8 million and counting...

[miriam_e]

Wow! Live Journal's 8 millionth account was added over the weekend.
(See here for more info.)
Not too shabby for a business model based upon the premise that giving something away and letting people buy it if they want, will generate a healthy income and a great service. It has become a very successful business. Kudos to the people who have produced this wonderful, open-source, meeting place.

Comments

[revbob2.livejournal.com]

Miriam, please forgive this thread hijacking, but please go read this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/jodie-evans/on-camp-casey_5603.html.

I'm starting to hope again.

Much love to you,
Bob

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I agree. If anything will unravel the patrician moron's administration it will be a gentle, reasonable Mum pulling persistently at the loose threads in a way that the press seem unable to. I think too many other patricians are becoming embarrassed by Dubya, so they will let him be scuttled.

The major worry I have is that he will be replaced by another patrician, every bit as destructive, but smart.

In some respects Dubya is USA's best chance to fix things, because the problems become glaringly obvious under him. He hasn't the intelligence or sophistication to hide things well. If major reforms don't come about as a result of his rule, then your next big chance won't come until the large scale introduction of robots (I don't mean the humanoid Hollywood ones, I mean the unobtrusive ones like automatic teller machines, small cleaning robots, and automated delivery vehicles). Rendering half the population unemployed will cause such social dislocation that the structure of society will have to be reassessed.

I thought for a while that China would become the great new hope, but I now doubt that. I think they will be brought down by a few disease problems rapidly gathering pace there. If they don't lose a large chunk of their population from a bird flu outbreak in the near future I'd be very surprised, but they also have to deal with SARS possibly rearing its head again. AIDS is much more entrenched in their society than their official figures let on, and they currently have an epidemic of schistosomiasis and hydatidosis.

And if they survive all that I think their economy may just get sabotaged like the Asian tiger economies were not many years back. Remember when all the most vibrant and rapidly growing Asian economies suddenly imploded? They caused a ripple effect, from which Japan has not fully recovered yet. The cause was not widely reported. It came about when a small group of Western billionaires started buying up currency in one of those nations (Thailand, I think) raising the value artificially, then when it had been driven unrealistically high they sold the lot. Those rich sons-of-bitches became even more obscenely wealthy, and flooded the market with that coin making its value plummet and ruining that nation's economy. And because of how those countries are tightly connected it pulled all its neighbors down with it. -poof!- No more Asian tiger economies.

The unregulated market is a much more powerful weapon than any bomb. When the 4 richest people in the world (all in USA) have more wealth than the 48 poorest countries, just imagine the power they wield over an easily manipulated "free" market.

Ooops... erm... sorry for being depressing, Bob. You hold up a shining beacon of hope and I go and say all that. But I do feel a lot of optimism about this lady. She may accomplish what so many others can't. Let's hope there is follow-through on that if it happens.

China?

[revbob2.livejournal.com]

You need to read Paul Theroux's book, or perhaps books, about traveling around China. What I took away from that book is the notion that China's cluelessness about the environment is even worse than the old Soviet Union's.

Never apologize for feeling the way you feel around me, dear friend. It happens you're totally wrong ;-p but you needn't apologize. ;-)

Re: China?

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... yeah, I hadn't thought much about their lack of environmental care. That would eventually bring them undone, though there is always the chance of patching things up if they became rich enough to have the time to care. Environmental considerations are generally seen as a luxury, even though they are in reality a necessity. Try telling someone who has barely enough food not to sell their forest to the logging company because next year they'll have nothing and be looking at dead, bare ground and no food at all.

I had hoped that China would rise to dominate the world economy and balance USA's power. I still think this will almost happen, and that will be good as far as it goes, but the real social leader in the future is going to have to be Europe, if they can get over their petty squabbles. I don't think we can expect a lot from USA, Britain, Australia, China, or India (though I must admit a few interesting things have been happening in India recently).

Re: China?

[revbob2.livejournal.com]

China isn't quite a dictatorship and the US and Australia aren't quite democracies -- OK, not by a long shot -- but they're close enough to those labels that the following truism applies to them: democracies have a lot more political inertia than dictatorships.

Which is to say, if dictatorships aren't crazy they can make the trains run on time. But if they're just a teensy bit crazy, a lot of really bad stuff can happen really fast.

The US and Australia would have to be a lot crazier than China for them to be as dangerous. Even the Bush-huggers have a little hesitation about declaring that Americans are racially, intellectually, and culturally superior to everybody else in the world, while the Chinese will pretty much tell you that any time you ask. In my book, that makes them pretty damn crazy. And, as hard as it is to believe, even crazier than us.

Re: China?

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I wonder...

I don't know that labels like democracy or dictatorship really mean much anymore. The USA and Australia aren't democracies -- I've forgotten what the name for rule by a few corporations is. China is in a weird transition state. What probably matters most is the amount of freedoms in each. In the USA and Australia we have grown used to having a lot of personal freedom, and without using severe brainwashing it is really hard to take that away. Unfortunately there is a lot of brainwashing going on in USA, and quite a lot here in Australia. It is already very dangerous.

From my conversations with people in the USA, and because our media has become dominated in recent years by the USA I have become very worried for my friends over there. People in USA are often some of the most brainwashed people I've met, and it takes more than average strength to stand up to it. I can see the same thing starting to happen over here and it is very unsettling. I have an Australian friend who works on VR and he often travels to many places around the world. He loves visiting the USA, though lately when he returns from there he is more and more distressed and depressed. USA is dying. It is happening slowly because it has so much inertia, but it is something mostly visible from outside.

In many countries when a candidate steals rule through trickery and fraud there is general uprising against them. The USA is so brainwashed by their media that they just let it go. Even worse, when the elections are stolen a second time almost everybody believes it when they are told that the majority wanted it. An unjust invasion built upon a web of lies, taking the lives of hundreds of thousands of people simply continues and people simply bow. People are turned against each other over stranger danger, first in the anti-commie purges, then the drug wars, then the pedophilia witch hunts and people believe it all, thinking they are in the grip of a rising tide of crime, when actually crime has been dropping for decades -- centuries even.

There is much more, but I won't go on. It is all starting to happen here too... most upsetting.

USA has at least a chance to turn it around. I don't know how likely that is, though I hope it can be done. Australia, I don't hold out a lot of hope for. Our politicians are such weasles, and our few big companies so corrupt, and the rule from afar so entrenched that I doubt things will change fast enough to avoid the trainwreck.

We'll see.

I still hope for robotics, VR, and replicator technology to swoop in at the last minute to save us.

It doesn't sound like I'm an optimist, but mostly I am. Maybe I'm just having a bad day. :)