The always-on connectivity is at least as important as the speed. In fact, if I had to choose between the two, I'd probably drop the speed first.
Absolutely! I have "broadband" in Russia.:) My ISP, Rednet, provides cable access in my part of the city (for about 20-30 apartment buildings with ~5000-10000 households covered). Since incoming traffic in St. Petersburg (just 200 km from Finland, the most wired and the most wireless country) costs 2 cents/Mb wholesale and 7 cents/Mb to me, it's impractical to have fast broadband. In fact, Rednet prices different connection options according to the speed. 128Kbit/sec costs 12$/month + traffic. Even without MP3/movie downloading (did enough of that during my studies in neighbouring Finland) I manage to download about 500Mb/month, which brings the total bill to about 35-40$/month.
128K is definitely not very fast, but it's pretty comfortable for browsing, some downloading and stuff. Speed is not a big issue here. But the advantage of 24h connectivity is huge and I cannot imagine going back to dial-up access (although I still have a 2400baud modem in the closet).
Well, Cuba is not a totalitarian dictatorship, Belarus is not a totalitarian dictatorship (a dictatorship, though). These countries are not communist, though. The point is, there have been no communist countries yet, there have been only countries governed by communist parties, not the same thing.
Check and balances are vital, no doubt about that. The lack of openness and proper feedback was the major drawback in USSR.
The things that you describe are not the characterisics of communism, but of totalitarian dictatorships of the 20th century. In communism there is no state, there is no money (therefore no printing press) and no army (hence, no "guns"). How could it become a totalitarian dictatorship and what "IT" is?:)
Communist society (not government) need two things to work: 1) advanced technology to provide high production capabilities 2) "hearts of gold" - necessarily follows from the basis. And experience shows that given proper material support, people will often behave like they should in a communist society.
People are selfish bastards because we are selected for that trait, which happens because we live in the world of scarcity. Remove that part and we can let ourselves be altruistic. And then capitalism is not needed, because without scarcity communism works just fine.
May I suggest you Silent Storm. It's a turn based strategy, just like UFO/X-Com, but about WW2. It has really kick-ass graphics, realistic physics (almost HL2-grade) and completely destructible levels (have to be seen to be believed). Although I loved X-Com games until very recently, I don't think I would be playing them anymore.:) Now it's time for Silent Storm and may be UFO: Aftermath.
Well, sometimes I have watch the films with the family and other members suggest the films. In case of Charlie Angels it took us about 10 minutes to decide to watch 'Pirates of the Carribean' instead.:) But anyway, I currently have about 30 movies and a couple of documentary series that I still have to watch, but don't have time. And 50+ movies that I don't have yet, but want to find and see. Why would I spend my time watching the films I already saw?:)
Anyway, I think that it all depends on how much different people watch movies. If someone spends 40 hours per month watching them, he might need DVDs. If someone has only 4 hours per month for movies, may be renting would be the better option. And the latter person would probably prefer video-on-demand or download service to save some time and effort.
I don't think Marx ignored greed. In fact it was hardly possible to ignore it in the 19th century.:) But anyway, I think it can be said that the theory is pretty solid and is still the best scientific theory we have to explain the transitions between socio-economic orders.
As for the ideal place, there are two important things that you need - one is production capacity and the second one correctly raised people. The first one will be available soon in all developed countries because of scientific and technological progress. Second is more difficult because people in capitalist countries are not completely ready for communism.:) People inside USSR had a lot of shortcomings, but you have to admit that there have been a lot of altruistic people, who believed in the ideals of communism.
But people are secondary. Just like feodalism replaced the slave-owning system, regardless of anyone's personal qualities, capitalism replaced feodalism, the same way communism will replace capitalism when the production capabilities arrive. When Khruschev said "We will bury you", he was wrong in details - USSR did not outlive the USA, but he was ultimately correct in general - communism will replace capitalism simply because it's a more advanced system and it's suited better for the economy where voluntary labour is sufficient to fulfill most human needs.
This is going to happen in every nation, but details are very much country-specific. Some countries will easily expand their socialist offerings to gradually change into communism. Some countries might need a more or less violent revolution led by the general population to seize control from the capitalists. In the context of Brain's articles, if American corporations try to charge high prices for McDonalds hamburgers, replace people working there with robots and do not pay people "free money", people will eventually revolt.:)
The science of communism simply says that when machines (or nanomachines, or economy in general) can provide for all basic needs and most other needs, capitalist system is no longer useful. When the problem of scarcity is no longer of primary importance, you don't need markets and free enterprise. So it would be correct to say that communism is not an alternative to capitalism, but its logical replacement.
People want interaction now, that's what they are willing to pay for. The comic writters should start writting plots/charachters for games, and mabey they would see a little profit out of it, and the gamers might get better games out of it.
Like anime adventure games, right? I am mostly familiar with the hentai variety:) but it seems that's exactly the thing you describe. Story, pictures and text, as in traditional comics, but as an extra, some animation and interactivity.
My guess is that Hayek (recommended by Sharp'r) actually tried using Joe Stalin to discredit communism. What else could he do in 1944. But the fact is that Stalin != communism and Stalin violated many principles of communism when he succeumbed to his paranoia. Saying that communism is bad because of Stalin is precisely the same as saying Democracy is bad because of McCarthy and capitalism is bad because of Bill Gates.
You mention North Korea, Cuba and PRC, but 1) Each of these countries is a special case with many problems caused by their specific history and not by being communist. Korea has a paranoid dictator for a leader, China was an agrarian country and it's simply not easy to reform 1.5 billion people, Cuba has US embargo. These are the roots of their problems, not the fact that they tried to build communism. 2) All these countries were agrarian undeveloped countries. As I mentioned elsewhere, communism should be built in rich advanced societies. Marx and Engels developed a science, not just cool principles. And if the science says you shouldn't build communism in Russia or Cuba, may be there is something to it. At least don't be surprised when the attempt fails.
So if you say that an attempt to build communism in a undeveloped country will likely lead to totalitarian dictatorship, I just might agree with you. And at the same time I will tell you that an attempt to build capitalism in a country with planned economy will likely lead to criminal anarchy. Both things are true, but they say nothing about relative merits of communism and capitalism. They just say that there are certain prerequisites for each. When you meet these requirements, you may very well succeed, when you don't, prepare for a disaster.
How many times do you watch the movie on average? If it's significantly more than 1, you either need to watch different movies (instead of watching Star Wars for the 20th time), or to get a life (instead of spending 50% of your free time watching movies). Normal people have some favourite movies that they watch again and again, but watch most of the movies only once. If you already know from reviews that Charlie Angels 2 sucks, why do you need a DVD? You should instead watch it once for 4$.
If, for some reason, you will find out that you like the movie, buy a DVD. The 4$ you lose in this case should be offset by the money you save by not buying DVDs for all other movies.
One in 909,000 impact chance. We know that one human life costs significanlty more than $1 million, but let's agree on 1 mln. That means the estimated losses from the potential collision with the asteroid can be at least $2 billion just for the expected loss of human life (assuming one continent is devastated). Add to that the loss in industrial capital, loss of cultural artifacts and the culture in now dead humans, some other things as well, and finally a loss of a continent. This might very well add up to $10 billion. If we take a larger estimate for the cost of human life, make it $100 billion. This is our expected loss just from the fact that this piece of rock is flying around.
I am not even talking about the fact that most dangerous asteroids are as yet unnoticed, that there are other dangerous ones, etc. I guess we better spend a good chunk of this money on developing some working tech to destroy dangerous asteroids. We can't rely on Bruce Willis and his team of misfits to save us.
That's the same as the administrator account in Win2000/XP. It looks like you can run your system as a user with limited rights and have a more secure system. In reality many products require that you have Admin rights for installation (and sometimes just for running it) for no apparent reason.
I can well imagine that although you will be able to diasble Palladium, programs like Windows Media Player, Real Player, may be Quicktime, etc. will refuse to install and run...:)
That's natural for the OSS model. You can release as often as you like. MS can't. OSS doesn't spend billions on marketing, MS does. So MS needs to concentrate everything they make over several years into a new product, hype it to the sky and earn shitloads of money. If they used OSS model, you'd see much smoother evolutionary development.
Having a good product is not a problem. May be Bill wants to take the Henry Ford appoach (he didn't like that most companies at that time didn't want to sell a good product, but a product that the customer would want to replace soon - can't find the exact quote, sorry).:)
But in any case there is still a lot of innovation to be made on the OS market. If MS somehow manages to add ~100% security and stability, they can start adding features. There are many possible routs to be taken and as an aside they will again be able to fully utilise the CPU power that Intel and AMD throw at us.:)
Unfortunately, in [Soviet] Russia the number of cars skyrocketed after the collapse of the USSR. This coincided with the unwillingness of Russians to pay parking tickets, which gave rise to parking in places where parking is illegal. The authorities tried a countermeasure - arresting a car and placing it in custody, but the courts ruled out that it's illegal (in Russia you can't deprive anyone of property without a court decision, not even a drug user/dealer). Still, Russians don't pay the tickets, so there is no way to stop rampant parking. The drivers park on the grass, in the flower-beds, in the playing ground, under the "No Parking" signs, around "No Parking" signs, near the firestation exits, on central city streets, everywhere. The ability of Prius to fit itself into the parking space would not be particularly useful for Russians, because they can just leave their car where they see fit.:)
P.S. This is true for St. Petersburg, situation may be slightly better in other cities.
Does that depend on the equipment used? Different mice have different characteristics. I am sure that there are still some recurring patterns, but will this software be able to recognize my signature, regardless of whether I am using an optical mouse, expensive mechanical mouse with heavy ball, clunky 5-button mouse, small cheapo "Noname" (tm) mouse with light plastic ball, gaming mouse, ergonomic mouse, etc?
You are right. I was giving the original poster a benefit of the doubt. May be he meant that "peasants" were an important force in the revolutions, directed by someone else. I agree with you that Winston Smith was probably insane when he said that our hope lies in Proles.:)
But today masses are more than capable of organising themselves, as examples, such as Indonesians throwing off Suharto, antiglobalists organising themselves and also Al Quaeda terrorists. Of course, often there is a cunning mastermind, weaving the threads of revolution:) , but sometimes network-based organisations are quite capable from building their movements from ground up.
As far as I know, when he wrote "The Road to Serfdom", he was only 26 years old. And not a Nobel prize winner by a long shot. And I doubt that he visited the USSR before writing the book. I said several times that I don't believe Hayek to be stupid, but I don't believe him to be a trustworthy expert on communism either and his 1944 book to be a worth resource today, especially given some of the wild speculations that Sharp'r claims are there.
I am not asking you to read Joseph Trachtenberg's* books on capitalism so please, don't insult my intelligence suggesting I read Hayek to educate myself about communism.
* - Joseph Trachtenberg (1883-1960) - a Soviet economist, a specialist on the economic crises in capitalist countries. Member of the Academy of Sciences. He was awarded an Order of Lenin and an Order of Red Banner.
Demagogy. First, it is important to teach people "one true doctrine" - the dialectic materialism of Marx and Lenin. You shouldn't teach them wrong things extensively.:) And please don't get me wrong, knowing other views might be important, but different philosophical viewpoints are not equally valuable. Second, I am talking here about a very specific case - about myself and about this one book. Surely you must realise that I have other things to do in life. I can't just read any book that someone recommends me on Slashdot, can I? I always have the value of being exposed to yet another opinion with how much time I have to spend for that.
So education is important. Reading past works is only important as a tool for that - you don't need to read all past works, only the best and most valuable ones, especially those that support a correct viewpoint (you don't need to read one book on creationism for every biological book that you read, or one book about alien abductions for every physics book).
When I meet such level of ignorance about communism as I see here on Slashdot, I tend to ignore the references that they provide. I know quite well the relation between communism and totalitarism - if Hayek "demonstrates" that one always leads to another, then he is full of crap and I don't need to read him to make sure.
P.S. The level of state intererence in life of the individual in later Soviet Union is comparable with that in the US in certain periods. Does the name Joseph McCarthy ring a bell? Or do you think there is nothing totalitarian about the US today?
You do and I don't.;) I never solicit advertising and giving me a service is not an excuse. May be in the US it is considered normal, but I certainly don't think so.
Ads are evil. I am going to spend my income whether I see any ads or not. This is my contribution to the economy (or, more correctly, the work that I did to get this income). I don't see how watching ads would contribute anything extra. The distribution may vary - AltaVista is going to get less, but some other company will get more. I can certainly sleep at night knowing about this small market imperfection if I don't have to see ads.:)
Nope. I can't get a credit card easily here, where I live. And since I don't live in the US, a lot of ads are irrelevant to me. I am therefore extremely unlikely to buy anything advertised at AltaVista. Since text advertisers usually pay per click, I don't deprive anyone from any revenue. I am not saying that anything should be free for me, I just disagree with the concept of advertisements. I don't want to see them, I have no legal or moral obligations to watch them, so I filter them out. You want to see ads, go ahead. BTW, can I have your e-mail address. Some people I know would be very glad to recommend you some excellent products and services...
I was born in Soviet Union and now live in Russia. I have a BBA degree and another degree in innovation management, my father is Professor, Doctor of Economics, my grandfather was a Professor of Economics, PhD. I know advantages and disadvantages of communism, socialism and capitalism firsthand. I don't need to read some political harangue written by a long dead man.
Hayek wasn't a stupid person, but the time and place he lived in inevitably limited his perception. His book might be an interesting historical curiosity, but it hardly can be considered top-quality scientific analysis today.
I don't know how many times it needs to be explained, but there was no communism in Soviet Union, except for a brief period after the revolution and in some isolated periods and places after that (where it worked quite well). It was state capitalism and socialism. Yes, it also was a totalitarian dictatorship, but that wasn't a necessity. It was built by Stalin and by him alone, was slowly disbanded after his death and finally destroyed from within. The USSR was called "communist" country, but the only correct meaning is "a country ruled by communists", not "a country with communist order".
So I don't see anything bad in trying communism again, when the society and economy will be ready (in developed countries).
What do you mean money and power? If you think all Bolsheviks wanted was money and power, you are crazy.:) If you think that money and power was necessary to organize the revolution, you are also not entirely correct - money was needed, but it could be relatively easily acquired.:)
And regardless of who is organizing the revolution, the point of original poster was that concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is an indicator that poor people might become willing to risk everything in a revolution. As for the peasants, sorry, but the fact that only a few percent of the people are farmers doesn't mean that the revolution is impossible.:))
I hope it would occur to them that having another 40 million die trying to make Communism work _yet_ _again_ is not exactly compatible with the common good.
First, don't confuse communism with a totalitarian dictatorship. One does not necessarily means another. And second, don't forget that everyone knew even 90 years ago that Russia was not ready for the transition to communism. When USA or EU changes from capitalism to communism in a few decades, no one needs to die. Deaths in Russia happened during the transition from agrarian to industrial economy and then because of Stalin's paranoia. It is in no way (except in the American government propaganda) related to communism, just like genocide of American Natives is in no way related to advantages or disadvantages of capitalism and democracy.
Slashdot Mirror
The always-on connectivity is at least as important as the speed. In fact, if I had to choose between the two, I'd probably drop the speed first.
:) My ISP, Rednet, provides cable access in my part of the city (for about 20-30 apartment buildings with ~5000-10000 households covered). Since incoming traffic in St. Petersburg (just 200 km from Finland, the most wired and the most wireless country) costs 2 cents/Mb wholesale and 7 cents/Mb to me, it's impractical to have fast broadband. In fact, Rednet prices different connection options according to the speed. 128Kbit/sec costs 12$/month + traffic. Even without MP3/movie downloading (did enough of that during my studies in neighbouring Finland) I manage to download about 500Mb/month, which brings the total bill to about 35-40$/month.
Absolutely! I have "broadband" in Russia.
128K is definitely not very fast, but it's pretty comfortable for browsing, some downloading and stuff. Speed is not a big issue here. But the advantage of 24h connectivity is huge and I cannot imagine going back to dial-up access (although I still have a 2400baud modem in the closet).
Well, Cuba is not a totalitarian dictatorship, Belarus is not a totalitarian dictatorship (a dictatorship, though). These countries are not communist, though. The point is, there have been no communist countries yet, there have been only countries governed by communist parties, not the same thing.
:)
Check and balances are vital, no doubt about that. The lack of openness and proper feedback was the major drawback in USSR.
The things that you describe are not the characterisics of communism, but of totalitarian dictatorships of the 20th century. In communism there is no state, there is no money (therefore no printing press) and no army (hence, no "guns"). How could it become a totalitarian dictatorship and what "IT" is?
Communist society (not government) need two things to work:
1) advanced technology to provide high production capabilities
2) "hearts of gold" - necessarily follows from the basis. And experience shows that given proper material support, people will often behave like they should in a communist society.
People are selfish bastards because we are selected for that trait, which happens because we live in the world of scarcity. Remove that part and we can let ourselves be altruistic. And then capitalism is not needed, because without scarcity communism works just fine.
May I suggest you Silent Storm. It's a turn based strategy, just like UFO/X-Com, but about WW2. It has really kick-ass graphics, realistic physics (almost HL2-grade) and completely destructible levels (have to be seen to be believed). Although I loved X-Com games until very recently, I don't think I would be playing them anymore. :) Now it's time for Silent Storm and may be UFO: Aftermath.
How might that effect research on high altitude lightning, ozone depletion, atmospheric pollution, weather, ...?
:)
I don't want to sound unimaginative, but won't thousands of LEO launches have a negative impact on the ozon layer?
Well, sometimes I have watch the films with the family and other members suggest the films. In case of Charlie Angels it took us about 10 minutes to decide to watch 'Pirates of the Carribean' instead. :) But anyway, I currently have about 30 movies and a couple of documentary series that I still have to watch, but don't have time. And 50+ movies that I don't have yet, but want to find and see. Why would I spend my time watching the films I already saw? :)
Anyway, I think that it all depends on how much different people watch movies. If someone spends 40 hours per month watching them, he might need DVDs. If someone has only 4 hours per month for movies, may be renting would be the better option. And the latter person would probably prefer video-on-demand or download service to save some time and effort.
I don't think Marx ignored greed. In fact it was hardly possible to ignore it in the 19th century. :) But anyway, I think it can be said that the theory is pretty solid and is still the best scientific theory we have to explain the transitions between socio-economic orders.
:) People inside USSR had a lot of shortcomings, but you have to admit that there have been a lot of altruistic people, who believed in the ideals of communism.
:)
As for the ideal place, there are two important things that you need - one is production capacity and the second one correctly raised people. The first one will be available soon in all developed countries because of scientific and technological progress. Second is more difficult because people in capitalist countries are not completely ready for communism.
But people are secondary. Just like feodalism replaced the slave-owning system, regardless of anyone's personal qualities, capitalism replaced feodalism, the same way communism will replace capitalism when the production capabilities arrive. When Khruschev said "We will bury you", he was wrong in details - USSR did not outlive the USA, but he was ultimately correct in general - communism will replace capitalism simply because it's a more advanced system and it's suited better for the economy where voluntary labour is sufficient to fulfill most human needs.
This is going to happen in every nation, but details are very much country-specific. Some countries will easily expand their socialist offerings to gradually change into communism. Some countries might need a more or less violent revolution led by the general population to seize control from the capitalists. In the context of Brain's articles, if American corporations try to charge high prices for McDonalds hamburgers, replace people working there with robots and do not pay people "free money", people will eventually revolt.
The science of communism simply says that when machines (or nanomachines, or economy in general) can provide for all basic needs and most other needs, capitalist system is no longer useful. When the problem of scarcity is no longer of primary importance, you don't need markets and free enterprise. So it would be correct to say that communism is not an alternative to capitalism, but its logical replacement.
People want interaction now, that's what they are willing to pay for. The comic writters should start writting plots/charachters for games, and mabey they would see a little profit out of it, and the gamers might get better games out of it.
:) but it seems that's exactly the thing you describe. Story, pictures and text, as in traditional comics, but as an extra, some animation and interactivity.
Like anime adventure games, right? I am mostly familiar with the hentai variety
Crap is good, because
1) it means someone is taking risks
2) someone is trying to do stuff
3) you never know what will turn out good
My guess is that Hayek (recommended by Sharp'r) actually tried using Joe Stalin to discredit communism. What else could he do in 1944. But the fact is that Stalin != communism and Stalin violated many principles of communism when he succeumbed to his paranoia. Saying that communism is bad because of Stalin is precisely the same as saying Democracy is bad because of McCarthy and capitalism is bad because of Bill Gates.
You mention North Korea, Cuba and PRC, but
1) Each of these countries is a special case with many problems caused by their specific history and not by being communist. Korea has a paranoid dictator for a leader, China was an agrarian country and it's simply not easy to reform 1.5 billion people, Cuba has US embargo. These are the roots of their problems, not the fact that they tried to build communism.
2) All these countries were agrarian undeveloped countries. As I mentioned elsewhere, communism should be built in rich advanced societies. Marx and Engels developed a science, not just cool principles. And if the science says you shouldn't build communism in Russia or Cuba, may be there is something to it. At least don't be surprised when the attempt fails.
So if you say that an attempt to build communism in a undeveloped country will likely lead to totalitarian dictatorship, I just might agree with you. And at the same time I will tell you that an attempt to build capitalism in a country with planned economy will likely lead to criminal anarchy. Both things are true, but they say nothing about relative merits of communism and capitalism. They just say that there are certain prerequisites for each. When you meet these requirements, you may very well succeed, when you don't, prepare for a disaster.
Thus did the US government became the architect of its own demise. :)
How many times do you watch the movie on average? If it's significantly more than 1, you either need to watch different movies (instead of watching Star Wars for the 20th time), or to get a life (instead of spending 50% of your free time watching movies).
Normal people have some favourite movies that they watch again and again, but watch most of the movies only once. If you already know from reviews that Charlie Angels 2 sucks, why do you need a DVD? You should instead watch it once for 4$.
If, for some reason, you will find out that you like the movie, buy a DVD. The 4$ you lose in this case should be offset by the money you save by not buying DVDs for all other movies.
One in 909,000 impact chance. We know that one human life costs significanlty more than $1 million, but let's agree on 1 mln. That means the estimated losses from the potential collision with the asteroid can be at least $2 billion just for the expected loss of human life (assuming one continent is devastated). Add to that the loss in industrial capital, loss of cultural artifacts and the culture in now dead humans, some other things as well, and finally a loss of a continent. This might very well add up to $10 billion. If we take a larger estimate for the cost of human life, make it $100 billion. This is our expected loss just from the fact that this piece of rock is flying around.
I am not even talking about the fact that most dangerous asteroids are as yet unnoticed, that there are other dangerous ones, etc. I guess we better spend a good chunk of this money on developing some working tech to destroy dangerous asteroids. We can't rely on Bruce Willis and his team of misfits to save us.
That's the same as the administrator account in Win2000/XP. It looks like you can run your system as a user with limited rights and have a more secure system. In reality many products require that you have Admin rights for installation (and sometimes just for running it) for no apparent reason.
:)
I can well imagine that although you will be able to diasble Palladium, programs like Windows Media Player, Real Player, may be Quicktime, etc. will refuse to install and run...
That's natural for the OSS model. You can release as often as you like. MS can't. OSS doesn't spend billions on marketing, MS does. So MS needs to concentrate everything they make over several years into a new product, hype it to the sky and earn shitloads of money. If they used OSS model, you'd see much smoother evolutionary development.
Having a good product is not a problem. May be Bill wants to take the Henry Ford appoach (he didn't like that most companies at that time didn't want to sell a good product, but a product that the customer would want to replace soon - can't find the exact quote, sorry). :)
:)
But in any case there is still a lot of innovation to be made on the OS market. If MS somehow manages to add ~100% security and stability, they can start adding features. There are many possible routs to be taken and as an aside they will again be able to fully utilise the CPU power that Intel and AMD throw at us.
Unfortunately, in [Soviet] Russia the number of cars skyrocketed after the collapse of the USSR. This coincided with the unwillingness of Russians to pay parking tickets, which gave rise to parking in places where parking is illegal. The authorities tried a countermeasure - arresting a car and placing it in custody, but the courts ruled out that it's illegal (in Russia you can't deprive anyone of property without a court decision, not even a drug user/dealer). Still, Russians don't pay the tickets, so there is no way to stop rampant parking. The drivers park on the grass, in the flower-beds, in the playing ground, under the "No Parking" signs, around "No Parking" signs, near the firestation exits, on central city streets, everywhere. The ability of Prius to fit itself into the parking space would not be particularly useful for Russians, because they can just leave their car where they see fit. :)
P.S. This is true for St. Petersburg, situation may be slightly better in other cities.
Does that depend on the equipment used? Different mice have different characteristics. I am sure that there are still some recurring patterns, but will this software be able to recognize my signature, regardless of whether I am using an optical mouse, expensive mechanical mouse with heavy ball, clunky 5-button mouse, small cheapo "Noname" (tm) mouse with light plastic ball, gaming mouse, ergonomic mouse, etc?
You are right. I was giving the original poster a benefit of the doubt. May be he meant that "peasants" were an important force in the revolutions, directed by someone else. I agree with you that Winston Smith was probably insane when he said that our hope lies in Proles. :)
:) , but sometimes network-based organisations are quite capable from building their movements from ground up.
But today masses are more than capable of organising themselves, as examples, such as Indonesians throwing off Suharto, antiglobalists organising themselves and also Al Quaeda terrorists. Of course, often there is a cunning mastermind, weaving the threads of revolution
As far as I know, when he wrote "The Road to Serfdom", he was only 26 years old. And not a Nobel prize winner by a long shot. And I doubt that he visited the USSR before writing the book. I said several times that I don't believe Hayek to be stupid, but I don't believe him to be a trustworthy expert on communism either and his 1944 book to be a worth resource today, especially given some of the wild speculations that Sharp'r claims are there.
I am not asking you to read Joseph Trachtenberg's* books on capitalism so please, don't insult my intelligence suggesting I read Hayek to educate myself about communism.
* - Joseph Trachtenberg (1883-1960) - a Soviet economist, a specialist on the economic crises in capitalist countries. Member of the Academy of Sciences. He was awarded an Order of Lenin and an Order of Red Banner.
Demagogy. First, it is important to teach people "one true doctrine" - the dialectic materialism of Marx and Lenin. You shouldn't teach them wrong things extensively. :) And please don't get me wrong, knowing other views might be important, but different philosophical viewpoints are not equally valuable. Second, I am talking here about a very specific case - about myself and about this one book. Surely you must realise that I have other things to do in life. I can't just read any book that someone recommends me on Slashdot, can I? I always have the value of being exposed to yet another opinion with how much time I have to spend for that.
So education is important. Reading past works is only important as a tool for that - you don't need to read all past works, only the best and most valuable ones, especially those that support a correct viewpoint (you don't need to read one book on creationism for every biological book that you read, or one book about alien abductions for every physics book).
When I meet such level of ignorance about communism as I see here on Slashdot, I tend to ignore the references that they provide. I know quite well the relation between communism and totalitarism - if Hayek "demonstrates" that one always leads to another, then he is full of crap and I don't need to read him to make sure.
P.S. The level of state intererence in life of the individual in later Soviet Union is comparable with that in the US in certain periods. Does the name Joseph McCarthy ring a bell? Or do you think there is nothing totalitarian about the US today?
You do and I don't. ;) I never solicit advertising and giving me a service is not an excuse. May be in the US it is considered normal, but I certainly don't think so.
:)
Ads are evil. I am going to spend my income whether I see any ads or not. This is my contribution to the economy (or, more correctly, the work that I did to get this income). I don't see how watching ads would contribute anything extra. The distribution may vary - AltaVista is going to get less, but some other company will get more. I can certainly sleep at night knowing about this small market imperfection if I don't have to see ads.
Nope. I can't get a credit card easily here, where I live. And since I don't live in the US, a lot of ads are irrelevant to me. I am therefore extremely unlikely to buy anything advertised at AltaVista. Since text advertisers usually pay per click, I don't deprive anyone from any revenue. I am not saying that anything should be free for me, I just disagree with the concept of advertisements. I don't want to see them, I have no legal or moral obligations to watch them, so I filter them out. You want to see ads, go ahead. BTW, can I have your e-mail address. Some people I know would be very glad to recommend you some excellent products and services...
I was born in Soviet Union and now live in Russia. I have a BBA degree and another degree in innovation management, my father is Professor, Doctor of Economics, my grandfather was a Professor of Economics, PhD. I know advantages and disadvantages of communism, socialism and capitalism firsthand. I don't need to read some political harangue written by a long dead man.
Hayek wasn't a stupid person, but the time and place he lived in inevitably limited his perception. His book might be an interesting historical curiosity, but it hardly can be considered top-quality scientific analysis today.
I don't know how many times it needs to be explained, but there was no communism in Soviet Union, except for a brief period after the revolution and in some isolated periods and places after that (where it worked quite well). It was state capitalism and socialism. Yes, it also was a totalitarian dictatorship, but that wasn't a necessity. It was built by Stalin and by him alone, was slowly disbanded after his death and finally destroyed from within. The USSR was called "communist" country, but the only correct meaning is "a country ruled by communists", not "a country with communist order".
So I don't see anything bad in trying communism again, when the society and economy will be ready (in developed countries).
What do you mean money and power? If you think all Bolsheviks wanted was money and power, you are crazy. :) If you think that money and power was necessary to organize the revolution, you are also not entirely correct - money was needed, but it could be relatively easily acquired. :)
:))
And regardless of who is organizing the revolution, the point of original poster was that concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is an indicator that poor people might become willing to risk everything in a revolution. As for the peasants, sorry, but the fact that only a few percent of the people are farmers doesn't mean that the revolution is impossible.
I hope it would occur to them that having another 40 million die trying to make Communism work _yet_ _again_ is not exactly compatible with the common good.
First, don't confuse communism with a totalitarian dictatorship. One does not necessarily means another. And second, don't forget that everyone knew even 90 years ago that Russia was not ready for the transition to communism. When USA or EU changes from capitalism to communism in a few decades, no one needs to die. Deaths in Russia happened during the transition from agrarian to industrial economy and then because of Stalin's paranoia. It is in no way (except in the American government propaganda) related to communism, just like genocide of American Natives is in no way related to advantages or disadvantages of capitalism and democracy.