This may sound crazy to you, but I believe that creatures CAPABLE of moral choice will, under circumstances where coercion is absent, act in the best interests of themselves and their fellows. In such a landscape, laws are unnecessary, and in fact a hindrance to the full functioning of the individual.
Indeed, the laws established by States actively PROMOTE killing; you have to look no farther than last century to see the most bloody "lawful" engagements leaving literally millions of bodies on the fields of this planet. In every instance, these purges were established under the "laws" of the State, driven by their aristocratic classes. The peasant of 30s Ukraine and today's Texas death-row inmate both wind up the same way: dead.
The existance of the State depends on you depending on it to protect you. As long as you believe your fate lies in the hands of an organization outside of yourself, you will never be free or safe.
Law exists to protect them against a type of theft that is particular to their industry. Suddenly, technology exists to make it incredibly easy to accomplish this type of theft, potentially threatening their industry's existence. Would you expect the people involved to do anything less than vigorously defend themselves by applying the related law, and even sharpening the law?
Law is created by the rich to protect their property; the cruft of "law" has accumulated over the centuries to the point where lunacies like this issue can be bandied about as intelligent discourse.
Your "point" that rich, entreched interests move to protect themselves hints at the above truth--only those in a position of power and wealth can "sharpen" the law to their benefit.
I also remark that if these content-based industries failed to defend themselves, and collapsed, the content they provide would likely dry up as well - because there wouldn't be any money in providing it.
A classic error of economic, spoken as truth. Economics is a pseudo-science and has as much real value as today's weather report.
Simply, people are NATURAL producers--remember the Copper-top analogy in The Matrix? That is just one way a human produces; given the full breadth of expression, people will naturally produce work that is of value, even if that value is only measured in their own satisfaction.
The problem today is most people--people like you--are so convinced they are worthless outside of what they can sell that they cannot imagine another way. In such a world, pay-per-view of Lewis Carroll and Shakespear and WHATEVER makes perfect, logical sense.
Well, there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio......
I think I will stick to what fellow geeks without a political axe to grind tell me.
I do agree that the Anlantic Monthly is a right-wing piece of trash, but I think you give too much credit to the existence of the apolitical geek. Most geeks I've met who look beyond their soldering iron clamor for concentration camps for "those welfare cheats" on their LIBERAL days.
Many people have made the observation that use of technology is inherently political, and John Zerzan isn't the only one to note that tech use is a conversative/right derived and supported phenomenon. It's certainly disengenuous of Fallows to talk about the ugliness of Japan as he trots out his own little horror show to pander to the droids on this side of the Pacific, but let's not forget who his target audience is: those very same geeks you hold in high esteem, only 5 or 10 years removed from their secondary indoctrination. Barring any alchemical transformations, those folk readily soak in the words of the Fallows of this society--they just need to get their SUV first.
And there are no realistic options to giving up information about oneself in many circumstances. This is why people form govenrments, BTW (read Hobbes).
Actually, Hobbes argued that people flock to governments out of fear, so I don't know if that applies here, unless you're suggesting that a NEW government be formed, in which case I wholeheartedly agree.
Still, Hobbes provided a defense for what would become the modern nation-state without the foresight to see how people of his class--the "aristocratic intellectuals"--would so completely capitulate in the face of the security apparatus such states have erected to maintain their control, even to the extent that most of that class become de facto criminals with little or no privacy. Though Hobbes might feel secure in today's world, I doubt that he would feel all that comfortable (but then again, what crypto-totalitarian ever does?)
Regarding this particular issue, have no illusions about where the impetus for this comes from--the people who own the land should determine who manages it, to paraphrase one of the gentry that we're taught to call "Founding Fathers", and by god, they're gonna do it THEIR way, whether you opt-out or not.
My own experience is that art that is free is generally shit (except in the eyes of the artist).
I haven't had the same experience, but then again, I've so rarely seen art that wasn't self-consciously commercial. I remember a debate years ago in the Comics Journal about whether or not the Sistine Chapel was commericial art, and if it was, did that invalidate Michaelangelo's inspiration. Even though the work WAS commissioned, his talent, as staggering as it was, was not: he invested his great gift in the work, over and above any price that could have been placed on what he produced. The same could be said of Beethoven: his art was primary, and he had to suffer fools to get paid for it. Hopefully without sounding too much like an elitist snob, I firmly believe that material created strickly for pay rarely has any value, least of all to the artist. (Mozart might be an exception...) A theory I'm currently playing with is not quite-so-well-hidden in my sig: namely, that the finest visions remain private. Once shared, the Form leaves the Form World, and becomes a part of this world (a shadow of Amber if there ever was one), to become a pale representation of it's orginal inspiration.
The same applies to government subsidized art, except that in this case, it goes all the way past worthless, and isn't worth shit.
I would argue that, politically, all art today DOES come from the government, or at least is subsidized by it, if indirectly. Even Piss Christ serves a function for the state: it creates a maelstrom of controversy about a non-issue when there's much more important things to be angry about. I think it was Plato who wanted to deny the masses art because it would corrupt the Polis. Imagine how he must be churning in his grave to see how wrong he was: call the modern world the Inverted Polis.
Genetic engineering--as practiced by the Corporate Overloads--is the equivalent of greedy kids playing with matches--you just KNOW they're going to get burned. The sad part of this thing is that when these human Prometheuses screw up--and they WILL, if not out of incompentence, hubris, or greed, or all of the above, it's very likely their faux pas will take a great deal of innocent species down with it.
I suppose the only hope for Gaia at this point is that the Sons of Fort Detrick take their pratfall early in their alchemical pursuits, and wipe out the Virus That Walks Like a Man before too much more damage is done. Where's Agent Smith when you need him?
While I'm sure there are many starving would-be authors out there whose spirits will be lifted by this decision, it really begs the question of just what is worth paying for. Theodore Sturgeon made the observation that 90% of everything is shit, which includes stuff that is ALREADY paid for. My feelings are if art isn't free, it has no real intrinsic value.
This is not to say I don't feel hacks shouldn't be paid for their work. Like all factory workers, the faceless scribes who fill up such bastions of culture as Salon and People Magazine deserve their shekels, but one has to wonder if they should be paid twice for something that was of dubious value to begin with. After all, pieceworkers get paid only once for their toil.
The emphasis on legality, while being typically American, is misplaced, as always.
In a market economy, everything is for sale, and it's offered up at the best price, or so the story goes. SPAM is the *ultimate* form of free speech in this context: it elicits a potential buy response from a consumer at a low cost to EACH party. In theory, this is why the "marketplace of ideas" works, but in reality most folks are crypto-fascists wanting their freebooting capitalism right alongside their DisneyWorldview--which rules out porn, free cellphones and any other for-sale item the marketeers wish to pitch. It's as though you want a kinder, gentler capitalism--there ain't no such thing.
What people seem to be seeking--indeed, what many people here seem to want--is a legislation of a moral stance to which they find themselves attached. This isn't the solution now, and it never has been, not the least because not everyone shares standards. Tacitus noted over 2000 years ago that the more laws a state has, the more corrupt it will be. I personally think this State is plenty enough corrupt already.
While I agree with most of what you said, the one issue that's glossed over is: who pays for this stuff?
*ALL* technology as we know it today comes from governmental/military impetus of some form or other. (Yes, there are rivulets of innovation, but in a National Security State, they only go so far before they feed back into the Great River of the State.) If we are to suppose that government is funded by the People for the People's best interest (an extremely iffy proposition, admittedly), then your tax dollars and mine are funding ALL research, and its fruit, such as it is, should belong to *all* of us, not just the lucky few who have brothers at Lockheed or Raytheon. As we've seen, though, it doesn't work out this way, and I'm sure many are ready to scream at the top of their lungs that it *shouldn't* work that way.
(Incidently, the system as it now exists is known as the "Pentagon System"; see Chomsky for more details.)
Which brings me to the title of this response: who is really naive--the person who goes to college to get an education, winds up with an indoctrination and their "IP" taken away, or the person who believes that educational institutions are anything other than the farming grounds for the next generation of commissars? Put another way: does the germ warfare scientist group up thinking they're doing right by the world by cooking up batches of super anthrax and smallpox?
Your rant amounts to little more than a pro-capitalist defense of a system that you no doubt suck as much life out of as you can without any regard for anyone or anything else.
Get this: this is a COMMAND economy just as your socialist or communist ones. Just because YOU are prospering--and informed, to keep this on topic--doesn't mean the other 85% of the country is.
Capitalism, the Free Market, and all the other odes to the One True Way are just another face of the systems you despise: it is a state-sponsored form of social control only less barbaric than the communism of the 20th century by a few million deaths (which in itself is debatable when one considers the "market economies" of India and Africa starved out their populations during that era).
Face it: if you're for the State, you're for Death, and Death doesn't care if you were a capitalist or a communist. The media is used by either system to keep people down.
While I agree with your view that Katz points the finger at the wrong suspect, your premise that government and the corporate system are separate is simply silly.
Corporations ARE government, and have been at least since Ike warned of the Military-Industrial Complex (really long before that). If you honestly believe your precious tax dollars aren't being used to float the boat of corps such as Raytheon, Lockheed, etc., then you're living in a Randian capitalist fantasy.
Anti-capitalism = anti-government, just ask any anarchist.
I'm sorry, but you're obviously so far under the burden of your own myopia that, like the fish in the sea, you cannot know that what surrounds you is water until you are out of it.....
Simply put, your corp--or any other, for that matter--IS a legal fiction, and CANNOT exist without the government to PROTECT it through COERCIVE FORCE. You would-be (and real) anarcho-capitalists make me puke--pretending you can live without Government to protect your gold-inlaid faucets and your stock portfolios.
"the reason 40000 children die of starvation each day is they're too poor to afford their Volvo because of their government, but that's too bad because I've got mine, living free in my gated community, so all is right with the world, now if we could only eliminate *our* government, to let the Market decide the best for all of us."
Please try not to be so empty-headed and fascist as to believe the system you embrace in your little way is alright because you're not personally pouring arsenic into the water table.
Jon, you have an amazing grasp of the obvious, but your lament falls short of placing the blame where it really exists: the System Itself.
The giants you mention--Microsoft, Disney, AOL--and the literally thousands you neglected are only doing what they were desigined to do: create profit for a few without concern for the Whole. Corporations are the greatest creation for social and economic control ever created, and their success at manipulating governments (which isn't difficult, as they are little tyrannies in their own right) has only increased over the last 100 years as their powers have expanded. They are doing what they were designed to do.
The real question is: what do you do to reverse the trend? If corporations are the problem--which they are; one doesn't need the remedial Business Ethics class to see that (which is something most MBAs blissfully ignore, anyway)--then they should be removed. But are you going to do that? Aren't you wringing your hands in public for PAY from one of these evil monstrosities?
You are correct: Marx and Lenin are the high priests of the very worst forms of socialism--the conservative, authoritarian variety which, as we've seen, exceeds its capitalist counterpart--state capitalism, or merchantilism, if you prefer--in barbarity, but only just barely. Both forms of social control effectively emasculate the individual, just as the feudal systems they replaced did. On that continuum, a communist equals a capitalist--they're BOTH conservative, if not reactionary.
In other words, if you're for the State--a Hobbesian--then you're on the Right, or conservative. If you wish for freedom unfettered by the coercive State, then you're on the Left, or progressive/radical.
Is this me or seems like Slashdot seems to be completely dominated by leftists and liberals. When was a last time you saw any story presented from conservative point of view?
Do you have ANY concept how stupid this statement makes you appear? Slashdot is RIDDLED with "conversatives" who are ACTUALLY liberals. (Hey, if Unca Ronnie is your favorite president, then, guess what, you're a neo-liberal, dimwit.)
With the rare exception, this forum tilts so far to the right that Mussolini looks like a communist.
Like all spoiled children of America, you claim the moral highground because of your fat bank account--without any justification other than your own greed.
Really, that's off the topic, though. Simply, if you think the wind blows from the Left here, you are so far to the right that you wouldn't know a Left idea if it came up and bit you on your ass.
I think you mistake who these weapons are REALLY aimed at: "the domestic enemy".
Like the soon-to-be-mounted-on-your-nearest-HUMVEE microwave weapon (which will pleasantly fry your skin to 160 degrees), the Less Lethal weapons are to curb disturbances such as those seen in Seattle in 1999 or perhaps Paris in 1968.
Those far-away lands you mentioned are the dumping ground for depleted-uranium weapons and similar toxic toys that Raytheon and the boys cook up in their labs. We get the good stuff, here...
Your central thesis is certainly correct, though: the US is the Country of Carpetbaggers.
....this a few years back, before we bombed Belgrade. Even though that exception pretty clearly wipes out the rule (after all, there are lots of Mickey D's in China, and we may find ourselves at war with them someday)...
Uhh, who is this "we" you speak of?
If by "we" you mean the United States government acting on its own volition (with the prodding of a few profit-hungry hawks) to commit an act of aggression against Serbia, then you speak for that government and yourself ONLY.
You do not speak for me, nor should you presume to do so.
Why does this forum look and feel more and more like 1938 Nuremburg?
Re:Microsofts Infomation War
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Mundie Responds
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Your message hits this issue precisely on the head (it's not surprising that you're from another country; people inside the US are not exactly aware, and many that are, aren't exactly smart or lacking in greed enough to appreciate your point.)
Simply, IP is war on the have-nots. It's the latest form of colonialism (now in vogue again thanks to "globalization") that the Burdened One has fostered on the planet to keep the natives (folks generally not of Western European descent) in their place.
The interesting part of IP, though, is that those who "possess" it (as if one could control Information like some lobotomized slave), are far more enamored of its value--it is PROPERTY, after all--as an abstract concept than the people who can benefit from its realization: the "consumers" of the "market of ideas". Just ask the African AIDS victims who suffered due to patents on medicines what they care about--a dubious legal construct or drawing another breath. Oh, I forgot, they're already DEAD, aren't they?
Re:The plot and story line...
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Linux and Shrek
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...must obviously suck. When a trailer for a CARTOON trumpets all the flesh-voices as the reason it's a "must-see", you KNOW a dog is waiting to bark off its reel.
Really, what is this obsession with gosh-gee visuals, anyway? _The Simpsons_ is STILL more visually interested (not to mention intellectually challenging) than the latest Burger King toy factory flickering at the cineplex.
While your missive makes for fairly decent satire, it goes too far in encouraging the statist group-think the average propeller-head here indulges in.
So, without ANY satire, with all the truth that can be mustered by an electronic persona manifesting on an insignificant electronic message system, let me state unequivocally and without doubt that the State is the complete and absolute enemy of the individual, and any attempt by the State to take more power unto itself should be reviled and resisted as much as possible by any individual worth his or her salt.
Why would ANYONE in the West (outside of product-peddlers on Mad Ave.) care about a provincial sporting event like the Olympics?
The Net strikes at the very physical boundaries that made the Olympics marginally interesting to the land-locked flag-waver of years past. Now, with the click of a mouse, you can be reading/following events anywhere in the world.
The Olympics were irrelavent before this decision; the grip of the tar pit they're in just increased.
So, either the Founding Fathers, who managed to get a couple other things right, were elitist snobs; or perhaps they were a bunch of idiots; OR maybe there's some purpose to having such a system, which takes an attention span longer than a sound bite to comprehend.
This presupposes that the Founding Fathers were acting in any interest other than there own. I suppose it *is* wise to cover one's ass, but that activity hardly qualifies as wisdom in the Platonic sense. The Framers were acting to maintain their position of power, just as the landed gentry ALWAYS have done. (It's not surprising your link points to that prostitute-to-power Will: he speaks for the very people the Framers' passed their money down to.)
Please don't elevate slave owners to god status. The whole lot of them were every bit as greedy as today's San Francisco VC boys (with the possible exception of Paine, who was not really consulted when it came time to create the "republic".)
Jefferson may have been a bright man, as was Hamilton. However, that doesn't mean they weren't classist, statist apologists for a system of control that ulitmately wiped out the native population, maintained slavery as a viable form of employee relationship, while at the same time silencing the voices of most of "the People".
And yesterday, their legacy put a drooling moron into the Presidency. Some wisdom.
For some reason I believe these people are not interested in realpolitik, tho, and would rather wallow in their principles than make a constructive effort to win.
Believe it or not, many people out here think Kissinger is a scumbag, and the people who follow his "teachings" morally bankrupt.
I'll take people who "wallow in their principles" over your ugly cynical worldview any day. Which begs the question: if you don't wallow in principles, what value do you have to offer to this discussion?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't believe I AM over-generalizing.
This may sound crazy to you, but I believe that creatures CAPABLE of moral choice will, under circumstances where coercion is absent, act in the best interests of themselves and their fellows. In such a landscape, laws are unnecessary, and in fact a hindrance to the full functioning of the individual.
Indeed, the laws established by States actively PROMOTE killing; you have to look no farther than last century to see the most bloody "lawful" engagements leaving literally millions of bodies on the fields of this planet. In every instance, these purges were established under the "laws" of the State, driven by their aristocratic classes. The peasant of 30s Ukraine and today's Texas death-row inmate both wind up the same way: dead.
The existance of the State depends on you depending on it to protect you. As long as you believe your fate lies in the hands of an organization outside of yourself, you will never be free or safe.
Law exists to protect them against a type of theft that is particular to their industry. Suddenly, technology exists to make it incredibly easy to accomplish this type of theft, potentially threatening their industry's existence. Would you expect the people involved to do anything less than vigorously defend themselves by applying the related law, and even sharpening the law?
Law is created by the rich to protect their property; the cruft of "law" has accumulated over the centuries to the point where lunacies like this issue can be bandied about as intelligent discourse.
Your "point" that rich, entreched interests move to protect themselves hints at the above truth--only those in a position of power and wealth can "sharpen" the law to their benefit.
I also remark that if these content-based industries failed to defend themselves, and collapsed, the content they provide would likely dry up as well - because there wouldn't be any money in providing it.
A classic error of economic, spoken as truth. Economics is a pseudo-science and has as much real value as today's weather report.
Simply, people are NATURAL producers--remember the Copper-top analogy in The Matrix? That is just one way a human produces; given the full breadth of expression, people will naturally produce work that is of value, even if that value is only measured in their own satisfaction.
The problem today is most people--people like you--are so convinced they are worthless outside of what they can sell that they cannot imagine another way. In such a world, pay-per-view of Lewis Carroll and Shakespear and WHATEVER makes perfect, logical sense.
Well, there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio......
I think I will stick to what fellow geeks without a political axe to grind tell me.
I do agree that the Anlantic Monthly is a right-wing piece of trash, but I think you give too much credit to the existence of the apolitical geek. Most geeks I've met who look beyond their soldering iron clamor for concentration camps for "those welfare cheats" on their LIBERAL days.
Many people have made the observation that use of technology is inherently political, and John Zerzan isn't the only one to note that tech use is a conversative/right derived and supported phenomenon. It's certainly disengenuous of Fallows to talk about the ugliness of Japan as he trots out his own little horror show to pander to the droids on this side of the Pacific, but let's not forget who his target audience is: those very same geeks you hold in high esteem, only 5 or 10 years removed from their secondary indoctrination. Barring any alchemical transformations, those folk readily soak in the words of the Fallows of this society--they just need to get their SUV first.
And there are no realistic options to giving up information about oneself in many circumstances. This is why people form govenrments, BTW (read Hobbes).
Actually, Hobbes argued that people flock to governments out of fear, so I don't know if that applies here, unless you're suggesting that a NEW government be formed, in which case I wholeheartedly agree.
Still, Hobbes provided a defense for what would become the modern nation-state without the foresight to see how people of his class--the "aristocratic intellectuals"--would so completely capitulate in the face of the security apparatus such states have erected to maintain their control, even to the extent that most of that class become de facto criminals with little or no privacy. Though Hobbes might feel secure in today's world, I doubt that he would feel all that comfortable (but then again, what crypto-totalitarian ever does?)
Regarding this particular issue, have no illusions about where the impetus for this comes from--the people who own the land should determine who manages it, to paraphrase one of the gentry that we're taught to call "Founding Fathers", and by god, they're gonna do it THEIR way, whether you opt-out or not.
Are you up to slaying the dragon?
My own experience is that art that is free is generally shit (except in the eyes of the artist).
...) A theory I'm currently playing with is not quite-so-well-hidden in my sig: namely, that the finest visions remain private. Once shared, the Form leaves the Form World, and becomes a part of this world (a shadow of Amber if there ever was one), to become a pale representation of it's orginal inspiration.
I haven't had the same experience, but then again, I've so rarely seen art that wasn't self-consciously commercial. I remember a debate years ago in the Comics Journal about whether or not the Sistine Chapel was commericial art, and if it was, did that invalidate Michaelangelo's inspiration. Even though the work WAS commissioned, his talent, as staggering as it was, was not: he invested his great gift in the work, over and above any price that could have been placed on what he produced. The same could be said of Beethoven: his art was primary, and he had to suffer fools to get paid for it. Hopefully without sounding too much like an elitist snob, I firmly believe that material created strickly for pay rarely has any value, least of all to the artist. (Mozart might be an exception
The same applies to government subsidized art, except that in this case, it goes all the way past worthless, and isn't worth shit.
I would argue that, politically, all art today DOES come from the government, or at least is subsidized by it, if indirectly. Even Piss Christ serves a function for the state: it creates a maelstrom of controversy about a non-issue when there's much more important things to be angry about. I think it was Plato who wanted to deny the masses art because it would corrupt the Polis. Imagine how he must be churning in his grave to see how wrong he was: call the modern world the Inverted Polis.
Genetic engineering--as practiced by the Corporate Overloads--is the equivalent of greedy kids playing with matches--you just KNOW they're going to get burned. The sad part of this thing is that when these human Prometheuses screw up--and they WILL, if not out of incompentence, hubris, or greed, or all of the above, it's very likely their faux pas will take a great deal of innocent species down with it.
I suppose the only hope for Gaia at this point is that the Sons of Fort Detrick take their pratfall early in their alchemical pursuits, and wipe out the Virus That Walks Like a Man before too much more damage is done. Where's Agent Smith when you need him?
While I'm sure there are many starving would-be authors out there whose spirits will be lifted by this decision, it really begs the question of just what is worth paying for. Theodore Sturgeon made the observation that 90% of everything is shit, which includes stuff that is ALREADY paid for. My feelings are if art isn't free, it has no real intrinsic value.
This is not to say I don't feel hacks shouldn't be paid for their work. Like all factory workers, the faceless scribes who fill up such bastions of culture as Salon and People Magazine deserve their shekels, but one has to wonder if they should be paid twice for something that was of dubious value to begin with. After all, pieceworkers get paid only once for their toil.
The emphasis on legality, while being typically American, is misplaced, as always.
In a market economy, everything is for sale, and it's offered up at the best price, or so the story goes. SPAM is the *ultimate* form of free speech in this context: it elicits a potential buy response from a consumer at a low cost to EACH party. In theory, this is why the "marketplace of ideas" works, but in reality most folks are crypto-fascists wanting their freebooting capitalism right alongside their DisneyWorldview--which rules out porn, free cellphones and any other for-sale item the marketeers wish to pitch. It's as though you want a kinder, gentler capitalism--there ain't no such thing.
What people seem to be seeking--indeed, what many people here seem to want--is a legislation of a moral stance to which they find themselves attached. This isn't the solution now, and it never has been, not the least because not everyone shares standards. Tacitus noted over 2000 years ago that the more laws a state has, the more corrupt it will be. I personally think this State is plenty enough corrupt already.
While I agree with most of what you said, the one issue that's glossed over is: who pays for this stuff?
*ALL* technology as we know it today comes from governmental/military impetus of some form or other. (Yes, there are rivulets of innovation, but in a National Security State, they only go so far before they feed back into the Great River of the State.) If we are to suppose that government is funded by the People for the People's best interest (an extremely iffy proposition, admittedly), then your tax dollars and mine are funding ALL research, and its fruit, such as it is, should belong to *all* of us, not just the lucky few who have brothers at Lockheed or Raytheon. As we've seen, though, it doesn't work out this way, and I'm sure many are ready to scream at the top of their lungs that it *shouldn't* work that way.
(Incidently, the system as it now exists is known as the "Pentagon System"; see Chomsky for more details.)
Which brings me to the title of this response: who is really naive--the person who goes to college to get an education, winds up with an indoctrination and their "IP" taken away, or the person who believes that educational institutions are anything other than the farming grounds for the next generation of commissars? Put another way: does the germ warfare scientist group up thinking they're doing right by the world by cooking up batches of super anthrax and smallpox?
Your rant amounts to little more than a pro-capitalist defense of a system that you no doubt suck as much life out of as you can without any regard for anyone or anything else.
Get this: this is a COMMAND economy just as your socialist or communist ones. Just because YOU are prospering--and informed, to keep this on topic--doesn't mean the other 85% of the country is.
Capitalism, the Free Market, and all the other odes to the One True Way are just another face of the systems you despise: it is a state-sponsored form of social control only less barbaric than the communism of the 20th century by a few million deaths (which in itself is debatable when one considers the "market economies" of India and Africa starved out their populations during that era).
Face it: if you're for the State, you're for Death, and Death doesn't care if you were a capitalist or a communist. The media is used by either system to keep people down.
Isn't his the same thing that was posted yesterday? Really, this was not so much a Part Two, as a Redundant Agitation Attempt.
Are those cynical souls who question Jon's sincerity actually correct in their view that this is thunder to generate "discussion"?
While I agree with your view that Katz points the finger at the wrong suspect, your premise that government and the corporate system are separate is simply silly.
Corporations ARE government, and have been at least since Ike warned of the Military-Industrial Complex (really long before that). If you honestly believe your precious tax dollars aren't being used to float the boat of corps such as Raytheon, Lockheed, etc., then you're living in a Randian capitalist fantasy.
Anti-capitalism = anti-government, just ask any anarchist.
I'm sorry, but you're obviously so far under the burden of your own myopia that, like the fish in the sea, you cannot know that what surrounds you is water until you are out of it.....
Simply put, your corp--or any other, for that matter--IS a legal fiction, and CANNOT exist without the government to PROTECT it through COERCIVE FORCE. You would-be (and real) anarcho-capitalists make me puke--pretending you can live without Government to protect your gold-inlaid faucets and your stock portfolios.
"the reason 40000 children die of starvation each day is they're too poor to afford their Volvo because of their government, but that's too bad because I've got mine, living free in my gated community, so all is right with the world, now if we could only eliminate *our* government, to let the Market decide the best for all of us."
Please try not to be so empty-headed and fascist as to believe the system you embrace in your little way is alright because you're not personally pouring arsenic into the water table.
Jon, you have an amazing grasp of the obvious, but your lament falls short of placing the blame where it really exists: the System Itself.
The giants you mention--Microsoft, Disney, AOL--and the literally thousands you neglected are only doing what they were desigined to do: create profit for a few without concern for the Whole. Corporations are the greatest creation for social and economic control ever created, and their success at manipulating governments (which isn't difficult, as they are little tyrannies in their own right) has only increased over the last 100 years as their powers have expanded. They are doing what they were designed to do.
The real question is: what do you do to reverse the trend? If corporations are the problem--which they are; one doesn't need the remedial Business Ethics class to see that (which is something most MBAs blissfully ignore, anyway)--then they should be removed. But are you going to do that? Aren't you wringing your hands in public for PAY from one of these evil monstrosities?
You are correct: Marx and Lenin are the high priests of the very worst forms of socialism--the conservative, authoritarian variety which, as we've seen, exceeds its capitalist counterpart--state capitalism, or merchantilism, if you prefer--in barbarity, but only just barely. Both forms of social control effectively emasculate the individual, just as the feudal systems they replaced did. On that continuum, a communist equals a capitalist--they're BOTH conservative, if not reactionary.
In other words, if you're for the State--a Hobbesian--then you're on the Right, or conservative. If you wish for freedom unfettered by the coercive State, then you're on the Left, or progressive/radical.
Is this me or seems like Slashdot seems to be completely dominated by leftists and liberals. When was a last time you saw any story presented from conservative point of view?
Do you have ANY concept how stupid this statement makes you appear? Slashdot is RIDDLED with "conversatives" who are ACTUALLY liberals. (Hey, if Unca Ronnie is your favorite president, then, guess what, you're a neo-liberal, dimwit.)
With the rare exception, this forum tilts so far to the right that Mussolini looks like a communist.
Like all spoiled children of America, you claim the moral highground because of your fat bank account--without any justification other than your own greed.
Really, that's off the topic, though. Simply, if you think the wind blows from the Left here, you are so far to the right that you wouldn't know a Left idea if it came up and bit you on your ass.
I think you mistake who these weapons are REALLY aimed at: "the domestic enemy".
Like the soon-to-be-mounted-on-your-nearest-HUMVEE microwave weapon (which will pleasantly fry your skin to 160 degrees), the Less Lethal weapons are to curb disturbances such as those seen in Seattle in 1999 or perhaps Paris in 1968.
Those far-away lands you mentioned are the dumping ground for depleted-uranium weapons and similar toxic toys that Raytheon and the boys cook up in their labs. We get the good stuff, here...
Your central thesis is certainly correct, though: the US is the Country of Carpetbaggers.
....this a few years back, before we bombed Belgrade. Even though that exception pretty clearly wipes out the rule (after all, there are lots of Mickey D's in China, and we may find ourselves at war with them someday)...
Uhh, who is this "we" you speak of?
If by "we" you mean the United States government acting on its own volition (with the prodding of a few profit-hungry hawks) to commit an act of aggression against Serbia, then you speak for that government and yourself ONLY.
You do not speak for me, nor should you presume to do so.
Why does this forum look and feel more and more like 1938 Nuremburg?
Your message hits this issue precisely on the head (it's not surprising that you're from another country; people inside the US are not exactly aware, and many that are, aren't exactly smart or lacking in greed enough to appreciate your point.)
Simply, IP is war on the have-nots. It's the latest form of colonialism (now in vogue again thanks to "globalization") that the Burdened One has fostered on the planet to keep the natives (folks generally not of Western European descent) in their place.
The interesting part of IP, though, is that those who "possess" it (as if one could control Information like some lobotomized slave), are far more enamored of its value--it is PROPERTY, after all--as an abstract concept than the people who can benefit from its realization: the "consumers" of the "market of ideas". Just ask the African AIDS victims who suffered due to patents on medicines what they care about--a dubious legal construct or drawing another breath. Oh, I forgot, they're already DEAD, aren't they?
...must obviously suck. When a trailer for a CARTOON trumpets all the flesh-voices as the reason it's a "must-see", you KNOW a dog is waiting to bark off its reel.
Really, what is this obsession with gosh-gee visuals, anyway? _The Simpsons_ is STILL more visually interested (not to mention intellectually challenging) than the latest Burger King toy factory flickering at the cineplex.
While your missive makes for fairly decent satire, it goes too far in encouraging the statist group-think the average propeller-head here indulges in.
So, without ANY satire, with all the truth that can be mustered by an electronic persona manifesting on an insignificant electronic message system, let me state unequivocally and without doubt that the State is the complete and absolute enemy of the individual, and any attempt by the State to take more power unto itself should be reviled and resisted as much as possible by any individual worth his or her salt.
You may go back to your Gameboy now.....
Exactly.
Why would ANYONE in the West (outside of product-peddlers on Mad Ave.) care about a provincial sporting event like the Olympics?
The Net strikes at the very physical boundaries that made the Olympics marginally interesting to the land-locked flag-waver of years past. Now, with the click of a mouse, you can be reading/following events anywhere in the world.
The Olympics were irrelavent before this decision; the grip of the tar pit they're in just increased.
Yes, we're made of matter, but what animates that matter?
You could say it's energy and I can say it's a soul, and we'd both be right.
The real question is: does the imprint of consciousness (personality) remain intact once the energy is released from the matter?
Or, in this case, will consciousness infect nanobots, with or without our interference, once they are activated?
Mary Shelley's myth has nothing on this.....
So, either the Founding Fathers, who managed to get a couple other things right, were elitist snobs; or perhaps they were a bunch of idiots; OR maybe there's some purpose to having such a system, which takes an attention span longer than a sound bite to comprehend.
This presupposes that the Founding Fathers were acting in any interest other than there own. I suppose it *is* wise to cover one's ass, but that activity hardly qualifies as wisdom in the Platonic sense. The Framers were acting to maintain their position of power, just as the landed gentry ALWAYS have done. (It's not surprising your link points to that prostitute-to-power Will: he speaks for the very people the Framers' passed their money down to.)
Please don't elevate slave owners to god status. The whole lot of them were every bit as greedy as today's San Francisco VC boys (with the possible exception of Paine, who was not really consulted when it came time to create the "republic".)
Jefferson may have been a bright man, as was Hamilton. However, that doesn't mean they weren't classist, statist apologists for a system of control that ulitmately wiped out the native population, maintained slavery as a viable form of employee relationship, while at the same time silencing the voices of most of "the People".
And yesterday, their legacy put a drooling moron into the Presidency. Some wisdom.
For some reason I believe these people are not interested in realpolitik, tho, and would rather wallow in their principles than make a constructive effort to win.
Believe it or not, many people out here think Kissinger is a scumbag, and the people who follow his "teachings" morally bankrupt.
I'll take people who "wallow in their principles" over your ugly cynical worldview any day. Which begs the question: if you don't wallow in principles, what value do you have to offer to this discussion?