Yes, lets put out some lights to make the few astronomer fucks in the world happy. It would only inconvienence the other 5.9999 BILLION humans on the planet.
I don't own a gun, I'm actually kinda anti-gun but not to the point of taking away anyone's rights, nor did I vote for Bush. I didn't vote for anyone. My political affiliation is "undefined."
As for the elitists, it works both ways. If there is someone out there who truly think that way, do you want them near YOU? Do you want them to interact with you with all of their snobbish ways? Think about it. Instead of that one family in every neighborhood which everyone knows is full of snobs who look down on the rest of the hood, they can all go off and make their own hood and be happy together. Who would miss them?
And its not the worst form of discrimination. How does someone who may be middle class or low income suffer from not being able to interact with the rich? Real economic discrimination keeps someone from advancing their station in life. Gated communities have nothing to do with that. A gated community can't stop you from going to school or starting your own company and striking it rich. Once you've done so, THEN you can move into the gated community. And you know, as long as someone treats you ok in public thats good enough for me. But a neighboorhood is like an extension of your home. You shouldn't have to be nice to a group of people you don't like. I know America is supposed to be eaglatarian and all but some people truly are beneath others. Who's to judge? You are. Each person is the judge for their own situation. You do it on a daily basis whether you want to admit it or not. I'm betting you've never sat down and played chess with a bum off the street or taken one out to dinner now have you? Maybe you have and you're a saint. Who knows, I just know most of us aren't saints. There's all types of gated communities you know. Gated communites obviously for rich white folks. Rich hispanic folks. Rich black folks. Rich asian folks. Mixed race rich folks. For entertainers. For businesssmen.
And its not that these people think they are better because they are rich. They've always thought they were better, even back when they were poor. They just now have the means to mold their worlds into the forms that they see fit.
What about non-gated communites? A community doesn't have to be gated to be exclusive. If you buy a $3 million dollar house in a neighborhood where prices that high are common, aren't you already in effect isolating yourself from the common man? Are those people being snooty too? Should we all just remain in the ghetto so that we don't dare deprive the poor of our pressence? Do they have a right to interaction with the rich or something?
I'm not rich myself yet. So I am forced to live amongst people whom I can only denigrate at best. Should I ever become rich though, I plan to take snobbery and make it into an artform elevating it to such a height that would make these folks in the gated communities look like humble, civic minded folk.
Well first of all not everyone agrees with the assumption that the Internet is supposed to be what it was originally designed for. Things change. And its not like they're closing off the entire internet, just one TLD. Do you feel so slighted by that that it matters to you? Must everyone want to share every and anything with everyone lest they be labelled enemies of the spirit of the net?
How is it stupid if it serves its purpose? If someone who is qualified gets the chartered thing, and it brings them in busines because as you said "people still look for 'chartered professionals'" then how is it stupid? Just cause you don't like it?
Actually the IT professionals were probably left out simply because they don't have any money after the dot com bomb. Add that to the fact that most IT professionals or geeks as they are better known, seem to have a weird anti-status gene built in that prevents them from wanting recognition for their profession and an abundance of a pro-sucker gene that allows them to be worked to the bone 60, 70, 80+ hours a week for half the money they made either a year or two ago.
I don't get this attitude of yours at all. On one hand a ton of people here on Slashdot bitch about how average people are morons and idiots some of them so stupid that they shouldn't be allowed to breed, and then you come across a situation where a group of people decides they have had "enough" of that kind of people so they make a gated community to protect them and shield them from it and you give them shit over it and mock them?
Can no one have discriminating tastes over those they choose to associate with? How the hell do you know they are sacrificing community? They may be as close as can be behind those gates simply because they KNOW they aren't living next to the unwashed masses. And whats so grand or great about the unwashed masses to begin with that no one should "dare" to move away from them or gate themselves off from them?
I don't think these people are afraid of the world, probably just tired of it. Stuck up perhaps, but being snobby isn't always a bad thing. If no one is able to say there is a point or a level of crap they won't tolerate anymore then no one anywhere would have any standards of any kind.
Yeah I know exactly what you mean. God forbid that the economic incentive from those $10 pills should ever motivate a corporation to pour all the resources and talent necessary into curing any specific disease. We sure as hell don't want any diseases cured if someone's gonna get rich from it!
I mean, all diseases are as easy and simple to cure as polio or tuberculosis right? There can't be any hardy viruses or bacteria that require more research then your run of the mill government agency/lab could provide.
People can only work on something they are interested working on. If someone wants to research a cure for baldness then their desire to do so is all they really need. You can't bitch about the wasted resources just because someone is starving somewhere. Do you donate or dedicate 100% of your personla resources to some charity?
America is pro free trade. Free trade allows people to sell their labor internationally. This provides consumers with cheaper goods. The workers are largely irrelevant. I don't care if you lose your job just as long as the price of the product stays low.
As an American myself I would find it largley hypocritical to want our companies to be able to sell things in other nations but not allow other nations sell their things here, including such things as consumer electronics, automobiles and yes now even telecommuted labor. In short, tough shit.
You're an idiot. Mac OS X is supported by Apple on all but the very first Powerbook G3 (Kanga). The ones supported are the (Wallstreet, Lombard and Pismo) models. Also supported is the beige G3 desktop Powermac. ADB ports on all models that have them work fine. I should know, my Wallstreet has been running OS X for over a year and a half since the public beta. The only thing that is missing is accelerated graphics support. But by no means are these machines unsupported.
This home user loves protected memory and pre-emptive multitasking. If you're satisifed with substandard performance from your OS then so be it but its really silly to bitch when those things are improved.
Well it all depends on your own needs and goals. If you have certain financial goals in your life where $43k or even $63k a year isn't enough, then it isn't enough. But if it is, it is.:D Its not enough for me but it sure is for lots of other folks.
I think you are vastly over-rating both the IT workers and the tools and products they deploy/impliment. Simply put, not every company needs all the crap the tech industry wants to sell you.
If managers paying IT workers less now is somehow "bad" what would you describe overpaying IT workers a few years ago as? "Good"?
Not that you aren't entitled to post as an AC all you want, but you've posted several times on this article with the same links and if you are going to be so bold and consistent in your anti-HB-1 visa propaganda the very least you could do is to create an account and/or login.
Open Source never BECAME gimme gimme gimme, its been that from the start. All it is is the duplication of already existing proprietary software with very little to no innovation. I mean how many distinct ways can you make a GUI to begin with? How many other people besides those of us on slashdot even WANT to learn a new GUI?
LOL "smart people"? Don't you mean the tiny number of anti-social geeks who read slashdot on a daily basis to feed their voraciously hungry paranoid appetites for info on "Big Brother"?
Well first of all things aren't as bad here as you think they are. Yes capitalism leads to the creation of monopolies, but even without regulation a business can only become so big before it is too inefficient to compete against its smaller competitors. And we DO have regulation. We've got the DOJ and FTC to regulate industries who may or may not be coming under the influence of a rising monopoly or to regulate existing ones. We don't just let our businesses run roughshod over anything they please. As for the airwaves, well for TV there's cable, 100's of channels and most of America has cable. For radio I can understand your pain, I share it too. But there's internet streaming and XM radio. In short, if you want the good stuff you'll have to pay for it. I don't see a problem with that. Freedom of speech remains.
I'm not so sure that having dozens of political parties is such a great thing. One only has to look to the world's oldest democracy, India, to see the folly of dozens of so called "coalition" governments which are different parties in the government constantly re-aligning themselves with who-ever didn't insult them on that particular week. The more parties you have the more overhead the government needs to get anything done. If you think the U.S. government is slow to act on things, imagine how bad it would be if there were 4 or 5 parties in Congress. It just so happens that the majority of Americans actually ARE represented in either Republican or Democratic party ideals. I'd like my government to continue actually functioning so I don't really have a problem with that.
Yeah the US has propped up crooked regimes for a long time. And its a bad thing to do. But we've done it for strategic interests, oil. We have to ensure the oil will flow. In concerns to that, democratic transformation of that particular country(ies) is secondary. It will just have to wait till we're all driving hydrogen-electric hybrids. But for nations that hold no strategic interests and only represent a potential enemy, then we can use capitalism as a silent weapon to foster democratic transformation. Its a start at least.
The Hawaiians were certainly a soverign people. And yes they have every right to self-determination. I just don't know how many Hawaiians today who would honestly like to go back to hunting and catching their own food and building their own tools......etc. Plenty of them like the American way of life very much. Democracy and Capitalism is very tolerant I would say. We're extremely tolerant of the democratically run socialist/communist governments in Europe. As long as they don't bother us, we don't bother them. But they aren't a threat to us to begin with. What we have little tolerance for is regimes that are dangerous not only to our way of life but to their own citizens. And as long as they don't hold a strategic resource that we need, we will work to change what they are, for the good of everyone.
The World Bank and IMF suck. They aren't represenative of capitalism. Its really a form of lethal incompetence. They need to be reformed massively and I hope the continued protests of the anti-globalization folks eventually prods them to reform their policies. Because its the World Bank and IMF who are giving globalization a very bad name.
As for voting, well all I can say is people have the right to vote and the right to not vote. We did have a fairly high recent voter turnout for the last presidential election after all. A non-vote can really be interpreted as a "Hey I'm ok with whichever choice you make since it is either good for me regardless or will have little to no effect on my life". When people are pissed or upset about something however, they DO vote to change things, but once those things are righted they go right back to not voting until the next political emergency. No ever said that in a democracy everyone had to vote each and every time. I would think the fact that the republic has survived for the past 200+ years is proof evident enough that we're all mostly satisfied with the way things are being run. We've had only one civil war and of course some urban riots but nothing on the scale to overthrow the federal government. Crime is low, unemployment while recently spiking up to 6% is still low...etc. In short if a people are ABLE to become fat, happy, dumb and lazy its because their government is working correctly.
I would also argue that Russia is vastly better off then they were before. Changing an economy is not an overnight job. It takes years and years. They've first got to root out all the corruption then setup proper laws and regulations for businesses before their capitalist economy will be as efficient as the others of the world. But at least now the people are free, free to say what they want and do what they want. Thats a big plus in my book.
Ok you asked what if it worked and the country is a democracy with free markets. Well, after that we just trade and be happy! There isn't really anything more left to do after that. We watch with glee as the standard of living in the newly democratic nation rises and our investments in said country prosper. Then we move onto the next non-democratic nation and work on them. And then the next. Then the next. Until there's no more non-free people's on the planet. Once that is accoomplished we consider a loose framework for a world government. Something that say the United States, European Union, African Union (doesn't exist yet), Middle Eastern Union (again not here yet) and Asian Union (this too, not here yet!) would be states of. Then once the globe is united, we focus on space travel and colonizing the solar system. Massive colonies on the Moon and Mars and perhaps free floating Oribital Compounds capable of holding millions or billions each. We could populate the solarsystem with 10's of billions or 100's of billions of humans without even moving past the orbit of Pluto! Imagine the levels of trade that could commence then! wh0000000 b0y. Sorry the capitalist in me got out of control again.
Would you entertain the possibility that the greater success of capitalism inside certain countries that suck, such as China, paves the way to a later transformation to Democracy? As China joins the world's markets and since it has joined the WTO its markets, and thus society will be forced to open up as never before. Capitalism and the process of free market economics allows people to learn more about the rest of the world and thus question their governments like they have never before.
So one could make a reasonable argument that by denying a country, one that has a oppressive government, your business you are delying the day when they become a democracy and thus no longer a threat to us. Food for thought.
Where would innovation, motivation and inspiration come from if bosses and wealthy folk were as generous as you suppose? I mean if you were suddenly given an extra $10k a year why should you work any harder? And why should your boss startup a company if all he is going to do is give most of it away as if he were running a charity? Where would most of the wonderful things we currently have come from if they weren't inspired by the selfish pursuit of material or social gain? Would we have the PC? The microchip? Cell phones? Cars? Planes? What would we have? Do you really think we would be at this point where we are now if everyone just cared about everyone else?
Furthermore I'm not so sure I'd want a CEO who would work for only $500k vs. $10 million. Who knows if such a altruistic CEO has the competitive spirt needed to guide the company past the competition. There is a Malden Mills company here in MA. that suffered a fire and had to shut down. Well the generous owner of the company decided to keep on paying the company until they could rebuild the mill and restart production. The company ended up filling for bankruptcy.
I don't want to live in a world where everyone knows they don't have to work because they can just depend on others. What happens in that kind of a world is no one ends up working because they all think there's someone else to depend on, after a while there isn't!
Why would I care? Lowest price wins. You're not about to suggest that we pathetically base our purchasing decisions on where the products come from now are you? Patriotic buying has never been a very smart way to run an economy.
I know you mean well, you really do but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. CEO's aren't there to be good human beings. They are there to increase shareholder value. A CEO who is benevolent and altruistic would not be doing the best job a CEO could do. Its not their money they are playing with. Its the shareholder's money. Now if a CEO wants to take his own salary and do something generous with it, then by all means he can do that. But even then it would just be a drop in the bucket. If a CEO makes say $200 million over the lifetime of his career and gives it away, which most do in thier wills by the way, what would that amount to? You seem to think that money if paid to only a few stays locked up in banks and does society no good. Thats just not true. First like I said before, its taxed so the government gets it as part of standard wealth distribution that goes on in any nation. Next it earns interest for the banks where it is again taxed. The banks then use their earnings to invest in new companies, development or products or services. In short, the money plays a central role in fueling the economy. Just giving the damn money away isn't going to do many people any good.
Also, is it always a skewed sense of morality that causes the ills of the world? Are the so called victims always blameless? What about those who simply lack iniative or motivation or any kind of ambition? If I am a rich person, say with a networth of $10 million or more, and I donate to no poor person does that make me scum? Why? I have beaten no one up. I have not stolen it, but I have earned it. Along the way to earning it I have been taxed. My contribution to society has already been taken out of my earnings. Why then at this point would you want me to do MORE? Haven't I already done ENOUGH? Where does it end? Must I completely turn my pockets inside out for you to be satisifed that I have good morals? Not that rich folks need it or anything, nor am I actually a rich person, but when do they get a friggen break? They're not all evil masterminds bent on world domination. Some of them were just lucky, or really smart or really talented. To cast the blame on them for society's ills ignores the real problems.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, lets put out some lights to make the few astronomer fucks in the world happy. It would only inconvienence the other 5.9999 BILLION humans on the planet.
I don't own a gun, I'm actually kinda anti-gun but not to the point of taking away anyone's rights, nor did I vote for Bush. I didn't vote for anyone. My political affiliation is "undefined."
As for the elitists, it works both ways. If there is someone out there who truly think that way, do you want them near YOU? Do you want them to interact with you with all of their snobbish ways? Think about it. Instead of that one family in every neighborhood which everyone knows is full of snobs who look down on the rest of the hood, they can all go off and make their own hood and be happy together. Who would miss them?
And its not the worst form of discrimination. How does someone who may be middle class or low income suffer from not being able to interact with the rich? Real economic discrimination keeps someone from advancing their station in life. Gated communities have nothing to do with that. A gated community can't stop you from going to school or starting your own company and striking it rich. Once you've done so, THEN you can move into the gated community. And you know, as long as someone treats you ok in public thats good enough for me. But a neighboorhood is like an extension of your home. You shouldn't have to be nice to a group of people you don't like. I know America is supposed to be eaglatarian and all but some people truly are beneath others. Who's to judge? You are. Each person is the judge for their own situation. You do it on a daily basis whether you want to admit it or not. I'm betting you've never sat down and played chess with a bum off the street or taken one out to dinner now have you? Maybe you have and you're a saint. Who knows, I just know most of us aren't saints. There's all types of gated communities you know. Gated communites obviously for rich white folks. Rich hispanic folks. Rich black folks. Rich asian folks. Mixed race rich folks. For entertainers. For businesssmen.
And its not that these people think they are better because they are rich. They've always thought they were better, even back when they were poor. They just now have the means to mold their worlds into the forms that they see fit.
What about non-gated communites? A community doesn't have to be gated to be exclusive. If you buy a $3 million dollar house in a neighborhood where prices that high are common, aren't you already in effect isolating yourself from the common man? Are those people being snooty too? Should we all just remain in the ghetto so that we don't dare deprive the poor of our pressence? Do they have a right to interaction with the rich or something?
I'm not rich myself yet. So I am forced to live amongst people whom I can only denigrate at best. Should I ever become rich though, I plan to take snobbery and make it into an artform elevating it to such a height that would make these folks in the gated communities look like humble, civic minded folk.
Cisco and Microsoft certified people are not professionals. They're just glorified technicians. Geesh.
How would requiring a login be any different from a restricted TLD? Wouldn't both serve the same goal of keeping the "unqualified" out?
Well first of all not everyone agrees with the assumption that the Internet is supposed to be what it was originally designed for. Things change. And its not like they're closing off the entire internet, just one TLD. Do you feel so slighted by that that it matters to you? Must everyone want to share every and anything with everyone lest they be labelled enemies of the spirit of the net?
How is it stupid if it serves its purpose? If someone who is qualified gets the chartered thing, and it brings them in busines because as you said "people still look for 'chartered professionals'" then how is it stupid? Just cause you don't like it?
Actually the IT professionals were probably left out simply because they don't have any money after the dot com bomb. Add that to the fact that most IT professionals or geeks as they are better known, seem to have a weird anti-status gene built in that prevents them from wanting recognition for their profession and an abundance of a pro-sucker gene that allows them to be worked to the bone 60, 70, 80+ hours a week for half the money they made either a year or two ago.
Why do the people have to be "insecure"? Why all the status-hate on this site?
I don't get this attitude of yours at all. On one hand a ton of people here on Slashdot bitch about how average people are morons and idiots some of them so stupid that they shouldn't be allowed to breed, and then you come across a situation where a group of people decides they have had "enough" of that kind of people so they make a gated community to protect them and shield them from it and you give them shit over it and mock them?
Can no one have discriminating tastes over those they choose to associate with? How the hell do you know they are sacrificing community? They may be as close as can be behind those gates simply because they KNOW they aren't living next to the unwashed masses. And whats so grand or great about the unwashed masses to begin with that no one should "dare" to move away from them or gate themselves off from them?
I don't think these people are afraid of the world, probably just tired of it. Stuck up perhaps, but being snobby isn't always a bad thing. If no one is able to say there is a point or a level of crap they won't tolerate anymore then no one anywhere would have any standards of any kind.
Yeah I know exactly what you mean. God forbid that the economic incentive from those $10 pills should ever motivate a corporation to pour all the resources and talent necessary into curing any specific disease. We sure as hell don't want any diseases cured if someone's gonna get rich from it!
I mean, all diseases are as easy and simple to cure as polio or tuberculosis right? There can't be any hardy viruses or bacteria that require more research then your run of the mill government agency/lab could provide.
People can only work on something they are interested working on. If someone wants to research a cure for baldness then their desire to do so is all they really need. You can't bitch about the wasted resources just because someone is starving somewhere. Do you donate or dedicate 100% of your personla resources to some charity?
America is pro free trade. Free trade allows people to sell their labor internationally. This provides consumers with cheaper goods. The workers are largely irrelevant. I don't care if you lose your job just as long as the price of the product stays low.
As an American myself I would find it largley hypocritical to want our companies to be able to sell things in other nations but not allow other nations sell their things here, including such things as consumer electronics, automobiles and yes now even telecommuted labor. In short, tough shit.
You're an idiot. Mac OS X is supported by Apple on all but the very first Powerbook G3 (Kanga). The ones supported are the (Wallstreet, Lombard and Pismo) models. Also supported is the beige G3 desktop Powermac. ADB ports on all models that have them work fine. I should know, my Wallstreet has been running OS X for over a year and a half since the public beta. The only thing that is missing is accelerated graphics support. But by no means are these machines unsupported.
This home user loves protected memory and pre-emptive multitasking. If you're satisifed with substandard performance from your OS then so be it but its really silly to bitch when those things are improved.
Thank you Mr. Hoffa. Glad to see your enemies did not succeed in killing you as was previously thought.
Well it all depends on your own needs and goals. If you have certain financial goals in your life where $43k or even $63k a year isn't enough, then it isn't enough. But if it is, it is. :D Its not enough for me but it sure is for lots of other folks.
I think you are vastly over-rating both the IT workers and the tools and products they deploy/impliment. Simply put, not every company needs all the crap the tech industry wants to sell you.
If managers paying IT workers less now is somehow "bad" what would you describe overpaying IT workers a few years ago as? "Good"?
Not that you aren't entitled to post as an AC all you want, but you've posted several times on this article with the same links and if you are going to be so bold and consistent in your anti-HB-1 visa propaganda the very least you could do is to create an account and/or login.
You can stop coming down on microsoft's legal activities just to win brownie points on slashdot now
Open Source never BECAME gimme gimme gimme, its been that from the start. All it is is the duplication of already existing proprietary software with very little to no innovation. I mean how many distinct ways can you make a GUI to begin with? How many other people besides those of us on slashdot even WANT to learn a new GUI?
LOL "smart people"? Don't you mean the tiny number of anti-social geeks who read slashdot on a daily basis to feed their voraciously hungry paranoid appetites for info on "Big Brother"?
Well first of all things aren't as bad here as you think they are. Yes capitalism leads to the creation of monopolies, but even without regulation a business can only become so big before it is too inefficient to compete against its smaller competitors. And we DO have regulation. We've got the DOJ and FTC to regulate industries who may or may not be coming under the influence of a rising monopoly or to regulate existing ones. We don't just let our businesses run roughshod over anything they please. As for the airwaves, well for TV there's cable, 100's of channels and most of America has cable. For radio I can understand your pain, I share it too. But there's internet streaming and XM radio. In short, if you want the good stuff you'll have to pay for it. I don't see a problem with that. Freedom of speech remains.
I'm not so sure that having dozens of political parties is such a great thing. One only has to look to the world's oldest democracy, India, to see the folly of dozens of so called "coalition" governments which are different parties in the government constantly re-aligning themselves with who-ever didn't insult them on that particular week. The more parties you have the more overhead the government needs to get anything done. If you think the U.S. government is slow to act on things, imagine how bad it would be if there were 4 or 5 parties in Congress. It just so happens that the majority of Americans actually ARE represented in either Republican or Democratic party ideals. I'd like my government to continue actually functioning so I don't really have a problem with that.
Yeah the US has propped up crooked regimes for a long time. And its a bad thing to do. But we've done it for strategic interests, oil. We have to ensure the oil will flow. In concerns to that, democratic transformation of that particular country(ies) is secondary. It will just have to wait till we're all driving hydrogen-electric hybrids. But for nations that hold no strategic interests and only represent a potential enemy, then we can use capitalism as a silent weapon to foster democratic transformation. Its a start at least.
The Hawaiians were certainly a soverign people. And yes they have every right to self-determination. I just don't know how many Hawaiians today who would honestly like to go back to hunting and catching their own food and building their own tools......etc. Plenty of them like the American way of life very much. Democracy and Capitalism is very tolerant I would say. We're extremely tolerant of the democratically run socialist/communist governments in Europe. As long as they don't bother us, we don't bother them. But they aren't a threat to us to begin with. What we have little tolerance for is regimes that are dangerous not only to our way of life but to their own citizens. And as long as they don't hold a strategic resource that we need, we will work to change what they are, for the good of everyone.
The World Bank and IMF suck. They aren't represenative of capitalism. Its really a form of lethal incompetence. They need to be reformed massively and I hope the continued protests of the anti-globalization folks eventually prods them to reform their policies. Because its the World Bank and IMF who are giving globalization a very bad name.
As for voting, well all I can say is people have the right to vote and the right to not vote. We did have a fairly high recent voter turnout for the last presidential election after all. A non-vote can really be interpreted as a "Hey I'm ok with whichever choice you make since it is either good for me regardless or will have little to no effect on my life". When people are pissed or upset about something however, they DO vote to change things, but once those things are righted they go right back to not voting until the next political emergency. No ever said that in a democracy everyone had to vote each and every time. I would think the fact that the republic has survived for the past 200+ years is proof evident enough that we're all mostly satisfied with the way things are being run. We've had only one civil war and of course some urban riots but nothing on the scale to overthrow the federal government. Crime is low, unemployment while recently spiking up to 6% is still low...etc. In short if a people are ABLE to become fat, happy, dumb and lazy its because their government is working correctly.
I would also argue that Russia is vastly better off then they were before. Changing an economy is not an overnight job. It takes years and years. They've first got to root out all the corruption then setup proper laws and regulations for businesses before their capitalist economy will be as efficient as the others of the world. But at least now the people are free, free to say what they want and do what they want. Thats a big plus in my book.
Ok you asked what if it worked and the country is a democracy with free markets. Well, after that we just trade and be happy! There isn't really anything more left to do after that. We watch with glee as the standard of living in the newly democratic nation rises and our investments in said country prosper. Then we move onto the next non-democratic nation and work on them. And then the next. Then the next. Until there's no more non-free people's on the planet. Once that is accoomplished we consider a loose framework for a world government. Something that say the United States, European Union, African Union (doesn't exist yet), Middle Eastern Union (again not here yet) and Asian Union (this too, not here yet!) would be states of. Then once the globe is united, we focus on space travel and colonizing the solar system. Massive colonies on the Moon and Mars and perhaps free floating Oribital Compounds capable of holding millions or billions each. We could populate the solarsystem with 10's of billions or 100's of billions of humans without even moving past the orbit of Pluto! Imagine the levels of trade that could commence then! wh0000000 b0y. Sorry the capitalist in me got out of control again.
Would you entertain the possibility that the greater success of capitalism inside certain countries that suck, such as China, paves the way to a later transformation to Democracy? As China joins the world's markets and since it has joined the WTO its markets, and thus society will be forced to open up as never before. Capitalism and the process of free market economics allows people to learn more about the rest of the world and thus question their governments like they have never before.
So one could make a reasonable argument that by denying a country, one that has a oppressive government, your business you are delying the day when they become a democracy and thus no longer a threat to us. Food for thought.
Where would innovation, motivation and inspiration come from if bosses and wealthy folk were as generous as you suppose? I mean if you were suddenly given an extra $10k a year why should you work any harder? And why should your boss startup a company if all he is going to do is give most of it away as if he were running a charity? Where would most of the wonderful things we currently have come from if they weren't inspired by the selfish pursuit of material or social gain? Would we have the PC? The microchip? Cell phones? Cars? Planes? What would we have? Do you really think we would be at this point where we are now if everyone just cared about everyone else?
Furthermore I'm not so sure I'd want a CEO who would work for only $500k vs. $10 million. Who knows if such a altruistic CEO has the competitive spirt needed to guide the company past the competition. There is a Malden Mills company here in MA. that suffered a fire and had to shut down. Well the generous owner of the company decided to keep on paying the company until they could rebuild the mill and restart production. The company ended up filling for bankruptcy.
I don't want to live in a world where everyone knows they don't have to work because they can just depend on others. What happens in that kind of a world is no one ends up working because they all think there's someone else to depend on, after a while there isn't!
Why would I care? Lowest price wins. You're not about to suggest that we pathetically base our purchasing decisions on where the products come from now are you? Patriotic buying has never been a very smart way to run an economy.
I know you mean well, you really do but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. CEO's aren't there to be good human beings. They are there to increase shareholder value. A CEO who is benevolent and altruistic would not be doing the best job a CEO could do. Its not their money they are playing with. Its the shareholder's money. Now if a CEO wants to take his own salary and do something generous with it, then by all means he can do that. But even then it would just be a drop in the bucket. If a CEO makes say $200 million over the lifetime of his career and gives it away, which most do in thier wills by the way, what would that amount to? You seem to think that money if paid to only a few stays locked up in banks and does society no good. Thats just not true. First like I said before, its taxed so the government gets it as part of standard wealth distribution that goes on in any nation. Next it earns interest for the banks where it is again taxed. The banks then use their earnings to invest in new companies, development or products or services. In short, the money plays a central role in fueling the economy. Just giving the damn money away isn't going to do many people any good.
Also, is it always a skewed sense of morality that causes the ills of the world? Are the so called victims always blameless? What about those who simply lack iniative or motivation or any kind of ambition? If I am a rich person, say with a networth of $10 million or more, and I donate to no poor person does that make me scum? Why? I have beaten no one up. I have not stolen it, but I have earned it. Along the way to earning it I have been taxed. My contribution to society has already been taken out of my earnings. Why then at this point would you want me to do MORE? Haven't I already done ENOUGH? Where does it end? Must I completely turn my pockets inside out for you to be satisifed that I have good morals? Not that rich folks need it or anything, nor am I actually a rich person, but when do they get a friggen break? They're not all evil masterminds bent on world domination. Some of them were just lucky, or really smart or really talented. To cast the blame on them for society's ills ignores the real problems.