[plug] International student w/ DDoS and social engineering history

[Russell Steicke]

On Tue, Jul 05, 2005 at 12:41:33PM +0800, Alex Polglaze wrote:
> You just try harder. If it was easy everyone would do. It just soviety's 
                                                                 ^^^^^^
> way of rewarding effort.

That's the most amusing spelling mistake I've seen in a long while.
:)

> A fact of life is that most people give up and then envy those who have 
> succedded. Everybody comes into this world with the same opportunity. Take 
> Bill Wylie as an example, he was born in a tiny, tiny town like Tone River 
> or something like that, that very few people have even heard of, let alone 
> been there. He made it. Dick Smith is a nother example, Sir Richard 
> Branson, Anita Roddick. How many examples do you want, of people who have 
> stated with nothing, absolutely nothing and built vast empires and at the 
> same time are good corporate citizens and good citizens in general.

The problem with this argument is the implicit assumption that because
one person (or N people, for values of N significantly less than the
population size) can do this, then everyone can do it.  It's
impossible for everyone to build vast empires.  Dick Smith and Richard
Branson require most of us to be ordinary, in order for their
businesses to work.  (Yes, I know Dicky sold his stuff to Woolworths
and doesn't run the chain any more, but the point stands.)

I don't give a flying how many examples of enormous wealth you can
come up with, but I also don't begrudge the people in your examples
their wealth, as long as it's accumulated legally and ethically.
What's important is that everyone has a chance to be ordinary, where
"ordinary" includes "comfortable" and "secure".  Examples of people
who try and get screwed over trump examples of people who try and
succeed.  If they don't then we're playing statistical games with
people's lives.

> Very few people have everything given to them, and in a lot of cases 
> inherited wealth does not last more than 3 generations or so.
> 
> My 2.5c worth, (capital growth):-)

$0.0275, inc GST.



-- 
Russell Steicke

-- Fortune says:
VICARIOUSLY experience some reason to LIVE!!