A free-market economy is a result of freedom, not the cause of it.
It's the result of political decisions. If freedom is an issue, then it's because it has been insisted upon by whomever is in charge of that political sphere. Free-market economies abound, often without much freedom attached to it.
And freedom only comes through centuries of negotiation between peasants and elites.
Have we finished negotiating with King George III yet? I'm eager to begin doing that freedom thing.
If the elites don't feel like they have to talk to the peasants, then the country has no hope of escaping the mire of poverty, Internet or no.
In a global economy, there's not just one's own country's elites to deal with. An aggrieved Filipino or Indonesian factory worker has to deal with: uncaring local managers, uncaring regional owners, uncaring state and federal governments, uncaring Western execs (e.g. Phil Knight or Michael Eisner) who are themselves buffered by layers of underlings and plausible deniability, uncaring Western politicians who care only about Kapital Über Alles, and caring, ineffectual entities, of which the largest is the United Nations.
You need to get out more. Quit this Open Source® nonsense now!:) But you're very right in saying that technology is no match for the entrenched heinousness of good old-fashioned human greed and powerlust. But we shouldn't make excuses for that greed and powerlust, whether it comes from Redmond, Wall Street, or Jakarta. It doesn't take centuries to fix what's broken, and if we don't even make an effort, we shouldn't be surprised if the pent-up dysfunction results in riots, coups, and economic collapses from time to time.
Why is it the position of these "visionaries" that other cultures around the world want technology in the same way our's does?
Why don't we let "other cultures" decide for themselves and not assume that they're the same as us or not the same as us? You're being a "visionary" too. "Other cultures" are not inscrutable aliens from the planet Zong -- they're people in the same way that you and I are people, and probably have similar attitudes about technology that any cross-section of people in this culture would. The only real differences involve exposure to technology -- not opinions about it. Modern-day Luddites are not exclusive to any region of the world; modern-day Negropontes are just as likely to be in Ouagadougou as in Cambridge, given an equal amount of exposure to technology. This is not about "saving" anybody.
The public does get involved. Who do the pollsters call? The public. All 1139 of them. The Nielsen Families of this 24/7 TV show called American Politics and Policy.
Actually, people spend good money to filter damn near everything for public consumption, so we (the public) are left with the wide center-right "spectrum" of opinions when we turn on the TV or read the Op-Ed pages.
A couple of recent magazine articles: "$1 Billion for Conservatives" and "Anti-Feminists Money Can Buy". Marketing has triumphed over ideas, independent thought, and enlightening discourse; everything has been reduced to a media war, even when there's no war at all.
Has CNN and its peers even mentioned how this bombing campaign (which I support, BTW) pretty much trashes international law? If we're not bringing that into public (or talking-head) debate, something is seriously wrong. If the rule of law can be ignored, what prevents some country (or alliance) from launching missiles and smart bombs on the US the next time there's trouble in Los Angeles? I would probably have to support that too. I think I would, in fact.
And like ecologies, there's not a damn thing that the goverment can do execept stay out of the way and let it correct itself.
On the twin anniversaries of Three Mile Island and the Exxon Valdez you say this? Some things are beyond human control, but things like the cleanup often depend on human intervention. Speaking of which, you might recall President Hoover's hands-off policy after the crash -- it exacerbated the situation. He got voted out, the power of his incumbency was outweighed by the power of the inadequacy of his proto-Libertarian solutions. FDR at least stopped the bleeding; I wouldn't call him a rousing success, but he did a better job than his predecessor. Why is it we never bring Hoover into these arguments? FDR's first term didn't begin until 3 1/2 years after the crash; much damage had already been done.
I should also remind you that Milton Friedman, great man that he is, isn't God.
Go ahead and rant and rave. I, like Louse, am not a fan of the revisionism of fundamentalists. We'll see how the truly-invisible hand of history deals with your solutions and your truisms. And your excuses.
I wasn't talking about unions, I was talking about people, and about people oppressing other people. Often governments don't have an active role in it -- one might call it passive-aggressive. I deliberately made this about workers, not unions, since people like you consider the word to be a red flag. I would also suggest you look up the word "oppress" in the dictionary, since your anti-government bias seems to have precluded things like reading and facts. And I suppose I should mention that I'm talking about the world in general, not just the United States, as you seem a bit Americocentric in your attitude. On top of that, maybe you should look at 20th Century US history, and the role unions played in its post-WWII prosperity, the era where economic growth dwarfed what this era has been able to produce. I might also suggest you down a Prozac or two.
Who the hell ever heard of Bill Clinton before 1992? Bush had been in the public eye for 12 years.
Maybe it shows the voters' hatred for Reagan/Bush/Quayle? Maybe his, uh, seductive qualities made up the difference? I don't know.
Bush had actually been in the "public eye" (perhaps better described as the "chattering-class eye" or the "talking-head eye") for 20 years by then. But Clinton had been maneuvering since adolescence: in one of his letters written while "dodging" the draft, he spoke of trying to retain his "political viability" or some such thing. He was a legitimate liberal until he tried to run for office in Arkansas in the mid-70's; with each failure and career setback he became more and more conservative -- these were the seeds of the DLC (the We're Not Liberal branch of the Dems), his main venue in the 80's/90's for positioning himself for a White House run. He also made a long, boring keynote speech at the 1988 Democratic Convention, and made a public pandering ass of himself on C-SPAN doing 1991 photo ops (at a time when he'd promised Arkansas voters, IIRC, that he wouldn't bolt and run for president).
So I wouldn't call him an unknown; McCain and Bradley are unknowns because they were pretty much doing their jobs in the Senate, rather than trying to get on C-SPAN or CNN. Bradley's book didn't get a third of the publicity that Gore's "environmentalist" book got, because it was a real book (by a former Rhodes Scholar), not some "Look At ME!" piece of fluff. McCain's hero status dates back to the 60's -- ancient history, like Bradley's hoop career. McCain's high-profile issues in the Senate were campaign-finance reform (I call him "John Quixote") and boxing reform (he's a fight fan and an ex-boxer); these are very unsexy issues, and he never got any reform legislation passed anyway.
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Libertarianism is neither socialism nor plutocracy
on
Al Gore Buzzword Bingo
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A libertarian government, concerned with protecting the people from force, threat of force, and fraud, would by no means have ignored such abuses. "Libertarian government" does not mean "no government"; it means a government whose sole concern is the protection of individual liberties from violation by (once again the refrain) force, threat of force, or fraud. If the bosses hire thugs to attack union leaders, then the thugs are guilty of assault and battery, and the bosses complicit.
But bosses, in your scenario, would be perfectly within their rights to fire everyone who mentions the word "union". That's the sort of violence (neither physical nor explicit, but still very real, and not uncommon in some countries) in which a Libertarian government would be complicit. The owner of the workplace has all the rights, and those rights override those of the workforce. These are the "rights" that FDR "stole" from Henry Ford. I'm sure you can say that there may be scattered cases in which management will gladly work with labor, but I doubt labor would be willing to take a chance on a Libertarian solution if there is no right to collective bargaining and no right to collectively withhold one's labor. I find genuine labor-management dialogue to be of more overall benefit (to everyone, including the peanut gallery) than the monologues that generally exist; a Libertarian solution, via sins of omission, does more to foster monologue than dialogue.
And what is this but an enhancement of the already-ongoing privatization of oppression? Like the old line about a free press, this is liberty only for those who can afford it.
His fortune came from the high-tech of the day (i.e. the 60's), but I've alwways thought of him as a world-class executive, maybe like a non-evil twin of Bill Gates. (I don't consider Gates a geek).
Go read the 10 Planks of the Communist Manifesto. And then look at long term goals of the Democratic Party. They look pretty similar to me.
Does a Democrat write stuff like this?
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors", and has left no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
Are these the planks?
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
I don't see any connection here.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
In fact, while income tax is still mildly progressive, there are things like FICA and sales taxes on necessities that pretty much wipe out any progressivity that exists. I wouldn't mind a truly progressive income tax - even if my own ox is gored; the Democrats disagree with me.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
Hmmm. I don't think you'll find that in the Dems' platforms.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
I have no idea what this refers to in a modern context. Rebels tend to be in prison anyway.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
And where is this One True National Bank? Considering how much money political parties get from banks (and Clinton has had a banker or two in his administration as well), no sane party would advocate this.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in he hands of the state.
Of course, this was written long before radio, TV, or Henry Ford. Do public broadcasting and public transport count? Not really, since they're far from a monopoly. I find both to be valuable, and they could use more funding, but that's not what Marx is talking about; what he talks about exists in the form of commercial broadcasting, which indoctrinates us all into the "American way of thinking" -- i.e. the religion of consumerism and consumption.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
The waste lands and soil part has been done, by both Democrats and Republicans. The other part has never been advocated.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Sounds a little like that "workfare" buzzword, eh?
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
Since both parties (Donkey/Elephant) pander to the moats of suburbia, while turning the inner city alternately into guinea pigs and sacrificial lambs (depending on whether it's Guinea Pig Season or Lamb Season), I think this is another non-issue.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
Public education -- A Communist Plot! Film at 11! An end to child labor? This is bad? Unfortunately, many of your possessions were made by the hands of kids, and with the blessing of American pols of all stripes. And, of course, both parties (Donkey and Elephant, that is) would like to combine education with the demands of corporations; I myself prefer that institutions of learning be about learning, but the Dems and GOP (and their sponsors) disagree.
So there you have it. It would be nice if those who would demonize Marx -- or call dissenters Marxist -- would actually take the time to read Marx. I started doing just that, as a right-wing adolescent in the 70's; now, thanx to the WWW, I can read him some more. BTW, it's marx.org.
...and you sound just like Jerry Rubin or Abbie Hoffman at their speed-rapping best. Or H Rap Brown or Stokely Carmichael on a Bad Hair Day. Rah rah rah! Revolution's kewl 'coz it's our revolution, man!
See you at the virtual barricades, maaaaaaan!
Rah rah rah!
I hope you read this tripe of yours in 20-30 years; I can hear your embarrassed semi-laugh right now, in my mind's ear. Groooooovy!
Maybe you should have prefaced it with: "I was drunk when I wrote this / forgive me if it goes astray..."
The "Slashdot political mind"? WTF? That "mind" seems even more selfish, childish, and uninformed than the electorate at large, and you wish to swell their egos further? Take your little revolution and go back to the sandbox. Technology progresses by leaps and bounds, but humans don't. Deal with it.
As you may recall, many of the worst excesses of "capitalism" have stemmed from big government aiding industry, often in a corrupt fashion. Consider for instance the use of police and National Guard troops to attack striking workers, or the continued corruption of the military-industrial complex, or the continued federal support of Big Tobacco through subsidies (even as with the other hand the government prosecutes the tobacco companies).
The worst excesses of capitalism come from its robber barons and leading lights -- modern-day examples include Bill Gates, Phil Knight, Michael Eisner, the late Sam Walton (RIP) and literally hundreds of others, large and small. They draw at least some of their power from the absence of government interference, not from government's help.
A Republican ex-General coined the phrase "military-industrial complex"; it came from Dwight Eisenhower in his presidential farewell speech. His cause has been championed for decades by a wide variety of people. This has nothing to do with the Libertarian Party -- did the Libertarian Party invent the internet too?
As for using troops against striking workers, Henry Ford did it in the 1930's, and various manufacturers do it today. It's often a public-private partnership, a collusion between the owners, their security people, and the local authorities. In Ford's case, he paid for his own people to do most, if not all, of the whoop-ass stuff. None of this has much to do with your "point"; the absence of government intervention enabled Ford to try this solution -- laws protecting and enabling labor came after heads were busted open by the rent-a-thugs.
Libertarians do not stand for government support and subsidy of industry. Libertarians do not stand for government being used as the tool of the rich against the working class.
The rich can do a far better job of raping the working class without government getting in the way. This is proven every day in the Third World, where limited government rules, al least WRT to businesses and corporations. By being hands-off with labor-related legislation, and by not holding domestic corporations accountable for their Third World escapades, Clinton and Congress are essentially endorsing a Libertarian way of doing things.
Libertarians stand for the government having one purpose and one purpose alone: the protection of individuals against violent force, threat of force, and fraud.
Fine.
There is nothing in Libertarianism that speaks against labor unions, cooperatives, worker-owned businesses, and other forms of empowerment of the working class. Libertarianism allows for whatever steps a person may take to improve his/her position in the market --- including unionizing or cooperating with others --- as long as those steps do not involve the use of force. The market competition which libertarianism supports permits cooperation within a competitive framework --- whereas the forced, pseudo-cooperative framework which socialism mandates does not permit competition.
Oh that magic shape-shifting word: socialism. Apparently our only choices are "liberty" or "socialism". Is this "socialism" as defined as: "anything I don't like"?
Socialism would end oppression by placing all power in the hands of the government, which is presently the largest source of oppression on the planet --- "whitewashing a wall by painting it black", to quote Hagbard Celine. Libertarianism, by directly undercutting this oppressive force, is in a sense more true to the intentions of socialism than socialism itself is.
Come on. Governments don't have a monopoly on oppressing people. You're just as bad as a Republican or Democrat who gives us the God-ordained Choice A and the evil Choice B, while ignoring a perfectly good alphabet. Get a clue, kid. Isms don't oppress; people do. The problems today don't result so much from an ism, they result from the people in power (be that power political, economic, or both), and even more from the people who elect them or give their tacit approval to them.
Can you tell me which ism is doing damage in Yugoslavia? Which ism is bloddying dissent in Honduras? Or in Burma? Which ism is responsible for life in Chiapas? Or life on Smoky Mountain? Which ism causes a kid to open fire on his classmates? Which ism tries to smuggle a truckload of people into New York, nearly killing and bankrupting them in the process?
I'm a conservative, and I believe in a government limited in size and scope. But I also believe in honesty and accountability; I believe in a democracy that really empowers the bosses -- namely you and me, the voters. I also believe that we, the bosses, should not be as willfully distant and clueless as we have collectively been for the last couple of decades. The real enemy is us, to paraphrase Walt Kelly.
Enough. All you're doing is adding noise to an already noise-corrupted discourse in a multi-corrupted body politic. Wake me when the Libertarian Party (or the Librarian Party or the Veterinarian Party) comes up with some real answers.
Libertarianism is pure capitalism. It leads to the 1920's again. We've been there once, no need to go back there again.
It actually takes us back further, to the Dickensian 19th Century. It makes the 1920's look like a rave.
It gives disportionate power to the wealthy. It's not a well thought out political belief.
But it's actually pretty mainstream, thanks to corporate-funded think tanks like the Cato Institute. They "invest" in our national dialogue by bankrolling Libertarian ideas and their purveyors, and they've been pretty successful -- the fact that they're only a "fringe party" is testament to their success, since politicians (Republicans mostly) have swiped their ideas. The fact that the Dems and GOP pretty much agree on purer (if not "pure") capitalism being "the only way to go" is a sign of at least a partial Libertarian victory. It's also a sign of cowardice, arrogance, and sell-out to corporate interests.
They probably are, in fact; a truly honest politician would have a difficult time getting elected these days. A truly honest politician doesn't toe the party line on every issue, and doesn't maintain that he/she has always toed that party line when he/she in fact hasn't. A truly honest politician isn't afraid to admit that his/her "team" doesn't have a monopoly on right answers and truth.
For instance, here in Georgia it was brought out that Bob Barr who is pro-life et cetera et cetera had an affair and forced his ex-wife to have an abortion...well first off, it was a matter of public record that he used the 5th amendment when questioned on this in his divorce proceedings. Well, since he used the fifth and clammed up, and subsequently accused bill clinton of perjury (notice bastard clinton's name not in caps) - does that make him a hypocrite? Well accoording to most leftists I hear, yes it does. However...because one realizes past mistakes and changes his mind does make him a hypocrite and using a constitutional right is not the same as lying either.
It doesn't take a leftist to call Barr a hypocrite. He didn't actually plead the Fifth -- he invoked some clause in state law that would have left him with a vastly inferior divorce settlement (since it was a divorce proceeding IIRC, and he didn't want to go into any detail about his mistress). He stonewalled about his previous wives and mistresses; he stonewalled about the abortion; he stonewalled about his speech(es) to the CCC. He later did his lame mea culpas, once enough people (of all political and apolitical stripes, including Flynt's investigators) confronted him.
But he can't be all that bad; Geraldo seems to have taken a liking to him, plus he wasn't always the hardcore right-winger he paints himself out to be -- there may be hope that in the future he can just be an intelligent, open-minded legislator instead of a disingenuous grandstanding blowhard. I'll keep watching and crossing my fingers.
It is interesting to see some people parroting the radical leftist party line on the affects of humans on the environment.
Which "radical leftist party" would this be? Being as radicals and leftists are completely excluded from the political entertainment discourse in the United States, this must be some party that is barely a bliplet on the national radar. Is it the Socialist Workers Party perhaps? The CPUSA? The Wobblies? Don't leave us hanging...
Personally, the only Republican I can imagine voting for is John McCain, but he doesn't have a chance in hell of being nominated, assuming he even runs.
The face time he gets during the Kosovo War is valuable (this is not to say that he has the White House in mind when he goes on Larry King), but it's too late for him to run. Gore (PMRC, Gore '88, "Mister Environment" books, "Mister Technology" speeches, VP and "co-president"), Bush (First Son, "ownership" of a baseball team as a platform for "family values", Governor's races as test runs for the White House), and Dole (numerous cabinet posts, Bob Dole's almost-co-president, and a high-profile Red Cross gig) have been preparing for 2000 since 1980-something; people like McCain and Bradley were too busy being statesmen -- their Rolodexes and coffers are now empty, and their name recognition is puny compared to the Big Three, which is remarkable considering one's a Hall of Fame athlete and the other's a legitimate War Hero.
You don't get it. The vast majority of politicians are poor speechwriters (or hire poor speechwriters); you can play Buzzword Bingo with 90% of professional politicians -- a John Kasich or a Pat Moynihan, for example, can get through a buzzword-less speech; most don't bother, since they have an agenda to reinforce in our minds. A good speaker makes you laugh with them -- not at them -- but still gets his agenda across. There's still an agenda there, with or without buzzwords. The buzzwords are not the content. To focus on that is no better than focusing on the politician's bad suit or bad haircut.
I still think the article was great, but to take this as Yet Another Gore-bashing Foray (or as yet another chance to fish for proselytes on behalf of the "clueful" "outsider" Libertarian Party) misses the point.
I'm so happy there are only a tiny minority of apologists on Slashdot. It means that reality is far more important than appearances amongst the geek culture.
I can't say I've read every post, but I haven't seen one single apologist or pro-Gore post today. You don't seem to get the point of your own Ventura reference; his appeal was based on plain-speaking, but we can't tell if it's "empty" or not based on a campaign. Ventura's shtick is much more honest than a professional politician's shtick, but the bottom line is still the same: we need to judge on performance, not personality. Even plain-speaking is shtick if its "empty appeal" isn't backed up with action once elected.
What about the recent furor about Governor Body signing a deal to manufacture Jesse Ventura action figures at a sweatshop in China? I don't follow Minnesota events at all, so someone can tell us if he has responded to the complaint(s) about that [see the Star-Tribune opinion page of 25 March]. Or has he gone into a song-and-dance? How has this played with the Reform Party?
This is truly the golden age of anti-advertising advertising. Keep your heads up and your eyes and ears open.
We all agree that Censorship is Bad. That's not what I was talking about. I'm talking about the mislabeling of Al and Tipper as a couple of censorers based on the activities of the PMRC (events that, I'll bet, happened either before you were born or when you were too young to care). They did bad things, but the real evil was done by assorted senators (the committee Gore was on, and maybe chaired), the RIAA, various retailers, and the voters in general (who didn't seem to raise much of a fuss). The PMRC wasn't a Gore organization; IIRC, there were many other politicians' wives involved (from both parties), and they were aided and abetted by Moral Majority type groups (I think I remember Pat Robertson giving Tipper some airtime on The 700 Club when she was out promoting her "family values" parenting book) -- which was the ultimate political motivation for Al and Tipper to get involved, i.e. their timetable for suck-cess included a 1988 presidential bid, and they wanted to pre-empt any notion that Al was one of those bomb-throwing un-American liberals.
There you go. A history lesson for today. Though I will confess to a little fuzziness of memory, since that was a long time ago, and I was probably on the road for a good deal of those hearings (rather than veged out in front of my beloved C-SPAN 24/7:)
If you can remember the 80's, then you weren't having as much fun as I was:)
Then why harp on the PMRC? Those infamous hearings took place 15 years ago or so. A bipartisan coalition of pandering idiots went on a crusade that ended up with record companies (our friends the RIAA) putting "Parental Advisory" warning stickers on anything that said "booger" on its lyric sheet. The Gores moved on to the Gore '88 campaign and kept it as an item on their resume. They didn't ban anything. Other entities did the censoring and banning.
If it's the content that counts, why does/. always devolve into script-kiddie-hood on the subject of politics (KDE v GNOME, MS v DOJ, Gore v Dole/Bush/Browne,...)? To inaccurately single out Al and Tipper for "censorship" is no better than singling out Quayle for his spelling. There are more substantive reasons to dislike all of them.
WHAT? Your saying that censorship and banning content of music and art is acceptable IF it was done to get a position of power?!?
Short answer: no. Long answer: read the other posts. I'm saying it's a typical piece of political dishonesty and powerlust, things that are just as not-OK as censorship.
Zhu Rongji -- the prime minister of China -- is in Washington today, being given the (uh) red-carpet treatment. I'd feel a whole lot better if Al Gore understood what "human rights" means, and told us what he'll do about sweatshops, prison labor (both Chinese and American), and Tibet; whether or not he gets "open source" right or understands TCP/IP isn't quite as weighty an issue. And it's not like he's the only politician in the world who suffers from foot-in-mouth disease or cluelessness.
Zhu Rongji -- the prime minister of China -- is in Washington today, being given the (uh) red-carpet treatment. I'd feel a whole lot better if Al Gore understood what "human rights" means, and what he thinks of sweatshops, prison labor (both Chinese and American), and Tibet; whether or not he gets "open source" right or understands TCP/IP isn't quite as weighty an issue. And it's not like he's the only politician in the world who suffers from foot-in-mouth disease or cluelessness.
I don't like the idea of censorship, but I also don't think you can fault Wal-Mart or MTV. They are privately owned companies. They have the freedom to sell/show what they choose.
I agree, to a point. But the censorship tends to give bad signals, that's my complaint. MTV makes an issue of a marijuana leaf logo while being suckers for tits'n'ass (their censorship of "Justify My Love" was essentially a high-profile way to "disprove" that); they also condone product-placement for some items (a Mercedes, for instance) and not others (a shoe company logo on a t-shirt).
As far as Wal-Mart, do they inform customers that they sell censored (as in re-recorded -- not banned) items? I think they still have a policy of selling "cleaned-up" versions of CDs. If it's not plainly stated, it's a deceptive practice. Not all consumers are informed consumers, which brings us back to the original topic: we who take potshots at Mister Internet are just as clueless as Mister Internet himself.
But the market is still there. And politicians still play to it; the amount of pandering varies from region to region, but when you're running for president, you have to cover every region. Gore just needs a small piece of market share (say, 33% of their vote) to succeed, as it would offset the efforts of the Christian Coalition and similar groups in getting them all to vote Republican. Hence the continuing references to the PMRC in their campaign material, whether they actually personally believe in that "protect the kids" nonsense or not.
I think Bob Zelnick has been saying something similar on his book tour (he has a new Gore biography out). Al Gore was born into a rich, political family, and maybe he does feel like he has to pad his resume a bit, so he can look like he's done more than coast his way to national prominence. There is a grain of truth in all of Al's tall tales -- he was more tech-clueful than most members of Congress; he may have been a vague inspiration for one of the characters in Love Story, or at least a fragment of dialogue; in Tennessee, the Gore family owns lots of farm land -- they're now notorious for growing tobacco, thanks to Al's speech at the 1996 Democratic convention.
He's no more or less a tall-tale spinner than the average politician; it's just that he has this knack for doing it in front of large audiences:)
Slashdot Mirror
It's the result of political decisions. If freedom is an issue, then it's because it has been insisted upon by whomever is in charge of that political sphere. Free-market economies abound, often without much freedom attached to it.
And freedom only comes through centuries of negotiation between peasants and elites.
Have we finished negotiating with King George III yet? I'm eager to begin doing that freedom thing.
If the elites don't feel like they have to talk to the peasants, then the country has no hope of escaping the mire of poverty, Internet or no.
In a global economy, there's not just one's own country's elites to deal with. An aggrieved Filipino or Indonesian factory worker has to deal with: uncaring local managers, uncaring regional owners, uncaring state and federal governments, uncaring Western execs (e.g. Phil Knight or Michael Eisner) who are themselves buffered by layers of underlings and plausible deniability, uncaring Western politicians who care only about Kapital Über Alles, and caring, ineffectual entities, of which the largest is the United Nations.
You need to get out more. Quit this Open Source® nonsense now! :) But you're very right in saying that technology is no match for the entrenched heinousness of good old-fashioned human greed and powerlust. But we shouldn't make excuses for that greed and powerlust, whether it comes from Redmond, Wall Street, or Jakarta. It doesn't take centuries to fix what's broken, and if we don't even make an effort, we shouldn't be surprised if the pent-up dysfunction results in riots, coups, and economic collapses from time to time.
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Why don't we let "other cultures" decide for themselves and not assume that they're the same as us or not the same as us? You're being a "visionary" too. "Other cultures" are not inscrutable aliens from the planet Zong -- they're people in the same way that you and I are people, and probably have similar attitudes about technology that any cross-section of people in this culture would. The only real differences involve exposure to technology -- not opinions about it. Modern-day Luddites are not exclusive to any region of the world; modern-day Negropontes are just as likely to be in Ouagadougou as in Cambridge, given an equal amount of exposure to technology. This is not about "saving" anybody.
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The public does get involved. Who do the pollsters call? The public. All 1139 of them. The Nielsen Families of this 24/7 TV show called American Politics and Policy.
Actually, people spend good money to filter damn near everything for public consumption, so we (the public) are left with the wide center-right "spectrum" of opinions when we turn on the TV or read the Op-Ed pages.
A couple of recent magazine articles: "$1 Billion for Conservatives" and "Anti-Feminists Money Can Buy". Marketing has triumphed over ideas, independent thought, and enlightening discourse; everything has been reduced to a media war, even when there's no war at all.
Has CNN and its peers even mentioned how this bombing campaign (which I support, BTW) pretty much trashes international law? If we're not bringing that into public (or talking-head) debate, something is seriously wrong. If the rule of law can be ignored, what prevents some country (or alliance) from launching missiles and smart bombs on the US the next time there's trouble in Los Angeles? I would probably have to support that too. I think I would, in fact.
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On the twin anniversaries of Three Mile Island and the Exxon Valdez you say this? Some things are beyond human control, but things like the cleanup often depend on human intervention. Speaking of which, you might recall President Hoover's hands-off policy after the crash -- it exacerbated the situation. He got voted out, the power of his incumbency was outweighed by the power of the inadequacy of his proto-Libertarian solutions. FDR at least stopped the bleeding; I wouldn't call him a rousing success, but he did a better job than his predecessor. Why is it we never bring Hoover into these arguments? FDR's first term didn't begin until 3 1/2 years after the crash; much damage had already been done.
I should also remind you that Milton Friedman, great man that he is, isn't God.
Go ahead and rant and rave. I, like Louse, am not a fan of the revisionism of fundamentalists. We'll see how the truly-invisible hand of history deals with your solutions and your truisms. And your excuses.
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Maybe it shows the voters' hatred for Reagan/Bush/Quayle? Maybe his, uh, seductive qualities made up the difference? I don't know.
Bush had actually been in the "public eye" (perhaps better described as the "chattering-class eye" or the "talking-head eye") for 20 years by then. But Clinton had been maneuvering since adolescence: in one of his letters written while "dodging" the draft, he spoke of trying to retain his "political viability" or some such thing. He was a legitimate liberal until he tried to run for office in Arkansas in the mid-70's; with each failure and career setback he became more and more conservative -- these were the seeds of the DLC (the We're Not Liberal branch of the Dems), his main venue in the 80's/90's for positioning himself for a White House run. He also made a long, boring keynote speech at the 1988 Democratic Convention, and made a public pandering ass of himself on C-SPAN doing 1991 photo ops (at a time when he'd promised Arkansas voters, IIRC, that he wouldn't bolt and run for president).
So I wouldn't call him an unknown; McCain and Bradley are unknowns because they were pretty much doing their jobs in the Senate, rather than trying to get on C-SPAN or CNN. Bradley's book didn't get a third of the publicity that Gore's "environmentalist" book got, because it was a real book (by a former Rhodes Scholar), not some "Look At ME!" piece of fluff. McCain's hero status dates back to the 60's -- ancient history, like Bradley's hoop career. McCain's high-profile issues in the Senate were campaign-finance reform (I call him "John Quixote") and boxing reform (he's a fight fan and an ex-boxer); these are very unsexy issues, and he never got any reform legislation passed anyway.
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But bosses, in your scenario, would be perfectly within their rights to fire everyone who mentions the word "union". That's the sort of violence (neither physical nor explicit, but still very real, and not uncommon in some countries) in which a Libertarian government would be complicit. The owner of the workplace has all the rights, and those rights override those of the workforce. These are the "rights" that FDR "stole" from Henry Ford. I'm sure you can say that there may be scattered cases in which management will gladly work with labor, but I doubt labor would be willing to take a chance on a Libertarian solution if there is no right to collective bargaining and no right to collectively withhold one's labor. I find genuine labor-management dialogue to be of more overall benefit (to everyone, including the peanut gallery) than the monologues that generally exist; a Libertarian solution, via sins of omission, does more to foster monologue than dialogue.
And what is this but an enhancement of the already-ongoing privatization of oppression? Like the old line about a free press, this is liberty only for those who can afford it.
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Does a Democrat write stuff like this?
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors", and has left no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
Are these the planks?
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
I don't see any connection here.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
In fact, while income tax is still mildly progressive, there are things like FICA and sales taxes on necessities that pretty much wipe out any progressivity that exists. I wouldn't mind a truly progressive income tax - even if my own ox is gored; the Democrats disagree with me.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
Hmmm. I don't think you'll find that in the Dems' platforms.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
I have no idea what this refers to in a modern context. Rebels tend to be in prison anyway.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
And where is this One True National Bank? Considering how much money political parties get from banks (and Clinton has had a banker or two in his administration as well), no sane party would advocate this.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in he hands of the state.
Of course, this was written long before radio, TV, or Henry Ford. Do public broadcasting and public transport count? Not really, since they're far from a monopoly. I find both to be valuable, and they could use more funding, but that's not what Marx is talking about; what he talks about exists in the form of commercial broadcasting, which indoctrinates us all into the "American way of thinking" -- i.e. the religion of consumerism and consumption.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
The waste lands and soil part has been done, by both Democrats and Republicans. The other part has never been advocated.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Sounds a little like that "workfare" buzzword, eh?
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
Since both parties (Donkey/Elephant) pander to the moats of suburbia, while turning the inner city alternately into guinea pigs and sacrificial lambs (depending on whether it's Guinea Pig Season or Lamb Season), I think this is another non-issue.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
Public education -- A Communist Plot! Film at 11! An end to child labor? This is bad? Unfortunately, many of your possessions were made by the hands of kids, and with the blessing of American pols of all stripes. And, of course, both parties (Donkey and Elephant, that is) would like to combine education with the demands of corporations; I myself prefer that institutions of learning be about learning, but the Dems and GOP (and their sponsors) disagree.
So there you have it. It would be nice if those who would demonize Marx -- or call dissenters Marxist -- would actually take the time to read Marx. I started doing just that, as a right-wing adolescent in the 70's; now, thanx to the WWW, I can read him some more. BTW, it's marx.org.
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See you at the virtual barricades, maaaaaaan!
Rah rah rah!
I hope you read this tripe of yours in 20-30 years; I can hear your embarrassed semi-laugh right now, in my mind's ear. Groooooovy!
Maybe you should have prefaced it with: "I was drunk when I wrote this / forgive me if it goes astray..."
The "Slashdot political mind"? WTF? That "mind" seems even more selfish, childish, and uninformed than the electorate at large, and you wish to swell their egos further? Take your little revolution and go back to the sandbox. Technology progresses by leaps and bounds, but humans don't. Deal with it.
Rah rah rah! Hooray for our team!
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The worst excesses of capitalism come from its robber barons and leading lights -- modern-day examples include Bill Gates, Phil Knight, Michael Eisner, the late Sam Walton (RIP) and literally hundreds of others, large and small. They draw at least some of their power from the absence of government interference, not from government's help.
A Republican ex-General coined the phrase "military-industrial complex"; it came from Dwight Eisenhower in his presidential farewell speech. His cause has been championed for decades by a wide variety of people. This has nothing to do with the Libertarian Party -- did the Libertarian Party invent the internet too?
As for using troops against striking workers, Henry Ford did it in the 1930's, and various manufacturers do it today. It's often a public-private partnership, a collusion between the owners, their security people, and the local authorities. In Ford's case, he paid for his own people to do most, if not all, of the whoop-ass stuff. None of this has much to do with your "point"; the absence of government intervention enabled Ford to try this solution -- laws protecting and enabling labor came after heads were busted open by the rent-a-thugs.
Libertarians do not stand for government support and subsidy of industry. Libertarians do not stand for government being used as the tool of the rich against the working class.
The rich can do a far better job of raping the working class without government getting in the way. This is proven every day in the Third World, where limited government rules, al least WRT to businesses and corporations. By being hands-off with labor-related legislation, and by not holding domestic corporations accountable for their Third World escapades, Clinton and Congress are essentially endorsing a Libertarian way of doing things.
Libertarians stand for the government having one purpose and one purpose alone: the protection of individuals against violent force, threat of force, and fraud.
Fine.
There is nothing in Libertarianism that speaks against labor unions, cooperatives, worker-owned businesses, and other forms of empowerment of the working class. Libertarianism allows for whatever steps a person may take to improve his/her position in the market --- including unionizing or cooperating with others --- as long as those steps do not involve the use of force. The market competition which libertarianism supports permits cooperation within a competitive framework --- whereas the forced, pseudo-cooperative framework which socialism mandates does not permit competition.
Oh that magic shape-shifting word: socialism. Apparently our only choices are "liberty" or "socialism". Is this "socialism" as defined as: "anything I don't like"?
Socialism would end oppression by placing all power in the hands of the government, which is presently the largest source of oppression on the planet --- "whitewashing a wall by painting it black", to quote Hagbard Celine. Libertarianism, by directly undercutting this oppressive force, is in a sense more true to the intentions of socialism than socialism itself is.
Come on. Governments don't have a monopoly on oppressing people. You're just as bad as a Republican or Democrat who gives us the God-ordained Choice A and the evil Choice B, while ignoring a perfectly good alphabet. Get a clue, kid. Isms don't oppress; people do. The problems today don't result so much from an ism, they result from the people in power (be that power political, economic, or both), and even more from the people who elect them or give their tacit approval to them.
Can you tell me which ism is doing damage in Yugoslavia? Which ism is bloddying dissent in Honduras? Or in Burma? Which ism is responsible for life in Chiapas? Or life on Smoky Mountain? Which ism causes a kid to open fire on his classmates? Which ism tries to smuggle a truckload of people into New York, nearly killing and bankrupting them in the process?
I'm a conservative, and I believe in a government limited in size and scope. But I also believe in honesty and accountability; I believe in a democracy that really empowers the bosses -- namely you and me, the voters. I also believe that we, the bosses, should not be as willfully distant and clueless as we have collectively been for the last couple of decades. The real enemy is us, to paraphrase Walt Kelly.
Enough. All you're doing is adding noise to an already noise-corrupted discourse in a multi-corrupted body politic. Wake me when the Libertarian Party (or the Librarian Party or the Veterinarian Party) comes up with some real answers.
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It actually takes us back further, to the Dickensian 19th Century. It makes the 1920's look like a rave.
It gives disportionate power to the wealthy. It's not a well thought out political belief.
But it's actually pretty mainstream, thanks to corporate-funded think tanks like the Cato Institute. They "invest" in our national dialogue by bankrolling Libertarian ideas and their purveyors, and they've been pretty successful -- the fact that they're only a "fringe party" is testament to their success, since politicians (Republicans mostly) have swiped their ideas. The fact that the Dems and GOP pretty much agree on purer (if not "pure") capitalism being "the only way to go" is a sign of at least a partial Libertarian victory. It's also a sign of cowardice, arrogance, and sell-out to corporate interests.
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They probably are, in fact; a truly honest politician would have a difficult time getting elected these days. A truly honest politician doesn't toe the party line on every issue, and doesn't maintain that he/she has always toed that party line when he/she in fact hasn't. A truly honest politician isn't afraid to admit that his/her "team" doesn't have a monopoly on right answers and truth.
For instance, here in Georgia it was brought out that Bob Barr who is pro-life et cetera et cetera had an affair and forced his ex-wife to have an abortion...well first off, it was a matter of public record that he used the 5th amendment when questioned on this in his divorce proceedings. Well, since he used the fifth and clammed up, and subsequently accused bill clinton of perjury (notice bastard clinton's name not in caps) - does that make him a hypocrite? Well accoording to most leftists I hear, yes it does. However...because one realizes past mistakes and changes his mind does make him a hypocrite and using a constitutional right is not the same as lying either.
It doesn't take a leftist to call Barr a hypocrite. He didn't actually plead the Fifth -- he invoked some clause in state law that would have left him with a vastly inferior divorce settlement (since it was a divorce proceeding IIRC, and he didn't want to go into any detail about his mistress). He stonewalled about his previous wives and mistresses; he stonewalled about the abortion; he stonewalled about his speech(es) to the CCC. He later did his lame mea culpas, once enough people (of all political and apolitical stripes, including Flynt's investigators) confronted him.
But he can't be all that bad; Geraldo seems to have taken a liking to him, plus he wasn't always the hardcore right-winger he paints himself out to be -- there may be hope that in the future he can just be an intelligent, open-minded legislator instead of a disingenuous grandstanding blowhard. I'll keep watching and crossing my fingers.
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Which "radical leftist party" would this be? Being as radicals and leftists are completely excluded from the political entertainment discourse in the United States, this must be some party that is barely a bliplet on the national radar. Is it the Socialist Workers Party perhaps? The CPUSA? The Wobblies? Don't leave us hanging...
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The face time he gets during the Kosovo War is valuable (this is not to say that he has the White House in mind when he goes on Larry King), but it's too late for him to run. Gore (PMRC, Gore '88, "Mister Environment" books, "Mister Technology" speeches, VP and "co-president"), Bush (First Son, "ownership" of a baseball team as a platform for "family values", Governor's races as test runs for the White House), and Dole (numerous cabinet posts, Bob Dole's almost-co-president, and a high-profile Red Cross gig) have been preparing for 2000 since 1980-something; people like McCain and Bradley were too busy being statesmen -- their Rolodexes and coffers are now empty, and their name recognition is puny compared to the Big Three, which is remarkable considering one's a Hall of Fame athlete and the other's a legitimate War Hero.
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I still think the article was great, but to take this as Yet Another Gore-bashing Foray (or as yet another chance to fish for proselytes on behalf of the "clueful" "outsider" Libertarian Party) misses the point.
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I can't say I've read every post, but I haven't seen one single apologist or pro-Gore post today. You don't seem to get the point of your own Ventura reference; his appeal was based on plain-speaking, but we can't tell if it's "empty" or not based on a campaign. Ventura's shtick is much more honest than a professional politician's shtick, but the bottom line is still the same: we need to judge on performance, not personality. Even plain-speaking is shtick if its "empty appeal" isn't backed up with action once elected.
What about the recent furor about Governor Body signing a deal to manufacture Jesse Ventura action figures at a sweatshop in China? I don't follow Minnesota events at all, so someone can tell us if he has responded to the complaint(s) about that [see the Star-Tribune opinion page of 25 March]. Or has he gone into a song-and-dance? How has this played with the Reform Party?
This is truly the golden age of anti-advertising advertising. Keep your heads up and your eyes and ears open.
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There you go. A history lesson for today. Though I will confess to a little fuzziness of memory, since that was a long time ago, and I was probably on the road for a good deal of those hearings (rather than veged out in front of my beloved C-SPAN 24/7 :)
If you can remember the 80's, then you weren't having as much fun as I was :)
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Then why harp on the PMRC? Those infamous hearings took place 15 years ago or so. A bipartisan coalition of pandering idiots went on a crusade that ended up with record companies (our friends the RIAA) putting "Parental Advisory" warning stickers on anything that said "booger" on its lyric sheet. The Gores moved on to the Gore '88 campaign and kept it as an item on their resume. They didn't ban anything. Other entities did the censoring and banning.
If it's the content that counts, why does /. always devolve into script-kiddie-hood on the subject of politics (KDE v GNOME, MS v DOJ, Gore v Dole/Bush/Browne, ...)? To inaccurately single out Al and Tipper for "censorship" is no better than singling out Quayle for his spelling. There are more substantive reasons to dislike all of them.
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Short answer: no. Long answer: read the other posts. I'm saying it's a typical piece of political dishonesty and powerlust, things that are just as not-OK as censorship.
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Zhu Rongji -- the prime minister of China -- is in Washington today, being given the (uh) red-carpet treatment. I'd feel a whole lot better if Al Gore understood what "human rights" means, and told us what he'll do about sweatshops, prison labor (both Chinese and American), and Tibet; whether or not he gets "open source" right or understands TCP/IP isn't quite as weighty an issue. And it's not like he's the only politician in the world who suffers from foot-in-mouth disease or cluelessness.
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I agree, to a point. But the censorship tends to give bad signals, that's my complaint. MTV makes an issue of a marijuana leaf logo while being suckers for tits'n'ass (their censorship of "Justify My Love" was essentially a high-profile way to "disprove" that); they also condone product-placement for some items (a Mercedes, for instance) and not others (a shoe company logo on a t-shirt).
As far as Wal-Mart, do they inform customers that they sell censored (as in re-recorded -- not banned) items? I think they still have a policy of selling "cleaned-up" versions of CDs. If it's not plainly stated, it's a deceptive practice. Not all consumers are informed consumers, which brings us back to the original topic: we who take potshots at Mister Internet are just as clueless as Mister Internet himself.
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I think Bob Zelnick has been saying something similar on his book tour (he has a new Gore biography out). Al Gore was born into a rich, political family, and maybe he does feel like he has to pad his resume a bit, so he can look like he's done more than coast his way to national prominence. There is a grain of truth in all of Al's tall tales -- he was more tech-clueful than most members of Congress; he may have been a vague inspiration for one of the characters in Love Story, or at least a fragment of dialogue; in Tennessee, the Gore family owns lots of farm land -- they're now notorious for growing tobacco, thanks to Al's speech at the 1996 Democratic convention.
He's no more or less a tall-tale spinner than the average politician; it's just that he has this knack for doing it in front of large audiences :)
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