Message-ID: <20020820151644.26106.qmail@email.com>
From: sockz at email.com (sockz loves you)
Subject: NY State of Mind ;)

Hi fad3r.
your email made me laff lotz.  :)
but it also made me sad in places.  :(

> I would like to offer my 2 cents.  Please read the whole thing
> cause I like points C & D the best

i did!  i read it!  and yes even the whole thing!

> A)  These "blackhats" seem to be whining about capitalism.  If
> you dont like capitalism move to a repressed country like china
> or better yet palestine (maybe the IDF will whack you or a
> suicide bomber will blow you up).  Treasure your freedom.  Alot
> of people died protecting it. (Oh and yes capitalism is a part
> of freedom)

oh *sigh* the young misguided youth of binary philosophy in political
systems.  i've almost missed seeing these kinds of comments.  capitalism is
just *one* way of organising a nation (to put it in over simple, perhaps
even crude terms).  misinformed people will say that capitalism is every-
thing communism is not, and that if you dont like capitalism then you must
be a communist.  although, this is not really the case.  first of all, just
as there are many different kinds of communism (leninism, castroism :),
stalinism, maoism, etc etc to name a select few) there are also different
kinds of capitalism.  but as you would already know, the fundamental
difference is that capitalism revolves around 'individuals as part of a
system' and communism claims to recognise the value of 'teamwork' more.
thats over simplified and there are probably flaws in that definition that
ppl could pick to pieces and i'd prolly agree with you.

now you say "repressed" as though you think that capitalism itself isn't
oppressive.  which is interesting to note.  i thought long and hard about
how to present this whole argument in a clear and concise manner that ppl
with no understanding of politics could grasp.  and i concluded that i'm
just going to have to rattle it all off and hope you're all smart enough to
understand it as i go.  so here goes...

imperialism.  it starts with imperialism.  we've all played age of empires
right?  imperialism is 'latent' within capitalism because capitalism is
dependent upon world systems (eg free trade theory and comparative advan-
tage, blah blah all that globalisation junk).  now at the very heart of
imperialism is what we call the core-periphery thesis -- basically the idea
that a stronger economic system dominates those around it (eg the US and
Mexico & Canada).  when the imperial state (the stronger economic nation)
starts out it seeks out those markets near its own turf that are easily
accessible, share similiar cultural values, similiar languages... all these
help to create stronger political ties between the two nations.  as the
imperial state grows bigger and more powerful it may find that it doesn't
necessarily need to look for markets with a similiar culture (eg the US and
Japan after WW2).

now the reason the imperial state is entering the foreign nation in the
first place is because it requires access to what we call "factor
endowments".  factor endowments are things a country has that are bene-
ficial to trade.  like the skill of its labour force, natural resources,
land, so on and so forth.  so if we look at the US, which pretends...  um,
i mean *claims* to be a relatively free nation, the US needs access to some
resources in other nations (like labour in south east asia or oil in the
middle east) in order to sustain its own economic power (fuel for the car
industry, labour so americans arent all nekkid).  so this giant economic
power busts into this peripheral nation (albeit there may be other reasons
like in japan the threat of communism from the north, i mean you had that
whole mccarthyism thing happening, blah blah blah), and cuz it needs to
transport its goods and cuz some companies want to set up shop in this per-
iphery, among other things, you get *foreign injection of capital* (from
employing periphery workers).

although there are many forms of oppression, indeed even many forms of eco-
nomic oppression, i will focus on economic imperialism in particular,
because its easy to explain and can still be applied to foreign relations,
which lets face it, are damn near the essence of the stability of
capitalism.  since the workers in the periphery are being employed by the
core, the workers become dependent upon that foreign injection of capital
in order to survive (this is the argument behind why sweatshops *aid* the
community, because despite their violation of human rights, people are
still better off working there than not working at all).  so the periphery
then becomes economically dependent upon the core, and if this dependence
gets to a desperate state (as in some regions of south-east asia for
example) the periphery will put up with nigh anything so the core isn't
tempted to move its operations elsewhere (eg low wages).  is this healthy?
no.  cuz when you have states that are too scared of the economic rammi-
fications of passing laws to do with things like the basic wage rate, you
actually stunt the rate of growth.  since people aren't getting more money
than they need to meet their current expenses, things liek new technologies
research, in some cases education, are all detrimentally affected.

SO.  when you come out with a statement like "If you dont like capitalism
move to a repressed country like china or better yet palestine.  Treasure
your freedom.  Alot of people died protecting it. (Oh and yes capitalism
is a part of freedom)" you can very well see how i look at this and shed
a tear for the loss of the next generation.  capitalism is what causes
repressed nations.  the freedom you 'treasure' is the 'treasure' you're
stealing from poorer people.  a lot of people DID indeed die so that your
way of life could be protected, but no they weren't necessarily from your
nation and they died from poverty, not in some glorious battle.  and
'capitalism is part of freedom'?  hahahah. please...  the US' policies on
expansionism are fundamentally no different from those of the USSR.  and
if you really stop to look at the differences between "dictatorships" and
"liberal democracy" you'll notice that there's not a great degree of philo-
sophical difference.  and that, sir.  is my response to point A.  of course
the entire thing will prolly be palmed off as "anti-american propaganda",
and my point will be lost, but hey, you get that.

> B)  They also seem to be whining about the term hacker.  We hack you hack
> I hack.  Who cares?  So the whitehats are security professionals.  Does
> the definition of a word mean so much you whine and complain like little
> kids?  Silly rabbit TRIX are for kids ;)

cute.  almost as cute and silly as whitehats who call themselves hackers.
kinda like a 4yo child saying "i'm a doctor".

> C)  I live in NYC and I would be happy to find a vacant parking
> lot where we can all gather and beat the shit out of each other.

that'd be cool.  let me know when you do organise something like that,
i'll bring some friends along and we can beat the shit out of each other
together.

> D)  When we are done with that we can all goto www.soundfactorynyc.com,
> drop some really good e, hang out with the model / po rn-star / strippers
> who all have their brea sts done and dance till the late pm's on Sunday.
> Everybody gets laid!

dunno if this is what you call fun but i kinda grew out of that shit when i
was 15.  perhaps this explains fundamental differences between the way you
and i think about the world.

> At the very least this should lower the testosterone level of
> his list.

heh, i can think of a million other ways, but a lot of them involve "your
mother" jokes, and as amusing as that is for a nanosecond, i cant be
bothered to be that pathetic.

> love fad3r ;)

okay yeah no thanks
-- 
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