Re: OT: Atheist joke


John Larkin wrote:
On 27 Mar 2006 14:25:50 -0800, bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote:


John Larkin wrote:
On 27 Mar 2006 01:00:11 -0800, bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote:


John Larkin wrote:
On 26 Mar 2006 09:55:28 -0800, bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote:


Both the Co-op stores and the John Lew Partnership have survived
through rather turbulent times. They aren't exactly convincing examples
of metastability.

They aren't convincing examples of co-ops either. They are classic
business structures, run by megabuck CEOs, boards of directors,
accountants and attorneys. And their employees are just employees.

They don't fit your U.S.-media-condtitioned image of what constitutes a
co-op,

You always resort to insults.

That isn't an insult. You live in the U.S. and most of the information
you are going to get about co-ops is filtered through the U.S. media.
which isn't exactly sympathetic to what they see as left-wing social
experiments.

Of course it's an insult. I was talking about concepts, and you
started talking about me.

I don't believe in Platonic concepts that exist outside of the brains
that understand them.
Any discussion of concepts includes and element of exploration of what
we separately understand to be the concept.

You are saying that I get all my information
from US media

I quite explicitly said "most of the information" - not, as you claim,
just three lines later "all my information".

(I haven't watched a network news show in a decade, at
least) and that I can't think for myself.

And the people you interact with don't watch news news either? You may
believe yourself to be free from media influence, but you live in a
heavily media-influenced environment - as we all do.

And you don't know much
about US media, where you can find just about any prejudices you
fancy. I doubt the Khmer Rouge, at their peak, were as lefty as the
Pacifica chain radio stations.

This I doubt. Though there is the point that the Kymer Rouge were more
lunatic than lefty - forcing the educated classes to work as peasants
in the rice-paddies hasn't got much to do with the anarcho-syndicalist
preference for employee-controlled work-places.

I've always be interested in the motivations of those rare individuals like you who have
an active need to be uncivil and disliked. There's a lot to be learned there.

I don't perceive an active need on my part to be either uncivil or
disliked. I do feel motivated to make my opinions clear and
unambiguous.

any more than the Dickensian images of western buinesses
practices presented by communist Russian media conformed to western
reality.

And you learned of this... how? When I was in the USSR, the only
attitude I could see that they had for US business was awe and envy.
They all wished *they* could work for a Capitalist enterprise.

The East European film industry and the Russian novels pulbished in
translation via the regular routes (rather than the stuff that got
smuggled out) did have to hew closer to the party line. Obviously,
individual Russians didn't believe the propaganda, and developed an
equally unrealistic idea of the efficiency and effectiveness of western
business practices, that served them poorly when the communist regime
finally did come apart.

I might point out that my opinions of "serious" co-op businesses was also
acquired first-hand, and often eaten on the spot.

Where? The Russian business was never run on co-op lines - the party
machine dominated the whole system, and I've enver heard of a really
large-scale U.S. co-op.

Of course not. There aren't any, because they don't work.

That's one explanation of the absence of U.S. examples, which doesn't
explain why such businesses do work elsewhere.

There are
some big "membership" food and department stores that work like the UK
ones you refer to, but that's largely bogus, to encourage shopping
loyalty (more profit) and reduce shoplifting (more profit.)

But I did hang out in Berkeley in the 70's, where real
employee-equally-owned businesses were the rage.

*Small* employee-equally-owned businesses. There does seem to be a
qualitative difference between businesses with fewer than 250 employees
(where practically any business model can be made to work by a good and
attentive manager - usually the owner's secretary) and businesses with
more employees, and the interesting question is whether the co-op
approach offers any advantage in businesses above this threshold.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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