will never allow us to blow each other up. The Soviet Union/Russia was not and is not a threat. This is Wargarble that serves one of 3 purposes: to keep the economy going with the military industrial complex (since real socialism is a pill Americans can't swallow), an excuse for ever lowering standards of living or just plain 'ole war profiteering.

I remember a few years ago a bunch of Pakistani terrorists hit a major building in India. There was strong evidence the Pakistani gov't was aware of the impending attack and said nothing. I was all set for WWIII and then... nothing. Not so much as a wimper.

See, dropping bombs on people that can't fight back from $2 million dollar drones is profitable. Real, large scale total war isn't.

Not so much. Critical to the _investor class_ maybe? But for anyone in tech this is the end of what's left of their careers. How are we suppose to compete which borderline indentured servitude?

Also, Foxconn doesn't make public statements about their commitment to workers rights while cheerfully ignoring the abuses. I was prepared to give Apple a pass the first time they claimed they weren't aware. The second I was leery. We're on something like the 5th or 6th report. Apple, like all tech companies, abuses it's workforce. The difference is they spend a lot of time claiming they don't....

And tried them with off the wall games? Like Psychonauts, Stranger's Odyssey, older Need For Speed games or Maybe Fallout 3? I'm wondering how stable they are these days. The 4000 serious turned me off ATI again. Ran fine on Call of Duty and other big titles but the smaller ones were really unstable :(... I miss the nicer image quality, better performance and lower prices...

I'll stop bashing when I stop reading reports about their Labor abuses. Deal?

and Germany. And the Netherlands. And a tonne of other countries where Socialism works just fine thank you very much. What _doesn't_ work is mixing American Style right-wing Reagan-Thatcher politics in. See the UK's collapsing economy for that, or wealth inequality in the U.S. that's gone back to pre-Black Tuesday leves.

Also, there's this little think called progress. I'm too lazy to google for the Robert Reich infographic that show that productivity is up 80% since 1979 but wages are only up 8% (and that proves wages stopped growing in America in 1979). Forget all that. We're rapidly automating away just about every job. Even _China_ is replacing workers with robots. When robots are cheaper than Chinese slave labor you know you have a problem.

So, when we don't need people to work 20 hours a week let alone the 50 they're doing now (you can google the /. article on that one too) what the _heck_ do we do with 'em all. The world _doesn't_ need ditch diggers....

the real capitalists are global. They benefit from us competing with cheaper labor. Marx predicted this but all anyone can remember about him is that a few dictators used his books for rhetoric.

As for Adam Smith, he actually as against this sort of naked capitalism. He wrote at a time of small merchant artisans. He didn't see the industrial revolution coming and if he had probably wouldn't have written the books he did. These days he's like Marx: all anybody remembers about him is what fits in with what they want.

Slaves were very expensive compared to immigrants. With immigrants you could treat them just as bad and when they got weak move on to the next batch. With slaves you had money sunk in. The south also had huge amounts of capital sunk into slaves. If you're selling someone's buying, and that costs money. It's one of the reasons they were so far behind the curve on the industrial revolution...

they just lost. That's all. I'm sure they fought mightily to avoid paying.

Motorola built a factory in the states and did just fine. They only moved it over seas because slave labor is still cheaper, but they were plenty profitable and selling the phones for competitive prices.

I've been filling the head of a good friend of mine with liberalism and it prompted his Dad to ask "What do you have against Profit". This. This is what I have against profit. It's _never_ enough.

Well, actually it's the Supreme Judicial Court, or SJC.

or android. Or PS4. Or any other platform Microsoft doesn't want it on.

I know I might be over reacting, but is it just me or is there something wrong with a world where a company has so much money it just just nonchalantly drop $2 billion USD to get a slight competitive advantage? This isn't the first time Microsoft has done this either. This is why liberals don't like concentration of wealth and support high capital gains taxes...

I'm not saying that. I'm saying the "green" message wasn't what stopped nuclear. Backroom deals among the ultra wealthy, just like everything else that really matters.

Seriously? Do you really believe a bunch of hippies put the breaks on something as profitable as Nuclear power?

Coal and oil lobbies, the folks paid to store nuclear waste instead of processing it into new power. Look at those folks. Follow the money. When anything of importance happens it's always money.

In America there's 5 million job openings... and 10 million people looking for work. Easier said than done.