No, I didn't. Did you?
Are you equating a few one-sided jet sorties, some cruise missles, and 12 troops defending our embasy with the invasion and occupation of Iraq? Mostly we just enforced a no-fly zone to keep jets from bombing civilians. It was a humanitarian effort, not an invasion.
Just where the hell do you get your news?
Also, Afghanistan; instead of pulling out, Obama sent far more troops there than were there when he first started.
You're damn right about Afghanistan though. I really didn't want the surge. And despite the fact that it lowered the violence, it's not a move in the right direction. I know if we just cut and run that horrible people will fill the void, whoever it is, but the whole situation is a quagmire and it would just be so damn expensive to build them up and it would probably rub Pakistan the wrong way.
Lastly, Iraq: how many years did he keep troops there instead of pulling out?
Orderly withdraw. Mostly it's political to keep the republicans from claiming we're retreating. But slow change is the safest change. I thought this was handled pretty well. Our pull out was essentially old news. A non-event. Which means it was executed FANTASTICLY. That's the sucky part about being a general/leader in an unpopular war, the media only pays attention when shit hits the fan.
Oh jesus christ, calm the fuck down. I understand the sentiment, but you're just playing word games here. And beating on the dogma drum. (it's good dogma, really, but it scares away the kiddies). Listen, I believe that 1+1=2, that the world is round(ish), the sun will rise tomorrow, and that I had eggs for breakfast yesterday. I believe them because there's a high probability that they're true. Or will be true. Sure, there's a possibility that my vegan friends snuck in and swapped out my eggs with vegan substitutes, and that a object in space moving near the speed of light will collide with and take out the sun... But that's unlikely. I do not hold a belief about what I'll have to breakfast tomorrow, because there is an insufficient probability of any one event.
So yeah, "I believe" != "I believe unconditionally and unquestioningly". It wasn't used in the same way as "faith". And yeah, wave your thesaurus around all you want, the English language isn't perfect like that and words can have multiple meanings. Deal with it.
And this is the important part that I want you to pay attention to: If you lash out like this during a discussion with a mixed group, you're going to do a number of things:
1: The people that already agree with you will understand your sentiment and agree. They'll repeat the dogma and remind themselves to be good scientists.
2: The people that disagree with you will get angry. They'll either stoop down and start arguing ugly or the whole thing will dissolve into arguing over semantics....and damn me for falling into that pit.
3: The people that were undecided will see an confrontational outburst and be dissuaded from your argument. Let's be honest here, people judge things based partly on the character of the person arguing for it.
Well since the analogy goes:
Lawful = capitalism
Good = socialism
That would mean that
Chaotic = communism/centralized economy
Evil = individualism? In it only for yourself, or something like that? You help yourself at the cost of society?
Which is funny because if anything I'd say that capitalism is close to economic anarchy. Clearly chaotic. Hell Geekoid, haven't you ever heard of the deity Frem'Arket? The chaotic neutral god of commerce. His favored weapon is gold coins. He's diametrically opposed to Ack'Damia the lawful neutral god of knowledge. Favored weapon: Book.
Chaotic neutral would make you a communist that realizes that you have to help yourself and your fellow man.
Monopolies are almost always the result of a tilted playing field,
Well duh. Bigger corporations have the advantage of scale, bigger war chests, established contact and relations in the industry, and simply more power overall. It's kind of the definition of a big corporation. Power is useful. Every business from the one-man-band to the giant corporation has an amount of power over their market. A single guy can refuse to sell to you, and giant corporations can arbitrarily decide to switch standards. How do you like the ribbon in Vista? Did anyone particularly like it? Too bad, you can't escape it.
Monopolies must rely on government support
How did the robber-barons or the East Indian Trading company rely on government?
They used the government towards their own end to a certain extent. But if the government, for whatever reason, wasn't corruptible or simply said "no", it's not like these corporations would have simply folded. They would remain powerful forces in their markets.
And the ultimate communist ideal is equivalent to a monoculture such as a wheat field, which requires an unending supply of fertilizers, plowing, pest controls and other interventions to maintain.
You have completely lost me with your analogy here.
Also note that in some economic ecosystems, just as in biological ecosystems, they gorge themselves, swell up their numbers, and then face a terrifying time of disease, hunger, depression, and despair where the majority of them die off and the land as a whole is blighted. A few survive and attempt to repeat the cycle. Please do not be like one of those hippies that thinks that because it's natural that it's a healthy and good thing.
Responsibility and liability are great when they act as a deterrent,
...from making shitty man-slaughtering autonomous vehicles. If you buy a car, you have a reasonable expectation that it's not going to burst into flames for no good reason roasting you and your family in a horribly greusome death. If it did, the manufacture would be liable. Because they fucked something up. If it's a big enough fuckup, that's criminal negligence, and someones is supposed to go to prison. But the threat of bankrupting an honest American who just happened to fuck up and plow into some pedestrians IS a deterrent. Duh.
Also, "paying into a victum fund" to help the few who get unlucky is EXACTLY WHAT INSURANCE IS. At least, that's what it's supposed to be. (If the odds are greater then 50%, it's more like a savings plan for the inevitable cost.) So when you say, "I'd pay into a fund in exchange for lower insurance rates", you're effectivly just paying two insurances.
Good luck to you. If you can get technology into the hands of people it empowers them. The fear of big brother and a panopticon society works both ways. Those cameras can be in the hands of little brother and can point at cops. It keeps them honest, reduces waste, and makes life better for all.
I don't know how well he'll do with e-commerce, but some basics for government transparency would do a lot for a budding government. Hell, it's doing a lot for my government.
Stories like this are the sort of thing that makes me want to show up with a crate of OLPCs and start teaching kids python.
Man, there are a lot of raging hate-mongers and crazy in this thread. I mean, there's those few in every story about Muslims, but it seems to be a little bit more prolific here. What's up Slashdot?
We've got blatant racism like this guy, people that think the only technology they're concerned about is AK-47's, the one nutjob who thinks Muslims are 40% gay, the conspiracy types who are saying the whole arab spring is a CIA action, and they have their cohorts who claim it's entirely because of Libya's desire for a gold standard.
Bloody hell, it's like Slashdot is off their meds.
Well bless the few who are calm enough to respond with a simple rebuttal.
Of course not. He was a run-of-the-mill copyright infringer. He is unrepentant after being punished. He doubles down and actively pushes and spreads the tools of infringement. He not only continues to print copyrighted material but also makes and distributes printers. The moral is that you can't govern people with tanks, I mean, brutal and disproportionate imprisonment. They will only push back even harder. Well, some of them.
The fact that the girl couldn't print something out to fix the stuff around her house? She didn't print anything because it was illegal. It's kind of the point of the dystopian future where copyright runs (further) amok. When push came to shove she cowered down, suffered the burden of not being able to fix her own stuff, and didn't get brutally arrested like her father.
Dude, it's the insurance. You are required by law to have liability insurance on your automobile. The biggest problem with making your own car is the ludicrous cost of ownership due to insurance.
You know how car companies do a bunch of crash tests to prove how safe and reliable their cars are? Guess what the insurance company will charge you when you tell them "trust me, it's safe". That's right, an arm and a leg. Not your arm and leg of course, but someone else's which they'll have to pay for when your car fucks up and you dismember people.
Oh, is that unlikely and not going to happen?
Prove it to the insurance company. Make 5 and crash them. Take some videos and let some engineers dicker over them for a few hours at $200 hours a pop.
I apologize for not being better read in the subject, but my views on the matter are derived more from observation than what rich people have theorized. I don't have any books to recommend you.
Yeah, throwing Ayn Rand out there really does set the stage a little. I've nothing against objectively looking at things. I mean, following tradition for traditions sake is silly. But rich people don't need a religion to make them feel better about being greedy. And Ayn Rand certain developed a cult around her. Her books are just far too preachy to be enjoyed and too idealistic to be believable. Sure, in an ideal world we wouldn't have any government, because we wouldn't need it. But we can't assume the horse is a sphere.
And that's kind of my problem with Ron Paul. He's very steadfast and his fundamentals are great. But his views of the economy are just too simplistic, and his ideas are unworkable. If you axe taxes and the federal government on the whole, corporations will simply fill in the void and "we the people" get screwed even harder. We'll pay more and get worse quality. Kind of like how energy deregulation worked out.
But the company stores, the pinkertons, the low wages, the squalor that the working man lived in, the excesses of the industrialists, the abuse of the bosses, these are the sort of things that should leap out at you when people talk about the robber baron era. History is doomed to be repeated by those who don't study it. De-regulation of the financial sector and letting the markets run free is how you set up big crashes. If we deregulated all the things that go into manufacturing, like getting rid of the minimum wage, safety regulation, union laws, environmental regulation, child labor laws, we would absolutely be able to compete with China. Eventually. It would take a little while for the peasants to accept their squalor, stop rioting, eat their biscuit, and get back to work.
Grats for being polite and reasonable. That is one thing that Libertarians really have going for them. Of the three that I've had as friends, all were fairly polite about the subject.
What you have described is corporatism, and 100% of the bad things you describe are a result of government perversion of the market place.
What? No, not quite. The robber-baron era was most certainly not created due to "government perversion". Company stores. Pinkertons. Have you read the history of "trust busting"? Good stuff.
See, I had other things to say about this, but it's really moot if you're so blindly pro-capitalism that you think the "bad things" about the robber-baron era wasn't due to capitalism.
Capitalism is more or less a good thing, but it NEEDS competition. Once someone wins the capitalism game, they need regulation. And it's up to the democracy to keep the regulation up to date and clean of influence.
Oh yeah, we will virtually lynch you all day. We'll gather our digital pitchforks and light our cyber torches and hang you from the highest red/black tree we have. We'll lambast you and call you names. We'll also politely and patiently explain why you're wrong, but you're not really going to pay attention to that.
And then you'll get tired, turn off the computer, maybe have a snack, and then go to your nice and cozy warm bed.
Because the lynching SIMULATED and you're physically perfectly fine. Well, maybe a little fatter for spending so much time on the internet.
...Sold ALL of my furniture and probably 90% of my personal possessions.... I used the money earned from my yard/ebay sales to pay for gas and 1st month's rent/deposit on a cheap apartment and utils. Total cost to move = $0.
Uh.... No, I think the actual "cost to move" was the price of the gas and 1st month's deposit/deposit. You're saying that if I cashed in all my stock and did something with it, the cost would be zero. That's nuts. Really dude, learn the meaning of "wealth".
I show up, I do what I am good at, and the owner(s) of the company are assuming 100% of the risks. Sure, I am subject to the risk of maybe losing my job, but my nest egg isn't on the line. I am not going gray haired from worrying about how to make the entire company's numbers fit.
By and far the people running these companies don't assume that risk either. They show up, collect their bonuses, give a speech or two, find the cheapest replacement they can, fire off the division that's been slacking, and let the people they hired to get the numbers to fit do so. They don't worry about any those things you mention. They hire people to do that for them.
Because the vast majority of businesses, as counted by their slice of the economy, already have it made. They're established. Yeah, starting a business is a really tough thing to do. But most business isn't small business.
And here's the thing about capitalism. It favors big business. It's a pretty viscous dogfight and the way the capitalist system works, the biggest dog wins. And then stops any other dog from getting too big. And then it gets fat. We've been there, done that, it's history. The robber-baron era kinda sucked. It turns out we need regulation to keep capitalists from really winning. But now we have a system that is only capitalistic to a point. And from there it's sort of a cat-and-mouse game between corporations, politicians, regulatory capture, the public, and all of that replicated again in other countries working under different rulesets. Welcome to the issue. Nobody said sociopolitical economics would be simple.
Also, you seem to think that capitalism has invented the idea of division of labor. And that the evil pinko-commies want to get rid of it. Don't be silly.
That's right kids, DON'T advertise your product.
Come on, if you're ever in a situation where you're better off if you hide your product rather than advertise your product, you've already screwed something up.
This is a fantastic thing.
Educating kids is THE long term solution for damn near all the problems that plague humanity.
RANT TIME!
Make. It's a culture thing. A lash-back against rampant consumerism. The buy, use, break, replace, cycle that expects everything to be expendable. Up to and including the workforce. We're in this race to the bottom of price but that comes bundled with long-term cost. A sort of DRM for products. When a tool from company X isn't compatible with the product from company Y, it ultimately hurts the consumer but only years down the road when you need to fix the thing. And caring about the long-term cost of the widget is a cultural thing.
The make culture depends on the hackability of tools and product. An aspect that is almost entirely un-advertised and sometimes specifically hidden away. It opens minds to the idea that we don't really need corporate overlords to give us gizmos to do specialy functions, because we can make/mod/buy the generic tools that do that function. And a host of others. That's a type of freedom that I can really get behind.
tl;dr
I'm a fan of Make, hackerspaces, and the whole idea because it's good for humanity.
Occupy Wall Street was nowhere near as effective as Arab Spring, and that's because we were not throwing Molotov Cocktails and shooting cops.
This gets +5 insightful? Calm the fuck down slashdot!
But no, the Arab spring was successful because the cops (eventually) sided with those revolting rather than those in power. Your plan would only incriminate and degrade the legitimacy of the protest. Ultimately driving people away from the movement and bringing it to a swift demise. Plus you're inciting people to cause violence. You're literally telling people they should be shooting cops.
today's action by the DoJ was basically a big "fuck you" to due process and working within the system.
How exactly do you know that? Do you know what the process is for the feds getting foreign nations to arrest foreigners?
Because if you looked at the charges the feds are sticking to Mr. Dotcom, you'll see some serious stuff. Well, half of it is kinda bullshit, but the other half is real criminal behavior. And, this is the kicker, if they can prove it in court, then Mr. Dotcom and Megaupload really DOES deserve jail time. (Aside from the foreign-laws thing)
Hmmmm. I have to side with the future assassin on this one. It's a legitimate question. It's the start of a line of reasoning that has some pretty solid if counter-intuitive examples of how pirating helps your business. He really could have simply laid it all out there instead of just the hook though. It's kind of one of those things that's pretty common over here, but not so common that anyone mentioning it should be labeled a troll.
Dude, it's roman_mir (125474). If I'm responsible for half the shit that came out of that, then my whole political platform is fucked.
It's the little clear circle next to his name. Click it, trust me.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you equating a few one-sided jet sorties, some cruise missles, and 12 troops defending our embasy with the invasion and occupation of Iraq? Mostly we just enforced a no-fly zone to keep jets from bombing civilians. It was a humanitarian effort, not an invasion.
Just where the hell do you get your news?
Also, Afghanistan; instead of pulling out, Obama sent far more troops there than were there when he first started.
You're damn right about Afghanistan though. I really didn't want the surge. And despite the fact that it lowered the violence, it's not a move in the right direction. I know if we just cut and run that horrible people will fill the void, whoever it is, but the whole situation is a quagmire and it would just be so damn expensive to build them up and it would probably rub Pakistan the wrong way.
Lastly, Iraq: how many years did he keep troops there instead of pulling out?
Orderly withdraw. Mostly it's political to keep the republicans from claiming we're retreating. But slow change is the safest change. I thought this was handled pretty well. Our pull out was essentially old news. A non-event. Which means it was executed FANTASTICLY. That's the sucky part about being a general/leader in an unpopular war, the media only pays attention when shit hits the fan.
How many nations has Obama invaded?
Oh jesus christ, calm the fuck down. I understand the sentiment, but you're just playing word games here. And beating on the dogma drum. (it's good dogma, really, but it scares away the kiddies).
...and damn me for falling into that pit.
Listen, I believe that 1+1=2, that the world is round(ish), the sun will rise tomorrow, and that I had eggs for breakfast yesterday. I believe them because there's a high probability that they're true. Or will be true. Sure, there's a possibility that my vegan friends snuck in and swapped out my eggs with vegan substitutes, and that a object in space moving near the speed of light will collide with and take out the sun... But that's unlikely. I do not hold a belief about what I'll have to breakfast tomorrow, because there is an insufficient probability of any one event.
So yeah, "I believe" != "I believe unconditionally and unquestioningly". It wasn't used in the same way as "faith". And yeah, wave your thesaurus around all you want, the English language isn't perfect like that and words can have multiple meanings. Deal with it.
And this is the important part that I want you to pay attention to: If you lash out like this during a discussion with a mixed group, you're going to do a number of things:
1: The people that already agree with you will understand your sentiment and agree. They'll repeat the dogma and remind themselves to be good scientists.
2: The people that disagree with you will get angry. They'll either stoop down and start arguing ugly or the whole thing will dissolve into arguing over semantics.
3: The people that were undecided will see an confrontational outburst and be dissuaded from your argument. Let's be honest here, people judge things based partly on the character of the person arguing for it.
Well since the analogy goes:
Lawful = capitalism
Good = socialism
That would mean that
Chaotic = communism/centralized economy
Evil = individualism? In it only for yourself, or something like that? You help yourself at the cost of society?
Which is funny because if anything I'd say that capitalism is close to economic anarchy. Clearly chaotic. Hell Geekoid, haven't you ever heard of the deity Frem'Arket? The chaotic neutral god of commerce. His favored weapon is gold coins. He's diametrically opposed to Ack'Damia the lawful neutral god of knowledge. Favored weapon: Book.
Chaotic neutral would make you a communist that realizes that you have to help yourself and your fellow man.
Monopolies are almost always the result of a tilted playing field,
Well duh. Bigger corporations have the advantage of scale, bigger war chests, established contact and relations in the industry, and simply more power overall. It's kind of the definition of a big corporation. Power is useful. Every business from the one-man-band to the giant corporation has an amount of power over their market. A single guy can refuse to sell to you, and giant corporations can arbitrarily decide to switch standards. How do you like the ribbon in Vista? Did anyone particularly like it? Too bad, you can't escape it.
Monopolies must rely on government support
How did the robber-barons or the East Indian Trading company rely on government?
They used the government towards their own end to a certain extent. But if the government, for whatever reason, wasn't corruptible or simply said "no", it's not like these corporations would have simply folded. They would remain powerful forces in their markets.
And the ultimate communist ideal is equivalent to a monoculture such as a wheat field, which requires an unending supply of fertilizers, plowing, pest controls and other interventions to maintain.
You have completely lost me with your analogy here.
Also note that in some economic ecosystems, just as in biological ecosystems, they gorge themselves, swell up their numbers, and then face a terrifying time of disease, hunger, depression, and despair where the majority of them die off and the land as a whole is blighted. A few survive and attempt to repeat the cycle. Please do not be like one of those hippies that thinks that because it's natural that it's a healthy and good thing.
Responsibility and liability are great when they act as a deterrent,
...from making shitty man-slaughtering autonomous vehicles. If you buy a car, you have a reasonable expectation that it's not going to burst into flames for no good reason roasting you and your family in a horribly greusome death. If it did, the manufacture would be liable. Because they fucked something up. If it's a big enough fuckup, that's criminal negligence, and someones is supposed to go to prison. But the threat of bankrupting an honest American who just happened to fuck up and plow into some pedestrians IS a deterrent. Duh.
Also, "paying into a victum fund" to help the few who get unlucky is EXACTLY WHAT INSURANCE IS. At least, that's what it's supposed to be. (If the odds are greater then 50%, it's more like a savings plan for the inevitable cost.) So when you say, "I'd pay into a fund in exchange for lower insurance rates", you're effectivly just paying two insurances.
Good luck to you. If you can get technology into the hands of people it empowers them. The fear of big brother and a panopticon society works both ways. Those cameras can be in the hands of little brother and can point at cops. It keeps them honest, reduces waste, and makes life better for all.
I don't know how well he'll do with e-commerce, but some basics for government transparency would do a lot for a budding government. Hell, it's doing a lot for my government.
Stories like this are the sort of thing that makes me want to show up with a crate of OLPCs and start teaching kids python.
Man, there are a lot of raging hate-mongers and crazy in this thread. I mean, there's those few in every story about Muslims, but it seems to be a little bit more prolific here. What's up Slashdot?
We've got blatant racism like this guy, people that think the only technology they're concerned about is AK-47's, the one nutjob who thinks Muslims are 40% gay, the conspiracy types who are saying the whole arab spring is a CIA action, and they have their cohorts who claim it's entirely because of Libya's desire for a gold standard.
Bloody hell, it's like Slashdot is off their meds.
Well bless the few who are calm enough to respond with a simple rebuttal.
ah yes, I knew there was a reason you have a little red dot by your name.
But my wizard needs hitpoints!
Of course not. He was a run-of-the-mill copyright infringer. He is unrepentant after being punished. He doubles down and actively pushes and spreads the tools of infringement. He not only continues to print copyrighted material but also makes and distributes printers. The moral is that you can't govern people with tanks, I mean, brutal and disproportionate imprisonment. They will only push back even harder. Well, some of them.
The fact that the girl couldn't print something out to fix the stuff around her house? She didn't print anything because it was illegal. It's kind of the point of the dystopian future where copyright runs (further) amok. When push came to shove she cowered down, suffered the burden of not being able to fix her own stuff, and didn't get brutally arrested like her father.
Dude, it's the insurance. You are required by law to have liability insurance on your automobile. The biggest problem with making your own car is the ludicrous cost of ownership due to insurance.
You know how car companies do a bunch of crash tests to prove how safe and reliable their cars are? Guess what the insurance company will charge you when you tell them "trust me, it's safe". That's right, an arm and a leg. Not your arm and leg of course, but someone else's which they'll have to pay for when your car fucks up and you dismember people.
Oh, is that unlikely and not going to happen?
Prove it to the insurance company. Make 5 and crash them. Take some videos and let some engineers dicker over them for a few hours at $200 hours a pop.
I apologize for not being better read in the subject, but my views on the matter are derived more from observation than what rich people have theorized. I don't have any books to recommend you.
Yeah, throwing Ayn Rand out there really does set the stage a little. I've nothing against objectively looking at things. I mean, following tradition for traditions sake is silly. But rich people don't need a religion to make them feel better about being greedy. And Ayn Rand certain developed a cult around her. Her books are just far too preachy to be enjoyed and too idealistic to be believable. Sure, in an ideal world we wouldn't have any government, because we wouldn't need it. But we can't assume the horse is a sphere.
And that's kind of my problem with Ron Paul. He's very steadfast and his fundamentals are great. But his views of the economy are just too simplistic, and his ideas are unworkable. If you axe taxes and the federal government on the whole, corporations will simply fill in the void and "we the people" get screwed even harder. We'll pay more and get worse quality. Kind of like how energy deregulation worked out.
But the company stores, the pinkertons, the low wages, the squalor that the working man lived in, the excesses of the industrialists, the abuse of the bosses, these are the sort of things that should leap out at you when people talk about the robber baron era. History is doomed to be repeated by those who don't study it. De-regulation of the financial sector and letting the markets run free is how you set up big crashes. If we deregulated all the things that go into manufacturing, like getting rid of the minimum wage, safety regulation, union laws, environmental regulation, child labor laws, we would absolutely be able to compete with China. Eventually. It would take a little while for the peasants to accept their squalor, stop rioting, eat their biscuit, and get back to work.
Grats for being polite and reasonable. That is one thing that Libertarians really have going for them. Of the three that I've had as friends, all were fairly polite about the subject.
Guys, I've got this one! It's easy.
Just set your password to "I killed a man back in 1994"
What you have described is corporatism, and 100% of the bad things you describe are a result of government perversion of the market place.
What? No, not quite. The robber-baron era was most certainly not created due to "government perversion". Company stores. Pinkertons. Have you read the history of "trust busting"? Good stuff.
See, I had other things to say about this, but it's really moot if you're so blindly pro-capitalism that you think the "bad things" about the robber-baron era wasn't due to capitalism.
Capitalism is more or less a good thing, but it NEEDS competition. Once someone wins the capitalism game, they need regulation. And it's up to the democracy to keep the regulation up to date and clean of influence.
Oh yeah, we will virtually lynch you all day. We'll gather our digital pitchforks and light our cyber torches and hang you from the highest red/black tree we have. We'll lambast you and call you names. We'll also politely and patiently explain why you're wrong, but you're not really going to pay attention to that.
And then you'll get tired, turn off the computer, maybe have a snack, and then go to your nice and cozy warm bed.
Because the lynching SIMULATED and you're physically perfectly fine. Well, maybe a little fatter for spending so much time on the internet.
...Sold ALL of my furniture and probably 90% of my personal possessions. ... I used the money earned from my yard/ebay sales to pay for gas and 1st month's rent/deposit on a cheap apartment and utils. Total cost to move = $0.
Uh.... No, I think the actual "cost to move" was the price of the gas and 1st month's deposit/deposit.
You're saying that if I cashed in all my stock and did something with it, the cost would be zero. That's nuts. Really dude, learn the meaning of "wealth".
I show up, I do what I am good at, and the owner(s) of the company are assuming 100% of the risks. Sure, I am subject to the risk of maybe losing my job, but my nest egg isn't on the line. I am not going gray haired from worrying about how to make the entire company's numbers fit.
By and far the people running these companies don't assume that risk either. They show up, collect their bonuses, give a speech or two, find the cheapest replacement they can, fire off the division that's been slacking, and let the people they hired to get the numbers to fit do so. They don't worry about any those things you mention. They hire people to do that for them.
Because the vast majority of businesses, as counted by their slice of the economy, already have it made. They're established. Yeah, starting a business is a really tough thing to do. But most business isn't small business.
And here's the thing about capitalism. It favors big business. It's a pretty viscous dogfight and the way the capitalist system works, the biggest dog wins. And then stops any other dog from getting too big. And then it gets fat. We've been there, done that, it's history. The robber-baron era kinda sucked. It turns out we need regulation to keep capitalists from really winning. But now we have a system that is only capitalistic to a point. And from there it's sort of a cat-and-mouse game between corporations, politicians, regulatory capture, the public, and all of that replicated again in other countries working under different rulesets. Welcome to the issue. Nobody said sociopolitical economics would be simple.
Also, you seem to think that capitalism has invented the idea of division of labor. And that the evil pinko-commies want to get rid of it. Don't be silly.
That's right kids, DON'T advertise your product.
Come on, if you're ever in a situation where you're better off if you hide your product rather than advertise your product, you've already screwed something up.
This is a fantastic thing.
Educating kids is THE long term solution for damn near all the problems that plague humanity.
RANT TIME!
Make. It's a culture thing. A lash-back against rampant consumerism. The buy, use, break, replace, cycle that expects everything to be expendable. Up to and including the workforce. We're in this race to the bottom of price but that comes bundled with long-term cost. A sort of DRM for products. When a tool from company X isn't compatible with the product from company Y, it ultimately hurts the consumer but only years down the road when you need to fix the thing. And caring about the long-term cost of the widget is a cultural thing.
The make culture depends on the hackability of tools and product. An aspect that is almost entirely un-advertised and sometimes specifically hidden away. It opens minds to the idea that we don't really need corporate overlords to give us gizmos to do specialy functions, because we can make/mod/buy the generic tools that do that function. And a host of others. That's a type of freedom that I can really get behind.
tl;dr I'm a fan of Make, hackerspaces, and the whole idea because it's good for humanity.
Occupy Wall Street was nowhere near as effective as Arab Spring, and that's because we were not throwing Molotov Cocktails and shooting cops.
This gets +5 insightful? Calm the fuck down slashdot!
But no, the Arab spring was successful because the cops (eventually) sided with those revolting rather than those in power. Your plan would only incriminate and degrade the legitimacy of the protest. Ultimately driving people away from the movement and bringing it to a swift demise. Plus you're inciting people to cause violence. You're literally telling people they should be shooting cops.
today's action by the DoJ was basically a big "fuck you" to due process and working within the system.
How exactly do you know that? Do you know what the process is for the feds getting foreign nations to arrest foreigners? Because if you looked at the charges the feds are sticking to Mr. Dotcom, you'll see some serious stuff. Well, half of it is kinda bullshit, but the other half is real criminal behavior. And, this is the kicker, if they can prove it in court, then Mr. Dotcom and Megaupload really DOES deserve jail time. (Aside from the foreign-laws thing)
In short,
No, fuck you.
Wow, this guy has TWO posts. And the other is meatless windows worship back in September.
This.
Plus, how long did megaupload take to respond to your DMCA requests on average?
How long have other sites taken to respond?
Hmmmm. I have to side with the future assassin on this one. It's a legitimate question. It's the start of a line of reasoning that has some pretty solid if counter-intuitive examples of how pirating helps your business. He really could have simply laid it all out there instead of just the hook though. It's kind of one of those things that's pretty common over here, but not so common that anyone mentioning it should be labeled a troll.
Dude, it's roman_mir (125474). If I'm responsible for half the shit that came out of that, then my whole political platform is fucked.
It's the little clear circle next to his name. Click it, trust me.