Re: Ashton, a worthy reply, allow me to reply in kind

Post #13,253 by gtall 10/14/01 8:07:49 PM Reply	Re: Ashton, a worthy reply, allow me to reply in kind Re your points A, B, and C: it isn't necessary that a people respond "logically" to the those influences. I distinctly did not neccessitate a people respond logically (Jeze, Louise, just because you know I'm a logician does not imply I imply logical tendencies to people, or peoples). However, penury and hunger are hard to deny. If the Arabs (not necessarily Muslims) had no oil, is there any doubt they would still be damn upset over the status quo? And Evangelical Islam provides them exactly what that will fix these problems? Political expression, there is none under EI. Economic vision? None. I didn't mean to imply they wouldn't choose it regardless, I did mean to imply it can not deliver. Aiding and abetting C) - is a new litany of factoids concerning the 'general case' that most wealth of the West is controlled by tiny fractions of their (supposedly educated? and alert??) populations. These bin-L's are fully capable of exploiting the Fact of their side's widespread and severe poverty VS the West's. deliver. Yes, and there is a tiny group of people who control the Universe. Your paranoia re economics and how it really works is...what...indecipherable. That doesn't mean bin Laden (and you) are incapable of exploiting your beliefs on how it works, but people beggared by stupid economic schemes become (over time) hard to fight against (see Communism). "We shall prevail next and soon, because - our techno, our material might is such that, no group canprevail / significantly alter the world's distribution of 'wealth'" Oh please, there is never any guarantee the West will prevail. However, the West has entertained the greatest redistribution of wealth to the common man beyond anything in anyone's wildest imagination...except yours...I'm sorry you are not rich, but you are richer than 90% of everyone else on the Earth. Learn to feel grateful instead of spiteful because you seem to feel someone has more marbles that you. Gerard Allwein
Post #13,268 by Ashton 10/15/01 1:27:23 AM Reply	'Rich' is an emotional evaluation (Actually I consider myself 'rich' - I own more of my own time, can engage in more pursuits that interest me, than most I know whose 'net worth' is quite higher :-\ufffd ie. I chose many years ago, as in intentionally - that aim over other options.) I prefer adequacy to endless more. Won't quibble much about the 'average wealth' of US VS all others - so long as you won't quibble about the fact of very many living well below that average, the % of Murican children below our own arbitrary 'poverty level' and such. We so love to reduce all human qualities of life - and even IQ! - to numbers that fit spreadsheets. Clearly Scandinavian countries opted for lopping off the extreme possibilities of personal wealth: at both ends, and the experiment appears viable - for them. Of course they aren't Muricans, just homo-saps generically. Meaning only - there are other demonstrated options to our present yielding of power once reserved for society - to Corporate interests, unresponsive to any allegiance except a narrow, immediate definition of short-term profits. Obviously then, we could.. opt for reforms of laws governing corporate behavior - in many ways quite more subtle than merely whatever (declining percentages currently) we collect in taxes. (We can change the rules anytime 'we' can buy more legislators than 'they' already own, I presume) As to whatever you imagine I know of economics - we'd both have to guess what direct experience the other has, of how low income folks actually live here. As, say: the temps of Si Valley, the operations of Manpower Inc. and other facets of survival at $10-12/hr, some even less, in such an environment - often amid highly toxic compounds and sweatshop working schedules. (Unless you were speaking of those theoretical concepts re the velocity of money - in full academic flight?) Or maybe we could count the # of people we know personally, living that life? Would that connote: economics field work, or would it not be sufficiently theoretical to receive official credit? Dismiss the idea of "the tiny group of people controlling the universe" as you like. Dismiss as well, the practical powerlessness of a substantial portion of all US workers too, but then you'll also have to elide: the present impossibility of even commencing campaign reform, that which goes to the heart of our advertised 'democratic process' VS Corporate ownership of (the selection / propaganda aspect of) that process. We may even have to look to Europe for any discipline of M$ ever! - just one of our corporations. But as to the division of spoils worldwide? I can't see how this factor can be ignored perpetually, as technology equips smaller and smaller players to do large damage. Perhaps you can. (Of course too, the entire argument may be rendered moot, soon enough.) Ashton
Post #13,288 by gtall 10/15/01 8:13:28 AM Reply	Re: 'Rich' is an emotional evaluation Re Silicon Valley, I've visited Stanford several times...about as close as I got. I certainly did notice I got along much better with the Latinos than I did the Anglos. The subsurface class warfare between the two groups was enough to make me swear I'll never agree to live there. Re Scandanavian countries, Sweden is essentially buying their future with deficit spending, at least last time I looked. They also do not have very many defence requirements. And their unemployment rate isn't good. Come to think of it, it isn't good around most of Europe...and hasn't been for a long time. Re campaign reform, what makes you think it will solve anything? The pols will take the money the gov. gives them AND take any "contributions" made by others. They will get paid off twice, in effect. It won't solve anything, the contributions won't get paid directly to the congress critter, it will get paid to his friends, his family, business in his/her/its district. Campaign reform is a chimera and only glommed onto by dewy eyed "reformers" who just know that the congress critters really, really, want to play fair if only the rules would let them. Bullshit! They are scum, if we want better representation, we'll have to vote for it. Last I heard, the Justice Dept. and M$ weren't getting along. There's hope yet those bastards will burn, although...we won't get to see Billy and his CrapWare roasted over an open fire. Now THAT I would pay to see. Gerard Allwein
Post #13,427 by Ashton 10/15/01 5:58:35 PM Reply	Well then, my friend Perhaps we can meet around that weinie er crapware roast, warm our backsides from.. that glow which can truly light the world.. (Thanks JFK - your words were wiser than many acts you had time to try out.. And then: you might have proved a dud after all. Oh well.) Ya got me - alas I have no more 'hope' than you, that anything much in the way of campaign reform can ameliorate the fact of: self-selection of the terminally ego-mad and manipulative - as ever are the prototypical seekers of power. Not that Murica has a monopoly on such filtering; just - we be so sanctimonious about how Our Slime is better than Your Slime! :[ And no.. I possess no magna carta for undoing the execrable which 'we' have done - along with the occasional magnificent.. largely done by the founders of a huge Idea (we mostly fail to give even lip-service, in daily bizness). May aim next is simply, not to yield to a growing hysteria and jingoism which.. we seem prone to, and whose momentum appears to follow the laws of physics and not of reason. Cheers, Ashton

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