Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

there's a whole series on this topic here, asa: http://www.bubblegeneration.com/2008/02/fourth-horseman-of-macropocalypse.cfm

The US can be with the largest economy again! Just switch from Dollar to Euro :-)

Wow, it takes 15 countries to match the GDP of the U.S., and you consider it to now be the second largest "economy"? That's a pretty loose definition of the word. Yeah, I'm really scared of France's economy and their 8.7% unemployment!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_France#Unemployment

Asa, this has been happening for as long as man has been alive. It just becomes a little more obvious in times like these. This is why rich people have a policy to never discuss their wealth. They know it will just piss people off, because above a certain amount it is impossible to acquire it fairly. At some point you have to pay labor less than the value they provide in order to accumulate huge amounts of wealth. Another stream of income are entitlements the rich use. I'm talking about titles of ownership. When you have enough entitlements, you can derive value simply from having the title paper, without any work on your part. Money simply piles onto you. This is especially true if you hold the title on natural resource rich land. You can be the last moron on earth, and still make a ton of money. On the other hand, ordinary people have to get college degrees and make themselves useful to the wealthy in order to have a life. You can't really say they are working for themselves if they get only a fraction of the value they produce.

None of this is a secret. Thinking about it just pisses people off. People close their eyes and pretend it's not too bad. Until one day it is. That's when the revolution happens.

It doesn't have to be like that. But in order for it to be any different, the wealthy must become humane and they must respect the poor instead of piling derision upon derision on them as they do now. The wealthy contribute to museums, opera houses, exotic locations such as Africa, disease research that will be of use to the rich (poor people have no insurance and are not likely to benefit from the latest break-through medicines). Basically all the philanthropic activity of the wealthy is very self-serving. How many wealthy directly help the homeless here in the USA? How many wealthy uplift the poor out of poverty by honest help and not by giving them a slave-like job for a tiny wage? I tell you how many -- ZERO.

Oh please Leo, the dichotomy of rich and poor is so false. Most people (including me and you probably too) are neither rich nor poor.

And this is so naive:
"At some point you have to pay labor less than the value they provide..."

Labor is always (not just at some point) paid less than the value they create, otherwise there would be no point for companies to hire anybody.

There is nothing wrong with the principle of making a profit, but there is a lot wrong with the idea of making others (in this case tax-payers) pay for your losses.

Oh please Leo, the dichotomy of rich and poor is so false. Most people (including me and you probably too) are neither rich nor poor.

And this is so naive:
"At some point you have to pay labor less than the value they provide..."

Labor is always (not just at some point) paid less than the value they create, otherwise there would be no point for companies to hire anybody.

There is nothing wrong with the principle of making a profit, but there is a lot wrong with the idea of making others (in this case tax-payers) pay for your losses.

Oh please Leo, the dichotomy of rich and poor is so false. Most people (including me and you probably too) are neither rich nor poor.

And this is so naive:
"At some point you have to pay labor less than the value they provide..."

Labor is always (not just at some point) paid less than the value they create, otherwise there would be no point for companies to hire anybody.

There is nothing wrong with the principle of making a profit, but there is a lot wrong with the idea of making others (in this case tax-payers) pay for your losses.

> Labor is always (not just at some point) paid less than the value they create, otherwise there would be no point for companies to hire anybody.

I was being gracious there. But you're wrong. What you are saying is that there is no economic sense to create a cooperative. That's patently wrong.

People benefit from cooperating with each other even if there is no owner or a layer of executive management skipping the cream off the milk.

The point is that greed is the root of all the problems. Privatizing gains and socializing losses is just one type of greed. The less obvious and the more indirect the harm that comes from the acts of greed, the more the power find it acceptable to engage in those acts. Now, in the past, being greedy was bad, and if you displayed greedy behavior as a child, you'd be scolded. When I was growing up, my parents told me to split my sandwich in half and share with a friend in school. Do Americans teach this to their kids? From what I can see, Americans teach that it's perfectly OK to say, "Get your own". Which is a polite way to say "F U" to your "friend". No wonder there is no true friendship in USA. The only thing that passes for friendship is, I scratch your back and you scratch mine, eh? Sure, there are some exceptions. But I don't see very many friendships that transcend the material realm. Sad.

The only good thing I see here is that there is potential to turn all that around. Let's once again criticize greed. Let's once again teach our kids to share their sandwiches in school. Let's teach our kids that helping less fortunate is good (as opposed to Ayn Randian crap that everyone must pull themselves by their own bootstraps in every case and anyone who wants some help is a leecher). It's an issue of culture.

Selfishness is destructive. Greed is destructive. Let's once again teach this to our kids. You don't have to be religious to recognize this truth. I am not religious at all. In fact, I detest religious dogmas. But moral values are not dogmatic.

It's difficult to even find the words to describe the seven year aggravated assault on our society and economy.

If capitalism is frowned upon by decent people, only vulgarians will have any capital.

It seems Jerry Rubin had come to a similar conclusion after years of vehement "anti-capitalism".

In the case of a cooperative a worker is "paid" even less for his work, if you didn't produce more than you were "paid" the system wouldn't work.

Oh, and BTW I am not from the US, I live in a country that was once part of the Soviet Union, maybe the biggest cooperative ever, everyone had to work for the "common good". Strangely there was less to distribute amongst people than in those "evil" countries whose system was based on "greed". And you know why? Because no-one was MOTIVATED to work.

So yeah, in theory what you say sounds all nice and sweet and everything, but in practice, there is this little problem with human nature that couldn't even be changed over 70 years of re-education.

"Selfishness is destructive. Greed is destructive. Let's once again teach this to our kids. You don't have to be religious to recognize this truth."

Kids seem to know this already when the natural stage of psychological development occurs and they become aware of others as conscious entities like themselves.

To some degree, children have their natural idealism and their innate sense of justice is beaten out of them by cynical adults as they grow up.

If that stage of anti-social indoctrination could be skipped, people would be left with their moral intuition intact.

John, I'm originally from there myself. The thing is that good behavior cannot be forced onto people in a top-down fashion. That doesn't mean we should abandon praising good behavior and stop criticizing the bad. Greed is bad. Sharing is good. You cannot legislate non-greed, and because of that, it is very important to talk about it. Because talking accomplishes what legislation can never accomplish -- it influences the undercurrent mindset, the basis of culture. Good culture cannot be forced or legislated.

When people work in a cooperative voluntarily, it can be a very profitable and happy place to work where everyone (and not just some) makes plenty of money. The way this is accomplished is by flattening out the reward pyramid. So at the top people don't make as much, but at the base of the pyramid people make more. It's the same money just distributed different. And what's even more important, the relationship between people is better. Everyone is an owner. Everyone is a stake holder. There no owners going around spanking the non-owners to work harder under the threat of unemployment.

Excellent work can come only as a result of positive motivation. Fear makes people do the bare minimum to stay in the game. Love makes people do far more than is necessary to just stay in the game.