From: Michael M. Butler (mmb@spies.com)
Date: Tue Jan 28 2003 - 12:21:21 MST
Anders Sandberg wrote:
requires quite a bit of electronics. Which
> as a rule dictatorships are bad at, and have to import at high
> prices.
I've been wondering about that. There's probably more than
one influence (parallel "cause") of that. Here are some ideas
off the top of my head, feel free to add more...
Many of these are lumped together by the standard contrary
anticommie thinking/talking of the day. I'm trying to shine
light through the lump. Or maybe it's more like x-ray
crystallography.
1) dirigist societies quash innovation in general
2) advanced thinkers tend to be free thinkers, thus are either
flattened or leave
3) reward feedback is in short supply and tends to come only
to the "blessed"
4) central planning leads to shortages of staples and those
shortages get the attention
5) depressed "we pretend to work, they pretend to pay" people
don't do a good job with clean room protocols
6) electronic gear is opaque, whereas simple things are not--
the opacity "plays into the hand" of the shiftless--
you can tell when milk or cheese is bad, but who
looks at the innards of tech gear?
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