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Comment Re:And... it's gone (Score 1) 636

Assuming that the NK top military are not religious nut cases or just outright stupid, the only reason for the sabre rattling, would be to divert attention of the general population away from internal issues and keep them in line; I would expect the levels of dissent among the NK population to be quite high.

Does someone have any direct information on general position of the NK population of its leaders?

Comment Re:And... it's gone (Score 1) 636

Please do some back ground checks with someone who really has had some experience living in Europe, before you start blurting out nonsense.

Europe is not going broke under the weight of Socialistic market controls. It's going broke because in the last 15-20 years everything that was governed by 'socialistic market controls' has been privatised, after which prices of those services started soaring and the actual service received dropped significantly.

Due to privatisation, instead of just going to the GP and getting a prescription, patients now go to the GP, who tells them to get a some further tests with a specialist in the hospital, who in turn does some additional tests 'just to be sure', then another appointment at the GP later that person gets the same prescription. After privatisation, money is made by every additional bit of work someone does, resulting in lots of unnecessary steps. Also because hospitals are essentially competing with one another, every hospital now needs that multi-million CAT scanner that sits idle for 80% of the time. Previously if a test like that was required and no profit was made, a patient would be sent to a different hospital, Now patients pay for expensive equipment that sits idle most of the time.

Same with the railroads; railroads are privatised after which the companies that run them are completely uninterested in actually maintaining the existing infrastructure, in turn resulting in degraded public transport. This goes on until the infrastructure is really broken and the private company has completely sucked dry the investment done by all previous generations of citizens, after which the government can buy their own infrastructure back at a premium.

Electricity grid and telecommunications, same story.

It's not the so-called 'Socialistic market controls' killing Europe, it's unbounded neo-liberalism and unchecked privatisation and short-sighted, short-term profits and pure greed of a relatively small group of people at the expense of generations of citizens who paid for good infrastructure with their taxes and saw their politicians squander it inside just a few short years.

Comment Re:Good riddance (Score 1) 539

Yes, she definitely had the balls to call Pinochet a close friend and Nelson Mandela a terrorist and the balls to help out Pol Pot with british troops (possibly because they were somewhat inefficient in whittling down their own population). Great leader, Mrs Thatcher. On that note Genghis Khan was a great leader as well.

Comment Re:Good riddance (Score 1) 539

Apart from that, the capitalist class is actively making it hard for people not in that group to become part of that group. It's getting harder each year for 'normal people' to reach the tipping point of where one can use money to generate more money. The gap between 'haves' and 'have nots' is actively being made wider by the 'haves'.

Comment Re:Well, does the law force compliance? (Score 1) 316

Doesn't really feel like this law is doing anything but putting into law what was already happening in the real world. So in a sad way, it does clarify the situation for master and slave^H^H^H^H^H^H^H rich and poor ^H^H^H^H^H^H employer and employee.

Welcome to the wonderful world of plutocracy.

The Military

United States Begins Flying Stealth Bombers Over South Korea 567

skade88 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the United States has started flying B-2 stealth bomber runs over South Korea as a show of force to North Korea. The bombers flew 6,500 miles to bomb a South Korean island with mock explosives. Earlier this month the U.S. Military ran mock B-52 bombing runs over the same South Korean island. The U.S. military says it shows that it can execute precision bombing runs at will with little notice needed. The U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting its allies in the region. The North Koreans have been making threats to turn South Korea into a sea of fire. North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' mainland."

Comment Re:Thank you (Score 1) 199

Believe that would be a very good start...

Just a brain storm, but I believe lots of side issues can be resolved by ensuring that companies are allowed a maximum staff of 1000 people (or a similarly fairly low limit) and can't own other companies. This will take care of issue 8 in your list as well and might be a resolution to issue 1 not providing enough diversity.

Having such a restriction will ensure:

- Real competition; companies can't now just grow market share by absorbing other companies.

- Increase in productivity through efficiency; since corporations can't just throw more people at a problem, this means that the only way to gain a competitive edge is to train staff and to become more efficient. This will also mean that corporations will become specialists in only a limited number of areas, since they can't have enough staff to be a specialist in all areas.

- Standardisation; some products may need more than 1000 staff to produce, which will decrease the number of companies that have complete end to end production lines (with only small components delivered by other companies). This means these companies need to start even more relying on parts produced by other companies, which increases the need for standardisation to be able to compete. The companies sourcing parts are not able to monopolise one complete part supply line, due the the restricted size in staff.

- Economic growth; because of the limit in the number of staff, there is more money flowing between different corporations, since more companies will need the services and products of other companies to be able to operate. The size of an economy is the amount of money in an economy multiplied by the rate at which the money flows through an economy.

This will also reduce issues like corruption and buying votes somewhat, since corporations will have a limited size and lobbying capability.

Maybe 1000 staff is even a too high a number...

Any thoughts?

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