From owner-freebsd-chat Sat May 13 17:17: 2 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from sharmas.dhs.org (c62443-a.frmt1.sfba.home.com [24.0.69.165]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AAA8337B916 for ; Sat, 13 May 2000 17:16:59 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org) Received: (from adsharma@localhost) by sharmas.dhs.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) id RAA17113; Sat, 13 May 2000 17:16:38 -0700 Date: Sat, 13 May 2000 17:16:38 -0700 From: Arun Sharma Message-Id: <200005140016.RAA17113@sharmas.dhs.org> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why are people against GNU? WAS Re: 5.0 already? In-Reply-To: <20000514021611.F22405@physics.iisc.ernet.in> References: <391D71FE.1570F551@asme.org> <391D4DAD.FD80980A@picusnet.com> <003b01bfbcdc$6059fb40$a164aad0@kickme> <391D71FE.1570F551@asme.org> <20000513205610.A22103@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <3.0.6.32.20000513143506.00895650@mail85.pair.com> <20000514021611.F22405@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Reply-To: adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org.nospam Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org In muc.lists.freebsd.chat, you wrote: > > Communism is about state control and restricting individual freedom -- > originally in economic matters, like manufacturing and so on, but > in practice in everything including speech and expression. The theory > is that individuals are selfish so the state has to tell them what to > do. > > Capitalism is about maximising individual freedom and using individual > selfishness to increase social good. But a capitalist society still > has some government enforcement mechanisms, like copyright/patent > laws, antitrust laws and so on. That's a pretty one sided picture. There are evil sides to both theories. One prime example of this is the Indian state of Kerala, which has been ruled by communists within the framework of democracy. The state has the highest literacy in the country, no industries because of labor problems d and scores very well on most yard sticks of progress. On the other hand, many the other "capitalist" states in India have flourishing industries, but the average man on the street is worse off than the one in the communist state. I think the closest political analogy to the GNU philosophy is communism within the framework of democracy. -Arun To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message