Man of the Future:
— america loves it because its orifices have been raped so hard that its continued rapage is easy and theres not so much communist revolt like in say, venezuela.
O- You think Chavez is this age’s Lenin?
— we (the multinational corporations that run our country) “love” third world countries that are easily raped, because of our horrifying psychoses. sorry for the confusion.
O- Let me dispel so much confusion. You’re looking at the middle man. “We” consumers love third world countries. We love cheap labor. We love to get very handsomely paid but like also, like any middle class country, to pay only the bare minimun. We don’t care that a cow was killed cold blooded so that we could enjoy the steak in front. Nor do we care that raising the cow increased global warming. That is just useless baggage that most of us rather do without.
— well, kennedy did invade his country unprovoked and attempted to assassinate him in many many different ways, and put upon him the worst sanctions the world has ever seen. do you like how kennedy treated castro? i think he should be put on trial for it, especially since kennedy’s hostility is what led to the cuban missile crisis and it was NOT a result of it. the bay of pigs was before the missiles. castro needed to defend himself.
O- I agree. But you do understand that most americans did love Kennedy and would have killed Castro 1,000 times before they would have handed JFK over to this dictator, despite the legitimacy of Castro’s grievance. In the same way, though you could rationally make a case for a third world country, that does not mean that for the majority of people that means anything.
— of course thats what our leaders claim. that doesnt mean that its true, case in point is cuba. castro tried to purchase guns from europe to defend himself from the massive pre-missile crisis onslaught, but he was prevented from doing so. our friends the europeans, who completely share our interests in raping latin america, forced castro to rely on the soviet union.
O- So you’re making a case for selling guns to dictators? Making a case for the introduction of M-16’s into third world-countries on the brink of civil war? The USSR gave guns to Castro, along with seemingly every dictator they could find and the poorest countries in which guns could do no benefit but to reduce the amount of young people without a job. Now the AK-47 is Lord over entire continents. I am against sending arms to countries. That only increases the number of dead people. It may seem cruel to leave defenseless those who would oppose a regime, but it is simply better not to encourage violent opposition because then what you get is a chair of presidency with no meaning. The first necessity for the possibility of a legitimate goverment is the centralization of weapons. Even if in the wrong hands, it is better to eliminate the offending dictator than invite open armed revolt, after which you still have weapons all around which must either be collected or risk them being used to depose the govt as it makes decisions that are unpopular. It sucks, but sending AK-47’s into Africa has only created warlords who hijack humanitarian relief efforts for it’s own forces. Armed gangs shoot at one another but the people doing the majority of the dying have no weapons. I say we do not give them any, any, guns and watch as their ammunition runs out. There will be lose but these will be finite, rather than infinite, as if we sell them the stuff.
— we therefore caused the threat to exist more than it would have otherwise. not that we needed an actual threat, we would have made one up like the one in haiti, grenada or iraq that surely doesnt exist.
O- Back then we did not need to create a treath. We already had the Soviets. But you do bring an interesting “What if…” What if there had not been a Bay of Pigs? Would Castro become an ally of the US? That is a question that Kennedy had to ask himself and not very easy to answer.
— read the quote in my profile by herman goerring. of course the leaders tell you that we are under attack and that the pacifists are wrong, thats the only way to get the sheep to not violently revolt against the war.
O- I don’t even need to look at it. Orwell made just that point in his 1984. That is just an accusation against the human species.
— the first time? or after he became corrupted somehow? because i heard that there was a regular old fake election and nobody in the first world knew who aristide was and he was elected out of nowhere by an upliftingly united grassroots movement
O- The second time. But just consider another historical “What if…”
Aristide was initially a communist, who thought that democracy was just the way the rich appointed those who they wanted in power. That is a very cynical view of democracy. Now can someone who believed that then turn around and give a guarantee that he will defend democracy even if he considers his prospects of winning small? I don’t think so. Perhaps it was not that he became but already was corrupted. Democracy is made for well established societies, where there is no work to be done but an order to maintain. When a country is in a quasimodo state, the men that come to power are great and noble, and four years are not enough to bring forth their visions. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I don’t doubt that Aristide and Trujillo and others dreamt of a better tomorrow…along with some perks for themselves and those of their circle. Aristide might have simply seen elections as an obstacle for the implementation of a long plan of reforms, and did not want to leave the job half way done.
— private firms are never publicly accountable unless the people revolt against the government that protects them.
O- No, no, no. I have in mind a govt that is a reflection of the will of the people. But more than that, the consumer is the one that holds accountable a product or service. In a competitive market this means that the best product for the less price wins out. Without this competition, the consumer is forced to put up with whatever product it is given, because he cannot chose any other. That is not good. Imagine if you could only buy one brand of milk, bread, clothes etc, etc. If they were too pricey or of low quality, you could only choose not to eat or eat foul stuff. And the worst part is that without fear from competition, the monolith has no insentive to produce good quality stuff, but on the contrary, it can chug out bad stuff because the consumer, it knows, must buy his low-quality crap.
— not with a properly functioning media and or leader who isnt a monster.
O- The media has nothing to do with that. You will have biased media anyways. In Puerto Rico, state owned industries employed those who voted for it. It was almost a reward for their loyalty-- or at least that is what they thought. If the opposition whon, it would simply fire the crew loyal to the other chief and hire like-minded employes. This is brutal, but natural in an enviroment when there is no differentiation. Your political choice, I say, should not have economic consequences, otherwise you vote with your walled and not with your mind. That is true even in america (“A vote for Clinton is a vote to raise taxes…”), but much worse in Puerto Rico.
— it means you either sell them to americans or else your owners have no reason to care about the welfare of americans.
O- No one cares for the welfare of “all” americans. I worry when I see the dehumanization of men into such labels. It is spin and political lacunas of meaning. What? Do you believe that they also meant: “All men are created equal…” Owners do care about the welfare of americans…of some americans, that is. But some are always left out, not because of the product they make but because of the nature we have.
— if you grew sugar in a nice suburban town and it massacred the environment and made that town a horrible place to live, you would not even attempt to sell your sugar to that town because the people would hate you and never buy it. but if you sold that sugar elsewhere, you dont have that problem.
O- So do you think that they do not sell sugar in Haiti? It is one of the things they grow but do not significantly export.
— they needs jobs and food produced by their own labor.
O- In one way or another, what we consume is made by our labor.
— this will likely require a decrease in population growth? im ok with that, they probably are too.
O- A reduction in population will not solve many things. They need foreign investment. They need the diversification of their industry. They can’t all be farmers and if the all stay farmers, the land will fail. If they all stay farmers, they will lose a battle with US farmers. They need more raw material pumped into it, which they can then assemble into end items. We’re talking computers, cars and the like. They need to make initial conscesions to foreign investors, such as taxing them after a certain period, maybe ten years, after they set camp in Haiti. Tourism has to emerge, but stability must be present for both foreign investors and tourist to seriously consider Haiti above other 3rd world countries. Haiti is not competing against the US but against Africa and the Pacific islands.
Progress has been made in education but 50% bare literacy wont cut it. They need brains. I know some Haitians, and I know they are intelligent if given the opportunity to learn.
What they do not need is a Marxist ideology trying to fix with revolution a problem that can only be solved by cooperation with a largely democratic hemisphere. This whole ideology of eating only what you produce etc, is crap. The Haitian wants and deserves a normal life. They float to the DR and NYC not because they can then afford what their hands used to produce, but because they want to have buying power to afford whatever they decide to buy. They want a mango? Fine. They want an apple? that’s cool too.
— yes it does. im not talking abotu saving whales im talking abot saving drinking water and maintaining the farmability of the soil. sugar and bananas suck it dry because they do not naturally occur there in the quantities that they are farmed.
O- But for those who need a job to survive, it does not matter what the crop does to the soil but whether he will be paid for putting it or taking it out of the soil. The future does not matter for the person in the middle of battle for his own survival. He has no time to speculate about enviromental catastrophes. Raise his standard of living and you raise his consciousness of the future effects on the enviroment.
— if the government wasnt corrupt, they would force rotation and maintenance programs that greatly decrease the profitability of these products, and that is why america doesnt like governments like that.
O- Dude, again, it is not the effects govt in Haiti have for the US investors that place troops within Haiti. That is absurd. The US cares about a govt that is representative of the people- that is, they are the rightful center from which diplomacy is directed from and to the people, and who can maintain control. If they can’t maintain order then the US, as it ususally does, will see if a stronger partner arises. Only the strongrest dog can pass rules in the dog yard. If you find yourself dealing with the weaker dog, you’ll either have to prop up that dog above the stronger do, so that your dog is artifially in charge. You might dislike the more dominant dog, but then you only prop the weaker dog until a bigger dog comes along that can stand by his own self, because resentment always comes to him that stands by a weak dog (1) and friendly to the US (2). Investors can go to Africa, China, Japan, Phillipines, even DR and PR.
— i live in america, its pretty unlikely im going to have the kinds of jobs that a third worlder would complain about. if my stupid mom worked in a factory where she doesnt feel like wearing the gloves, her boss would force her to wear the gloves because there are inspectors that go around and fine the corporation if stupid workers arent being forced to be safe. there are also inspectors who force them to pay minimum wages and properly maintain and rotate farmland.
O- Boses are also ex-workers who did the same and consider the practice of wearing PPE stupid and effeminate. The other boses, who are more rational, don’t have the time to survey the entire complex. Inspectors come, but only sporadically, and in the US at least, they provide the companies with written notice prior. Prior to and after, workers seek their own comfort.
— we never supported the kind of government that was too worker oriented, environmentally protective, economically protectionist. never. big coincidence?
O- Hell, the US lacks these very things. In reality we simply supports the imitators of our system which we are comfortable with. Hell the US let’s companies outsource to india, jobs that could and perhaps should be performed by americans in Lousianna.
— i dont care what stupid consumers are doing
O- Do you own a pair of Levis’ jeans? Or to put it in another way: Can you assure me or yourself that all the products you’ve bought have not cause hardship on another human being?
— they cant be expected to ever do anything right without being forced.
O- The echo of a tyrant.
— what matters is that in america, we made laws that force employers to pay a minimum wage
O- Minimun wage is simply a sum of money we deem essential for health of the worker in that particular economy he finds himself in. In PR it was $3.60; it the US it’s over $6 an hour. If it takes 30 cents to eat a hamburger in that economy, then the minimun wage will reflect that. It is a percentage and not some magic number. Minimun Wage will have to depend on the money the Haitian govt can borrow, because right now the govt expends more than it makes.
— and protect the environment because we think those are important things.
O- We protect the enviroment because we can destroy other enviroments instead. The day we are forced into an isolationist policy, you’ll find our true nature. I believe that if the Arabian peninsula ran dry of oil, same as everywhere else, but Yellowstone Park, Shell and Texaco would be there tomorrow with the blessings of all america.
— the fact that corporations are free to subvert those laws by going to a different country not only proves that our leaders dont give a shit about the laws they made
O- No. It means that the US is not trying to make laws for other nations. we’re not pro-state building.
— but coupled with the fact that our leaders consistently support leaders that dont have the same laws as us
O- I beg to differ. Haiti, for example, has many laws, many that in fact resemble our laws. that is not the crucial factor. The cuestion is is the goverment stable enough to dictate and enforce it’s law and be seen as legitimately doing so.
— it proves that our leaders actually hate the laws that benefit the majority of our population and they are clamoring for any opportunity to hurt people and their world, since that is what will make money.
O- Again, it is not your leaders, but you, me and everyone else. In Italy, the socialists have many laws that benefit the majority. For example, if you have a house of such and such dimension, it is considered luxurious, and thus you pay a greater tax on it. Similarly, any effort on your part to stand apart, to make progress, if above the progress of the majority, even if the majority is incapable, it is punished and discouraged. After living there for two years, I missed capitalism, where the laws are made to benefit those hungry, those who desire to work and reward the excellent for their vigor, instead of a country that rewards you simply on the fact of being more numerous than another group.