Re: [Ghm-discuss] The posh talk does not complain with the policy

[François Revol]

Hello John,

On 12/08/2014 23:24, John Gilmore wrote:
> Jose E. Marchesi writes:
>> The main reason why my talk violates the current policy is that it mocks
>> and somewhat ridiculizes the very rich aristocratic people, including
>> their appearance and the affectionated manners usually associated to
>> them [1].
> 
> I was so offended that I dropped my monocle.

Go buy a manufacture ;-)))

Oh dear, looks like I'll be missing a funny event!

> Seriously, I don't know what it is like where you live, Jose, but it
> is not a pretty thing being a rich person in America today.  There is
> a deliberate attempt to stir up an "us versus them" against the rich,
> regardless of their innocence or guilt in any moral sense.  The "99%
> versus the 1%" is all about divide and conquer, us versus them.
> People who believe themselves part of "us", "the 99%" are led to think
> that they need not care about "them", the 1%.  By definition, they are
> not looking for solutions that work for the 100%, i.e. everyone; they
> don't care if their policies step on the lives or the rights of 1% of
> the populace.  Poor activists are blind to the irony of denouncing the
> "greed" of the rich, while the same activists greedily seek to take
> other peoples' wealth for their own projects.

That's a bit Manichaean indeed, but maybe it's the interpretation of it
that is as well.

I don’t have any problem with people providing useful services to others
and making a (good) living out of it, like you do.

What I despise however are for example people who use unfair practices
(like bundle sale and other monopolistic behavior) to sell things to
people and make them believe it's best for them, or even selling them
golden cages and claiming it's a "revolution", just to make even more
money, then play on other countries debt at stock exchange to make other
people even poorer and them even more rich.

At least that'd be my definition of the "1%", although it's probably
much less than 1%.

Are you really sure you are in the 1%?

Of course, the problem is people generalize things and just end up
thinking 1% = rich = bad.

> And it's not just yakety yak, there are real consequences.  Once that
> attitude became established here, politicians started increasing taxes
> on only the rich.  At its worst, this attitude caused the Reign of
> Terror during the French Revolution; and caused the national police in

At least we abrogated the death penalty here since then... :^)

> Guatemala to systematically kill off most of the educated people in
> the country, over 30 years of ugly, murderous civil war that only
> ended in the 1990s.

Well, it's not like the imagery hasn't been widespread even before,
including by Walt Disney with Scrooge McDuck :D

Although believe the cliché here was not so much about the rich, but the
condescending careless rich that shouldn't deserve much more respect
than he gives to others.

> In the US, the big lie is that "the rich don't pay their fair share".
> If you look at US federal income tax, 40% of the adult population pays
> no income taxes at all!  (In 1984 it was less than 15% of the people
> who paid nothing, but things have changed.)  The lower income 50% of
> the people pay less than 4% of the income taxes.  The upper income 50%
> pays 96.5% of the income taxes.  And the top 5% pay 55% (with the top
> 1% paying 35% all by themselves).  Figures like these are easy to find
> online, for example:
> 
>   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States#Distribution
>   
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/2010_US_Tax_Liability_by_Income_Group_-_CBO.png
>   http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2704794/posts
> 
> So, in actuality, the rich (and the 1%) pay far more than their fair
> share, unless the word fairness has lost all meaning.

And yet, "big Corps" (certainly not run by the 99%) go to Delaware or
other tax heavens ;-)

At least you don't have politicians evading tax by getting Swiss bank
accounts as french ministers do... (cf. Jérôme Cahuzac), or do you? ;-)

> So, perhaps you thought you were speaking to a crowd of poor people,
> who would all cheer when you demonize the rich.  But a few of us in
> the free software community, like me, actually learned how to make
> money writing and giving away free software, making money from
> supporting it and extending it, and ended up rich.  (And also inspired
> a thousand follow-on projects and companies, that support themselves
> and/or make money writing and supporting free software -- more power
> to them!)  I am not ashamed of making money or having wealth, nor
> do I think I am making the world more evil by doing so.

Again, I at least have nothing against people making money the fair way.
Although I'd add that having skills is sadly not a condition enough to
make a living out of it, sometimes medical conditions or other things
impair this possibility, and in the end everyone should be able to have
enough money to live correctly regardless. But making more money if you
can shouldn't be a problem indeed.

What people should really be going against are those who betray them by
selling them overpriced crap for example. It just happens that most (or
maybe not most, but the others you never hear from them) of them get
rich, then people focus on "the rich".

Of course it doesn't occur to them that if they got that rich it's
because many people bought their crap, so at least on this topic, the
real enemy of the "99%" are the "99%" themselves.

As french humorist Coluche said:

"When you think about it, it would only take it that people stop buying
for it to stop selling."

[...]
> PS: As this discussion has noted, perhaps the GNU project should revise
> some of the sexist jokes on the website, too.

Btw, I'm not even sure the "Emacs virgin" ever had their sex mentioned,
thinking they can only be female might as well be regarded as sexism itself.

Anyway...

$460M ought to be enough for everyone ;-)

François.