Standard Oil got its market position with no government aid whatsoever. It dominated the market because of Rockefeller's foresight in reading future trends and obsession with efficiency.
While other refiners dumped the waste products from the refining process directly into rivers, since the government at that time refused to enforce property right laws involving pollution, Rockefeller hired chemists to find uses for the waste products. This R&D paid off in spades as it meant he could earn more money from a barrel of oil than his competitors.
Standard Oil declined rapidly once Rockefeller retired in 1896. The management that took his place was too conservative and was outmaneuvered by smaller competitors. By the time the antitrust cases came to fruition it was for naught, Standard Oil's dominance had already been destroyed by the market, it was now just another oil company in a market with dozens of competing oil refiners.
The only thing Das Kapital is good for is a history lesson on 19th century economic thought and starting a campfire. Trying to learn practical economic knowledge from Das Kapital is like trying to learn practical medical knowledge from a 19th century surgeons textbook. Sure there may be a true tidbit here and there, but most of it is horribly out of date and wrong.
“He believed that by the 23rd century, mankind would have evolved past the need for money.”
The problem with Roddenberry is that he never understood what money is, a unit of measure and a medium of exchange. Humans can't get rid of money any more than they can get rid of rulers or numbers. Well, technically they can, but only if you enjoy the hunter/gatherer lifestyle.
The Federation could never work in real life, and would quickly collapse for the same reason the Soviet Union during War Communism, 1918–1921, did. That reason is the problem of economic calculation, as pointed out by Ludwig von Mises in 1920. Without profit and loss it is physically impossible to make rational economic decisions. The only way to figure out what to produce and how to produce it is by the profit and loss mechanism. Without market prices entrepreneurs have no way of knowing what or how to most efficiently meet the desires of consumers.
Should car chassis be built of Steel, Aluminum, or Titanium? From a technical point of view, the answer is Titanium as it gives the lightest and strongest chassis. The entrepreneur though can look at the market prices for those metals along with the costs of fabricating with those metals and see that the most economical choice is steel. A central planner would not have market prices and would have no idea which choice would use the fewest resources. Thus you ended up with the Trabant in East Germany, built with cotton reenforced resin because steel was artificially scarce in the Eastern Block and an inefficient, labor-intensive production process because there was no competition in the automobile industry to force innovation.
One way that the Federation could have kludged along is with the help of the Ferengi. The Soviet Union was able to kludge along economically because it could borrow the market prices from the capitalist West and use that to crudely calculate, but the calculations made were never close to optimal and choices were frequently made for political reasons, like the retention of the Trabant's labor-intensive production process.
This is of course the same reason why all the government's/central bank's efforts into the economy over the last 12+ years have failed, no profit/loss and decisions are politically motivated. It's not that they are stupid or don't care, it's because it is impossible for them to know the information that would be necessary for them to make the correct decision. The distortions they put into market signals cause the rest of the market to go haywire as entrepreneurs act upon false economic signals.
You entire premise makes no sense, why does one need to JUTIFY as you put it anything?
Because otherwise it is nothing more than your opinion. If you think rape is wrong and someone thinks it is OK, where does that leave you?
if you want justification how about for the harm it does to society which i already pointed out?
That "harm" is nothing more than a matter of your opinion. What if I disagree? What if I think the benefits outweigh the supposed "harm" you cite? What if a majority disagrees with you? Are you going to have something more substantial than, "Because I say so" as an argument? Under atheism you have no objective standard to point to, all morality becomes under atheism is whatever the majority thinks it is. From a practical perspective it means, "Might makes right". Your moral code is built on a foundation of sand. You think 9/11 was evil, Bin Laden thinks it was good. Who is right? Under atheism the answer is "both" since such actions are morally neutral and are nothing more than a personal opinion. Yet you know in your heart that this is false.
The Theist worldview has such an objective standard with which to compare to. To use a quote I think you will recognize, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Or how about treating others with decency and respect will often get YOU treated with decency and respect in return? How about common fucking sense? Do they not exist in your world? Apparently not, since you just seem to be incapable of even picturing a world where we don't need sky bullies to live decent lives.
That's only one option of how we can live our lives and is nothing more than your opinion. You're only preferring that because it suits your self interest right now. Given YOUR current situation, living the way you are now is indeed common sense, but that does absolutely nothing to prove that it is "right" or "wrong".
What If I want to, and am able to, live my life like Joseph Stalin? A life of absolute luxury while millions starve. If life ends at the grave why should I care about those millions my lifestyle has killed? If, like Hitler, someone else disagrees and they are at my doorstep I just put a pistol in my mouth and get away scott free with no punishment for my actions. After all, I have to die sometime, why NOT exploit my fellow man and get as much as I can out of the life I have?
If I can get away with it, why shouldn't I lie cheat and steal? Bernard Madoff lived the high life for decades on his Ponzi scheme. He's 70+, he'll be dead soon anyway. Decades of luxury, wealth, and power followed by a few years in prison hanging out with Carmine Persico, the former mob boss, or Jonathan Pollard, the spy? Quite a few people would take that option given the chance, regardless of who it hurt. Given Atheism, if someone were to make that choice, thinking that the benefits outweighed the costs, why would it be wrong?
You also misunderstand what belief in god is, God is not fire insurance in case some day when we die there is a hell. God is not something that we can pay our dues to once a week or twice a year and then expect to be saved from hell. We cannot even go to church every day of the week and expect to be saved from hell. Salvation is not something that we can keep in our back pocket just in case someday we need it. Salvation is a completely new lifestyle. It is changing the way we live, and think, and breathe, and why we breathe. Salvation, ultimately, is to know God and to live to please him. That doesn't mean that we will always please him. As long as we are alive there are going to every day be new ways in which we sin. But if we give our lives over to Jesus that means that if we were homosexuals or lesbians it means that we have changed our ways, repented of our sins, and are now living the straight and narrow path t
Actually I'd say you are misinformed, or at least misguided. you say that atheist can tell "good" from "evil" yet yet we are supposed to not act on this...why exactly?............
You have completely misunderstood the argument and are getting mad at a straw-man. Don't worry, it took me plenty of time to wrap my head around some of this when I first started studying philosophy.
The problem is NOT, can Atheists recognize objective moral values. They can.
The problem is NOT, can Atheists live moral lives. They do.
The problem IS, can Atheists JUSTIFY the existence of objective moral values. They can't.
Let me distill the problem down for you to the most simple and basic level.
1. Is rape OBJECTIVELY wrong?
2. If yes, says who? (Who or what is the OBJECTIVE standard for that moral belief.)
That is the problem right there for Athisim, heavily stripped down of course. Despite thousands of years of trying, Atheistic philosophy cannot put forth an answer to question #2 that stands up to scrutiny as objective morality rather than moral relativism. Many Atheist philosophers over the years, Friedrich Nietzsche, Baruch Spinoza, and David Hume among many have simply admitted that the answer to question 1 is "no", that rape is not objectivity wrong and that all morality is in some form or another relative to the individual and society. Atheism has no metaphorical foundation on which to base objective morality. All it can do is moral relativism.
I hope that cleared up the misunderstanding. You're a smart person, I know you can understand the point being made. What you do with it of course is up to you.
Unfortunately you are incorrect. Without an objective standard of "good" any claim of "good" or "evil" is nothing more than ones personal opinion. Under Atheism, if god does not exist, to say that killing the mentally retarded is "evil" is nothing more than ones own personal opinion. Someone else could hold the opinion that the burden they place on society is too great and is hurting the rest of society.
Let me explain it this way: How do you objectively tell if a drawing of President Obama is a "Good" drawing? Simple, since President Obama exists you simply compare the drawing to the original. There is an objective standard to compare to.
Now, how do you tell if a drawing of Sherlock Holmes is a "Good" drawing? You can't, Sherlock Holmes doesn't exist, therefore any conclusion of "good"or "bad" is relative. There is no objective standard to compare to.
Under Theism there is an objective "good", a standard that one can compare and justify moral actions against. (A standard that we ALL fall short of.) Under Atheism there is not, everything is relative.
Now of course the question is NOT, can Atheists recognize objective moral values. They certainly do. Romans 2:14-15 Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.
The moral law is written on the hearts of all humans, none is without excuse. The problem for Atheists is that while they recognize moral values and duties and can live lives that put theists to shame, they cannot JUSTIFY objective morality. The Atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was correct in his observation that "If God is dead, everything is permitted.". Most Artiest and Theist philosophers agree. Without God to serve as a foundation for morality, "good" and evil" do not exist. Rape is no more "evil" than belching at the dinner table. All that exists is a sea of differing personal opinions.
So what you have in the case of hairyfeet's post is incoherence. On one hand he says that god does not exist by holding to Atheism, but then claims that god DOES exist by claiming that objective evil exists. (Richard Dawkins also has this problem of incoherence.) His observations on technical matters are superb, thus why I follow his posts on those subjects, but his philosophical and economic observations show that he is simply uninformed on those subjects. Nothing to be ashamed about, we all have subjects that we are not well read in. You don't see me commenting in car forums about rebuilding a transmission.
Thankfully most Atheists do not follow their philosophical beliefs to their logical conclusion, sadly though, most don't even realize the conclusions that their worldview leads to. On the flip side, the world would be a far better place if more Christians DID follow their philosophical beliefs to their logical conclusion, it's sickening how many supposed "Christians" I run across that are pro warfare state.
Slashdot Mirror
Standard Oil got its market position with no government aid whatsoever. It dominated the market because of Rockefeller's foresight in reading future trends and obsession with efficiency.
While other refiners dumped the waste products from the refining process directly into rivers, since the government at that time refused to enforce property right laws involving pollution, Rockefeller hired chemists to find uses for the waste products. This R&D paid off in spades as it meant he could earn more money from a barrel of oil than his competitors.
Standard Oil declined rapidly once Rockefeller retired in 1896. The management that took his place was too conservative and was outmaneuvered by smaller competitors. By the time the antitrust cases came to fruition it was for naught, Standard Oil's dominance had already been destroyed by the market, it was now just another oil company in a market with dozens of competing oil refiners.
The only thing Das Kapital is good for is a history lesson on 19th century economic thought and starting a campfire. Trying to learn practical economic knowledge from Das Kapital is like trying to learn practical medical knowledge from a 19th century surgeons textbook. Sure there may be a true tidbit here and there, but most of it is horribly out of date and wrong.
Yea, that was always a glaring plot hole for me as well. Here is a good article that I think you would like on the subject.
The Economic Fantasy of “Star Trek” http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-economic-fantasy-of-quotstar-trekquot/
“He believed that by the 23rd century, mankind would have evolved past the need for money.”
The problem with Roddenberry is that he never understood what money is, a unit of measure and a medium of exchange. Humans can't get rid of money any more than they can get rid of rulers or numbers. Well, technically they can, but only if you enjoy the hunter/gatherer lifestyle.
The Federation could never work in real life, and would quickly collapse for the same reason the Soviet Union during War Communism, 1918–1921, did. That reason is the problem of economic calculation, as pointed out by Ludwig von Mises in 1920. Without profit and loss it is physically impossible to make rational economic decisions. The only way to figure out what to produce and how to produce it is by the profit and loss mechanism. Without market prices entrepreneurs have no way of knowing what or how to most efficiently meet the desires of consumers.
Should car chassis be built of Steel, Aluminum, or Titanium? From a technical point of view, the answer is Titanium as it gives the lightest and strongest chassis. The entrepreneur though can look at the market prices for those metals along with the costs of fabricating with those metals and see that the most economical choice is steel. A central planner would not have market prices and would have no idea which choice would use the fewest resources. Thus you ended up with the Trabant in East Germany, built with cotton reenforced resin because steel was artificially scarce in the Eastern Block and an inefficient, labor-intensive production process because there was no competition in the automobile industry to force innovation.
One way that the Federation could have kludged along is with the help of the Ferengi. The Soviet Union was able to kludge along economically because it could borrow the market prices from the capitalist West and use that to crudely calculate, but the calculations made were never close to optimal and choices were frequently made for political reasons, like the retention of the Trabant's labor-intensive production process.
This is of course the same reason why all the government's/central bank's efforts into the economy over the last 12+ years have failed, no profit/loss and decisions are politically motivated. It's not that they are stupid or don't care, it's because it is impossible for them to know the information that would be necessary for them to make the correct decision. The distortions they put into market signals cause the rest of the market to go haywire as entrepreneurs act upon false economic signals.
You entire premise makes no sense, why does one need to JUTIFY as you put it anything?
Because otherwise it is nothing more than your opinion. If you think rape is wrong and someone thinks it is OK, where does that leave you?
if you want justification how about for the harm it does to society which i already pointed out?
That "harm" is nothing more than a matter of your opinion. What if I disagree? What if I think the benefits outweigh the supposed "harm" you cite? What if a majority disagrees with you? Are you going to have something more substantial than, "Because I say so" as an argument? Under atheism you have no objective standard to point to, all morality becomes under atheism is whatever the majority thinks it is. From a practical perspective it means, "Might makes right". Your moral code is built on a foundation of sand. You think 9/11 was evil, Bin Laden thinks it was good. Who is right? Under atheism the answer is "both" since such actions are morally neutral and are nothing more than a personal opinion. Yet you know in your heart that this is false.
The Theist worldview has such an objective standard with which to compare to. To use a quote I think you will recognize, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Or how about treating others with decency and respect will often get YOU treated with decency and respect in return? How about common fucking sense? Do they not exist in your world? Apparently not, since you just seem to be incapable of even picturing a world where we don't need sky bullies to live decent lives.
That's only one option of how we can live our lives and is nothing more than your opinion. You're only preferring that because it suits your self interest right now. Given YOUR current situation, living the way you are now is indeed common sense, but that does absolutely nothing to prove that it is "right" or "wrong".
What If I want to, and am able to, live my life like Joseph Stalin? A life of absolute luxury while millions starve. If life ends at the grave why should I care about those millions my lifestyle has killed? If, like Hitler, someone else disagrees and they are at my doorstep I just put a pistol in my mouth and get away scott free with no punishment for my actions. After all, I have to die sometime, why NOT exploit my fellow man and get as much as I can out of the life I have? If I can get away with it, why shouldn't I lie cheat and steal? Bernard Madoff lived the high life for decades on his Ponzi scheme. He's 70+, he'll be dead soon anyway. Decades of luxury, wealth, and power followed by a few years in prison hanging out with Carmine Persico, the former mob boss, or Jonathan Pollard, the spy? Quite a few people would take that option given the chance, regardless of who it hurt. Given Atheism, if someone were to make that choice, thinking that the benefits outweighed the costs, why would it be wrong?
You also misunderstand what belief in god is, God is not fire insurance in case some day when we die there is a hell. God is not something that we can pay our dues to once a week or twice a year and then expect to be saved from hell. We cannot even go to church every day of the week and expect to be saved from hell. Salvation is not something that we can keep in our back pocket just in case someday we need it. Salvation is a completely new lifestyle. It is changing the way we live, and think, and breathe, and why we breathe. Salvation, ultimately, is to know God and to live to please him. That doesn't mean that we will always please him. As long as we are alive there are going to every day be new ways in which we sin. But if we give our lives over to Jesus that means that if we were homosexuals or lesbians it means that we have changed our ways, repented of our sins, and are now living the straight and narrow path t
Actually I'd say you are misinformed, or at least misguided. you say that atheist can tell "good" from "evil" yet yet we are supposed to not act on this...why exactly?............
/Good day.
You have completely misunderstood the argument and are getting mad at a straw-man. Don't worry, it took me plenty of time to wrap my head around some of this when I first started studying philosophy.
The problem is NOT, can Atheists recognize objective moral values. They can.
The problem is NOT, can Atheists live moral lives. They do.
The problem IS, can Atheists JUSTIFY the existence of objective moral values. They can't.
Let me distill the problem down for you to the most simple and basic level.
1. Is rape OBJECTIVELY wrong?
2. If yes, says who? (Who or what is the OBJECTIVE standard for that moral belief.)
That is the problem right there for Athisim, heavily stripped down of course. Despite thousands of years of trying, Atheistic philosophy cannot put forth an answer to question #2 that stands up to scrutiny as objective morality rather than moral relativism. Many Atheist philosophers over the years, Friedrich Nietzsche, Baruch Spinoza, and David Hume among many have simply admitted that the answer to question 1 is "no", that rape is not objectivity wrong and that all morality is in some form or another relative to the individual and society. Atheism has no metaphorical foundation on which to base objective morality. All it can do is moral relativism.
I hope that cleared up the misunderstanding. You're a smart person, I know you can understand the point being made. What you do with it of course is up to you.
Unfortunately you are incorrect. Without an objective standard of "good" any claim of "good" or "evil" is nothing more than ones personal opinion. Under Atheism, if god does not exist, to say that killing the mentally retarded is "evil" is nothing more than ones own personal opinion. Someone else could hold the opinion that the burden they place on society is too great and is hurting the rest of society.
Let me explain it this way: How do you objectively tell if a drawing of President Obama is a "Good" drawing? Simple, since President Obama exists you simply compare the drawing to the original. There is an objective standard to compare to.
Now, how do you tell if a drawing of Sherlock Holmes is a "Good" drawing? You can't, Sherlock Holmes doesn't exist, therefore any conclusion of "good"or "bad" is relative. There is no objective standard to compare to.
Under Theism there is an objective "good", a standard that one can compare and justify moral actions against. (A standard that we ALL fall short of.) Under Atheism there is not, everything is relative.
Now of course the question is NOT, can Atheists recognize objective moral values. They certainly do. Romans 2:14-15 Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.
The moral law is written on the hearts of all humans, none is without excuse. The problem for Atheists is that while they recognize moral values and duties and can live lives that put theists to shame, they cannot JUSTIFY objective morality. The Atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was correct in his observation that "If God is dead, everything is permitted.". Most Artiest and Theist philosophers agree. Without God to serve as a foundation for morality, "good" and evil" do not exist. Rape is no more "evil" than belching at the dinner table. All that exists is a sea of differing personal opinions.
So what you have in the case of hairyfeet's post is incoherence. On one hand he says that god does not exist by holding to Atheism, but then claims that god DOES exist by claiming that objective evil exists. (Richard Dawkins also has this problem of incoherence.) His observations on technical matters are superb, thus why I follow his posts on those subjects, but his philosophical and economic observations show that he is simply uninformed on those subjects. Nothing to be ashamed about, we all have subjects that we are not well read in. You don't see me commenting in car forums about rebuilding a transmission.
Thankfully most Atheists do not follow their philosophical beliefs to their logical conclusion, sadly though, most don't even realize the conclusions that their worldview leads to. On the flip side, the world would be a far better place if more Christians DID follow their philosophical beliefs to their logical conclusion, it's sickening how many supposed "Christians" I run across that are pro warfare state.