Agreed. I live in the North-east Argentina. Buenos Aires has recently experienced some heavy storms in the past couple of years, which the media tends to exaggerate. They get crazy about 40-60mm rainfall. And I think to myself... gee, it hasn't rained that much in a while. I actually MISS when it rains like that.
In the 2009-2010 summer (south hemisphere, remember) I heard El Niño was going to be stronger than usual. So I got myself a wireless rain meter. The first rain was good enough to test it. The second rain was 180mm in 1 night! 120mm in 3 hours alone.
Next day? No power for a few hours and some flooded streets that were dry by the time power came back. That morning was a bit complicated but the afternoon was business as usual. Summer ended with almost 500mm rain, and the river, 50cm away from evacuation (3m is the average height, 6m is warning, 6,50 is evacuation. It's a wide river, over 2km wide and "only" 30m deep where I live... so rising for 6 to 6,50 takes a good deal of water).
Minidisc had some popularity in Europe but it was never really that big. Just bad timing, I guess, since in 1999 the Diamond Rio was out and by next year Napster was the shit. If it wasn't for MP3, maybe MD would have been the alternative.
No loss unless you cling to your company name. For each new product, creating a new shell company is trivial.
All is branding.
Sony and all its line of failures would like to disagree with you.
DAT, MiniDisc and Betamax come to mind. While they never really caught in the mainstream market, some gained some sort of popularity in "niche" markets. DAT is the interesting example: it was developed to replace the Cassette but was never popular in home environments, but it found a loyal user base in the semi-pro (and pro) community, since it let you have a (rather) portable unit with CD-quality digital audio.
MD is weird too. I only knew 1 person who used MD, and this was in the pre-MP3 times (I was the only freak in town with a Diamond Rio), about 2000-2001 when Sony started bundling the MD deck with the GRX line of audio systems. This guy liked it so he got the MD walkman. In Japan, the MD seemed to be very popular. Japan is weird... CD-R wasn't as big there as MO is. Sony still made TAPE Walkmans (!) until last year, long, long after the rest of the world gave up on tapes.
Japanese companies seem to support their products in japan for much longer. Maybe the japanese law requires it? As soon as the xbox 360 came out, Microsoft slashed the xbox AND new game licenses. They moved everything to the 360. Sony still makes the PS2 and licenses new games, years after the PS3 came into the market. Maybe Sega or some subsidiary is still supporting the Dreamcast over there?. They released the SNES in '90 in japan and discontinued it on '03 (91 to 99 for USA). They also have very obscure, rare, japan-only stuff (Nintendo-licensed FLASH cartridges you can download games to, https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Nintendo_Power_(cartridge) )
Mitsubishi is the example of one of those japanese "conglomerates" that use the same brand for everything from pencils to cars. They don't create shell companies.
A toilet seat is statistically cleaner than a kitchen.
Also, I don't get "anything" on my devices. I don't use toilet paper. Here in the civilized world we have a more eco-friendly and comfortable alternative called the "bidet". A soft jet of warm water cleans your ass much better than a piece of TP.
Iba a contestarte pero se ve que es al pedo discutir con vos, capo. Se ve que tenes una respuesta para todo.
La diferencia es que yo le doy al gobierno la razon cuando la tiene (sabes cual es mi canal de television favorito? Encuentro), y lo critico cuando no me gusta lo que hace (cerrar las importaciones en vez de fomentar la investigacion y desarrollo en el pais, y no solo "ensambladoras de notebooks" en tierra del fuego). Siempre compitiendo por precio contra China en vez de competir con calidad. La clasica politica argentina de "el dolar alto" que no sirve para una mierda. Alemania y USA no tienen ningun problema, y tienen dolar y euro respectivamente. No tienen que negarle nada a su poblacion para progresar, como hacemos nosotros. Yo quiero una notebook y me tengo que conformar con una mierda o pagar 4-5 veces el precio USA, total los fabricantes estan vendiendo como locos a Kris las netbooks que se regalan.
Cambia TVR, Victor Hugo, y todos los pelotudos cipayos de K y mira otros canales de vez en cuando, sobre todo esos canales de cable de lunes a viernes a las 11 de la noche. Tienen opiniones interesantes y no son cancheros cool como los K.
Do you ever watch Pawn Stars? That's pretty much what I get from that kind of customers.
They mostly want to get rid of old comic books and get fresh (old) comic books, but they want me to buy they stuff for the same price I'm going to sell them. Sometimes they even want to adjust for devaluation and inflation! The other day this woman comes in with two Sailor Moon manga from the 90s, books #2 and #7, and she wanted USD 10 for each, which was MORE than what she paid for over 15 years ago. And I guess I could order those from Spain, sell them new for about $15 and make a 30% profit.
Also, it's a small city and they pretty much know each other from conventions and such. They have pretty much traded every comic book they had, so when they come into my store trying to sell me their stuff, it's the lowest bottom end, the kind of crap none of them wants (damaged, missing numbers, bad comic books, etc).
If I were to provide what these guys want, I'd need to travel to Buenos Aires ($200 round trip and about $200 extra for spending. I'd really need to go and not just mail order because I'd need to visit underground shops which don't really give a fuck), $300 or so in "stuff" to sell, if I'm lucky, for $600 over the course of 1 year. So I'd be looking to invest $700 to earn $600 (not adjusted for 25% annual inflation).
Well, from memory I believe the PM/President of Argentina is Eva Kirshner or something like that
President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. You confused her for Eva Duarte de Peron, who was Peron's wife (she was only the first lady). Honest mistake.
I'm not sure if you have an American style Congress/Senate/Presidential Head of State structure, or whether it is closer to the British Parliamentary system. Judging from the Spanish origin of your country, and because you have fallen under the American sphere of influence during your country's formative years, I would suspect you have a president as Head of State, because the alternative would be that you have a royal figurehead as head. That would imply that you similarly have a Congress and a Senate.
American-style President, Congress and Senate.
It strikes me that your country has a weakness for ideology. You went the more socialist route, and your economy crashed. Specifically, some time in the 1980's as I remember, your debt had built up. Unfortunately for you, your debt was denominated in US dollars. A crisis of confidence caused your currency to collapse, while your debt, denominated in US dollars remained unchanged or increased. This caused your effective debt to increase massively, a hundred times or more if memory serves. This was of course unserviceable. Most of the cherished government services your country had built up ceased to exist. Your formerly healthy middle class largely disappeared, and your country entered an economic stasis similar to that of Cuba after the 1950's, with most of the cars on your streets dating to the 1980's for more than a decade.
Completely wrong. My country went, from 1976-onwards, with the "neo-liberal" route, as every other country in South America, because of US pressure. Around that time, most south american countries were controlled by military dictatorships, in order to crush every kind of communist revolution, by US orders. The debt was denominated in US dollars, because money was provided by the IMF (International Monetary Fund), who gave out "loans" to every country in the region. The US government used (and still does) the IMF as leverage to make countries do whatever it wants to do. Argentina was the poster child of IMF "help" until late 00's when the IMF pressured for even more and more "debt reduction", which of course couldn't be done, as every service as you mentioned, ceased to exist. Most of them were privatized (oddly enough, the state owned ones like the power and water companies for my province work great, while the privatized power company in Buenos Aires has many problems even when receving hundreds of millions of dollars a year in subsidies. And the water company had to be "statized" (de-privatized) again because it was emptied by private owners. The same thing that happened with Aerolineas Argentinas, who owned tens of planes, simulators, etc and by the end of the decade was operating at a loss and leasing airplanes. The railways service operated at USD 1M a day in loses for 30.000km of railways when it was state owned, and when it was privatized it costed the state USD 1M a day in subsidies for 1500km of railways. If anything, the "socialist" route was working rather well. The IMF refused to give out loans to Argentina, we went from poster child to failed experiment. We finally fixed the problem ourselves and experienced a period of amazing growth, and paid off a good deal of IMF's debt, and re-structured the rest. We politely refuse IMF's help now, and we get a lot of heat from that, meaning the US government is trying to get us under their control again. The fact that cars were old is that the access to credit is, and has always been, impossible, in this country. To get a loan first you need to prove that you don't need it (as an anecdote, I can tell you I went to the local HSBC branch to ask for a credit card. I didn't "qualify" for one so the only way for me
You and I have very different views of the world, for the simple reason that you're American, and I'm from Argentina. Our views on politics is simply too different, the difference being that I'm familiar with the US political system, and you probably just know that Argentina is in South America and its capital is Buenos Aires. As a curiosity you can read the preamble of the Argentine constitution and find it interestingly familiar.
Most important: we have a different view of what a GOVERNMENT is supposed to do. In my country, the government (more precisely: El Estado, The State) provides free education (from kinder to university) and health (but you still can get private education and private health). In our view, the state is in charge of fullfilling the needs that have been neglected by private individuals (or corporations), either by regulating or providing government-sponsored alternatives. This was the same in the US until the end of WWII when the military-industrial complex was born and corporations pushed for a downsizing of the state, effectively reducing it to sockpuppets. The people vote for which corporation will be in charge for the next 4 years.
In my country it's completely different. It's just the Peronists, and "any other party". Either the peronists are in charge, thugging everyone around, or the other party is in charge, and gets thugged around by the peronists, and eventually resigns.
Regarding to your bookstore idea: this applies to every other business, providing either goods or services. Business need to make a profit in order to survive, but that's because the system demands you it. You need to pay your employees first, your taxes second, and anything left is for you. The government doesn't care if you're providing a service to mankind. If you don't pay taxes, you go to jail. If you don't pay your employees, they sue you and you lose your stuff. When a library makes enough profit, it can take the risk of selling "alternative" books. If you make barely enough profit, you either close or focus specifically in "best sellers". I'd rather stick to selling best sellers and get kids used to "reading" (once they get hook up on reading they're more likely to read french revolutionaries than they would if they never read a book before) than closing my shop for good.
This is a clear example of a person who watches 6-7-8 and likes to believe everything the government says.
The problem with people like this is that they have polarized opinions. Either you agree 100% with the government or you agree 100% with Clarin. There's no middle point. This government puts itself in a "trendy" position. It's "cool" to think like the government does. So if you don't think like the government tells you, you aren't cool. You are a loser. These people just can't seem to find a middle ground, and like to adorn their speech with adjectives, like "dictatiorial".
It's a fine example of how the government-controlled media apparatus works. They even see the media's "fourth power" status as something bad! Who watches the watchmen?
They applaud the new "media law" which wants to split up nation-wide channels, under the premise of "democratization". The government's main selling point about the old media law was that it was, first, old, but second and most important: "WAS WRITTEN BY THE MILITARY DICTATORSHIP!!!!!oMGOMGOMGMGO THE MILITARY ARE CONTROLLING OUR MEDIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA". They don't realize (or do, but like to deny it) it's just a divide-and-conquer strategy. When every newspaper, radio, and TV station is local, then economy of scale makes it impossible to stay in business, without resorting to government sponsorship. Once they start playing advertisements paid by the government, they lose their "free speech"... they can still say what they want, under the risk of losing government support. Anyone with 1/8th of a brain can listen to that clown Mariotto for 30 seconds and realize why this law is a TERRIBLE idea. That, and the fact that supporters of this law (http://www.leydemedios.com.ar/), are just stupid government sockpuppets. If you are minimally serious about this, you can't make a list (see right there at the bottom) of "EVIL" people who are "against" the law, and "COOL" people who are WITH it.
The fact that the congress had to make a separate calculation for inflation rates because the government institute that calculates it is oh-god-so-infected by government supporters (the government even fines private companies that make their own inflation measurements). The government claims that there is NO inflation and you can buy more with the same amount of money now, than in 2007. I have a business, I can go back to 2007 invoices and prove to you that things costed almost half back then.
Let me put it this way. My grandfather had a store in the 50s. One of those small-town stores where they sold everything from food to paint. It was doing just fine until he refused to hang the president's picture in the wall (Peron). After that, things went shitty. First they stopped supplying him with beer. Then sugar, flour... until he had to close the store and leave town with his family. That's how it was in the 40s-50s.
The current government tries to pull similar tactics. If your company isn't "with" the government, they won't kill you or anything... you're just "more likely" to get thugs at your warehouses doors and keep trucks with your products from leaving your factory.
They are in a war against Grupo Clarin right now. Clarin owns a newspaper (Clarin), ISP (Fibertel), TV stations (Canal 13, TN, Volver, and a few others), Cable (Cablevision), AM and FM national coverage radios, and they also own a lot of shares of the (oops) only newspaper paper factory in the country (so they get paper at a discount price). Cristina Kirchner, the previous president's (Nestor Kirchner) widow is just a continuation of what Nestor initiated in 2003, until he died, Cristina was the president but Nestor ruled the country, so when I say "the current government" includes the previous presidency too. SO, the current government allowed Clarin to grow out of control. They even allowed them to merge with Multicanal, which was the only other competing cable company. After a few years, things got rough, and now the government tries everything they can do to destroy Clarin: * A couple of years ago, they tried to jam Clarin's satellite feeds and TN was forced out of the air for a while. * The truck driver's union blocks Clarin's trucks and the newspaper can't be delivered that way (The government claims they don't have anything to do with that but they don't do anything to stop it. Oh, btw, the leader of the truck driver's union, Hugo Moyano, sits next to Cristina when there's a cabinet meeting. He's not a government official) * Last year they tried to remove Fibertel's ISP license on a technicality (the license was granted to Fibertel, which was a part of grupo clarin, but they billed you in the same invoice as Cablevision, which the government claimed they couldn't do) * They are trying to go after Ernestina Herrera de Noble (grupo clarin's head), claiming that her children were illegally adopted in the 70s under the military government. DNA testing found no match with any of the registered families.
So you can see pretty much how things work here, and get your own conclusions about wether the government tacitly endorses... "stuff".
I forgot to mention, there's no free speech protection in Argentina. You can't make jew jokes (Family Guy style) or pro-Nazi declarations. there's the INADI (National Institute against Discrimination) which sues anyone who does that. Except if it's against the catholic church: against them, everything goes.
A few years ago (I even submitted a story about this to Slashdot) they tried to pass a law requiring ISPs to log every website visit by every person for 10 years. It was so wrong, the president had to sign a decree giving internet communications the same protections as the Postal and Telephone service. Basically, you can't read your wife's e-mail and use it against her in your divorce case, and the government can't wiretap you unless a judge orders it.
Technical filtering of the Internet is uncommon in Argentina
I'm not sure what this actually means, is this supposed to include P2P? Because if it is, it's a lie.
Telecom Argentina actively filters the Megaupload site. You get to the download page, wait 45 seconds, get the download link, and your file starts downloading.... at 0.1kbps until it times out.
I happen to have two internet connections at home. The other one, from Fibertel, downloads the same file, at the same time, just fine.
But in the other hand, Fibertel explicitly blocks torrent trackers. You can get to TPB, download a torrent, and then the file will never start downloading. You do the same over Telecom, and you soon get your torrent at line-speed (3Mbps in my case). As a curiosity, I added the Fibertel machine manually to uTorrent, so my machine directly contacted the Fibertel one. A couple of seconds later, my Telecom machine sent a few peers through peer exchange to the Fibertel one, and it suddenly started downloading.
No, I simply stated that book STORES exists as an excercise in commerce. It's in their interest to make profit off the goods they offer, and yes, the worth of a product is measured in the profit it makes. That's why a re-edition from philosophical classics are dirt cheap. Because they're not covered by copyright, because few people are interested in them (be it because of lack of interest, or the fact that their ideas, as you stated, are an integral part of our "civilization". And this is the first point where I'm going to disagree with you: You're just limiting yourself to Western civilization. Completely forgetting about our dear friends at the East and their own schools of thought. The fact that a book makes serves as a basis for the US constitution simply means that it's relevant to the history of the west.
Read your comment again, your moaning (not bemoaning) is just about losing the values of Western civilization. And your logic has two, completely flawed assumptions:
1) The works will not disappear from public consciousness. "On ne tue point les idees". Ideas cannot be killed. 2) on a more mundane way of thinking: you don't just get books from bookstores. There are libraries too. And there's the internet nowadays. 3) French revolutionaries and philosophers aren't the only people capable of writing those books. Have you even considered the possibility of someone else writing influential philosophical books?
And you also whine that we WILL lack the intellectual ability to understand what's in our best interest. As if we, as societies, ever had a chance with that. The level of political discourse? Wait, what? Before all your 1700's frenchie idols, there was a world, you know? There were whole civilizations and empires. The roman empire worked rather good, then it went to shit. But society didn't disappear - we just changed ideals. During the roman empire it was ok to fuck a young boy, now we see that as disgusting. How do we even know the civilization we have right now is "good"? Why would we even want to kep it? I mean, since the 1800s, the world has been governed by people in London and Washington. Most of Africa is a wasteland, why does the world even want that world to continue?
And this world we live in is the very product of the ideas you are defending so much.
Groupon was blocked the other day for offering travel discounts. You can't sell anything travel-related if you're not a registered travel agency in Argentina (you get a.tur.ar domain for your website). I'm not sure how they blocked it but groupon simply vanished off the net. NXDOMAIN even in other DNS servers... I was too busy to investigate further, but it was a bit surprising.
(it wasn't censor, they were sued by travel agencies and in the meantime the judge ordered them to be blocked - if they were a physical shop they would have been closed down temporarily)
And yet you're too stupid to realize why your comment is dumb.
A bookstore like you describe can't survive unless it's in an area where people actually care about those books. Small town bookstores sell the crap you mentioned, because it SELLS. Voltaire, Rousseau, and Sartre DON'T.
Signed, someone who owns a comic book store in a small city and who is constantly nagged by so-called experts for focusing on manga (which sells) instead of used 80s comic books (which don't sell).
And we're down to the argument of "saving your career". We kill people only because of a fucked up system where killing someone is less of a burden than keeping him alive.
The same system that looks for "a" guilty person rather than "the" guilty person.
You know what the problem it? It assumes that the police are one step above the law, they're not normal citizens. And criminals are one step below normal citizens, so if you kill them, well, it wasn't a big loss anyway. Which is a complete illusion anyway: we're all equal. That's what laws say, anyway.
For that matter, if a muslim guy starts killing people in the US, he should walk free. In his view, he is above them, he killed people HE considered inferior, sinners, and getting rid of them was for a greater good.
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Check out FF extensions Ghostery and BetterPrivacy
Altavista didn't suck, newfag.
Agreed. I live in the North-east Argentina. Buenos Aires has recently experienced some heavy storms in the past couple of years, which the media tends to exaggerate. They get crazy about 40-60mm rainfall. And I think to myself... gee, it hasn't rained that much in a while. I actually MISS when it rains like that.
In the 2009-2010 summer (south hemisphere, remember) I heard El Niño was going to be stronger than usual. So I got myself a wireless rain meter. The first rain was good enough to test it. The second rain was 180mm in 1 night! 120mm in 3 hours alone.
Next day? No power for a few hours and some flooded streets that were dry by the time power came back. That morning was a bit complicated but the afternoon was business as usual. Summer ended with almost 500mm rain, and the river, 50cm away from evacuation (3m is the average height, 6m is warning, 6,50 is evacuation. It's a wide river, over 2km wide and "only" 30m deep where I live... so rising for 6 to 6,50 takes a good deal of water).
Minidisc had some popularity in Europe but it was never really that big. Just bad timing, I guess, since in 1999 the Diamond Rio was out and by next year Napster was the shit. If it wasn't for MP3, maybe MD would have been the alternative.
Sony and all its line of failures would like to disagree with you.
DAT, MiniDisc and Betamax come to mind. While they never really caught in the mainstream market, some gained some sort of popularity in "niche" markets. DAT is the interesting example: it was developed to replace the Cassette but was never popular in home environments, but it found a loyal user base in the semi-pro (and pro) community, since it let you have a (rather) portable unit with CD-quality digital audio.
MD is weird too. I only knew 1 person who used MD, and this was in the pre-MP3 times (I was the only freak in town with a Diamond Rio), about 2000-2001 when Sony started bundling the MD deck with the GRX line of audio systems. This guy liked it so he got the MD walkman. In Japan, the MD seemed to be very popular. Japan is weird... CD-R wasn't as big there as MO is. Sony still made TAPE Walkmans (!) until last year, long, long after the rest of the world gave up on tapes.
Japanese companies seem to support their products in japan for much longer. Maybe the japanese law requires it? As soon as the xbox 360 came out, Microsoft slashed the xbox AND new game licenses. They moved everything to the 360. Sony still makes the PS2 and licenses new games, years after the PS3 came into the market. Maybe Sega or some subsidiary is still supporting the Dreamcast over there?. They released the SNES in '90 in japan and discontinued it on '03 (91 to 99 for USA). They also have very obscure, rare, japan-only stuff (Nintendo-licensed FLASH cartridges you can download games to, https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Nintendo_Power_(cartridge) )
Mitsubishi is the example of one of those japanese "conglomerates" that use the same brand for everything from pencils to cars. They don't create shell companies.
Wipe dry, which beats wiping clean.
Anyway, as I have my own bathroom, I have my own towel to dry ;) TMI?
A toilet seat is statistically cleaner than a kitchen.
Also, I don't get "anything" on my devices. I don't use toilet paper. Here in the civilized world we have a more eco-friendly and comfortable alternative called the "bidet". A soft jet of warm water cleans your ass much better than a piece of TP.
Why would I waOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I see what you did there.
So what's the % of people using laptops and smartphones in the bathroom? Didn't we have portable devices before the iPad?
Sent from my bathroom. (Really).
Iba a contestarte pero se ve que es al pedo discutir con vos, capo. Se ve que tenes una respuesta para todo.
La diferencia es que yo le doy al gobierno la razon cuando la tiene (sabes cual es mi canal de television favorito? Encuentro), y lo critico cuando no me gusta lo que hace (cerrar las importaciones en vez de fomentar la investigacion y desarrollo en el pais, y no solo "ensambladoras de notebooks" en tierra del fuego). Siempre compitiendo por precio contra China en vez de competir con calidad. La clasica politica argentina de "el dolar alto" que no sirve para una mierda. Alemania y USA no tienen ningun problema, y tienen dolar y euro respectivamente. No tienen que negarle nada a su poblacion para progresar, como hacemos nosotros. Yo quiero una notebook y me tengo que conformar con una mierda o pagar 4-5 veces el precio USA, total los fabricantes estan vendiendo como locos a Kris las netbooks que se regalan.
Cambia TVR, Victor Hugo, y todos los pelotudos cipayos de K y mira otros canales de vez en cuando, sobre todo esos canales de cable de lunes a viernes a las 11 de la noche. Tienen opiniones interesantes y no son cancheros cool como los K.
Do you ever watch Pawn Stars? That's pretty much what I get from that kind of customers.
They mostly want to get rid of old comic books and get fresh (old) comic books, but they want me to buy they stuff for the same price I'm going to sell them. Sometimes they even want to adjust for devaluation and inflation! The other day this woman comes in with two Sailor Moon manga from the 90s, books #2 and #7, and she wanted USD 10 for each, which was MORE than what she paid for over 15 years ago. And I guess I could order those from Spain, sell them new for about $15 and make a 30% profit.
Also, it's a small city and they pretty much know each other from conventions and such. They have pretty much traded every comic book they had, so when they come into my store trying to sell me their stuff, it's the lowest bottom end, the kind of crap none of them wants (damaged, missing numbers, bad comic books, etc).
If I were to provide what these guys want, I'd need to travel to Buenos Aires ($200 round trip and about $200 extra for spending. I'd really need to go and not just mail order because I'd need to visit underground shops which don't really give a fuck), $300 or so in "stuff" to sell, if I'm lucky, for $600 over the course of 1 year. So I'd be looking to invest $700 to earn $600 (not adjusted for 25% annual inflation).
Does it sound like a business plan to you?
President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. You confused her for Eva Duarte de Peron, who was Peron's wife (she was only the first lady). Honest mistake.
American-style President, Congress and Senate.
Completely wrong. My country went, from 1976-onwards, with the "neo-liberal" route, as every other country in South America, because of US pressure. Around that time, most south american countries were controlled by military dictatorships, in order to crush every kind of communist revolution, by US orders.
The debt was denominated in US dollars, because money was provided by the IMF (International Monetary Fund), who gave out "loans" to every country in the region. The US government used (and still does) the IMF as leverage to make countries do whatever it wants to do. Argentina was the poster child of IMF "help" until late 00's when the IMF pressured for even more and more "debt reduction", which of course couldn't be done, as every service as you mentioned, ceased to exist. Most of them were privatized (oddly enough, the state owned ones like the power and water companies for my province work great, while the privatized power company in Buenos Aires has many problems even when receving hundreds of millions of dollars a year in subsidies. And the water company had to be "statized" (de-privatized) again because it was emptied by private owners. The same thing that happened with Aerolineas Argentinas, who owned tens of planes, simulators, etc and by the end of the decade was operating at a loss and leasing airplanes. The railways service operated at USD 1M a day in loses for 30.000km of railways when it was state owned, and when it was privatized it costed the state USD 1M a day in subsidies for 1500km of railways. If anything, the "socialist" route was working rather well.
The IMF refused to give out loans to Argentina, we went from poster child to failed experiment. We finally fixed the problem ourselves and experienced a period of amazing growth, and paid off a good deal of IMF's debt, and re-structured the rest. We politely refuse IMF's help now, and we get a lot of heat from that, meaning the US government is trying to get us under their control again.
The fact that cars were old is that the access to credit is, and has always been, impossible, in this country. To get a loan first you need to prove that you don't need it (as an anecdote, I can tell you I went to the local HSBC branch to ask for a credit card. I didn't "qualify" for one so the only way for me
That's why in my country we have a constitutional right to go on strike WITH PAY.
Unless a judge rules the strike is illegal, the company still has to pay you. Otherwise, we get situations like you describe.
You and I have very different views of the world, for the simple reason that you're American, and I'm from Argentina. Our views on politics is simply too different, the difference being that I'm familiar with the US political system, and you probably just know that Argentina is in South America and its capital is Buenos Aires. As a curiosity you can read the preamble of the Argentine constitution and find it interestingly familiar.
Most important: we have a different view of what a GOVERNMENT is supposed to do. In my country, the government (more precisely: El Estado, The State) provides free education (from kinder to university) and health (but you still can get private education and private health). In our view, the state is in charge of fullfilling the needs that have been neglected by private individuals (or corporations), either by regulating or providing government-sponsored alternatives. This was the same in the US until the end of WWII when the military-industrial complex was born and corporations pushed for a downsizing of the state, effectively reducing it to sockpuppets. The people vote for which corporation will be in charge for the next 4 years.
In my country it's completely different. It's just the Peronists, and "any other party". Either the peronists are in charge, thugging everyone around, or the other party is in charge, and gets thugged around by the peronists, and eventually resigns.
Regarding to your bookstore idea: this applies to every other business, providing either goods or services. Business need to make a profit in order to survive, but that's because the system demands you it. You need to pay your employees first, your taxes second, and anything left is for you. The government doesn't care if you're providing a service to mankind. If you don't pay taxes, you go to jail. If you don't pay your employees, they sue you and you lose your stuff. When a library makes enough profit, it can take the risk of selling "alternative" books. If you make barely enough profit, you either close or focus specifically in "best sellers". I'd rather stick to selling best sellers and get kids used to "reading" (once they get hook up on reading they're more likely to read french revolutionaries than they would if they never read a book before) than closing my shop for good.
This is a clear example of a person who watches 6-7-8 and likes to believe everything the government says.
The problem with people like this is that they have polarized opinions. Either you agree 100% with the government or you agree 100% with Clarin. There's no middle point. This government puts itself in a "trendy" position. It's "cool" to think like the government does. So if you don't think like the government tells you, you aren't cool. You are a loser. These people just can't seem to find a middle ground, and like to adorn their speech with adjectives, like "dictatiorial".
It's a fine example of how the government-controlled media apparatus works. They even see the media's "fourth power" status as something bad! Who watches the watchmen?
They applaud the new "media law" which wants to split up nation-wide channels, under the premise of "democratization". The government's main selling point about the old media law was that it was, first, old, but second and most important: "WAS WRITTEN BY THE MILITARY DICTATORSHIP!!!!!oMGOMGOMGMGO THE MILITARY ARE CONTROLLING OUR MEDIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA". They don't realize (or do, but like to deny it) it's just a divide-and-conquer strategy. When every newspaper, radio, and TV station is local, then economy of scale makes it impossible to stay in business, without resorting to government sponsorship. Once they start playing advertisements paid by the government, they lose their "free speech"... they can still say what they want, under the risk of losing government support. Anyone with 1/8th of a brain can listen to that clown Mariotto for 30 seconds and realize why this law is a TERRIBLE idea. That, and the fact that supporters of this law (http://www.leydemedios.com.ar/), are just stupid government sockpuppets. If you are minimally serious about this, you can't make a list (see right there at the bottom) of "EVIL" people who are "against" the law, and "COOL" people who are WITH it.
The fact that the congress had to make a separate calculation for inflation rates because the government institute that calculates it is oh-god-so-infected by government supporters (the government even fines private companies that make their own inflation measurements). The government claims that there is NO inflation and you can buy more with the same amount of money now, than in 2007. I have a business, I can go back to 2007 invoices and prove to you that things costed almost half back then.
Let me put it this way. My grandfather had a store in the 50s. One of those small-town stores where they sold everything from food to paint. It was doing just fine until he refused to hang the president's picture in the wall (Peron). After that, things went shitty. First they stopped supplying him with beer. Then sugar, flour... until he had to close the store and leave town with his family. That's how it was in the 40s-50s.
The current government tries to pull similar tactics. If your company isn't "with" the government, they won't kill you or anything... you're just "more likely" to get thugs at your warehouses doors and keep trucks with your products from leaving your factory.
They are in a war against Grupo Clarin right now. Clarin owns a newspaper (Clarin), ISP (Fibertel), TV stations (Canal 13, TN, Volver, and a few others), Cable (Cablevision), AM and FM national coverage radios, and they also own a lot of shares of the (oops) only newspaper paper factory in the country (so they get paper at a discount price). Cristina Kirchner, the previous president's (Nestor Kirchner) widow is just a continuation of what Nestor initiated in 2003, until he died, Cristina was the president but Nestor ruled the country, so when I say "the current government" includes the previous presidency too. SO, the current government allowed Clarin to grow out of control. They even allowed them to merge with Multicanal, which was the only other competing cable company.
After a few years, things got rough, and now the government tries everything they can do to destroy Clarin:
* A couple of years ago, they tried to jam Clarin's satellite feeds and TN was forced out of the air for a while.
* The truck driver's union blocks Clarin's trucks and the newspaper can't be delivered that way (The government claims they don't have anything to do with that but they don't do anything to stop it. Oh, btw, the leader of the truck driver's union, Hugo Moyano, sits next to Cristina when there's a cabinet meeting. He's not a government official)
* Last year they tried to remove Fibertel's ISP license on a technicality (the license was granted to Fibertel, which was a part of grupo clarin, but they billed you in the same invoice as Cablevision, which the government claimed they couldn't do)
* They are trying to go after Ernestina Herrera de Noble (grupo clarin's head), claiming that her children were illegally adopted in the 70s under the military government. DNA testing found no match with any of the registered families.
So you can see pretty much how things work here, and get your own conclusions about wether the government tacitly endorses... "stuff".
I forgot to mention, there's no free speech protection in Argentina. You can't make jew jokes (Family Guy style) or pro-Nazi declarations. there's the INADI (National Institute against Discrimination) which sues anyone who does that. Except if it's against the catholic church: against them, everything goes.
A few years ago (I even submitted a story about this to Slashdot) they tried to pass a law requiring ISPs to log every website visit by every person for 10 years. It was so wrong, the president had to sign a decree giving internet communications the same protections as the Postal and Telephone service. Basically, you can't read your wife's e-mail and use it against her in your divorce case, and the government can't wiretap you unless a judge orders it.
I'm not sure what this actually means, is this supposed to include P2P? Because if it is, it's a lie.
Telecom Argentina actively filters the Megaupload site. You get to the download page, wait 45 seconds, get the download link, and your file starts downloading.... at 0.1kbps until it times out.
I happen to have two internet connections at home. The other one, from Fibertel, downloads the same file, at the same time, just fine.
But in the other hand, Fibertel explicitly blocks torrent trackers. You can get to TPB, download a torrent, and then the file will never start downloading. You do the same over Telecom, and you soon get your torrent at line-speed (3Mbps in my case). As a curiosity, I added the Fibertel machine manually to uTorrent, so my machine directly contacted the Fibertel one. A couple of seconds later, my Telecom machine sent a few peers through peer exchange to the Fibertel one, and it suddenly started downloading.
No, I simply stated that book STORES exists as an excercise in commerce. It's in their interest to make profit off the goods they offer, and yes, the worth of a product is measured in the profit it makes. That's why a re-edition from philosophical classics are dirt cheap. Because they're not covered by copyright, because few people are interested in them (be it because of lack of interest, or the fact that their ideas, as you stated, are an integral part of our "civilization". And this is the first point where I'm going to disagree with you: You're just limiting yourself to Western civilization. Completely forgetting about our dear friends at the East and their own schools of thought. The fact that a book makes serves as a basis for the US constitution simply means that it's relevant to the history of the west.
Read your comment again, your moaning (not bemoaning) is just about losing the values of Western civilization. And your logic has two, completely flawed assumptions:
1) The works will not disappear from public consciousness. "On ne tue point les idees". Ideas cannot be killed.
2) on a more mundane way of thinking: you don't just get books from bookstores. There are libraries too. And there's the internet nowadays.
3) French revolutionaries and philosophers aren't the only people capable of writing those books. Have you even considered the possibility of someone else writing influential philosophical books?
And you also whine that we WILL lack the intellectual ability to understand what's in our best interest. As if we, as societies, ever had a chance with that. The level of political discourse? Wait, what? Before all your 1700's frenchie idols, there was a world, you know? There were whole civilizations and empires. The roman empire worked rather good, then it went to shit. But society didn't disappear - we just changed ideals. During the roman empire it was ok to fuck a young boy, now we see that as disgusting. How do we even know the civilization we have right now is "good"? Why would we even want to kep it? I mean, since the 1800s, the world has been governed by people in London and Washington. Most of Africa is a wasteland, why does the world even want that world to continue?
And this world we live in is the very product of the ideas you are defending so much.
How's that for a troll?
"Argentina" hasn't done anything to fix it either.
Groupon was blocked the other day for offering travel discounts. You can't sell anything travel-related if you're not a registered travel agency in Argentina (you get a .tur.ar domain for your website). I'm not sure how they blocked it but groupon simply vanished off the net. NXDOMAIN even in other DNS servers... I was too busy to investigate further, but it was a bit surprising.
(it wasn't censor, they were sued by travel agencies and in the meantime the judge ordered them to be blocked - if they were a physical shop they would have been closed down temporarily)
This was on Infobae, which failed to mention that the site existed at all...
Only Clarin reported it. Front page, print edition. But, you know, you aren't supposed to believe Clarin.
You seem to be so smart!
And yet you're too stupid to realize why your comment is dumb.
A bookstore like you describe can't survive unless it's in an area where people actually care about those books. Small town bookstores sell the crap you mentioned, because it SELLS. Voltaire, Rousseau, and Sartre DON'T.
Signed,
someone who owns a comic book store in a small city and who is constantly nagged by so-called experts for focusing on manga (which sells) instead of used 80s comic books (which don't sell).
Slashdot is finally honoring its slogan!
And we're down to the argument of "saving your career". We kill people only because of a fucked up system where killing someone is less of a burden than keeping him alive.
The same system that looks for "a" guilty person rather than "the" guilty person.
You know what the problem it? It assumes that the police are one step above the law, they're not normal citizens. And criminals are one step below normal citizens, so if you kill them, well, it wasn't a big loss anyway. Which is a complete illusion anyway: we're all equal. That's what laws say, anyway.
For that matter, if a muslim guy starts killing people in the US, he should walk free. In his view, he is above them, he killed people HE considered inferior, sinners, and getting rid of them was for a greater good.