1) Telling someone it's their "own fault" they're dying of hunger, and using that as an excuse to leave them to die of hunger, makes you respectively a jackass and a cunt (i.e. wrong and evil);
2) You're confusing socialism with communism (i.e. ignorant).
when he invests, he is putting the fruit of his _previous work_ at risk.
No, that isn't working. That's putting "the fruit of his previous work at risk". (Although for most businesspeople, it's not nearly as simple as earning money by hard work then investing - it's usually inherited wealth/loans/who-ya-know/etc.)
He can lose it all,
No, that's precisely what a limited liability company is designed to prevent.
Meanwhile, the person doing the job (i.e. the employee), will get paid whether the investment is good or bad.
No. If the investment is bad, there is no means of production (since that is privately held), therefore the employee cannot get paid. Indeed, the employer can wind up a company even without paying wages due.
Oh, and I say this as someone who did start up a successful business by working in an office and saving up money.
The system works because the capitalist takes the risk (therefore he has an incentive to take on successful projects and avoid bad ones) and the employee minimizes risk while providing services he is good at and getting access to the tools that help him.
You're right. I was poking the, "Piracy is okay because it actually increases profits!" camp rather than the, "Perhaps the industry would think about..." camp. And lawmakers ought not to legislate based on what is more profitable!
And yeah, it is extreme - for some reason people are more worked up by rape than even e.g. murder, and that intrigues me, so I was being a bit flamebaitish.
What the hell are you talking about? It's called The Internationale for a reason.
The main difference between a socialist and a capitalist is that socialists think you shouldn't be rewarded for investment, only for work, IOW no reward for laziness.
That's the clincher. And, yes, it's usually not about someone acting solo - these man-gods need supporters, who carry the same blind belief.
(Although Lenin wasn't really what went wrong in Russia - Lenin did, for all his ideals, respond to feedback in the medium term. It's Stalin who really showed us where a country led by self-belief leads you.)
Dude, carefully read my OP and the half dozen eludications that other friendly people here have given - IamTheRealMike's post is particularly informative if you want more specifics. Then go have a beer, light up, browse some porn, or something.
Perhaps you're having a bad week, and my sympathies if so, but chill. It's only the Internet.
Well, I think you've been overly optimistic with your detail, but I agree with the thrust of your message. None of these things are about one man thinking they've invented a better society, however - they're about lots of people working together to form consensus on gradual improvements to society, then putting that consensus into practice, then evaluating it.
The main difference between the 20th century and previous centuries is communication. We're educated, dynamic peers. We're not always looking to one man/god/cadre to solve every problem. (Of course, we still often do that - whether genuflecting to an industrialist, politician or preacher - but much less. Thank fuck.)
People who think they've invented a better society are the nastiest sort. The biggest problem is that they're stupid - they create a simplistic, inadequate set of rules to live by. Whether they're underground libertards (as here), staunch conservatives or flag-waving Leninists, they soon find that their utopia isn't quite working out the way they planned.
Debian called - it wants to know why you have only been running the same install since 2001.
Honestly, I thought FreeBSD was okay in the late '90s, but it's managed by a bunch of puffed-up egotists and nepotists who seem to deliberately refuse to document - or do anything else which would increase the pool of systems developers.
At least de Raadt, for all his unsupportable fuckwittery, has a goal beyond himself. And NetBSD, in it's time... well, "of course it runs" it. But FreeBSD, like Yahoo, is just inertia.
I have a simple litmus test for a person's belief system. I ask the following question:
"Does your system require that people suffer, not because they would have anyway, but because of the rules of the system?"
It obviously immediately eliminates American Capitalism and Soviet Communism as thoroughly immoral - though I can hear the ideologues right now prepare themselves to explain why some suffering MUST happen (although conveniently it won't much suffering for them, only for someone else in the system) - but it can also be applied to features of subsystems.
In this case, the NSA is immoral on several counts - one of which, as you rightly point out, is that merely because of this mindless obsession with data-gathering, resources must be taken away from other facilities which benefit people.
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1) Telling someone it's their "own fault" they're dying of hunger, and using that as an excuse to leave them to die of hunger, makes you respectively a jackass and a cunt (i.e. wrong and evil);
2) You're confusing socialism with communism (i.e. ignorant).
0/2, must try harder.
profits are extremely relevant to the question of whether it is immoral
what
rape itself is inherently immoral, while copying is not
inherently immoral
what
Which comes down to the same thing. Think.
when he invests, he is putting the fruit of his _previous work_ at risk.
No, that isn't working. That's putting "the fruit of his previous work at risk". (Although for most businesspeople, it's not nearly as simple as earning money by hard work then investing - it's usually inherited wealth/loans/who-ya-know/etc.)
He can lose it all,
No, that's precisely what a limited liability company is designed to prevent.
Meanwhile, the person doing the job (i.e. the employee), will get paid whether the investment is good or bad.
No. If the investment is bad, there is no means of production (since that is privately held), therefore the employee cannot get paid. Indeed, the employer can wind up a company even without paying wages due.
Oh, and I say this as someone who did start up a successful business by working in an office and saving up money.
The system works because the capitalist takes the risk (therefore he has an incentive to take on successful projects and avoid bad ones) and the employee minimizes risk while providing services he is good at and getting access to the tools that help him.
That's the crude initial hypothesis, yes.
I see you mention musicians then Justin Bieber.
You're right. I was poking the, "Piracy is okay because it actually increases profits!" camp rather than the, "Perhaps the industry would think about..." camp. And lawmakers ought not to legislate based on what is more profitable!
And yeah, it is extreme - for some reason people are more worked up by rape than even e.g. murder, and that intrigues me, so I was being a bit flamebaitish.
You know those "A is to B as C is to D" quizzes you had/have to take at school? Do you notice how they're not saying that A is C and B is D?
The people actually doing the work are always paid the least. That's what the "capital" in "capitalism" intends.
(And it works surprisingly well, but it's so far short of ideal.)
...but that doesn't mean it's right.
Look, I'm all for piracy. But whether it increases sales is irrelevant.
What the hell are you talking about? It's called The Internationale for a reason.
The main difference between a socialist and a capitalist is that socialists think you shouldn't be rewarded for investment, only for work, IOW no reward for laziness.
Actually, I'd say the welfare-poverty problem in India is bigger than all those issues, yes.
"...before they did the whole..."
That's the clincher. And, yes, it's usually not about someone acting solo - these man-gods need supporters, who carry the same blind belief.
(Although Lenin wasn't really what went wrong in Russia - Lenin did, for all his ideals, respond to feedback in the medium term. It's Stalin who really showed us where a country led by self-belief leads you.)
Dude, carefully read my OP and the half dozen eludications that other friendly people here have given - IamTheRealMike's post is particularly informative if you want more specifics. Then go have a beer, light up, browse some porn, or something.
Perhaps you're having a bad week, and my sympathies if so, but chill. It's only the Internet.
If that's a parody, it's beautiful. But if not...
making it more of a struggle for existence against aggressors than simply snuffing out people with disagreements ala soviet purges.
How do you think the soviet purges were justified?
If your society involves murdering witnesses for declaring what they've witnessed, it isn't better.
"You can only test..."
"...we can't even measure the amount of good..."
Please reconcile.
nemo iudex in causa sua, you dullard.
Well, I think you've been overly optimistic with your detail, but I agree with the thrust of your message. None of these things are about one man thinking they've invented a better society, however - they're about lots of people working together to form consensus on gradual improvements to society, then putting that consensus into practice, then evaluating it.
The main difference between the 20th century and previous centuries is communication. We're educated, dynamic peers. We're not always looking to one man/god/cadre to solve every problem. (Of course, we still often do that - whether genuflecting to an industrialist, politician or preacher - but much less. Thank fuck.)
One he has his hypothesis, he obtains consent from the people. Once he has consent, he tests it.
He still doesn't think he's invented a better society - yet.
Don't strawman, now. Trying to create a better society is a very different thing from thinking you've invented one.
People who think they've invented a better society are the nastiest sort. The biggest problem is that they're stupid - they create a simplistic, inadequate set of rules to live by. Whether they're underground libertards (as here), staunch conservatives or flag-waving Leninists, they soon find that their utopia isn't quite working out the way they planned.
And then they start killing people.
And yet it moves.
"If the rules were different, would this suffering still happen?"
Suffering is well defined in dictionaries,Wikipedia, etc. Trying to make a simplistic economic definition is missing the point entirely.
Try various dictionaries, or even Wikipedia.
Debian called - it wants to know why you have only been running the same install since 2001.
Honestly, I thought FreeBSD was okay in the late '90s, but it's managed by a bunch of puffed-up egotists and nepotists who seem to deliberately refuse to document - or do anything else which would increase the pool of systems developers.
At least de Raadt, for all his unsupportable fuckwittery, has a goal beyond himself. And NetBSD, in it's time... well, "of course it runs" it. But FreeBSD, like Yahoo, is just inertia.
I have a simple litmus test for a person's belief system. I ask the following question:
"Does your system require that people suffer, not because they would have anyway, but because of the rules of the system?"
It obviously immediately eliminates American Capitalism and Soviet Communism as thoroughly immoral - though I can hear the ideologues right now prepare themselves to explain why some suffering MUST happen (although conveniently it won't much suffering for them, only for someone else in the system) - but it can also be applied to features of subsystems.
In this case, the NSA is immoral on several counts - one of which, as you rightly point out, is that merely because of this mindless obsession with data-gathering, resources must be taken away from other facilities which benefit people.