Re: How much money do you need?
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I didn't say that Gates robbed anyone, I'm saying that in a Capitalist economy, in order for one person to have more than the "average median" income or assets, many others MUST have less than the average, thus making them "poor" based on that economy.
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So if you're below average, you're poor? Hardly. You need to learn some facts before you make these wonderful claims. The average income in the US is WAY above the poverty line.
And are you further claiming, that an economy is good only if everyone has the same amount of assets/income? Why is that necessary? I don't begrudge rich people what they have. I'm happy with my lot in life. (tip: average and median are different concepts, you might want to investigate further [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]
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And let's not get into the "productivity" that Microsoft has delivered, since they continually produce buggy software and have a near stranglehold in the world of Operating Systems and Word Processing applications.
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As a frequent MS basher, you're preaching to the choir here. BUT, you're making a mistake. I agree MS could make MUCH better s/w, hence my dislike of them. However, that doesn't mean that their products haven't delivered much to their customers. Again, if people got no value from a product, they would stop buying it. Period.
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Many "better" products have been put out of business because other "lesser" products just had better marketing or more capital to set themselves up. Beta vs. VHS, Amiga vs. IBM PC's, etc.
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Again, preaching to the choir. I still have my original Amiga 1000 (one of the first 100 made [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] But notice something: you put better in quotes. Who says it's better? Not enough people, that's the problem. "better" is subjective. Why did Beta fail? Sony kept the h/w proprietary, so they could charge more, and not compete with the undercutters. Result: People bought VHS, cause it was cheaper. Was it as good? No. Was it good enough? Yes. And cheaper, too [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] (see MS argument above). Why did the Amiga fail? Because Commodore was too cheap to pay business app vendors to port their apps to the Amiga. Result: NO businesses bought PCs. Just hobbyists and cable TV stations. And there weren't enough of those sales to support the machine.
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Also, it isn't always about performing well, many companies just rip us off. I know it's nit-picking, but here are a few examples:
1. Friendlies Restaurants (Northeast US) used to give you HALF a cherry with your ice cream. What corporate big-wig was sitting in his office going "do you know how many millions we'll save if we give everyone half a cherry?!"
2. Moist Wipes: These used to come in packages of 50, now you get 48, or 42, but you get charged the same, or more.
3. Have you SEEN the prices of razor blades lately? You're paying something like 16 dollars for eight razor blades that probably cost a nickel or less apiece to produce (granted, there are varying advertising and other costs to be considered, but c'mon man, really!)
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In all three examples, you don't have to buy the product. If you get "ripped off" more than once, it's your fault.
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4. Purchase Microsoft XP in the States and you're paying somewhere between $150-$300. You can get it in China for $40 (and I'm not talking an illegal copy, this is a Microsoft approved price)
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Well, if you buy a configured system, you're paying a lot less than $150 for the OS. And if you're buying just the OS, there are ways to pay (sometimes) much less. As far as China goes, I actually admire MS approach to it. They are trying to encourage a society with much less available capital than the US/Canada/Europe to actually buy the product instead of stealing it. Reminds me of the music industry complaint against MP3s/file-sharing. They say they are losing $7B a year in sales. Yeah, right. Like $7B is going to appear out of thin air to buy the CDs. If they could stop file-sharing, they would make very little additional income, consumers would simply consume less. MS is attempting to sell more legitimate copies at a lower price, making the same income they would have anyway, but also starting the process of putting the illegal copiers out of business.
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We live in a society where we are taken advantage of by the minority upper class who control the majority of the money and assets. And we are too apathetic and comfortable to fix the system.
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Well, let's just say that's a completely subjective statement, and I simply don't agree.
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Don't get me wrong, I know that Socialism and Communism have had, and do have, their faults. We haven't found an ideal system yet, hopefully one day we will.
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Here we agree.
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