And that is just one of the many many motives because education should not be managed by the government. It can be paid by the government, but putting the government to manage it opens the doors for all kinds of abuse in addition to government's natural inefficiency. Either you have overprotect employees that can do or not do anything and are all but unfireable or you have employees fired because of political and bureaucratic motives regardless of their competence.
But the list measures only hits and therefore it is has some information about notability, much more than it has about influence at least. The fact of this guy appearing as a notable person is even weirder than it would be if it appeared in a list that really tries to infer influence.
And that is in great part the result of the misguided ideas mainstream humanities and the ideas of the Frankfurt School propagates. Every nation that has followed these ideas is on the bottom of the pit.
We are much better off without humanities PHDs, rest assured.
The kind that you don't find in societies with highly progressive forms of taxation. Places like Norway
Oh and that is stupid. Sure you do. People that have high monthly income do pay a higher tax in Norway or Sweden. But neither in Norway nor in any other developed country we have taxes over property and assets. The end result is that really rich people pay far less taxes than poor people there. Because rich people have no income. They never realize profits.
It is the middle class that sustains the welfare state, not the rich. As it is always the case. In Norway it will go for a long time yet because they have oil money to keep going. In Sweden on the other hand taxes over higher income are being constantly lowered as the state struggles to keep its finances stable.
Since I'm not a billionaire, why should I care if billionaires exist?
You shouldn't care at all if they exist. You should care if the system that allows them to exist is the best system in existence to make you prosper though, which happens to be the case.
Successful, sure. Let's look at the great success of Bill Gates. What great contribution to society has he made that warrants his wealth? Was it when he was spreading FUD about the "viral" GPL? Was it the vendor lock-in that he guided Microsoft to pursue? Was it all the permatemp employees that he hired and retained for years without extending health benefits to? Are you suggesting these astounding feats of success couldn't have been performed by anyone else? Are you suggesting that Microsoft and Gates' success didn't come at the expense of the rest of society?
Even the permatemp employees are better off working for him in the conditions that they did than they would be otherwise and that is exactly why they worked for him. We still live in a free society. Nobody is forced to work for anybody else.
And no I am not suggesting anything. I am blatantly stating that MS success didn't come at the cost of US society. Much on the contrary it came to the benefit of US society and the astounding feats of success like this be maybe achieved by other people, but not many people, and those people would end equally rich. Having an idea and making it work is not as trivial as you think, otherwise you would be a billionaire at this point.;)
No, my friend, I would tell him to accept the help anyone willingly decide to give him and would give my help. You, on the other hand, would be one of those that would turn your back on him, let him drown, and write a rant saying that we should force other people with bigger boats to help people drowning.
Oh, you expected to have a linear correlation between the positions in the graphiic and per capita GDP? Please that is silly.
The important fact is that you can't find countries that have populations with a good income and quality of life and are not near the top of that list. That is the undeniable truth.
By allowing for extreme stratification of wealth, you're denying the masses an equitable share of wealth
That is ridiculous and it becomes abundantly clear when you realize the truth of my last statement. The wealth you are "denying" the masses would even exist in the first place.
Indeed. Instead of Microsoft, we'd have a healthy ecosystem of competitors improving the US economy and generating wealth.
No we wouldn't, in exact the same way other countries do not. Things do not come from thin air. People need to create them. US economical strength comes from all the people that start small companies in the hope of getting rich or at least vastly improve their wealth, and many of them are successful.
And he is wrong in this point, as you are. They are as much middle men as day traders. And day traders exist for a long time and have a positive effect on trading and do provide liquidity. HFT does exactly the same thing day traders do just in a faster time scale.
Oh 27th is very good in a list of 178 countries. Therefore you proved yourself my point.
And one of the natural results of economic freedom is stratification of wealth. They are not orthogonal issues. The only way to prevent people from getting rich is by forcing them not to be, that is hardly freedom.
Oh and answering your previous comment, All those billionaires were actually instrumental in improving US economy and generating wealth. Microsoft alone that wouldn't exist if not for Gates generated hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth, and a good part of it was paid in salaries and shares to its employees which bought goods and service from many many other people.
Oh it is easy to show you. Check any system where the government prevents people from getting rich, like for example USSR, China before the last decades when they opened to the free market, North Korea, Cuba, etc, and see the amount of wealth generated by these countries even with the incredible amount of resources some of them have.
Now compare that to the wealth generated by the countries at the top of the World Heritage Foundation list of economic freedom.
They are. At any given instant in time, there is a finite amount of wealth in existence.
And a very large portion of this wealth wouldn't exist if the system didn't allow for rich people to exist in the first place, and so your whole theory of zero sum game goes down the drain.
Oh, but people do it all the time. There are several community managed broadband ISPs in Germany, for example. As an activity becomes more and more lucrative, which is what happens when a monopoly forms, there is plenty of incentive for competing and overcoming such barriers. Especially considering a large part of these barriers consist in costs directly and indirectly caused by government regulation.
All the monopolies that exist are in heavy regulated areas. Actually there are not heavy regulated areas where there is anything more competitive than oligopolies. See telecommunications for reference.
Now in areas where the regulation is minimum, lax, largely ignored or even non existent as in some countries, like for example cloth selling there are no monopolies and not even oligopolies and none can form.
As regulation increases in any area smaller business start to close and oligopolies and eventually monopolies start to form. The process is always the same.
Oh and nobody said anything about no governments. Governments have 3 very good motives to exist and should focus on those 3 things only:
- Provide physical security to people by preventing violence from being committed by people (police and criminal justice);
- Serve as arbitrator in disputes (civil justice)
- protect the country from external threats (military)
Cute. Bigotry is trying to force other people to think like you do. Very serious problems happen when this is combined with power. Oh, and the most powerful members of society are progressivists that preach exactly the same you do and keep polarizing and inventing a fight of classes, genders or whatever to keep in power, using useful idiots like you.
Again excuses. You do nothing and rationalize that it is because you don't make a difference in the larger picture, but you could do in a smaller picture and there are a LOT of people like you. You, my friend, by your own standards is an hypocrite and a soulless piece of shit who is completely detached from caring for your fellow humans.
No they would not because they are competing with each other and with all the rest of the market. It is actually gets a lot harder to grow when you get larger. Companies get harder and harder to manage, get inefficient and eventually collapse. Look at GM, Banks or anywhere for reference. Governments are the only force that keeps protecting and sustaining corporations when they fail.
And here you just prove my point, my friend. Only what you believe is right should be able to be said or thought and anything that defies it should be punished. Your doctrine is not in any way different from any mainstream religion that dominated a society in History.
Keep using excuses to justify your ugly ugly envy. You are likely much much richer than 99% of the people in this planet, and I sincerely doubt you are donating 99% of your income to the poor people in Africa.
Capitalist don't "endager" the public, you would on the other hand if you could carry on with your ideas, because the only way to accomplish what you want is through force and coercion and the results are as shown time and again catastrophic.
Not at all, my friend. You seem to live in another reality.
In our reality it is perfectly Ok to talk against Christians, rich people, whites males etc. To the extent that nothing happened to Sharon Osbourne when she said on TV that a cheating husband deserved to have his penis cut by his wife, just to give you an example.
Now try to talk against black people, gays, or suggest that a cheating woman deserved to be beaten by her husband on TV. Good luck!
Sure it can, but it cannot corner any market for long without the power of coercion government adds. I defy you to find monopolies that resisted for more than a few years without government protection, in the form of barriers, subsidies or regulations.
The point is, corporations cannot run everything without government. there is no monopoly in existence that survived for any significant amount of time without government protection for example.
And if you want citations just check the countries at the top of economic freedom ranking of the heritage foundation and those at the bottom, then compare it to the standards of living of the average people in those same countries. The freer the economy the better the quality of life of the common person.
Rich people are not "harming" anybody. Much on the contrary. Someone with employees is providing the employees jobs that otherwise wouldn't exist. He can "screw them over" and they can decide to go elsewhere. That is how a free society works.
On the other hand if you increase government powers, those same employees can be "screwed over" without any chance to defend themselves under the threat of force. And even worse this force can be bought by those rich guys.
So if you want to prevent damage from being done you should defend that governments should be as small as possible and that violence and coercion, which are the tools of any government, should be kept at a minimum.
Slashdot Mirror
And that is just one of the many many motives because education should not be managed by the government. It can be paid by the government, but putting the government to manage it opens the doors for all kinds of abuse in addition to government's natural inefficiency. Either you have overprotect employees that can do or not do anything and are all but unfireable or you have employees fired because of political and bureaucratic motives regardless of their competence.
But the list measures only hits and therefore it is has some information about notability, much more than it has about influence at least. The fact of this guy appearing as a notable person is even weirder than it would be if it appeared in a list that really tries to infer influence.
And that is in great part the result of the misguided ideas mainstream humanities and the ideas of the Frankfurt School propagates. Every nation that has followed these ideas is on the bottom of the pit.
We are much better off without humanities PHDs, rest assured.
The kind that you don't find in societies with highly progressive forms of taxation. Places like Norway
Oh and that is stupid. Sure you do. People that have high monthly income do pay a higher tax in Norway or Sweden. But neither in Norway nor in any other developed country we have taxes over property and assets. The end result is that really rich people pay far less taxes than poor people there. Because rich people have no income. They never realize profits.
It is the middle class that sustains the welfare state, not the rich. As it is always the case. In Norway it will go for a long time yet because they have oil money to keep going. In Sweden on the other hand taxes over higher income are being constantly lowered as the state struggles to keep its finances stable.
Since I'm not a billionaire, why should I care if billionaires exist?
You shouldn't care at all if they exist. You should care if the system that allows them to exist is the best system in existence to make you prosper though, which happens to be the case.
Successful, sure. Let's look at the great success of Bill Gates. What great contribution to society has he made that warrants his wealth? Was it when he was spreading FUD about the "viral" GPL? Was it the vendor lock-in that he guided Microsoft to pursue? Was it all the permatemp employees that he hired and retained for years without extending health benefits to? Are you suggesting these astounding feats of success couldn't have been performed by anyone else? Are you suggesting that Microsoft and Gates' success didn't come at the expense of the rest of society?
Even the permatemp employees are better off working for him in the conditions that they did than they would be otherwise and that is exactly why they worked for him. We still live in a free society. Nobody is forced to work for anybody else.
;)
And no I am not suggesting anything. I am blatantly stating that MS success didn't come at the cost of US society. Much on the contrary it came to the benefit of US society and the astounding feats of success like this be maybe achieved by other people, but not many people, and those people would end equally rich. Having an idea and making it work is not as trivial as you think, otherwise you would be a billionaire at this point.
No, my friend, I would tell him to accept the help anyone willingly decide to give him and would give my help. You, on the other hand, would be one of those that would turn your back on him, let him drown, and write a rant saying that we should force other people with bigger boats to help people drowning.
The important fact is that you can't find countries that have populations with a good income and quality of life and are not near the top of that list. That is the undeniable truth.
By allowing for extreme stratification of wealth, you're denying the masses an equitable share of wealth
That is ridiculous and it becomes abundantly clear when you realize the truth of my last statement. The wealth you are "denying" the masses would even exist in the first place.
Indeed. Instead of Microsoft, we'd have a healthy ecosystem of competitors improving the US economy and generating wealth.
No we wouldn't, in exact the same way other countries do not. Things do not come from thin air. People need to create them. US economical strength comes from all the people that start small companies in the hope of getting rich or at least vastly improve their wealth, and many of them are successful.
And he is wrong in this point, as you are. They are as much middle men as day traders. And day traders exist for a long time and have a positive effect on trading and do provide liquidity. HFT does exactly the same thing day traders do just in a faster time scale.
Oh 27th is very good in a list of 178 countries. Therefore you proved yourself my point.
And one of the natural results of economic freedom is stratification of wealth. They are not orthogonal issues. The only way to prevent people from getting rich is by forcing them not to be, that is hardly freedom.
Oh and answering your previous comment, All those billionaires were actually instrumental in improving US economy and generating wealth. Microsoft alone that wouldn't exist if not for Gates generated hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth, and a good part of it was paid in salaries and shares to its employees which bought goods and service from many many other people.
Oh it is easy to show you. Check any system where the government prevents people from getting rich, like for example USSR, China before the last decades when they opened to the free market, North Korea, Cuba, etc, and see the amount of wealth generated by these countries even with the incredible amount of resources some of them have.
Now compare that to the wealth generated by the countries at the top of the World Heritage Foundation list of economic freedom.
They are. At any given instant in time, there is a finite amount of wealth in existence.
And a very large portion of this wealth wouldn't exist if the system didn't allow for rich people to exist in the first place, and so your whole theory of zero sum game goes down the drain.
Oh, but people do it all the time. There are several community managed broadband ISPs in Germany, for example. As an activity becomes more and more lucrative, which is what happens when a monopoly forms, there is plenty of incentive for competing and overcoming such barriers. Especially considering a large part of these barriers consist in costs directly and indirectly caused by government regulation.
All the monopolies that exist are in heavy regulated areas. Actually there are not heavy regulated areas where there is anything more competitive than oligopolies. See telecommunications for reference.
Now in areas where the regulation is minimum, lax, largely ignored or even non existent as in some countries, like for example cloth selling there are no monopolies and not even oligopolies and none can form.
As regulation increases in any area smaller business start to close and oligopolies and eventually monopolies start to form. The process is always the same.
Oh and nobody said anything about no governments. Governments have 3 very good motives to exist and should focus on those 3 things only:
- Provide physical security to people by preventing violence from being committed by people (police and criminal justice);
- Serve as arbitrator in disputes (civil justice)
- protect the country from external threats (military)
Cute. Bigotry is trying to force other people to think like you do. Very serious problems happen when this is combined with power. Oh, and the most powerful members of society are progressivists that preach exactly the same you do and keep polarizing and inventing a fight of classes, genders or whatever to keep in power, using useful idiots like you.
Again excuses. You do nothing and rationalize that it is because you don't make a difference in the larger picture, but you could do in a smaller picture and there are a LOT of people like you. You, my friend, by your own standards is an hypocrite and a soulless piece of shit who is completely detached from caring for your fellow humans.
No they would not because they are competing with each other and with all the rest of the market. It is actually gets a lot harder to grow when you get larger. Companies get harder and harder to manage, get inefficient and eventually collapse. Look at GM, Banks or anywhere for reference. Governments are the only force that keeps protecting and sustaining corporations when they fail.
Oh but there are deregulated areas. And in those areas you won't find monopolies. At least not monopolies that last more than a few years.
And here you just prove my point, my friend. Only what you believe is right should be able to be said or thought and anything that defies it should be punished. Your doctrine is not in any way different from any mainstream religion that dominated a society in History.
Keep using excuses to justify your ugly ugly envy. You are likely much much richer than 99% of the people in this planet, and I sincerely doubt you are donating 99% of your income to the poor people in Africa.
Capitalist don't "endager" the public, you would on the other hand if you could carry on with your ideas, because the only way to accomplish what you want is through force and coercion and the results are as shown time and again catastrophic.
Not at all, my friend. You seem to live in another reality.
In our reality it is perfectly Ok to talk against Christians, rich people, whites males etc. To the extent that nothing happened to Sharon Osbourne when she said on TV that a cheating husband deserved to have his penis cut by his wife, just to give you an example.
Now try to talk against black people, gays, or suggest that a cheating woman deserved to be beaten by her husband on TV. Good luck!
Sure it can, but it cannot corner any market for long without the power of coercion government adds. I defy you to find monopolies that resisted for more than a few years without government protection, in the form of barriers, subsidies or regulations.
The point is, corporations cannot run everything without government. there is no monopoly in existence that survived for any significant amount of time without government protection for example.
And if you want citations just check the countries at the top of economic freedom ranking of the heritage foundation and those at the bottom, then compare it to the standards of living of the average people in those same countries. The freer the economy the better the quality of life of the common person.
Rich people are not "harming" anybody. Much on the contrary. Someone with employees is providing the employees jobs that otherwise wouldn't exist. He can "screw them over" and they can decide to go elsewhere. That is how a free society works.
On the other hand if you increase government powers, those same employees can be "screwed over" without any chance to defend themselves under the threat of force. And even worse this force can be bought by those rich guys.
So if you want to prevent damage from being done you should defend that governments should be as small as possible and that violence and coercion, which are the tools of any government, should be kept at a minimum.