[geeks] Socialized medicine [was Re: nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac Pro]

[Nadine Miller]

Lionel Peterson wrote:
>> From: Phil Stracchino <alaric at metrocast.net>
>> Date: 2008/05/27 Tue AM 06:33:52 EDT
>> To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>> Subject: Re: [geeks] Socialized medicine [was Re: nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac 
> Pro]
> 
>> Shannon Hendrix wrote:
>>> On May 26, 2008, at 06:22 , Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
>>>> Most of the early settlers in the English part of the "new world"
>>>> went there to evade religous persecution.
>>> Actually, only a few came here because of that.
>>>
>>> That's an old American myth.
>>>
>>> Most of the early settlements were purely economic colonies run as 
>>> standard business arrangements.
>>>
>>> People just tend to focus on the pilgrims for some odd reason.
>> The "moral descendents" of the Pilgrims like to focus on the Pilgrims 
>> and to remind everyone that the Pilgrim Fathers came to America fleeing 
>>from religious persecution in Europe.  However, as has oft been 
>> remarked, it's perhaps closer to the truth to say that they fled what 
>> they perceived as religious persecution in Europe, seeking the freedom 
>> to persecute others in their own way.
> 
> Wow, what a neat, snippy way to dismiss what was a major, life-changing 
> decisions by the early settlers. I think that most knew that once they left 
> the harbor in europe, they'd never see their relatives, let alone europe 
> again... And survival on the open seas was less than certain, and the 
> situation they arrived in was, to say the least, uncertain.
> 
> Ditto for the folks that went from the eastern states to the western 
> territories, and the later move to Alaska (gold rush)...
> 
> It is sometimes hard to remember that a move of a few thousand miles was not a 
> trivial decision, and that there was almost no ability to change their mind 
> once they left.
> 
> I'm also reminded of the mythical "Joad family" and their real-life 
> counterparts that abandoned everything they knew to escape the dust bowl in 
> the mid-west, and the irish that escaped the potato famine in Ireland... All 
> those decisions were not simply "let's give it a try and see if it can work 
> out" kinds of decisions. They went all-in, to borrow a phrase from the current 
> alpha-male craze, "texas hol'em poker"...

While you're correct in saying that these were "all in" decisions that 
they made, that doesn't negate the fact that the folks that financed the 
gig really wanted to get out from under the perceived monetary and 
religious oppression of the Crown and implement their own.  I'm sure 
that a lot of the folks who agreed to come over to the colonies 
initially didn't realize the lack of recourse they'd have when it came 
to disputes with the colonial governors.

Read Franklin for some first-hand accounts of the back room politicking 
necessary to get ahead thanks to the control of the Penn family and others.

While I believe there was a significant religious component to the 
decision for many of the people who took the gamble, for the big-wigs, 
money and power were very large components as well.

=Nadine=