What makes you cringe?

When the word "antisocial" is used to describe shy people.

Flossing my bottom front teeth. The terrible feeling lasts for days.

Seeing fat people eat fast food. It is totally disgusting to see fat people stuffing their face with super-size burgers and fries.

This survey!

Running my finger over velvet. Or any imitation of velvet for that matter.

Oh, they use the word 'antisocial' to describe everything nowaday.
Same with racist, too. How dumb do you have to be not to figure out that RACEist referst ONLY to the race not to nationality (eg 'He doesn't like Italians - he's a racist.').

opening a new bottle of vitamins or pills and pulling the cotton out

Or: he doesn't like Israel's politics, so he is anti-semite.
Or: he thinks Bush is a bad president, so he hates America.

It's stupid people that make me cringe.

A car accident--when I pass one on the road, I don't even look for fear of seeing a mangled body.

> When the word "antisocial" is used to describe
> shy people.
I agree.

> Seeing fat people eat fast food. It is
> totally disgusting to see fat people stuffing
> their face with super-size burgers and fries.
Hehehehe... that was good... made my day!

> This survey!

Well, *forced*ha-ha-ha-ha... and you say you don't have a sense of humor...

I lied!

well, let's just say... it's rather "unconventional"

ugh, lately it seems like too many things make me cringe.

do you hate the feel of cotton all together? i actually know quite a few people like that...a girl at work, the owners of my salon (both the husband and wife) and their son.

Especially since a lot of Americans hate Bush...

Bush/Cheney bumperstickers

freaky child molesters like on that survey about them.

I think Bush is one of those people that you just either really hate or really love, and if your somewhere in the middle, your definatly in the minority. I think Clinton was sort of the same way.

yeah, I can think of a few things on the top of my head. That feeling you get trying to imagine your teeth grinding againts carpet, or the scraching of chalk on a chalkboard. Then there's that thing that some really girly women and some gay men do with their hands, that limp hand thing, man, that crap is just straight up creepy.

yeah, they're very creepy too. These people are just fudging fudgeed up. There's something seriously wrong with them.

when someone near experiences embarrassment

bad crazy wrong

no, cotton balls don't bother me really, i think it's just the whole action of pulling it out of the bottle, it kind'a makes a sound of some sort, almost similar to the sound of one scratching a lottery ticket, or like the sound of someone chewing on ice....

A few things will, but the first thing that came to mind is sqeaking on a chalkboard.

Watching people do stupid things.

I don't know about Clinton. I had an impression that a lot of people like him. At least here in Canada.

BUGS , SNAKES , & LARGE DOG'S & RAT'S

yes, that's my whole point. A lot of people do love him. But at the same time, also a lot of people also hated him as well. Its the people in the middle who were in the minority. Clinton wasnt like that as much as Bush is today though. Its like, most people who vote for Kerry only do it not because they like him, but its because they hate bush so much. But then just talk to anyone who lives in "Bush country" and they love him to death. Its like all the rational people in the middle are gone.

What about you, what do you think about the politics? Do you like Bush?

hym, politcs. There's an interesting subject I could rambble on and on for hours.

I am that minority, probabbly somewhere in the middle. I dont really like Bush, but I also believe that a lot of the bad things people say about him are exagerations. I think that deep down, in his heart, his intentions are good, but he is a bit misguided and doesnt understand the full implication of all his decions. I mean for christs sake, the guy was a fraternity member back in his college days (in the days when fraternites were still an excusivle thing), who went on a drug binge only to be saved by the born-again christians; only to end up believing that god wanted him to be presidenent. The guy's obviously out-of touch with reality, and a bit arragont if you ask me. But in his defence, at least its benovelent arrogance, sort of like ceasear.

The problem with a lot of critisms on Bush is this: as Mark Twain once said, "its hard to believe a man is telling the truth if you know would probabbly would have lied in his shoes." I know that Bush is probabbly full of crap when we rambbles about his wmds on the basis that I would probabbly have said the same thing had I been the president. In his own mind, he probably figured its better to lie now, for a greater cause in the future. Its so hard to be honest for politians these days especially in democracies, knowing that if they were honest, people wouldnt put faith in them. I mean, even William Churchill was full of crap when he made speeches to the Brits, but somehow those lies helped the allies win WW2, and he is now a legend for being a great leader.

Another problem with the attacks on him is that he takes a lot of heat for the state of our economy. THe funny thing is that the economy is hardly affected by the president, and its not bushs fault that so many people are unemployed. Why in the hell should anyone believe that someone else would do a better job. The Kerry and Bush back and forth speeches are nothing but cheat shots and sound bites.

This isnt to say that I want him re-elected. I think many of his policies are bad, and someone else needs to take his place, but my reasons for getting rid of Bush are not for the same reasons that many librals want him out of office. If he does not get re-elected, I'll know its because the voters got rid of him for all the wrong reasons. To make an analogy, its like putting an armed robber in prison for going 10 miles over the speed limit and driving without a licence.

When people say "acrossT." There's no "T" there, people!

On the same note, I don't like seeing heavy people at buffets--I think it just perpetuates stereotypes about heavy people.

um... yo' mamma jokes

any inlaw coming down my driveway

People kissing each other in bars - I mean full on tongues kissing.

I don't know, I have an extreme respect for Bush Sr, but Jr just doesn't cut it. I mean, I am usually unable to focus on him as a politician because he cracks me up. I think he would have a splendid career as a comedian.
I like how you try to look at GWB from the middle point because, as you said, not many people do. I don't think Bush is that bad, and Michael Moore's movies may be good because they try to open people's eyes to look that it's not as it appears to be on the surface, but they portray Bush in only black light.

When people with poor grammar and spelling skills point out other people's poor grammar and spelling.

Watching voluntary pain, the prospect of touching mucky substances, insects esp. roaches, ...
I cringe a lot, but just what does it, I don't really recall at the moment.

President's have quite a lot to do with the economy. It's been awhile since anti-trust laws were more thoroughly enforced, and that has contributed to lots of good jobs lost. Whom to tax effects the economy. Foreign tariffs, public works, The more I think about it, the more presidents have all handed the wealth from workers to investors in recent decades.

Bush's actions probably are well intended misunderstandings, but the same thing applies to Hitler too. So what do you think the real reasons to get rid of Bush would be?

I don't know...stuff.

The sound of nails on a blackboard and the sound of another person chewing, particularly with their mouth open. *shudder*

Typical Human behavior.
Contemporary anything.
Teenagers.

and things?

simulating bones breaking in movies, people throwing up in movies, scary moments in movies . . . .all those things in real life, too, just to name a few.

No, just stuff.

Liars

Oh yeah, people cracking their knuckles does it for me.

The decay of this great nation.

When people sit around for HOURS knowing they are going to puke, but they don't do anything about it and end up doing it near me.

the sound on silverware being scratched against plates and each other

nothing

That happens a lot?

Stupidity.

The sound of nails on a chalkboard. Other people saying stupid or embarassing things.

Not really, but since I am totally afraid of vomiting, when people do anything like that, it makes me cringe.

Discussion of slitting wrists, achilles tendons or throats.

Babies crying. Yelling. Animal cruelty.

OR people that think the best way to solve racism and sexism is to be racist and sexist to different people.

Or people who apply different standards to different religions or make excuses all teh time for the behaviour of one set of people while applying unfair scrutiny on the bahviour of another set of people.

Those people are really really cringeworthy.

It's the 'defend the underdog' strategy, and they would shift to defend whomever the current perceived underdog is. It's not my favorite ultimate system, but as an intermediate evolutionary 'checks and balances', it makes some theoretical sense. Without that system, the holocaust system would permeate society.
Unfortunately most people look at ultimate sytems as being impractical and unrealistic, and settle on stop-gap measures instead.
I enjoy the term 'cringeworthy'.

That's assuming all members of the perceived "underdog" group are actually all underdogs and that all members of the perceived well to do group are all well to do. Of course this is a lie and is what racist and sexist bigotry like affirmative action is based on.

The different standards I speak of are between how people treat Christians and Muslims. It's open season on Christians but Muslims only act how they do because of the nasty west right? It's the same with the Jews. Leftists especially make excuses for Palestinians blowing up pizza huts or school buses while they claim the Jews building a defensive wall is an act of aggression!

It's the same with how the left constantly make excuses for anything done by the third world, often blaming all actions on the west, yet the US can do nothing right. It's double standards, zero logic and hypocrisy.

Not true. In fact for the sytem to work as a balance, you don't even require that a majority of a class be genuine underdogs; only that comparative proportions between classes differ. If only 7% of blondes know how to teach turtles gymnastics, while 11% of red-heads know haw to teach these turtles, then you focus on training the blondes until 11% of them know as as well. Perhaps you neglect training the red-heads altogether, until 9% of blondes and 9% of red-heads have their turtles doing back fliips. If you over compensated, and attained 10% blonde functionality, while reds had slipped to 8%, then red-heads become the underdog in need of further life-enrichment training.

Palestine isn't a numbers game in the first place. It's about Israel bullying with it's power and the Palestinians responding with acts of desperation. If the Palestinians had the power to wall Israel in at the same time, it'd be a whole different ball game. If you wanted to play the numbers game anyhow, it would turn out the same. The Israelis have a 22% nuke-em-all coefficient while Palestinians have a 0.2% coeficcient per capita there.

Unlike a board-game of Risk, where gross product counts, AA is about proportion. You can't go saying 'Who cares if the purple kids only make it to second grade; There are 20 more times the amount of them than the orange kids who graduate high school, so it works out even.'

In the sort of underdog scenario where gross product does count (international conflict), a case is being made that they are playing the quantity game. Even if 14 of 54 kids don't get gloriously sacrificed in war, like the Catholic, sheer numbers of populace will simply drown out society with ideology until the grand majority of the planet is Muslim. It's a tricky upcoming concern for the liberal who until now have merely been defending the current 'proportional' underdogs The ideology is being examined and discussed on liberal radio. Much as you'd like to think otherwise, we really do think about grander scheme. While conservatives seem to grand scheme thinking, we are more prone to even criticising our own tactics. It's inherant in the ideology, We'd probably strike as effectively as the conservatives, if we could ever agree on something in which no one gets slighted, conservatives, underdogs, or our own multi-faceted factions. The conservative approach is do whatever you want unless someone can stop you. The liberal approach is do nothing unless you're fairly sure no one will have just grivances. It's also why the liberals gripe no matter what the west does, because there really are few actions a body can take on this planet which won't also have negative repurcussions to someone somewhere.

Why stop at blondes and red heads? Why not have affirmative action for blue eyes? It makes as much sense to a person who is not seeing race as the be all and end all of the individual like the left do. Why do you socialists want to force people into situations until there are equal numbers represented? First of all it makes zero sense demographically since populations do not naturally occur in this way, and second you must ignore everything else about the individual which is crazy.

You ignore the landmass coefficient between the Jews and the Muslims. Who has more capacity to absorb the Palestinians? Where would the Palestinians fit in better? Why is the fact that Palestine also incorporates part of Jordan and Syria being ignored when addressing the issue of a state? Why does ISrael have to arm itself? The reason is clear and has been stated by the Muslims. They do not want just a state for Palestine. Have you heard anything they have said? They want Israel gone for good. They want to "push the Jews into the sea". They have a hatred of Jews to rival Hitlers' and this is openly discussed among Muslims. Do you blame the Jews for building a wall and arming themselves to the teeth? Why do make excuses for the agressors here and attack Jewish reactions to aggression?

AA is not proportonal at all, and it doesn't take into account how Asians are more successful than whites. Apparently if you believe in AA, the standard whites achieve is the optimal and what Asians are doing is freak. Why don't you support some type of action to make the top scorers in academics include less Asians. That's what AA is about after all.

The conservative approach is not about anarchy. It is about being left alone to either succeed or fail based on your own effort. Liberal ideology is about penalising the people who succeed (unless you're Asian apparently) and rewarding those who don't. Your assertion that "the liberal approach is do nothing unless you're fairly sure no one will have just greivances" apparently does not extend to white males or whites in general. That's some serious racist bigotry included in the liberal approach. But we all know every white male on the planet has it made don't we?

Liberals attack everything the west does because they are sociaists and the west is generally not which is why the west succeeds so well. Liberals do not attack communist countries despite their eefect on the world being worse for those "colonised" and despite the environmental record in socialist countries being atrocious. It's obvious then that capitalism is the target which is also why liberals are so easily duped into believing the global warming scam if it means the west has to pay more for energy. Since when did facts come into any liberal decision making process?

Please read this interview. It's a Muslim woman talking about what's wrong with Islam.
http://www.abc.net.au/enoughrope/stories/s1189233....

I think it's so ironic that liberals support Islam which in fact is far more conservative than anyth Christian right group. It's obviously liberal bigotry rearing it's ugly head again. The Christian right are mainly white people based in capitalist western countries while Muslims are mainly non-white in the third world. Ideology plays no part in why liberals support one and attack the other. It's bigotry.

You wouldn't stop at blondes and red heads, you would include blue eyes; whomever the current uniderdog is as a proportion of their demograph. Demographics by race is even an incidental arbitrary choice within the premise of of the system's theoretical efficacy. The system would ultimately equalize everyone even if shoe size, number of siblings, favorite color, or average birth latitude of grand-parents was the chosen demographic standard to equalize upon. On the average, it's fairer than systems which do examine individuals. For the latter to work fairly, an infinite range of standards would have to be deeply scrutinized.
Ok, the land mass is a good point. That does justify greater armament in the international gross product equation. I'd have to live in the mid-east to really know what's going on. As far as I know, the issue is concrete, not theoretical; that Israel is actively imposing a tougher life on the existing residents, making a land grab and a symbolic gesture.
Treatment of Asians in academics fits the model I spoke of as far as I know. here in America, blacks are the academic underdogs. If their ratings improved, we'd start working more on hispanics. Once the blacks and hispanics had caught up with the whites, we'd work on getting blacks, hispanics, and whites to catch up with asians. To whatever extent whites are slighted by mandatory black inclusion, I would think asians are already negatively impacted as well. I don't think it's simply administrated as white and non-white, and even if it were 'officially' administrated simply as minority and non-minority, the actual practice would still involve acting upon demographic data, and targetting more blacks than asians in advertisements for educational opportunity programs.
Liberals don't always choose race as a demographic factor. They can pick public school students or farmers just as easily. The criteria for support is simply that it be a defined demograph with disproportional hardship. They probably would like to examine every situation on a case per case basis instead of bulk demographics if that were feasable. That's why case workers exist. If liberal-socialist extremists had their way, probably one in five people would be employed as a case worker.
I wasn't trying to say conservatives were anarchists, but now that you mention it...
Sometimes the liberal approach is to enable underdog demographics, but at times it is to disable victor demographics. The goal is to ultimately have a system in which no class or demographic can take advantage of another. The ultimate system would be one in which no person could profit from the loss of another.
Liberal are indeed more idealistic than factual. Conservatives are after ethics serving practice (their practice), and liberals are after practice serving ethics.

The conservative justification for their international economic policy is that they are playing by fair rules for everyone. It is however like a professional boxer playing by fair rules when beating upon some innocent person walking down the street. Other countries did not want to participate in our concept of fair play.

I know quite a lot of liberals quite well, and don't know of any that actually like Islam. They would raise hell if anyone tried to impose it here. What they do support is the right of a nation to choose for itself what it wants to be, and have capitalism leave them alone. Liberalism is live and let live. We would be against the local christian right if they tried imposing something on the rest of us, and I'm sure we'd protest any local islamic attempts at imposing something on the rest of us. As is, they don't even have a voice in local media, let alone political sway in america. We support there right to free speech and live amongst themselves however they choose. We'd leave the christian right alone too if they weren't bent on converting everyone. It doesn't matter to liberals if mid-easterners are satanists, hippie christian communists, or puritans; what matters is that they want to be left alone.
One liberal utopia would be one in which everyone lived in lifestyle communes. Communists would be free to communists, capitalists could live amongst capitalists, soldiers could live with soldiers and happily kill each other. Of course each commune would have to have equal geological resources, and not infringe upon each other in any way. As is, the only communes are dispersed demographics, nations, and the globe. Within our nation, the goal is that no demographic can capitalize upon another. Within the globe, the goal is that no nation can capitalize upon another. Liberals are divided as to whethar demographics crosses national borders or not, and so some defend a woman's right to expose her face, while others defend a nations right to cover their women, even if they would oppose it being enforced within their own collective.
Liberals are the ones who stand up for the rights of Nazis to participate in parades, even though Naziism is the last thing thing they'd personally like to see actually happen. It's not about the ideology of the underdogs, it's an ideology of allowing others their own ideology. ... Provided it doesn't interfere with someone else. btw, this has been primarily a description of democratic liberals, not liberal socialists. Likewise, I'm sure conservatives have their libertian conservatives, fundamental conservatives, etc, etc. whom all have differing perspectives on anarchy, border respect, standardization, etc.
As far as I can tell, the only solid difference is that generally for conservatives, economic freedom of the individual supercedes that of the collective, and for liberals, social freedom of the individual supercedes that of the collective.
Some liberals are communist, some are anti-communist, depending on why they liberal in the first place. I supect most of them have been waiting for a system like mine to come along that is both socially and economically 'liberal'. I suppose liberalism is at it's very heart, hypocritical, since they want equal opportunity for people to be diverse. I supose the only way to do that would be to wipe the slate clean every morning. It's a Back to Eden philosphy which accounts for those who back non-ownership.

How is it fairer to deny a person a job because they have big feet?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Just as fair I suppose to deny someone a job because they have a penis or a melanin deficiency.
You socialists are insane!

"What they do support is the right of a nation to choose for itself what it wants to be, and have capitalism leave them alone." That's not what socialists are about at all. Socialists attack any country that chooses to restrict entry to immigrants, especially if those immigrants are not white or Christian because socialists seem to think non-whites and non-Christians somehow deserve more rights. Socialists also do not believe that capitalist countries should be left alone. You are constantly trying to force your ideology on capitalist countries. Again it's a double standard. Christian, white capitalist = evil. Anything else deserves all the benefits and all the rights and NONE of the responsibility.

Why does your "liberal utopia" where "communists would be free to communists, capitalists could live amongst capitalists" not extend to national level? Why is it when capitalists live together as a nation they are somehow evil and need to be changed, or they have to support the socialist/communist economic basket-cases because capitalism works better? Why is that?

My utopia would be that any group of people who choose to live under a system such as socialism must suffer the consequences and not 1.demand other systems bail them out or 2. Label other systems (capitalism) as evil for keeping all their hard earnt wealth to themselves when their own system (socialism) results in people eating each other.

You socialists suffer from "Henny Penny syndrome".

"Within our nation, the goal is that no demographic can capitalize upon another." Sorry but that's complete crap. A white guy who worked hard and paid for his education himself by working crap jobs having been denied a job simply because he is white and/or male is not somehow being capitalized upon? What rubbish you speak! Sorry, but it doesn't matter how you try to dress it up with your socialist jargon, AA is a racist and disgusting system that must be crushed. Anyone who supports it is a racist.

Liberals are also not the people to go to if you want to be left alone during a protest or march that opposes what liberals pretend to believe in. I'm sorry Kristal but who were the lunatics who destroyed inner cities during "peace" marches?!? Give me a break.

You can look at your statement "for conservatives, economic freedom of the individual supercedes that of the collective, and for liberals, social freedom of the individual supercedes that of the collective" from another angle. For conservatives, economic freedom of the collective comes when there is economic freedom of the individual. For liberals, social freedoms outweigh the moral standards of society and social cohesion.

Isn't it funny how any group of people who force the socialist ideology on the proletariat (who never want it) always end up owning everything. Socialist hypocrisy yet again.

It's fairest in a law of avarages. Liberalism is different in that it puts societal justice ahead of individual liberty. Also, ambiguous groups are a convenient means of their equalizing without being accused of targetting individuals. They can get away with saying those with big feet (generally richer) will pay a library tax, while those with small feet (generally poorer) get free library cards. If they really had their way, they'd do without the demographic equalization entirely, and and say that from now on, {b}everyone{b} earns $17 an hour. They can't get away with being totally fair though, so instead they play Robin Hood a bit (yeah, blame him. He's probably the first major liberal folk hero).

"What they do support is the right of a nation to choose for itself what it wants to be, and have capitalism leave them alone." -- "That's not what socialists are about at all." I know. I thought we were talking about 'liberals', not socialists. that's why I even bothered to mention that this recent thread has been about democratic liberals, and not liberal socialists.

Aside from our own, when do socialists or liberals ever try imposing their ideology on capitalist nations, except in nations where half the nation has a liberal/socialist stance already, and foreign investors or political agents with unfair advantage are trying to push the scales towards capitalism? Can you name an example country?

Nations are too big for that commune model. If Venezuela went totally capitalist, that would leave a lot of socialists with no where to go. My idea is that within each geography of each nation theres such a place one is free to move to, preferably within a days drive. LA could easily be divided into half a dozen political nations, and a confederacy of these nations would report to the federal government and agree on things like a common currency and tariffs.

I didn't say capitalist nations are evil. If your exammple is Iraq, we are defending their right to their status quo, not specifically defending Islam. We weren't hip on any soviet or chinese conquests either. The underdog always get defended simply by virtue of being the underdog. Capitalism is however likened to military conquest. Any attempt at subjugating resources discouraged, military or economic.

Your utopia is quite fair provided each group had equitable resources to start with. Of course if everyone was socialist, there'd be no need for borders nor anyone in a better position to help, unless some area had a natural disator that the others didn't. Capitalists don't bail each other out either. Instead they profit from immennse loans made in desperation.

Henny Penny - Hit by an acorn, runs around spreading rumors that the sky is falling. How's that apply to socialists?

Your example, a white suffering male, is a statistical anomaly in the larger scope where usually it is the minority which suffers more. The system starts wide and works it way down to details. There simply isn't the micro-management capacity
yet to make sure New Orleans blacks are doing as well as Nigerian recently immigrated blacks, or that white divorced males working at both fast-food and baggage handling jobs with kids in school (possibly your suffering white man) ar e doing as well as Nigerian immigrant stock investors. If you gave AA enough time, that's what it would have looked like, until ultimately it ended up with everyone makes $17/hr and the first three kids get free college. Supposedly, the idea was to let up when everyone had a fair chance, but if you think about it, that's so open ended that even a population of clones wouldn't solve the issue.

Inner city destruction? not sure what you refer too, but I expect it was the poor and uneducated who were at least smart enough to realize they stood a better chance with liberal socialism. Currently it's peaceful protestors standing up for our constitutional rights like free speech. The conservatives don't care because 1. They are more concerned with their own asses than any societal wide justice, and 2. They don't have any Free Speech they want to demonnstrate and protect, because the conservative government is already enforcing their value system. If socialists were in power and gave everyone the same wage, it's conservatives who would be throwing bottles at police.

I don't even get either of your defining statements:
"For conservatives, economic freedom of the collective comes when there is economic freedom of the individual" - How could that exist? If individuals have the freedom to compete economically, some will gain and some will lose; not all of society will prosper equally.
"For liberals, social freedoms outweigh the moral standards of society and social cohesion." - haven't a clue what you are even saying. Liberal believe those who want to be nudists or smoke grass are free to do so, as long as they don't infringe upon others. If social cohesion and moral standards means that no one is allowed to smoke or go nude, then I suppose that is true.

If you mean that the implementing socialist dictators themselves end up owning everything, then that is hypocrisy, but hypocrisy of the dictators, not socialists in general. Capitalist leaders claim to give everyone a competitive opportunity, but tend actually to just make it easier for their own private niche to have more competitive opportunity. I can't claim it's hypocrisy though, because 'every man for himself' IS the basis of capitalism.

Kristal, can you hear yourself? When you say "generally small feet" or generally any characteristic you are generalizing and this is wrong. That's the problem with the left, you see groups of people rather than individuals and you don't care about people who don't fit the stereotype.

Socialists are always trying to force capitalists to become socialists mainly when they push for huge tax rises. Ironically socialists use words like "bigot, racist, sexist" to force unequal treatment of individuals based on their race or sex which would make socialists the true racists and sexists.

Capitalism is likened to military conquest? Wrong. Socialism has to be spread militarily because people don't want it. Capitalism is absorbed by people by choice. Revolutions are always away from socialism towards capitalism. No one ever got sent to a gulag for rejecting capitalism.

Henney Penny - I was talking about the story where one individual did all the work and asked for help. All the socialists kept saying "not I" untill the crap hit the fan and there was no food. Then all the socialists were asked "Who will help me eat the food?" and they all said "I will!"

I really don't give a crap if a poor white person is a statistical anomaly, thay person is still an individual who is being denied what he needs because of his race or sex. That's racism. You're a racist. I think you will find that poor, uneducated rural whites outnumber the poor blacks anyway. Too bad for them they are white huh Kristal?

If socialists were in power everyone would be getting 5cents an hour and would be starving. Do you study what socialism has done everywhere else at all?

Do you believe that hard workers should have their income confiscated? Why should they have the same income as a person who does less work? You are advocating insanity, a place where hard work is penalised and laziness rewarded. IT DOESN'T WORK!

Government is about groups of individuals; Not everyones house will burn down, but everyone pays to have a fire department.

Ensuring racial equality involves comparison of racial success. The alternative is to ignore that race has anything to do with unfair circumstances.

Countries vote for socialist leaders when capitalist contenders exist. The US sends in military support to capitalists when both socialists and capitalists have resorted to violence to settle their political issues. When such nations do have elections, the liberals have to send in poll monitors to ensure the capitalists aren't playing dirty. Even with a semblance of fair play, foreign investors pay for large propoganda ads in all the major papers to sway the local voters. If foreign capitalists stayed out of it, more nations would be socialist. Foreign capitalists are of course in for the profit, and a few locals would stand to gain as well. For the most part though, the general populace would stand to lose. For instance, oil that belonged to the people would belong to a couple local tycoons and and their foreign investors if the capitalist party won.

Perhaps no one was ever sent to a gulag, but capitalism still bites into peoples lives. Just last night, a credit account I have maintained for years at the same level suddenly decided they will quadruple my interest rate based on something in my credit report. I haven't a clue what, and just sent in for a copy of the report today. That's an increase of $650/yr in interest which I don't have. I really don't want to go through bankruptcy, so I have to hope some other company with a low rate will transfer my debt. It's really bizarre. They charge the highest interest to those who can afford it least. What international banks do to foreign nations is quite similar.

Do you live on some foreign planet? You can make a valid argument for one system of justice over another, but to think blacks are doing better in general than whites &/or even have the same chance is pure insanity.

If capitalism were really about 'the rewards of working harder' I would love it. But it hardly is at all. That's the justification propoganda spewed by the true capitalists. Those early commie philosophers wanted to create an economy that was based on labor, not capitalisation. With each successive capitalist regime in power, tax law increasingly supports investors while comparatively penalising workers. People who's concept is work hard for a square deal are getting screwed, working three jobs flipping burgers and carrying suitcases, barely making the rent, while those who invested in burger chains and airlines are coasting through life, sending their kids to college to learn to do the same thing. The system will inevitably collapse. It's gotten so much worse in the past 20 years, and seems to logarithmically progress, that I suspect it will occur in less than a decade, much like the Soviet collapse, and there are plenty of signs that the investor class is aware of this trend, and is preparing by supporting an enormous prison industry, and approving all mechanisms of martial law, in preparation for the day when both workers and those assisted in this economy where paying jobs become rarer revolt against the system entirely.

If you think the system is still working, then grab any 30 year old person now living at the poverty level, black or white, and make them a homeowner without debt before they die.

Again, I believe in means testing, not race testing. If you ignore race you can still determine if an individual needs help or not. Making blanket generalizations about everyone in a certain race is not only inaccurate it is immoral.

The system is working better than any socialist system ever had. Sure everyone under socialism is equal but equal in what? Abject poverty.

Means testing would be even better. AA is a bulk rate short-cut when society can not afford to have one in ten hired as a case worker to thoroughly evaluate peoples means. I can't even get any of my close family members to agree on what my best course of survival &/or success might be. Last I heard, there were 34000 homeless people in NY City, and 80,000 in LA (I find it hard to believe it's that high, but you can't walk a block or two even in residential neighborhoods without running into one or two, or their encampment). These are people who primarily make their living recycling peoples soda containers. They aren't even part of the welfare system. They are evidence that society doesn't have room these days for everyone to work. Colleges advertise a chance of getting a job these days. I think the solution is a Keynesian system where publicly beneficial work is created to employ these people suiting their capacity. I see homelessness as the inevitable result of capitalism in a post-industrial society that increasingly doesn't really need much work done. The last wave was computer programmers and dotcom entrepreeneurs, but that window has closed too. Skilled programmers are looking for employment in places like Australia that haven't yet done all they want to do (or so the rumor here is), mediocre programmers are on unemployment, and the schools keep churning out tons more who will never find work. I think pure capitalism is obsolete. At one time it may have meant that the clever who put in the effort are well off while others sweat for a meager living, but increasingly it's the the clever who put in the effort who have jobs at all and pay unemployment for the others. If that's really the case, and I believe it is, then I only see three answers that sustain the populace: 1) continue to let people work and pay the unemployment of others 2) have the government create work 3) have more people working less and spreading the wealth. The fourth option is of course to not sustain everyone. Like you, I don't see that #1 is fair, so that leaves 2 & 3. I prefer #3. If I understand you correctly, I think you have a fifth option, like the fourth, except people get entrepreneurial and create their own jobs. With each successive decade, as the system gets more streamlined, I see less and less room for that, and the niches left to entrepreneurs border on finding ways to sell air to everyone. If I misunderstand you, or you also have some better idea, let me know.

I've said often that Oz resembles the US two decades age. If that extends to this scenario, either your collapse will follow ours, or you have some modern self sustaining model we haven't latched onto here.

Increasingly these past couple years I hear people here looking for some other country that offers better chances at survival and social liberty. Bush may be aware of the need to create work, and his answer is arms, prison industry, and the military. At the RNC (republican convention) it became clear that the right to peacefully assemble, even when there is no violence, does not exist anymore. Pedestrians carrying signs are now considered as obstructions to pedestrians who have nothing to say, and both are caught in the sweeps. Mentioning your right to be there is part of the policy guaranteed to include you in a sweep.

The line of thinking us liberals are fighting is that 'we must set aside our personal liberties and not speak against Bush because he is protecting us from the terrorists who would have our rights taken away'. We're not at all happy campers these days. I'm reminded of the ancient Clash song which goes 'You have the right to free speech, provided you don't actually use it'. I've tried to hold onto the Gandhi line of thought, but I increasingly wonder what one does when the leadership of your own government becomes totalitarian. Peaceful resistance would mean not supporting them, including the taxes, and then things would just fall apart. Bush unashamedly says that 'he represents the haves and the have mores', while increasingly people become have nots. Kerry says otherwise, but his policies somewhat reflect the same thinking. I'm not sure which is worse, the deception of Kerry, or the blatant corruption of Bush. Well really, Kerry's better, but I'm sure I could find 10000 people in LA I would prefer.

So socialism would give programming work to a third rate programmer? If people have only a skill to offer that no one wants, surely the problem lies with that individual. I can't see why this is the problem of capitalism. Why should capitalism accomodate someone who decides to study the making of jousts?

I think homelessness is a cop-out. These people, rather than do labouring jobs, decide to beg. Yes, they could always create something else. I'm sure there are plenty of skills amongst those 80,000. BTW, there were homeless people in the USSR only the press was banned from talking about them.

In Australia we have "work for the dole". There is no free ride. You are required to prove you are looking for work, but if you are still unemployed you must do community service to get welfare. The problem with the US is that you don't give a crap if people decide to drop out and be homeless. Here it is unacceptable to do nothing and lower than low to beg. You also have the huge problem of vast numbers of unskilled Mexican workers entering the workforce every year. No system can utilize these people that quickly. You don't seem to care about the illegal immigration problem you have. Liberals in the US also don't see it as beneficial to ensure new migrants speak English like we do here. How can you provide employment for uneducated people who can't speak to their co-workers or employers? It's the liberal love of multiculturalism and rejection of assimilation that has brought the US to this point, not capitalism.

The US also has a huge problem of race and culture differences being important. Rather than assimilation, the US has fractured into tribes of languages and races. You don't work together. There are places in your cities where people avoid if they aren't of a certain race. You're failure to ensure all people are Americans first has made your country a social basket case and it is the way liberals continue to see people in race groups or allow Spanish to become a second US language that has brought it to this. In Australia the inner cities are valuable and are booming. In the US you have blacks occupying the inner cities and the cultural divide means whites avoid it. Blacks end up hating their situation and blame it on the whites, which breeds more contempt.

All of your liberal "touchy-feely" social policy has resulted in what you have today - a country that is made up of different groups of people who distrust each other at best and hate each other at worst. I hope Australia isn't the US 20 years ago. We are certainly not making the same mistakes you did. I only hope we don’t get a wacko leftist party in government who has the idea that to make sure people all speak the same language is somehow racist, or a party “like the Greens” who think anyone arriving illegally on our shores should be allowed to become a permanent resident.

The apparent failures of capitalism are mainly due to liberal social engineering – including race-based rewards.


Kerry is a hypocrite. He is very wealthy yet claims he will hit the rich with taxes etc. He’s feeding you bullcrap to get elected and liberals are eating it up with a spoon.

Kerry and Bush are both wealthy from wealthy families. Both went to Yale and both are in the Skull and Bones secret society and both are descended from the same couple – Edmund Reade and Elizabeth Cooke. There’s an agenda here deeper than conservatism versus liberalism. Whatever you get the real story will never be seen.

In your first paragraph, you're missing my point. In almost every paragraph in fact.

Let me describe this instead in terms of an exxagerated fantasy. People once made $100 yr which was all spent on bread and maybe a sewing machine if they were lucky, from others doing the same. Eventually they had industrious jobs building robots that manufactured and distributed both raw materials and finished projects, both practical and exotically fanciful. They did this in the employ of Duke Gotcha. They were happy to earn $100 year from the duke; Making bread and sewing machines in their kitchen was beginning to cost $200/yr, but now they could buy all the bread, sewing machines, and neon poodle curlers they could use from the duke for $60 yr. Of course, once all the robots were finished, he let all the employees go except a handful. Since making bread costs him next to nothing now, and no one has jobs, the duke has lowered the cost of living (buying his commodities) to $40 yr, but the people, making nothing, are worse off than when they made $100 all spent on bread.

People in prison pick up garbage on the highways and even work well below minimum wage for corporations now. Homeless getting relief do fill out work search reports, and are made to spend so many days per month standing under a tree raking leaves at the park or filing at a govt. office. Actually working would be frowned upon by all the others there paid to stand in a tool shed, sit at a desk, or sit in a truck. After all, they're worried about their paid jobs. There's far greater voter interest in letting go of all the government employees who are paid for mouse training, than their is to employ those on welfare.

I use the example of computer programmers because it's the only growth industry we've had in two decades, and it's over. Only minimal maintenace is required now. On occasion a new technology comes along, like the ability to connect cell phones to web sites, but this is rare, and the new work takes less time/effort since we know how to design more efficient programming tools these days. Of course the general public still believes this is where the jobs are, and colleges need to attract students, so they don't say otherwise. They don't let on to the 4000 annual grads that there are only 400 new jobs yr, and probably even more layoffs. They can't go back to training people as construction workoers on hydro-electric dams; that work was finished 60 years ago. If they were more realistic, they might go back to training for some basic work staple, like being a sales clerk, and push those sales clerks without degrees onto the streets. It would never pay for their degree of course, especially since their income taxes would now pay to support former clerks on welfare.

So, if programming was the only job in existence, but only five in 100 programmers were now needed, then no, I don't see that it makes sense to hire the 95 relatively mediocre ones, except that they need to earn a living, and so it makes most sense that they rotate employment. Otherwise, the five support the other 95, or society starves.

In a society of 100 people and only 30 jobs that really need done, those people who want the jobs which require some effort, but pay far bettter than welfare, are glad (if they could think it out) to have half the population drop out of the competiton. The problem occurs when only 15 jobs really need done, and the cost of keeping the dropouts on life support is too high for those still in the game. That's the pont we're reaching now. We've been in the former state for 35-45 years.

Now that you bring immigration into the equation, I don't see what's changed. Instead of a society off 100 people fighting for 30 jobs, you have a society of 200 fighting for 60 jobs. It's no different than expanding one's national borders. You'll notice no one really has an interest in doing that this past century. .. Perhaps some strategic military/trade outposts, but simply more land/population?, god no.
If you think about it, theres almost no difference between immigration and every domestic national company which possibly can, hiring overseas (one more reason there are no jobs here). The only difference is that we don't try to provide minimum wage, benefits, or unemployment insurance overseas. If we were to expand our borders to include korea and {whoa, I'm roaming the house and finding just about everything is made in China, even the things with an american flag in the package corner giving one the first impression it's made in USA.}, anyhow, it'd be like a population of 300 now, fighting for 90 jobs. Of course 60 of those were asia in the first place, so it would only make sense that asia now gets 100/300ths of the dole (if not 60/90ths). - - now that I think of it, I can suddenly compare your reverend capitalism to the socialism you cry against. You ask 'why do the people living in a nation, say Australia, have to support those who don't?'. I could just as well ask 'Why do the people working in Korea have to support those in the US who don't'?.

I'm sort of inclined towards having a national language, if nothing else, with the lame excuse of cultural preservation. My liberal radio station switched a year ago to doing a third of it's programming in Spanish. The thing is, it had no Latino audience. It just did it out of idealism (proportional broadcasting), perhaps with intent to indocrtinate them, maybe to capture some of the largest growing oudience. People argue though that if we go that route, what about proportionally representing all 102 languages found in the LA school system. We have a few tv broadcastng networks, and I was stunned a couple days nights ago when one the grand three filled it's entire prime-time slot in Spanish, including the ads. I think we have a spanish vhf channel, but usually it's the uhf channels where all the foreign languages are found.

Actually liberals aren't buying Kerry at all. They have nothing good to say about him all. They grumble and say we have to vote for him, because otherwise Bush will win and we'll be sent to camps or something. There are liberals urging to vote Green or Nader, to actually support our actual ideals, and those who consider that policy a derisive damage to our cohesive chances in ousting Bush.

I don't buy there family relationship as more than coincidence. A lot of people won't even cooperate with their brother on anything. Yet I still agree with you that their is a conspiracy here. It's never been more evident than now that there's a unified hidden agenda behind both candidates. Both parties try to smear each other for minimally patriotic military service, whethar they have 3 purple hearts or got deferred. It's absurd, and I have to guess that's it's dept of defense recruitment propoganda, and not campaigning at all. I mean it doesn't even have anything to do with facts anymore. In fact very little of the campaigning has anything to do with any facts.

So you want us to return to making spears and trading them for face paint? Technology changes but it doesn't mean that just because old jobs are lost that there is nothing to replace those jobs with. I was thinking today that if it wasn't for US capitalism we would still be bloodletting and cutting holes in people's heads to let the evil spirits out.

You know who objected to making people on welfare earn their money here? The damn socialists and greens. Where's the logic there? As far as people in prison go, they lose some rights when they choose to commit crimes that they know full well they shouldn't have done. They chose to be in that situation. They're lucky they have any work at all.

No, the 5 employed programmers should not have to support those 95 who are unemployed. The 95 do something else, or use their skills to develop something original - you know 'ingenuity', that thing socialism kills?

Let's face it, the Chinese make crap. Quality is made elsewhere and the amrket knows it which is why China fills the gap and makes the world's souvineers and dildos. Once they make quality like Japan, the standard of living will be on par with the rest of the world so wages will be too high to support factories making cheap crap. These jobs will move to a place where they are needed. MEanwhile the west moves towards information and further ingenuity because places like China don't bother researching anything new, they just reverse engineer western technology. You should be supporting globalisation because after all, it is resulting in sharing the wealth only it does it by creating work. Socialism simply steals from the rich. Capitalism allows the poor the pride of working for their income.

What is happening in LA with Spanish is "linguistic cleansing" and before you know it you will have to do everything in Spanish or get out. Nice country your liberal ideology has left the future. Where's the responsibilty from immigrants? I see a lot of rewards but as usual with left leaning polic zero responsibilty. They come to a new country and don't even have to bother learning the mother tongue? Disgusting.

Americans get the leaders they deserve. This mentality that there are only two possible choices is what has lead you to this point. Your two major parties know they can fudge up all they like and they will still be back in power in a few elections even if they get voted out. One party introduces a draconian measure that both parties want but this party becomes the fall guy. The party voted in never removes the legislation that caused the former party to be voted out but the people are so ignorant they don't care. Politics becomes a glorified Big Brother reality show. If more people voted for a third party, the two majors would be fallng over each other to give the public what tehy want. The more I see of your politics the more disgusted I am. How can a political party close down a city and divert massive police numbers to security work while spending millions to pat themselves on the back. This sort of thing would be politican suicide in Australia. We hate pretentiousness and blowing yur own horn especially if it's all bullcrap. Where is the democracy? Why shouldn't all parties be equally represented on the media? Ours at least talks to the leaders of the first 6 largest parties. Local newspapers always show each candidate from every party and allow them say 300 words to explain their policies. Perhaps your interests could buy a full page of advertising in the LA Times and divide it up equally amongst the largest six paties? Americans are voting someone out, not voting someone in which is what causes the two party duopoly.

The conspiracy goes further. If you look at the family trees of all the presidents, they all have connections to the blue bloods of European royalty somewhere. What's more scary is how the candidate who wins the US election is always the one with the most royal genes. You have a King, not a President.

Trading spears for face paint is an option. My idea of tracking utilization and rating on web cell phones of people washing dogs, computer training, adjusting a bicycle, mediating between offices, simulating extra-planetary atmospheres, or handing essays in to professors is such a system.

P.K. Dick wrote a short story in which a planet so impoverished that it was a sin to waste goods, had found a way to robotize production, but it was an all or nothing machine, and resulted in the production of excess goods. There answer was a stamp program. The leisure class could could afford to demonstrate that they had perhaps worn out a deck of cards in a month. The struggling class however had to demonstrate weekly that it had worn out golf clubs, hats, radios, etc. How many goods do you see these days made to last 30 years, like rocking chairs or hi-fi equipment? To still do so would be the demise of our last excuse for manufacturing employment. I paid $5 for an extended hand-set cord and laugh knowing every single person I know has had the batteries die on their cordless phone when talking to me. Except for my bicycle (oh wait, I bought that used on eBay too) and computer, there's not a new purchased object in this house.
But no, I wasn't suggesting going back to nature, rather I was suggesting we continue to streamline food and shelter, owned publicly, manufacture durable goods again, share the production wealth and duties, and spend most of our time at the beach. The innovation model was good to fulfill our survival needs, but somehow the profits still ended up in the hands of a few, and new innovtion revolves around creating needs like video games, while everyone still has to struggle for a living. I've said repeatedly that we live in a post-industrilal society. By that, I mean that we could have met the needs of all those on welfare, and still relaxed, but instead, capitalisation continues to promote struggle of the masses.
China makes whatever the demand is for. American homes are filled with chinese products. If americans wanted something else, the chinese would make something else. Cheap goods could be made in america, and bring the jobs back, but that's not why we buy from China. It's because we can pay them less for their labor; we aren't paying their benefits and welfare. Those cheap goods would cost us too much manufactured here, because we do pay for welfare here. If we annexed china, it wouldn't be cheaper to manufacture there, hence we wouldn't bother.

What do the other 95 programmers do? You don't seem to get 'post-industrial' at all.

Globalism is not sharing the wealth. We profit from foreign labor by not paying their societys true cost of living. I repeat, we would not hire overseas if it meant extending the same courtesy we extend to ourselves.

IT can certainly make life more efficient, but it's still motivated by achieving the highest capitalist profit on the labor and resources of others. Now the goal is for the capitalist leaders to profit more efficiently from the creative and intellectiual labors of others. It's like building a panama canal. Sure, it improves trade, but it's also a means of remaining the top controlling dog and subjecting others to tariffs they didn't have on their own. You could argue that those subjected are getting a good deal, but each such scenario continues to sustain the relative wealth between capitalist and producer/consumer. In the end, wealth is always measured relatively.
I don't expect you to get that, or care. The others at SC are right, you don't get much of anything, no matter how eloquently you express your opinion. If I were to give you the benefit of the doubt, I would have to say you are simply playing the devils advocate, and don't have much to work with, not your fault. You do offer good things at times though. I appreciate hearing how Australia has less racism. Michael Moore was good at demonstrating how Canada has less racism too. I'm not quite sure it's for the reasons you cite though. I notice that Africans full of cultural pride do far better in business and civics and are respected more than african-americans simply trying to fit in. They also embrace multi-culturalism, and give one a sense in conversation of being a world citizen.

One could argue that this south-western territory was theres before it was ours, won through war. Of course, one could argue that hispanics and english alike should have learned the native tongues. I don't see you complaining about not speaking maori, nor do I suspect you see it as a problem that the phillipines, java, , fiji, etc etc. are increasingly adopting English. -- If that's the case, then you are simply cultural-centric.

I can't argue with your take on the elections and democracy in america. There is nothing in our media at all to make people aware of politics in other nations, and that things could be different here. If nothing else, pay attention to what has happened here, and don't let it happen there. We lost control of the media, and even if a state votes for something like medica marijuana, the feds overturn it. The public has lost any means of direct control, and now is losing their ability to even say they want some representation. Buying media through collective email fund-raising was one method we tried, but we discovered the media have a right to refuse service to advertisers.

Comparing conventions, the republicans were far less truthfull (and I personally reject all the plans they offer), yet far more compelling. They had superior deceptive speech writers. The democrats might say we will take candy from babies and offer them redress in court, while the republicans will simply say that we are creating an america in which babies are free to patriotically hand over their candy. Republican speeches don't bring up anything that might cause pause for consideration. The symbolic stage arrangements for Bush make him out as a king. Recent observation suggests that america is divided into two camps, those terrorized into believing we need a strong leader to dictate everything, and those who have faith in society to work things out.

Chinese workers don't have the same benefits as we do in the west because they haven't fought for them and are willing to work for less money. That's really not our problem. Where were they when we were going through the industrial revolution? Why do you seem to hate the way the west interferes in the affairs of other countries but you seem to call for it all the time?

I get post-indiustrial. The west hasn't been "industrial" for many decades now. Tertiary industries were relocated to countries that don't give a crap about their environment. We are now in quarterary or "ideas" industry then we farm out the crap work to people who are at the stage we were at 50 years ago. The only difference is that they never came up with the ideas. 50 years ago we had to.

Globalism is sharing the wealth Kristal. You might have noticed a little thing called China. They seem to be getting very wealthy due to globalism. That and their rejection of the lunacy of communism. That's something that you fail to "get", no matter how much the facts stare you in the face. Personally I don't give a crap what "the others" here at SC think about me, especially if they are socialists like you. You deny the facts - actual things that are happening - and live in some fantasy world where an idealised version of socialism that has never, ever worked is your utopia. You are in serious denial, as are "the others" who seem to be discussing me behind my back. To demonstrate how deluded you are I try to make you see that AA is racism and you are too stupid to see it even though AA is racism defined. I understand wealth is relative. The poorest individual in a capitalist system is still better off than the masses in a socialist system because under socialism they have zero opportunity to improve their lot.

Why would I complain about speaking Maori? ALL Maori can speak English. You see some people (not leftists) think it's a good idea if all the members of a society can communicate with each other. Now unless you want to learn every one of the hundreds of languages present in LA, the intelligent thing would be to decide on one common language wouldn't it? Look at me trying to preach common sense to a socialist.

Part of your not getting things is that you generalize and don't always listen; I never suggest meddling in the affairs of other countries. In fact the implications of my city-state designs are that every micro-socio-political-geographic demonstarte that they can be entirely self-sustaining, preferably without even having to trade goods or services with other city-states. The only contrast to that is that at the same time, I would eliminate national borders and give people the freedom to join any collective.

Speaking of fighting for workers rights, things are getting volatile here. Apparently there are school teachers making $18k, a wage which means having to work a couple other jobs as well, and being public employees, they're not allowed to unionize anymore. Now, apparently, Bush wants to dismantle the last of the unions by making it illegal for any union to form a contract with an employer.
We don't pay education (in fact, tuition in community colleges just doubled in price), but we do pay for building and staffing new prisons.
Bush scares me. There was a gleam in his eye when he spoke of the president he most would have liked to be, Abraham Lincoln. Not because Lincoln freed the slaves, but because it would have been fascinating to run a nation at war with itself.
If he continues his trend to turn labor into a slave class, he risks putting us in a civil class war. That he seems to be preparing for it (with laws supposedly to secure us from terrorism) just a step ahead of alienating sects of the american public certainly makes me sceptical of him.
I do understand what you mean by AA being racist, even if shoe size were the criteria to equalize upon. Class inequities still exist however, and equalizing upon the same class distinctions is the only affordable policy to correct it; means testing would be better. It's not like we don't have that though. The majority of assistance for things like education and housing is simply based on income. They can't afford however to determine why individuals live in poverty, and go on the presumption that you'd have as much money as everyone else if you had the means.
When bread producers will raise their prices to whatever the market will bear, relative wealth is the only wealth. The only hope someone has in capitalism of dramatically increasing their relative wealth is to somehow turn the tables and find a means of capitalizing upon someone else themself.

I've learned recently that the chicanos in their mural art actually pride themselves on being border people, not really citizens of mexico or the US. Unless they were recognized as an independent nation, and had some bargaining power like a union, I don't see that their perspective is very advantageous.

I'm not hopeless. I've adopted some of what you've described. Even when my argument is solid from one perspective, it doesn't mean I discount the truth of an opposing perspective when I see a solid argument there too.

On one hand, we will never agree, because no matter what policies we argue for, my foundation sentiment is more liberal than yours. Your's is often fairly liberal too though at interspersed tiers. You can't complain about Rockefeller and call yourself a true capitalist, because he represents the ultimate goal of capitalism. When liberals speak against capitalism, it's his sort of capitalism they are ultimately against. If you called what you favor 'socially-democratized (regulated with checks and balances) libertarian mercantilism' or something, you might get less flack from the liberals who also want to prevent a one world fascism.

It dawns on me that we haven't been looking very far down the road lately. Probably because of Bush. Still, the systems found in 1984 or Brave New World could exist within our lifetime. BNW is based on a capitalist victor, 1984 on a socialist victor, BNW on cheerful ignorant masses, 1984 on people knowing they are opressed. Both though show the inevitability of one world govt through socialism or capitalism. It seems to me that, keeping this in mind, we should look towards what we want that sytem to look like, and how to make it happen. My take is that multi-national corporations and the government are becoming synonymous, yet the ultimate single social control structure should at least be democratized in some fashion. I think the route is to increasingly democratize civil government (the reverse of what's happening), but more importantly, to democratize large corporations now that the anti-trust model has failed.

You constantly suggest meddling in other countries affairs. You want the west to either dictate their wage levels and environmental policy, or you want the west to deny them the opportunity to engage in world trade. Again with the national borders thing? Have you even considered the consequences of that action or are you too short sighted? How about I remove the borders around your house - doors and such - and see what happens.

"Not because Lincoln freed the slaves, but because it would have been fascinating to run a nation at war with itself." - what are you a mindreader too?

Class does not follow race lines, despite what socialists like to believe.

I can complain about Rockefella when he goes beyond the spirit of capitalism> capitalism is about making a better product and giving people what they want, not squashing another person out of the picture or buying up patents for better or more efficient products and sitting on them so you can sell your crappy version first. I also have a problem with people who worship Gods that stand for ruthlessness. I have a problem with people who can only make it by breaking the rules that better people follow. I agree that capitalism must have rules and guidelines just as every system does after all if you extrapolate capitalism to the point where wages are so low that people cannot afford the goods they produce then it all collapses, and if you look at socialism it always fails because it lacks what capitalism has - drive and ingenuity.

I hardly think liberals who advocate socialism should compare capitalism to fascism or pretend socialism is the antithesis of fascism. As I have said and demonstrated before, fascism is far closer to socialism than capitalism is. There is no free market with fascism and there is no competition.

You're calling for the nationalization of coporations? I don't know about the US but in Australia and New Zealand, the reason the governments began selling their state owned businesses like airlines, banks etc, and in New Zealand (the experiment) everything down to sewage works was sold, was to pay for the huge amount of debt. The reason these countries were in such debt, especially New Zealand, was because of the huge cost of social welfare. New Zealand was a capitalist country crippled by socialist dogma. 15-20 years ago one third of the population was recieving some type of government handout! Of course this was unsustainable. So it's ironic that you, a socialist, would call for both more handouts and the nationalisation of assets since the handouts are what forced Australia and New Zealand (at least) to sell everything. New Zealand went through a terrible 10 year period of paying off the socialist folly but is now emerging stronger and wealthier.

You turn my words around. When I speak of regulating employee benefits elsewhere, I only mean when we here are the employers, and above that, I suggest that we not even be employers overseas.
To some extent I live by the 'Mi casa, su casa' motto of keeping ones doors open to others. I even offer homeless people showers. I'm not a hypocrite as you imagine, ewven though I never went as far as suggesting that people open their doors as they do their borders. Opening borders equalizes the globe. People migrate to wherever the jobs or resources are. No one has a birthright to geography, and comprative local legal conditions aren't used as a means of exploiting others. What holds true in one part of the globe holds true wherever similar people gather, and systems that evolve, for better or worse, are free to evolve anywhere. Either the US shouldn't have benefits, or US companies should offer the same benefits to employees overseas, or US companies shouldn't be there, or for that matter, the people our companies hire overseas should be allowed to come here as employees. Otherwise we are capitalising on the misfortune of other nations, which is a general premise of capitalism, capitalise on the less fortunate.
Bush actually said that on an hour televised interview. No mind reading involved. He didn't mention the slave freeing part though. It's like when Rumsfeld wished the live media coverage from the Iraqui side of the war could be as exciting as our coverage. Was he in Skull and Bones too by chance?

There is some coincidence between class, race, and culture. Nigerians and afro-americans are both black, yet, on a statistical average, I'm sure Nigerians fare better economically. I'm sure there are tons of blacks that fare better than whites too. I'm not even sure what you mean. If that's your argument, you could also claim class doesn't follow education lines.

People who see capitalism as an evil do so because they don't believe that that 'beneficial' spirit of capitalism you speak of exists much; That most capitalists lean towards as much of those evils you speak of as they can get away with.
I once mentioned to you a finger pricking device my bro invented. Just last week he had one used on him. What had happened was that he was in their employ of a prick manufacturer a decade and invented a far superior design which used less material, less machinging, was more ergonomic, and had the added feature of retracting the disposable prick. He even built a working prototype in the garage after hours. They told him that they couldn't afford to retool and already had a market for their existing product, and also that he could no build such a thing on his own, because the law is that anything an employee creates during his period of employment belongs to the employer. He lasted there a couple months, and now, a decade later, the same company uses his design with no credit at all to him. -- I figured out why this happens, once again, capitalism. Laws are decided by the outcome of trials. Trials are won by the costliest lawyers. In laws between employees and employers, employers will have one and set the precedent. Likewise, any laws that are created to settle disputes between small and large companies will favor larger companies, because they too had better lawyers.
One ultimate goal of any capitalist is to have no competion.
I'm not calling for the nationalistion of corporations, I'm saying it's happening, but rather through the reverse. When the lobbyists control who does what in political office, the government and corporations become one and the same. Bush has pretty much filled every appointed office with the last people who should be there, owners of the industry to protect the very resources they want to use. But, actually I do want to nationalise industry, but only to put public resources in the hands of public decision and benefit. Bush does things like allow foreign mining of federal property, so his dads canadien company can mine our gold. Bush is using the office of president to be a rockefellerian capitalist of federal public resources. It's a trend happening at all levels of government recently unfortunately. It makes the newspapers (not tv), but not even as a wrong doing. The public doesn't seem to make the connections on the degree to which they are being screwed over by the they people elect to serve them.

Are you telling me NZ's banks and airlines weren't profitable? I would think a nation should have a sustainable means of supporting it's populace, and having the public own businesses makes more sense than having no means t pay welfare at all. The other means of paying welfare is taxes, but that's not nearly as fair since it taxes individuals and not public assets. The only reason taxing individuals is fair because in all likelihood they make their money capitalizing off the general public of that nation. You say they are wealtier now. Did they stop paying as much welfare, or were taxes on those assets more profitable than ownership? If private ownership resulted in layoffs or lower pay (as capitalists tend to do), then I would think their welfare costs would even increase. If you ask me, I'd expect NZ was forced into a bad move selling those assets, or had an internal political coup working on behalf of business interests, but against total NZ prosperity. How are you defining wealth? Is the average NZ family better off now? If so, where did the increased wealth come from?

So you think European colonization was good? After all, the Europeans colonists went where they wanted to and treated the globe outside Europe as if there were no borders. I'm not sure you really believe what you say, or at least when it comes to the activities of White people your standards seem to change. Typical leftist. Europeans migrated to where the jobs and land was but I'm sure you have stated elsewhere that this was a bad thing and that Europeans should not have done this. What is it to be?

How can the west be capitalizing on the misfortune of those in other coutries if they are better off with the jobs they get? Why work in a job at all if your net benefit is actually a loss? There is no force involved. Do you have any concept at all about economics, currency differences, inflation? First of all the value of the currencies in the third world are so low that the cost of living relative to what an American or Australian pays for things like water is miniscule. You want US companies to pay the few who work in their factories an American wage. OK, so now you have a few select people earning comparatively huge amounts of money living amongst subsistence farmers and the self employed. What do you think will happen when people start splashing money around these villages? Soon, basic commodities will be so expensive that the poor could never buy them. What would happen is what you complain about in Santa Clara (was it?) where big money forced the ordinary people out.

You socialists seem to have absolutely zero foresight. You come up with these wide-eyed utopian ideas that don't work at best and which create far more problems than there were to start with at worst. It's like your no-bordr call. It's insanity. Try actually thinking about what your ideology will cause in 10 or 20 years.

My point with class, race etc is that you should not take any of that into consideration at all. Why is that so hard for you to grasp? It's wrong and flawed. You can't look at a person's race and make assumptions about how educated they are, wealthy they are, poor they are. That's what AA does and that's why conservatives hate it. It's racism and sexism legislated into existence by ignorant leftist bigots who are either too stupid or too blinded by their crazy ideology to see the truth.

So how did what happened to your brother differ from the socialist utopia you want? He would get nothing and the invention would not get made anyway. I'm sorry but there are plenty of ways to protect yourself from being ripped off. Capitalism is not the only system where people steal ideas from each otehr, but in capitalist societies there are measures that a person can take to protect his/her ideas. Telling all and sundry what your good ideas are is just stupid.

Nationalised industry is fascism. It's about the removal of a free marketand the dictating of the methods and results of production.

The banks and airlines and everything else in NZ and Australia were profitable. So what? The amount of interest being paid on foreign debt accumulated with the leftist social policy. There was not enough tax coming in to pay for socialist overspening on social policy. The banks etc were sold off so one huge payment could be made to reduce debt to a point where they could keep up with the lower interest ammount charged on the smaller debt.

I don't think you really understand what happens outside the US. You seem to think Australia is like the US 20 years ago but in many respects the US and Australia were never the same and in others the US seems backward to us. New Zealand and Australia started off at a place closer to what you seem to want. It failed and almost banckrupted NZ. Australia had the same debt that resulted in Argentina going under. The conservative government in Australi has paid off much of the debt accumulated by the socialists. In New Zealand, a sociallly left leaning govt with extreme right wing economic policy has pulled that country from the brink.

NZ made it less easy to get welfare when you don't really need it. What happened? Well people did not starve, they went out and got jobs or created work and then the economy began to pick up after people had more money. Crime also fell as people gained pride in themselves again rather than sucking on the state's bewb. I know that prices have fallen since competition has risen which makes it easier for those still unemployable.

The increased wealth came from the increases in general employment. The more people worked the more money there was, more capital to invest, more jobs etc.

I don't know if the average NZ family is better off but as an indication, the numbers of migrants for NZ to Australia has fallen dramatically. There are now far fewer economic refugees from a socialist basket case.

You force me to qualify my position. European conquest and dominion was not good. The natives welcoming the Europeans and the Europeans having some gratitude and learning the existing ways of the new land could have been good, as it could have been for the natives. However, the europeans rounded the natives into camps instead, not good at all.

Of course I realize the money is different, but even then, factory employees over there can't pay a doctor or buy a toyota.

We are already becoming borderless. M.Nat'l. companies do business all over, hiring the desperate and immobile, and yet the political borders remain. MN's don't bring the bounty of their local politics, just the aspects of production they'd rather stick someone else with. Ideally, I'd have everyone paid the same everywhere, and sharing the same cost of living, so no one is pushed out of anywhere. Extending local benefits overseas wasn't my first choice, rather I'd have them employ locally and not go overseas at all. If they couldn't survive paying local benefits, then it indicates that what they are trying to do is not an activity that is self-sustaining for a community, and relies instead on tapping the effort of another community that couldn't afford that standard of living.

If a lower percentage of blacks than whites was making it through college, without AA, how would you correct the inequity their children would inherit? Income is something one could do simple means testing on, or possibly lack of education, but how could one for instance do individual means testing of the amount of prejudice a person receives, even if means testing suggests they have the same health and intelligence?

In my utopia, my brother would have simply been paid the same wage everyone makes for his time in the garage workshop, but would have been given credit so he could get more employment in tinker workshops. He wouldn't have gained much more at all except that share of social wealth efficiency which in the present system went not to the general public, but rather only to those few individuals who capitalised upon him.

Industry is bound to become national facism whethar it is run by a rockefellerian elite, or by a socialist democracy. I favor the latter since I believe the public should have some say in the forces which control their lives. I think your high minded notion of a free market is quickly and quietly being squelched by grand capitalists in the same fashion as Bush is striving to make unions illegal.

Did you ever bother to ask yourself the question 'Debt to whom?'. Nations in debt are not like street neighbors lending a hand. Do you think there's some other natiion that has paid all it's welfare costs and has surplus to spare? Those debts are to international banks, not thriving nations, and the money loaned was probably printed from thin air. Economics has two levels, what the money does, and what happens below the money, the labor and production. They are almost entirely different entities. Debt doesn't necessarily correspond with the capacity of a nation to farm it's fields and repair it's automobiles. Within a nation, or across nations, the world bank would love to do to nations what my credit company tried to do to me, corner me in eternal servitude.

You are trying to relate two unrelated things. The welfare costs of NZ, and the income-assets/debt of NZ. If you ask me, it sounds like they failed at meeting their welfare costs, and poorly managed their hopes of prosperity in the income-asset / debt department. If I were them, I probably would have chosen to default on the loan, and concentrated instead on building self-reliancy. Of course it's not that simple. If you threaten default, they blackmail with you shutting off your international currency, and you can't export wool sweaters anymore. The debt NZ had wasn't tied to any gold standard. I'm sure it all started from thin air printing and loans paying off debts to start with. If there was a run on the bank, it would collapse. The huge debts are a fictious excuse to skim bits of real wealth from global society on a consistent basis. The only time any of that wealth of debt becomes non-fictious is when fools like NZ cash out actual labor-production assets in lieu of continually catering to the global tax extorter.

Even if Oz looks better now on paper, has it solved the reasons it was going into welfare debt in the first place? Did the conservatives create more & better jobs, or is everyone personally up to their neck in credit debt instead of the nation itself?

I've said this before, if you want to design a pure utopia, remove the fictitious money from the equation and see if the manpower and resources exist to build trains, bake bread, teach college, etc. If it exists (which it does), and yet one still asks where the money would come from to build trains and teach colleges, then they are oblivious about how capitalists banks have blinded everyone into cutting them in. The banks are in power, and they have no means of getting their cut if nations start using socialism to build trains and teach college, hence, they have spent much economic and political force for decades to ensure nations don't become socialist. The Red Scare scared the rockefellers of this world more than anyone else.
Although I believe a person with a job is less likely than someone getting the same check on welfare to commit a crime, I find it hard to imagine that simply reducing those checks reduced crime.
I suppose the refugee factor is a good indicator. NZ at least lent itself to movies for Lord of the Rings. I saw a tourism billboard for them, so I suppose that's one industry they created. They also sell their bottled water. Those are all foreign capitalisations though, not evidence of self-sufficiency, capitalising primarily on the american market having corrupted it's own prisine resources. Decent as far as such things go, I'm just pointing out the concept is still there.

Kristal, I get from your answers that in your opinion, anything that comes from white western capitalism or European culture is bad. Everything else is good. Yes you are so typical of a leftist.

Where did you get that from? I don't care what color or culture a self-sufficient nation is. If you want to chiefly ascribe global banking as the anything wich comes from white western culture, then sure, but I'd still be against it if it came from Madagascar or Cuba.

You've so responded in an ambiguous generalisation which isn't true of my theoretical points, that I must imagine you are too weary to actually address them.

I spend a page on how the banking industry screws with personal and national livelihood, and you call me a racist. What in this page, other than overcoming inequities of prejudice, even inspired you to say such a thing?

European colonisation is bad, Hispanic colonisation of the SW is good. Capitalism is bad, socialism is good. Industrialisation is bad, collectivism in small groups is good. etc etc etc. That's where I got that from. There's nothing you agree with that came from white people at all. Talk about self loathing!

There's nothing I agree with with that came from anybody in particular at all. How is small collectivism any more or less white than anything else?

As per my prior example of getting along with the natives or slaughtering them, I'm no fan of the Conquitadores conquest of the Mayans either, but the hispanic missionaries didn't do so terribly. The missinaries here formed a bridge with the locals, and the Mexican culture now, though hispanic catholic, also carries the more local Mayan sort of roots. All our major towns are named San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, etc. The natives and hispanics are merely moving into a territory they had peacefully habited before a more slaughtering campaign by the Euro-scandinavian Federalists chased them out for a brief century.

I'm proud to be an Irish-German with some french and scottish., and have learned those languages first, though spanish would have been far more practical and neighborly here. That the concept of self-loathing even comes for you suggests to me that you are the one wrestling with such a concern. I'm happy that there are many town scattered around that have those roots too, but I'm equally fascinated by India districts and such. With the exception of the native tribes, whom I feel, in some preservational sense, we owe parcels to preserve a historically accurate lifestyle (and I'm equitable here; I'd preserve historic saxon villages and a few ethiopian bee huts too, per geography), my ideas (utopian concepts) have nothing at all to do with genetic culture. I might learn things from tribal cultures, but I first learned of socialism through descriptions of the soviet system, and those guys are as white as they get. You're a fool if you even bring up white self-loathing again. As with many germans I've met, I've got this slight secret fear that I'm related to Hitler. Possibly my socialists roots go back to my teenage days as an actor in the Rennaissance Faire as a celt, in which both the acting organisation, and the culture they portrayed were quite socialist. The Steward would swap land parcels yearly in case some families were stuck with worse soil. It was the most loving time of my life. Everyone shared most anything with any of the 200 others in the group. You also had all of them looking to see that your ethics were appropriate; If they weren't, you were excommunicated, which, if you didn't mind highway robbers, wasn't a bad system back in period times either. The outcasts were still generally forced to learn social skills, even if only with other outcasts.

As for liberals in general, did you even read the definitions in that recent survey? Back to biblical chrisitan thinking (christ could have been black or white, don't matter to me) liberalism is about bringing up the underdog and letting people live and let live. I don't see the globe as having political borders built into the landscape. It would make more sense to me if the global borders were redrawn everynight as families moved or had more kids than another culttural-political group. The chicanos, with their native heritage, are a more migratory culture. Whites here may see their presence as a land invasion, but they see it more as people fit where people fit, closest to the resources, be that an ancient river-grove of acorns, or farmed fields and furniture manufacturing districts. That system seems more natural and equitable to me, and has nothing to with skin color.

The Native Americans ate each other and were very territorial before Europeans arrived so contrary to what socialists spew, their lives were far from utopian. They were slaughtering each other when the Europeans were worshiping Venus. Also, Spanish is the language that was forced on the Native Americans south of the border so to adopt it in order to be PC or neighborly or demonstrate your socialist worth is pointless. You talk about practicality and how it would make sense for you to learn Spanish but you seem to never have grasped my point of the practicality of learning English when Hispanics move to the US. That is infinitely more practical.

There are no living Saxon villages because the Europeans have moved on centuries ago. It's wrong to try to keep people back so you can preserve some socialist anthropological zoo. That's what environmentalists did when they blocked World Bank loans for India that would have gone to the construction of a dam that would have provided clean water for 9 million people and irrigation for farms.

Liberalism is most definately not about letting people live and let live! Some of the most ludicrous legislation comes from the left. You even try to legislate against freedom of speech with your PC crap.

"The chicanos, with their native heritage"? Gee, I wonder what their pre-European bullfights were like? They are about as native as I am. They ae crossing (illegally I might add) into the US because capitalism and Judeo-Christian ethics combined with secularism in the US has made that country rich. What's natural and equitable is for the Mexicans to get on with improving their own country instead of breaking the law and crossing into the US. God, anyone would think American wealth just popped into existence if they listened to you or any socialist. America is wealthy because the people worked hard for it. You seem to think other peoples shouldn't have to earn the same standard of living through the same struggle.

I'd like to know why you think Mexico is an economic basket case and always has been even before NAFTA? When you consider the history of the US, it wasn't as if you had it easy at all yet you succeeded. Mexico fails. Why?

I think the hispanics see it somewhat as their cultural boundaries have expanded. They have both a radio show and tv show called 'without borders'. They are neither trying to become american patriots nor form some new nation here, but merely come here to work and eat.
Although, like them, I don't believe in political border ownership of resources, I'm not crazy about their culture usurping ours through growth, and would favor a global zero-population-growth-program. I'm considering moving to Cabo San Lucas in mexico. I hear there's a trend lately for mexicans to move back to mexico.

I'm sure there are resources somewhere in mexico, especially in the yucatan, but driving for days through baha californian, our mexican neighbor, I saw nothing but desert, and would trade any california coastal town for the whole territory. San Diego, our southern border town, is in the desert too, but we have that colorado river water supply which once was shared by tiajuana. The people crossing the border are willing to work harder for less, so I can't see that your argument makes sense. What, they only work hard when they cross the border? Sunstroke perhaps? They could work for O'Neill Wetsuits there for $6/day, or on the other side of the border for O'Neill Wetsuits for $6/hr. If they don't cross the border, their other option is to unionize mexico, and demand a cost of living similar to what's paid on the other side of the border. We also have all the illegal employers here, hiring as if they were in mexico. If we simply made a law that, with cost of living adjustments for local geography, any employer here had to offer similar benefits in other nations, we wouldn't have the border crossings. Working hard and being enterprising isn't all it takes to succeed. Mexicans couldn't take over the wetsuit plants themselves to any advantage, because the customers for for wetsuits are in the US, and controlled (marketed, distributed) by the US. {my ex was a programmer for them when they sent production ovor the border}.

So how do you really feel about Nafta? You've been all for nation-corporations capitalising upon other nation's labor, but what if they continue in the same trend as today, where even ordering at a drive-thru window can be handled by an employee in korea. What if the only jobs left in Australia were stock holders meetings and the most basic physical labor for which bodies must physically be present?

It dawns on me that you have different policies for multi-cultural labor; You don't mind if a company hires overseas at a lower pay scale, but you mind if they import same migrant workers at a lower pay scale. You don't mind if these capitalists create an impoverished class just as long as they keep that impoverished class somewhere else.

I recall hanging out a liquor store 20 years ago, and hearing the proprietor dog about the asians who had a liquor store across the avenue, because they were willing to work so much harder, and were making it tougher for those living the status quo.

America was built with a migrant underclass, irish and chinese steel workers, child loom workers, hispanic farmers. Mexico didn't have any racial underclasses. It also didn't have the forests, rivers, coal deposits, mineral deposits, or fertile land we had to build upon before it switched to a service and info economy (especially marketing and distributing), and we had already established ourselves as the dominant global leaders in that latter realm first.

How would you recover mexico? The only equitable chance I see for them now is to take over american corporations, which obviously ain't going to happen either. I think their only practical choice they have is that which they are unconsciously doing already, to become the american culture until they eventually inhabit critical political and corporate posts, then eventually open the border as an economic and political anachronism.

Texas has oil, Idaho has potatos, California has everything. There is only so much market for painted posters and puppets made of masticated paper pulp.
Hmm, they seem to have a lot of bright paint there, and probably the colorful minerals to support it. I'm guessing though that the french, germans, and danish have already capitalised upon mexico's paint manufacturing capacity.

Another thing about US compared to Mexico... in the US we figured out quick that we had a wealth of resources, didn't want to be a 3rd world country supporting europe, and had a revolution. The spanish figured out they didn't have much reason to fight to keep mexico, when it figured out two centuries later that they weren't really spanish anymore.

Finally some tacit admission that your US culture is actually worth something and worthy of protection. Perhaps your socialist longing for self-destruction isn't as strong as I thought.

NAFTA? I don't see anyone constantly complaining about what it's doing to Canada. If there is a town in Mexico with 55% unemployment and a US company builds a factory and offers jobs for 2 cents per day do you think they will gat any takers? The fact that whatever they are paying attracts people who previously had nothing shows that the wage is better than what those people had before. No one holds a gun to their head and forces them to work. In fact they could open up a taco stand across the street from the factory. It's called enterprise or "smarts".

When the Dutch first came here they didn’t stop because they saw no worth in the country. The French really weren’t interested until they found out the British were, and the British only saw Australia as a potential prison. Australia is the driest continent after Antarctica. The soils are ancient and very poor. There is only one river worthy of a hydroelectric scheme. The soils are dry but when irrigated too much they turn to salt. The trees are generally unusable for boat building which is why the pines on Norfolk Island were used. We seemed to manage. Hell, the people were all convicts! Don’t tell me Mexico has no resources. Why is it up to Europeans to go into these places and extract minerals? We then get crap on and called imperialists despite paying for what we locate and extract!

Yes I think it’s better to leave cheap labour in their home countries. How is it better to import cheap labour and pay them 16K a year when they live in the US with a cost of living at 30K than it is to set up a factory in Mexico and pay them 8K a year and they can live on that? You socialists always ignore the currency discrepancies when complaining about the “evils” of globalisation. That sort of thing demonstrates the ignorance of socialists. Oh, the evil capitalists are paying those Mexican workers 8K a year when they could earn 16K in the US.

Why should Mexicans steal US companies? Why is it always up to the west to bail out people who can’t get their crap together? Mexico is right next to the biggest market in the world. They have bugger all transport and communication costs to worry about. There’s no really huge culture shock to worry about, and still they are fudgeed. You need to stop trying to pin this failure on the west or capitalism all the time and start looking at the people themselves. Canada is frozen over half the year and they do all right.

Hell, the Mexicans could make bricks, or don’t they have the right dirt?

Canada, New Zealand and Australia never had a revolution. The Queen of England is still the official head of state for these three countries.

Just because I've never had just cause to claim my culture is superior, there's never been an implication that I find my culture inferior, nor that I wish to surrender living in it. I'm sure though that that is mostly a matter of birth. If I hadn't grown up with a bunch of Santa Cruz hippy socialists with art and engineering degrees, I may have been someone else, praising investment speculation or religious law.

When a Walmart is built in a town (claiming to offer jobs), they've calculated that a 100 new jobs will replace 150 better paying jobs in the community. Still, you're probably right that employment offerred by nafta is better than anything they have, it's still unfair prejudice, they're not paying the same cost of living, and certainly not the same intn'l currency for the work, really it's no different than if instead of being geographically prejudiced, they only hired locally, but paid women half the rate, in a universe where women weren't making much at all, and it could be argued that they were offering women more than what they were getting otherwise. Why heck, it would even give the women income to buy from each others yard sales and open an emboidered doily shop across from the factory.
Of course no one complains about nafta in canada; canadiens are in no desperate position to allow themselves to desperately be taken advantage of.

Your missing my point. I was trying to imagine a commodity mexico had to offer on the global market, then realised that europe had probably beat them to profiting from their own resource. They'd probably be glad to keep all the profits local if some foreign company hadn't thought of the idea first, and claimed the resources and labor as it's own.

I imagine that Australia survives by getting other countries resources, perhaps even labor, to work for you. Mexico clearly isn't in that position. I've never seen anything here made in Oz except the occasional bottle of Alice Springs wine or something (which I get because it's a romantic notion (and cheap), not because the wine is really all that good). If international capitalism were made banned, I'm sure the US and Oz would suffer way more than most. On your desert continent, you'd probably fare much worse. We'd simply go back to using our own resources before depleting those of others.

Undoubtedly you were one of those who picked 'globalism' in the doctrine survey.

Hey, you've finally made a compelling argument for me (am I too sardonic). It would make more sense to create a factory where the cost of living was cheaper, provided it really did accomodate the local minimal cost of living (at a 1/4 the cost), instead of giving them half-living at an 1/8 cost (which is what they are generally accused of), or hiring locally to give them a half-living at 1/2 cost.
I haven't been ignoring currency discrepancries. When workers overseas work 16 hour days and employ children, there's more going on than currency discrepancy can account for.

It's not about having ones act together to make of success of ones effort, it's about competing against a dominant machine which has the greater efficiency and more powerful trade connections which come from it's size and history of having been the dominant leader. The dominant leaders seldom topple no matter how hard the competiton works. It's called window of opportunity. The only other competitve option fora nation like mexico, is to become an industry leader in a new field, as microsoft did with desktop software. Chances are, that next field will be nanotechnology, and mexico would already have the barest chance of competing, considering the US gov't grants $8 billion /yr for research, and has 20 agencies already setup to regulate anything they finally achieve. Like clinton and the internet, or t. roosevelt and the panama canal, we see what's on the horizon and have 'the money' to invest in maintaining our global dominance.

Besides, I wasn't really suggesting they 'steal' american companies, but rather that they build up their position as any local or global employee may have the right to do, and after eventually making the corporation truly global, treating geography and human rights as something truly global too.

Now that you mention it, bricks are exactly what mexico makes. For earthquake safety and construction speed, we haven't built with bricks for a century now, but all the fancy ceramic tile, ceramic planters, and garden statues come from mexico. For some decades, people would drive their cars down to tiajuana to have them reupholstered, but that was before disposable cars were mfgr'd to have all parts wear out simultaneously. There was also a time people would buy jalopies, cars that had been rebuilt in jalopy mexico from parts salvaged here, but rebuilt cars are impossible to register here now. As far as local labor goes, mexicans build the most dogin sculptural bicycles, but only a mexican would generally be seen riding one. Really, they should be proud. They carry on all the craftsman jobs that require technical training, an artful eye, and love of ones work. (Like back when I restored show-car Citroëns). Alas, there's no demand for hand labor these days. People put up with the mass produced characterless disposable furnishings from Ikea, which i suspect are designed in scandinavia and assembled in asia (could be all asia though).

Perhaps like mexico, Oz didn't really stand much to gain competing against dominant leaders like britain., and had more to gain for the time being hooking into british trade instead (as i suggested the mexicans do with US trade).

Considering it's cultural roots, it's almost surprising australia didn't have a revolution. I'd think people were just as fanatical and ecclectic. Perhaps it's because you had less international diversity, and weren't having your resources taxed as much.

I can't argue a point with you on job creation in the 3rd world. Obviously you seem to think ot's better to have no job than to have a job in Mexico at all. Maybe you think it's a good idea to pay a Mexican factory worker US$40K. You don't seem to have a grasp on the concepts of freedom of choice or economics.

Globalisation is far far less fair for a country like Australia because we have absolutely zero tariffs due to our conservative governments, yet we have to compete with countries with a currency walued far less than ours. If you know anything about global economics you will know that when a currency is cheap, they can sell their goods to a country with a strong currency at a discaount rate which makes their exports more attractive. Countries where currencies are stronger find is harder to sell their goods at the cheaper price. Despite this, Australia still exports goods and we still succeed.

You seem to fall into the trap of assuming rich countries get rich because they always steal from other countries. Buying the goods other countries sell is not stealing. Australia is rich in many of the worlds leading minerals including coal. Are we being exploited by the countries we choose to sell our resources to? Stop this crap about teh big bad west screwing the poor third world. You need to look at the real reasons for why te 3rd world fails. It isn't colonisation or capitalism. Some of the biggest basket cases were never colonised. Take Ethiopia. Take Nth Korea.

How much do you want to win the argument? I already agreed it would be better for the 3rd world country, if a company paid dirt to offer the same standard of living. I'm surprised you support it though, since, if you live in a country like the US, it makes the upper class richer, but puts the rest of the nation on unemployment.

Just curious, where do you export to, and import from? Can you afford european wares, or is most of your stuff from china, taiwan, and korea too? Our produce has been coming from S. America lately. Not sure what's at fault there. We do get european cheese. I can only afford the Irish cheese. Our mexican market is weird; we import food from mexico, but only market it to local latinos. I have no idea where we export to, to someone richer than us, if anywhere. We can't afford our own stuff. I was thinking maybe kitchen appliances, but nope, they're made in chana and mexico too. Oh, I can think of one industry, pharmaceuticals, and that's because we don't allow wholesale imports of others. Curiously, it's at immense mark up too, and people complain that we aren't buying from canada. India is portrayed almost as an enemy in that respect. The only thing we get from them is religious supplies. Oh, and software, another immense mark-up item. I never see anything except drums from africa or a rare beauty aid gadget from israel.

I make the assumption that when we have plenty of a resource, yet buy it elsewhere, that either it's comparative exploitation, or we have a national defense plan to save our reserves and exhaust other nations first. ClearlyAfrica is the place to buy diamonds.

Isn't ethiopia mud huts? They're a basket case for the same reason no one wanted to colonise there. Either that, or that Arc of the Covenant puts out a powerful forcefield. Except for refugees, colonisation was a matter of return on investment. Our US history books seem to take some pride in the later wealth we found in territories we bought from other colonisers for cheap. In spite of so many other reasons given, it seems obvious to me that the main reason we fought for the west coast was strategic, sea to sea commerce, and only two borders to defend. I ask, wondering if it's a matter of shipping lines or political alliances. I bet you get things from England (or othercrown colonios). That's rarer here each degade except food souvenirs. We seem to buy water from all over the planet, esp Europe and island nations.

Chalk under my finger nails

everything.

Did you work for the DBO (dead body outliners)?

People groping eachother in public.

I was browsing member websites and found your journal. Just thought I'd let you know I recruited myself into your army! Whatever that means!

Oh, you mean you clicked on it! See, it's this game called Kings of Chaos that when you click on those links, you get me more soldiers in my army. Thanks so much!