"The state of corporate IT can be shocking. When I took over the IT at the UK branch of an international technology company I couldn't believe what I saw. Regular office staff had file sharing switched on individual PCs, Software developers had systems operated as root or administrator. People routinely downloaded whatever they wanted and installed it on their computers. The first thing I did was make sure that no computer had any file sharing or any other services running on it"
You were doing it wrong, then, and probably the company employees hate you.
The first thing you should have done is understanding why computers/lans were configured that way. I can't count the times I've seen security just going all the place closing this and that without providing working alternatives to the function the user was achieving that way, just to put productivity to a halting grind.
People don't go out of their way to share their hard disks or to install this or that simply because they have nothing better to do but because they need to do something and do it that way because they don't know anything better.
Corporate security is more about providing secure ways to do what it's needed to be done (as defined by the end user, not the top brass) and less about tying users' hands but very short numbers of "IT security people" seem to understand that.
"The problem with unlimited mechanical replication is the same problem that happens with biological chemical replication. Errors. "
You are right and wrong at the same time.
You are wrong: mechanical replication can be bound to QA, which is something that bears no meaning when talking about real spontaneous life forms. Of course you cannot copy a stream of bits (or a physical machine for that matter) with 100% security of 0 flaws, but it's trivial to check the stream (or the physical machine) and discard it if you find any flaw.
You are right: The problem with unlimited mechanical replication is the same problem that happens with biological chemical replication. Raw material.
As of now, all of our machines require a lot of exotic elements not so easy to find over there. Even "standard" life tissues require some exotic elements you are not going to easily find and extract over there. The problem to replicate machines at a scale will be the avalibility of, say, iron, titanium, arsenium, gallium, gold, platinum... and how much of them can you put your hands on.
"if you built such a thing and it could only do something like 25% of the speed of light, it would only take them 300,000 years to overrun the entire galaxy."
Yeah. Now try redoing the math with something that just makes 0'001% the speed of light and then, in order to replicate, they require readily access to some elements in the high part of the the periodic table.
"ET must likely does not use radio waves, they are too primitive."
21th century civilization most likely does not use wheels, they are too primitive.
See? not an argument. When something perfectly fits its role, "too primitive" means nothing.
And then, even if it's too primitive, it's probably only too easy for an advanced civilization to produce radio noise, moreso if they are not worried since the radio noise won't mask their own superadvance comms tools.
"Finally, we can discover whether increased crime causes ice cream sales to rise...or if it's the other way around."
Nonsense... increased ice cream sales comes from global warming which, in turn, reduces pirates as everybody know, therefore reducing crime, not the other way around.
"You are correct, it is possible to have a causal relationship that does not result in a correlation."
Too long to explain. An easier way: there can be causation without correlation. This is called deterministic chaos (the butterfly inducing a hurricane in the other side of the world, remember?).
"What makes you think it wont? We are inching towards it every day in a variety of way."
There're no massive numbers starving. In fact, being poor now means obesity, not starving.
"We are inching towards it every day in a variety of way"
Even Nero knew that circus was a good way to avoid revolution and we have the best circus now.
So we have proper 'panem et circenses'. No revolution in sight. -But, but... I'll make the revolution on twitter!!! -Yes, sure... while in the mid-time comercials of the Superbowl.
"You're dismissing any of the many corrective features of consumers and competition in the market."
Do you know what global big means? It means necessarily low numbers, low competition and high barriers of entry. I'm not dismissing them but counting on the natural output. I.e.: hoy many car builders there were 40 years ago? how many are now? -and that's even considering that the potential producers are much more that they were back then: Europe and USA then and now you should add the South East.
"Indeed, history tells us that even huge and abusive corporations like Standard Oil cannot continue indefinitely."
Are you sure? On one hand, Standard Oil belongs to a much shorter world; on the other you don't have that many oil conglomerates now and their pressure on governments can be easily noted.
"Look carefully at the history and you'll see that the "trust busting" activities of the Federal government during that episode was driven by corrupt ambitions of politicians"
*Unavoidable* corrupt ambitions of policitians. There, corrected.
"and the market was ALREADY CORRECTING"
Are you sure? Exxon-Mobile seems to still going quite well nowadays. And this was not about any single company: names can come and go; maybe in a few years the new Delta Air Lines is Ryanair instead and there's no more American Airlines, but you can bet there will only be about ten big worldwide air companies -probably less, and that they'll lobby world governments just like they do now.
"Besides, we don't have anything better, or even as good, on a large scale."
I won't go into that now, but knowing nothing better doesn't make something to be good.
"People that complain about capitalism never want to look at more than, at most, about 150 years of history. Look at a minimum of 800-1000 years if you want a significant sample size."
That points us somewhere between 1014 and 1214 AD. I don't know any scholar that would say you had capitalist societies back then. And you wonder why I'm asking for _your_ definition of capitalism!?
Nevertheless, you offer some points towards your definition, so there we go: * freemarket (I assume, Adam Smith's freemarket, here, correct me if I'm wrong) * producers chase consumer resources * Consumers call the shots by voting for the best producers with their money * enough regulation to prevent violence and fraud from having much of an impact * also requires limits on regulation to prevent THAT from having a significant impact on markets....so yes, up to a point, Somalia gets out of the equation since it lacks enough regulation to prevent violence and fraud (I would better say "rule of law" instead of regulations, but I can accept this is a minor detail within context).
So then, you need an enforcement body strong enough to enforce the required regulations, which we usually identify to government which can either be tiranny or democracy/republic. I'll take the second since it is usually a 'standard' to accept the democracy/republic is a needed requirement for truly free markets.asdf
Unless you are talking about a short city-state, we are being to talk about representatadfive democracy or republic, which means authority of the people is managed by their representants.
So we have a strong enough government, constituency and their elective officers in a society model primed by the value of capital within a free market.
Under these circumnstances, moreso when you add global markets to the equation, it is unavoidable for at least some comercial entities to accrue enough power to be significant at the government level (much more than that and you fail on your point about enough regulation, much less and the companies are inefficient) and, in any case, they'll grow very strong when considered against a single individual.
This means that at least some comercial entities will accrue enough capital as either to brive elected officers or even to directly lobby the government to have laws that kill any or both of your last two points in their favour and once that starts to happen, no stable system can avoid it to go further.
You see, under a free and global market there's no way you can avoid (some) corporations to grow to high level; then there's no way you can avoid them (because they are so big) bribing or lobbying government to pass laws in their favour, then rinse an repeat.
This *shouldn't* happen in theory, it is still unavoidable in practice.
"in your twisted mind that values the well being of the collective more than the rights of individuals, I'm sure it is."
You see, no mention about my own position on this. Just a chain of cause-and-effect elements.
"Free market capitalism, however, has the best historical track record for improving living conditions."
Only when you cherrypick your examples.
Please, first define capitalism, then upon your definition, let's see why Somalia is not as capitalist -or even more, than USA. Once I have your definition and some examples about how you work out it, I'll tell you how cronyism/corporatism becomes unavoidable.
Not that I'm excusing myself, it's only I'm tired of the true scotsman game.
"3) A failed revolution attempted after deployment of robotic military / police, the 1% crush the 99% and live happily ever after"
We manage to do astounding technical feats but still there they go, mosquitoes and cockroaches. How is it that us 1% haven't managed to crush them 99% cockroaches?
4) the 1% puts out of "the system" the other 99% and don't give a damn about them except for making sure they don't get their head out of the water. I.e. quite alike to Huxley's 'A Brave New World'.
"they've convinced a lot of people that capitalism is the problem"
But capitalism *is* the problem: current cronyism/corporatism/fascism seems to be an unavoidable outcome of capitalism, just as tiranny seems to be an unavoidable outcome of comunism.
Maybe your "pure" capitalism is free of those problems, but then comunism is also problem-free... in theory.
"Would you sacrifice the industrial revolution to make the lives of farmers easier?"
No, I wouldn't.
Would I look for ways for the industrial revolution not to be so damaging for millions over decades instead of just leaving it to the "market forces" which really benefit less than 1% of the population? Certainly yes.
"You can either do what you can to protect yourself and your family or not."
Unless you are already in the less than 1%, helping the majority will also help yourself.
"A barbarian was someone who didn't speak the language (Greek and later, Latin). That's all the word means. If these slaves of yours still speak the prevailing language of English, they won't be barbarians."
No, they wouldn't be barbarians; they'd just be slaves which were not considered proper human beings.
"Alarmist articles about how the latest technologies are going to destroy all jobs is not new. Most of the time the job destruction is either overestimated or temporary."
Yes, it's only that: a) You don't want to be on the side of the jobs being destroyed when "temporary" can mean up to 150 years. b) All trends have their limits (see Malthus). So it might be the case that this time there're no new jobs to be created for human hands (at least not enough for all the hands avaliable) once current ones are taken off of human hands.
"... over the short term jobs may be lost. They were after every previous advancement. But then the market found a place for the labor that was freed up in the process."
Yes. It's only that in the case of the industrial revolution it took, what? 100 to 150 years to recover. Are you ready to destroy the lives of yourself, your son, your grandson, your grand-grandson and the son of your grand-grandson for the one-percenters to be more wealthy?
"For a whort while, the extra richess will go to the capitalist, but society will eventually balance itself."
For a short while? What makes you think it will take a short while or even that will happen at all?
Steam engines destroyed both jobs and quality of living. They eventually got to produce a better society for everybody (for a definition of "everybody"). It's only that "eventually" meant century a beyond.
"That model doesn't really exist today other than by force (taxes), and it will be interesting to see how the great divide will handle that."
What does make you think it will handle in any way? History shows that aristocracy is quite acquinted to do nothing about it and if 90% of population becomes unshelted pariahs, so be it. This has only changed when the 90-percenters have taken care of it by means of revolution and revolution only happens when the 90-percenters are really starving *and* the get a minimal support to revolt from some people of higher ranks. What makes you think this will happen again in the future?
"But humans have a long history of having to work in order to get food, clothes, shelter and other essentials."
In fact, that's not the case.
It's a matter of how you define "human". If you think a bit about it, "human" has only meant "all of us, Homo sapiens" in the very recent past. Get, let's say, ancient Greece: for all practical purposes, "humans" were only affluent men, and those didn't work for a living. All the other H. sapiens were not humans but slaves/women/barbarians, not to be taken into account. Now the role of slaves will be taken by machines and all the other H. sapiens not privileged to be considered humans will just be barbarians.
"you don't want to destroy the redundant people, they're what really makes your economy."
Please, apply a bit more of imagination.
*Current* economy, not much more than a century old (since Henry Ford, to put an obvious time tag) is based on a middle class buying production.
But for basically all history, wealth distribution has managed to work on a basis of a very short affluent/powerful class with a majority of peasants/slaves/outclassed. Maybe the 20th century has just been an exception along history and we are just returning to the standard trend.
Slashdot Mirror
"The state of corporate IT can be shocking. When I took over the IT at the UK branch of an international technology company I couldn't believe what I saw. Regular office staff had file sharing switched on individual PCs, Software developers had systems operated as root or administrator. People routinely downloaded whatever they wanted and installed it on their computers.
The first thing I did was make sure that no computer had any file sharing or any other services running on it"
You were doing it wrong, then, and probably the company employees hate you.
The first thing you should have done is understanding why computers/lans were configured that way. I can't count the times I've seen security just going all the place closing this and that without providing working alternatives to the function the user was achieving that way, just to put productivity to a halting grind.
People don't go out of their way to share their hard disks or to install this or that simply because they have nothing better to do but because they need to do something and do it that way because they don't know anything better.
Corporate security is more about providing secure ways to do what it's needed to be done (as defined by the end user, not the top brass) and less about tying users' hands but very short numbers of "IT security people" seem to understand that.
"The problem with unlimited mechanical replication is the same problem that happens with biological chemical replication. Errors. "
You are right and wrong at the same time.
You are wrong: mechanical replication can be bound to QA, which is something that bears no meaning when talking about real spontaneous life forms. Of course you cannot copy a stream of bits (or a physical machine for that matter) with 100% security of 0 flaws, but it's trivial to check the stream (or the physical machine) and discard it if you find any flaw.
You are right: The problem with unlimited mechanical replication is the same problem that happens with biological chemical replication. Raw material.
As of now, all of our machines require a lot of exotic elements not so easy to find over there. Even "standard" life tissues require some exotic elements you are not going to easily find and extract over there. The problem to replicate machines at a scale will be the avalibility of, say, iron, titanium, arsenium, gallium, gold, platinum... and how much of them can you put your hands on.
"if you built such a thing and it could only do something like 25% of the speed of light, it would only take them 300,000 years to overrun the entire galaxy."
Yeah. Now try redoing the math with something that just makes 0'001% the speed of light and then, in order to replicate, they require readily access to some elements in the high part of the the periodic table.
"ET must likely does not use radio waves, they are too primitive."
21th century civilization most likely does not use wheels, they are too primitive.
See? not an argument. When something perfectly fits its role, "too primitive" means nothing.
And then, even if it's too primitive, it's probably only too easy for an advanced civilization to produce radio noise, moreso if they are not worried since the radio noise won't mask their own superadvance comms tools.
"Give us another 100 years..."
No way.
I already gave you 100 years and I'm still waiting for my flying cars and my underwater cities. You wasted your credit.
"Finally, we can discover whether increased crime causes ice cream sales to rise...or if it's the other way around."
Nonsense... increased ice cream sales comes from global warming which, in turn, reduces pirates as everybody know, therefore reducing crime, not the other way around.
"You are correct, it is possible to have a causal relationship that does not result in a correlation."
Too long to explain. An easier way: there can be causation without correlation. This is called deterministic chaos (the butterfly inducing a hurricane in the other side of the world, remember?).
Oh, yes! And you don't micromanage.
"The middle class seems to do okay for example."
You are kidding, aren't you? Middle class is going the way of the dodo at a fair pace, thank you very much.
"What makes you think it wont? We are inching towards it every day in a variety of way."
There're no massive numbers starving. In fact, being poor now means obesity, not starving.
"We are inching towards it every day in a variety of way"
Even Nero knew that circus was a good way to avoid revolution and we have the best circus now.
So we have proper 'panem et circenses'. No revolution in sight.
-But, but... I'll make the revolution on twitter!!!
-Yes, sure... while in the mid-time comercials of the Superbowl.
"You're dismissing any of the many corrective features of consumers and competition in the market."
Do you know what global big means? It means necessarily low numbers, low competition and high barriers of entry. I'm not dismissing them but counting on the natural output. I.e.: hoy many car builders there were 40 years ago? how many are now? -and that's even considering that the potential producers are much more that they were back then: Europe and USA then and now you should add the South East.
"Indeed, history tells us that even huge and abusive corporations like Standard Oil cannot continue indefinitely."
Are you sure? On one hand, Standard Oil belongs to a much shorter world; on the other you don't have that many oil conglomerates now and their pressure on governments can be easily noted.
"Look carefully at the history and you'll see that the "trust busting" activities of the Federal government during that episode was driven by corrupt ambitions of politicians"
*Unavoidable* corrupt ambitions of policitians. There, corrected.
"and the market was ALREADY CORRECTING"
Are you sure? Exxon-Mobile seems to still going quite well nowadays. And this was not about any single company: names can come and go; maybe in a few years the new Delta Air Lines is Ryanair instead and there's no more American Airlines, but you can bet there will only be about ten big worldwide air companies -probably less, and that they'll lobby world governments just like they do now.
"Besides, we don't have anything better, or even as good, on a large scale."
I won't go into that now, but knowing nothing better doesn't make something to be good.
"People that complain about capitalism never want to look at more than, at most, about 150 years of history. Look at a minimum of 800-1000 years if you want a significant sample size."
That points us somewhere between 1014 and 1214 AD. I don't know any scholar that would say you had capitalist societies back then. And you wonder why I'm asking for _your_ definition of capitalism!?
Nevertheless, you offer some points towards your definition, so there we go: ...so yes, up to a point, Somalia gets out of the equation since it lacks enough regulation to prevent violence and fraud (I would better say "rule of law" instead of regulations, but I can accept this is a minor detail within context).
* freemarket (I assume, Adam Smith's freemarket, here, correct me if I'm wrong)
* producers chase consumer resources
* Consumers call the shots by voting for the best producers with their money
* enough regulation to prevent violence and fraud from having much of an impact
* also requires limits on regulation to prevent THAT from having a significant impact on markets.
So then, you need an enforcement body strong enough to enforce the required regulations, which we usually identify to government which can either be tiranny or democracy/republic. I'll take the second since it is usually a 'standard' to accept the democracy/republic is a needed requirement for truly free markets.asdf
Unless you are talking about a short city-state, we are being to talk about representatadfive democracy or republic, which means authority of the people is managed by their representants.
So we have a strong enough government, constituency and their elective officers in a society model primed by the value of capital within a free market.
Under these circumnstances, moreso when you add global markets to the equation, it is unavoidable for at least some comercial entities to accrue enough power to be significant at the government level (much more than that and you fail on your point about enough regulation, much less and the companies are inefficient) and, in any case, they'll grow very strong when considered against a single individual.
This means that at least some comercial entities will accrue enough capital as either to brive elected officers or even to directly lobby the government to have laws that kill any or both of your last two points in their favour and once that starts to happen, no stable system can avoid it to go further.
You see, under a free and global market there's no way you can avoid (some) corporations to grow to high level; then there's no way you can avoid them (because they are so big) bribing or lobbying government to pass laws in their favour, then rinse an repeat.
This *shouldn't* happen in theory, it is still unavoidable in practice.
"in your twisted mind that values the well being of the collective more than the rights of individuals, I'm sure it is."
You see, no mention about my own position on this. Just a chain of cause-and-effect elements.
"Free market capitalism, however, has the best historical track record for improving living conditions."
Only when you cherrypick your examples.
Please, first define capitalism, then upon your definition, let's see why Somalia is not as capitalist -or even more, than USA. Once I have your definition and some examples about how you work out it, I'll tell you how cronyism/corporatism becomes unavoidable.
Not that I'm excusing myself, it's only I'm tired of the true scotsman game.
"3) A failed revolution attempted after deployment of robotic military / police, the 1% crush the 99% and live happily ever after"
We manage to do astounding technical feats but still there they go, mosquitoes and cockroaches. How is it that us 1% haven't managed to crush them 99% cockroaches?
4) the 1% puts out of "the system" the other 99% and don't give a damn about them except for making sure they don't get their head out of the water. I.e. quite alike to Huxley's 'A Brave New World'.
"they've convinced a lot of people that capitalism is the problem"
But capitalism *is* the problem: current cronyism/corporatism/fascism seems to be an unavoidable outcome of capitalism, just as tiranny seems to be an unavoidable outcome of comunism.
Maybe your "pure" capitalism is free of those problems, but then comunism is also problem-free... in theory.
"Would you sacrifice the industrial revolution to make the lives of farmers easier?"
No, I wouldn't.
Would I look for ways for the industrial revolution not to be so damaging for millions over decades instead of just leaving it to the "market forces" which really benefit less than 1% of the population? Certainly yes.
"You can either do what you can to protect yourself and your family or not."
Unless you are already in the less than 1%, helping the majority will also help yourself.
"A barbarian was someone who didn't speak the language (Greek and later, Latin). That's all the word means. If these slaves of yours still speak the prevailing language of English, they won't be barbarians."
No, they wouldn't be barbarians; they'd just be slaves which were not considered proper human beings.
"Alarmist articles about how the latest technologies are going to destroy all jobs is not new. Most of the time the job destruction is either overestimated or temporary."
Yes, it's only that:
a) You don't want to be on the side of the jobs being destroyed when "temporary" can mean up to 150 years.
b) All trends have their limits (see Malthus). So it might be the case that this time there're no new jobs to be created for human hands (at least not enough for all the hands avaliable) once current ones are taken off of human hands.
"... over the short term jobs may be lost. They were after every previous advancement. But then the market found a place for the labor that was freed up in the process."
Yes. It's only that in the case of the industrial revolution it took, what? 100 to 150 years to recover. Are you ready to destroy the lives of yourself, your son, your grandson, your grand-grandson and the son of your grand-grandson for the one-percenters to be more wealthy?
"For a whort while, the extra richess will go to the capitalist, but society will eventually balance itself."
For a short while? What makes you think it will take a short while or even that will happen at all?
Steam engines destroyed both jobs and quality of living. They eventually got to produce a better society for everybody (for a definition of "everybody"). It's only that "eventually" meant century a beyond.
"Easy. Basic income and land value tax."
That's just the 'to be' and it is quite far from the 'as is'. In any project the critical factor is the process going from the 'as is' to the 'to be'.
I don't see your proposal for such a process and without it, it just won't happen.
"That model doesn't really exist today other than by force (taxes), and it will be interesting to see how the great divide will handle that."
What does make you think it will handle in any way? History shows that aristocracy is quite acquinted to do nothing about it and if 90% of population becomes unshelted pariahs, so be it. This has only changed when the 90-percenters have taken care of it by means of revolution and revolution only happens when the 90-percenters are really starving *and* the get a minimal support to revolt from some people of higher ranks. What makes you think this will happen again in the future?
"But humans have a long history of having to work in order to get food, clothes, shelter and other essentials."
In fact, that's not the case.
It's a matter of how you define "human". If you think a bit about it, "human" has only meant "all of us, Homo sapiens" in the very recent past. Get, let's say, ancient Greece: for all practical purposes, "humans" were only affluent men, and those didn't work for a living. All the other H. sapiens were not humans but slaves/women/barbarians, not to be taken into account. Now the role of slaves will be taken by machines and all the other H. sapiens not privileged to be considered humans will just be barbarians.
"you don't want to destroy the redundant people, they're what really makes your economy."
Please, apply a bit more of imagination.
*Current* economy, not much more than a century old (since Henry Ford, to put an obvious time tag) is based on a middle class buying production.
But for basically all history, wealth distribution has managed to work on a basis of a very short affluent/powerful class with a majority of peasants/slaves/outclassed. Maybe the 20th century has just been an exception along history and we are just returning to the standard trend.
"No, because the "backdoor" is getting a judge to sign a warrant for the police to wiretap you"
The police and the police only? In each and every case?