Russians put the first human in space... built up a bunch of nukes... had high-tech military stuff... and so on... Russia might be back to its third-world status now but it will take a few decades before they complete their transition down to their previous state. As much as I hate militaries, Russia still has the 2nd best jet fighters in the world.
First neo-liberal economics supporter in the crowd... Here I go...
I'm just going to pull the standard leftist arguments (me being a leftist and all:) ):
1. Modern free trade agreements (which cause the out-sourcing) result in harm to workers and the environment. NEarly every country that you out-source to, treats their workers muchworse, and harms the environment far more greatly. You can go and look up the facts. In particular, go and check how the environmental regulations in poor countries are severely weakened by free trade agreements. Similarly, the new workers often have to work longer hours, have less rights and so on. To people on the left, like me, it is almost as if someone who loves prostitution goes to a poor country because the cost is lower and the regulations are almost non-existent (try to figure out whether you can dump waste into rivers in these countries).
2. Wealth discrepancy between the rich and the poor increases. When you out-source, what really happens is that an owner's costs go down, while his profits go up (that's why they do it after all). The workers get poorer overall (since a high salary from a developed country just become a low sarly in an undeveloped country) while the owners get richer (the owners would manage to lower their costs and increase profits). The OVERALL end result is that the gap between the rich and hte poor increases (it does NOT decrease).
3. This is a personal thing... Power shifts to the capitalists and therefore I don't like it. Workers become weaker.
That should be enough for now... if you need more reasons, just e-mail me. I'm sure I can find leftist articles shredding the neo-liberal economist arguments...
Unfortunately, governemnt is on the side of the elites and the wealthy. What will happen is that all these people will be arrested and put in jail (probably for years too)...and the worst thing is that no one will care. In fact, many would even consider it to be a good thing. I mean, just look at the apathy towards the homeless.
I might be biased by I think the most likely scenario will be the collapse of capitalism. I can't see how capitalism will survive a scenario where hordes of people are unemployed and poor.
There are two (easy) ways for capitalism to collapse. One cause will be debt. And the other is the one we are talking about, which will basically be a class war. The elites will not matter much after the revolution--just like how the monarchs and the aristocrats didn't matter much after the previous revolutions.
KoalaBear33, waiting for the day capitalism collapses
Perhapse we've found the real reason for the missile defence program? Gotta stop all those chinese nukes.
Actually that is the REAL reason USA is building a missile shield. No, I'm not joking. The whole notion that the missile is for terrorist states is the most stupidest thing ever--or a convenient excuse. There is NO WAY a terrorist state will launch nukes. Why do you think they are called terrorist states? Because they use terrorist means. And guess what? A missile shield is not going to stop a smuggled in nuke.
US missile shield is primarily to combat China (and to a lesser extent Russia and others). Once China ramps up its nukes, USA will have to back down on many issues (including Taiwan). With a shield, USA will attempt to stand still.
It's not a fact; it's a theory. If you are just talking about the law then you are right. But in practice, it is not true. Economists (who are basically capitalist economists, hence should understand this better than anyone) still can't figure out how upper management is compensated i.e. they can't figure out the value of management's compensation. There are a whole bunch of theories but none which explain why a particular CEO can get say $100 million at a particular point in time.
1. This is probably the most serious problem at this point it time: compatibility with MS Office file format. Hate to say it but it isn't very good. I can't even create a resume in OOg (to be saved as.DOC). It screws up all the time. Conversely, importing MS Word files into OOg isn't that great either. The main issues so far seem to be bullets, layout, margins, and fonts.
2. Screen refresh/redraw problems. Something is wrong with the graphic engine. At times you'll end up with redraw problems, half a dialog box still on the screen (after you close it), and so on. Not a big deal but it's good to get it fixed.
3. Performance. OOg is very slow compared to MS Office. I'm talking about load times and file opening/saving. It seems to be ok once it loads but until it is slow while loading.
hmm...I think that's about it. The primary concern is the file compatibility issue. Other than that, OOg is a pretty good alternative. Haven't tried the new version but if it has PDF output, it will great to those sending documents to external people (who don't use OOg--recall the file compatibility problems with.doc files).
Someone said that OOg is one the key software that is responsible for the popularity of GNU/Linux. I agree. Without it, it would be very difficult go 100% Linux (which I'm pretty much doing right now).
I think there's a lot more to right wing vs. left wing than elitism vs. pragmatism. Your classification of people into two groups seems rather extremist. Personally, I try to stay away from most *isms. (except, perhaps, pragmatism)
lol I'm the type that uses a lot of ISMs;) If you are a pragmatist, I'm sort of the opposite: an idealist:)
It may seem extremist but that's how things are. Since you are close to the middle, you may not be aware of the core issues that seperate people. The whole left vs right distinction is too simplistic in some sense. However, if one looks at the underlying philosophies, he/she will likely come to the conclusion I made. It is an eternal battle.
If you think that 98% of people are genetically equivalent in terms of intelligence, athleticism, etc. then you are flying in the face of biology.
I'm not saying that people are identical. When leftists talk about equality that is not what we mean. People are NOT equal. I doubt that there is even one out of the 3 billion who has 100% of the same genes as you. When we say equality, we are referring to the notion that everyone should be treated as equals. We, on the left, strive to create a society where everyone is treated as equal, given the same opportunity, penalized equally, etc. So when we say a woman is equal to a man, we are not saying that men and women are identical. Of course they are not. If anything, men look different from women, and have different features and qualities. Each have their advantages are disadvantages. For example, men are generally stronger than women, men are more athletic, etc. Conversely, women are emotionally stronger, can reproduce, etc. Yet we consider women and men to be equal. Similarly, nearly everyone on the left treat everyone as equals. This includes people who are say blind or deaf. We treat them as equals, even though they reall aren't.
Another important point is that egalitarianism also implies no classes. This is a big difference from the right-wing, who subscribe to merit-based elitist systems which result in classes.
I would be very surprised if scientific research ever proved that black Americans are not, on average, genetically better atheletes than white Americans or that Kenyans aren't better marathon runners. There have been studies which showed that some ethnic groups may be more intelligent than others, but of course this research can't be pursued because it might result in politically incorrect conclusions.
It has nothing to do with political correctness (although it depends on what you mean by this). Rather, it is to avoid racial wars. If people start doing research into this, it will give ammunition to the fascists and likely result in racial wars. We all know what happened when this sort of stuff was done 50 years ago. If the world was egalitarian and everyone was equal, it wouldn't matter. Unfortunately it's not like that. THe world is very elitist and certain traits are valued more than others
However, I don't agree that this would automatically drop American wages by 3/4ths.
It won't drop wages by 3/4ths.. it will drop wages by 100%... there won't be ANY jobs in that field...
For one thing, keep in mind that the jobs will be going to well-off Chinese programmers with Masters degrees.
Due to the nature of the world right now (ie. currency discrepancies, political clout, abuse of workers/environment/etc), the worker will be worse off. Yes, it will be a Chinese programmer with a Masters degree. But they get nowhere near what Americans get. Besides, they work longer, worker laws are weaker, and so on.
Yes, it will affect wages and maybe cut them in half, but there is some advantage to be gained from location as long as R&D isn't the dominant cost (plus you get R&D tax credits anyway).
What I was talking about is not just R&D but a lot of other jobs too (like support, marketing,
Maybe, but one of the things that sticks in my mind was how many people who called in said they were relieved to be speaking with someone who speaks English (read: someone without a thick foreign accent).
This is something that can be overcome, and I expect it to be overcome. I'm sure people will concentrate more on their language skills once more support jobs become available. There isn't a reason why some dude in China, India, or Eastern Europe shouldn't be able to speak proper English. Right now, they can't because they are not used to it and aren't prepared for it. But once people realize it is important they will get good at it (I mean, they might even take English speaking as a mandatory course or something).
I don't think language skills are going to protect the jobs for very long. They may right now but we'll see in 20 years.
...so the bulk of these jobs going over seas is every bit as much of a tragedy as the cabbage picking jobs being taken by illegal immigrant migrant workers.
One thing some of you guys don't realize is that the VAST majority of the jobs, even in the developed world, are blue-collar jobs. The middle class and the working class mostly have "low-level" jobs. You can't have everyone doing "high-level" jobs (due to the hierarchial class structure present right now). For every project manager, there are probably 10 software developers; and for every software developer, there are probably 3 support personell.
That is why I think the/. argument that businesses should be thankful for OSFSF because it lowers their costs. There's a similar argument to the above for profits. Lowered costs only benefit a company if they are the only ones who can realize those savings. If everyone's costs are lowered, profits will go down.
My feeling is that OS|FS will not have much of an impact on wages. The thing people fail to realize is that the programmers of these projects have to make a living. If the programmers are out of a job, they won't be programming OS|FS. The reason people can afford to spend time on OS|FS is because: (i) they are being paid for it (eg. Red Hat/SuSE/Mandrake employees, university researchers, etc). (ii) they love doing it, (iii) they are trying to accomplish something (eg. provide an alternative that is less restrictive and more free (in terms of freedom)). The way I see it, if most of these people didn't have jobs, they surely wouldn't be spending their time with OS|FS. Because of that, I don't think OS|FS will really kill programmers. If it did, it will self-destruct right away.
An analogy to what I'm saying is charity work (say you donating time to help educate the homeless or something). OS|FS is kind of like charity work (especially the free software side of it). Charity works well and helps a lot of people. But if the people volunteering were laid off or didn't have jobs, they wouldn't be volunteering for very long. People in USA, Canada, etc volunteer a lot with various charities--more so than in poorer countries. This is not because Americans or Canadaians are any more altruistic than anyone else. Rather, it's because these people have jobs and hence can carry out other activities. If unemployment rose significantly in these countries, you can bet that nearly all of them would stop volunteering (and rather spend the time looking for a way to make a living). In such a case, charities will self-destruct. I see the same thin with OS|FS. If OS|FS really did harm the software industry (especially the programmers) it will self-destruct. Fortunately, I don't think that will happen--although I guess you disagree.
You can't export your US sales force to Malaysia. You could export your marketing department, but you probably wouldn't want to. You can export your tech support (and many do), although your customer service may suffer from having the phone answered by non-native English speakers.
My feeling is that you can export anything, except those jobs that involve direct contact with customers (I guess face-to-face sales or something). There is no reason why you can't get good support people (should be able to find fluent English speaking people), marketing (no reason why you can't do the same thing with foreign entities...only sticking point would be things like culture), and so on. Sure, it may be tough to co-ordinate everything...but I think it will be possible at some point
I don't understand your logic here. Why down by 1/4th? Why not 3/4ths?
My bad... yeah it's supposed to be 3/4--not 1/4. Thanks for correcting me:)
I wouldn't say I was a leftist, I'd say centrist. I do believe that people in different countries are fairly equal to each other (is that a leftist idea?), but that within each country there is still wide variance in terms of intelligence, etc. (That was probably what you meant.)
I can't say I speak for all leftists. However, a key underlying philosophy of the left-wing is egalitarianism. This is in contrast with the right-wing, which is based on elitism (although they always call it meritocracy). You are closer to the right-wing than the left it seems. The egalitarian view basically implies that humans are equal, both in terms of their desires, as well as their capabilities. Sure, there are people who are much better off than anyone else but these people are negligible (they probably constitute less than 1% of the population). What all this means is, IN MY OP
Yeah I'm referring to the Chinese Communist revolution (it is typically called the Communist revolution).
I'm not really sure if you are talking to me. Which of my theories is half-baked? (lol I had a bunch of theories in my post). My post was not supposed to include ALL revolutions. Yes, there are many more (Although, I don't think peaceful change (which occurs slowly) counts as a revolution. Revolutions are supposed to be quick abrupt changes). Anyway, my point was that the original poster's view (dictatorships/totalitarian regimes/etc in large countries fall apart more easily than in small countries--or something to that effect) is wrong. Large countries have just as easy of a time maintaining their regimes. THis is possibly due to the strengths of the courts and the military (once you have a large powerful military, and can corrupt the courts, you are all set:( )
Nope, no sarcasm:) Perhaps you are lucky but the vast majority of the people have jobs that they don't like, aren't good at, won't help the world, etc. Majority of people's talents are completely wasted. You may be different. Consider yourself lucky....
I agree with your view that larger populations are harder to control. However, I disagree with your reasons
Well, in general, centralized anything works better on smaller levels (compare how small dictatorships often stand while large ones topple). The larger a body that a centralized entity addresses, the further removed it is from any individual point in that body.
I disagree that large dictatorships fall quicker than smaller ones. Let's look at some of the ones that survived the longest. Soviet Union+their proxy states (like East Germany! Survived close to 40 years without any major problem (except for the Nazis, who nearly slaughtered the Russians). Don't forget that the Soviet Union was huge, in terms of territory, as well as population. Next: China. China has had long dictatorships. The Communists have ruled the country for like 50 years (a bit less I think). It has managed control 1 billion people. Imagine trying to impose a birth control policy on 1 billion people (no one would ever agree to reduce their reproductive capability--against human desires). Next to consider is USA's close ally, Egypt. Has been a military dictatorship for a while now with no threats from anyone (except groups like Al-Qaeda). Many more...
The reason it is harder to run an efficient system with large populations is probably due to social issues. My theory is that social problems exhibit non-linear behaviour. For instance, crime rates are always higher with more people. I think it is easier to control 10 cities of 100,000 than 1 city of 1,000,000. Same thing with countries
Large countries will always be more powerful but I suspect that they will always have greater social problems (eg. unemployment, disease, crime, mental illness, lonliness, etc)
The only place socialism* isn't corrupt is in Civ II.
I won't debate socialism vs communism ok?;) But I guess you haven't played the latest Civ eh? In CIV III, there is horrible corruption... and no, it isn't because of communism. In fact, communism can improve corruption. In any case, Civ is biased against communism. Civ's political systems are way too simplistic and they don't capture the reality or the underlying philosophies. Civ III is even worse than Civ II in that regard:(
Once you take the profit out of health care, it will be relegated to the basement of science like basic dynamics has been. There will be little investment in new techniques because there will be fewer ways to profit from them.
This is completely false.
Most of the rich countries (Europe, Canada, Japan, etc) have nationalized healthcare of some sort. There is practically zero private health care (with some exceptions here and there). Yet, these countries have top-notch health facilities, doctors, nurses, etc. Clearly, the lack of profit hasn't hurt.
And this is only the *immediate* future. no one questions (or at least no _economists_) question the viability of the US system in the longterm. The pension/welfare-state of Europe is seen as having longterm trouble--at least in its current form.
The vast majority of economists are really capitalists. In fact, I claim that what is called economics is nothing more than capitalist economics (it is not a social science, like it should be). Clearly, these guys are going to criticize any sort of socialist policy. YOu don't need me to tell you this. You just go and look up the stuff. In particular, look back and see how nearly all economists claimed that countries would end up with massive unemployment if minimum wage was introduced. Similarly, you can look up what they said about unions, or giving women maternity leaves, and so on.
On the contrary, these "experts":( somehow never managed to observe how countries are spiralling out of control due to debt. Of course, no one ever says that debt is bad right? And they would never criticize their neo-liberal(sic) economic policies, will they?
I suggest that you stop listening to the economists, unless you need to do it for your job (we all know that jobs are just schemes to pass time and survive). Modern economists are nothing more than alchemists. They may claim that they can create gold out of nothing, but they are a bunch of fools......
Because if you actually care about the issues as you claim, you should really do your best to support those issues. The 3% or whatever of the vote the Green party got in 2000 has done far more to hurt the enviroment than it has to help it.
This is one of the worst things one can possibly do in their life. There is ONLY ONE REASON one does what you suggested. That is to BLOCK an opponent from rising to power. And this is only meaningful in EXTREME cases (eg. trying to block a fascist from winning (if you are on the left), or trying to block a socialist from winning (if you are on the right), or trying to block a religious fundamentalist from winning (if you are on the left), and so forth). In all other cases, one should not do what you are suggesting. There are many reasons why you shouldn't do it. But the most obvious ones are: (i) you become ta slave of the system, (ii) you will waste your whole life voting on issues that you don't support
Unless one totally hated Bush and the Republicans, one shouldn't follow your strategy.
I agree that most Americans are conservative but that is only from a world perspective. Compared to Europe or even some parts of Asia and South American, even the Democrats aren't very liberal at all. In fact, the Democrats and Republicans are so similar to each other that an external person can't even tell the difference.
Yeah, and he almost socialised medicine, which would have requried everybody to have a government ID card-- imagine how easy it would be for the [insert poltiical enemy of the momeny] to be rounded up and sent off to concentration camps with a national ID card!
This is one of the most bizarre things I've heard. If you don't like socialized policies, fine. But bashing medicare cuz of ID cards is rather strange. The govt can already track you very easily. There are so many IDs that they probably already know everything about you. Let's see... how about driver's license? Social insurance number (or some sort of work permit #)? How about your telephone # (which incidentally is linked to your address and can be easily tapped by anyone)?
And let's not forget that Japanese Americans were shipped off to concentration camps around 50 years ago (although, I guess it must have been easy considering that non-whites were some sort of inferior animals at that time).
If the govt doesn't need another ID to track you... they already do!
...20% of the population control 80% of the money....
Nothing unusual there... I mean, name a country where that is not true (not counting some European countries). I have to double-check but I think even USA is like that
...if you can't afford the office suite you need now, you can't very well pay programmers to develop a new one so you can give it away in 2 to 3 years from now.
This is not necessarily true with open-source or free software (OS|FS). Unlike traditional closed-source development, OS|FS relies on large number of developers spread throughout the world. What this means is that OS|FS is kind of "socialized" and subsidized by a large number of people. So, even if you can't afford to pay, say $300 for an office suite, you can possibly spend $75 helping with the development of OS|FS. This is possible since the costs, as well as the benefits, are spread across a large number of people.
That is the beauty of OS|FS. You can develop good software without one party or individual expending too much resources. For example, Linux (the OS) probably would have cost hundreads of millions of dollars, or possibly even a billion to develop. Yet, Linus Torvalds, Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc probably didn't even spend $300m on it. The total cost is probably still the same (although it may be a bit cheaper due to economies of scale), but no single party or person spent a lot of resources.
Same thing applies to KDE, Gnome, GIMP, or any other application you can think of. I highly doubt that any single company/person/party/etc spent even $100million on it. Instead, each contributed a little bit, which adds up.
This whole topic is really dealing with two things: open-source and/or free software (OS|FS), and outsourcing of jobs to cheaper countries. What you said is true but it still doesn't mean that your job is safe. OS|FS won't threaten support jobs. Like you said, people need help. Support jobs are service jobs and hence OS|FS poses no threat. In fact, it will help it further since OS|FS will likely never be as consumer-oriented and easy to use.
Yet this still leaves outsourcing of jobs (which is another matter). Support jobs are highly likely to be transferred to cheaper countries. Instead of you handling support, a company can get 3 people to do the same thing in a cheaper place.
We all know how to make the parts the power comes from understanding the integration.
Yeah... I agree that integration will be more important in the future. If anything, OSFSF (open-source and free software) will shift the focus towards integration.
The problem is that what you are saying is totally irrelevant to the vast majority of people. It's not because your words aren't insightful or anything. It's just that there are only a few management-type jobs. What you are saying will not sustain an economy. It might work for a few individuals but not for the majority of hte people. Most people cannot follow your strategy because only a few can get the jobs you are referring to. Afterall, modern corporations are hierarchial and only have a few positions at the top.
If you just cared about yourself or are approaching this from an individualistic point of view, it's fine: it's good advice. But at some point, shouldn't one start looking around themselves?
In someways I see this little Stalin-wannabe iconoclast preaching in the third world as the ultimate act of contempt.
hm... do you have Stalin and Lenin mixed up or are you talking about something else? Stalin basically inherited the system and did very little preaching.
Slashdot Mirror
Russians put the first human in space... built up a bunch of nukes... had high-tech military stuff... and so on... Russia might be back to its third-world status now but it will take a few decades before they complete their transition down to their previous state. As much as I hate militaries, Russia still has the 2nd best jet fighters in the world.
KoalaBear33
Interesting society... essentially people will become slaves of their lives...
KoalaBear33
First neo-liberal economics supporter in the crowd... Here I go...
:) ):
I'm just going to pull the standard leftist arguments (me being a leftist and all
1. Modern free trade agreements (which cause the out-sourcing) result in harm to workers and the environment. NEarly every country that you out-source to, treats their workers muchworse, and harms the environment far more greatly. You can go and look up the facts. In particular, go and check how the environmental regulations in poor countries are severely weakened by free trade agreements. Similarly, the new workers often have to work longer hours, have less rights and so on. To people on the left, like me, it is almost as if someone who loves prostitution goes to a poor country because the cost is lower and the regulations are almost non-existent (try to figure out whether you can dump waste into rivers in these countries).
2. Wealth discrepancy between the rich and the poor increases. When you out-source, what really happens is that an owner's costs go down, while his profits go up (that's why they do it after all). The workers get poorer overall (since a high salary from a developed country just become a low sarly in an undeveloped country) while the owners get richer (the owners would manage to lower their costs and increase profits). The OVERALL end result is that the gap between the rich and hte poor increases (it does NOT decrease).
3. This is a personal thing... Power shifts to the capitalists and therefore I don't like it. Workers become weaker.
That should be enough for now... if you need more reasons, just e-mail me. I'm sure I can find leftist articles shredding the neo-liberal economist arguments...
KoalaBear33
Unfortunately, governemnt is on the side of the elites and the wealthy. What will happen is that all these people will be arrested and put in jail (probably for years too)...and the worst thing is that no one will care. In fact, many would even consider it to be a good thing. I mean, just look at the apathy towards the homeless.
KoalaBear33
I might be biased by I think the most likely scenario will be the collapse of capitalism. I can't see how capitalism will survive a scenario where hordes of people are unemployed and poor.
There are two (easy) ways for capitalism to collapse. One cause will be debt. And the other is the one we are talking about, which will basically be a class war. The elites will not matter much after the revolution--just like how the monarchs and the aristocrats didn't matter much after the previous revolutions.
KoalaBear33, waiting for the day capitalism collapses
Perhapse we've found the real reason for the missile defence program? Gotta stop all those chinese nukes.
Actually that is the REAL reason USA is building a missile shield. No, I'm not joking. The whole notion that the missile is for terrorist states is the most stupidest thing ever--or a convenient excuse. There is NO WAY a terrorist state will launch nukes. Why do you think they are called terrorist states? Because they use terrorist means. And guess what? A missile shield is not going to stop a smuggled in nuke.
US missile shield is primarily to combat China (and to a lesser extent Russia and others). Once China ramps up its nukes, USA will have to back down on many issues (including Taiwan). With a shield, USA will attempt to stand still.
KoalaBear33
It's a fact, not a theory.
It's not a fact; it's a theory. If you are just talking about the law then you are right. But in practice, it is not true. Economists (who are basically capitalist economists, hence should understand this better than anyone) still can't figure out how upper management is compensated i.e. they can't figure out the value of management's compensation. There are a whole bunch of theories but none which explain why a particular CEO can get say $100 million at a particular point in time.
KoalaBear33
OOg is great but here are the problems I see:
.DOC). It screws up all the time. Conversely, importing MS Word files into OOg isn't that great either. The main issues so far seem to be bullets, layout, margins, and fonts.
.doc files).
1. This is probably the most serious problem at this point it time: compatibility with MS Office file format. Hate to say it but it isn't very good. I can't even create a resume in OOg (to be saved as
2. Screen refresh/redraw problems. Something is wrong with the graphic engine. At times you'll end up with redraw problems, half a dialog box still on the screen (after you close it), and so on. Not a big deal but it's good to get it fixed.
3. Performance. OOg is very slow compared to MS Office. I'm talking about load times and file opening/saving. It seems to be ok once it loads but until it is slow while loading.
hmm...I think that's about it. The primary concern is the file compatibility issue. Other than that, OOg is a pretty good alternative. Haven't tried the new version but if it has PDF output, it will great to those sending documents to external people (who don't use OOg--recall the file compatibility problems with
Someone said that OOg is one the key software that is responsible for the popularity of GNU/Linux. I agree. Without it, it would be very difficult go 100% Linux (which I'm pretty much doing right now).
KoalaBear33
I think there's a lot more to right wing vs. left wing than elitism vs. pragmatism. Your classification of people into two groups seems rather extremist. Personally, I try to stay away from most *isms. (except, perhaps, pragmatism)
;) If you are a pragmatist, I'm sort of the opposite: an idealist :)
It may seem extremist but that's how things are. Since you are close to the middle, you may not be aware of the core issues that seperate people. The whole left vs right distinction is too simplistic in some sense. However, if one looks at the underlying philosophies, he/she will likely come to the conclusion I made. It is an eternal battle.
lol I'm the type that uses a lot of ISMs
If you think that 98% of people are genetically equivalent in terms of intelligence, athleticism, etc. then you are flying in the face of biology.
I'm not saying that people are identical. When leftists talk about equality that is not what we mean. People are NOT equal. I doubt that there is even one out of the 3 billion who has 100% of the same genes as you. When we say equality, we are referring to the notion that everyone should be treated as equals. We, on the left, strive to create a society where everyone is treated as equal, given the same opportunity, penalized equally, etc. So when we say a woman is equal to a man, we are not saying that men and women are identical. Of course they are not. If anything, men look different from women, and have different features and qualities. Each have their advantages are disadvantages. For example, men are generally stronger than women, men are more athletic, etc. Conversely, women are emotionally stronger, can reproduce, etc. Yet we consider women and men to be equal. Similarly, nearly everyone on the left treat everyone as equals. This includes people who are say blind or deaf. We treat them as equals, even though they reall aren't.
Another important point is that egalitarianism also implies no classes. This is a big difference from the right-wing, who subscribe to merit-based elitist systems which result in classes.
I would be very surprised if scientific research ever proved that black Americans are not, on average, genetically better atheletes than white Americans or that Kenyans aren't better marathon runners. There have been studies which showed that some ethnic groups may be more intelligent than others, but of course this research can't be pursued because it might result in politically incorrect conclusions.
It has nothing to do with political correctness (although it depends on what you mean by this). Rather, it is to avoid racial wars. If people start doing research into this, it will give ammunition to the fascists and likely result in racial wars. We all know what happened when this sort of stuff was done 50 years ago. If the world was egalitarian and everyone was equal, it wouldn't matter. Unfortunately it's not like that. THe world is very elitist and certain traits are valued more than others
However, I don't agree that this would automatically drop American wages by 3/4ths.
It won't drop wages by 3/4ths.. it will drop wages by 100%... there won't be ANY jobs in that field...
For one thing, keep in mind that the jobs will be going to well-off Chinese programmers with Masters degrees.
Due to the nature of the world right now (ie. currency discrepancies, political clout, abuse of workers/environment/etc), the worker will be worse off. Yes, it will be a Chinese programmer with a Masters degree. But they get nowhere near what Americans get. Besides, they work longer, worker laws are weaker, and so on.
Yes, it will affect wages and maybe cut them in half, but there is some advantage to be gained from location as long as R&D isn't the dominant cost (plus you get R&D tax credits anyway).
What I was talking about is not just R&D but a lot of other jobs too (like support, marketing,
Maybe, but one of the things that sticks in my mind was how many people who called in said they were relieved to be speaking with someone who speaks English (read: someone without a thick foreign accent).
...so the bulk of these jobs going over seas is every bit as much of a tragedy as the cabbage picking jobs being taken by illegal immigrant migrant workers.
This is something that can be overcome, and I expect it to be overcome. I'm sure people will concentrate more on their language skills once more support jobs become available. There isn't a reason why some dude in China, India, or Eastern Europe shouldn't be able to speak proper English. Right now, they can't because they are not used to it and aren't prepared for it. But once people realize it is important they will get good at it (I mean, they might even take English speaking as a mandatory course or something).
I don't think language skills are going to protect the jobs for very long. They may right now but we'll see in 20 years.
One thing some of you guys don't realize is that the VAST majority of the jobs, even in the developed world, are blue-collar jobs. The middle class and the working class mostly have "low-level" jobs. You can't have everyone doing "high-level" jobs (due to the hierarchial class structure present right now). For every project manager, there are probably 10 software developers; and for every software developer, there are probably 3 support personell.
KoalaBear33
That is why I think the /. argument that businesses should be thankful for OSFSF because it lowers their costs. There's a similar argument to the above for profits. Lowered costs only benefit a company if they are the only ones who can realize those savings. If everyone's costs are lowered, profits will go down.
:)
I wouldn't say I was a leftist, I'd say centrist. I do believe that people in different countries are fairly equal to each other (is that a leftist idea?), but that within each country there is still wide variance in terms of intelligence, etc. (That was probably what you meant.)
My feeling is that OS|FS will not have much of an impact on wages. The thing people fail to realize is that the programmers of these projects have to make a living. If the programmers are out of a job, they won't be programming OS|FS. The reason people can afford to spend time on OS|FS is because: (i) they are being paid for it (eg. Red Hat/SuSE/Mandrake employees, university researchers, etc). (ii) they love doing it, (iii) they are trying to accomplish something (eg. provide an alternative that is less restrictive and more free (in terms of freedom)). The way I see it, if most of these people didn't have jobs, they surely wouldn't be spending their time with OS|FS. Because of that, I don't think OS|FS will really kill programmers. If it did, it will self-destruct right away.
An analogy to what I'm saying is charity work (say you donating time to help educate the homeless or something). OS|FS is kind of like charity work (especially the free software side of it). Charity works well and helps a lot of people. But if the people volunteering were laid off or didn't have jobs, they wouldn't be volunteering for very long. People in USA, Canada, etc volunteer a lot with various charities--more so than in poorer countries. This is not because Americans or Canadaians are any more altruistic than anyone else. Rather, it's because these people have jobs and hence can carry out other activities. If unemployment rose significantly in these countries, you can bet that nearly all of them would stop volunteering (and rather spend the time looking for a way to make a living). In such a case, charities will self-destruct. I see the same thin with OS|FS. If OS|FS really did harm the software industry (especially the programmers) it will self-destruct. Fortunately, I don't think that will happen--although I guess you disagree.
You can't export your US sales force to Malaysia. You could export your marketing department, but you probably wouldn't want to. You can export your tech support (and many do), although your customer service may suffer from having the phone answered by non-native English speakers.
My feeling is that you can export anything, except those jobs that involve direct contact with customers (I guess face-to-face sales or something). There is no reason why you can't get good support people (should be able to find fluent English speaking people), marketing (no reason why you can't do the same thing with foreign entities...only sticking point would be things like culture), and so on. Sure, it may be tough to co-ordinate everything...but I think it will be possible at some point
I don't understand your logic here. Why down by 1/4th? Why not 3/4ths?
My bad... yeah it's supposed to be 3/4--not 1/4. Thanks for correcting me
I can't say I speak for all leftists. However, a key underlying philosophy of the left-wing is egalitarianism. This is in contrast with the right-wing, which is based on elitism (although they always call it meritocracy). You are closer to the right-wing than the left it seems. The egalitarian view basically implies that humans are equal, both in terms of their desires, as well as their capabilities. Sure, there are people who are much better off than anyone else but these people are negligible (they probably constitute less than 1% of the population). What all this means is, IN MY OP
Yeah I'm referring to the Chinese Communist revolution (it is typically called the Communist revolution).
:( )
I'm not really sure if you are talking to me. Which of my theories is half-baked? (lol I had a bunch of theories in my post). My post was not supposed to include ALL revolutions. Yes, there are many more (Although, I don't think peaceful change (which occurs slowly) counts as a revolution. Revolutions are supposed to be quick abrupt changes). Anyway, my point was that the original poster's view (dictatorships/totalitarian regimes/etc in large countries fall apart more easily than in small countries--or something to that effect) is wrong. Large countries have just as easy of a time maintaining their regimes. THis is possibly due to the strengths of the courts and the military (once you have a large powerful military, and can corrupt the courts, you are all set
KoalaBear33
Nope, no sarcasm :) Perhaps you are lucky but the vast majority of the people have jobs that they don't like, aren't good at, won't help the world, etc. Majority of people's talents are completely wasted. You may be different. Consider yourself lucky....
I agree with your view that larger populations are harder to control. However, I disagree with your reasons
Well, in general, centralized anything works better on smaller levels (compare how small dictatorships often stand while large ones topple). The larger a body that a centralized entity addresses, the further removed it is from any individual point in that body.
I disagree that large dictatorships fall quicker than smaller ones. Let's look at some of the ones that survived the longest. Soviet Union+their proxy states (like East Germany! Survived close to 40 years without any major problem (except for the Nazis, who nearly slaughtered the Russians). Don't forget that the Soviet Union was huge, in terms of territory, as well as population. Next: China. China has had long dictatorships. The Communists have ruled the country for like 50 years (a bit less I think). It has managed control 1 billion people. Imagine trying to impose a birth control policy on 1 billion people (no one would ever agree to reduce their reproductive capability--against human desires). Next to consider is USA's close ally, Egypt. Has been a military dictatorship for a while now with no threats from anyone (except groups like Al-Qaeda). Many more...
The reason it is harder to run an efficient system with large populations is probably due to social issues. My theory is that social problems exhibit non-linear behaviour. For instance, crime rates are always higher with more people. I think it is easier to control 10 cities of 100,000 than 1 city of 1,000,000. Same thing with countries
Large countries will always be more powerful but I suspect that they will always have greater social problems (eg. unemployment, disease, crime, mental illness, lonliness, etc)
KoalaBear33
The only place socialism* isn't corrupt is in Civ II.
I won't debate socialism vs communism ok? ;) But I guess you haven't played the latest Civ eh? In CIV III, there is horrible corruption... and no, it isn't because of communism. In fact, communism can improve corruption. In any case, Civ is biased against communism. Civ's political systems are way too simplistic and they don't capture the reality or the underlying philosophies. Civ III is even worse than Civ II in that regard :(
Once you take the profit out of health care, it will be relegated to the basement of science like basic dynamics has been. There will be little investment in new techniques because there will be fewer ways to profit from them.
This is completely false.
Most of the rich countries (Europe, Canada, Japan, etc) have nationalized healthcare of some sort. There is practically zero private health care (with some exceptions here and there). Yet, these countries have top-notch health facilities, doctors, nurses, etc. Clearly, the lack of profit hasn't hurt.KoalaBear33
And this is only the *immediate* future. no one questions (or at least no _economists_) question the viability of the US system in the longterm. The pension/welfare-state of Europe is seen as having longterm trouble--at least in its current form.
The vast majority of economists are really capitalists. In fact, I claim that what is called economics is nothing more than capitalist economics (it is not a social science, like it should be). Clearly, these guys are going to criticize any sort of socialist policy. YOu don't need me to tell you this. You just go and look up the stuff. In particular, look back and see how nearly all economists claimed that countries would end up with massive unemployment if minimum wage was introduced. Similarly, you can look up what they said about unions, or giving women maternity leaves, and so on.
On the contrary, these "experts" :( somehow never managed to observe how countries are spiralling out of control due to debt. Of course, no one ever says that debt is bad right? And they would never criticize their neo-liberal(sic) economic policies, will they?
I suggest that you stop listening to the economists, unless you need to do it for your job (we all know that jobs are just schemes to pass time and survive). Modern economists are nothing more than alchemists. They may claim that they can create gold out of nothing, but they are a bunch of fools......
KoalaBear33
Because if you actually care about the issues as you claim, you should really do your best to support those issues. The 3% or whatever of the vote the Green party got in 2000 has done far more to hurt the enviroment than it has to help it.
This is one of the worst things one can possibly do in their life. There is ONLY ONE REASON one does what you suggested. That is to BLOCK an opponent from rising to power. And this is only meaningful in EXTREME cases (eg. trying to block a fascist from winning (if you are on the left), or trying to block a socialist from winning (if you are on the right), or trying to block a religious fundamentalist from winning (if you are on the left), and so forth). In all other cases, one should not do what you are suggesting. There are many reasons why you shouldn't do it. But the most obvious ones are: (i) you become ta slave of the system, (ii) you will waste your whole life voting on issues that you don't support
Unless one totally hated Bush and the Republicans, one shouldn't follow your strategy.
KoalaBear33
Most Americans lean towards Conservative...
I agree that most Americans are conservative but that is only from a world perspective. Compared to Europe or even some parts of Asia and South American, even the Democrats aren't very liberal at all. In fact, the Democrats and Republicans are so similar to each other that an external person can't even tell the difference.
KoalaBear33
Yeah, and he almost socialised medicine, which would have requried everybody to have a government ID card-- imagine how easy it would be for the [insert poltiical enemy of the momeny] to be rounded up and sent off to concentration camps with a national ID card!
This is one of the most bizarre things I've heard. If you don't like socialized policies, fine. But bashing medicare cuz of ID cards is rather strange. The govt can already track you very easily. There are so many IDs that they probably already know everything about you. Let's see... how about driver's license? Social insurance number (or some sort of work permit #)? How about your telephone # (which incidentally is linked to your address and can be easily tapped by anyone)?
And let's not forget that Japanese Americans were shipped off to concentration camps around 50 years ago (although, I guess it must have been easy considering that non-whites were some sort of inferior animals at that time).
If the govt doesn't need another ID to track you... they already do!
Oh.. BTW, medicare rules... well, sort of...
KoalaBear33
Nothing unusual there... I mean, name a country where that is not true (not counting some European countries). I have to double-check but I think even USA is like that
KoalaBear33
This is not necessarily true with open-source or free software (OS|FS). Unlike traditional closed-source development, OS|FS relies on large number of developers spread throughout the world. What this means is that OS|FS is kind of "socialized" and subsidized by a large number of people. So, even if you can't afford to pay, say $300 for an office suite, you can possibly spend $75 helping with the development of OS|FS. This is possible since the costs, as well as the benefits, are spread across a large number of people.
That is the beauty of OS|FS. You can develop good software without one party or individual expending too much resources. For example, Linux (the OS) probably would have cost hundreads of millions of dollars, or possibly even a billion to develop. Yet, Linus Torvalds, Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc probably didn't even spend $300m on it. The total cost is probably still the same (although it may be a bit cheaper due to economies of scale), but no single party or person spent a lot of resources.
Same thing applies to KDE, Gnome, GIMP, or any other application you can think of. I highly doubt that any single company/person/party/etc spent even $100million on it. Instead, each contributed a little bit, which adds up.
KoalaBear33
This whole topic is really dealing with two things: open-source and/or free software (OS|FS), and outsourcing of jobs to cheaper countries. What you said is true but it still doesn't mean that your job is safe. OS|FS won't threaten support jobs. Like you said, people need help. Support jobs are service jobs and hence OS|FS poses no threat. In fact, it will help it further since OS|FS will likely never be as consumer-oriented and easy to use.
Yet this still leaves outsourcing of jobs (which is another matter). Support jobs are highly likely to be transferred to cheaper countries. Instead of you handling support, a company can get 3 people to do the same thing in a cheaper place.
KoalaBear33
We all know how to make the parts the power comes from understanding the integration.
Yeah... I agree that integration will be more important in the future. If anything, OSFSF (open-source and free software) will shift the focus towards integration.
KoalaBear33
The problem is that what you are saying is totally irrelevant to the vast majority of people. It's not because your words aren't insightful or anything. It's just that there are only a few management-type jobs. What you are saying will not sustain an economy. It might work for a few individuals but not for the majority of hte people. Most people cannot follow your strategy because only a few can get the jobs you are referring to. Afterall, modern corporations are hierarchial and only have a few positions at the top.
If you just cared about yourself or are approaching this from an individualistic point of view, it's fine: it's good advice. But at some point, shouldn't one start looking around themselves?
KoalaBear33
OFF TOPIC
In someways I see this little Stalin-wannabe iconoclast preaching in the third world as the ultimate act of contempt.
hm... do you have Stalin and Lenin mixed up or are you talking about something else? Stalin basically inherited the system and did very little preaching.
KoalaBear33