>
> There is no industry on earth more dependent and involved in government
> decision-making and intervention than high-tech; to argue that government is
> "evil" from such folks is ideological silliness. They depend on government
> for their very existence.
I think the 'government is evil' line is more the line of people down the scale, on the order of those who depend merely on venture capital and consultancy fees. It is, of course, used by the big firms as a useful hegemonic tool from time to time.
Also, the 'government is evil' line spouted by Wired-heads is just another phrasing of 'bigness is evil', a classic line of the petit-bourgeois (or aspiring p-b). That's why I've been saying (half in jest) for years that the denizens of Wired could provide the urban cover for a renewal of fascism (like the urban p-b provided ideological cover for the rural p-b ground-troops of Italian fascism in the 1920s). In this regard I agree with James H. on the links between 'small is beautiful', the worship of 'small farmers' and reaction. I just disagree with him about the solution.
The recent spat between the UK and France is interesting in this regard. In both the UK and France the ideological image of farmers as 'good solid country folk' has been a useful bastion of conservatism, and farm subsidies have bolstered the conservative political blocs. The tension between the 'new economics' of Blair and co, and the maintainance of this ideological reserve, is an interesting (and underanalysed, especially by the bourgeois press) phenomenon.
Peter -- Peter van Heusden : pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk : PGP key available Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower. - Karl Marx
NOTE: I do not speak for the HGMP or the MRC.