No. It's really annoying when you do this. Many things got worse for many people, but it doesn't follow that I think things would have been better had the industrial revolution never happened. It's really odd that you feel the need at every turn to stamp your foot and insist that capitalism is better than what came before. It is not black and white, obviously. — jamalrob

You just feel like I'm stomping all the time for capitalism. But I'll take that as a compliment. :wink:

Problems, defects and excesses there are, but you should make the argument clear that things got worse for many people especially in the long run. Above all, the basic problem is that the most corrupt, unjust society with broken or nonexistent institutions is usually portrayed as "true capitalism" and the normal outcome of capitalism by socialists.

Let's take for example that not so long ago the majority of the people in both of our countries were working in agriculture. Now a few percent work in agriculture. So where are the roaming hordes of unemployed wandered the countryside? Did we even see them earlier? The fears of the luddites didn't materialize in the way they feared machines would take over. Because that take over has just continued for hundreds of years now. Yet seldom people understand that in the equation of supply there is also demand and if everybody is dirt poor, which can happen, there is no actual market for many things either.

You minimize the trauma and destructiveness of capitalist ascendancy, but you don't even have to do that to defend the status quo. — jamalrob

Do we discuss the trauma and destructiveness of communism?

Do we even mention how non-marxist socialism has influenced quite a lot our present day system? Do we mention the creation of the welfare state, the large income transfers and labour laws as things that have corrected the faults in capitalism?

No.

The trendy thing is to compete in describing how worse things are now than before. And that nothing has changed. So forward to the barricades!

Perhaps the most interesting factoid to come out of the Bolton book is that Trump actually wants to be re-elected. I had always assumed that Trump would be fine with loosing the re-election and leveraging his status as ex-president to stroke his ego. But, if the Bolton book is accurate in that regard, he has actually invested his ego into being re-elected. That will guarantee it gets very ugly. — Echarmion

Yes.

I think he would have been happy to lose to Hillary, actually. He could have had that TV station he was thinking about and would be listened in the right-wing-realm as the prime Hillary-basher there is. Him being a presidential candidate of the Republican party would give him this clout.

Now it's different. He has finally gotten people like Barr who do what he wants. He has gotten comfortable with the Presidency. And he thinks he will look like a failure if he's a single term President. And perhaps he fears that he will be in court in no time if he isn't a President.

The numbers were not the point. The point is that the will to become a successful entrepreneur making you become a successful entrepreneur is a myth. — Kenosha Kid

I think people understand that you need more to be in the situation that people are willing to pay for your services. Like starting with education and vocational training.

Yes, insofar as I labour for others to eat. — Kenosha Kid

I assume you labour for yourself to eat.

I do not hold inheritors of wealth responsible for the theft any more than I would hold a baby of European stock responsible for the near-genocide and theft of two continents. — Kenosha Kid

Well, that's a good start.

You seem to share Judaka's view that to say 'Y happened because of X' it follows that 'Y is responsible for X'. Capitalism is based on a theft; it did not perform the theft, rather it inherited from it. — Kenosha Kid

Theft = the action or crime of stealing

Stealing = take another person's property without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.

Hence, when you argue that capitalism is based on theft (meaning stealing), it should not be any wonder to you how I or Judaka interpret your thoughts the way we do (and now naturally speaking just on my behalf). There is someone you stole from if you steal something. And I've asked you again and again, who or what is the thief here and who is the one whose property has been stolen?

Or is then inheritance theft? Should the wealth you poses be given to the state or what? Do you genuinely think that the society would be more just if inheritance was forbidden? So you work all your life helping your mother and father in the shop they have until your father dies and the state reclaims the shop and you have to find work somewhere else and start from scratch with your mother?

Sure, tribalism precedes feudalism, one difference being that a group that that took a watering hole by force was on a level playing field with the next group that wanted to take that watering hole by force, another being that social groups as a whole controlled that watering hole, which sounds a bit too commie, doesn't it. — Kenosha Kid

So who had the right to the watering hole at the first place? And why do assume it was a "level playing field"?

Or, was ownership a way for two tribes to live peacefully side by side with mutually agreeing on that this watering hole is yours and that watering hole is ours? Or better thing would be just to say "F*k it, we'll fight you to death if we see you near any watering hole we use".

Obviously they were forced by circumstances, if not by direct coercion. — jamalrob

And things would have been better if they have stayed in the countryside without an industrial revolution? I but I agree that once the changes happened, people are forced by circumstances. But so are now people here who were farmers earlier choose jobs in the local town rather than try to earn a living by farming. Again circumstances, but not so desperate ones.

In any case, I don't know if anyone is saying things were better for peasants than they were for the working class, although in some cases they probably were: peasants sometimes had a level of economic independence that factory workers could only dream of. — jamalrob

I've majored in economic history so yes, I can say that in general choosing to work in the factories was a major improvement for working the fields. Notice the differences with peasants that either owned their land or rented land and then those that were only agricultural labour. Especially for them a factory job was really a great opportunity. Even if peasants owned their land, you cannot divide the estate to your children perpetually as the land simply won't support them.

Although it's irresistible, communism seems like a dangerous utopian dream. I am not sure what the answer is ssu. — jamalrob

I only disagree with you on that I would say "because it's a dangerous utopian dream, it surely isn't irresistible".

But I can surely understand why people are drawn to it ...and other crazy ideas. My personal moment of "enlightenment" on this issue happened in Manila in the 80's when I was sixteen. I was standing in the middle of a very busy street in Old Manila with people brushing past me, when I saw something moving in this overflowing filthy gutter. I noticed it was a handicapped boy totally covered in filth and literally crawling in the sewage. I was just stunned with a "WTF"-moment and didn't know what to do until someone said that the bus we had been waiting was coming. In a society where nobody cares and just walks by I can see just why some people would be drawn to totally remold the whole society and have an especially deep hatred against the rich and those in power.

Or is your point that, since capitalism gets me a plumber more quickly, I have to concede that a moron who inherits half a billion dollars -- enough to buy a Presidency, say -- deserves that inheritance more than a Projects kid who could change the world if only he could stop his stomach from rumbling and hurting long enough to focus on class? It's difficult to join the dots on that one. — Kenosha Kid

Do I think taxation is theft? No, I don't.

Is there a problem in some people getting rich? No, as long the poorest don't get in absolute terms poorer. Social cohesion is important. And when wealth is created, it genuinely can happen that people are more prosperous: I assume both your and my great grandparents and their parents had less wealth than we have at similar age.

This is a psychological malfunction called the illusion of expertise. 200 people try to become successful entrepreneurs. Due to a thousand factors outside of anyone's control or consideration, one person makes it. — Kenosha Kid

You think only 0,5% of entrepreneurs are successful? You think being a millionaire is this success or what? I would think you are talking about professional athletes or something.

If it makes sense to you, though, you and you can talk in those terms. I am not obliged to entertain such silliness. — Kenosha Kid

I think you didn't get my point but anyway. You were the one saying you are a peasant, so...

You mean what is so wrong that we went from a condition where we could walk the land and hunt and gather to one where, if we wanted to eat, we had to labour for someone who suddenly claimed that land was his? Just that it's theft. Ask the Native Americans how they feel about it. — Kenosha Kid

Well, I guess they TOO were quite stringent about just who uses their hunting grounds.

So you bring up this "someone who suddenly claimed that land was his". Who are you talking about? I think that it will go further than just our historical time as animals can be territorial also.

It's hardly debatable that the concentration of the ownership of land, and capital in general, can be traced back to theft in the form of such legal measures as enclosures and clearances, with accompanying punishment and repression of the victims (vagabonds, Luddites, etc). — jamalrob

Sorry, did the vagabonds or, ahem, Luddites own the land? Who was it stolen from? Or is the argument, as Proudhon put it, that property is a theft?

The question we have to address is: radicalism or reform? That land ownership originates in theft might not justify the wholesale dispossession of the owners in one fell swoop. — jamalrob

This is a different and vastly complex issue starting from things like annexation of whole countries or whatever, are the rights of small landowners or actual dwellers on the land upheld or not. When have people the right to own land or do they even have the right in the first place.

Feudalism was "abolished by modern commerce" in a specific way that I think justifies drawing a parallel between feudalism and capitalism in terms of the inequality of ownership, property relations, and the relations of production, despite the huge differences between the two systems in other ways. — jamalrob

And capitalism surely has had it's problems too. But with forgetting that anything actually has happened between the time of feudalism and the present day, we don't look at the present problems, and possible solutions (especially from history) correctly.

The bourgeoisie didn't simply cry "feudalism is unfair and we hereby abolish it!", even if it seemed to take that form in certain places and historical moments (where the Enlightenment took its most radical and progressive form (jeez I do sound like a boring old Marxist eh)). What happened is that nobles, even e.g. Scottish clan chiefs, gradually began to find the benefits of capitalism more attractive than their traditional obligations as patriarchs, nobles, or vassals, and became capitalists, alongside and competing with the new capitalists who arose out of commerce. The peasants were out of luck: thus the working class was born. — jamalrob

Have you read Adam Smith? I think so, but I can be wrong.

Of course large transformations happen during a longer time scale than we notice.

I'd say that the ruling class, the aristocrats, were hoodwinked out of their power by the lure of capitalism which was a good thing, because otherwise you would have had in the UK a bloody Civil War again. The peasants and the poor? Well, let's remember again that they weren't as slaves forced into the factory. Likely as factory workers, however bad the conditions were then, did get better salaries than working the fields and literally facing hunger.

I don't think anyone is denying that there are huge differences, or that we formally have freedoms that are often beneficial. They key point is, despite that, each of us is thrown into a world in which a small part of the population holds the land and capital, thanks to inheritance and class dominance. Whether one is an owner or, on the contrary, depends on the owners for one's livelihood, with virtually no say over the situation, is an accident of birth--also rather like feudalism. — jamalrob

OK. And thus even my conservative party here is an adamant supporter of the welfare state.

So, is the answer Communism or is it capitalism, where we try to fix the problems, jamalrob?

As for the Black Panthers, they were fucking heroes and anyone who does not revere them like they do MLK ought to stop pretending they give a shit. — StreetlightX

Many do agree with MLK's message in his "I have a Dream" speech. I don't think they pretend. Do they even know about Huey Newton? But feel free to think that they only pretend and don't give a shit in order to create your own inherently racist America. But luckily we have you as the righteous one. So what happened to the Black Panthers, StreetlightX? If you revere them so much, perhaps you can enlighten me, really.

Get this through your head: the US is dealing with the same problems that have existed since the end of the civil war, in many ways in worse forms, not better. More black people die at the hands of the police in the US than they did at the height of lynchings in post-reconstruction US. — StreetlightX

So nothing has happened in 155 years? Things are worse. Ok.

Just like a serf had to give a portion of his crops to the lord in order to be permitted to live and work on the lord’s land. — Pfhorrest

Just like a serf?

The problem is far too easily people interpret today to being serfs working for a lord. For them it's just a trendy figure of speech. For historical serfs this was something different. Remember that the lord in feudal system was also the judge and the law around. You simply didn't have the option to pack your stuff and work somewhere else. You couldn't just like that move into a city and start a business there.

What is lacking typically is the understanding just how feudalism was abolished by modern commerce, which is only replaced by very eager figures of speach of "modern day feudalism". As if our current time in the prosperous West with it's democratic structures and welfare state resembles the feudal past. We may have problems today, but they don't anything like under feudalism. Just as our present day farmers, those usually old people who work still with agriculture, are far away from the subsistence farming peasant of the past.

Plumbers and carpenters do work for someone else for the money they need to feed their families. It's just nicely abstracted now. — Kenosha Kid

All people who provide any service to others do work for someone else. Plumbers, carpenters, lawyers, personal trainers, engineers. Whoever. Remember that theoretically there's not much difference in you buying a haircut and you employing a barber.

There aren't many self-employed plumbers left here, don't know about where you are. — Kenosha Kid

Thanks to capitalism, obviously you can CHOOSE a person or a firm, big or small, you want to provide the service you need. Or better to have that state plumber to fix your pipes at your home, who comes 5 months from now?

As for entrepreneurs, it's a myth that you can just decide to become a successful entrepreneur. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, you do need things like a free market, the ability to choose a profession and be an entrepreneur in the field you want. Some professions naturally need regulation like doctors, pharmacists or layers. But training and official certificates aren't the major way to control a market as feudal corporations were or what limits a centrally planned economy creates.

It is without doubt much more fair than the feudal system, which is why I'd prefer to be an honest capitalist than a communist. But all of this is still based on that original theft. People who inherent wealth believe they deserve it, but they don't. They are no more deserving of their inheritance than a trouserless scally playing in a gutter in a street, not entirely sure if its mother is home or not. — Kenosha Kid

Original theft or original sin? It's correct actually to put it in religious terms as the issue is quite religious in my view. The viewpoint comes more from a religious aspects than from practical measures of making the World better.

Welfare is a partial repayment of that theft, — Kenosha Kid

Why?

What is so utterly wrong in the fact that the seller of a service and the buyer of a service can reach an agreement what the price of the service is? Other one gets the service, other one gets income and both are happy.

And are you utterly incapable of thinking that a person that employs people is happy that he or she employs people that then get income? Or that people are genuinely happy if they have satisfied customers? Or is THE ONLY religiously acceptable form of employment a cooperative, as if any company is just theft? This is the problem in viewing any transaction as basically theft, original sin.

Worth also noting that Martin "peaceful" Luther "protest" King had disapproval ratings at levels far worse than current day BLM — StreetlightX

Worth noting how different the US was back then too in general, btw.

MLK might be publicly and officially revered now, but are the Black Panthers too?

“Nationality” is traditionally a synonym of “ethnicity”. — Pfhorrest

In my own language this has never been so. Nationality and citizenship might be synonyms sometimes, but ethnicity hasn't. And now as we use ethnic or ethnicity isn't a synonym for nationality.

It’s only since the era of nation-states that nationality and citizenship have been able to be treated like they were synonyms, but in some cases (like the Kurds) they still come apart. — Pfhorrest

I don't think so, actually. Even the Romans understood the power of assimilation to being Roman. Hence first the various people in the Italian Peninsula were made to be Romans and later others too. So it's absolutely no coincidence that the people we called Byzantinians thought of themselves, and justly so, as Romans. Hence these ideas are far older.

No, I'm a peasant only insofar as I must labour for someone else in order to feed and house my family. — Kenosha Kid

Right. I thought you were being poetic as a peasant is a more of a historical name, but the correct definition is simply that you are an employee either working in the private or public sector. And of course you don't have to work for someone else. You could be the most annoying type of person to communists, social democrats and trade unions: namely an entrepreneur, a plumber or carpenter working for yourself. So your profession isn't really chained to the ground as with some historical peasant. (And do notice, peasants could own their lands, just like here in Finland and usually in the Nordic countries.)

Besides, being an employee doesn't at all make you part of any class. CEO's are employees, you know.

Strictly speaking nationality is synonymous with ethnicity (a nation is a people, not a state), but I understand that you mean it to mean association with a state. — Pfhorrest

Case point, being an US citizen or even an UK citizen are examples of nationality not being synonymous to ethnicity. And don't try to say that the UK and US aren't nations, but only states! Being British is a later invention, being English, Scottish or Welsh is basically what you call an ethnicity.

Doesn't ethnicity encompass race and religion? — Harry Hindu

Not exactly,

Ethnicity is a category of people who identify with each other, usually on the basis of presumed similarities such as a common language, ancestry, history, society, culture, nation or social treatment within their residing area.

Here the most common issue or most obvious difference of ethnicity is language. People can have different language, yet share the same religion and there be no outward differences. And with different language there comes different culture.

If you say YOU are a peasant, then really, do you or your family own the land?

As subsistence farming has long gone except in Third World countries, fewer and fewer people actually farm. Or are genuinely saying that you now farm rented fields without any fields of your own? Renting land a profession for few farmers and mainly large company-like farms. The 2 million farms in the US employ only 2,6 million people. Agricultural production is really transforming to an industry just like others.

I am one of the multitude who must labour for others in order to provide for my family. I am a peasant :) — Kenosha Kid

If you are a peasant, then you farm land. And so, from who have you or your family stolen the land?

During various times some of those categories are made hilariously important. Other times they are simply ignored as an oddity that isn't even used.

Are they important for us? As individuals often no, but our societies do use them and we will notice easily how powerful they can be.

Just live in a foreign country that goes into war with the country whose citizen you are and in an instant you have become to be very suspicious person. Have some other strife, riot, terrorist attack or a conflict which has to do with one of those four elements and you can notice it does effect your life even if your race, ethnicity, religion or nationality hasn't been ever important to you.

But there's no going back. It just goes from thieving bastard to either offspring or another thieving bastard. It's still theft. — Kenosha Kid

From which pious innocent saints was land stolen from first? Or is this an original sin that you are talking about?

And from who have you stolen your wealth, Kenosha Kid?

Yes. And?

Your example really doesn't even question the argument that I gave.

If now for 119 years Nobel prizes have been given out and roughly for 70 years of those 119 years women weren't participating in the workforce as men were and even still women don't go to work as much on the STEM-fields as men do, why on Earth you would draw any conclusions from the fact that more men have gotten Nobel prizes as women?

It is genuinely as stupid as to notice that EUROPEANS and NORTH AMERICANS have gotten more Nobel prizes than Asians without noticing that there was this thing called colonization etc until the 1960's or so. Or how about drawing the line with those who came from rich or middle class backgrounds or poor backgrounds. Again I would dare to say that there are less Nobel prize winners from dirt poor backgrounds than from middle class ones. OMG! What does that say!

But no, let's go directly to saying something about the intelligence of various people or gender or whatever. :shade:

You say it in your notes:

The proof above is standard calculus. You may also come across a variety of philosophical,
semantic, arithmetic, algebraic, precedence arguments[22], some of which are interesting or
relevant in their own right. Perhaps a source of confusion is that the number 1 figures nowhere in the sequence (0.9, 0.99, 0.999, ...). Another possible source of confusion could be the Archimedean properties [23][24][25] : neither ∞ nor infinitesimals[26] are real numbers [27][28]. Either way, calculus has real applications, proven in action, just ask physicists and engineers.

Yes, we know the answer, we know how it works.

The sorry fact is, that we cannot either describe or simply cannot understand infinity as clearly as we would want. Or infinitesimal and it's relation to numbers.

I believe the actual number of men and women in science doesn't matter. What's important is the percentage of men and women who win Nobel prizes.

If the percentage of men who get Nobels is greater than the percentage of women Nobel winners then gender plays a role in intelligence. — TheMadFool

ssu By the way the ratio of men to women Nobel laureates is 866 : 53 = 16 : 1 approximately. If gender doesn't affect the chances of winning a Nobel then the population of men has to be 16 times the population of women which we know isn't the case. The sex ratio is at most only 2 men to 1 woman. — TheMadFool

Umm.... now it really seems that you are living up to your PF name.

Because how can you say that the actual number of men and women in science doesn't matter?

Really?

If there's 99 men and 1 woman working in "Biogradable physics" before the 1970's or whatever, then it's a bit strange to say that men are better in "Biogradable physics" because more men have gotten Nobel prizes in "Biogradable physics" than women! Even the assumption that more Nobel prizes received by gender (or race/ethnicity/nationality) tells ANYTHING about the intelligence of gender (race/ethnicity/nationality) is quite dubious in to me.

Is property damage ever a good tactical decision in a protest? — Isaac

There's a difference between a peaceful protest and a riot.

Property damage is indeed a tactic, but for something else than just a "protest". If you want to instill fear, escalate tensions or get the authorities to respond by violence, then destroying property is a great tactic. Yet then you aren't just talking about "protests".

What's shameful looking at that is that no woman has won the Nobel prize for physics solo, which means that even when women are doing great research, they're not doing their own great research. It's unlikely to change because science is ever more collaborative and still male-dominated. — Kenosha Kid

Actually solo Nobel-prizes have become more rare. What usually happens is that some specific field gets a Nobel and there simply isn't a Newton or an Einstein that hasn't got the peers that "on whose shoulders they stood". So very likely it's more than one. Besides, seldom people publish scientific breakthrough articles just by their name, but have others that have participated in it.

Not theory, but experiment. Helen Fisher studied extremes of intelligence and found that there were more male geniuses. And more male idiots. — Kenosha Kid

I would argue that even larger issue is simply what fields men and women choose to study.

And yes, there can be the occasional misogynist still somewhere in the academia, but they are very rare. More likely the head of the university or the research institute will sigh happily if they get a talented woman or minority member to their team.

1. Is there a theory of intelligence that explains these statistics? — TheMadFool

This is quite dumb, actually. But very typical for today.

The answer is of course not.

How about the issue that the prizes have been started to be given out since 1901? How many women were at STEM-fields in 1901? How many women could even vote at that time? I think for the first seventy or nearly eighty years a minority of women worked outside the house in the US. So you could start with these kind of statistics before going in Nobel-prizes:



How many are there even now in the STEM-fields? They are a minority, yet are women really going to study physics or economics far more than men?

How have things changed? Well, Hence looking from 1975 onwards:



And Marie Curie? Thank God for her, because statistically it was really rare to have women in her position. Of course, once you gotten a Nobel-prize, you have a huge probability more to get another one. Let's remember that we are talking about a very small group of people, but people will eagerly use the statistics for Nobel-prize winners to answer general questions about science and gender, race or nationality.

Besides, Trump's line is obvious:

I stand before you today to declare the silent majority is stronger than ever before. Five months from now, we're going to defeat sleepy Joe Biden. Why does he get a pass from these people? We're going to stop the radical left.

And Seattle, of course...

But it's probably better for us to just watch that disaster. I flew in with some of our great Congressmen who were going to introduce in a second and I said to him Congressman what do you think? I can straighten it out fast. You would just go in. No sir, let it simmer for a little while. Let people see what radical Left democrats will do to our country, but Americans have watch Left, wing radicals burned down, buildings loot businesses destroy private property.

I don't forecast the elections to be ugly. I think they will be hideously ugly, even if Biden isn't as inflammatory to the Republicans as Hillary was.

Ah, Australia. A country with a colonial past also. OK.

Please don't say that you live in the UK.

No more state murder of black people. Ideally, no more state murder of any people. This is not hard. — StreetlightX

Did I mention about the record gun sales in your country? I think I did above.

I think it is hard...especially for Americans.

Unconditional surrender. — unenlightened

Yes, that's typical what protesters do.

The solution?

Rabble armies are like cluster bombs; they tend to result in a certain amount of collateral damage. Regrettable but sometimes necessary. — unenlightened

Cluster bombs are quite complex explosives intended for a very specific targets and a specific attack method, actually. Better figure of speech would be of high altitude bombing with free fall bombs using only map coordinates. Some of the hopefully hit what you are intending to hit, others, who cares?

I think we should note just how earlier the US has avoided change and why after similar incidents for many decades now, be it in the 90's and later, same issues come up. What did happen after the Rodney King beating and the riots? What happens after the protests? I'm genuinely hopeful about police reform, but of course that "whining about broken windows" or vandalized George Washington statues IS ALREADY used as a countermethod to poison the moment and draw people away from the consensus gained in the condemnation of police brutality. Silly season is starting, so time to juxtapose the American people to two different camps. Time to divide the people. And it works, every time.

Besides, there's millions of guns in the US and you have now record gun sales, so more guns I guess is the American answer:

Gun sales and accompanying FBI background checks spiked last month, breaking records as the nation weathered the coronavirus pandemic and riots broke out in major cities over the death of George Floyd.

Already this year, the FBI has recorded 15 million background checks in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, closing in on breaking last year’s record of 28 million background checks.

A total of 3,091,455 checks were recorded in May, the highest May number since the system was created 22 years ago, and the third highest month on record. The highest number of checks in one month occurred in March, which recorded a record 3,740,688 checks.

Your nation can always find ways to disappoint you and make things even worse.

Biden and Trump don't need to debate policy and precedent. The American people don't want that. What we need is a water drinking contest. And if Biden can run down a ramp he'll have November locked down. — Maw

Things might go so that they don't even debate.

What do you need debates for in your elections? Just go and vote if you can.

I remember some sociologists referring development happening in the way of an "take off". This means that enough of various variables have to happening at the same time for a country or a society to make dramatically change. Hence only having every little brat sitting on a school chair and learning math and English won't the problems of a poor country.

In fact, a too easy revenue stream seems to behave as an outright curse. If you have huge natural reserves like oil, there is somebody always willing to buy it and pump it up from the ground no matter how crazy things are in the country. Money flows in, but doesn't create necessarily prosperity among the people. You do not actually need a highly trained workforce for the money to flow into the country and there aren't strings attached, hence usually the end result is corruption and misery. Perhaps only Norway has been apt to handle the riches from oil as even the UK went on a spending binge when it had huge oil reserves in the North Sea. (And at least the UAE has built awesome skyscrapers, to say something positive about them.)

Who's said anything about force? I never even mentioned it. — Isaac

Embargoes are a show of force, mind you.

Why? I get that in conservative ideology the arbitrary geographic lines we draw around groups of people become really hyper-important for some reason, but why would it be limited what foreigners can do (in theory). — Isaac

"Arbitrary things" like the ATLANTIC OCEAN separates me from Americans so yeah, there indeed are issues that limit what I can do. :snicker:

I explained the theory. It's right next to the bold word 'Theory'. I thought that might be a clue. If you disagree with the theory, — Isaac

Umm...I really don't understand what you are saying at all, sorry. So if you burn Apple shops, children survive, but if you don't... nevermind.

I get that in conservative ideology — Isaac

Why is it that when conservatives are faced with policies — Isaac

And this is the dog whistle you hear if I talk. Rather irrelevant to say that I'm simply against violence WHEN non-violent methods do work and do work even better. I'm no pacifist, but I do think a democracy can work well enough for us if we make a concerted effort in upholding it.

Let's see how outraged you are when some right-wing extremists use similar tactics to further their dubious agenda. :roll: Because you would. It comes clear from an earlier discussion sometime with VagabondSpectre on this Forum.

If alt-rioters shut down an event you that happened to be attending and support, I'm guessing you would object to their use of force against you and yours, right? — VagabondSpectre

And your reply:

Yes. That's the point of having a feeling about how our society should be. I would object to the alt-right using any means at all to shut down an event I approved of because I'd believe them to be wrong. You can't remove the judgement of what's right and what's wrong from this. The debating arena itself is constructed and maintained by people. People who all have a view of what's right and what's wrong. It infuses every action they take. Denying a platform, allowing a platform, ignoring a platform...everything is infused with our moral sensibilities, we cannot 'step outside of them' to create a fair debating space. — Isaac

So you don't believe in a fair debating space, or that laws are tried to be made or can be made for the common good. Again a quote from the earlier discussion:

We have laws protecting individual rights (such as property rights) because if we allow ourselves to act fast and loosely according to our felt connections, we're not guaranteed to behave any better than an angry mob, and we just wind up creating more problems for ourselves and everyone else. — VagabondSpectre

Look to your history books. If you can detail me a single instance of a law protecting property coming about after a community-wide discussion about the anarchistic ramifications if we don't, I'd be fascinated to see it. All I've found so far is laws put in place by wealthy landowners in order to apply the force of the army to back up their claim to land. — Isaac

So no wonder, as laws about property are according to you "put in place by wealthy landowners in order to apply the force of the army", property might be called theft as the old slogan from Proudhon goes. Needless to say that the lack of those individual property rights of the poor is one of the basic problems in Third World countries.

I'll think I'll end this discussion for a while to enjoy a lovely Midsummer here.

Mr. Brook's killer charged with felony murder and 11 other charges 5 days after the incident which is unprecidentedly swift for a local DA anywhere in the US. — 180 Proof

Happened a bit quicker than the charges against the other police officers in the George Floyd case.

Good things might come out of this, even if real change will take time.

True that nothing guarantees economic success, it’s probably comprised of multiple factors which play key parts and education does play a component of it. — Josh Lee

Indeed.

Especially in the 60's there was a huge belief that education would solve everything. It isn't so, even if education is extremely important. The Catch-22 is that if you have a good and working education sector, the society already has to be prosperous. Or then you have the typical divide of good or tolerable education for the rich and outright nonexistent education for the poor.

In a Third World country an university professor has to have a second job perhaps as a cab driver to feed his family, which tells a lot.

Bolton's book will simply just reinforce the well drawn picture of what kind of disaster this person totally inept for the job is. I've never noticed them (books about President Trump) being different in this way from each other...they all tell the same story.

And yeah, people don't know that we aren't part of Russia. Who would have known? (So that's why he was so nice to us Finns!)

However, the education system constantly reinforces the wrong mindset where they test and grade us. This is like rushing us to reach an end, without caring for the process itself. This somewhat takes the meaning away from education where the end goal is a certificate or diploma, instead of learning itself.

Do you guys agree with this and what can we do to change or improve the system? — Josh Lee

Yes. Because we use the quantity of those diplomas as a number showing the success of the education system. The more people have diplomas the better, it seems.

Especially the role of education is seen far too simplistically in the society. Far too easily it's just assumed that if people are more educated, they get better jobs and the prosperity of the whole society increases. Yes, it's a fact that if people cannot read, there's not many highly demanded high tech jobs for them. But education just by itself doesn't create those high tech jobs either. It's not an economic equation that if we only have more a) natural resources, b) infrastucture, c) education that the prosperity increases. Education should not be looked upon from such narrow viewpoint.

A good example of this is to enlargen education really to "lifelong learning". The positive aspects of lifelong learning are that it enhances social inclusion, active citizenship, personal development, self-sustainability, as well as competitiveness and employability.


Besides, being uneducated sucks.

We're always going to someone else's country and encouraging some way of doing things. — Isaac

Yet there's a huge difference if that encouragement is optional or if it is implemented by force. If it's optional for the country itself to choose what it wants, then we are on the right track.

Just like in the case of this thread, which about systematic racism in THE US (which this discussion with you has strayed off), it is honestly and genuinely A JOB FOR CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES to get their shit together. It's simply limited what foreigners really can do. My setting ablaze the store of a Harley Davidson or a Chrysler importer really isn't the best option to tackle systemic racism in the US.

Let me try it this way. Here's two possible solutions to the problem of Congolese slaves.

1. Carry on buying phones as usual so that they eventually get richer and make their own laws banning the practice. Theory - industry leads to development and development leads to better living conditions. Disadvantage if theory is wrong - lots of children suffer and die.

2. Set fire to an Apple Store. Theory - the protest shows how angry people are about Apple's supply chain choices, and media spotlight embarrasses people into changing phones, Apple eventually backs better working conditions. Disadvantage if theory is wrong - an entrepreneur loses their businesses and some workers have to find another job or go on benefits. — Isaac

That makes absolutely so sense at all. First of all, neither is really a solution.

Second, how setting fire to an Apple Store magically saves children in Congo? No, the disadvantages are:

1) Lots of children suffer and die.
2) Lots of children suffer and die AND an entrepreneur loses their businesses and some workers have to find another job.

Of course option 2) might also be:

2) Lots of children suffer and die AND an entrepreneur loses their businesses and some workers have to find another job AND people vote "Law & Order" Trump to office for four more years because they are fed up with their fast food restaurants being set on fire by vandals (or this image is successfully fed to them by Fox News).

So keep playing to the tune which Trump wants to hear from you.

The only scenario that makes sense - is to send advance robotic probes and the autonomous AI-ships as extensions of Terrestrial intelligence into interstellar space and then eventually across the Milky Way galaxy. — 180 Proof

Even if 180 Proof is here talking about interstellar space, I have to add that this "not making sense" argument has been used against any human exploration of space. We are intended for Earth, so let machines take care of things anywhere else.

That humans even bothered to go to the Moon is something out of the normal. Even if we would have the technology, there's actually not the desire.