... like the big guys in the RIAA and MPAA using their power and influence to shape laws for the protection fo their industry. We shouldn't have big corporations deciding how we use our computers.
Plus, I really think corporations should offer maternity leave, enough so that I think the government should intercede to provide tax incentives.
Whichever way you look at it this is the end of the line for corporate deregulation. Regulation is now going to be considered pensioner friendly and stockholder friendly.
Well, at least until the current round of presidential speechifying and toothless legislating subsides Wall Street's fears, and corporate America's hand returns to the cookie jar.
In and of themselves, public scandals tend not to result in meaningful and structural change. To move beyond political grandstanding and weak legislation (and the bills being looked at currently are very weak -- see CitizenWorks for more info) requires a significant, independent-minded citizen's movement. A corporate accountability movement of this type could begin with demanding reforms in governance and accounting practices (like forcing corporations to expense stock options, a measure rejected by congressional Democrats), and move on to demanding serious and structural changes, such as taking corporate money out of politics (which will require public financing of elections, and breaking up the corporate strangehold over the news media.
But expecting a significant trend to reverse deregulation to suddenly spring up amongst politicians who continue to take their orders from major corporate donors is, unfortunately, too optimistic.
At the very least we will see the sweatheart deals arranged by Enron and the Gramms to exclude energy derivatives from oversight being swept away.
Don't count on it. As far as I remember, the current legislation doesn't repeal Gramm's Enron bill.
But at the deeper level I think that politicians are not going to be able to score easy votes by dennouncing regulation.
No, few voters are going to get hot and bothered about changes in corporate accounting regulations. However, most of them know, pretty intuitively, that they're getting screwed by big business. Frankly, most of the world understands that the current economic order doesn't operate for their benefit (particularly folks in the two-thirds world who don't just lose money on Enron stock, but get displaced by Enron-financed dams).
And no, that's not Marxist babbling -- take a look at some polling numbers: 67% think most corporate executives are dishonest, 57% think white collar crime happens very often, and the percentage who name big business as the largest threat to America's future is at an all-time high (38%).
However, the public doesn't trust politicians to solve these (or most) problems, probably a leading cause of why fewer and fewer of them bother to vote. And nobody's going to trust grand-standing Democrats like Lieberman (who spends most of his time on his knees before the insurance industry) to take a firm stance against over-reaching corporate power.
IMHO, the only way we're going to see a viable political movement for corporate accountability is with a strong, progressive, independent third party. At the moment, both in the U.S. and around the world, that's the Green Party. Provided we continue moving beyond feel-good environmentalism, the Greens can be a grassroots and effective voice for change, by bringing up these issues when people are paying some attention to them (during the election season) and offering bold solutions, rather than more of the same focus-grouped bullshit. The Green Party in the U.S. is now organized in almost every state, and has a platform full of creative ways to advance real, grassroots democracy.
In closing (and for the purposes of extending my pomposity a bit further), I'd like to remind folks that corporate abuse of power affects everyone, in millions of ways -- whether you're a white-collar type whose 401(k) is suddenly worthless, a software developer who's forced to deal with ludicrous patents, or a worker whose job just got shipped to Mexico. And it will take all of us to effect the changes so desperately needed.
I know./ers often don't like ideology, but it disturbs me how many people in this argument (and not just on./) don't appear to have taken a class in basic political economy, and have little appreciation for public policy, sociology, etc.
The questions being asked her ought to extend beyond "how is file sharing affecting consumer spending habits?," however it's argued. Broadly, the question ought to be the general effects of file-swapping, economic and otherwise.
Suppose some consumers are buying fewer CDs. In and of itself, that doesn't tell me anything. How is it affecting the music industry, and what it produces? What does it mean for artists' attempting to make a living? (the record companies have plenty of people looking out for them already) Is file-swapping resulting in more exposure for different forms of music, particularly those which aren't conducive to the corporate bottom-line?
The answer to these questions is not always an unqualified "yes!", but we need to start asking them, instead of buying into these bullshit debates over record-buying habits.
Why do corporations think they have a right to do anything they want, even with other people's property?
Because, for the most part, they do. Corporations have all the same legal rights as individuals, and few of the drawbacks (i.e., they have a funny tendency not to die). Furthermore, they will continue to engage in wildly abusive business practices (internet privacy policies are just the tip of the iceberg, you know), until there's a broad-based movement to stop them.
Whining on./ is all well and good, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE start talking to your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc. Join organizations (local ones especially, not just the EFF). Write letters. Join boycotts. Vote for candidates running on anti-corporate platforms (hint: that's not Harry Browne).
First, although I've no idea where to look for numbers, but it seems to me you're leaving OEM sales completely out of the equation. So long as new hardware is purchased, Microsoft will continue earning a pretty substantial piece of the pie, even if upgrades drop off to some extent.
Secondly, I think you're underestimating the extent to which purchasing decisions are not always driven by rational economic sense, especially for individual consumers. If software purchases were driven entirely by cost-benefit analyses, Microsoft wouldn't be spending millions on advertising. Fact is, a lot of folks (especially individual consumers, but also some corporate types) are going to upgrade just because it's new, flashy, and being advertised.
Lastly, the supposed consumer distrust. Yes, the company has a slightly soiled image with a lot of folks due to the antitrust case. However, that doesn't necessary carry over to purchasing patterns, especially when the overwhelmingly majority of consumers don't even conceive of having an alternative choice (unfortunately).
Nothing like a bad mix of George Soros and techno-futurism to come up with vapid social analysis.
We seem to be running away from the world, and much of the world hates us for it.
Americans are doing a good job of ignoring the rest of the world, thanks to the woefully narrow focus of most of our news media. The U.S. government, on the other hand, continues to get better and better at interfering with the rest of the world, often in ways we don't even hear about. How many./ers know there are American "military advisors" (a la Vietnam) in Colombia and the Phillippines right now?
As the U.S. evolved rapidly from an industrial to a data-based economy, much of the world hasn't come along, or doesn't want to.
Mr. Katz, who do you think manufactures your sneakers? Your car? Your computer? Regardless of whether the U.S. now has a "data-based economy," someone has to do the producing. And, quite frankly, the fact that good-paying industrial union jobs in the U.S. have evaporated, only to be replaced with temp work for 13-year-old Indonesian girls earning a few dollars a day, doesn't strike me as much cause for celebration.
A ferocious advocate of open societies..
No, Mr. Soros is a ferocious advocate of open markets. Big difference.
... they're still fairly effective at controlling the movement of people. (Although even there, the Net ultimately makes that more difficult, at least in terms of intellectual property and ideas. This kind of content is liquid, no longer confinable within territorial boundaries.
Since when does "people == content"? I'm all for the Net's revolutionary impact on intellectual 'property,' but it doesn't have much effect on whether peaceful people can cross borders freely. That privilege is reserved for capital.
nation-states and their constituents now have to choose between globalism (and its attendant prosperity) or religious fanaticism.
This is a false choice: Enron or Osama. I pick neither. Unfortunately for Mr. Soros, the romantic notion that ordinary people, not financial markets, ought to make the decisions that affect their lives, lingers in the hearts of many.
The full results of the survey don't seem to be published online, but I'd very much like to see the numbers on breakdown on how family income level and education spending plays into all of this. It seems obvious, but there's an enormous number of people who can't afford high-tech gadgetry, and stand zero chance of learning how to use it. Although most kids are now growing up with some computers in their schools, schools in poor communities often have obsolete computers, relatively few of them, and no effective training.
As a college student coming from a relatively wealthy background, growing up in a tech-savvy area, I've been struck by how many students my own age are totally clueless when it comes to basic computing tasks, much more so than in my high school (which was within driving distance of Microsoft). Yes, the age gap is huge, but let's not pretend all of America's young people are getting the same skills.
Slashdot Mirror
Not real good on picking up sarcasm, eh? As it happens, I agree with you.
... like the big guys in the RIAA and MPAA using their power and influence to shape laws for the protection fo their industry. We shouldn't have big corporations deciding how we use our computers.
Plus, I really think corporations should offer maternity leave, enough so that I think the government should intercede to provide tax incentives.
Hence, I am running for congress as a Libertarian, because only the Libertarians truly understand the way to deal with corporate power is to repeal every regulatory counterbalance imaginable.
In the end, The Market will cure all our ills.
Whichever way you look at it this is the end of the line for corporate deregulation. Regulation is now going to be considered pensioner friendly and stockholder friendly.
Well, at least until the current round of presidential speechifying and toothless legislating subsides Wall Street's fears, and corporate America's hand returns to the cookie jar.
In and of themselves, public scandals tend not to result in meaningful and structural change. To move beyond political grandstanding and weak legislation (and the bills being looked at currently are very weak -- see CitizenWorks for more info) requires a significant, independent-minded citizen's movement. A corporate accountability movement of this type could begin with demanding reforms in governance and accounting practices (like forcing corporations to expense stock options, a measure rejected by congressional Democrats), and move on to demanding serious and structural changes, such as taking corporate money out of politics (which will require public financing of elections, and breaking up the corporate strangehold over the news media.
But expecting a significant trend to reverse deregulation to suddenly spring up amongst politicians who continue to take their orders from major corporate donors is, unfortunately, too optimistic.
At the very least we will see the sweatheart deals arranged by Enron and the Gramms to exclude energy derivatives from oversight being swept away.
Don't count on it. As far as I remember, the current legislation doesn't repeal Gramm's Enron bill.
But at the deeper level I think that politicians are not going to be able to score easy votes by dennouncing regulation.
No, few voters are going to get hot and bothered about changes in corporate accounting regulations. However, most of them know, pretty intuitively, that they're getting screwed by big business. Frankly, most of the world understands that the current economic order doesn't operate for their benefit (particularly folks in the two-thirds world who don't just lose money on Enron stock, but get displaced by Enron-financed dams).
And no, that's not Marxist babbling -- take a look at some polling numbers: 67% think most corporate executives are dishonest, 57% think white collar crime happens very often, and the percentage who name big business as the largest threat to America's future is at an all-time high (38%).
However, the public doesn't trust politicians to solve these (or most) problems, probably a leading cause of why fewer and fewer of them bother to vote. And nobody's going to trust grand-standing Democrats like Lieberman (who spends most of his time on his knees before the insurance industry) to take a firm stance against over-reaching corporate power.
IMHO, the only way we're going to see a viable political movement for corporate accountability is with a strong, progressive, independent third party. At the moment, both in the U.S. and around the world, that's the Green Party. Provided we continue moving beyond feel-good environmentalism, the Greens can be a grassroots and effective voice for change, by bringing up these issues when people are paying some attention to them (during the election season) and offering bold solutions, rather than more of the same focus-grouped bullshit. The Green Party in the U.S. is now organized in almost every state, and has a platform full of creative ways to advance real, grassroots democracy.
In closing (and for the purposes of extending my pomposity a bit further), I'd like to remind folks that corporate abuse of power affects everyone, in millions of ways -- whether you're a white-collar type whose 401(k) is suddenly worthless, a software developer who's forced to deal with ludicrous patents, or a worker whose job just got shipped to Mexico. And it will take all of us to effect the changes so desperately needed.
(P.S. Another great resource on corporate power is the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy.)
I know ./ers often don't like ideology, but it disturbs me how many people in this argument (and not just on ./) don't appear to have taken a class in basic political economy, and have little appreciation for public policy, sociology, etc.
The questions being asked her ought to extend beyond "how is file sharing affecting consumer spending habits?," however it's argued. Broadly, the question ought to be the general effects of file-swapping, economic and otherwise.
Suppose some consumers are buying fewer CDs. In and of itself, that doesn't tell me anything. How is it affecting the music industry, and what it produces? What does it mean for artists' attempting to make a living? (the record companies have plenty of people looking out for them already) Is file-swapping resulting in more exposure for different forms of music, particularly those which aren't conducive to the corporate bottom-line?
The answer to these questions is not always an unqualified "yes!", but we need to start asking them, instead of buying into these bullshit debates over record-buying habits.
Why do corporations think they have a right to do anything they want, even with other people's property?
./ is all well and good, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE start talking to your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc. Join organizations (local ones especially, not just the EFF). Write letters. Join boycotts. Vote for candidates running on anti-corporate platforms (hint: that's not Harry Browne).
Because, for the most part, they do. Corporations have all the same legal rights as individuals, and few of the drawbacks (i.e., they have a funny tendency not to die). Furthermore, they will continue to engage in wildly abusive business practices (internet privacy policies are just the tip of the iceberg, you know), until there's a broad-based movement to stop them.
Whining on
A couple thoughts:
First, although I've no idea where to look for numbers, but it seems to me you're leaving OEM sales completely out of the equation. So long as new hardware is purchased, Microsoft will continue earning a pretty substantial piece of the pie, even if upgrades drop off to some extent.
Secondly, I think you're underestimating the extent to which purchasing decisions are not always driven by rational economic sense, especially for individual consumers. If software purchases were driven entirely by cost-benefit analyses, Microsoft wouldn't be spending millions on advertising. Fact is, a lot of folks (especially individual consumers, but also some corporate types) are going to upgrade just because it's new, flashy, and being advertised.
Lastly, the supposed consumer distrust. Yes, the company has a slightly soiled image with a lot of folks due to the antitrust case. However, that doesn't necessary carry over to purchasing patterns, especially when the overwhelmingly majority of consumers don't even conceive of having an alternative choice (unfortunately).
Nothing like a bad mix of George Soros and techno-futurism to come up with vapid social analysis.
We seem to be running away from the world, and much of the world hates us for it.
Americans are doing a good job of ignoring the rest of the world, thanks to the woefully narrow focus of most of our news media. The U.S. government, on the other hand, continues to get better and better at interfering with the rest of the world, often in ways we don't even hear about. How many ./ers know there are American "military advisors" (a la Vietnam) in Colombia and the Phillippines right now?
As the U.S. evolved rapidly from an industrial to a data-based economy, much of the world hasn't come along, or doesn't want to.
Mr. Katz, who do you think manufactures your sneakers? Your car? Your computer? Regardless of whether the U.S. now has a "data-based economy," someone has to do the producing. And, quite frankly, the fact that good-paying industrial union jobs in the U.S. have evaporated, only to be replaced with temp work for 13-year-old Indonesian girls earning a few dollars a day, doesn't strike me as much cause for celebration.
A ferocious advocate of open societies ..
No, Mr. Soros is a ferocious advocate of open markets. Big difference.
Since when does "people == content"? I'm all for the Net's revolutionary impact on intellectual 'property,' but it doesn't have much effect on whether peaceful people can cross borders freely. That privilege is reserved for capital.
nation-states and their constituents now have to choose between globalism (and its attendant prosperity) or religious fanaticism.
This is a false choice: Enron or Osama. I pick neither. Unfortunately for Mr. Soros, the romantic notion that ordinary people, not financial markets, ought to make the decisions that affect their lives, lingers in the hearts of many.The full results of the survey don't seem to be published online, but I'd very much like to see the numbers on breakdown on how family income level and education spending plays into all of this. It seems obvious, but there's an enormous number of people who can't afford high-tech gadgetry, and stand zero chance of learning how to use it. Although most kids are now growing up with some computers in their schools, schools in poor communities often have obsolete computers, relatively few of them, and no effective training.
As a college student coming from a relatively wealthy background, growing up in a tech-savvy area, I've been struck by how many students my own age are totally clueless when it comes to basic computing tasks, much more so than in my high school (which was within driving distance of Microsoft). Yes, the age gap is huge, but let's not pretend all of America's young people are getting the same skills.