Umm, I'm as big a fan of linguistic pedantry as anyone, but according to the OED:
fortunately, adv., In a fortunate manner; by or with good fortune, happily, luckily, successfully.
It certainly was good fortune for the passengers that it was separate. Sorry, I have to disagree. "Fortune" strongly implies luck, even according to the OED. Luck or fortune have nothing to do with it. But even that is largely secondary to my primary point. There is no reasonable scenario which would ever put the IFE system in a position to affect the avionics, so mentioning the "fortune" of them being separate is utterly ridiculous.
Fortunately the IFE system is totally disjoint from the avionics "Fortunately"? Hardly has anything to do with fortune. See, they made it separate on purpose. Might as well have said "fortunately the IFE system isn't connected to the pilot's brain" or "fortunately the IFE system isn't connected to the oxygen in the cabin", for all the fucking sense it makes.
Which shows Gallagher is a human being and your co-worker is thoughtless and rude.
Actually, Gallagher had been in the store somewhat regularly and on more than one occasion pulled the classic snotty "don't you know who I am?" maneuver on other of our fellow coworkers in an attempt to get new release movies reserved for other (better) customers, and had a "note in his file" to that effect. My coworker was a bit of a jackass, yeah, but Gallagher totally had it coming.
I don't really care about the physical labor part - who cares if you work a crap job washing dishes or get a scholarship? The point is common roots. I disagree. Common roots count for little. Unless there's an issue of hunger, a childhood of being supported by a stepfather who owns a car dealership isn't substantially different from a childhood supported by a father who runs a lucrative bootlegging business. It's the teen/young adult years and beyond that are generally the most formative.
The problem with the government as an exclusive service provider is that it instantly becomes a monopoly, and therefor has no direct incentive to provide better service. FWIW, As a government employee myself, I can say that at least a substantial minority of government are highly sensitive about that and actually work very hard and try to do the best job they can. Unfortunately, most of their efforts are for naught because they're stuck implementing boneheaded policy handed down from jackass politicians. I think DMV employees are specifically hired for their unpleasant surliness, though.
How many recent senators, representatives, or presidents can you name that ever in their life worked at a resteraunt or doing manual labor to put themselves through college?
Bill clinton comes to mind. Of course, everybody seems to hate him - son of a travelling salesman who died before his birth, born to no legacy in particular.
The man may have had a loser father, but he never worked a manual labor job in his life. Scholarships through school, followed by internships for politicians, then right into politics himself. He had to work hard for what he got, but he sure as hell ain't any sort of "common man". Harry Truman was probably the last president who spent any substantial period of his life at hard physical labor-- working the family farm from age 12-22, back in 1906 when farm work was really hard.
Not to mention that speed limit would be much better enforced by cameras that would ticket everyone, and not just a select few that police felt like bringing over, leaving 90% of other cars on the road going over the speed limit.
And people would take speed limits seriously for a change. And the limits would have to be brought up from 55mph to something sane for a change. Trouble is, the city will take one look at all that ticket revenue and leave the speed limits ridiculously low-- that's partly why they're low in first place. Really, they'd need to raise the limits to something reasonable first, as nobody is going to respect a 35 speed limit on a road that's clearly safe at 50.
The British Army is the Army. Nobody calls it HM Army. There's the Royal Navy, the Army, and the Royal Air Force. It would be seriously inappropriate for anyone to reveal an MI6 affiliation for anything as trivial as a traffic offence. I'm sceptical. Can you tell? The MI6 thing, maybe, but just Google for "HM Army" and you'll find it's not such an uncommon thing.
Yet I have not seen a single accident as a result of their irresponsible behavior. That has more to do with the ratio of cops to regular folks on the roads. E.g. for every 100 days of driving, you see one accident. For every 500 cars on the road, 1 is a cop car. Subsequently, statistics would indicate that you should see a cop car in an accident once every 50,000 days-- 137 years. Guestimate numbers, but probably not far off. California has only 3 cops on the beat for every 10,000 people... so yeah, you could go your entire life without seeing an accident involving a cop car.
FWIW, I've actually witnessed a cop rear ending someone. Man, that must suck...
Cops are definately not cowards. You can say they abuse their powers at times, but I think it takes alot of balls to be dealing with criminals on a constant basis.
Debatable. Some would say it doesn't take much balls at all to face down 99% of the "criminals" out there that beat officers deal with. Most of them are drunks, junkies, or other petty criminals. Haven't you ever watched "Cops"? How brave do you really have to be when you're better armed, better armored, backed by the government, and both you and the skinny guy you caught with a $5 rock know it? I think you're mistaking bravado for bravery.
I don't know if you ever been shot at before, but putting yourself in the line of fire is not a cowardly action.
Line of fire? Most cops, even in big cities, go their entire careers without being shot at. And when a gunfight happens, then you see just how rare true bravery is. Most firefights consist of two guys-- cop and perp-- trying to hide from each other while trading shots that generally miss. Seriously, if you read just about any analysis of police reaction to being thrust into a surprise firefight, you find all but a very rare few officers are able to stick to their tactical training and not turn into a ducking, dodging, flailing, retreating clusterfuck waving a gun towards the shooter and pulling the trigger. Just about the same reaction you'd find in the general population to a guy pulling a knife-- most of us would fucking RUN, and the truly brave few would actually fight the guy (and, like the cop, usually WIN).
People always bitch and moan about cops screwing them over. The fact is that cops are saving people's lives every day,
How? By showing up to take report after a burglary? To take a report after an assault? To rough up a kid selling $5 rocks on the corner? I'd call it a stretch to say they're saving lives. Fire/EMT guys? Damn straight, saving lives. Cops? No.
but once a cop is giving you a speeding ticket they instantly become the tyranny the rules over us all. I have even more respect for cops because of this.
You have more respect for cops specifically because others have less? That makes no fucking sense.
My friend says most of his non-report writing time is spent on dealing with domestic disputes.
Wait, so he's not out catching murderers and having shootouts? How much bravery does it take for two armed, armored cops to separate a drunken couple and tell them to either a) file a complaint so one of them can be hauled off, or b) pipe down and sober up? Granted, it's a tough job dealing with unreasonable drunks at all hours, but really, that is primarily what "keeping the peace" is. It's tedious, largely thankless work that you couldn't pay me enough to do. Given the nature of the work, it's patently obvious that it would lend itself more to bravado than bravery. The appearance of bravery is more than enough to do 99% of the job.
He always tries to get both sides of the story, and tries to treat people with respect. He's told me many stories where he is treated like shit by the person who he is trying to help. Do you know what it feels like to be treated like shit, when you're only trying to help? If you are dick to a cop, don't be surprised when he is dick back. The difference is that he can actually screw you over. The golden rule can go a long way with dealing with cops.
Problem is, expectation of "Golden Rule" behavior is only appropriate when you're talking about two equal parties. Cops, being officers of the law, should have no fucking right at all to be dicks, no matter how dickish the citizen they're dealing with is acting. They are instruments of the State, and if they cannot execute their duties fairly and impartially, they should get jobs doing something else. Frankly, I'm pretty fucking sick and tired of people excusing
it completely defeats the purpose of preserving a competitive market. Their job isn't to preserve the competitors, but rather the capacity for competition. Right now any third party could, for about as much as either XM or Sirius paid, enter the satellite radio market. There is no particular barrier to entry. It's not like Standard Oil owning 90%+ of the oil production, refining and transport industry.
You want real anti-trust laws? Stop punishing companies for attaining a position that our laws encourage, and have fair formulaic restrictions on mergers to begin with - like any merger which would make you largest competitor in any given field is barred. So you're saying that nobody could merge their way up to a point where they'd be bigger than the biggest entity in the markeyt? Sounds like you're trying to protect the biggest entity there. Perhaps you meant that the biggest player shouldn't be allowed to merge with anyone, in which case a market with one 30% player and fourteen 5% player could see the 5% players merge into a 70% and crush the "big guy"? None of this adequately addresses one company not buying their competitor, but subtly undercutting him and taking his customers, driving him out of business. No, you need to read a little more about the history of trusts and monopolies. There is no magic "formula" that'll let you determine a "good" merger from a "bad" one. The best they can do is analyze on a case-by-case basis, as they have since 1890.
The street in front of your house is owned by the city (or county) You ought to be more careful when arguing property rights, because it's a lot more complicated than most people realize. The above is absolutely untrue. The street in front of your house out to the surveyed property line (usually the geometric center of the street, but it can vary) is your property. There is, however, an easement on the property in the form of a public right-of-way. If you own the house across the street, you can actually dig a tunnel under or erect a bridge over the road, so long as you don't block the right-of-way. In fact, if you own enough property on each side of the road and there is adequate access to adjacent properties via alternate routes, you can actually close the road to public traffic.
As far as the cops leaving their lights on, your "safety" argument is purely idle speculation, and erroneous at that. The rotating colored beacon lights are specifically for situations where 360-degree warning is required. Occasionally that can be to mark a stationary hazard, but usually they're for moving through traffic. Pulled over to the side of the road, the forward takedown light and the rear directional hazard warning flashers are all that are needed. Many departments even have a policy requiring this, as the rotators are too distracting to passing traffic and thereby become a hazard themselves. You ever seen a highway patrolman parked at the side of the interstate, writing a ticket with his rotators on? City and county LEOs sometimes do, but leaving the red-blue rotators on after a stop is purely for intimidation. What it comes down to is, any cop who, upon being asked by a homeowner who is being kept awake by them, refuses to turn off his rotators when parked at the side of a residential street is nothing more than a grade-A prick.
"If you want to get somewhere one light faster, leave the house earlier." --Gallagher"
Leaving the house earlier doesn't get you anywhere faster - it gets you there earlier; you're still going to travel the same amount of distance in the same amount of time. Also, are we really quoting Gallagher now? Come on... Way Back When, before Netflix, Blockbuster, and DVDs, I worked in a video rental shop near where Gallagher had his silly hippy ranch. One day, Gallagher came in and rented two of his own concert videos. When he came up to the counter to check out, my coworker picked up the tapes, looked at the titles and grimaced, saying "Wow, nobody rents these" (which was true). Gallagher said nothing, but only signed the receipt and stormed angrily out the door. To this day I thank my lucky stars I was on hand to witness that.
References to his past history in the military don't really seem all that relevant. Yes, many vets of Viet Name and other action carry the scars with them but that does not give them a right to totally ignore their employer's direction. Exactly. I don't think an event 37 years ago, traumatic though it may have been, is a reasonable excuse for not following the rules.
Imagine, if you will, that his chosen method of coping with PTSD was drinking two pints of cheap gin a day. If, after showing up to work drunk and being warned this was not OK, he continued to do so, would not IBM be justified in canning him then? Does the man himself not bear the lion's share of the blame for not seeking some more work-friendly means of soothing his PTSD at some point over the last 37 effing years? What did he do between 1969 and about 1995, when there were no smutty internet chat rooms?
I saw some comparably disturbing things in 2002-2003 in Afghanistan, but I'd never be so stupid as to think that a freakin' dirty-talk chat room is a good way to take my mind off the bad memories. This guy's grasping at straws. If he's that fucked up by a common wartime occurrence two thirds of a lifetime ago, how has he managed to hold down a job so well? He was probably a typical short-timer who figured he could let his work habits slide for those last 6 months. Well, he thought wrong.
No. Not at all how cars work. There is no heat exchanger in the exhaust. Unless it's an old air-cooled VW! Of course, those of us who've had them know how well THAT works. If the exchangers weren't rusted out, then there was plenty of hot air--- pumped in from the engine compartment and smelling of burning oil, of course.
This is why diesel engines (Like my TDI) take forever to heat up on the road and will never warm up at idle. They're much more efficient than gasoline engines. VW had an experimental TDi powered vehicle that was so ridiculously efficient that it required an auxiliary electric heater, as the engine never developed enough waste heat to effectively heat the cabin.
USSR, Cuba, and even "communist" China were never good examples of communism. They are all totalitarian states. Yet in America, we call them communism.
The truth is that only decent example of pure communism would be Israeli collectives.
The simple and obvious conclusion is that communism simply doesn't work beyond small, dedicated, voluntary groups. The Marxist ideal of communism supplanting capitalism on any scale larger than "small village" is a crock of shit. I once had a very illuminating conversation with a former hippy commune dweller, who really laid out the folly of universal collectivism. His observation was essentially this:
In the 60's the idea of communes was popular. At a new collective you'd have a fairly representative cross section of work ethics found in general society. At one end of the Bell curve you have the ringleaders, the Competent Idealists. These were the people who truly believed in the commune and usually were the ones who set it up and ran it, despite the supposed pure egalitarianism of the collective. They were the ones working 16-20 hours a day to keep the water running, the food cooking, and generally contributing effort wherever it was needed. Sometimes they'd be bossy dictatorial types, but mostly they were just skilled, energetic idealists who really wanted it to work. The classic "good" hippies who believed in self sufficiency and made their own clothes.
At the other end of the Bell curve you have the Leeches. These were the folks who thought communism meant you didn't have to work hard and that somehow food, clothing, shelter, and drugs would show up of their own accord. These were the "bad hippies", like the ones you used to find following the Dead around the country, living off the handouts of others, the kind of people who could say out loud at a party, without shame, "I've got papers if anyone's got weed".
In between you have the Vast Majority. Most of them were there because it was fashionable and sounded like it might be better than the status quo. They worked reasonably well, even if they weren't terribly skilled, and took direction fairly well from the Competent Idealists.
In the beginning, it worked. The Vast Majority and the Idealists were productive enough to make the inevitable Leeches not be a problem. As time went on, however, members of the Majority began to realize that commune life was not actually easier than life "outside". It was, in fact, more work for somewhat measurably less gain. The Majority, not being as thoroughly dedicated as the Idealists, just didn't get that same sense of satisfaction from living "outside the system". As time went on, the Majority began to shrink as disenchanted members left to get regular jobs that paid decent money and let you live in homes with running water. Eventually, as the Majority dwindled, they were left with a small core of hard working Idealists busting their asses even harder to support a small group of lazy slacker Leeches, while their standard of living continued to decline. At some point, the competent Idealists said "fuck this", and went to work for the EPA, or Greenpeace, or some idealistic org or another that needed competent folks and actually paid money. This left the commune unworkable and the Leeches went off to sell plastic beads to middle class concert goers and cajole others into letting them live in the closet under their stairs.
Now imagine what would happen if there were guards at the edge of the commune, telling the Majority folks "No, you don't leave. You get back to work." Any idealism they may have had is long gone. Clearly their motivation will drop to the lowest common denominator, that of the Leeches. Now, the Leeches work a little harder because of the guards with the guns, but not a whole lot. As a result you have a commune that's 10% hard workers, and 90% clock-punchers doing the bare minimum. This is why communism is doomed to fail (or at least doomed to stagnate) at larger scales. You can't enforce
Because in the digital OSS world, you can "take" anything (modify it, change it, copy it, use it) without having to appropriate the original. Source code can be "collectivized" without taking it from the authors. Farms can't be collectivized without taking them from the farmers. Personally, I think comparisons of OSS to communism are bogus because they miss a critical facet of the philosophy behind the GPL. Communism is premised upon the idea that all property is held in common. OSS is premised upon the idea that information isn't property, and that current law erroneously treats it as such. The former is a rejection of the idea of private property, while the latter is merely the objection to the misapplication of property rights. OSS is indeed compatible with communism, but communists are merely a subset of the larger group, most of which still believe in private property rights for real property.
you'll have to forgive him for not seeing whatever joke may have been intended, for it was neither funny, nor rooted in any basic truth, which are basic requirements for effective humor.
Do you even know the meaning of socialism? Here it is (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/socialism):
"a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole."
This would fit the definition of linux and the GNU, except for the fact that the Free Software foundation is at the top (many people give all of their IP rights to the GNU..as described in the license), so, this fits more in this definition: You're missing the critical point where the comparison breaks down. One of the central principles behind the GPL is the premise that information, being infinitely replicable without diminishing, shouldn't be considered "property". Free Software folks don't necessarily believe that all real property (e.g. land) should be held in common. It's more of an objection to the misapplication of property rights than an outright rejection of them, as is found in Communism.
maybe you haven't been paying attention the last twenty years, but despite a few oddities (lack of recent imported automobiles, thanks USA), Cuba's economy is remarkably healthy despite the USA's deliberate attempts to sabotage it. Y'know, that's kinda like saying "he's remarkably healthy for someone who's been eating out of garbage cans for 50 years". Cuba's economy is terrible. When the Soviets collapsed, Cuba's economy really went into the crapper. They're seeing good GDP growth now that they're diversifying away from sugar and into tourism and pharmaceuticals and allowing people to be self-employed; but the per capita GDP of Cuba is second lowest in the Caribbean basin--- Haiti is the lowest, but it's the poorest country in the western hemisphere.
The country wasn't realy settled until the 20th century.
... to the great surprise of already large cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Maybe you mean the western USA. Even then, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles were all fairly sizable by the mid-1800's. If those don't meet the definition of "settled", then what does? There are always spaces "in between" where people don't live. The Mojave Desert is still largely unsettled today.
Russia had horses, it had more land and it had comparable population. It is mostly urban. People settled close to services in the 20th century. That has mostly to do with two things: 1) Russian climate, and 2) Russians.
<cynicism>That must be what most of the American public does, and as such they don't show up for the poles. Bah! Why bother showing up for the Poles. Those pollacks never show up for us!
At least selecting negatively like that allows one to actually cast a ballet.</cynicism> Personally, I think one should select positively when casting a ballet. You know, like, "that dancer can stay on her toes a long time, we should pick him", or "wow, they really nailed that pas de deux, we should get them both".
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Actually, Gallagher had been in the store somewhat regularly and on more than one occasion pulled the classic snotty "don't you know who I am?" maneuver on other of our fellow coworkers in an attempt to get new release movies reserved for other (better) customers, and had a "note in his file" to that effect. My coworker was a bit of a jackass, yeah, but Gallagher totally had it coming.
How many recent senators, representatives, or presidents can you name that ever in their life worked at a resteraunt or doing manual labor to put themselves through college?
Bill clinton comes to mind. Of course, everybody seems to hate him - son of a travelling salesman who died before his birth, born to no legacy in particular.
The man may have had a loser father, but he never worked a manual labor job in his life. Scholarships through school, followed by internships for politicians, then right into politics himself. He had to work hard for what he got, but he sure as hell ain't any sort of "common man". Harry Truman was probably the last president who spent any substantial period of his life at hard physical labor-- working the family farm from age 12-22, back in 1906 when farm work was really hard.And people would take speed limits seriously for a change. And the limits would have to be brought up from 55mph to something sane for a change.
Trouble is, the city will take one look at all that ticket revenue and leave the speed limits ridiculously low-- that's partly why they're low in first place. Really, they'd need to raise the limits to something reasonable first, as nobody is going to respect a 35 speed limit on a road that's clearly safe at 50.
FWIW, I've actually witnessed a cop rear ending someone. Man, that must suck...
Cops are definately not cowards. You can say they abuse their powers at times, but I think it takes alot of balls to be dealing with criminals on a constant basis.
Debatable. Some would say it doesn't take much balls at all to face down 99% of the "criminals" out there that beat officers deal with. Most of them are drunks, junkies, or other petty criminals. Haven't you ever watched "Cops"? How brave do you really have to be when you're better armed, better armored, backed by the government, and both you and the skinny guy you caught with a $5 rock know it? I think you're mistaking bravado for bravery.
I don't know if you ever been shot at before, but putting yourself in the line of fire is not a cowardly action.
Line of fire? Most cops, even in big cities, go their entire careers without being shot at. And when a gunfight happens, then you see just how rare true bravery is. Most firefights consist of two guys-- cop and perp-- trying to hide from each other while trading shots that generally miss. Seriously, if you read just about any analysis of police reaction to being thrust into a surprise firefight, you find all but a very rare few officers are able to stick to their tactical training and not turn into a ducking, dodging, flailing, retreating clusterfuck waving a gun towards the shooter and pulling the trigger. Just about the same reaction you'd find in the general population to a guy pulling a knife-- most of us would fucking RUN, and the truly brave few would actually fight the guy (and, like the cop, usually WIN).
People always bitch and moan about cops screwing them over. The fact is that cops are saving people's lives every day,
How? By showing up to take report after a burglary? To take a report after an assault? To rough up a kid selling $5 rocks on the corner? I'd call it a stretch to say they're saving lives. Fire/EMT guys? Damn straight, saving lives. Cops? No.
but once a cop is giving you a speeding ticket they instantly become the tyranny the rules over us all. I have even more respect for cops because of this.
You have more respect for cops specifically because others have less? That makes no fucking sense.
My friend says most of his non-report writing time is spent on dealing with domestic disputes.
Wait, so he's not out catching murderers and having shootouts? How much bravery does it take for two armed, armored cops to separate a drunken couple and tell them to either a) file a complaint so one of them can be hauled off, or b) pipe down and sober up? Granted, it's a tough job dealing with unreasonable drunks at all hours, but really, that is primarily what "keeping the peace" is. It's tedious, largely thankless work that you couldn't pay me enough to do. Given the nature of the work, it's patently obvious that it would lend itself more to bravado than bravery. The appearance of bravery is more than enough to do 99% of the job.
He always tries to get both sides of the story, and tries to treat people with respect. He's told me many stories where he is treated like shit by the person who he is trying to help. Do you know what it feels like to be treated like shit, when you're only trying to help? If you are dick to a cop, don't be surprised when he is dick back. The difference is that he can actually screw you over. The golden rule can go a long way with dealing with cops.
Problem is, expectation of "Golden Rule" behavior is only appropriate when you're talking about two equal parties. Cops, being officers of the law, should have no fucking right at all to be dicks, no matter how dickish the citizen they're dealing with is acting. They are instruments of the State, and if they cannot execute their duties fairly and impartially, they should get jobs doing something else. Frankly, I'm pretty fucking sick and tired of people excusing
Can one satellite network handle two (well three) giant egos.
Let's find out. Jesus, who cares? They're all worthless turds.
"I there over their jimmying it's door and its not even they're car, than I will loose more then just my job!"
You want real anti-trust laws? Stop punishing companies for attaining a position that our laws encourage, and have fair formulaic restrictions on mergers to begin with - like any merger which would make you largest competitor in any given field is barred. So you're saying that nobody could merge their way up to a point where they'd be bigger than the biggest entity in the markeyt? Sounds like you're trying to protect the biggest entity there. Perhaps you meant that the biggest player shouldn't be allowed to merge with anyone, in which case a market with one 30% player and fourteen 5% player could see the 5% players merge into a 70% and crush the "big guy"? None of this adequately addresses one company not buying their competitor, but subtly undercutting him and taking his customers, driving him out of business. No, you need to read a little more about the history of trusts and monopolies. There is no magic "formula" that'll let you determine a "good" merger from a "bad" one. The best they can do is analyze on a case-by-case basis, as they have since 1890.
As far as the cops leaving their lights on, your "safety" argument is purely idle speculation, and erroneous at that. The rotating colored beacon lights are specifically for situations where 360-degree warning is required. Occasionally that can be to mark a stationary hazard, but usually they're for moving through traffic. Pulled over to the side of the road, the forward takedown light and the rear directional hazard warning flashers are all that are needed. Many departments even have a policy requiring this, as the rotators are too distracting to passing traffic and thereby become a hazard themselves. You ever seen a highway patrolman parked at the side of the interstate, writing a ticket with his rotators on? City and county LEOs sometimes do, but leaving the red-blue rotators on after a stop is purely for intimidation. What it comes down to is, any cop who, upon being asked by a homeowner who is being kept awake by them, refuses to turn off his rotators when parked at the side of a residential street is nothing more than a grade-A prick.
I saw some comparably disturbing things in 2002-2003 in Afghanistan, but I'd never be so stupid as to think that a freakin' dirty-talk chat room is a good way to take my mind off the bad memories. This guy's grasping at straws. If he's that fucked up by a common wartime occurrence two thirds of a lifetime ago, how has he managed to hold down a job so well? He was probably a typical short-timer who figured he could let his work habits slide for those last 6 months. Well, he thought wrong.
This is why diesel engines (Like my TDI) take forever to heat up on the road and will never warm up at idle. They're much more efficient than gasoline engines. VW had an experimental TDi powered vehicle that was so ridiculously efficient that it required an auxiliary electric heater, as the engine never developed enough waste heat to effectively heat the cabin.
USSR, Cuba, and even "communist" China were never good examples of communism. They are all totalitarian states. Yet in America, we call them communism.
The truth is that only decent example of pure communism would be Israeli collectives.
The simple and obvious conclusion is that communism simply doesn't work beyond small, dedicated, voluntary groups. The Marxist ideal of communism supplanting capitalism on any scale larger than "small village" is a crock of shit. I once had a very illuminating conversation with a former hippy commune dweller, who really laid out the folly of universal collectivism. His observation was essentially this:
In the 60's the idea of communes was popular. At a new collective you'd have a fairly representative cross section of work ethics found in general society. At one end of the Bell curve you have the ringleaders, the Competent Idealists. These were the people who truly believed in the commune and usually were the ones who set it up and ran it, despite the supposed pure egalitarianism of the collective. They were the ones working 16-20 hours a day to keep the water running, the food cooking, and generally contributing effort wherever it was needed. Sometimes they'd be bossy dictatorial types, but mostly they were just skilled, energetic idealists who really wanted it to work. The classic "good" hippies who believed in self sufficiency and made their own clothes.
At the other end of the Bell curve you have the Leeches. These were the folks who thought communism meant you didn't have to work hard and that somehow food, clothing, shelter, and drugs would show up of their own accord. These were the "bad hippies", like the ones you used to find following the Dead around the country, living off the handouts of others, the kind of people who could say out loud at a party, without shame, "I've got papers if anyone's got weed".
In between you have the Vast Majority. Most of them were there because it was fashionable and sounded like it might be better than the status quo. They worked reasonably well, even if they weren't terribly skilled, and took direction fairly well from the Competent Idealists.
In the beginning, it worked. The Vast Majority and the Idealists were productive enough to make the inevitable Leeches not be a problem. As time went on, however, members of the Majority began to realize that commune life was not actually easier than life "outside". It was, in fact, more work for somewhat measurably less gain. The Majority, not being as thoroughly dedicated as the Idealists, just didn't get that same sense of satisfaction from living "outside the system". As time went on, the Majority began to shrink as disenchanted members left to get regular jobs that paid decent money and let you live in homes with running water. Eventually, as the Majority dwindled, they were left with a small core of hard working Idealists busting their asses even harder to support a small group of lazy slacker Leeches, while their standard of living continued to decline. At some point, the competent Idealists said "fuck this", and went to work for the EPA, or Greenpeace, or some idealistic org or another that needed competent folks and actually paid money. This left the commune unworkable and the Leeches went off to sell plastic beads to middle class concert goers and cajole others into letting them live in the closet under their stairs.
Now imagine what would happen if there were guards at the edge of the commune, telling the Majority folks "No, you don't leave. You get back to work." Any idealism they may have had is long gone. Clearly their motivation will drop to the lowest common denominator, that of the Leeches. Now, the Leeches work a little harder because of the guards with the guns, but not a whole lot. As a result you have a commune that's 10% hard workers, and 90% clock-punchers doing the bare minimum. This is why communism is doomed to fail (or at least doomed to stagnate) at larger scales. You can't enforce
you'll have to forgive him for not seeing whatever joke may have been intended, for it was neither funny, nor rooted in any basic truth, which are basic requirements for effective humor.
"a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole."
This would fit the definition of linux and the GNU, except for the fact that the Free Software foundation is at the top (many people give all of their IP rights to the GNU..as described in the license), so, this fits more in this definition:
You're missing the critical point where the comparison breaks down. One of the central principles behind the GPL is the premise that information, being infinitely replicable without diminishing, shouldn't be considered "property". Free Software folks don't necessarily believe that all real property (e.g. land) should be held in common. It's more of an objection to the misapplication of property rights than an outright rejection of them, as is found in Communism.
At least selecting negatively like that allows one to actually cast a ballet.</cynicism>
Personally, I think one should select positively when casting a ballet. You know, like, "that dancer can stay on her toes a long time, we should pick him", or "wow, they really nailed that pas de deux, we should get them both".