ahickey
Recent Actions
-
Commented on Invaders from Mars
I understand that this is mostly a metaphor about the alienation of modern life, but this is the wrong way to think about corporations from a left perspective. Corporations are really not very similar to mysterious self sufficient entities, biological,...
Comment Threads
-
Charlie Stross commented on
Invaders from Mars
I am getting the distinct impression that you're here to troll. Don't Do That. (Consider this a friendly hint.)...
-
scentofviolets commented on
Invaders from Mars
@ 490: When the argument is the person, as you yourself admit too Well, that is one way of seeing it... AFAICT, you admitted to being a contrarian in the post I was responding too. So I don't see any other way of seeing it. You could prove me wrong by completely disavowing Cato for the propaganda mill that it is As I wrote -- I don't know much about Cato, I do trust the integrity of the guy that wrote that report for them. If there is a good answer to that, please post it. I'll be grateful and...
-
scentofviolets commented on
Invaders from Mars
@ 500: 1. For the fifth time, I don't know (or care) enough to have an opinion about Cato; I am not a Libertarian. I wrote about a report they presented. See 493/494. You don't have anything to say about that? Rubbish. If you really didn't know before, you've been presented with enough evidence here that they are nothing but right-wing propagandists. Since you claim to still not know enough to tell if this is true, that means that you really don't have enough competence to verify whether or not a source is good or not. Note that I didn't...
-
mike.hamerski commented on
Invaders from Mars
I unfortunately haven't had the time to go through all the replies, so perhaps someone else has said something similar to what follows... Charlie, I (mostly) heartily agree, but I think you should also consider two other things which evolved from the 19th century: nation-states and democracy. Briefly, the advent of competing nationalisms gave corporations an actionable lever (war) through which to sell their products. One way to see it is that an empire provides less markets than a dozen states (Greene describes this quite nicely in The Confidential Agent). The advent of modern democracy (one citizen, one vote) on...
-
Charlie Stross commented on
Invaders from Mars
Paul, compulsory voting doesn't fix things; if it did, Australia wouldn't have to choose between Julia Gillard and the Mad Monk for PM. As for "none of the above", that would apply to candidates, yes? Not parties? I suspect you're American and looking at the problem from the background of lightly whipped parties that are themselves umbrellas for different interest groups. Apply "none of the above" at an individual candidate level to a system with tight party discipline and all it does is strengthen the central party's ability to control internal dissent. As for "none of the above" in other...
Following
Not following anyone
Buy my Books
Quick Stuff
Specials
- Common Misconceptions About Publishing—a series of essays about the industry I work in.
- How I Got Here In The End —my non-writing autobiography, or what I did before becoming a full-time writer.
- Unwirer—an experiment in weblog mediated collaborative fiction.
- Shaping the Future—a talk I gave on the social implications of Moore's Law.
- Japan: first impressions — or, what I did on my holidays
- Inside the MIT Media Lab—what it’s like to spend a day wandering around the Media Lab.
- The High Frontier, Redux — space colonization: feasible or futile?
- “Nothing like this will be built again”—inside a nuclear reactor complex.
- Old blog—2003-2006 (RIP)
Merchandise
About This Page
Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.