Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 02:10:02 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org (Arun Sharma) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why are people against GNU? WAS Re: 5.0 already? Message-ID: <200005170210.TAA09486@usr05.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <20000516183807.A25954@sharmas.dhs.org> from "Arun Sharma" at May 16, 2000 06:38:07 PM
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> > > 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. > > > > It is well known that there is severe corruption in India. There > > is much less severe corruption in the US. > > <snip> > > What does corruption have to do with the above discussion ? I'd think > the communist state is less corrupt than the rest of the country, because > the kind of corruption common in India is more due to poverty than greed. > The communist state being better educated and idealistic, is less prone > to corruption than other states. Education is no protection against corruption; look at the high esteem in which people commonly hold the honor of lawyers... most politicians are lawyers, and most corrupt politicians are corrupt lawyers. This isn't to smear them all with the same brush, but the US has more lawyers in the 5 county area surrounding the San Francisco Bay than there are in all of Europe. You may very well be right that your isolated Communist regime is in fact less corrupt than your isolated "Capitalist" regime (quotes maintained intentionally). This doesn't prove that all fish are trout. Pointing to a corrupt regime that pays lip service to the idea of Capitalism, but is in fact an ideological cesspool in no way proves anything. You are effectively arguing against the existance of altruism; when someone does this, I generally conclude that they read Ayn Rand at an early age, and bought into the idea of the Aristotilian mean that allows people to ask questions like "Yes or no: have you stopped beating your wife?", and expect answers. The problem here is that there are not only two answers, and your argument excludes the middle from consideration. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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