Subject:
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Serendipity & IBM
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 24 Jun 2004 08:14:36 GMT
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Viewed:
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865 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richard Parsons wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richard Parsons wrote:
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Don’t get me wrong, government is critically important (like say, a decent
sewerage system),
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Disagree, see below.
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but its highest achievement is to be just a tool.
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I’d agree with that. Properly construed, government is a tool to protect
rights. Improperly constructed, government is a master that takes them away.
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My sewerage system is completely privately owned and works just fine.
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Two points.
1, Perhaps there’s a bit of cause and effect there? Sewerage isn’t really a
proper function of government anyway.
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As per my reply to Chris I wasn’t actually saying that governments should run
sewerage, only that government is critically important, like sewerage is
critically important.
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2. Completely privately owned things that work just fine are a large part of
what I feel patriotic about. Certainly I take a lot more patriotic pride in
thinking about the achievements of, say, IBM, than I do the “achievements” of
the BATF.
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Put your flag away. By chance, I read
this is
my newspaper yesterday about IBM:
Gypsies win right to sue IBM over role in Holocaust -
In 1936 IBM set up its European “headquarters” in Geneva. The appeals court
ruling said: “It does not appear inconsistent to conclude that the respondent
IBM facilitated the task of the Nazis in their committing of crimes against
humanity - acts which were counted and codified by IBM machines ... IBM’s
complicity through material or intellectual assistance to the criminal acts of
the Nazis during world war two via its Geneva office cannot be ruled out.”
...Thomas Watson, who created IBM after starting his career as a sewing-machine
salesman, was an admirer of Hitler and was decorated by the Third Reich in
1937...
Scott A
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One of the great things about the US (and other western democracies,
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and other countries where capitalism has been allowed to function) is that
great things consistently get done by private organizations.
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I think we’ve got a large area of agreement on this, looking at these
capitalist ventures as an expression of American-ness. Does your disagreement
suggest that the you do NOT feel that your government can act in ways that
make you feel patriotic? Or just that government is not critically important
generally.
Richard
Still baldly going...
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