You are arguing from a discredited position. I've offered evidence discounting greed as the major human motivation, and you haven't even addressed that. You keep arguing as if 'greed is good' is supported by evidence. It isn't.
Greed is not the best for personal survival, cooperation is. Species that cooperate are more successful than those that don't. Nature is full of examples of cooperation, at least as much as it is full of examples of competition.
Technological progress is not primarily brought about by greed. Scientists and engineers are not well paid. Someone wanting to make a lot of money would never enter those fields, they would go into a traditional business.
'The Rest' don't just fall. People who are failing don't just lay down and die. They become desperate. So all of us have a vested interest in making sure others do not fail to the point that they become desperate enough to destabilize society. That takes cooperation. And seeing as how everyone benefits from a safety net regardless of whether they contribute, we are morally correct to force others to contribute to said safety net, or forgo the benefits of living in a civilized society.
You don't get to define marriage. Some religions consider a same sex union a marriage. Your definition of marriage is based on your religion.
As for hate speech, the laws are clear and do not trump free speech rights, except for clearly defined exceptions that already exist. That is, even without hate speech laws I can not advocate for murder without opening myself up to prosecution. Nothing about this situation would change if gays were allowed to marry. What's illegal would still be illegal, and saying that being gay is evil, or minorities are inferior, is not illegal now and it wouldn't be with gay marriage.
You have no basis for restricting marriage to heterosexual couples except for your religious bias. If you can show a reason to have separate terminology that does not rest on religious reasoning, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise, you are not advocating for purity of language, you are arguing that your religious laws should be the law of the land.
I've been to a Christian church that accepts gays and supports gay marriage. Not civil unions, gay marriage. Who are you to tell them they are wrong? You are arguing from semantics. If you aren't against gay civil unions, why does the terminology matter so much to you? It isn't a redefinition of the word marriage, that is only your opinion.
And you've just managed to agree with me that we can't ban gay marriage, and that civil unions aren't enough, because that would be telling religion what to do. Thanks for the pleasant conversation, glad we agree that we can not ban gay marriage, and that we must be free to call it marriage.
Without some kind of major overhaul, capitalism becomes corporatism with the same kind of historical certainty that communism becomes tyranny.
Seeing as how the issue of corporate rights in Santa Clara was decided by a law clerk and not a Supreme Court judge, it really shouldn't be any trouble to overturn that aspect of the case.
Right. A religious ceremony. A ceremony, performed in any number of different ways, by any number of religions. Some religions, including many sects of Christianity, perform gay marriages, and call them marriages. So, unless you want to restrict freedom of religion, you need to STOP trying to say what ceremonies other religions besides your own can and can not perform.
No, most of you DO oppose civil unions. You just want to sound tolerant and enlightened, so you claim that would be okay, until it comes up in the polls, and then most of you vote against it. There is no misunderstanding.
You obviously don't want to ban marriage ceremonies by other religions, right? So, if there were a religion that wanted to perform gay marriages, you wouldn't want to restrict that religion, right? I mean, if we went around restricting one religion, what's to stop us from restricting yours?
And there are religions that will perform gay marriages, and call them marriages.
Nobody wants to force your church to perform gay marriages. If your church is not tolerant of homosexuality, why would any gays want to invade that nest of bigots? They wouldn't, any more than Muslims would want to force you to perform Muslim marriages.
You are being disingenuous, and hypocritical. You want to espouse your bigotry without being called a bigot. You want 'separate but equal,' which we all know is not equal at all. You want to impose your religious intolerance onto other religions, and claim the institution of marriage for your religion exclusively.
Understanding what I just wrote makes your post moot, because you are a bigot who wants to impose your religious values onto other religions besides your own and wants to dictate what ceremonies other religions are allowed to perform.
So, you are proposing a second class of marriage for barren citizens, with no economic incentives like tax breaks. That would be fine, if children were the only societal benefit of marriage. To quote drsmithy from this very thread: "Overall, marriage creates a 'stronger' community. On a more individual scale, married couples generally live longer, make more money and and have higher employment rates. Additionally children brought up by married couples tend to have better health, better school results and fewer problems with the law."
There are other positive externalities of marriage besides children. If nothing else, married couples both gay and straight can provide a better, more stable family for adopted children. But married couples also tend to be better for the community in general, more productive, more stable, contributing more wealth.
Still, if you would be willing to take a consistent stance and advocate for banning marriage benefits to barren couples, I can accept that. mostly because, if you take that stance, your entire argument will be disregarded by right minded people. So, you can either be a hypocrite, or you can be ignored as a loon. Your choice.
When have Democrats threatened Churches? What 'immoral laws' are you referring to? Maybe you should look at the IRS current guidelines for lobbying by any 501(c)3 tax exempt entity. You simply can not be tax exempt and lobby to change legislation. It has been that way for over fifty years.
Separation of church and state works both ways. You keep your church out of my state, I'll keep my state out of your church.
Marriage is both a religious ceremony among a number of different religions, and a civil contract. Gays do not want to change the ceremony part, they do not wish to force churches that hate them to perform marriage ceremonies for them. There are plenty of loving, tolerant churches out there that will marry gays, they don't need to invade your cesspool of hatred.
You obviously DO want this to be a nation of religious law. You want to impose your religion's morality on everyone else. You write as if your religion were the only legitimate one, let me quote you,
"Because marriage is a religious ceremony. If you were "married" before a judge, you had a civil union, stop trying to hijack a ceremony if you don't believe in the religion and there won't be problems with it."
THE religion? There is only ONE religion that performs marriages?
I have a marriage certificate, not a civil union certificate, and I was not married by a church. You don't get to claim the institution of marriage for your religion exclusively. Seeing as how there ARE religions that perform gay marriage ceremonies, you can not protest on religious grounds unless you claim your religion is the only true religion and all others should be banned.
You don't want that, right? So you can't deny gays on religious grounds. Simply saying, 'most religions don't allow it' is no justification, if even one completely made up religion allows it, then you have no grounds, as we have separation of church and state here in the land of the free.
Okay, that makes more sense:) I think marriages create stability for society, whether or not procreation is involved. In your opinion, what are the social benefits of marriage?
Marriage produces benefit for society whether or not there are offspring. Married couples are more stable. Singles are more likely to take unnecessary risks and act in selfish ways that harm society. Married couples make better foster or adoptive families.
Many individuals know they are barren before they marry. People do get vasectomies before marriage, you know. Are you proposing we outlaw marriage for people who already know they are barren?
You are correct. From the studies I have read about these economic experiments I mentioned, about 10-15 percent of people are selfless and fair nearly all the time. About 5 percent are selfish and exploitative, all the time. It is the rest of the people who are the interesting case.
When people can punish unfairness, everyone else tends to be fair. When it is easy to take advantage of others, everyone else tends to be selfish.
I'm not proposing that people rely on anything. That would be foolish, according to the data I've presented. I'm proposing that we do not worship selfishness. I'm proposing that we do not set up our economic system to expect and encourage it. I'm proposing we give people more direct control over punishing unfairness.
The problem, according to the data I've seen, is that (so far anyway) all attempts to deal with the selfish 5% have resulted in systems that favor them. By assuming selfishness, the system requires everyone to either be selfish or be taken advantage of.
This is a hard problem. Centralize power in any form, and the sociopaths flock to that power structure. Decentralize power and we are easier to pick off one by one. Act selflessly and be taken advantage of, or act selfishly and get beaten at a game the sociopaths just play better. How do we as a society arrange our affairs so that we do not encourage selfishness as a defensive reaction to selfishness? How do we enact society wide rules without creating a centralized power structure that becomes a haven for sociopaths?
I think a constitutional direct democracy would work with today's communications technology. Representational democracy has unfortunately proven itself quite amenable to takeover by sociopaths.
Clergy can't be compelled to perform marriages of any sort now. Nobody has ever talked about changing that, except for paranoiacs who use it as scare tactic. Also, there are plenty of Christian denominations that do not forbid homosexual marriages, You see, the prohibition against homosexuality is in the part of the Bible (the old testament) that Jesus repealed. So in addition to allowing you to eat pork and wear garments made of two different materials, you can also have gay marriages. The early Christian church has records of performing many such homosexual unions.
Because marriage is a religious ceremony. If you were "married" before a judge, you had a civil union, stop trying to hijack a ceremony if you don't believe in the religion and there won't be problems with it.
Luckily, we have freedom of religion in this country. Christians can't force Muslims to perform Christian ceremonies. Jews can't force Christians to perform Jewish ceremonies. And even religions as ridiculous as Scientology are legally accepted as religions. Meaning, I can define my own religion, which includes gay marriage as a sacrament. And take the actions necessary to get my religion recognized. And I can then perform gay marriages as part of a religion, which has as much legal validity here in the country of FREEDOM OF RELIGION as yours does.
Nobody wants to force your homophobic church to perform gay marriages, just like the Muslims don't want to force your church to perform Muslim marriages. We just don't want you telling us how we can or can't worship, and who we can or can't marry. Perhaps you wish this was a Christian nation, with religious laws enforced like they do in the Middle East. But it isn't, so if you want that kind of thing, perhaps you should look for it someplace else.
You should be able to marry your sister. And if genetic screenings say you won't make web footed duck babies, you should be able to have kids with her too. But you should be able to marry her in any case. Marriage isn't necessarily about procreation, if it were, then barren couples wouldn't be allowed marriage either. Your sister and you are adults, you can consent, why shouldn't you be able to marry? Just because some people think its gross? Some people think mixed marriages are gross, too.
The institution of marriage has a stabilizing effect on society. This occurs whatever the partners' sexual orientation or capacity to breed. Married couples tend to be more stable and responsible. Marriage is a positive institution. Why deny that to homosexuals?
You see, you are advocating denying people the right to marry whom they choose. That does not impact anyone else except in indirect but positive ways. You need to justify this abrogation of rights. How will denying homosexuals the rights to marry benefit society? You can't just compare homosexual unions to bestiality or incest without more complete reasoning. You appear to be trying to appeal to emotions rather than using logic. You say, 'you can't marry your sister,' but you don't state why you can't, or how the case of sibling incest is similar to homosexuality. Sure, it's a step up from comparing homosexuality to bestiality, but not by much.
You are the one making outrageous claims. You are the one advocating harmful actions against oppressed minorities. You need to justify your claims as best you can, rather than making cheap appeals to emotions. If you don't even attempt to justify your position logically, people are correct to disrespect you.
Read up on modern economic experiments. People value fairness and reciprocity over self interest, only resorting to self interested behavior when the system seems unfair, and they might be taken advantage of. Look at experiments like the dictator game, the ultimatum game, and the public goods game. Google 'fairness reciprocity economic experiment.'
Greed is not reliable, it is not the basis of economic behavior, people aren't logical, self interested actors. Being selfish rather than fair and reciprocal does not feel good to most people.
This isn't to say that society should make anti-social behaviors profitable. Quite the opposite. Society should strive to encourage fairness and reciprocity, as more people will feel comfortable being fair and reciprocating if society encourages it and discourages selfishness.
Greed is not 'good.' It is, by definition, bad. Bad for society, and as it turns out, bad for the individual. There is a reason every major religion, philosophy and spiritual practice condemns it.
Oh for the love of.... sarcasm, my friend. Sarcasm. I was writing from the delusional point of view of the sociopaths running things. The funny thing is that you understood every single point I was trying to make, except that you thought I was actually serious.
People do not act like this in every system. Systems impact how people act. There will always be selfish people in any system, true. But systems that cater to and reward selfish behavior, that don't allow people to punish unfairness, will create more selfishness.
While your suggestions as to how to correct things are astute, you seem to be denying the impact that economic systems can have on people's behavior. You may want to read up on modern economic theory. Economic systems can make a huge difference in whether people play fair or not. Look up various games theory experiments, the dictator game, the public goods game, the ultimatum game. Or google, 'fairness reciprocity economic research.' It turns out that, counter to your assertion, people are not primarily selfish or self interested. They are far more motivated by notions of fairness and reciprocity. Only when they have no power to punish unfairness in others do most people resort to selfishness, to avoid being taken advantage of.
America will no longer accept it from our business leaders.
For how long?
How long does it take a generation to forget a major recession? Five years? Ten?
How long did it take to make it okay to say, 'greed is good,' in public? Back in the 50s and 60s, it was not okay to say that. CEOs and other corporate fat cats could not flaunt their amorality. They had to at least pay lip service to being good community members.
If I recall, greed started being 'good' in the eighties, at least according to Gordon Gekko. I don't think the majority of people think it is anymore. Maybe we can hold better values than greed in high esteem again, things like cooperation, fairness, reciprocity, service, and selflessness.
Maybe we shouldn't be playing the sociopath's game if we aren't sociopaths. They will always win that game.
Vicious, semi-legal, fraudulent, knock down drag out competition is the cornerstone of capitalism.
Not if you want to stay in business for the long haul.
How did this not get a single flame mod?
Because everyone knows I'm right. Show me one business that has been around 'for the long haul' that does not have at least one black mark of this type on it's record, and I'll back down.
People are sick and tired of this kind of capitalism. They see it on Wall Street every day. They see it destroying America, and they hate it. So no, nobody feels like I'm flaming anything. Just telling the hard truth. Most Americans are moral people. Most CEOs aren't, and people are tired of Wall Street Fat Cats getting respect they don't deserve.
I'm not badmouthing capitalism in general here, just the utter lack of morals it encourages. Amoral behavior is not okay, and America will no longer accept it from our business leaders.
Oh, Bruce. Vicious, semi-legal, fraudulent, knock down drag out competition is the cornerstone of capitalism. Why, if CEOs do not try every ruthless, amoral strategy they can think up, they aren't competing. Without competition, the fat lazy companies take over the business ecosystem. If companies did not try to take advantage of every customer, supplier, and worker, those customers, suppliers, and workers would take advantage of them, or worse yet, everyone would get a fair deal. And if everyone got a fair deal, the strong would not succeed and the weak would not fail, and that would weaken the gene pool.
See, by relentlessly screwing us over, people like Darrell are improving the species.
Slashdot Mirror
You are arguing from a discredited position. I've offered evidence discounting greed as the major human motivation, and you haven't even addressed that. You keep arguing as if 'greed is good' is supported by evidence. It isn't.
Greed is not the best for personal survival, cooperation is. Species that cooperate are more successful than those that don't. Nature is full of examples of cooperation, at least as much as it is full of examples of competition.
Technological progress is not primarily brought about by greed. Scientists and engineers are not well paid. Someone wanting to make a lot of money would never enter those fields, they would go into a traditional business.
'The Rest' don't just fall. People who are failing don't just lay down and die. They become desperate. So all of us have a vested interest in making sure others do not fail to the point that they become desperate enough to destabilize society. That takes cooperation. And seeing as how everyone benefits from a safety net regardless of whether they contribute, we are morally correct to force others to contribute to said safety net, or forgo the benefits of living in a civilized society.
You don't get to define marriage. Some religions consider a same sex union a marriage. Your definition of marriage is based on your religion.
As for hate speech, the laws are clear and do not trump free speech rights, except for clearly defined exceptions that already exist. That is, even without hate speech laws I can not advocate for murder without opening myself up to prosecution. Nothing about this situation would change if gays were allowed to marry. What's illegal would still be illegal, and saying that being gay is evil, or minorities are inferior, is not illegal now and it wouldn't be with gay marriage.
You have no basis for restricting marriage to heterosexual couples except for your religious bias. If you can show a reason to have separate terminology that does not rest on religious reasoning, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise, you are not advocating for purity of language, you are arguing that your religious laws should be the law of the land.
I've been to a Christian church that accepts gays and supports gay marriage. Not civil unions, gay marriage. Who are you to tell them they are wrong? You are arguing from semantics. If you aren't against gay civil unions, why does the terminology matter so much to you? It isn't a redefinition of the word marriage, that is only your opinion.
Why you rotten... wait, what? Where am I? Who replaced my regular Internet with something civil?
And you've just managed to agree with me that we can't ban gay marriage, and that civil unions aren't enough, because that would be telling religion what to do. Thanks for the pleasant conversation, glad we agree that we can not ban gay marriage, and that we must be free to call it marriage.
Without some kind of major overhaul, capitalism becomes corporatism with the same kind of historical certainty that communism becomes tyranny.
Seeing as how the issue of corporate rights in Santa Clara was decided by a law clerk and not a Supreme Court judge, it really shouldn't be any trouble to overturn that aspect of the case.
Right. A religious ceremony. A ceremony, performed in any number of different ways, by any number of religions. Some religions, including many sects of Christianity, perform gay marriages, and call them marriages. So, unless you want to restrict freedom of religion, you need to STOP trying to say what ceremonies other religions besides your own can and can not perform.
No, most of you DO oppose civil unions. You just want to sound tolerant and enlightened, so you claim that would be okay, until it comes up in the polls, and then most of you vote against it. There is no misunderstanding.
You obviously don't want to ban marriage ceremonies by other religions, right? So, if there were a religion that wanted to perform gay marriages, you wouldn't want to restrict that religion, right? I mean, if we went around restricting one religion, what's to stop us from restricting yours?
And there are religions that will perform gay marriages, and call them marriages.
Nobody wants to force your church to perform gay marriages. If your church is not tolerant of homosexuality, why would any gays want to invade that nest of bigots? They wouldn't, any more than Muslims would want to force you to perform Muslim marriages.
You are being disingenuous, and hypocritical. You want to espouse your bigotry without being called a bigot. You want 'separate but equal,' which we all know is not equal at all. You want to impose your religious intolerance onto other religions, and claim the institution of marriage for your religion exclusively.
Understanding what I just wrote makes your post moot, because you are a bigot who wants to impose your religious values onto other religions besides your own and wants to dictate what ceremonies other religions are allowed to perform.
So, you are proposing a second class of marriage for barren citizens, with no economic incentives like tax breaks. That would be fine, if children were the only societal benefit of marriage. To quote drsmithy from this very thread: "Overall, marriage creates a 'stronger' community. On a more individual scale, married couples generally live longer, make more money and and have higher employment rates. Additionally children brought up by married couples tend to have better health, better school results and fewer problems with the law."
There are other positive externalities of marriage besides children. If nothing else, married couples both gay and straight can provide a better, more stable family for adopted children. But married couples also tend to be better for the community in general, more productive, more stable, contributing more wealth.
Still, if you would be willing to take a consistent stance and advocate for banning marriage benefits to barren couples, I can accept that. mostly because, if you take that stance, your entire argument will be disregarded by right minded people. So, you can either be a hypocrite, or you can be ignored as a loon. Your choice.
When have Democrats threatened Churches? What 'immoral laws' are you referring to? Maybe you should look at the IRS current guidelines for lobbying by any 501(c)3 tax exempt entity. You simply can not be tax exempt and lobby to change legislation. It has been that way for over fifty years.
Separation of church and state works both ways. You keep your church out of my state, I'll keep my state out of your church.
Marriage is both a religious ceremony among a number of different religions, and a civil contract. Gays do not want to change the ceremony part, they do not wish to force churches that hate them to perform marriage ceremonies for them. There are plenty of loving, tolerant churches out there that will marry gays, they don't need to invade your cesspool of hatred.
You obviously DO want this to be a nation of religious law. You want to impose your religion's morality on everyone else. You write as if your religion were the only legitimate one, let me quote you,
"Because marriage is a religious ceremony. If you were "married" before a judge, you had a civil union, stop trying to hijack a ceremony if you don't believe in the religion and there won't be problems with it."
THE religion? There is only ONE religion that performs marriages?
I have a marriage certificate, not a civil union certificate, and I was not married by a church. You don't get to claim the institution of marriage for your religion exclusively. Seeing as how there ARE religions that perform gay marriage ceremonies, you can not protest on religious grounds unless you claim your religion is the only true religion and all others should be banned.
You don't want that, right? So you can't deny gays on religious grounds. Simply saying, 'most religions don't allow it' is no justification, if even one completely made up religion allows it, then you have no grounds, as we have separation of church and state here in the land of the free.
Okay, that makes more sense :) I think marriages create stability for society, whether or not procreation is involved. In your opinion, what are the social benefits of marriage?
Marriage produces benefit for society whether or not there are offspring. Married couples are more stable. Singles are more likely to take unnecessary risks and act in selfish ways that harm society. Married couples make better foster or adoptive families.
Many individuals know they are barren before they marry. People do get vasectomies before marriage, you know. Are you proposing we outlaw marriage for people who already know they are barren?
You are correct. From the studies I have read about these economic experiments I mentioned, about 10-15 percent of people are selfless and fair nearly all the time. About 5 percent are selfish and exploitative, all the time. It is the rest of the people who are the interesting case.
When people can punish unfairness, everyone else tends to be fair. When it is easy to take advantage of others, everyone else tends to be selfish.
I'm not proposing that people rely on anything. That would be foolish, according to the data I've presented. I'm proposing that we do not worship selfishness. I'm proposing that we do not set up our economic system to expect and encourage it. I'm proposing we give people more direct control over punishing unfairness.
The problem, according to the data I've seen, is that (so far anyway) all attempts to deal with the selfish 5% have resulted in systems that favor them. By assuming selfishness, the system requires everyone to either be selfish or be taken advantage of.
This is a hard problem. Centralize power in any form, and the sociopaths flock to that power structure. Decentralize power and we are easier to pick off one by one. Act selflessly and be taken advantage of, or act selfishly and get beaten at a game the sociopaths just play better. How do we as a society arrange our affairs so that we do not encourage selfishness as a defensive reaction to selfishness? How do we enact society wide rules without creating a centralized power structure that becomes a haven for sociopaths?
I think a constitutional direct democracy would work with today's communications technology. Representational democracy has unfortunately proven itself quite amenable to takeover by sociopaths.
Cart before the horse, man. There are economic incentives and benefits because the government is involved, not the other way around.
Clergy can't be compelled to perform marriages of any sort now. Nobody has ever talked about changing that, except for paranoiacs who use it as scare tactic. Also, there are plenty of Christian denominations that do not forbid homosexual marriages, You see, the prohibition against homosexuality is in the part of the Bible (the old testament) that Jesus repealed. So in addition to allowing you to eat pork and wear garments made of two different materials, you can also have gay marriages. The early Christian church has records of performing many such homosexual unions.
Because marriage is a religious ceremony. If you were "married" before a judge, you had a civil union, stop trying to hijack a ceremony if you don't believe in the religion and there won't be problems with it.
Luckily, we have freedom of religion in this country. Christians can't force Muslims to perform Christian ceremonies. Jews can't force Christians to perform Jewish ceremonies. And even religions as ridiculous as Scientology are legally accepted as religions. Meaning, I can define my own religion, which includes gay marriage as a sacrament. And take the actions necessary to get my religion recognized. And I can then perform gay marriages as part of a religion, which has as much legal validity here in the country of FREEDOM OF RELIGION as yours does.
Nobody wants to force your homophobic church to perform gay marriages, just like the Muslims don't want to force your church to perform Muslim marriages. We just don't want you telling us how we can or can't worship, and who we can or can't marry. Perhaps you wish this was a Christian nation, with religious laws enforced like they do in the Middle East. But it isn't, so if you want that kind of thing, perhaps you should look for it someplace else.
You should be able to marry your sister. And if genetic screenings say you won't make web footed duck babies, you should be able to have kids with her too. But you should be able to marry her in any case. Marriage isn't necessarily about procreation, if it were, then barren couples wouldn't be allowed marriage either. Your sister and you are adults, you can consent, why shouldn't you be able to marry? Just because some people think its gross? Some people think mixed marriages are gross, too.
The institution of marriage has a stabilizing effect on society. This occurs whatever the partners' sexual orientation or capacity to breed. Married couples tend to be more stable and responsible. Marriage is a positive institution. Why deny that to homosexuals?
You see, you are advocating denying people the right to marry whom they choose. That does not impact anyone else except in indirect but positive ways. You need to justify this abrogation of rights. How will denying homosexuals the rights to marry benefit society? You can't just compare homosexual unions to bestiality or incest without more complete reasoning. You appear to be trying to appeal to emotions rather than using logic. You say, 'you can't marry your sister,' but you don't state why you can't, or how the case of sibling incest is similar to homosexuality. Sure, it's a step up from comparing homosexuality to bestiality, but not by much.
You are the one making outrageous claims. You are the one advocating harmful actions against oppressed minorities. You need to justify your claims as best you can, rather than making cheap appeals to emotions. If you don't even attempt to justify your position logically, people are correct to disrespect you.
Read up on modern economic experiments. People value fairness and reciprocity over self interest, only resorting to self interested behavior when the system seems unfair, and they might be taken advantage of. Look at experiments like the dictator game, the ultimatum game, and the public goods game. Google 'fairness reciprocity economic experiment.'
Greed is not reliable, it is not the basis of economic behavior, people aren't logical, self interested actors. Being selfish rather than fair and reciprocal does not feel good to most people.
This isn't to say that society should make anti-social behaviors profitable. Quite the opposite. Society should strive to encourage fairness and reciprocity, as more people will feel comfortable being fair and reciprocating if society encourages it and discourages selfishness.
Greed is not 'good.' It is, by definition, bad. Bad for society, and as it turns out, bad for the individual. There is a reason every major religion, philosophy and spiritual practice condemns it.
It's called 'diffusion of responsibility.'
Oh for the love of.... sarcasm, my friend. Sarcasm. I was writing from the delusional point of view of the sociopaths running things. The funny thing is that you understood every single point I was trying to make, except that you thought I was actually serious.
[slap]
BRIAN: Aaah!
CENTURION: Oh, and, uh, throw him to the floor, sir?
PILATE: What?
CENTURION: Thwow him to the floor again, sir?
PILATE: Oh, yes. Thwow him to the floor, please.
People do not act like this in every system. Systems impact how people act. There will always be selfish people in any system, true. But systems that cater to and reward selfish behavior, that don't allow people to punish unfairness, will create more selfishness.
While your suggestions as to how to correct things are astute, you seem to be denying the impact that economic systems can have on people's behavior. You may want to read up on modern economic theory. Economic systems can make a huge difference in whether people play fair or not. Look up various games theory experiments, the dictator game, the public goods game, the ultimatum game. Or google, 'fairness reciprocity economic research.' It turns out that, counter to your assertion, people are not primarily selfish or self interested. They are far more motivated by notions of fairness and reciprocity. Only when they have no power to punish unfairness in others do most people resort to selfishness, to avoid being taken advantage of.
96 pixels wide by 128 pixels tall
If this thing is a 3D display, shouldn't there be another pixel dimension quoted here?
I'd settle for an explanation of how the thing works.
For how long?
How long does it take a generation to forget a major recession? Five years? Ten?
How long did it take to make it okay to say, 'greed is good,' in public? Back in the 50s and 60s, it was not okay to say that. CEOs and other corporate fat cats could not flaunt their amorality. They had to at least pay lip service to being good community members.
If I recall, greed started being 'good' in the eighties, at least according to Gordon Gekko. I don't think the majority of people think it is anymore. Maybe we can hold better values than greed in high esteem again, things like cooperation, fairness, reciprocity, service, and selflessness.
Maybe we shouldn't be playing the sociopath's game if we aren't sociopaths. They will always win that game.
Vicious, semi-legal, fraudulent, knock down drag out competition is the cornerstone of capitalism.
Not if you want to stay in business for the long haul.
How did this not get a single flame mod?
Because everyone knows I'm right. Show me one business that has been around 'for the long haul' that does not have at least one black mark of this type on it's record, and I'll back down.
People are sick and tired of this kind of capitalism. They see it on Wall Street every day. They see it destroying America, and they hate it. So no, nobody feels like I'm flaming anything. Just telling the hard truth. Most Americans are moral people. Most CEOs aren't, and people are tired of Wall Street Fat Cats getting respect they don't deserve.
I'm not badmouthing capitalism in general here, just the utter lack of morals it encourages. Amoral behavior is not okay, and America will no longer accept it from our business leaders.
Oh, Bruce. Vicious, semi-legal, fraudulent, knock down drag out competition is the cornerstone of capitalism. Why, if CEOs do not try every ruthless, amoral strategy they can think up, they aren't competing. Without competition, the fat lazy companies take over the business ecosystem. If companies did not try to take advantage of every customer, supplier, and worker, those customers, suppliers, and workers would take advantage of them, or worse yet, everyone would get a fair deal. And if everyone got a fair deal, the strong would not succeed and the weak would not fail, and that would weaken the gene pool.
See, by relentlessly screwing us over, people like Darrell are improving the species.