How you you can claim that government bureaucrats are bad but for-profit insurance company bureaucrats are good is unfathomable. I hope it isn't just the simple-minded beliefs that since insurance companies are capitalist enterprises they are by definition good, or that since they want to spend as little as possible on you they will be maximally efficient rather than maximally stingy. Look around you. Neither of those beliefs are supported by facts.
We aren't even at the level of efficient high speed rail project designs. The plans in California are idiotically circuitous and discontinuous. We see such projects as opportunities to scam state and federal treasuries, not as useful and durable infrastructure to evolve and develop our economy. Soon Chinese media will be talking about us as an incompetent, backward, authoritarian Third World oligarchy.
Are we just going to let that happen? [That's a rhetorical question, BTW]
I totally agree. Although I would much rather live in a relatively free society like the US (thank you very much), whiny armchair bullshitters seem unable to see the larger picture. Perhaps because the US Civil War is completely gone from living memory, and so few US citizens have had to experience severe social unrest and instability, they are quick to judge based on simple-minded moral and ethical considerations. When living relatives can describe to you misery, death, and destruction from civil strife, you are far more cautious about bringing it about again.
Oh quit your pretentious whining. If you are a US citizen, you live in a country that incarcerates and executes far more people per capita than China, invades far more sovereign nations than China, killing, maiming, and rendering psychologically disturbed tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians per decade. The US also provides lavish funding to insurgents of various sorts to destabilize governments it finds offensive. We support right-wing authoritarian governments, including absolute monarchies, that as you complain "routinely muzzle speech and dissent within their own borders, and force those who do business with them to do the same" as well as "have thousands of political prisoners." Your tax dollars pay for this. The politicians you vote for support this.
You are nobody to criticize what China or anybody else does if you are a fellow US citizen.
I lived in Mexico for nearly 20 years, including the time TelMex was privatized. TelMex service improved not because it was privatized but because they sold old malfunctioning equipment and replaced practically their entire network. The privatization was widely reported to be a corrupt transaction involving then president Carlos Salinas, who somehow managed to become quite wealthy as a result. Carlos Slim has amassed billions by overcharging poorly paid Third World users. There is no credible justification for it beyond "he and the stockholders did it because they can." No significant added value, no competition, none of the magical benefits of capitalist legend. Just exploitation.
People like this do not drive the economy in any credible way, that's just myth and legend. They did not manufacture the equipment, create the network, build the company, or any such thing. They bought control of an existing company and proceeded to exploit the customer base. Just like the people who made ridiculous subprime loans, insane derivatives, and have insured trillions of dollars in worthless securities. You are mistaken in your remark "Through some combination of their own original work, management and business decisions, careful investments, blood, sweat, and a little bit of luck these people do indeed earn their money. They are simply much better at it than the rest of us."
I do not think "business is bad." I consider myself a capitalist in that I believe in personal responsibility and financial rewards for honest work. It is utterly puerile to believe that such wealth was amassed by honest talent and business acumen. These people are sociopathic swindlers, not capitalists. You are conflating the two. They are not the same thing.
In capitalism there are no laws. Capitalism is an abstraction of political economy, not a legal framework. There are plenty of people who propose to do away with all "regulations" in order to achieve a "free market," another oft abused abstraction.
So if you realize that you actually have a fairly high standard of living compared to much of the world, why would you feel the need to screw over the tiny percentage of people who have it even better? How is that just?
How is it just for some people to so vastly overcharge and underpay that they have accumulated billions in wealth? How is our standard of living relevant in discussing the unjust accumulation of wealth by crooks? In real life, large disparities in income distribution characterize Third World economies, not our own erstwhile First World economy.
I suppose you could closely examine every wealthy person and find a few moral lapses, as you would in almost anyone, but you'll find that those lapses aren't the reason that many of them are wealthy.
We are not talking about "moral lapses." If they accumulated tens of billions of dollars they must have charged far more for the goods and services than they cost to produce, possibly vastly underpaid their staff, or both. There is no other way to have accumulated so much wealth. "Society" or "the market" do not determine prices in the presence of a highly monopolistic product or service, or in the presence of companies able to game the system in various ways. Companies try to set prices as much as they can, often resorting to price fixing, bribes, and a variety of other illegal techniques. You drank too much of the kool-aid. You are placing far too much faith in the faux capitalistic myths and legends that have been drummed into your head since childhood.
Your remark doesn't follow from the parent's. It is clear practically by inspection that most Americans (most people in general) are not able to consistently understand what's best for them. Making such a statement does not imply 1) that I know what's best for everyone or anyone, or 2) that I cannot be classified in the same group. Your response is little more than shallow-thinking denial. If most of us did know what was best for us most of the time and consistently acted upon it intelligently, this would be a vastly different world.
Nice try. I, of course, don't deserve it. How does anybody? You're just trolling, showing what a shallow-thinking gullible slashdotter you are. Explain how anyone can "earn" or "deserve" $50 billion by systematically overcharging and underpaying as many people as possible by as much as possible. That "deserves" a reward?
You are actually claiming that someone can "earn" $50 billion? That is utterly preposterous. These people gamed the system. People like them destroyed the world economy. Open your eyes and stop looking at the childish myths and legends that have been drilled into you since birth.
Once again, we get to admire some of the most ruthless people alive. People who so vastly overcharge for goods and services and brutally underpay their staff, people who speculate mercilessly and rapaciously with no regard to the broader costs to society, people who push for legislation that favors their accumulation of wealth at any cost, in short some of the world's greatest social parasites.
Go ahead. Admire them. You love them. You wish you were like them. You believe the bullshit that working hard, taking risks, and being "entrepreneurial" deserves such fantastically disproportionate accumulation of wealth. Let's face it. You're a sucker. You look around you and you don't see what is actually there. You just see the puerile myths and legends that have been drummed into your wooden head since birth.
Now go lick Carlos Slim's boots, or better yet, those of the Waltons. Between them they have more than Carlos Slim and Bill Gates put together. Why not? Hell, it's partly your money they accumulated. Sucker.
Welcome, Comrades!
Welcome to the Glorious Union of Soviet Corporatist Republics!
No more evils of individualism! No longer shall we be left victims of our base instincts! Now our heroic Comrades at The People's Ministry of Apple shall shine their brilliant light of Freedom and Collective Thought so that we never again go astray!
Captive audiences are Freedom!
Exploitation is Liberty!
Corporate control is Independence!
I got my daughter a Palm Centro via AT&T. It did not survive normal use. She is not particularly careless, the case never showed any visible damage. It was replaced 3 times by AT&T and failed again. She fell back to one of those $15 by-the-minute phones they have at Target, which work when you swap in the SIM card. At least the damn thing works reliably. AT&T no longer sells Palm smartphones, at least in California.
News Flash: Palm stock is down nearly 40% in the last 5 days. Gosh, I wonder why.
Slashdot Mirror
my wife got a staff infection
I hope you meant Staph (as in Staphylococcus) infection. Remind me not to go to that clinic.
How you you can claim that government bureaucrats are bad but for-profit insurance company bureaucrats are good is unfathomable. I hope it isn't just the simple-minded beliefs that since insurance companies are capitalist enterprises they are by definition good, or that since they want to spend as little as possible on you they will be maximally efficient rather than maximally stingy. Look around you. Neither of those beliefs are supported by facts.
Pelosi and Obama and the rest of them are lying sacks of shit
More generally, American politicians starting around the county level on up are lying sacks of shit representing the interests of mobsters.
All the world's a "free" market, and we are but its mules.
Not for inland destinations.
We aren't even at the level of efficient high speed rail project designs. The plans in California are idiotically circuitous and discontinuous. We see such projects as opportunities to scam state and federal treasuries, not as useful and durable infrastructure to evolve and develop our economy. Soon Chinese media will be talking about us as an incompetent, backward, authoritarian Third World oligarchy.
Are we just going to let that happen? [That's a rhetorical question, BTW]
I totally agree. Although I would much rather live in a relatively free society like the US (thank you very much), whiny armchair bullshitters seem unable to see the larger picture. Perhaps because the US Civil War is completely gone from living memory, and so few US citizens have had to experience severe social unrest and instability, they are quick to judge based on simple-minded moral and ethical considerations. When living relatives can describe to you misery, death, and destruction from civil strife, you are far more cautious about bringing it about again.
Oh quit your pretentious whining. If you are a US citizen, you live in a country that incarcerates and executes far more people per capita than China, invades far more sovereign nations than China, killing, maiming, and rendering psychologically disturbed tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians per decade. The US also provides lavish funding to insurgents of various sorts to destabilize governments it finds offensive. We support right-wing authoritarian governments, including absolute monarchies, that as you complain "routinely muzzle speech and dissent within their own borders, and force those who do business with them to do the same" as well as "have thousands of political prisoners." Your tax dollars pay for this. The politicians you vote for support this.
You are nobody to criticize what China or anybody else does if you are a fellow US citizen.
I'm so surprised! A sovereign nation with an authoritarian government insists that foreign companies abide by its laws! Who woulda thunk...
I lived in Mexico for nearly 20 years, including the time TelMex was privatized. TelMex service improved not because it was privatized but because they sold old malfunctioning equipment and replaced practically their entire network. The privatization was widely reported to be a corrupt transaction involving then president Carlos Salinas, who somehow managed to become quite wealthy as a result. Carlos Slim has amassed billions by overcharging poorly paid Third World users. There is no credible justification for it beyond "he and the stockholders did it because they can." No significant added value, no competition, none of the magical benefits of capitalist legend. Just exploitation.
People like this do not drive the economy in any credible way, that's just myth and legend. They did not manufacture the equipment, create the network, build the company, or any such thing. They bought control of an existing company and proceeded to exploit the customer base. Just like the people who made ridiculous subprime loans, insane derivatives, and have insured trillions of dollars in worthless securities. You are mistaken in your remark "Through some combination of their own original work, management and business decisions, careful investments, blood, sweat, and a little bit of luck these people do indeed earn their money. They are simply much better at it than the rest of us."
I do not think "business is bad." I consider myself a capitalist in that I believe in personal responsibility and financial rewards for honest work. It is utterly puerile to believe that such wealth was amassed by honest talent and business acumen. These people are sociopathic swindlers, not capitalists. You are conflating the two. They are not the same thing.
In capitalism there are no laws. Capitalism is an abstraction of political economy, not a legal framework. There are plenty of people who propose to do away with all "regulations" in order to achieve a "free market," another oft abused abstraction.
So if you realize that you actually have a fairly high standard of living compared to much of the world, why would you feel the need to screw over the tiny percentage of people who have it even better? How is that just?
How is it just for some people to so vastly overcharge and underpay that they have accumulated billions in wealth? How is our standard of living relevant in discussing the unjust accumulation of wealth by crooks? In real life, large disparities in income distribution characterize Third World economies, not our own erstwhile First World economy.
I suppose you could closely examine every wealthy person and find a few moral lapses, as you would in almost anyone, but you'll find that those lapses aren't the reason that many of them are wealthy.
We are not talking about "moral lapses." If they accumulated tens of billions of dollars they must have charged far more for the goods and services than they cost to produce, possibly vastly underpaid their staff, or both. There is no other way to have accumulated so much wealth. "Society" or "the market" do not determine prices in the presence of a highly monopolistic product or service, or in the presence of companies able to game the system in various ways. Companies try to set prices as much as they can, often resorting to price fixing, bribes, and a variety of other illegal techniques. You drank too much of the kool-aid. You are placing far too much faith in the faux capitalistic myths and legends that have been drummed into your head since childhood.
You didn't hear about the lawsuit? Surely you don't claim that MS Windows is "worth" $300?
Your remark doesn't follow from the parent's. It is clear practically by inspection that most Americans (most people in general) are not able to consistently understand what's best for them. Making such a statement does not imply 1) that I know what's best for everyone or anyone, or 2) that I cannot be classified in the same group. Your response is little more than shallow-thinking denial. If most of us did know what was best for us most of the time and consistently acted upon it intelligently, this would be a vastly different world.
Nice try. I, of course, don't deserve it. How does anybody? You're just trolling, showing what a shallow-thinking gullible slashdotter you are. Explain how anyone can "earn" or "deserve" $50 billion by systematically overcharging and underpaying as many people as possible by as much as possible. That "deserves" a reward?
And trust me, they don't want to. The system is designed to maximize corruption.
You are actually claiming that someone can "earn" $50 billion? That is utterly preposterous. These people gamed the system. People like them destroyed the world economy. Open your eyes and stop looking at the childish myths and legends that have been drilled into you since birth.
Nobody "earns" tens of billions of dollars.
All the world's a moronic TV show or YouTube video, and we are but its couch potatoes.
Wake up. Idiot.
Once again, we get to admire some of the most ruthless people alive. People who so vastly overcharge for goods and services and brutally underpay their staff, people who speculate mercilessly and rapaciously with no regard to the broader costs to society, people who push for legislation that favors their accumulation of wealth at any cost, in short some of the world's greatest social parasites.
Go ahead. Admire them. You love them. You wish you were like them. You believe the bullshit that working hard, taking risks, and being "entrepreneurial" deserves such fantastically disproportionate accumulation of wealth. Let's face it. You're a sucker. You look around you and you don't see what is actually there. You just see the puerile myths and legends that have been drummed into your wooden head since birth.
Now go lick Carlos Slim's boots, or better yet, those of the Waltons. Between them they have more than Carlos Slim and Bill Gates put together. Why not? Hell, it's partly your money they accumulated. Sucker.
Welcome, Comrades!
Welcome to the Glorious Union of Soviet Corporatist Republics!
No more evils of individualism! No longer shall we be left victims of our base instincts! Now our heroic Comrades at The People's Ministry of Apple shall shine their brilliant light of Freedom and Collective Thought so that we never again go astray!
Captive audiences are Freedom!
Exploitation is Liberty!
Corporate control is Independence!
Long live The Great Leader Comrade Jobs!
I got my daughter a Palm Centro via AT&T. It did not survive normal use. She is not particularly careless, the case never showed any visible damage. It was replaced 3 times by AT&T and failed again. She fell back to one of those $15 by-the-minute phones they have at Target, which work when you swap in the SIM card. At least the damn thing works reliably. AT&T no longer sells Palm smartphones, at least in California.
News Flash: Palm stock is down nearly 40% in the last 5 days. Gosh, I wonder why.
As I said, a dictatorship is a dictatorship is a dictatorship.
This may sound goofy and way over the top, but we in the US live in an oligarchic dictatorship.
I know, I know. Move along, citizen, move along. Don't pay attention to the lunatic.
Fear, trust, whatever. Same difference.
A dictatorship is a dictatorship is a dictatorship. The ideologies, pretentions, and trappings may vary wildly, but inside they are all alike.
Hear, hear!