The following is a comment made by Gabe at Engadget. I like the incisive insights, so I gleefully copied it here:
Constant conflicts (economic or warfare) is necessary to maintain stability in our society. Capitalism necessarily expands to avoid collapse. It’s what Joseph Tainter called a “runaway train”.
The amount of attention given to, dogmatization of, and religious adherence to the idea of “freedom” might as well be philosophical slavery – anything that does not conform to an arbitrary set of criteria that defines “freedom” is automatically “evil” and rejected, regardless of any practical benefits it may have.
Knowing half of the truth and thinking you know the whole is far worse than knowing nothing at all. We can at least acknowledge and deal with our ignorance in the second case, whereas in the first case we become so secure in our biased perception of the truth it “becomes” the truth.
Who is Joseph Tainter
From wikipedia:
A professor in anthropology. His best-known work is The Collapse of Complex Societies. This 1988 book examines the collapse of Maya and Chacoan civilizations, and the Roman Empire, in terms of network theory, energy economics and complexity theory. Tainter argues that societies collapse when their investments in social complexity reach a point of diminishing marginal returns.
My take
Hope I can know more about Dr. Tainter’s theory. I would question his theory by asking this question: can a study of three civilizations be enough to prove the correlation between the burden of complexities and the collapse of a society? How would this theory be applied to the longest sustained civilization in China?
When I read your post the first thing that came to my mind was the fable of Aesop about the fox and the grapes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes
Regards from an occasional reader of your blog and a weird thinker too.
Thank you for pasting the Aesop story… It’s especially useful when Wikipedia was blocked in China.
I got your idea, but I think I was gravely misunderstood — I am not against freedom. After all, it’s a holy word that even most dictators try to use to legitimize their rules.
What I am against, as the quote suggests, is that the word freedom is abused to the point it demands conformity rather than diversity. Do you agree I have my freedom to doubt what freedom actually is?
Just because my idea of freedom does not agree with yours, I am turned into a fox?
In sum:
1) I do hold grudges against capitalism and I believe there can be a better form of society, for example, socialism.
2) The very essence of freedom is freedom to think and doubt. I don’t see anything wrong in this aspect.
“One hot summer’s day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till
he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had
been trained over a lofty branch. “Just the thing to quench my
thirst,” quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and
a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a
One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success.
Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last
had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air,
saying: “I am sure they are sour.”"
Moral:
I let you reach your own.
This is totally misunderstanding. Suppose I say Spain or U.S. has some problems, I am not necessarily saying China is better.
Democracy does have its defects — just look at the war in Iraq — but so far it is still the best way to distribute wealth and power in a relative fair way.
My reply may sounds a little tense, but actually I want say Gracias for sharing your opinions. We just need to clear our misunderstandings.
“Suppose I say Spain or U.S. has some problems, I am not necessarily saying China is better.”
I can assure you that we do have some problems!
And for most part of history China was not a bad place to live. A more rational form of government than in the west for long periods of time.
“Democracy does have its defects”
The worst form of government, except for all those others that has been tried. Some politician said.
My opinion. A system designed no to put to best, but to take out the worst out of power. Still, not a few, times the system could be thwarted.
And it is not something that should be pushed down people’s throats.
Just see what happen in Iraq……
“My reply may sounds a little tense, ”
It is difficult to show the right nuances in email, blog posts and/or Messages. Only emoticons can help.
“but actually I want say Gracias for sharing your opinions.”
Hhhhmmm…. No sabía que hablases algo de Español. I thank you too
Es siempre agradable oir ir el idioma materno de alguien de tierras tan lejanas.
By the way. Your countrymen here learn spanish very fast. Cannot say the same ourselves about Chinese language.
Also, I follow your technical posts with great interest. Few in quantity but good in quality.
Saludos desde el Noroeste de España
(Greetings from Northwest Spain)
http://tinyurl.com/m7xucz
Some random answers in irrelevant order
“….I am turned into a fox?”
Not turned into a fox, just behaving like the fox in the fable. At least from my point of view.
“…I believe there can be a better form of society, for example, socialism.”
And I believe I live in a more socialist society than all of them that preach to be one. I remember one English class in Vietnam, where I was helping the local teacher and her students. There was a funny moment during the class
The teacher told her students.
“Mr Ecodelta here lives in a capitalist country and we live in a socialist country”
I answered
“No. That is incorrect. You are capitalist. We are socialist”
She asked “why?”
I answered: “Well… I have never seen so many capitalist per square meter. Here everywhere I go I meet someone is trying to sell me something, barter about it, or just trying to make some business with me.”
“On the social services. You have to pay fees for your children to go to school. I helped some NGO to provide families enough support to being able to send their kids to school. In my country we paid none.
You have to pay for right medical assistance, be it with fees + money under the desk to get right treatment and right medicines. Form personal local friends I was made aware of the problem.
Sometimes even paying, quite a bit, you get not the right treatment or medicine.
I pay nothing for treatment and just symbolic quantities for medicine.
Etc, etc, etc.”
Well, to tell the truth, I do pay throug my taxes, more than 50% of my earnings go to the state in one way or the other: VAT, Income, property, etc. That is quite socialist to me, and quite happy with the services I am being provided and help to provide.
“It’s especially useful when Wikipedia was blocked in China.”
All of it?
Not only the Chinese version or just the most sensitive parts?
That is grievous indeed. And a great disservice to the country.
I believe the next revolution, which already started, is just in information. All about the new social internet is just about, creating, sharing, providing access and mining information.
By constant blocking China risk falling behind just another technical revolution.
“The very essence of freedom is freedom to think and doubt. I don’t see anything wrong in this aspect.”
Freedom to think and doubt, not only oneself but also allow others to think and doubt, and express their thinks and doubts without risking retribution, nor muffling mouths nor choking throats.
I have no rights to silence others, and the others has not rights to force me to hear just their opinions.
Reading through your comments, I can’t find any of your points that I disagree with. Just want to let you know that I am doing a Ph.D in political science, and I would be so lame if I didn’t know the basic concepts.
Wikipedia was blocked before, but it has been working fine during the past year or two. Last year Sourceforge.net was temporarily blocked. I can’t access twitter and youtube now — there are simply too much ‘harmful’ information.
Do you code in Python? I always want to learn a programming language, but I really doubt if I have the right brain cells to learn it. By the way, do you know something about Information Management? I am gonna start getting a degree in this area, and hope you know about this area by chance.
By the way, I am here: http://tinyurl.com/lfh7tw
My major was computer science not Information management.
I do not know if I would be able to help much with it.
I see from your post that you have read something about GTD (Get Thinks Done) from David Allen.
I use some of the Technics there for managing the flood of information I have to manage at my work.
I use evernote to register of the disparate information I have to manage.
Also use Personalbrain when I need the different information items to be networked, in some cases I use it as a browser bookmark repository.
For task management and tracking I use VIP Organizer. Sometimes I think is a little overkill, but the I find its database capabilities quite useful to find and arrange task to be done.
For finding things stored somewhere in my computer I use Google Desktop.
I do program in Python. I program not complex software, just sophisticated enough. I use it to write my own tools with it.
I was a heavy C programmer, also quite experience with C++ but eventually decided to migrate to garbage collection equipped languages. Too many memory leaks and corruption even with after executing the code with Purify.
I loved Lisp when I studied in at MIT ( the Scheme variation)
I tried to find something similar with better support and popularity. I Tried PLT Scheme, TCL and finally settle down with Python.
Very simple and clean syntax, good expressiveness power and good libraries. Close enough to Lisp in some respects, but without the parentheses.
I prefer it to Java and C#. I plan to learn some C# someday, more by the tools that Microsoft offers than for the language itself.
Each time I try to do something in other language than Python, I find myself forced to use less elegant coding.
If you decide to give Python a try, you may like it.
I also liked Perl when it appeared, but I consider it to be a bash shell+unix tools on steroids. It has its uses, but for just script programming I prefer python.
Heard quite a bit about Ruby and Haskell, but never get into it beyond language introduction.
Next week I will be in Hue (Vietnam). Not too far from China. I have never been in China but I plan to visit one time.
Have you arrived in Hue already? I heard about the name of the city from the title of a book called The Cat from Hue, but I haven’t read it.
Thank you for the tips about GTD tools and programming language. I only heard about evernote but not other tools. It seems these tools are heavily java based, but somehow I don’t like Java programs. I use Mind Manager for personal project management, and I use a Firefox plugin Zotero to collect and organize information. For online bookmarking, I guess Diggo should do the job.
You appear to be a programming wizard for all the programming language you have used. I do have a few questions to concerning how to learn programming as a newbie:
Since I am switching my career to the field of information management, I guess I should at least learn one programming language. I know about the reknowned Python long ago, and even tried to learn it. But self-teaching is diffcult.
How do I learn a programming language? How to learn Python? Where shall I start?
Vietnam is now a new supplier of cheap labor in the international market. Bygone the commie ideology, globalization brought capitalism and sweatshops to Vietnam.
Thanks for the tip, I will have a look at the book, sounds interesting
I share your distate for Java. Personal brain takes longer to start with the last versions.
For starting to learn python, you should always start at…
http://python.org/
Lots of documents and tutorials.
With python is no only important to learn the language basics, but also its huge libraries. Almost all you need to do you will find there, and them some more.
Some books from by favorite publisher: O’Reilly
Learning Python, 2nd Edition
Programming Python
Python Cookbook 2nd Edition
I have a subscription to safaribooksonline, so is easy to me to get all books I need. It cost some bucks though. Has the advantage of not needing to carry tons of paper each time I move.
The best way to learn is to start with an introductory book and tutorial and start to play with the language by yourself.
Python is easy to use, and very iterative.
You can do also do quick GUI programs with tkinter.
Quite useful to write quick graphics program, and more powerful than it seems.
It is also important not to forget the higher level. Algorithms, Program structure and design.
Some books that were useful for me
Structure and interpretation of computer programs.
(oriented to Scheme programming language but interesting)
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
Introduction to Algorithms.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11866
(rather advanced, maybe for later)
I am not much of a wizard, just been around computers for long time.
Yes Vietnam is very capitalist right now, not much different from China in that respect. But labor unions here are stronger and less controlled by the state. That has advantages and disadvantages.
Not so easy to move people at the whim of planners, but also not so easy to move forward fas.
It is funny, maybe Marx was right, to reach socialist heaven first is necessary to got through a capitalist period.
Shortcut from agricultural/feudal state direct to socialism nirvana didn’t seem to work.
I think Trostky was right with his theory of deformed worker’s state:
“states where the bourgeoisie has been overthrown through social revolution, the industrial means of production have been largely nationalized bringing benefits to the working class, but where the working class has never held political power (as it did in Russia shortly after the Russian Revolution). These workers’ states are deformed because their political and economic structures have been imposed from the top (or from outside), and because revolutionary working class organizations are crushed. Like a degenerated workers’ state, a deformed workers’ state cannot be said to be a state that is transitioning to socialism.”
Or degenerated worker´s state
“The Soviet state degenerated because the working class became politically dispossessed. After the death of Lenin, the ruling stratum of the Soviet Union was held to be a bureaucratic caste, and not a new ruling class, because its political control did not also extend to economic ownership. ”
What will happen in the future, in the west or in the east? I have not idea.
Capitalism has its problems too, just look at the current crisis.
Some compared capitalism to a Ferrari car. High performance, exciting to drive, but needs lots of tweaking and tunning, and you can crash easily if not careful.
I just searched Google blogs about how to learn Python, and it came up with a few good writings on the topic.
However, the ideas of strings, loops, stacks and classes dazzles me. I hope I can handle them.
Start with the basics.
numbers, strings, and lists (lists very important)
then go through loops.
Functions.
Recursive functions.
dont worry about classes until later.
Don’t try to drink too much in one try.
Starts with a basic tutorial, do some exercises, when feel comfortable with new concepts move forward to new ones.
If you can get a copy, this is a good book
Learning Python, 2nd Edition
by Mark Lutz; David Asche
There is a good tutorial in python.org
http://docs.python.org/tutorial/
Don´t just read it. Play with the language.
This seems daunting, but I’ll try. I think the only two languages I want to learn is bash script and Python.
Thank you for the advice.