I didn't say democracy was needed, I said government was. Capitalism requires laws and enforcement to protect property and contract and to punish fraud, any despot would do fine for this. That was my point about Murdoch. If we had what you call (pure) capitalism, the owners would be, literally, King. Chances are, given recent events, they would be as committed to preserving the laws protecting capitalism as Stalin was to protecting the proletariat. (Actually, Adam Smith made that point long before Enron.)
But my larger point was that decisions about where to put the mill, what to pay the workers, whether and where to dump the waste, are political decisions in that they affect communities of people. Ultimately, a democratic government may make them or it may choose not to. But the decisions are political.
Communism is a political system. The communist ideal covers all forms of distribution: goods services, power (equal of course,) even the ladies get passed around in Marx's vision. A Communist world would be without government--that is essential to the whole idea. That isn't to say it wouldn't be governed, on the contrary, it would be governed by the harmony of the people working togeth . . . you get the idea.
But going further, economics is a subset of politics. An economy without government cannot be Capitalist. It may have markets, but they won't function well and they certainly won't grow to the point of todays Capitalist economies. It is government which backs the contract. It's government which protects the property (and of course, the big subsidies.) The thought that government and economics are separable is plain false.
Modern liberal states may have left much of the "governance" of the economy to Capitalists (after all Capitalism means: rule by capital) but their role (and, very indirectly, the role of the people) is to protect that system. Or tear it down.
The Russian approach of imposing a socialist state, in the hopes that one day it would just sort of take, was a scam. Since the folks didn't like it, Lenin, then Stalin, used the brute force approach. But the power, in both the Soviet system and the US, rests with the government.
Soon, perhaps, the power in the US will rest entirely with NewsCorp. When it does we won't be calling ourselves a democracy just because we choose a powerless legislature. We will consider ourselves to be ruled by "Murdoch, the Father." and we recognize economic power as, well, power.
Remember the "Office of Public Diplomacy?" Under the Reagan Administration this band of propogandists taught us the horrors of the Sandanistas by planting stories, ghostwriting Op-Eds and staging bogus news briefings, like the fraudulent Mig story on the eve of the 1984 election. Ironic, eh?
The program was ultimately condemned by Congress in the early 90's for waging an info war against the American people -- paraphrasing here: the likes of those we would use against a foreign enemy.
Otto Reich was the director of this infowar program in the 80's. Reich was returned to the White house without confirmation (Congressional recess) as the US's lead Latin American Diplomat.
That MIT, the DoD's prized tech school and farm team, might produce this piece of dog crap should not be seen as ironic or crazy, it should be seen as creepy and scary and . ..well . ..ok, a little ironic.
He fought for the P.O.U.M Trotskyite militia. While they (the P.O.U.M.) fought alongside the anarchists--and with the Spanish CP, they were committed socialists. As for Orwell, In the beginning, he wanted to get the hell out of the POUM and fight with the better equipped, Soviet-backed, Socialist/CP militia.
His report from the front and his dissillusionment with the Spanish Socialists/CP make a great story, but the Coward is right, he never shyed away from the Socialist moniker, though usually insisting upon Democratic Socialist.
A previous poster hit the nail on the head. The issue for 1984 isn't the tech, it's the info. How much footage have you seen from Afghanistan? (No, not the film of US Soldiers meandering around, but the footage of the "dead al Qaeda?") When did the news man ask,"If our forces can't tell terrorists from Canadians, how can they tell them from an Afghan farmer?" When was the last expose' on the hospitals in Iraq? Dirt eating toddlers shitting themselves to death would be big news if it was happening in Belgium.
I better stop now, the Office Of Homeland Security is lurking. . .
Speech is not an inalienable right. You might have learned that if you had taken the time to review the "deep philosophical and moral framework" rather than pretend it does not exist.
As for your rhetorical questions, yes, clearly, reasoning on that level "leads quickly to absurdity."
Whether or not the West has triumphed due to it's technology (putting aside the question of whether it has triumphed at all) is a question that helps little to answer how technology advanced in the first place. It answers even less the question of whether triumph is in and of itself a good thing. Atilla the Hun may have thought so. I would like to think we in the west have more to offer, like democracy.
While I know nothing of the "Age of Reconnaisance," as for the great thinkers of the past three or four centuries, they would all likely say that technology may change our lives and our experiences but only knowledge can change our values. The bomb may change our experience by giving us a new question for our value system but it doesn't provide much in the way of answers.
As for fair use being antiquated, is that addage about standing on the shoulders of giants just commie propaganda? Isn't the point of art and expression in the sharing? Shouldn't the laws be written by the people who will be held to them rather than the technologists who will execute them?
You were close with your end goal of "the improvement of the society of man" But the gifts of the "technological elite" should be accepted or rejected not by their creators but by their beneficiaries and victims."
Slashdot Mirror
But my larger point was that decisions about where to put the mill, what to pay the workers, whether and where to dump the waste, are political decisions in that they affect communities of people. Ultimately, a democratic government may make them or it may choose not to. But the decisions are political.
But going further, economics is a subset of politics. An economy without government cannot be Capitalist. It may have markets, but they won't function well and they certainly won't grow to the point of todays Capitalist economies. It is government which backs the contract. It's government which protects the property (and of course, the big subsidies.) The thought that government and economics are separable is plain false.
Modern liberal states may have left much of the "governance" of the economy to Capitalists (after all Capitalism means: rule by capital) but their role (and, very indirectly, the role of the people) is to protect that system. Or tear it down.
The Russian approach of imposing a socialist state, in the hopes that one day it would just sort of take, was a scam. Since the folks didn't like it, Lenin, then Stalin, used the brute force approach. But the power, in both the Soviet system and the US, rests with the government.
Soon, perhaps, the power in the US will rest entirely with NewsCorp. When it does we won't be calling ourselves a democracy just because we choose a powerless legislature. We will consider ourselves to be ruled by "Murdoch, the Father." and we recognize economic power as, well, power.
The program was ultimately condemned by Congress in the early 90's for waging an info war against the American people -- paraphrasing here: the likes of those we would use against a foreign enemy.
Otto Reich was the director of this infowar program in the 80's. Reich was returned to the White house without confirmation (Congressional recess) as the US's lead Latin American Diplomat.
That MIT, the DoD's prized tech school and farm team, might produce this piece of dog crap should not be seen as ironic or crazy, it should be seen as creepy and scary and . . .well . . .ok, a little ironic.
His report from the front and his dissillusionment with the Spanish Socialists/CP make a great story, but the Coward is right, he never shyed away from the Socialist moniker, though usually insisting upon Democratic Socialist.
A previous poster hit the nail on the head. The issue for 1984 isn't the tech, it's the info. How much footage have you seen from Afghanistan? (No, not the film of US Soldiers meandering around, but the footage of the "dead al Qaeda?") When did the news man ask,"If our forces can't tell terrorists from Canadians, how can they tell them from an Afghan farmer?" When was the last expose' on the hospitals in Iraq? Dirt eating toddlers shitting themselves to death would be big news if it was happening in Belgium.
I better stop now, the Office Of Homeland Security is lurking. . .
Speech is not an inalienable right. You might have learned that if you had taken the time to review the "deep philosophical and moral framework" rather than pretend it does not exist.
As for your rhetorical questions, yes, clearly, reasoning on that level "leads quickly to absurdity."
Whether or not the West has triumphed due to it's technology (putting aside the question of whether it has triumphed at all) is a question that helps little to answer how technology advanced in the first place. It answers even less the question of whether triumph is in and of itself a good thing. Atilla the Hun may have thought so. I would like to think we in the west have more to offer, like democracy.
While I know nothing of the "Age of Reconnaisance," as for the great thinkers of the past three or four centuries, they would all likely say that technology may change our lives and our experiences but only knowledge can change our values. The bomb may change our experience by giving us a new question for our value system but it doesn't provide much in the way of answers.
As for fair use being antiquated, is that addage about standing on the shoulders of giants just commie propaganda? Isn't the point of art and expression in the sharing? Shouldn't the laws be written by the people who will be held to them rather than the technologists who will execute them?
You were close with your end goal of "the improvement of the society of man" But the gifts of the "technological elite" should be accepted or rejected not by their creators but by their beneficiaries and victims."