Dean Forster wrote:
>wrote:
>
>>
>> I... want... my... textbooks.
>>
>> We did this debate. Dammit. Where are my sources
>> when I need 'em?
>>
>
>Your impartial NZ, American hating/mocking sources,
>who are so extreme in their views that they think
>you're anti-green?
Er, no, this would be my impartial *American* American hating/mocking
sources who are so extreme in their views that they think I'm anti-green.
The other lot are here. What I *want* is sitting on my bookshelf at home,
a few thousand miles away. <frustration> Where's Scotty and his
transporter when you need 'em?
>I think it's not too early for you to start facing
>reality, Kat. You don't have to wait until you join
>the workforce.
Quick side note: I don't plan on getting a job, per se. I may get an
interim job teaching or in journalism, but my plan is to make a living
either farming, working for another farmer, or writing. Possibly some
combination. (The idea of being a dairy farming science fiction writer
really appeals, for some reason.)
>the Big Evil Corporations are not in a
>big conspiracy together to rape the earth and eat all
>the hippies who dare speak against them.
No, they're not that bright. Besides, they usually just subvert the
hippies....
> They're
>composed of people doing their jobs. Granted, some of
>the high ups may have the tendancy to pursue wealth
>single mindedly to the exclusion of most other things.
> But above all, in a free market economy, the Big
>Nasty Baby Killing Soul Sucking Corporations make what
>they love most, money, by doing one thing.
>
>They give people what they want.
>
>Let me say it again.
>
>They give people what they want.
<sigh>
First off, you're sort of right, which bugs me. I want people to be
better than that.
Second off, I know they're composed of people just doing their jobs; I've
met several of those people, and mostly I like them, although some of
them annoy the hell out of me do to the entire blinders-wearing thing.
But they're just people. One of those sitting-on-the-shelf sources did
some rather interesting writing on the fact that, in general, people were
not evil; but institutions could be, and where the institutions were
evil, the people within them might *do* evil (or just bad) without being
bad people at all. I think he was German. Bugger, I hate my memory.
Which brings me to the third point: giving people what they want.
Let me tell you what I want. I want to have a computer, a car, unlimited
energy, cheap gas, lots and lots of CDs and lots and lots and *lots* of
books, clean air, good soil, nice weather, world peace, a watch that
ingraines itself into my wrist so I can't loose it, and an ungutted
environmental species act. Oh, yeah, and cold fusion while we're at it.
I don't think I'm *that* far off normal (except maybe for the watch
thing). Now, the corporations sure as hell aren't giving me that. They're
giving me some of it, at the cost of other things. They're also doing
their damnedest to convince me that I don't *really* want those other
things. Or that those things aren't important. Or that they really are
giving me those other things even though they're not. Or that there's no
*way* to have those other things.
What people *want* is never what they *get*, and what people *want* is
certainly not a good measure of what needs doing or what should happen.
Chunks of the American public *wanted* the Vietnam war. That doesn't mean
it should have happened. The same goes for products. Sure, everybody
*wants* cheap, unlimited power. And everybody wants clean air and water
too. Which one are you going to give them?
Which one do they *need*?
>Go back and look at what I wrote about MS. I can
>preach long and loud and convincingly about their
>shortcomings. But in the end, they're giving people
>what they ask for. They have no hidden agenda, no
>mind control lasers, no political aspirations beyond
>what effects their business.
Eh, let me clarify something here. I am *not* a proponent of the "evil
corporate conspiracy" theory. I don't think they're that smart. I *do*
think that there's plenty of nasty little deals cut between friends, way
up there in the land of CEO-hood to which I can never aspire, but it's
not a *conspiracy.* If anything, the corps are guilty of being too
narrow, not thinking outside their little box of corporate planning and
next year's profits to what might happen to those profits if the
environmentalist whackos are actually right.
> Of the big time chairman of the
>board types, most of them golf. The thought might
>cross their minds sometimes that if they do something
>to adversely effect the environment, they might not
>have their pretty lawns to play snooty pool on.
Ah, golf courses. Major pollution sources. Look at the runoff from the
chemicals they use to keep the grass like that sometimes.
>As far as R and D goes with researching new technology
>or improving on existing technology, no corporation
>benefits itself by dragging their feet and doing a
>crappy job at anything.
Unless it involves negative effects of a technology they're marketing...
in which case it is a perfectly logical capitalist move to try and block
any such research. Or, as I mentioned before, unless the tech has a
immediate cost with no immediate- or even no financially measurable-
benefit.
>I know just as well as you that it's easy to sit back
>and critique what others do while not making a
>contribution yourself. At least do the big evil
>establishment the favor of giving a good hard look at
>what they really do and why.
Believe it or not, I try to. I didn't grow up with parents who'd ever
worked corporate (except my mom's summer as a secretary- main lesson: "If
your boss keeps dropping pencils and asking you to bend over and pick
them up, whop him one") and most of the people I was around were
working-class, not white-collar, so I honestly don't know much about how
things go; nor is it anything I ever intend to have a part of. But I
don't assume that those people are evil people. A little dumb, maybe; a
lot narrow-minded, almost certainly. But not evil.
(Even if I did cackle a lot during the "Golden Calf" boardroom scene in
Dogma. But Matt Damon... oh, never mind.)
> It's the only way you're
>going to be able to come up with something better.
>When you do, send me some email and i'll come runnin.
Hey, I'm only twenty. Give me at *least* to twenty-five before I figure
out how to save the world!
Kat Feete
P.S. I know I know who you are and what you do, but I can't remember.
Dammit, we need a bios page for this listserve!
P.P.S. Or else I need to petetion the gods for a new brain....
---------------------------
"Don't you talk to me about progress. Progress just means
bad things happen faster."
- Terry Pratchett
