Well, my original suspicion was absolutely correct. You do belong on a lamp-post.
And I say you belong burnt in effigy- since you've chosen to make this personal.
They don't need to be. All, WTO requires, is for there to be no laws preventing such sales.
Re-read the GATS treaty: preferential treatment must be given to foreign companies in governmental service contracts. For giving up water supplies in North America- we will gain taking care of water supplies in South America.
As long as it leaves my pocket anyway, why do I care, where it goes?
Money that goes to your local community comes back into your pocket in the form of increased sales locally, and if you're an employee, increased job prospects locally. Money that goes overseas is gone, as good as if you'd burnt it.
Ooops... Your rage is taking the better of you -- gotta cut down on breaking windows. "ANYWHERE ON THE PLANET"? Phillippines? Germany? Japan? South Korea? Taiwan? These are direct "recipients" of democracy from us. There are countless others, who were helped less directly (like the former Soviet block -- almost entirely).
None of those are democracies- they're puppet governments of the US Multinational Corporations.
I hope so- if so, my new third party will have a cakewalk re-registering voters in 2007. That is- as long as there's still an election in 2008. But since we support *both* the IWW and the NRA, I don't think there will be much of a problem forcing our names onto the ballot if that's what it comes down to- a need for regime change in Washington.
What's evil? Selling an idea? Buying an idea? What's your problem?
What is evil is earning money off of another person's work- no matter how you try to make it moral.
Those who do not work, should not eat. EVER.
I don't see, how "the current market" is stealing anything from anyone. Lenin-esque or not. May be, the little piece of the sky right above you fell down, but I don't see it.
Any time somebody earns money off of your work, that is stealing from you. And that is evil.
You are changing the subject and I will not bite. Here is some reading for you, though. And here is some more.
And here's an article for you. You brought up globalization- and neither of your articles show why water supplies all over the world, even already privatized ones, need to be sold to foreign companies. Yet it's a requirment in WTO treaties that YOUR CITY has to sell it's water supply to foreign interests. When GATS is complete, your money you pay for water will be going someplace else.
Your last sentence makes no sense to me. I "overvalue the use of finances as a tax"? Sorry, that's gibberish. But you seem to dislike Imperialism, so I'll defend it a little.
You support the Bankers having control over ideas that they never had themselves- that's imperialism.
Capitalism (Imperialism? Nyah, its globalisation now) survives and prospers. The most efficient way to organize millions and billions of people currently known.
Depends on what you're organizing them for- it's certainly efficient if you're trying to make slaves out of them. It's not very efficient at spreading democracy and freedom- which is why we've yet to succeed at planting a democracy ANYWHERE ON THE PLANET.
It might have something to do with the Asperger's Syndrome- or maybe just not believing that slashdot sucks. I comment on what I'm interested in, when I'm interested in it, with what I know. Just because you're an incredibly boring AC doesn't mean that I don't have a wide range of interests.
If she's got the geek gene, she should be showing it by now- by making sure you can NEVER watch TV at a normal volume or without having it turned off and on a million times.
If she's got the geek gene, she'll pick it all up by osmosis, no need for a book. If she doesn't, she'll never understand anyway, no more than your PHB does at work.
60 Minutes didn't even think that telling us that Indian programmers are getting our jobs because they are *better* with their IIT degrees than we are with 10-20 years of experience was insulting. I think CBS can readily be dismissed as an actual news source- and was a long time ago by anybody watching these things. So no- I don't think whoever gave the documents to Burkett would have thought that their forgery would have been caught so quickly.
If it was the Republicans, then not only does it not pass the smell test- it means that Rove & Crew are so smart, so underhanded, that Kerry might as well concede the election today.
On everything other than the offshore outsourcing and open borders, I like what he had to say. I'll still be forming a third party in 2008 though- because automation, immigration, and offshoring will need to be addressed, and in a way that doesn't use the free market system- because we're well on the road to having anywhere between 25% and 75% of our workers kicked out of that system entirely, not because somebody in Korea can do the job cheaper, but because robots can do the job even cheaper yet. And if we don't want a violent revolution, we're going to have to do something with those people. What exactly, is the question, and the reason I'm going with a hack of marxism as opposed to libertarianism.
I'm also a Get Bush Out Voter- but I'd encourage all slashdotters whose states are polling at more than an 8% difference between the candidates to vote Libertarian NOW!
Actually, the correct action would've been for this to be standing policy since the invention of the transponder, but I digress. Given the circumstances, yes, the President should've given that order.
Many of us thought it WAS the standing order- but that day showed us differently.
If this were the case, it should've been standing policy for decades, since the Air Force has lots of pilots who have worked up through the ranks into positions of influence within the Pentagon. However, since it wasn't policy, I'd wager that Bush was never taught this course of action in his pilot training. If he was, I'm going to be a lot less happy with every President since the birth of commercial aviation for dropping the ball (and yeah, that does mean W, too).
Not turning off your transponder (which is the heart of our friend-foe id systems) wasn't drilled into fighter pilots sice the invention of the transponder during WWII? But I agree, tons of Presidents (and other high up muckity-mucks in the Pentagon) had dropped the ball- and the silly thing is, you've got a liberal talk show host out there, who WAS in the Air Force (only ground crew) but she thought it was policy (and it was her job to help keep the jets operating for such missions). You can find lots of information on it on her blog.
For the most part, I do agree with this; however, the President of the United States has duties other than that of Commander-in-Chief. He had to be extremely careful not to do anything that could be construed as panic in front of the cameras because that would create panic in the rest of the country. I see no problem with taking a few minutes to make sure you don't do anything hasty or scare anyone. Then again, I think the chain of command should be able to act at least in a preliminary way to defend us against an attack without talking to the President. Sending up planes to intercept airliners with their transponders off would've definitely been within this authority that I think they should have, but I would say the President should be consulted before firing in most cases.
I would agree with that- Maybe modify it by "I've got urgent business for our country to take care of, I'm sorry, but I won't be able to read to you today. I'll try to come back as soon as I can". That would keep from scaring the kiddies- even if it does disappoint them temporarily.
Are these still the correct actions today?
Too late, unfortuneately- we had about a 72 hour window of opportunity there when this was possible without destroying our economy entirely- so no, Kerry wouldn't be given the chance.
If yes, would John Kerry carry them out upon election?
Given Kerry's financial base- the real question is: If French Chefs Attacked America with Food Poisoning, killing 5000 people, would you let them fly back to Paris? Would you let Paris Survive? Personally, I think Kerry is almost as big of a whimp as Bush is on this topic.
My personal opinion is that nuking Mecca would've been overkill, but I have absolutely no problem with an attack on Saudi Arabia which has never been our friend, and attacking Afghanistan was clearly the right course of action.
Afghanistan was certainly a part of the correct action- as would have been Northern Pakistan once we found out that the Pakistani Government didn't have control of the region. But Saudi HAS been the friend of the Bush family, if not America- which is the point with Bush, he put personal friendship over duty to country.
Every illegal alien in the country should be rounded up and either deported or held for questioning anyway because they have no right to be here (by definition of illegal alien).
Too bad neither party will touch this- even after most of the hijackers came in with obviously forged and sometimes even ludicrously filled out documents.
On the other hand, I doubt that Kerry would do them
snip...What matters is the forms almost every government employee signs that basically state that what they see at work stays at work and is NOT to be discussed with anyone under penalty of criminal prosecution.
snip...
I do agree this country needs a change in it's political system: we need candidates and government employees who take personal responsibility for their actions, voters who will get off their couches and VOTE (even if it's for None Of The Above), and an end to putting up with people in public office who lie, cheat, and steal. If we continue to elect people based on popularity contests and group-think, we deserve what we get. We need to vote for people who have honesty, integrity, compassion, and a willingness to do what is right even when it's the unpopular thing to do. More importantly, we need to embrace those attributes as well and reflect them in the way that we live.
A good start, might be putting an end to the kind of secrecy in the first quote I snipped out of your post. There are two ways to deal with this in the information age: Have separate networks for separate political parties, OR dump everything into the public view all the time so that we can see what kind of sleazeballs we've been electing. I personally vote for the second- it'd be interesting to see what the press does with the sudden information overload and the utter lack of a stranglehold on the information marketplace.
So? Yes, the end result of purchasing something and stealing it can be the same. A lot of vastly different means can lead to the same ends.
And my point is that if the end is evil, the means don't matter. The end is not justified by the means, no matter how much you want it to be.
According to who? Somebody, somewhere has to decide, what is and what is not good. And whoever is picked to make the decision (a government agency, a priest, free market, etc.), there will be people, who'll disagree. Still, I'd prefer the free market.
If the free market was free instead of co-opted by a bunch of con artists who prevent innovation from even being tried, I'd agree. But don't even attempt to pretend that the current market is anything more than a Lenin-esque atempt to steal money from the poor and give it to the rich.
Oh, yeah, and now, like a good modern Marxist, you object to the globalization. Go break a window or two...
Back to the end is not justified by the means- how is having a multinational corporation charging people for water and stealing their land to put their farmers out of business any different than just taking them over militarily and killing them all off?
Could it be, that you UNDERVALUE the work it takes to bring an idea (however great) to life. Very elitist of you, BTW -- comes with being a Marxist, I suppose.
Just as you overvalue the use of finances as a tax on human labor and ideas- how very Imperialist of you.
Pardon the intrusion, I just wanted to point out that 0% unemployment would be a VERY BAD thing. You don't need to be an economist to understand this, you just have to use some logic.
Bad thing for whom? Certainly NOT for the workers!
Zero percent unemployment implies that there is always a spare job out there instantly available for anyone that needs it, with each employer automatically hiring all applicants regardless of their qualifications. This sounds good on the surface. As employees we all like to have the boss desperate for our labor. But zero unemployment also means that workers are so desperate to find a new job that they will instantly grab the first one available. They aren't willing to spend time looking for the best job.
Or, alternatively, that all jobs pay equally well- and that there is no reason to be idle.
To me, zero percent unemployment sounds an awful lot like slavery. Actually worse than slavery, as the employers are equally bound in this dystopia. I don't know what the ideal unemployment rate is or even if there is one, but I know for sure it isn't zero percent. That's just fantasy.
Depends on how you think about it- slavery can be a form of freedom. Think about how much time you waste *every week* just looking for a way to live. That's a huge drain on your productivity and happiness. Now think instead if you could be assured of a way to live regardless of what mistakes you make- thus enabling you to make more mistakes. As any successfull individual knows, the secret of success is NOT BEING AFRAID TO MAKE MISTAKES!
Having said that- even socialists agree that 2%-4% unemployment is best, and while I'd like to see 0% unemployment, I say we should close our borders to new immigrants any time unemployment is above 4%. The rest will take care of itself.
If you're not their venture capitalist, or [cough] investing in their stocks, then you're not paying for their failures at all.
If you're an employee- you're betting YOUR future on THEIR success- and you're investing your time and work in their company. You're going to get hurt far more than the Venture Capitalist will when they fail. If the Venture Capitalist feels it at all- most skim enough off the top of the funds they manage for a quite comfortable lifestyle.
It's quite simple really. Their poor employees might be unemployed after the company goes belly up, but they still had their wages.
Which these days aren't even enough to live on anyway- so they go into debt working on promises from the employer that they will have future work. When that promise fails to materialize, personal bankruptcies soar.
Sidenote: criminal abberations like Enron belong to a completely different topic. Their employees were the victims of criminal acts and not victims of a non-marxist economic system.
Ah, but as I posted in my journal, Enron wasn't the abertation, but rather is the rule of how all corporations act. They were just stupid enough to get caught. And in fact, by putting profit and cost as the kings of business- Enron is the inevitable end of any publically traded corporation. GUARANTEED.
More complex than that. To use SP2 effectively, you need to become the master of the Windows Firewall. For most things it's fine- for just about everything else patches have come out already. There is a solution for every problem you will run into- so yes, it's safe as of now.
A problem with this is that it's estimated that for consumption taxes to replace all current federal taxes, the national sales tax rate would have to be 45% with NO exceptions (which, oddly enough, is about the same rate the working poor pay in Oregon right now on their income).
The difference is huge -- just like that between buying something and stealing it. Paying money to a willing seller (even he is selling at -- as future might show -- a big discount) is still a purchase (of an idea), not a theft.
The end result is the same however- the guy who does all the work gets shafted, the guy who invests gets all the reward.
You seem to have referred to the dot-com-bust as the source of your disillusionment. Well, those people got busted not because their ideas were stolen, it was because they weren't good (enough) in the first place... I worked in a dot-com too, I saw it happening.
Sometimes the ideas were very good- and those ideas are still in the marketplace, but the developers of those ideas are laid off without any reward, replaced by people in India who work for 1/10th the price. The entire.com bust was over in 1999- but the layoffs are still happening today, why is that do you think? Could it be because IDEAS are UNDERVALUED in the market to the extent that they are available for pawn shop prices (hint, that's a good analogy- the reason the prices in the pawn shop are so low is because everything there is stolen).
No we're not- our workers are floundering in a sea of low pay and no health insurance, with layoffs happening daily. We are certainly NOT at the cutting edge of taking care of our workers, nor are we at the cutting edge of having work for them to do- or we'd be at 0% unemployment.
Your incorrect assumption is that all ideas are worth investing in. 99% are not. Many millions of VC dollars are flushed (cough-dotcom-cough). So when the VC takes a large percentage of your business (come on, not quite 99%, and the founders of google, for example, are hardly homeless) you are paying for the failures of people equally convinced of their ideas.
Why should I pay for their failures? Why should they take money from my success? Why can't patenting be a true first-come-first-serve basis with an internet search for previous art?
Conversely, and much more likely, when your idea fails and the money (that isn't yours) goes bye-bye that was used to fund your idea, YOU are benefitting from what is taken from the other person. The founders, employees, and all people who profited from the failed venture all have the VCs to thank!
I've yet to profit from any failed venture- in fact, I usually end up with less assets than when I started. But that is as it should be. Anybody profiting from a failed venture is as bad as the investors.
Do the VCs make a lot of money? Sure. But guess what! The better they are at choosing ideas... the better their results will be! If they consistently fail... guess what? They go away.
My point is that the whole system is fraud and failure to begin with- an utterly unneccessary parasite on innovation.
Innovation requires risk. Risk requires loss. All investment has risk and this is the price the investor pays.
And what I'm saying is that it's far better for the innovator to take on that risk themselves- but they're not allowed to under the current system where only a corporation can afford to get a patent.
Best discussion I've ever seen as to why Boomers now vote Republican. As for me: live like a pauper, saving like hell, in hopes you can scrape by the next 20 years, Already doing this one, but am failing at it (partially because I failed to see the trend early enough and am around $200,000 in debt for trying to live like my parents did- and they weren't rich people to begin with) or
organize, discuss, and vote in hopes of becomming an unusually lucrative voting block.
I'm working on the 2nd by attempting to form a new political party that addresses the fears of younger people and older people on the same time. Socialized Food, Clothing, Shelter, and Medical Care is a huge plank- as is economic self-sufficiency for the United States.
Yeah, and we all know that the younger people who are also smarter will doubtless vote for Kerry (probably a direct consequence of their increased intelligence). Only the old, stupid, slow people would not mind Bush's lies and vote for him and "his people."
Do you think perhaps it's because smarter actually value intelligent conversation- and Bush often comes up appearing like a rich frat boy whose father paid for every good grade he ever got?
Door to Door might work better- but nobody wants to pay for that anymore. Calling phone numbers truly at random might work- but you've got more than just the United States in that list (Canada is also tied into the 10 digit dialing system, as are a few other places like the US Virgin Islands). I think that one guy has the best idea- move forward to internet polling of truly large samples.
Ignoring the fact that you've just changed the terms of the argument (from "wealth generation" to "truly wealthy"), my answer is a resounding "yes".
Well, let's take a look at it, shall we? If you like- since this whole thread seems to be moving towards being modded flamebait, we can move to my journal after this post- but I'd like to answer your points in public.
Don't you mean Warren Buffet instead of Bill Bennett?
Thank you, and I've made the change in my JE on the same topic. But like you say, it matters little to the argument.
In any case, the top 0.005% of the wealthy is hardly indicative of the average wealthy person. They certainly do not provide evidence that honest wealth creation is impossible. That's like saying it's impossible to get an honest high school diploma because the valedictorian was caught cheating.
Ah, but if the only way to pass the test is to cheat- then yes, that's the only way to get the diploma. But the real core of the argument is that investment is honorable.
You're also making a very fundamental mistake, and the same one Marx made. Your assumption is that only labor provide honorable wealth. This is nonsense. If it's not theft or fraud, just about any kind of wealth generation is honest. Investment is honorable. While you might have disagreement with Warren Buffet over the size of his investments, investment itself is still honorable.
What is the difference between investment and theft when it comes to innovation? I see no difference at all- it doesn't matter if you steal my idea or invest in it, in the end I work very hard and become homeless either way. There's no incentive to innovate under an investment system that rewards people so richly for doing NO work- it's far better to not do any work and invest than it is to innovate. And that's why investment is dishonorable by your own argument- it's theft from the labor class, and theft is wealth generation that is not honest.
So for the forseeable future, metadata will be far more successfull at finding images. Computer vision is still incredibly primitive: more so than computer speech recognition ten years ago.
And with this patent, it's bound to stay so for the next 24 years at least. Patents kill innovation.
I hope I'm right- if so I'm going to ask your sibling poster for his brother-in-law's address so that I can send him four blank DVDs- I think that's probably enough for the entire LD series.
Slashdot Mirror
Mine will be hosted local to me- and will also include a donations button in hopes of paying for my Sabatical in the summer of 2007 and 2008.
Well, my original suspicion was absolutely correct. You do belong on a lamp-post.
And I say you belong burnt in effigy- since you've chosen to make this personal.
They don't need to be. All, WTO requires, is for there to be no laws preventing such sales.
Re-read the GATS treaty: preferential treatment must be given to foreign companies in governmental service contracts. For giving up water supplies in North America- we will gain taking care of water supplies in South America.
As long as it leaves my pocket anyway, why do I care, where it goes?
Money that goes to your local community comes back into your pocket in the form of increased sales locally, and if you're an employee, increased job prospects locally. Money that goes overseas is gone, as good as if you'd burnt it.
Ooops... Your rage is taking the better of you -- gotta cut down on breaking windows. "ANYWHERE ON THE PLANET"? Phillippines? Germany? Japan? South Korea? Taiwan? These are direct "recipients" of democracy from us. There are countless others, who were helped less directly (like the former Soviet block -- almost entirely).
None of those are democracies- they're puppet governments of the US Multinational Corporations.
http://politics.slashdot.org/ has become my favorite site- at least until November when I start the blog for my new political party.
I hope so- if so, my new third party will have a cakewalk re-registering voters in 2007. That is- as long as there's still an election in 2008. But since we support *both* the IWW and the NRA, I don't think there will be much of a problem forcing our names onto the ballot if that's what it comes down to- a need for regime change in Washington.
What's evil? Selling an idea? Buying an idea? What's your problem?
What is evil is earning money off of another person's work- no matter how you try to make it moral.
Those who do not work, should not eat. EVER.
I don't see, how "the current market" is stealing anything from anyone. Lenin-esque or not. May be, the little piece of the sky right above you fell down, but I don't see it.
Any time somebody earns money off of your work, that is stealing from you. And that is evil.
You are changing the subject and I will not bite. Here is some reading for you, though. And here is some more.
And here's an article for you. You brought up globalization- and neither of your articles show why water supplies all over the world, even already privatized ones, need to be sold to foreign companies. Yet it's a requirment in WTO treaties that YOUR CITY has to sell it's water supply to foreign interests. When GATS is complete, your money you pay for water will be going someplace else.
Your last sentence makes no sense to me. I "overvalue the use of finances as a tax"? Sorry, that's gibberish. But you seem to dislike Imperialism, so I'll defend it a little.
You support the Bankers having control over ideas that they never had themselves- that's imperialism.
Capitalism (Imperialism? Nyah, its globalisation now) survives and prospers. The most efficient way to organize millions and billions of people currently known.
Depends on what you're organizing them for- it's certainly efficient if you're trying to make slaves out of them. It's not very efficient at spreading democracy and freedom- which is why we've yet to succeed at planting a democracy ANYWHERE ON THE PLANET.
It might have something to do with the Asperger's Syndrome- or maybe just not believing that slashdot sucks. I comment on what I'm interested in, when I'm interested in it, with what I know. Just because you're an incredibly boring AC doesn't mean that I don't have a wide range of interests.
If she's got the geek gene, she should be showing it by now- by making sure you can NEVER watch TV at a normal volume or without having it turned off and on a million times.
If she's got the geek gene, she'll pick it all up by osmosis, no need for a book. If she doesn't, she'll never understand anyway, no more than your PHB does at work.
60 Minutes didn't even think that telling us that Indian programmers are getting our jobs because they are *better* with their IIT degrees than we are with 10-20 years of experience was insulting. I think CBS can readily be dismissed as an actual news source- and was a long time ago by anybody watching these things. So no- I don't think whoever gave the documents to Burkett would have thought that their forgery would have been caught so quickly.
If it was the Republicans, then not only does it not pass the smell test- it means that Rove & Crew are so smart, so underhanded, that Kerry might as well concede the election today.
On everything other than the offshore outsourcing and open borders, I like what he had to say. I'll still be forming a third party in 2008 though- because automation, immigration, and offshoring will need to be addressed, and in a way that doesn't use the free market system- because we're well on the road to having anywhere between 25% and 75% of our workers kicked out of that system entirely, not because somebody in Korea can do the job cheaper, but because robots can do the job even cheaper yet. And if we don't want a violent revolution, we're going to have to do something with those people. What exactly, is the question, and the reason I'm going with a hack of marxism as opposed to libertarianism.
I'm also a Get Bush Out Voter- but I'd encourage all slashdotters whose states are polling at more than an 8% difference between the candidates to vote Libertarian NOW!
Actually, the correct action would've been for this to be standing policy since the invention of the transponder, but I digress. Given the circumstances, yes, the President should've given that order.
Many of us thought it WAS the standing order- but that day showed us differently.
If this were the case, it should've been standing policy for decades, since the Air Force has lots of pilots who have worked up through the ranks into positions of influence within the Pentagon. However, since it wasn't policy, I'd wager that Bush was never taught this course of action in his pilot training. If he was, I'm going to be a lot less happy with every President since the birth of commercial aviation for dropping the ball (and yeah, that does mean W, too).
Not turning off your transponder (which is the heart of our friend-foe id systems) wasn't drilled into fighter pilots sice the invention of the transponder during WWII? But I agree, tons of Presidents (and other high up muckity-mucks in the Pentagon) had dropped the ball- and the silly thing is, you've got a liberal talk show host out there, who WAS in the Air Force (only ground crew) but she thought it was policy (and it was her job to help keep the jets operating for such missions). You can find lots of information on it on her blog.
For the most part, I do agree with this; however, the President of the United States has duties other than that of Commander-in-Chief. He had to be extremely careful not to do anything that could be construed as panic in front of the cameras because that would create panic in the rest of the country. I see no problem with taking a few minutes to make sure you don't do anything hasty or scare anyone. Then again, I think the chain of command should be able to act at least in a preliminary way to defend us against an attack without talking to the President. Sending up planes to intercept airliners with their transponders off would've definitely been within this authority that I think they should have, but I would say the President should be consulted before firing in most cases.
I would agree with that- Maybe modify it by "I've got urgent business for our country to take care of, I'm sorry, but I won't be able to read to you today. I'll try to come back as soon as I can". That would keep from scaring the kiddies- even if it does disappoint them temporarily.
Are these still the correct actions today?
Too late, unfortuneately- we had about a 72 hour window of opportunity there when this was possible without destroying our economy entirely- so no, Kerry wouldn't be given the chance.
If yes, would John Kerry carry them out upon election?
Given Kerry's financial base- the real question is: If French Chefs Attacked America with Food Poisoning, killing 5000 people, would you let them fly back to Paris? Would you let Paris Survive? Personally, I think Kerry is almost as big of a whimp as Bush is on this topic.
My personal opinion is that nuking Mecca would've been overkill, but I have absolutely no problem with an attack on Saudi Arabia which has never been our friend, and attacking Afghanistan was clearly the right course of action.
Afghanistan was certainly a part of the correct action- as would have been Northern Pakistan once we found out that the Pakistani Government didn't have control of the region. But Saudi HAS been the friend of the Bush family, if not America- which is the point with Bush, he put personal friendship over duty to country.
Every illegal alien in the country should be rounded up and either deported or held for questioning anyway because they have no right to be here (by definition of illegal alien).
Too bad neither party will touch this- even after most of the hijackers came in with obviously forged and sometimes even ludicrously filled out documents.
On the other hand, I doubt that Kerry would do them
snip...What matters is the forms almost every government employee signs that basically state that what they see at work stays at work and is NOT to be discussed with anyone under penalty of criminal prosecution.
snip...
I do agree this country needs a change in it's political system: we need candidates and government employees who take personal responsibility for their actions, voters who will get off their couches and VOTE (even if it's for None Of The Above), and an end to putting up with people in public office who lie, cheat, and steal. If we continue to elect people based on popularity contests and group-think, we deserve what we get. We need to vote for people who have honesty, integrity, compassion, and a willingness to do what is right even when it's the unpopular thing to do. More importantly, we need to embrace those attributes as well and reflect them in the way that we live.
A good start, might be putting an end to the kind of secrecy in the first quote I snipped out of your post. There are two ways to deal with this in the information age: Have separate networks for separate political parties, OR dump everything into the public view all the time so that we can see what kind of sleazeballs we've been electing. I personally vote for the second- it'd be interesting to see what the press does with the sudden information overload and the utter lack of a stranglehold on the information marketplace.
So? Yes, the end result of purchasing something and stealing it can be the same. A lot of vastly different means can lead to the same ends.
And my point is that if the end is evil, the means don't matter. The end is not justified by the means, no matter how much you want it to be.
According to who? Somebody, somewhere has to decide, what is and what is not good. And whoever is picked to make the decision (a government agency, a priest, free market, etc.), there will be people, who'll disagree. Still, I'd prefer the free market.
If the free market was free instead of co-opted by a bunch of con artists who prevent innovation from even being tried, I'd agree. But don't even attempt to pretend that the current market is anything more than a Lenin-esque atempt to steal money from the poor and give it to the rich.
Oh, yeah, and now, like a good modern Marxist, you object to the globalization. Go break a window or two...
Back to the end is not justified by the means- how is having a multinational corporation charging people for water and stealing their land to put their farmers out of business any different than just taking them over militarily and killing them all off?
Could it be, that you UNDERVALUE the work it takes to bring an idea (however great) to life. Very elitist of you, BTW -- comes with being a Marxist, I suppose.
Just as you overvalue the use of finances as a tax on human labor and ideas- how very Imperialist of you.
Pardon the intrusion, I just wanted to point out that 0% unemployment would be a VERY BAD thing. You don't need to be an economist to understand this, you just have to use some logic.
Bad thing for whom? Certainly NOT for the workers!
Zero percent unemployment implies that there is always a spare job out there instantly available for anyone that needs it, with each employer automatically hiring all applicants regardless of their qualifications. This sounds good on the surface. As employees we all like to have the boss desperate for our labor. But zero unemployment also means that workers are so desperate to find a new job that they will instantly grab the first one available. They aren't willing to spend time looking for the best job.
Or, alternatively, that all jobs pay equally well- and that there is no reason to be idle.
To me, zero percent unemployment sounds an awful lot like slavery. Actually worse than slavery, as the employers are equally bound in this dystopia. I don't know what the ideal unemployment rate is or even if there is one, but I know for sure it isn't zero percent. That's just fantasy.
Depends on how you think about it- slavery can be a form of freedom. Think about how much time you waste *every week* just looking for a way to live. That's a huge drain on your productivity and happiness. Now think instead if you could be assured of a way to live regardless of what mistakes you make- thus enabling you to make more mistakes. As any successfull individual knows, the secret of success is NOT BEING AFRAID TO MAKE MISTAKES!
Having said that- even socialists agree that 2%-4% unemployment is best, and while I'd like to see 0% unemployment, I say we should close our borders to new immigrants any time unemployment is above 4%. The rest will take care of itself.
If you're not their venture capitalist, or [cough] investing in their stocks, then you're not paying for their failures at all.
If you're an employee- you're betting YOUR future on THEIR success- and you're investing your time and work in their company. You're going to get hurt far more than the Venture Capitalist will when they fail. If the Venture Capitalist feels it at all- most skim enough off the top of the funds they manage for a quite comfortable lifestyle.
It's quite simple really. Their poor employees might be unemployed after the company goes belly up, but they still had their wages.
Which these days aren't even enough to live on anyway- so they go into debt working on promises from the employer that they will have future work. When that promise fails to materialize, personal bankruptcies soar.
Sidenote: criminal abberations like Enron belong to a completely different topic. Their employees were the victims of criminal acts and not victims of a non-marxist economic system.
Ah, but as I posted in my journal, Enron wasn't the abertation, but rather is the rule of how all corporations act. They were just stupid enough to get caught. And in fact, by putting profit and cost as the kings of business- Enron is the inevitable end of any publically traded corporation. GUARANTEED.
More complex than that. To use SP2 effectively, you need to become the master of the Windows Firewall. For most things it's fine- for just about everything else patches have come out already. There is a solution for every problem you will run into- so yes, it's safe as of now.
A problem with this is that it's estimated that for consumption taxes to replace all current federal taxes, the national sales tax rate would have to be 45% with NO exceptions (which, oddly enough, is about the same rate the working poor pay in Oregon right now on their income).
The difference is huge -- just like that between buying something and stealing it. Paying money to a willing seller (even he is selling at -- as future might show -- a big discount) is still a purchase (of an idea), not a theft.
.com bust was over in 1999- but the layoffs are still happening today, why is that do you think? Could it be because IDEAS are UNDERVALUED in the market to the extent that they are available for pawn shop prices (hint, that's a good analogy- the reason the prices in the pawn shop are so low is because everything there is stolen).
The end result is the same however- the guy who does all the work gets shafted, the guy who invests gets all the reward.
You seem to have referred to the dot-com-bust as the source of your disillusionment. Well, those people got busted not because their ideas were stolen, it was because they weren't good (enough) in the first place... I worked in a dot-com too, I saw it happening.
Sometimes the ideas were very good- and those ideas are still in the marketplace, but the developers of those ideas are laid off without any reward, replaced by people in India who work for 1/10th the price. The entire
And yet we are on the cutting edge of both.
No we're not- our workers are floundering in a sea of low pay and no health insurance, with layoffs happening daily. We are certainly NOT at the cutting edge of taking care of our workers, nor are we at the cutting edge of having work for them to do- or we'd be at 0% unemployment.
Your incorrect assumption is that all ideas are worth investing in. 99% are not. Many millions of VC dollars are flushed (cough-dotcom-cough). So when the VC takes a large percentage of your business (come on, not quite 99%, and the founders of google, for example, are hardly homeless) you are paying for the failures of people equally convinced of their ideas.
Why should I pay for their failures? Why should they take money from my success? Why can't patenting be a true first-come-first-serve basis with an internet search for previous art?
Conversely, and much more likely, when your idea fails and the money (that isn't yours) goes bye-bye that was used to fund your idea, YOU are benefitting from what is taken from the other person. The founders, employees, and all people who profited from the failed venture all have the VCs to thank!
I've yet to profit from any failed venture- in fact, I usually end up with less assets than when I started. But that is as it should be. Anybody profiting from a failed venture is as bad as the investors.
Do the VCs make a lot of money? Sure. But guess what! The better they are at choosing ideas... the better their results will be! If they consistently fail... guess what? They go away.
My point is that the whole system is fraud and failure to begin with- an utterly unneccessary parasite on innovation.
Innovation requires risk. Risk requires loss. All investment has risk and this is the price the investor pays.
And what I'm saying is that it's far better for the innovator to take on that risk themselves- but they're not allowed to under the current system where only a corporation can afford to get a patent.
MOD PARENT UP MAJOR TIME.
Best discussion I've ever seen as to why Boomers now vote Republican. As for me:
live like a pauper, saving like hell, in hopes you can scrape by the next 20 years,
Already doing this one, but am failing at it (partially because I failed to see the trend early enough and am around $200,000 in debt for trying to live like my parents did- and they weren't rich people to begin with)
or organize, discuss, and vote in hopes of becomming an unusually lucrative voting block.
I'm working on the 2nd by attempting to form a new political party that addresses the fears of younger people and older people on the same time. Socialized Food, Clothing, Shelter, and Medical Care is a huge plank- as is economic self-sufficiency for the United States.
Yeah, and we all know that the younger people who are also smarter will doubtless vote for Kerry (probably a direct consequence of their increased intelligence). Only the old, stupid, slow people would not mind Bush's lies and vote for him and "his people."
Do you think perhaps it's because smarter actually value intelligent conversation- and Bush often comes up appearing like a rich frat boy whose father paid for every good grade he ever got?
Nah- you want to stay away from primes when making up statistics. Primes, evens, and numbers divisible by 5 are always suspect.
Door to Door might work better- but nobody wants to pay for that anymore. Calling phone numbers truly at random might work- but you've got more than just the United States in that list (Canada is also tied into the 10 digit dialing system, as are a few other places like the US Virgin Islands). I think that one guy has the best idea- move forward to internet polling of truly large samples.
Ignoring the fact that you've just changed the terms of the argument (from "wealth generation" to "truly wealthy"), my answer is a resounding "yes".
Well, let's take a look at it, shall we? If you like- since this whole thread seems to be moving towards being modded flamebait, we can move to my journal after this post- but I'd like to answer your points in public.
Don't you mean Warren Buffet instead of Bill Bennett?
Thank you, and I've made the change in my JE on the same topic. But like you say, it matters little to the argument.
In any case, the top 0.005% of the wealthy is hardly indicative of the average wealthy person. They certainly do not provide evidence that honest wealth creation is impossible. That's like saying it's impossible to get an honest high school diploma because the valedictorian was caught cheating.
Ah, but if the only way to pass the test is to cheat- then yes, that's the only way to get the diploma. But the real core of the argument is that investment is honorable.
You're also making a very fundamental mistake, and the same one Marx made. Your assumption is that only labor provide honorable wealth. This is nonsense. If it's not theft or fraud, just about any kind of wealth generation is honest. Investment is honorable. While you might have disagreement with Warren Buffet over the size of his investments, investment itself is still honorable.
What is the difference between investment and theft when it comes to innovation? I see no difference at all- it doesn't matter if you steal my idea or invest in it, in the end I work very hard and become homeless either way. There's no incentive to innovate under an investment system that rewards people so richly for doing NO work- it's far better to not do any work and invest than it is to innovate. And that's why investment is dishonorable by your own argument- it's theft from the labor class, and theft is wealth generation that is not honest.
So for the forseeable future, metadata will be far more successfull at finding images. Computer vision is still incredibly primitive: more so than computer speech recognition ten years ago.
And with this patent, it's bound to stay so for the next 24 years at least. Patents kill innovation.
What's his address? Can I send him 4 DVD-Rs and have him burn me a copy?
I hope I'm right- if so I'm going to ask your sibling poster for his brother-in-law's address so that I can send him four blank DVDs- I think that's probably enough for the entire LD series.