When you think of capitalism, think of activities that people engage in specifically to make a profit.

So

1. George buys a car for his own use. There's no capitalism there.

2. George buys a car to sell. This is capitalism.

Notice how the car is seen differently in each case.

In the first case, George sees the car as a tool, as a thing that will enhance his ability to survive, or will up his profile among friends, or maybe he wants to tinker with it.

In the second case, the car is an object to be resold. This is the merchant perspective. The merchant doesn't see bread as food, but as a way to make a profit.

In a capitalist economy, this perspective is pervasive. It can go so far that people are looked at as mechanisms for making profit. It can have a devastating effect on culture.

But as for what the profit-making object is: it can be anything. There doesn't need to be any production of goods involved. That's just one scenario.

But in the 19th Century one could be forgiven for thinking industry and capitalism have to go hand in hand. Industrialists were huge and all-powerful back then.

Things are more complicated. Now stocks and bonds are more central.

I'm sure Street will clarify anything you throw at him. — Tom Storm

I doubt it.

I think our reactions to content like this will be indicative of where a person comes from politically, no? — Tom Storm

We're just discussing the way "capitalism" is used, not whether it's good or bad.

Streetlight's views seem outdated to me, like he's in the 19th Century or something.

Many of us forget that our values and sense of self are a product of this ideology. — Tom Storm

What Streetlight said there isn't really true, though.

Capitalism on the other hand, cannot be understood apart from issues of production: of who and what is it that stuff is produced for — Streetlight

His focus seems to be on industrialized societies, forgetting that markets can be deal with things like bundles of mortgages, which are not produced by anyone per se, and certainly don't involve labor.

The birth of 'the individual' follows quite nicely from the birth of generalized market-society. It is no surprise that liberalism - whose unit of analysis is precisely the individual, upon whom rights and obligation accrue (and property rights above all!) - is born exactly at the end of feudalism at the point at which markets become ascendant. — Streetlight

The 'birth of the individual' is usually identified as the Renaissance. It's true that it's an idea in conflict with feudal life. So he's sort of right about this. A guy can't be wrong all the time.

Anywhere where exchange is not impersonal: families, friends, strangers asking for directions in the street, co-workers passing pens to each other across the room. Market exchanges make up a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of our lives. It just so happens their influence is unimaginably deep. Their extensity does not match their intensity in society. Markets are parasitic on non-market exchange that happen everywhere, all the time, among everyone, at all levels. I'm not even charging you for this — Streetlight

This is utter nonsense.

Your think this based on what? — Benkei

Mostly just familiarity with the way people maneuver. If Europe doesn't want Ukraine in NATO, they might refer to the rules as a reason to deny Ukraine's application.

But if Europe wants to accept the application, they'll find a way.

The cartoon intellect hath spoken — Streetlight

But they said they don't want to sedate you to lance it, so they're going to just leave it. :groan:

To be fair this assumes NATO has principals which it abides by, which of course, it does not. — Streetlight

Correct. Bad Motherfuckers do what they want.

I think they make up the rules as they go, though.

No I think your line made a hard stop a few generations ago, evolutionary speaking. — Streetlight

They said it was an infected boil.

Mm, from one set of murdererous freaks to another. — Streetlight

Yep. Welcome to your own species.

That's not going to happen. First of all, a country has to be functional democracy, which Ukraine isn't and won't be for a very long time. — Benkei

We'll see.

independent of Russia, yes. They'll be in NATO.

So basically, if all goes right from this moment, resistance and the will to fight for freedom paid off, securing the future for all Ukrainians who want to live free and independent as their own nation. — Christoffer

:up:

"Around 2,000 people are returning each day to Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, said the head of the city’s regional military administration, Oleh Synehubov. Russian forces bombarded the city for weeks but have recently withdrawn, in what military analysts describe as a victory for Ukraine."
NYT :clap:

Aka trolling — Olivier5

Yep

By the way, why do you lie so much? — Olivier5

Micro-aggression.

IOW, you don't know.

So the Bronze Age economy was not capitalist. It was clearly socialist
— frank

This is an anarchonism so terrible it does not deserve attention. — Streetlight

Really? Why doesn't the palace economy count as socialism?

First, I don't know why you keep referring to 'free' markets, rather than markets. — Streetlight

A free market has no price controls. The oldest version of controlled markets is where priests set prices (in quantities of cacao nuts in South America). There were harsh penalties for trading without permission.

In a free market prices are set by the operation of the market itself.

I'm not sure why you think 'money and banking' is a target here — Streetlight

What we think of as capitalism developed hand in glove with money and banking. Separating them would be a leap in the dark.

But part of the reason I've emphasized that capitalism takes root at level of production rather than exchange, — Streetlight

So the Bronze Age economy was not capitalist. It was clearly socialist. It's interesting to contemplate why it failed after centuries of robust contribution to culture.

More importantly: why, having failed, it never came back.

First, what is a market? A market is, first and foremost, a site of what might be called impersonal exchange. It is ‘impersonal’ insofar that those who participate do not, for the most part, have any pre-existing obligations, bonds, or relations to one another. — Streetlight

One of the ancestors of free markets was an aspect of the Bronze Age palace economy. People brought their wheat and other goods to the palace. Priests would then take a cut for the palace and distribute the rest to the people.

The late Bronze Age was similar to our world in that there were a handful of powerful states which controlled the known world. Free markets appeared around the time this international complex began to disintegrate. They may have been a response to collapse.

So free markets don't necessarily require states. However a free market can be a brutal and dangerous environment. Prior to the advent of money, every possible way to cheat and rob were explored in free markets.

Money, as far as we know was invented one time in Lydia. It eventually revolutionized human life by becoming the prime abstraction. It facilitated trade by eliminating one of the ways people cheated. Everywhere money went, societies lurched out of stagnation into progress. Strictly speaking, you don't need a state to mark gold ingots that all weigh exactly the same, but state backing increases confidence.

Now that abstraction is seeping into every aspect of human life with the prime abstraction: value, the next leap in human capacity comes from banks which provide the technology of virtual value. Since the Italians perfected the art, we've been living beyond our means. We basically discovered how to walk into our dreams.

This is one of the things I wish I could get across to some leftists. Money and banking, which are both products of a laissez-faire environment, aren't just objects in our world that we can extricate ourselves from by wearing red bandanas. Those things are literally part of who and what we are. They're part of the way we think and see the world.

Finally what does financialization have to do with this? We often hear about the rise of financialization, and the predominance of ‘speculation’ and debt, but what does this have to do with the above? Well, one answer is that the above model of capitalism based on markets is, in a word, failing. — Streetlight

Failing how, though? I've been pondering this for a while, and I still don't quite understand other than it has to do with the 1970s.

The outcome was the emergence of a new elite, new opportunities, new horizons, new dangers.

Wars often stroke extreme nationalism. — Olivier5

I imagine this invasion has created hatred for Russia that will persist in Ukraine for the next 50 years at least.

My reply is, firstly that it's collective intent that brings money into existence, not belief; secondly that any efficacy resulting from such a god would be reducible to that group intent, as for money — Banno

Intention would appear to be an abstraction. Group intent definitely is. So you've got gods and money "reducing' to abstractions.

Abstractions don't reduce.

What [ ] is called amorality is a thing that does not exist. If you are willing to submit to any norm, you have, nolens volens, to submit to the norm of denying all morality, and this is not amoral but immoral. — Ortega - Revolt of the Masses, p. 189

I get what he's saying. Plus judgement of some kind is at the core of any action.

On the other hand, amorality is a lens through which we can see the world. We use that lens in anthropology and psychology. In those endeavors we aren't judging, but rather trying to understand.

You won't know until you try. — Harry Hindu

You'd have to define "suffering."

Does suffering require a sense of self? If it's just the firing of nociceptors, then earth worms can suffer.

What if we were to point to "capable of suffering" vs "not capable of suffering" as the distinction? — Harry Hindu

That will also be a quagmire.

the preemie baby outside the womb still requires care to survive, how is that any different than the care they receive inside the womb? — Harry Hindu

Are you arguing that abortion is always wrong?

What do you mean, "live outside the womb"? — Harry Hindu

I think a 24 week infant has about a 7% chance of survival even with high tech care. At 20 weeks, there's really no chance.

Check the work of Julian Young, Brian Lieter, Thomas Hurka.If l get the opportunity , l will collect a list of all scholars with reference, past and present who share the same interpretation of Nietzsche as me — Wittgenstein

He does register a lot of disgust at what appears to him to be life-rejecting behavior and practice, but ultimately he's not offering a prescription for our world. Nietzsche makes it pretty clear that our world is the threshold of a new one which we would have trouble imagining.

You'd have to take his words out of context and extrapolate your own interpretation from there to get the OP.

So you're attacking a strawman.

the more reason 3rd Tri abortions are the most important kind to protect. — Streetlight

True. It's always going to be rare, though.

Third trimester abortion is rare and usually done for medical reasons, either a problem with the mother or the baby.

Yea, that's not going to happen.
— frank
Back in the day, folks said the same about Abolition ... and desegregation ... and mixed-raced marriage ... Actuarial inevitability, sir. — 180 Proof

They also said it about pigs flying.

Prenatal homicide (e.g. health of the mother, severe / unviable birth defects, poverty, etc), ain't infanticide. Ergo no unwanted / unloved newborns. Each woman knows best. Actuarial progress over retrograde conservatism. — 180 Proof

Third trimester is too late. Get over it.

My 30+ years old position is, I suppose, the "extremist" one (as the old post exerpted shows): abortion on demand – as an inalienable Human Right – even in the third trimester. — 180 Proof

Yea, that's not going to happen. Third trimester is a baby.

And that is why your posts are of so little value. Look at the name of the thread. — Banno

:lol: OK. Forge ahead with your stuff there.

The point being it is read this way. See the OP. — Banno

It doesn't look like there was any reading of Nietzsche involved in the OP. I have no idea why his name was mentioned.

Getting one country to change it's course in security policy after 200 years of a successful policy that made it to avoid WW1 and WW2, and another one basically the time it has been independent, one surely has had to make some radical decisions. And Putin has made them. — ssu

Why didn't Finland join earlier? They just didn't think there was any need?

and yet time and again it is read as encourage the aristocratic nonsense of the OP. Time and again this is how it is read. Your view looks like special pleading. — Banno

Name a Nietzsche scholar who reads it this way.

It's funny that one of your favorite phrases is "bootlicker."

:lol:

Fine, then let's go back to the question you're trying to avoid:
Are you a person? How do you know?
— Harry Hindu
If you can't explain why you are a person then what is wrong with aborting you? I'm not interested in bringing morality into it. I just want to know what traits a thing possesses that would qualify it as a person. — Harry Hindu

I'm not trying to avoid the question. I just don't know exactly when a clump of cells actually turns into a person. I know it will, given the right conditions. It happened to me.

What we do is declare that some time before the 20th week when the AC membrane in the lungs is too thick to function, the thingy is not a person. Somewhere around 25 weeks the membrane will work and the thingy can live outside the womb.

Some people reject that claim. So the buy-in for it is iffy.

What about the potential of personhood? — Harry Hindu

A lot of the land surface of the planet has the potential to become a person, Harry.

Your hair used to be some dust stirred up by a brontosaurus.