Re:Do Myhailo a favor...
on
Krawtchouk's Mind
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Yeah, but the problem is that Marxism as a theory does not explain AT ALL how it should be put into practice. And the ONLY way it has been put into practice is, well, what you saw in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, etc.
If people were walking around with German SPD t-shirts (supporting socialist economics) - hey, that's cool with me. But communism has only existed as horrible dictatorial regimes. It has no existence other than as horrible dictatorial regimes.
This is not the fault of the "sheepish west" confusing some pure theory with the practice. This is the intelligent west understanding that the theory only exists in someone's mind as a utopia that cannot be put into practice, and what actually can be put into practice is horrible. That's not sheepish. That's perceptive.
>> We were the good guys, they were the bad guys, they lost, end of story
> The guys who win always say that.
Ah yes, people feel so smart when they point out that the winners write the history. Just like it makes them feel smart to accuse others of seeing the world in black and white, having a simplistic reading of history, etc.
But these are all simply cliches that do not and should not end the argument, and the people who use them, more often than not, are simply parroting something they heard someone else say to sound smart.
Yes, the winners write the history. But acknowledging that power relations affect our reading of history does not excuse us from the need to make judgments. And it does not change the fact that the USSR was much, much worse than the US in the the Cold War, and that the Cold War was right to fight.
Actually, the recent reexamination of the McCarthy years has actually put McCarthy in a better light, since the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss were both shown to have actually passed on documents to the Soviet Union.
Besides, it's absolutely ridiculous to compare Hoover with Dzerzhinski, or McCarthyism (hundreds accused) with Stalinism (millions sent to labor camps, children encouraged to report on their parents, etc.).
I don't live in a "black and white world." The US did bad things as part of the Cold War. But the fact remains the the US did fewer bad things, and was by far the good guys.
I read about politics all the time. Go to my web site, and you'll find articles I've written about politics. I might want to find a political job in DC one of these days.
But...
I do hate having to go to vote. I did vote in the last one...but I could see myself skipping future ones. After all, my one vote doesn't make a difference among the tens of thousands (or millions, depending on the election) of votes. But it's like 45 minutes from the day I don't feel like spending. Make it 20 seconds from day, in front of a PC, that's no problem.
I'm a bit skeptical about the implied relationship between physical "spin" (as in rotation) and quantum "spin", however. Still, this is the sort of scientific advance that renews my faith in the system.
What system are we talking about? Why does faith need to be renewed in it? What, have you lost faith in physics because it doesn't discover new laws every day?
The global villiage does not bring the poorer nations up to our level, it drags the richer nations down to theirs. And it the Greed of the multi-nationals which ensures that this happens.
God, I am so tired of the childish anti-globalization arguments on Slashdot. Let's look at this:
In the last twenty years, there has been a major increase in the standard of livings of both China and India, as both nations started to privatize and nationalize.
There has also been a major increase in the standard of living in South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and Taiwan.
In the last twenty years, there has been an increase in the standard of living in the US as well.
That makes, as far as I can tell, both parts of your statement completely false. Poor nations are rising to our level, and rich nations are not being dragged down (at least, America, Canada, Britain, and Australia haven't, Germany's has problems but that's due to reunification, not globalization).
Actually, the only reason there are food shortages is because of politics. There is more than enough food to go around. For example, it's not "overfarming" that's causing starvation in Zimbabwe, it's Robert Mugabe. It wasn't "overfarming" that caused starvation in the USSR in the 1930s, it was collectivization. The US could feed millions overseas. But either the poor can't afford the food, or, it gets waylaid (like when we sent food to Ethiopa and it rotted on the docks). Etc.
And what oil shortage are you talking about? The only oil shortages I know came of during the 1970s. And again, that was due to politics (OPEC), not a real shortage. Which is not to say that there's an infinite amount of oil, but that so far the (relatively) free market has done a good job of distributing resources so that they don't run out.
I don't know anything about water shortages, so I won't comment there.
I don't own a car. I don't have a driver's license. I take public transportation everywhere. So I don't take offense personally at you blaming rich car drivers for the world's problems. But it's an incorrect view at this juncture in history. The reason South Korea is rich while millions are starving in North Korea is not because the North Koreans overfarmed or overmined or because the South Koreans are wastefully using up all the resources on the Korean peninsula. It's because the political/economic system of North Korean is screwed up.
One day, at a certain population level and a certain standard of living, it might be accurate to claim that some are poor because others are using too many resources. But I don't think we're there yet. Hopefully we will never be. Right now, there are about 6 billion people. That is projected to peak at 8.9 billion in 2050, and then decline. If increases in resource usage are gradual enough, technology substitutes for resources great enough (like figuring out a make fusion power work), and the decline in population steep enough, we might dodge that particular bullet. But we'll have to wait and see.
Did slavery and racism prevent blacks from getting educated? Yes, absolutely. But that does not change the fact that it is black culture that does not respect and admire intelligent young people.
Whites played a big part in how that black culture developed. But it is, nevertheless, still black culture. It is blacks who are calling each other oreos for studying too hard. As John McWhorter, (a black) UC Berkeley linguists prof, said in his recent interview in Salon, the fact is that Asian culture in the US puts a high value on academics, while black and Hispanic culture do not.
Again, whites played a big part in the development of black culture. And black culture can change - culture is not static. But that doesn't change the fact that today, black culture - the culture of black people who live in the US - does not respect intellectual achievement.
Think about it. Before Apple's Switch campaign, when is the last time you saw someone on your TV saying, "Hello, I'm a real person and I use this product because it works for me." ?
Um, all the time? I see customer testimonials all the time on web sites. The only difference between Apple's switch ads and most TV ads is that they use real people. But the point of most TV ads is "look how happy this person is using our product." And some do use real people. So Apple was hardly innovative with their switch ads.
I don't see why almost everyone on Slashdot is making fun of the idea of switching from the Mac to PC. I was an Amiga (2000, upgraded with a Picasso II+ and a 68060 accelerator) owner, then an iMac owner, and now a Windows user.
Two of my friends switched in the last two years from the Mac to the PC. Both of them were hard-core Mac zealots. One of them is married to a graphic designer, and he himself is a user interface designer, so he was naturally a Mac user for a long time. The other had been a Mac user since he was 10, and was a huge believer that Macs were superior to PCs in any and every way.
Well, eventually MacOS X came out, and my friend the user interface designer basically made the switch to the PC. Why? Because Macs are too expensive, don't provide the benefits they used to (let's face it - there's no difference between using Photoshop and Quark on the Mac vs. the PC any more), and because Apple broke all of its own great user interface rules with MacOS X.
My friend who had used Macs since he was 10 switched to the PC because Macs were just too fucking slow. He had a super-speedy Athlon for much less than a new Mac would cost him. He's a big geek, so he runs Linux most of the time, but he uses Windows for gaming.
And me? I like the fact that Apple puts a lot of thought into how the software works, and how the system works as a whole. I like the fact that the computers are cool looking. But, that is not worth the premium of the MUCH higher cost of Macs (I'm sorry, for what I want to do with my computer Macs are way more expensive). Additionally, I was really, really disappointed by MacOS X's interface. The MacOS had such a great interface, and now it's as lame as Windows. So why pay a premium for it?
On the other hand, a friend of mine who was a PC-zealot (he used to mock my iMac all the time, and thought Mac users were idiots) just visited an Apple Store and has become a total convert. It's fascinating.
Anyway, I guess the point is, it's not ridiculous for people to switch from PCs to Macs, and it's not ridiculous to switch from Macs to PCs. Seriously, different platforms have different advantages. MS showing people who went from Mac to PC is no more ridiculous than showing people going from PC to Mac.
(When I switched from Mac to PC, I found the PC annoying at first. But then I got used to it, and now I find the Mac annoying when I first start using it again. A lot of this is what you're used to.)
ARGH!!! This is such bullshit, I get hired of hearing it. I am not an anti-Mac zealot (in fact, I used to use a Mac, and would consider buying one again if I weren't so disappointed with what Apple did to the macOS X interface), but it's so annoying to hear Mac fans claim that Macs have some large installed marketshare that no one recognizes.
First of all, Apple does not get 5% of all computer sales each year. It gets less than 5%. Secondly, were Macs staying in use longer than PCs, you'd expect Macs to show up as a larger percentage of web site hits. But they don't.
These suggest the Mac has between 2-4% market share.
People need to stop fooling themselves. Just because the Mac has only 3% market share, doesn't mean you shouldn't use it. But stop pretending it has larger market share, when it doesn't!
His state office is doing more then federal offices like SEC and even aspects of DOJ. But what has ge gotten in return?
I know this isn't really where you were going, but Spitzer has become extremely well-known and well-respected as a result of his actions against Wall Street and corporations. His plan is to run for New York Governor some day, and this popularity has a real good chance to make that a reality. Because Spitzer has done something very wise, politically-speaking. By going against lying investment banks and NA for preventing reviews, he is aligning himself not against business, but against the excesses of business that hurt the average person.
Spitzer will get the anti-business, far-left votes when he runs for governor, no matter what, because the choice comes down to Democratic Spitzer versus a Republican. But in being for saving capitalism (and protecting the average investor/user) through regulation, rather than attacking capitalism through government fiat, Spitzer can pick up votes from the broad middle that believes in capitalism and a corporate economy, but also believes that corporations sometimes do illegal things that must be prevented.
Having said that Spitzer's line of attack is very wise politically, I don't actually believe that he has made his decision on how to confront corporations based on self-interested political motives. The fact is that Spitzer almost became a corporate lawyer himself. He does not hate corporations, and he does not want to destroy Merrill Lynch. He just wants to make sure they don't lie to investors.
It's like FDR during the New Deal. There were people on the far left who wanted socialism in the US. But FDR believed that it was best to keep capitalism, but to fix its most egregious flaws.
And I think it's silly to write off Spitzer as a potential Supreme Court Justice, some day. If a Democratic president nominated him, it would be very hard for Republicans in Congress to oppose him. Because while Republicans might not love Spitzer, that doesn't give them enough to oppose him. Sure, Larry Kudlow and Forbes magazine would support spiking his nomination, but it would definitely be a losing issue for the Republicans to make, because there are too many swing and Republican voters who would say, "Hey wait, I own stock, I'm glad Spitzer stopped these bastards from lying to me!"
Supreme Court nominations get a huge amount of publicity. It's way too risky for the Republicans, already perceived as the party of the rich, to spike a guy because he protected stock market investors (who now make up a majority of the population) against lying corporations.
And why are there no alternatives? Because after hundreds of years of economic colonialism by the west, traditional subsistence structures have bee destroyed and any chance for competition on equal footing precluded!
Traditional subsistence structures have not been destroyed because of colonialism. Traditional subsistence structures have been destroyed because they have outlived their usefulness. Even were there no colonialism, American grain could still be sold cheaper in many nations than it could be grown by those nations themselves.
Modern economies are massively more efficient than subsistence economies. Do you doubt that America can produce 1000s of times as much per person than it could 300 years ago? The same is true for Europe, and Japan, and is becoming more and more true in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, China, and India.
So, you know what? Third-world nations are welcome to continue running subsistence economies. Seriously, close the country to all imports, and run land reform. It can be done. But to what end? Then you get your whole population doing subsistence farming, while meanwhile people elsewhere are becoming richer and richer. And you have a population full of farmers, and yet it's still cheaper to buy American grain shipped from 4,000 miles away than it is to buy grain your neighbor grows, because American farming is so much more efficient.
And if you do put up import barriers, you still will have to have sweatshops some day if you want to improve your economy. Course, instead of being run by Nike, they'll be run by your neighbor, but you're still being "exploited."
Now, I recognize the argument that it may be better to put up import barriers and foreign ownership barriers to build your own economy. It's a tricky issue, because there's arguments both ways - for example, Latin America failed with ISI (lots of import barriers) and now seems to be failing with free trade as well.
And I also think that one can make a reasonable argument that Nike should be forced to improve conditions in sweatshops in certain ways. For example, there are certain marginal improvements that can be made to sweatshop conditions that don't really impact the economics of the situation very much (a relatively small loss to Nike that doesn't discourage foreign investment in these countries, but a relatively huge gain for the workers in these countries).
But it is foolish to pretend that because we don't like sweatshops, then they don't have to be. There's really no other path to development, other than starting out moving from farms to really horrible factory conditions.
It's amazing how everyone can bitch about how terrible sweatshops are, and how they exploit third-world countries, without bringing up any exmaples. After all, last time I checked China had quadrupled its GDP/capita in the last decade running a "sweatshop" economy - bringing in manufacturing from abroad, attracted by their cheap labor, and then using that to build up their economy to bigger and better things.
Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Malaysia have also been "sweatshop" economies.
Nobody is saying it's fun working in a sweatshop. But subsistence farming ain't that great either. And long-term, attracting cheap manufacturing jobs can be the first step to a modern economy, whereas subsistence farming doesn't really lead anywhere.
And hey, if you think I'm a fascist, feel free to read Marx and see what he thought about the feudal farming economy versus the modern capitalist economy. He recognized many of the same problems with manufacturing capitalism (in his own Europe) that we see today in the third-world today, but that didn't stop him from realizing that such capitalism was a necessary step in economic and social development.
Now, sweatshops don't guarantee success. But they can be the first step in building a modern economy. After all, not only can you look at those Asian nations I listed above, but you can look at Europe and America - early factories hired children, had squalid working conditions, etc. Eventually, as society grew more prosperous, they could afford better work conditions.
I hope you misspoke when you said Apple would merge or disappear. Apple isn't going anywhere, as can be seen by their repeated strong showings at their release party conferences and on Wall Street.
I am not sure what you mean by "repeated strong showings...on Wall Street." Apple's stock is trading at barely above the value of their cash reserves, which shows you that Wall Street has very little faith in Apple stock indeed. There was a brief (but massive) run-up in Apple stock in 1998 and 1999, but other than that the stock has been a failure over the long term - selling at the same price today as it was 12 years ago.
You know, the modding on Slashdot is outrageous sometimes. There is nothing trollish about this post. But too many moderators on Slashdot think that trolling means saying something they don't like.
Someone posts a comment that the only reason other countries in the world have weapons is because they're afraid of an American attack, and it gets moderated as +5 insightful. Someone simply says that there are left-wingers who produce biased science too (which is demonstably true), and he gets modded as a troll.
Recently, in a thread on SGI, I saw a post by a user with an ID around 600, which gave a lot of evidence for why SGI is in trouble in a number of marketplaces, because of pressure from cheap Athlon systems. He got modded as a troll. Then a user with a userID above 600,000 posted nothing more than "SGI will lose because Linux is taking it on the low-end" and got rated as insightful. So apparently, if you say SGI is dying because of low-end PCs, that's trolling because Slashdotters emotionally prefer SGIs to PCs. But if you say SGI is dying because of Linux, that's not trolling, because Slashdotters emotionally prefer Linux to all else.
You can mod me down as off-topic, or as a troll, but I don't care. Moderators need to recognize that just because you don't like an opinion doesn't make it a troll.
They often ask me what Japan can do to improve its economy, and I usually tell them that Japan needs to get all of its eggs out of the US Economic basket and spread them around, so if that basket falls, not all of the eggs will break. They often ask me why I don't like the US and I usually respond by asking them why they aren't afraid of George W. Bush.
Maybe you should advise them to fix their banking system and start dealing with their massive national debt (which, as a percentage of GDP, is more than twice as big as America's). Your platitude sounds meaningful - an American warning about America - but it is actually meaningless. Japan's major problem economically is the domestic basis of its economy.
Yes, if America collapses economically then Japan is screwed. So is the rest of the world. But one of the reasons America's economy is so important to the world right now is because Japan and Europe have not fixed their economies. America, South Korea, China, and India are driving world economic growth right now. But because China and India are mainly exporters, and South Korea isn't that big, only America can really help the rest of the world. Traditionally, when America was going into recession, we could expect European and Japanese growth to help counteract the American recession. But now, because Japan and Europe have been stagnant for years, it is left up to America's economy alone.
If you think that North Korea (or Iraq) as aspirations to take over the world, then I think you are mistaking them with the most power / money-hungry country on Earth - the US. Everyone else (except for Israel) is quite happy left to their own devices, and only has weapons to protect themselves from the inevidable invasion from the US military / economy.
Ok, let's see:
The Palestinians started an Intifada against the Israelis despite the fact that the Israelis had just gone to final status negotiations with them, and continued negotiating at Taba even after 3 months of violence.
Hizbullah continues to attack Israel despite a complete pullout - certified by the UN - of Israeli forces from Lebanon.
Iraq invaded Iran. Iraq invaded Kuwait.
Serbians tried to ethnically cleanse Kosovo. Serbians tried to ethnically cleanse Bosnia.
Pakistan continues to send militants into Kashmir. Pakistan and India recently almost went to war over Kashmir.
The Soviet Union went to war in Aghanistan.
France sent its military to the Ivory Coast to prevent the civil war there from spreading.
There has been a massive war in Congo to which rival African nations sent their armies.
Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a war.
All these happened in the last 20 years. There are more, I'm just going off the top of my head. So right. The only reason any countries have weapons is because they are afraid of the US. Obviously Japan is afraid of the US, not North Korea - oh wait! Japan wants to join the US missile shield because they are afraid of North Korea!
I am less than sympathetic towards Kevin Mitnick. He committed a crime, and he got punished for it. Poor baby.
However, I think not ever allowing him to use a computer again is a foolish punishment. Computers are too essential to life in America today for that to be a reasonable punishment.
Personally, I would like to see some sort of bargain between the court and Mitnick, whereby he gets to use computers again, but will face an ever tougher punishment if he is discovered hacking again.
I thought enough material had finally invaded the net to realize sarcasm.
Note the original posters helpful use of an emoticon at the end of his post. Emoticons can symbolize many tones in situations where the text would otherwise be unclear.
Additionally, you ask where IMF intervention has worked. Well, it's very hard to measure whether IMF intervention was successful or not. After all, there are a lot of factors in an economy. If an economy booms after IMF intervention, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the IMF (Russia's economy is doing better today because oil prices have risen, not because of the IMF). On the other hand, if an economy collapses despite IMF intervention, it doesn't necessarily mean IMF intervention was bad - the economy might just have had too many problems for the IMF to correct.
But, it is possible to argue that the IMF intervention was successful in South Korea. The South Korean economy contracted by 6.3% in 1998 (source) after the Asian economic crisis hit, but it has rebounded very well. According to one report, "GDP growth for 1999 was 10.7%, possibly the fastest recovery ever." (source Its GDP growth for 2002 is 6.1%, and GDP growth for 2003 is estimated to be 5.3%. (source)
South Korea's recovery from the Asian Crisis has been very good. In fact, people are talking about how South Korea might become the new model for Asian economic development, taking over from the Japanese model. The South Korean model is basically moving away from export-driven growth to domestic consumption driven growth.
This model, I will point out, is essentially the American model for economic growth. And, also the model the IMF was pushing.
Thailand has also recovered fairly well from the Asian economic crisis. Its GDP dropped 1.7% and then 10.7% in the wake of the crisis, (source), but bounced back by 4.4%, 4.6% (source) and then 1.8% (source). Its recovery hasn't been as good as South Koreas, but its has been recovering. Its unemployment has remained very low. And frankly, given that people thought that the Asian crisis might lead to a worldwide depression, I think that's pretty incredible. Remember how long it took the world to get through the last depression - when there was no IMF.
I happen to think that the IMF sometimes offers mistaken economic policy as well (I am not an economic expert, but from my reading about Russia and China I believe there are cases where government guidance is necessary to put the economy on stable ground, and then it can be deregulated). But just to make sure everyone is clear on what Stiglitz is saying, he is NOT saying that "The IMF is a vehicle for implementing a policy that is designed to make poor nations poorer, and the US based financial world richer." Or, at least, he is not saying that the IMF's policy goal is to make poor nations poorer for the sake of making the rich nations richer. That may be an unintended consequence, but it is not the IMF's goal according to Stiglitz. Here's what he wrote in his New Republic article:
"It's not fair to say that IMF economists don't care about the citizens of developing nations. But the older men who staff the fund--and they are overwhelmingly older men--act as if they are shouldering Rudyard Kipling's white man's burden. IMF experts believe they are brighter, more educated, and less politically motivated than the economists in the countries they visit. In fact, the economic leaders from those countries are pretty good--in many cases brighter or better-educated than the IMF staff, which frequently consists of third-rank students from first-rate universities. "
In other words, Stiglitz thinks the IMF is wrong - not purposely malicious.
Just for the record, YIM does appear to store messages for when a user comes online. At the very least, I just logged onto it a few days ago and got a message that user xxxxx had sent me a message while I was offline, and I could read it...
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but the problem is that Marxism as a theory does not explain AT ALL how it should be put into practice. And the ONLY way it has been put into practice is, well, what you saw in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, etc.
If people were walking around with German SPD t-shirts (supporting socialist economics) - hey, that's cool with me. But communism has only existed as horrible dictatorial regimes. It has no existence other than as horrible dictatorial regimes.
This is not the fault of the "sheepish west" confusing some pure theory with the practice. This is the intelligent west understanding that the theory only exists in someone's mind as a utopia that cannot be put into practice, and what actually can be put into practice is horrible. That's not sheepish. That's perceptive.
>> We were the good guys, they were the bad guys, they lost, end of story
> The guys who win always say that.
Ah yes, people feel so smart when they point out that the winners write the history. Just like it makes them feel smart to accuse others of seeing the world in black and white, having a simplistic reading of history, etc.
But these are all simply cliches that do not and should not end the argument, and the people who use them, more often than not, are simply parroting something they heard someone else say to sound smart.
Yes, the winners write the history. But acknowledging that power relations affect our reading of history does not excuse us from the need to make judgments. And it does not change the fact that the USSR was much, much worse than the US in the the Cold War, and that the Cold War was right to fight.
Actually, the recent reexamination of the McCarthy years has actually put McCarthy in a better light, since the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss were both shown to have actually passed on documents to the Soviet Union.
Besides, it's absolutely ridiculous to compare Hoover with Dzerzhinski, or McCarthyism (hundreds accused) with Stalinism (millions sent to labor camps, children encouraged to report on their parents, etc.).
I don't live in a "black and white world." The US did bad things as part of the Cold War. But the fact remains the the US did fewer bad things, and was by far the good guys.
I read about politics all the time. Go to my web site, and you'll find articles I've written about politics. I might want to find a political job in DC one of these days.
But...
I do hate having to go to vote. I did vote in the last one...but I could see myself skipping future ones. After all, my one vote doesn't make a difference among the tens of thousands (or millions, depending on the election) of votes. But it's like 45 minutes from the day I don't feel like spending. Make it 20 seconds from day, in front of a PC, that's no problem.
I don't understand this submission:
I'm a bit skeptical about the implied relationship between physical "spin" (as in rotation) and quantum "spin", however. Still, this is the sort of scientific advance that renews my faith in the system.
What system are we talking about? Why does faith need to be renewed in it? What, have you lost faith in physics because it doesn't discover new laws every day?
The global villiage does not bring the poorer nations up to our level, it drags the richer nations down to theirs. And it the Greed of the multi-nationals which ensures that this happens.
God, I am so tired of the childish anti-globalization arguments on Slashdot. Let's look at this:
In the last twenty years, there has been a major increase in the standard of livings of both China and India, as both nations started to privatize and nationalize.
There has also been a major increase in the standard of living in South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and Taiwan.
In the last twenty years, there has been an increase in the standard of living in the US as well.
That makes, as far as I can tell, both parts of your statement completely false. Poor nations are rising to our level, and rich nations are not being dragged down (at least, America, Canada, Britain, and Australia haven't, Germany's has problems but that's due to reunification, not globalization).
Oops.
The fact that the parent post is currently modded flamebait proves conclusively, once and for all, that moderators have no sense of humor. :)
Actually, the only reason there are food shortages is because of politics. There is more than enough food to go around. For example, it's not "overfarming" that's causing starvation in Zimbabwe, it's Robert Mugabe. It wasn't "overfarming" that caused starvation in the USSR in the 1930s, it was collectivization. The US could feed millions overseas. But either the poor can't afford the food, or, it gets waylaid (like when we sent food to Ethiopa and it rotted on the docks). Etc.
And what oil shortage are you talking about? The only oil shortages I know came of during the 1970s. And again, that was due to politics (OPEC), not a real shortage. Which is not to say that there's an infinite amount of oil, but that so far the (relatively) free market has done a good job of distributing resources so that they don't run out.
I don't know anything about water shortages, so I won't comment there.
I don't own a car. I don't have a driver's license. I take public transportation everywhere. So I don't take offense personally at you blaming rich car drivers for the world's problems. But it's an incorrect view at this juncture in history. The reason South Korea is rich while millions are starving in North Korea is not because the North Koreans overfarmed or overmined or because the South Koreans are wastefully using up all the resources on the Korean peninsula. It's because the political/economic system of North Korean is screwed up.
One day, at a certain population level and a certain standard of living, it might be accurate to claim that some are poor because others are using too many resources. But I don't think we're there yet. Hopefully we will never be. Right now, there are about 6 billion people. That is projected to peak at 8.9 billion in 2050, and then decline. If increases in resource usage are gradual enough, technology substitutes for resources great enough (like figuring out a make fusion power work), and the decline in population steep enough, we might dodge that particular bullet. But we'll have to wait and see.
Did slavery and racism prevent blacks from getting educated? Yes, absolutely. But that does not change the fact that it is black culture that does not respect and admire intelligent young people.
Whites played a big part in how that black culture developed. But it is, nevertheless, still black culture. It is blacks who are calling each other oreos for studying too hard. As John McWhorter, (a black) UC Berkeley linguists prof, said in his recent interview in Salon, the fact is that Asian culture in the US puts a high value on academics, while black and Hispanic culture do not.
Again, whites played a big part in the development of black culture. And black culture can change - culture is not static. But that doesn't change the fact that today, black culture - the culture of black people who live in the US - does not respect intellectual achievement.
Think about it. Before Apple's Switch campaign, when is the last time you saw someone on your TV saying, "Hello, I'm a real person and I use this product because it works for me." ?
Um, all the time? I see customer testimonials all the time on web sites. The only difference between Apple's switch ads and most TV ads is that they use real people. But the point of most TV ads is "look how happy this person is using our product." And some do use real people. So Apple was hardly innovative with their switch ads.
I don't see why almost everyone on Slashdot is making fun of the idea of switching from the Mac to PC. I was an Amiga (2000, upgraded with a Picasso II+ and a 68060 accelerator) owner, then an iMac owner, and now a Windows user.
Two of my friends switched in the last two years from the Mac to the PC. Both of them were hard-core Mac zealots. One of them is married to a graphic designer, and he himself is a user interface designer, so he was naturally a Mac user for a long time. The other had been a Mac user since he was 10, and was a huge believer that Macs were superior to PCs in any and every way.
Well, eventually MacOS X came out, and my friend the user interface designer basically made the switch to the PC. Why? Because Macs are too expensive, don't provide the benefits they used to (let's face it - there's no difference between using Photoshop and Quark on the Mac vs. the PC any more), and because Apple broke all of its own great user interface rules with MacOS X.
My friend who had used Macs since he was 10 switched to the PC because Macs were just too fucking slow. He had a super-speedy Athlon for much less than a new Mac would cost him. He's a big geek, so he runs Linux most of the time, but he uses Windows for gaming.
And me? I like the fact that Apple puts a lot of thought into how the software works, and how the system works as a whole. I like the fact that the computers are cool looking. But, that is not worth the premium of the MUCH higher cost of Macs (I'm sorry, for what I want to do with my computer Macs are way more expensive). Additionally, I was really, really disappointed by MacOS X's interface. The MacOS had such a great interface, and now it's as lame as Windows. So why pay a premium for it?
On the other hand, a friend of mine who was a PC-zealot (he used to mock my iMac all the time, and thought Mac users were idiots) just visited an Apple Store and has become a total convert. It's fascinating.
Anyway, I guess the point is, it's not ridiculous for people to switch from PCs to Macs, and it's not ridiculous to switch from Macs to PCs. Seriously, different platforms have different advantages. MS showing people who went from Mac to PC is no more ridiculous than showing people going from PC to Mac.
(When I switched from Mac to PC, I found the PC annoying at first. But then I got used to it, and now I find the Mac annoying when I first start using it again. A lot of this is what you're used to.)
ARGH!!! This is such bullshit, I get hired of hearing it. I am not an anti-Mac zealot (in fact, I used to use a Mac, and would consider buying one again if I weren't so disappointed with what Apple did to the macOS X interface), but it's so annoying to hear Mac fans claim that Macs have some large installed marketshare that no one recognizes.
First of all, Apple does not get 5% of all computer sales each year. It gets less than 5%. Secondly, were Macs staying in use longer than PCs, you'd expect Macs to show up as a larger percentage of web site hits. But they don't.
References:
CNet article on Mac market share in 2001
News Factor Network story about Mac market share in 2002
Business Week article about Mac market share
If you read these articles, you find that Mac market share is about 3%.
Now, what do the web stats say about Apple's market share?
Google's web stats
W3Schools web stats
These suggest the Mac has between 2-4% market share.
People need to stop fooling themselves. Just because the Mac has only 3% market share, doesn't mean you shouldn't use it. But stop pretending it has larger market share, when it doesn't!
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/2 3/168225&mode=flat&tid=126
His state office is doing more then federal offices like SEC and even aspects of DOJ. But what has ge gotten in return?
I know this isn't really where you were going, but Spitzer has become extremely well-known and well-respected as a result of his actions against Wall Street and corporations. His plan is to run for New York Governor some day, and this popularity has a real good chance to make that a reality. Because Spitzer has done something very wise, politically-speaking. By going against lying investment banks and NA for preventing reviews, he is aligning himself not against business, but against the excesses of business that hurt the average person.
Spitzer will get the anti-business, far-left votes when he runs for governor, no matter what, because the choice comes down to Democratic Spitzer versus a Republican. But in being for saving capitalism (and protecting the average investor/user) through regulation, rather than attacking capitalism through government fiat, Spitzer can pick up votes from the broad middle that believes in capitalism and a corporate economy, but also believes that corporations sometimes do illegal things that must be prevented.
Having said that Spitzer's line of attack is very wise politically, I don't actually believe that he has made his decision on how to confront corporations based on self-interested political motives. The fact is that Spitzer almost became a corporate lawyer himself. He does not hate corporations, and he does not want to destroy Merrill Lynch. He just wants to make sure they don't lie to investors.
It's like FDR during the New Deal. There were people on the far left who wanted socialism in the US. But FDR believed that it was best to keep capitalism, but to fix its most egregious flaws.
And I think it's silly to write off Spitzer as a potential Supreme Court Justice, some day. If a Democratic president nominated him, it would be very hard for Republicans in Congress to oppose him. Because while Republicans might not love Spitzer, that doesn't give them enough to oppose him. Sure, Larry Kudlow and Forbes magazine would support spiking his nomination, but it would definitely be a losing issue for the Republicans to make, because there are too many swing and Republican voters who would say, "Hey wait, I own stock, I'm glad Spitzer stopped these bastards from lying to me!"
Supreme Court nominations get a huge amount of publicity. It's way too risky for the Republicans, already perceived as the party of the rich, to spike a guy because he protected stock market investors (who now make up a majority of the population) against lying corporations.
And why are there no alternatives? Because after hundreds of years of economic colonialism by the west, traditional subsistence structures have bee destroyed and any chance for competition on equal footing precluded!
Traditional subsistence structures have not been destroyed because of colonialism. Traditional subsistence structures have been destroyed because they have outlived their usefulness. Even were there no colonialism, American grain could still be sold cheaper in many nations than it could be grown by those nations themselves.
Modern economies are massively more efficient than subsistence economies. Do you doubt that America can produce 1000s of times as much per person than it could 300 years ago? The same is true for Europe, and Japan, and is becoming more and more true in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, China, and India.
So, you know what? Third-world nations are welcome to continue running subsistence economies. Seriously, close the country to all imports, and run land reform. It can be done. But to what end? Then you get your whole population doing subsistence farming, while meanwhile people elsewhere are becoming richer and richer. And you have a population full of farmers, and yet it's still cheaper to buy American grain shipped from 4,000 miles away than it is to buy grain your neighbor grows, because American farming is so much more efficient.
And if you do put up import barriers, you still will have to have sweatshops some day if you want to improve your economy. Course, instead of being run by Nike, they'll be run by your neighbor, but you're still being "exploited."
Now, I recognize the argument that it may be better to put up import barriers and foreign ownership barriers to build your own economy. It's a tricky issue, because there's arguments both ways - for example, Latin America failed with ISI (lots of import barriers) and now seems to be failing with free trade as well.
And I also think that one can make a reasonable argument that Nike should be forced to improve conditions in sweatshops in certain ways. For example, there are certain marginal improvements that can be made to sweatshop conditions that don't really impact the economics of the situation very much (a relatively small loss to Nike that doesn't discourage foreign investment in these countries, but a relatively huge gain for the workers in these countries).
But it is foolish to pretend that because we don't like sweatshops, then they don't have to be. There's really no other path to development, other than starting out moving from farms to really horrible factory conditions.
It's amazing how everyone can bitch about how terrible sweatshops are, and how they exploit third-world countries, without bringing up any exmaples. After all, last time I checked China had quadrupled its GDP/capita in the last decade running a "sweatshop" economy - bringing in manufacturing from abroad, attracted by their cheap labor, and then using that to build up their economy to bigger and better things.
Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Malaysia have also been "sweatshop" economies.
Nobody is saying it's fun working in a sweatshop. But subsistence farming ain't that great either. And long-term, attracting cheap manufacturing jobs can be the first step to a modern economy, whereas subsistence farming doesn't really lead anywhere.
And hey, if you think I'm a fascist, feel free to read Marx and see what he thought about the feudal farming economy versus the modern capitalist economy. He recognized many of the same problems with manufacturing capitalism (in his own Europe) that we see today in the third-world today, but that didn't stop him from realizing that such capitalism was a necessary step in economic and social development.
Now, sweatshops don't guarantee success. But they can be the first step in building a modern economy. After all, not only can you look at those Asian nations I listed above, but you can look at Europe and America - early factories hired children, had squalid working conditions, etc. Eventually, as society grew more prosperous, they could afford better work conditions.
I hope you misspoke when you said Apple would merge or disappear. Apple isn't going anywhere, as can be seen by their repeated strong showings at their release party conferences and on Wall Street.
I am not sure what you mean by "repeated strong showings...on Wall Street." Apple's stock is trading at barely above the value of their cash reserves, which shows you that Wall Street has very little faith in Apple stock indeed. There was a brief (but massive) run-up in Apple stock in 1998 and 1999, but other than that the stock has been a failure over the long term - selling at the same price today as it was 12 years ago.
And I'm an Apple stockholder, unfortunately.
You know, the modding on Slashdot is outrageous sometimes. There is nothing trollish about this post. But too many moderators on Slashdot think that trolling means saying something they don't like.
Someone posts a comment that the only reason other countries in the world have weapons is because they're afraid of an American attack, and it gets moderated as +5 insightful. Someone simply says that there are left-wingers who produce biased science too (which is demonstably true), and he gets modded as a troll.
Recently, in a thread on SGI, I saw a post by a user with an ID around 600, which gave a lot of evidence for why SGI is in trouble in a number of marketplaces, because of pressure from cheap Athlon systems. He got modded as a troll. Then a user with a userID above 600,000 posted nothing more than "SGI will lose because Linux is taking it on the low-end" and got rated as insightful. So apparently, if you say SGI is dying because of low-end PCs, that's trolling because Slashdotters emotionally prefer SGIs to PCs. But if you say SGI is dying because of Linux, that's not trolling, because Slashdotters emotionally prefer Linux to all else.
You can mod me down as off-topic, or as a troll, but I don't care. Moderators need to recognize that just because you don't like an opinion doesn't make it a troll.
They often ask me what Japan can do to improve its economy, and I usually tell them that Japan needs to get all of its eggs out of the US Economic basket and spread them around, so if that basket falls, not all of the eggs will break. They often ask me why I don't like the US and I usually respond by asking them why they aren't afraid of George W. Bush.
Maybe you should advise them to fix their banking system and start dealing with their massive national debt (which, as a percentage of GDP, is more than twice as big as America's). Your platitude sounds meaningful - an American warning about America - but it is actually meaningless. Japan's major problem economically is the domestic basis of its economy.
Yes, if America collapses economically then Japan is screwed. So is the rest of the world. But one of the reasons America's economy is so important to the world right now is because Japan and Europe have not fixed their economies. America, South Korea, China, and India are driving world economic growth right now. But because China and India are mainly exporters, and South Korea isn't that big, only America can really help the rest of the world. Traditionally, when America was going into recession, we could expect European and Japanese growth to help counteract the American recession. But now, because Japan and Europe have been stagnant for years, it is left up to America's economy alone.
If you think that North Korea (or Iraq) as aspirations to take over the world, then I think you are mistaking them with the most power / money-hungry country on Earth - the US. Everyone else (except for Israel) is quite happy left to their own devices, and only has weapons to protect themselves from the inevidable invasion from the US military / economy.
Ok, let's see:
The Palestinians started an Intifada against the Israelis despite the fact that the Israelis had just gone to final status negotiations with them, and continued negotiating at Taba even after 3 months of violence.
Hizbullah continues to attack Israel despite a complete pullout - certified by the UN - of Israeli forces from Lebanon.
Iraq invaded Iran.
Iraq invaded Kuwait.
Serbians tried to ethnically cleanse Kosovo.
Serbians tried to ethnically cleanse Bosnia.
Pakistan continues to send militants into Kashmir. Pakistan and India recently almost went to war over Kashmir.
The Soviet Union went to war in Aghanistan.
France sent its military to the Ivory Coast to prevent the civil war there from spreading.
There has been a massive war in Congo to which rival African nations sent their armies.
Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a war.
All these happened in the last 20 years. There are more, I'm just going off the top of my head. So right. The only reason any countries have weapons is because they are afraid of the US. Obviously Japan is afraid of the US, not North Korea - oh wait! Japan wants to join the US missile shield because they are afraid of North Korea!
I am less than sympathetic towards Kevin Mitnick. He committed a crime, and he got punished for it. Poor baby.
However, I think not ever allowing him to use a computer again is a foolish punishment. Computers are too essential to life in America today for that to be a reasonable punishment.
Personally, I would like to see some sort of bargain between the court and Mitnick, whereby he gets to use computers again, but will face an ever tougher punishment if he is discovered hacking again.
*sigh*
I thought enough material had finally invaded the net to realize sarcasm.
Note the original posters helpful use of an emoticon at the end of his post. Emoticons can symbolize many tones in situations where the text would otherwise be unclear.
Where does that put you?
Additionally, you ask where IMF intervention has worked. Well, it's very hard to measure whether IMF intervention was successful or not. After all, there are a lot of factors in an economy. If an economy booms after IMF intervention, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the IMF (Russia's economy is doing better today because oil prices have risen, not because of the IMF). On the other hand, if an economy collapses despite IMF intervention, it doesn't necessarily mean IMF intervention was bad - the economy might just have had too many problems for the IMF to correct.
But, it is possible to argue that the IMF intervention was successful in South Korea. The South Korean economy contracted by 6.3% in 1998 (source) after the Asian economic crisis hit, but it has rebounded very well. According to one report, "GDP growth for 1999 was 10.7%, possibly the fastest recovery ever." (source Its GDP growth for 2002 is 6.1%, and GDP growth for 2003 is estimated to be 5.3%. (source)
South Korea's recovery from the Asian Crisis has been very good. In fact, people are talking about how South Korea might become the new model for Asian economic development, taking over from the Japanese model. The South Korean model is basically moving away from export-driven growth to domestic consumption driven growth.
This model, I will point out, is essentially the American model for economic growth. And, also the model the IMF was pushing.
Thailand has also recovered fairly well from the Asian economic crisis. Its GDP dropped 1.7% and then 10.7% in the wake of the crisis, (source), but bounced back by 4.4%, 4.6% (source) and then 1.8% (source). Its recovery hasn't been as good as South Koreas, but its has been recovering. Its unemployment has remained very low. And frankly, given that people thought that the Asian crisis might lead to a worldwide depression, I think that's pretty incredible. Remember how long it took the world to get through the last depression - when there was no IMF.
I happen to think that the IMF sometimes offers mistaken economic policy as well (I am not an economic expert, but from my reading about Russia and China I believe there are cases where government guidance is necessary to put the economy on stable ground, and then it can be deregulated). But just to make sure everyone is clear on what Stiglitz is saying, he is NOT saying that "The IMF is a vehicle for implementing a policy that is designed to make poor nations poorer, and the US based financial world richer." Or, at least, he is not saying that the IMF's policy goal is to make poor nations poorer for the sake of making the rich nations richer. That may be an unintended consequence, but it is not the IMF's goal according to Stiglitz. Here's what he wrote in his New Republic article:
"It's not fair to say that IMF economists don't care about the citizens of developing nations. But the older men who staff the fund--and they are overwhelmingly older men--act as if they are shouldering Rudyard Kipling's white man's burden. IMF experts believe they are brighter, more educated, and less politically motivated than the economists in the countries they visit. In fact, the economic leaders from those countries are pretty good--in many cases brighter or better-educated than the IMF staff, which frequently consists of third-rank students from first-rate universities. "
In other words, Stiglitz thinks the IMF is wrong - not purposely malicious.
Just for the record, YIM does appear to store messages for when a user comes online. At the very least, I just logged onto it a few days ago and got a message that user xxxxx had sent me a message while I was offline, and I could read it...