so forth.
I think I'll take a pass from here, thanks.
Monopolies granted by government, which you call IP, are fundamentally anti-competitive. This is one example of half-assed thinking, on your part.
Or perhaps IP in journalism and the need to sell advertising space is exactly why so much journalism is so bad. We have alternative models, such as public broadcasting, collaborative efforts like Indymedia and so forth. It would mean it would have to change, but being a "shadow of itself" is merely hyperbole and is not "fact". It should not be a shadow of itself. IIt should be totally different.
I know you believe this to be true. It does not however qualify as a fact. For example, all you have to do is consult some proprietary information sources on Linux revenues and adoption to...Oh, what is that? You don't have access to Gartner, IDC, Forrester or other companies doing research on technology adoption because you are a strong proponent of the IP rights of those companies and therefore, do not have access to their facts. No problem, you can go over to Wikipedia and look at the article on Linux and see quotes from publically available newspaper articles that republish bits of their reports in barely disguised efforts to shill for these companies which say: "The Linux market is rapidly growing and the revenue of servers, desktops, and packaged software running Linux is expected to exceed $35.7 billion by 2008." That $35.7 billion dollars is quite a few proprietary software companies' lunch.
Since you are so interested in facts, could you explain why you offer this completely baseless conjecture? You don't know what this ratio is now or might be in the future.
Claims can be either true or false. They can't fail. Now, you could claim that his anti-ownership efforts were a total failure. I think if you take something like the GPL, the most significant example of his anti-ownership efforts, you have to agree that - taken on its own terms, it has been successful. You might not like what it is doing, but that is besides the point. I think you are really trying to say that you think his claims are false, which you have argued for here. However, I disagree - because I don't find your argument compelling (more exactly, I take some of your underlying premises to be false) and I don't share the set of assumptions that are at the center of your worldview.
Free software is built on a service model, not a product model. You give away the product to sell the service. There are plenty of businesses that use this model - cell phones are the first example that comes to mind. I think many more businesses could use that model - even industries where it might seem counter-intuitive, like high end computer games. They would be designed differently because of this need, but it is possible.
I think you are missing the larger argument here. The current model for IP is broken (e.g., Disney's ownership of Winnie the Pooh). The notion of a single creator of a work is becoming obsolete (e.g., Wikipedia). There are other reasons for contributing that have nothing to do
This is true. However, you should be as much a gadfly to your own arguments as to others. You are basically taking a pro-status quo position that cannot imagine other circumstances that would support intellectual businesses. The newspaper industry needs to change just like the record and movie industries need to change. Software is one area where businesses have had to adapt because of the power of the free software model. You are saying it is a failure. I am saying not only is it not a failure, it is a model that can be applied to other areas (whether the current business models can support them or not). This is something on which reasonable people can disagree. However, you need to be careful of "pulling out "facts" to support their agenda that are anything but" yourself - which you have surely done here.
I am familiar with the industry. I don't disagree with the bulk of what what you have said on how newspapers operate.
I was making a simple argument from analogy. One of the key points of the argument was that proprietary information is less used than information that has fewer barriers or is freely distributed. It is the difference say between AP and a piece of investigative journalism by a specific paper. The license for these different sources impacts their use - which is basically the same argument RMS makes.
Now, you can argue that the analogy is flawed and you could point out salient differences. However, talking about newspaper business models is a straw man. It wasn't my argument. Having a relative in the business isn't a compelling grounds for an argument from authority. Your technical assessments seem to be shaped by the needs of your argument more than an honest assessment. For example, your assessment of the most popular web server as "a relatively simple product and a platform" forces anyone that is trying to be charitable to your argument to question your competence to make technical judgments - and there are many here.
But, I think the real difficulty is your style of communicating. Here, you are coming across like a bit of a know-it-all rather than someone interested in a conversation. Perhaps my previous posts (and perhaps even this one) had/have a bit of that element in them and was instrumental in bringing that out. If so, accept my apologies. However, with that said, I'm going to move on to a more civil dialogue that might be worth the time it takes to have it. This conversation doesn't meet that criteria any longer.
If this is true, can you explain why companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to access newspaper articles as far back as the 1980s? You are looking at newspapers from only one perspective - the perspective of a person buying a single, paper copy of a newspaper. It does not reflect other aspects of the business.
For example, suppose I am a writer or a business analyst that wants to research past brand integration efforts in the white goods industry by the likes of Whirlpool or in related industries say Black & Decker. I am very much interested in articles contemporary with when these efforts took place. If I cannot access those articles because of the licensing terms by which those older articles are made available, then I cannot use them to write new articles or do an analysis regarding a business decision.
Your argument is that they are not analogous both because newspapers only have value when they are current and they have a different business model. I think I have demonstrated that newspapers have value beyond their use for timely information.
The second point you raise is that they are different financial models. I don't think that are that different. You are basically using the anomoly that you can buy single issues of a newspaper, but you are ignoring the fact that newspapers make their money from subscribers. The only real difference between Adobe and the NYT is that the NYT has the luxury of staging the subscription costs over several years where Adobe has to get it all at once and hope for some additional upgrade revenue. The analogy would be perfect if it were possible to buy one day passes to the Photoshop application - but alas, there are some difference- not enough to say it is not analogous to my mind.
The other issue is that you think of the NYT times as a single issue of the paper. I tend to think of it as all NYT articles available electronically - which poses the same risks to the NYT that Adobe's has with its object code.
However, all of this is besides the point, I think the real issue is that people (including yourself) still think of newspapers as something that is delivered as paper and sits on downsteps rather than a database of information. All the content of the NYT is in a database, people just don't know about it because it costs a lot of money. Thefore, they don't use it. It's an illustration on Stallman's point.
Apache, MySQL, Samba, Perl, Firefox, Open Office, etc. The bottom line is that free software tends to be fragmented. You have various flavors of operating systems (Linux, BSD and so forth), databases (MySQL/Postgres), browsers, office suites, etc. Most of the examples you use are consumer applications that have been in the market for at least twice as long as the free software alternative. I think places where the time differencial is less, like in browsers, you see less of a difference. The advantage of legacy proprietary code will disappear over time, and I think you will find that free software will be the standard. There will be a point in each area where there is not that much difference in things such as usability, features, documentation that will justify the premium for common applications - such as a spreadsheet. I think proprietary software will continue to have a place, but its place will be defined by where they can get away with charging a premium and that space is going to get smaller over time.
The fact that free software is where it i
Let's do a thought experiment shall we? Let's assume your rendering of his argument is correct and let's change "software" to "information" - as a concrete example, newspaper information available in sources such as the New York Times (NYT), Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and free (no cost) versions available through Yahoo or other services.
Fewer people do use the WSJ versus the NYT. It costs money to get the WSJ. NYT requires registration. Now compare Yahoo and other sources that have no cost and no barriers such as registration. What gets used more? What is a more competitive product?
It is clear that WSJ is referred to and used less than free or registration only services - which basically supports his first point. The competitiveness - however you define it - is besides the point.
I think you can make the argument that the Wikipedia, the trend for online publications to provide discussion forums attached to specific articles and so forth basically supports Stallman's second point. These resources are more useful because they can be updated in a timely fashion and errors and corrections can be made. Compare that to the old newspaper model - which works much like proprietary software and where the publisher can publish bug fixes in the form of "corrections" on a page no one sees.
However, I think his strongest point is the third one. Proprietary information is less valuable because people in lateral areas can't learn from it. The best example for these and newspapers is the ability to aggregate them. Let's say you are doing research on a topic and want to be able to do a search across the NYT, WSJ, Yahoo free services like AP Newswire and so forth. Right now, there is only one service that provides this capability - Factiva - which owns the WSJ. If you used a service like Nexis, you would not be able to search the Wall Street Journal as well. Factiva itself has troubles keeping other sources in their database like the Financial Times.
I can tell you that this has negative effects on the business decision making ability of organizations because they cannot look at all the relevent press coverage on a topic. The ability to do this kind of search is contingent on companies being willing to license their aggregate content so that it can be searched through one source. The more restrictive and proprietary the information becomes because the companies that own it won't license it, the less useful these aggregating search database becomes and I would argue it has a negative impact on business overall.
Now, I think you can basically make many of the same arguments when you change "information" back to "software". I think your premise that proprietary software has outcompeted free software is questionable at best. Based on what metric, presence on the desktop? Code quality? Anywhere you look you don't have a particularly strong argument. I also think that you that advantages of free software are ones that are realized over time that you are not accounting for.
You second point about users is also a bit dubious. His argument is geared toward developers. Do most developers prefer closed source software and how has that tracked over time? I'd argue that it has increased, but I don't have a source handy that supports me. I also think that as companies attempt to assert more control over the desktop, you will see users making choices about using products that don't unnecessary restrict them over those that do. Again, this is something that will manifest itself over time.
I'm not sure I'm following the last part of your argument. I think you are using users when you should be talking about developers. The ability to reuse code mostly impacts the development cycle. Users will ultimately follow a development cycle that gives them tools that enable them to use their computer the way they want to use it.
You can see the impact today in product releases like IE7. You think IE7 would look and work the way it does without Firefox blazing the trail? You think this might b
I've read your original post and this one, and I think the difficulty is the same: your expectations.
The expectation that what you do in a public forum will remain private or that you somehow can control it an expectation you can have only if you can create or rely on an environment of negative network effects. If there are resource limitations, such as disk drive space to hold Usenet posts or the combination of limited personal connections with limited interest in what you do or say, then you have "privacy" that is created by these limitations.
I can understand not liking the fact that networks and capabilities evolve. However, I do not understand why you don't simply change your expectations rather that propose creating artificial means of maintaining your "privacy" that if you think of all the implications will result in a great deal of harm and will likely not maintain your "privacy" anyway.
Using the DMCA to protect privacy is a bad idea. It is not the purpose of the law. Creating a law specifically for this purpose will have the effect of killing useful resources (or introducing a lot of ridiculous waivers) such as access to Usenet through Google. Technological means such as DRM have many of the same problems as legal means. Etc.
You can control what you say in public forums. You cannot control how other people might relate what you say to others, how this may be aggregated in the future (one day I may be able to just click on your Slashdot Id and find all your Usenet posts), how other people moderate what you say or what have you. Doing things in public means you have to deal with public consequences, such as moderations, that may not always be fair. But then again, life isn't fair. Deal with it.
Yes, because we all know that executives at large companies pay the ultimate price if they swindle the public. I know I'd be very worried given the punishment given in the highest profile example: Enron.
Enron - The Crime: A group that wiped out thousands of jobs, more than $60 billion in market value and more than $2 billion in pension plans. The Punishment: Lay: No punishment. He had the nerve to die first. Skilling: 24 years, 4 months of prison. Fastow: 6 years. Causey: 5 1/2 years, he will also have to serve two years' probation and pay a $25,000 fine that will be distributed to Enron's victims. Several other executives are serving prison terms of between 18 months and five years.
Skilling was the only one that recieved any kind of major punishment. Now, take a look at the sentencing statistics for the 5th Circuit Court (the court in which Skilling's trial occurred). If you look on page 14, you'll notice the mean number of months people get for fraud nationally (21.3) and in the 5th circuit (24.2) and the medians are significantly lower.
So, the lesson here is that unless it is a high profile case, you are looking at two years or less. Even in high profile cases such as Enron, most people involved will get less than 5 years. Do you think FTTH is really be a high profile case - given most people don't even understand what it means?
More to the point, if you are a c-level executive making millions once your total compensation is calculated, do you think you are really going to worry about a 2 year prison sentence? Also consider that c-level executives tend not to stay at any particular company for long, giving most executives plausible denyability that any fraud was their fault. I don't think this is something that is keeping these folks up at night.
Anything in alpha testing can't really be called a product, much less the most innovative product (or in the top ten) of the year.
You are aware that the Supreme Court is the only court mentioned by the U.S. Constitution and that this court did not have any real power until Marbury vs. Madison in 1803? The notion of judicial review is not explicit in the U.S. Constitution and was developed over time as a tradition. It certainly wasn't there right out of the gate. Just thought that needed to be clarified.
You must be using a definition of liberal that is very different from mine. I think the Wikipedia description of Liberalism and Social Liberalism is adequete in that it identifies individual liberty as the primary political value of liberalism and the social liberal's view of the role of government in increasing the liberty of the poor and those discriminated against.
I don't see anything anti-Christian in having liberty as a primary political value. I am not sure what you mean by Christian heritage. To my mind, Cornel West has a good way of thinking about Christian heritage that he talks about in his book Democracy Matters. Cornel talks about two types of Christianity - Constantinian Christianity and prophetic Christianity, and he makes a rather damning assessment:
I would agree that Constantian Christianity has some of the features you describe and that it is the prevaling voice in the U.S. However, I wouldn't paint all Christianity with that brush.
I also think you make a number of unwarranted assumptions in your post. I think it is demonstratably false that all religions are intolerant. For one example, take Hinduism. There is no way to convert and there is no damnation (in the sense of eternal damnation). Are there intolerant fundamentalist Hindus? Of course, just as there are intolerant fundamentalist Christians. It still doesn't mean that is typical of the religion as a whole.
I think you also make the mistake of thinking all Christians have scripture as their ultimate authority. Even the Catholic church acknowledges tradition has a role to play in faith along with scripture. There are also those that believe in an unfolding revelation. Then, there is always the scripture itself, which says even the devil can quote it for his own purposes. Personally, I think that scripture is a tool for dialogue with God, and the idea of misreading it is not even one that makes sense to me. The truth isn't in scripture, the truth is something that can be obtained from a relationship with God.
I find your comments on Robertson simply confusing. Let's look at what I said in my post:
I'm trying to look at it from your point of view. But, your comment that "not everyone has that much to say" is particularly weak. There is no shortage of people with something to say, and I personally would like to hear from more of them - perhaps especially those I disagree with beyond Robertson.
You assume that advocating for more diverse voices means silencing Robertson altogether - not a very charitable rendering of my argument but I suppose I could have been clearer on that point. I'm not interested in shutting up Robertson. I like the fact that he is out there. Also, I think he is a very useful as a bad example - as he was here. I'm not even sure that I'm arguing for less Robertson (my answer depends on whether we assume that broadcast time is finite or not). However, these are minor points to the
You could point to other factors as well. There has also been a shift to service jobs, which also includes retail, hospitality and so forth. These are not higher paying, more productive jobs. They are also jobs that people in higher economic strata need.
We have a progressive tax because people that benefit more from society (e.g., they can spend their time being a surgeon rather than cleaning their house) should pay more tax. I don't agree with the idea that a progressive tax is penalizing people for success. It is contributing some of the income to society, so everyone can share in the benefits - including the person cleaning their house. It is in no way punishing success. It is sharing the benefits with all the people that have made success possible.
As for the other point, discrimination is widespead. Everything from women being paid .75 cents for every dollar a man earns to country of origin bias. An obvious example, think of the government and the media's response to Katrina. Racism is institutional, you think it is a coincidence that the U.S. population is 12.3% black and the population of federal and state inmates is 43.9% black? I call it what it is - racism. Ever think of what your income potential is as an ex-prisoner? If it exists in such an obvious way in our justice system, do you think it might exist, but be slightly less obvious, on the job - especially since corporations, like government, tend to be run by older white men? I think it is safe to assume it is there - even if we personally might not see how it manifests itself (since we aren't the target).
You have made some good points. I do think education opportunity is important. However, I don't think it alone will solve the larger problem - which is poverty. I also think that trying to use education to address poverty is problematic public policy since poverty itself is a barrier to education.
Regulation (or deregulation) is redistribution. It is clear from the previously cited chart that the Top 5% have benefited from a redistribution of income since 1980. I don't think this redistribution of more income to the top 5% is a function of their increased education, for their working harder, based on merit, because the other groups are less educated or for any other reason other than an economic structure has been changed to benefit those at the top - to use your terminology, it was/is a "forcible resdistribution" that the government facilitated.
It seems appropriate that public policy should address this issue. While people may not agree what constitutes equity or even what policies might help create it, it would be easy enough to target giving the lower 40% a greater share of the income and track it over time and balance it against other measures like productivity, GDP or what have you - with the understanding that maximizing these other measures is actually secondary to other concerns (such as maintaining a clean environment, making sure citizens aren't living in poverty, etc.)
I agree with you on the structural point. However, I don't think the problem is primarily education. I think the primary problem is concentrated wealth. If you start out in life with a $1 million dollar trust fund, you are going to have different opportunities than someone that has to earn money to put food on their parent's table - irrespective of your education level.
I'd also say that there is subtle sexism and racism in play. Let's use your example. If there are 10,000 applicants to Harvard and 2,000 openings. Let's say that there are roughly 2,500 applicants with roughly the same profile (that is qualified to attend the school) and 1000 of them are minority candidates. Affirmative action should be showing a preference for candidates that are members of traditionally discriminated against groups when all else is equal. I don't have any issue with that - but people that talk against affirmative action typically assume that this is not the case. Why? Why assume they attended poor schools at all?
It's one thing to talk about a specific instance and say that people were giving opportunity they didn't deserve. I think that is the exception. However, can we agree, in principle, that affirmative action as I described it is not a bad thing?
Are you saying that we live in a meritocracy? So, the trend since 1980 that you can see in this chart (Table 680) showing that the top 5% of people had an increase in their percentage of all earnings move from 14.6% to 20.5% must be because the top 5% must have started working harder since then, right? George Bush is president because he was the guy most deserving to be president in the country?
Social justice is simply the idea that there are structures in place in our society that benefit some at the expense of others - irrespective of individual effort. Even if you believe that market economies are the most efficient (which is a dubious assertion because market economies fail to account for externalities like pollution in their price), you have to acknowledge that the U.S. does not have a market economy. Subsidies and government controls in all their myriad varieties exist because certain things (agricultural production, industrial capacity, etc.) need to be maintained to mitigate the unfortunate highs and lows (which are highly inefficient) that are built into free markets.
So, the question is that if you are going to have controls, then you need to make sure that the distribution of the benefits are equitable and designed to reward behaviors you approve of like sacrifice, saving and hard work. The simple fact is the current system is not set-up that way, and it is clear from looking at the progression of income distribution (unless you want to make a classest argument that somehow the distribution of hard working people is more highly clustered in the upper regions of income).
I'm a Quaker, and I believe in non-violence. However, I have to allow that there may be circumstance where I might be wrong and armed revolt might actually have a restraining effect on a group that would otherwise be more violent. I don't think this is the case, but I have to allow for the possibility. I certainly don't think it is appropriate to compel you to agree with me on this issue - as George Fox once said to William Penn, "Wear thy sword as long as thou canst."
I do think you are right that people use it as a way of determinng in/out groups. People that I agree with on most other issues find it most distressing that I don't support gun control. I agree there is a bit of a paradox of being a Quaker that doesn't support gun control, but I think my reasoning is sound. I am open to hearing what others have to say either direction on it.
I'm about as left on the political spectrum as any person you are likely to meet in the U.S. I'm part of what I like to think of as the Christian Left. In this post, you are making the common mistake of assuming that secularism is what drives the left. It's a factor, but I wouldn't call it a defining characteristic.
My experience is that what people have trouble with when it comes to religion, specifically Christianity, is the hypocrisy and hate of those that claim to be Christians and who have a significant following or media presence. If your primary experience with Christians is based on the words of people like Pat Robertson who say things like:
You can't escape the fact that this is an intolerant statement. Beliefs such as this drive people to do hateful and terrible things in God's name. I think this is what many secular people take issue with - and I agree with them. However, some also make the mistake of assuming all religious people are like this - which shows another form of intolerance that can also drive people to do hateful and terrible things.
However, you can't escape the fact that Pat Robertson has more free speech than either you, I, or the vast majority of people have. The issues you raise: campaign finance reform, speech codes, and so forth are simply efforts to deal with this issue. At its heart, individual political autonomy depends on a diversity of voices in the political landscape. We need to be aware that there are limits on free speech in place (for example, why does Pat get network time? why has the FCC supported network consolidation?) and that the current limits appear transparent because we are used to them. I think it is a legitimate discussion to talk about how these limits might be changed to encourage a diversity of viewpoints that better reflect the ideas of the U.S. population. However, the other side of that coin is that people like Newt and certain types on the left might use it as an opportunity to limit points of view that differ - which goes against the whole idea of doing it from my point of view.
I find the other crowd more interesting. You know, those that get upset about free speech rights but think that guns should be outlawed. The U.S. was founded on the notion that the population has the right to revolt against an unjust government. It's the last resort, the baseline that guarantees the other rights.
The problem is that many people have forgotten that it could happen here. They fear the freedom of individuals (speaking or with weapons) more than they fear the government taking away their freedom. It's the reason both sides fail to support both 1st and 2nd amendment rights - and pick one over another. Whenever either one of these ceases to mean anything, it will be the inescapable sign that there is trouble in the republic.