Re: Bill Gates and the PC

[boddhisatva <kbevans@xxxxxxxxx>]

                Mr. Proyect,



        While the condition of having an opinion on everything is, indeed,
the province of the Marxist qua Marxist (or Marxist qua Proyect), I admit
with dour coutenance, heavy heart, but untroubled soul, that I suffer the
same ill.


        As for the point I was making (as distinct from the basis of your
argument), my proposition was that the internet creators ARE entrepreneurs
while Gates is a marketer (a legitimate, marginally useful, and unlaudable
trade) and a blood-sucking weasel.  Capitalists define entrepreneur as
economic innovator, but staff the position with middlemen.  My point was that
the altruistic and the venal are equal in the eyes of the market, if not in
the eyes (dewy) of their fellow men.  While it is true that we stand on the
shoulders of unselfish and unsung benefactors, we also stand on the shoulders
of people who have charged us for it.  The point is to develop an economy
where real economic innovation is effected and rewarded, stuffing cash into
the pockets of pious byte-pushers over their strenuous objections, if
necessary.


        The path of mystifying "virtue" is a is a slippery, unscientific
slope, to a rocky, reactionary road to a dialectiacl dead-end street.  Better
to think of a system where the ingenious are rewarded by logic rather than
edict - economic logic, market logic, logical choices, by rational consumers.


        How can the unselfish man stake his claim?  This is the central
problem of socialism.  Who will recognize his value, the state? really?, call
me cynical, but the state has a long history of rewarding its own. In fact so
does everyone.  Why not make the innovator part of a group that is its own
power base?  Why not make that group collective, so as not to offend his
unselfish nature?


        If you don't like market socialism, fine, think of it as the beta
version of Socialism 1.1.


        As for my Marxism, I am only a lionizer of capitalism (to the extent
that I even am) for the same reason that Marx was - for argument's sake.  I
just happen to take the "control" part of "workers control the means of
production" very seriously and literally.



        peace



                boddhisatva





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