Looking at the ban on internet taxes from an abstract point of view, rather than a specific internet tax proposal.....
The consumer isn't subsidizing the internet company. The government is subsidizing the internet companies by making it cheaper to
buy from the internet company than a brick-and-mortar company.
And the irony comes in when people use "free-market" rhetoric to defend this government
intervention to subsidize online business.
I understand your sympathies about Katz, Zeinfeld,
but I salute him for posting something which
can generate discussion from libertarian, socialists, democrats, green, capitalists, from
different middle-class points of views..
Some really awesome points made here and kuro5hin
I enjoy talking to you all!
In talking about global trade...we have choices.
Labels like anti-globalist or socialist often fail to illuminate.
We have the choice to distribute a given thing in a socialist or capitalism way. Water, cars,
software... Do we want Lieberman, Bush, Eisner, Kissinger and Putin deciding this stuff instead?
Certain stuff, lets get for free...stuff we all want and need.
These WTO agreements make people pay for stuff they used to get for free! I used to get water
by turning on the faucet, now I can't drink it.
We used to grow food for our people, now we grow
Fkcungi coffee and sugar for export. Our government's in debt 'cause a US-installed dictator borrowed a ton of money from him!
The leaders say..only capitalism...capitalism
always gives the best solutions...
The heck with that...
We could designate common land in each country
for farming for non-profit feeding of people...
We could use some of the fibers to make clothes for everyone, have houses for everyone and invest
in free clean hydrogen energy for everyone!
We could keep a capitalist market maybe for
some things like home video games!
Capitalists say... we need choice...you get
one vote for every dollar you have. Nevermind
that some start with millions and some start
with a mother who didn't wish to have a baby...
Damn...
I never thought of that...you're right...
I guess if you're downloading some mod
or something you could get bit by a virus.
Still, if you're only downloading stuff
from the video-game company you might
consider yourself safe.
I'm going to have to think about this...
Thanks for bringing it up
Yo if you check out this game, you might
agree with me that Nintendo can make
some awesome games!
GameCube will have awesome games, so will
Xbox, so will PS2, so does Dreamcast (Virtua
Tennis)
and so does Super Nintendo, 2D rules!
ScottySocialist
unions depend on members, leaders
on
IT Unions?
·
· Score: 1
Some unions are good and some stink -- sorta like corporations that you work for.
And the strength of a union depends of course
how many workers put how much time and
energy into the union and also how much
of the decision-making gets made by the
workers and how much gets made by the
union leaders or AFL-CIO.
Also how much community
support it has, how much the media
hates the union (.. actually I've seen
some positive corporate media support
of IBM's union effort... ), as
well as how many other unions are
active in the area.
How much the governor and president
works against unions matters too.
One of Democrat Harry Truman's claim
to fame was making it illegal for
working people to go on strike for
people in a different part of the
country and different industry, say.
So you could have your union, as
long as you only worked on your
own plant's workers and worried
about your own asses... An effective
way to disempower people...
On a different note,
I also want to point out that we can
not foresee whether or not computer
programmers would continue to do well
in a future capitalist economy.
One could argue that we might one day
make computers so easy to program
With the experience I've had I have
to smile real big after writing that.
A more realistic threat to our mass
employment would be smart machines, which
have displaced so many of our
brethren and sistren workers in so
many other industries, and which
might be better programmers than
us some day.
Or you could argue the other way...
Also, all other things being equal,
employers prefer to dumb down
jobs.... for details I refer you
to a search on Harry Braverman's
writings about work.
Re:IT Unions not all bad
on
IT Unions?
·
· Score: 1
... To each his own I guess, but I love being home by 5:00 every day.
Does extra money make up for more time to yourself, hobbies, friends and loved ones?
What if we organized and won the right
for each worker to refuse or accept overtime?
Like many, I see unions as top-down
organizations that disempower members
at worst, while winning them better pay and
benefits at best and working for a
host of social and environmental causes
at best.
Around the world, the people who worked in unions which empowered working people and mobilized
them on stopping pollution, empowering women,
and making it possible to work and to
survive on the money you make have been
imprisoned and murdered, at worst, and
encouraged to become union bureaucrats,
at "best".
In the eyes of the US military and the
words of the establishment press,
and in Java
if ( person.has_been_called("communist") )
{
System.out.println(
you.getName() + " can kill " + person.getName());
}
I want unions and unions of unions...and I want the unions to look like this:
1) diverse - why only one union per plant,
what about a union of unions of people w/
similiar conditions/wants or maybe
similar ages or races
2) cross-company - If we organize across
companies we greatly increase our power.
This will prevent unions from being
anti-competitive as well, with the
advantages this brings (as well
as possibly some disadvantages of
prolonging capitalism a bit).
3) cross-racial and cross-national -
We don't want companies moving to
Mexico, or India, or the US because
of their lower wages and/or benefits
and/or legal protection for workers,
do we?
Probably any aspiring or professional game writers already know this, but FYI, Adrenaline Vault is looking for part-time writers for console and PC games.
Click here for more info.
I had to add here the one stupid thing I am most proud of from my NES days...
Beating SuperMario Bros. 1 with the controller
on the ground, playing with my toes.
(without warping or loading up on extra guys)
Whoop-dee-doo...huh?
Don't buy a book without checking out BestBookBuys.com, a website which automatically compares the price of a given book at 29 different online bookstores. No I don't work for them...
Surely you don't believe there are 95 million Americans who don't have to work, but rather can live off of their investments? If you re-read my post you'll see what I meant. And we do have much different interests, obviously on whether wages go up or down and also on other things, like inflation. People who are owe money, whether it's from student loans, a car loan, or a mortgage benefit from modest inflation since the money they have to pay back is worth less than the money they borrowed. Most mainstream econ reporting makes it sound like we are all hurt equally by inflation and that Alan Greenspan is somehow looking out for "the nation's interests" or "the economy" instead of looking out for the well-being of a small number of the population.
Mainstream economic reporting about the "boom economy" and other issues often reports material in a critical and unbiased way. Not to mention that in this so-called "boom", median real wages for U.S. workers are less than they were when Richard Nixon was president. Economic news is presented with a bias towards the investor class and a bias against people who work for a living. And even if you own stock or have a 401k plan, the majority of middle-class and upper-middle-class people depend on their wages and their salaries and do not live off of the profits of their investments. This gives us very different economic interests than the very rich. Mainstream economic reporting does not often speak to our interests, and often contains misleading distortions to serve the interests of the rich. As an antidote for this biased reporting, I recommend "Economic Reporting Review", an e-mail publication that looks at mainstream economic reporting and points out the distortions and the real facts. It is a joint project of Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting and the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Here is a relevant excerpt about the over-valued stock market: ...the current price to earnings ratio for broad market indexes such as the S&P 5000 is more than 30 to 1. This is more than twice the historic average. The Congressional Budget Office projects that corporate profits, after adjusting for inflation, will decline by approximately 4.0 percent over the next ten years. This implies that stocks are over-valued by close to 50 percent. Hope you find this useful!
The Italian state under Mussolini was the first to be called "facist". This government supported rich people and capitalism and crushed labor unions and any independent political activity. They put all citizens to work for the noble task of making wealthy tycoons richer. I believe they used torture chambers to do this. Why do I bring this up now? Because another common name for this facist governmental system was "estato corporativo"... in English, "corporate state"! If you think that corporate capitalism since WWII history has been less violent than during facist Italy or Germany, just look at the histories of U.S.-backed governments in Indonesia, Chile, El Salvador, S. Korea, Haiti, Iran, etc.... For daily news from a progressive viewpoint Common Dreams For a huge amount of good political and activist info (I especially recommend the Noam Chomsky archive, which you can find from the main page, and which another poster linked to above) Z-Net.
Yes, sales taxes are regressive, but I want to bring up another topic, green taxes. I realize this is slightly off-topic, but it's interesting and no one has mentioned it, AFAIK.
The idea of "green" taxes is that instead of taxing income or sales we tax use of non-renewable resources and pollution. This encourages care of the environment and it makes a product's price reflect the true cost of making it. Plus we could then lower income taxes (for the lower and middle-classes first!)
Before anyone grumbles about having these higher prices passed along to them realize that we all pay the costs of pollution. We also need ways to produce that do not deplete Earth's resources, but renew them, like the processes of the rest of nature seem to do.
I've heard some parts of Europe are using green taxes.
Get off it, the USSR is gone (though Russia's not much better for it, in my opinion)
Actually Russia is much worse now since they turned their economy over to the Harvard experts who told them, "just cut all social spending and that will fix everything" (it's more complicated of course). GDP is down by 50%, and there are literally millions of orphans, last time I heard. This isn't defending the totalitarianism of the USSR; it's just a fact, people are doing worse.
Socilism is a GOOD thing, unfortunatly it was linked with the USSR during the McArthy witch hunt for 'communists' and forever since has been associated with the 'big, bad, red menace'.
I agree. (This makes us 'fucksticks', according to one poster; wait a second, that sounds like a compliment!)
The first big red scare (that I know of - check out "The People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn for an excellent U.S. history) was during WWI, when thousands of U.S. socialists were arrested for speaking out against the war. In a famous Supreme Court case, the court decided that speaking out against a senseless war that killed millions was equivalent to shouting fire in a crowded theater! The right to free speech meant nothing until people organized the ACLU and started defending ourselves! It wasn't until then (in the 20s) that the people won a single free speech case against the government, AFAIK.
There were once millions of socialists in the U.S., which is ironic since people have been taught to see it as a Russian thing. Even the May Day movement started here in the U.S., I believe; it was a movement for an 8-hour day (how far we've come!) and workers around the world marched in solidarity.
Dumb, dumb fuckstick. I hope you're European so I never have to live in the goddam wasteland your vote would encourage.
Nice talking with you, fellow fucksticks. And does this person realize that the U.S. trails the rest of the industrial world in most indicators of quality of life, like infant mortality, cost of healthcare, number of homicides, etc.?
However, as Arthur C. Clarke pointed out, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics might have been Soviet (whatever that means) but it was most certainly not a Union composed of Republics, and it was not Socialist. I wouldn't call the USSR socialist either, but it was definitely not Soviet! The soviets were councils or groups of ordinary citizens. During the first stages of the Russian Revolution, workers got together in these soviets, took over their factories, threw out their bosses and started running the factories themselves. Peasants also organized and took over production of the feudal estates. I believe soldiers also organized and quit fighting WWI. It was truly a revolution, and you can why the capitalist powers that be were terrified and have spent billions of dollars making sure it would never happen again! (For a short, thoughtful summary of the Russian Revolution I recommend the section in Daniel Guerin's "Anarchism".) There were two major groups of revolutionaries: the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and Trotsky and the anarchists. The Bolsheviks argued for taking over state power and using it in the interests of the workers and to defend the revolution. The anarchists argued against dictatorship, even dictatorship of the proletariat; they wanted to run the economy in a bottom-up way through federations of these workers' organizations, not through central planning. Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks won. The soviets, the unions and peoples' councils were destroyed - all authority was taken by the Communist Party. So the USSR was not soviet. As for the term "socialist", it depends on what you mean by the term, of course. Everyone from the Nazis (National Socialists) to the USSR to the U.S. Socialists (one of their mottos: production for use, not profit - I like that!) have all used that word in very different ways. I think of "socialist" as an economy based on co-operation, not competition and a political system based on democracy, not tyranny like capitalist "democracy" where you get one vote for each dollar you have. The USSR called itself socialist to claim it worked for the people. The U.S. called the USSR socialist to claim that socialism meant central planning, a one-party state, and political mass killings. I don't mind being called a socialist, but what's important are issues and ideas, of course, not names. By the way, I enjoyed your post, even though I went off on my own ideas.
The names "communism" and "socialism" have been used in so many different ways that its hard to talk about them, any more. I think some understanding of the Russian Revolution will help people better understand these terms, how they have been used and why - although I'm going to be brief! Many of the people who carried out the Russian Revolution in 1917 (I think it was then) were not communists. They were workers and peasants who organized, shut their bosses out of their factories and workplaces and ran their workplaces themselves. Many were anarchists, who wanted to run the whole economy not by central planning but through federations of these worker councils. (Sorry, the word "anarchist" is probably unusable today as well.) The word "soviet" means worker council, or union, and the Russians organized into these councils and were able to have control over their lives, for the first time. The sad new is: this revolution was eventually taken over by the Communist party (Bolsheviks). The leaders said "You do not need these soviets because our party represents the workers"! The Communist party killed its opponents, broke the unions, and assumed all power. Here's where some of the confusion begins: The Soviet Union called themselves "socialists" and "communists" to propagandize to its own citizens that the government was serving their interests. The capitalists, afraid of unions and workers' power in general called the Soviet Union "socialists" and "communists". They did this to make people associate alternatives to capitalism with the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union, and later, China. Also there have been a whole bunch of interpretations of "socialism" - from radical left-wing to Clinton-Democrat but that's too big a story to get into here. As far as being "armchair philosophers", socialists and communists in the U.S. have worked for peace, civil rights, civil liberties, workers' rights, and just about any non-conservative social movement you can think of. Abroad, socialists and communists have helped replaced feudalism with democracy (look at Europe). Is that enough far you? As Karl Marx said (although not an exact quote), "Philosophers so far have tried to understand history... the point is to change it!"
It doesn't really matter who has committed more atrocities, the U.S. or China; I was just making the point that the U.S. was hypocritical after committing so many of its own violations. I think it's safe to say that the U.S. has committed far more violations around the world (what countries has China been involved in?) and that China has committed more against its own citizens. And don't think we know all about U.S. violations against its own citizens; are you following the story of the U.S. government experiments with injecting plutonium into unknowing Americans - I think they all died. What matters is doing what we can to stop human rights violations wherever we can and promoting peace and justice in the world. Now, as an American, can I have more influence on stopping U.S. or Chinese human rights violations? I can educate Americans, protest, write letters to the editor, vote, etc. to stop U.S. human rights violations, but there is much less I can do about China - it is enough of a challenge for Chinese to do anything about China. Don't think that me or my fellow left-wingers are just America-bashing; that America is bad and other countries are good. Of course, the free press, civil rights, labor rights, and the limited democracy we have are all victories compared to monarchy or totalitarianism. Remember, though, that all these "rights" were fought for and won (often with blood), not given to us by the Founding Fathers. Sure, they threw in the First Amendment, but they passed a law saying you couldn't criticize the government within ten years (Alien and Sedition Acts), and it wasn't until activists formed the ACLU that we REALLY had any 1st Amendment rights (as I remember my history). As far as China, Cuba, Iran and Iraq, if you want to learn more about them do some research - I don't think Slashdot will get you too far there. A lot has been written about them, I'm sure. To understand some of the U.S. role (since WWII) I recommend William Blum's book "Killing Hope". Understand that a lot of money has gone from the CIA through academia - that said there are still a lot of independent scholars out there. There is actually an opposition press in Iran, although it often gets shut down (as I recall). A central issue to this opposition is indeed women's rights. Speaking of Iran, I'll close with some history that you might not know. In 1953 Iran was a democracy. Their Parliament voted to nationalize the oil industry, which was basically British. Although nations have the right to do this under international law (it's like eminent domain) the CIA helped overthrow the democratic government and installed a brutal dictator, the shah, and a secret police force that tortured and killed Iranians. But let me end on a positive note: at least it's Friday!
The world is a dangerous place largely thanks to the U.S. In its mission of defending the profits of big U.S. corporations, the U.S. exports far more weapons than any other country in the world. The companies that make the weapons are subsidized by taxpayers, of course. Check here for a report from Peace-Action. But we're defending democracy, right? Actually 53% of the weapons the U.S. exports are to NON-DEMOCRATIC countries, from monarchies like Saudia Arabia to military dictatorships like Guatemala which has killed hundreds of thousands of its own citizens!
Communism has been proved wrong (and stupid) multitudinous times. With capitalism, you have a few really rich people, a lot of middle-class people, and a smaller amount of poor people. With communism, you have the government, the military, and the civilians, a few of whom are rich, but most of whom are poor; most live in squalor. Your describe capitalism as it exists in the U.S., arguably, but most capitalist countries fit your description of communism: a few rich, the military and most poor and living in squalor. I'm thinking of Latin America which is 100% capitalist thanks to the CIA (see "Killing Hope" by William Blum), except for Cuba. One of the reasons so many people can live so well in the U.S. is that our country takes so many resources from poorer countries (i.e. - the rest of the world besides Europe). It is hard to imagine today the word "communist" being used positively, but this wasn't the case before countries like the USSR and China corrupted the C-word. Read about the Paris Commune of 1871, where the citizens governed themselves democratically without rulers and still were able to run the day-to-day activities of the city and feed people. Then you understand why millions of people around the world rallied behind the label "communist". It wasn't the USSR they were admiring! I'm not supporting China, but their human rights violations don't compare to those of the U.S. The U.S. can just ignore its human rights violations, like bombing civilians in Serbia and Iraq, withholding food and medicine from Cuba, and funding terrorists (aka contras) in Nicaragua, all of which violate international law. The world community has condemned the U.S. many times for its human rights violations, (i.e. the World Court ruling condemning the U.S.-contra terrorism in Nicaragua), so the U.S. is a total hypocrite when lecturing about human rights. That said, I still hope the people of China can organize to win more rights, but I doubt the U.S. is really interested in helping them.
I agree that violence is not absolutely wrong, but defending people within the U.S. who are being attacked is much different than defending the property of U.S. corporations. Especially when the people in these countries live in poverty while Western corporations make lots of money off their resources. The threats the U.S. military has defended against have been the threats of people organizing to keep their own countries' wealth to themselves! The U.S. hasn't been attacked by a military power since Pearl Harbor, as far as I recall. Since then there have been plenty of CIA and military actions to protect the interests of wealthy Americans - see William Blum's "Killing Hope". Your point that the Internet is an army project is worth mentioning. Many who preach the wonders of laissez-faire capitalism forget that the computer industry (and many other industries and the roads) are a product of government-industry cooperation. In fact we already have a type of socialism, except most of the profits are given to a few private rich investors, much less profitable but still-good jobs are given to a larger number of workers, and the rest of the benefits are left to "trickle-down" to the rest of us (the poorer Americans are still waiting for computers and the Internet to trickle down to them). Then we all pay to clean the environment of industries' mess. Noam Chomsky said some interesting stuff about this, and I recommend reading his interviews and writings from the Chomsky Archive. He explains that the U.S. economy went from the Depression period to a period of fantastic growth when the government started coordinating industry, supplies, wages, etc. during the WWII effort. According to him, when WWII was over U.S. elites wanted to continue this economic success by continuning to coordinate the economy through the government. They realized they could either coordinate the economy around social investments, like roads, schools, hospitals, etc., or military investments, i.e. the military-industrial complex. According to Chomsky, you can go back to the business journals of the era and read the debate. The elites decided in favor of the military-industrial complex because spending money on education and social investments would lead to people expecting the government to serve the interests of the many, as opposed to the interests of the very rich. If you think this sounds crazy and un-American, go back to James Madison, one of the fathers of the U.S. Constitution. Madison said a primary responsibility of government was "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority" ! Forgive me for expanding from the original subject
Before working for the U.S. military in any way, check out the book "Killing Hope" by William Blum. Blum worked in the State Department until the Vietnam War, when he quit in disgust. The corporate/wealthy establishment running the government was able to convince Americans that there was an "international communist conspiracy" to enslave the world. The USSR actually had little role in many of the countries attacked by the U.S., especially in Latin America. Millions have been killed for trying to organize alternatives to U.S.-dominated capitalism. The people tortured and killed include teachers, priests, nuns, folk singers, labor unionists, students, mayors, and actual communists - although many of the communists were completely unconnected with the USSR (which didn't invent communism - remember). If you don't want to read the book, read up on the histories of Greece, Indonesia, Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Brazil, the Phillipines (sp?)... the list goes on and on. You can be part of all this if you help the military. At least if you like Corporate America you wouldn't have to make a tough choice, you'd still be working for them!
This is off the original topic but I'm responding to this one post. Check out Cato's opinions, but be aware that Cato represents corporate-style libertarianism. In this article by the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, you'll see that Cato is funded by big oil, pharmaceutical, tobacco, and other big corporations including.... MICROSOFT!!! (check out the list in the article). I recommend the foreign policy sections of Z Magazine's web page for analysis of defense matters and to learn what ordinary people are doing for peace. Still, when people say that it is good to cut defense spending and stop imperialist military actions, I will agree with them, right or left. These conservative think-tanks get quoted all the time in the media, without mentioning who their funding comes from. One of their latest projects is to "reform" Social Security. This means to convince people that Social Security won't be there for them when they retire and that we need to be able to invest the money in the stock market instead. The major funding comes from... surprise, surprise... brokerage groups, who want to cash in on the increased commissions. Here is a great article from The Nation about this issue.
Did you all know that Einstein was a socialist? A socialist Jew in Germany, no wonder he had to leave! Here is his essay, "Why Socialism". It starts off a bit dry but gets better. He also mentions the fact that a planned economy (e.g. USSR - but he doesn't say this), is not what he considers socialism. Happy holidays
This is an investment made by the government on behalf of your nation. They are hoping that the profits on the product whose research they help to fund will generate a bigger tax revenue, thus reducing the tax burden on individual citizens. What would benefit individual Americans more: the tax reductions you mention or bringing down the highest health care costs in the world? I've read that Americans spend twice as much on health care per person as any other industrialized country. The fact that drugs are developed at significant public expense and then given to private companies along w/ patents (= monopolies) is one of the reasons that the pharmaceutical industry is (IIRC), the most profitable industry in America. I doubt that the tax savings from pharmaceutical profits make up for the cost of health insurance for individuals or employers. If you disagree with the idea of the governemt investing in industry in general, you are out of luck. The only system that really agrees with that view, communism, invests totally in industry, through state ownership. I suppose you could vote for the Green Party. I agree w/ government investment, but with what goals in mind? For private profit or the true well-being of the common people? The "system" I have in mind is not the same as capitalism or communism, BTW. (Just because you oppose capitalism doesn't mean you support Russian, Chinese or Cuban communism.) But I won't go into detail here... And just voting Green Party won't change anything. There have been many European "socialist" or "labor" governments that were elected to help the working class but turned against the working class when in office. The capitalists exert power over elected officials in many ways, such as buying government bonds to fund the government. That's why I'm so excited about the international protests against the WTO and the success in raising public awareness. Nice chatting with you, Scott
Slashdot Mirror
Looking at the ban on internet taxes from an abstract point of view, rather than a specific internet tax proposal.....
The consumer isn't subsidizing the internet company. The government is subsidizing the internet companies by making it cheaper to
buy from the internet company than a brick-and-mortar company.
And the irony comes in when people use "free-market" rhetoric to defend this government
intervention to subsidize online business.
good point..but we'll still need to organize
so we don't end up poor.
History shows that people can live richer using
ancient farming methods than under so-called
advanced civilization.
We develop the ability to grow a bunch for food,
but you can only get it if you have money or
a social government.
Land that supported people for hundreds of years
goes to people who don't even live on it and they
grow sugar and coffee instead of food
Scott
www.foodfirst.org
I understand your sympathies about Katz, Zeinfeld,
... we need choice...you get
but I salute him for posting something which
can generate discussion from libertarian, socialists, democrats, green, capitalists, from
different middle-class points of views..
Some really awesome points made here and kuro5hin
I enjoy talking to you all!
In talking about global trade...we have choices.
Labels like anti-globalist or socialist often fail to illuminate.
We have the choice to distribute a given thing in a socialist or capitalism way. Water, cars,
software... Do we want Lieberman, Bush, Eisner, Kissinger and Putin deciding this stuff instead?
Certain stuff, lets get for free...stuff we all want and need.
These WTO agreements make people pay for stuff they used to get for free! I used to get water
by turning on the faucet, now I can't drink it.
We used to grow food for our people, now we grow
Fkcungi coffee and sugar for export. Our government's in debt 'cause a US-installed dictator borrowed a ton of money from him!
The leaders say..only capitalism...capitalism
always gives the best solutions...
The heck with that...
We could designate common land in each country
for farming for non-profit feeding of people...
We could use some of the fibers to make clothes for everyone, have houses for everyone and invest
in free clean hydrogen energy for everyone!
We could keep a capitalist market maybe for
some things like home video games!
Capitalists say
one vote for every dollar you have. Nevermind
that some start with millions and some start
with a mother who didn't wish to have a baby...
Keep the ideas going...
Scott
Damn... I never thought of that...you're right... I guess if you're downloading some mod or something you could get bit by a virus. Still, if you're only downloading stuff from the video-game company you might consider yourself safe. I'm going to have to think about this... Thanks for bringing it up
Yo if you check out this game, you might agree with me that Nintendo can make some awesome games! GameCube will have awesome games, so will Xbox, so will PS2, so does Dreamcast (Virtua Tennis) and so does Super Nintendo, 2D rules! ScottySocialist
And the strength of a union depends of course how many workers put how much time and energy into the union and also how much of the decision-making gets made by the workers and how much gets made by the union leaders or AFL-CIO. Also how much community support it has, how much the media hates the union (.. actually I've seen some positive corporate media support of IBM's union effort ... ), as
well as how many other unions are
active in the area.
How much the governor and president works against unions matters too.
One of Democrat Harry Truman's claim to fame was making it illegal for working people to go on strike for people in a different part of the country and different industry, say.
So you could have your union, as long as you only worked on your own plant's workers and worried about your own asses... An effective way to disempower people...
On a different note, I also want to point out that we can not foresee whether or not computer programmers would continue to do well in a future capitalist economy. One could argue that we might one day make computers so easy to program With the experience I've had I have to smile real big after writing that. A more realistic threat to our mass employment would be smart machines, which have displaced so many of our brethren and sistren workers in so many other industries, and which might be better programmers than us some day. Or you could argue the other way... Also, all other things being equal, employers prefer to dumb down jobs.... for details I refer you to a search on Harry Braverman's writings about work.
Does extra money make up for more time to yourself, hobbies, friends and loved ones?
What if we organized and won the right for each worker to refuse or accept overtime?
Like many, I see unions as top-down organizations that disempower members at worst, while winning them better pay and benefits at best and working for a host of social and environmental causes at best.
Around the world, the people who worked in unions which empowered working people and mobilized them on stopping pollution, empowering women, and making it possible to work and to survive on the money you make have been imprisoned and murdered, at worst, and encouraged to become union bureaucrats, at "best".
In the eyes of the US military and the words of the establishment press, and in Java
if ( person.has_been_called("communist") ) { System.out.println( you.getName() + " can kill " + person.getName()); }
I want unions and unions of unions...and I want the unions to look like this:
1) diverse - why only one union per plant, what about a union of unions of people w/ similiar conditions/wants or maybe similar ages or races
2) cross-company - If we organize across companies we greatly increase our power. This will prevent unions from being anti-competitive as well, with the advantages this brings (as well as possibly some disadvantages of prolonging capitalism a bit).
3) cross-racial and cross-national - We don't want companies moving to Mexico, or India, or the US because of their lower wages and/or benefits and/or legal protection for workers, do we?
Probably any aspiring or professional game writers already know this, but FYI, Adrenaline Vault is looking for part-time writers for console and PC games. Click here for more info.
I had to add here the one stupid thing I am most proud of from my NES days... Beating SuperMario Bros. 1 with the controller on the ground, playing with my toes. (without warping or loading up on extra guys) Whoop-dee-doo...huh?
Don't buy a book without checking out BestBookBuys.com, a website which automatically compares the price of a given book at 29 different online bookstores. No I don't work for them ...
Surely you don't believe there are 95 million Americans who don't have to work, but rather can live off of their investments? If you re-read my post you'll see what I meant.
And we do have much different interests, obviously on whether wages go up or down and also on other things, like inflation. People who are owe money, whether it's from student loans, a car loan, or a mortgage benefit from modest inflation since the money they have to pay back is worth less than the money they borrowed. Most mainstream econ reporting makes it sound like we are all hurt equally by inflation and that Alan Greenspan is somehow looking out for "the nation's interests" or "the economy" instead of looking out for the well-being of a small number of the population.
Mainstream economic reporting about the "boom economy" and other issues often reports material in a critical and unbiased way. Not to mention that in this so-called "boom", median real wages for U.S. workers are less than they were when Richard Nixon was president.
...the current price to earnings ratio for broad market indexes such as the S&P 5000 is more than 30 to 1. This is more than twice the historic average. The Congressional Budget Office projects that corporate profits, after adjusting for inflation, will decline by approximately 4.0 percent over the next ten years. This implies that stocks are over-valued by close to 50 percent.
Economic news is presented with a bias towards the investor class and a bias against people who work for a living. And even if you own stock or have a 401k plan, the majority of middle-class and upper-middle-class people depend on their wages and their salaries and do not live off of the profits of their investments. This gives us very different economic interests than the very rich. Mainstream economic reporting does not often speak to our interests, and often contains misleading distortions to serve the interests of the rich.
As an antidote for this biased reporting, I recommend "Economic Reporting Review", an e-mail publication that looks at mainstream economic reporting and points out the distortions and the real facts. It is a joint project of Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting and the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Here is a relevant excerpt about the over-valued stock market:
Hope you find this useful!
The Italian state under Mussolini was the first to be called "facist". This government supported rich people and capitalism and crushed labor unions and any independent political activity. They put all citizens to work for the noble task of making wealthy tycoons richer. I believe they used torture chambers to do this. ... in English, "corporate state"!
Why do I bring this up now? Because another common name for this facist governmental system was "estato corporativo"
If you think that corporate capitalism since WWII history has been less violent than during facist Italy or Germany, just look at the histories of U.S.-backed governments in Indonesia, Chile, El Salvador, S. Korea, Haiti, Iran, etc....
For daily news from a progressive viewpoint Common Dreams
For a huge amount of good political and activist info (I especially recommend the Noam Chomsky archive, which you can find from the main page, and which another poster linked to above) Z-Net.
Yes, sales taxes are regressive, but I want to bring up another topic, green taxes. I realize this is slightly off-topic, but it's interesting and no one has mentioned it, AFAIK.
The idea of "green" taxes is that instead of taxing income or sales we tax use of non-renewable resources and pollution. This encourages care of the environment and it makes a product's price reflect the true cost of making it. Plus we could then lower income taxes (for the lower and middle-classes first!)
Before anyone grumbles about having these higher prices passed along to them realize that we all pay the costs of pollution. We also need ways to produce that do not deplete Earth's resources, but renew them, like the processes of the rest of nature seem to do.
I've heard some parts of Europe are using green taxes.
I liked your post, Izubachi.
Get off it, the USSR is gone (though Russia's not much better for it, in my opinion)
Actually Russia is much worse now since they turned their economy over to the Harvard experts who told them, "just cut all social spending and that will fix everything" (it's more complicated of course). GDP is down by 50%, and there are literally millions of orphans, last time I heard. This isn't defending the totalitarianism of the USSR; it's just a fact, people are doing worse.
Socilism is a GOOD thing, unfortunatly it was linked with the USSR during the McArthy witch hunt for 'communists' and forever since has been associated with the 'big, bad, red menace'.
I agree. (This makes us 'fucksticks', according to one poster; wait a second, that sounds like a compliment!)
The first big red scare (that I know of - check out "The People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn for an excellent U.S. history) was during WWI, when thousands of U.S. socialists were arrested for speaking out against the war. In a famous Supreme Court case, the court decided that speaking out against a senseless war that killed millions was equivalent to shouting fire in a crowded theater! The right to free speech meant nothing until people organized the ACLU and started defending ourselves! It wasn't until then (in the 20s) that the people won a single free speech case against the government, AFAIK.
There were once millions of socialists in the U.S., which is ironic since people have been taught to see it as a Russian thing. Even the May Day movement started here in the U.S., I believe; it was a movement for an 8-hour day (how far we've come!) and workers around the world marched in solidarity.
Dumb, dumb fuckstick. I hope you're European so I never have to live in the goddam wasteland your vote would encourage.
Nice talking with you, fellow fucksticks. And does this person realize that the U.S. trails the rest of the industrial world in most indicators of quality of life, like infant mortality, cost of healthcare, number of homicides, etc.?
However, as Arthur C. Clarke pointed out, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics might have been Soviet (whatever that means) but it was most certainly not a Union composed of Republics, and it was not Socialist.
I wouldn't call the USSR socialist either, but it was definitely not Soviet!
The soviets were councils or groups of ordinary citizens. During the first stages of the Russian Revolution, workers got together in these soviets, took over their factories, threw out their bosses and started running the factories themselves. Peasants also organized and took over production of the feudal estates. I believe soldiers also organized and quit fighting WWI. It was truly a revolution, and you can why the capitalist powers that be were terrified and have spent billions of dollars making sure it would never happen again! (For a short, thoughtful summary of the Russian Revolution I recommend the section in Daniel Guerin's "Anarchism".)
There were two major groups of revolutionaries: the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and Trotsky and the anarchists. The Bolsheviks argued for taking over state power and using it in the interests of the workers and to defend the revolution. The anarchists argued against dictatorship, even dictatorship of the proletariat; they wanted to run the economy in a bottom-up way through federations of these workers' organizations, not through central planning.
Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks won. The soviets, the unions and peoples' councils were destroyed - all authority was taken by the Communist Party. So the USSR was not soviet.
As for the term "socialist", it depends on what you mean by the term, of course. Everyone from the Nazis (National Socialists) to the USSR to the U.S. Socialists (one of their mottos: production for use, not profit - I like that!) have all used that word in very different ways. I think of "socialist" as an economy based on co-operation, not competition and a political system based on democracy, not tyranny like capitalist "democracy" where you get one vote for each dollar you have.
The USSR called itself socialist to claim it worked for the people. The U.S. called the USSR socialist to claim that socialism meant central planning, a one-party state, and political mass killings.
I don't mind being called a socialist, but what's important are issues and ideas, of course, not names.
By the way, I enjoyed your post, even though I went off on my own ideas.
The names "communism" and "socialism" have been used in so many different ways that its hard to talk about them, any more. I think some understanding of the Russian Revolution will help people better understand these terms, how they have been used and why - although I'm going to be brief!
Many of the people who carried out the Russian Revolution in 1917 (I think it was then) were not communists. They were workers and peasants who organized, shut their bosses out of their factories and workplaces and ran their workplaces themselves. Many were anarchists, who wanted to run the whole economy not by central planning but through federations of these worker councils. (Sorry, the word "anarchist" is probably unusable today as well.)
The word "soviet" means worker council, or union, and the Russians organized into these councils and were able to have control over their lives, for the first time. The sad new is: this revolution was eventually taken over by the Communist party (Bolsheviks). The leaders said "You do not need these soviets because our party represents the workers"! The Communist party killed its opponents, broke the unions, and assumed all power.
Here's where some of the confusion begins: The Soviet Union called themselves "socialists" and "communists" to propagandize to its own citizens that the government was serving their interests. The capitalists, afraid of unions and workers' power in general called the Soviet Union "socialists" and "communists". They did this to make people associate alternatives to capitalism with the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union, and later, China. Also there have been a whole bunch of interpretations of "socialism" - from radical left-wing to Clinton-Democrat but that's too big a story to get into here.
As far as being "armchair philosophers", socialists and communists in the U.S. have worked for peace, civil rights, civil liberties, workers' rights, and just about any non-conservative social movement you can think of. Abroad, socialists and communists have helped replaced feudalism with democracy (look at Europe). Is that enough far you? As Karl Marx said (although not an exact quote), "Philosophers so far have tried to understand history... the point is to change it!"
It doesn't really matter who has committed more atrocities, the U.S. or China; I was just making the point that the U.S. was hypocritical after committing so many of its own violations. I think it's safe to say that the U.S. has committed far more violations around the world (what countries has China been involved in?) and that China has committed more against its own citizens. And don't think we know all about U.S. violations against its own citizens; are you following the story of the U.S. government experiments with injecting plutonium into unknowing Americans - I think they all died.
What matters is doing what we can to stop human rights violations wherever we can and promoting peace and justice in the world. Now, as an American, can I have more influence on stopping U.S. or Chinese human rights violations? I can educate Americans, protest, write letters to the editor, vote, etc. to stop U.S. human rights violations, but there is much less I can do about China - it is enough of a challenge for Chinese to do anything about China.
Don't think that me or my fellow left-wingers are just America-bashing; that America is bad and other countries are good. Of course, the free press, civil rights, labor rights, and the limited democracy we have are all victories compared to monarchy or totalitarianism. Remember, though, that all these "rights" were fought for and won (often with blood), not given to us by the Founding Fathers. Sure, they threw in the First Amendment, but they passed a law saying you couldn't criticize the government within ten years (Alien and Sedition Acts), and it wasn't until activists formed the ACLU that we REALLY had any 1st Amendment rights (as I remember my history).
As far as China, Cuba, Iran and Iraq, if you want to learn more about them do some research - I don't think Slashdot will get you too far there. A lot has been written about them, I'm sure. To understand some of the U.S. role (since WWII) I recommend William Blum's book "Killing Hope". Understand that a lot of money has gone from the CIA through academia - that said there are still a lot of independent scholars out there.
There is actually an opposition press in Iran, although it often gets shut down (as I recall). A central issue to this opposition is indeed women's rights.
Speaking of Iran, I'll close with some history that you might not know. In 1953 Iran was a democracy. Their Parliament voted to nationalize the oil industry, which was basically British. Although nations have the right to do this under international law (it's like eminent domain) the CIA helped overthrow the democratic government and installed a brutal dictator, the shah, and a secret police force that tortured and killed Iranians.
But let me end on a positive note: at least it's Friday!
The world is a dangerous place largely thanks to the U.S. In its mission of defending the profits of big U.S. corporations, the U.S. exports far more weapons than any other country in the world. The companies that make the weapons are subsidized by taxpayers, of course. Check here for a report from Peace-Action.
But we're defending democracy, right? Actually 53% of the weapons the U.S. exports are to NON-DEMOCRATIC countries, from monarchies like Saudia Arabia to military dictatorships like Guatemala which has killed hundreds of thousands of its own citizens!
Communism has been proved wrong (and stupid) multitudinous times. With capitalism, you have a few really rich people, a lot of middle-class people, and a smaller amount of poor people. With communism, you have the government, the military, and the civilians, a few of whom are rich, but most of whom are poor; most live in squalor.
Your describe capitalism as it exists in the U.S., arguably, but most capitalist countries fit your description of communism: a few rich, the military and most poor and living in squalor. I'm thinking of Latin America which is 100% capitalist thanks to the CIA (see "Killing Hope" by William Blum), except for Cuba. One of the reasons so many people can live so well in the U.S. is that our country takes so many resources from poorer countries (i.e. - the rest of the world besides Europe).
It is hard to imagine today the word "communist" being used positively, but this wasn't the case before countries like the USSR and China corrupted the C-word. Read about the Paris Commune of 1871, where the citizens governed themselves democratically without rulers and still were able to run the day-to-day activities of the city and feed people. Then you understand why millions of people around the world rallied behind the label "communist". It wasn't the USSR they were admiring!
I'm not supporting China, but their human rights violations don't compare to those of the U.S. The U.S. can just ignore its human rights violations, like bombing civilians in Serbia and Iraq, withholding food and medicine from Cuba, and funding terrorists (aka contras) in Nicaragua, all of which violate international law. The world community has condemned the U.S. many times for its human rights violations, (i.e. the World Court ruling condemning the U.S.-contra terrorism in Nicaragua), so the U.S. is a total hypocrite when lecturing about human rights. That said, I still hope the people of China can organize to win more rights, but I doubt the U.S. is really interested in helping them.
I agree that violence is not absolutely wrong, but defending people within the U.S. who are being attacked is much different than defending the property of U.S. corporations. Especially when the people in these countries live in poverty while Western corporations make lots of money off their resources. The threats the U.S. military has defended against have been the threats of people organizing to keep their own countries' wealth to themselves!
The U.S. hasn't been attacked by a military power since Pearl Harbor, as far as I recall. Since then there have been plenty of CIA and military actions to protect the interests of wealthy Americans - see William Blum's "Killing Hope".
Your point that the Internet is an army project is worth mentioning. Many who preach the wonders of laissez-faire capitalism forget that the computer industry (and many other industries and the roads) are a product of government-industry cooperation.
In fact we already have a type of socialism, except most of the profits are given to a few private rich investors, much less profitable but still-good jobs are given to a larger number of workers, and the rest of the benefits are left to "trickle-down" to the rest of us (the poorer Americans are still waiting for computers and the Internet to trickle down to them). Then we all pay to clean the environment of industries' mess.
Noam Chomsky said some interesting stuff about this, and I recommend reading his interviews and writings from the Chomsky Archive. He explains that the U.S. economy went from the Depression period to a period of fantastic growth when the government started coordinating industry, supplies, wages, etc. during the WWII effort.
According to him, when WWII was over U.S. elites wanted to continue this economic success by continuning to coordinate the economy through the government. They realized they could either coordinate the economy around social investments, like roads, schools, hospitals, etc., or military investments, i.e. the military-industrial complex. According to Chomsky, you can go back to the business journals of the era and read the debate.
The elites decided in favor of the military-industrial complex because spending money on education and social investments would lead to people expecting the government to serve the interests of the many, as opposed to the interests of the very rich. If you think this sounds crazy and un-American, go back to James Madison, one of the fathers of the U.S. Constitution. Madison said a primary responsibility of government was "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority" !
Forgive me for expanding from the original subject
Before working for the U.S. military in any way, check out the book "Killing Hope" by William Blum. Blum worked in the State Department until the Vietnam War, when he quit in disgust. ... the list goes on and on.
The corporate/wealthy establishment running the government was able to convince Americans that there was an "international communist conspiracy" to enslave the world. The USSR actually had little role in many of the countries attacked by the U.S., especially in Latin America.
Millions have been killed for trying to organize alternatives to U.S.-dominated capitalism. The people tortured and killed include teachers, priests, nuns, folk singers, labor unionists, students, mayors, and actual communists - although many of the communists were completely unconnected with the USSR (which didn't invent communism - remember). If you don't want to read the book, read up on the histories of Greece, Indonesia, Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Brazil, the Phillipines (sp?)
You can be part of all this if you help the military. At least if you like Corporate America you wouldn't have to make a tough choice, you'd still be working for them!
This is off the original topic but I'm responding to this one post. .... MICROSOFT!!! (check out the list in the article). ... surprise, surprise ... brokerage groups, who want to cash in on the increased commissions. Here is a great article from The Nation about this issue.
Check out Cato's opinions, but be aware that Cato represents corporate-style libertarianism.
In this article by the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, you'll see that Cato is funded by big oil, pharmaceutical, tobacco, and other big corporations including
I recommend the foreign policy sections of Z Magazine's web page for analysis of defense matters and to learn what ordinary people are doing for peace.
Still, when people say that it is good to cut defense spending and stop imperialist military actions, I will agree with them, right or left.
These conservative think-tanks get quoted all the time in the media, without mentioning who their funding comes from. One of their latest projects is to "reform" Social Security. This means to convince people that Social Security won't be there for them when they retire and that we need to be able to invest the money in the stock market instead. The major funding comes from
Did you all know that Einstein was a socialist? A socialist Jew in Germany, no wonder he had to leave!
Here is his essay, "Why Socialism". It starts off a bit dry but gets better. He also mentions the fact that a planned economy (e.g. USSR - but he doesn't say this), is not what he considers socialism.
Happy holidays
This is an investment made by the government on behalf of your nation. They are hoping that the profits on the product whose research they help to fund will generate a bigger tax revenue, thus reducing the tax burden on individual citizens.
What would benefit individual Americans more: the tax reductions you mention or bringing down the highest health care costs in the world? I've read that Americans spend twice as much on health care per person as any other industrialized country. The fact that drugs are developed at significant public expense and then given to private companies along w/ patents (= monopolies) is one of the reasons that the pharmaceutical industry is (IIRC), the most profitable industry in America. I doubt that the tax savings from pharmaceutical profits make up for the cost of health insurance for individuals or employers.
If you disagree with the idea of the governemt investing in industry in general, you are out of luck. The only system that really agrees with that view, communism, invests totally in industry, through state ownership. I suppose you could vote for the Green Party.
I agree w/ government investment, but with what goals in mind? For private profit or the true well-being of the common people?
The "system" I have in mind is not the same as capitalism or communism, BTW. (Just because you oppose capitalism doesn't mean you support Russian, Chinese or Cuban communism.) But I won't go into detail here...
And just voting Green Party won't change anything. There have been many European "socialist" or "labor" governments that were elected to help the working class but turned against the working class when in office. The capitalists exert power over elected officials in many ways, such as buying government bonds to fund the government.
That's why I'm so excited about the international protests against the WTO and the success in raising public awareness.
Nice chatting with you,
Scott