MPAA Backs Anti-Piracy Curriculum For Elementary School Students 250
An anonymous reader writes "A number of groups, including the MPAA, are pushing to educate elementary school kids about the dangers of piracy. From the article: 'A nonprofit group called the Center for Copyright Information, which is supported by the MPAA and other groups, has commissioned a school curriculum to teach elementary-age children about the value of copyrights. The proposed curriculum is still in draft stage, but it's already taking flak. Some critics say the curriculum promotes the biased agenda of Hollywood studios and music labels. Others contend it would use up valuable classroom time when U.S. public schools are already struggling to teach the basics.'"
Looks like yet-another dupe (Score:3, Funny)
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/09/24/1235226/california-elementary-schools-to-test-anti-piracy-curriculum [slashdot.org]
Re:Looks like yet-another dupe (Score:5, Funny)
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A dupe, a movie advertisement, and 2 things which aren't even news.
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You must be new here.
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Hey - a good brainwashing campaign requires a lot of duplicated effort!
Godwinned in One Post (Score:3, Insightful)
The Nazis also pushed for youth indoctrination to attempt to create generations of followers. Glad DARE and MAFIAA learned the lesson.
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The Prussians invented the modern school system for indoctrinating kids, and most Western nations copied it.
Re:Godwinned in One Post (Score:5, Insightful)
It all starts with a pledge of allegiance...
Re:Godwinned in One Post (Score:5, Interesting)
Which started as a marketing ploy to sell flags.
Re:Godwinned in One Post (Score:5, Interesting)
I've heard about the pledge of allegiance. That's just plain creepy.
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Re:Godwinned in One Post (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you hear me running? (Score:3)
It all starts with a pledge of allegiance...
There are plenty of ways to passive-aggressively protest state worship [stackexchange.com].
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The DARE lesson is a little bit different. Students who had gone through the program were found to be more likely to try drugs, but also more likely to use them responsibly.
TPTB prefer ignorance to (failed) indoctrination.
Biased (Score:4, Insightful)
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Of course we all know this will be biased. Piracy funds terrorism, illegal drugs, crime and violence.
Have they made any adjustments to the party line to deal with the fact that the economics of buying dodgy DVDs from some bloke down the pub and just torrenting everything are really quite dissimilar (and, indeed, likely direct rivals)?
It isn't rocket surgery to suspect, or even find the occasional confirmation in stories about some arrest, that people who deal in commodities that command a markup because they incur legal exposure will also deal in illicit media copies, since those are a commodity that co
Re:Biased (Score:5, Insightful)
also lead to mass layoff and unemployment and be the direct cause of the next great depression.
Hey, now, this is Slashdot; I'm sure, with our collective intellect, we could come up with a rationale explaining how media piracy is directly responsible for smallpox and the Holocaust.
At least, one equally as convincing as any argument the MPAA has made thus far; admittedly, it's really an easy task when you consider the fact we're talking about a group of people who once claimed to have lost more revenue to piracy than the combined GDP of the entire planet. Ridiculous is their bread-and-butter.
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also lead to mass layoff and unemployment and be the direct cause of the next great depression.
Hey, now, this is Slashdot; I'm sure, with our collective intellect, we could come up with a rationale explaining how media piracy is directly responsible for smallpox and the Holocaust.
If only people hadn't distributed illegal copies of Hitler's paintings...
If only unauthorized back-alley publishers distributing illegal copies of books hadn't used paper carrying the smallpox virus...
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At least, one equally as convincing as any argument the MPAA has made thus far;
Then I go with... because of the faries.
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Not to mention it causes cancer!
Re:Biased (Score:5, Insightful)
Justification-- for downloading? No, you have it backwards. Natural law is the justification. Copying should not be a crime, copying should be encouraged because it is good for us all. Rather, those who seek to block us all from using our technology are the ones who should justify their position.
We've all heard their justifications. They claim that poor starving artists can't make money without copyright, that copyright is the only way or only fair way to compensate artists. They are wrong. How can they ask that we all forego the enormous flowering of cooperation and culture that the Internet, computers, hard drives, writable optical media, and flash drives has made possible? We could have the entire Library of Congress online, for free downloading, without risking a single precious physical copy. We could have research that we already paid for freely available. That perhaps is the most galling of all, that these thieves of our most valuable works, works of science that are important for our future and which we already pay for through grants, really believe they should have the right to lock it all away behind paywalls.
You should also recall their history. The media moguls fought the player piano, AM radio, cassette tape, VCR, and DAT, to name a few of the big ones. Their business grew despite the losses they suffered. No, these guys have shown that they aren't friends of art and artists, they are public enemies seeking control and rent monies that they do not deserve.
Education? (Score:5, Insightful)
I respectfully submit a request to change the tag on this story from "education" to "indoctrination".
Re:Education? (Score:4, Interesting)
Education would have at least some mention about the public domain and its advantages, and the fact that copyright is a privilege, not a right.
Re:Education? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I am probably going to draw flack for this but WTF, here we go...
Article 1 Section 8 Clause 8 of the US Constitution makes it a right in the US. Besides that, let's play Devil's advocate here for a while:
Tell me just how an artist or distributor of content is supposed to make a living regardless of the length of time given for the "limited time" as listed in the Cons
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Aaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnddddd, none of this is relevant to letting the MPAA or any other group access to school curriculum.
If these fuckers can get access, who else already has?
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Release it when its ready, don't arbitrarily delay the release...
If the finished code can be made available on a torrent site, then why cant it be made available for purchase?
And don't be so greedy... The more you try to screw people, the more they will bite back. Stop screwing the public domain, and charge reasonable prices.
Accept that the very nature of a trivially copied product means that there will always be some who copy it.
Stop screwing paying customers with "copy protection" schemes, those who want
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"Tell me just how an artist or distributor of content is supposed to make a living regardless of the length of time given for the "limited time" as listed in the Constitution? Right now, things are showing up on the illegal sites even before they are officially released by the rightful owner. Just how do you overcome that? "
The same way a water-seller does it when it begins to rain.
Trying a new business model, not sending people to jail because they drank out of a puddle.
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How do you price fairly to beat free?
Again, how do you beat those that make it available even before you do as I outlined above.
Doing the right thing involves education to know right from wrong. Circumstances can override that education such as the ease it is in getting the content with little to no repercussions for doing the wrong thing.
Agreed, however they are a d
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Crowd funding changes everything IMO. How silly would it be to combine crowd funding with DRM? With crowd funding, you get a social deterrent replacing a technical deterrent. When it's your buddy who paid for the software/movie/whatever, he's not going to be impressed that you copied it without paying, and your buddy is well placed to judge whether your copy was actually a lost sale, and give you shit if you should really have paid.
Especially for music, where the tchotchkes from the crowd funding become
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It really wouldn't bother me ... I want something, I fund it. I'd actually prefer if something I funded went directly into the public domain after a very brief period of time. I get the product I wanted, the producer gets paid, and society benefits.
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Education would have at least some mention about the public domain and its advantages, and the fact that copyright is a privilege, not a right.
It would also present the counter arguments and have a discussion of the relative merits of both points of view.
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'It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again...'
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What's the difference?
Or do you refuse to acknowledge the bias in education?
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Good on them. (Score:5, Insightful)
Movie execs need their private jets, blow, and hookers to relax after a hard day of not paying taxes and buying congress people.
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Politics of envy! If you ain't one of them it's because you're lazy, stupid, or you don't love jeebus enough.
or a commanuss.
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I'm glad that the MPAA is proposing a curriculum about respecting the rights of artists.
I suggest they start with Art Buchwald [wikipedia.org].
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Or every Canadian artist.
Re:Good on them. (Score:4)
Remember Kids... (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't nice to share your toys, you're stealing money that the toy manufacturers deserve when your friend Johnny doesn't buy his own toy!
CAPTCHA: Retail
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Oy, be good consumers (Score:3, Insightful)
We don't teach our children to think, we teach them to consume.
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That's true. We should make sure we teach them the principles of justice, the value of honest labor, and the benefits of arts to culture and society. Then let them make an informed decision.
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You teach anyone those things, they'll become socialists.
DARE (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just like the pharmaceutical industry funding D.A.R.E..
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The pharmaceutical industry also has an interest in people using prescription drugs only as instructed on the label.
That's not what DARE is about.
I doubt they've gotten more effective (Score:2)
Think of the children (Score:5, Insightful)
oh come on! Think of the poor MPAA losing their shirt just because times change. And hey, if schools are having troubles right now, they're sitting on a MOTHERLOAD of a profitable resource: A captive and impressionable audience. I'm sure the MPAA would be willing to part with a few dollars to have a SIMPLE and PRODUCTIVE message sent to our youths.
And why stop there? I'm sure that ExxonMobile would be willing to donate to our children's future and supply a brief explanation of the benefits of fracking. Halliburton would be able to give an up-close and insightful description of political issues to bolster their social science awareness. Microsoft would be able to explain what all happens when you agree to those complicated EULAs. They could also comment on the importance of sharing, caring, and litigating anyone who dares do it with your toys. Monsanto would do wonders in the biology class.
Just think of the possibilities [wikipedia.org].
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You may think you're joking, but you're not:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/18442-flow-chart-exposes-common-cores-myriad-corporate-connections [truth-out.org]
You what? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm understanding this correctly, the music labels are now resorting to re-educating future generations in a futile attempt to protect their obsolete business models. Their meddling with the legal system, constant redefinition of copyright terms and heavy-handed persecution of those they see as "offenders" have, as predicted by everyone except them, done nothing to prevent people doing what human beings have loved to do with audible culture for millennia - sharing it. These idiots probably see this as a good idea. What next? Selectively assigning breeding privileges to the population based on an exam paper sponsored by the Corporate Overloads of America to ensure your opinions conform to our scientifically proven CorrectThink(TM)?
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No, you are not understanding this correctly.
You used the term "re-educating" incorrectly. You imply that people who violate copyright are not actually offenders. And the slippery slope argument about breeding is so ridiculous right now that you deserve to be stripped of your posting rights.
As you said, people have the natural instinct of sharing things. On a normal basis of friend to friend, this is generally tolerated. Buying one copy and sharing it with everyone on the planet is illegal in pretty muc
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Give Credit," "It's Great to Create,"ECT the RIAA (Score:3)
Give Credit," "It's Great to Create,"ECT the RIAA tells the artests that but uses a lot of loop holes and Hollywood book keeping to not pay them.
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I'd hope the RIAA could find time to explain the economics of the industry. i.e. the chargebacks and other fun instruments used to lessen or entirely remove the need to pay royalties to artists. For additional credit, have the MPAA explain why high grossing films can make a loss because Paramount sent a cut of the revenues to the fucking moon.
I teach... (Score:3)
Actually as common core, students have to work more with media. As a result we are ripping DVDs and cds and editing these to meet some educational goals... I am sure that is against their curricula.
bastards. (*IAA, not the students, this time.)
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But do you teach elementary school students? Somehow I doubt elementary school kids are ripping DVDs and CDs and editing them for class. I don't think you're going to get the chance to bollix their indoctrination. At least, not on the first go-round. You'll probably get the chance in a few years, when the first crop of students that has received the indoctrination gets to you. (Does anybody think the MAFIAA won't get this into some school somewhere?)
Incidentally, your sig isn't rendering right. Looks
Re:I teach... (Score:4, Funny)
"Following these detailed instructions on how to setup an anonymous proxy and access these warez sites is bad, m'kay".
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Are your principles worth more to your than your career?
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Are your principles worth more to your than your career?
- In reply to "I dare the administration to tell me I have to teach this curriculum to my students. I'll give my own slant on it and end up teaching anonymous proxy, torrents, ripping, you name it..."
If they really are a teacher - yes (it's part of the job description).
But there's no need to concentrate on "anonymous proxy, torrents, ripping, you name it...", although they merit discussion - I'd just spend time on the public domain and how copyright can be, has been and is being used to steal from society.
Fair and balanced only (Score:4, Interesting)
As long as I can form a coalition that gets equal time promoting piracy and clearly exposes the Hollywood MAFIAA for what it really is I have no problem with this.
Otherwise it's essentially Nazi-style propaganda, which has no place in our schools. Sorry MAFIAA, but no.
we can use the fox news view that is very GOP (Score:2)
we can use the fox news view that is very GOP but they list Fair and balanced in the prom card.
Fabulous idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't we start with the fact that Hollywood was founded as it was about as far from New York and their IP laws about the movie industry as you could get in those days? Let's make sure we cover the theft of material from the public domain for corporate use too.
Don't forget to cover the MPAA's own history of corruption. The RIAA should not be forgotten either, they have a long history of ripping of artists and we need to make sure we educate people on that. We should have a special section on Hollywood accounting that covers how you have a billion dollar blockbuster that costs $100 million to make and officially loses money. Make sure that we cover how this works in the music industry too.
I also think it is important that people are educated on all of their rights that have been trampled and attempted to be circumvented by the **AA's and their like kind organizations overseas. By all means we should show the **AA's support of taking away your rights for a fair trial if your accused of copyright infringement. Don't forget to educate people on treaties and what they have done to take away your rights by treaty.
Don't forget to cover public domain and the history of extending how long something will last before being put into public domain. We also need to show how this has changed over the years. Libraries, those bastions of piracy! They have the audacity to lend IP without people paying for them fresh every single time, let's make sure we cover the history of trying to shut down libraries abilities to do lend things.
Anything else that we should educate people on?
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Excellent post.
Anything else that we should educate people on?
How about offshoring their profits by paying massive "licensing fees" to empty offices in the Barbados so they don't have to chip in their share of taxes to support the economic system they bleed dry? ('course, this hardly sets them apart from any of the Fortune 500)
Two birds with one stone: (Score:3)
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I support copyright... (Score:2)
...as it was originally designed (20-30, maybe even 40 years). Not this 110+ the lift of author business.
Demand an Opt-Out Option (Score:5, Insightful)
Religious people can opt-out their children when it comes to evolution and sex-education. Seems only fair that parents get the option to opt their children out of this unabashed intrusion of the classroom by media corporations. From an economic educational standpoint, I don't want my kids learning that having the right political connections can be used to compensate for a broken business model.
Great idea (Score:3, Informative)
Great idea... as long as it's objective and based on science.
You know... explaining how copyright once just lasted only a handfull of years and how downloading movies and music doesn't actually hurt sales.
Perhaps the kids should also be educated in the danger giving up your privacy to phone-home Digital Restriction Management, how companies steal control over your computer just because you want to play a CD and how they no longer actually own the things they buy in a store.
Blatant indoctrination (Score:2)
This is blatant indoctrination. China will be jealous.
Surely not in PUBLIC schools!!??!! (Score:4, Interesting)
How in the WORLD is advertising and propaganda being placed directly in public school curriculum?
I am sure this is not the first time propaganda has been pushed through elementary schools. There are tons of examples in various countries and regimes. And since it's that time of year again, let's tip our hats to the incredibly successful disinformation campaign of the Daughters of the American Revolution in creating our wonderful American Thanksgiving mythology (among many other similar myths).
Did I miss the nationwide campaign for elementary school level curriculum on the dangers of smoking? I seem to remember that being a part of Health in junior high... where you'd sort of expect it. If this followed that pattern, I'd expect to see this in within a class on Government in High School where patents, trademarks and copyright were debated alongside a treatment of historical patterns of dying industries using laws/regulations to postpone their demise rather than adapting.
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Will this be on the test? (Score:2)
The student's grade, and the schools' grade are test-based. (The teacher's grade may be too, though that's still a bone of contention.) Until it's on the test (Common Core, in the current instance), where is the incentive to teach it?
Waste of time (Score:3)
Teach kids how to read and write properly. Teach them to do math without a calculator. Geography, general culture, the works.
Your / You're
Would of
Its / It's
Heck, it's not even my native langage and it hurts my brain the way people write today...
The MPAA is going to teach MORALITY? (Score:2)
The Eleventh Commandment (Score:2)
Thou shalt not make non-destructive copies of electrons as they pass over the holy Internet.
I thought this had.... (Score:2)
But seriously, how about some equal time? I think one could make the case that in the interest of inclusion, pro-piracy curriculum should be included.
Buying the next generation (Score:2)
if you can buy education today, you get your way tomorrow.
Re:Piracy makes more sense if stuff is worth money (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed.
Copyright keeps culture "hostage". No one is allowed to enjoy unless they pay-to-play. Short-term profit over long-term benefits to society.
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Let's also keep in mind that this is what copyright was supposed to be for in the first place!
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The argument all the kneejerkers all say is that people would stop making media for cash. And yes, suddenly only people who strongly believed in sharing with the world would still make media. This means the little guy would have more power of expression. If big projects needed to be made, we could just have projects like kickstart do them.
The point to remember is that this can be done now, if it is viable then it can be proven and if it is indeed better then piracy and copyright will be a non-issue anyway. It's a nice idea you've got there but it seems pretty much nobody actually wants to do it.
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My own personal idea is that copyright/patents should only last like 5-7 years, then everything is in public domain. This way the old guard could still keep plugging on to a degree.
Although I agree that the current copyright term is ridiculously long, effectively preventing any work from being open to the culture that created it, I think 5-7 years may be a little short. I've wondered about an automatic 14 year term for all works (like current automatic copyright), plus a 14-year extension for $$$$, for 28 years max. These numbers are based on an older copyright term, but are still basically arbitrary. You want to strike a balance between culture having free access to art in a timel
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The numbers are based on an older copyright term, which existed in the days of the printing press and distribution by horseback and sail ship...
Terms of 5-7 years are reasonable if even a bit long considering today's technology. Most media makes the vast majority of its money in the first years anyway, and modern technology allows content to be released worldwide in a matter of minutes.
And time to recoup costs is irrelevant, if you produce garbage then you may never recoup the costs, if you produce somethin
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What about the remake of Star Wars: Episode IV? It's old footage sprinkled with new special effects, how would your system work on that? Also, I think there's been a "director's cut/final/definitive/etc" Blade Runner release every five years for over two or three decades now. If they already do it to make more money, do you really think they're not going to use that trick to lock their movies/etc forever?
There would need to be provisions in place so that releasing a new shorter/longer/modified version would
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Easy. You get copyright on the new derived work you produce. The older work you based it on expires normally.
So with Blade Runner, after 14 years anyone can produce a 'Directors Cut' and each producer will own a 14 year copyright on their Directors Cut. As long as you can keep producing these and selling them you can keep the money flowing in and keep something copyrighted. If you slack off or run out of ideas, the gravy train ends. But either way, the public gets the use of the original.
Don't want the
Re:Piracy makes more sense if stuff is worth money (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is that the current system is tilted so heavily in favor of the distributors... The consumers get totally shafted, and often the initial producers do too.
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My own personal idea is that copyright/patents should only last like 5-7 years, then everything is in public domain.
I have an idea that I think is even easier, and ultimately, would make society more free: Get rid of copyrights and patents.
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The argument all the kneejerkers all say is that people would stop making media for cash.
Sounds good to me.
Nobody was part of the Renaissance to make cash.
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damn it, now you made me listen to it in my head... now you are distributing it illegally and just made me a pirate.
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Yeah, the words of a man who became a multi-millionnaire many times over really make me appreciate how everything should be equal and no-one should profit from the system!
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I say in religion class.
A field trip to Somalia.
Re:Schools Teaching Morality (Score:5, Informative)
Sex-ed isn't a moral lesson, it's a biology lesson. The people trying to remove it from schools, or make it a "moral" lesson, are generally totally unethical religious crazies who want to deprive kids of accurate info. The same folks want to put their superstitions in science class. We all have an obligation to never let religious extremists limit education. People who can't handle reality should not be passing along their dysfunction to the next generation.
Re:Schools Teaching Morality (Score:4, Insightful)
If there's one set of people I'm glad I didn't learn all my morality from, it's my parents.
I mean, some things they taught were brilliant. But a lot of what was going round in their heads... oh boy, anyone would think they were just a pair of average humans.
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Says the person who knows nothing about the person he's replying to when spewing forth ad hominems.
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We have kifs coming out of highschool unable to balance a checkbook or figure out the amount of tax on a purchase... but please let's teach 'em this instead.
Or spell kid or High School, as it happens.
Marxism was a disaster ! (Score:2)
Capitalism was a fun experiment
Capitalism is not fool-proof.
Capitalism has a lot of faults in it
But compare Capitalism to Marxism, Capitalism still wins hands down
I am saying this based on my own experience - I was from a very Marxist-oriented country and the country turned from bad to worse under Marxism
Decades later, after that country started to adopt Capitalism, things began to start picking up
Now that country has the world's 2nd largest GDP
Yes, that country was China - and yes, I was from China - and please don't tell me how bad Cap