A lesson for Microsoft ( and other tech developers )

I’m one of the generation who grew up with the first home computers; some of my friends at school had things like the Atari, Commodore64, ZX81, Apple III, and Amiga ( amongst others ), while our family had an Apple IIe, one of the schools I attended had some Amstrads, and the local TAFE ( aka Australian technical colleges – actually called a CAE ( “college of advanced education” ) back in those days, long before it became a fully fledged university ) had a punch-card & tape-drive mainframe system ( probably IBM, but I’m not sure ). Continue reading “A lesson for Microsoft ( and other tech developers )”

Flawed assumptions of capitalism

In order for capitalism to “work” ( ie – not fail ) in any regard, its starting assumptions must most likely be either true, or not too far off the truth; they certainly can’t be utterly false and contradictory to reality, in some manner likely to cause total failure.

Now one of the defences not often spoken – but which must logically be implied by any defence of capitalism from a civil liberties, human rights, and individual freedom of expression perspective – is that:

  • IF your offerings to the world have value;
  • THEN you should be able to support yourself providing such;
  • ELSE IF you are unable to support yourself;
  • THEN clearly your offerings have no significant value.

Think about that for a minute. Continue reading “Flawed assumptions of capitalism”

Flaws of Capitalism: redundant professions

As I walked home from the cafe where I sometimes go to do writing, I saw a tradesman’s car signage, and which stimulated the thought for this article.

How many houses exist in all the cities of the world? Many millions right? Of those houses in the wealthier cities, how many of them have roof guttering that collects leaves and other things that need to be cleared out so that the guttering doesn’t overflow into the ceiling or wall cavities, and doesn’t rust through? Of those houses, how many are owned &/or occupied by people unable ( or unwilling ) to get up and clear them from time to time? Well … enough to keep some roof guttering guys in work anyway. Continue reading “Flaws of Capitalism: redundant professions”

Capitalism Breaches Human Rights

I have been saying for a while now that capitalism is in breach of human rights, according to the articles of the international declaration ( or charter ) of human rights ( link ).

For those of you unfamiliar with the document, I have made a summary of its points ( following ), but you can also read the full version online via the link above. Anyone else is free to skip past all that to here. Continue reading “Capitalism Breaches Human Rights”

The numbers don’t add up

A simple way to see for yourself the flaws of capitalist reasoning, is to create a spreadsheet which calculates the cost of a hypothetical scenario. What makes this conclusive, is to pick a hypothetical scenario which represents something the world desperately needs, but is complex, difficult, and time consuming to plan and execute, so it needs a lot of support to get it off the ground.

Continue reading “The numbers don’t add up”