Economic globalization increases the economic equality of societies (e.g., USA vs. Bangladesh) while increasing economic inequality overall by providing more opportunities to exploit workers and making it easier for a small number of people to become grossly rich. It is difficult to enforce laws against multinational corporations (e.g., Yahoo versus France) because they can hide across internation boundaries or even have other countries actively protect them.
Political globalization stabilizes world politics at the cost of local power, and can, therefore, alienate people even while it is saving them from war. If power centralizes into the wrong hands (e.g., a corporation focused on financial gain and not the welfare of citizens, or an oppressive regime) you get an Orwellian (i.e., "1984") nightmare. Political globalization makes it easier for companies to make money, but harder for them to hide from the law.
Cultural globalization makes people more tolerant of each other and different points of view (thus decreasing global conflict), but threatens local cultures with extinction, which is why religious extremists hate it.
There's a difference between being on call and having to come in if you are called:
Being On-call: You have to have a means of contact with you (e.g., cell phone or pager) at all times. Said device must always be on. You may not go any further than 30 minutes away from work (or some other arbitrary time period).
Having to come in if you are called: You can go anywhere you want if you aren't working. You don't have to carry a cell phone or pager. You can go to Antarctica if you like. If you are unreachable, it is their problem. If it is going to take you 3 days to return, that is their problem.
People need to be paid if they are going to be "on-call".
Microsoft's operating system monopoly is what created the open source phenomenon that we see today. Basically, there were two factors made true by the monopoly:
1. Since MS had no realistic competition, they didn't have to create a good product; therefore, their product sucked.
2. No other company could make money off of an operating system.
Since the operating system sucked, but programmers couldn't be paid to write a better one (since companies were no longer interested in pursuing that market), the only answer was for programmers to create a new computing environment for free. When I say "computing environment", I mean the whole enchilada from kernel to Gnome/KDE to office products to server programs.
Clearly, there was open source software before the MS monopoly, but it wasn't popular and it certainly wasn't a major economic force.
So, in essence, MS has it's own greed and lack of concern for the needs of both advanced and normal computer users to blame for the open source phenomenon that we see today; and Windows users have open source programmers to thank for the upcoming improvements in the Windows operating system.
In conclusion, open source is what it is because of MS. If MS wants to stay #1, they need to shut up and actually innovate for once.
Not only do the rich owe their success partly to the society that allowed them to get rich, as others have pointed out, but a large rich-poor gap is usually accompanied by civil unrest. A small gap doesn't hurt much, but when 5% of the people own 95% of the wealth, there's a problem. Not only are the poor jealous of the rich, but many of the poor are going without health care and food, often because it isn't profitable for the rich to give them health care and food.
That's exactly what's going on right now. We could have universal health care, but the rich, and those who think they are rich (but would, in actuality, benefit from universal health care), simply are too greedy. The second group is the most hilarious. There are so many economic conservatives out there making $20k to $100k per year. These are the kinds or people that benefit, along with the poor, from progressive economic programs.
Assuming you are one of those evil bastards who don't care if people eat and can go to the doctor, then there are two issues that matter: 1) At what point will the poor get pissed and screw things up?, 2) Since the same people who are getting poorer while the rich get richer are the ones buying the stuff that provides the rich with money, there's a point when the economy won't work anymore if the gap gets too large.
One more thing: There are two kinds of human trash (economically speaking) -- the poor who could work but don't because they prefer to leech off of society, and the rich who do the very same thing. Did the guy making $1 million a year really work that much harder in his life than some poor bastard still making $10/hr? No. He was born smarter, probably better looking, but most of all he was born into a rich family. So hard work has nothing to do with it.
I live in Columbia, Missouri which is driving distance from Kansas City (which is mostly located in Missouri, not Kansas, BTW). I didn't go because they were charging what I considered to be a lot of money to get in. I'm a member of the Mizzou Linux Users Group which has put on two free Linux events in Columbia. Even though Columbia isn't nearly as big as KC, I would guess that we had more than 300 people in attendance. When Eric Raymond gave his speech at our event, the room was packed. My point is not that we did a great job with our event -- in fact, I'll admit that it was poorly planned... pretty much thrown together. Rather, my point is that Linux people, unlike MS users, are not willing to pay $300 (or whatever it was) for information.
I don't think that is being cheap. I think it is reasonable. Why should I pay $300 just so I can go to an event where companies will try to sell me stuff? MLUG's event was free for attendees and very cheap for exhibitors -- I think we just asked for them to donate a door prize.
Had the entry fee for the KC event been $30 or less, I might have gone.
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There are different kinds of globalization:
Economic globalization increases the economic equality of societies (e.g., USA vs. Bangladesh) while increasing economic inequality overall by providing more opportunities to exploit workers and making it easier for a small number of people to become grossly rich. It is difficult to enforce laws against multinational corporations (e.g., Yahoo versus France) because they can hide across internation boundaries or even have other countries actively protect them.
Political globalization stabilizes world politics at the cost of local power, and can, therefore, alienate people even while it is saving them from war. If power centralizes into the wrong hands (e.g., a corporation focused on financial gain and not the welfare of citizens, or an oppressive regime) you get an Orwellian (i.e., "1984") nightmare. Political globalization makes it easier for companies to make money, but harder for them to hide from the law.
Cultural globalization makes people more tolerant of each other and different points of view (thus decreasing global conflict), but threatens local cultures with extinction, which is why religious extremists hate it.
Being On-call: You have to have a means of contact with you (e.g., cell phone or pager) at all times. Said device must always be on. You may not go any further than 30 minutes away from work (or some other arbitrary time period).
Having to come in if you are called: You can go anywhere you want if you aren't working. You don't have to carry a cell phone or pager. You can go to Antarctica if you like. If you are unreachable, it is their problem. If it is going to take you 3 days to return, that is their problem.
People need to be paid if they are going to be "on-call".
Microsoft's operating system monopoly is what created the open source phenomenon that we see today. Basically, there were two factors made true by the monopoly:
1. Since MS had no realistic competition, they didn't have to create a good product; therefore, their product sucked.
2. No other company could make money off of an operating system.
Since the operating system sucked, but programmers couldn't be paid to write a better one (since companies were no longer interested in pursuing that market), the only answer was for programmers to create a new computing environment for free. When I say "computing environment", I mean the whole enchilada from kernel to Gnome/KDE to office products to server programs.
Clearly, there was open source software before the MS monopoly, but it wasn't popular and it certainly wasn't a major economic force.
So, in essence, MS has it's own greed and lack of concern for the needs of both advanced and normal computer users to blame for the open source phenomenon that we see today; and Windows users have open source programmers to thank for the upcoming improvements in the Windows operating system.
In conclusion, open source is what it is because of MS. If MS wants to stay #1, they need to shut up and actually innovate for once.
Not only do the rich owe their success partly to the society that allowed them to get rich, as others have pointed out, but a large rich-poor gap is usually accompanied by civil unrest. A small gap doesn't hurt much, but when 5% of the people own 95% of the wealth, there's a problem. Not only are the poor jealous of the rich, but many of the poor are going without health care and food, often because it isn't profitable for the rich to give them health care and food.
That's exactly what's going on right now. We could have universal health care, but the rich, and those who think they are rich (but would, in actuality, benefit from universal health care), simply are too greedy. The second group is the most hilarious. There are so many economic conservatives out there making $20k to $100k per year. These are the kinds or people that benefit, along with the poor, from progressive economic programs.
Assuming you are one of those evil bastards who don't care if people eat and can go to the doctor, then there are two issues that matter: 1) At what point will the poor get pissed and screw things up?, 2) Since the same people who are getting poorer while the rich get richer are the ones buying the stuff that provides the rich with money, there's a point when the economy won't work anymore if the gap gets too large.
One more thing: There are two kinds of human trash (economically speaking) -- the poor who could work but don't because they prefer to leech off of society, and the rich who do the very same thing. Did the guy making $1 million a year really work that much harder in his life than some poor bastard still making $10/hr? No. He was born smarter, probably better looking, but most of all he was born into a rich family. So hard work has nothing to do with it.
I don't think that is being cheap. I think it is reasonable. Why should I pay $300 just so I can go to an event where companies will try to sell me stuff? MLUG's event was free for attendees and very cheap for exhibitors -- I think we just asked for them to donate a door prize.
Had the entry fee for the KC event been $30 or less, I might have gone.