Hi Max! Just thought you should know, this is the common cry of the secretly self loathing consumerist. "You are all greedy bastards just like me, you just aren't as skilled at being a greedy bastard!"
Listen, there's nothing wrong with being a greedy bastard, so don't feel like you have to defend your lifestyle choice. But believe me, some people actually prefer a simple life lacking in material goods but rich in interpersonal relationships. They aren't weird, or sublimating their seething desire for material goods, and many of them actually have perfectly good hygiene. They are just different from you. You should be glad, they are contented by different things than you are, and so are not in competition with you.
She said I couldn't root her box because my hard drive was too small and I didn't have enough RAM. Then she said that all her ports were closed unless I had a fat pipe. Chicks these days, they want top of the line hardware, let me tell you.
Sure, I hear that too... from the schools PR departments and from privatization fanatics who would say the moon was made of green cheese if it helped their cause.
The research I noted shows greed is not a prime motivating factor. Most of us are hard wired genetically to be motivated by ideals of fairness and reciprocity moreso than greed. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that, although personal gain is a motivating factor, fairness and reciprocity are the tools hard wired into the human brain for achieving personal gain.
The system a human being finds themselves in plays a large part in determining the strategy used for enacting personal gain. In a system that rewards cooperation and punishes unfairness, fair and reciprocal methods will be prefered. In the opposite system, selfishness will prevail. We could argue all day about whether the free market is a system that rewards cooperation and punishes unfairness. I say the jury is out on that, but in any case, I think we could both agree, the system we have now is not such a systems.
Rewarding greed as a prime motivating factor dimishes other motivating factors. People have intrinsic motivations as well as the extrinsic motivation of external reward. When external rewards are given unfair prominence, intrinsic motivations are pushed to the background. People will be less likely to follow their dreams when they see only greed and selfishness rewarded.
The tragedy of the commons assumes that people cannot enact common control of resources, that one person can better manage a resource than many. In a system of democratically controlled resources, people would be collectively responsible for that resource. In a free market where greed triumphs, what is the motivation to manage a resource sustainably when the option to reinvest the profits of unsustainable use into other resources exists? I will admit that collective responsibility works best in small groups, however.
In reality, what constitutes a violation of others' rights is a tricky issue. You excluding me from using a resource is a violation of my rights, but me taking something from you that you have worked for is a violation of yours. Where do we draw the line?
Yeah, yeah, it was kind off a weak troll. I would argue, however, that my recent post to reply ratio is more indicative of my "never let them get the last word in" strategy than anything else.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. The greedy and corrupt have found ways to game every system we have come up with so far. Free market, big government, communism, capitalism, democracy, socialism, it seems like everything we try, the rat-bastards manage to weasel in and screw it up for the rest of us. Your saying the rat-bastards would have a harder time gaming the free market than a democratically elected government? Sure, I'd like to believe it, but I've seen no evidence.
Okay, granted, we haven't had anything like free markets here for centuries & corporations do not in fact represent a true free market. Perhaps I should have said that the people who most often and most loudly proclaim their desire for a free market usually desire no such thing, and in fact usually desire exactly the opposite.
That being said, complete deregulation of all markets wouldn't work from where we are standing right now. I don't believe we can move from a corporate-feudal society to a true free market society in any sort of easy fashion. Also, there would have to be some regulation of externalities and natural monopolies (I believe these are some of the failure modes discussed in 'Wealth of Nations,' yes?)
I also believe that there is a place for communes and cooperatives within a free market system, and that perhaps a network of bottom-up run cooperative structures could take the place of a monolithic top-down government.
We need to revise some of the ideas of the free market system to reflect the realities of human nature. The theory of 'homo economicus' or the selfish, rational actor don't seem to hold true, as many people seem to prefer equality, justice, fairness, and reciprocity over strict selfishness. This is seen in several modern economic experiments done within the last few years, google for 'reciprocity fairness economic experiment' to read more.
A system that enshrines greed as it's highest ideal will reward greed and punish altruism. I believe we should come up with a system that rewards fairness and reciprocity instead.
But a line has only one dimension. That's all I'm trying to say. It is bounded by the fact that it lacks more dimensions. Not like a strip, with actual boundaries on multiple sides. Simply a matter of what you think of as boundaries. A line isn't a plane, a plane isn't three dimensional. When you say something isn't something else you are saying it has boundaries. It's boundaries are defined by the things it is not. Sigh. I forget what we were even discussing now.
Simply reinstating some of the previous limitations on corporate power would go a long way to taming the beast. Corporations used to be limited to the geographical area and type of business named in their charter, and limited in lifespan to the lifespan of the last founder. They could easily be disincorporated for failure to uphold their charter, and they had no rights as natural persons.
A fair point of view, to be sure. I'm not convinced it works in the real world, though. Externalities and natural monopolies require some kind of regulation. Imbalances of power can't always be addresses through the free market. I know some would state that imbalances of power are natural and good, and to a degree, I concur. However, no one requires or deserves thousands of times more reward than other, and a system that encourages such imbalances operates at the expense of the majority who do not reap the benefits of such a system. The value created by the average person is stolen by the powerful, and this is not a moral situation in my book. The free market does nothing to check such imbalances, and therefore leaves itself open to criticism.
Of course the silliness above constituites a large portion of conversation on forums such as slashdot.
And that's what makes them so fun! Read my post history and you know that I can engage in serious debate with people who's views differ from mine. Today, I was trolling. For the people who didn't take the bait and wrote something rational in reply, I responded in kind. For the AC that merely called me stupid and presented no rational argument, I responded in kind as well. Tit for tat is fair play, right? And if I can piss off a few of the hated neo-con evildoers at the same time, all the better! Hehe, no, I jest, not all neo-cons are evil. Some are just stupid.
Ending government sponsored monopolies isn't a bad thing, I'll give you that. But the free market doesn't seem to work as advertised, given the imbalance created by corporate power. I can believe that a free market of numerous small businesses would work well for many types of markets. Natural monopolies such as streets or utilities such as electricity and water are one area where they fail. Another is any area where the societal good of full coverage outweighs the benefits of a free market, such as health care or retirement plans.
Man are you ANONYMOUS! How about you take some time to try to prove a point instead of calling names? Oh yeah, because name calling is all you free market neo can freaks are good at. Rationality just isn't your side's strong suit, is it?
Ah, come on. Deregulation of the airlines has lead to MORE problems not less, and every private charter school I have ever heard about has been a total failure.
Privatization is part of a self fulfilling worldview that rewards the greediest individuals and actively discourages cooperation and altruism, and as such it preferentially rewards the greedy, the rich and the powerful at the expense of the common man. The fantasy of Adam Smith has been proven to be untenable, the invisible hand is usually in the pants pocket of the poor, filching their wallets.
Free market, you're my hero! You've rescued pensions and defeated the evil of public water in South America, saved the airlines and the public schools here in the US and done countless acts of good around the world! Now that you have set your sights on the public airwaves, I'm sure we will all have gigabit wireless within a few months.
Sure, a line has no boundaries by that definition. Perhaps I should rephrase what I said. A line is infinite in length, but not in width. A plane is infinite in length and width but not depth, and so forth. Thus a line is essentially bounded in comparison to a plane, as a plane has extension where a line does not. Does that make more sense?
In the absence of perfect information regarding a crime, capital punishment is unnacceptable. I would rather a hundred guilty men go free than one die unjustly.
Sperm is "on it's way to becoming human life." Should we all refrain from onanism too?
Well, I can certainly understand your points. I will grant you that although the issue stem cell research is, for me, a cut and dried proposition (anything before brain function begins isn't a human life, after that, it is all about the societal impact, and therefore embryos harvested before a certain period in gestation aren't any more human than an afterbirth is. Never mind the fact that stem cells can be hrvested from umbilical cord blood.) to others it is not, and as a society we must all come to the table and strive to see everyone's concerns are addressed.
Limiting liability at the expense of privacy favors corporations and the rich, who have the means to do so. The individual has no ability to limit his own liability through invading the privacy of a corporation. This is about an unfair imbalance of power and access to information.
That being said, should the issue be legislated or taken care of through the free market? If we could come closer to full employement without runaway inflation, then perhaps workers could afford to say, "I'm not working there, their genetic testing policy sucks!" As it is, they can't.
Finally, if a genetic testing becomes commonplace, who IS liable for those with genetic disposition to disease? No insurer will insure them, no company will hire them, they will become a drain on society. I certainly hope you aren't one of those social darwinists who want people like that to just roll over and die, are you? Because they won't, all that strategy gets us is increased human misery and social unrest.
Okay, point taken, but it still smacks of trying to draw a pet issue into an unrelated discussion. Personally, I have no ethical issues with stem cell research or genetic testing, along the same lines as I have no ethical issues with guns. Nothing wrong with them, it's what people do with them. And to be frank, in regards to stem cell research, I don't have an issue with any supposed ending of human life. I don't see it that way. A fetus before a certain stage is no more "strictly and technically human life" than an appendix or tonsils are. I have an issue with who will have access to the fruits of this research and how much it will cost.
Well, as you have laid it out, if the company had followed all relevant procedures relating to workplace safety, they shouldn't be held accountable for a workers injuries, regardless of testing for genetic predisposition. It pains my lil' leftist hippy heart to say that, but it's true.
Of course if we had universal health care like most industrialized nations, it wouldn't be an issue.:-P
As for your digression (cough*TROLL*cough) into stem cell land, there are two distinct issues: research into a life saving technology and invasion of privacy. Just because they happen to both be related to genetics in some vague way doesn't mean they are the same. Tractors and tanks both use treads but I fully endorse the use of one and not the other. Does that make me some kind of hypocrite?
Employers actions are not always wrong and employers actions not always right, to be sure. What I protest is the system that gives the concerns of one precedence over the other, one more power than the other, one more status than the other in complete disproportion to the amount of societal good one does over the other.
Slashdot Mirror
I prefer ground up raw Gungan. Tar Tar Binks!
Go right ahead. It was meant to be funny, in a subtle way, as a jab at Max in return for his funny but unsubtle jab at counter culture types.
Hi Max! Just thought you should know, this is the common cry of the secretly self loathing consumerist. "You are all greedy bastards just like me, you just aren't as skilled at being a greedy bastard!"
Listen, there's nothing wrong with being a greedy bastard, so don't feel like you have to defend your lifestyle choice. But believe me, some people actually prefer a simple life lacking in material goods but rich in interpersonal relationships. They aren't weird, or sublimating their seething desire for material goods, and many of them actually have perfectly good hygiene. They are just different from you. You should be glad, they are contented by different things than you are, and so are not in competition with you.
She said I couldn't root her box because my hard drive was too small and I didn't have enough RAM. Then she said that all her ports were closed unless I had a fat pipe. Chicks these days, they want top of the line hardware, let me tell you.
who said, "I drank what?"
--Chris Knight (Val Kilmer), Real Genius
Sure, I hear that too... from the schools PR departments and from privatization fanatics who would say the moon was made of green cheese if it helped their cause.
The research I noted shows greed is not a prime motivating factor. Most of us are hard wired genetically to be motivated by ideals of fairness and reciprocity moreso than greed. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that, although personal gain is a motivating factor, fairness and reciprocity are the tools hard wired into the human brain for achieving personal gain.
The system a human being finds themselves in plays a large part in determining the strategy used for enacting personal gain. In a system that rewards cooperation and punishes unfairness, fair and reciprocal methods will be prefered. In the opposite system, selfishness will prevail. We could argue all day about whether the free market is a system that rewards cooperation and punishes unfairness. I say the jury is out on that, but in any case, I think we could both agree, the system we have now is not such a systems.
Rewarding greed as a prime motivating factor dimishes other motivating factors. People have intrinsic motivations as well as the extrinsic motivation of external reward. When external rewards are given unfair prominence, intrinsic motivations are pushed to the background. People will be less likely to follow their dreams when they see only greed and selfishness rewarded.
The tragedy of the commons assumes that people cannot enact common control of resources, that one person can better manage a resource than many. In a system of democratically controlled resources, people would be collectively responsible for that resource. In a free market where greed triumphs, what is the motivation to manage a resource sustainably when the option to reinvest the profits of unsustainable use into other resources exists? I will admit that collective responsibility works best in small groups, however.
In reality, what constitutes a violation of others' rights is a tricky issue. You excluding me from using a resource is a violation of my rights, but me taking something from you that you have worked for is a violation of yours. Where do we draw the line?
Yeah, yeah, it was kind off a weak troll. I would argue, however, that my recent post to reply ratio is more indicative of my "never let them get the last word in" strategy than anything else.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. The greedy and corrupt have found ways to game every system we have come up with so far. Free market, big government, communism, capitalism, democracy, socialism, it seems like everything we try, the rat-bastards manage to weasel in and screw it up for the rest of us. Your saying the rat-bastards would have a harder time gaming the free market than a democratically elected government? Sure, I'd like to believe it, but I've seen no evidence.
Okay, granted, we haven't had anything like free markets here for centuries & corporations do not in fact represent a true free market. Perhaps I should have said that the people who most often and most loudly proclaim their desire for a free market usually desire no such thing, and in fact usually desire exactly the opposite.
That being said, complete deregulation of all markets wouldn't work from where we are standing right now. I don't believe we can move from a corporate-feudal society to a true free market society in any sort of easy fashion. Also, there would have to be some regulation of externalities and natural monopolies (I believe these are some of the failure modes discussed in 'Wealth of Nations,' yes?)
I also believe that there is a place for communes and cooperatives within a free market system, and that perhaps a network of bottom-up run cooperative structures could take the place of a monolithic top-down government.
We need to revise some of the ideas of the free market system to reflect the realities of human nature. The theory of 'homo economicus' or the selfish, rational actor don't seem to hold true, as many people seem to prefer equality, justice, fairness, and reciprocity over strict selfishness. This is seen in several modern economic experiments done within the last few years, google for 'reciprocity fairness economic experiment' to read more.
A system that enshrines greed as it's highest ideal will reward greed and punish altruism. I believe we should come up with a system that rewards fairness and reciprocity instead.
But a line has only one dimension. That's all I'm trying to say. It is bounded by the fact that it lacks more dimensions. Not like a strip, with actual boundaries on multiple sides. Simply a matter of what you think of as boundaries. A line isn't a plane, a plane isn't three dimensional. When you say something isn't something else you are saying it has boundaries. It's boundaries are defined by the things it is not. Sigh. I forget what we were even discussing now.
Simply reinstating some of the previous limitations on corporate power would go a long way to taming the beast. Corporations used to be limited to the geographical area and type of business named in their charter, and limited in lifespan to the lifespan of the last founder. They could easily be disincorporated for failure to uphold their charter, and they had no rights as natural persons.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Prove capitalism is the cause and that we wouldn't be even better off with a different system.
A fair point of view, to be sure. I'm not convinced it works in the real world, though. Externalities and natural monopolies require some kind of regulation. Imbalances of power can't always be addresses through the free market. I know some would state that imbalances of power are natural and good, and to a degree, I concur. However, no one requires or deserves thousands of times more reward than other, and a system that encourages such imbalances operates at the expense of the majority who do not reap the benefits of such a system. The value created by the average person is stolen by the powerful, and this is not a moral situation in my book. The free market does nothing to check such imbalances, and therefore leaves itself open to criticism.
Of course the silliness above constituites a large portion of conversation on forums such as slashdot.
And that's what makes them so fun! Read my post history and you know that I can engage in serious debate with people who's views differ from mine. Today, I was trolling. For the people who didn't take the bait and wrote something rational in reply, I responded in kind. For the AC that merely called me stupid and presented no rational argument, I responded in kind as well. Tit for tat is fair play, right? And if I can piss off a few of the hated neo-con evildoers at the same time, all the better! Hehe, no, I jest, not all neo-cons are evil. Some are just stupid.
Anyways, it's always open season on ACs.
Yes, I was trolling. /hangs head in shame.
Ending government sponsored monopolies isn't a bad thing, I'll give you that. But the free market doesn't seem to work as advertised, given the imbalance created by corporate power. I can believe that a free market of numerous small businesses would work well for many types of markets. Natural monopolies such as streets or utilities such as electricity and water are one area where they fail. Another is any area where the societal good of full coverage outweighs the benefits of a free market, such as health care or retirement plans.
Man are you ANONYMOUS! How about you take some time to try to prove a point instead of calling names? Oh yeah, because name calling is all you free market neo can freaks are good at. Rationality just isn't your side's strong suit, is it?
Ah, come on. Deregulation of the airlines has lead to MORE problems not less, and every private charter school I have ever heard about has been a total failure.
h tml
As for South America, I was refering to Argentina's water privitization schemes: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=10088
and Chile's pension privitization schemes:
http://www.nathannewman.org/log/archives/002107.s
both of which failed miserably.
Privatization is part of a self fulfilling worldview that rewards the greediest individuals and actively discourages cooperation and altruism, and as such it preferentially rewards the greedy, the rich and the powerful at the expense of the common man. The fantasy of Adam Smith has been proven to be untenable, the invisible hand is usually in the pants pocket of the poor, filching their wallets.
Free market, you're my hero! You've rescued pensions and defeated the evil of public water in South America, saved the airlines and the public schools here in the US and done countless acts of good around the world! Now that you have set your sights on the public airwaves, I'm sure we will all have gigabit wireless within a few months.
Sure, a line has no boundaries by that definition. Perhaps I should rephrase what I said. A line is infinite in length, but not in width. A plane is infinite in length and width but not depth, and so forth. Thus a line is essentially bounded in comparison to a plane, as a plane has extension where a line does not. Does that make more sense?
In the absence of perfect information regarding a crime, capital punishment is unnacceptable. I would rather a hundred guilty men go free than one die unjustly.
Sperm is "on it's way to becoming human life." Should we all refrain from onanism too?
Well, I can certainly understand your points. I will grant you that although the issue stem cell research is, for me, a cut and dried proposition (anything before brain function begins isn't a human life, after that, it is all about the societal impact, and therefore embryos harvested before a certain period in gestation aren't any more human than an afterbirth is. Never mind the fact that stem cells can be hrvested from umbilical cord blood.) to others it is not, and as a society we must all come to the table and strive to see everyone's concerns are addressed.
Limiting liability at the expense of privacy favors corporations and the rich, who have the means to do so. The individual has no ability to limit his own liability through invading the privacy of a corporation. This is about an unfair imbalance of power and access to information.
That being said, should the issue be legislated or taken care of through the free market? If we could come closer to full employement without runaway inflation, then perhaps workers could afford to say, "I'm not working there, their genetic testing policy sucks!" As it is, they can't.
Finally, if a genetic testing becomes commonplace, who IS liable for those with genetic disposition to disease? No insurer will insure them, no company will hire them, they will become a drain on society. I certainly hope you aren't one of those social darwinists who want people like that to just roll over and die, are you? Because they won't, all that strategy gets us is increased human misery and social unrest.
Okay, point taken, but it still smacks of trying to draw a pet issue into an unrelated discussion. Personally, I have no ethical issues with stem cell research or genetic testing, along the same lines as I have no ethical issues with guns. Nothing wrong with them, it's what people do with them. And to be frank, in regards to stem cell research, I don't have an issue with any supposed ending of human life. I don't see it that way. A fetus before a certain stage is no more "strictly and technically human life" than an appendix or tonsils are. I have an issue with who will have access to the fruits of this research and how much it will cost.
Well, as you have laid it out, if the company had followed all relevant procedures relating to workplace safety, they shouldn't be held accountable for a workers injuries, regardless of testing for genetic predisposition. It pains my lil' leftist hippy heart to say that, but it's true.
:-P
Of course if we had universal health care like most industrialized nations, it wouldn't be an issue.
As for your digression (cough*TROLL*cough) into stem cell land, there are two distinct issues: research into a life saving technology and invasion of privacy. Just because they happen to both be related to genetics in some vague way doesn't mean they are the same. Tractors and tanks both use treads but I fully endorse the use of one and not the other. Does that make me some kind of hypocrite?
Employers actions are not always wrong and employers actions not always right, to be sure. What I protest is the system that gives the concerns of one precedence over the other, one more power than the other, one more status than the other in complete disproportion to the amount of societal good one does over the other.