Actually the US committed no acts of any kind against the USSR in this particular case. They made some intentionally buggy software which was STOLEN by SPIES. A Soviet act of aggression was used in a passive way to entrap them. It was sneaky and nasty but I don't think it could be considered an act of war by any interpretation of international law.
I must have missed the part of the story that mentioned an assassination.
Also, while the term "terrorism" is fairly loose it does have SOME meaning. Terrorism is the use of violence to create fear in a population in order to intimidate or coerce a society or government. In this case the violence was rather passive (we passively let the soviets steal malware) The "sabotage" was not intended to cause fear in the general population or even among the leadership aside from a fear that stolen technology may be booby-trapped.
Fine, your I'll grant you point that "true" Communism is a fantasy. I agree that arguing the merits of "true" Communism versus western capitalism is like arguing about whether the X-Men (fictional entities like "true communism") would win in a fight against a squad of Navy SEALs (a reality like capitalism). It's a meaningless conflict that only occurs in the imagination of the communist/comic book geek. The person arguing on behalf of the fictional character can always win, since it is a fantasy it can always be redefined in the imagination in such a way that it "wins".
Still the tragedy of "practical" rather than "true" communism is that a bunch of people didn't realize that communism was merely a fantasy. They tried to turn their comic book fantasy world into reality and whenever the fantasy failed to materialize they came to the conclusion that their methods needed to be more brutal . They "progressed" from Marxism, to Marxism/Leninism, to Maoism, to Pol Pot - each new attempt seeing the failure of it's predecessor as being caused not by the fundamental unreality of their goal but in the "half-measures" compromises and a lack of sufficient brutality.
You appear to be arguing that the vicious reality doesn't discredit the fantasy but I disagree. Yes, the fantasy is beautiful, it all works so nicely on paper and in the mind but what has that to do with anything? Fantasy is easy, it ALWAYS works on paper. In the meantime the fantasists have create a very real hell on earth. Those that have escaped from it have every RIGHT to condemn the fantasists and their fantasy as a brutal failure.
This stage is NOT communism! This is an intermediate state which Marx felt was necessary during the transition *to* Communism.
I was aware that this is the plan. Frankly I think it is perfectly fair to call the dictatorships that communists set up "communist dictatorships" but if you prefer I'll call them "transitional dictatorships".
Despite having been tried on several occasions by communists of various stripes, under various conditions, they never manage to *transition* to anything beyond brutal repression and finally utter economic disaster and collapse. Again this is the result predicted by the critics of communism (or would you prefer "transitionism?").
In every case despite the best efforts of the proletariat dictatorship to create "the new soviet man" no matter how tightly controlled the individual to force him to make the "right" "choices", to be "better"; no matter how many "counterrevolutionaries" and kulaks are starved to death, no matter how many are slaughtered to remove the stain of bourgeois culture and achieve "year zero" we never seem to get any closer to the sunny uplands of universal peace, perfect equality, and brotherly love where we can finally get rid of the government that has controlled every aspect of life in its effort to create this utopia.
Might I suggest to you that there is a flaw in the plan?
I am of course speaking about an American politician in the context of American politics. Kucinich is as far to the left as you get in America. His positions as they stand would probably make him a centrist in Europe, but then again given that "politics is the art of the possible" and he has already "buried the needle" over on the left hand side of the meter do see him adopt positions even further to the left if there were a constituency for such positions.
Bull, they existed and they failed in exactly the manner that their critics predicted (devolving into brutal dictatorship, deadening bureaucracy and eventual economic stagnation). If you are saying no country has ever succeeded in implementing *working and successful* communism I would happily agree with you because such success is, and was, impossible.
All of them were/are, in the end, dictatorships.
Yes, but they were communist dictatorships. Dictatorships of the proletariat doomed to failure because those hastening the abolition of class found that the proletariat that were supposed to be dictating weren't all on the same page and needed someone else to dictate to them.
...this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. -
Karl Marx "Critique of the Gotha Programme" 1875
That 90% of the wealth is tied up in personal accounts making more money for it's master.
Exactly how does it make money for it's master though? A bank doesn't pay you interest on your money for the privilege of storing it in a vault - it DOES SOMETHING with it. If it is in a "personal account" it is being lent back out to someone who is doing something with it (starting a business, hiring employees, buying a home). This is true of the worst case scenario where the "master" is just parking it in a bank account.
The wealth of the top 10% is NOT stagnant, it is almost all INVESTED in one way or another almost all of which involve employing people at one or more points along the line. Of course the whole point of an investment is that the investor is hoping for a greater return - so after employing a bunch of people at the end of the day the rich guy is even richer. Of course as a whole the top 10% may be so much richer from the investments (which employed everyone else) that they get an even BIGGER share than the 90% they (purportedly) started out with. So the "income gap" widens even while *everyone* is doing better. One alternative could be to take all their money and thus wiping out the jobs they would have created making *everyone* poorer BUT there would be no "income gap" to complain about.
Perhaps having a lower economy but less inequality would be worth it if that 10% was a permanent over-class. But the fact is that there is tremendous social mobility both up and down the income ladder. About a third of the top quintile changes over the course of a decade, about half of the top 1% changes. Over the course of a generation the percentage of change is of course much higher. VERY few of the richest 1% (10% or 20%) stay in that niche over the course of their life. Even fewer, despite stereotypes, inherit their position in life or succeed in passing it on to their children. There are of course plenty of examples of people that DO but despite their visibility they are not typical.
Exactly, along with the simple notion that IBM's American dollars are fueling the Indian economy instead of our own. You can't pour water out of one glass into another without the water level in the first glass going down quite a bit.
I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusions but I take issue with this statement. it is not a "simple" notion, it is a "simplistic" one and it is just plain wrong.
The size of the economy, unlike the water in your glass, is not fixed, it grows at a variable rate (and on occasion it can shrink) influenced by a wide range of factors. It is likely that outsourcing to India has a net positive effect on the rate of growth of the world economy. It is even possible (though perhaps less likely) that it has a net positive effect on the American economy - that the growth in the American economy from lower IT costs freeing up money to invest elsewhere generates more money and jobs than those lost by IT professionals. Of course such a net benefit would have broad, marginal effects across the entire economy and be hard to attribute specifically to outsourcing (everybody pays slightly lower prices for stuff, on the aggregate new jobs and wealth are created as a result). The costs on the other hand are felt deeply by a distinct group (IT professionals that lost their job)
You don't think there were fart jokes back in '56? I don't think that the parent post was saying we should go backwards culturally, but that fart jokes are lame, cheap laughs that get tired quickly. They are the last refuge of a humorist that isn't very creative, talented or funny - in '56 Disney was above that, funnier, more creative, more interesting. Today Disney is flailing about, talentless, uncreative, humorless - resorting to scatological jokes in the absence of creativity. Their movies lately have been uniformly poor, and flops at the box office. Pixar on the other hand is *very* creative and funny and they almost never resort to scatological humor (I can think of only one fart joke) and when they do it's understated deriving it's humor from some other source than mere grossness. Disney by contrast is about as creative as a couple of five year olds taking turns saying "potty" and falling down laughing at their own wit.
True, but in the DVD commentary they don't only joke about it but they also express their mixed feelings about it. That they understand that scatological humor is a cheap laugh and rather lame. I don't think they were wrong, or cheap in deciding to keep it in. It was as fart jokes go very understated and it's humor wasn't only so much about being vulgar but about the juxtaposition of that massive, dramatic series of explosions resulting in nothing but a couple of bubbles.
I think It speaks very well of their artistic sensibilities that despite it's appropriateness in that particular instance they had a lot of resistance to relying on a fart joke.
I'll agree that it is more likely that Jobs is doing this to try and get Eisner axed. There are even rumors of talks between Comcast and Pixar. Pixar would get the deal they couldn't get from Eisner from Comcast and Comcast could sweeten their takeover bid by promising to bring Pixar back into the fold.
With two films left to go, it seems early for a splitting of the ways
Not really, the next movie after "cars" (and maybe even the next one after that) is already in the early stages of development. I'm sure Pixar wants to have the situation with Disney or another distributor resolved before they get too far into production. I'm sure there is a lot of advance work in marketing and distributing a movie that they will have to start thinking about pretty soon.
From there, it's just a matter of picking another niche and moving into it.
I think you are spot on. Years ago when a reporter disparaged Apple for "only being a niche player" an Apple exec came back by saying something to the effect of "if you own all the niches then you own the whole market" implying that Apples strategy is to ratchet itself up in market share by going after a series of distinct small niches. I think a lot of their recent moves in this regard have been "low hanging fruit" or even defensive moves. The film and music niches already had strong Apple presence. I think they are also moving to enlarge their share of the science/research niche (xServe cluster node, xGrid, BLAST). I wouldn't be surprised to see them buying a 3-D modeling software company to bolster their position in that part of film/video. Perhaps from there they start moving into the CAD/CAM markets. Beyond such low-hanging fruit there are a lot of other vertical markets with no particular dependence on M$ but dominated by one or two essential "industry-standard" software packages that Apple could conceivably just buy and by so doing buy themselves into market dominance of that niche.
And thanks to that mentality we will ALWAYS have a 2 party system in the US, which is little better than an Oligarcy.
I get tired of the complaints about the two party system, it has it's problems but I think it is superior to most multi-party schemes. A multi-party system where only a plurality is required to win would give us elected officials that only had the support of small minorities. A system which features a run-off between the top two candidates is back to a "lesser of two evils" situation BOTH of which may represent only a small fraction of the population. The two party system provides for a wide array of factions to put forward their candidates (in the primaries) but to emerge with a consensus candidate with broad support and an eventual winner with (in most cases;) the support of a majority.
There were 9 different Democrats running representing a reasonably wide variety of viewpoints. You have (or had) a choice of a moderate hawk (lieberman), a super-leftist (Kucinnich) a liberal pacifist (Dean), a southern populist (Edwards), a northern liberal (Kerry), a black populist (Sharpton), a union candidate (Gephardt). Over the course of the primaries where each faction will have the chance to support their favored candidate they will end up with a consensus candidate who is at least palatable to each of the factions.
The Republicans of course don't have such a range of choices this time around but they DID last time around (McCain, Baur, Keyes, Forbes et al) and Bush was the consensus candidate - you might think of him as either the greater or lesser of two evils, but face the fact that he was the first choice of some people and at least acceptable to a lot more. If he was wildly unpopular with any significant faction within the Republican party he would face a primary challenge.
The dissatisfaction with this system I think has less to do with it failing to provide voters with choices but with voters failing choose the way you want them to.
I'll refer to the research of the Economic Policy Institute about the minimum wage.
I'll see your policy wonk think tank and raise you 1, 2, 345. I'm sure you could do the same. Once you get beyond the simple laws of economics (like supply and demand) to more complex theories I challenge you to find any two economists that really agree with each other. "If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions." - Winston Churchill
Don't overuse the simple model of supply and demand, especially when issues like pricing, competition, floors, and perception are involved. The most useful models are far, far more complex.
The reality of course is far more complex than a simple graph of supply and demand. Unfortunately I don't see any evidence that any of the multitude of competing, contradicting complex models put out by a wide array of economists are any better. As I said economics is NOT really a science, they try and I think there is a good body of fundamental, basic insights into the basic behavior of economies. But as economic models become more complex the more controversial they are, there is no consensus aside from intellectual fads that wax and wane over time. Polls of economists over the years seem to indicate a great deal of agreement on the basics (like the law of supply and demand AND it's application to the minimum wage and price controls generally) while there is no agreement on the complex theories that purport to trump those basic rules. ("when done 'right', under certain conditions, at this time but not this other time, please forget that my last economic forecast was utterly wrong - I can explain that" etc. etc. etc.)
In any event even the complex models that attempt to show price controls on labor as being an exception to the basic rules of supply and demand that the vast majority of economists would agree apply to every other commodity are valid only at the margins. Perhaps a slight increase in the minimum wage would have no ill effects but I think even the most liberal economist would agree that an outrageous increase (say to $100 per hour just for an extreme example) would have a bad effect on employment. Where then is the cut-off, or the tipping point where the advantages for the poor outweigh the disadvantages? Is there even such a tipping point or does the ill effect just get smaller until it is masked by the various other effects that are also operating on the unemployment rate (or just easier to explain away as being due to other factors). If President Clinton raised the minimum wage marginally during a time of economic expansion and nearly "full employment" would we even notice the ill effects (unemployment was low, but would it have been lower still)? Would raising minimum wages during the early stages of a jobless recovery see the same absence (or masking) of ill effects? Would raising the minimum wage from $5.15/hr to a "living wage" often asserted to be $14/hr - well over double the current rate - have the same non-existent or negligible ill effects?
I think the basic laws of economics are fundamentally sound and underlie the immense complexity often masks them and provide numerous APPARENT counter-examples. I have no such confidence in various complex theories that attempt to show that these counter-examples are themselves the rule rather than the exception and that we can now ignore the old fundamental rules.
Also, those multi-generational benefits you refer to aren't going to incentivize anyone currently working.
No, but they ARE currently working which is my point. Significantly increase the minimum wage and many of them won't be.
This is a very basic and non-controversial law of economics: the law of demand. Increasing the cost of anything ALWAYS decreases the demand (all other things being equal). Increasing the cost of labor will decrease the demand for labor. The people that are hit the most by this decreased demand are the unskilled laborers whose cost to employ has now gone up and who are usually in direct competition with skilled laborers (ditch diggers vs. backhoe operators, agricultural "stoop laborers" vs. operators of mechanical harvesters etc. etc.) This has been demonstrated time after time in the real world. Minimum wage increases tend to increase unemployment among the very poor while marginally increasing the wages of their skilled labor competitors who were already earning "a decent living wage".
Ehrenreich's axe is less dogmatic than Friedman's - she was motivated as much by curiosity as anything.
No, she is an activist and a leader in the socialist party. I don't believe she was motivated out of curiosity but to prove a point she already "knew" to be true.
Your point of economics texts is partly valid, Economics is a "social science" which is really to say it's not much of a "science" at deals with subjective analysis that can't be proven in the same way a physics problem can. Still they have to account on some level with hard objective facts and I think many DO make at least some attempt to adhere to the scientific method of observation -> hypothesis -> prediction -> experimentation (or further observation) -> modification of the hypothesis. Ehnreich doesn't attempt this kind of analysis and her book is largely based on anecdotes and the personal experiences of a highly prejudiced observer in largely artificial situations she created. It's not surprising that she found what she expected.
I suspect that she fudges the experiment a bit to ensure that her hypothesis is proven true. For instance (taken from the nitpicks of largely positive reviews) she complains about the high cost of rent but never moves to split that cost with one or more roommates, she only stays at entry level jobs for a month discounting any possibility for advancement, getting a raise, increasing her level of benefits, or finding a better job in the same area. As far as I can tell she never pursues what private and public charity that remains available to help her out with some of those crushing expenses. She only appears to consider others in the same situation (people fully supporting themselves) without considering the large number of people that are only taking this kind of low wage work because they want a little extra spending money (again: teenagers, college kids, spouses working part time to supplement a primary income, empty-nesters, etc.)
70-hours of work to support a sustenance lifestyle is not a good situation.
No it's not but still a man (or woman) working 70 hours a week to just make ends meet and provide for his family has some significant advantages over the man who passively accepts the same amount as charity. The fruit of this may not be visible in one generation but I think the evidence (both statistical and anecdotal) is that passive welfare leads to multi-generational dependency and a permanent underclass whereas the back-breaking labor of the poor but self-reliant lays a foundation upon which the next generation builds solid success.
If those ditches are worth being dug at all, it's worth paying someone a basic decent wage to do it.
No. it is worth whatever it is worth to the person who wants it and at whatever wage someone is willing to do it for. A "basic decent wage" is a purely arbitrary number totally unrelated to the one persons need for a ditch and another persons need for an income. A "living wage" is the theoretical requirements of a person with the HIGHEST possible needs - a head of household with multiple dependents. If it is higher than what it is worth to the person needing the ditch they'll simply do without the ditch. Or, more likely, it will be higher than some other (formerly more expensive) means. For example what I may have once employed five guys with shovels to do I will now employ one guy with a backhoe - in either event five guys with crappy (but existent) jobs are now unemployed replaced by either no-one or by one guy with a decent job and better equipment. You believe that those five guys formerly employed as ditch diggers are better off unemployed.
As for Barbara Ehrenreich's book - it is an interesting and compelling concept I'm sure it provides valuable insights. But you should recognize that she started out with a conclusion and then set out to prove it. By doing so through the format of personal experiences and anecdotes she has ample opportunity to paint the picture in a way that confirms rather than undermines her prejudices. I'm not saying such a book lacks any value but it should taken with a grain of salt - recognized as a polemic rather than as a work of objective research.
Personally, I feel that our ditch diggers should be able to earn a decent living wage with the ability to afford the basics - decent housing, basic medical care, and a baseline education for their children - and be able to get it with 40 hours a week of work.
Exactly how much is it worth to someone else to have the ditch dug? The alternative often is not between having a job at a "too low" wage or having it at a "living wage" but between having a job at a price that is worth it to someone else to pay or not having a job at all.
What you are saying is that because sometimes adults with adult responsibilities get stuck in entry level jobs that there should not BE entry level jobs. Every job should start right from the beginning paying at a rate sufficient to meet the needs of a head of household with dependents in 40 hours of work. Teenagers, college kids, empty-nest mothers, single adults, even married adults without children - anyone without the same need for high wages that the head of a household with multiple dependents has should not have the option to work at any lower wages. Even heads of households that would be willing to should prefer unemployment and welfare rather than having to work more than 40 hours to meet their obligations.
It is an imperfect world and people that are perfectly capable and deserving of better, more worthwhile, better paying work can't find it. But I don't believe the answer to people stuck on the lower rungs of the economic ladder is to cut off those rungs.
Well, to us in America, there's only one British accent
Geez, didn't you ever watch "My fair lady"? I think most Americans know there are a variety of English accents of different regions and classes.
American English does have far fewer differences than there are in England. The majority of Americans speak one dominant dialect with generally the same syntax and grammar - most of the differences are accents pretty much effecting only pronunciation. In England there are not only regional accents but regional dialects with not only differences in pronunciation but in grammatical structure that border on being mutually incomprehensible.
If you think about it this makes sense. England is where the language formed and populations have been living in their distinct regions for many, many generations. On top of that historically there wasn't a great deal of social mobility.
In coming to America all those brits from all those regions and representing all those classes were jumbled up together right from the point the boarded the ship to come over. When they got here they moved about a great deal as the population pushed westward and there was more social mobility. All those dialects and accents pretty much evened out into one general American dialect. Even before modern communications and transportation an American would usually have less trouble understanding another American half the continent away than an Englishman would have understanding someone from three or four towns over, or potentially even someone from the same town but from a substantially different economic class.
In the book Strider uses "flaming brands of wood in each hand" because the riders fear the fire, not the useless shard of Narsil.
I realize this, but it is hard to reconcile the lordly, awesome nazgul of latter scenes with a creature that is pitifully afraid of little more than a bit of fire or crossing a shallow ford. In the book it is clear that they are growing stronger as time goes by, as their master gains power and as they are nearer him. That's probably not worth taking the time to explain in the simpler format of a movie. A sword of ancient power that wounded their master and doomed him to ~3,000 years of wandering about without physical form would understandably provoke fear.
Of course in retrospect that would be a problem because it's crucial to the plot that Aragorn be revealed latter as part of their plot to goad Sauron into action. If the Nazgul had seen Narsil earlier they would already know that there was an heir of Isuldur wandering about carrying about the tokens of his kingship.
Jackson says that he thought it would be 'silly' for him to be carrying a broken blade around for two and a half movies.
I have to say I disagree with Jackson. If the broken shard was long enough it wouldn't look that silly. And the fact that it was THE sword would explain it's effectiveness against the black riders on weathertop. Without it you lose the mystery and symbolism about Strider.
Have the talent bitch and moan about terms of original deal
Pixar is not bitching and moaning about the original deal, (three movies) which they actually extended (to five movies). They are just declining to enter a new deal.
Hold it. That is NOT what you said. From your FIRST post in this thread:
You might also note the adjective "likely." (within the realm of credibility, probable)
Again, I will point out that that same "evidence" was used to claim that Iraq could launch "WMD's" in 45 minutes.
True to a degree. The evidence for either supposition may have led to the wrong conclusion. The evidence on the ground now that we have access to Iraq's territory and many of their records is that they did not have significant WMD (despite the recent discovery of ~100 canisters of mustard gas buried in the desert)
On the other hand sources for a connection to Al Queada were not the same as the sources for WMD so they may, or may not be subject to the same flaws that led to the failure of intelligence on WMD. The truth of the matter is less likely to be easy to find out. It is after all easier to destroy a few pieces of paper recording the meetings of what could be a very small number of people than the vast number of records and production facilities, research laboratories, stockpiles etc. that would be around in the case of a robust WMD program. However the little evidence that has been found has not been as disappointing to the administration as the search for WMD. Documents have been found that show connections to groups such as Uganda's "Allied Democratic Front" that also have ties with Al Queada - which is after all an umbrella group supporting many quasi-independent subsidiary groups.
My point is not to suggest that the administration was right to do what they did. I think they went off half-cocked. But at the same time I think the blithe dismissal of any evidence suggesting links to Al Queda is ALSO coming to an unfounded conclusion. A conclusion which would also implicate the Clinton administration which made the exact same claims.
If by "better" you mean "breeding the next generation of people with a hatred of the US" then I'd have to agree with you
There is no shortage of people that hate us so a marginal increase in that number of haters is not in and of itself a substantive increase in the level of the threat that is much more than offset by the decrease in the EFFECTIVENESS of that marginally larger number of "haters" by being deprived of a safe base of operations.
Besides which IF the worst happens and the Afghan state utterly fails Afghanistan will devolve into it's natural state of ethnic hatred and warfare. The only group likely to harbor Al Queada and be in close proximity to be in danger of having their innocent civilians killed in U.S. attacks are Pashtuns who already hate us. The rest of the Afghans (Uzbecks, Tajicks, Hazeris, even Pashtun from other clans & tribes) are not going to hate us for saving them the trouble.
Again, this is the worst case scenario and one that i don't think will happen. I think it is more likely that local "warlords" will rule their different enclaves, the central government will be marginally effective at little more than keeping the regional warlords from engaging in total war. But Al Queda will NOT ever feel free to operate openly and will thus be less effective for the lack of a secure HQ and training facilities.
I'm sure Saddam would be happy to see the US leave Saudi Arabia.
Yes, that is what I said.
He (Osama) has taken weapons and money but he has not fought for any cause other than his own.
Yes, that is what I said.
Fine, Osama is willing to take weapons and $$ but doesn't change his agenda or "work with" those that provide the same. The point is that Osama's agenda was to get U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia and that this by sheer coincidence coincided with something that would make Saddam happy and is a potential motivation for him to do nothing more than provide weapons, $$ and perhaps intelligence.
And your claim is that Saddam was working with Osama to get the US out of Saudi Arabia.
I see now the problem is with reading comprehension. I did not claim such a thing, I merely said it was PLAUSIBLE and that there was a quantity of inconclusive evidence to that effect. It's not that I am sure that such a thing happened, that it is a FACT, it is that I think it is something that cannot be dismissed as a possibility, even a probablity.
Perhaps outside of mathematics there is no proof only facts. It is a sad reality that we don't always KNOW the facts and we must use the few facts we do know to make suppositions about the facts that we don't know in order to make decisions. The few facts we did know led both a Democratic and a Republican administration with significantly different biases to reach the same suppositions regarding WMD and Al Queada receiving support from Iraq.
As it turns out both administrations were wrong about WMD and perhaps also about Saddam's providing support to Al Queda. That is a HUGE problem - an intelligence failure of enormous proportions. But that is different from saying that the Bush administration (but not the Clinton administration?) were LYING, that they KNEW their stated suppositions were false and that they were acting on them to pursue different, unstated, and unscrupulous policy goals.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually the US committed no acts of any kind against the USSR in this particular case. They made some intentionally buggy software which was STOLEN by SPIES. A Soviet act of aggression was used in a passive way to entrap them. It was sneaky and nasty but I don't think it could be considered an act of war by any interpretation of international law.
I must have missed the part of the story that mentioned an assassination.
Also, while the term "terrorism" is fairly loose it does have SOME meaning. Terrorism is the use of violence to create fear in a population in order to intimidate or coerce a society or government. In this case the violence was rather passive (we passively let the soviets steal malware) The "sabotage" was not intended to cause fear in the general population or even among the leadership aside from a fear that stolen technology may be booby-trapped.
No Shake is high-end compositing software not 3-D modeling.
Fine, your I'll grant you point that "true" Communism is a fantasy. I agree that arguing the merits of "true" Communism versus western capitalism is like arguing about whether the X-Men (fictional entities like "true communism") would win in a fight against a squad of Navy SEALs (a reality like capitalism). It's a meaningless conflict that only occurs in the imagination of the communist/comic book geek. The person arguing on behalf of the fictional character can always win, since it is a fantasy it can always be redefined in the imagination in such a way that it "wins".
Still the tragedy of "practical" rather than "true" communism is that a bunch of people didn't realize that communism was merely a fantasy. They tried to turn their comic book fantasy world into reality and whenever the fantasy failed to materialize they came to the conclusion that their methods needed to be more brutal . They "progressed" from Marxism, to Marxism/Leninism, to Maoism, to Pol Pot - each new attempt seeing the failure of it's predecessor as being caused not by the fundamental unreality of their goal but in the "half-measures" compromises and a lack of sufficient brutality.
You appear to be arguing that the vicious reality doesn't discredit the fantasy but I disagree. Yes, the fantasy is beautiful, it all works so nicely on paper and in the mind but what has that to do with anything? Fantasy is easy, it ALWAYS works on paper. In the meantime the fantasists have create a very real hell on earth. Those that have escaped from it have every RIGHT to condemn the fantasists and their fantasy as a brutal failure.
This stage is NOT communism! This is an intermediate state which Marx felt was necessary during the transition *to* Communism.
I was aware that this is the plan. Frankly I think it is perfectly fair to call the dictatorships that communists set up "communist dictatorships" but if you prefer I'll call them "transitional dictatorships".
Despite having been tried on several occasions by communists of various stripes, under various conditions, they never manage to *transition* to anything beyond brutal repression and finally utter economic disaster and collapse. Again this is the result predicted by the critics of communism (or would you prefer "transitionism?").
In every case despite the best efforts of the proletariat dictatorship to create "the new soviet man" no matter how tightly controlled the individual to force him to make the "right" "choices", to be "better"; no matter how many "counterrevolutionaries" and kulaks are starved to death, no matter how many are slaughtered to remove the stain of bourgeois culture and achieve "year zero" we never seem to get any closer to the sunny uplands of universal peace, perfect equality, and brotherly love where we can finally get rid of the government that has controlled every aspect of life in its effort to create this utopia.
Might I suggest to you that there is a flaw in the plan?
You don't get out (of the US) a lot, do you? :)
I am of course speaking about an American politician in the context of American politics. Kucinich is as far to the left as you get in America. His positions as they stand would probably make him a centrist in Europe, but then again given that "politics is the art of the possible" and he has already "buried the needle" over on the left hand side of the meter do see him adopt positions even further to the left if there were a constituency for such positions.
Bull, they existed and they failed in exactly the manner that their critics predicted (devolving into brutal dictatorship, deadening bureaucracy and eventual economic stagnation). If you are saying no country has ever succeeded in implementing *working and successful* communism I would happily agree with you because such success is, and was, impossible.
All of them were/are, in the end, dictatorships.
Yes, but they were communist dictatorships. Dictatorships of the proletariat doomed to failure because those hastening the abolition of class found that the proletariat that were supposed to be dictating weren't all on the same page and needed someone else to dictate to them.
That 90% of the wealth is tied up in personal accounts making more money for it's master.
Exactly how does it make money for it's master though? A bank doesn't pay you interest on your money for the privilege of storing it in a vault - it DOES SOMETHING with it. If it is in a "personal account" it is being lent back out to someone who is doing something with it (starting a business, hiring employees, buying a home). This is true of the worst case scenario where the "master" is just parking it in a bank account.
The wealth of the top 10% is NOT stagnant, it is almost all INVESTED in one way or another almost all of which involve employing people at one or more points along the line. Of course the whole point of an investment is that the investor is hoping for a greater return - so after employing a bunch of people at the end of the day the rich guy is even richer. Of course as a whole the top 10% may be so much richer from the investments (which employed everyone else) that they get an even BIGGER share than the 90% they (purportedly) started out with. So the "income gap" widens even while *everyone* is doing better. One alternative could be to take all their money and thus wiping out the jobs they would have created making *everyone* poorer BUT there would be no "income gap" to complain about.
Perhaps having a lower economy but less inequality would be worth it if that 10% was a permanent over-class. But the fact is that there is tremendous social mobility both up and down the income ladder. About a third of the top quintile changes over the course of a decade, about half of the top 1% changes. Over the course of a generation the percentage of change is of course much higher. VERY few of the richest 1% (10% or 20%) stay in that niche over the course of their life. Even fewer, despite stereotypes, inherit their position in life or succeed in passing it on to their children. There are of course plenty of examples of people that DO but despite their visibility they are not typical.
Exactly, along with the simple notion that IBM's American dollars are fueling the Indian economy instead of our own. You can't pour water out of one glass into another without the water level in the first glass going down quite a bit.
I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusions but I take issue with this statement. it is not a "simple" notion, it is a "simplistic" one and it is just plain wrong.
The size of the economy, unlike the water in your glass, is not fixed, it grows at a variable rate (and on occasion it can shrink) influenced by a wide range of factors. It is likely that outsourcing to India has a net positive effect on the rate of growth of the world economy. It is even possible (though perhaps less likely) that it has a net positive effect on the American economy - that the growth in the American economy from lower IT costs freeing up money to invest elsewhere generates more money and jobs than those lost by IT professionals. Of course such a net benefit would have broad, marginal effects across the entire economy and be hard to attribute specifically to outsourcing (everybody pays slightly lower prices for stuff, on the aggregate new jobs and wealth are created as a result). The costs on the other hand are felt deeply by a distinct group (IT professionals that lost their job)
"This isn't 1956, anymore... Cultures evolve."
You don't think there were fart jokes back in '56? I don't think that the parent post was saying we should go backwards culturally, but that fart jokes are lame, cheap laughs that get tired quickly. They are the last refuge of a humorist that isn't very creative, talented or funny - in '56 Disney was above that, funnier, more creative, more interesting. Today Disney is flailing about, talentless, uncreative, humorless - resorting to scatological jokes in the absence of creativity. Their movies lately have been uniformly poor, and flops at the box office. Pixar on the other hand is *very* creative and funny and they almost never resort to scatological humor (I can think of only one fart joke) and when they do it's understated deriving it's humor from some other source than mere grossness. Disney by contrast is about as creative as a couple of five year olds taking turns saying "potty" and falling down laughing at their own wit.
True, but in the DVD commentary they don't only joke about it but they also express their mixed feelings about it. That they understand that scatological humor is a cheap laugh and rather lame. I don't think they were wrong, or cheap in deciding to keep it in. It was as fart jokes go very understated and it's humor wasn't only so much about being vulgar but about the juxtaposition of that massive, dramatic series of explosions resulting in nothing but a couple of bubbles.
I think It speaks very well of their artistic sensibilities that despite it's appropriateness in that particular instance they had a lot of resistance to relying on a fart joke.
I'll agree that it is more likely that Jobs is doing this to try and get Eisner axed. There are even rumors of talks between Comcast and Pixar. Pixar would get the deal they couldn't get from Eisner from Comcast and Comcast could sweeten their takeover bid by promising to bring Pixar back into the fold.
With two films left to go, it seems early for a splitting of the ways
Not really, the next movie after "cars" (and maybe even the next one after that) is already in the early stages of development. I'm sure Pixar wants to have the situation with Disney or another distributor resolved before they get too far into production. I'm sure there is a lot of advance work in marketing and distributing a movie that they will have to start thinking about pretty soon.
From there, it's just a matter of picking another niche and moving into it.
I think you are spot on. Years ago when a reporter disparaged Apple for "only being a niche player" an Apple exec came back by saying something to the effect of "if you own all the niches then you own the whole market" implying that Apples strategy is to ratchet itself up in market share by going after a series of distinct small niches. I think a lot of their recent moves in this regard have been "low hanging fruit" or even defensive moves. The film and music niches already had strong Apple presence. I think they are also moving to enlarge their share of the science/research niche (xServe cluster node, xGrid, BLAST). I wouldn't be surprised to see them buying a 3-D modeling software company to bolster their position in that part of film/video. Perhaps from there they start moving into the CAD/CAM markets. Beyond such low-hanging fruit there are a lot of other vertical markets with no particular dependence on M$ but dominated by one or two essential "industry-standard" software packages that Apple could conceivably just buy and by so doing buy themselves into market dominance of that niche.
And thanks to that mentality we will ALWAYS have a 2 party system in the US, which is little better than an Oligarcy.
;) the support of a majority.
I get tired of the complaints about the two party system, it has it's problems but I think it is superior to most multi-party schemes. A multi-party system where only a plurality is required to win would give us elected officials that only had the support of small minorities. A system which features a run-off between the top two candidates is back to a "lesser of two evils" situation BOTH of which may represent only a small fraction of the population. The two party system provides for a wide array of factions to put forward their candidates (in the primaries) but to emerge with a consensus candidate with broad support and an eventual winner with (in most cases
There were 9 different Democrats running representing a reasonably wide variety of viewpoints. You have (or had) a choice of a moderate hawk (lieberman), a super-leftist (Kucinnich) a liberal pacifist (Dean), a southern populist (Edwards), a northern liberal (Kerry), a black populist (Sharpton), a union candidate (Gephardt). Over the course of the primaries where each faction will have the chance to support their favored candidate they will end up with a consensus candidate who is at least palatable to each of the factions.
The Republicans of course don't have such a range of choices this time around but they DID last time around (McCain, Baur, Keyes, Forbes et al) and Bush was the consensus candidate - you might think of him as either the greater or lesser of two evils, but face the fact that he was the first choice of some people and at least acceptable to a lot more. If he was wildly unpopular with any significant faction within the Republican party he would face a primary challenge.
The dissatisfaction with this system I think has less to do with it failing to provide voters with choices but with voters failing choose the way you want them to.
You forget to say that if you DON'T overreact then the terrorists will have won.
I'll refer to the research of the Economic Policy Institute about the minimum wage.
I'll see your policy wonk think tank and raise you 1, 2, 3 4 5. I'm sure you could do the same. Once you get beyond the simple laws of economics (like supply and demand) to more complex theories I challenge you to find any two economists that really agree with each other. "If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions." - Winston Churchill
Don't overuse the simple model of supply and demand, especially when issues like pricing, competition, floors, and perception are involved. The most useful models are far, far more complex.
The reality of course is far more complex than a simple graph of supply and demand. Unfortunately I don't see any evidence that any of the multitude of competing, contradicting complex models put out by a wide array of economists are any better. As I said economics is NOT really a science, they try and I think there is a good body of fundamental, basic insights into the basic behavior of economies. But as economic models become more complex the more controversial they are, there is no consensus aside from intellectual fads that wax and wane over time. Polls of economists over the years seem to indicate a great deal of agreement on the basics (like the law of supply and demand AND it's application to the minimum wage and price controls generally) while there is no agreement on the complex theories that purport to trump those basic rules. ("when done 'right', under certain conditions, at this time but not this other time, please forget that my last economic forecast was utterly wrong - I can explain that" etc. etc. etc.)
In any event even the complex models that attempt to show price controls on labor as being an exception to the basic rules of supply and demand that the vast majority of economists would agree apply to every other commodity are valid only at the margins. Perhaps a slight increase in the minimum wage would have no ill effects but I think even the most liberal economist would agree that an outrageous increase (say to $100 per hour just for an extreme example) would have a bad effect on employment. Where then is the cut-off, or the tipping point where the advantages for the poor outweigh the disadvantages? Is there even such a tipping point or does the ill effect just get smaller until it is masked by the various other effects that are also operating on the unemployment rate (or just easier to explain away as being due to other factors). If President Clinton raised the minimum wage marginally during a time of economic expansion and nearly "full employment" would we even notice the ill effects (unemployment was low, but would it have been lower still)? Would raising minimum wages during the early stages of a jobless recovery see the same absence (or masking) of ill effects? Would raising the minimum wage from $5.15/hr to a "living wage" often asserted to be $14/hr - well over double the current rate - have the same non-existent or negligible ill effects?
I think the basic laws of economics are fundamentally sound and underlie the immense complexity often masks them and provide numerous APPARENT counter-examples. I have no such confidence in various complex theories that attempt to show that these counter-examples are themselves the rule rather than the exception and that we can now ignore the old fundamental rules.
Also, those multi-generational benefits you refer to aren't going to incentivize anyone currently working.
No, but they ARE currently working which is my point. Significantly increase the minimum wage and many of them won't be.
This is a very basic and non-controversial law of economics: the law of demand. Increasing the cost of anything ALWAYS decreases the demand (all other things being equal). Increasing the cost of labor will decrease the demand for labor. The people that are hit the most by this decreased demand are the unskilled laborers whose cost to employ has now gone up and who are usually in direct competition with skilled laborers (ditch diggers vs. backhoe operators, agricultural "stoop laborers" vs. operators of mechanical harvesters etc. etc.) This has been demonstrated time after time in the real world. Minimum wage increases tend to increase unemployment among the very poor while marginally increasing the wages of their skilled labor competitors who were already earning "a decent living wage".
Ehrenreich's axe is less dogmatic than Friedman's - she was motivated as much by curiosity as anything.
No, she is an activist and a leader in the socialist party. I don't believe she was motivated out of curiosity but to prove a point she already "knew" to be true.
Your point of economics texts is partly valid, Economics is a "social science" which is really to say it's not much of a "science" at deals with subjective analysis that can't be proven in the same way a physics problem can. Still they have to account on some level with hard objective facts and I think many DO make at least some attempt to adhere to the scientific method of observation -> hypothesis -> prediction -> experimentation (or further observation) -> modification of the hypothesis. Ehnreich doesn't attempt this kind of analysis and her book is largely based on anecdotes and the personal experiences of a highly prejudiced observer in largely artificial situations she created. It's not surprising that she found what she expected.
I suspect that she fudges the experiment a bit to ensure that her hypothesis is proven true. For instance (taken from the nitpicks of largely positive reviews) she complains about the high cost of rent but never moves to split that cost with one or more roommates, she only stays at entry level jobs for a month discounting any possibility for advancement, getting a raise, increasing her level of benefits, or finding a better job in the same area. As far as I can tell she never pursues what private and public charity that remains available to help her out with some of those crushing expenses. She only appears to consider others in the same situation (people fully supporting themselves) without considering the large number of people that are only taking this kind of low wage work because they want a little extra spending money (again: teenagers, college kids, spouses working part time to supplement a primary income, empty-nesters, etc.)
70-hours of work to support a sustenance lifestyle is not a good situation.
No it's not but still a man (or woman) working 70 hours a week to just make ends meet and provide for his family has some significant advantages over the man who passively accepts the same amount as charity. The fruit of this may not be visible in one generation but I think the evidence (both statistical and anecdotal) is that passive welfare leads to multi-generational dependency and a permanent underclass whereas the back-breaking labor of the poor but self-reliant lays a foundation upon which the next generation builds solid success.
If those ditches are worth being dug at all, it's worth paying someone a basic decent wage to do it.
No. it is worth whatever it is worth to the person who wants it and at whatever wage someone is willing to do it for. A "basic decent wage" is a purely arbitrary number totally unrelated to the one persons need for a ditch and another persons need for an income. A "living wage" is the theoretical requirements of a person with the HIGHEST possible needs - a head of household with multiple dependents. If it is higher than what it is worth to the person needing the ditch they'll simply do without the ditch. Or, more likely, it will be higher than some other (formerly more expensive) means. For example what I may have once employed five guys with shovels to do I will now employ one guy with a backhoe - in either event five guys with crappy (but existent) jobs are now unemployed replaced by either no-one or by one guy with a decent job and better equipment. You believe that those five guys formerly employed as ditch diggers are better off unemployed.
As for Barbara Ehrenreich's book - it is an interesting and compelling concept I'm sure it provides valuable insights. But you should recognize that she started out with a conclusion and then set out to prove it. By doing so through the format of personal experiences and anecdotes she has ample opportunity to paint the picture in a way that confirms rather than undermines her prejudices. I'm not saying such a book lacks any value but it should taken with a grain of salt - recognized as a polemic rather than as a work of objective research.
Personally, I feel that our ditch diggers should be able to earn a decent living wage with the ability to afford the basics - decent housing, basic medical care, and a baseline education for their children - and be able to get it with 40 hours a week of work.
Exactly how much is it worth to someone else to have the ditch dug? The alternative often is not between having a job at a "too low" wage or having it at a "living wage" but between having a job at a price that is worth it to someone else to pay or not having a job at all.
What you are saying is that because sometimes adults with adult responsibilities get stuck in entry level jobs that there should not BE entry level jobs. Every job should start right from the beginning paying at a rate sufficient to meet the needs of a head of household with dependents in 40 hours of work. Teenagers, college kids, empty-nest mothers, single adults, even married adults without children - anyone without the same need for high wages that the head of a household with multiple dependents has should not have the option to work at any lower wages. Even heads of households that would be willing to should prefer unemployment and welfare rather than having to work more than 40 hours to meet their obligations.
It is an imperfect world and people that are perfectly capable and deserving of better, more worthwhile, better paying work can't find it. But I don't believe the answer to people stuck on the lower rungs of the economic ladder is to cut off those rungs.
Well, to us in America, there's only one British accent
Geez, didn't you ever watch "My fair lady"? I think most Americans know there are a variety of English accents of different regions and classes.
American English does have far fewer differences than there are in England. The majority of Americans speak one dominant dialect with generally the same syntax and grammar - most of the differences are accents pretty much effecting only pronunciation. In England there are not only regional accents but regional dialects with not only differences in pronunciation but in grammatical structure that border on being mutually incomprehensible.
If you think about it this makes sense. England is where the language formed and populations have been living in their distinct regions for many, many generations. On top of that historically there wasn't a great deal of social mobility.
In coming to America all those brits from all those regions and representing all those classes were jumbled up together right from the point the boarded the ship to come over. When they got here they moved about a great deal as the population pushed westward and there was more social mobility. All those dialects and accents pretty much evened out into one general American dialect. Even before modern communications and transportation an American would usually have less trouble understanding another American half the continent away than an Englishman would have understanding someone from three or four towns over, or potentially even someone from the same town but from a substantially different economic class.
In the book Strider uses "flaming brands of wood in each hand" because the riders fear the fire, not the useless shard of Narsil.
I realize this, but it is hard to reconcile the lordly, awesome nazgul of latter scenes with a creature that is pitifully afraid of little more than a bit of fire or crossing a shallow ford. In the book it is clear that they are growing stronger as time goes by, as their master gains power and as they are nearer him. That's probably not worth taking the time to explain in the simpler format of a movie. A sword of ancient power that wounded their master and doomed him to ~3,000 years of wandering about without physical form would understandably provoke fear.
Of course in retrospect that would be a problem because it's crucial to the plot that Aragorn be revealed latter as part of their plot to goad Sauron into action. If the Nazgul had seen Narsil earlier they would already know that there was an heir of Isuldur wandering about carrying about the tokens of his kingship.
Jackson says that he thought it would be 'silly' for him to be carrying a broken blade around for two and a half movies.
I have to say I disagree with Jackson. If the broken shard was long enough it wouldn't look that silly. And the fact that it was THE sword would explain it's effectiveness against the black riders on weathertop. Without it you lose the mystery and symbolism about Strider.
Have the talent bitch and moan about terms of original deal
Pixar is not bitching and moaning about the original deal, (three movies) which they actually extended (to five movies). They are just declining to enter a new deal.
the recent pooh suit setback
I don't know what this is but it sound disgusting.
Hold it. That is NOT what you said. From your FIRST post in this thread:
You might also note the adjective "likely." (within the realm of credibility, probable)
Again, I will point out that that same "evidence" was used to claim that Iraq could launch "WMD's" in 45 minutes.
True to a degree. The evidence for either supposition may have led to the wrong conclusion. The evidence on the ground now that we have access to Iraq's territory and many of their records is that they did not have significant WMD (despite the recent discovery of ~100 canisters of mustard gas buried in the desert)
On the other hand sources for a connection to Al Queada were not the same as the sources for WMD so they may, or may not be subject to the same flaws that led to the failure of intelligence on WMD. The truth of the matter is less likely to be easy to find out. It is after all easier to destroy a few pieces of paper recording the meetings of what could be a very small number of people than the vast number of records and production facilities, research laboratories, stockpiles etc. that would be around in the case of a robust WMD program. However the little evidence that has been found has not been as disappointing to the administration as the search for WMD. Documents have been found that show connections to groups such as Uganda's "Allied Democratic Front" that also have ties with Al Queada - which is after all an umbrella group supporting many quasi-independent subsidiary groups.
My point is not to suggest that the administration was right to do what they did. I think they went off half-cocked. But at the same time I think the blithe dismissal of any evidence suggesting links to Al Queda is ALSO coming to an unfounded conclusion. A conclusion which would also implicate the Clinton administration which made the exact same claims.
If by "better" you mean "breeding the next generation of people with a hatred of the US" then I'd have to agree with you
There is no shortage of people that hate us so a marginal increase in that number of haters is not in and of itself a substantive increase in the level of the threat that is much more than offset by the decrease in the EFFECTIVENESS of that marginally larger number of "haters" by being deprived of a safe base of operations.
Besides which IF the worst happens and the Afghan state utterly fails Afghanistan will devolve into it's natural state of ethnic hatred and warfare. The only group likely to harbor Al Queada and be in close proximity to be in danger of having their innocent civilians killed in U.S. attacks are Pashtuns who already hate us. The rest of the Afghans (Uzbecks, Tajicks, Hazeris, even Pashtun from other clans & tribes) are not going to hate us for saving them the trouble.
Again, this is the worst case scenario and one that i don't think will happen. I think it is more likely that local "warlords" will rule their different enclaves, the central government will be marginally effective at little more than keeping the regional warlords from engaging in total war. But Al Queda will NOT ever feel free to operate openly and will thus be less effective for the lack of a secure HQ and training facilities.
I'm sure Saddam would be happy to see the US leave Saudi Arabia.
Yes, that is what I said.
He (Osama) has taken weapons and money but he has not fought for any cause other than his own.
Yes, that is what I said.
Fine, Osama is willing to take weapons and $$ but doesn't change his agenda or "work with" those that provide the same. The point is that Osama's agenda was to get U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia and that this by sheer coincidence coincided with something that would make Saddam happy and is a potential motivation for him to do nothing more than provide weapons, $$ and perhaps intelligence.
And your claim is that Saddam was working with Osama to get the US out of Saudi Arabia.
I see now the problem is with reading comprehension. I did not claim such a thing, I merely said it was PLAUSIBLE and that there was a quantity of inconclusive evidence to that effect. It's not that I am sure that such a thing happened, that it is a FACT, it is that I think it is something that cannot be dismissed as a possibility, even a probablity.
Perhaps outside of mathematics there is no proof only facts. It is a sad reality that we don't always KNOW the facts and we must use the few facts we do know to make suppositions about the facts that we don't know in order to make decisions. The few facts we did know led both a Democratic and a Republican administration with significantly different biases to reach the same suppositions regarding WMD and Al Queada receiving support from Iraq.
As it turns out both administrations were wrong about WMD and perhaps also about Saddam's providing support to Al Queda. That is a HUGE problem - an intelligence failure of enormous proportions. But that is different from saying that the Bush administration (but not the Clinton administration?) were LYING, that they KNEW their stated suppositions were false and that they were acting on them to pursue different, unstated, and unscrupulous policy goals.