Actually it has. Compare the standard of living of the countries with relatively free markets to those of such socialist paradises as Cuba, the Soviet Union, China before they started to wise up, etc.
Is this the same standard of living that has been falling for the past 40 years?
As for the money that corporate CEOs make, what's it to you? Are you a shareholder?
If you have a Social Security Card, you've become a shareholder.
The United Nations was formed to regulate business? That's news to them! [un.org]
Not regulate business- hide the effects of business through mitigation of the starvation concentration of wealth causes.
Also, advocating the slaughter of millions of human beings to support your worldview certainly illustrates what kind of worldview you hold.
Why not? Philip Morris has made a fortune on "advocating the slaughter of millions of human beings". EVERY worldview is supported by the slaughter of millions of human beings.
Like other marxists, you completely ignore the effects of productive effort.
Productive effort is equal among all human beings, and has almost nothing to do with the raw inputs of the product.
If you raise a crop, build a house, paint a picture, or any of the other activities that people do for a living, you create wealth that did not exist before.
Really? So where did the additional atoms come from? WEALTH is a real world physical item, not something imaginary you made up in your head.
Just because a resource is very big does not mean that it is infinite. There are only a fixed number of qubits in the universe that are accessible to mankind, therefore of course "wealth" is a finite resource, and it's stupid to argue that it is infinite merely because you've redefined wealth as a fiat currency.
Yes, that's one of many things that Marx got wrong. He failed to realize that wealth is a consequence of freedom.
Only if you include the freedom to do evil in your concept of freedom. I don't. Your freedom ends where the next guy's begins. Thus concentration of wealth, which is *always* due to becoming a parasite on the system and thus is supported by unpaid wages or unfair pricing (usually both), is not freedom. It's enslaving your fellow citizens.
Well, all of the above were merely reactions to what the multinationals were doing already. Nuke the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and Switzerland and you'd wipe most of them out.
You can read Marx in two ways- the Communist Manifesto or The Theory of Capital. The second has much to say about how concentration of wealth and freedom are not compatible.
So your local businesses and stores have some kind of right to your business?
Yes. As my friends and neighbors, they should get preferential treatment. In addition to that, they favor me with their business in return. That's called having a local economy.
And for that, you support government coercion to stomp on the corporations' ability to contract with whom they please?
Yes. Especially when they attempt to use profits from one region to put local businesses in another region out of business.
Ah, I see, I'm being too autistic again. I took "no one" in the article to mean they had asked *BOTH* the school district and IBM where the paperwork or hardware was, and that "no one" had any clue.
I never wanted to be rich- I just want to be left the hell alone. The way I see it, we don't need the "International" corporations of the world. And that includes IBM.
The items may not have been returnable unless defective. Even if returned, there could have been a handling charge for the returns. At a minimum, a RMA would have been setup to handle the return. You can't just return items without working with the vendor.
Actually, under federal law, all you really need to do is write "Delivery rejected" on the outside of the unopened box.
I think if you read the above you will see that I have not attended college yet, and I graduated from High School in 1984. I am sorry if I have totally blown your image of me as some sort of rich asshole neocon nutbag, but those are the facts.
Actually, you blew two images at once. The first was the real image- you would have missed the boom years (by 1988, we were falling into the minirecession between Reagan and Clinton) even if you HAD gone to college. But the second image you've blown is you as an intelligent being- I grew up KNOWING uncles who had been in Vietnam and so didn't believe the first word any of the recruiters said, thus never signed up to "serve my country". Just about everybody I know who did got fucked over just like you did.
I have, huh? You say I've got mine, but I wouldn't even know where to look for it, much less have the idea that I have nothing to worry about. And do you mean to imply that everyone over the age of 37 is a neocon? Not hardly. I have always been and remain somewhere left of what the US considers 'liberal' - something in the range of Democratic Socialist.
The neocons ARE lefties- your generation was the last generation that had a *better* standard of living than your parents. If you squandered the money you made in the 1980s and should have been investing in the 1990s, that's your own fault. Where for those of us who went into hock to get a college education in the 1990s to graduate just in time to get thrown out of work for a bunch of people in other countries (Bill Clinton and George W's idea of "liberal free trade"- between those two we might as well not even HAVE a country, neither one has ever heard of "border control" or "tariffs") have NO CHANCE AT ALL- we'll be working all of our lives just to pay off the debt run up trying to become adults. And our children will be paying for the governmental debt the baby boomers ran up.
And BTW - everyone born in the baby boom (1946 - 1964) would be over the age of 42, while those of us between the ages of 37 and 42 are actually the early part of GenX.
True. That's part of the transistional stage....When did you graduate from college? Early enough to make money off of the boom years of the 1980s?
Consider how the economy has done quite well during the Bush tenure, and all you hear is how the prosperity is just a pause before the financial storm.
I've yet to see my personal economy recover. "The economy has done quite well"- only if you think the stock market is the economy, and can afford to invest instead of living life getting eaten by usury, credit cards, subprime loans, and bad bankruptcy laws.
Of course, if you're over the age of 37 you've already escaped all that- and "fuck the future, I've got mine" has always been the neocon liberal baby boomer's defiant motto anyway, never mind the broken homes, hearts, and lack of financial ability you left behind in your divorces and drug use.
Actually, if you ever actually look at the reports Al Gore and the IPCC have produced, they don't say that CO2 is the problem. In fact, it's one of a set of gases that are a *part* of the problem. *Many* other gasses are much more likely to cause global warming.
CO2 is just the smoking gun so to speak- an easy gas to carbon date (because it has carbon in it) and thus can be traced back to fossil fuels easily (high C12 content) and can be shown to have increased greatly in the last 2 centuries (in ice cores.
Myself, I'm much more afraid of Methane Hydrate- a fossil fuel that might be the replacement for gasoline, or if we don't beat the tipover point, will be released from tundras and ocean bottoms around the world to accelerate global warming far beyond what we've seen so far. It's a greenhouse gas that exists as ICE at high pressure and might already be the cause of several airplane and boat sinkings in the Bermuda Triangle.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually it has. Compare the standard of living of the countries with relatively free markets to those of such socialist paradises as Cuba, the Soviet Union, China before they started to wise up, etc.
Is this the same standard of living that has been falling for the past 40 years?
As for the money that corporate CEOs make, what's it to you? Are you a shareholder?
If you have a Social Security Card, you've become a shareholder.
The United Nations was formed to regulate business? That's news to them! [un.org]
Not regulate business- hide the effects of business through mitigation of the starvation concentration of wealth causes.
Also, advocating the slaughter of millions of human beings to support your worldview certainly illustrates what kind of worldview you hold.
Why not? Philip Morris has made a fortune on "advocating the slaughter of millions of human beings". EVERY worldview is supported by the slaughter of millions of human beings.
So provide them with your business. What everyone else does with their business though, is none of your concern.
It is if they use unfair business practices to put my local companies out of business.
Like other marxists, you completely ignore the effects of productive effort.
Productive effort is equal among all human beings, and has almost nothing to do with the raw inputs of the product.
If you raise a crop, build a house, paint a picture, or any of the other activities that people do for a living, you create wealth that did not exist before.
Really? So where did the additional atoms come from? WEALTH is a real world physical item, not something imaginary you made up in your head.
Only assuming "wealth" is a finite resource.
Just because a resource is very big does not mean that it is infinite. There are only a fixed number of qubits in the universe that are accessible to mankind, therefore of course "wealth" is a finite resource, and it's stupid to argue that it is infinite merely because you've redefined wealth as a fiat currency.
Yes, that's one of many things that Marx got wrong. He failed to realize that wealth is a consequence of freedom.
Only if you include the freedom to do evil in your concept of freedom. I don't. Your freedom ends where the next guy's begins. Thus concentration of wealth, which is *always* due to becoming a parasite on the system and thus is supported by unpaid wages or unfair pricing (usually both), is not freedom. It's enslaving your fellow citizens.
Well, all of the above were merely reactions to what the multinationals were doing already. Nuke the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and Switzerland and you'd wipe most of them out.
You can read Marx in two ways- the Communist Manifesto or The Theory of Capital. The second has much to say about how concentration of wealth and freedom are not compatible.
So your local businesses and stores have some kind of right to your business?
Yes. As my friends and neighbors, they should get preferential treatment. In addition to that, they favor me with their business in return. That's called having a local economy.
And for that, you support government coercion to stomp on the corporations' ability to contract with whom they please?
Yes. Especially when they attempt to use profits from one region to put local businesses in another region out of business.
When they steal business from local businesses and stores, it definately affects my community and most certainly IS my business.
OH! I'm being autistic again. I saw "no one" as including IBM. If IBM has such proof, then they deserve their money.
Ah, I see, I'm being too autistic again. I took "no one" in the article to mean they had asked *BOTH* the school district and IBM where the paperwork or hardware was, and that "no one" had any clue.
I never wanted to be rich- I just want to be left the hell alone. The way I see it, we don't need the "International" corporations of the world. And that includes IBM.
I bet IBM has proof. :) It certainly isn't IBM's fault if the school district was disorganized.
Given that, why didn't they offer this proof when the newspaper called, thus making the whole thing a moot point?
The items may not have been returnable unless defective. Even if returned, there could have been a handling charge for the returns. At a minimum, a RMA would have been setup to handle the return. You can't just return items without working with the vendor.
Actually, under federal law, all you really need to do is write "Delivery rejected" on the outside of the unopened box.
Whatever you are smoking, sir, I should also like to partake.
Read their trade agreements. NO CONSERVATIVE WOULD EVER SIGN SUCH HOGWASH. CAFTA alone gives away billions in business.
Where's the proof that the computers were ever delivered? There's no paperwork, no hardware, nothing! I'm extremely suspicious of the whole deal.
If the hardware was returned, then what? They have to pay for hardware that the school no longer possesses?
For one reason or another the computers were never used and no one now seems to be able to locate either the paperwork or the hardware.
I don't understand something. Is there any proof that the computers were ever delivered?
I think if you read the above you will see that I have not attended college yet, and I graduated from High School in 1984. I am sorry if I have totally blown your image of me as some sort of rich asshole neocon nutbag, but those are the facts.
Actually, you blew two images at once. The first was the real image- you would have missed the boom years (by 1988, we were falling into the minirecession between Reagan and Clinton) even if you HAD gone to college. But the second image you've blown is you as an intelligent being- I grew up KNOWING uncles who had been in Vietnam and so didn't believe the first word any of the recruiters said, thus never signed up to "serve my country". Just about everybody I know who did got fucked over just like you did.
I have, huh? You say I've got mine, but I wouldn't even know where to look for it, much less have the idea that I have nothing to worry about. And do you mean to imply that everyone over the age of 37 is a neocon? Not hardly. I have always been and remain somewhere left of what the US considers 'liberal' - something in the range of Democratic Socialist.
The neocons ARE lefties- your generation was the last generation that had a *better* standard of living than your parents. If you squandered the money you made in the 1980s and should have been investing in the 1990s, that's your own fault. Where for those of us who went into hock to get a college education in the 1990s to graduate just in time to get thrown out of work for a bunch of people in other countries (Bill Clinton and George W's idea of "liberal free trade"- between those two we might as well not even HAVE a country, neither one has ever heard of "border control" or "tariffs") have NO CHANCE AT ALL- we'll be working all of our lives just to pay off the debt run up trying to become adults. And our children will be paying for the governmental debt the baby boomers ran up.
And BTW - everyone born in the baby boom (1946 - 1964) would be over the age of 42, while those of us between the ages of 37 and 42 are actually the early part of GenX.
True. That's part of the transistional stage....When did you graduate from college? Early enough to make money off of the boom years of the 1980s?
Consider how the economy has done quite well during the Bush tenure, and all you hear is how the prosperity is just a pause before the financial storm.
I've yet to see my personal economy recover. "The economy has done quite well"- only if you think the stock market is the economy, and can afford to invest instead of living life getting eaten by usury, credit cards, subprime loans, and bad bankruptcy laws.
Of course, if you're over the age of 37 you've already escaped all that- and "fuck the future, I've got mine" has always been the neocon liberal baby boomer's defiant motto anyway, never mind the broken homes, hearts, and lack of financial ability you left behind in your divorces and drug use.
Actually, if you ever actually look at the reports Al Gore and the IPCC have produced, they don't say that CO2 is the problem. In fact, it's one of a set of gases that are a *part* of the problem. *Many* other gasses are much more likely to cause global warming.
CO2 is just the smoking gun so to speak- an easy gas to carbon date (because it has carbon in it) and thus can be traced back to fossil fuels easily (high C12 content) and can be shown to have increased greatly in the last 2 centuries (in ice cores.
Myself, I'm much more afraid of Methane Hydrate- a fossil fuel that might be the replacement for gasoline, or if we don't beat the tipover point, will be released from tundras and ocean bottoms around the world to accelerate global warming far beyond what we've seen so far. It's a greenhouse gas that exists as ICE at high pressure and might already be the cause of several airplane and boat sinkings in the Bermuda Triangle.
(unless you count overpopulation, which they've alleviated temporarily in several countries through horrific mass murders.)
Can you think of a more efficient way to get rid of excess population?
The reverse is also true- I know in several circles there is a "burn the witch" attitude towards anybody who mentions global warming.