Re: What, exactly, is Apple's iPod business model?

On Sep 4, 11:37 pm, Jeffrey Goldberg <nob...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 9/4/07 12:20 AM, spinoza1111 wrote:

On Sep 4, 12:50 pm, Jeffrey Goldberg <nob...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It's working out much better than the alternative.

How would you know that?

I lived in Hungary for six years including during the tail end of socialism.

A thug takeover supported by the Soviet army wasn't "socialism".

Yes. Although it goes against what I know of economic theory, it does
work far better than the broken system in the US. It is true that there
are long waits and "rationed" services, but those issues are no worse in

Britons deny this.

I suppose that if you select your Britons very carefully you can try to
maintain your claim. I also lived in the UK for six years. My daughter
was born there.

I always choose my friends with care. Look, any economist will tell
you that queues and rationing are what you get when you limit the free
market. The problem (as even Adam Smith seems to have known) with the
complete free market operating within a sphere of human endeavor is
that in place of queues and rationing you get access into
"unity" (right this way, Mr. Creosote, no waiting in line) and
"zero" (hey, Gomer, get out of my emergency room).

Most people worldwide choose some queueing and some (nonmarket)
rationing in health care, even in the free-market paradise of Hong
Kong, because the demand for health care, operating as it does at the
horizons of life, has a different and unique combination of elasticity
(more Botox for Mr. Creosote) and inelasticity (thanks, but one enema
will do just fine).


But this helps illustrate my approach. I'm relying on experience to
tell me whether markets in general work better than socialism. With
socialized medicine, socialism works better in my experience (even
though I'm not sure why). In just about every other domain socialism
works worse (and I have pretty good ideas about why).

How would you know?

Does one have to have direct experience of something to have a well
reasoned opinion? As it happens, I do have some limited experience of
socialism.

Nicaraguan and Hungarian. The former under continual United States
pressure, in effect a war socialism (the United States was convicted
of a violation of international law in its 1986 mining of Nicaraguan
harbors, as you know). The latter a murderous takeover and mirror
image, in the execution of Imre Nagy after the popular and anti-Soviet
revolution of 1956, of Chile 1973: a country which the "great" powers,
including the US, allowed to be bullied so they could have the
identical free hand in their own spheres: to bully in such a way that
inspires, indirectly, the behavior in this thread.

The Hungarian revolutionaries of 1956, 1968 and even 1989 were NOT
demonstrating for the right to be a source of cheap labor and guest-
house operators. They were, for the most part, demonstrating for
democratic (and therefore Scandinavian/British style) Fabian socialism
in each of those years.

Now, if I wanted to play Dorayme's game, I suppose I could discount
and dismiss your direct experience in the abstract, wildly accusing
you of being some sort of space cadet who wanted to bring to bear some
weirdass experience even as Dorayme abstractly and without doing any
homework wildly accuses me of reading books.

But, as you know, I'm a class act. There IS a body of work that claims
that socialism is untried and has never been tried except in extreme
conditions, whether in the Western democracies in times of war, in
1917 given the collapse of Romanov authority, or the conditions
created in the third world by the Western powers.

[For a take on the last, look at the map of the Congo's railway
"network" in today's International Herald Tribune. It's absurd,
because it was constructed exclusively by the Belgians to extract the
Congo's wealth. Franz Fanon describes exactly what happens in
"decolonization".]

As it happens, and in my view, the "intellectuals" speak for the
people when they ask for truly democratic unions and a civil society
that would indeed support "socialism", and neither the "intellectuals"
nor the ordinary slobs ever get this. Instead, the elite egg the
ordinary slobs on in an attack on the intelligentsia. It's the oldest
game in the book: divide, and rule.


What are the "facts" you see? Your backyard?

I've been just waiting for you to say that I'm not well travelled enough
to have a qualified opinion. You insist that Warren Oates is a London
lager lout on no evidence and consider him unqualified to have an

The evidence is in "Warren Oates'" foul, abusive, and off-topic
behavior in this ng. It's quite enough for me, thank you.

opinion. You claimed, again, that dorayme wasn't qualified to discuss
things with you because s/he wasn't well travelled enough. You

No, I said that he or she has an absurd view that one shouldn't
reference sources in posting. This view disqualifies him, her, or it
from being taken seriously by me, him, her or it.

concluded Tim Steater of the same, but he came back at you with travel
history. And now the same is going on with me.

I have evidence in what you post that the travel may have had a
dialectical effect: Shakespeare saw, in As You Like It, that our
experiences have to be interpreted and a widening experience (travel,
or globalization) can have on people, sophisticated devices they are,
the effect of souring and narrowing their view insofar as they cannot
absorb the widening effect: thus Rosalinde sees that Jacques' travel
has done nothing for him.

Sociologists describe "the ruralization of the cities", an unintended
consequence of globalization, where a place like Sarajevo is as a
consequence of globalization exposed to global influences, which its
inhabitants "process" as decadence, and "return to their roots", in
the case of Sarajevo by joining armed militias, and, in May 1992,
taking potshots from the hills at the poor deluded cosmopolitans in
the square below, demonstrating, poor deluded fools they are, for
peace and ethnic unity.

The ruralization of the Internet is the entry, not of "trolls", but of
the lower middle class masses who make ever more absurd claims, such
as no need for steenking references, or Shakespeare didn't write
"Shakespeare", or "intelligent design", or, at your higher and more
intelligent level, the narrative of socialism that "we" done tried and
which didn't woik.



Oh, and I should add that I started turning against socialism after my
summer in Nicaragua in 1985.

I can understand, people being on the whole pretty ugly en masse, that
their were stinking, rotten, ugly things in Nicaragua. Yet, when given
a chance, it appears that the people, the masses, the 80%, Juan
Valdez, choose socialism because unlike you they can't leave.



You should watch what's going on with a vaguely open mind instead of
just giving your prewrapped Marxist interpretation.

I've been doing a far better job, you have references, from me.
Whereas with all due respect I submit that you are watching TV and the
alder grow in the back yard.

You give me too much credit. It's only from watching the alder grow in
the back yard that I gain my knowledge of the world. I don't have a TV
(well, there is one in the house for watching video's, but it's not
connected to the outside world in any way.)

TV has a more global and pernicious influence, usually at a young age.
The influence can be of course resisted, but I don't think you fully
do so when on the one hand you accept that National Health worked yet
say and yet, and yet.


-j


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: USF to Sun Bowl!
    ... We should work first for pacifism, and only later for socialism. ... and UConn basketball fans are well-known to be ... Personally I just got the GREEN LIGHT from Mrs. G to travel, ...
    (rec.sport.football.college)
  • Re: Discuss RV travel ??
    ... to RV travel. ... The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, ...
    (rec.outdoors.rv-travel)
  • Re: What, exactly, is Apples iPod business model?
    ... I lived in Hungary for six years including during the tail end of socialism. ... to have a qualified opinion. ... concluded Tim Steater of the same, but he came back at you with travel ... Whereas with all due respect I submit that you are watching TV and the ...
    (comp.sys.mac.apps)
  • Re: What, exactly, is Apples iPod business model?
    ... doing so, and for his PhD thesis, invented "Hungarian" notation, the ... to epitomize the power of "freedom". ... the Cultural Revolution, but this is because it put, as all too many ... fuck "socialism" up, which it doesn't, all the time. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.apps)
  • Re: What, exactly, is Apples iPod business model?
    ... you that queues and rationing are what you get when you limit the ... Does one have to have direct experience of something to have a well ... democratic Fabian socialism ... Which Hungarian revolutionaries do you have in mind for 1968. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.apps)