Re: [CPF0000] The globalization of COMMON, or is this the right direction? -- MIDRANGE-L

I dunno, listening to all this I can see many sides. Scrolling all theway back to the "trigger" on this thread, I think if you have a problemwith any of the candidates for any reason, don't vote for them, that isthe great thing about the country we live in: We can vote and make adifference, rather than make our decisions at the end of a rifle barrel.

A couple of things I'll reflect on. I don't know how many NativeAmericans are on the list, but I'm guess that as resources and power wasdrained away to the foreigners that invaded this land several hundredyears ago, there was probably plenty of discussion of the pro's andcon's of dealing with the reality of the new "foreign competition" thatwas invading what was a fairly free and open expanse of opportunity.Suddenly the old familiar lifestyle was gone, people were displaced,many died. From the native American perspective the place was probablygoing downhill pretty rapidly as more and more people took more andmore of what was rightfully owned by native Americans. Right or wrong,the reason we sit here and and code away is that we displaced plenty ofpeople who "owned" this land. Great for us (progress, right?). Bummerfor them. I don't see much difference in the globalization movement.We are talking about economic displacement rather than geographicaldisplacement but yeah, we're not going to stand around an watch whilepeople take what is "rightfully" ours economically! Welcome to cowboysand Indians (no pun intended) 21st century style. We'll be no more ableto change these forces than the Native Americans had keeping theforeigners at bay.

So we give up, right? Wrong. You either fight it (it is a losing battle...) or you compete against it. I prefer to compete. There is one thingthat folks in the US do better than anything and that is innovate. Ibelieve that "free thinking", creative thinking, is our strong suit andyou can't offshore that kind of stuff. So, although that may not beimmediately comforting to a farmer or steelworker or programmer orcustomer support rep, doing things better and smarter is going todifferentiate us and we should leverage that. I also think that abilityis a result of a mature democracy and a reflection of how we live.Again, something that can't be offshored.

Change is inevitable. Uncomfortable, but inevitable. And I think thatthe general outcome will be better, just as it was for this chunk ofland called the United States that was overtaken by foreigners in 17thcentury.


Pete Helgren


Booth Martin wrote:

Great!  Pete, as always you hit the nail squarely.
Of course, my own preference is that a rising tide raises all boats,including ours. This does not have to be a zero-sum game, with us beinglosers. This, to me, is all about leadership and not about building walls.
Pete Hall wrote:
I've just gotta get my ultra flaming liberal, Viet era USMC 2cents worthin, and I'll go away. It seems to me that we in the US have been livingpretty unreasonably well since WWII. It's not a natural state, and it'scoming to an end. We don't have to like it, but we do need to accept it.It's not unfair for people in India, Pakistan, China or Mexico to wanttheir share. They're just looking out for themselves, same as us. Ourstandard of living, and indeed the world dominance of the US is indecline. It happened to the Greeks, Romans, Hapsburgs, Britts, and it'shappening to U.S. To paraphrase another button toking new age radical,whose name, for the life of me I can't recall at the moment, "Youshouldn't worry about how you're going to make a million dollars. Worry,instead, about how you're going to provide something worth a milliondollars. The money will take care of itself." Sounds kind of phony, andI'm not rich, but I've tried to do that, and it hasn't hurt me. I'vealso got a son-in-law who's an illegal alien, and a son whom I've knownwas gay since he was 8 years old. They're two of the hardest working,most upright and righteous people you'd ever want to meet. If we couldall be like them, the US congress wouldn't need to waste its' time onmeaningless tripe instead of tackling the real problems that confrontthe human (collective M/F implied) brotherhood. Ok, I'm going back intomy paisley palace now. Peace.