Re: Lisp is Sin

Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
Cameron MacKinnon wrote: 
The current system, for all its warts, has the advantage of bringing me
an awful lot of neat stuff for cheap, having stimulated the greatest era
of invention that mankind has ever known. The costs of regulation are
comparatively low, and borne by the companies that benefit. I don't
think your command-economy solutions would be either cheaper or more
stimulative than the status quo. This probably isn't the place for this
debate, either -- that's what slashdot is for.



Quick antidote to the above misinformation... I'm not going to spend
much time on this, so I'll just use the words of Steele, Gabriel, Bill
Gates's dad, John McCarthy, former Intel head honcho Andy Grove, Noam
Chomsky, etc.

Bill Sr.? Aside from being an Eagle Scout and a proud parent, is there any reason this man's opinion should be given weight in these areas? I can sometimes accept appeal to authority, but appeal to C-list celebrity?

Every 'expert' on your list is an American, commenting mainly on US specific military/industrial complex issues. If America votes for big-government Republicans over fiscally conservative Democrats, that's America's business. There are many countries succeeding through their exports of IP innovations (just as America does) which aren't based on a model of massive government subsidy, so don't try to generalize from one bad example. Besides, even if I were to concede that there's no free market anywhere, would it diminish my main claim that the current system has been wonderful at encouraging innovation and delivering me the fruits thereof?

(Of course, corporations, patent offices, gov't, etc, are all "command
economies," with bureacratic appendages.)

A corporation has market discipline imposed upon it when it needs to go to the capital markets for funds, or when it starts to underperform its peers significantly. A steady-state corporation which doesn't underperform and has positive cash flow fits your description, but they're not where the action is.

I think I'm just going to reiterate here, since your sequence of clippings didn't refute my statement: The current system, for all its warts, has the advantage of bringing me an awful lot of neat stuff for cheap, having stimulated the greatest era of invention that mankind has ever known.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Will Boston trade for Beckett?
    ... and cheap at this point. ... This deal would allow the Sox to ... >>> like AJ Burnett, Jeff Weaver, Kevin Millwood, Jarrod Washburn or anyone ... >> Beckett gets hurt all the time, and he'll have a low 4 ERA in the AL. Throw ...
    (alt.sports.baseball.bos-redsox)
  • Re: The New Statesmans new Paki political editor brands us "cattle"
    ... worthwhile invention in the history of mankind ... ... I can just imagine legions of trailer trash ku kludz klan types beavering ...
    (uk.politics.misc)
  • Re: Stupidest thing to try in an OT political thread
    ... >Era of Good Feelings, prior to the invention of the Mouse. ... that was the "Era of Good Feels" prior to the invention of the ...
    (rec.gambling.poker)
  • Re: How many people own thinkpad?
    ... I am a follower of the other camp. ... Just buy cheap and more often. ... For example I still have my Epson PX-8 Geneva ('84 era) and it still works. ... But once a laptop gets a couple of years old, you are missing out on some great advances in technology. ...
    (comp.sys.laptops)
  • Re: Does it make sense to hide inventions?
    ... >sense to hide an invention or to oppose change when it benefits lots ... like inventions that could be used as cheap ... where governments try to keep the technology secret for ...
    (sci.econ)