Cheers. I read 'always metastasize' as 'always metastasize with or without treatment' rather than 'always metastasize irrespective of treatment'. I was involved in this so I read into it what I wanted to read. Skimmed the rest because the health statistics debate isn't something I care about.

My frustration with subsidizing boner meds is that it creates a disincentive for pharmaceuticals to spend their overhead on anything other than what are, in effect, luxury goods for the developed world. Not that they've ever had much incentive to do otherwise. 

Well, for starters, erectile dysfunction wouldn't exist. World peace to follow...

Boner meds? Not yet. But I'm still young.

Luxury goods for the developed world. Actually, who am I kidding. A substantial part of it would go towards my salary/retirement package. And, by extension, towards drugs (not the kind manufactured by Merck and Pfizer) and prostitutes.

Not sure if that answered your questions, though, so I'll read between the lines. 

If your point is that: (1) the current political and economic system is unlikely to change to the extent that humanitarian goods take precedence over luxury goods; and (2) I'm a hypocrite for enjoying those luxury goods; then you're probably right on both counts, although not the particular issues. (I throw in the qualifier only because I'm desperately insecure about male impotence. Note that I listed erectile dysfunction before world peace above.) 

But I never claimed to be practical; nor moral, or even consistent. Just outraged by the structural blindnesses of the sort of system that we live in, whatever significance my outrage carries. If you want to convince me to give up that outrage, then I'm afraid we're at an impasse. And not the sort of impasse that can be settled by a battle of the wits, however unwise it is to go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

But hey, that system won't change, no matter what abusive names I invent for it. And even if it kills people, it kills relatively fewer than its competitors (liberal democracy has had a lot of crappy competitors).

luckily video games do not have the power to oppress people.

And all powerful socialist government can't oppress?  Nazi Germany?  The Red Terror?  Cahirman Mao?  Fidel Castro?  Based on history, I will take my chances with the free market.

A government powerful enough to give you everything you can ever want or need is strong enough to take everything away - Thomas Jeffereson.

Pshaw. It's quite the opposite of a free market. Copyright depends entirely on government (it needs both 'independent' enforcement mechanisms and a public acceptance of that force being legitimately applied). No pure free market could sustain copyright or patent law other than through force of private arms.

EA is the epitome of capitalism, a large and exceedingly wealthy organization that has become so enamored of the charts illustrating the steady growth of their wealth that their leaders have lost all meaningful contact with both the people they employ and the customers they have won. Sound like a government to you? That's because major corporations and governments are the same class of organism--large-scale formal organizations that tend to 'institutionally forget' the reasons they were established and end up focused on protecting and expanding turf for individuals in the leadership hiearachy.

Then they die.

There, finished your post.

Companies that survive the founder are historically rare, companies that continued for a century or more without regime changes are historically zero.  When 99% of them don't die in a less regulated mess than we've now achieved, I'll accept your position.  They still collapse even with all the protections put in place by uncle.  We should have lost most of the old investment banks, the biggest insurance company, multiple national banks and two of the three surviving car manufacturers just in the last couple years.  Government is what is keeping those rotting corpses around to screw us again.  They should have all gone into bankruptcy, to either be restructured or liquidated.

I believe the historial context of where capitalism originated, and what drove it have not been considered on the thread.  Unless the origins of a philosophy (any philosophy) are taken into account, it is hard to quantify how or why that philosphy evolved into whatever it maybe in any point in time. To jump into the middle of a constantly shifting evolution of systemic thought, or change in the evolution of a philosophy lays such thinking wide open to mis charactorisation - even plain deliberate untruth to conveniently skip over historial reality in favour of popularist thinking. It all revolves around the evolution of the Rights and Freedom of Individuals

The whole principle of the "Freedom of the Individual under Law" - a pre-requisite for any "Free" system , beit legal, commercial, trade, private way of life, etc - was first encapsulated by the Magna Carta  in 1215 (without getting picky over year of origin and revisions etc). It was as a result of the Barons in England rebelling against the absolute power of the monarchy, and the whole framework of feudalism, serfdom etc that had spawned for centuries.  The Magna Carta laid down the defining principles of Freedom at its basic forms, so much so, that over the following 200 years European Countries based their constitutions, political and legal system on various variants of that original charter.  Whilst in practice Feudalism still existed in many ways for another 300 years or so in Europe post Magna Carta, it days were numbered, the Magna Carta had "let the cat out of the bag".  Absolute Monachies were increasingly citing the Magna Carta throughout Europe as their justification for appearing "Liberal" and "acting for the people". The principle of the Constitutional Monarch was born, and spreading like a wild fire.

The importance of it, and its key role in the evolution of Democracy is strongly recognised by the American Bar Association as the foundation of the current democratic and legal sysems throughout the world.  The American Bar Association paid for, and maintain a memorial on the Site of the signing of the Magna Carta in England. See: [url=http://www.runnymede.gov.uk/portal/site/magnacarta/menuitem.f38b9c56ee32432edf7a8e7c9f8ca028/]American Bar Memorial[/url]. My personal interest?  I live 4 miles down the road from the Memorial.

The Magna Carta has even been recently Cited by the Californian Supreme Court as a relevant factor in its judgement concerning non-attorney judges (lay magistrates in UK terms) in its 1974 Ruling:

".............. The principle we announce today is not a novel one. It dates back at least to 1215 and the Magna Carta (§ 45) where it was written, "We will not make men justices, constables, sheriffs, or bailiffs, unless they are such as know the law of the realm, and are minded to observe it rightly." We conclude that, under today's advanced standards, due process demands that henceforth a defendant charged with an offense carrying a possible jail sentence must be provided with an attorney judge to preside over the proceedings, unless he elects to waive such right"

In the Centuries that followed the Magna Carta, Freedom for individuals was fought for, argued over, evolved, even caused many major European wars.  It was subjected to ever increasing philosophical thinking in terms of Free Markets (Europepean source of angst in 16th and 17th centuries, and had spawned the French Revolution with its crys of "liberty and Justice", the last vestige of Middle Ages Feudalism ended up in the guillotine basket along with the head of the French King.  The rise of Liberalism as a political mainstream grew alongside Free Marketeers in Europe in the Middle Ages, and was spawned by such thinking.

In the swirl of these events, and growing clamour for Political and Personal Freedom, a group of colonists gathered in England, driven by a hatred of the last vestages of feudalism and absolute monarchists epoused by King George.  The situation was a complex one, however the aspect pertinent to the OP above, is the passionate and driving desire by the colonalists to be rid of interfering external influences in their lives - they wanted freedom, genuine unadulterated Freedom, the Magna Carta was about to spawn its ultimate proponents. So they sailed from UK for the North American Continent.

Here arguably, was Utopia, or as close as you would get to it at that time. They were the founding colonists, the first, it was a clean sheet, no external influence existed to hold back their passionate desire to place the individual and their freedoms above all else. So much so, as we all know, they booted out King George and us Brits after unjustified interference from King George in the colony's affairs.  The US Independence, together with the heavy influence of the prior French Revolution and attendent French Republic Constitution, let loose an unrestrained surge towards individual freedoms, and free trade principles in North America. Whilst such thinking had spawned in the Europe, it was grossly constrained in its early days by the last of the Feudal Kings.  Not so in the North American Continent.

A famous quote from Churchill:

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those tried before it"

The philosophies of Democracy, Free Market, and Liberalism exploded outwards in the US like a Bush Fire, there was nothing to dampen it down. No external influence as in Europe, existed on the Continent to hold it back. It was driven by that burning desire of the very first founding colonists from England to create a life guided by Freedom in its ultimate forms.  Its but a short hop to evolve the US version of capitalism from such an historic background.

So the short answer to the OP is "its all they have ever known".  If such principles are all a population has ever known, has survived over 250 years of internal evolution of ideas of its practical incarnation, and many external threats to its philosophical existence as the very core of its daily life ........

...... You get real passionate about it

Regards

Zy

Very astute observation, and I believe mostly correct.  I will not comment on EA itself as I am not familiar with their corporate culture, but as a general rule, you analysis of big business is correct.

But I will digress with you a bit on the nomenclature of Major corporations.  I think it is less the companies themselves, than it is the quality of the CEO.  A CEO that runs an established company is not the same type as a CEO that creates it.  The latter being more of a free market cowboy, while the former being a more perfect fit for your description.  The problem with most large corporations is they lost their entrepreneur spirit once they got big and either retired or sacked their startup CEO. I think one of the best examples of that is APple.  Fortunately for them, Jobs was brought back in time to save the company.  And the recent (last 10 years) success of Apple is almost totally due to Jobs taking back the company.

I disagree.  Socialism is a construct of Monarchism - where the state (in elder days, the Monarch) took care of the people because they were the source (armies) of their power.  Democracy sprang up in ancient Greece, and is nothing like what we call Democracy today.  However that is due to the fact that the founding fathers of America (and perhaps France) learned from the mistakes of the Greeks.

MaarekStele - that is actually the Gilette Razor model.  Back in the 1950s, the CEO told the officers of the company that they were not in the razor business, but razor blade business.  You have probably noted that printer manufacturers have adopted the model.  Give away (or sell for a minimal price) the object, and then charge out the wazoo for the consumables.

Where a company has you locked into buying their consumables (like printers and their smart cartridges and cell phones with service), they are going to make back the cost of the original item many times over during the life of the asset.

Guilty.  I was thinking of European socialism (not communism).

Not with the post I made about it.  It was strickly Democrat Socialism.  I think the other is communism (as practiced, not as defined in Funk and Wagnalls).  Just curious, but where do you see me mixing them?

I would be happy for some leads on this.  I have studied some of the early histories of India (many moons ago) and thatis where I developed my taste for hinduism (No, I am not nor will be a Hindu, but love the culture surrounding it from a scholarly viewpoint).  But of course when I say studied, that was many years ago, and the democracy angle did not enter into it.

America was founded on the principal of keeping white male's wealth secure from taxes and outside control. Our subsequent voting and tax systems have been constructed around that ideal. As a white male who may soon be wealthy, I am opposed to this policy and will try to stop it through democratic voting and protesting. That is my opinion, which is supported by facts and is perhaps a little one-sided. If you have seen what I have seen of America in the past three years, I must say you would agree.