Indeed. Many conservatives forget that their ideals were once labeled "liberal." The term itself is a moving target. It is a synonym for revolutionary and forward-thinking ideologies and ideals. Granted, not always good or right ideologies, but ones that cause a paradigm shift. Only recently has the republican right tried to pin down liberalism to one single mode of thought, and only recently has the democratic/pseudosocialist left settled into their own definition of liberal and touted it as the way. In reality, liberal means Free, free of ties to the current ideology of the day, free of the restraints of political machines, free of mind and body. This could not be further from the modern interpretation of the word. True liberals should be free thinkers, open to consider all ideas, even if those ideas clash with their dogma.
Conservative, classically, means just the opposite. To be conservative it so hold the status quo. The, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality. Perhaps even a bit counter revolutionary, wanting to revert back to a time percieved as better than the present.
Both perfectly valid ideologies and modes of thought.
Yes, at one time Leninists, Marxists and Maoists were liberals. But so too were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Adam Smith. So too were leaders of change, for better or worse, around of the world and across time. Even Jesus was a liberal.
I'm sure my bias is seeping through my words as I type them. I'm a liberal. I try my damnedest to live up to my own definition of liberal. Oddly enough, it pushes me further and further towards libertarianism every day. Of course, being young, I'd rather say i'm an anarchist because of it's shock appeal. If only so many libertarians weren't corporatist douches, I would be able to embrace the party more fully.
Bottom line, Liberals are classically the bringers of change to the world, for better or worse. Conservatives are classically those that feel the world is in ballance and doesn't need change. It's interesting to see how both sides have morphed and twisted the terms to match their dogmas and agendas. Liberal != democrat. Conservative != republican.
Personally, I'm more afraid of a government that can drop a 500 lb bomb on me from 10,000 miles away. Most businesses can't do that.
Rather than a corporation poison your groundwater, then conveniently go out of business before taking responsibility to clean it up (ie, the Acid pits of Glen Avon, in Riverside county california)? Or a thousand corporations collectively spewing particulates and precursors to ozone into the air that then lead to increased rates of childhood asthma (the plight of the south coast air basin in southern california right now)?
The point is, if you have a large society, you can not have either government or business, you need both. Personally I would rather have a government with a contract to provide me with certain liberties it swears to protect, even if it does not protect all of them all of the time. If the government is set up to be accountable to it's populace, the will of the people will prevail. Don't get me wrong, government sucks, but complex societies require it, especially when the main means to success in that society is to screw your neighbor for more money.
The problem with businesses is that they lack social forsight, which leads to muck, bullshit, and economic externalities in the future. Government at least attempts to have some social forsight to mitigate those that are lacking in a market that doesn't react completely in real time.
The idea is the get the business to serve your interests. For example, they'll make you a car or build you a house or cook you a meal if you give them some money. They're actually helping you. And they do it because that money you gave them will come back to you when you do something for them. It's reciprocity. It's people helping people, although they rarely realize it.
While the reality you're positing on is nice and dreamy with little flowers and frogs jumping from one lilly pad to another, that's not the actual reality of the situation. Most major governments are now slaves to their domestic corporate interests, which demand security in their foreign projects and opportunities in places their governments have no business entering. You want to see the reality of Corporate Globalism, go to south east asian gold mines run by US corporations, or go to oil works in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan run by Exxon, Shell, and United Oil. The pursuit of money is not people helping people. It's government helping businesses expand their profit margins while marginalizing the individual. The trees in the forest no longer matter, my friend. All that matters is that their growth is maximized that harvest comes more frequently each year.
Remember that even X has to have things running in the background to be able to do what it does. Why not complain about them
You are obviously new here. Slashdotters only complain. They complain about X, KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox, blackbox, openbox, windowmaker, gentoo, rehat, slackware, *BSD, slashdot, microsoft, linus torvalds, linux...I think you get the idea. Slashdotters do nothing but complain. That's the only constant here, man.
FreeBSD makes a decent desktop, about as fast as most major linux distros, but without a lot of the linux-specific niceties like HAL and DBUS. Check out arch linux, as well, it's got all cutting edge desktop stuff, but with a very simple, unbloated base install that you build on with binary packages. Pacman (it's packaging systems) is one of the most bare-bones, but easy-to-use package managers i've laid hands on. It's got what *i* expect to be there, without any extra cruft. But yeah, those would be my two choices for a desktop *nix system, FreeBSD or Arch. Both slim, no-nonsense systems.
Right now they're working on an amd64 port for arch linux. I'm currently running the i686 version on my opteron and it runs pretty damn well. I used Gentoo for like...5 years before switching over, and I dig arch a lot more than Gentoo. Basically the install is pretty similar, except it uses packages instead of compiling every dependency from scratch. And...oddly enough...it's faster than Gentoo. Give it a try, I highly recommend it.
Which is why the EU was created, right? Since they don't have to compete in the global market with the US. Same reason we're starting to worry about China's increasing capital and oil use, because we don't have to compete with them on the global market. I totally see your point.
Governments are the only real monopolies in the world. I define a "real" monopoly as an entity that increases prices, increases inefficiency, increases its market share and power...but doesn't have to be accountable for any of its failures
Of course, which is why we weren't attacked on september 11th after fucking with the taliban in the 80's to help fight communism, why we didn't go after sadam hussien, allegedly, for gassing his people and having a corrupt regime. Makes perfect sense, governments are never accountable for their failures.
When a politician fails, he not only doesn't get fired, he asks for more money and usually gets it!
Or s/he is overthrown by a pissed off populace.
With government, you HAVE to buy (pay taxes) and obey their laws. Governments use force, businesses use marketing and persuasion.
You don't have to. You can drop out of society. The reason you wouldn't, though, is because despite all the bitching and moaning about coersion and unaccountability in government (Which I totally agree with), the benefits of sticking with a society outweigh the costs of hoofing it on your own in the real world without any national affiliation. There are people who do it, though. So, yes, you CAN choose to not buy into a Government's product (it's social, political, and economic ideals). Most people are just too pussy to do it. It's kind of like Wal*Mart syndrome...sure, you might feel bad about getting your household goods from a huge chain store that tends to push smaller, more entrepenurial (i butchered that), and arguably more "American" businesses out of town, but...shit, you can't beat their prices! Heh. And if you feel that governments these days don't use marketing and intellectual persuation to keep their populace happy, you're a bit naieve. The Government uses the same types of statistics, visual tricks, and language a large company would if it wanted to instill pride and loyalty in it's customers.
So no, government is not business. It may be run like a business (a very very bad one that would be bankrupt before it even started), but governments are definately not businesses. And until I can choose whether or not to pay taxes it will never be a business.
So it comes down to taxes. I see. Well, move to the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, build yourself a yurt, and live off the land. Hey, Pot grows natually all over the place up there, and krygyzstan is pretty open and kind to us pale faces. Chances are you won't be found by any government agency, you won't have to pay taxes, and you can not only live as a guilt-free libertarian, but also as an anarchist!
Your argument is well taken, but it assumes that economies do not exist between government entities, only within them. That's flawed. Governments do compete on the global scale for economic dominance and a foothold in the global market, just like an ideal company would. The only real difference I can see is that Government is obligated, by contract, to provide social goods and services to it's "customers", whereas a business is only told it should, but is not forced to (well, that's arguable - i'm talking about concrete social services, not government mandated taxes that are taken from all citizens and corporate entities). So, one could say that governments, in and ideal world (like an ideal market), would compete for constituents by promoting their product (a social, political, and economic ideal) and create alliances (conglomerations) to make their product more pervasive throughout the market.
With that out of the way, my original, one-sentence argument is that businesses now h
having used apt-get and ports extensively, yes. The various BSD ports are better than apt-get. However, pacman (in arch linux) beats them all to hell. Simple, clean, and elegant.
You're 100% dead wrong. He was referring to schools taking on the role of parents, spending less time on academic pursuits and more time on hand-holding bullshit that should be done by good, effective parents.
Sooooo coool down Johnny Homeschool. No offence was meant towards you and your wacko ideals.
And it doesn't matter. You can bitch all you want but it does NOTHING. He, on the other hand, helps people across the world with money he "stole" from people across the world who have income to burn and, for the most part, choose his product. You are a nobody, he is a somebody. When you're both dead, you will be equals - but with one exception. Many more people will have profitted from his existance than will have from yours.
well, to be fair humans have been around for as long as 400,000 years. That's the lower bound of the Vostok ive core...so who knows, maybe before 400,000 years ago the atmosphere had a steady concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere...that's highly unlikely but Vostok itself doesn't go back far enough to refute it completely.
And, no i'm not a moron and actually believe this to be true.
For a long time, because it's science. Science is speculative for a LONG time before it's accepted. Of course scientifically, the mechanisms behind the Green House effect are almost universally accepted. We know CH4, C02, and others trap heat in the troposphere. We know their emissions are increased. The question is - how long will the correlation between mean temp increase and increase in CO2 emissions continue? Now, of course, it's politicized, which means if you belong to one camp you have to believe there is a correlation, and if you belong to another you have to believe their isn't one. That only complicates things and lends itself to warped analysis of scientific findings.
too bad you can't see the nutrient loading in the bay, the algal blooms, disrupting it's value as a purifying estuary as salt water fish leave and fresh water fish die off due to lack of oxygen - all disrupting the fragile ecosystem that is an estuary. Hey man, maybe it'll die like the Chesapeake. It'll still be blue, though...for a while.
They're just saying that climate change leads to mass extinction, be it normal cyclic (like the last 100,000 years) or cataclysmic (think dinosaurs - they didn't die because asteroid shards hit every single one of them, they died because the debris in the atmosphere blocked out the sun, causing the major producers of the time to die out). Right now the climate is changing, we're approaching a peak, anthropogenically aided or not. Will that lead to another mass extinction? That's the question they're raising. Nice jump to reactionary politicism, though.
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Indeed. Many conservatives forget that their ideals were once labeled "liberal." The term itself is a moving target. It is a synonym for revolutionary and forward-thinking ideologies and ideals. Granted, not always good or right ideologies, but ones that cause a paradigm shift. Only recently has the republican right tried to pin down liberalism to one single mode of thought, and only recently has the democratic/pseudosocialist left settled into their own definition of liberal and touted it as the way. In reality, liberal means Free, free of ties to the current ideology of the day, free of the restraints of political machines, free of mind and body. This could not be further from the modern interpretation of the word. True liberals should be free thinkers, open to consider all ideas, even if those ideas clash with their dogma.
Conservative, classically, means just the opposite. To be conservative it so hold the status quo. The, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality. Perhaps even a bit counter revolutionary, wanting to revert back to a time percieved as better than the present.
Both perfectly valid ideologies and modes of thought.
Yes, at one time Leninists, Marxists and Maoists were liberals. But so too were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Adam Smith. So too were leaders of change, for better or worse, around of the world and across time. Even Jesus was a liberal.
I'm sure my bias is seeping through my words as I type them. I'm a liberal. I try my damnedest to live up to my own definition of liberal. Oddly enough, it pushes me further and further towards libertarianism every day. Of course, being young, I'd rather say i'm an anarchist because of it's shock appeal. If only so many libertarians weren't corporatist douches, I would be able to embrace the party more fully.
Bottom line, Liberals are classically the bringers of change to the world, for better or worse. Conservatives are classically those that feel the world is in ballance and doesn't need change. It's interesting to see how both sides have morphed and twisted the terms to match their dogmas and agendas. Liberal != democrat. Conservative != republican.
Personally, I'm more afraid of a government that can drop a 500 lb bomb on me from 10,000 miles away. Most businesses can't do that.
Rather than a corporation poison your groundwater, then conveniently go out of business before taking responsibility to clean it up (ie, the Acid pits of Glen Avon, in Riverside county california)? Or a thousand corporations collectively spewing particulates and precursors to ozone into the air that then lead to increased rates of childhood asthma (the plight of the south coast air basin in southern california right now)?
The point is, if you have a large society, you can not have either government or business, you need both. Personally I would rather have a government with a contract to provide me with certain liberties it swears to protect, even if it does not protect all of them all of the time. If the government is set up to be accountable to it's populace, the will of the people will prevail. Don't get me wrong, government sucks, but complex societies require it, especially when the main means to success in that society is to screw your neighbor for more money.
The problem with businesses is that they lack social forsight, which leads to muck, bullshit, and economic externalities in the future. Government at least attempts to have some social forsight to mitigate those that are lacking in a market that doesn't react completely in real time.
The idea is the get the business to serve your interests. For example, they'll make you a car or build you a house or cook you a meal if you give them some money. They're actually helping you. And they do it because that money you gave them will come back to you when you do something for them. It's reciprocity. It's people helping people, although they rarely realize it.
While the reality you're positing on is nice and dreamy with little flowers and frogs jumping from one lilly pad to another, that's not the actual reality of the situation. Most major governments are now slaves to their domestic corporate interests, which demand security in their foreign projects and opportunities in places their governments have no business entering. You want to see the reality of Corporate Globalism, go to south east asian gold mines run by US corporations, or go to oil works in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan run by Exxon, Shell, and United Oil. The pursuit of money is not people helping people. It's government helping businesses expand their profit margins while marginalizing the individual. The trees in the forest no longer matter, my friend. All that matters is that their growth is maximized that harvest comes more frequently each year.
Remember that even X has to have things running in the background to be able to do what it does. Why not complain about them
You are obviously new here. Slashdotters only complain. They complain about X, KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox, blackbox, openbox, windowmaker, gentoo, rehat, slackware, *BSD, slashdot, microsoft, linus torvalds, linux...I think you get the idea. Slashdotters do nothing but complain. That's the only constant here, man.
And wtf does "becoz" mean?
Well, when deciding between a business and the government, i'll trust the government long before i trust a business. And I never trust the government.
FreeBSD makes a decent desktop, about as fast as most major linux distros, but without a lot of the linux-specific niceties like HAL and DBUS. Check out arch linux, as well, it's got all cutting edge desktop stuff, but with a very simple, unbloated base install that you build on with binary packages. Pacman (it's packaging systems) is one of the most bare-bones, but easy-to-use package managers i've laid hands on. It's got what *i* expect to be there, without any extra cruft. But yeah, those would be my two choices for a desktop *nix system, FreeBSD or Arch. Both slim, no-nonsense systems.
Right now they're working on an amd64 port for arch linux. I'm currently running the i686 version on my opteron and it runs pretty damn well. I used Gentoo for like...5 years before switching over, and I dig arch a lot more than Gentoo. Basically the install is pretty similar, except it uses packages instead of compiling every dependency from scratch. And...oddly enough...it's faster than Gentoo. Give it a try, I highly recommend it.
The government doesn't have to compete.
Which is why the EU was created, right? Since they don't have to compete in the global market with the US. Same reason we're starting to worry about China's increasing capital and oil use, because we don't have to compete with them on the global market. I totally see your point.
Governments are the only real monopolies in the world. I define a "real" monopoly as an entity that increases prices, increases inefficiency, increases its market share and power...but doesn't have to be accountable for any of its failures
Of course, which is why we weren't attacked on september 11th after fucking with the taliban in the 80's to help fight communism, why we didn't go after sadam hussien, allegedly, for gassing his people and having a corrupt regime. Makes perfect sense, governments are never accountable for their failures.
When a politician fails, he not only doesn't get fired, he asks for more money and usually gets it!
Or s/he is overthrown by a pissed off populace.
With government, you HAVE to buy (pay taxes) and obey their laws. Governments use force, businesses use marketing and persuasion.
You don't have to. You can drop out of society. The reason you wouldn't, though, is because despite all the bitching and moaning about coersion and unaccountability in government (Which I totally agree with), the benefits of sticking with a society outweigh the costs of hoofing it on your own in the real world without any national affiliation. There are people who do it, though. So, yes, you CAN choose to not buy into a Government's product (it's social, political, and economic ideals). Most people are just too pussy to do it. It's kind of like Wal*Mart syndrome...sure, you might feel bad about getting your household goods from a huge chain store that tends to push smaller, more entrepenurial (i butchered that), and arguably more "American" businesses out of town, but...shit, you can't beat their prices! Heh. And if you feel that governments these days don't use marketing and intellectual persuation to keep their populace happy, you're a bit naieve. The Government uses the same types of statistics, visual tricks, and language a large company would if it wanted to instill pride and loyalty in it's customers.
So no, government is not business. It may be run like a business (a very very bad one that would be bankrupt before it even started), but governments are definately not businesses. And until I can choose whether or not to pay taxes it will never be a business.
So it comes down to taxes. I see. Well, move to the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, build yourself a yurt, and live off the land. Hey, Pot grows natually all over the place up there, and krygyzstan is pretty open and kind to us pale faces. Chances are you won't be found by any government agency, you won't have to pay taxes, and you can not only live as a guilt-free libertarian, but also as an anarchist!
Your argument is well taken, but it assumes that economies do not exist between government entities, only within them. That's flawed. Governments do compete on the global scale for economic dominance and a foothold in the global market, just like an ideal company would. The only real difference I can see is that Government is obligated, by contract, to provide social goods and services to it's "customers", whereas a business is only told it should, but is not forced to (well, that's arguable - i'm talking about concrete social services, not government mandated taxes that are taken from all citizens and corporate entities). So, one could say that governments, in and ideal world (like an ideal market), would compete for constituents by promoting their product (a social, political, and economic ideal) and create alliances (conglomerations) to make their product more pervasive throughout the market.
With that out of the way, my original, one-sentence argument is that businesses now h
i need to come back to this and check this out.
having used apt-get and ports extensively, yes. The various BSD ports are better than apt-get. However, pacman (in arch linux) beats them all to hell. Simple, clean, and elegant.
The government is business.
You're a sub-par photographer.
Totally agree. Some of the highest modded posts add nothing of value to the discussion.
You're 100% dead wrong. He was referring to schools taking on the role of parents, spending less time on academic pursuits and more time on hand-holding bullshit that should be done by good, effective parents.
Sooooo coool down Johnny Homeschool. No offence was meant towards you and your wacko ideals.
agreed.
Yes, Yes we do.
it will be once they finish up their rewrites and get a packaging system in there. That's where i'll be moving.
except amd64 has worked (for me) on freebsd for like...psh at least 10 years.
And it doesn't matter. You can bitch all you want but it does NOTHING. He, on the other hand, helps people across the world with money he "stole" from people across the world who have income to burn and, for the most part, choose his product. You are a nobody, he is a somebody. When you're both dead, you will be equals - but with one exception. Many more people will have profitted from his existance than will have from yours.
pshhh except a civilization that advanced would have mastered hydroponics. Hell, we're virtually mastered it. It produces *ehem* very good "crops".
haha, woops, that should be "I'm not a moron and i do NOT believe this to be true."
well, to be fair humans have been around for as long as 400,000 years. That's the lower bound of the Vostok ive core...so who knows, maybe before 400,000 years ago the atmosphere had a steady concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere...that's highly unlikely but Vostok itself doesn't go back far enough to refute it completely.
And, no i'm not a moron and actually believe this to be true.
Uh...and what geological evidence is that?
For a long time, because it's science. Science is speculative for a LONG time before it's accepted. Of course scientifically, the mechanisms behind the Green House effect are almost universally accepted. We know CH4, C02, and others trap heat in the troposphere. We know their emissions are increased. The question is - how long will the correlation between mean temp increase and increase in CO2 emissions continue? Now, of course, it's politicized, which means if you belong to one camp you have to believe there is a correlation, and if you belong to another you have to believe their isn't one. That only complicates things and lends itself to warped analysis of scientific findings.
too bad you can't see the nutrient loading in the bay, the algal blooms, disrupting it's value as a purifying estuary as salt water fish leave and fresh water fish die off due to lack of oxygen - all disrupting the fragile ecosystem that is an estuary. Hey man, maybe it'll die like the Chesapeake. It'll still be blue, though...for a while.
They're just saying that climate change leads to mass extinction, be it normal cyclic (like the last 100,000 years) or cataclysmic (think dinosaurs - they didn't die because asteroid shards hit every single one of them, they died because the debris in the atmosphere blocked out the sun, causing the major producers of the time to die out). Right now the climate is changing, we're approaching a peak, anthropogenically aided or not. Will that lead to another mass extinction? That's the question they're raising. Nice jump to reactionary politicism, though.