Grim “courtesy” – whining to me about “courtesy” will get you no where.

I am still wincing over the “courtesy” shown by communist tanks when they rode into Budapest, Prague and Kabul.

Grim Squeers & Co

I notice you fellows carefully ignoring one line I made in my last post

“your collectivist policies have produced, at best, a complete waste and at worst, mass murder.”

Not one of you got anything which is going to challenge those words?

Has the cat got your tongues?

Or do you do, like most collectivists demand,

Ignore the inconvenient truth in favour of a defective but renamed/rebranded economic theory which, in your heart of hearts, you just know will not work but you want to inflict it on real people to prove yourself for the benefit of your own self-righteous ego and sense of unfulfilled envy and lust for power over others.

Like one right wing politician said

“Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul.”

In short, whilst the left is grovelling around, obsessed by mere existence and “economic equality”, the right is focused more on life quality and individual liberty, without which all the economic equality in the world means nothing.

Oh and another quote from the same source

“Socialists cry “Power to the people”, and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean—power over people, power to the State.”



Finally Yabby, going back to where it started, IBM essentially gave Bill Gates and friends the “PC world” when they commissioned his DOS operating system on a non-exclusive contract for their new range of PCs. and Microsoft then went and sold the same OS to a hundred clone manufacturers, anxious to grab what was looking like an IBM monopoly.

That’s the free market for you... I just love it!

Grim

You have written two of the best posts I have read in a while.

So good, in fact, that you have stimulated the crustacean out of his burrow to rush to the defence of poor, maligned Bill Gates. Great stuff. Love the stats on the earning capacity of the 'parasitical' every-man(person).

And you too, Squeers, enjoy your arguments very much. What is it with the 'laissez-faire libertarian', that their liberty doesn't extend to others? Only those who fit within the narrow confines of unfettered capitalism and worship the almighty dollar.

I am no more anti-capitalism than I am anti-sport. However, I have the ability to assess and critique either and (quelle surprise) determine when either is profiteering at the expense of others.

What else can one expect of the "either you're with me or against me" myopic crowd?

Severin - re What else can one expect of the "either you're with me or against me" myopic crowd?

When I consider the collectivist’s mantra

"You are either with me or you will die in a collectivist re-education gulag."

I think what you snidely describe as “myopic” is a far more humane and tolerant attitude than collectivist tyranny

Like I said before

“collectivist policies have produced, at best, a complete waste and at worst, mass murder.”

I do not see what you wrote in any way challenging the veracity of that statement at all

Two part harmony1/2

Thanks Grim... I appreciate your kind words, and also share your regard for Squeers, who, as I read his scribblings here, is far from being an advocate for any form of Communist regime, who I suspect he would suspect with the same doubting questions as he puts before the maddog pro-Capitalists, and as others point out, the fuzzy Libertarians who denounce all who come without the same shaped hair shirts as their own.

My memories of Gates are that I have been unable to avoid his witless products every time I buy a computer.

True, there is Linux, a system my children use along with all the free and frequently superior software that goes with it, but I found I was unable to keep changing from work-Word to Open Office, and back, everyday so sacked the Linux from my machine and stuck with works demands, Gates-only.

I wouldn't mind using Gates if it was not so bloody terrible, and prone to attack.

Now, from another post I've stolen the 'sage' words of "Peterson" who says 'Religion has been the driving force of man-kind
from day one' and drop it in here because Squeers asked what was the driving force.

The usual cuplrits seem to have avoided this thread so far, but I wonder if there is not some content to be found in this screaming lunge of Peterson's at those who do not agree with him/her?

Perhaps, in this thread, not quite what Squeers was driving at, but certainly an element of it (more in 2/2).

Thread 2/2

It would be too churlish to pretend that no good has ever come from even the evils committed under the name of various gods, and some religions do thrive upon the prosperity gospel in various forms, even if not quite in the same form from one denomination to another.

Then there is the getting-around-the-rules of religions, like when Christians thought it was a sin to borrow or lend money, and interest....whoa.... a deadly sin!, but hey presto, that's what Jews are for, to borrow from and malign after for being Jesus killers and evil.... all very motivational for capitalisms early stages.

The wealth of endless churches-in-the-fields, monasteries, cathedrals.... just to visit them is to see abundant wealth, albeit squeezed from the bones of mortal peasants, supplemented through both Crusades and various crusades to glean from the pockets of centuries of fearful nitwits, while paying us all back, long after the builders are creators are dead, with architecture to wonder at, and music and art to absorb.

The joyous intermingling of base evil producing some good... then again, what would those peasants have done if they were not saving themselves from Satan through iniquitous taxes and unsafe working conditions?

And the artists? What would they have done without so many egotistical, self satisfied 'big nobs' to paint?

God moves in mysterious ways, indeed (just ask Runnet and AGIR).

*to rush to the defence of poor, maligned Bill Gates.*

That is hardly the case, Severin. More like setting the
record straight, for the benefit of the more ignorant
amongst you, such as yourself.

Fact is that Gates became rich, because he broke a
monopoly which enabled the PC revolution that followed.
Too many people loving a product is hardly a rip-off.

In fact the Gates Foundation donates around 800$ million$
a year for global health, which is as much as the
budget of the United Nations World Health Organisation.

So there you have it. A single individual, first enabling
the global PC revolution by breaking a monopoly and giving
people value for money, or they would not have bought his
Windows 3, then going on to help more sick, poor people
on the globe then anyone before him!

Yes, he's a Capitalist, not from the loony left of dreamers.
All this is of course commonly forgotten, when you shake
your fists with calls of "unfair".