"Microsoft is not Satan, Hitler, Stalin, Big Brother, MegaCorp(tm), or anything of the sort. It's a software company"
MS is a megacorp and much worse. Hitler and Stalin are evil becasue they killed millions of humans which is a profoundly evil thing to do. What Bill Gates wants to do is much worse. He want's to kill what separates you from the animals in the first place. The ability to communicate and pass on information freely from one human to another and from one generation to another. It's one thing to kill humans it's another to kill what makes you human in the first place.
Even if you totally disagree with me, even if Bill gates is not as evil as Hitler or Stalin he is still a pretty evil person who has committed evil acts against other companies and people. At a minimum he is a criminal (perjury) and his company has comitted criminal acts (evidence tampering, witness tampering). These things should not be so easaliy dismissed.
Even if you disagree with the fact that they are criminals not even you will deny that MS is a threat to open source software and an enemy of open source. They cleary think you, me and millions of other programmers are communist, un-american and a threat to the american way of life. They are spending millions of dollars bribing congress, advertising and spreading lies about the open source movement. This alone makes it important that every open source developer fight them at every opportunity to do so.
And finally I don't think that nybody would argue that Bill Gates, Jim Allchin, Steve Ballmer etc are liars. They have lied publicly, frequently and effectively all of their lives to further their own agenda which is nothing less then accumulating as much money as humanly possible. Well last I checked the bible said the love of money is the root of all evil. I guess you are going to have to take it up with your own God.
It really depends on if they also enforce registration overseas. They are not probably stupid enough to force people in other countries to pay for software. Instead they will use increased revenue fom the US and Europe to subsidize pirating in the third world. In a perfect world all MS products would have to be protected everywhere. This way nobody in south america, africa, china etc would be able to afford MS products and choose lower cost alternatives or free ones thereby breaking the MS monopoly.
Like I said though they are not stupid enough to make everybody pay just the stupid American sheeple.
"Also consider that when you are the powerful ruling class it's easy to let insults pass. If you are on the lower rungs of the food chain it's harder to just laugh things off. "
In America where you and I and Slashdot live the powerful happens to be the white race.
You seem to suggest that the best way to deal with racism is to just laugh it off or to let it go. I suppose that's one way. I don't agree. I think you should fight it at every occurance. If you see or hear racism then point it out and berate the person. Point out that they are racist (nobody not even david duke will admit to being a racist) so that people around them will take note. I guess I don't like the "turn the other cheek" way of dealing with insults it sounds to me a bit too much like "shut up and take it (bitch, nigger, kike, spic, raghead etc.).
BTW it's great to have a sense of humor but not at the expense of other people. Being funny does not have to involve making fun of other people or putting them down. Sure it's a cheap laugh here on slashdot to make fun of blacks especially when you are anonymous and don't have to face the audience but it's also sleazy and cheap.
"IMHO no words are racist. words alone cannot be racist no matter what they say"
Are you married? Do you have a girlfriend? How about a mother? Do you have a woman coworker or a boss? If so try this.
Walk up to a woman in your life and say the following. "Hi bitch would you mind handing me the stapler?" Or "Hey bitch could you please get me a glass of water?". Then kindly explain to them that words are just words and the when you say "bitch" to them you are not actually meaning anything bad.
"I think we should all endevour not to take offense too easily. Perhaps doing so would reduce the general stress level."
Well that's easy to say when you are not being the butt of somebodies joke. The fact of the matter is that you don't get to choose how, where and when somebody can be offended. If somebody directs a racist epitath towards me I get to choose weather to get offended or not.
Also consider that when you are the powerful ruling class it's easy to let insults pass. If you are on the lower rungs of the food chain it's harder to just laugh things off. Take your rednecks and blacks example. Have you ever heard of a bunch of blacks lynching a redneck? Dragging one behind their truck till he got dismembered? What are the chances of a black man denying a redneck a job or housing?
If you tell a redneck joke the redneck isn't thinking "wow maybe this guy will kill me" but if you tell a nigger joke the recipient is. Somewhere in the back of his mind he is thinking you just might decide to chain him to the bumper and go for a joyride. Maybe it's not justified but I guarantee you it's there and it did not get there on it's own. These thoughts are reinforced every day in little ways.
This kind of stuff happens all the time though. Here is a recent and great example.
Bill Clinton during the waning days of his administration passed the roadless wilderness protection act (I don't remember the exact name of the bill but the intent was to stop building roads in roadless areas of the forests). The State of Idaho sued to prevent this law from taking effect. By the time the suit arrived in court it was up to the Bush Justice dept to defend the bill (which of course they did not like one bit). The Ashcroft Justice dept filed a two sentence brief in defence of the act. When it came to argue before the judge they used up four minutes of their allocated thirty and then sat down.
The net effect of course was that the Judge (who also was a republican) was able to stop the enactment of the bill.
This kind of shenanigans goes on at the highest levels of our govt and commerce. Do you honestly think that the Ashcroft Justice Dept will pursue MS with the same zeal that the Reno Justice dept did? Of course not.
You point out why it's always good to root for and support the underdog no matter who it is. If one day AMD becomes dominant then we should help out intel.
The problem with MSDN is that there is only recent information. Any older technology documentation is all but impossible to find. Combine that with their search engine which returns a thousand hits about.NET anytime you search for anything and it's downright annoying as hell. It's better to do a search on Deja/Google then MSDN most of the time.
"This is extremely doubtful, as the most valuable thing in a knowledge-based society are knowledge-based products, worth much more than the natural resources that were indirectly consumed in their production. "
Well it's obvious tome we are using a different costing system. I think this is due to the fact that the cost of natural resources are dependent on the rate of extraction rather then the rate of replenishment. If I decide to log yellowstone national park in one year then the price of wood will drop like a rock because of oversupply. An economist will look at this and say. "I have used up only ten dollars worth of wood to build this house" or he might say "there must be an inifinate amount of wood in the world because wood is so cheap" or more likely "the amount of wood in the world must be increasing because the price is going down". In his world using his criterea, his unwillingness to consider the long term and the big picture he is probably right. I tend to look at things in the long view.
Nowhere in your calculations did you probably consider the cost of soil depletion, air pollution, increased cancer rates, disease, allergies, extinctions etc which are byproducts of this modern society.
I submit to you that your equations look good to you because you have not added up all the costs.
" I grew up hunting and working on land and being out in nature. Respecting animals and the land is not mutually exclusive with harvesting those same animals and that same land for use. "
Only if it's done in a responsible and sustainable manner. Unfortunately due to the amound of energy and resources required by the humans on this planet this is not possible. The demand for wood, paper etc far outstrips the ability of nature to grow trees fast enough.
As far as saving the earth is concerned I don't think anybody thinks that's actually possible. The best anybody can hope is to stave off disaster for a few more years. A massive catalysm occured and killed off all the dinasaours and plants on this planet a while back. For centuries afterwards the dominant species on this planet was the fern. Today we know this because there is a three inch layer of dirt which has nothing but ferns in it sandwiched between dinos and mamals. The destruction of the human species will not destroy the earth it may mean another quarter inch of dirt with nothing in it but ferns or roaches. The earth does not need saving we do.
" Nature is a zero-sum game? In what sense? A programmer has to eat, yes, but there is not a fixed amount of food; it is created anew all the time. A computer is made from raw materials, but none of them are limited in any meaningful sense."
Nature is a zero sum game. Forst of all food can be regrown but at the expense of soil depletion. Soils need to be replenished by manufacturing fertilizers which use up inordinate amounts of energy. Also due to incresed demand for food whole host of chemicals must be manufactured to fight insects and hostile plants. You are looking only in the short term and in a limited view. Taken as a whole nature is being depleted faster then it can be replenished. The seafood industry is beginning to reach it's limits and now has to cut back on their yields due to overfishing for centuries to site just one example.
You can close your eyes and pretend that there is an inifnate amount of nutrients in the soil, fish in the sea, oil in the land, water in the world but it just isn't true. Even using the energy that the earth has stored up over the last few million years has side effects in emissions.
Why is it that the conservatives believe that there is no such thing as free lunch in every endevour except natural resources. How can you possibly claim that there will never be food, water, or energy shortages when recent history is full of examples of these very things.
" Most natural resources are not scarce. In fact, they have become more plentiful and cheaper over time."
Wow your view of reality is truly warped. Take a look at any natural resource and tell me which ones have gone down in price over the last 50 or 100 years. Sure there are fluctuations in price in the short term depending on the yields harvested but in the long run the price of clean water, electricity, coal, wood etc has gone way up. In fact certain woods like teak which were once used on giant ships are worth their weight in gold now.
In the short term the president can order the massive harvesting of federal lands and flood the market with wood(thereby reducing the price of wood) but even a child knows those trees are being used up faster then they are growing. In the long run once the short term supply runs out the prices will shoot up again and even worse. Can you honestly claim that there is more oil being created by nature then is being used by mankind? Please go take a look at worldwide statistics on forests and also look at what the US is doing.
You are not doing the math right. Not only that but you are making the classic mistake of putting monetary value on things which have no inherent dollar figures attached to them.
First of all it's impossible for you to only to consume $20.00 worth of natural resources. All your life you have been suckling on the mother earths teats. You ate all your life to get to that stage where you were ready to program. You were educated, driven around, clothed, generated waste, heated, went to the movies, read papers, wiped your butt, drank beer, and wore shoes. NONE of that came for free and all of came from nature which was not able to replenish those things at the rate that you were consuming them. Not only that but all those products were mined, processed and transported which took immense amounts of energy. (BTW the results of all those hydrocarbons was the probable cause of a snow warning today in northwest US. Snow in june go figure).
You also have to factor into that the resources the people who bought your software took out of the earth. Those people too ate, drank etc. It's all connected and when taken as a whole it all subtracts from the earth at a non renewable rate. The wealth generated by your program came from the buyers of your program so their consumption must be added into the equation too.
I also want to mention that according to economists a yellow fin tuna has no worth until it's cut up and ends up in a sushi bar and a tree has no worth unless it's in your fireplace or your mantelpiece. This is plainly wrong and until you start measuring the worth of creatures not by what they provide to you but what they conribute to the ecosystem as a whole your math will always be wrong.
So in your example above. You consumed ungodly amounts of food, air, water, energy to live long enough to learn enough to write a piece of software. Many other people also consumed ungodly amounts of stuff so that they could give you a thousand dollars for your software. The amount of natural resources you all used up is much much more then your software ever made. Not only that but in the process you (all of you) have caused several species to become endangered or extinct which no amount of money can bring back.
I agree with you. But according to the boneheads on this thread the california energy crisis is caused by a lack of supply and can be fixed by simply drilling for more oil.
The economy may not be a zero sum game but nature is. What you are describing a money flowing around in a closed system. Somewhere down the line either somebody prints more money (leading to money being worth less) or somebody takes something out of the earth and sells it.
Even some low impact product like a software license requires natural resources. Programmer has to eat, drink, clothe himself, live in a heated house, and perhap even an office. He need a computer and electricity which required mining and drilling. The economy only grows at the expense of natural resources. Maybe they did not teach you that in econ 101 but it's true nevertheless. There is no such thing as free lunch.
As for corps VS the Govt I don't buy your dichotomy. Both are equally evil and neither is responsive to the common man. At least with the govt it's one man one vote with a corp it depends on wealth. In order to get heard in a corporation I would have to accumulate an inordinate amount of shares. It's possible to cripple both the corporations and the govt.
Regardless. The plight of the earth goes beyond petty political considerations. As the Budha once said "Man looks at the sky and says 'This is east and that is west' but the sky knows no such difference". To the forests that are disappearing it makes no difference if the chainsaws that are wielded are by a communist or a capitalist. It also makes no difference to the rest of the ecosystem which collapses along with the forest. It all comes back to bite you in the end.
The fact is that the capitalist nations where private ownership is worshipped as a religion use a HUGE percentage of the worlds resources. The reason those forests are being cut down is to supply the United States with coffee, sugar, beef, cocaine, and marijuana (amongst other things).
It's smart for us to destroy other peoples forests first but eventually they will run out and we will have to start in on our own lands.
If that was the case then there would have to be a gradual increase in prices as the supply started getting shorter. That did not happen. The prices all of a sudden spiked up tenfold despite the fact that CA used seven percent less energy this year and then last year.
Something had to have happened within the last year to cause a DRASTIC reduction of supply. Once again please point our what it was that caused the supply to drop so drastically that even though they are using less energy they are paying more for it.
"your notion that all wealth comes directly from the Earth is misguided. In most modern economies have about 75% of the GDP (economic activity) is based on Services. Natural resources weighs in at a paltry 6%. Manufacturing & construction is most of the balance."
As I stated in my original post. Services require human beings who have to eat, drink, shit, wear clothes, drive cars, have a home to go to, have an office to work in. Humans consume a huge amount of natural resources. A huge percentage of the oil usage in the world is to move humans from one place to another or to heat their homes and offices, a good percentage of the wood used in the world to shelter humans (and of course to entertain them with the sunday times and to wipe their butts). Take away those natural resources and your human beings are no longer able to supply the services which constitute the 75% of economic activity.
Yes all money comes from the earth. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Well I'll modify that a little. If and only if you use natural resources at the rate that they are being replenished then you are OK. We can sort of presume the sun will be here forever supplying the energy which makes it all possible. But of course this is not the case in any natural resource you can think of.
We used to feel superior to nations who used prison labor now of course we are amongst them. Consider this.
The reason why there is a war on drugs (or for that matter there are a billion laws in the books) is so that we can jail people at will. By increasing the prison population we are providing a source fo cheap labor for the major corporations of the world who are in turn giving money to politicians who pass more laws.
I will guarantee you this. Every day you break a law the only reason you are not in jail is because a cop let you skate.
Well they are soul-less immortal beings who are summoned by a cabal of priest like humans who scribetexts in an arcane language. Once summoned into being these creatures then serve the people who summoned them.
In every culture there are soul-less immortal beings and in every culture they are regarded as being evil.
Also consider that corporations have no souls and therefore have no moral imperitive. A corporation has only a profit imperitive. If you are a follower of christ then this might seem like an evil being (love of money being the root of all evil and all that). A corporation exists only from the love of money and only to feed that love by collecting money.
Weather you think a corporation is evil or not depends on your own religious upbringing and your god. I thik that in a christian outlook corporation are most certainly evil. If you are moslem less so (mohammed was not as anti-capitalist as christ but even he was adamant about thiting). If you are budhist you do not think in terms of good an evil but in terms of attachment and the I am pretty sure the Budha would regard corporations and attachment to money and worldly things as leading to misery. If you are an atheist then of course corporations are not evil.
Slashdot Mirror
"Microsoft is not Satan, Hitler, Stalin, Big Brother, MegaCorp(tm), or anything of the sort. It's a software company"
MS is a megacorp and much worse. Hitler and Stalin are evil becasue they killed millions of humans which is a profoundly evil thing to do. What Bill Gates wants to do is much worse. He want's to kill what separates you from the animals in the first place. The ability to communicate and pass on information freely from one human to another and from one generation to another. It's one thing to kill humans it's another to kill what makes you human in the first place.
Even if you totally disagree with me, even if Bill gates is not as evil as Hitler or Stalin he is still a pretty evil person who has committed evil acts against other companies and people. At a minimum he is a criminal (perjury) and his company has comitted criminal acts (evidence tampering, witness tampering). These things should not be so easaliy dismissed.
Even if you disagree with the fact that they are criminals not even you will deny that MS is a threat to open source software and an enemy of open source. They cleary think you, me and millions of other programmers are communist, un-american and a threat to the american way of life. They are spending millions of dollars bribing congress, advertising and spreading lies about the open source movement. This alone makes it important that every open source developer fight them at every opportunity to do so.
And finally I don't think that nybody would argue that Bill Gates, Jim Allchin, Steve Ballmer etc are liars. They have lied publicly, frequently and effectively all of their lives to further their own agenda which is nothing less then accumulating as much money as humanly possible. Well last I checked the bible said the love of money is the root of all evil. I guess you are going to have to take it up with your own God.
It really depends on if they also enforce registration overseas. They are not probably stupid enough to force people in other countries to pay for software. Instead they will use increased revenue fom the US and Europe to subsidize pirating in the third world. In a perfect world all MS products would have to be protected everywhere. This way nobody in south america, africa, china etc would be able to afford MS products and choose lower cost alternatives or free ones thereby breaking the MS monopoly.
Like I said though they are not stupid enough to make everybody pay just the stupid American sheeple.
It does not matter who they blame it on as long as they are broke they can't bribe the congress critters.
Please re-read my post. Notice I said
"Also consider that when you are the powerful ruling class it's easy to let insults pass. If you are on the lower rungs of the food chain it's harder to just laugh things off. "
In America where you and I and Slashdot live the powerful happens to be the white race.
You seem to suggest that the best way to deal with racism is to just laugh it off or to let it go. I suppose that's one way. I don't agree. I think you should fight it at every occurance. If you see or hear racism then point it out and berate the person. Point out that they are racist (nobody not even david duke will admit to being a racist) so that people around them will take note. I guess I don't like the "turn the other cheek" way of dealing with insults it sounds to me a bit too much like "shut up and take it (bitch, nigger, kike, spic, raghead etc.).
BTW it's great to have a sense of humor but not at the expense of other people. Being funny does not have to involve making fun of other people or putting them down. Sure it's a cheap laugh here on slashdot to make fun of blacks especially when you are anonymous and don't have to face the audience but it's also sleazy and cheap.
"IMHO no words are racist. words alone cannot be racist no matter what they say"
Are you married? Do you have a girlfriend? How about a mother? Do you have a woman coworker or a boss? If so try this.
Walk up to a woman in your life and say the following. "Hi bitch would you mind handing me the stapler?" Or "Hey bitch could you please get me a glass of water?". Then kindly explain to them that words are just words and the when you say "bitch" to them you are not actually meaning anything bad.
"I think we should all endevour not to take offense too easily. Perhaps doing so would reduce the general stress level."
Well that's easy to say when you are not being the butt of somebodies joke. The fact of the matter is that you don't get to choose how, where and when somebody can be offended. If somebody directs a racist epitath towards me I get to choose weather to get offended or not.
Also consider that when you are the powerful ruling class it's easy to let insults pass. If you are on the lower rungs of the food chain it's harder to just laugh things off. Take your rednecks and blacks example. Have you ever heard of a bunch of blacks lynching a redneck? Dragging one behind their truck till he got dismembered? What are the chances of a black man denying a redneck a job or housing?
If you tell a redneck joke the redneck isn't thinking "wow maybe this guy will kill me" but if you tell a nigger joke the recipient is. Somewhere in the back of his mind he is thinking you just might decide to chain him to the bumper and go for a joyride. Maybe it's not justified but I guarantee you it's there and it did not get there on it's own. These thoughts are reinforced every day in little ways.
This kind of stuff happens all the time though. Here is a recent and great example.
Bill Clinton during the waning days of his administration passed the roadless wilderness protection act (I don't remember the exact name of the bill but the intent was to stop building roads in roadless areas of the forests). The State of Idaho sued to prevent this law from taking effect. By the time the suit arrived in court it was up to the Bush Justice dept to defend the bill (which of course they did not like one bit). The Ashcroft Justice dept filed a two sentence brief in defence of the act. When it came to argue before the judge they used up four minutes of their allocated thirty and then sat down.
The net effect of course was that the Judge (who also was a republican) was able to stop the enactment of the bill.
This kind of shenanigans goes on at the highest levels of our govt and commerce. Do you honestly think that the Ashcroft Justice Dept will pursue MS with the same zeal that the Reno Justice dept did? Of course not.
You point out why it's always good to root for and support the underdog no matter who it is. If one day AMD becomes dominant then we should help out intel.
Monopolies are bad for the consumer.
The problem with MSDN is that there is only recent information. Any older technology documentation is all but impossible to find. Combine that with their search engine which returns a thousand hits about .NET anytime you search for anything and it's downright annoying as hell. It's better to do a search on Deja/Google then MSDN most of the time.
"This is extremely doubtful, as the most valuable thing in a knowledge-based society are knowledge-based products, worth much more than the natural resources that were indirectly consumed in their production. "
Well it's obvious tome we are using a different costing system. I think this is due to the fact that the cost of natural resources are dependent on the rate of extraction rather then the rate of replenishment. If I decide to log yellowstone national park in one year then the price of wood will drop like a rock because of oversupply. An economist will look at this and say. "I have used up only ten dollars worth of wood to build this house" or he might say "there must be an inifinate amount of wood in the world because wood is so cheap" or more likely "the amount of wood in the world must be increasing because the price is going down". In his world using his criterea, his unwillingness to consider the long term and the big picture he is probably right. I tend to look at things in the long view.
Nowhere in your calculations did you probably consider the cost of soil depletion, air pollution, increased cancer rates, disease, allergies, extinctions etc which are byproducts of this modern society.
I submit to you that your equations look good to you because you have not added up all the costs.
" I grew up hunting and working on land and being out in nature. Respecting animals and the land is not mutually exclusive with harvesting those same animals and that same land for use. "
Only if it's done in a responsible and sustainable manner. Unfortunately due to the amound of energy and resources required by the humans on this planet this is not possible. The demand for wood, paper etc far outstrips the ability of nature to grow trees fast enough.
As far as saving the earth is concerned I don't think anybody thinks that's actually possible. The best anybody can hope is to stave off disaster for a few more years. A massive catalysm occured and killed off all the dinasaours and plants on this planet a while back. For centuries afterwards the dominant species on this planet was the fern. Today we know this because there is a three inch layer of dirt which has nothing but ferns in it sandwiched between dinos and mamals. The destruction of the human species will not destroy the earth it may mean another quarter inch of dirt with nothing in it but ferns or roaches. The earth does not need saving we do.
" Nature is a zero-sum game? In what sense? A programmer has to eat, yes, but there is not a fixed amount of food; it is created anew all the time. A computer is made from raw materials, but none of them are limited in any meaningful sense."
Nature is a zero sum game. Forst of all food can be regrown but at the expense of soil depletion. Soils need to be replenished by manufacturing fertilizers which use up inordinate amounts of energy. Also due to incresed demand for food whole host of chemicals must be manufactured to fight insects and hostile plants. You are looking only in the short term and in a limited view. Taken as a whole nature is being depleted faster then it can be replenished. The seafood industry is beginning to reach it's limits and now has to cut back on their yields due to overfishing for centuries to site just one example.
You can close your eyes and pretend that there is an inifnate amount of nutrients in the soil, fish in the sea, oil in the land, water in the world but it just isn't true. Even using the energy that the earth has stored up over the last few million years has side effects in emissions.
Why is it that the conservatives believe that there is no such thing as free lunch in every endevour except natural resources. How can you possibly claim that there will never be food, water, or energy shortages when recent history is full of examples of these very things.
" Most natural resources are not scarce. In fact, they have become more plentiful and cheaper over time."
Wow your view of reality is truly warped. Take a look at any natural resource and tell me which ones have gone down in price over the last 50 or 100 years. Sure there are fluctuations in price in the short term depending on the yields harvested but in the long run the price of clean water, electricity, coal, wood etc has gone way up. In fact certain woods like teak which were once used on giant ships are worth their weight in gold now.
In the short term the president can order the massive harvesting of federal lands and flood the market with wood(thereby reducing the price of wood) but even a child knows those trees are being used up faster then they are growing. In the long run once the short term supply runs out the prices will shoot up again and even worse. Can you honestly claim that there is more oil being created by nature then is being used by mankind? Please go take a look at worldwide statistics on forests and also look at what the US is doing.
You are not doing the math right. Not only that but you are making the classic mistake of putting monetary value on things which have no inherent dollar figures attached to them.
First of all it's impossible for you to only to consume $20.00 worth of natural resources. All your life you have been suckling on the mother earths teats. You ate all your life to get to that stage where you were ready to program. You were educated, driven around, clothed, generated waste, heated, went to the movies, read papers, wiped your butt, drank beer, and wore shoes. NONE of that came for free and all of came from nature which was not able to replenish those things at the rate that you were consuming them. Not only that but all those products were mined, processed and transported which took immense amounts of energy. (BTW the results of all those hydrocarbons was the probable cause of a snow warning today in northwest US. Snow in june go figure).
You also have to factor into that the resources the people who bought your software took out of the earth. Those people too ate, drank etc. It's all connected and when taken as a whole it all subtracts from the earth at a non renewable rate. The wealth generated by your program came from the buyers of your program so their consumption must be added into the equation too.
I also want to mention that according to economists a yellow fin tuna has no worth until it's cut up and ends up in a sushi bar and a tree has no worth unless it's in your fireplace or your mantelpiece. This is plainly wrong and until you start measuring the worth of creatures not by what they provide to you but what they conribute to the ecosystem as a whole your math will always be wrong.
So in your example above. You consumed ungodly amounts of food, air, water, energy to live long enough to learn enough to write a piece of software. Many other people also consumed ungodly amounts of stuff so that they could give you a thousand dollars for your software. The amount of natural resources you all used up is much much more then your software ever made. Not only that but in the process you (all of you) have caused several species to become endangered or extinct which no amount of money can bring back.
I agree with you. But according to the boneheads on this thread the california energy crisis is caused by a lack of supply and can be fixed by simply drilling for more oil.
And how is any of that fixed by drilling for more oil?
The economy may not be a zero sum game but nature is. What you are describing a money flowing around in a closed system. Somewhere down the line either somebody prints more money (leading to money being worth less) or somebody takes something out of the earth and sells it.
Even some low impact product like a software license requires natural resources. Programmer has to eat, drink, clothe himself, live in a heated house, and perhap even an office. He need a computer and electricity which required mining and drilling. The economy only grows at the expense of natural resources. Maybe they did not teach you that in econ 101 but it's true nevertheless. There is no such thing as free lunch.
As for corps VS the Govt I don't buy your dichotomy. Both are equally evil and neither is responsive to the common man. At least with the govt it's one man one vote with a corp it depends on wealth. In order to get heard in a corporation I would have to accumulate an inordinate amount of shares. It's possible to cripple both the corporations and the govt.
Yeay. We are number two or three!
Regardless. The plight of the earth goes beyond petty political considerations. As the Budha once said "Man looks at the sky and says 'This is east and that is west' but the sky knows no such difference". To the forests that are disappearing it makes no difference if the chainsaws that are wielded are by a communist or a capitalist. It also makes no difference to the rest of the ecosystem which collapses along with the forest. It all comes back to bite you in the end.
The fact is that the capitalist nations where private ownership is worshipped as a religion use a HUGE percentage of the worlds resources. The reason those forests are being cut down is to supply the United States with coffee, sugar, beef, cocaine, and marijuana (amongst other things).
It's smart for us to destroy other peoples forests first but eventually they will run out and we will have to start in on our own lands.
If that was the case then there would have to be a gradual increase in prices as the supply started getting shorter. That did not happen. The prices all of a sudden spiked up tenfold despite the fact that CA used seven percent less energy this year and then last year.
Something had to have happened within the last year to cause a DRASTIC reduction of supply. Once again please point our what it was that caused the supply to drop so drastically that even though they are using less energy they are paying more for it.
"your notion that all wealth comes directly from the Earth is misguided. In most modern economies have about 75% of the GDP (economic activity) is based on Services. Natural resources weighs in at a paltry 6%. Manufacturing & construction is most of the balance."
As I stated in my original post. Services require human beings who have to eat, drink, shit, wear clothes, drive cars, have a home to go to, have an office to work in. Humans consume a huge amount of natural resources. A huge percentage of the oil usage in the world is to move humans from one place to another or to heat their homes and offices, a good percentage of the wood used in the world to shelter humans (and of course to entertain them with the sunday times and to wipe their butts). Take away those natural resources and your human beings are no longer able to supply the services which constitute the 75% of economic activity.
Yes all money comes from the earth. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Well I'll modify that a little. If and only if you use natural resources at the rate that they are being replenished then you are OK. We can sort of presume the sun will be here forever supplying the energy which makes it all possible. But of course this is not the case in any natural resource you can think of.
Are you denying that there is deforestation, water shortages or pollution?
We used to feel superior to nations who used prison labor now of course we are amongst them. Consider this.
The reason why there is a war on drugs (or for that matter there are a billion laws in the books) is so that we can jail people at will. By increasing the prison population we are providing a source fo cheap labor for the major corporations of the world who are in turn giving money to politicians who pass more laws.
I will guarantee you this. Every day you break a law the only reason you are not in jail is because a cop let you skate.
Last I checked the median income in the US was about 35K. Which is pretty pathetic if you ask me.
"Corporations aren't evil"
Well they are soul-less immortal beings who are summoned by a cabal of priest like humans who scribetexts in an arcane language. Once summoned into being these creatures then serve the people who summoned them.
In every culture there are soul-less immortal beings and in every culture they are regarded as being evil.
Also consider that corporations have no souls and therefore have no moral imperitive. A corporation has only a profit imperitive. If you are a follower of christ then this might seem like an evil being (love of money being the root of all evil and all that). A corporation exists only from the love of money and only to feed that love by collecting money.
Weather you think a corporation is evil or not depends on your own religious upbringing and your god. I thik that in a christian outlook corporation are most certainly evil. If you are moslem less so (mohammed was not as anti-capitalist as christ but even he was adamant about thiting). If you are budhist you do not think in terms of good an evil but in terms of attachment and the I am pretty sure the Budha would regard corporations and attachment to money and worldly things as leading to misery. If you are an atheist then of course corporations are not evil.