USA has been cloacking its imperialism all this time and you want to make it more obvious? I don't think you are going to get any job with the CIA any time soon...
Not agreeing with the definition of socialism because it is from some "kooks and nuts":( is like me saying I don't agree with the definition of capitalism because it is from some "kooks and nuts". The people you call "nuts" are probably socialists and probably know about the system than you. I suggest that you revisit those definitions instead of trying to find "proper" definitions. If you are still not satisfied, go back to the original definition which comes from Marxism...
If you think that the market should be the foundation of most or all aspects of society, then I suppose you could claim that any non-market system is "socialist". This would seem to be a strange position (consider the justice system).
You are looking at the results rather than the underlying philosophies. What's important is the underlying philosophies and not the end-result. For example, an anti-war activist and a fascist can beoth be against a war but they are totally different. The anti-war person believes war won't solve the issue (should be a last resort), while a fascist is against the war because they don't want to lose their "own kind" in a bogus war. In the case of socialism, what is important is not the market. Sure, socialism, as well as its derivatives like communism, are against free markets but that is not imporant. In 100 years, there might be a new concept similar to markets (but not free markets) and socialism might still be against that. What is important with socialism is the notion that actions are performed for the common good. That captures the system better.
On the other hand if you consider socialism and capitalism to be nothing more than economic systems, rather than some sort of grand philosophy, then environmental regulations would appear to be sort of neutral.
Socialism=politics+economics; capitalism=economics only. Socialism is more than an economic system. For example, socialism is religion-neutral while capitalism takes no position on religion (since it doesn't delve into areas other than economics).
In any case, even if a system were purely economic, it will impact the environment. There is ALWAYS a cost associated wit hthe environment. Captitalists might try to downplay that or say it is zero but it is there. Therefore, economic decisions will impact the environment.
Just to clarify, I am NOT saying that ALL pro-environemntal policies are socialist. Socialism is not the only system which values the environment. BUT I AM saying that most pro-environmental policies ARE. This is because socialism, along with several other leftist systems, place environment above business (and private interests) and carries out an action for the general public. Let's look at what happens in the modern world.
I'm glad you brough up urban sprawl because that is clearly a modern environemntal issue and will illustrate my point.
Why does urban sprawl occur? The answer is simple. It happens because business interests are valued more than the environment. You say that there is a future cost but there isn't. In case you haven't realized, capitalism puts a cost of ZERO on the environment. Not only that, destroying the environment is generally considered GOOD. This happens because you profit from such actions. Urban sprawl is BIG BUSINESS. A developer, along with the govt, makes tons of money off it. More houses=more property tax/more profits; more population=more workers; more buildings=more wealth for the property owners; etc.
So that's the first point: business is valued over environment. That's why urban sprawl occurs.
The second point is that under a system where actions are NOT performed in favour of the common public, things like that will occur. No one cares what you, your neighbours, or the general public cares. The policies that are implemented are in favour of an individual or a small entity, rather than the general public. If someone was carrying out an action for the common good, urban sprawl w
Internal e-mail is neither "sent" nor "received"... it just... hmm... dissapears when "unwanted"... Company policy of every major corporation since you were born;)
I'm glad you notice the underlying philosophy. My head clicked with the message too... although I suspect I liked it more since I'm a socialist:)
...how to keep the "awakend workers" from becomming as corrupt as there bosses, or what is a "fair" meains of distributing limited recources?
I don't think anyone knows for sure HOW to keep corruption from creeping into the system. But we do know what Marx said. He said that the government will dissapear (resulting in anarchism although I don't think he used the concept of anarchism) and that is when we are free. I agree with him. The only thing is that neither he nor anyone else has said HOW the govt (or any authority) is going to dissapear. Suffice to say, IF the govt DOES dissapear, corruption (of a similar scale) will not exist...
My personal opinion is that you lower corruption by continuously de-centralizing power. You keep doing that until power cannot be monopolized (ie. you will basically arrive at anarchism at that point). Of course, easier said than done... Power is more addicting than drugs, sex, or oil;)
If we are to follow the lead of history, we might guess that you have more incommon (education, finance, social class) with evil corprate officers then you do with any lower middle class working stiff.
I don't know who you are referring to but Marx had more in common with the lower class than you think...
A spectre is haunting earth... Capitalism WILL collapse... just be prpeared for its collapse...
How much do you want to bet that this judge still thinks a tape backup is the stuff from the 60's? Of course the opposition should keep the lawyer games at bay but really...
One more thing... Do note that when environmental policies do not conflict with other things, they are neither socialist nor capitalist. In such a case, politics and economics will not play a role and hence econopolitical systems have nothing to do with it. However, there are rarely any cases where the environment does not conflict with other things. There is nearly always a cost associated with environmental policies.
Protectionism in and of itself is not socialist. USA DOES have protectionism but that is very minimal compared to the rest of the world, and is insufficient to qualify it as socialist. What IS socialist is protectionism of activities/businesses/institutions/etc that will help workers/environment/etc. USA has A LOT of protectionism aimed at helping large corporations, who are mostly owned by a tiny wealthy group. Such a thing has absolutely nothing to do with socialism. If anything, socialists will dismantle all that right away. In contrast, socialists will accept protectionism of farmers.
-----
As far as the environment is concerned... pro-environmental policies are considered socialist because they value the environment over commerce/business. This is a key philosophy of socialism. In contrast, capitalism puts commerce/business above the environemnt (as can be seen by the free trade agreements and various other treaties that are signed).
Nazis were practicing capitalism for hte most part. There was very little socialism. For instance, Germany was pretty much driven by private interests. The vast majority of the owners of the companies and major industries were private (i.e. not govt owned as in socialist or socialist-like states)...
The reason Hitler (and other founders of Nazism) used the word socialism is to get the workers on their side. Workers were very important because they were suffering and whoever they supported would have won...and the Nazism triumped, instead of communism.
National Socialism is as socialist as the Democratic Republic of Korea is democratic... which is to say not much...
You have to understand that America is far more socialist than Europe in a lot of ways; but it's a right-wing socialism.
No offense but get your description of econopolitical systems right. It makes no sense, not to mention misleading, to claim that USA is socialist. And right wing socialist!?! Socialism is left wing! Plain and simple. There is no way you can claim that there can be a right wing version.
I really don't know why you call USA "socialist". It is very capitalist and has almost no features of socialism: egalitarianism, utiltarianism, strong welfare, strong worker rights, strong environmental rights, protectionism, etc.
I'm really curious...why do you say USA is "socialist"?
There is no such thing as natural rights. All rights are granted by the governments (via courts). It is quite possible for you to lose your natural rights, just like how you can gain new natural rights in the future.
Consider sexual orientation. Fifty years ago (or even now in many countries), if you were a homosexual, you had no rights (can't live together, can't marry, can't have sex, etc). In 50 years from now, I'll bet this will become what you call "natural right". It didn't exist but you will gain it.
All you need is change in attitude of the people. You can easily, for example, implement fascism and discriminate against people. The courts will back you; the governments will back you; and the people will back you too.
All rights are granted by the government and taken away by the government. Until there is no government (or some authority) you won't have natural rights whether you like it or not...
I also disagree with your main arguments. For instance, you say that the more "granted rights" you have, the weaker the government. I say this has nothing to do with govt strength. Government strength comes from other factors. You simply need to look at the top two totalitarian governments in the last 100years: fascism and Communism. One on the right, the other on the left. Both of these governments were EXTREMELY strong. They "granted" a lot of rights yet were very strong...
First of all, socialism=politics+economics. You can't claim that a country is socialist just because one element is somewhat socialist.
Anyway, I don't see anything in Iran resembling socialism. Is some central authority planning stuff? Does the govt heavily control economics? Nope. As far as I can tell, it is very capitalistic and most of the economy is driven by private industry. You are probably saying it is socialist because it is authoratarian and your memory of authoratarianism is probably limited to Communism. So you think everything that is authoratarian is socialist.
Interestingly, Iraq was more socialist than Iran during most of the 70's and 80's.
Actually their hands weren't tied in Afghanistan. There were hardly any US soldiers in Afghanistan. Most of the fighting was done by Northern Alliance. Besides, USA clearly indicated that it wasn't going to stay in Afghanistan. It pulled out pretty quickly and other countries probably have more troops than USA now...
This is propaganda. Instead of them thinking of about, why don't YOU think about it for a sec? Why would a country like USA initiate a program to free an ISP in Iran of all places? There are many other countries where the help would be in greater need...
This has nothing to do with freedom or privacy or anything like that...
Oh, BTW, agents already know stuff like this before it hits the media. Often, informants (usually money-seeking neighbours and what not) will notify of the agents long before the media even knows what's going on.
I don't know anything about this "web of trust" you are referring to but GPG should be able to protect any communication. I don't see what a town or airplane has to do with any of this???
As far as not being able to send any messages to the destination address, if that is the case you can't do anything anyway. Regardless of whether you can anonymize or not, chances are the agents are watching the receiving end for everything that DOES get through.
I don't know anything about Anonymizer or any other software like it. But I do know one thing. Any time an organization lets a government, of any kind, near them, you might as well just avoid them like the plague. If an anonymizing service can be mainipulated by money that governments provide, they are not worth considering...
If you think modern day Iran is socialist you clearly have no idea what a theocracy is nor what socialism is...
You CANNOT practice theocracy with socialism because socialism is atheist. Socialists won't let any religious leaders come near power...
BTW, the US initiated overthrow is simply for one reason: oil. USA attempted something in Venezuela and it didn't work. Now they are trying Iran... Having said all this, I don't see USA invading Iran any time soon since they have their hands tied with Iraq...
This is nothing more than US govt attempts to overthrow the Iranian govt. That's the only reason USA would do it for Iran, and not many other countries which are even worse off (eg. African countries)...
If these are scientific studies then the problems you mentioned won't occur. Social science involves avoiding the problems you mentioned. Anyone that has gone through university will be using scientific methods. For instance, they will pick a sample that is not biased in any manner. Unless these studies are done by non-scientists, they should be acceptable.
It's just like polls. There is a difference between scientific polls (often conducted by professional polling organizations) and non-scientific polls (stuff you put up on your website). Scientific polls will pick a representative sample, will avoid biases, and the results should be fairly precise. In contrast, a poll on say SlashDot is not worth much since it is heavily biased in favour of the tech crowd.
What you are talking about is FULL freedom of speech (or any freedom in general) vs limited freedoms. I think you are simply referring to distribution on the interent but it is similar to freedoms in the non-wired world too. Roughly you can say that USA tries to grant full freeomds while, say, Canada grants limited freedoms.
At one time, I used to think that limited freedom was best. I used the same argument as you. I mean, if someone is carrying out something undesirable to society what's the point? In real world, an undesirable action might be some neo-Nazi claiming that Jews are inferior; in the interent case, an undesirable action might be someone spamming something. In both cases, the vast majority of society would be better off without either. The only people who would be hurt by censorship are the neo-Nazis and the spammers. Seems like a good idea right? Well many people thought so (this is why most of Europe and Canada grants limited freedoms).
As I grew older, I realized that the full freedom approach is FAR BETTER. Why? Well there are many reasons but one key reason is as follows. Whenever you censor something, some entity (could be a corporation, person, government, faction, religious body, etc) has power to decide the outcome. This isn't bad in and of itself. In fact, during "good times" there is no problem whatsoever. BUT such a system leaves the possibility of mass exploitation during "bad times". For instance, some dictator can take over a country and easily start censoring stuff. In fact, I claim that some dictator can take over Canada and start censoring me (you can argue that laws mean nothing under a dictatorship, since the ruler controls the courts but I'm not going to go into that). In the case of the internet, some corporate body (for example) can take over the system and start exploiting it (again, you can argue that under capitalism, wealthy bodies will control the system anyway but I"m not going to go into that). Without censorship, it will be hard to take over the internet.
It is far more desirable to have a free internet than to have a SANITIZED internet...
You basically answered your own question. I think John Carmack, as well as others, are doing it because they like doing this sort of stuff. I think John even mentioned it in that news article (where they say that they will keep going even after the X-Prize). I highly doubt that many people are doing it for profit.
Sure it may be risky but these people are prepared to take the risks. I don't think it is any more dangerous than climbing the Everest (at least 30 years ago). Right now, a lot of people may be succeeding at climbing the Everest but imagine 30 years ago when they didn't have "tourist camps", helicopter support, modern tools/clothes, etc.
Perhaps one simply need to look at space exploration: just imagine the first person to go into space. Imagine when the Russians went up into orbit for the very first time. No one had ever done it, the systems were far inferior to today (in fact, they didn't even have transistor-based computers at that time if I recall), and so on. Sure they might have spent a billion dollars (by capitalist standards) whereas the X-Prize teams don't have that luxry. Nevertheless, the situation is quite similar IMO...
If they are going to tax something on the interent, it should ONLY be commercial (ie. profit-seeking) activities. Everything else should be free. Taxing LAN/WAN is the dumbest thing ever!!! They should not tax the transport mechanism or how many computers are connected to the interent, or whether you have a personal website up, and so on...
If you live in Florida, you better stop your govt from taxing all of the internet.
Not exactly what you were looking for but you DID help me out although it wasn't what you were expecting lol... Thanks for linking to that math site. I never knew such a site existed. It is similar to Wikipedia and I like it (people working together to help everyone:) ). I'm bookmarking it for sure:)
If you know of other free specialized websites, can you e-mail me or respond to this message. Website for things like a chemistry, physics, astronomy, sociology, etc would help. I personally find these online "encyclopedias" very helpful. Quickly checking out a specialized site to see the description of say a quasar or a black hole is better than trying to search the web.
I kind of agree with all your points except #3. Living in outer space SHOULD be cheaper in the medium and longer terms. It may be expensive to keep 2 people up in space but economies of scale will ensure that the cost/person for the 1000th person will drop significantly. In fact, if you can get 250 people to live in space for a short while, they can accomplish a lot... like building better housing, improving the situation up there, and so on.
One more thing... the cost of living on earth often ignores the environmental costs. Large countries with lots of space may not have that problem but smaller countries will certainly run into problems. Once you have cut down all the trees to make way for roads and houses, the whole place is going to turn into a desert--or worse. (The other solution is living in oceans but I'm not going to go there)...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to get flamed for this but anyway :) ...
USA has been cloacking its imperialism all this time and you want to make it more obvious? I don't think you are going to get any job with the CIA any time soon...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Not agreeing with the definition of socialism because it is from some "kooks and nuts" :( is like me saying I don't agree with the definition of capitalism because it is from some "kooks and nuts". The people you call "nuts" are probably socialists and probably know about the system than you. I suggest that you revisit those definitions instead of trying to find "proper" definitions. If you are still not satisfied, go back to the original definition which comes from Marxism...
If you think that the market should be the foundation of most or all aspects of society, then I suppose you could claim that any non-market system is "socialist". This would seem to be a strange position (consider the justice system).
You are looking at the results rather than the underlying philosophies. What's important is the underlying philosophies and not the end-result. For example, an anti-war activist and a fascist can beoth be against a war but they are totally different. The anti-war person believes war won't solve the issue (should be a last resort), while a fascist is against the war because they don't want to lose their "own kind" in a bogus war. In the case of socialism, what is important is not the market. Sure, socialism, as well as its derivatives like communism, are against free markets but that is not imporant. In 100 years, there might be a new concept similar to markets (but not free markets) and socialism might still be against that. What is important with socialism is the notion that actions are performed for the common good. That captures the system better.
On the other hand if you consider socialism and capitalism to be nothing more than economic systems, rather than some sort of grand philosophy, then environmental regulations would appear to be sort of neutral.
Socialism=politics+economics; capitalism=economics only. Socialism is more than an economic system. For example, socialism is religion-neutral while capitalism takes no position on religion (since it doesn't delve into areas other than economics).
In any case, even if a system were purely economic, it will impact the environment. There is ALWAYS a cost associated wit hthe environment. Captitalists might try to downplay that or say it is zero but it is there. Therefore, economic decisions will impact the environment.
Just to clarify, I am NOT saying that ALL pro-environemntal policies are socialist. Socialism is not the only system which values the environment. BUT I AM saying that most pro-environmental policies ARE. This is because socialism, along with several other leftist systems, place environment above business (and private interests) and carries out an action for the general public. Let's look at what happens in the modern world.
I'm glad you brough up urban sprawl because that is clearly a modern environemntal issue and will illustrate my point.
Why does urban sprawl occur? The answer is simple. It happens because business interests are valued more than the environment. You say that there is a future cost but there isn't. In case you haven't realized, capitalism puts a cost of ZERO on the environment. Not only that, destroying the environment is generally considered GOOD. This happens because you profit from such actions. Urban sprawl is BIG BUSINESS. A developer, along with the govt, makes tons of money off it. More houses=more property tax/more profits; more population=more workers; more buildings=more wealth for the property owners; etc.
So that's the first point: business is valued over environment. That's why urban sprawl occurs.
The second point is that under a system where actions are NOT performed in favour of the common public, things like that will occur. No one cares what you, your neighbours, or the general public cares. The policies that are implemented are in favour of an individual or a small entity, rather than the general public. If someone was carrying out an action for the common good, urban sprawl w
NT
Internal e-mail is neither "sent" nor "received"... it just... hmm... dissapears when "unwanted"... Company policy of every major corporation since you were born ;)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I'm glad you notice the underlying philosophy. My head clicked with the message too... although I suspect I liked it more since I'm a socialist :)
...how to keep the "awakend workers" from becomming as corrupt as there bosses, or what is a "fair" meains of distributing limited recources?
;)
I don't think anyone knows for sure HOW to keep corruption from creeping into the system. But we do know what Marx said. He said that the government will dissapear (resulting in anarchism although I don't think he used the concept of anarchism) and that is when we are free. I agree with him. The only thing is that neither he nor anyone else has said HOW the govt (or any authority) is going to dissapear. Suffice to say, IF the govt DOES dissapear, corruption (of a similar scale) will not exist...
My personal opinion is that you lower corruption by continuously de-centralizing power. You keep doing that until power cannot be monopolized (ie. you will basically arrive at anarchism at that point). Of course, easier said than done... Power is more addicting than drugs, sex, or oil
If we are to follow the lead of history, we might guess that you have more incommon (education, finance, social class) with evil corprate officers then you do with any lower middle class working stiff.
I don't know who you are referring to but Marx had more in common with the lower class than you think...
A spectre is haunting earth... Capitalism WILL collapse... just be prpeared for its collapse...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
How much do you want to bet that this judge still thinks a tape backup is the stuff from the 60's? Of course the opposition should keep the lawyer games at bay but really...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
One more thing... Do note that when environmental policies do not conflict with other things, they are neither socialist nor capitalist. In such a case, politics and economics will not play a role and hence econopolitical systems have nothing to do with it. However, there are rarely any cases where the environment does not conflict with other things. There is nearly always a cost associated with environmental policies.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Protectionism in and of itself is not socialist. USA DOES have protectionism but that is very minimal compared to the rest of the world, and is insufficient to qualify it as socialist. What IS socialist is protectionism of activities/businesses/institutions/etc that will help workers/environment/etc. USA has A LOT of protectionism aimed at helping large corporations, who are mostly owned by a tiny wealthy group. Such a thing has absolutely nothing to do with socialism. If anything, socialists will dismantle all that right away. In contrast, socialists will accept protectionism of farmers.
-----
As far as the environment is concerned... pro-environmental policies are considered socialist because they value the environment over commerce/business. This is a key philosophy of socialism. In contrast, capitalism puts commerce/business above the environemnt (as can be seen by the free trade agreements and various other treaties that are signed).
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Nazis were practicing capitalism for hte most part. There was very little socialism. For instance, Germany was pretty much driven by private interests. The vast majority of the owners of the companies and major industries were private (i.e. not govt owned as in socialist or socialist-like states)...
The reason Hitler (and other founders of Nazism) used the word socialism is to get the workers on their side. Workers were very important because they were suffering and whoever they supported would have won...and the Nazism triumped, instead of communism.
National Socialism is as socialist as the Democratic Republic of Korea is democratic... which is to say not much...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
You have to understand that America is far more socialist than Europe in a lot of ways; but it's a right-wing socialism.
.why do you say USA is "socialist"?
No offense but get your description of econopolitical systems right. It makes no sense, not to mention misleading, to claim that USA is socialist. And right wing socialist!?! Socialism is left wing! Plain and simple. There is no way you can claim that there can be a right wing version.
I really don't know why you call USA "socialist". It is very capitalist and has almost no features of socialism: egalitarianism, utiltarianism, strong welfare, strong worker rights, strong environmental rights, protectionism, etc.
I'm really curious..
Sivaram Velauthapillai
There is no such thing as natural rights. All rights are granted by the governments (via courts). It is quite possible for you to lose your natural rights, just like how you can gain new natural rights in the future.
Consider sexual orientation. Fifty years ago (or even now in many countries), if you were a homosexual, you had no rights (can't live together, can't marry, can't have sex, etc). In 50 years from now, I'll bet this will become what you call "natural right". It didn't exist but you will gain it.
All you need is change in attitude of the people. You can easily, for example, implement fascism and discriminate against people. The courts will back you; the governments will back you; and the people will back you too.
All rights are granted by the government and taken away by the government. Until there is no government (or some authority) you won't have natural rights whether you like it or not...
I also disagree with your main arguments. For instance, you say that the more "granted rights" you have, the weaker the government. I say this has nothing to do with govt strength. Government strength comes from other factors. You simply need to look at the top two totalitarian governments in the last 100years: fascism and Communism. One on the right, the other on the left. Both of these governments were EXTREMELY strong. They "granted" a lot of rights yet were very strong...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
First of all, socialism=politics+economics. You can't claim that a country is socialist just because one element is somewhat socialist.
Anyway, I don't see anything in Iran resembling socialism. Is some central authority planning stuff? Does the govt heavily control economics? Nope. As far as I can tell, it is very capitalistic and most of the economy is driven by private industry. You are probably saying it is socialist because it is authoratarian and your memory of authoratarianism is probably limited to Communism. So you think everything that is authoratarian is socialist.
Interestingly, Iraq was more socialist than Iran during most of the 70's and 80's.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Actually their hands weren't tied in Afghanistan. There were hardly any US soldiers in Afghanistan. Most of the fighting was done by Northern Alliance. Besides, USA clearly indicated that it wasn't going to stay in Afghanistan. It pulled out pretty quickly and other countries probably have more troops than USA now...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
This isn't progress...
This is propaganda. Instead of them thinking of about, why don't YOU think about it for a sec? Why would a country like USA initiate a program to free an ISP in Iran of all places? There are many other countries where the help would be in greater need...
This has nothing to do with freedom or privacy or anything like that...
Oh, BTW, agents already know stuff like this before it hits the media. Often, informants (usually money-seeking neighbours and what not) will notify of the agents long before the media even knows what's going on.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I don't know anything about this "web of trust" you are referring to but GPG should be able to protect any communication. I don't see what a town or airplane has to do with any of this???
As far as not being able to send any messages to the destination address, if that is the case you can't do anything anyway. Regardless of whether you can anonymize or not, chances are the agents are watching the receiving end for everything that DOES get through.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I don't know anything about Anonymizer or any other software like it. But I do know one thing. Any time an organization lets a government, of any kind, near them, you might as well just avoid them like the plague. If an anonymizing service can be mainipulated by money that governments provide, they are not worth considering...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
If you think modern day Iran is socialist you clearly have no idea what a theocracy is nor what socialism is...
You CANNOT practice theocracy with socialism because socialism is atheist. Socialists won't let any religious leaders come near power...
BTW, the US initiated overthrow is simply for one reason: oil. USA attempted something in Venezuela and it didn't work. Now they are trying Iran... Having said all this, I don't see USA invading Iran any time soon since they have their hands tied with Iraq...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
This is nothing more than US govt attempts to overthrow the Iranian govt. That's the only reason USA would do it for Iran, and not many other countries which are even worse off (eg. African countries)...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
If these are scientific studies then the problems you mentioned won't occur. Social science involves avoiding the problems you mentioned. Anyone that has gone through university will be using scientific methods. For instance, they will pick a sample that is not biased in any manner. Unless these studies are done by non-scientists, they should be acceptable.
It's just like polls. There is a difference between scientific polls (often conducted by professional polling organizations) and non-scientific polls (stuff you put up on your website). Scientific polls will pick a representative sample, will avoid biases, and the results should be fairly precise. In contrast, a poll on say SlashDot is not worth much since it is heavily biased in favour of the tech crowd.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
What you are talking about is FULL freedom of speech (or any freedom in general) vs limited freedoms. I think you are simply referring to distribution on the interent but it is similar to freedoms in the non-wired world too. Roughly you can say that USA tries to grant full freeomds while, say, Canada grants limited freedoms.
At one time, I used to think that limited freedom was best. I used the same argument as you. I mean, if someone is carrying out something undesirable to society what's the point? In real world, an undesirable action might be some neo-Nazi claiming that Jews are inferior; in the interent case, an undesirable action might be someone spamming something. In both cases, the vast majority of society would be better off without either. The only people who would be hurt by censorship are the neo-Nazis and the spammers. Seems like a good idea right? Well many people thought so (this is why most of Europe and Canada grants limited freedoms).
As I grew older, I realized that the full freedom approach is FAR BETTER. Why? Well there are many reasons but one key reason is as follows. Whenever you censor something, some entity (could be a corporation, person, government, faction, religious body, etc) has power to decide the outcome. This isn't bad in and of itself. In fact, during "good times" there is no problem whatsoever. BUT such a system leaves the possibility of mass exploitation during "bad times". For instance, some dictator can take over a country and easily start censoring stuff. In fact, I claim that some dictator can take over Canada and start censoring me (you can argue that laws mean nothing under a dictatorship, since the ruler controls the courts but I'm not going to go into that). In the case of the internet, some corporate body (for example) can take over the system and start exploiting it (again, you can argue that under capitalism, wealthy bodies will control the system anyway but I"m not going to go into that). Without censorship, it will be hard to take over the internet.
It is far more desirable to have a free internet than to have a SANITIZED internet...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
You basically answered your own question. I think John Carmack, as well as others, are doing it because they like doing this sort of stuff. I think John even mentioned it in that news article (where they say that they will keep going even after the X-Prize). I highly doubt that many people are doing it for profit.
Sure it may be risky but these people are prepared to take the risks. I don't think it is any more dangerous than climbing the Everest (at least 30 years ago). Right now, a lot of people may be succeeding at climbing the Everest but imagine 30 years ago when they didn't have "tourist camps", helicopter support, modern tools/clothes, etc.
Perhaps one simply need to look at space exploration: just imagine the first person to go into space. Imagine when the Russians went up into orbit for the very first time. No one had ever done it, the systems were far inferior to today (in fact, they didn't even have transistor-based computers at that time if I recall), and so on. Sure they might have spent a billion dollars (by capitalist standards) whereas the X-Prize teams don't have that luxry. Nevertheless, the situation is quite similar IMO...
BTW, AFAIK the X-Prize requires manned flight.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Are you trying to disrupt the harmony that exists in their team? This is not the time to be accusing some team member of pocketing some extra cash ;)
Besides, these engines probably require different high-performance materials...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
If they are going to tax something on the interent, it should ONLY be commercial (ie. profit-seeking) activities. Everything else should be free. Taxing LAN/WAN is the dumbest thing ever!!! They should not tax the transport mechanism or how many computers are connected to the interent, or whether you have a personal website up, and so on...
If you live in Florida, you better stop your govt from taxing all of the internet.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Not exactly what you were looking for but you DID help me out although it wasn't what you were expecting lol... Thanks for linking to that math site. I never knew such a site existed. It is similar to Wikipedia and I like it (people working together to help everyone :) ). I'm bookmarking it for sure :)
If you know of other free specialized websites, can you e-mail me or respond to this message. Website for things like a chemistry, physics, astronomy, sociology, etc would help. I personally find these online "encyclopedias" very helpful. Quickly checking out a specialized site to see the description of say a quasar or a black hole is better than trying to search the web.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I kind of agree with all your points except #3. Living in outer space SHOULD be cheaper in the medium and longer terms. It may be expensive to keep 2 people up in space but economies of scale will ensure that the cost/person for the 1000th person will drop significantly. In fact, if you can get 250 people to live in space for a short while, they can accomplish a lot... like building better housing, improving the situation up there, and so on.
One more thing... the cost of living on earth often ignores the environmental costs. Large countries with lots of space may not have that problem but smaller countries will certainly run into problems. Once you have cut down all the trees to make way for roads and houses, the whole place is going to turn into a desert--or worse. (The other solution is living in oceans but I'm not going to go there)...
Sivaram Velauthapillai