I'm just wondering how the fan base of South Park is just now maybe going to be polarized on this issue, or start seeing their views as crazy.
I mean no offense but where have you guys been? Muslims have rioted around the world, killed people, and attempted to kill people, all for insulting their religion. The Danish cartoon riots were *world wide*, it was serious news that nobody could have missed!
At what point does practice start reflecting on the spirit or theory of a religion?
If you took any one person or one event behind the Spanish Inquisition, it wouldn't reflect on Christianity. But taken together most people say that was in fact the nature of the religion at the time and it has changed since then.
Well right now the nature of Islam is not that good. Why people go out of their way to defend Islam by saying "the TRUE Islam is..." makes no sense to me. Aren't we all adult enough (on slashdot at least) to know there's no TRUE anything when it comes to politics and religion?
What would be correct is that the end-goal of Islam is extremely peaceful. Islam says that peace is obtained when everybody submits to Allah's will and becomes Muslim. That would indeed be peaceful, as homogeneity usually is.
The process of reaching that end-goal, which includes jihad, is most decidedly not peaceful.
Maybe the Muslim community supports them more than you think.
What I've found talking with moderate Muslims from Muslim-majority countries is that they are all for tolerance in principle, but in specific instances they'll say "Yeah but why do they want to say THAT about Muhammed? What does that contribute to free speech?" and so on.
We don't exactly help the situation when we have Western countries that outlaw hate speech (e.g. Canada, which recently threatened Anne Coulter when she was going to speak at a university).
I don't know if you've ever read Terry Pratchett novels, but a recurring joke is when the police investigate a death and classify it as suicide instead of murder - because the person did something provocative that would obviously lead to murder. The assumption is that the people who murdered him HAD to murder him.
Muslim countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan have a segmented society and the moderate, liberalized, urban Muslims who you typically see as journalists, authors, etc, are very much like Terry Pratchett's characters. They see a huge segment of their population as beyond help. The bad Muslims have a "tribal" (not "Muslim") culture. They are uneducated and ignorant. They don't know the true Islam. Maybe they are funded/co-opted by the CIA/Israel/India/Blackwater. Whatever the excuse, the purpose is to say "See, we have all these people who JUST HAVE TO get violent when you do something un-Islamic like insult Muhammed, promote women's education, say something positive about the US."
So for the sake of the stability of their society, they say, they can't support the kind of "destructive" free speech that we want them to support.
The debatable part (for us) is whether those "tribal" people really don't understand Islam, or if it's the moderate and liberal minority who doesn't understand Islam. (As if there's one "Islam" anyway.) And to what degree the moderates are actually moderate compared to using the "tribal" excuse to appear moderate while pragmatically leaning towards fundamentalism.
indiscriminate - not marked by careful distinction : deficient in discrimination and discernment The US army killed everyone in the group since 1 may have had a gun and 1 may have had an RPG. That may be called prudent even. But it certainly was indiscriminate.
They discriminated between the armed group and the rest of the city. It's not the granularity you wanted but that's a matter of opinion.
unprovoked - occurring without motivation or provocation The men on the ground didn't shoot. They weren't close enough to swear at or give the finger. Hell there was no indication that they were aware of the helicopter.
Well, carrying an RPG in a war zone is provocative. You really can't argue against that can you?
What's wrong with being weak? It's reality. No country on earth is strong enough to fight terrorism effectively and have a lower level of collateral damage (including damage brought about through inaction). If nobody is that strong, though, maybe your criteria for strength are flawed.
If an artificial legal construct can have income and profit, there seems to be no reason why it ought not to be taxed
The practical reason it should not be taxed is that it further obfuscates tax revenue sources. I think it would be great if employer portions of income taxes were clearly listed on everybody's paychecks. Everybody's 401k or IRA statement should show how much lower their dividends were because of various taxes. Every receipt for gasoline should break out the gas tax.
How does a tax on land make more sense than on roads? The government didn't create the land or pay to maintain the land, it just exists. Roads are built and paid for and need to be maintained, so charging for them makes sense.
You act like employees, customers, and suppliers are just doing it all for fun. You can turn it around and say the employees, customers, and suppliers need the roads to interact with each other. So why shouldn't they pay for it? The "corporation" is just a name for a way to organize those activities, it's not a real thing.
I remember the tobacco companies quietly publishing reports that smoking lowers overall government costs due to earlier deaths. Does that make not smoking immoral too because you're brazenly going around costing everybody more money? Also, could your assumption that not wearing a seatbelt results in more money being spent be wrong for similar reasons?
Personally I don't think utilitarianism should be the basis of morality.
No one has ever said that the only way the climate can warm is due to humans burning fossil fuels. Deniers like to act as if AGW proponents have said that, however. 'Tis just a strawman.
This is your own strawman. AGW skeptics don't believe that AGW proponents believe that climate change can only be caused by humans burning fossil fuels. Indeed, that's why they like to bring up climate change that happened 20k years ago, because AGW proponents can't deny that climate change happens without human involvement.
Don't mix up actual houses and homes with political authority in a region. Do you honestly think the UN sent troops or something to go kick Palestinians out of their very houses?
Now I know many Palestinians lost their homes in later wars; some say they left voluntarily others say they were kicked out by the Israeli army. Either way, that's not what you're saying and has nothing to do with the founding of Israel.
India with corruption so deep-set and intractable that even buying a TV usually involves multiple pay-offs?
Where did that come from? I'm American and I am very puzzled where the hugely negative perception of India comes from. Is it just because they were friendly with the evil Soviets?
Oh give it up. When one talks about "Israel", "France", "USA" etc. doing something, it is clear that it is a reference to the people in power in these countries and not the abstract entities of "nations" themselves. And in the case of governments, single unified will is the usual outcome, be it a dictatorial decree or a result of a democratic vote.
That conflicts with what you said earlier, which is what I was replying to. The majority of people in Israel, a democratic country, seem to want Palestine to remain contained as long as Palestinians engage in terrorism against Israel. So again, how does "Israel" have the power to stop wanting that and thus change the situation? See the problem in what you said earlier in light of your revelations about the democratic voice?
Except of course in this entire disingenuous proposal the wholly arbitrary "changing of borders" as dictated by The Oh So Wise White Men from High Upon The Mountain would inevitably lead to far more violence - this time involving Jordan, Lebanon and Syria as additional direct, as opposed to merely passively hostile, combatants!
Damn, good one, you really zinged me by calling me a wise white man. And being so sarcastic. Great argument.
You are definitely a Supremacist. Racism may or may not play a role in that, but that is largely irrelevant. You are a Supremacist because you believe that one group of nations (Western ones in this case) is somehow more entitled to making decisions for denizens of other nations of a different cultural and ethnic background without any concern whatsoever about the opinions of those to be so treated.
You're the supremacist here. Apparently white men are not as qualified as others to opine on international conflicts?
Rejecting Supremacist arguments and philosophies out of hand is hardly "debasing oneself".
You have debased yourself by talking to someone on the internet, who you don't know, making all sorts of negative assumptions, and never presenting a coherent argument (let alone being friendly or extending good faith) regarding the facts or what I said.
You did have one reasonable fragment of a line in this post, mixed with racist garbage, about the passive hostiles becoming direct combatants. I would respond to that because I think it's correct but can be weighed against alternatives, but I don't see the point anymore.
Anyways, enjoy your life of hating white people who dare to stick their noses into "your" international business.
Of course there are laws. If you're restricting capitalism to purely the economic sense, there are still laws about murder, safety of personal property, etc. You and the other poster are confusing capitalism with anarchy. Did you even read the original post? He claimed that there are literally no restrictions on what is for sale in a capitalist society (note society, not economic system), meaning you could sell your services for assassination, organ harvesting, you could sell other people's property, etc. It's ridiculous.
How is it just for some people to so vastly overcharge and underpay that they have accumulated billions in wealth?
Some people make billions by selling something people want. There are some unjust billionaires and there are just billionaires.
How is our standard of living relevant in discussing the unjust accumulation of wealth by crooks?
Again, read the original post. I think our standard of living is relevant in discussing whether accumulation of wealth is de facto unjust (as you seem to be implying) because there's really nothing unjust if everybody is doing pretty well.
In real life, large disparities in income distribution characterize Third World economies, not our own erstwhile First World economy.
Yup there are huge disparities between the top 50% of the first world and the bottom 50% of third world. So that's why it's relevant. As part of the first world, it's stupid to be angry that other first-worlders are billionaires, since obviously our economic system has propelled you waaaay above the people in the third world and even if you're not in the top 1%, you're still doing pretty well in comparison.
There may not be any Christian churches but Christians are allowed to practice
How so? Most Christian denominations revolve around churches. A country that doesn't allow Christian churches is not "doing okay" with respect to its Christian minority and arguably does not allow them to practice. I mean if you are required to only "practice" in the privacy of your own head, I guess you could say every place on earth has complete religious freedom.
nor are other things forced on people like they were under the Taliban.
Really, so you think blasphemy laws aren't forced on non-Muslims?
I guess you didn't read all of my post, because you would have read where I said [slashdot.org]: "Not that it can't do better, but it has Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs. Now it was bad under the Taliban but they aren't in control anymore." But then because you specifically said there were no churches there I am led to believe you're trolling.
I read your whole post, and the part you quoted just now has nothing to do with my comment on the "doing okay" part. None of the stuff you quoted supports your claim that Afghanistan is doing okay.
I'm intrigued by your last comment about Islamic jihadism. Have you considered that part of the reaction of Christian fundamentalists is driven by the disparity in treatment given to different religions in academic settings?
The positive spin on non-Christian religions plays in beautifully with mainstream academic virtues like anti-imperialism/anti-colonialism and is a conscious counterbalance to years of "orientalism" which "poisoned" our thinking and caused most of the problems in the Middle East.
I was skeptical of your claim so I did some googling -- did you know there isn't a single Christian church in all of Afghanistan? The one church that was built in 1970 was bulldozed by Muslims in 1973.
I guess you either didn't know that or have some very strange ideas of what "doing okay" means for minority religions.
It's a little late to reply so you'll probably never see this but..
No, Israel has the power because
"Israel" is not a single person with a clear will, it's a bunch of people who want different things. By definition it does not have the power to do things it doesn't want to do, and that was my point. Israel has no more power than Palestine in that regard.
Current state of affairs was arrived at by historical events, pretending that it is not so is by definition designed to dis-enfranchise one side or the other in any uneven conflict (and in this particular case it is patently obvious that it would be the Arabs getting the shaft).
That's demonstrably wrong, because I proposed just such a solution and my design was not to consciously dis-enfranchise one side. I think both sides would benefit more by stopping the violence than either side would lose by having to change around their borders.
Let me get this straight, so you want to "solve" a problem caused by Western meddling... by more arrogant Western meddling
My reasoning is that two wrongs in quick succession may be less wrong overall than one wrong that is dragged out for decades upon decades. Feel free to criticize it in terms of its likelihood of success, but don't bother trying to label me a racist because I'm not. Your entire paragraph added nothing to the discussion except to make it clear that you will happily dismiss things for the wrong reasons, which only debases yourself.
In a true capitalistic country, there is no restriction on what can be for sale.
Right, because in capitalism there are no laws. There aren't even property laws in capitalism, you can literally sell someone else's house and pocket all the money!!!
And you can't really blame the Bill Gates of the world for it either. He got 1 vote. It is the millions of people who are just a paycheck away from complete financial ruin who vote against a system that could give them a proper safety net because they think that next paycheck will have a billion dollar amount on it, and then they would have to pay 50% taxes on it and that 500 million would mean utter ruination of their dream to one day make it rich.
They're also against them because they have a sense of fairness and justice. And as long as they're doing "okay" on their own why screw over someone else?
I mean every day we hear about how decadent and rich Americans are -- even the lower and middle classes. "Oh, you expect to be able to DRIVE A CAR and not use public transit???? You want a 2000sqft house!!???! If the poor of the world lived like you, our planet would die!"
So if you realize that you actually have a fairly high standard of living compared to much of the world, why would you feel the need to screw over the tiny percentage of people who have it even better? How is that just?
No man does 53 billion dollar of work. He games the system so the incremental profits of the workers at the bottom of the pyramid trickle up into his pockets.
How is that not work?
If you disagree, you are wrong.
The problem is you have your own special definition of "work". Managing people's assets apparently isn't work to you since you put Buffett in that list, and I honestly have no idea why. Don't you think it takes time and effort to make good decisions with money?
Oh, and fear of socialism is the primary undercurrent to keep healthcare in America as a luxury only the wealthy can afford.
No idea what you mean by wealthy, but a majority of Americans have health care so... I guess you're saying capitalism is a great system that creates tons of wealthy people and provides them with luxuries?
America is a fucked up mess. Capitalism is a fallacy.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm just wondering how the fan base of South Park is just now maybe going to be polarized on this issue, or start seeing their views as crazy.
I mean no offense but where have you guys been? Muslims have rioted around the world, killed people, and attempted to kill people, all for insulting their religion. The Danish cartoon riots were *world wide*, it was serious news that nobody could have missed!
At what point does practice start reflecting on the spirit or theory of a religion?
If you took any one person or one event behind the Spanish Inquisition, it wouldn't reflect on Christianity. But taken together most people say that was in fact the nature of the religion at the time and it has changed since then.
Well right now the nature of Islam is not that good. Why people go out of their way to defend Islam by saying "the TRUE Islam is ..." makes no sense to me. Aren't we all adult enough (on slashdot at least) to know there's no TRUE anything when it comes to politics and religion?
Islam, true Islam, is extremely peaceful.
You don't understand Islam.
What would be correct is that the end-goal of Islam is extremely peaceful. Islam says that peace is obtained when everybody submits to Allah's will and becomes Muslim. That would indeed be peaceful, as homogeneity usually is.
The process of reaching that end-goal, which includes jihad, is most decidedly not peaceful.
Maybe the Muslim community supports them more than you think.
What I've found talking with moderate Muslims from Muslim-majority countries is that they are all for tolerance in principle, but in specific instances they'll say "Yeah but why do they want to say THAT about Muhammed? What does that contribute to free speech?" and so on.
We don't exactly help the situation when we have Western countries that outlaw hate speech (e.g. Canada, which recently threatened Anne Coulter when she was going to speak at a university).
I don't know if you've ever read Terry Pratchett novels, but a recurring joke is when the police investigate a death and classify it as suicide instead of murder - because the person did something provocative that would obviously lead to murder. The assumption is that the people who murdered him HAD to murder him.
Muslim countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan have a segmented society and the moderate, liberalized, urban Muslims who you typically see as journalists, authors, etc, are very much like Terry Pratchett's characters. They see a huge segment of their population as beyond help. The bad Muslims have a "tribal" (not "Muslim") culture. They are uneducated and ignorant. They don't know the true Islam. Maybe they are funded/co-opted by the CIA/Israel/India/Blackwater. Whatever the excuse, the purpose is to say "See, we have all these people who JUST HAVE TO get violent when you do something un-Islamic like insult Muhammed, promote women's education, say something positive about the US."
So for the sake of the stability of their society, they say, they can't support the kind of "destructive" free speech that we want them to support.
The debatable part (for us) is whether those "tribal" people really don't understand Islam, or if it's the moderate and liberal minority who doesn't understand Islam. (As if there's one "Islam" anyway.) And to what degree the moderates are actually moderate compared to using the "tribal" excuse to appear moderate while pragmatically leaning towards fundamentalism.
That's just my experience though.
indiscriminate - not marked by careful distinction : deficient in discrimination and discernment
The US army killed everyone in the group since 1 may have had a gun and 1 may have had an RPG. That may be called prudent even. But it certainly was indiscriminate.
They discriminated between the armed group and the rest of the city. It's not the granularity you wanted but that's a matter of opinion.
unprovoked - occurring without motivation or provocation
The men on the ground didn't shoot. They weren't close enough to swear at or give the finger. Hell there was no indication that they were aware of the helicopter.
Well, carrying an RPG in a war zone is provocative. You really can't argue against that can you?
What's wrong with being weak? It's reality. No country on earth is strong enough to fight terrorism effectively and have a lower level of collateral damage (including damage brought about through inaction). If nobody is that strong, though, maybe your criteria for strength are flawed.
If an artificial legal construct can have income and profit, there seems to be no reason why it ought not to be taxed
The practical reason it should not be taxed is that it further obfuscates tax revenue sources. I think it would be great if employer portions of income taxes were clearly listed on everybody's paychecks. Everybody's 401k or IRA statement should show how much lower their dividends were because of various taxes. Every receipt for gasoline should break out the gas tax.
If each person who works for or runs the the corporation has the right to free speech, why don't they have the right to free speech as a group?
I could write a blog and sign each article "Yours truly, stdarg". Why would it suddenly be different if I signed it "Yours in capitalism, stdarg inc."
How does a tax on land make more sense than on roads? The government didn't create the land or pay to maintain the land, it just exists. Roads are built and paid for and need to be maintained, so charging for them makes sense.
You act like employees, customers, and suppliers are just doing it all for fun. You can turn it around and say the employees, customers, and suppliers need the roads to interact with each other. So why shouldn't they pay for it? The "corporation" is just a name for a way to organize those activities, it's not a real thing.
If the government weren't there, they'd just pay for security if the land is worthwhile and productive.
I remember the tobacco companies quietly publishing reports that smoking lowers overall government costs due to earlier deaths. Does that make not smoking immoral too because you're brazenly going around costing everybody more money? Also, could your assumption that not wearing a seatbelt results in more money being spent be wrong for similar reasons?
Personally I don't think utilitarianism should be the basis of morality.
It's not physical risk but betrayal of trust that makes it immoral. Otherwise hobbies like skateboarding are also immoral and that doesn't make sense.
No one has ever said that the only way the climate can warm is due to humans burning fossil fuels. Deniers like to act as if AGW proponents have said that, however. 'Tis just a strawman.
This is your own strawman. AGW skeptics don't believe that AGW proponents believe that climate change can only be caused by humans burning fossil fuels. Indeed, that's why they like to bring up climate change that happened 20k years ago, because AGW proponents can't deny that climate change happens without human involvement.
Don't mix up actual houses and homes with political authority in a region. Do you honestly think the UN sent troops or something to go kick Palestinians out of their very houses?
Now I know many Palestinians lost their homes in later wars; some say they left voluntarily others say they were kicked out by the Israeli army. Either way, that's not what you're saying and has nothing to do with the founding of Israel.
India with corruption so deep-set and intractable that even buying a TV usually involves multiple pay-offs?
Where did that come from? I'm American and I am very puzzled where the hugely negative perception of India comes from. Is it just because they were friendly with the evil Soviets?
The foreign workers are often poor but citizens of Saudi Arabia seem pretty well off from what I've read.
Oh give it up. When one talks about "Israel", "France", "USA" etc. doing something, it is clear that it is a reference to the people in power in these countries and not the abstract entities of "nations" themselves. And in the case of governments, single unified will is the usual outcome, be it a dictatorial decree or a result of a democratic vote.
That conflicts with what you said earlier, which is what I was replying to. The majority of people in Israel, a democratic country, seem to want Palestine to remain contained as long as Palestinians engage in terrorism against Israel. So again, how does "Israel" have the power to stop wanting that and thus change the situation? See the problem in what you said earlier in light of your revelations about the democratic voice?
Except of course in this entire disingenuous proposal the wholly arbitrary "changing of borders" as dictated by The Oh So Wise White Men from High Upon The Mountain would inevitably lead to far more violence - this time involving Jordan, Lebanon and Syria as additional direct, as opposed to merely passively hostile, combatants!
Damn, good one, you really zinged me by calling me a wise white man. And being so sarcastic. Great argument.
You are definitely a Supremacist. Racism may or may not play a role in that, but that is largely irrelevant. You are a Supremacist because you believe that one group of nations (Western ones in this case) is somehow more entitled to making decisions for denizens of other nations of a different cultural and ethnic background without any concern whatsoever about the opinions of those to be so treated.
You're the supremacist here. Apparently white men are not as qualified as others to opine on international conflicts?
Rejecting Supremacist arguments and philosophies out of hand is hardly "debasing oneself".
You have debased yourself by talking to someone on the internet, who you don't know, making all sorts of negative assumptions, and never presenting a coherent argument (let alone being friendly or extending good faith) regarding the facts or what I said.
You did have one reasonable fragment of a line in this post, mixed with racist garbage, about the passive hostiles becoming direct combatants. I would respond to that because I think it's correct but can be weighed against alternatives, but I don't see the point anymore.
Anyways, enjoy your life of hating white people who dare to stick their noses into "your" international business.
Of course there are laws. If you're restricting capitalism to purely the economic sense, there are still laws about murder, safety of personal property, etc. You and the other poster are confusing capitalism with anarchy. Did you even read the original post? He claimed that there are literally no restrictions on what is for sale in a capitalist society (note society, not economic system), meaning you could sell your services for assassination, organ harvesting, you could sell other people's property, etc. It's ridiculous.
How is it just for some people to so vastly overcharge and underpay that they have accumulated billions in wealth?
Some people make billions by selling something people want. There are some unjust billionaires and there are just billionaires.
How is our standard of living relevant in discussing the unjust accumulation of wealth by crooks?
Again, read the original post. I think our standard of living is relevant in discussing whether accumulation of wealth is de facto unjust (as you seem to be implying) because there's really nothing unjust if everybody is doing pretty well.
In real life, large disparities in income distribution characterize Third World economies, not our own erstwhile First World economy.
Yup there are huge disparities between the top 50% of the first world and the bottom 50% of third world. So that's why it's relevant. As part of the first world, it's stupid to be angry that other first-worlders are billionaires, since obviously our economic system has propelled you waaaay above the people in the third world and even if you're not in the top 1%, you're still doing pretty well in comparison.
There may not be any Christian churches but Christians are allowed to practice
How so? Most Christian denominations revolve around churches. A country that doesn't allow Christian churches is not "doing okay" with respect to its Christian minority and arguably does not allow them to practice. I mean if you are required to only "practice" in the privacy of your own head, I guess you could say every place on earth has complete religious freedom.
women aren't required to wear head scarfs
Really? Maybe not legally, but socially they're required to do that and more.
nor are other things forced on people like they were under the Taliban.
Really, so you think blasphemy laws aren't forced on non-Muslims?
I guess you didn't read all of my post, because you would have read where I said [slashdot.org]: "Not that it can't do better, but it has Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs. Now it was bad under the Taliban but they aren't in control anymore." But then because you specifically said there were no churches there I am led to believe you're trolling.
I read your whole post, and the part you quoted just now has nothing to do with my comment on the "doing okay" part. None of the stuff you quoted supports your claim that Afghanistan is doing okay.
I'm intrigued by your last comment about Islamic jihadism. Have you considered that part of the reaction of Christian fundamentalists is driven by the disparity in treatment given to different religions in academic settings?
The positive spin on non-Christian religions plays in beautifully with mainstream academic virtues like anti-imperialism/anti-colonialism and is a conscious counterbalance to years of "orientalism" which "poisoned" our thinking and caused most of the problems in the Middle East.
I was skeptical of your claim so I did some googling -- did you know there isn't a single Christian church in all of Afghanistan? The one church that was built in 1970 was bulldozed by Muslims in 1973.
I guess you either didn't know that or have some very strange ideas of what "doing okay" means for minority religions.
It's a little late to reply so you'll probably never see this but..
No, Israel has the power because
"Israel" is not a single person with a clear will, it's a bunch of people who want different things. By definition it does not have the power to do things it doesn't want to do, and that was my point. Israel has no more power than Palestine in that regard.
Current state of affairs was arrived at by historical events, pretending that it is not so is by definition designed to dis-enfranchise one side or the other in any uneven conflict (and in this particular case it is patently obvious that it would be the Arabs getting the shaft).
That's demonstrably wrong, because I proposed just such a solution and my design was not to consciously dis-enfranchise one side. I think both sides would benefit more by stopping the violence than either side would lose by having to change around their borders.
Let me get this straight, so you want to "solve" a problem caused by Western meddling ... by more arrogant Western meddling
My reasoning is that two wrongs in quick succession may be less wrong overall than one wrong that is dragged out for decades upon decades. Feel free to criticize it in terms of its likelihood of success, but don't bother trying to label me a racist because I'm not. Your entire paragraph added nothing to the discussion except to make it clear that you will happily dismiss things for the wrong reasons, which only debases yourself.
In a true capitalistic country, there is no restriction on what can be for sale.
Right, because in capitalism there are no laws. There aren't even property laws in capitalism, you can literally sell someone else's house and pocket all the money!!!
And you can't really blame the Bill Gates of the world for it either. He got 1 vote. It is the millions of people who are just a paycheck away from complete financial ruin who vote against a system that could give them a proper safety net because they think that next paycheck will have a billion dollar amount on it, and then they would have to pay 50% taxes on it and that 500 million would mean utter ruination of their dream to one day make it rich.
They're also against them because they have a sense of fairness and justice. And as long as they're doing "okay" on their own why screw over someone else?
I mean every day we hear about how decadent and rich Americans are -- even the lower and middle classes. "Oh, you expect to be able to DRIVE A CAR and not use public transit???? You want a 2000sqft house!!???! If the poor of the world lived like you, our planet would die!"
So if you realize that you actually have a fairly high standard of living compared to much of the world, why would you feel the need to screw over the tiny percentage of people who have it even better? How is that just?
No man does 53 billion dollar of work. He games the system so the incremental profits of the workers at the bottom of the pyramid trickle up into his pockets.
How is that not work?
If you disagree, you are wrong.
The problem is you have your own special definition of "work". Managing people's assets apparently isn't work to you since you put Buffett in that list, and I honestly have no idea why. Don't you think it takes time and effort to make good decisions with money?
Oh, and fear of socialism is the primary undercurrent to keep healthcare in America as a luxury only the wealthy can afford.
No idea what you mean by wealthy, but a majority of Americans have health care so... I guess you're saying capitalism is a great system that creates tons of wealthy people and provides them with luxuries?
America is a fucked up mess. Capitalism is a fallacy.
Oops. Well I don't know what you meant then.