From: denis bider (denis.bider@globera.com)
Date: Fri Jan 19 2001 - 20:34:24 MST
> Thats more than the entire value of many countries
> (likely greater than the value of Herr Bider's home
> country of Slovenia). How would you like it if a
> neighbor, say, Italy, had a communist government
> and decided to confiscate the entire country of Slovenia
For the record - our country drafts all young men for 6 months in the army
once they're done with their education. This means you get to shoot around
as much as you want, but only when you're old enough, and by being put in
the proper perspective - a perspective of war.
If Italy was to march upon us, every active male between 18 and 45 would get
a gun and would be ordered to fight. Which is a concept I pretty much
dislike, because I think a professional army could do the same thing just as
well, if not better. After all, we're too small to defend against any
serious invasion - like Italy, perhaps - if we don't get external help.
Myself, if there was a war, I would prefer to find myself another place to
live, if at all possible. My fortune is my mind, not my land. If people are
childish enough to want to play command-and-conquer in real-blood-mode,
well, I'd prefer not to be anywhere in sight.
> Of course, a government that thinks it can tell a
> $100+ billion company like Microsoft how to run its
> business is only a hairs breadth from doing just that...
A-haa, lookie lookie, now I can see where you're coming from.
Believe it or not, I can hardly wait for Microsoft to be broken up, and I
totally agree with the findings of that fine Thomas Penfield Jackson.
Namely, his findings about the nature of Gates' and Microsoft's customary
habits when it comes to doing business. Not that I don't like Bill, he's a
great guy and I sympathise with him very much. I think he's a good person
overall. But what he is doing is fundamentally bad.
So it seems we disagree on the very basics of it all. I like liberty, and I
like rights, but I also believe in society. We can't go to Mars if we don't
cooperate. We can't possibly ever visit Alpha Centauri if we kill each other
off. The sad fact is, giving people too much rights enables some of them,
like that Mr Gates over there, or that Mr Case over on the other side, to
get their hands at more power than they can manage. And that causes grief
and suffering for everyone else.
The fact is, society works much better if it trusts itself. Which,
essentially, means that you have to trust your government, too. Not blindly
or naively, but - trust in principle, distrust on specifics. But the way
many people seem to be doing it is distrust in principle, trust in
specifics. If that attitude prevails, no honest person wants to work in the
government, and you sooner or later find yourself with a really crooked
government that you really can't trust.
And I'm raving, and I definitely need to go to bed. :-(
Regards,
- denis
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