Please keep talking, people like you are the reason the republicans will win the next election.
I do not give a damn about corrupt Republicans or corrupt Democrats. What is important is to get the lobbyists, large business interests and career graft-surfing politicos out, but most importantly the Medieval Inquisition of Greed known as the Neo-cons. And in that regard, I am afraid that the Democrats stand far better chance of winning, at least the 2006 round, then the Republicans as the American public is finally taking notice of the activities of the Neo-cons and the resulting stench of death, busted open bank vaults and the image of plain, frothing at the mouth insanity of the prominent members of the White House is begining to seriously scare the voters. One has to only look at the recent polls by virtually any polster.
One way or another, I am a Canadian and our political landscape is considerably different.
What is it about this statement that you don't understand. I feel that the role of government is to prevent cohesion and market manipulation, and I have made my opinion on this matter quite clear. Don't keep citing examples of this because I already understand that it is a problem.
And what you missed from my long-winded, multi-pronged attempt to explain it to you is that the victims of such coercion (it is the wrong word to use but you insist) are frequently (or most of the time today, as the techniques became fine art) unaware of it. They (or their emotions, social links etc) were manipulated to the point where they accept their coercion as something desirable, or normal everyday occurance not warranting any concern. Like for example the fact that one pays for Cable TV to watch commercials on it. You are probably far too young to realize that Cable TV was sold to the public, and its operators were allowed effective monopolies in whole cities, precisely because they claimed to provide, unlike then dominant Broadcast TV, commercial-free programming, in exchange for a small monthly fee. But as soon as they were entrenched enough...
These techniques are extremely difficult to make illegal. Step one is to end any government assistance to them (like granting monopolies based on a pretty smile and a song). But the other steps, far more important are very, very tricky. Undoing a successful, long-term, multi-faceted brainwash is a staggering proposition even for experts with personal access to the victim. At this point the public is so brainwashed by various manipulators that the problem is starting to adversly affect not only the marketplace but the political landscape as well. FOX, Clear Channel and similiar entities are applying that, by now rather refined, technique of brainwashing to the consumer masses with the purpose of not only selling unwanted goods and services but changing the whole political landscape to make it more "friendly" to their owners' other entrrprises. That and they actually think that consumption of unwanted goods is a good thing for the marketplace, to them, more consumption, of any kind, the better.
In this environment it is extremely difficult for the government to do anything about it because on one hand it is crippled by the political machinations of massive, controlling wealth and on the other the brainwashing is so successful that the very poeple whom you know were and are coerced are shocked when you try to do anything about their condition. They even turn on you, claiming that it is your attempt to disabuse them from their delusion which is somehow the cause of them!
Someone once said that the best method to enslave a person is to make him build his own mental chains. That is the very method employed here.
And yet, if one does nothing, capitalism will slowly but surely cease to function. Once consumer choice is no longer, in majority of consumers, educated, all the other mechanisms of the marketplace must surely fail as a result.
Racketeering is illegal. I don't know why you think this is not the case.
Of course I do know it to be the case. But what the law means by "racketeering" is the Al-Capone style, obvious, violent "protection" racket. That is basically the only type of racketeering which can be successfully (and yet even for the Mafia it took decades) to prosecute. We are talking now of far more sophisticated methods and tricks then a gorilla with a baseball bat asking for "protection money".
The reason it often goes unpunished is because people are unwilling to admit when they've been had. Clearly, the solution to this problem is more aggressive government prosecution.
And how, pray tell, are you planning to convince people who gulp litres of Coke a day and swear that Pepsi is the most foul tasting sludge, or the other camp of the true believers who claim that Pepsi is the thing and Coke tastes like sewer water? Except that in double blind studies 90% of people can't tell the
You are wrong. In a free market, exchanges take place only when both parties agree to the exchange. Because both parties agreed to the exchange, they are likely to view the exchange as having been fair. The only notable exceptions are when people feel that they have been coerced into an making an exchange.
Except when one side lacks information to make an informed choice (whithout realizing it, due to skillful manipulation by a poweful seller with domineering media presence) or is being badgered emotionally or forced by carefuly manufactured peer pressure and million other factors which effectively destroy the theoretical "educated consumer choice" which is the cornerstone of Adam Smith's theory. Without educated consumer choice there cannot be fair competition. That is why companies engage in "branding" and million other psychological warfare manouvers. They do it to remove as much fairness from the deal as possible. That is why companies lobby and use propaganda to instill in the general public from the young age the unquestioning acceptance of highly questionable practices, like, for example, treating information as if it were "private property". And all of this in addition to the old problem of the complexity of technological products far exceeding the ability of an average purchaser to fully judge their merits. The list goes on and on.
And this is only in relation to actual sales of actual products. Add to this a completely whole new dimention of outright scams, like much of the "investment"/"insurance" marketplace or gambling or laughable medical "services" intent on separating desperate, gravely ill people from the last of their money. All legal of course.
Then sprinkle on top the ability of some people to collect vast sums of money for not performing at all. For example, in the USA, recently, an everage pay of an CEO is around 500 times that of an average worker in the same company, not counting stock options and other benefits. This keeps being true even if the company is losing money and eventually goes bankrupt. The shareholders (another supposedly essential group of people in capitalism) end up with zilch and the CEOs with "golden parachutes" (no one even talks about the workers, they are like garbage to be thrown out, things to be used and discarded). This of course breaks the whole capitalist "allocation of resources based on performance" deal completely. And yet, it is commonplace in corporate America. And while shareholders often sue, prosecution in these cases has been anemic and rarely successful.
Add to this monopolies and oligopolies based on geography, natural resource distribution, perversion of law etc.
So as I keep saying, with an ever growing list of examples, there is nothing inherently "fair" about the marketplace. It can be fair, and in many cases it is fair, but these are usually restricted to situations where large numbers of small producers compete to provide well understood commodity goods to educated consumers. Further you get away from that fair "core" of the marketplace, more unfair and unstable things get, up to and including complete breakdown of the capitalist methodology. That is because capitalism is a mere theory, which works perfectly only under idealized, theoretical conditions, which do not exist commonly in the real life. The discrepancy between the theoretical requirements and real life is what causes many of these problems we are discussing. And that is on top of a completely whole different universe dealing with morality and the nature of societies, which also has a critical part to play, and which capitalism, being a mere economic theory, is unable to account for. This is where your laughable, ridiculous and quite pitiful attempts at equating "value to society" or "value to a person" of all things with their price are stemming from -- you are looking at capitalism as if it were an all-explaining, all-controlling religious experience, which is by the way, not new to me as I ran into people like you many times before.
I think your problem may be that you assume yourself so intelligent that you can make value judgments for other people better than they can for themselves.
No. As I have repeteadely demonstrated, the simplistic system of capitalism breaks down in a number of obvious circumstances. I have done so, and which you keep desperately attempting to ignore, using your own definitons. For example, transferring vast wealth to offspring who had not earned it is a feudal, not capitalist, activity. That is why certain external rules have to put in place, to keep the system functioning in a way at least resembling its intended purpose. This is derrived from the mechanisms of the system itself, and its supposed purpose, not from making "value judgments for other people better than they can for themselves". It is the whole system that needs those controls, not individuals. Otherwise, no system whatsoever is valid, as every single one of them makes overall value judgments for each and every participant. I am sure that communists are equally as pissed at the capitalist "value judgments" being forced upon them by run-of-the-mill capitalist society as you, the extreme egoist, are miffed at any rule which involves anything that interferes with your hoarding of wealth.
Even if you knew enough to be able to maximize the value to others (as you see it) you would be incapable of doing a better job because you judge values by a different standard than other people.
Again, some values are basic and immutable. Some are the result of the socio-economic system in place. What you keep insisting on, and which I fully understand, is a narcisstic, completely self-centered approach of moral relativity. That is you want to be given an absolute freedom in doing whatever you want, regardless how harmful to others, and allow no one, other then yourself, to make any decisions in regards to this. In other words, you consider the society to be a set of resources and serfs put there (by God, presumably) for your personal use exclusively. In your world view, no one but yourself has any rights, expectations or priviledges whatsover, other then the ones you chose to grant them. Everything in the world is a mere tool, a toy to be used by you as you please. Other people are mere things that you can put to work as you see fit and dispose of whenever no longer useful. You are a vile psychotic sociopath, pure and simple.
So when you decide that these heirs are undeserving of their parents fortune, you must understand that it is a value judgment that the parent must make.
No. As you yourself have been harping on, "value to society" and "wealth" are supposed to have a positive correlation in the capitalist system. As I have repeatedly demonstrated, the transfer of vast wealth from parents to children is contrary to that rule. Yet, when convenient to you, you want to make an exception to that rule and decide that is not "the society" but parents, with vested personal interest in the matter, contrary to that of the society, to make that call, to override that rule. You seem to favour feudalism whenever it hits close to home and strict capitalism, or even Spencer's "Social Darwinism" when it applies to others. Which is really no surprise because you see capitalism as a mere smokescreen for your own sociopathic behaviour.
Simply put, it is not your money and you have no reason to believe that you know how to spend it better than they do.
Feudalism then it is. You are finally dropping any whiny pretense about "value to society". Gone is all that "allocation of resources based on the record of their creation" bullshit. This is your narcisticc socipathic psyche, standing naked before all to be seen in its ugly glory. Wealth based on divinely annointed blood-lines. Dynasties. Riches and priviledge begeting more riches and priviledge. All that glittering mis-direction about "producing resources" now far too smal
I have never said that capitalism worked perfectly all of the time.
Curious. All your statements are in an absolute form "Money represents resources" or "If you do not produce more then you consume you should die" or "wealthy people obtained their wealth through being valuable to society" etc. None of which were even tempered in the slightest by any adjective at all. Like "most of the time" or "generally" or "approximately". Apparently, your command of the English language, like your humanity or your comprehension of basics of society, is also not your strong suit.
What I have said is that capitalism works well enough that it is the best system.
I too said that "capitalism works well enough that it is the best system". However your meaning of "best" is different then mine: the near-perfect, divine, solution to all problems, to be religiously worshipped versus the least smelly turd in the pile.
The mere fact that you see no value in an individuals line of work does not mean that none exists.
They have none. They did not, nor are doing at present, anything of value to attain the money. Money is accumulating itself due to the efforts of others, professionals who manage their fortunes, hired by their fathers.
Furthermore, as I explained already, and which bounced off your thick skull once again, none of them did anything of value at the moment of their vast fortunes being transferred to them. Do you have a comprehension problem? If capitalism, according to your own definition, is a method to allocate resources in favour of those who produce them, then, in the case of these people, it failed miserably (and spectacularly due to the sizes of the fortunes) because it was their fathers not them who were supposedly the "producers". Therefore, from the point of view of the children, they got a vast, massive, reward, for no effort. Thus breaking the equation.
Also, as I already explained, and which just as surely ricocheted off the same concrete-encrusted cranium of yours, the very presence of these heirs is, in most cases, irrelevant to the operation of the fortune itself. That is they add no value to the capitalist equation. Should they be replaced with stone statues, both the Hilton hotel chain and Wal-mart would function as before, with no apprecietable difference. Thus, again, and I will go slowly, so that your maddeningly slow comprehension can catch up: it breaks the rules of the system, by your own definition.
Convincing people to give you money is not easy to do. It is extremely hard to do if you will provide no benefit for that money, and you do not break the law.
Yes, being a successful con-man is hard work. But usually nowhere near the value of the wealth you do acquire that way. That is the whole point: you are unable to produce things to warrant the wealth, therefore you do the conniving to get it. Except that in the cases I mentioned, all that was required was to be born in the "right" family, a result of pure chance.
There is nothing wrong with leaving money to your children. The wealth you accumulate during your life represents the positive contributions you've made to society during the course of that life, and the rest of society owes you a debt of gratitude. The wealth is yours to spend how you please and to leave to whoever you wish. This is the fundamental nature of economic freedom.
Which breaks all your precious rules about "value to society" being somehow related to "wealth" of the person in question. Furthermore, the society owes you no debt whatsoever (or at least it is not in any way obvious) because the very fortune you passed on might have been your fathers and you merely stood out of the way when it grew under the eyes of professionals. Therefore, again, (perheaps repetition will penetrate that cretinous skull of yours), you did not engage in any "positive contributions to society" whatsoever, when given the for
Earning money means that you're generating resources, spending money means that you're expending resources.
Untrue. I gave you already many, many examples in which money can be earned with no generation of resources and disposed of with no expenditure of them.
The idea behind capitalism is that allocating more resources to individuals who are more productive will increase the productivity of society as a whole. This means that the available resources will increase and more demand will be met.
That is roughly one of the tenets of the theory. But, as you keep constantly failing to comprehend, the theory has only a limited impact on real-life happenings. Or, more precisely, the theory is stochastic as it only predicts statistical results. That is, most of the time, under average circumstances, the results will be as prescribed. There will however be a large number of cases in which the relationships described will fail. Capitalism will "work" even if only, say, 50% of the time its tenets are fullfiled. It will be simply 50% "efficient". This however, prevents anyone sane from considering "money" to be a reliable yardstick of "value", both personal and "to the society", which was the part you keep harping on. In short, capitalism is a very crude but a useful tool. It does tend to allocate resources, approximately, towards those who produce more of them. But because it is so porous, and its operation based largely on chance, it has to be supervised and overrides have to be put in place to guarantee that things of "value to society" are protected. One such thing is a universal acknowledgment of some basic rights and expectations of all individuals in our society. If it were not so, we would be no different then termites or locust. And so, in order to protect the real values of the society, to which the crude tool of capitalism is supposed to be subservient, one has to override its operation wherever it is acting out of control. Otherwise, the only object of the entire excercise would be about resources. Only resources. Not people, not ideas, not human civilization. Resources. If we were to be erased off the surface of the Earth and left behind a band of fully automated, computer-controlled factories, transportation systems, warehouses, trading exchanges and mining operations, capitalism would march merilly on, under full auto-pilot, oblivious to the fact that we were gone.
A few hypothetical examples is not proof that the system does not work well.
Since you claims are of the absolute nature, as in every case capitalism was working perfectly, any example demolishes your position. I already stated that capitalism works. Sort of, roughly, crudely, sloppily but it does work. However your claim was that "value to society" and "wealth" are one and the same, unerringly, always (or so it appears from the ways you formulated it). That if someone is wealthy, it is always so because his or her wealth is always in direct proportion to his/her "value to society". Therefore the examples I provided destroy utterly your position because even one contrary example destroys an absolute claim. Logic 101.
In reality, one is hard pressed to find real examples of wealthy people who do not contribute positively to society.
Good grief. Paris Hilton? Helen, Alice, Jim, John and Rob Walton? And these are only the top multi-billionaire parasites that come to mind in an instant. There are litterally hundreds if not thousands of spoiled heirs as soon as you lower the bar to the "mere" multi-millionaires and millionaires.
In the cases you can find, the actions undertaken by the individuals in question to acquire wealth is usually illegal.
If it were only so! Sure, such crassly invaluable to society individuals being granted such extraordinary wealth should be somehow illegal, but the best that could be done was the thing called "inhe
I'm not sure the private sector is all that good at providing of quality anymore, of course poeple not beeing able to tell quality from expensive shit plays a part in that.
That is one of the weaknesses in the Adam Smith's model which only recently became increasingly apparent. Captialism depends on educated consumer choice, which is the very foundation of competition. Unfortunately, the companies have figured out a number of ways to prevent that choice from being educated. Strategies such as "branding" or FUD and other types of mis-information, combined with systematic efforts to keep consumers ignorant, an ability of corporates to dominate access to information and other factors are slowly but quite surely and effectively destroying the system. A set of draconian measures dealing with false advertising and mis-representation is in order. Albait the governments are no longer functioning in defense of the integrity of the marketplace, having been successfully infiltrated, corrupted and consumed by the corporates. I fear that a total market collapse, ala 1929, will be the only way in which some modicum of control could be regained over these cancerous corporate parasites.
Also, take into consideration it would be a US/Russia move against China.
Not likely. We were discussing US menacing Russia's best customer for military hardware for no other reason then US greed. I fail to see how interests of Russia would be served by allying itself with US on this. Most likely all the workers in the arms factories in Russia would salivate at the very idea of US attacking China for sales would go through the proverbial roof.
Possible Europian as well.
I am not quite sure why Europe should consider the US' Intellectual Property insanity and the resulting folly of trying to menace China over the said make-believe goods anything even remotely close to its vital interests. They would sit the thing out, wondering about what sort of debilitating madness the Americans are suffering from this time.
But China doesn't need a war to take over other countries,and they know it. Why do you think China is trying to buy as many oil companies as they can? Farms as well.
Quite right, China is waging the old economic campaign (quite shrewdly). But we were discussing some desperate, panicked attempts by the US to change the direction of things by menacing China with its military and it was in the context of that in which I responded to the parent.
If this is our competition, the U.S. will always have the advantage in movie making.
I suspect that you were jesting and thus you must know that as far as India's market is concerned, Bollywood is a vastly more powerful economic entity then Hollywood could ever dream of.
A thriving economy would not look inwards, it would be an aggressive trader because it would not be economic to produce domestically
What?! The whole point being made was that China is getting a thriving economy and USs is in decline thanks to China manufacturing things domestically (using the US fools as a bootstrapping mechanism while they are producing less and less).
If they were producing everything domestically, even when it made no sense, that would automatically introduce inefficiences into their system, as it did for the USSR.
You, Sir, are mightily confused. The inefficiencies of USSR were to do with its social/political system and not with its attempts to produce things locally. Consider this: what would be the "efficiency" difference between a very, very large group of people (China) which has nearly all the required natural resources, know-how and labour to be entirely self-sufficient and a larger group of people (Planet Earth)? How does the latter make things "more efficient", even though the distances required to transport goods and energy to do so are far greater in the second case? Could you elaborate?
China is _very_ energy starved
Only as far as oil is concerned, which is one of the reasons for abandoning oil in the long term. You try to make it sound as dependence on oil is a good thing while most see it as a disastrous liability to be eliminated as soon as feasible.
Btw: the Chinese economy despite showing 'great promise' is very inequitable: you need a work permit to come work in Shanghai for a year from the Western provinces and these work permits are much sought after. The western provinces are also quite poor (and not in the sense the US refers to Miss. as poor: we're talking about grinding poverty here).
Quite true but you seem to confuse the personal wealth of all citizens with the economic strength. As a matter of fact, Chinese have figured out that dividing their citizenry into permanent strata of priviledged wealthy and vast hordes of permanent work drone slaves is producing wonders for their national pocket books. I would be the last person to defend the morality of this, I am merely pointing out that by whatever strategy they chose to go by, it is manufacturing which drives everything. Don't shoot the messenger.
First of all, currency is the best measure of value. There is no better measure of value than currency. Since this is true, the amount of currency one controls is then the best measure of their value to society.
Utter and complete bullshit, as I keep explaining, over and over. Wealth has nothing whatsover to do with measure of "value to society" (that is the context of "value" we have been using so far, no?). How much denser can you get? Air we breathe has immesureable value to us because without it we all die. How much in "currency" do you pay for it? How much did you pay for Euklides' geometry without which there would be no modern engineering? And so on. This is getting tiresome. As I explained many times, with ever growing list of irrefutable examples, "value to society" and wealth, be it measured in "currency", "resources", "sports cars", "yachts", "private islands" or any other way, have no reliable correlation.
You seem to be repeating yourself in a loop, with no new data, probably simply hoping that if something is repeated many enough times, it becomes true.
No, you do not have to accumulate resources to accumulate wealth. This is one of the functions of currency. Currency represents resources.
I agree that "currency" and "resources" (and many other things) can be exchanged easily enough at a marketplace. I simply used your own terms (from your first "producer"/"consumer" example) when replying to you. It does not in any way alter the truth of my statement, but have it your way: "In a capitalist system, wealth is allocated to people depending on their ability to accumulate it". Note that it still has nothing to do with any "value to society". There is simply no reliable relationship between someone's "value to society" and his wealth. Or even between something's price and its "value to society" (a method to successfully separate the two is called "branding"). I gave many examples of that linkage being broken. Yet by repeating yourself (using "currency" or "resources" or probably the next time some other yardstik, like "gold signets") you appear to believe that if some lie is repeated enough times it becomes true.
This is not what I believe.
Actually, it is. What you propose and National Socialism only differ in the level of aggressiveness in removing those "undesirables". You hope that either a) they die from hunger or b) someone else gets to help them while you take advantage of thus reduced "competetivness" of those individuals to get ahead in your effort to greedily grab as much of the planet as you can. This entire discussion, despite you going on about "value to society" is quite obviously centered on your engaging in one of the oldest pursuits of man: seeking moral justification for your own infinite greed.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of currency. Only spending money represents an expenditure of resources.
What?! So now we are talking about "resources" again? No "currency"? Are you sure? I thought we were discussing how someone's "wealth" has nothing to do with his "value to society" (with you continuously switching between various ways of measuring "wealth" and then accusing me of confusing things). But have it your way: spending money and expenditure of resources are also not neccessarily related. One can burn money in a stove or give it to charity. In both cases no "expenditure of resources" (save the paper on which the notes were printed) occurs. You are wrong as usual.
Moreover he is providing a value to society, since he is providing investment capitol to boost the productivity of others.
No, he is not. The capital is providing the "value" itself. If anything, his father provided the capital or perhaps the professionals who presently manage it. The spoiled brat has nothing whatsoever to do with it, save for not managing to spend it all on buying up parcels of land on the Moon. I was under the impression that you clai
Maybe it just assumes that you can enforce your IP over the IP of developing countries whether it's valid or not.
That is even more futile. If, say, China develops a robust internal economy (which is already showing a great promise) and then limits its trade with, at that point fatally impoverished, USA, where the average consumer would no longer be able to afford even the "Dollar Store" purchases, and instead focuses on itself and its Asian neighbours, how are you planning to enforce any IP rights? Stop Chinese companies from shipping goods between Shanghai and Peking?! Or to France? Japan? Lets not be silly.
Being a large economic power with the best funded army in the world does have its merits.
As a result of all of the IP-economy scenarios the first part of your sentence would be then in the past tense: "A formerly large economic power, presently attempting to reschedule debt payments". As to the second one, you cannot be serious. Are you planning to menace, of all places, China?! With its ability to muster more soldiers then US has citizens and access to nuclear weapons as well as a vast array of armaments, including at this point ICBMs (or what do you think all that fuss about Chinese space program was all about)? I would suggest to ponder the way in which the, far, far, smaller Iraqi adventure has unfolded. In the light of these, the Vietnam war could be considered a brilliant, near-instantenious, all-around military success for the US when put next to what would happen in an engagement with near-future China. Most likely, we here in Canada would have to quickly adjust to a Canada-Chinese border.
No, one of the worst things that can happen to our society is that it's turned into an IP-based society.
Very insightful indeed. One wonders what sorts of troglodyte "thought" patterns must be present in those "globalization" and "idea economy" shills who fail to realize that all of the economic activity rests on manufacturing like a sky-scraper rests on its foundations. Those who manufacture and directly service the manufacturers, are the ultimate recipients of the bulk of the results of the economy. Perheaps it is too hard to see from the lofty top floor where the executive offices of the clowns-in-chief are all that distance to the ground, but simply pretending that there is no need for foundations, the building and even the very ground itself and instead engaging in dreams of the executive comfy-chair floating on the make-believe, etheral clouds of "Intelectual Property" is bound to end up in a rather rude awakening on the way down once the execs depart that top floor in their chairs during their attempt at realizing their fantasy.
The IP market is more of a defense against the now emerging countries like China. If we cant sell goods we sell ideas, IP and culture to them.
You are absolutely right of course. I would only add that it is also a futile and self-destructive "defense" in a long-term. It assumes, arrogantly, that the others are too dumb to match your R&D efforts or to produce their own culture. I hope I do not need to explain the frightening idiocy of that folly.
What is amazing and depressing to me is the number of otherwise bright people who buy into this IP sham. It is an economic and social disaster in the making, in the name of short term greed of the corporates and their paid-for, albait brainless, politicos.
And the main reason people have nothing is because they have lost it or proven themselves incapable of acquiring it through actions of their own.
Like, say, orphaned children or the premanently disabled.
You get what you deserve and all in a world where it's possible for an immigrant to this country to become one of its richest men.
This, stupidly, assumes that there is any relationship whatsoever between one's wealth and "deserving" of thereof. By this token a lottery winner or a spaced out on crack hier of a multi-billion dollar fortune are somehow "deserving" of them. Not to mention the impact of one's parents or place of birth, in the choice of which we have all such a great say, no? I see that the vile spectre of Spencer's "Social Darwinism" is about and as lively as ever. All that is missing from your ignorant musings is a mention of "God's hand" being involved in differentiating the "worthy" billionaires from the "worthless" Down Syndrome children. All bow before Divine Greed.
Why should I be helping people who refuse to help themselves? That's just going to promote laziness and dependence on me.
Translation: "I, Me and Mine. Mine. Me. I. Mine. All mine. Fuck off! Its all Mine!".
new drugs don't exist because companies aren't willing or able to invest as much in research.
Good grief. R&D constitutes a tiny fraction of Big Pharma expenses, with its bulk spent in "marketing and sales" (and probably lawsuit settlements). Furthermore, the most vigorous expenditures are in "lifestyle" drugs, such as Viagra because these have the highest profit potential. If possible, the drug companies would make no drugs whatsoever, only "remedies" in order to ensure even more profitable marketplace for themselves. The R&D expenditure whining is the most obnoxious and infuriorating of lies put forth by these, what can only be described as, parasites. The world would be far better served if the R&D was done by public academia and manufacturing left to private industry, whereby a horde of makers would have to compete on quality, delivery, packaging and all those other things at which private industry is actually good at.
This is really quite simple. In a capitalist system resources are allocated to people depending on their value to society.
Untrue. In a capitalist system, resources are allocated to people depending on their ability to accumulate them (or dumb luck or the combination of the two). A side-effect of this is, one hopes, that "An Invisible Hand" somehow embedded in this scenario due to its dynamics will, hopefully, lead to a useful correlation between the resources allocated and their "value to society". You keep making the same, basic, mistake in granting the capitalist system supernatural powers which it does not have. There is no guarantee whatsoever of a relationship between "allocation of resources" and "value to society" as I demonstrated with many examples.
We measure value in currency.
No we don't, as the amount of currency one controls has no reliable relationship to his "value to society". All we measure with currency is the amount of wealth one can possess. The relationship of "value to society" with wealth is at best tenuous.
If someone has no value to society, they are entitled to no resources.
Again, this is some more callous Spencer and his "Social Darwinism" bullshit. Applying to someone a measurement of "value to society" exclusively based on money only goes as far as one is willing to disengage from morality completely (not to mention the inherent unreliability of such a yardstick, as I explained). What you say would be true in a termite hive, where weak are left to die and recycled so that more eggs can be laid by the queen. But we are dealing with sentient beings here, humans, who deserve a modicum of support even if they have no direct way to contribute in ways that make cash. This of course being another part of your Mammon worshipping psyche, that only ways of contributing which can generate cash are to be even considered. By this measure, a volunteer who spent his whole life teaching reading and writing to homeless orphans, and by doing this enabled a brilliant nuclear scientist to emerge, by this measure he is "worthless" to society because he has not found a way to make cash on his actions and thus, in the crude way of capitalism, has no "resources" allocated to him for his work, lest what he manages to scrounge elsewhere.
Some people think that everyone has value. I don't think it's fair to promote government legislation to provide resources to everyone, since not everyone agrees that everyone has value. The way I figure it, if you care about bums on the street so much, you can take care of them, and I'll decide for myself if I feel they're worth it.
This system has been tried before. In its extreme form, it was called National Socialism (a misnomer if there ever was one) whereby weak, disabled, mentally ill and all other "worthless to Arian society" individuals (such as gays, Jews and Gypsies) were simply exterminated. A process called "eugenics" was applied to these "worthless to society" individuals to prevent them from reproducing. Eventually whole other, neighbouring societies were declared "deficient" and undeserving of their resources and an effort was made to remedy that situation militarily, thus starting that bit of a set-to which we now know as the World War II. It is amusing how all of that selfish greed mongering of the likes of you inevietably leads back to these "bold" social ideas of the "fascisti". At least we know where you stand on these matters. It is only a pity, that so many of your and mine countrymen died only so that some terminally ignorant and infinitely selfish wanker like you could try to resurrect some new flavour of all that evil which those brave men gave their lives to defeat.
The way I figure it, if you care about bums on the street so much, you can take care of them, and I'll decide for myself if I feel they're worth it.
I will extend your phillosophy one step further. What if we, the society, or at least a large enough portion of us, decide that it is yo
Of course, you knew what the guy meant anyway, didn't you?
Actually, no. You see, I run into a rather large number of people of the libertarian, anarcho-capitalist, "laissez-fare" marketplace or simply avarice-worshipping persuasion who, on purpose, conflate the two. The whole meme of a "self-made man", so popular amongst that crowd is based on this, purposeful, mis-direction. The idea being that some, glorious, God-annointed, talented, aristocratic individuals have an innate ability to "pull themselves by their shoe-strings", by their lone selves, and thus any requests for contributions to society within which they operate are a form of theft, robbery, Communism, Satanic Worship and all sorts of other general unspeakable evil. Or so they scream at the tops of their lungs. You see, their claim being that the society never contributes to their success beyond the usually relatively miniscule amounts which they already paid to various individuals within it for various things (most claiming that they overpaid severely). Therefore one can only assume that they spontaneously developed writing and mathematics, invented personally everything from ways of keeping fire, through the wheel and related trifles, proceeding through the whole history of humankind and culminating at the last thing before their first purchase.
That is why you will see this idea of "self-sufficiency" being promulgated, with a meaning changed to "profitability" but trying to retain the general impression of complete independence (ala Robinson Crusoe) from the society.
As I already stated, it is the best in a set of bad choices available. At least until human nature can be somehow changed. But having a marginally useful system, which very crudely approximates its purpose, is no reason to gloat at all.
By the way, the billionaire heir is a producer, since whoever left him the money found so much value in his existence that they left them with all that money.
Like, for example, winning some gigiantic multi-state lottery. Or some such equally fine way of finding "value in his existence". And no, even if his father did something of import, the son does not. This problem, which leads to excessive, multi-generational accumulation of wealth, and in the long term to all sorts of perversions of the marketplace, not to mention screwing up the whole "producer"/"consumer" measurement metric, was to be addressed by steep, nearly 100% inheretance taxes on fortunes in excess of certain base amount. But some find that too logical and not in service of all-consuming greed enough.
We take care of people because want to. These people have value to us because we hare happier to take care of them and keep them alive than to let them die. It makes no sense to argue that these people have no monetary value, since people are willing to spend so much money to keep them alive.
You have no idea what you are blabbing about. In one sentence you suggest that, quote, "if you produce less than you consume, you are just a worthless mooch, and the rest of us would be better off if you died", which implies that all those who, even due to circumstances beyond their control, cannot contribute enough should die off, and in the next you get all offended about how "It makes no sense to argue that these people have no monetary value". WTF?! Could you try to make some sense? People having "monetary value"? This is either some borderline insanity or a glimpse of your inner world of a complete subservience to the All-Poweful Mammon, in which religion everything can be only thought of in relation to stacks of coins.
This last paragraph marks you as an elitist no-nothing.
A "no-nothing"? That is certainly some new kind of an insult. Could you care to elaborate? Or is it that you are just semi-literate, as your ideas would seem to suggest?
You're simply using an exaggerated definition of the definition of "self-sufficiency."
No I am using the correct definition, one which requires that one sustains himself on the results of one's labour exclusively. Robinson Crusoe would be a "self-sufficent" man if you were to ignore his life up to the shipwrecking. Self-sufficiency is only possible (in theory) on a societal level and was strived for (unsuccessfully) by the USSR for example. Some religious groups are close by having established isolationist communes which strive to be self-sufficient.
Liberatarianism simply means that individuals have maximal power.
No. Libertarianism means that wealthiest individuals have maximum power and the rest, very, very little. Libertarianism means removal of all obstacles for these men to dominate all who are not wealthy enough and in the long term to, for all practical purposes, to own these less fortunates outright. Libertarianism is an out-of-control religion of individual greed and a very close cousin to "Anarcho-capitalism" (into which Libertarianism must, under real-life conditions, degenerate rapidly on the way to more vile scenarios).
Granted, that is not how it is being sold to gullibles, but neither was Marxism. A horrid corporate/feudal nightmare outcome is to libertarianism as USSR was to Marxism.
What have you got against power to the people?
Lenin would ask the same question. I figure he had a different kind of "power to the people" in mind though.
Or do you want everybody to be slaves living on Massa's plantation?
This of course being quite amusing as master/slave relationships are exactly the long-term practical outcome of libertarianism.
Someone else already said this, but just to reiterate, self-sufficient means that you produce at least as much value as you consume.
No. Self-sufficient means not only producing more or equal to one's needs but also consuming only what one produces. What you mean is profitability which is a different story altogether.
In a capitalist society, we measure value in units of currency, and we say that every member of society must produce as much value as they consume.
Bullshit. Capitalist society is a lousy (but so far the best compared to even worse choices) attempt at measuring one's "contributions" to society, utilizing a crude and unreliable tool called "money". For example: a con-man having successfully swindled many people of their money, and yet who was careful to stay nominally "legal", according to your "measure" is a great "producer" who is entitled to great levels of consumption. A jobless cocaine junkie billionaire heir to some fortune is equally a great "producer", while passed out in some whore-house.
If you produce more than you consume, you accumulate wealth, and can consume more at a later date, or pass that wealth on to you children, or donate it to whatever cause.
Untrue. The actual condition is: "if you accumulate more things then you have to part with, you accumulate wealth". There is nothing whatsoever about any "production" in a pure "capitalist" society. Adam Smith simply believed that by pure dynamics of such a system, somewhere, somehow, someone will produce things for others to consume. He called this phenomena "An Invisible Hand" which guides such a chaotic system towards some overall progress.
On the other hand, if you produce less than you consume, you are just a worthless mooch, and the rest of us would be better off if you died.
Utter, immoral bullshit. Otherwise, children and those born with debilitating diseases should be all left to die, which is the way of aminals.
By the way, that last sentence marks you as a Spencerite (i.e. a vicious, selfish, bloodthirsty animal, an enemy of everyone but himself, best put down like a rabid dog before he causes untold suffering to others) and thus not someone with whom an enlightened discussion can be had, lest it was about the "divine nature of greed".
If you contribute enough that your scorecard ("money") is positive and thus society has determined that you contribute more than you take, you are self sufficient.
First of all, that is not the definition of "self-sufficient". Secondly, "money" is an abysmal "scorecard" of "contributions" to society. By this measure a clever con man, engaged in immoral but "legal" scams is a great contributor. Likewise is a trust fund kid, who inhereited a multi-billion fortune and is busy spending it on fancy hookers and cocaine.
If you contribute enough that your scorecard is neutral, society has determined that you are taking exactly as much as you contribute. You are currently self sufficient.
Again, this has nothing to do with "self-sufficiency" and is equally poor measure of "contributions" as the above.
If you do not contribute enough and your scorecard is negative, then you are clearly not self sufficient.
Again, nothing whatsoever to do with "self-sufficiency", which is defined by independence of others, i.e. society.
Unless you have a major physical defect, like you are missing a head, society thinks that you should be a net contributor.
The society cannot "think" because it is not, on its own, sentient. It is merely agreed amongst most of its members that an optimal condition is whereby everyone contributes to the maximum of his/her abilities and in return is granted at least the minimum of ones basic needs, beyond which he/she is additionally rewarded in accordance with the level of those contributions. Unfortunately, noone has yet devised a reliable system of gaging those contributions and allocating the rewards. An extremely crude, inaccurate and unreliable kludge called "money" is being used instead and introduces with it a whole plethora of additional problems, some of which are of a significant detrement to the whole idea.
Unfortunately the current trend among individuals seems to be to take from the government because "I deserve it" rather than provide your particular value. Like not having what the next guy has entitles you to suck society's teet.
While some people who engage in this type of behaviour indeed exist, exaggerating greatly their number is a device of propaganda of another group, the so-called "Social Darwinists" of Spencerites, who are worshippers of individual greed and despise anything which stands in their way to acquire as much of the wealth of the world as possible, impoverishing other "competitiors to the loot" in the process, and who would do anything to prevent any attempts at curbing their desire to dominate others. It is they who continuously decry "theft" of taxation or any other requirement the society has put on them in exchange for its many advantages. It is they who whine about "self-sufficiency" when they mean "avarice". It is they who claim to be "self-made" men who only wish for "personal liberty" as long as the society supplies them with knowledge, fine goods, servants and the opportunities to rake in cash.
Just because you are poor doesn't mean you are entitled to support.
Spoken like a true Spencerite. "God chose rich to be rich because of their inherent 'value' and the poor wretches, born sick or into squalid corners of society? Why they deserve it, no?".
I have news for you: the value of society is determined easily by the way in which it treats its poor. If they are given every honest opportunity to become the contributors, which you so loudly proclaimed to be the chief measure of the social status, regardless of their initial condition, then it can be said that such society is fair. If, on the other extreme, it throws them to the wolves, caring far more for "money" then people, then it is merely an organised form of Barbarism and does not even warrant the label "society". A pack, a herd, or a hive, maybe. Society? No.
So in order to even warrant a label of society, some basic provisions have to be made for those who have no c
There's something to be said for self-sufficiency, and people who strive for it are never in a bad situation for long.
I agree that hermits born in the mountains, abandoned by age of 2 minutes and somehow surviving, raising themselves, building their log cabin, growing their own vegetables, making their own clothing and hunting with a bow and arrows (or more likely their teeth) would be never in a bad situation for long... oh never mind. Look, there is no such thing as a self-sufficient person. A self-sufficient society (of large enough scale) yes. Person? No. We are all dependent on each other. One man cannot even farm on his own for he either needs machinery or many others to help his inefficient farm (that is why early hominids were hunter-gatherers). Never you mind the knowledge of farming, which is a result of cumulative experience of those before him. Not to mention that he would not survive his first 10 years of life without help. Personal "self-sufficiency" is one of those idiotic, infuriorating libertarian gems of greed motivated illogic that discredits the whole phillosophy completely right at the outset.
Soyuz record in 'fatal accidents per flight' is slightly worse. Both systems have had 2 fatal incidents, but soyuz has flown less flights.
What?!! The Soyuz (in its many varieties) has flown over a thousand of missions since the system's inception in 1963 (for the booster) and 1966 (for the capsule). There were 220 of the original Soyuz vehicles, before even the "T" variety and a total of 750 Soyuz launches by 1994. By 2005 the Shuttle's has flown a meager 114 or so. You do forget that the Russians maintained, staffed and suppiled a series of space stations, starting with the military Almaz/Salyut series in 1973 and then the Mir complex.
If I hand you some data for you to look at, and we both agree that it's proprietary, sensitive data, and that you may not retain it any way
That is impossible as long as brain-erasing technology is not employed. You do forget, as all the purveyors of the "intellectual property" scam do, that "data" and "thought" are one and the same (as both are merely "information" stored in a storage system, one mechanical, the other biological). So as long as that "loophole" of being unable to control thoughts exits, one then can proceed to describe in detail the plot of the movie, make cartoons and what not based on it and in order to stop that from happening one has to further stretch logic and come up with a whole new, nebulous and undefinable, class of offenses dealing with "derrivative works". And down hill from there it goes. That is what you get for putting greed ahead of science and logic.
The IP wackos of course, knowing that, talk about "propagation" of information. Which suffers from the same nebulous and unverifiable specification of "derrivation" as soon as the original information is somehow processed before re-transmission.
Information is simply not capable (due to its properties) of being "private property" or "labour" and thus does not belong (despite of IP advocates' desperate arms waving) in a capitalist (or any other) marketplace as only physical "private property" or "labour" are subject to trade, or so would one Adam Smith have us believe.
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I do not give a damn about corrupt Republicans or corrupt Democrats. What is important is to get the lobbyists, large business interests and career graft-surfing politicos out, but most importantly the Medieval Inquisition of Greed known as the Neo-cons. And in that regard, I am afraid that the Democrats stand far better chance of winning, at least the 2006 round, then the Republicans as the American public is finally taking notice of the activities of the Neo-cons and the resulting stench of death, busted open bank vaults and the image of plain, frothing at the mouth insanity of the prominent members of the White House is begining to seriously scare the voters. One has to only look at the recent polls by virtually any polster.
One way or another, I am a Canadian and our political landscape is considerably different.
And what you missed from my long-winded, multi-pronged attempt to explain it to you is that the victims of such coercion (it is the wrong word to use but you insist) are frequently (or most of the time today, as the techniques became fine art) unaware of it. They (or their emotions, social links etc) were manipulated to the point where they accept their coercion as something desirable, or normal everyday occurance not warranting any concern. Like for example the fact that one pays for Cable TV to watch commercials on it. You are probably far too young to realize that Cable TV was sold to the public, and its operators were allowed effective monopolies in whole cities, precisely because they claimed to provide, unlike then dominant Broadcast TV, commercial-free programming, in exchange for a small monthly fee. But as soon as they were entrenched enough ...
These techniques are extremely difficult to make illegal. Step one is to end any government assistance to them (like granting monopolies based on a pretty smile and a song). But the other steps, far more important are very, very tricky. Undoing a successful, long-term, multi-faceted brainwash is a staggering proposition even for experts with personal access to the victim. At this point the public is so brainwashed by various manipulators that the problem is starting to adversly affect not only the marketplace but the political landscape as well. FOX, Clear Channel and similiar entities are applying that, by now rather refined, technique of brainwashing to the consumer masses with the purpose of not only selling unwanted goods and services but changing the whole political landscape to make it more "friendly" to their owners' other entrrprises. That and they actually think that consumption of unwanted goods is a good thing for the marketplace, to them, more consumption, of any kind, the better.
In this environment it is extremely difficult for the government to do anything about it because on one hand it is crippled by the political machinations of massive, controlling wealth and on the other the brainwashing is so successful that the very poeple whom you know were and are coerced are shocked when you try to do anything about their condition. They even turn on you, claiming that it is your attempt to disabuse them from their delusion which is somehow the cause of them!
Someone once said that the best method to enslave a person is to make him build his own mental chains. That is the very method employed here.
And yet, if one does nothing, capitalism will slowly but surely cease to function. Once consumer choice is no longer, in majority of consumers, educated, all the other mechanisms of the marketplace must surely fail as a result.
Racketeering is illegal. I don't know why you think this is not the case.
Of course I do know it to be the case. But what the law means by "racketeering" is the Al-Capone style, obvious, violent "protection" racket. That is basically the only type of racketeering which can be successfully (and yet even for the Mafia it took decades) to prosecute. We are talking now of far more sophisticated methods and tricks then a gorilla with a baseball bat asking for "protection money".
The reason it often goes unpunished is because people are unwilling to admit when they've been had. Clearly, the solution to this problem is more aggressive government prosecution.
And how, pray tell, are you planning to convince people who gulp litres of Coke a day and swear that Pepsi is the most foul tasting sludge, or the other camp of the true believers who claim that Pepsi is the thing and Coke tastes like sewer water? Except that in double blind studies 90% of people can't tell the
Except when one side lacks information to make an informed choice (whithout realizing it, due to skillful manipulation by a poweful seller with domineering media presence) or is being badgered emotionally or forced by carefuly manufactured peer pressure and million other factors which effectively destroy the theoretical "educated consumer choice" which is the cornerstone of Adam Smith's theory. Without educated consumer choice there cannot be fair competition. That is why companies engage in "branding" and million other psychological warfare manouvers. They do it to remove as much fairness from the deal as possible. That is why companies lobby and use propaganda to instill in the general public from the young age the unquestioning acceptance of highly questionable practices, like, for example, treating information as if it were "private property". And all of this in addition to the old problem of the complexity of technological products far exceeding the ability of an average purchaser to fully judge their merits. The list goes on and on.
And this is only in relation to actual sales of actual products. Add to this a completely whole new dimention of outright scams, like much of the "investment"/"insurance" marketplace or gambling or laughable medical "services" intent on separating desperate, gravely ill people from the last of their money. All legal of course.
Then sprinkle on top the ability of some people to collect vast sums of money for not performing at all. For example, in the USA, recently, an everage pay of an CEO is around 500 times that of an average worker in the same company, not counting stock options and other benefits. This keeps being true even if the company is losing money and eventually goes bankrupt. The shareholders (another supposedly essential group of people in capitalism) end up with zilch and the CEOs with "golden parachutes" (no one even talks about the workers, they are like garbage to be thrown out, things to be used and discarded). This of course breaks the whole capitalist "allocation of resources based on performance" deal completely. And yet, it is commonplace in corporate America. And while shareholders often sue, prosecution in these cases has been anemic and rarely successful.
Add to this monopolies and oligopolies based on geography, natural resource distribution, perversion of law etc.
So as I keep saying, with an ever growing list of examples, there is nothing inherently "fair" about the marketplace. It can be fair, and in many cases it is fair, but these are usually restricted to situations where large numbers of small producers compete to provide well understood commodity goods to educated consumers. Further you get away from that fair "core" of the marketplace, more unfair and unstable things get, up to and including complete breakdown of the capitalist methodology. That is because capitalism is a mere theory, which works perfectly only under idealized, theoretical conditions, which do not exist commonly in the real life. The discrepancy between the theoretical requirements and real life is what causes many of these problems we are discussing. And that is on top of a completely whole different universe dealing with morality and the nature of societies, which also has a critical part to play, and which capitalism, being a mere economic theory, is unable to account for. This is where your laughable, ridiculous and quite pitiful attempts at equating "value to society" or "value to a person" of all things with their price are stemming from -- you are looking at capitalism as if it were an all-explaining, all-controlling religious experience, which is by the way, not new to me as I ran into people like you many times before.
No. As I have repeteadely demonstrated, the simplistic system of capitalism breaks down in a number of obvious circumstances. I have done so, and which you keep desperately attempting to ignore, using your own definitons. For example, transferring vast wealth to offspring who had not earned it is a feudal, not capitalist, activity. That is why certain external rules have to put in place, to keep the system functioning in a way at least resembling its intended purpose. This is derrived from the mechanisms of the system itself, and its supposed purpose, not from making "value judgments for other people better than they can for themselves". It is the whole system that needs those controls, not individuals. Otherwise, no system whatsoever is valid, as every single one of them makes overall value judgments for each and every participant. I am sure that communists are equally as pissed at the capitalist "value judgments" being forced upon them by run-of-the-mill capitalist society as you, the extreme egoist, are miffed at any rule which involves anything that interferes with your hoarding of wealth.
Even if you knew enough to be able to maximize the value to others (as you see it) you would be incapable of doing a better job because you judge values by a different standard than other people.
Again, some values are basic and immutable. Some are the result of the socio-economic system in place. What you keep insisting on, and which I fully understand, is a narcisstic, completely self-centered approach of moral relativity. That is you want to be given an absolute freedom in doing whatever you want, regardless how harmful to others, and allow no one, other then yourself, to make any decisions in regards to this. In other words, you consider the society to be a set of resources and serfs put there (by God, presumably) for your personal use exclusively. In your world view, no one but yourself has any rights, expectations or priviledges whatsover, other then the ones you chose to grant them. Everything in the world is a mere tool, a toy to be used by you as you please. Other people are mere things that you can put to work as you see fit and dispose of whenever no longer useful. You are a vile psychotic sociopath, pure and simple.
So when you decide that these heirs are undeserving of their parents fortune, you must understand that it is a value judgment that the parent must make.
No. As you yourself have been harping on, "value to society" and "wealth" are supposed to have a positive correlation in the capitalist system. As I have repeatedly demonstrated, the transfer of vast wealth from parents to children is contrary to that rule. Yet, when convenient to you, you want to make an exception to that rule and decide that is not "the society" but parents, with vested personal interest in the matter, contrary to that of the society, to make that call, to override that rule. You seem to favour feudalism whenever it hits close to home and strict capitalism, or even Spencer's "Social Darwinism" when it applies to others. Which is really no surprise because you see capitalism as a mere smokescreen for your own sociopathic behaviour.
Simply put, it is not your money and you have no reason to believe that you know how to spend it better than they do.
Feudalism then it is. You are finally dropping any whiny pretense about "value to society". Gone is all that "allocation of resources based on the record of their creation" bullshit. This is your narcisticc socipathic psyche, standing naked before all to be seen in its ugly glory. Wealth based on divinely annointed blood-lines. Dynasties. Riches and priviledge begeting more riches and priviledge. All that glittering mis-direction about "producing resources" now far too smal
Curious. All your statements are in an absolute form "Money represents resources" or "If you do not produce more then you consume you should die" or "wealthy people obtained their wealth through being valuable to society" etc. None of which were even tempered in the slightest by any adjective at all. Like "most of the time" or "generally" or "approximately". Apparently, your command of the English language, like your humanity or your comprehension of basics of society, is also not your strong suit.
What I have said is that capitalism works well enough that it is the best system.
I too said that "capitalism works well enough that it is the best system". However your meaning of "best" is different then mine: the near-perfect, divine, solution to all problems, to be religiously worshipped versus the least smelly turd in the pile.
The mere fact that you see no value in an individuals line of work does not mean that none exists.
They have none. They did not, nor are doing at present, anything of value to attain the money. Money is accumulating itself due to the efforts of others, professionals who manage their fortunes, hired by their fathers.
Furthermore, as I explained already, and which bounced off your thick skull once again, none of them did anything of value at the moment of their vast fortunes being transferred to them. Do you have a comprehension problem? If capitalism, according to your own definition, is a method to allocate resources in favour of those who produce them, then, in the case of these people, it failed miserably (and spectacularly due to the sizes of the fortunes) because it was their fathers not them who were supposedly the "producers". Therefore, from the point of view of the children, they got a vast, massive, reward, for no effort. Thus breaking the equation.
Also, as I already explained, and which just as surely ricocheted off the same concrete-encrusted cranium of yours, the very presence of these heirs is, in most cases, irrelevant to the operation of the fortune itself. That is they add no value to the capitalist equation. Should they be replaced with stone statues, both the Hilton hotel chain and Wal-mart would function as before, with no apprecietable difference. Thus, again, and I will go slowly, so that your maddeningly slow comprehension can catch up: it breaks the rules of the system, by your own definition.
Convincing people to give you money is not easy to do. It is extremely hard to do if you will provide no benefit for that money, and you do not break the law.
Yes, being a successful con-man is hard work. But usually nowhere near the value of the wealth you do acquire that way. That is the whole point: you are unable to produce things to warrant the wealth, therefore you do the conniving to get it. Except that in the cases I mentioned, all that was required was to be born in the "right" family, a result of pure chance.
There is nothing wrong with leaving money to your children. The wealth you accumulate during your life represents the positive contributions you've made to society during the course of that life, and the rest of society owes you a debt of gratitude. The wealth is yours to spend how you please and to leave to whoever you wish. This is the fundamental nature of economic freedom.
Which breaks all your precious rules about "value to society" being somehow related to "wealth" of the person in question. Furthermore, the society owes you no debt whatsoever (or at least it is not in any way obvious) because the very fortune you passed on might have been your fathers and you merely stood out of the way when it grew under the eyes of professionals. Therefore, again, (perheaps repetition will penetrate that cretinous skull of yours), you did not engage in any "positive contributions to society" whatsoever, when given the for
Approximately.
Earning money means that you're generating resources, spending money means that you're expending resources.
Untrue. I gave you already many, many examples in which money can be earned with no generation of resources and disposed of with no expenditure of them.
The idea behind capitalism is that allocating more resources to individuals who are more productive will increase the productivity of society as a whole. This means that the available resources will increase and more demand will be met.
That is roughly one of the tenets of the theory. But, as you keep constantly failing to comprehend, the theory has only a limited impact on real-life happenings. Or, more precisely, the theory is stochastic as it only predicts statistical results. That is, most of the time, under average circumstances, the results will be as prescribed. There will however be a large number of cases in which the relationships described will fail. Capitalism will "work" even if only, say, 50% of the time its tenets are fullfiled. It will be simply 50% "efficient". This however, prevents anyone sane from considering "money" to be a reliable yardstick of "value", both personal and "to the society", which was the part you keep harping on. In short, capitalism is a very crude but a useful tool. It does tend to allocate resources, approximately, towards those who produce more of them. But because it is so porous, and its operation based largely on chance, it has to be supervised and overrides have to be put in place to guarantee that things of "value to society" are protected. One such thing is a universal acknowledgment of some basic rights and expectations of all individuals in our society. If it were not so, we would be no different then termites or locust. And so, in order to protect the real values of the society, to which the crude tool of capitalism is supposed to be subservient, one has to override its operation wherever it is acting out of control. Otherwise, the only object of the entire excercise would be about resources. Only resources. Not people, not ideas, not human civilization. Resources. If we were to be erased off the surface of the Earth and left behind a band of fully automated, computer-controlled factories, transportation systems, warehouses, trading exchanges and mining operations, capitalism would march merilly on, under full auto-pilot, oblivious to the fact that we were gone.
A few hypothetical examples is not proof that the system does not work well.
Since you claims are of the absolute nature, as in every case capitalism was working perfectly, any example demolishes your position. I already stated that capitalism works. Sort of, roughly, crudely, sloppily but it does work. However your claim was that "value to society" and "wealth" are one and the same, unerringly, always (or so it appears from the ways you formulated it). That if someone is wealthy, it is always so because his or her wealth is always in direct proportion to his/her "value to society". Therefore the examples I provided destroy utterly your position because even one contrary example destroys an absolute claim. Logic 101.
In reality, one is hard pressed to find real examples of wealthy people who do not contribute positively to society.
Good grief. Paris Hilton? Helen, Alice, Jim, John and Rob Walton? And these are only the top multi-billionaire parasites that come to mind in an instant. There are litterally hundreds if not thousands of spoiled heirs as soon as you lower the bar to the "mere" multi-millionaires and millionaires.
In the cases you can find, the actions undertaken by the individuals in question to acquire wealth is usually illegal.
If it were only so! Sure, such crassly invaluable to society individuals being granted such extraordinary wealth should be somehow illegal, but the best that could be done was the thing called "inhe
That is one of the weaknesses in the Adam Smith's model which only recently became increasingly apparent. Captialism depends on educated consumer choice, which is the very foundation of competition. Unfortunately, the companies have figured out a number of ways to prevent that choice from being educated. Strategies such as "branding" or FUD and other types of mis-information, combined with systematic efforts to keep consumers ignorant, an ability of corporates to dominate access to information and other factors are slowly but quite surely and effectively destroying the system. A set of draconian measures dealing with false advertising and mis-representation is in order. Albait the governments are no longer functioning in defense of the integrity of the marketplace, having been successfully infiltrated, corrupted and consumed by the corporates. I fear that a total market collapse, ala 1929, will be the only way in which some modicum of control could be regained over these cancerous corporate parasites.
Not likely. We were discussing US menacing Russia's best customer for military hardware for no other reason then US greed. I fail to see how interests of Russia would be served by allying itself with US on this. Most likely all the workers in the arms factories in Russia would salivate at the very idea of US attacking China for sales would go through the proverbial roof.
Possible Europian as well.
I am not quite sure why Europe should consider the US' Intellectual Property insanity and the resulting folly of trying to menace China over the said make-believe goods anything even remotely close to its vital interests. They would sit the thing out, wondering about what sort of debilitating madness the Americans are suffering from this time.
But China doesn't need a war to take over other countries,and they know it. Why do you think China is trying to buy as many oil companies as they can? Farms as well.
Quite right, China is waging the old economic campaign (quite shrewdly). But we were discussing some desperate, panicked attempts by the US to change the direction of things by menacing China with its military and it was in the context of that in which I responded to the parent.
I suspect that you were jesting and thus you must know that as far as India's market is concerned, Bollywood is a vastly more powerful economic entity then Hollywood could ever dream of.
What?! The whole point being made was that China is getting a thriving economy and USs is in decline thanks to China manufacturing things domestically (using the US fools as a bootstrapping mechanism while they are producing less and less).
If they were producing everything domestically, even when it made no sense, that would automatically introduce inefficiences into their system, as it did for the USSR.
You, Sir, are mightily confused. The inefficiencies of USSR were to do with its social/political system and not with its attempts to produce things locally. Consider this: what would be the "efficiency" difference between a very, very large group of people (China) which has nearly all the required natural resources, know-how and labour to be entirely self-sufficient and a larger group of people (Planet Earth)? How does the latter make things "more efficient", even though the distances required to transport goods and energy to do so are far greater in the second case? Could you elaborate?
China is _very_ energy starved
Only as far as oil is concerned, which is one of the reasons for abandoning oil in the long term. You try to make it sound as dependence on oil is a good thing while most see it as a disastrous liability to be eliminated as soon as feasible.
Btw: the Chinese economy despite showing 'great promise' is very inequitable: you need a work permit to come work in Shanghai for a year from the Western provinces and these work permits are much sought after. The western provinces are also quite poor (and not in the sense the US refers to Miss. as poor: we're talking about grinding poverty here).
Quite true but you seem to confuse the personal wealth of all citizens with the economic strength. As a matter of fact, Chinese have figured out that dividing their citizenry into permanent strata of priviledged wealthy and vast hordes of permanent work drone slaves is producing wonders for their national pocket books. I would be the last person to defend the morality of this, I am merely pointing out that by whatever strategy they chose to go by, it is manufacturing which drives everything. Don't shoot the messenger.
Utter and complete bullshit, as I keep explaining, over and over. Wealth has nothing whatsover to do with measure of "value to society" (that is the context of "value" we have been using so far, no?). How much denser can you get? Air we breathe has immesureable value to us because without it we all die. How much in "currency" do you pay for it? How much did you pay for Euklides' geometry without which there would be no modern engineering? And so on. This is getting tiresome. As I explained many times, with ever growing list of irrefutable examples, "value to society" and wealth, be it measured in "currency", "resources", "sports cars", "yachts", "private islands" or any other way, have no reliable correlation.
You seem to be repeating yourself in a loop, with no new data, probably simply hoping that if something is repeated many enough times, it becomes true.
No, you do not have to accumulate resources to accumulate wealth. This is one of the functions of currency. Currency represents resources.
I agree that "currency" and "resources" (and many other things) can be exchanged easily enough at a marketplace. I simply used your own terms (from your first "producer"/"consumer" example) when replying to you. It does not in any way alter the truth of my statement, but have it your way: "In a capitalist system, wealth is allocated to people depending on their ability to accumulate it". Note that it still has nothing to do with any "value to society". There is simply no reliable relationship between someone's "value to society" and his wealth. Or even between something's price and its "value to society" (a method to successfully separate the two is called "branding"). I gave many examples of that linkage being broken. Yet by repeating yourself (using "currency" or "resources" or probably the next time some other yardstik, like "gold signets") you appear to believe that if some lie is repeated enough times it becomes true.
This is not what I believe.
Actually, it is. What you propose and National Socialism only differ in the level of aggressiveness in removing those "undesirables". You hope that either a) they die from hunger or b) someone else gets to help them while you take advantage of thus reduced "competetivness" of those individuals to get ahead in your effort to greedily grab as much of the planet as you can. This entire discussion, despite you going on about "value to society" is quite obviously centered on your engaging in one of the oldest pursuits of man: seeking moral justification for your own infinite greed.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of currency. Only spending money represents an expenditure of resources.
What?! So now we are talking about "resources" again? No "currency"? Are you sure? I thought we were discussing how someone's "wealth" has nothing to do with his "value to society" (with you continuously switching between various ways of measuring "wealth" and then accusing me of confusing things). But have it your way: spending money and expenditure of resources are also not neccessarily related. One can burn money in a stove or give it to charity. In both cases no "expenditure of resources" (save the paper on which the notes were printed) occurs. You are wrong as usual.
Moreover he is providing a value to society, since he is providing investment capitol to boost the productivity of others.
No, he is not. The capital is providing the "value" itself. If anything, his father provided the capital or perhaps the professionals who presently manage it. The spoiled brat has nothing whatsoever to do with it, save for not managing to spend it all on buying up parcels of land on the Moon. I was under the impression that you clai
That is even more futile. If, say, China develops a robust internal economy (which is already showing a great promise) and then limits its trade with, at that point fatally impoverished, USA, where the average consumer would no longer be able to afford even the "Dollar Store" purchases, and instead focuses on itself and its Asian neighbours, how are you planning to enforce any IP rights? Stop Chinese companies from shipping goods between Shanghai and Peking?! Or to France? Japan? Lets not be silly.
Being a large economic power with the best funded army in the world does have its merits.
As a result of all of the IP-economy scenarios the first part of your sentence would be then in the past tense: "A formerly large economic power, presently attempting to reschedule debt payments". As to the second one, you cannot be serious. Are you planning to menace, of all places, China?! With its ability to muster more soldiers then US has citizens and access to nuclear weapons as well as a vast array of armaments, including at this point ICBMs (or what do you think all that fuss about Chinese space program was all about)? I would suggest to ponder the way in which the, far, far, smaller Iraqi adventure has unfolded. In the light of these, the Vietnam war could be considered a brilliant, near-instantenious, all-around military success for the US when put next to what would happen in an engagement with near-future China. Most likely, we here in Canada would have to quickly adjust to a Canada-Chinese border.
Very insightful indeed. One wonders what sorts of troglodyte "thought" patterns must be present in those "globalization" and "idea economy" shills who fail to realize that all of the economic activity rests on manufacturing like a sky-scraper rests on its foundations. Those who manufacture and directly service the manufacturers, are the ultimate recipients of the bulk of the results of the economy. Perheaps it is too hard to see from the lofty top floor where the executive offices of the clowns-in-chief are all that distance to the ground, but simply pretending that there is no need for foundations, the building and even the very ground itself and instead engaging in dreams of the executive comfy-chair floating on the make-believe, etheral clouds of "Intelectual Property" is bound to end up in a rather rude awakening on the way down once the execs depart that top floor in their chairs during their attempt at realizing their fantasy.
You are absolutely right of course. I would only add that it is also a futile and self-destructive "defense" in a long-term. It assumes, arrogantly, that the others are too dumb to match your R&D efforts or to produce their own culture. I hope I do not need to explain the frightening idiocy of that folly.
What is amazing and depressing to me is the number of otherwise bright people who buy into this IP sham. It is an economic and social disaster in the making, in the name of short term greed of the corporates and their paid-for, albait brainless, politicos.
Like, say, orphaned children or the premanently disabled.
You get what you deserve and all in a world where it's possible for an immigrant to this country to become one of its richest men.
This, stupidly, assumes that there is any relationship whatsoever between one's wealth and "deserving" of thereof. By this token a lottery winner or a spaced out on crack hier of a multi-billion dollar fortune are somehow "deserving" of them. Not to mention the impact of one's parents or place of birth, in the choice of which we have all such a great say, no? I see that the vile spectre of Spencer's "Social Darwinism" is about and as lively as ever. All that is missing from your ignorant musings is a mention of "God's hand" being involved in differentiating the "worthy" billionaires from the "worthless" Down Syndrome children. All bow before Divine Greed.
Why should I be helping people who refuse to help themselves? That's just going to promote laziness and dependence on me.
Translation: "I, Me and Mine. Mine. Me. I. Mine. All mine. Fuck off! Its all Mine!".
Good grief. R&D constitutes a tiny fraction of Big Pharma expenses, with its bulk spent in "marketing and sales" (and probably lawsuit settlements). Furthermore, the most vigorous expenditures are in "lifestyle" drugs, such as Viagra because these have the highest profit potential. If possible, the drug companies would make no drugs whatsoever, only "remedies" in order to ensure even more profitable marketplace for themselves. The R&D expenditure whining is the most obnoxious and infuriorating of lies put forth by these, what can only be described as, parasites. The world would be far better served if the R&D was done by public academia and manufacturing left to private industry, whereby a horde of makers would have to compete on quality, delivery, packaging and all those other things at which private industry is actually good at.
Untrue. In a capitalist system, resources are allocated to people depending on their ability to accumulate them (or dumb luck or the combination of the two). A side-effect of this is, one hopes, that "An Invisible Hand" somehow embedded in this scenario due to its dynamics will, hopefully, lead to a useful correlation between the resources allocated and their "value to society". You keep making the same, basic, mistake in granting the capitalist system supernatural powers which it does not have. There is no guarantee whatsoever of a relationship between "allocation of resources" and "value to society" as I demonstrated with many examples.
We measure value in currency.
No we don't, as the amount of currency one controls has no reliable relationship to his "value to society". All we measure with currency is the amount of wealth one can possess. The relationship of "value to society" with wealth is at best tenuous.
If someone has no value to society, they are entitled to no resources.
Again, this is some more callous Spencer and his "Social Darwinism" bullshit. Applying to someone a measurement of "value to society" exclusively based on money only goes as far as one is willing to disengage from morality completely (not to mention the inherent unreliability of such a yardstick, as I explained). What you say would be true in a termite hive, where weak are left to die and recycled so that more eggs can be laid by the queen. But we are dealing with sentient beings here, humans, who deserve a modicum of support even if they have no direct way to contribute in ways that make cash. This of course being another part of your Mammon worshipping psyche, that only ways of contributing which can generate cash are to be even considered. By this measure, a volunteer who spent his whole life teaching reading and writing to homeless orphans, and by doing this enabled a brilliant nuclear scientist to emerge, by this measure he is "worthless" to society because he has not found a way to make cash on his actions and thus, in the crude way of capitalism, has no "resources" allocated to him for his work, lest what he manages to scrounge elsewhere.
Some people think that everyone has value. I don't think it's fair to promote government legislation to provide resources to everyone, since not everyone agrees that everyone has value. The way I figure it, if you care about bums on the street so much, you can take care of them, and I'll decide for myself if I feel they're worth it.
This system has been tried before. In its extreme form, it was called National Socialism (a misnomer if there ever was one) whereby weak, disabled, mentally ill and all other "worthless to Arian society" individuals (such as gays, Jews and Gypsies) were simply exterminated. A process called "eugenics" was applied to these "worthless to society" individuals to prevent them from reproducing. Eventually whole other, neighbouring societies were declared "deficient" and undeserving of their resources and an effort was made to remedy that situation militarily, thus starting that bit of a set-to which we now know as the World War II. It is amusing how all of that selfish greed mongering of the likes of you inevietably leads back to these "bold" social ideas of the "fascisti". At least we know where you stand on these matters. It is only a pity, that so many of your and mine countrymen died only so that some terminally ignorant and infinitely selfish wanker like you could try to resurrect some new flavour of all that evil which those brave men gave their lives to defeat.
The way I figure it, if you care about bums on the street so much, you can take care of them, and I'll decide for myself if I feel they're worth it.
I will extend your phillosophy one step further. What if we, the society, or at least a large enough portion of us, decide that it is yo
Actually, no. You see, I run into a rather large number of people of the libertarian, anarcho-capitalist, "laissez-fare" marketplace or simply avarice-worshipping persuasion who, on purpose, conflate the two. The whole meme of a "self-made man", so popular amongst that crowd is based on this, purposeful, mis-direction. The idea being that some, glorious, God-annointed, talented, aristocratic individuals have an innate ability to "pull themselves by their shoe-strings", by their lone selves, and thus any requests for contributions to society within which they operate are a form of theft, robbery, Communism, Satanic Worship and all sorts of other general unspeakable evil. Or so they scream at the tops of their lungs. You see, their claim being that the society never contributes to their success beyond the usually relatively miniscule amounts which they already paid to various individuals within it for various things (most claiming that they overpaid severely). Therefore one can only assume that they spontaneously developed writing and mathematics, invented personally everything from ways of keeping fire, through the wheel and related trifles, proceeding through the whole history of humankind and culminating at the last thing before their first purchase.
That is why you will see this idea of "self-sufficiency" being promulgated, with a meaning changed to "profitability" but trying to retain the general impression of complete independence (ala Robinson Crusoe) from the society.
As I already stated, it is the best in a set of bad choices available. At least until human nature can be somehow changed. But having a marginally useful system, which very crudely approximates its purpose, is no reason to gloat at all.
By the way, the billionaire heir is a producer, since whoever left him the money found so much value in his existence that they left them with all that money.
Like, for example, winning some gigiantic multi-state lottery. Or some such equally fine way of finding "value in his existence". And no, even if his father did something of import, the son does not. This problem, which leads to excessive, multi-generational accumulation of wealth, and in the long term to all sorts of perversions of the marketplace, not to mention screwing up the whole "producer"/"consumer" measurement metric, was to be addressed by steep, nearly 100% inheretance taxes on fortunes in excess of certain base amount. But some find that too logical and not in service of all-consuming greed enough.
We take care of people because want to. These people have value to us because we hare happier to take care of them and keep them alive than to let them die. It makes no sense to argue that these people have no monetary value, since people are willing to spend so much money to keep them alive.
You have no idea what you are blabbing about. In one sentence you suggest that, quote, "if you produce less than you consume, you are just a worthless mooch, and the rest of us would be better off if you died", which implies that all those who, even due to circumstances beyond their control, cannot contribute enough should die off, and in the next you get all offended about how "It makes no sense to argue that these people have no monetary value". WTF?! Could you try to make some sense? People having "monetary value"? This is either some borderline insanity or a glimpse of your inner world of a complete subservience to the All-Poweful Mammon, in which religion everything can be only thought of in relation to stacks of coins.
This last paragraph marks you as an elitist no-nothing.
A "no-nothing"? That is certainly some new kind of an insult. Could you care to elaborate? Or is it that you are just semi-literate, as your ideas would seem to suggest?
No I am using the correct definition, one which requires that one sustains himself on the results of one's labour exclusively. Robinson Crusoe would be a "self-sufficent" man if you were to ignore his life up to the shipwrecking. Self-sufficiency is only possible (in theory) on a societal level and was strived for (unsuccessfully) by the USSR for example. Some religious groups are close by having established isolationist communes which strive to be self-sufficient.
Liberatarianism simply means that individuals have maximal power.
No. Libertarianism means that wealthiest individuals have maximum power and the rest, very, very little. Libertarianism means removal of all obstacles for these men to dominate all who are not wealthy enough and in the long term to, for all practical purposes, to own these less fortunates outright. Libertarianism is an out-of-control religion of individual greed and a very close cousin to "Anarcho-capitalism" (into which Libertarianism must, under real-life conditions, degenerate rapidly on the way to more vile scenarios).
Granted, that is not how it is being sold to gullibles, but neither was Marxism. A horrid corporate/feudal nightmare outcome is to libertarianism as USSR was to Marxism.
What have you got against power to the people?
Lenin would ask the same question. I figure he had a different kind of "power to the people" in mind though.
Or do you want everybody to be slaves living on Massa's plantation?
This of course being quite amusing as master/slave relationships are exactly the long-term practical outcome of libertarianism.
No. Self-sufficient means not only producing more or equal to one's needs but also consuming only what one produces. What you mean is profitability which is a different story altogether.
In a capitalist society, we measure value in units of currency, and we say that every member of society must produce as much value as they consume.
Bullshit. Capitalist society is a lousy (but so far the best compared to even worse choices) attempt at measuring one's "contributions" to society, utilizing a crude and unreliable tool called "money". For example: a con-man having successfully swindled many people of their money, and yet who was careful to stay nominally "legal", according to your "measure" is a great "producer" who is entitled to great levels of consumption. A jobless cocaine junkie billionaire heir to some fortune is equally a great "producer", while passed out in some whore-house.
If you produce more than you consume, you accumulate wealth, and can consume more at a later date, or pass that wealth on to you children, or donate it to whatever cause.
Untrue. The actual condition is: "if you accumulate more things then you have to part with, you accumulate wealth". There is nothing whatsoever about any "production" in a pure "capitalist" society. Adam Smith simply believed that by pure dynamics of such a system, somewhere, somehow, someone will produce things for others to consume. He called this phenomena "An Invisible Hand" which guides such a chaotic system towards some overall progress.
On the other hand, if you produce less than you consume, you are just a worthless mooch, and the rest of us would be better off if you died.
Utter, immoral bullshit. Otherwise, children and those born with debilitating diseases should be all left to die, which is the way of aminals.
By the way, that last sentence marks you as a Spencerite (i.e. a vicious, selfish, bloodthirsty animal, an enemy of everyone but himself, best put down like a rabid dog before he causes untold suffering to others) and thus not someone with whom an enlightened discussion can be had, lest it was about the "divine nature of greed".
First of all, that is not the definition of "self-sufficient". Secondly, "money" is an abysmal "scorecard" of "contributions" to society. By this measure a clever con man, engaged in immoral but "legal" scams is a great contributor. Likewise is a trust fund kid, who inhereited a multi-billion fortune and is busy spending it on fancy hookers and cocaine.
If you contribute enough that your scorecard is neutral, society has determined that you are taking exactly as much as you contribute. You are currently self sufficient.
Again, this has nothing to do with "self-sufficiency" and is equally poor measure of "contributions" as the above.
If you do not contribute enough and your scorecard is negative, then you are clearly not self sufficient.
Again, nothing whatsoever to do with "self-sufficiency", which is defined by independence of others, i.e. society.
Unless you have a major physical defect, like you are missing a head, society thinks that you should be a net contributor.
The society cannot "think" because it is not, on its own, sentient. It is merely agreed amongst most of its members that an optimal condition is whereby everyone contributes to the maximum of his/her abilities and in return is granted at least the minimum of ones basic needs, beyond which he/she is additionally rewarded in accordance with the level of those contributions. Unfortunately, noone has yet devised a reliable system of gaging those contributions and allocating the rewards. An extremely crude, inaccurate and unreliable kludge called "money" is being used instead and introduces with it a whole plethora of additional problems, some of which are of a significant detrement to the whole idea.
Unfortunately the current trend among individuals seems to be to take from the government because "I deserve it" rather than provide your particular value. Like not having what the next guy has entitles you to suck society's teet.
While some people who engage in this type of behaviour indeed exist, exaggerating greatly their number is a device of propaganda of another group, the so-called "Social Darwinists" of Spencerites, who are worshippers of individual greed and despise anything which stands in their way to acquire as much of the wealth of the world as possible, impoverishing other "competitiors to the loot" in the process, and who would do anything to prevent any attempts at curbing their desire to dominate others. It is they who continuously decry "theft" of taxation or any other requirement the society has put on them in exchange for its many advantages. It is they who whine about "self-sufficiency" when they mean "avarice". It is they who claim to be "self-made" men who only wish for "personal liberty" as long as the society supplies them with knowledge, fine goods, servants and the opportunities to rake in cash.
Just because you are poor doesn't mean you are entitled to support.
Spoken like a true Spencerite. "God chose rich to be rich because of their inherent 'value' and the poor wretches, born sick or into squalid corners of society? Why they deserve it, no?".
I have news for you: the value of society is determined easily by the way in which it treats its poor. If they are given every honest opportunity to become the contributors, which you so loudly proclaimed to be the chief measure of the social status, regardless of their initial condition, then it can be said that such society is fair. If, on the other extreme, it throws them to the wolves, caring far more for "money" then people, then it is merely an organised form of Barbarism and does not even warrant the label "society". A pack, a herd, or a hive, maybe. Society? No.
So in order to even warrant a label of society, some basic provisions have to be made for those who have no c
I agree that hermits born in the mountains, abandoned by age of 2 minutes and somehow surviving, raising themselves, building their log cabin, growing their own vegetables, making their own clothing and hunting with a bow and arrows (or more likely their teeth) would be never in a bad situation for long ... oh never mind. Look, there is no such thing as a self-sufficient person. A self-sufficient society (of large enough scale) yes. Person? No. We are all dependent on each other. One man cannot even farm on his own for he either needs machinery or many others to help his inefficient farm (that is why early hominids were hunter-gatherers). Never you mind the knowledge of farming, which is a result of cumulative experience of those before him. Not to mention that he would not survive his first 10 years of life without help. Personal "self-sufficiency" is one of those idiotic, infuriorating libertarian gems of greed motivated illogic that discredits the whole phillosophy completely right at the outset.
What?!! The Soyuz (in its many varieties) has flown over a thousand of missions since the system's inception in 1963 (for the booster) and 1966 (for the capsule). There were 220 of the original Soyuz vehicles, before even the "T" variety and a total of 750 Soyuz launches by 1994. By 2005 the Shuttle's has flown a meager 114 or so. You do forget that the Russians maintained, staffed and suppiled a series of space stations, starting with the military Almaz/Salyut series in 1973 and then the Mir complex.
That is impossible as long as brain-erasing technology is not employed. You do forget, as all the purveyors of the "intellectual property" scam do, that "data" and "thought" are one and the same (as both are merely "information" stored in a storage system, one mechanical, the other biological). So as long as that "loophole" of being unable to control thoughts exits, one then can proceed to describe in detail the plot of the movie, make cartoons and what not based on it and in order to stop that from happening one has to further stretch logic and come up with a whole new, nebulous and undefinable, class of offenses dealing with "derrivative works". And down hill from there it goes. That is what you get for putting greed ahead of science and logic.
The IP wackos of course, knowing that, talk about "propagation" of information. Which suffers from the same nebulous and unverifiable specification of "derrivation" as soon as the original information is somehow processed before re-transmission.
Information is simply not capable (due to its properties) of being "private property" or "labour" and thus does not belong (despite of IP advocates' desperate arms waving) in a capitalist (or any other) marketplace as only physical "private property" or "labour" are subject to trade, or so would one Adam Smith have us believe.