The flaw I see in that argument is that you have no guarantee of service. Some people (my employer) care about that, and some don't. I'm not saying it's insurmountable. I'm just saying that the idea of a Boeing or a General Motors converting to Gmail isn't going to come to fruition under the current model.
> The flaw I see in that argument is that you have no guarantee of service.
Oh god, not this shit again.
Look at any typical SLA and tell me you don't see a zillion loopholes for lawyers to wriggle around. There's never any real guarantee of service unless an ironclad SLA is hammered out, and I suspect that if Google gets traction with Gmail for Domains, they'll do it.
When I was at Google (2003-2004) we had something like 10 seconds of user-visible outage. That was before Gmail, but it was also with a staff of ~200 people and ~250K servers. I have every reason to believe that Google can still stomp the shit out of all contenders on uptime; they just need some incentive to do it for specific services.
(my $0.02 only; I don't work for Google anymore. In fact I doubt I could ever go back; it would be too depressing to see what's become of the bullpen atmosphere in ops. Even still -- Urs may be the best in the world at what he does.)
Perhaps, in your hurry to condemn, you have misinterpreted.
When I can walk out the back door and speak directly to the head of the department in charge of our application programming team, or the guys running the servers, and so on, then I feel pretty good about guaranteed uptime. More importantly, I can blame someone when it fails.
Let's presume for a minute that my smallish enterprise was to move to Google Apps, and for some reason completely beyond the control of my people (Google failure, cable cut, whatever), the service goes out. Who do I blame?
You can call it "shit" if that makes you feel better about it. But it certainly doesn't cut any ice for me to walk into the President's office and say "But Google only had 10 seconds of outage in 2003-2004." I'm still fired. Imagine how much worse it would be for someone in a large installation.
When I control the gear, I control what I can and can't accomplish. Unless you can sell me on a serious guarantee of service and compelling functionality...no thanks.
Obviously if you can run everything in-house for cheaper than an organization can do it elsewhere, you should. Large numbers of businesses are discovering that's not the case, or their 10 seconds of downtime isn't actually consequential. (If it is, then having an in-house base of expertise is critical. But an SLA is not the same as an in-house ops department!)
So not only do you have a recipe for cripplingly slow growth, but you also fail to ensure improvement in the quality of submissions. It's not like people are invulnerable to "Dude, c'mon...invite me!" from their friends, hacker or otherwise.
We have a pretty good crowd here now. I think that most of our friends would also be a good crowd, and most of the annoying 14-year-olds wouldn't be our friends.
And this didn't cripple the growth of Livejournal at all. You only get one invite a year, but you get it immediately on joining. I invite you, you turn around immediately and invite someone else, who invites someone else, etc. The 1/year rule is meant to make me careful about who I spend my one invite on.
Please cite your evidence for how we are being "dragged down," and please cite a purely capitalist society that rivals our own (or those of Western Europe). I'm willing to consider evidence, but not an unfounded assertion like this.
The examples are numerous - please look around. Simple examples would include the rent control policies in New York and San Francisco. The intention: provide low cost rent for tenants at the expense of landlords. The reality: because of the rent control, the ROI for entering the rental business declined dramatically. This caused less development of rental units and rapidly increasing rents for the scarcer supply left. The result of rent control: chronically higher rents for all but those lucky enough to already be renting and a chronic under-supply of rental units. Other classic examples are the minimum wage which increases unemployment, medicare/Medicaid which drives up the cost of health care for all, excessive taxation to pay for all of the entitlements which is a disincentive to business, etc.
Despite which, the US economy remains one of the largest and most productive in the free world. Your examples do not support your assertion.
According to both the IMF and the World Bank, the world's 10 largest economies in 2006 were, in order, the EU, the US, Japan, Germany, the PRC, the UK, France, Italy, Canada, Spain and Brazil. Very mixed economies, every one. I really don't see how this supports the idea that they're being "dragged down."
Do you understand the point that the result of rent control is less rental units for renters, higher prices for renters, and less profit for landlords? How is that not dragging down what would otherwise be a sphere of creativity of landlords going out of their way to provide greater value to renters (to increase their profits) if the regulations were removed?
Also, how does the fact that the US economy does well in comparison to other more socialist countries in any way show that removing the socialist controls we have now would not improve our economy even more?
I maintain that it doesn't support your argument that our economy is being dragged down. You may argue that it's not growing at the rate you think it would, and I can respond by arguing that the resulting society isn't one I'd want to live in -- that's a different discussion. But the general trend of growth year over in real GDP (http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/Macroeconomics/Data/HistoricalR...)
is not evidence of being "dragged down." The trend is broadly up.
Regarding your second point, this is a canard. The fact that the 10 largest, most successful economies in the world (in fact, most if not all of the top 20) incorporate elements of socialism (most to a much greater degree than the US) demonstrates that mixed economies can, and do, succeed. Your initial argument at least implies that a mixed economy is not a successful one. If I read that incorrectly, please tell me, because by most metrics, mixed economies are not only surviving, but prospering.
It's interesting that the article's core attitude is based on the idea that eliminating inequality is (or should be) the main concern.
It would be appropriate at this point to zoom out a bit and remind everyone that we're talking about a playroom full of kids ranging from roughly kindergarten to third grade. Of course eliminating inequality (insofar as access to toys and play equipment is concered) is the point! As I stated in a previous comment, you can argue whether the teachers picked the best way to do it, but that argument does not change the underlying premise.
Maybe the underlying premise is flawed. Maybe it would be better to focus on teaching the children the fact that in this world inequality is unavoidable and how best to deal with it. After all, it's clear from the article that the teachers are going after something bigger than plain equitable distribution of the toys.
This is just my perspective as a parent, but I think the underlying premise is just fine, thanks. My daughter will have her entire life to learn how to deal with inequality by simple dint of being American. I don't need a playroom to teach her that particular lesson. Besides, there are outside forces to consider...if I pay for my child to have access to an after-school playroom, I have a right to expect her not to be unnecessarily or arbitrarily excluded from play. Again, just my perspective.
As I noted in my other comment, I think you can question the teachers' methods, certainly.
Ahhh, I see where you're coming from. I'm really interested in the socio-economic aspects of this, and the article was written in a way that prompted thought from that angle. Since I don't have kids and the concerns that go with them, I took that line of thought and ran with it.
I don't deny that the playroom might not be a good place to be doing socio-economic experiments. But since the article didn't seem to take that view, I'm interested in the discussion of the experiment. The question of whether they should have been performing the experiment is not a big deal to me.
I think you'll find it hard to find a more representative microcosm of what an unfettered capitalist society would look like than that of an unsupervised classroom...
How is it, I wonder, that so many people get bent around the idea of making an economic analysis out of this? We're talking here about a playroom, the very nature and substance of which means that the teachers should be primarily concerned with making sure everyone has equitable access to the "resources" -- i.e. the toys.
I think one can argue whether or not the teachers are doing that in an effective and appropriate way, certainly. But I believe that this one underlying fact is nonnegotiable.
Personally, and as a parent, I find the repeated and forceful attempts to turn this into some kind of capitalist vs. socialist laboratory are both ill-conceived and ill-advised. Whatever else may be true of the situation, I believe it is certainly no place to institute a Lego-fied re-enactment of Lord of the Flies.
Are you talking about the teachers making an economic analysis out of the lego game, or the internet-comments making economic analysis out of what the teachers did?
If the former, then I can at least understand your point, though I would disagree (I think that going through a simulation like this is a very interesting way to teach kids about economics and power, and I wish I'd had teachers who spent that much attention on trying to teach their students things they felt were important in life).
If the latter, than it sounds like you misunderstood what the teachers did and why they did it. They were not primarily interested in the organizing a system that would merely provide kids with equitable access to toys in the playroom. They were interested in teaching the children their own version of how economics and social justice should be understood in real life, a version which many people (including me) take issue with for its fundamental lack of awareness of how wealth is created, and the effects of a system of organization on that wealth creation process.
There have been several posts lately about "stupid" or "unlikely" ideas that make money. I could see this falling into that category. It's an interesting attempt, if not singularly creative.
"Just because you weren't born into money doesn't mean you can't get there. That's the beauty of the free market, you have the OPPORTUNITY to succeed and get ahead."
This isn't always, or even usually, true. Millions upon millions are born into this world with _no_ prospects, and _no_ opportunity, and _no_ amount of hard work, inspiration or pure luck will change that. It may be more true in America than elsewhere, but it's certainly not the rule.
And the "free market" is a recipe for monopoly and domination as much as for opportunity. The goal of the players in a free market is the elimination of opportunity for anyone but themselves. The free market does not reward altruism, so there's no incentive not to crush anyone in your way, other than personal decency. Which also doesn't pay. The market we enjoy here is anything but free, for which I'm thankful.
"If everyone and everything is the same, then why even bother doing anything better or trying?"
That's a strawman.
"Socialism scares me to no end because it is way easier to scream for support and get it than it is to actually make something out of yourself."
Out of curiosity, what's your actual experience of socialism?
"I don't know about you, but I certainly don't want to have to live in a world that is built for the LCD."
So raise the lowest common denominator. There are multiple paths to that goal, after all.
I'm short on time, but I've lived in various south american countries that are all flirting with socialism. In most cases it has been met with open arms by the poor and screams from the rich. In the end, the poor are barely better off and the rich simply buy around what the socialized stuff gives them. Price controls and other economic "flattening" certainly have poor effects on the country as well.
Certainly I feel for those in underdeveloped or regressive countries and I'm VERY thankful that I am where I am and am able to live as comfortable a life as I am living. But what am I going to do? Frankly there is very little that I can do for people in N. Korea or Zimbabwe. Socialism is not the answer for the problems in the middle east, africa or N. Korea.
And (this is getting longer than I have time for), but how do I raise the LCD? It seems to me that every day the LCD goes down further. I had a conversation today with a buddy about trying to monetize an idea and he said we needed to find a way to make it more lowbrow since stuff like that pays (see hotornot.com in its "close to porn" heyday).
"The fundamental problem with their Lego trading game (and the original Legotown) is that they assume capitalism involves a fixed amount of resources that can only be traded. In reality, the resources are constantly growing. If it was really a fixed-resource system, it would always end like Monopoly, with one person owning everything, or owning enough to always be in power at the least."
I'm confused. Are you arguing that resources in the "real world" are not finite? So we'll never run out of indium, oil, fresh water, fertile soil, etc? Because if you are, that's a fascinating viewpoint, and almost completely at odds with reality.
"Surely all the wealth creation done by startups is evidence of that."
Maybe, maybe not. A lot of the "wealth" created by startups exists nowhere but on paper.
Yeah, looking back now I wish I had written the first paragraph with the word "wealth" instead of "resources." (Alas, the edit link has disappeared on me.) So please, when you see the word resources in my post, mentally substitute for me.
As for you second point, don't confuse money with wealth. Most startups have liquidation value (dollar value) only on paper, because there is no one to buy them, but the product they create represents wealth to someone, even if it's only one customer. If the startup doesn't create enough wealth for enough people, it will probably die, in which case it won't be creating new wealth anymore, but their product made someone's life better, even if only for a short time.
Is this a trick question?
<grin>
Actually, I sympathize.