From ... Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!uio.no!nntp.uio.no!ifi.uio.no!not-for-mail From: Erik Naggum Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: LISP - Xanalys - time to act! Date: 06 Sep 2002 21:25:17 +0000 Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway Lines: 26 Message-ID: <3240336317908925@naggum.no> References: <3D772B32.8000107@pontos.net> <87sn0opr9a.fsf@fbigm.here> <3D775289.10DF12FB@smi.de> <3D777068.44B11C82@smi.de> <3D78B7E7.3BDA8EB0@smi.de> <3D78C1DC.681C95C@cs.uni-bonn.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: maud.ifi.uio.no 1031347518 9679 129.240.64.16 (6 Sep 2002 21:25:18 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@ifi.uio.no NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 Sep 2002 21:25:18 GMT Mail-Copies-To: never User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.lisp:39928 * Pascal Costanza | Does this reasoning make sense? Does to me, except where you drag in your faith in capitalism. It is as if capitalism must suffer when people do stupid things in that system, like they would necessarily do in every other politicoeconomic system, too. It is somewhat like arguing that the experiment in constitutional democracy called the United States of America should be called a failure when not even a majority of the minority that voted, voted for George W. Bush. Although I think the mix of stupidity and power is the single most dangerous thing in the universe and what is ultimately going to do the whole human race in, I still believe the American people should get a chance to vote this dangerous average joe out of office like they did his father before we scrap the system and proclaim our loss of faith in democracy. Even the law-breaking abuses of market "power" perpetrated by the most villainous leader of orgranized crime in the history of the world, William H. Gates III, does not imply that the system is worth giving up over alternatives that institute organized crime at the government level. If a system should really succeed in making it impossible to do stupid things before they happened, it should aim at genetically improving human beings instead of restricting their freedom. -- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.