-----Original Message-----
From: Don W Gregory <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>We should all be appreciative that Jodi and I don't live in some
>third-rate 'capitalist' dictatorship; that you and, oh, Palmer,
>don't live in some third-rate 'communist' dictatorship
Actually, it may be better to live in a third rate communist dictatorship
than a first rate capitalist one, third rate implies a certain incompetence
and inability to carry out your plans. If your plans are wrong-headed in the
first place, a little bit of incompetence may actually be a good thing.
The quote below is from Internet Legal Practice Newsletter, the fellow being
interviewed is the special master who will advise the US courts on whether
Microsoft is in contempt of US anti-trust law:
http://www.collegehill.com/ilp-news/lessig2.html
Lessig: I had a great experience of this last summer when
I spent five weeks in Vietnam. Vietnam is a communist
country; and America is a free country. But both in
ideology and in practical regulation you couldn’t have
anything more reversed. First of all, because of the
technology of the regulation, basically anything you want
to do in Vietnam, you can. There’s no way the
government can regulate. So people are free of regulation.
But in the United States it’s completely the opposite.
Government can regulate absolutely everything you do,
and it does. So at the level of regulation Vietnam is the
free country. But at the level of ideology it’s even clearer
exactly what you’re talking about. In the United States it’s
completely normal for our major politicians to moralize
about how we ought to be behaving. And we take it as,
‘this is the way politics is.’
Now in Vietnam when the very same words are uttered
by Communist leaders, everybody talks about ‘oh this is
just ridiculous. They’re gonna tell us how we ought to
behave...’
So just call it call communism and you can have freedom,
and just call it freedom and you can have communism! It’s
completely absurd! [Laughter]
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