While that is all undoubtedly true, Castro is not the leader anymore, his brother is. His brother said it too, and he has not retracted it. The fact that Castro said it too is just icing on the cake, even if he did take it back. And he did say it, whether he meant it or not, that fact was backed up by two sources privy to the conversation from what I read.
Hierarchy is a perverse and disgusting addiction. Having power over others does get you high, yes. But it is a debilitating and destructive high. It destroys a person's empathy. It destroys their ability to be real with other people. It destroys their ability to have real friendships. It makes them paranoid. It destroys any intrinsic motivations they might have had for doing anything, all they want is that high they can get from power, and things that used to be enjoyable for their own sake now become all about chasing that dragon.
But we can gain power by honestly sharing our power with others, giving them some dominion over us and us over them. That is interdependence and it is a much more sustainable high. Power shared is power multiplied. An individual may accumulate more personal power by stealing other people's power through hierarchy games, but in the end, total human power is reduced because power is expended in the struggle and theft.
The owning class are terrified of the rest of us, of what we will do to them if they ever stopped playing dominance games and let us see them as fellow humans with imperfections. It's gotten pretty ugly in the past. What has been done to many humans world wide by the dominance addicts is unjust, to say the least. But blame, guilt and punishment have a lousy track record as a method of curing addiction.
Really getting the upper class to realize these facts will take care of ninety five percent of the problem. The other five percent we shoot in the head. They aren't human, they are sociopathic predators wearing human skins.
That's a joke. We aren't omniscient, so "killing off all sociopaths" is a really bad idea.
Liberty is so much more complicated than you think it is. Liberty is not the same thing as "I get to do whatever I want to," which is mere license. In the state of nature, we have no liberty. We either have the power to do what we please, or we do not. It is only when we freely gather together into societies that it even becomes meaningful to talk about liberty. Remember that, outside the bounds of society you do not have liberty. You may or may not have freedom, depending on your power, random chance, and the desires of others, but you do not have liberty. You do not own yourself, because ownership is a liberty invented by humans that only applies inside of agreements to honor ownership rights. Nature owns you. The universe owns you, and it may crush you in at any second.
Liberty comes from agreements. It is a contract between individuals. All liberties encompass a freedom gained, a freedom given up, and a responsibility. We agree not to punch each other in the face. We gain the freedom from being punched in the face. We lose the freedom to punch in the face. We agree to a shared responsibility to defend each other from being punched in the face.
Seeing as how all liberties truly come only from agreements between individuals, the concept can be abused, of course. People used to argue about the freedom to own slaves. But there is no higher power handing down liberties. They do not come from nature. Those are appeals to authority, used by those who want to sell you a package deal of liberties they think are important. You must decide for yourself what liberties you support and what you don't. Please do not "stand for" a package deal that someone else sold you. Think for yourself.
Some imbalance in wealth is not only unavoidable, it is desirable to most people. In my experience, people like it when excellence is fairly rewarded, even if they know they themselves are not excellent. People who aren't hypercompetitive assholes, anyway. Equality of opportunity should be maintained, but it is equitable, not equal outcomes I am looking for.
When we as a society allow too much of an imbalance in ownership to occur, we can not maintain a true democracy, and we can not maintain a true free market. That kind of imbalance necessarily means that the rich do not play by the same rules as the rest of us, and it is a fantasy to think they do.
Touted by self centered Americans, of course. I have gotten out quite a bit, lived overseas and worked under the table in Greece when I was sixteen, for instance.
China isn't subsidizing us with savings, they don't have any. What profits they make, they are wisely investing in natural resources elsewhere, including here, but what they are doing economically is a trick. They have their currency pegged to ours, the exchange rate can't fluctuate. Do I need to explain what that does to trade?
They should pay more, the system works for them and the benefits they get from it obviously far outweigh what they pay. None of us would be worse off without them because they don't do very much. We would all be far better off with a more equitable spread of wealth, rather than having ownership concentrated in so few hands.
Only a tiny fringe group of libertarian ideologues believes that unfettered capitalism did anything except lead to child labor, killing of union organizers, third world levels of wealth inequality, pollution, unsafe workplaces, and a legacy of political corruption. Here in the reality based community, we know that lssez faire is a miserable failure. The US only became a superpower thanks to the untiring efforts of dedicated activists reversing the trends of wealth redistribution to the wealthy.
I'll tell you what, you point to the libertarian argument that supports your position, (because I know you haven't come up with any original arguments of your own) and I'll debunk it for you. Sound fair?
What makes you think China will let us sell to their enormous market? They have the Yuan pegged to the dollar, so no amount of trade imbalance will make our goods cheaper to them.
Don't forget that money spent on Chinese products leaves the country, whereas money spent on American products circulates in our own economy, creating more and more wealth as it goes, instead of disappearing into some foreign coffers.
We aren't being taxed by the Chinese, their citizens are. And I am not suggesting we subsidize our industries, I am saying we increase tariffs on Chinese goods. And the last time I looked, our government is not oppressive. China's is, and that lets them unfairly produce goods cheaper than we do. If they won't compete on a level playing field, let them get taxed twice, once by China in the form of pollution and medical expenses, once by us in the form of tariffs. As an added bonus, it would help balance our budget and create American jobs. You do support a balanced budget and more American jobs, right?
And those places have LOWER taxes than we do? The fact is, the rich are already investing there and developing markets. There is no sense in developing markets here, the rich have already taken all the middle class' money. Why would they invest here when there is no demand? The American rich feel absolutely no loyalty to America or her citizens. They are already screwing us over, and the common wisdom seems to be that we need to lay back and take it, or they might leave us. Yes, please, my ass is feeling pretty chapped.
I'm tired of being the abused wife defending her retarded alcoholic husband when people point out that he's beaten her senseless.
You like playing host to parasites, I get it. Might I suggest you move to Somalia? There aren't any pesky laws keeping the parasites off you over there.
I never said anything about cutting China off, just taxing their goods in order to equalize the subsidies they give their industries. China is taxing its citizens and using the money to subsidize industry. Chinese citizens pay for the pollution, unsafe conditions, and low wages while the corporations get to produce goods at less than market rates thanks to the subsidies.
What do you think China is doing? They are redistributing wealth from the workers to the corporations. Someone pays the costs. Those kind of environmental and human rights abuses are not sustainable.
Did you hear that Fidel Castro has publicly come out in support of free market reforms? I guess our embargo of Cuba worked.
I'm sick and tired of the rich blackmailing us like this. We do not need them. Where would they go, anyway? Would they really be willing to give up such a lucrative market? If they leave, it's not as though the demand for goods and services disappears. We really don't need their investments. We can borrow from ourselves and pay it off by growing our economy.
It isn't really about human rights or pollution. It really is about unfair trade. Having lax environmental and worker safety laws amounts to the same thing as directly subsidizing your industries, which the WTO frowns on.
You forgot D) China complies with worldwide standards and practices fair trade.
Yeah, that is the court where we sue them for subsidizing their industry through lax environmental and worker safety laws. Subsidizing your industries so that they can produce items below cost (pollution and worker medical problems are costs) is not fair trade as defined by the WTO.
That is just fine, the more useless leaches "Go Galt" and flee the states, the better. We don't need those parasites. If they want to do business here, we still get to tax them until they bleed. And if they don't, great! Less competition for real American businesses.
Which part? China is a prime example of a hydraulic empire, and their culture reflects that. Considering that they had their first major empire collapse in 500BC or so and six major players left were fielding million man, iron equipped armies at the time, I'm really not sure what you are referring to as 'nonsense.'
I'm saying that we uphold our values and protect our interests. Is that really too much to ask of a nation that has been touted as the best on Earth?
Why should give them the benefit of our trade when they do not behave in a fair manner? You seem to be saying we shouldn't hold our trading partners accountable for their human rights violations. Why is it okay to do business with some mass murderers and not others?
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I didn't say you were libertarian, I said you were going to use recycled libertarian arguments.
While that is all undoubtedly true, Castro is not the leader anymore, his brother is. His brother said it too, and he has not retracted it. The fact that Castro said it too is just icing on the cake, even if he did take it back. And he did say it, whether he meant it or not, that fact was backed up by two sources privy to the conversation from what I read.
Hierarchy is a perverse and disgusting addiction. Having power over others does get you high, yes. But it is a debilitating and destructive high. It destroys a person's empathy. It destroys their ability to be real with other people. It destroys their ability to have real friendships. It makes them paranoid. It destroys any intrinsic motivations they might have had for doing anything, all they want is that high they can get from power, and things that used to be enjoyable for their own sake now become all about chasing that dragon.
But we can gain power by honestly sharing our power with others, giving them some dominion over us and us over them. That is interdependence and it is a much more sustainable high. Power shared is power multiplied. An individual may accumulate more personal power by stealing other people's power through hierarchy games, but in the end, total human power is reduced because power is expended in the struggle and theft.
The owning class are terrified of the rest of us, of what we will do to them if they ever stopped playing dominance games and let us see them as fellow humans with imperfections. It's gotten pretty ugly in the past. What has been done to many humans world wide by the dominance addicts is unjust, to say the least. But blame, guilt and punishment have a lousy track record as a method of curing addiction.
Really getting the upper class to realize these facts will take care of ninety five percent of the problem. The other five percent we shoot in the head. They aren't human, they are sociopathic predators wearing human skins.
That's a joke. We aren't omniscient, so "killing off all sociopaths" is a really bad idea.
Liberty is so much more complicated than you think it is. Liberty is not the same thing as "I get to do whatever I want to," which is mere license. In the state of nature, we have no liberty. We either have the power to do what we please, or we do not. It is only when we freely gather together into societies that it even becomes meaningful to talk about liberty. Remember that, outside the bounds of society you do not have liberty. You may or may not have freedom, depending on your power, random chance, and the desires of others, but you do not have liberty. You do not own yourself, because ownership is a liberty invented by humans that only applies inside of agreements to honor ownership rights. Nature owns you. The universe owns you, and it may crush you in at any second.
Liberty comes from agreements. It is a contract between individuals. All liberties encompass a freedom gained, a freedom given up, and a responsibility. We agree not to punch each other in the face. We gain the freedom from being punched in the face. We lose the freedom to punch in the face. We agree to a shared responsibility to defend each other from being punched in the face.
Seeing as how all liberties truly come only from agreements between individuals, the concept can be abused, of course. People used to argue about the freedom to own slaves. But there is no higher power handing down liberties. They do not come from nature. Those are appeals to authority, used by those who want to sell you a package deal of liberties they think are important. You must decide for yourself what liberties you support and what you don't. Please do not "stand for" a package deal that someone else sold you. Think for yourself.
Some imbalance in wealth is not only unavoidable, it is desirable to most people. In my experience, people like it when excellence is fairly rewarded, even if they know they themselves are not excellent. People who aren't hypercompetitive assholes, anyway. Equality of opportunity should be maintained, but it is equitable, not equal outcomes I am looking for.
When we as a society allow too much of an imbalance in ownership to occur, we can not maintain a true democracy, and we can not maintain a true free market. That kind of imbalance necessarily means that the rich do not play by the same rules as the rest of us, and it is a fantasy to think they do.
Touted by self centered Americans, of course. I have gotten out quite a bit, lived overseas and worked under the table in Greece when I was sixteen, for instance.
China isn't subsidizing us with savings, they don't have any. What profits they make, they are wisely investing in natural resources elsewhere, including here, but what they are doing economically is a trick. They have their currency pegged to ours, the exchange rate can't fluctuate. Do I need to explain what that does to trade?
They should pay more, the system works for them and the benefits they get from it obviously far outweigh what they pay. None of us would be worse off without them because they don't do very much. We would all be far better off with a more equitable spread of wealth, rather than having ownership concentrated in so few hands.
Only a tiny fringe group of libertarian ideologues believes that unfettered capitalism did anything except lead to child labor, killing of union organizers, third world levels of wealth inequality, pollution, unsafe workplaces, and a legacy of political corruption. Here in the reality based community, we know that lssez faire is a miserable failure. The US only became a superpower thanks to the untiring efforts of dedicated activists reversing the trends of wealth redistribution to the wealthy.
I'll tell you what, you point to the libertarian argument that supports your position, (because I know you haven't come up with any original arguments of your own) and I'll debunk it for you. Sound fair?
What makes you think China will let us sell to their enormous market? They have the Yuan pegged to the dollar, so no amount of trade imbalance will make our goods cheaper to them.
Don't forget that money spent on Chinese products leaves the country, whereas money spent on American products circulates in our own economy, creating more and more wealth as it goes, instead of disappearing into some foreign coffers.
We aren't being taxed by the Chinese, their citizens are. And I am not suggesting we subsidize our industries, I am saying we increase tariffs on Chinese goods. And the last time I looked, our government is not oppressive. China's is, and that lets them unfairly produce goods cheaper than we do. If they won't compete on a level playing field, let them get taxed twice, once by China in the form of pollution and medical expenses, once by us in the form of tariffs. As an added bonus, it would help balance our budget and create American jobs. You do support a balanced budget and more American jobs, right?
And you work for them, astroturf boy. Sorry I ruined your publicity stunt!
And those places have LOWER taxes than we do? The fact is, the rich are already investing there and developing markets. There is no sense in developing markets here, the rich have already taken all the middle class' money. Why would they invest here when there is no demand? The American rich feel absolutely no loyalty to America or her citizens. They are already screwing us over, and the common wisdom seems to be that we need to lay back and take it, or they might leave us. Yes, please, my ass is feeling pretty chapped.
I'm tired of being the abused wife defending her retarded alcoholic husband when people point out that he's beaten her senseless.
Your position seems to be that we should allow the powerful to exploit us, because that will make us all richer the quickest.
You like playing host to parasites, I get it. Might I suggest you move to Somalia? There aren't any pesky laws keeping the parasites off you over there.
I never said anything about cutting China off, just taxing their goods in order to equalize the subsidies they give their industries. China is taxing its citizens and using the money to subsidize industry. Chinese citizens pay for the pollution, unsafe conditions, and low wages while the corporations get to produce goods at less than market rates thanks to the subsidies.
Are they really a big market for us? Those numbers tell me we DO have the power to hold them accountable.
What do you think China is doing? They are redistributing wealth from the workers to the corporations. Someone pays the costs. Those kind of environmental and human rights abuses are not sustainable.
Did you hear that Fidel Castro has publicly come out in support of free market reforms? I guess our embargo of Cuba worked.
I don't buy iCrap, but yes, I would pay more to have a clean conscience. Not supporting tyranny actually matters to decent people.
I'm sick and tired of the rich blackmailing us like this. We do not need them. Where would they go, anyway? Would they really be willing to give up such a lucrative market? If they leave, it's not as though the demand for goods and services disappears. We really don't need their investments. We can borrow from ourselves and pay it off by growing our economy.
It isn't really about human rights or pollution. It really is about unfair trade. Having lax environmental and worker safety laws amounts to the same thing as directly subsidizing your industries, which the WTO frowns on.
You forgot D) China complies with worldwide standards and practices fair trade.
Yeah, that is the court where we sue them for subsidizing their industry through lax environmental and worker safety laws. Subsidizing your industries so that they can produce items below cost (pollution and worker medical problems are costs) is not fair trade as defined by the WTO.
That is just fine, the more useless leaches "Go Galt" and flee the states, the better. We don't need those parasites. If they want to do business here, we still get to tax them until they bleed. And if they don't, great! Less competition for real American businesses.
Really? When they say they only made 130k in sales, where did the other 470k come from?
This is a cheap publicity stunt, nothing more.
Which part? China is a prime example of a hydraulic empire, and their culture reflects that. Considering that they had their first major empire collapse in 500BC or so and six major players left were fielding million man, iron equipped armies at the time, I'm really not sure what you are referring to as 'nonsense.'
I'm saying that we uphold our values and protect our interests. Is that really too much to ask of a nation that has been touted as the best on Earth?
Why should give them the benefit of our trade when they do not behave in a fair manner? You seem to be saying we shouldn't hold our trading partners accountable for their human rights violations. Why is it okay to do business with some mass murderers and not others?