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It certainly isn't possible for _everybody_ to get rich.
The current level of richness in the First World currently condemns most of the rest of the world to slavery or starvation. The idea of free trade is to enable people to first survive, then gradually to improve.
No amount of name-calling trying to stick stigmas of slavery or globalisation or neoliberalism will ever change the knowledge that protectionism impoverish most people and preserves some privileges.
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If he earns enough to stay alive, and nothing more, he's a wage slave.
Better than starving. Once one's avoided starvation, one can start thinking about improvements.
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if you're saying "Work for me or die"
One has a moral duty to provide food and shelter for the needy. But this has nothing to do with employment. Real slavery begins when one depends on government instead of his neighbour.
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The poor get poorer, and the rich profit, and the class inequality between rich and poor grows more and more.
Simply not true. Inequality rises, for greed has become the defining value of our practical materialist society. But the poor don't get poorer: it is enhanced transportation and communications that bring the world poverty near home. This same mistake was Marx's: he thought people were poorer, when in fact they were starting to avoid starvation. The difference was that they were poor and alive near the rich, while before they died in their huts.
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All it does is erode the middle class and make our poor even poorer.
Your middle class is our filthy rich. Either it gets out of its mediocrity, or it will suffer.
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we could do like much of Europe does and provide universal college education for all those who desire it, and we can reduce that inequality between classes.
This is killing Europe. Everything is taken for granted, nothing is never done for everything is consensus, and liberty is eroded.
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High school; take a guess as to how effective it is for the majority of people, and how much of it most people remember.
It is much better than what is available elsewhere. If you don't value it, your problem. Some immigrant will.
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As for libraries and internet access, it's very difficult to use either of those when you're working 16 hours a day just to survive.
If you are able to survive, count yourself privileged. It is the first step to any improvement. You could also battle protectionism to watch the cost of living get lower to NZ or BR standards.
In the First World, not knowing your privileges, you are wasting them.
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how unreasonable to want to be paid at least minimum wage.
If someone is poor and hard-working enough to want that wage, good: he's got a job, and is less poor for that. If someone is rich and lazy enough to refuse, his problem. Being a native, he will probably have better chances of qualifying for something better if he chooses to.
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The people entering the country quite often are coming from south of the border where things are completely intolerable.
A border is an artificial barrier, in this case keeping a few rich and many poor. Everytime someone manages to infiltrate, inequality becomes less.
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Training resources? Like college?
It is one's choice to take the risk or not. If fewer people take the college risk, the ones left will earn more and college prices will lower, or quality will improve.
But even when ones doesn't get college, one still has public high school, libraries, Net access and the such, which again are usually unavailable at the Third World.
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If you can't find a job here, then yeah, it becomes impossible to live here.
Can't one really? It is hard to believe that when so many people are still trying to enter the country. It seems more probable that one can't find a job according to his (comparatively overblown) expectations.
At least in the US and Europe one has access to training resources and unemployment benefits that are either too expensive or simply lacking in Third World countries.
At the very worst, the misery caused by managerial incompetence and political protectionism won't be possible to keep at bay, and then rich people will have to fight for their jobs with poor people. Ultimately this will drive costs low, and/coeteris paribus/ in average most people will benefit.
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20 years ago inflation in Mexico was running about 125% a year, but everything seemed to remain affordable.
Yes, it seemed -- because you are rich, or was in contact with relatively rich people who had bank accounts and perhaps government employment.
You see, inflation is a hidden tax, where the government prints money to pay its debt. It is paid by poor people, who seem to receive good salaries which actually are worth a lot less at the end of the month. Poor people in an inflationary period usually can also get jobs or even help from rich people and the medium class.
Now inflation is also a financial roller-coaster that eventually has to stop. When it does, people who used to benefit usually choose to keep buying the imports and luxury goods they became used to, and to instead fire or stop helping their poor servants.
So in the long run the end of inflation and the associated suffering is an economic purge that should help to build a saner, more just economy and society. But rich people's egotism amplifies the suffering.
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Do we want our lives to be traded as commodities to be moved and shuffled about at the whim of the free market?
Our lives (I take you to mean 'our jobs') are traded as commodities because commodities aren't being traded.
In other words, were there real free trade, goods would move around, and people would mostly just stay home where they know do to best their own stuff.
People have to move around because of protectionism, which concentrates richness in Europe, North America and the Far East; and because these countries are so rich they don't care even for children.
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While there is an abstract idea of market, which you can claim doesn't exist in the same way that a mathematical concept like a circle doesn't exist
It was easy to miss the point, because it was not made clearly. A circle exists by itself, while a market exists as a function of human needs and production. It was not discovered nor invented, except as a description for something that simply occurs when different people produce different things at different rates and qualities, as they do even in the simplest societies.
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There are different, older means of exchanging goods that don't resemble our modern concept of a market.
No, there aren't. It is mutual exchange, not the existence of moneys or corporations, that define a market.
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We are allowed to buy and sell from India. They are allowed to buy and sell from us. Indians can move here and work here, and we can move there and work there.
Not quite. Rich countries want to buy from the Third World only what they don't produce themselves. This includes tropical agricultural products, but there are lots of tropical agricultural products -- like sugar for instance -- that are being produced in rich countries, and thus blocked or heavily subsidised.
So one of the reasons why there is immigration to rich countries, besides the refusal of rich people to bear children, is the lack of opportunities in poor countries caused, besides incompetence, by the protectionism from the rich ones.
But immigration is so controlled that it is not enough neither to lower costs of living in the rich countries, nor to significantly alleviate the poor ones' plight.
The US is not the source of neoliberalism, because the US was never socialist. Neoliberalism is made of former socialists became liberals (European sense == laissez faire, free traders). BTW, it is an individual phenomenon, so thinking about it in terms of countries may be misleading.
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The EU is fully capable of first introducing a set of recommendations and later (after the OSS-based support and development structures have been established) requirements for publically-owned and open IT systems that can also be easily adopted by other countries across the globe.
Sure, great. Now can it execute on face of monopolistic pressure from the US, specially in the highly patented and copyrighted environment fostered by WIPO? Even worse, can its ageing native population, and disgruntled immigrants, pull themselves to execution in the face of a highly regulated environment with lower living standards?
Yes. It is that way for silence. The G5 actually takes less real estate, uses less power and produces less heat as compared to an x86 of similar performance and manufactured by a comparable process.
I am not a gamer, I have Power Macs and I run GNU/Linux. It is not about not having a specific driver, it is about not having any driver nor the techspecs.
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(I agree Macintosh and others were better but point 2 is the reason why MS succeeded).
>2) Standardizing the way GUI applications work so that ordinary folks can get productivity out of them instead of endless tweaking and fumbling.
At this point 2 of yours not only the Macintosh but also the Amiga and the NeXT are better to this day.
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Bill is a philanthropist
As a convicted monopolist this is the equivalent of giving alms with other people's money.
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a marvellous example compared to many other rich folks.
Perhaps some of these 'other rich folks' earned their money honestly and reinvest it to the benefit of their employees and partners instead of fleecing them.
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Computers running software whose price/performance is fantastic?
I find reliability and security better measures of utility than price/performance ration.
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One of the easiest-to-develop-for video game consoles ever?
Should profitting from a ill-gained monopoly to be able to create this earn someone knighthood? It is hardly a noble achievement in itself, and absolutely not if one considers the means.
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Highly capable web servers that run some of the busiest sites--Dell.com, Nasdaq.com, MSNBC.com?
So let's knight those who created that without hoarding software.
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Software conformity
I fear I don't understand at all what do you mean by 'software conformity'. Would it be subverting open standards to create a substandard proprietary lock-in?
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Tim Berners-Lee got the knighthood less than a month ago.
Nice to know, but the original poster -- and I agree wholeheartedly -- mentions that there are hundreds of more worthy people. OK, perhaps dozens... Stallman would be the obvious candidate, even if he sometimes has political and moral views I can't condone; but sure he is nobler than Gates, and so are Larry Wall, Linus Torvalds, Maddog, K&R, and so on... even that boneheaded ESR...
That BillG gets knighted before all this people, and even knighted at all, shows that you don't even need to write a check to effectively buy a nobility title.
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Learn to think for yourself and you'll be able to see through the sham.
I think I know how to think... it is just that this is not such an important issue for me to read MS accounts myself.
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MS does report stock option exercises on its income statements now.
If true, this would be interesting indeed.
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The $50 billion they have in the bank is proof of that.
No, this could be simply a result of past fraud.
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The doomsday scenario that Mr. Parish predicted hasn't panned out
It could still, if MS is forced to generalised discounts due to competition. On one hand, I'd like to see them pay; on the other I'd like them to be beaten in the marketplace, not on the stock exchange.
These I know and even translated. The issue is this particular year being reported now; has anything changed, or is MS still frauding the stock exchange, its minoritary shareholders and employers, and the IRS?
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I believe that we're going to see a massive shift in the next 20 years in terms of living expenses, tech job distribution, and economic power based on what areas of the world can provide jobs to a particular group of people. This could be good or bad
This would be incredibly good, if only the US and Europe would stop extorting the poor countries with intellectual property and trade protectionism.
It would mean lower costs of living in the rich countries, and better salaries in the poor ones.
Couple free trade with free movement of people, and people would be able to escape badly managed countries to fill the populational gap in decadent (but rich and well managed) countries.
The only thing barring this as I see it is the very decadence of Europe and the US, that makes the rich people fearful of competition and ashamed of socializing immigrants.
Slashdot Mirror
The current level of richness in the First World currently condemns most of the rest of the world to slavery or starvation. The idea of free trade is to enable people to first survive, then gradually to improve.
No amount of name-calling trying to stick stigmas of slavery or globalisation or neoliberalism will ever change the knowledge that protectionism impoverish most people and preserves some privileges.
Better than starving. Once one's avoided starvation, one can start thinking about improvements.
One has a moral duty to provide food and shelter for the needy. But this has nothing to do with employment. Real slavery begins when one depends on government instead of his neighbour.
Simply not true. Inequality rises, for greed has become the defining value of our practical materialist society. But the poor don't get poorer: it is enhanced transportation and communications that bring the world poverty near home. This same mistake was Marx's: he thought people were poorer, when in fact they were starting to avoid starvation. The difference was that they were poor and alive near the rich, while before they died in their huts.
Your middle class is our filthy rich. Either it gets out of its mediocrity, or it will suffer.
This is killing Europe. Everything is taken for granted, nothing is never done for everything is consensus, and liberty is eroded.
It is much better than what is available elsewhere. If you don't value it, your problem. Some immigrant will.
If you are able to survive, count yourself privileged. It is the first step to any improvement. You could also battle protectionism to watch the cost of living get lower to NZ or BR standards.
In the First World, not knowing your privileges, you are wasting them.
If someone is poor and hard-working enough to want that wage, good: he's got a job, and is less poor for that. If someone is rich and lazy enough to refuse, his problem. Being a native, he will probably have better chances of qualifying for something better if he chooses to.
A border is an artificial barrier, in this case keeping a few rich and many poor. Everytime someone manages to infiltrate, inequality becomes less.
It is one's choice to take the risk or not. If fewer people take the college risk, the ones left will earn more and college prices will lower, or quality will improve.
But even when ones doesn't get college, one still has public high school, libraries, Net access and the such, which again are usually unavailable at the Third World.
Can't one really? It is hard to believe that when so many people are still trying to enter the country. It seems more probable that one can't find a job according to his (comparatively overblown) expectations.
At least in the US and Europe one has access to training resources and unemployment benefits that are either too expensive or simply lacking in Third World countries.
At the very worst, the misery caused by managerial incompetence and political protectionism won't be possible to keep at bay, and then rich people will have to fight for their jobs with poor people. Ultimately this will drive costs low, and /coeteris paribus/ in average most people will benefit.
Are you black as the original poster is? Haven't you benefitted from the bubble?
Yes, it seemed -- because you are rich, or was in contact with relatively rich people who had bank accounts and perhaps government employment.
You see, inflation is a hidden tax, where the government prints money to pay its debt. It is paid by poor people, who seem to receive good salaries which actually are worth a lot less at the end of the month. Poor people in an inflationary period usually can also get jobs or even help from rich people and the medium class.
Now inflation is also a financial roller-coaster that eventually has to stop. When it does, people who used to benefit usually choose to keep buying the imports and luxury goods they became used to, and to instead fire or stop helping their poor servants.
So in the long run the end of inflation and the associated suffering is an economic purge that should help to build a saner, more just economy and society. But rich people's egotism amplifies the suffering.
Our lives (I take you to mean 'our jobs') are traded as commodities because commodities aren't being traded.
In other words, were there real free trade, goods would move around, and people would mostly just stay home where they know do to best their own stuff.
People have to move around because of protectionism, which concentrates richness in Europe, North America and the Far East; and because these countries are so rich they don't care even for children.
It was easy to miss the point, because it was not made clearly. A circle exists by itself, while a market exists as a function of human needs and production. It was not discovered nor invented, except as a description for something that simply occurs when different people produce different things at different rates and qualities, as they do even in the simplest societies.
No, there aren't. It is mutual exchange, not the existence of moneys or corporations, that define a market.
Is it impossible to live in the US? It still has lower costs and higher salaries than, say, Europe.
That is to be expected due to the burst of the bubble and the widespread corporate, political and individual stupidity, including protectionism.
Not quite. Rich countries want to buy from the Third World only what they don't produce themselves. This includes tropical agricultural products, but there are lots of tropical agricultural products -- like sugar for instance -- that are being produced in rich countries, and thus blocked or heavily subsidised.
So one of the reasons why there is immigration to rich countries, besides the refusal of rich people to bear children, is the lack of opportunities in poor countries caused, besides incompetence, by the protectionism from the rich ones.
But immigration is so controlled that it is not enough neither to lower costs of living in the rich countries, nor to significantly alleviate the poor ones' plight.
The US is not the source of neoliberalism, because the US was never socialist. Neoliberalism is made of former socialists became liberals (European sense == laissez faire, free traders). BTW, it is an individual phenomenon, so thinking about it in terms of countries may be misleading.
Garbage collection ain't bloat at all.
Sure, great. Now can it execute on face of monopolistic pressure from the US, specially in the highly patented and copyrighted environment fostered by WIPO? Even worse, can its ageing native population, and disgruntled immigrants, pull themselves to execution in the face of a highly regulated environment with lower living standards?
Yes. It is that way for silence. The G5 actually takes less real estate, uses less power and produces less heat as compared to an x86 of similar performance and manufactured by a comparable process.
Presumably also 25% less than an equivalent system for a power-hungry x86 processor. Probably even less.
And less real state too.
Not to mention that, were volumes put on the same level, the RISC processors would be cheaper to produce.
I am not a gamer, I have Power Macs and I run GNU/Linux. It is not about not having a specific driver, it is about not having any driver nor the techspecs.
GNU/Linux PowerPC users -- such as in Power Macs -- are still out of luck.
At this point 2 of yours not only the Macintosh but also the Amiga and the NeXT are better to this day.
As a convicted monopolist this is the equivalent of giving alms with other people's money.
Perhaps some of these 'other rich folks' earned their money honestly and reinvest it to the benefit of their employees and partners instead of fleecing them.
I find reliability and security better measures of utility than price/performance ration.
Should profitting from a ill-gained monopoly to be able to create this earn someone knighthood? It is hardly a noble achievement in itself, and absolutely not if one considers the means.
So let's knight those who created that without hoarding software.
I fear I don't understand at all what do you mean by 'software conformity'. Would it be subverting open standards to create a substandard proprietary lock-in?
Nice to know, but the original poster -- and I agree wholeheartedly -- mentions that there are hundreds of more worthy people. OK, perhaps dozens... Stallman would be the obvious candidate, even if he sometimes has political and moral views I can't condone; but sure he is nobler than Gates, and so are Larry Wall, Linus Torvalds, Maddog, K&R, and so on... even that boneheaded ESR...
That BillG gets knighted before all this people, and even knighted at all, shows that you don't even need to write a check to effectively buy a nobility title.
I think I know how to think... it is just that this is not such an important issue for me to read MS accounts myself.
If true, this would be interesting indeed.
No, this could be simply a result of past fraud.
It could still, if MS is forced to generalised discounts due to competition. On one hand, I'd like to see them pay; on the other I'd like them to be beaten in the marketplace, not on the stock exchange.
These I know and even translated. The issue is this particular year being reported now; has anything changed, or is MS still frauding the stock exchange, its minoritary shareholders and employers, and the IRS?
I wonder what Bill Parish has to say about that...
RISC is still a superior architecture. Maybe Sun won't ever adapt to higher volumes, but it is not clear that x86-64 is the answer to RISC.
This would be incredibly good, if only the US and Europe would stop extorting the poor countries with intellectual property and trade protectionism.
It would mean lower costs of living in the rich countries, and better salaries in the poor ones.
Couple free trade with free movement of people, and people would be able to escape badly managed countries to fill the populational gap in decadent (but rich and well managed) countries.
The only thing barring this as I see it is the very decadence of Europe and the US, that makes the rich people fearful of competition and ashamed of socializing immigrants.