h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The real attraction of Dilbert isn't that it's funny (which it isn't always), but that since a large percentage of the workforce is in an office enviremont nowadays, a lot of people can relate to it.

For a listing of Web-based comics that aren't always as topical, but are more often humorous, chack out my user page at http://www.h2g2.com/P118379

--Riff

Best put a subject on this, so's my homepage will remember it...

A wise idea, Riff. I'll take a look at the web comics soon enough.

Bob the Dancing Monk - keeper of the Goats: the comic strip FAQ

I heard a cute one-liner the other day.

"It's impossible to truly understand Dilbert until you've read it in the original Klingonese."
- Unknown Klingon Programmer

Okay, is Dilbert anti-capitalist or pro-capitalist? It's a big debate in America (predictably). I personally think the strip is blatently anticapitalist and that's that, but there's others who think otherwise. There's even a book written called 'The Problem With Dilbert' or something like that, which claims that Scott Adams is secretly working for large corporations which pay him to convince people to accept their omnipotent superiority.

Er.. My pencil sharpner isn't working!

Scott Adams is most certainly a capitalist. The book you are referring to is called _The Trouble with Dilbert_ by Norman Solomon. Adams once remarked that it is sometimes necessary for companies to fire people in order to survive. Capitalism, of course, cannot exist unless companies are allowed to hire the best employees they can and to fire those who do not produce. Misinterpreting this quote, Solomon argues in his book that Adams dances for joy every time an employee loses his or her job at the hands of a greedy corporation. This misinterpretation is the basis for almost the entire work - it's all bullsh#t. It is true that Dilbert is licensed to Universal Features Syndicate and that Adams receives money for his work through a corporation - Solomon calls this hypocrisy, Adams calls it delicious irony. I mean, he spends his life mocking the habits of large businesses, and they actually pay him to do it. In thus criticizing Adams, Solomon seems unaware that the very book he criticizes with was published by a large corporation. Adams' comic strip mocks the *practices* of modern business, not the capitalist system itself.