because it is not an exact numerical relationship of the physical relationship — Rank Amateur

This is absolutely crazy. Irrational numbers and transcendental numbers ARE NUMBERS.

Pi is a number, it is a mathematical constant. It has an exact definition: the most general is that it's the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. There are others too, actually, which hardly is suprising in mathematics.

by definition, an infinite,non-repeating decimal is an irrational number. An irrational number is not an exact anything. — Rank Amateur

Please read again your number theory.

Pi is a mathematical approximation — Rank Amateur

How is it an approximation?

Is to you the ratio of 1/3 an approximation? As when we write it with decimal numbers in our number system its (0,33333...)

Fallism is less about science in any tangible way, and more about the general dissatisfaction with social disparities between perceivably western and non-western ethnicities. There's an emotional debate going on, and science has been dragged into it (and unfairly accused of taking sides) like some kind of unlucky brother-in-law. — VagabondSpectre

Fallism came and went in the South African university circles just like Occupy Wall Street movement in the US. Both aren't anymore active in a major way, but the undertones haven't gone away for sure. To say that science has been just dragged to this as an innocent by-stander might accurately describe the situation. The Apartheid era education system where a minority had a good education system while the black majority had a lousy one won't naturally correct itself without investment and a lot of hard work. But that surely isn't the fault of science itself. To argue that science is Eurocentric or Western can have true repercussions, if the views would go as so far as with Boko Haram. Naturally South Africa is very different from Northern Nigeria.

You did do a computation. You gave a finite-length description of a particular real number. The numbers for which you can do that are the computable reals. — fishfry

Is making a drawing computation?

If all you have is the computable numbers, your real line is full of holes. The computable real line is NOT a model of Euclidean geometry. For example two lines in the plane made up only of points whose coordinates are computable, may pass through each other without intersecting. — fishfry

Of course, but I was talking about Mathematical constants. Now there are a lot of transcendental numbers that we simply cannot define.You see a number that is transcendental and "close to" Pi isn't an accurate definition that pinpoints to one exact number.

Of course pi is the output of a computation, as is the number 3. Most real numbers, and most points on Euclid's line, are not the output of any computation or finite-length description. — fishfry

Exactly, but us not being able to define them (to compute them) doesn't make them not to exist.

The simply basic problem is that the mathematics we use emerges from measuring things, from arithmetic, calculation and computation. It doesn't start from it's logical roots. Hence we just have infinity as an axiom. There's a lot in Mathematics to be discovered.

Yawn...

Yes, much has been written on this subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_cult

Here's a fairly comprehensive list of predicted apocalyptic events, many made by science:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events

For a walk down memory lane, here are some scientific doomsday predictions made at the time of the first Earh Day in 1970:

http://www.aei.org/publication/18-spectacularly-wrong-predictions-made-around-the-time-of-first-earth-day-in-1970-expect-more-this-year-2/

The more interesting phenomenon is how the adherents react when the prophecy fails and how they attempt to maintain their beliefs in light of them being proven wrong. Yours is particularly troubling for adherents because the date is only 10 years (or so) away. Can we declare the paper wrong in 15 years? — Hanover

I've stumbled into this with in economic and financial debate, the phenomenon of the existence of the so-called permabears. Now a permabear forecasts the imminent collapse of the stock market and the financial system. He or she sounds like a breath of fresh air to the very annoying permabull-people trying to sell you stocks and who see everything through rose-coloured glasses. At least at first. For one year or two. Now some of the arguments are indeed correct and can be very convincing. About every 10-25 years that is. We do have a financial crisis every now and then.

You would assume that a financial commentator that is correct once in ten to twentyfive years wouldn't have a following, but that isn't true. And the most suprising thing is that IF they would change their views. they come to the conclusion that now things are so bad that it's time to buy stock, they will LOOSE their audience, which at the worst times is the greatest. In fact they are prisoners of their own following audience.

Hence it's not only that the most dire forecast will break the newsbarrier, come to be quote far more than something more realistic, which people find simply boring. It's that dire & gloomy predictions create an audience who will just love the doom & gloom and be extremely hostile to any positive upbeat news.

Perhaps the most incredible thing is that when indeed some of the dire predictions come true, then we simply will ignore them as life does go on...

Pi is a number, but doesn't come into existence until calculated. It is the product of an equation. Absent the equation or at least prior to the existence of the equation it is just set of numbers without meaning. — GigoloJoe

Umm... geometry doesn't need calculus. You can draw geometry, you can draw a circle, you know. With geometry you already get the mathematical constant called Pi. No computation needed.

And if with the exception of Chaitin's constant all mathematical constants are computable numbers, don't fixate on just the computability.

Even Pi begins with a calculation before it becomes into existence. — GigoloJoe

Why do you say this?

Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. That definition defines Pi quite accurately from any other number.

Does the number three start with calculation?

Objectively speaking this isn't about social construction at all, but how to help students to learn. They note that there is a general problem with scientific pedagogy in that it alienates the student from the subject matter, and that this alienation is more pronounced in the cases where the social world has experienced European colonization. — Moliere

Yet this isn't just about that the pedagogy isn't the best possible one and hence students are lagging behind. The paper, as other similar ones talking about decolonization of science, start from the premiss that Eurocentric science is used as a tool of opression against the colonized, marginalized indigenous people. Quote from the paper:

school science overtly and covertly marginalizes Indigenous students by its ideology of neo-colonialism – a process that systemically undermines the cultural values of a formerly colonized group (Ryan, 2008). As a result, an alarming under representation of Indigenous students in senior sciences
persists.

Hence the call for "decolonization" assumes that science education has a neocolonialist ideology. This is not at all just your 'ordinary' call for improving educational methods, but also a deliberate accusation that science is deliberately used as a tool against certain people.

The kind of thinking you are concerned about in science infested the humanities tower first, then the social sciences building. Now they have begun attacking the science and math quad. Fumigate your quarters before they get any farther. — Bitter Crank

My leftist friend, this shouldn't be anything new to you either.

I'll try to give an example:

Let's assume that there would be a new socio-economic model that would describe how our World works far better than anything else before and for some reason people would understand and accept the model. The problem is that we wouldn't look at it like "Now there's a nice objective model on how the World economy works...", no, the immediate response would be "How can we solve the current problems? how can we make the World better with this model?". And those are normative statements, how can we make things better. Hence they aren't at all just about applying the scientific method anymore. As I've said earlier, the old name of economics, political economy, was much more informative and truthful.

In other words, science is not just method, it is institutions, it is embedded in society that directs its enquiring gaze howsoever objective and impartial, at some questions and not others. And here is how it can be used against a culture — unenlightened

Any human endeavour has it's societal aspects.

I think that this is well explained by Kuhn's theories, yet Kuhn basically as a historian of science doesn't at all to say that science would be just a social construct.

Thanks for the responses, all!

Except that it's not as if, for instance, the Chinese do not perform science as we know it in the West. When they launch a space probe, they presumably rely upon the same equations as does NASA. There is no "Chinese physics," any more than there is a "Jewish physics," as someone once fulminated. The fact that the modern scientific method arose relatively recently in the West (let us semi-arbitrarily say in the 16th century), it doesn't follow that there's something essentially Eurocentric about the entire affair. — Arkady

I think this is my point too, but unfortunately arguing that there is no "Chinese physics", that there's only physics, will obviously sound to those believing the Eurocentrism of science argument obviously as eurocentric view. And when it comes to fields like mathematics, the argument that math has to be decolonized has to start from apparent ignorance of mathematics. Starting from the fact that we use the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. Just try to quickly count what is MCMXCI + IX is (it's MM, obviously).

Historically this kind of argumentation, that science has another agenda than just being a method of inquiry and hence we have to have a different kind of science, has had dire consequences for science especially in totalitarian systems where being "politically correct" takes a whole new meaning. You already mentioned "Jewish physics", which was then opposed with Deutsche Physik in the Third Reich (and actually earlier), which is a perfect example of mixing race ideology with a natural science. Lysenkoism in biology is another perfect example from the Soviet Union, which truly set back Russian genetics research (and research in other socialist countries too). And many times scientific research is portrayed to have a separate normative agenda, just look at the opposition to stem cell research or one of the biggest scientific topics of today, climate change. We lose something when science is seen as a political statement.

Basically the problem aren't the well argumented views that want to take into consideration local culture, non-European science history or local traditions, the problem is the vulgar and basically ignorant views that take purging science of "Eurocentrism" literally. And when these ideas go a bit too far, it's very difficult then for academic community to respond that "this is nonsense" when it has accepted that science ought to be decolonized.

What the hell has happened to the american democracy? Are these kinds of elected representatives the result of extreme gerrymandering? Or is there some sort of collective insanity going on? — Echarmion

Good question.

I really wonder what will happen after Trump. It brings to my mind questions like a) What damage has Trump done to the GOP? b) What is the counter-response to Trump when the political pendulum swings back? Above all, c) What happens to American political discourse? Is the discourse salvageable or does the discourse continue breaking apart to two different camps that basically don't talk to each other, stay in their own worlds and result in a situation where to reach normal political compromises, that a democracy needs to function, becomes impossible.

How many more then? 400 million? 900 million? 4 billion? Shouldn't we have some idea where we're trying to go before we all start prancing about pretending we're interested in immigration? — Jake

Likely you will have a population of 400 million or so in 2050. When you have now 360 million, it isn't such a big increase.

But your disliking it doesn't really change the history of there being two kinds of communism, one of which is libertarian communism. — Moliere

OK, let's look at the history of libertarian communism then, Moliere?

Where do you find it or what examples do you have in mind? Perhaps in the Spanish or Russian Civil war? Likely the ideology was championed by those who were communists, but were also against the totalitarianism of the typical Marxist-Leninism? In both cases, the anarcho-communist groups were destroyed. Or are you thinking of some some small community living in the middle of nowhere that has declared itself to be a communist paradise? Or are we talking just about the ideology of Kropotkin?

The basic problem is that very small societies, groups or communes, anarchism could perhaps work somehow (and this is close to the objectives of some anarchist ideology), but with a larger society the problems rise. And this actually isn't just a problem for anarchism. A total monarchy with the ruler having basically dictatorial powers can work also quite well in a small society. Monaco and Brunei come to mind here as examples. These are quite rich societies and as the citizens can easily approach the monarch, and as the monarchs aren't crazy, the citizens don't have any problem of being subjects of a traditional monarch. The problems naturally rise when the society is larger and that direct link to the monarch is impossible. Then the lack of any kind of institutions make huge problems.

he action of business creates a profit by underpaying these large populations — Bloginton Blakley

Oh those evil businessmen.

Far better not to have a business or salary in the first place at all!

Yep, then the World is saved.

Could be interesting. I lived in France for a few years.One of the historic differences is the revolution. It may seem extravagant, but the class divisions in England especially play an important role. Most of the government went to the same school, and the same university. That's only slightly an exaggeration. — unenlightened

You even have a different language among the classes. Above all, the British are very class conscious in a totally different way than others.

And I should note here that I referred to the French politicians and officials, not the ordinary French people. The French do a long history of revolting against their officials, while with the English, your civil war was ages ago. And that in my view was more of a struggle between the King and the aristocracy.

It seems to me that rational or justified action involves acting on reason. But obedience requires acting based on authority or submission.

If someone makes a reasonable command you can judge it to be reasonable and then obey. But obedience usually requires suppressing ones own ideas and does not imply recourse to reason. — Andrew4Handel

In some occasions obedience is quite logical, even if you don't think the command is the most optimal.

For instance, a symphony orchestra follows the conductor. The conductor decides on the tempo, not the individual musicians. Now the musicians in the orchestra could have ideas how the musical piece ought to be played, but they understand that they simply cannot decide this on their own as the end result would be a terrible cacophony. The similar thing happens when you have to organize hundreds or thousands of people to coordinate their actions in order to do something. You simply cannot assume to make every decision by consensus in these situations.

Far too easily people look at obedience as some kind of social power issue and not a result of simple necessity.

I dare say we will survive, but the UK is losing influence, losing money, losing jobs, losing trade. We already have gone back to folks dying of malnutrition, rising inequality, rising homelessness, a loss of human rights and political accountability, increasing crime and quite a deal of despair and desperation. Plenty more bad stuff could happen. — unenlightened

Are you serious?

You know, I've thought about starting a thread on this British (or should I say English) gloominess and persistent self-flagellation, that only seldom is interrupted by some brief upbeat monent. Yes, one could argue that it's the loss of the Empire, but it has to be something more. Now some might find this quite rude and I surely don't want to be insulting, but there is a difference in attitude especially when comparing Britain to France. Even if France humiliatingly lost to the Third Reich, was occupied and also lost it's colonies too (which there were fewer) the attitude of the French is still different.

For me the perfect example of this, which might sound very odd at first, is the British Space program. In the 1970's the British government came to the conclusion that having a British Space program was far too costly (even if it had a shoe-string budget compared to the Superpowers), the program didn't have a purpose and somehow it would be a far better idea buying the ICBM rockets from the US. So, in the very British manner, the (few) people of the British Space program got the news that the program was terminated while in Australia when they were preparing finally to launch a rocket with a satellite. Not knowing what to do with a completed rocket and satellite, they then unceremoniously launched the rocket (that btw differed a lot from other rockets as it had been made by unique British technology). The rocket performed well and put the satellite into orbit. The satellite performed also well and kept flying around the World for the time planned for a government that didn't need it. And this happened just on the cusp of the era of commercial satellite launches, which has turned out to be quite lucrative to the French with their Arianne rocket-family. I don't know how many Britons nowdays even know that their country did have a space program with British built rockets.

Then there's the aviation industry, which created the jet engine with Frank Whittle, which today only manufactures parts of aircraft. By the way Whittles career reinforces this sad story of British government not using the talented people that worked for it. With more investment earlier the Battle of Britain could have been fought with Meteor jet aircraft. Or the car industry, which apart from few tiny sport car manufacturers is owned by foreigners. Now compare all this to France and the French counterparts in industry (Groupe PSA, Dassault group). Note the difference? Why is this?

I've really thought about what would be the reason of this, and the only answer that I come to is that people serving in the British government and British politicians simply don't believe in their country. Things are problems for the British industry, not opportunities to be seized. Their (the governments) role is to protect British industries from foreign competition, not for British industries to gain success. This dismal narrow mindedness of the politicians and government officials is the basic problem. Even if Thatcher had a bit of Churchill in her (which other British politician would have dared to send the Royal Navy to fight for some far off islands with more sheep than people?), she surely wasn't anything like general Petain.

We are standing at a cliff edge threatening to jump off. We are blaming the cruel world. Don't imagine there is much power in reason to influence us; we need the Samaritans, not some turbulent priest telling us we're going to hell. — unenlightened

You're not going to hell. What bad could happen to you?

It's a "problem" which has no solution. It has no solution because the exact nature of "the problem" cannot even be formulated in a universally acceptable way. So "the problem" itself is a phantom problem. — Metaphysician Undercover

Far easier to declare victory on fictional problems, or more precisely, delusional solutions (as if a wall will solve things) than to create real solutions to real problems. Like Trump's first national emergency, to tackle the opioid crisis. So, how things have gone after that declaration?

Just remember how "Make America Great Again" was solved: America was great again when Trump came into power.

And Lenin would say of your freedom that it is a bourgeois freedom, and not freedom proper -- that only the dictatorship of the proletariat as enacted by a vanguard revolutionary party in the interests of the working class can found a free society. — Moliere

The people who describe themselves in these terms -- say different things than you do about themselves. — Moliere

Of course, people can justify violence and tyranny for every possible benevolent cause there is.

You see, it's easy to find faults in an existing society, but the real question is what is then given as the solution and cure to the problems. How well have these solutions worked should be the focus. Usually anything starting from "we need to create a new man", teach a new generation to be something totally else, will not only utterly fail, but will just bring sorrow and misery. And this is the typical sin of the so-called "intelligentsia": while being critical of the present society they live in, they fall into the delusional fantasies of radical ideologies that simply will not work in the real World. Yes, there is a time and place for radical thinking, but radical changing of the society usually doesn't work.

And freedom? You simply look at the true track record of how "free" the people were. How many people were killed as the "enemy of the state", how many were/are prisoned because of their political beliefs. And has the "experiment" been successful... like if it still exists.

ibertarian communism has a rich history of its own. It's its own separate political line of thinking. — Moliere

Libertarian communism is in my view an odd oxymoron. Now it's true that Leftist libertarianism has been overshadowed by right-wing libertarianism (and all the Ayn Randians).

In my view there's a glitch in the idea of libertarian communism, or in fact, any kind of libertarian thought that mixes with a totalitarian ideology. And that is that basically libertarianism starts from the fact that people are free, and free people simply won't adapt to one single ideology.

Hence in an the most optimum libertarian society, socialists and conservatives will enjoy the fruits of society quite well... and believe in their own ideologies, thanks to the freedom in the society. The most closest society to the (right-wing) libertarian ideals would be Switzerland, and it has implemented a lot of leftist/socialist ideas. And I'm sure there are Swiss people who find their country in many ways being against libertarian ideals.

The OP's question does have a logical alternative.

Yes, every family makes boats, but as the trip to the unknown will definately be extremely dangerous, the most able boat builders should supervise the building of the boats and the most able seamen should supervize (and teach skills) that the people have at least the thin possibility of making it and have enough seamanship to survive in the ocean. Having inferior the boats sink in front of the island wouldn't be nice.

Hence the juxtaposition between "free market" and "central planning" isn't a great question as the mixture of both have in history been the most successfull: basically as a free market cannot operate well without institutions (contrary to the silly brainfarts of anarcho-libertarians) and on the other hand central planning cannot be successfull without some freedom of invention and innovation (as obviously central planners cannot know what the future holds and what will be successfull).

The two aren't opposed.

Anarchy is against hierarchy of any kind. Communism is an economic model where ownership over land, capital, and labor is somehow collective rather than individual. — Moliere

In the communist economic model the market mechanism is replaced with central planning. Central planning is anything but anarchism.

Furthermore, that everywhere it was tried the communist endeavour lead to totalitarianism, hence totalitarianism is de facto an integral part of communism. Again quite different from the objectives of anarchism. But of course, trendy daydreamers in the political left have no problem mixing the two.

Teachers will put forth video recordings of important contents of a provided course. Assignments and projects will be given. - Is there something wrong with this type of system? — Susu

There's a vast amount of video recordings of brilliant lectures even now in the internet. Yet the most important aspect is lacking: you cannot interact, ask the teacher questions. And even if you can ask, perhaps via email, it still lacks the easiness and simplicity when talking to a person face to face.

In fact this site, The PF, is a great example of this. Now you might have noticed that among us amateurs there are (or at least have been) academic professionals too. And you can get their answers and opinions here. Yet it would be totally different if you could sit down with SophistiCat, Jamesk or whoever responses to this thread and have a conversation in the classroom about the subject.

I do the vast majority of my work from home and I am on the phone, writing emails and participating in Skype-meetings. Yet actually meeting physically people is really important.

And education is free in my country. Yet getting accepted to an university is the hard part.

The Great Trump Wall is completely symbolic, a monument to the most excellent Donald who Made America Great Again. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yep. An effective joint effort to minimize illegal immigration would be far complicated to explain to a Trump supporter.

Or to Trump, for that matter. A physical concrete wall Trump can understand.

What aspects of Trump’s wall could work? Could it really prevent immigration? — Franklin

No.

The whole thing is an idiotic punchline for simpletons: Build a wall and Mexico will pay for it.

Yeah! More beer...

This debate is simple. Which government (or lack there of) would function better out of the two: Anarchy or communism? — Franklin

Both ideals have never been implemented on a larger scale. That is, communist have tried to achieve communism via totalitarian socialism, but it never has been pure communism. And even if a totalitarian system that truly sucks to it's core, the socialist workers paradise worked somehow. Life in East Germany or the Soviet Union wasn't that bad (had the chance to visit both places when they were up and going).

Terrapin Station is correct, basically with total anarchy, without the government controlled security system and legal system of any sort, ordinary people will typically form bands to protect themselves from others. History is full of samples when the police force or the military has collapsed, people form their own militias or vigilante groups. Of course, this is for many anarchists the ideal: voluntary and self-governing communities rising without a centralized authority commanding them. Yet this kind of society works even less than communism.

So I guess this one goes to communism.

As you agree with the obvious result of ban on billionaires and 92% tax rate, I should point out it doesn't result only in capital flight, but basically can cause a brain drain too and other severe consequences. It should be noted that even with wealth distribution and povetry eradicated by a welfare state, you do get billionaires. So what happens when we ban billionaires?

Let's take your model of Denmark. Of those 10 Danish billionaires four belong to one family, the Kristiansen family. And what sinister bad thing have they done? Basically their grandfather (and to the next generation their great grandfather) founded a toy company called LEGO. Hence the question is,how much revenue for Denmark has LEGO bought and that LEGOLAND is in the small town where the founder of the company was born? The vast majority of the 17 000 employees work in Denmark and is the 12th biggest employer in the country. In fact, all 10 Danish billionaires are competing in the global market, not "stealing" their entire wealth from the Danes (as there are only 5,8 million people). But for Benkei this is evil and Denmark would be far better off with the Kristiansen family moving their business to the US, where the bigger market is. Because with that 92% tax rate after one million, it would have be rather difficult to invest in LEGO at the first place to grow to the size it is. And as the company is a family owned business, obviously it's not just an investment.

Perhaps one question here would be to define just who is a "good" and who "bad" billionaire, as Benkei in the OP defined billionaires. One easy test for this is simple:

"Has the billionaire made his fortune with a great product or service on the global market or not?"

This is crucial. The global market isn't controlled by one country and hence corrupt ties to political leadership cannot be the reason for success in the marketplace, when you have alternative places like the US, EU, China, Russia, Japan etc. With that mix of countries, you simply cannot profit from political ties to the leadership of all countries.

And here you can see the difference with lets say the Kristiansen-family and for example Carlos Slim. Even if Slim's América Móvil operates in other countries (mainly Latin America), it's road to fortune came from seizing the Mexican telecommunications market. Hence Slim's fortune have to do a lot with on the decisions of the Mexican government. When it comes to an aggressive toy company that had the revolutionary idea in the 1940's to change from wood to plastic in toys, the success hardly has come from warm relations with the Danish political elite.

Typically the billionaires that have basically their business in one country, have in their background either a monopoly or a near monopoly, which has been granted by the government of that country. I don't know of any Russian oligarchs that has had his company being successful in enlarging their operations substantially outside Russia. Here the real problems rise of wealth and power, when the government institutions are weak and you get a vicious circle where private business profits from government decisions and then gets more political power. Worst case private entities simply cannot compete outside the countries borders as they are in no way capable of competing in the global market.

And then there are the billionaire thieves like Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator of the Phillipines and of course Vladimir Putin, likely the richest man in the World. These indeed are the "bad" billionaires.

Is it really so easy? The word "selection" implies choice, and choice requires an agent who is doing the choosing. In the case of "natural selection", if the agent who is doing the choosing is not God, then who is it, Mother Nature? It appears to me that as long as we maintain the concept of "natural selection", some sort of God or deity is implied as that which is doing the selecting. — Metaphysician Undercover

A bit off from the subject, but for an atheist it's quite easy. And in the process of "natural selection" you really don't need God, when you have a random process how species get their genes and then the process of those most adapted to the environment making more offspring. The result isn't the best or optimal, but just a result. First and foremost, Darwinism is part of science, not an ideology, and hence it's based on objective study. More of a need for God would be to answer moral questions, what is wrong or right, but atheists typically just refer to humanism in this case.

But you're illustrating my point very well re the prevailing ideology if against all the evidence, you actually believe what you are saying. — Baden

Well, Denmark has 10 or so billionaires to 5,8 million people. The US with 327 million people and 585 billionaires. That means if I counted correctly, there are more billionaires per capita in Denmark than in the US! Anyway, the figure is in the same ballpark here.

With this in mind, your statistical comparison about US and Denmark just shows how ridiculous is the idea of "banning" billionaires is to either wealth distribution or in fighting povetry. These things are a bit more nuanced. And btw, in Denmark the top rate for capital income is 42% and the tax ceiling goes on at 52,5% (similar as here) hence it's a far cry from Benkei's 92%.

People can be in power without forming a "class" or a specific "elite" group. Which is difficult and has very rarely been achieved. I was merely commenting that the an "elite" is not logically necessary. — Echarmion

If it's rarely been achieved, then tell me the example.

It is a nice thought that we should just all get along, but arguing that we shouldn't be "antagonizing" each other is vague. Of course we shouldn't be putting people to the guillotine. But there needs to be some amount of "antagonizing" to change the status quo. — Echarmion

And changing the "status quo" means today attacking some group of people, who are described to be harmful.

People in power do have the tendency to be filthy rich though, and filthy rich people always have power. — Echarmion

In my country politicians aren't rich and typically aren't millionaires and don't retire millionaires. There are very few if any that have a wealth of over 1 billion. That politicians hoard huge fortunes just means that the legal institutions that should prevent corruption don't exist or are weak.

Does it? What about a theocracy? Or just a feudal society that puts people in boxes which determines their rights? The well being of citizens in general is not always the stated goal of a political ideology. — Echarmion

Wow, that's pretty thick. A theocracy, those building a "New Jerusalem" or whatever especially want the best to people. First of all, they want to save their souls, create a more righteous society A theocracy is a case and point example of this.

And a feudal society? Even feudalism has a logic to itself in a society where centralized government hasn't either been created or has dissolved (as when Antiquity turned to the Dark Ages).

I don't know about that. It seems to me that governments are very anxious to be seen as the driving force behind the economy. As long as it's trending up, anyways. — Echarmion

And during a recession it somebody else's fault or the fault of the other party that was in power, yes.

What I was trying to say was that when people take the economy for granted, it means that the economy, the tax income it can possible get and employment are basically stationary and given. And if there is growth in an economic upturn is taken as granted. It's just the rich people who take far more than what would be their fare share. The populist discourse always takes the stance that "ordinary" people have been the victims and the fault is, well, you name it, some hated segment of the society.

Isn't the economy a contingent goal given your own argument? The actual first priority is the well being of the citizens. The economy is a means to an end. — Echarmion

Yes.

But do note that any political ideology starts as the objective being "the well being of the citizens". This well being then can be tried to be reached with quite horrible means, starting with killing off a social class or an ethnic or racial minority.

I made the emphasis as typically in the West nowdays it's just assumed that economy will do just fine and is taken as granted. And do note that it's the institutions themselves that also protects the citizens from monopolies, cartels or corruption.

That is, if corruption isn't made legal as in the US.

Care to explain why one "has to" have a power elite in the first place? — Echarmion

Care to give an example of a country that doesn't have a power elite? An executive branch?

Basically any kind of centralized government means that there is in one form or another a power elite. Quite ignorant or hypocrite to assume there wouldn't be a power elite.

So, your argument is that we should fear the rich, and therefore not antagonize them? — Echarmion

No, absolutely not, my argument is that a healthy society starts with social cohesion. Antagonizing classes against each other isn't the way to create prosperity for all.

And do notice that the power elite doesn't have to be bunch of rich billionaires and wealthy families. It can be, like in the case of Venezuela, adamant socialists clinging to their power. Or in the case of China, a communist party that has thrown away communism and replaced it with state run capitalism, which could be described as fascism.

Because of their influence, we can't pass laws to limit their influence. — frank

Absolute nonsense.

Enough people aren't just interested in doing that. When there is a will, there is a way.

The way the system is set up, as you're describing, is that you wind up with less for yourself the more you help others (via your tax dollars). If we instead make it that the way you get more for yourself, more scarce resources, is by doing more to help others, then you have an incentive rather than a disincentive to help. — Terrapin Station

I would put it this way: If you have a healthy prosperous economy, you can afford a welfare state and all the perks that come with it. Hence the state should have at first priority the economy and the keeping the instititutions operating that keep the economy healthy (that prevent corruption, guarantee property rights and human rights, maintain and develop the needed infrastructure).

Above all, one has to have a power elite and rich class that feels that it is their obligation or role to take care of the ordinary people and the poor. One typical way is for the power elite to be patriotic and have a sense that they have a mission for the country.

At worst the power elite and the rich are afraid to loose their power and wealth and percieve "the people" as a threat, as the ignorant violent rabble, that has to be policed and prevented from destroying the society and collapsing everything into anarchy. In this case there isn't much if any social cohesion, and you basically have this feeling of class warfare.

Now folks that want to manage without God have a problem, which has been pointed out here, that Man and Nature, or artificial and natural, collapse as man is part of nature sans god. And such a collapse deprives 'nature' of any meaning, because it deprives it of any negative. If there is nothing that is unnatural, then 'natural' means the same as 'everything'. But this is a purely linguistic phenomenon, and non-philosophers are happily immune from such vandalism of useful words and continue to use 'natural' in contrast to 'man-made', and trust that god has provided an appropriate hell for philosophers. — unenlightened

Rejecting God or any diety is easy. But as you say, what is exceptionally hard for many people is the difference between "man" and "nature" as obviously humans are part of nature too, so there's no justification for humans to be different anymore. Yet then comes all the normative baggage of what we "as humans" ought to do "to the environment" and how we ought to live. Atheist aren't willing to give up the exceptionality of humans, sometimes they promote it even more.

Of course, one simple solution is to define anything that is found in nature absent of man making it is natural and what man has made is synthetic/artificial or man made, opposite to "natural". Like there aren't many personal computers found in any natural environment where humans haven't been, even if the raw materials that it is made of can be found.

. We could, within the system, implement 92% income tax on anyone making over a million. We can introduce much higher estate taxes again. These are all changes within the system. — Benkei

Similar things have been tried, they simply don't work.

I remember being taxed 72,9% and believe me, I wasn't making a million, I was making roughly in todays prices 4 000 euros in annual income. It was then taxed by 72,9%. It really had an effect on me personally and since then I have loathed the people arguing for higher taxes "on the rich" or higher taxes. I personally know now that I am the target of those other people who want increase the taxation of "the wealthy" while not wanting to raise their own taxation. The hypocrisy of socialism is just nauseating.

The simple fact is that when taxation is so high, people simply avoid income, postpone any selling of any property that doesn't have to be sold. Better yet, hold it in cash or simply take the money abroad.

It's a simple fact that both by increasing OR decreasing taxation and tax rates, the net income of the taxation doesn't go linearly as the tax rate would imply: raising taxes don't amount to anticipated tax revenue, but also the other idea, that lowering taxes would improve revenue and hence tax income would be greater, seems also not to work.

Better yet, I propose that anybody who proposes a tax increase to others, should pay the similar tax.

And ought billionaires be abolished? Profiting from the capitalist system is a totally another thing to profiting from a criminal enterprise or racket. Of course, the pure leftist doesn't see any difference there.

It seems like not many places accept Bitcoin as payment yet, which doesn't help make the whole thing any less ridiculous. — Terrapin Station

Or that scams, kidnappings or other illegal activities use cryptocurrencies. It's just like with the 500 euro note: seldom accepted anywhere and hugely popular with criminals. Luckily inflation hasn't made this note to be common for ordinary payments.

Anyway, it starts to difficult to use cash nowdays for anything other than minor transactions.

With the narrow definition, capitalism means private ownership of the means of production. Hence for the narrow definition the opposite would be socialism.

However if we start from traditional liberal/libertarian capitalism and free markets, there are many different kinds of systems, not just socialism or communism. And these mixed-economies can work quite well. Typically the systems have Private ownership and the market mechanism for pricing as the backbone of the system, but have usually the government/public sector take a far more active role than leaving everything to the "invisible hand" of the market mechanism to do.