To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two mont
From:
"How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates" http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ [greenspun.com] """ William Henry Gates III made his best decision on October 28, 1955, the night he was born. He chose J.W. Maxwell as his great-grandfather. Maxwell founded Seattle's National City Bank in 1906. His son, James Willard Maxwell was also a banker and established a million-dollar trust fund for William (Bill) Henry Gates III. In some of the later lessons, you will be encouraged to take entrepreneurial risks. You may find it comforting to remember that at any time you can fall back on a trust fund worth many millions of 1998 dollars. """
In Bill Gates' own language, "Is this fair?" The guy is born a multi-millionaire, writes his commercial software on publicly funded computer at Harvard, learned to write software by dumpster diving at a computer center, and then, after all that, he writes a letter like this? That's chutzpah. From: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates [wikiquote.org] "The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating system."
Bill Gate's could have spent his lifetime writing free software. That being born a multi-millionaire was not enough for him is a sign of an illness that causes "financial obesity", not something to be emulated. But, in the end, it is not Bill Gates who has destroyed our society as much as all the people who want to be the next Bill Gates and support regressive social policies they hope to benefit from someday.
From:
"The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe's" http://conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47/ [conceptualguerilla.com] """ Of course eventually, these guy realize that not only are they not millionaires, they're not making much progress toward that noble goal. That's when they get ugly. You see, they see themselves as capable, intelligent, hard working people - and they are for the most part - who "have what it takes" to "make it". They believe that the difference between those who "make it" and those who don't is being "capable, intelligent and hardworking". Things like "having rich parents", "getting just plain lucky" or "being a crook" don't factor into the equation anywhere. No, American society is a natural hierarchy where the most capable are "rich beyond their wildest dreams", and the non-rich are chumps that just don't measure up.... But here's something I'll bet the dittoheads haven't thought of. Maybe they're the chumps. Maybe they've been sold a bogus "American dream" that never existed. Maybe "the rules" they play by were written by the people who have "made it" - not by the people who haven't. And maybe - just maybe - the people who have "made it" wrote those rules to keep the wannabes chasing a dream that's a mirage. Maybe Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Samuel Adams didn't fight to make the world safe for John D. Rockefeller - or Don LaPre, either. Maybe the Rolls Royce complete with bimbo was left out of our inalienable rights for a reason. Maybe the "pursuit of happiness" Thomas Jefferson wrote about was something a bit more profound than the empty joy of owning things you don't need so you can look down of down on the lesser mortals who lack your "ability". Maybe Thomas Jefferson intended the "pursuit of happiness" to be something attainable not just for anybody - but for everybody. """
Bill Gates is a smart and creative and hard working guy, no one can dispute that. It is too bad he did not apply that to helping all of society transition to a post-scarcity economy, rather than try to become "financially obese". The thing is, he knows something is wrong. He started a foundation to help the world. He is just so socially enmeshed in a dying ideology of artificial scarcity economics that he doesn't know how to fix it, and he surrounds himself with people who just produce more of the same rather than thinking outside the scarcity box.
More on what dumpster diving meant to Bill Gates: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=437640&cid=22255952 [slashdot.org] """ Interviewer: Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer? Bill Gates: No. the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system. You got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code. You've got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you're doing wrong. """
Interesting that Microsoft can accuse others of "stealing" their software, but he advocates reading through other people's source code that he had no permission to access?
It's a shame that MS doesn't let other people learn from their software by releasing the source (even if only for older products), if they really thought that is the best way to learn.
I do hope MS have good hard drive destruction procedures - if someone managed to fish out some MS source code recovered from a discarded company PC, it would
You got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code. You've got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you're doing wrong.
Quite a clear endorsement of the open source model. And if the source he dived for had had an explicit open source license, he not only would have had every right to take them, but he could have insisted on having it:-)
Of course eventually, these guy realize that not only are they not millionaires, they're not making much progress toward that noble goal. That's when they get ugly. You see, they see themselves as capable, intelligent, hard working people - and they are for the most part - who "have what it takes" to "make
Is that most people who are not millionaires but are working to become one would freely admit that they if they don't get there, its because they weren't good enough. You can work hard, study hard, etc, but, if you aren't good enough, you don't get to make the team millionaire. But along the way you do grow from what you do. You've tried to build a business, have made products, have made some sales, have learned about your gut and how the world really works. Those things you can only get from stepping into the ring, as Teddy Roosevelt so famously observed, and that, there's a certain thing you get just from getting in there and putting up your dukes.
What is important to us is having the opportunity to try and chase one's goals, and, if you listen to what we say, you would hear that over and over again - the Constitution doesn't guarantee success, but the right to pursue it. Nothing in life is guaranteed. The American dream is not getting rich per se, its about having the opportunity to try. When you guys on the left ramble on about guarantees, you've missed the point of life altogether. You want to have all of these guarantees for yourselves and in doing so really undermine your own ability to say, at the end, that you lived your life yourself. You want to trade away the opportunity for order, just because, you don't think you can succeed. That's just utterly pathetic.
So yeah, Bill Gates got rich. I didn't. Maybe I never will. I don't care and Bill Gate's wealth doesn't bother me. He got the opportunity to live his dream and I got the opportunity to live mine, and however I use my opportunity, my life, is my business, and has nothing to do with him, and has nothing to do with you.
Those quotes are to show how the replied to poster's assumptions about work, equity, their own future prospects, and so on have flaws, and that people have pointed those flaws out for decades. And as Marshall Brain suggests, it's just plain suicidal to believe in conservative hard-work-gets-you-ahead economics in an age of increasing automation (and better design), because most jobs will be automated, leaving people to starve. One alternative is significant social change towards a basic income (social secur
You're not even replying to him. You're just pasting text from somewhere else that you think is related. This is such a horrible troll account.
Yeah but at least he *read* it. At least there was enough semblance of some thought to relate it and it is appropriate to relate it. You are getting modded insightful by the same person who modded him a troll - but it doesn't change the reality.
The economic system is designed around a flawed and outdated model, it produces a plethora of externalities. What illustra
Is that most people who are not millionaires but are working to become one would freely admit that they if they don't get there, its because they weren't good enough. You can work hard, study hard, etc, but, if you aren't good enough, you don't get to make the team millionaire.
They would freely admit that, but they'd be wrong. Just because people drank the kool-aid and then agree with the guy at the front of the room behind the podium doesn't mean they're all right.
The America you describe might have existed in the previous centuries, but at this point in time, the system is showing extravagant fault.
All those guys who already became millionaires? They spend all their time making sure they stay millionaires. In order for them to stay millionaires, it means they have to keep ot
Bill Gate's could have spent his lifetime writing free software. That being born a multi-millionaire was not enough for him is a sign of an illness that causes "financial obesity", not something to be emulated. But, in the end, it is not Bill Gates who has destroyed our society as much as all the people who want to be the next Bill Gates and support regressive social policies they hope to benefit from someday.
It's a poor, twisted soul that even thinks to call wealth 'financial obesity', or refer to it as an
Wealth is a zero sum game. Not everyone can be wealthy. Period. If someone else takes all your candles, you could be left with no candle to light while he has a billion candles that you could be burning. (I assume you are talking about lighting a candle as if you were spending money.)
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but to say wealth isn't zero-sum is wrong (Unless you work for the US treasury and you are making new candles out of thin air causing all other candles to be less impressive.)
Wealth is a zero sum game. Not everyone can be wealthy. Period. I'll agree that not everyone can be wealthy, but that doesn't make it zero sum. If it was a zero sum game, we could not have far more wealthy people than the world has seen before, and we could not have a vast majority of western countries with citizens who enjoy material wealth not even possible 100 years ago.
That wealth was generated by human activity. It was not taken from someone else, because there was no one to take it from.
I think you are referring to cost of living? I'll agree, has gone down with the use of technology, but I don't attribute that to wealth. It's not like we have more rich people. We just have more people who can afford plumbing, big screen televisions, etc because they are getting cheaper to make.
We just have more people who can afford plumbing, big screen televisions, etc because they are getting cheaper to make.
And widespread access to the creature comforts of life supports your argument how? What is wealth for? Specific dollar numbers are going up and down, but access to the modern benefits that wealth provides is quite widespread....
I'll agree that not everyone can be wealthy, but that doesn't make it zero sum. If it was a zero sum game, we could not have far more wealthy people than the world has seen before, and we could not have a vast majority of western countries with citizens who enjoy material wealth not even possible 100 years ago.
That's a mighty vague definition of "wealth" you have there.
That's a mighty vague definition of "wealth" you have there. Money, and what you can buy with it. Simple enough for you? We exchange money for goods and services, so 'wealth' might include the ability to use goods and services as you choose.
You are engaging in an ad hominem (personal) attack and creating strawmen arguments, and saying there is no point to dialog, which all suggests your points are weak.
The market is failing for several mathematical reasons, so Sowell, even though wrong about many historic psychological things, is irrelevant (look up Marshall Sahlin's work on "The Original Affluent Society" or Alfie Kohn's work on motivation with lots of references to the scientific literature). http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html [gnu.org]
Ok, obviously someone is abusing the moderation system here to have a go at this guy or we have a moderator that is on a bad acid trip. I'll be flagging it as such and maybe some other moderators will redress the situation.
The term "financial obesity" comes from the author James P. Hogan, who is one of the most optimistic people around, believing strongly in the value of learning and effort and advanced technology. Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear [wikipedia.org]
And one of the few books around that describes what an Open Sourced society might look like - very interesting read.
Why the fuck is this ++Insightful comment modded as a troll? I see nothing trollish in it. It's ironic though that the behavior exhibited
Uh... no criticism of initiative, creativity, or risk taking inherent in achieving individual goals implicit... but do please explain why we currently record the largest gap in incomes since the founding of the republic.
The evidence of a wealth gap in and of itself is not a moral problem, unless you're operating out of a spirit of envy.
The wealth another man has or controls is irrelevant if his posession of such does not prevent me from generating enough wealth to meet my needs.
Re: Competition: The winning and losing involved in competition is not a permanent, one-time state. The person who loses today may better themselves and win tommorow. In denigrating competition, you miss this vital point.
They don't help out people who don't have any. Many cheap-labor conservatives don't want to help out the destitute at all. They say government assistance to people will make them "dependent". They say it breeds "inefficiency" and "laziness".
One anecdote about a person on welfare (possibly burned out or damaged from the current economic system or schooling) does not a case make.
You said previously that another person's vast wealth does not bother you unless it affected your ability to make a living. I then gave a list of things from campaign donations through advertising and getting multiple chances that suggests a vast wealth disparity would impact your ability to make money. And that's even without considering how many workers can be replaced
How this comment gets 5: Insightful is beyond me. All like the parent replied, it's all ad hominems and strawmen. There's not a single hard argument here that holds water.
Let's say we're both in line at Fortune 500 company for a VP promotion. We can't both have our candles lit, can we?
Implicit in your question is the assumption that the VP promotion is the only way for that individual to generate wealth beyond what he already posesses. It also implies a fixation on working for someone else to generate wealth, but someone has to start all these companies that grow into fortune 500 companies and employ thousands of people and a few VP's.
This is the most blatant example of moderator abuse I have seen on slashdot, every comment modded a troll. puuulease. It looks like the signs that Benjamin Franklin were talking about are happening right here and trite now, how glib.
This sort of abuse illustrates that freedom of speech will be sacrificed to maintain the status quo. Dissent will not be tolerated and there will be enough 'Useful idiot's' out there to help crush that dissent. What a ironic example of how freedom is an illusion. You are free t
--Wealth is not a zero-sum game. It's more like lighting candles- if I light your candle, I still have my flame. The generation of wealth is very real and quite possible to prove within a paragraph or two. I'll leave it to you to consider for the moment.--
They really don't generate anything other than what was already here. It just changes form and that is all. Like right now carbon in the ground is being sent to atmosphere by us. So every thing on this earth is zero sum in the end. Rich or poor, you will d
Bill Gates wrote to me for money in 1976 (Score:5, Interesting)
By William Henry Gates III
February 3, 1976
An Open Letter to Hobbyists
To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two mont
Re:Bill Gates wrote to me for money in 1976 (Score:2, Interesting)
From:
"How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates"
http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ [greenspun.com]
"""
William Henry Gates III made his best decision on October 28, 1955, the night he was born. He chose J.W. Maxwell as his great-grandfather. Maxwell founded Seattle's National City Bank in 1906. His son, James Willard Maxwell was also a banker and established a million-dollar trust fund for William (Bill) Henry Gates III. In some of the later lessons, you will be encouraged to take entrepreneurial risks. You may find it comforting to remember that at any time you can fall back on a trust fund worth many millions of 1998 dollars.
"""
In Bill Gates' own language, "Is this fair?" The guy is born a multi-millionaire, writes his commercial software on publicly funded computer at Harvard, learned to write software by dumpster diving at a computer center, and then, after all that, he writes a letter like this? That's chutzpah. From:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates [wikiquote.org]
"The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating system."
Bill Gate's could have spent his lifetime writing free software. That being born a multi-millionaire was not enough for him is a sign of an illness that causes "financial obesity", not something to be emulated. But, in the end, it is not Bill Gates who has destroyed our society as much as all the people who want to be the next Bill Gates and support regressive social policies they hope to benefit from someday.
From: ... But here's something I'll bet the dittoheads haven't thought of. Maybe they're the chumps. Maybe they've been sold a bogus "American dream" that never existed. Maybe "the rules" they play by were written by the people who have "made it" - not by the people who haven't. And maybe - just maybe - the people who have "made it" wrote those rules to keep the wannabes chasing a dream that's a mirage. Maybe Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Samuel Adams didn't fight to make the world safe for John D. Rockefeller - or Don LaPre, either. Maybe the Rolls Royce complete with bimbo was left out of our inalienable rights for a reason. Maybe the "pursuit of happiness" Thomas Jefferson wrote about was something a bit more profound than the empty joy of owning things you don't need so you can look down of down on the lesser mortals who lack your "ability". Maybe Thomas Jefferson intended the "pursuit of happiness" to be something attainable not just for anybody - but for everybody.
"The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe's"
http://conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47/ [conceptualguerilla.com]
"""
Of course eventually, these guy realize that not only are they not millionaires, they're not making much progress toward that noble goal. That's when they get ugly. You see, they see themselves as capable, intelligent, hard working people - and they are for the most part - who "have what it takes" to "make it". They believe that the difference between those who "make it" and those who don't is being "capable, intelligent and hardworking". Things like "having rich parents", "getting just plain lucky" or "being a crook" don't factor into the equation anywhere. No, American society is a natural hierarchy where the most capable are "rich beyond their wildest dreams", and the non-rich are chumps that just don't measure up.
"""
See also the way that programmers could afford to work for "free" making free stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income [wikipedia.org]
Bill Gates is a smart and creative and hard working guy, no one can dispute that. It is too bad he did not apply that to helping all of society transition to a post-scarcity economy, rather than try to become "financially obese". The thing is, he knows something is wrong. He started a foundation to help the world. He is just so socially enmeshed in a dying ideology of artificial scarcity economics that he doesn't know how to fix it, and he surrounds himself with people who just produce more of the same rather than thinking outside the scarcity box.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You know, if you take all of your sour grapes and start a winery, you'd be very successful.
Just saying.
Re:Bill Gates wrote to me for money in 1976 (Score:5, Informative)
More on what dumpster diving meant to Bill Gates:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=437640&cid=22255952 [slashdot.org]
"""
Interviewer: Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer?
Bill Gates: No. the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system. You got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code. You've got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you're doing wrong.
"""
Re: (Score:1)
Interesting that Microsoft can accuse others of "stealing" their software, but he advocates reading through other people's source code that he had no permission to access?
It's a shame that MS doesn't let other people learn from their software by releasing the source (even if only for older products), if they really thought that is the best way to learn.
I do hope MS have good hard drive destruction procedures - if someone managed to fish out some MS source code recovered from a discarded company PC, it would
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite a clear endorsement of the open source model. And if the source he dived for had had an explicit open source license, he not only would have had every right to take them, but he could have insisted on having it :-)
What you don't get... (Score:4, Informative)
Of course eventually, these guy realize that not only are they not millionaires, they're not making much progress toward that noble goal. That's when they get ugly. You see, they see themselves as capable, intelligent, hard working people - and they are for the most part - who "have what it takes" to "make
Is that most people who are not millionaires but are working to become one would freely admit that they if they don't get there, its because they weren't good enough. You can work hard, study hard, etc, but, if you aren't good enough, you don't get to make the team millionaire. But along the way you do grow from what you do. You've tried to build a business, have made products, have made some sales, have learned about your gut and how the world really works. Those things you can only get from stepping into the ring, as Teddy Roosevelt so famously observed, and that, there's a certain thing you get just from getting in there and putting up your dukes.
What is important to us is having the opportunity to try and chase one's goals, and, if you listen to what we say, you would hear that over and over again - the Constitution doesn't guarantee success, but the right to pursue it. Nothing in life is guaranteed. The American dream is not getting rich per se, its about having the opportunity to try. When you guys on the left ramble on about guarantees, you've missed the point of life altogether. You want to have all of these guarantees for yourselves and in doing so really undermine your own ability to say, at the end, that you lived your life yourself. You want to trade away the opportunity for order, just because, you don't think you can succeed. That's just utterly pathetic.
So yeah, Bill Gates got rich. I didn't. Maybe I never will. I don't care and Bill Gate's wealth doesn't bother me. He got the opportunity to live his dream and I got the opportunity to live mine, and however I use my opportunity, my life, is my business, and has nothing to do with him, and has nothing to do with you.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You're not even replying to him. You're just pasting text from somewhere else that you think is related. This is such a horrible troll account.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Those quotes are to show how the replied to poster's assumptions about work, equity, their own future prospects, and so on have flaws, and that people have pointed those flaws out for decades. And as Marshall Brain suggests, it's just plain suicidal to believe in conservative hard-work-gets-you-ahead economics in an age of increasing automation (and better design), because most jobs will be automated, leaving people to starve. One alternative is significant social change towards a basic income (social secur
Re: (Score:2)
Attack of the get-ahead's, they'll just keep thinking "It's gonna be me one day, it's my birthright"
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah but at least he *read* it. At least there was enough semblance of some thought to relate it and it is appropriate to relate it. You are getting modded insightful by the same person who modded him a troll - but it doesn't change the reality.
The economic system is designed around a flawed and outdated model, it produces a plethora of externalities. What illustra
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Is that most people who are not millionaires but are working to become one would freely admit that they if they don't get there, its because they weren't good enough. You can work hard, study hard, etc, but, if you aren't good enough, you don't get to make the team millionaire.
They would freely admit that, but they'd be wrong. Just because people drank the kool-aid and then agree with the guy at the front of the room behind the podium doesn't mean they're all right.
The America you describe might have existed in the previous centuries, but at this point in time, the system is showing extravagant fault.
All those guys who already became millionaires? They spend all their time making sure they stay millionaires. In order for them to stay millionaires, it means they have to keep ot
financial obesity? illness? What gall! (Score:3, Insightful)
Bill Gate's could have spent his lifetime writing free software. That being born a multi-millionaire was not enough for him is a sign of an illness that causes "financial obesity", not something to be emulated. But, in the end, it is not Bill Gates who has destroyed our society as much as all the people who want to be the next Bill Gates and support regressive social policies they hope to benefit from someday.
It's a poor, twisted soul that even thinks to call wealth 'financial obesity', or refer to it as an
Re: (Score:2)
Wealth is a zero sum game. Not everyone can be wealthy. Period. If someone else takes all your candles, you could be left with no candle to light while he has a billion candles that you could be burning. (I assume you are talking about lighting a candle as if you were spending money.)
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but to say wealth isn't zero-sum is wrong (Unless you work for the US treasury and you are making new candles out of thin air causing all other candles to be less impressive.)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Wealth is a zero sum game. Not everyone can be wealthy. Period.
I'll agree that not everyone can be wealthy, but that doesn't make it zero sum. If it was a zero sum game, we could not have far more wealthy people than the world has seen before, and we could not have a vast majority of western countries with citizens who enjoy material wealth not even possible 100 years ago.
That wealth was generated by human activity. It was not taken from someone else, because there was no one to take it from.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you are referring to cost of living? I'll agree, has gone down with the use of technology, but I don't attribute that to wealth. It's not like we have more rich people. We just have more people who can afford plumbing, big screen televisions, etc because they are getting cheaper to make.
So how does that support your point? (Score:2)
We just have more people who can afford plumbing, big screen televisions, etc because they are getting cheaper to make.
And widespread access to the creature comforts of life supports your argument how? What is wealth for? Specific dollar numbers are going up and down, but access to the modern benefits that wealth provides is quite widespread....
So what are you complaining about again?
Re: (Score:2)
I'll agree that not everyone can be wealthy, but that doesn't make it zero sum. If it was a zero sum game, we could not have far more wealthy people than the world has seen before, and we could not have a vast majority of western countries with citizens who enjoy material wealth not even possible 100 years ago.
That's a mighty vague definition of "wealth" you have there.
Oh, come now. It's simple. (Score:2)
That's a mighty vague definition of "wealth" you have there.
Money, and what you can buy with it. Simple enough for you? We exchange money for goods and services, so 'wealth' might include the ability to use goods and services as you choose.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You are engaging in an ad hominem (personal) attack and creating strawmen arguments, and saying there is no point to dialog, which all suggests your points are weak.
The differing underlying premises we operate from, and how that will generally make us talk past each other, is detailed in part by Thomas Sowell in A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles [amazon.com].
Unfortunately, I don't have the time or inclination to write a book, so I merely allude to the fact that the premises underlying our
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The market is failing for several mathematical reasons, so Sowell, even though wrong about many historic psychological things, is irrelevant (look up Marshall Sahlin's work on "The Original Affluent Society" or Alfie Kohn's work on motivation with lots of references to the scientific literature).
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html [gnu.org]
The market does not account well for positive or negative externalities (stuff like pollution).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality [wikipedia.org]
The
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And one of the few books around that describes what an Open Sourced society might look like - very interesting read.
Why the fuck is this ++Insightful comment modded as a troll? I see nothing trollish in it. It's ironic though that the behavior exhibited
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks. My sentiments exactly. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Uh... no criticism of initiative, creativity, or risk taking inherent in achieving individual goals implicit ... but do please explain why we currently record the largest gap in incomes since the founding of the republic.
The evidence of a wealth gap in and of itself is not a moral problem, unless you're operating out of a spirit of envy.
The wealth another man has or controls is irrelevant if his posession of such does not prevent me from generating enough wealth to meet my needs.
I have no need to explain it
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Competition: The winning and losing involved in competition is not a permanent, one-time state. The person who loses today may better themselves and win tommorow. In denigrating competition, you miss this vital point.
They don't help out people who don't have any. Many cheap-labor conservatives don't want to help out the destitute at all. They say government assistance to people will make them "dependent". They say it breeds "inefficiency" and "laziness".
Do you actually know anyone on government assist
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
One anecdote about a person on welfare (possibly burned out or damaged from the current economic system or schooling) does not a case make.
You said previously that another person's vast wealth does not bother you unless it affected your ability to make a living. I then gave a list of things from campaign donations through advertising and getting multiple chances that suggests a vast wealth disparity would impact your ability to make money. And that's even without considering how many workers can be replaced
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
How this comment gets 5: Insightful is beyond me. All like the parent replied, it's all ad hominems and strawmen. There's not a single hard argument here that holds water.
http://www.jmooneyham.com/the-huge-mountain-of-cash-separating-the-rich-from-everyone-else.html [jmooneyham.com] (and seriously, I'm seeing new infographics like this every few days, this is just the most recent)
Wealth is a zero sum game, a game where the wealthy get the sum and everybody else gets as close to zero as possible without revolting against
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Let's say we're both in line at Fortune 500 company for a VP promotion. We can't both have our candles lit, can we?
Implicit in your question is the assumption that the VP promotion is the only way for that individual to generate wealth beyond what he already posesses. It also implies a fixation on working for someone else to generate wealth, but someone has to start all these companies that grow into fortune 500 companies and employ thousands of people and a few VP's.
"Poisoned soul" doesn't mean anything. Y
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This sort of abuse illustrates that freedom of speech will be sacrificed to maintain the status quo. Dissent will not be tolerated and there will be enough 'Useful idiot's' out there to help crush that dissent. What a ironic example of how freedom is an illusion. You are free t
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This is the most blatant example of moderator abuse I have seen on slashdot, every comment modded a troll. puuulease.
I was thinking the exact same thing.
dfenstrate is a dolt, yet every post he makes gets rated +5...
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This is of course part of what I spoke of- a thousand underlying premises that make these discussions difficult at best.
I'm terribly sorry to do this point-by-point response, as I generally find it tiresome and cosntantly spiraling, but there it is.
You're right, you're way smarter than all of us unwashed masses who don't deserve the benefit of your supreme insight.
How do you even take yourself seriously?
"Nothing is easier than self-deception. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true." -Demosthenes
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Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWERzwbobOk [youtube.com]
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--Wealth is not a zero-sum game. It's more like lighting candles- if I light your candle, I still have my flame. The generation of wealth is very real and quite possible to prove within a paragraph or two. I'll leave it to you to consider for the moment.--
They really don't generate anything other than what was already here. It just changes form and that is all. Like right now carbon in the ground is being sent to atmosphere by us. So every thing on this earth is zero sum in the end. Rich or poor, you will d
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You touch on my position in your own response: It just changes form and that is all.
A balance of inputs and outputs- this is what you talk about, correct? Sure, it's changed form, but hey, the materials were always here, right?
How can we generate wealth if we've got a limited set of components to work with?
Is that your position? The basis of your statement? The notion you rest 'zero-sum wealth on'?
If:
raw materials = product
then that supports your idea that the amount of wealth in the world is stable, and on
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--raw materials + human effort = product + wealth--
You could just as easily have said this:
tobacco (Jamestown America) + human effort = dope
dope = wealth
It would not matter. We don't seem to important to the way the rest of the universe operates or anything.
--Where does the effort humans constantly add into the world figure into your equation?--
I don't know but the historical record doesn't look that well right now. Hopefully, we can do better because we must.
What didn't you really agree with?