Re: ``Nothing like a monopoly to get investors to cheer you

[stan johnson <sjohnson@gwi.net>]

** Reply to note from Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Sun, 08 Nov 1998   
14:13:36 -0700 
> People expend the effort, time, and money to innovate when they think it'll 
> get them a leg up. To deny this is to deny human nature. 
 
Then many of the people today and throughout history and prehistory whom I   
most admire went through life denying 'human nature'. Many, including me,   
view cooperation and mutual support as much more desirable modes of   
behavior than self-serving. You obviously are free to consider the advocating   
of such modes as attempts to improve 'human nature' if you wish.  
 
I see nothing in 'human nature', so-called, which is immune to improvement   
through learning and example. A human being is largely the product of the   
culture in which he or she was reared. If you change the culture, you change   
the human being. Or, expressed in your term (which I don't view as having any   
actual referent), you change 'human nature'. 
 
I decline to spend any more of my time debating, since it's evident that the   
only acceptable goals in your view comprise materialistic self-serving. There   
are other values; some of those other values are, as I understand it, those on   
which the OSS movement is built. I value them. You clearly do not. 
 
Stan

-- 
Stan Johnson    TeamOS/2
sjohnson@gwi.net