I think I've burned too much time trying on this particular thread, but I did want to close by making some observations about the nature of the thread.
You're first point, that we do not agree on what exactly capitalism is, is evident from the rest of the thread. I wouldn't say I'm a pure capitalist from your point of view. Of course neither are Adam Smith or F. A. Hayek, of Friedman. I would say im a liberal (in the traditional sense) and do believe in Smith's credo about "Public goods". Thus a lot of the comments you made don't really square with what I think.
I would say that freedom and capitalism are, to some degree, symbiotic. That is one works much better with the other. Authoritarian capitalism is "a house divided", in the same way that libertarian socialism is. In the real world people don't operate strictly as either one or the other. They achive a balance between the two, like "the political compass" suggests (though i might not agree with where they place some individuals on the spectrum, but that is open for legitimate debate). The point is that capitalism is fundamentally a system that relies on both individualism and governance by necessity. As opposed to a sort of feudal/lord system which has less "government" and thus you might think it more "free market", or socialism, which relies on group power. Neither is good in the extreme (you'd be trading one form of mob rule for another). To me that is the fundamental problem with both systems.
As an interesting aside, I was simply unable to take your test on the politcal compass website. The first question, "If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations." abbruptly ended the test. The reason is, of course, that in my view, that is not an either or question, because it will do both and because fundamentally the "transnational corporations" are owned by humanity. Thus there was no "correct answer" for me to click.:)
Honestly, I think Macs are better home computers, and im not sure Linux will ever truly cater to the nontechincal home user. The people just want to use their computer and aren't the tinkering poweruser type. The Macs at home will cooperate well with the Linux desktops at work. At work linux can be set up to do the work tasks and left alone, using a (thinner)client/server model. They might also shine as technical workstations, but then again so do G5 powermacs. Basically, in my opinion, home type users are better off with OSX macs because they are using them as PCs=(personal computers) whereas linux is a much better server/client choice, which seems more appropriate in a work environment. Whether the "workstation" class business machines are OSX or linux would probably depend on whether the business was small with little tech dept. (OSX) or big/corporate (linux).
Not to belabor the discussion, but I just wanted to correct a few things.
"Capitalism says nothing about politics"
No, but the fundamental principles of capitalism require the empowerment of individuals. And well as rule of law. Capitalism is a subsystem of the political system. A semi-stable political system that provides these things is necessary for capitalism to function at all.
" But unlike you, I am willing to consider alternatives. You clearly are not, because you are conformist."
I doubt you know me personally, so such a remark is highly specualtive in nature, but looking beyond that, my comment is that I haven't seen any better alternative. If you discover one, please let me know, but I certainly haven't been convinced by the arguments of socialism or anarchism, so we'll have to agree to disagree there.
"Doesn't matter. The point is that they are CAPITALIST failures!" So even if the policy is not capitalism, we can blame capitialism for the failure? My point was that most of these countries lack certain "capitalistic" institutions and values. These things take time to establish. Stable governments don't just pop up over night and work wonders. Actually they can, but only once the right institutions and values exist to allow such a transformation. (Such as West Germany after WWII.)
"Furthermore, the corruption faced by these countries is no different than, say, USA--except for the scope and magnitude. "
That's like saying there is no difference between running cross country and walking to the neighbors. Size and scope matter a great deal.
"What other person, other than a capitalist, would have the power to influence a country" And for 1000 points alex the answer is... a politician. Ding ding, thanks for playing.:) Ok that was a little tongue in cheek, but the point is that in reality not country engages in "pure capitalism", but some adhere to it more closely than others.
"Some capitalists are anarchists but they are a tiny minority." I guess that depends on how broadly you define capitalism. But I didn't define my terms, so I'll grant you that one, especially since it really doesn't pertain directly to the point I'm making.
"Actually, most people do NOT change classes in their lifetimes...But this doesn't change anything." Well at least you concede the statistically proven point that the great majority of people in the bottom 1/5 in any year do not remain their over their lifetime, This is a fact, at least in the US, again, the country whose statistics I am most familiar with. I would say it changes a great deal, viewed over the scope of a lifetime rather than the immediate term. It means that you have the ability to affect change in your life and the lives of others, unlike under the other system. Their is no system under which everyone has all the control they want, but capitialism lets the individual affect change, even if it seems small in the scheme of things.
"Yes the pie is getting bigger but that doesn't change anything." It certainly does. While humans like to benchmark their wellbeing against that of their neighbors, I would say that given the choice of everyone being a little better off ( with some much better) and everyone being "equal" (in whatever arbitrary fashion you find to be equal) and a little worse off, I think most people would prefer to be better off. It is the wealthy capitalist countries where socialism holds the more allure, since the gains of capitalism are taken for granted, so the focus is left to the disparity of wealth. It remains to be seen how individuals will react, so your prediction may happen, but I would be willing to bet that the results will not be good for such a country in the long run. Oh yes, and the French revolution was a monarcy with disparity in wealth and it did cause a revolution. But as you pointed out earlier yourself, it certainly isn't capitalism and they are certainly not interchangeable as econo/political systems (unless you consider mercantilism capitalism, but I'm not u
Actually, the US population is only growing right now because of immigration. Once the baby boomers start to retire in a couple years there will be lots of jobs by necessity, both caring for them and replacing them in the workforce, even if some of the jobs are obsoleted. Frankly, individuals time is just too expensive, even in "low paying jobs" for them to not use high levels of labor multiplying technology. So continuing growth in productivity is basically very important for the US, and that is happing now, which bodes well for the long term.
I could spend all day highlighting the dubious propositions you make in this post. But I don't have an unlimited supply of time, so I'll stick to the most glaring problems.
1. You cannot disprove a negative (that capitalism is the only way to produce the current level of wealth). OTOH, I can turn that right around and say that certain characteristics that are considered "capitalistic" and "constitutionally democratic" have a very high correlation to a nation's wealth. So while I cannot disprove the possibility of a theoretically better way, I have yet to see anyone offer a better alternative.
2. The countries you site as example of failures of capitalism (Indonesia, Venezuela and Argentina) were highly corrupt, with very weak judicial systems, and certainly not well established capitalist countries. You are citing the failure of a system that these countries never did manage to implement. Rule of law is a very minimal requirement for capitalism to function, which is why capitalists are not anarchists. In order of incentives to work, the legal system has to be at least translucent and at least vaguely predictable. Oh yeah, and U of C economist would never recommend pegging a currency to the dollar.
3. The problem with your labeling of capitalism as eliteist is that the elite rich you seem to rail against are not the same people from year to year, just as the poor are a changing group. There is a large degree of income mobility, at least in the US, which are the statistics which I am most familiar with. Unlike a caste system, most people DON'T stay in one group through most of their lives.
4. Arguing about the "fairness" of the distribution of income is shortsighted and smacks of arrogance. First of all, who is the arbiter of what is fair? At what point does someone become elite? It's some much easier to make broad appeals that demonize vague groups than to cite a number. Why? Because the entire exercise in "fairness" is an entirely subjective and arbitrary exercise to begin with.
5. Question, would you rather have 1/2 of a personal sized pizza or 1/4 of a large full sized pizza? The point is that the relative size of the pie matters, not just one's share of the pie. Yeah some people are better off than others, but that is the price you pay to grow the pie. The only question for the people is, is my slice getting bigger, because that is really the only objective way for an individual to judge the success and failure of a system.
Actually, the US government's current position on global warming is that the best scientific evidence says that it is happening. What the disagreement entails is exactly is the nature and timing of the problems it would cause, and how much of this warming is caused by human activity, vs. natural climatic change and "data pollution". Also, what are the costs and benefits of action and inaction. Of course no one really has a good answer to these questions, which is why the US govt has taken the "we need more research" position.
Dude, you might want to check your facts on that one.
North Korea is a socialist dicatorship, which is about the same thing, or worse, to those who live there.
"So? Why only a tax break for the rich?"
I don't think anyone is suggesting that, least I'm not. What they are suggesting is that anyone who is paying taxes should get a break, whether rich or poor. Because all of them, to some degree or another, contribute to the economic picture in some way. I'm basically saying "unbalanced" tax cuts, to select individuals, just further distorts the incentives. The tax code is not the best way to help those who are not as well off, nor is it the best way to change the incentives.
The US GOVERNMENT hasn't adapted the law to get with the times. A steel company that employes 3,000 people today has to pay 100% of the health insurance costs of 40,000 retirees.
This is why traditional pensions and retirement benefits are such a bad idea. It's also why big companies are happy to have social security and govenment healthcare, because it's not their problem then. In reality, individuals ought to be the owners of THEIR retirement money.
The fallacy in this kind of reasoning is in trying to force an economic model onto a natural system -- trying to convert a healthy environment into a marketable commodity with some monetary value so that we can trade it away for money, the value of which can be determined through market forces....The proper way is to set strict environmental protections that don't allow the destruction in the first place and then the manufacturer will have to produce his goods in ways that are responsible and sustainable.
You are looking at this from the wrong direction.
What law are you going to pass? Ambient air standards are fine, but what are you going to require to fix problems, a technology standard? How will you take into account the value of what each polluter is producing, will very large polluters be restricted to the same amount of pollution a smaller ones? Pollution reduction costs may be cheeper for some industries than for others. The point is to let a market determine the value of the right to produce a certain amount of pollution. Lookup tradable pollution credits. The problem with just legislating one standard is that there are more efficient ways to achive what you are trying to accomplish.
I do have to take issue with your statement about Egypt. They do have free elections, unlike Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. OTOH, Kuait is much more liberal and democratic than it was just 10 years ago. Oman is also very "western".
Next, the Chavez government was in gross violation of the constitution, and im not talking PATRIOT ACT bad, I'm talking desolving the courts and throwing judges that he didnt like out of office bad. So the US probably would have been happy to see him gone. But they didn't exactly back the revolutionaries either, precisely because the US didn't know what their goals were.
I don't deny that the US has helped out some very unsavory characters, but the idea that the alternative was much better seems to be an example in poorly thought out monday morning quarterbacking.
The problem with redistribution is that "total equality" isn't really achievable if you want to preserve incentives, the more "equity" you try to inject into the system, the less incentive everyone has. The best we can hope to do is give everyone a chance at well rounded education.
Actually the returning jobs aren't going to detroit, they are going to mississippi and kentucky, because they are cheeper places to live. But the irony is that most "Japanese" cars are assembled in the US now because they found that is was cheeper than manufacturing them in Japan. Of course the parts of the car come from all over the world, just like American cars, but much of the assembling is done here.
"However, if the decision is to mow your own lawn or sit on your ass and pay the neighbor's kid to do it, you're better off doing it yourself."
That depends on how highly Michael Jordan values his free time. Free time has value too. Some people value it more than others, both relatively and absolutely. And that is related to how much they earn.
Free Healthcare is not capital. Period. Under any definition.
When you say that most americans have no net capital, are you excluding their houses, and of course social security, which is a promised future benefit that discourages personal savings.
I'll say it again. Filtering and blacklists would be highly effective if you couldn't forge email addresses. The way to ensure that email isn't forged is to use RMX records. To verify that the server sending the message is actually the mail sending server for that domain. Yes you could still set up a spam domain, but it would be much easier to block such a site, since it could not hide it's identity. This would increase the effecitveness of serverside blacklists and filtering software.
That standard really doesn't hold as well in a civil war where the line between combatants and military is much much less clear. I don't mean to excuse Grant's behavior, just to say that it is not necessarily a directly analogous to other situations.
"Iraq WAS its own sovereign country before we invaded it."
Yeah, a sovereign country run by a really bad dictator.
There was no self determination going on here.
Yeah, in the past the US was willing to overlook or even favor certain dictators rather than more popular revolutionaries because the US, perhaps legitimately, feared that many of these populist groups were aligned with the USSR. However the US doesn't have to worry about that anymore. Thus they can now afford to be a bit more particular about who they align themselves with and support.
Re:Why, exactly, the *fear* of China?
on
The Future of NASA
·
· Score: 1
Actually it's a matter of leverage and willingness to endure casualties. They don't need as many nukes as the US has to "even the balance" This is true because they are more willing to take casualties for cultural and population reasons. If the US nuked Shanghi and china Nuked LA I think most people would consider it a loss to the US. Basically it boils down to the willingness to sacrific lives, which, IMHO the US is less willing to do than the Chinese.
That's why less than 20 nukes is an effective deterrent, because its all you would need to really damage a country. Remember, you don't have to destroy the whole country, just get "out of the way". It all depends on how many casualties a country's leaders are willing to endure. And how much damage they can do.
I hate to break it to you, but Haliburton has been a common government contractor for years, way before any of the "special connections" they supposedly have now. There's no big Bush conspiracy to pay off Haliburton, in fact, they didn't get a whole lot of money (compared to what they usually deal with) in these special Iraq contracts.
And if you finish the joke, the student picks up the bill, thus proving the professor's point. On the whole, you are never likely to see a 20 laying on the street, because all the starving students pick it up right away.
Frankly all the possible combinations that ACLs provide only serve to add unneeded complexity to the matter. The judicious use of groups and unix permissions, which, IMO are much simpler to grok that the ACLs, results in a system that is easier for the administator to understand. And thus the system is more likely to be correctly configured, with proper security. Yeah ACLs are "more powerful", and if you want them Linux will support them (in ext3 and jfs or xfs iirc). It's better to have "simple" permissions done correctly, than to have your "fine grained ACLs" configured wrong.
It's really an application of KISS and the 80/20 rule.
Frankly, I'm not entirely convinced that ACLs really provide anything that groups can't. ACL's make the easy moderately difficult, and the difficult moderately difficult. Where as standard unix permissions and groups make the easy easy, and the difficult difficult. Yeah, you can add all the fine grained stuff you want, but the need for that is the exception rather than the rule. So why compliate the simple stuff, just to make the diffcult stuff only moderately easier?
Slashdot Mirror
I always thought 50 years was a good date. I really settled on that one after the economists brief during eldred vs. ashcroft.
You're first point, that we do not agree on what exactly capitalism is, is evident from the rest of the thread. I wouldn't say I'm a pure capitalist from your point of view. Of course neither are Adam Smith or F. A. Hayek, of Friedman. I would say im a liberal (in the traditional sense) and do believe in Smith's credo about "Public goods". Thus a lot of the comments you made don't really square with what I think.
I would say that freedom and capitalism are, to some degree, symbiotic. That is one works much better with the other. Authoritarian capitalism is "a house divided", in the same way that libertarian socialism is. In the real world people don't operate strictly as either one or the other. They achive a balance between the two, like "the political compass" suggests (though i might not agree with where they place some individuals on the spectrum, but that is open for legitimate debate). The point is that capitalism is fundamentally a system that relies on both individualism and governance by necessity. As opposed to a sort of feudal/lord system which has less "government" and thus you might think it more "free market", or socialism, which relies on group power. Neither is good in the extreme (you'd be trading one form of mob rule for another). To me that is the fundamental problem with both systems.
As an interesting aside, I was simply unable to take your test on the politcal compass website. The first question, "If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations." abbruptly ended the test. The reason is, of course, that in my view, that is not an either or question, because it will do both and because fundamentally the "transnational corporations" are owned by humanity. Thus there was no "correct answer" for me to click. :)
Honestly, I think Macs are better home computers, and im not sure Linux will ever truly cater to the nontechincal home user. The people just want to use their computer and aren't the tinkering poweruser type. The Macs at home will cooperate well with the Linux desktops at work. At work linux can be set up to do the work tasks and left alone, using a (thinner)client/server model. They might also shine as technical workstations, but then again so do G5 powermacs. Basically, in my opinion, home type users are better off with OSX macs because they are using them as PCs=(personal computers) whereas linux is a much better server/client choice, which seems more appropriate in a work environment. Whether the "workstation" class business machines are OSX or linux would probably depend on whether the business was small with little tech dept. (OSX) or big/corporate (linux).
"Capitalism says nothing about politics" No, but the fundamental principles of capitalism require the empowerment of individuals. And well as rule of law. Capitalism is a subsystem of the political system. A semi-stable political system that provides these things is necessary for capitalism to function at all.
" But unlike you, I am willing to consider alternatives. You clearly are not, because you are conformist." I doubt you know me personally, so such a remark is highly specualtive in nature, but looking beyond that, my comment is that I haven't seen any better alternative. If you discover one, please let me know, but I certainly haven't been convinced by the arguments of socialism or anarchism, so we'll have to agree to disagree there.
"Doesn't matter. The point is that they are CAPITALIST failures!" So even if the policy is not capitalism, we can blame capitialism for the failure? My point was that most of these countries lack certain "capitalistic" institutions and values. These things take time to establish. Stable governments don't just pop up over night and work wonders. Actually they can, but only once the right institutions and values exist to allow such a transformation. (Such as West Germany after WWII.)
"Furthermore, the corruption faced by these countries is no different than, say, USA--except for the scope and magnitude. " That's like saying there is no difference between running cross country and walking to the neighbors. Size and scope matter a great deal.
"What other person, other than a capitalist, would have the power to influence a country" And for 1000 points alex the answer is... a politician. Ding ding, thanks for playing. :) Ok that was a little tongue in cheek, but the point is that in reality not country engages in "pure capitalism", but some adhere to it more closely than others.
"Some capitalists are anarchists but they are a tiny minority." I guess that depends on how broadly you define capitalism. But I didn't define my terms, so I'll grant you that one, especially since it really doesn't pertain directly to the point I'm making.
"Actually, most people do NOT change classes in their lifetimes...But this doesn't change anything." Well at least you concede the statistically proven point that the great majority of people in the bottom 1/5 in any year do not remain their over their lifetime, This is a fact, at least in the US, again, the country whose statistics I am most familiar with. I would say it changes a great deal, viewed over the scope of a lifetime rather than the immediate term. It means that you have the ability to affect change in your life and the lives of others, unlike under the other system. Their is no system under which everyone has all the control they want, but capitialism lets the individual affect change, even if it seems small in the scheme of things.
"Yes the pie is getting bigger but that doesn't change anything." It certainly does. While humans like to benchmark their wellbeing against that of their neighbors, I would say that given the choice of everyone being a little better off ( with some much better) and everyone being "equal" (in whatever arbitrary fashion you find to be equal) and a little worse off, I think most people would prefer to be better off. It is the wealthy capitalist countries where socialism holds the more allure, since the gains of capitalism are taken for granted, so the focus is left to the disparity of wealth. It remains to be seen how individuals will react, so your prediction may happen, but I would be willing to bet that the results will not be good for such a country in the long run. Oh yes, and the French revolution was a monarcy with disparity in wealth and it did cause a revolution. But as you pointed out earlier yourself, it certainly isn't capitalism and they are certainly not interchangeable as econo/political systems (unless you consider mercantilism capitalism, but I'm not u
Actually, the US population is only growing right now because of immigration. Once the baby boomers start to retire in a couple years there will be lots of jobs by necessity, both caring for them and replacing them in the workforce, even if some of the jobs are obsoleted. Frankly, individuals time is just too expensive, even in "low paying jobs" for them to not use high levels of labor multiplying technology. So continuing growth in productivity is basically very important for the US, and that is happing now, which bodes well for the long term.
1. You cannot disprove a negative (that capitalism is the only way to produce the current level of wealth). OTOH, I can turn that right around and say that certain characteristics that are considered "capitalistic" and "constitutionally democratic" have a very high correlation to a nation's wealth. So while I cannot disprove the possibility of a theoretically better way, I have yet to see anyone offer a better alternative.
2. The countries you site as example of failures of capitalism (Indonesia, Venezuela and Argentina) were highly corrupt, with very weak judicial systems, and certainly not well established capitalist countries. You are citing the failure of a system that these countries never did manage to implement. Rule of law is a very minimal requirement for capitalism to function, which is why capitalists are not anarchists. In order of incentives to work, the legal system has to be at least translucent and at least vaguely predictable. Oh yeah, and U of C economist would never recommend pegging a currency to the dollar.
3. The problem with your labeling of capitalism as eliteist is that the elite rich you seem to rail against are not the same people from year to year, just as the poor are a changing group. There is a large degree of income mobility, at least in the US, which are the statistics which I am most familiar with. Unlike a caste system, most people DON'T stay in one group through most of their lives.
4. Arguing about the "fairness" of the distribution of income is shortsighted and smacks of arrogance. First of all, who is the arbiter of what is fair? At what point does someone become elite? It's some much easier to make broad appeals that demonize vague groups than to cite a number. Why? Because the entire exercise in "fairness" is an entirely subjective and arbitrary exercise to begin with.
5. Question, would you rather have 1/2 of a personal sized pizza or 1/4 of a large full sized pizza? The point is that the relative size of the pie matters, not just one's share of the pie. Yeah some people are better off than others, but that is the price you pay to grow the pie. The only question for the people is, is my slice getting bigger, because that is really the only objective way for an individual to judge the success and failure of a system.
Actually, the US government's current position on global warming is that the best scientific evidence says that it is happening. What the disagreement entails is exactly is the nature and timing of the problems it would cause, and how much of this warming is caused by human activity, vs. natural climatic change and "data pollution". Also, what are the costs and benefits of action and inaction. Of course no one really has a good answer to these questions, which is why the US govt has taken the "we need more research" position.
Dude, you might want to check your facts on that one. North Korea is a socialist dicatorship, which is about the same thing, or worse, to those who live there.
"So? Why only a tax break for the rich?" I don't think anyone is suggesting that, least I'm not. What they are suggesting is that anyone who is paying taxes should get a break, whether rich or poor. Because all of them, to some degree or another, contribute to the economic picture in some way. I'm basically saying "unbalanced" tax cuts, to select individuals, just further distorts the incentives. The tax code is not the best way to help those who are not as well off, nor is it the best way to change the incentives.
This is why traditional pensions and retirement benefits are such a bad idea. It's also why big companies are happy to have social security and govenment healthcare, because it's not their problem then. In reality, individuals ought to be the owners of THEIR retirement money.
You are looking at this from the wrong direction. What law are you going to pass? Ambient air standards are fine, but what are you going to require to fix problems, a technology standard? How will you take into account the value of what each polluter is producing, will very large polluters be restricted to the same amount of pollution a smaller ones? Pollution reduction costs may be cheeper for some industries than for others. The point is to let a market determine the value of the right to produce a certain amount of pollution. Lookup tradable pollution credits. The problem with just legislating one standard is that there are more efficient ways to achive what you are trying to accomplish.
Actually, as far as earbuds go, the apple earbuds are pretty good. For earbuds.
Next, the Chavez government was in gross violation of the constitution, and im not talking PATRIOT ACT bad, I'm talking desolving the courts and throwing judges that he didnt like out of office bad. So the US probably would have been happy to see him gone. But they didn't exactly back the revolutionaries either, precisely because the US didn't know what their goals were.
I don't deny that the US has helped out some very unsavory characters, but the idea that the alternative was much better seems to be an example in poorly thought out monday morning quarterbacking.
The problem with redistribution is that "total equality" isn't really achievable if you want to preserve incentives, the more "equity" you try to inject into the system, the less incentive everyone has. The best we can hope to do is give everyone a chance at well rounded education.
Actually the returning jobs aren't going to detroit, they are going to mississippi and kentucky, because they are cheeper places to live. But the irony is that most "Japanese" cars are assembled in the US now because they found that is was cheeper than manufacturing them in Japan. Of course the parts of the car come from all over the world, just like American cars, but much of the assembling is done here.
That depends on how highly Michael Jordan values his free time. Free time has value too. Some people value it more than others, both relatively and absolutely. And that is related to how much they earn.
When you say that most americans have no net capital, are you excluding their houses, and of course social security, which is a promised future benefit that discourages personal savings.
I'll say it again. Filtering and blacklists would be highly effective if you couldn't forge email addresses. The way to ensure that email isn't forged is to use RMX records. To verify that the server sending the message is actually the mail sending server for that domain. Yes you could still set up a spam domain, but it would be much easier to block such a site, since it could not hide it's identity. This would increase the effecitveness of serverside blacklists and filtering software.
That standard really doesn't hold as well in a civil war where the line between combatants and military is much much less clear. I don't mean to excuse Grant's behavior, just to say that it is not necessarily a directly analogous to other situations.
Yeah, a sovereign country run by a really bad dictator. There was no self determination going on here.
Yeah, in the past the US was willing to overlook or even favor certain dictators rather than more popular revolutionaries because the US, perhaps legitimately, feared that many of these populist groups were aligned with the USSR. However the US doesn't have to worry about that anymore. Thus they can now afford to be a bit more particular about who they align themselves with and support.
Actually it's a matter of leverage and willingness to endure casualties. They don't need as many nukes as the US has to "even the balance" This is true because they are more willing to take casualties for cultural and population reasons. If the US nuked Shanghi and china Nuked LA I think most people would consider it a loss to the US. Basically it boils down to the willingness to sacrific lives, which, IMHO the US is less willing to do than the Chinese. That's why less than 20 nukes is an effective deterrent, because its all you would need to really damage a country. Remember, you don't have to destroy the whole country, just get "out of the way". It all depends on how many casualties a country's leaders are willing to endure. And how much damage they can do.
I hate to break it to you, but Haliburton has been a common government contractor for years, way before any of the "special connections" they supposedly have now. There's no big Bush conspiracy to pay off Haliburton, in fact, they didn't get a whole lot of money (compared to what they usually deal with) in these special Iraq contracts.
And if you finish the joke, the student picks up the bill, thus proving the professor's point. On the whole, you are never likely to see a 20 laying on the street, because all the starving students pick it up right away.
Frankly all the possible combinations that ACLs provide only serve to add unneeded complexity to the matter. The judicious use of groups and unix permissions, which, IMO are much simpler to grok that the ACLs, results in a system that is easier for the administator to understand. And thus the system is more likely to be correctly configured, with proper security. Yeah ACLs are "more powerful", and if you want them Linux will support them (in ext3 and jfs or xfs iirc). It's better to have "simple" permissions done correctly, than to have your "fine grained ACLs" configured wrong. It's really an application of KISS and the 80/20 rule. Frankly, I'm not entirely convinced that ACLs really provide anything that groups can't. ACL's make the easy moderately difficult, and the difficult moderately difficult. Where as standard unix permissions and groups make the easy easy, and the difficult difficult. Yeah, you can add all the fine grained stuff you want, but the need for that is the exception rather than the rule. So why compliate the simple stuff, just to make the diffcult stuff only moderately easier?
Trollarific.