Re: [ga] Policy for dealing with controversial TLDs

[sotiris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

I wrote:
> I believe many people have an interesting conception of what a free market
> may be, few have a true understanding of it.  What I have been hearing
> over the past several years from many people on this list is the
> equivalent of the besmirching of the so-called "robber barons" in what
> many 'capitalists' point to as the Golden Age of the free market system.
> Carnegie and the rest had their detractors in their day too.

Here's an excerpt from an interesting article at
http://www.city-journal.org/html/5_1_a2.html:

"In an age bereft of political heroes, the entrepreneurs who forged
America's industrial economy served as role models for the nation's young.

The best of them exemplified virtues long treasured by Americans: vision,
energy, perseverance, hard work, and character. Even though most started
near the top, enough outsiders, like Gould, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt,
climbed the slippery ladder of success to preserve the American dream that
anyone could do so.

But still these businessmen were vilified, at bottom perhaps because they
did their work too well. So brilliantly did they exploit the open system
to amass wealth and power that they forced radical changes in the rules by
their excesses, even as they forged an industrial system that produced
quality goods on a colossal scale at prices that declined steadily for
more than 30 years.

E. H. Harriman, who by the time of his death in 1909 controlled more
railroad mileage than anyone else and had brought the industry into a new
era based on long hauls of large volumes at low rates, pronounced the most
clear-sighted judgment on himself and his fellow Robber Barons. During an
interview, he startled a reporter by pulling out a sheet filled with data
on improvements to the Union Pacific Railroad. "As he read from it," the
reporter later recalled, "I realized it was the apologia pro vita sua."

"But the public assails and attacks you," said the reporter when Harriman
had finished, "and impugns your motives and accuses you of all sorts of
things. Doesn't the thanklessness of the job ever embitter you?"

Harriman responded by slapping the sheet of statistics with his hand.

"That," he said defiantly, remains."

Ho, ho, ho! :-o

Sotiris Sotiropoulos