and it certainly has nothing to do with deregulation in the Regan era that let clearchannel buy up all the local stations and newspapers, outsource everything and then control the politics to their benefit. No siree! Seriously. I don't read the newspapers because there's nothing their for me. Just the same bull$%@! telling me to work harder for less and nevermind my wages falling since 1970.
It hasn't gone out of style, it's just plain wrong. The world is a different place then when Thoreau wrote that (and it wasn't too close to the mark then). Do you honestly think there is anything else besides a strong central government that can stand up to mega-corps? Do you honestly want those few mega-corps (and their oligarch CEOs, kings of the new millennium) running things. Power is going to concentrate whether you like it or not. I'll take my chances with Obama over the Koch brothers any day.
on the Xbox 360? The controllers have special chips in them to lock third parties out? I can see him getting permission, but those chips are complex and hard to come by... Is Microsoft giving him a supply as charity? Kudos if they do.
millions of acres of prime farm land is being used to grow a poisonous weed that people burn. Also that farm land is ruined for decades (due to nicotine contamination plus the heavy toll growing tobacco takes on soil). Smokers drive up the cost of food for me. Plus, smart doctors are busy researching a type of cancer that doesn't need to exists (smoking induced lung cancer), when they could be researching things I (a non-smoker) are likely to die of.
development costs are a small fraction of the profits involved, and the 'manufacturing' costs are small to nil. Lets not forget what patents are for: encouraging invention. We don't need to encourage people to write software. It's so profitable they'd do it anyway. Hell, millions do it for free. We need to encourage people to make drugs and machines et al because the investment costs are much higher. I'm writing software right now, and I'm doing it with the same tools and resources as the big guys (well, not quite, I got a day job). I couldn't just jump into drug research or chip manufacturing...
Free market capitalism wastes TONS of resources. There's a Sheik in Saudi Arabia that built his own indoor ski resort in the middle of a desert. And the CEO of google just burnt half a million dollars of jet fuel flying to Tahiti for a solar eclipse (I think, can't remember if it was an eclipse or some other astronomical event, but really, who's counting).
And there's jobs and then there's quality of life. You probably make a good wage. You can thank unemployment insurance for that. It keeps desperate people from taking ANY job just to eat, which keeps your wages up. Unless your independently wealthy, but if that's the case why the heck are you wasting time posting on Slashdot? Don't you have an eclipse to be jetting off to?
"We can't solve the problem by throwing food at poor people, period. It cannot be done and will never work. "
At the risk of sounding facetious, "Citation Needed". We're devoting a lot of time, money and resources to maintaining an army whose sole purpose is to enforce the will of the super wealthy. If we build tractors and desalinization plants instead of bombs and guns, whose to say what we couldn't do. I guess what I'm saying is, the debate has already been framed in a way that says we've already lost, and we need to stop that. We can't hope to solve these problems unless we agree they CAN be solved. Mathew 26:11 was bunk.
As for a 'yes' or 'no' between dog-eat-dog capitalism and socialism, I'm open to suggestions, but I haven't really heard any that don't boil down to one or the other. Why the dichotomy? Because left free power bunches up in the hands of a lucky few, and we're seeing that with corporations. Who else, besides a strong, socialist government, can counteract the destructive impulses of multinational corps? That's what I can't get another answer for. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, but what good is that without POWER?
Genetics and intelligence are more complex than that. We don't know what makes a persons genes the 'smart ones'. e.g. Albert Einstein came from a pretty humble background. What we DO know is, health & intelligence is heavily dependent on prenatal care and nutrition. That's what the US WIC program is all about.
And if your solution is to let them die, isn't it wrong to let them die painfully of starvation? Even a dog gets the basic decency of being put down. Why not do the same for the poor? Even if you're unwilling to put down the poor for humanitarian reasons, you can't deny that for social and hygienic reasons it would be a viable solution (as it is with dogs).
Certainly I'm baiting with this question, and it's obviously not something you'd be willing to put in practice. But it does bring to light a hypocrisy. People are perfectly willing to let other people die, as long as they don't have to pull the trigger. In the meantime they never offer any real solutions.
There's a reason for them not being there: they don't exist. There has never been a communist nation in the history of the world (unless you count some small, obscure island nations). What you're probably referring to are fascist dictatorships that use communist rhetoric (USSR, China, etc).
See This. There are plenty of other articles about it, just google for 'Food Speculation'. It's fact. A nasty, unpleasant fact. But Fact. There's more to it then simple speculation. I'll admit the exact details of the systems escape me, but it was a break down in regulations that were written for the express purpose of preventing pricing spikes.
e.g. will we start letting the excess die in a gutter? The question isn't, can we feed these people? It's: Will we? We don't need these people. There's no jobs for them. Should we just let them starve? Capitalism says yes, socialism says no. I don't know of a third answer (that doesn't boil down to one or the other in practical terms).
what's pushing up food prices is that Bush deregulated the commodities market. Specifically, he removed the law/regulation that required people investing in farms to be wholesalers who can accept delivery of the goods. Now, you can 'buy' bushels of corn/apples/hog bellies/ etc without ever taking delivery. So we've got rich investors buying this stuff up, reselling at a profit, and never adding any value. They're just parasites, in the most literal sense of the word.
Did it ever occur to anyone that he might be mentally ill and/or developmentally disabled? Jesus, he'd almost have to be. Last I checked, a proper and just society protected people from this sort of thing.
Yeah, but at $60 dollars for a game built on an 8 year old engine (Warcraft III), I guess we were expecting the whole game. I don't play RTS games, but my bro did, and he plowed though all 30 missions in about 8 hours. He's not that good. A SC1 playthough is still about twice that, and that's with knowing exactly how to beat each level....
Oh, and it was the first blizzard game I've ever seen crash. Lots. They fixed it after launch, but I was pissed cause I bought the game to get his mind off all the crap in his life and then he ended up troubleshooting their damn game.
how do you have the sort of educated populace that the super wealthy want to take care of them and build cool stuff for them, and keep them poor and ignorant? I guess this is a good start. China's having a big problem with their huge (250m+) middle class. If you educate them enough that their brains work for stuff like liver transplants and doing the architecture on your 15000 sq/ft mansion then they usually start questioning why you've got it so good and their living in a dirt shack...
or does this just smack as another attack on Education. It seems everywhere I go I keep hearing how poor kids don't need college, books, classrooms, teachers. They just need to work. I'm reminded about how robber barons in the 1800s used to argue against the 40 hour work week, saying the working classes would just use it to drink (idle hands... devil's play thing).
Slashdot Mirror
their middle class is bigger than the entire US population, you know?
and it certainly has nothing to do with deregulation in the Regan era that let clearchannel buy up all the local stations and newspapers, outsource everything and then control the politics to their benefit. No siree! Seriously. I don't read the newspapers because there's nothing their for me. Just the same bull$%@! telling me to work harder for less and nevermind my wages falling since 1970.
It hasn't gone out of style, it's just plain wrong. The world is a different place then when Thoreau wrote that (and it wasn't too close to the mark then). Do you honestly think there is anything else besides a strong central government that can stand up to mega-corps? Do you honestly want those few mega-corps (and their oligarch CEOs, kings of the new millennium) running things. Power is going to concentrate whether you like it or not. I'll take my chances with Obama over the Koch brothers any day.
it's free money for somebody's buddy. Seriously, 'internet in a suitcase'? It's probably one of these
we should ban drive thru restaurants (a major source of unnecessary idling) and start making public transportation usable.
on the Xbox 360? The controllers have special chips in them to lock third parties out? I can see him getting permission, but those chips are complex and hard to come by... Is Microsoft giving him a supply as charity? Kudos if they do.
millions of acres of prime farm land is being used to grow a poisonous weed that people burn. Also that farm land is ruined for decades (due to nicotine contamination plus the heavy toll growing tobacco takes on soil). Smokers drive up the cost of food for me. Plus, smart doctors are busy researching a type of cancer that doesn't need to exists (smoking induced lung cancer), when they could be researching things I (a non-smoker) are likely to die of.
Smokers actions don't take place in a vacuum.
development costs are a small fraction of the profits involved, and the 'manufacturing' costs are small to nil. Lets not forget what patents are for: encouraging invention. We don't need to encourage people to write software. It's so profitable they'd do it anyway. Hell, millions do it for free. We need to encourage people to make drugs and machines et al because the investment costs are much higher. I'm writing software right now, and I'm doing it with the same tools and resources as the big guys (well, not quite, I got a day job). I couldn't just jump into drug research or chip manufacturing...
Free market capitalism wastes TONS of resources. There's a Sheik in Saudi Arabia that built his own indoor ski resort in the middle of a desert. And the CEO of google just burnt half a million dollars of jet fuel flying to Tahiti for a solar eclipse (I think, can't remember if it was an eclipse or some other astronomical event, but really, who's counting).
And there's jobs and then there's quality of life. You probably make a good wage. You can thank unemployment insurance for that. It keeps desperate people from taking ANY job just to eat, which keeps your wages up. Unless your independently wealthy, but if that's the case why the heck are you wasting time posting on Slashdot? Don't you have an eclipse to be jetting off to?
Further back than that. The Railroad companies got huge amounts of free money and land from our government.
"We can't solve the problem by throwing food at poor people, period. It cannot be done and will never work. "
At the risk of sounding facetious, "Citation Needed". We're devoting a lot of time, money and resources to maintaining an army whose sole purpose is to enforce the will of the super wealthy. If we build tractors and desalinization plants instead of bombs and guns, whose to say what we couldn't do. I guess what I'm saying is, the debate has already been framed in a way that says we've already lost, and we need to stop that. We can't hope to solve these problems unless we agree they CAN be solved. Mathew 26:11 was bunk.
As for a 'yes' or 'no' between dog-eat-dog capitalism and socialism, I'm open to suggestions, but I haven't really heard any that don't boil down to one or the other. Why the dichotomy? Because left free power bunches up in the hands of a lucky few, and we're seeing that with corporations. Who else, besides a strong, socialist government, can counteract the destructive impulses of multinational corps? That's what I can't get another answer for. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, but what good is that without POWER?
Genetics and intelligence are more complex than that. We don't know what makes a persons genes the 'smart ones'. e.g. Albert Einstein came from a pretty humble background. What we DO know is, health & intelligence is heavily dependent on prenatal care and nutrition. That's what the US WIC program is all about.
And if your solution is to let them die, isn't it wrong to let them die painfully of starvation? Even a dog gets the basic decency of being put down. Why not do the same for the poor? Even if you're unwilling to put down the poor for humanitarian reasons, you can't deny that for social and hygienic reasons it would be a viable solution (as it is with dogs).
Certainly I'm baiting with this question, and it's obviously not something you'd be willing to put in practice. But it does bring to light a hypocrisy. People are perfectly willing to let other people die, as long as they don't have to pull the trigger. In the meantime they never offer any real solutions.
There's a reason for them not being there: they don't exist. There has never been a communist nation in the history of the world (unless you count some small, obscure island nations). What you're probably referring to are fascist dictatorships that use communist rhetoric (USSR, China, etc).
See This. There are plenty of other articles about it, just google for 'Food Speculation'. It's fact. A nasty, unpleasant fact. But Fact. There's more to it then simple speculation. I'll admit the exact details of the systems escape me, but it was a break down in regulations that were written for the express purpose of preventing pricing spikes.
e.g. will we start letting the excess die in a gutter? The question isn't, can we feed these people? It's: Will we? We don't need these people. There's no jobs for them. Should we just let them starve? Capitalism says yes, socialism says no. I don't know of a third answer (that doesn't boil down to one or the other in practical terms).
what's pushing up food prices is that Bush deregulated the commodities market. Specifically, he removed the law/regulation that required people investing in farms to be wholesalers who can accept delivery of the goods. Now, you can 'buy' bushels of corn/apples/hog bellies/ etc without ever taking delivery. So we've got rich investors buying this stuff up, reselling at a profit, and never adding any value. They're just parasites, in the most literal sense of the word.
Restore the regulations and prices will drop.
Heck, it's not just free. You can 'return' the license and make money. There's guides on how to do it. It's easy if you're in Europe.
it's free. You usually don't get any discount on the Linux netbooks & nettops...
Did it ever occur to anyone that he might be mentally ill and/or developmentally disabled? Jesus, he'd almost have to be. Last I checked, a proper and just society protected people from this sort of thing.
Yeah, but at $60 dollars for a game built on an 8 year old engine (Warcraft III), I guess we were expecting the whole game. I don't play RTS games, but my bro did, and he plowed though all 30 missions in about 8 hours. He's not that good. A SC1 playthough is still about twice that, and that's with knowing exactly how to beat each level....
Oh, and it was the first blizzard game I've ever seen crash. Lots. They fixed it after launch, but I was pissed cause I bought the game to get his mind off all the crap in his life and then he ended up troubleshooting their damn game.
So yeah, I expected more.
you need to be constantly reminded of the facts because cigarette companies will start lying about it first chance they get. Google for 'T Zone'.
Or, as I once read, Common sense isn't.
how do you have the sort of educated populace that the super wealthy want to take care of them and build cool stuff for them, and keep them poor and ignorant? I guess this is a good start. China's having a big problem with their huge (250m+) middle class. If you educate them enough that their brains work for stuff like liver transplants and doing the architecture on your 15000 sq/ft mansion then they usually start questioning why you've got it so good and their living in a dirt shack...
Zuckerberg's a little squeamish about killing a goat. CmdrTaco runs slashdot and listens to hot grit jokes all day. My money's on Taco.
or does this just smack as another attack on Education. It seems everywhere I go I keep hearing how poor kids don't need college, books, classrooms, teachers. They just need to work. I'm reminded about how robber barons in the 1800s used to argue against the 40 hour work week, saying the working classes would just use it to drink (idle hands... devil's play thing).
if you've got enough money. They'll sue you, and if they've got more money/lawyers then you, they win.