KillBurger: 'Tis time to have done with the oppression of a free market. Capitalists are bad, because they take advantage of the stupidity of the masses. Luckily, we are here to raise the cattle and educate the chickens.Frenchy: I'm neither a cow, nor a chicken. I'm not stupid, and I don't want to be managed.
KillBurger: Look, you. This is a free, open forum for ideas. We're discussing how to liberate the cattle from free markets. If all you have for us are these 'complaints', you can just wait your turn against the wall.
Am I being melodramatic? I don't think so. The idea is that people can't make their own choices, and that someone else is inevitably to be tasked to make it for them. This is socialism; the economic activity of a society will be harnessed, if necessary by force, to accomplish social goals set by an educated elite (thus, the popularity of "soft socialism" to social scientists, who consider themselves the 'elite'). One has several options in response:
1) One can agree. This puts you in one of two camps - the patricians, or the proles. To be a patrician, you'll have to advocate some rather messy 'fixes' to the present means of doing business, whatever the rhetoric. To be a prole, you'll have to content yourself with perpetual childhood.
2) Be silent. I believe this is what you have advocated to Frenchy (an option that may be enforced, no doubt, if his opinions do not become more favorable to the theme here). This puts you in the position of being inevitably assigned to one of the two above choices by the patricians. You'll likely end up a prole.
3) Speak up. Point out what is being advocated, and hope some reason sinks in. This apparently makes people angry, and puts you in danger of ostracization. In many past communist (oops ... "state capitalist") societies, this option might very well draw a death sentence for the overly expressive.
4) Get ready for a fight. Take the chatter as a personal warning. Some clever people are about to overthrow your society. Get ready to oppose them, in any way open to you.
I've already posted on this line of discussion. I thought to make that the final expression of my opinion on this matter. Apparently, however, the rhetoric is starting to become emotional. I wanted to mak eit clear - very clear - that this emotion flows very strongly with all the parties concerned. Frenchy is not alone in his 'concern'.
If this is too much honesty for the masses, by all means ban me, and other of my perfidious ilk. I respond only because I believe that many people involved in discussions of this sort are not really hard core Marxists, out to set up a Castro-like dictatorship, but are actually honest folks trying to make the world a better place, and are looking at all the options. You would make my life much simpler, and free up some badly needed free time otherwise spent posting at this site, by dispelling my illusions in this regard. Feel free to do so, if you desire.
D.C.
P.S. I'll check the site here soon, to see what your verdict is. All you need do is inform me that my sort is not welcome. I will take the hint very quickly.
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McSpotlight: Your verdict is entirely welcome, Doc. And you may take a satirical tone from time to time, but you are at least participating in the debate seriously.
Time for a restatement of the DR's purpose here vis-avis the rest of McSpotlight.
McSpotlight as a whole is here to be a reference library of information about McDonald's you couldn't find elsewhere. It was set up as a response to McDonald's attempts to silence the McLibel Two in court. See my response to your point below in an earlier post - if our view is incomprehensible to you, too bad; but we have provided you with all of the information that came out in court; you can examine and judge it for yourself. Judge for yourself; to do that, you need all of the evidence.
These Debating Rooms are neutral; they are for you; the general public, to speak and debate in. They are not just like being out in the street; they are debating forums. As such, just spewing irrelevant and/or abusive crud is not what we're here for; we don't have the patience or the hard disk space for it; the DRs are a moderated forum; so that we can exercise some effort to keep the debate as focussed as possible. We do not reject any halfway serious post; or a satirical post that is trying to make a worthwhile point. Regardless of how we may personally feel about these issues.
If anything, I screen the anti-McD's/anti-capitalist posts harder than the pro-McD's/pro-capitalist ones; I am aware of my own feelings in this matter and do my best to view the posts from a totally dispassionate view. Ask yourself; have I ever rejected any post you made out of hand?
We would never inform someone that they were not welcome on the basis of their political beliefs; after all, if we did that, in what way would we be better than McDonald's themselves (who issued 40+ writs in 15 years in efforts to try and silence critics in the UK)?
No. We will never censor someone on their political beliefs if they are willing to express them. What we will junk is personal abuse that does nothing to further the debate. We say that in the index page; neither have we changed this in the three and a half years I've been on these Debating Rooms.
I am in no way castigating Frenchy because of his political behaviour or beliefs; I am castigating him because he behaved in a discourteous way in spite of our requests to him that he debate actual points rather than just resort to cheap one-liners. I stated quite clearly that Frenchy was as welcome as anyone to post his thoughts as long as he had something to contribute to the discussion. What he said was that debating was futile, since the Communists were really going to take over by force and that thus the Debating Rooms served no purpose. I take that personally, as a) I'm not a Communist b) I think that the debate is a vital tool of democracy and c) I actually enjoy moderating the Debating Room. It's why I do it. If I spent the time I spend moderating the DR doing my main job, I could earn $300 a week more. I don't, because I value the DR and the debate more than the money. A debate with only one side is no debate; but a debate with no moderator descends all too quickly into irrelevance and abuse. It's why we moderate the DRs; and it isn't going to change in the forseeable future.
Our binding promise to you; all of you; is never to censor or cut a post purely because it disagrees with our views. We don't have that right. But to serve the debate, we need to keep it focussed; we need to keep the personal abuse from escalating out of hand and we need to keep the debate (vaguely) on the subject.
Given this, I take some pride in keeping the DR as neutral as I can; and I dislike a newcomer like Frenchy dismissing the DR as a waste of time out of hand.
Oh; and I've just had a lousy day at work, OK?
Rex, McSpotlight.
Just remember; show some consideration for the feelings of others on the DR, show a tiny bit of appreciation for us, speak what you believe in and you can't go far wrong in our eyes.
