Is it my imagination, or is that really...

Post #39,437 by CRConrad 5/21/02 6:31:22 PM Reply	Is it my imagination, or is that really... Barry: Unless you disagree with basic property rights. ...the only "rights" you people think are really important? Coz, so help me the Great Rotating Rod, that sure seems to be the only one you[] ever employ in this fashion: As a rhetorical device intended to trump further discussion. It goes like, "Political rights, yadda yadda... Voting, yadda yadda... Balancing one thing against the other, yadda yadda yadda... But, oh, this-or-that would interfere with property* rights! Well, then it goes without saying that this-or-that, whatever it was, is right out of the question!" The impression one gets, is one of "So much for 'Liberty' and all that guff -- turns out it was just the 'liberty' to make a fast buck off of your fellow man that mattered in the end". Are you quite, quite, sure, all of you, that that was all your oh-so-revered[*] "Founding Fathers" had in mind, when they began that little experiment you call the United States? Just wondering... []: "You" meaning 'Americans in general', not just Barry. []: At least in political speeches -- when their ideas don't too obviously interfere directly with turning a fast buck. Christian R. Conrad** Of course, who am I to point fingers? I'm in the "Information Technology" business, prima facia evidence that there's bats in the bell tower. -- [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=27764\|Andrew Grygus]
Post #39,441 by broomberg 5/21/02 6:49:25 PM Reply	I dunno about founding fathers After all, they were quite happy to own slaves and consider it good behaviour. My issue is when someone comes over with a gun to my head and tells me that I must run a business in such a way that is guaranteed to fail. According to some here, I am offering VERY good wages (based on the amount of housing it can buy in the local area) for specific skill sets. It does my company NO GOOD to pay this money to people who can't do the job. It also does my company NO GOOD to pay less money to more people WHO CAN'T DO THE JOB. So, what would you have me do? Note: This is a jobs forum. I gave specific advice on how to approach employment, in a way that has worked for my and might work for others. It has now degraded into a social and political flamefest, which I try to stay away from. So don't bother answering the above question unless it relates to specific job advice, becuase I sure won't.
Post #39,501 by boxley 5/22/02 10:56:43 AM Reply	Barry's assessment of how to work in this biz is correct I have always worked myself out of a job by making IT faster, cheaper and easier for the firm to do the work, whatever it is. I take pride in that even years later people/businesses will call me for advise on how to address a new task they are having problems with. I enjoy what I do and take it as a challenge, this is a hobby of mine that seems to pay rather well. thanx, bill TAM ARIS QUAM ARMIPOTENS
Post #39,544 by mmoffitt 5/22/02 5:55:41 PM Reply	It's not just us. In the US, I mean. Look at the Russians, East Europeans, Czechs, etc. We (in the US) like to wax eloquently on and on about "the triumph of democracy over totalitarianism", about "winning the Cold War". But the ideals expressed in the notion of democracy had nothing to do with it. It was not "the triumph of democracy" that caused the Soviet Union to fail, it was the promise of a "triumph of consumerism". They (well, okay, most of them) did not want liberty, they wanted Levi's.
Post #39,551 by Arkadiy 5/22/02 7:38:07 PM Reply	So much bull, so little time. Democracy may be harmed by private property, but it cannot exist without private property. All police states begin with nationalization of property. WRT East Europe, you are putting the cart before the horse. Why do you think those countries were so poor? Because of lack of respect for private property, which caused lack of freedom. So the people there weren't after "Levi's", they were after a right to sew levi's and to keep their wages, and maybe one day to open a clothes shop. Eating well and wearing nicer stuff was simply a nice bonus.
Post #39,711 by mmoffitt 5/23/02 5:05:31 PM Reply	Shto? >> Why do you think those countries were so poor? Because of lack of respect >> for private property, which caused lack of freedom. So, you cannot be "free" without personal wealth? That is our (US) unstated view, but I do not hold it to be true. Your argument is valid only if "consumption" is necessary for "freedom". I don't think that is a valid premise. There are counter-examples to this supposition.
Post #39,845 by Arkadiy 5/24/02 3:05:13 PM Reply	You cannot be free without private property. I do not know about "personal wealth", but private property is indeed a foundation of freedom. I do not know about "consumption", but hungry people rarely can stay free. In any case, you are confusing cause and effect here, again. Freedom to hold private property causes personal wealth (with all its excesses). Same freedom causes material abundance, that leads to material (over?-)consumption. But private property, or freedom, do not _need_ overconsumption or excesses to exist. (btw, "shto" would be a slightly "vulgar", "hurried" pronunciation. Proper pronunciation for this word is "chto" :-) )
Post #40,219 by mmoffitt 5/28/02 5:13:31 PM Reply	How about "kak?"
Post #40,256 by a6l6e6x 5/28/02 11:26:56 PM Reply	"kak" is "how" while "chto" is "what". Alex "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Post #40,261 by mmoffitt 5/28/02 11:35:23 PM Reply	I know. I was kidding. I don't know the English spellings of Russian words (and my Russian is not what it once was). Like, I can say, "Meenya zavoot Meesha" [My name is Mike] and I can spell it in Russian, but I don't know the "offical" phonetic spellings in English. I think Arkadiy and I have traded posts in the past about my having spent a large part of Grade 4 (Klass Chitiri) in Kiev. Thanks for the clarification though. And, do you know how I can post in Cyrillic font here? Besides, Breshnev always said, "SHHHTO?" :-)
Post #40,265 by a6l6e6x 5/28/02 11:57:45 PM Reply	I tried a cut and paste of Russian from pravda.ru ... but it does not survive the "Preview" in the Subject but can be seen OK (below) in this comment area on my machine. I do have Ukrainian [uk] in addition to English [en] in Preferences \| Navigator \| Languages set up in Mozolla. Below is "Chto hovoryat?": Что говорят? Alex "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Post #40,272 by Ashton 5/29/02 12:50:34 AM Reply	Hmm.. Cyrillic in Moz? Recall vaguely the travails of setting up a friend's machine (in Win 3.1x then), finding fonts all over Europe - so she could read Cyrilic text from Russia (plus prelim Eng. translation), receive ditto in both English and orig. Russian (occasionally Ukrainian?) for cleaning up the syntax in scientific papers. Fonts were for Word6 (which was essential to swap with Russ and also invoke the subtle editing modes available in colors) But the results were .zipped and sent as attachments, then. Now I've forgotten the details.. Noted the option in Moz to switch to Cyrillic - which raises issue of which kb encoding. When I tried to post a Cyrillic character via above switch.. this box got redrawn with smaller characters, but these were in Engrish unchanged. Did you just switch to View\|Character Coding\|Cyrillic (Windows 1251) -- and paste in some Russ text from Pravda? Wondering now, if there's a simple alternative to the sequences we needed back then (using DOS, Unix storage and the PINE e-mail system! to transmit back mostly English editing) ie in Moz - can we type-in Cyrillic via whatever kb map, see it displayed and.. send ? Guess I need to read about "language packs" at Moz for this. Ashton
Post #40,305 by Arkadiy 5/29/02 10:53:44 AM Reply	Brezhnev... would indeed say "shto". Just like Bush keeps saying "nucular". :)
Post #39,847 by Arkadiy 5/24/02 3:15:18 PM Reply	This is just sooo rich! A [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=39733\|businessman] who does not believe in private property!
Post #40,220 by mmoffitt 5/28/02 5:16:04 PM Reply	Nyet. If I implied that I "don't believe in private property" I misspoke. I merely contend that "right to private property" != "freedom".
Post #40,304 by Arkadiy 5/29/02 10:49:36 AM Reply	Agreed. => is not the same as <=> (foreach country \| HasPrivateProperty(country) <=> HasFreedom(country)) is false. (foreach country \| HasPrivateProperty(country) => HasFreedom(country)) is true. (in this world's interpretation :) ) Note that the truth table for => is 0 1 --------- 1 \| 1 1 0 \| 1 0 so it's possible to have private property and no freedom. But you cannot have freedom without private property. Would you agree with that?
Post #40,513 by mmoffitt 5/30/02 10:13:14 AM Reply	No, I wouldn't. Which I guess makes me a communist ;-) A small true story will illustrate my point, I think. When I was in Soviet Russia, the US guides on the exhibit (of which my father was one) had a party in our hotel suite. There were perhaps 20 people there, one of which was a Russian girl that one of the single guides had asked to accompany him to the party. I remember her apologizing to my father for being absent during the party (she had come into the room occupied by my brother and me to sit quietly at a table and read a contraband book - don't remember which one it was perhaps "Nicholas and Alexandria"). At any rate, she had to forward the book to her contact the next morning or risk falling off the "illegal book trading train". Everyone understood, of course, and left her alone to finish her book. The freedom to read anything and everything does not require private property. The freedom to say anything and everything does not require private property. The freedom to believe anything and everything does not require private property. The freedom to think and express any idea does not require private property. The freedom to expand one's education to the fullest extent does not require private property. These are but some of the greatest freedoms that a people can know, imo.
Post #40,521 by Arkadiy 5/30/02 11:00:13 AM Reply	The freedom to read requires the freedom to own the book I think your story is a proof of my point. The girl 'had to forward the book to her contact the next morning or risk falling off the "illegal book trading train"'. If this is not a violation of private property, what is? I wonder if she managed to finsh the book... Also, check out R. Stallman's essay about the brave new world where ownership of books is illegal. How would you like to live there? As to freedom of speach... You may be right. But, it's a bit hard to say a lot when you can't legally own a copier, a printer or a computer. Freedom of belief... Did you mean freedom of worship? How do you worship when a church is not recognised as a legal unit, therefore cannot own a place of worship? How about a prohibition to use you private house for anything but family gathering? It's your private house, right? Think again. I'll grant you this: a _person_ can be free w/o owning anything. A person can be free under any government. A state that does not recognize private property cannot be called a "free state" ( I define "free state" as such a state that does not require a free person to hide the fact that they have freedom).
Post #40,541 by mmoffitt 5/30/02 12:47:50 PM Reply	Do you "own" library books? WRT my story, some one did have to buy the book and pass it around because of the absence of freedom. Far from supporting your argument, my story illustrates an instance of private ownership becoming a necessity because of a lack of freedom. And a state that does not recognize private property could be the state that provides its citizens with more freedom than any society has yet enjoyed. Of course here I'm speaking theoretically as no such system has ever been attempted, let alone achieved. And I'm willing to grant you that it may not be possible to create such a state given the overwhelming limitations of our species at this point in our evolution.
Post #40,557 by boxley 5/30/02 2:16:59 PM Reply	cuba does not recognise personal property in housing, automobiles etc. Doesnt appear to be a rush of freedom lovers lined up trying to get in. Albania was another where there was no private property. They are all moving to serbia. thanx, bill TAM ARIS QUAM ARMIPOTENS
Post #40,596 by mmoffitt 5/30/02 4:49:49 PM Reply	Clarification. I'm not saying that you can only be free if there is no private property. All I am saying is that it is not necessarily the case that one must possess private property in order to be free, nor is it the case that private property rights must exist or a society cannot be free (which is essentially Arkediy's position). Private property rights and "freedom" are not mutually exclusive, nor are the necessarily intertwined. And all too often private property rights are considered by a populace that possesses them to be more important than [other] liberties. One need look no farther than the US to see that this is the case.
Post #40,604 by CRConrad 5/30/02 5:46:13 PM Reply	Bullshit, I think. (Goes for the Soviet Union too, BTW.) Cuba is known, in car enthusiast circles, for its rich supply if Battista-vintage American cars; collectors, custom-builders, and just ordinary people -- some who got hooked on some particular model when they were kids, for example -- go there to buy a well-preserved (or "fixer-upper") rarity on the cheap. Whom do you think they buy them from? In all the car-magazine articles on the theme I've seen, it's always something like "I bought it off an old guy who had been driving it as a taxi in Havanna for thirty years, and was retiring" -- ergo, a private citizen. (Oh, and that 'BTW' in my subject line: Hey, Arkadij, betcha you (or your mother, if you will) owned the clothes you wore as a kid, right?) Christian R. Conrad Of course, who am I to point fingers? I'm in the "Information Technology" business, prima facia evidence that there's bats in the bell tower. -- [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=27764\|Andrew Grygus]
Post #40,617 by Arkadiy 5/30/02 7:05:46 PM 5/30/02 7:06:14 PM Reply	Individual belongings versus private property. Yes, I owned my clothes. No one else wanted them. Even socialism recognises that people needed to own _something_ . But, say you have a clothing drive for suffering Vietnamese children. Try not to bring some of your stuff. Ass-chewing at a Komsomol meeting is guaranteed. And if do not say that you "forgot", if you say "I need clothes for myself"... KGB will open a case. Another thing about clothes: school uniform. You get a coupon for one set for whole year. Want to buy more? Tough. Want to wear something different to school? Much, much worse. My whole childhood I was wearing patched up pants - they were worn right through in a few months. Hardly a private property :) By the time of Brezhnev, people were even allowed to buy cars. But, try to use yours as a taxi - you're dead meat (unless of course, you pay some bakshish in time). Selling of used cars is allowed only at state-owned places, using state as the middleman, at state-set prices. Of course, people talk to each other and some money is exchanged under the table. The "dealership" employees simply look the other way. You're confusing what's happening with what's supposed to happen. People under socialism can have some individual stuf. And much more is allowed through corruption. Still more is allowed because the system realises it can't survive on its own principles. But the principles stay the same: you don't have anything that can't be sacrificed for the Radiant Future. Edited by Arkadiy May 30, 2002, 07:06:14 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #40,575 by Arkadiy 5/30/02 2:59:53 PM 5/30/02 3:01:36 PM Reply	No. Library does. The books in the library are still someone's property, even if that someone is a city or a church. If I decide to start a library tomorrow, can you tell me what books to buy with my own money? As for your "could be" argument... Looks like we both agree that humans like they existed in history and exist now are not capable of of such "could be". I think it's indeed called "communism", and it failed everywhere it was attempted. Moreover, its failure produced human suffering and death beyond anything else humanity experienced before. (Some say it has never been attempted properly. May be. I don't care.) Edited by Arkadiy May 30, 2002, 03:01:36 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #40,595 by mmoffitt 5/30/02 4:45:49 PM Reply	Ah, but who owns the library? The People do ;-) Soviet Russia was a fascist state. Even it at least had the decency not to call itself a communist state (CCCP - Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). Its more than a semantics game. Nazi Germany was "Socialist" as well. Don't blame the communists, blame the socialists. :-)
Post #40,637 by Ashton 5/30/02 9:15:06 PM Reply	Guess I don't see any real argument here. Given that USSR was nothing to do with (anyone's) concept of: a future.. not ever even approached, "communism". USSR isn't then about communism. Ditto re property; maybe the most realistic aim for dealing with that concept (could be): an acquired dislike for the ugliness produced everywhere, when a person's status/power in a society is measured by # of things acquired. This attitude might lead to a large de-emphasis on (at least) "buying stuff as recreation". (Surely that direction would eschew "buying stuff as the Meaning of Life\ufffd and possibly - after-life too? that Great Mall in the Sky with Free Credit and Approved Sex-substitutes) Given "how we're doing" - I'd think the above is a realizable goal, hardly an assured one. As to further than that, the gradual dying of the Need to Own Stuff (generally), I'd think it obvious that such an idea would be completely inaccessible of understanding.. except in some future adult society. If the species survives adolescence, that is. Ashton
Post #40,542 by mmoffitt 5/30/02 12:52:14 PM Reply	And she did finish that book (I saw her) ;-)
Post #40,224 by orion 5/28/02 5:45:28 PM Reply	Property rights chances are if you paid taxes on it, you must own it. Pay property taxes then sit on lawn with a shotgun and yell "Git off'n my land!" at anyone who isn't a friend or relative or making a delivery like a postal carrier or UPS, etc. *I am free now, to choose my own destiny.*

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