Required But Not Sufficient: Banning Semi-automatic Firearms

Following the Christchurch Mosque shootings politicians are calling for banning private ownership of semi-automatic weapons.

I agree that they should be banned but believe we need much much more. Simply banning semi-automatics without ending the underlying causes of the shootings is just saying "It's OK to murder 25 Muslims but not 50"

Terrorism and NZ Passports

I've heard news reports that the government is thinking of removing passports from people that are likely to go and be foreign fighters for "terrorist" groups.

What are they thinking? Where do I want to start on this?

What do they mean by terrorist? 

If they were talking Pre Good Friday agreement IRA, post 11/9 Al Qaeda, or Tama Iti's "Not terrorist at all" training camps  we could probably agree but as it's being used here the term just seems to be a code name for any islamist movement that the USA doesn't like.

Is ISIL "Terrorist"?

I regard them as a nasty inhuman faction in a civil war, but I fail to see how they are "terrorist". Hate them or loathe them, ISIL, like Hamas are now no more "terrorist" organisations than IDF or the USA are. All four are the defacto (factual) governments of territories and project their military power across the front-line into the territory of their opponents. ISIL is just the last to arise and only arose because the west would neither allow the Syrian government to buy the necessary aid to allow it to suppress "Terrorists" (i.e their enemies) nor give the rebels the necessary aid to overthrow the regime in Damascus.

We're making exactly the same error in Syria that "the West" made in 1936 in Spain. What should have been over (one way or another) in months dragged on for 3 long years, teaching the Axis how to efficiently bomb civilian towns and the Left how stage a take-over and destroy liberal internal opposition without destroying your own army on the front. After the final fall of the Spanish Republic, refugees were amazed to see the arms  that the republic had paid for all lined up in France; not allowed into Spain because of humanitarian inspired weapons embargoes.

What's the Spain connection?

John Key's English father is reputed to have left his first wife to fight in Spain. If he'd stayed with her he would never have met  John's mother and ...

If this proposed law had been on the British books in 1936, his passport might have been lifted and the world would never have known John Key.

How do they plan to stop Kiwis leaving?

Kiwis travel. We book one way flights from here to Europe with stopovers in Asia.

I'm not interested in dieing for anyone's imaginary friend. Not Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Kali or Mohammed's Allah, but if I decided to go overseas into the middle of someone else's civil war I sure as hell wouldn't tell anyone about it here before setting out. The chances are that anyone they do manage to stop will be on the stupid end of the spectrum and more likely to make some corner of a foreign field forever Kiwi than do harm.

Should we let them leave?

Part of me says we shouldn't allow New Zealand citizens to fight in any foreign militaries (Although an exception could be made for the Samoan, Tongan, UK and Australian ones), the penalty for voluntarily enlisting should be loss of citizenship. As a point of comparison, US passports warn the bearer that they "may lose your U.S. citizenship" by "serving in the armed forces of a foreign state." The "may" comes from a court ruling in 1967, before that "may" was allegedly "will"; except that the veterans of the "Abraham Lincoln Brigade" were apparently still regarded as US citizens despite their service in Spain.

If we did manage to keep them here, the chances they would still want to help their cause and may see themselves as imprisoned by an unfriendly government in a hostile country and start actual terrorism here. We've never been immune to terrorism in this country; In 1951 union supporters blew up a rail bridge, Neil Roberts blew himself up to attack the police computer system in 1982, someone blew up the Trades Hall caretaker a couple of years later, the French sank the Rainbow warrior and so on.

I'd rather not see a new batch blowing things up here because of their religion.

 If Kiwis are dumb enough to go and get themselves killed in foreign wars, I say "Let them go" but I also say "Don't let them back".

Fake sign language interpreter crashes Nelson Mandela service

While the world remembers Nelson Mandela, one man was taking the mickey at his memorial.

Something didn’t seem quite right about the sign language interpreter who stood to the side of the various speakers, ‘interpreting’ what they were saying for the benefit of South Africa’s Deaf population.

The ‘interpreter’ signed in a strange repetitive rhythm – his signs appearing to come in threes or fours, occasionally swinging his shoulders, as if he was signing along with an intermittent beat.

 In one of the most bizarre Deaf stories of recent years, it appears that there really was something wrong – because, according to Deaf South Africans, the interpreter was a fake.

Which meant that – if true – on a day when the world saluted a man who fought oppression, a guy stood on stage and effectively oppressed another minority – Deaf people, by making a mockery of our language.

And, during the service, rather than remembering Mandela, many South Africans (and others from around the world) who were either Deaf, or work with Deaf people, were expressing their outrage.

Credit:  The Limping Chicken

Justice delayed is justice denied

This news item raises an interesting question.

Daljit Singh who was a Labour Party candidate and seven other "men accused of an alleged Auckland Super City voter scam have had their trial shifted to the High Court. Police allege that the scam involved people from throughout the North Island falsely enrolled to vote in the 2010 Auckland Super City elections.[...]It has been set down for up to eight weeks and is due to begin in October - three years after the men were arrested." NZ Herald News

Why are our courts so slow? Three years after being arrested seems a ridiculous time to wait for a trial but every day there are reports of people being sentenced for minor offences they were arrested for six months to two years ago.

 Aside from the negative effects having charges pending for so long have on the accused, this means that the victims of crime don't see justice in a timely manner.

There is a legal maxim "Justice delayed is justice denied" meaning that if legal redress is available for an injured party but is not delivered in a timely way it is effectively the same as getting no redress. This is the basis for the right to a speedy trial, so what is happening in our courts to deny that right?

Hone Flies Again

There's a huge fuss on at the moment about Maori Party MP Hone Harawira. He's been suspended from the party caucus and there's apparently a process that will decide if he will be expelled from the party. The mainstream media are baying for blood, the NZ Herald editorial "Maori Party should cut Harawira loose" while the Gisborne Herald printed a letter saying "Harawira not keeping to Maori values"


Fifteen months ago there was another big fuss over intemperate and allegedly racist language from Hone Harawira. At the time I said

"Hone Harawira is quite safe, as long as his support remains a lot less than theirs, Sharples and Turia won't touch him as they need him, or someone so like him to make no difference appeal to the minority segment of Maoridom he holds for the party. They'll make tut-tutting noises, but they are both to clever to alienate him or his electorate."

I'm going to make the same prediction today. This is an election year, like all parties, the Maori party, need to attract as much attention as they can and they need to reconnect with their electorate. After two years in the governing coalition the poorer among in society, including the poorer among the Maori, are feeling disadvantaged and they need to feel that continuing to support the Maori Party is in their best interests. The middle class Maori electorate can see that the Maori party has delivered for them, but this has been a hard two years for the working class and unemployed.


What does Hone say about all this? In his blog on the issue he says

"I know I don’t have all the answers. I know my colleagues have just as much to offer as I do, but I also know that our people are crying out for us to reconnect with them, with their lives, with their situations and with their hopes and dreams."

You're right there Hone, your party needs you to connect with the Maori radicals and keep their vote for your party and your party needs you, or someone like you, to raise your party's public image. Meanwhile Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia will continue to connect with their parts of the Maori Electorate. Every time you and they have robust discussion in public you get press and TV coverage that the other small parties aren't getting and you raise your party's public profile.

Finally I'd like you to consider that Hone's mother was a founder member of protest Ngā Tamatoa in the early 1970s and has been a Maori activist since at least that long ago. Hone has been an activist since at least 1979 and says "When people refuse to do what's right, at the end of the day you step in, do what you've got to do." He wasn't some unknown, the Maori Party selected him as a candidate knowing full well what he believes and what he stands for. It would be hypocritical of them to turn around and say that he doesn't fit in the party he helped bring into government.

2011 Prediction - Freedom of the press and the internet

Freedom of the press was never about allowing anyone to publish, it was about allowing the middle class (who were the ones rich enough to own presses) the right to publish. The USA revolution was a middle class revolution and it was to allow competing voices within the ruling class to be heard.

There's a long history of using pretexts and excuses for suppressing freedom of expression in Democracies (Dictatorships don't need excuses). Advertising has also been a control mechanism ... offend a powerful group and your advertising dries up making it hard to run those expensive presses.

As they slowly wake up to the fact that the Internet allows ordinary people to say what they want to as large an audience as they can attract power slips slowly away from the communications media owned by the ruling classes. With publication so cheap, the advertising lever is no longer as effective.  The Internet has reached the point where it is starting to scare the ruling classes and they are finding pretexts to "regulate" it. Wikileaks, Whale Blubber's vigilante blog, etc give high profile whipping boys and I expect them to find more pretexts like these in 2011 to push for a more highly regulated Internet.

Shades of Philip K. Dick, Soldiers' kids could get virtual mums and dads

Some years back I acquired several volumes of Philip K. Dick's collected short stories, many years back I had became a fan of his work, especially his short stories. Before his visions and subsequent reaffirmation of his faith he produced a large number of often low quality novels ... sometimes with a couple of good short-stories worth of material in each. His short stories, on the other hand, were (in my opinion) where he excelled, they were often though provoking and often scary. He wrote nearly all of his short stories in the 1950s and they were hard to come by in New Zealand of the late 1970s and early 1980s. When I got the collection it was a joy to read through all his short work.

One story I remember, but can't find at the moment concerned a child with a loved toy that had a voice chip in it. The problem was that this voice chip delivered government approved ideas (propaganda) to the child as it drifted off to sleep with the intention of brainwashing the child to be a perfect cold-war citizen as an adult.

When I read in New Scientist:

It is a poor substitute for the real thing, but the US government is hoping a 'virtual parent' could provide emotional support for the children of servicemen and women while they are away on active duty.

The Department of Defense is soliciting proposals for a computer program that would enable young children to interact with a virtual version of their parent.

I was immediately reminded of this story, as I feel that the virtual parent will deliver pretty much only officially approved messages to the child.

No need to wonder how Dick would have felt about this, but at least he wouldn't have been surprised.

Stopping the illegal drug trade

Originally announced in 2008¹ as tougher rules on psuedoephedrine, John Key has since announced that you and I will be unable to obtain psuedoephedrine based cold cures without a prescription as a way of fighting the 'P' (Methamphetamine) crisis this country is undergoing. Sure, it will still be available on prescription, but while his wife may have nothing better to do than sit in a doctor's waiting room for an hour or so, normal people aren't going to the doctor for a cold. Normal people are going to be denied the one really effective treatment for the symptoms of the common cold.

John's key to hiding Rodney and honing Harawira

There's a lot of fuss at the moment about Rodney Hide and Hone Harawira misusing the parliamentary travel perks for private benefit. The media had a go at Chris Carter a while back, but when they were challenged that had he been heterosexual they wouldn't have done this they went quiet. Having carefully checked that both Hide and Harawira are heterosexual they decided that they could bay for blood over much lesser amounts.

All humour apart, Rodney Hide's infraction was particularly galling to many as he has publicly stood up a "perk buster" for a few years and was specially vigorous in that role before he took over as leader of ACT. It used to really gall me that he was going on and on with a populist line more fitting of Winston Peters than a party of principle like ACT, but to be fair the press wasn't reporting ACT except for Rodney, so it was a way of getting some publicity however bad.

On the other hand, Hide was merely using a benefit that is part of his employment package. It's really no worse than airline staff using the travel perks they get or bank staff and their cheap mortgages, if these still exist.

Hone Harawira was sent to Brussels for some kind of meeting with officials of the European Parliament. Don't ask me why they made the trip, but Europe is a very important trading partner and any improvement in relationships can only be good, so even if it was a touchy feelie thing, it's still of benefit to New Zealand. The only problem is that Harawira decided to bunk off from the last day of the trip and go to Paris to try and solve the Da Vinci code. When this was discovered he is supposed to have sent a private email couched in very offensive terms to another party member. Normally I wouldn't condone racist outbursts like that, but in this case it was a private email to another member of the Maori party, and should have stayed private. In other words it was a beat-up.

There's a big fuss at the moment, but it will all blow over after a bit for a few reasons and Harawira will not be expelled from the party nor punished in any meaningful way. The main one is that although it is a racially organised party, the Maori party is pluralistic and diverse party and not some kind of Nationalsozialistische Maori Arbeiterpartei. While other parties such as ACT or The Greens can appeal to a narrow economic or social segment of the population, Maori cover the range of demographic groups from Kaumātua and Kuia like the highly educated, urbane Pita Sharples and the grandmotherly Tariana Turia to the opposite extreme; and the Maori party has to find how to appeal across that huge diversity. Harawira does appeal to the economically disadvantaged Maori in a way that neither Sharples nor Tariana Turia will. The NZ Herald has just published a "Marae-DigiPoll survey" about Maori attitudes to the Maori party and other Maori politicians that shows that the three most popular Maori politicians are Sharples 33%, Turia 16%, and Harawira 6.4%.

Rodney Hide needs to make serious attempts of eating humble pie and repairing his reputation ... either that or he needs to go. ACT is a party of principle and must live or die by those principles. It's no excuse that members of the tired old centrist duopoly had their rorts ... nobody expects otherwise of them. It's no excuse that the Greens used their pension scheme for their rental scheme ... for all the ecological rhetoric, the Greens are a doctrinaire socialist party and still hold with Lenin's slogan "Expropriate the expropriators" and although many Maori deplore the ripping of of the system, others have been raised on an attitude of dependency and see nothing wrong with ripping off the government.

Hone Harawira is quite safe, as long as his support remains a lot less than theirs, Sharples and Turia won't touch him as they need him, or someone so like him to make no difference, to appeal to the minority segment of Maoridom he holds for the party. They'll make tut-tutting noises, but they are both to clever to alienate him or his electorate. Nor should they, their party is supposed to represent Maori and Maori interests and that means trying to appeal to all Maori. As John Key put it recently in a different context, Parliament needs diversity in order for the House of Representatives to actually be Representative.

Driving with cellphones

I'm writing this in the closing few minutes of October 2009 and by the time I finish it will be November. On November 1st it becomes illegal to use a hand-held mobile phone while driving. The penalty will be a modest $80 fine and 20 demerit points.

We've been getting the usual propaganda for the last few months on how it is unsafe to phone and drive. The message has been paid adverts and an endless succession of reportage from tame journalists echoing the official line. The figures that keep being repeated are 4 times more likely to have an accident while talking on the phone and that it is as dangerous to use a mobile phone while driving as it is to drink and drive.

If this is true, why on earth is the penalty so low? Or to put that another way why are our politicians so gutless about this?

There's only a very few options here:

• It isn't as dangerous as is claimed (Please note I'm not disputing that it's dangerous)
• Driving under the influence of alcohol isn't as dangerous as claimed. (Again, I don't believe this)
• As alcohol is a drug, our politicians are wanting to punish it more for moral reasons
• Our politicians are too gutless to take road safety seriously.

My money's on a combination of the last two; but I've been wrong before.

Whatever the truth of the matter, we have an appalling road toll in New Zealand and it's about time that the authorities started taking enforcing the road laws seriously.

Sensible Sentencing? How about honest reporting?

"Life means life", "Outrage because criminal released early" and similar headlines are the stock in trade of the news media in New Zealand, and it's a complete croc.

In the New Zealand penal system, convicted criminals are eligible for parole after completing a relatively small percentage of their sentence. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe for "minor" crimes (not that anyone is actually imprisoned for truly minor crimes) parole is pretty much automatic.

When a judge sentences a person to 5 years jail, it is in the full knowledge that they will be released in 18 months or 2 years, but the NZ Herald and other parts of the increasingly yellow New Zealand press insist on reporting just the headline sentence ... presumably because it sells more papers. Then when the person gets out "early" they pretend they never knew that the so called 5 year sentence was really only 2.

Working hand in glove with the yellow press are media creations like the "Sensible Sentencing Trust" - I'm not saying that these aren't genuine groups, but without the constant press publicity, they would vanish into obscurity. Just like the yellow Herald they affect surprise when a criminal is released and the news media repeats their words. None of these people are particularly stupid and it is inconceivable that they don't understand that the system is working exactly as the politicians intended.

When they say "If the judge who heard the case decided 5 years jail it should mean 5 years" they are ignoring the fact that the judge assigned 5 years in the full knowledge that the sentence would really only be two. Judges aren't stupid, and judges are required to know the law, so the judge was fully aware of the parole laws and took them into account when determining the sentence

Much as I hate to admit that their corrupt, politically manipulated, legal system does anything better than we do, this is one thing we should learn from the Americans. When a judge over there gives out that same 5 year sentence, it will be described as 2 to 5 years, and it will be reported in the press that way. Over there there is no public expectation that the person will actually serve more than 2 years. What there is is outrage when a serious criminal is sentenced to a short prison term, the judges listen to the public and adjust the real sentences accordingly. With the poor reportage here, that isn't likely to happen.

But wait, there's less.

There's another scam the press work on the public. How often do you see headlines like "Professional burglar gets 21 years prison" then when you read the article you see they got 1 year for this and 2 for that in a long list; finally there's an obscure phrase "the sentences are concurrent". That phrase says that the criminal has probably only received 5 or 6 months jail! How it works is that all these sentences are served at the same time (concurrently). This means that the effective sentence is not the sum of the sentences, but the longest single one. In theory concurrent sentencing is a good idea, if the criminal with a suspended license steals a car and drives through a stop sign, they have committed 3 offenses in only one action, so the theory says that they should receive a single penalty; presumably adjusted to allow for the multiple crimes.

Where the system breaks down comes in two parts. Firstly the press consistently misreports these sentences, the headline sentence should be the longest single sentence (and it should be the non parole period) ... imagine the public reaction if instead of saying "Criminal gets 21 years prison" they honestly reported the sentence "6 months prison for 21 burglaries" people would start asking "Why?"

The second breakage comes from the consistent misuse of the system. It's fair enough that one car theft gets one sentence, but what happens instead is a career criminal burgles a house a week for 2 years before the police arrests him. That isn't one criminal act that happens to break 3 laws, that's 108 separate crimes! The rules on concurrent sentencing should be changed so each burglary receives its own sentence and the sentences run consecutively!

Finally

Groups like the "Sensible Sentencing Trust" need to stop playing the media's dishonest game and start pressing for the public to be honestly informed about what is really happening in the courts. I'm sure an informed populace would start demanding sentences that actually fit the crime.

I believe in rehabilitation and forgiveness and as I can't agree with their hard-line "throw away the key" attitude to crime, I'd rather it wasn't the current "Sensible Sentencing Trust" but a replacement organisation that was set up to agitate for honest and appropriate sentences for crime, but right now they are all we've got.

Rodney Hide, MP for Epsom

As well as being leader of ACT New Zealand, Rodney Hide is my local MP, a position he's held for just over three years.

In the lead up for the 2005 general election, the ACT party seemed finished, founding leader Richard Prebble had resigned and the party was polling well under the 5% threshold to remain in parliament, things looked hopeless for ACT unless they could somehow win an electorate seat. In an interview with the student newspaper Salient, Rodney described winning Epsom as his most memorable moment in parliament

"Without doubt, off the top of my head, it is winning Epsom in 2005. because we had such a trauma for 18 months with everyone, everyday writing us off, and then to sneak through – and it was an enormous amount of work from myself and a number of supporters."

Until a few days out from the election nobody really expected him to do it, National had abandoned the centre and was trying to collapse ACT's vote. The leafy tree lined avenues of Epsom housed one of Auckland's most blue ribbon electorates that had voted National since some time in the Precambrian, yet Rodney and his team were out there every day knocking on doors waving placards and doing everything else you could imagine to promote themselves.

On election night, Rodney had the numbers to take Epsom and the party had just enough votes to bring in Heather Roy as a list MP.

For the last three years Rodney has worked hard as our local MP, turning up at all types of community events and even becoming a "television personality" with appearances on talk shows and his spectacular run on Dancing with the stars. Spectacular mainly because he managed to survive on the popular vote for several weeks despite the judges wanting to write him off ... sounds a lot like his political life.

In the 2008 general election Rodney increased his personal vote winning Epsom by a large majority and ACT increased its party vote and now has 5 MPs in parliament. As I am writing this the new National ministry is close to being announced, possibly only hours away, and it seems highly likely that Rodney will be a minister outside cabinet.

(Update 6PM) It's been announced that Rodney and Heather Roy will both be ministers.

His job now, is to stand for the values that ACT was elected on and to effectively represent those views in parliament, but he also needs to remember that he is there, not because ACT passed the 5% threshold, but because the people of Epsom put him there. We look forward to seeing him doing as good a job for us this parliamentary term as he did in the previous one.

Originally published on Qondio

Nia Glassie case - another mindless knee-jerk reaction

Today's Herald reported

Abuse sentences to be reviewed "Justice Minister elect Simon Power says the new National government will consider toughening up sentences on child abusers in its first 100 days.

His comments follow guilty verdicts in the case of Nia Glassie, the Rotorua toddler whose three years of life ended in months of torment and her brutal slaying."

The facts of the case are that the existing laws were not applied. Neighbours stood by pretending they didn't see the abuse. I don't know if Nia Glassie was seen by medical services before her fatal injury, but if she was they also stood silent. In most of the recent cases of child abuse leading to horrific injuries or death to young children, those who had the power to step in to save the child chose to stand back.

There seems to be an on-going tendency for politicians to call for, or promise stiffer sentences, when there is no evidence that there is any real need for them. To the contrary, it seems that the existing law is sufficient, just not applied. Presumably they do this because it gives them the opportunity to be doing something, even if that something is completely futile.

We need a change to society's attitude, we need people to come forward and bring these cases to the attention of the authorities and we need the authorities to act. Until that happens, it doesn't matter how severe the penalties are, if the law that is set up to protect children isn't being applied, it doesn't matter how severe the penalty, that law is a waste of space on the statute books and a shame on the people of Aotearoa / New Zealand.

Of course, we need our elected representatives to earn their salaries and address the actual problems, not just make empty noises that will not make an iota of difference when it comes to protecting the next Nia Glassie.

Meat feeds more climate change than food miles

With all the fuss over fuel miles affecting New Zealand's meat exports to Europe I was intrigued when I found this interesting report in New Scientist magazine's environment section.

"That locally-produced, free-range, organic hamburger might not be as green as you think.

"An analysis of the environmental toll of food production concludes that transportation is a mere drop in the carbon bucket. Foods such as beef and dairy make a far deeper impression on a consumer's carbon footprint.

"If you have a certain type of diet that’s indicative of the American average, you're not going to do that much for climate while eating locally,"

Of course as we're exporting meat, this doesn't directly help New Zealand's case, but when you couple this with the way we grow beef and lamb: free-range in paddocks eating grass and not grain, our cattle are a lot closer to carbon neutral than the factory farmed beasts in the northern hemisphere.

Let's hope someone can get the message out to the world and remember "Red meat isn't bad for you, green fuzzy meat is bad for you".

Rodney Hide, Communist?

Rodney Hide, my local MP, says in his blog that he's a Linux fan. In one of the comments on his choice of operating system he got accused of being a commie, perhaps half in jest.

The following is a lightly edited version of something I originally wrote for Slashdot in April, I thought I'd reproduce a slightly cleaned version here.

I wish the people that bandy around terms like commie (communist) would stop and consider what these terms mean.

I am a worker (In my case an intellectual worker, but that doesn't matter) under both capitalism and communism I would be creating a product.

Under capitalism I create something, and I can sell it or give it away as I wish. It doesn't matter if that something is a wooden table or a computer program. It's my choice what I do with it.

The person I sell/gift it to can do with it as he or she wishes. In other words, my product is covered by a BSD licence.

Under communism everything (including the fruits of my labours) belongs to "the people", in actual implementation "the state". I make something, the state pays me a wage and it determines how and by whom the product is used.

Under capitalism (as described by Marx) competitive pressure forces the price of commodity goods down towards the cost of production. The producers can only make a profit by reducing their cost of production, including wages, to a minimum.

What's the true commodity cost of software? The cost of downloading and perhaps the cost of burning it to a CD.

Under communism, the state restricts competition, and interferes in the market, thus keeping the price of commodities high enough to ensure a decent wage for the workers.

The exact mechanism for how it restricts competition isn't that relevant. It could be "5 year plans" stating exactly how many will be produced, it could be limiting the number of people permitted to make the product, or it could be changing the patent rules to permit patenting the product rather than the old "patenting the process" model.

Under communism you have the state creating or enforcing monopolies on the production of commodity items. It doesn't matter if those items are cornflakes or software, the prices are kept artificially high to permit "the workers" to keep more of the wealth.

Looking to the USSR experiment, "the workers" that retained the wealth weren't so much the ones on the factory floor as the managers and the communist functionaries that replaced the former owners, but no-one can realistically argue against the belief that the upper echelons of the society of the USSR were wealthy.

Under capitalism, a number of people chose to develop (or pay others to develop) operating systems like Linux, office suites like OOo, games, etc and then give these products away. Some do it because they see it as fun, others (such as IBM) do it because they aren't in the business of producing commodity software and see this as a step for maximising their profits in the areas where they do see their business. It really doesn't matter, either way it is a capitalist activity.

Rodney Hide selects the best commodity software for his purposes and pays the lowest possible price for that software. Sound lake capitalism to me.