It's funny you live in the area--i figure you know what's going on there. I meant my car example to be totally hypothetical. But I don't see how it is a bad analogy? just asking...:-)
analogies are almost never perfect. but as long as they illustrate the point (e.g., company employees are not fair subsets of the consumer population), an analogy does its job, right?
You seem to assume that the Microsoft campus is a representative subset of the Seattle population when it comes to portable music devices. I disagree.
Consumers who happen to microsoft employees are presumably geekier and more knowledgeable about technology alternatives than the standard seattle citizen. Moreover, they work for a company that actively competes with the iPod from a consumer entertainment platform perspective. If you don't believe me, look for the Mossberg quote at the end of this article:
Thus, msft employees are NOT a representative subset. We SHOULD be surprised if they purchase iPods in the same proportion as the rest of the seattle population.
Here's a hypothetical example. For the sake of argument, assume that Honda is the best selling carmaker in the US--it has 80% of the market. In the absence of other information, your logic is correct. Given any random town, we would assume that that Honda would be the best selling car. If i then said that Honda is the best selling car in Detroit, or among GM employees, wouldn't you be surprised? I would find it remarkable if 80% of the cars driven into the GM employee parking lot were Hondas.
The point is that GM employees and Microsoft employees are NOT representative subsets of the consumer population--because of industry knowledge, company loyalty, and peer pressure from coworkers. Therefore, if these employees purchase competing products at the same rate as the regular population, that IS surprising.
shows the power of demand-driven bottom-up interest in digital music players versus the top-down directives from a supplier (i.e., marketing initiatives from the corporate office). the most successful marketing campaigns mix top-down from the supplier and the bottom-up from the consumer of course. in this case, microsoft is out of that product loop with their own employees.
And the posters above who claim that microsoft is not competing with Apple, you're wrong. In a narrow sense, it's true that Microsoft does not sell a portable music device. In a larger sense, Microsoft IS competing with Apple when it comes to digital consumer entertainment platforms.
That is why Microsfot has spent more than a year denigrating the iPod and promoting its "open" audio format and associated MP3 players. This is why microsoft has been pushing "http://www.digitaljoy.com/" at CES.
Just because Microsoft does not manufacture Intel hardware, are you going to say Microsoft doesn't compete with Apple b/c Apple sells computers? Sheesh!
IBM exists to serve corporate customers. Large corporations are not clamoring for apple (I say this as the happy owner of an iBook).
IBM has to have compelling reasons to think it can make money by convincing either (1) corporations to buy macs or (2) consumers to buy from IBM.
Let's look at the price tag. Since Apple's current market cap is $25 billion dollars, IBM would have to pay something in that range to purchase Apple.
To put things in perspective, IBM is expected to receive $1-2 billion from the sale of its existing PC business. IBM has about $10 billion in cash in the bank.
Does IBM have the money? Only by issuing more debt (IBM has about $22 Billion in debt already) OR by purchasing Apple using IBM stock which would dilute shareholder value.
Does IBM have the will and/or stupidity to pursue such a deal? NO.
There's a great article on the very topic of eyelessness in cave fishes I found linked off of www.pandasthumb.org, which is cool evolution blog that started this year:
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/deve lo pment_of_cavefish_eyes/
It shows the power of combining developmental and evolutionary biology. There are a variety of hypotheses explored, and here's the conclusion (SPOILER WARNING):
"What all this is telling us is that the failure of the eye to form in the blind cavefish isn't the result of a passive loss of eye genes, but the expansion of expression of genes that actively oppose eye formation. Other work from the Jeffery lab suggests that the expanding genes are responsible for an increase in jaw size and the number of gustatory receptors. The enlargement of sensory and manipulatory structures isn't to compensate for the loss of eyes, as Darwin suggested, but may actually be the developmental
cause of the organism's blindness."
For example, evolution. There are still lots of unanswered problems with this theory. In a few years, there will likely be a few changes to this theory, as the data improves.
Yes, it's true that there are controversies within evolution and biology that need to be worked out, just as there are in, say, reconciling quantum physics with relativity. But these are advanced topics that teachers generally don't have time to get to in K-12 science classes.
Just b/c Newton didn't get everything right doesn't mean we don't teach the commonly accepted Theory of Gravity. (Those who are interested can learn more about relativity on their own.) And just b/c there are still unanswered questions in biology doesn't mean that schoolkids shouldn't learn the standard model of Darwinian evolution. After they've learned enough of the fundamentals, they can then start reading about advanced topics in biology and see what the thornier issues are.
At the K-12 level, there is NOTHING that should be controversial about the Modern Synthesis, which combined Darwinism and Mendelian genetics more than half a century ago. All evidence over the last 50 years from molecular biology, developmental biology, and paleontology has simply strengthened the Synthesis.
Why does biology need to meet a higher standard of evidence than other sciences?
This is an old canard; there is no conflict between the 2nd law and evolution. As you stated, entropy increases in a CLOSED system. The earth is not closed as energy is constantly streaming into it from an external source--the Sun.
Think about development. When a single-celled embryo differentiates into an adult multicellular creature--does this contradict the 2nd law? I suppose you might say something about the developmental program requiring the information in the DNA...
OK, a better example is quoted here: "Order from disorder is common in nonliving systems, too. Snowflakes, sand dunes, tornadoes, stalactites, graded river beds, and lightning are just a few examples of order coming from disorder in nature; none require an intelligent program to achieve that order. In any nontrivial system with lots of energy flowing through it, you are almost certain to find order arising somewhere in the system."
I agree with the positive results homeschooling can achieve. But I call bullshit on this: Why is it that, when *every* other governement monopoly has been replaced by a competitive private equivalent, the quality of the product has gone up and the price of the product has come down but no one is willing to try this with primary education?
I'm not against experimentation -- targetd school choice programs might work in some areas. but for you to make a blanket statement about privatization ALWAYS succeeding seems ridiculous. What about the California energy market? What about the oil industry in Russia post Soviet Union?
Don't get me wrong--I'm all for free markets and deregulation has done good in many industries (breaking up AT&T comes to mind). But I'm against unthinking market fundamentalism. Markets are kickass tools to create wealth, not goals in and of themselves. And sometimes, these tools don't work. A great (and fairminded) book on this topic is "Reinventing the Bazaar" by John McMillan. He's a professor at Stanford's Business School who is definitely capitalist. Where there is competition, costs fall and quality rises.
As for quality always improving or cost always going down, what about the cost of higher education (where there is presumably a free market)? Compare also the public health statistics (average lifespan, etc.) delivered in the U.S. with those from other industrialized countries with socialized medicine. Tho n fairness, the U.S. healthchare system is screwed and not actually neither competitive nor gov't monopoly.
Why does it have to be like this though? Why is it that the stock market must go up, corporate profits must increase, and small companies must become large ones to survive?
Public companies have a legal and economic responsibility to their shareholders. A private companies is different--if enough of it is owned by 1 person, he or she can decide to keep doing the same thing every year, make the same revenue, etc. with zero growth. So a small company can stay small forever, assuming it can hold onto it's niche. Many owners of small businesses do some variation on this because they don't want to take away time from their families, or risk what they already have by throwing a lot of money at new investment. And this is totally fine assuming it's a stable situation.
The only problem (in our system) is that his customers usually have the opportunity to patronize better products or cheaper prices offered by rivals who have been busy growing, saving, and investing. So there is a strong incentive for these small companies to "keep up with the Joneses". You may complain about this state of affairs, but it's what has lead to GDP growth which (combined with higher output per worker per hour) leads directly to better lives (see below).
I haven't heard anyone "pipe up" with a sensible plan to get ourselves out of this hole we've (our grandfathers) dug, but maybe this is it.
I say this as a political liberal--we are NOT in a hole compared to our grandfathers. By virtually every objective metric, life in the industrialized world is better now than it was in just about any society living before 1940. Look at education, health, charity, and wealth. Don't disparage wealth--it can be thought of as a proxy for the freedom to live life as one decides is best.
Are there many people stuck in dead end jobs (or worse, can't find a job)? Are there problems with income distribution (esp. in North and South America)? Are there a large number of people that could have better lives? Yes, yes, and yes. There are a lot of problems we need to address (such as providing better health care coverage, opportunities for people to fund the education they want or need, balancing economic dynamism with social stability, protecting our environment for a sustainable futuree, etc...)
But despite our problems I would be shocked to see if (as a percentage of the population as a whole), any pre-WWII societies have done better than the modern developed world in providing people life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to their inhabitants.
McCloud makes a similar point in terms of why simple "cartoony" characters are easier to relate to. Typically, your own subjective "vision" of yourself is a schematic smiley face (2 eyes, and simple mouth), whereas views of other people are more realistic and "objective".
Check out this Understanding Comics--it's an insightful analysis of how comics are an excllent medium of communication, and breaks down how they work.
You make good points in your 2 posts. One thing I would add is that a consumer in your example would probably value the 360 songs from Apple much more than the 300 on CD albums.
B/c you can cherrypick the 360 tracks individually rather than all the album filler. When comparing songs you would actually rate highly and listen to repeatedly, the fairer comparison is probably 360 Apple songs vs. 40-100 CD songs.
On that scale, anybody other than trendy people who live off their credit cards are going to look at these and say "Nice, but these are a cut-down iPod with a lot less space".
People buy more space than they need; otherwise, they wouldn't buy Huge SUVs, huge suburban houses, and iPods that have 40G.
Not always true. If you live somewhere where parking is hard to find, you're more likely to buy a smaller car. I agree with you in this sense: a trendy consumer might buy a new MiniCooper while a barebones buyer might go with a used Kia. But sometimes smaller makes sense, esp. if the overall price is lower (even though the relative price/GB is not).
I was responding to your post: "I don't care about people in third world countries, in fact they will be displaced eventually just as America displaced the Indians, Rome displaced the Carthaginians, and the Germans displaced Rome.
You make it sound like ethnic cleansing is inevitable in the third world. If I understand your point correctly, some crude Social Darwinism will eliminate these weak societies, totally discounting the ability of the people in those societies to reform their nation-states. Military force and power is essential to understanding international relations. But there are many other factors to consider.
My response merely cites examples where previous eliminationist tendencies were *stopped* rather than encouraged by an outside power. And that outside power is the U.S. which has a history of having idealistic foreign policy. (Obviously balanced by realist and other schools of thought.)
You make it sound as if some combination of demographic and/or military force will eventually eliminate the people who live in the third world. If I understand you correctly, you claim that those lands will then be taken over by individuals from some outside civilization. Though starvation, disease, and illiberal governments are serious issues in some of these countries (esp. subsaharan Africa), your concept is ridiculous. What outside military power do you expect will come in to conquer, say, Zimbabwe?
I have no idea what you are talking about...There is nothing truly unique to the Green Party ideology.
Obviously. When I say "Green Revolution" , I refer to the "process of technological development of agricultural techniques that began in Mexico in 1944 and has since spread throughout the world." Basically, it's disproved Malthus. (Or pushed off his deadline farther into the future, depending on your point of view.) I am NOT refering to the Green Party.
The reason I raised it was in response to your idea that "great suffering that has lead to every human ehancement thus far". yes, yes, desperation is the mother of all invention, except when it ISN'T. I was pointing out the Green Revolution, a massive advance for humanity, was not in itself a response to suffering. Why? b/c the kind of suffering that comes from subsistence farming has existed for thousands of years. My point is that suffering alone is not enough for these advances. You need other factors like the proper social and technological conditions for this "adversity" to do anything constructive.
OK, i admit it's not the greatest example. What about the arts or pure math, where people advance frontiers b/c they enjoy it. It's about fun, not suffering.
Why is that a corruption?
What I said was: "Unfortunately, democracies throughout history have a tendency to corrupt themselves through military and imperial overreaching." Why is this a corruption? Because democracy is about an idealism about how people relate to each other and can form a voluntary society and a represntative form of government. A government based on positive patriotism rather than merely negative fear of force. Unfortunately, these ideals are often forgotten (corrupted) both internally and when waging imperalist and expansionst wars abroad. I don't mean defensive wars, although there's a lot of gray area between imperalism vs. defensive military action.
I have nothing against society expanding. I do have a problem when it expands at the expense of our democracy. In the process of reaching out militarily, we corrupt our Republic internally. You're probably right that this is inherent to all growing societies. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be aware of the dangers and fight to hold onto our ideals. Many of the Founding Fathers themselves were concerned about this corruption from foreign adventures.
When I say "the people" I am referring to MY people, not any other people. I don't care about people in third world countries, in fact they will be displaced eventually just as America displaced the Indians, Rome displaced the Carthaginians, and the Germans displaced Rome.
I guess the natural order of things would have been to let the Saddam Hussein's Sunnis to displace the Kurds (and Kuwaitis), the North Vietnamese to displace the South Vietnamese, the Soviet Union to displace the Third Worlders in Western Europe in 1945. Oh wait, the superior American civilization stopped them all (except for Vietnam).
The British empire at it's peak was the height of "civilization". But 3 decades after 1914, it was completely displaced by the Third World you don't care about. How does that work with your progressivist theory of history?
Dream a little more, realize humans are more than animals, and that life should not be about contentment. It is through adversity that we grow, it great suffering that has lead to every human ehancement thus far. We can already see how ease of life is so corrupting, or are you ignoring it?
What sort of adversity brought about the Green Revolution in 20th century agriculture that raised more people out of subsistence farming and complete poverty in 50 years than the entire rest of human history? Starvation and disease had been around for millenia. Do you mean to say that adversity was somehow "necessary" for the technological and social conditions that led to the Green Revolution?
Actually, I agree with you that people should have noble goals. But these aspirations should be informed by history. One of my ideals is that in a liberal democracy, we can negotiate with others regarding what kind of public ideals should be and gain followers through inspiration rather than coercion.
Unfortunately, democracies throughout history have a tendency to corrupt themselves through military and imperial overreaching.
Black or white, we all lost our freedom in 1865, and the country can never again be what the founders intended, and what it once was. In reality, slavery was not ended, but expanded to cover the entire citizenry.
Do you mean the economic "slavery" unleashed on exploited workers and small rural farmers by robber barons in the ensuing Gilded Age? The economic elite that amassed power during the last third of the nineteenth century probably felt like they gained a lot of "freedom". Well, until those damn socialists began enacting "Progressive reforms" in the 20th century.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
This. Thanks for writing that post. :)
It's funny you live in the area--i figure you know what's going on there. I meant my car example to be totally hypothetical. But I don't see how it is a bad analogy? just asking... :-)
analogies are almost never perfect. but as long as they illustrate the point (e.g., company employees are not fair subsets of the consumer population), an analogy does its job, right?
You seem to assume that the Microsoft campus is a representative subset of the Seattle population when it comes to portable music devices. I disagree.
o rm ats/
Consumers who happen to microsoft employees are presumably geekier and more knowledgeable about technology alternatives than the standard seattle citizen. Moreover, they work for a company that actively competes with the iPod from a consumer entertainment platform perspective. If you don't believe me, look for the Mossberg quote at the end of this article:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/08/18/file.f
Thus, msft employees are NOT a representative subset. We SHOULD be surprised if they purchase iPods in the same proportion as the rest of the seattle population.
Here's a hypothetical example. For the sake of argument, assume that Honda is the best selling carmaker in the US--it has 80% of the market. In the absence of other information, your logic is correct. Given any random town, we would assume that that Honda would be the best selling car. If i then said that Honda is the best selling car in Detroit, or among GM employees, wouldn't you be surprised? I would find it remarkable if 80% of the cars driven into the GM employee parking lot were Hondas.
The point is that GM employees and Microsoft employees are NOT representative subsets of the consumer population--because of industry knowledge, company loyalty, and peer pressure from coworkers. Therefore, if these employees purchase competing products at the same rate as the regular population, that IS surprising.
OK, it's been said already, but:
"Coke, the most popular cola in ther world, is the most popular cola on the Pepsi campus?! How is that possible?!"
"Microsoft Windows, the most popular pc OS in the world, is the most popular OS on the Apple campus?! How is that possible?!"
shows the power of demand-driven bottom-up interest in digital music players versus the top-down directives from a supplier (i.e., marketing initiatives from the corporate office). the most successful marketing campaigns mix top-down from the supplier and the bottom-up from the consumer of course. in this case, microsoft is out of that product loop with their own employees.
And the posters above who claim that microsoft is not competing with Apple, you're wrong. In a narrow sense, it's true that Microsoft does not sell a portable music device. In a larger sense, Microsoft IS competing with Apple when it comes to digital consumer entertainment platforms.
That is why Microsfot has spent more than a year denigrating the iPod and promoting its "open" audio format and associated MP3 players. This is why microsoft has been pushing "http://www.digitaljoy.com/" at CES.
Just because Microsoft does not manufacture Intel hardware, are you going to say Microsoft doesn't compete with Apple b/c Apple sells computers? Sheesh!
IBM exists to serve corporate customers. Large corporations are not clamoring for apple (I say this as the happy owner of an iBook).
IBM has to have compelling reasons to think it can make money by convincing either (1) corporations to buy macs or (2) consumers to buy from IBM.
Let's look at the price tag. Since Apple's current market cap is $25 billion dollars, IBM would have to pay something in that range to purchase Apple.
To put things in perspective, IBM is expected to receive $1-2 billion from the sale of its existing PC business. IBM has about $10 billion in cash in the bank.
Does IBM have the money? Only by issuing more debt (IBM has about $22 Billion in debt already) OR by purchasing Apple using IBM stock which would dilute shareholder value.
Does IBM have the will and/or stupidity to pursue such a deal? NO.
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/dev
It shows the power of combining developmental and evolutionary biology. There are a variety of hypotheses explored, and here's the conclusion (SPOILER WARNING):
For example, evolution. There are still lots of unanswered problems with this theory. In a few years, there will likely be a few changes to this theory, as the data improves.
Yes, it's true that there are controversies within evolution and biology that need to be worked out, just as there are in, say, reconciling quantum physics with relativity. But these are advanced topics that teachers generally don't have time to get to in K-12 science classes.
Just b/c Newton didn't get everything right doesn't mean we don't teach the commonly accepted Theory of Gravity. (Those who are interested can learn more about relativity on their own.) And just b/c there are still unanswered questions in biology doesn't mean that schoolkids shouldn't learn the standard model of Darwinian evolution. After they've learned enough of the fundamentals, they can then start reading about advanced topics in biology and see what the thornier issues are.
At the K-12 level, there is NOTHING that should be controversial about the Modern Synthesis, which combined Darwinism and Mendelian genetics more than half a century ago. All evidence over the last 50 years from molecular biology, developmental biology, and paleontology has simply strengthened the Synthesis.
Why does biology need to meet a higher standard of evidence than other sciences?
This is an old canard; there is no conflict between the 2nd law and evolution. As you stated, entropy increases in a CLOSED system. The earth is not closed as energy is constantly streaming into it from an external source--the Sun.
o ns .html#thermo
Think about development. When a single-celled embryo differentiates into an adult multicellular creature--does this contradict the 2nd law? I suppose you might say something about the developmental program requiring the information in the DNA...
OK, a better example is quoted here: "Order from disorder is common in nonliving systems, too. Snowflakes, sand dunes, tornadoes, stalactites, graded river beds, and lightning are just a few examples of order coming from disorder in nature; none require an intelligent program to achieve that order. In any nontrivial system with lots of energy flowing through it, you are almost certain to find order arising somewhere in the system."
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconcepti
And of course, talkorigins has plenty of other good links on this topic:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo.html
I agree with the positive results homeschooling can achieve. But I call bullshit on this:
Why is it that, when *every* other governement monopoly has been replaced by a competitive private equivalent, the quality of the product has gone up and the price of the product has come down but no one is willing to try this with primary education?
I'm not against experimentation -- targetd school choice programs might work in some areas. but for you to make a blanket statement about privatization ALWAYS succeeding seems ridiculous. What about the California energy market? What about the oil industry in Russia post Soviet Union?
Don't get me wrong--I'm all for free markets and deregulation has done good in many industries (breaking up AT&T comes to mind). But I'm against unthinking market fundamentalism. Markets are kickass tools to create wealth, not goals in and of themselves. And sometimes, these tools don't work. A great (and fairminded) book on this topic is "Reinventing the Bazaar" by John McMillan. He's a professor at Stanford's Business School who is definitely capitalist.
Where there is competition, costs fall and quality rises.
As for quality always improving or cost always going down, what about the cost of higher education (where there is presumably a free market)? Compare also the public health statistics (average lifespan, etc.) delivered in the U.S. with those from other industrialized countries with socialized medicine. Tho n fairness, the U.S. healthchare system is screwed and not actually neither competitive nor gov't monopoly.
Why does it have to be like this though? Why is it that the stock market must go up, corporate profits must increase, and small companies must become large ones to survive?
Public companies have a legal and economic responsibility to their shareholders. A private companies is different--if enough of it is owned by 1 person, he or she can decide to keep doing the same thing every year, make the same revenue, etc. with zero growth. So a small company can stay small forever, assuming it can hold onto it's niche. Many owners of small businesses do some variation on this because they don't want to take away time from their families, or risk what they already have by throwing a lot of money at new investment. And this is totally fine assuming it's a stable situation.
The only problem (in our system) is that his customers usually have the opportunity to patronize better products or cheaper prices offered by rivals who have been busy growing, saving, and investing. So there is a strong incentive for these small companies to "keep up with the Joneses". You may complain about this state of affairs, but it's what has lead to GDP growth which (combined with higher output per worker per hour) leads directly to better lives (see below).
I haven't heard anyone "pipe up" with a sensible plan to get ourselves out of this hole we've (our grandfathers) dug, but maybe this is it.
I say this as a political liberal--we are NOT in a hole compared to our grandfathers. By virtually every objective metric, life in the industrialized world is better now than it was in just about any society living before 1940. Look at education, health, charity, and wealth. Don't disparage wealth--it can be thought of as a proxy for the freedom to live life as one decides is best.
Are there many people stuck in dead end jobs (or worse, can't find a job)? Are there problems with income distribution (esp. in North and South America)? Are there a large number of people that could have better lives? Yes, yes, and yes. There are a lot of problems we need to address (such as providing better health care coverage, opportunities for people to fund the education they want or need, balancing economic dynamism with social stability, protecting our environment for a sustainable futuree, etc...)
But despite our problems I would be shocked to see if (as a percentage of the population as a whole), any pre-WWII societies have done better than the modern developed world in providing people life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to their inhabitants.
McCloud makes a similar point in terms of why simple "cartoony" characters are easier to relate to. Typically, your own subjective "vision" of yourself is a schematic smiley face (2 eyes, and simple mouth), whereas views of other people are more realistic and "objective".
Check out this Understanding Comics--it's an insightful analysis of how comics are an excllent medium of communication, and breaks down how they work.
You make good points in your 2 posts. One thing I would add is that a consumer in your example would probably value the 360 songs from Apple much more than the 300 on CD albums.
B/c you can cherrypick the 360 tracks individually rather than all the album filler. When comparing songs you would actually rate highly and listen to repeatedly, the fairer comparison is probably 360 Apple songs vs. 40-100 CD songs.
Argh, no mod points. Mod parent up as insightful.
On that scale, anybody other than trendy people who live off their credit cards are going to look at these and say "Nice, but these are a cut-down iPod with a lot less space".
People buy more space than they need; otherwise, they wouldn't buy Huge SUVs, huge suburban houses, and iPods that have 40G.
Not always true. If you live somewhere where parking is hard to find, you're more likely to buy a smaller car. I agree with you in this sense: a trendy consumer might buy a new MiniCooper while a barebones buyer might go with a used Kia. But sometimes smaller makes sense, esp. if the overall price is lower (even though the relative price/GB is not).
your point?
I was responding to your post: "I don't care about people in third world countries, in fact they will be displaced eventually just as America displaced the Indians, Rome displaced the Carthaginians, and the Germans displaced Rome.
You make it sound like ethnic cleansing is inevitable in the third world. If I understand your point correctly, some crude Social Darwinism will eliminate these weak societies, totally discounting the ability of the people in those societies to reform their nation-states. Military force and power is essential to understanding international relations. But there are many other factors to consider.
My response merely cites examples where previous eliminationist tendencies were *stopped* rather than encouraged by an outside power. And that outside power is the U.S. which has a history of having idealistic foreign policy. (Obviously balanced by realist and other schools of thought.)
You make it sound as if some combination of demographic and/or military force will eventually eliminate the people who live in the third world. If I understand you correctly, you claim that those lands will then be taken over by individuals from some outside civilization. Though starvation, disease, and illiberal governments are serious issues in some of these countries (esp. subsaharan Africa), your concept is ridiculous. What outside military power do you expect will come in to conquer, say, Zimbabwe?
I have no idea what you are talking about...There is nothing truly unique to the Green Party ideology.
Obviously. When I say "Green Revolution" , I refer to the "process of technological development of agricultural techniques that began in Mexico in 1944 and has since spread throughout the world." Basically, it's disproved Malthus. (Or pushed off his deadline farther into the future, depending on your point of view.) I am NOT refering to the Green Party.
The reason I raised it was in response to your idea that "great suffering that has lead to every human ehancement thus far". yes, yes, desperation is the mother of all invention, except when it ISN'T. I was pointing out the Green Revolution, a massive advance for humanity, was not in itself a response to suffering. Why? b/c the kind of suffering that comes from subsistence farming has existed for thousands of years. My point is that suffering alone is not enough for these advances. You need other factors like the proper social and technological conditions for this "adversity" to do anything constructive.
OK, i admit it's not the greatest example. What about the arts or pure math, where people advance frontiers b/c they enjoy it. It's about fun, not suffering.
Why is that a corruption?
What I said was: "Unfortunately, democracies throughout history have a tendency to corrupt themselves through military and imperial overreaching." Why is this a corruption? Because democracy is about an idealism about how people relate to each other and can form a voluntary society and a represntative form of government. A government based on positive patriotism rather than merely negative fear of force. Unfortunately, these ideals are often forgotten (corrupted) both internally and when waging imperalist and expansionst wars abroad. I don't mean defensive wars, although there's a lot of gray area between imperalism vs. defensive military action.
I have nothing against society expanding. I do have a problem when it expands at the expense of our democracy. In the process of reaching out militarily, we corrupt our Republic internally. You're probably right that this is inherent to all growing societies. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be aware of the dangers and fight to hold onto our ideals. Many of the Founding Fathers themselves were concerned about this corruption from foreign adventures.
When I say "the people" I am referring to MY people, not any other people. I don't care about people in third world countries, in fact they will be displaced eventually just as America displaced the Indians, Rome displaced the Carthaginians, and the Germans displaced Rome.
I guess the natural order of things would have been to let the Saddam Hussein's Sunnis to displace the Kurds (and Kuwaitis), the North Vietnamese to displace the South Vietnamese, the Soviet Union to displace the Third Worlders in Western Europe in 1945. Oh wait, the superior American civilization stopped them all (except for Vietnam).
The British empire at it's peak was the height of "civilization". But 3 decades after 1914, it was completely displaced by the Third World you don't care about. How does that work with your progressivist theory of history?
Dream a little more, realize humans are more than animals, and that life should not be about contentment. It is through adversity that we grow, it great suffering that has lead to every human ehancement thus far. We can already see how ease of life is so corrupting, or are you ignoring it?
What sort of adversity brought about the Green Revolution in 20th century agriculture that raised more people out of subsistence farming and complete poverty in 50 years than the entire rest of human history? Starvation and disease had been around for millenia. Do you mean to say that adversity was somehow "necessary" for the technological and social conditions that led to the Green Revolution?
Actually, I agree with you that people should have noble goals. But these aspirations should be informed by history. One of my ideals is that in a liberal democracy, we can negotiate with others regarding what kind of public ideals should be and gain followers through inspiration rather than coercion.
Unfortunately, democracies throughout history have a tendency to corrupt themselves through military and imperial overreaching.
Black or white, we all lost our freedom in 1865, and the country can never again be what the founders intended, and what it once was. In reality, slavery was not ended, but expanded to cover the entire citizenry.
:-)
Do you mean the economic "slavery" unleashed on exploited workers and small rural farmers by robber barons in the ensuing Gilded Age? The economic elite that amassed power during the last third of the nineteenth century probably felt like they gained a lot of "freedom". Well, until those damn socialists began enacting "Progressive reforms" in the 20th century.