What is Digg?165 Comments
- third_eye, on 10/12/2007, -1/+45If the CEO's would simply shut their freaking mouths about 'feeling the strain along with us' it wouldn't be such a hypocrisy. I wish they'd just be honest and say. "We have it, you want it - and we'll charge whatever the F* we want because you'll pay it."
- fr4ncium, on 10/12/2007, -4/+31My Dad works for ExxonMobil and a lot of his coworkers lost their jobs last year during the whole "oil crisis" when they shut down an entire building in Dallas. Then they announced their best year yet. Wasn't the profit aomething along the lines of 6 billion? It's not just capitalism, but I think we all know that...
- triska, on 10/12/2007, -4/+25If Apple hadn't given steve his $60million private jet, and instead put the money into making iPods cheaper, with a grand total of over 30 million iPods sold so far, that could mean iPods would be a grand total of...
...two dollars cheaper.
Just imagine it. whoa. - dagonweb, on 10/12/2007, -6/+24This isn't capitalism. I don't mind capitalism. Capitalism works just fine here in the netherlands AND we have a humane welfare system. Capitalism as done in the US is the far right inhuman system, just shy of corporate fascism (or maybe not) and on the far end of the left authoritarian side is red maoist china (like it was 20 years ago), or DDR state pampering.
But DO realize a lot of people in both the DDR and China nowadays want it back like it used to be.
The problems is that most americans are ignorant as hell. They are clueless. In some spasmodic sense of nationalism they assume that once you say communism you always imply bread lines, society falling apart and that just isn't so. Sensible Socialism works just fine here in holland and strangely enough those people visiting the netherlands are completely surprised and/or want to stay for a while longer.
Societies dont need to be insane production machines. It IS possible to sustain humane practices and spread wealth around in a decent manner. The system doesn't automatically collapse if you practice some common sense equality. Get over the corporate propaganda. Socialism works. Minimum wages work. Keeping people from starving works. Welfare works. It keeps society from ripping itself to pieces.
And do bear in mind that the USA right now is a lot closer to a soviet style 1989s collapse than most people believe. Remember the housing bubble? The difference between rich and poor? The dollar sliding away? Fat cat rich oil plutocrats? A resource aquisition war in Iraq? The US spending more on pentagon warfare pork than the rest of the world combined?
I'll predict you one thing: Within the next 5 years the US is gonna catalysmically collapse and then everybody is gonna wake up and realize that draconian capitalism is just a destructive an extreme as stalinism or maoism. All it took was a 7 trillion debt and 100$ oil for people to realize unrestrained consumerism is not going anywhere either. - lagrange, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Theres nothing inherently wrong with Capitalism, just the way its currently practiced in the United States in the last 40 years or so.
Take a belief that scorched earth capitalism can actually work and combine it with a democracy thats declining quickly into a corporate cleptocracy and you have a problem.
Don't get me wrong, this system is incredibly effective at generating low wages and high profits, but the people who live in it quickly get ground up in the gears of the machinary.
It all depends on what you want from your society. Do you want a large pool of faceless cheap labor that will produce record profits with little investment, or do you want a highly moderated business enviroment where quality of life is important?
In the past 200 years the US has had both, changing a number of times and it will no doubt change again. Only history will tell which one was best. - pondster, on 10/12/2007, -12/+27We already have this, only thing is, the state is stealing from US and making US poor! It's bad enough that we live in a society that the elderly need to choose between FOOD and their MEDICINE, now they have a third choice - whether or not to buy the GAS to get their food OR medicine! The world is ***** and its going to take people snapping left and right before anything is done.
- Chive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19Don't forget he didn't make this money in a Capitalist system. We all talk about "capitalism" but the reality is that we labor under a form of crony-capitalism where there are strong self-serving ties between government, the hereditary rich and corporations.
Even when gas was over $3.00 our Government was looking for more tax breaks to toss to big oil. Energy bills are partly written by lobbyists and passed by paid-off congressmen and consist of thousands of pages of arcane laws that benefit industry at the expense of the public good. The Dept of the Interior is run by former mining company executives. Senators help pass friendly laws and then they are assured cushy industry or lobbyist laws for life.
It's really pretty putrid. It would be nice if we had anything close to real capitalism. But we don't. We have a system where the rich help the other rich grow richer while the public watch TV and are dazzled by the propaganda that is spoon fed to them every day. - jaypee68, on 10/12/2007, -6/+20You are embarassed to be an American because people don't want to pay $3.00/gal for gas? Are you mad, or mildly retarded? How about when gas finally makes it to $5.00? Will you be singing the same song? You say $3.00 for gas is "JUST FINE"? Maybe you print your own money, or have found a way to make your car get 100 mpg.
I bet all the people that work minimum wage don't share your view, and most of them probably work just to make money to fill their tank so that they can get to work only to repeat such a vicious again and again and again.
If you really want to be ashamed to be an American, be ashamed of your president, or the fact that alot of people think Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and Michael Jackson are the best things since sliced bread. Or how about the fact that it's illegal to sit in your own home and get stoned out of your mind off marijuana and eat Doritos while watching Harry Potter, but it's extremely easy to go get drunk and drive a car only to kill innocent people.
Or how about the fact that the religious right and all the other dumbasses that think it's evil to farm marijuana and tax it because it's "a gateway drug that leads to other drug use", but the government thinks it's just fine to give you a pill to get you an erection, or a pill to relieve your depression which sometimes backfires, or how about a pill because you are to fat, or a pill because you are to skinny, or a pill because you don't know what your sexual orientation is supposed to be, etc... Drug free my ass, America is the most drugged up country in the world. The only allowed drugs are the ones that corporate america can profit from.
Or how about Wal-Mart putting up a new store in your area every year that puts mom and pop stores out of business, there's 2 within 10 miles of where I am now with 1 on the way.
These are things that should make you embarassed to be an american. There are soooo many things wrong in this country that should be making you cry on your knees, not the fact that some people are voicing opinion about high gas prices that are getting out of control.
Just my $0.02 USD - mechtech, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Dear ***** up americans,
$2.79 1 Gallon gasoline.
$1.19 16 fl oz bottled water. (16 fl oz * 8 =1 Gal = $9.52)
Gasoline: Limited resource. pumped from the ground of war torn far away countries, shipped in multimillion dollar vessels, refined, then trucked to your local gas station.
Water: The most abundant resource on the planet. It actually falls from the f'ing sky! (really) :)
Pumped from underground springs/ wells just the same as your tap water at home.
(BTW my water bill at home for 2,500 Gal's is approx. $.0152 per Gallon)
Lets not forget the billions of plastic water bottles going into landfills.
I can't wait to sell you retards bottled air..I'll make 1 billion a day!!!! - Norante, on 10/12/2007, -6/+18Agreed. It's not how much people make, but how the misery of others is overlooked.
- AdamCo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+18"If the CEO presides over a record profit year, his compensation will most likely reflect that"
Nevermind the peasant workers who apparently did nothing make that profit a possibility, let's give the rich guy another raise while the poor guy stays poor. He apparently did everything by himself. Another round of layoffs, on the house. Some call this success, while others call it failure. - knightblade2oo4, on 10/12/2007, -8/+18People who manage their business proporly are rich. What a concept.
- Harmutt, on 10/12/2007, -5/+14Another example of war-profiteering. No sacrifice is being asked of anyone during a time of war; least of all corporations. Stunning really.
- Osjpr, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12"Tear away, put your money where your mouth is, buy some stock and voice your displeasure. " You really think someone buying 0.0001% of stock will give their plea weight? No, it won't. You must have forgetten most people can't afford to buy stock.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -23/+31Yes, everyone on Digg knows that capitalism is evil and we need a robin hood state to make us all equal.
- bluedepth, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11Bah! The state doesn't make people equal. Revolutions do that. Great big bloody ones. :)
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+16What the hell is with all these crybabies pitching a fit over $3.00/gal gas? My car only gets 19mpg (it's a sports car, so... meh) and I'm not going to whine over $3.00. Which would you rather do? Pay $3.00? Or spend all day **walking** 19 miles?
Gas is more expensive in most other countries. The only countries that have cheaper gas are those where it is subsidized by the government OR where they are major oil countries to begin with. Otherwise, every other country spends WAY more on gas than America. For instance, in the UK gas is so expensive they sell it by the litre (I believe). And it comes out to around $9.00 per gallon.
How ***** much are you driving if $3.00/gal is putting the pinch on you?! You must be like a taxi cab driver or something. $3.00/gal is JUST FINE. Hell, I'm more upset that milk is about $4.50/gal than I am over the price of gas.
Bunch of crybabies. I'm telling you. It's stuff like this that makes me embarassed to be an American sometimes. - bristolz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Oil costs the same in Europe as it does in the US. The taxes cost a lot more in Europe, though.
- ZenPirate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@ morganm-
*snip* here are diesel vehicles available *snip*
...except in New York, where it has been made illegal to purchase diesel powered passenger vehicles. - dagonweb, on 10/12/2007, -17/+23WHY do americans keep voting republican? WHY do americans keep supporting an inhuman system where most people lose out and are poor, and a few reap the benefits bigtime? Are they stupid?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10And?
Jim Carrey and a lot of other actors and actresses make a good $20million per picture. Figure it takes six months of work for them to make a flick. That's about 140 work days. That's almost $143,000/day. Are we suggesting that the guy from The Cable Guy and Fun With Dick And Jane who entertains a couple million people for a couple hours provides a more vital and valuable service than the people who fuel the transportation of a 300million-citizen nation (not even counting the rest of the world)?!
Don't get me wrong - I think the oil tycoons are a bunch of oppertunistic dicks preventing the progress of the entire society by clinging on to fossil fuels - but let's be realistic here. - piratearggghhh, on 10/12/2007, -9/+15Basically a white collar criminal who should belong in jail but instead are living the high life.
- YellowBook, on 10/12/2007, -9/+15At a minimum, I think all most people would want is a world where there's enough food to go around. Not the fault of Exon for paying this guy that much money but capitalism is seriously flawed to distribute wealth this unequally.
- alexzizka, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7CAPITALISM RULES!!!
- combatchuck, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I love how you just know everything about everybody in the US. No, I can't work closer to home. Most people in the US (New York and Los Angeles excluded, they're just as foreign as another country) don't have the option to work closer to home. Reason being, there are no ***** jobs. Unless I want to flip burgers or pick up garbage, my options are pretty limited near home. I would live closer to work, but work is in a higher-class area and cost of living is much higher there. As far as a solution, most of us have excellent solutions in mind. When we get some money saved up after paying for surviving, the plan is usually to go to school or move. But oh, wait, we make just enough to survive and nothing more, while dedicating most of our time and energy and money to a job and a house and a car that are all too expensive yet necessary to survive.
- DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Capitalism is great but it bothers me that people defend it like it's perfect. This guy does not deserve that much money. Period.
- giveer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The moral "good" of a country is not, and should not, be determined through proving it is less "evil" than another country.
- combatchuck, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Most of you also have alternatives. I can't take a train or a bus to work.
- neozeed, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Or they could have just died on the vine in 1997, and Sun could have pushed forward with OpenStep on Solaris, and the suns would be running OSX... With any luck the ipod would have come to sun.
Now that would have been a really wierd world. - rfunches, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Unfortunately the price of gas in the U.S. will never go back to where it was before (sub-$2) because the oil companies can actually make money by sucking oil out of shale (which is a very expensive process unless the price of gas is high). Once they started doing that, $1.50/gal gas disappeared. Not to mention the switch to ethanol in the fuel mix adding considerable cost (corn oil is about $2/gal).
- hkorth, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8This is not capitalism, it's just another sign of the poor political skills of the administration. But I guess we cannot expect the friends of the oil industry to grill the companies why they have been driving in insane amounts of profit during the last year. The hearings they had were nothing but a show so they can continue as before.
- canadianguy33, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Third Eye you really made me chuckle, and although I'd like these CEO's to be honest, I'd still like to tear them a new one.
- dougbdl, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Obscene Greed, no matter how you look at it.
Corporate tax rate is down to 17%, and I guaruntee nobody reading this on Digg pays that little.
They have hijacked the political system with bribes barely concealed as 'contributions'.
Corporations play states and cities against each other to escape taxes, making the local population make up the difference. Just google TIF.
Coorporations are not inherently bad, they are simply built to make profits no matter what the cost. They do not care about employees, community, state, country, or environment if they get in the way of bigger profits. PROFIT IS ALWAYS #1. Then the 15-20 at the very top (CEO, CFO, Board members) get to take that profit and do with it as they please. That usually includes giving some to the stock holders and keeping ALOT for themselves. That is why they need oversight. In this political climate in the US they are not getting that oversight. - Frinkahedron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4God dammit I hate when people say that gas prices are high because the gas companies want to screw you over/iraq/bush/oil crash coming/etc.
THE REASON WE HAVE HIGH GAS PRICES IS BECAUSE NO NEW REFINERIES HAVE BEEN BUILT SINCE THE 1970s!
Every single time a company applies for a building permit for a refinery, it gets shot down by local governments who don't want a refinery in their backyard, and then go and complain about filling their 6 mile per gallon hummer. -_-
Remember how gas prices spiked after katrina? It's not because we're running out of oil, its because the refineries on the gulf coast were knocked out. - recursive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4http://www.dol.gov/esa/minwage/america.htm
Assman: The USA minimum wage is $5.15. It hasn't changed in several years. You are wrong. - dnder, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5morganm, you seem to have all the mother ***** answers don't you. Hey, if you can't pay for gas, why don't you move your house so you can live closer to your work? Or if you can't pay for gas, why don't you ride a ***** bicycle? You seem to spew out all these alternatives that is completely useless for the average working joe. On a side note, are you some kind of oil company lobbists?
- Xyl3ne, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Hey genius, mininum wage does NOT increase every year. New Jersey's minimum was the same from about 1994 until October of 2005. How's that for every year?
- Nerys, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5About steve jobs ? well its easy I DONT HAVE TO BUY AN IPOD there are alternatives that are better and cheaper than an IPOD and on top of this ABSTINANCE is an OPTION. so he is rich because we CHOOSE willingly to make him rich. OIL execs are rich because they TAKE the money from us without consent IE we really have no viable ALTERNATIVE but to "pay"
THAT is the difference and NO ONE here is dumb I should not have had to say this.
One is a choice the other for all intents and purposes is NOT. the JOBS and MOVIE Star analogies are irrelevant and have no meaning to this discussion.
Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/ - ZekeSulastin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5The only real problem with a 100+ USD barrel of oil is that all the other competing technologies would need to catch up while world economies tanked. If oil is expensive, all of a sudden, transportation costs will skyrocket, causing prices of all goods to go up as it costs so much more to deliver them. And tourism? Forget that - airline tickets would become VERY expensive, thus ruining tourist area economies and likely bankrupting the rest of the carriers (in the US, at least). Shipping, trains, etc. - anything that relied on large-scale movement would be affected. There wouldn't be much money or resources left to implement new sources of energy.
However wonderful a forced move to alternative energy would be in your fantasy land, it would only ruin us in the real world. There is very little in the way of a possible alternative for trucking (really really BIG electric engine? Or fuel cells - they just need to make them much more powerful), you probably wouldn't like the alternative for oceanic movement (most people freak out when they think of nuclear power ... I think it would be good for oceanic myself), and there is NO alternative for aircraft as of yet (well, I guess you COULD have a fuel cell powering propellers, but I d don't think it'd be anywhere near remotely efficient).
Want to screw up economies in the name of progress? Be my guest - I will remain in the status quo, waiting for such a change to occur in a reasonable fashion. - ryogahibiki, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Pure capitalism with true competition works very well. The problem is that the system is broken in America with lobbysists giving billions of dollars to our politicians to get favorable government laws made for them to the detriment of all Americans (except for the super-rich). America will continue to go down the tubes unless the system changes now!
- bpapa, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I like how people are flipping out over Capitalism vs. whatever when the original comment was clearly sarcastic.
- eN1X, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Interesting fact I thought I'd throw in here.
1. Gas is around $8.00 USD a gallon over in England
2. My friends dad recently went to Iran and said you can fill a WHOLE TANK of gas for $2.00 USD
;) - koko775, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6The way I see it, capitalism's dogma is equity, whereas communism's dogma is equality. In the former case, "equity" is taken to mean "treat everyone the same"; in the former, "equality" is taken to mean "make everyone the same".
Neither approach works 100%. Pure Capitalism, laissez faire, makes money the ultimate goal without ethical considerations, whereas Communism makes equality the ultimate goal without economical considerations (incentive, etc.). Not to mention that Communism has been practiced as "more equal than you" dictatorships, but I digress...
Capitalism in the US sucks because it lacks equity and lacks equality. All you have is rich people cheating to get to the top. The US shouldn't be an oligarchy, but it sure is turning that way. - anarchocap, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The day you idiots quit driving is the day this guy gets a pay cut.
- 1randomnumber, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5And yes, $3.00/gal is putting the pinch on many of us. My car also gets around 19-20 mpg. But it's a 1987 Plymouth Caravelle POS, cause I can't afford anything else. Granted, I'm in high school, but still, I live 14 miles away from school... that's around $5/day just to get to school and back... not counting anything else. Not all of us are rich enough that $3.00/gal is a drop in the bucket. My family and myself are lower-middle class, and well, this gas thing is beating the crap out of us.
- nazadus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@dagonweb
Then what is their incentive to try harder?
Personally, I think a flat tax only on all purchases is the fairest thing.
If you make more, you spend more. If you save your money -- then good for you.
I hear the IRS if fighting this _really_ hard, but many people want it... then again, I have only have small fry friends in the govt... so I don't know if it's true or not. - mrgreen4242, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I love people who say move closer to work so you can ride a bike! BRILLIANT! Why didn't I think of that! OMG, thank you so much for enlightening me, you ***** moron.
I looked (and am still looking at) property near to where I work, (but that would still put my wife 15+ miles from work), but the prices near there - it happens to be close to a big 10 school - are seriously 50% more than what they are on my side of town (the small town, rural end). Any savings in gas would be chewed up by higher cost of living, and I'd likely have a smaller, shabbier, home that I would enjoy less.
Going back to the other part of that, my wife, there's no where to live that will put us both in a non-car situation, so that's pretty much useless. Then there's the several feet of snow and ice that cover the whole area for 6 months a year (ya, not all of us live in LA, like you apparantly do). If you can't come up with something better than bike to work, just STFU.
For the record, I walk to the grocery store and pretty much only drive to go to work, or visit family on holidays, etc. I suppose that I do drive on the weekends to go out to dinner, but we avoid places that are more than 10 miles away. - joshfraz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Invest in Hydrogen power
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6And also money is nothing but a symbol or intermediary we use to allow us to trade our work for someone else's. If you lose that concept, I guess you have barter, or else the state owns everything and portions it out according to need. Which of course necessitates a ruling class to decide these things.
So where in that system does your incentive to work come from? It cannot come from a desire to improve your lot in life, because it cannot be improved. You get only what you need. So the incentive can only come from the barrel of a gun, and people tend to do the amount of work least likely to attract notice. Amd you get the predictable, historical results that communism always gets. There's not a lot of need to try it again anymore, or to wonder if it's such a bad system. The evidence exists. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Yes, if everything were worthless and nobody had anything, and they were satisfied with that, communism would be fantastic. The fact is, we can, and have had, communes in America for those inclined to live like that. You are free to do so, and enjoy the fruits or lack thereof of your labor.
But you can't have the reverse, you can't be free under communism. Communism relies on harnessing the productive members in society to benefit the non-productive, and they can't allow anyone to excel, or innovate, or be worth any more than anyone else. There is no more dehumanizing, immoral, unworkable, and repugnant system available today.
But again, rather than harness everyone to the yoke, you are welcome to practice communism yourself. That's how great a country we've got here. -
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