If you are making money just by having money, without working, you are accruing the product of someone else's labor.
- first of all, clearly you don't have any money to manage, because you would know then that keeping money and growing it is actual work. If you do not do it correctly, you lose it, history is littered with people who had huge fortunes and blew them with poor management.
Secondly capital and labour are in competition to each other in the free market economy at all times. Supply and demand are very simple concepts, the more labour there is, the cheaper it will be. The less labour there is the more expensive it will be. The more capital there is the cheaper (lower interest rate) it will be. The capital savings there is the more expensive (higher interest rates) it will be.
What we have today is *ABSENCE* of real savings in the face of a huge debt and deficit by modern Western economies and total willing to destroy value of the fiat money further by printing it/creating it electronically into existence by the central banks, who then 'loan' this money to banks with the explicit purpose of 'loaning' it back to the so called 'Treasury' (should be called Debtory, there is no treasure there, only IOUs). That's not wealth, that's not savings, that's not capital, that's a huge black hole that will swallow the economy that is spiralling into it.
Real free market capitalism should have people with more and more accumulated savings, which then act as *TRUE LENDERS* to the economy and that's their extremely important role. Not governments, governments do not earn money, they spend stolen money, they have no concept of working at all. People who come to money by either working or by chance of being born to wealthy parents have much more respect for money and they really do not want to lose it, they are the best *STEWARDS* of capital savings, that's their job - they control and manage their own capital, allowing people to dip into those resources but only under voluntary circumstances.
You think that it is a bad thing to have many rich people, I think it is a *WONDERFUL* thing, it is a bad thing to have many poor people.
Not on money, no, but it is effectively illegal to be homeless
- and for a good reason, go, be homeless somewhere in the woods. I don't want your homeless ass on my property and as far as 'public' property is concerned, it shouldn't even exist, it is an oxymoron. It is not property without a real owner and government is not an owner. Sure you are allowed to be homeless, but not in a developed place where people are maintaining it and you are leeching off of that labour and capital while bringing your dirt there.
Now I know you're just trolling
- wrong, I never troll, there is no reason for it. You have your options. None of them should be using government force to steal from anybody.
There are other solutions besides state socialism, and just because you don't like that solution doesn't mean you can flatly deny the problem entirely.
- as long as your solutions do not force me into any group behaviour by using threat of government violence, be my guest.
As for most of the rest of your post, you're also confusing "investment" with "lending at interest".
- all lending with interest is investing. It doesn't matter to me much HOW you are going to pay me back my principle and the interest as long as you do, however if I have a choice between lending for consumption and lending for production, in a normal free market capitalist economy I choose to lend for production. What we have today with FAKE money being brought into existence by the power of the State and this fuels consumption binges while creating enough inflation (expansion of the money supply) that mis-allocates scarce resources in such a way that productivity is stifled and production stops and a former biggest creditor nation in the world is now the biggest debtor nation specifically because of all the fake money that is created and then lent out at fake interest rates, which props up consumption binges that inflate the bubbles in various markets. Be it stock market, housing market or now government itself (bonds, dollars, trust), it doesn't matter one way or another, none of it is a real economy. Yes, in such an economy you get huge displacement of resources, of productivity, of jobs and thus you get bigger and bigger disparity between those who can produce and thus profit from production and those who cannot produce anything and cannot profit from it. They are still profiting on the sidelines from the consumption, crumbs of which they are getting, but eventually their lives will be destroyed by it. They allowed it to happen by creating the government monster that promised them free and easy life and of-course there is nothing more expensive than anything that government promises for free.
It's not capitalism until you get to talking about unearned income: someone making money simply by virtue of having money (or other capital), without having to actually work for it.
- wrong.
Capitalism is private ownership and operation of property. How that property came to being is secondary. I also own some stocks in other companies and I own some other income producing assets and my company is growing in value due to accumulation of wealth generated here (code base, client contacts, experience, name recognition).
people accruing wealth simply from letting others borrow their wealth, with no work required.
- work was already done and nobody forces anybody to take loans and nobody would be risking their own money by giving it to anybody if there was no promise of return, thus preventing people from starting their own companies. I built mine by saving myself, other people take loans and promise to return the money with interest, which is a payment for getting access to the savings accumulated by others in the first place.
Do you get free bread from a bakery? Why shouldn't you be able to get a loan from a lender if you are willing to pay back the loan with interest? Interest is the cost of taking that loan, not anything more than that.
Money makes money and that is a GOOD THING, otherwise our ability to accumulate savings would always be bound by the amount of labour that we can add as value. Money SHOULD make money. As you said earlier, by owning a property and lending it to somebody you are making a return on that investment.
As to Marx, keep it to yourself, I came from the former USSR and I am one of the fewer people who come from there who have no patience for Marxism, Leninism, Socialism, Communism, Fascism or any other form of collectivism whatsoever. I do not collaborate or cooperate under the barrel of a gun and nobody should be forced to do that.
I was a poor schmuck stuck renting a room in somebody else's house at some point in life. What is your point, that somebody should come and give you something just because you graced us with your presence on this planet?
Now imagine couple of poor schmucks having offspring instead of working and saving rather than consuming, all to improve their lives later on. Let's say they have 1 kid, is it their responsibility or maybe this kid is the responsibility of the state that will stick the responsibility of paying for that kid onto actually productive people?
Let's say they have 2 kids, now it's twice as many people that the state is going to force somebody else to pay for.
Those 2 poor kids grow up, marry other 2 poor ex-kids and have their own 2 poor kids each, again, stuck in somebody's basement. Tell me, the geometric progression of poverty here, do you think it can be offset with the dwindling (thanks to the government policy of redistribution and inflation - printing) resources that are still provided by those, who are productive members of society?
Let's say there is a group of 100 people, with 1 of them being the richest and the 49 below him being the middle class and the 50 below them being the poor (it all works out that way statistically anyway). The poor have 200 poor kids, if in your society the top 50 (mostly top 10 but especially top 1) people were covering much of cost of living of the bottom 50 people, but now they are covering cost of living of the bottom 250 people. How much more do you expect to pile up on the top 50 people, 10 people or 1 guy and still call it 'justice'? Because that's what you are after, justice, right? Justice in your eyes is taking from those who have and redistributing to those who do not.
Well, that's how you create capital outflow, because that's not justice, that's the opposite of justice. Justice would be not using any force of government to control any of these people's businesses and jobs and generally lives. Real justice is only equal treatment under the same law, not unequal application of laws, such as a progressive income tax is as an example - an unequal application of law.
The trend has been pretty ugly- lower share of societies benefits for most- higher share of societies benefits for the very few- often related more to their parents success (50%) than their own ability. I mean- a lot of the better jobs are practically inherited these days.
- one of the reasons that people work beyond what they need in their own lives is to improve quality of life of their immediate families. Of-course if you start a business you will want your kids to inherit it, that's the most natural thing and there is nothing wrong with it at all.
Capitalism is private ownership and operation of property. That's all it is.
Capital that you build up over your life time will give you an advantage in terms of being able to acquire more capital over somebody who is only now entering the work force. That is a consequence of being able to own and operate property, it is not the definition of capitalism in itself.
Of-course you have an advantage when you own something over others, who do not own something. As to 'exploitable', that is just propaganda and nothing else.
I hire people because I spent a lot of time working myself and saving money rather than spending it like many others people did and do. So I forgo that extra entertainment or vacation and save.
Savings are capital.
I used my capital savings to live off of for a few years while I was building my own first systems and I used it to find a client. Then I found another client. Now I have 2 offices in 2 countries with employees who build things that I want to build and I pay them salaries that are competitive in the marketplace.
From your definition I am 'exploiting' something, from my definition I am making myself more productive by using higher level tools (employees) to build products that I want to build and now that I can do so with many more hands than just my own 2 hands, I can produce much more than is needed just for my own survival.
I build products that my clients want and I hire people who want to work for me, I train them and pay them what I can and if they find a better job they leave, while others come working for me.
Thus by denying myself the entertainment and higher level consumption earlier in life I built something that allows me higher level of consumption later, but even more importantly it allows me freedom to create what I want to create and do so at a much faster rate than I ever could if I was doing it by myself.
If I just kept going as a contractor, I would only be building things that other people envisioned, as is I am building what I want. Saving and not spending so as to invest is all about making yourself more productive, and being productive can benefit society much more than simply following an easy and safe path of being a normal worker, like everybody else.
I will never agree that this is in any way 'exploiting' something, since that word has a connotation that implies some sort of devious or evil process in play. Quite the opposite, I know others who also started and run their own businesses by denying themselves a simpler and safer lives and I think those are much higher quality people and if anything, they are the ones being exploited by the society that sees the result of their harder than normal work and wants to steal it from them. That is not just 'exploiting', as far as I am concerned, that's theft and the hight of immorality.
AFAIC free market capitalism is the most moral way to run a society, a society of people free from being exploited by the jealous desires of the mob.
Siphoning? Hmmm, so you don't like the price, don't buy the product. If you think there is so much 'siphoning' happening, that's just a business opportunity for you to enter the market yourself and to provide people with a cheaper version of the phone that people want to buy. Apple doesn't siphon anything from anybody, Apple builds products that people want and people pay for without any violence being threatened to them, they are voluntarily exchanging their own money for a product they want.
Siphoning is happening when government uses threat of violence to steal money from individual or corporate income and wealth and then spends that money on whatever it wants, that's siphoning. Apple not giving up a portion of its income to that Mafia is a good thing, good for the overall economy in the world that the money made by a smart ran company stays with that company so it can use it to build more products and services that people are apparently willingly exchange for.
Before Apple (or any non-subsidised individual or business) is taxed by even 1 cent, it already creates much more for the economy than any government can or does. Products are created, income for the investors is created, investment opportunities are created, jobs are created as well. It is individuals and companies owned by individuals that create the economy, not governments or any other violent associations.
There is no such thing as a 'fair share of taxes', the rich are taxed disproportionately and it is the most unfair thing that exists. They are taxed at a higher rate of income than the poor are and that is ultimately the most unfair thing that happens after the very fact of income and wealth taxation and redistribution in the first place. The actual problems are with the people that want this theft and redistribution, not with people that earn the money and hide it from being stolen.
lending capital temporarily in exchange for a permanent transfer of even greater capital back to you, which causes the problem of wealth concentration, redistributing wealth from those who have less of it (and thus need to borrow it) to those who have more of it already (and thus can afford to lend it out), which has the secondary effect of requiring those with less of it to labor for those with more of it in order to continue borrowing to survive, in effect creating perpetual servitude of a working class to an owning class.
- nice propaganda you are pushing here.
1. Nobody forces anybody to take loans. 2. Nobody is forcing you to survive. 3. Nobody owes you anything free, just because you are born you are not automatically somebody else's responsibility except for your parents. 4. Without interest there will be no loans to people unknown to the lender. I would not lend any money to somebody I don't know at all if I couldn't hope to get more of it back, it's a risky proposition to give somebody money, they may never pay back. 5. What you call 'usury' is a rate of interest, which is the cost of borrowing, which helps to allocate scarce resources in the most efficient manner for the overall benefit of the entire economy.
Without having a cost to borrowing, borrowing couldn't be prioritised (even if somebody was willing to give you any money whatsoever without a promise of a return on the investment). Without having a cost of borrowing all of a sudden an unproductive type of lending that is used for personal consumption has the same potential borrowing priority as some productive type of lending that can lead to more production, which in turn is what is supposed to provide a legitimate return.
Borrowing money to consume and borrowing money to produce are not the same game at all. Taking a risk to lend money for production is one thing, lending money for consumption is much more risky, unless there is already a proven source of income (like a job that you have to have if you want to buy that car or that house with a huge mortgage).
The problem that exists today is not due to the concept of interest on an investment, the problem that exists today is due to the destruction of real money, real capital savings in lieu of fake money (paper fiat) and fake interest rates set by government and pseudo government entities, like the Federal reserve for example. Fake money and fake lending rates combined with the welfare state ideology is what is killing the economies around the world. Real money and real interest rates and dissolution of welfare state restarts economies and allows people to build up wealth, thus truly fighting poverty.
Without lending and without interest that can be generated on lending poor people have much harder time getting out of poverty.
Oh, and nobody owes you anything just because your parents decided to fuck and you were born into the world. You are a nobody's problem but your parents.
Capitalism is private ownership and operation of property.
Free market is a market free from government regulations, a market based on free (not impeded by an external violent government force) voluntary exchange of goods and services.
Freedom (non violent or free from government) is a virtue and lack of freedom (oppression) is a vice.
Free market capitalism is the most moral (not coerced by the violence of a state) and efficient (when it is allowed) system of wealth generation and distribution that we have discovered to date.
So what, many things are scams, it's up to individuals to decide what they want to do, scam or no scam. Governments are scams and plenty of people subscribe to that model.
Of-course it is about exercising individual rights. Nobody is forcing these people to do any of it, they are volunteering to do it and the fact that they are volunteering to do it not with any government office but with another private individual or a company doesn't matter one bit, it's their body and it's their lives. By default we are the owners of ourselves, this is the ultimate capitalism - the capital is your body and you are the private owner of it. You may want to have a totally socialist/fascist/dictatorial system if you like, fine, but I do not agree with it. People own themselves, nobody else does. In fact what you are proposing is that people do not own themselves but instead they are property of the state and I oppose it completely.
And that has always been what baffles me about this... how is it even legal?
- I see, so you don't believe that people and not the state are ultimately owners of their own bodies can decide what to do with themselves (including killing themselves if they want to)?
You know, if something is legal it doesn't mean it's right and if something is illegal it doesn't mean it's wrong.
The first world education has failed to produce enough people capable of discerning truth from fiction and in many cases even barely capable to detect bullshit. Sure, some people can still do it some of the time. But very few can do it consistently. A tiny minority of Americans understood that Saddam was never involved in 911 AND that he had no weapons of mass destruction in his disposal. Tiny minority of Russians understand that their president and government in general is destroying their economy with centralization of power. For that matter only a tiny minority of Americans understand that also. Tiny minority of people understand that without strong morality (protection against theft) in the area of private property rights the economy doesn't have a long lived and prosperous future. Tiny minority of people understand that governments as a general concept guarantee violence and immorality of theft and murder in the modern global society.
What can western style education do to create free thinking people truly capable of changing their own plight in the world? Education cannot be a government's job to create free people.
Funny stuff, just the other day I was telling one of my devs that I am already using a much higher level language than what is available to coders. I hire devs and I tell them what I want them to do. I am coding in the highest possible level ( available to me), I definr the tasks and explain the tasks to my devs in a human language, human coders understand the context of the tasks at hand and they have a sense of humour as well unlike the machines. Highest level langage for coding today requires a human to listen to the task and translate it to the machine.
Let me guess you're one of those people who don't think people are animals, we're something special.
- People are animals. There is no god, people are a by-product of development of this universe and all it took for us to be here is a lot of time and many many attempts at different combinations of events. However us being animals does not preclude us from being individuals first of all. Our recognition that we are individuals and not a group is what separates us from animals most of all.
Yes, we have higher capacity for communication, data recording, specialization, tool making/handling. This is not our most important characteristic as far as I am concerned. I am convinced that our most important characteristic is our ability to become individuals even though we came from the world of animals. Being individuals, free thinking entities, not bound by being 'part of a herd', not bound by any form of group think, not bound by being part of anything that takes away our freedoms, being able to make our own decisions at every point in time on any issue.
Enforcing any type of group think, 'herd' think, socialist or fascist or communist ideas, where an individual becomes subservient to the group goes against the very grain of what makes us capable of technological progress through independent abstract thinking that is unattainable by other organisms that are bound by those group processes.
As to statistics, as long as it is not used to manipulate individuals into behaving as groups I don't see any problems with it, but of-course it is a political tool often used for those exact reasons.
I absolutely 100% understand it and it is not 'anti science', it is anti herd.
AFAIC 'herd immunity' is an offensive term, I cannot even begin to fathom something more offensive than grouping of people together, thinking of people as of a 'herd'. Death is preferable to this level of groupthink. It is and it always has to remain a private/individual decision to vaccinate or not. As it says in TFA more than half of these day cares have below-average vaccination rates, so this means a large portion of the individuals decide against vaccination.
I must also say that I think vaccination is a calculated risk and I am not against it at all as a general concept. However to me, as an individual, the ability to refuse any kind of group ideology or group pressure is much more important than any and all health considerations combined.
I think what they are trying to say is that when you are buying a car you are mostly paying for fluff and not for the bare essentials.
The bare essentials in a car is a drive train, the engine, maybe, MAYBE the gas tank and the steering wheel and the gas pedal.
Everything else is fluff you are paying for. Wouldn't you rather just pay for the bare necessities and the hell with the fluff?
(oh, and if you want to eat an apple you have to have an apple tree somewhere, which is also mostly fluff since only the fruit is edible and the tree is not, so what the fuck, nature?)
Illegal is a meaningless term. It is the right thing to do to avoid and evade taxes, to provide services that people want (drugs, whatever). It is the wrong thing to do to steal from people and to use violence as a method of running a society but violence is what all governments are.
I cheer for the bank and wish all banks would do the right thing. Of course the governments need to be neutralized as well, since legality / illegality gives them their violent power.
It's up to the market to decide whether it wants schools to exist that do any of the shit you mentioned for 'profit'. 'For profit' gave us everything we have and 'for justice' murdered and imprisoned hundreds of millions over centuries.
Also learn to type on your fucking phone.
As to being 'forced to learn about corporate history', fuck you, you piece of shit, corporations are creations of government and they cannot be mentioned in the same sentence with free markets.
Violence is the large refuge of the incompetent. Asimov said that. I would expand on it like so: personal attacks in an argument are the large refuge of the incompetent because that is the extent of violence they are willing to involve themselves in.
Again, there shouldn't be any public education at all under any circumstances. Same applies for health insurance, health care, even fucking firefighters and cops AFAIC should not be government employees. Competition is the name of the game, it provides us with all the services and products we need and this includes teaching, which is a service. As to WM of education - good. At least WM can provide the lowest priced goods and it provides over a million jobs in the process. WM is great for what it does and a WM style school would be wonderful because it would be client oriented.
I don't like anything government, not just government schools and the main problem is of-course government regulations of schools and taxes, it is all about money and power and I don't want government to have any of either.
Modern economic theory is propaganda, Keynesianism that the politicians love, since it allows them to print and borrow all the money they need to stay in power by promising the impossible free lunch forever to the idiotic mob, which ends up eating its own economy for 'greater good'. Austerity is not going to solve problems until people recognise that the entire concept of a welfare state is a joke that keeps pushing them down into dirt (and for a good reason).
Correctly implemented austerity must consist of cutting government spending and cutting taxes on everybody. Instead the so called 'austerity' does not end up cutting welfare state spending and increases taxes to pay out the bond holders who were promised their returns and safety by irresponsible governments that used the Keynesian style 'economic theory' to destroy their economies.
By the way, did I just see you talking about nationalization and 'Keynes plan'? You are part of the cancer and rot that destroys the economy.
Austerity should be about smashing government spending to bits and thus being able to reduce taxes, not increase it on anybody at all. As to 'good balance' for a welfare safety net - that's the root of the evil that is destroying modern day socialist/fascist economies, they assume that they can steal from some and give to others and they set up entire government systems to achieve that goal. There should be 0 (zero) welfare provided by state in any state (and as far as I am concerned state itself is a concept that needs to be thrown in the garbage in our global world, only individuals can have rights, groups of individuals cannot).
"universal healthcare" is a 'human right'? ??? ??? So what aliens from what planet are supposed to provide you with this 'human right' if you stop oppressing people around you to give you that ENTITLEMENT? Does healthcare grow on magic trees somehow and all you need to do is think about a magic fruit from that magic tree and get your 'human right'? So capitalism is standing in the way of you getting that 'human right', is it? Well, obviously, because under capitalism people actually own their own bodies and their productive output and you hate that concept of self ownership because it directly contradicts your idea that forcing somebody to give you something is somehow a 'human right'.
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If you are making money just by having money, without working, you are accruing the product of someone else's labor.
- first of all, clearly you don't have any money to manage, because you would know then that keeping money and growing it is actual work. If you do not do it correctly, you lose it, history is littered with people who had huge fortunes and blew them with poor management.
Secondly capital and labour are in competition to each other in the free market economy at all times. Supply and demand are very simple concepts, the more labour there is, the cheaper it will be. The less labour there is the more expensive it will be. The more capital there is the cheaper (lower interest rate) it will be. The capital savings there is the more expensive (higher interest rates) it will be.
What we have today is *ABSENCE* of real savings in the face of a huge debt and deficit by modern Western economies and total willing to destroy value of the fiat money further by printing it/creating it electronically into existence by the central banks, who then 'loan' this money to banks with the explicit purpose of 'loaning' it back to the so called 'Treasury' (should be called Debtory, there is no treasure there, only IOUs). That's not wealth, that's not savings, that's not capital, that's a huge black hole that will swallow the economy that is spiralling into it.
Real free market capitalism should have people with more and more accumulated savings, which then act as *TRUE LENDERS* to the economy and that's their extremely important role. Not governments, governments do not earn money, they spend stolen money, they have no concept of working at all. People who come to money by either working or by chance of being born to wealthy parents have much more respect for money and they really do not want to lose it, they are the best *STEWARDS* of capital savings, that's their job - they control and manage their own capital, allowing people to dip into those resources but only under voluntary circumstances.
You think that it is a bad thing to have many rich people, I think it is a *WONDERFUL* thing, it is a bad thing to have many poor people.
Not on money, no, but it is effectively illegal to be homeless
- and for a good reason, go, be homeless somewhere in the woods. I don't want your homeless ass on my property and as far as 'public' property is concerned, it shouldn't even exist, it is an oxymoron. It is not property without a real owner and government is not an owner. Sure you are allowed to be homeless, but not in a developed place where people are maintaining it and you are leeching off of that labour and capital while bringing your dirt there.
Now I know you're just trolling
- wrong, I never troll, there is no reason for it. You have your options. None of them should be using government force to steal from anybody.
There are other solutions besides state socialism, and just because you don't like that solution doesn't mean you can flatly deny the problem entirely.
- as long as your solutions do not force me into any group behaviour by using threat of government violence, be my guest.
As for most of the rest of your post, you're also confusing "investment" with "lending at interest".
- all lending with interest is investing. It doesn't matter to me much HOW you are going to pay me back my principle and the interest as long as you do, however if I have a choice between lending for consumption and lending for production, in a normal free market capitalist economy I choose to lend for production. What we have today with FAKE money being brought into existence by the power of the State and this fuels consumption binges while creating enough inflation (expansion of the money supply) that mis-allocates scarce resources in such a way that productivity is stifled and production stops and a former biggest creditor nation in the world is now the biggest debtor nation specifically because of all the fake money that is created and then lent out at fake interest rates, which props up consumption binges that inflate the bubbles in various markets. Be it stock market, housing market or now government itself (bonds, dollars, trust), it doesn't matter one way or another, none of it is a real economy. Yes, in such an economy you get huge displacement of resources, of productivity, of jobs and thus you get bigger and bigger disparity between those who can produce and thus profit from production and those who cannot produce anything and cannot profit from it. They are still profiting on the sidelines from the consumption, crumbs of which they are getting, but eventually their lives will be destroyed by it. They allowed it to happen by creating the government monster that promised them free and easy life and of-course there is nothing more expensive than anything that government promises for free.
It's not capitalism until you get to talking about unearned income: someone making money simply by virtue of having money (or other capital), without having to actually work for it.
- wrong.
Capitalism is private ownership and operation of property. How that property came to being is secondary. I also own some stocks in other companies and I own some other income producing assets and my company is growing in value due to accumulation of wealth generated here (code base, client contacts, experience, name recognition).
people accruing wealth simply from letting others borrow their wealth, with no work required.
- work was already done and nobody forces anybody to take loans and nobody would be risking their own money by giving it to anybody if there was no promise of return, thus preventing people from starting their own companies. I built mine by saving myself, other people take loans and promise to return the money with interest, which is a payment for getting access to the savings accumulated by others in the first place.
Do you get free bread from a bakery? Why shouldn't you be able to get a loan from a lender if you are willing to pay back the loan with interest? Interest is the cost of taking that loan, not anything more than that.
Money makes money and that is a GOOD THING, otherwise our ability to accumulate savings would always be bound by the amount of labour that we can add as value. Money SHOULD make money. As you said earlier, by owning a property and lending it to somebody you are making a return on that investment.
As to Marx, keep it to yourself, I came from the former USSR and I am one of the fewer people who come from there who have no patience for Marxism, Leninism, Socialism, Communism, Fascism or any other form of collectivism whatsoever. I do not collaborate or cooperate under the barrel of a gun and nobody should be forced to do that.
I was a poor schmuck stuck renting a room in somebody else's house at some point in life. What is your point, that somebody should come and give you something just because you graced us with your presence on this planet?
Now imagine couple of poor schmucks having offspring instead of working and saving rather than consuming, all to improve their lives later on. Let's say they have 1 kid, is it their responsibility or maybe this kid is the responsibility of the state that will stick the responsibility of paying for that kid onto actually productive people?
Let's say they have 2 kids, now it's twice as many people that the state is going to force somebody else to pay for.
Those 2 poor kids grow up, marry other 2 poor ex-kids and have their own 2 poor kids each, again, stuck in somebody's basement. Tell me, the geometric progression of poverty here, do you think it can be offset with the dwindling (thanks to the government policy of redistribution and inflation - printing) resources that are still provided by those, who are productive members of society?
Let's say there is a group of 100 people, with 1 of them being the richest and the 49 below him being the middle class and the 50 below them being the poor (it all works out that way statistically anyway). The poor have 200 poor kids, if in your society the top 50 (mostly top 10 but especially top 1) people were covering much of cost of living of the bottom 50 people, but now they are covering cost of living of the bottom 250 people. How much more do you expect to pile up on the top 50 people, 10 people or 1 guy and still call it 'justice'? Because that's what you are after, justice, right? Justice in your eyes is taking from those who have and redistributing to those who do not.
Well, that's how you create capital outflow, because that's not justice, that's the opposite of justice. Justice would be not using any force of government to control any of these people's businesses and jobs and generally lives. Real justice is only equal treatment under the same law, not unequal application of laws, such as a progressive income tax is as an example - an unequal application of law.
The trend has been pretty ugly- lower share of societies benefits for most- higher share of societies benefits for the very few- often related more to their parents success (50%) than their own ability. I mean- a lot of the better jobs are practically inherited these days.
- one of the reasons that people work beyond what they need in their own lives is to improve quality of life of their immediate families. Of-course if you start a business you will want your kids to inherit it, that's the most natural thing and there is nothing wrong with it at all.
Capitalism is private ownership and operation of property. That's all it is.
Capital that you build up over your life time will give you an advantage in terms of being able to acquire more capital over somebody who is only now entering the work force. That is a consequence of being able to own and operate property, it is not the definition of capitalism in itself.
Of-course you have an advantage when you own something over others, who do not own something. As to 'exploitable', that is just propaganda and nothing else.
I hire people because I spent a lot of time working myself and saving money rather than spending it like many others people did and do. So I forgo that extra entertainment or vacation and save.
Savings are capital.
I used my capital savings to live off of for a few years while I was building my own first systems and I used it to find a client. Then I found another client. Now I have 2 offices in 2 countries with employees who build things that I want to build and I pay them salaries that are competitive in the marketplace.
From your definition I am 'exploiting' something, from my definition I am making myself more productive by using higher level tools (employees) to build products that I want to build and now that I can do so with many more hands than just my own 2 hands, I can produce much more than is needed just for my own survival.
I build products that my clients want and I hire people who want to work for me, I train them and pay them what I can and if they find a better job they leave, while others come working for me.
Thus by denying myself the entertainment and higher level consumption earlier in life I built something that allows me higher level of consumption later, but even more importantly it allows me freedom to create what I want to create and do so at a much faster rate than I ever could if I was doing it by myself.
If I just kept going as a contractor, I would only be building things that other people envisioned, as is I am building what I want. Saving and not spending so as to invest is all about making yourself more productive, and being productive can benefit society much more than simply following an easy and safe path of being a normal worker, like everybody else.
I will never agree that this is in any way 'exploiting' something, since that word has a connotation that implies some sort of devious or evil process in play. Quite the opposite, I know others who also started and run their own businesses by denying themselves a simpler and safer lives and I think those are much higher quality people and if anything, they are the ones being exploited by the society that sees the result of their harder than normal work and wants to steal it from them. That is not just 'exploiting', as far as I am concerned, that's theft and the hight of immorality.
AFAIC free market capitalism is the most moral way to run a society, a society of people free from being exploited by the jealous desires of the mob.
Siphoning? Hmmm, so you don't like the price, don't buy the product. If you think there is so much 'siphoning' happening, that's just a business opportunity for you to enter the market yourself and to provide people with a cheaper version of the phone that people want to buy. Apple doesn't siphon anything from anybody, Apple builds products that people want and people pay for without any violence being threatened to them, they are voluntarily exchanging their own money for a product they want.
Siphoning is happening when government uses threat of violence to steal money from individual or corporate income and wealth and then spends that money on whatever it wants, that's siphoning. Apple not giving up a portion of its income to that Mafia is a good thing, good for the overall economy in the world that the money made by a smart ran company stays with that company so it can use it to build more products and services that people are apparently willingly exchange for.
Before Apple (or any non-subsidised individual or business) is taxed by even 1 cent, it already creates much more for the economy than any government can or does. Products are created, income for the investors is created, investment opportunities are created, jobs are created as well. It is individuals and companies owned by individuals that create the economy, not governments or any other violent associations.
There is no such thing as a 'fair share of taxes', the rich are taxed disproportionately and it is the most unfair thing that exists. They are taxed at a higher rate of income than the poor are and that is ultimately the most unfair thing that happens after the very fact of income and wealth taxation and redistribution in the first place. The actual problems are with the people that want this theft and redistribution, not with people that earn the money and hide it from being stolen.
lending capital temporarily in exchange for a permanent transfer of even greater capital back to you, which causes the problem of wealth concentration, redistributing wealth from those who have less of it (and thus need to borrow it) to those who have more of it already (and thus can afford to lend it out), which has the secondary effect of requiring those with less of it to labor for those with more of it in order to continue borrowing to survive, in effect creating perpetual servitude of a working class to an owning class.
- nice propaganda you are pushing here.
1. Nobody forces anybody to take loans.
2. Nobody is forcing you to survive.
3. Nobody owes you anything free, just because you are born you are not automatically somebody else's responsibility except for your parents.
4. Without interest there will be no loans to people unknown to the lender. I would not lend any money to somebody I don't know at all if I couldn't hope to get more of it back, it's a risky proposition to give somebody money, they may never pay back.
5. What you call 'usury' is a rate of interest, which is the cost of borrowing, which helps to allocate scarce resources in the most efficient manner for the overall benefit of the entire economy.
Without having a cost to borrowing, borrowing couldn't be prioritised (even if somebody was willing to give you any money whatsoever without a promise of a return on the investment). Without having a cost of borrowing all of a sudden an unproductive type of lending that is used for personal consumption has the same potential borrowing priority as some productive type of lending that can lead to more production, which in turn is what is supposed to provide a legitimate return.
Borrowing money to consume and borrowing money to produce are not the same game at all. Taking a risk to lend money for production is one thing, lending money for consumption is much more risky, unless there is already a proven source of income (like a job that you have to have if you want to buy that car or that house with a huge mortgage).
The problem that exists today is not due to the concept of interest on an investment, the problem that exists today is due to the destruction of real money, real capital savings in lieu of fake money (paper fiat) and fake interest rates set by government and pseudo government entities, like the Federal reserve for example. Fake money and fake lending rates combined with the welfare state ideology is what is killing the economies around the world. Real money and real interest rates and dissolution of welfare state restarts economies and allows people to build up wealth, thus truly fighting poverty.
Without lending and without interest that can be generated on lending poor people have much harder time getting out of poverty.
Oh, and nobody owes you anything just because your parents decided to fuck and you were born into the world. You are a nobody's problem but your parents.
Capitalism is private ownership and operation of property.
Free market is a market free from government regulations, a market based on free (not impeded by an external violent government force) voluntary exchange of goods and services.
Freedom (non violent or free from government) is a virtue and lack of freedom (oppression) is a vice.
Free market capitalism is the most moral (not coerced by the violence of a state) and efficient (when it is allowed) system of wealth generation and distribution that we have discovered to date.
So what, many things are scams, it's up to individuals to decide what they want to do, scam or no scam. Governments are scams and plenty of people subscribe to that model.
Of-course it is about exercising individual rights. Nobody is forcing these people to do any of it, they are volunteering to do it and the fact that they are volunteering to do it not with any government office but with another private individual or a company doesn't matter one bit, it's their body and it's their lives. By default we are the owners of ourselves, this is the ultimate capitalism - the capital is your body and you are the private owner of it. You may want to have a totally socialist/fascist/dictatorial system if you like, fine, but I do not agree with it. People own themselves, nobody else does. In fact what you are proposing is that people do not own themselves but instead they are property of the state and I oppose it completely.
And that has always been what baffles me about this ... how is it even legal?
- I see, so you don't believe that people and not the state are ultimately owners of their own bodies can decide what to do with themselves (including killing themselves if they want to)?
You know, if something is legal it doesn't mean it's right and if something is illegal it doesn't mean it's wrong.
The first world education has failed to produce enough people capable of discerning truth from fiction and in many cases even barely capable to detect bullshit. Sure, some people can still do it some of the time. But very few can do it consistently. A tiny minority of Americans understood that Saddam was never involved in 911 AND that he had no weapons of mass destruction in his disposal. Tiny minority of Russians understand that their president and government in general is destroying their economy with centralization of power. For that matter only a tiny minority of Americans understand that also. Tiny minority of people understand that without strong morality (protection against theft) in the area of private property rights the economy doesn't have a long lived and prosperous future. Tiny minority of people understand that governments as a general concept guarantee violence and immorality of theft and murder in the modern global society.
What can western style education do to create free thinking people truly capable of changing their own plight in the world? Education cannot be a government's job to create free people.
Funny stuff, just the other day I was telling one of my devs that I am already using a much higher level language than what is available to coders. I hire devs and I tell them what I want them to do. I am coding in the highest possible level ( available to me), I definr the tasks and explain the tasks to my devs in a human language, human coders understand the context of the tasks at hand and they have a sense of humour as well unlike the machines. Highest level langage for coding today requires a human to listen to the task and translate it to the machine.
Let me guess you're one of those people who don't think people are animals, we're something special.
- People are animals. There is no god, people are a by-product of development of this universe and all it took for us to be here is a lot of time and many many attempts at different combinations of events. However us being animals does not preclude us from being individuals first of all. Our recognition that we are individuals and not a group is what separates us from animals most of all.
Yes, we have higher capacity for communication, data recording, specialization, tool making/handling. This is not our most important characteristic as far as I am concerned. I am convinced that our most important characteristic is our ability to become individuals even though we came from the world of animals. Being individuals, free thinking entities, not bound by being 'part of a herd', not bound by any form of group think, not bound by being part of anything that takes away our freedoms, being able to make our own decisions at every point in time on any issue.
Enforcing any type of group think, 'herd' think, socialist or fascist or communist ideas, where an individual becomes subservient to the group goes against the very grain of what makes us capable of technological progress through independent abstract thinking that is unattainable by other organisms that are bound by those group processes.
As to statistics, as long as it is not used to manipulate individuals into behaving as groups I don't see any problems with it, but of-course it is a political tool often used for those exact reasons.
I absolutely 100% understand it and it is not 'anti science', it is anti herd.
AFAIC 'herd immunity' is an offensive term, I cannot even begin to fathom something more offensive than grouping of people together, thinking of people as of a 'herd'. Death is preferable to this level of groupthink. It is and it always has to remain a private/individual decision to vaccinate or not. As it says in TFA more than half of these day cares have below-average vaccination rates, so this means a large portion of the individuals decide against vaccination.
I must also say that I think vaccination is a calculated risk and I am not against it at all as a general concept. However to me, as an individual, the ability to refuse any kind of group ideology or group pressure is much more important than any and all health considerations combined.
I think what they are trying to say is that when you are buying a car you are mostly paying for fluff and not for the bare essentials.
The bare essentials in a car is a drive train, the engine, maybe, MAYBE the gas tank and the steering wheel and the gas pedal.
Everything else is fluff you are paying for. Wouldn't you rather just pay for the bare necessities and the hell with the fluff?
(oh, and if you want to eat an apple you have to have an apple tree somewhere, which is also mostly fluff since only the fruit is edible and the tree is not, so what the fuck, nature?)
Illegal is a meaningless term. It is the right thing to do to avoid and evade taxes, to provide services that people want (drugs, whatever). It is the wrong thing to do to steal from people and to use violence as a method of running a society but violence is what all governments are.
I cheer for the bank and wish all banks would do the right thing. Of course the governments need to be neutralized as well, since legality / illegality gives them their violent power.
There is nothing else to say when the first punch is thrown, at that point any arguments end and violence begins.
It's up to the market to decide whether it wants schools to exist that do any of the shit you mentioned for 'profit'. 'For profit' gave us everything we have and 'for justice' murdered and imprisoned hundreds of millions over centuries.
Also learn to type on your fucking phone.
As to being 'forced to learn about corporate history', fuck you, you piece of shit, corporations are creations of government and they cannot be mentioned in the same sentence with free markets.
Violence is the large refuge of the incompetent. Asimov said that. I would expand on it like so: personal attacks in an argument are the large refuge of the incompetent because that is the extent of violence they are willing to involve themselves in.
Again, there shouldn't be any public education at all under any circumstances. Same applies for health insurance, health care, even fucking firefighters and cops AFAIC should not be government employees. Competition is the name of the game, it provides us with all the services and products we need and this includes teaching, which is a service. As to WM of education - good. At least WM can provide the lowest priced goods and it provides over a million jobs in the process. WM is great for what it does and a WM style school would be wonderful because it would be client oriented.
I don't like anything government, not just government schools and the main problem is of-course government regulations of schools and taxes, it is all about money and power and I don't want government to have any of either.
Modern economic theory is propaganda, Keynesianism that the politicians love, since it allows them to print and borrow all the money they need to stay in power by promising the impossible free lunch forever to the idiotic mob, which ends up eating its own economy for 'greater good'. Austerity is not going to solve problems until people recognise that the entire concept of a welfare state is a joke that keeps pushing them down into dirt (and for a good reason).
Correctly implemented austerity must consist of cutting government spending and cutting taxes on everybody. Instead the so called 'austerity' does not end up cutting welfare state spending and increases taxes to pay out the bond holders who were promised their returns and safety by irresponsible governments that used the Keynesian style 'economic theory' to destroy their economies.
By the way, did I just see you talking about nationalization and 'Keynes plan'? You are part of the cancer and rot that destroys the economy.
Austerity should be about smashing government spending to bits and thus being able to reduce taxes, not increase it on anybody at all. As to 'good balance' for a welfare safety net - that's the root of the evil that is destroying modern day socialist/fascist economies, they assume that they can steal from some and give to others and they set up entire government systems to achieve that goal. There should be 0 (zero) welfare provided by state in any state (and as far as I am concerned state itself is a concept that needs to be thrown in the garbage in our global world, only individuals can have rights, groups of individuals cannot).
"universal healthcare" is a 'human right'? ??? ??? So what aliens from what planet are supposed to provide you with this 'human right' if you stop oppressing people around you to give you that ENTITLEMENT? Does healthcare grow on magic trees somehow and all you need to do is think about a magic fruit from that magic tree and get your 'human right'? So capitalism is standing in the way of you getting that 'human right', is it? Well, obviously, because under capitalism people actually own their own bodies and their productive output and you hate that concept of self ownership because it directly contradicts your idea that forcing somebody to give you something is somehow a 'human right'.