Lion Hunting in Socialist Computer Utopia

The attempt to create a computer system with better graphics than reality hit a snag last night on the issue of Extended ATX vs ATX power supply. Our ASUS A8N-SLI Motherboard turns out to be “EATX”, so our super cool (and super complicated) Thermaltake Xaser V500D case is lacking a couple of pins of connector power. After massive perusal of Web, we have determined that either:

1). It makes no difference if not doing dual processors or graphics, just plug and go.
2). There is a simple “converter” that works just great, now on order for $10 and shipping

3). We need to go get a REAL EATX power supply, of which there are not many.

The “build your own computer” hobby has provided a lot of fun, and occasional significant head scratching over the years. This is one of those scratching times. The ASUS web site is amazing. It seems hard to imagine that we are the first to hit this particular snag on a MB install, yet there seems to be no mention of EATX, either in the manual or on the web. We ordered most the parts from Mwave, which I generally like, but a little bit of “cross checking” about a couple things like “did you really want to order a case with ATX power and a MB with EATX?” Would have been very helpful.

Such things would be nice, but sadly, as a programmer, I also know they are far from free. The specs aren’t well structured data, they change frequently, and the only way the software acquires the knowledge to ask is by an investment in real work.

After reading Zinn though, I now understand that the reason for this is not due to any facility of the universe that makes things complex, but rather due to the wealthy 1% of the US population conspiring to confuse us! In a 687 page death march of a book, Howard finally got to the part about how to do things better. The simplicity of it makes the horror of 100s of years of wasted humanity seem even more tragic.

“The society’s levers of powers would have to be taken away from those whose drives have led to the present state – the giant corporations, the military, and their politician collaborators. We would need – by a coordinated effort of local groups all over the country – to reconstruct the economy for efficiency and justice, producing in a cooperative way what people need most.

We would start in our neighborhoods, our cities, our workplaces. Work of some kind would be needed by everyone, including people now kept out of the workforce – children, old people, “handicapped” people. Society would use the enormous energy now idle, the skills and talents now unused. Everyone would share the routine but necessary jobs for a few hours a day, and leave most of the time free for enjoyment, creativity, labors of love, and yet produce enough for an equal and ample distribution of goods. Certain basic things would be abundant enough to be taken out of our money system and be available – free – to everyone: food, housing, health care, education, and transportation.”

“The great problem would be to work out a way of accomplishing this without a centralized bureaucracy, using not the incentives of prison and punishment, but those incentives of cooperation which spring from natural human desires, which in the past have been used by the state in times of war, but also by social movements that gave hints of how people might behave in different conditions. Decisions would be made by small groups of people in their workplaces, their neighborhoods – a network of cooperatives, in communication with one another, a neighborly socialism avoiding the class hierarchies of capitalism and the harsh dictatorships that have taken the name socialist”.

There you have it. We are close enough to nirvana that if we could take the controls away from the evil corporations and military, the basic non-competitive good nature of humans would take over with only the slight complexity of a bit of communication difficulty! I’m sure a tear is crossing your cheek right now as you consider the simplicity of it all, how close we are to bliss, and yet we have been denied entry to this paradise by our corrupt American system.

Power supply mismatches are just one very small example, but it is easy to see how the right thing would happen in Zinnworld. Little engineering conclaves, much like artist conclaves, would see their socialist brothers need for better graphics in first-person shooter games. After their “few hours” of joyful group labor providing “free” food, shelter, healthcare, education, and transportation to themselves and their just society, they would no doubt gather in an earthen hall to reach instant agreement on the proper standards for all manner of connections, voltages, and software parameters. I can almost hear a little socialist hymn to the benefits of agreement and sameness arising from their smiling lips as they power up the ultimate socialist game machine – there is no doubt in my mind it would be completely friendly to the environment and be the ultimate in human factors engineering as well!

It is completely breathtaking to me that after reaching the end of what I was beginning to fear was an endless diatribe against America, the family, private property, western civilization, religion, competition, capitalism, democracy, and countless other elements of our society, that “the answer” to all this is a thinly veiled threat of revolution against the system we live in, followed by two paragraphs of pabulum on some abstract utopia that bears no resemblance to anything that ever has, does, or is ever going to exist as long as nature and humans are involved.

Has Zinn really missed that competition was not exactly “created by man”? We may argue about HOW it was created, but it seems pretty obvious that it exists in nature as well as in human society. There is ONE way to make man give up the idea of personal property, and at least reduce the competition in the masses - it isn’t like it hasn’t been done before; Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. 

Zinn may not like the US, but it isn’t like the alternatives have exactly produced garden spots. It is too bad that Howard can’t spend some time in North Korea. The freedom to be paid by the state to criticize the state (university professor), and be the darling of “the permanent adversarial culture” (those that Howard hopes will eventually revolt) might look pretty inviting from a prison cell were he to try the same line of work there.

I suspect this book will kick me off into a few days of writing on what I consider the “fundamentals” of the left and right. While fortunately, over 50% of Americans would consider Howard’s ideas to be absurd (in the unlikely event that they submit to the torture of reading them), there is one thread through this book that should be taken seriously. Zinn is very much a cheerleader for violence from the left, and found the Vietnam years with their riots and bombings and lack of respect for American institutions to be very refreshing. 

This is a lull in politics, but guys like Zinn, and Chomsky are always out there, and not very far removed from men like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, Tom Harkin, and others. If you ever doubt that threats to America from people within our borders are real, and that revolution is still being preached on our own campuses, you need read no further than Howard Zinn. Fortunately, apparently even more than 50% of the teens have a better grasp on reality than Howard.

This is how he closes the book:

“Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth, like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you-
Ye are many; they are few!

Keep the right to bear arms! If the “lions” ever get out, shoot straight, and make sure you have plenty of ammo!