So, this explains a lot. If banks are making profits, then people must be paying back their debt in droves. This would explain the weak demand for oil. Add to that cranked up production of oil all over the place, and we might be in some, to use an economics term, deep shit my friends.

The US has drastically decreased the amount of oil that they are importing, starting since 2013 (which was the year that fracking and shale really started taking off. All these other economies that are oil economies are dependent upon their selling oil at a certain price to keep themselves going (like Russia, the OPEC nations etc.), and other countries are dependent on these most recently richer nations for business. The handful of rich people that own the oil companies also, in turn, use it to buy up ownership of companies in the investment markets, including the stock market. Whenever oil prices drop, a major section of the rich suffer from a profitability squeeze, and as such, start selling their shares in the market. And this one major explanation for the current market drop.

I am unsure if this is true, but all the statistics I've looked at point to it being true.

Obviously the current economic problems are directly related to oil prices dropping, which comes from the US overproducing shale, right?

Usually, except in periods where there is grand delusion where the investors wildly mispriced some assets en masse a long period prior. An example of this is the Dotcom Boom.

Landru, you do know that when people play the market, they are basing their buy and sell decisions off of the most current information about the economy, right?

Landru, are you seriously suggesting that a stock market crash has no effect on poor people? Even when banking systems are so interlocked with the stock market itself?

What about the ideologies that say violence was once necessary/is part of the long-gone past/no-longer necessary of the currently existing state of affairs? Because liberalism is incredibly violent, except such violence does not involve explosives or bullets, but bureaucratic and contractual coercion.

I think that all political ideologies start with, in practice, the question of how much violence. Violence itself is always part and parcel of any form of ideology.

Good god, the older I get the more I hate John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

You make great points except all your fact are wrong, so really you make horrible points.

Consumer lending isn't at a standstill. Nor is it in the UK. As may be suspected, there has been a rapid rise in consumer loans in China as well.

People's income has been pretty stagnant for over 30 years now in the United States. In capitalism, the day-to-day salvaging factor for most people (however morbid) is people's access to loans, however despicable the loans may be (like pay day loans, which are making more bank now than ever).

Banks need a relatively good credit market to keep making money. It's against their interests to not continue to put us into debt slavery. That's why Fed money has been cheap and banks have been issuing out more loans than ever.

If the market crashed entirely and the rich lost everything, then I welcome it. But I remember it like it was yesterday that the market was crashing entirely and the government saved the rich by giving them hundreds of billions in bail outs. Oh yeah, and I starved. Just like I starved when the 1997 IMF crash happened in Asia. But they didn't.

I also come from a relatively poor Asian country, and the markets crashing here in Asia means suddenly our currency devalues at multiple percentage points. Suddenly, our prices for imports goes up multiple times, huge credit crunches occur because foreign investors pull out of our markets (which, I don't care for the act of them leaving, but they have made more than a third of our economy dependent on expecting their cash). Our banks suddenly stop lending, work becomes hard to come by. I don't know where you come from, but down here in non-rich leftist land, we are directly screwed by huge market crashes.

I think I know what I'm talking about since the last time this shit happened, the exact same scenario applied to me. I didn't own stock, never even thought about it, but not only did my student loan bank go under, forcing me to drop out of college and go homeless for a month, but the company I was selling my labor to experienced a severe credit crunch, and started laying off half their workers, including me. So, like it or not, people's livelihoods are tied to the financial markets.

This didn't happen to just me. It happened to huge numbers of people all around the world. You claim yourself that 90% of Americans have no ties to the stock market, but that link says 54% do, directly (as of 2011). Most likely 95%+ have indirect economic ties to the financial markets. So, what's it going to be? Also, say they have 10K in savings, and savings are historically calculated in these polls to include equity in the stock market, then when their 0-10K vanishes in thin air, isn't that a big fucking deal? I don't know about you, but the last time I lost 0-10K in the market that I wasn't even playing, I went starving for half a year.

Look, I hate Wall Street as much as the next guy, but you can't just make shit up.

A huge number of jobs depend on company stock options in lieu of payment nowadays. Companies attempting expansion or ones that need to a credit-line depend on other companies that depend on financial markets for their cash. Like it or not, when there is a huge financial market crash, huge numbers of layoffs necessarily follow.

Chinese regulators tried to head off such concern by announcing earlier in the week major shareholders could sell only in private transactions to avoid flooding the market. This is the second asinine attempt by Chinese regulators in less than 9 months. The first time they only allowed large shareholders to buy, and not sell for 6 months.

Not really irrelevant, since the whole economy runs on a credit system, and huge swathes of credit provided by banks is tied up in the market. Currency values for international trade also have a huge dependency on the stock market. Also, let's not forget the retail traders, especially in Asia and South America. If the stock market is utterly irrelevant to 90% of Americans, when markets crash there shouldn't be that many layoffs, small businesses closing down, and so on.

You and me same, Tiff. That was about 8 years ago... and I'm still living with the consequences of the first one, and definitely not ready for the new one. For example, except for the mountain of debt and loss of future prospects, I haven't bought a gun to join the Banker Lynch Squad that is surely going to come soon yet.

Someone said something about holes and ground.

Unless you care a little bit.

For the record, I don't necessarily find the actions of these people entirely despicable, at least in principle. The Bureau of Land Management itself has pretty oppressive, and also racist, roots and this isn't the first time some group in America has clashed with the BLM. Furthermore, I'm actually glad some group is correctly exercising their second amendment rights in the form that it was originally intended, at least theoretically, in idealist lala-land: to make sure that people have guns to fight the government. In actuality, the second amendment was meant to be a reason to arm these militias in their attempt to complete the white man's mission for the complete genocide of the natives, as well as fending off the Old World colonial powers. The second amendment was actually quite a brilliant move, on both counts.

But other than that, I can't really bring myself to sympathize with the rest of these Yeehawist ideas.

What will probably happen is they'll give them all free Wendy's burgers. I mean, Dylann "Stormfront-Disturbed-Youth" Roof got a free burger.

Point noted about contextual differences, but what you said has actually happened in the past (for example, the Marin County courthouse incident or the Wounded Knee incident), and of course the circumstances are different, and that was a different time, but even granting that, protests in an urban area yield far different reactions from the police, for example, the protests in the Ferguson area yielded this:


Granted, a similar response came out from the state during Occupy Wallstreet, but not during the Tea Party rallies. So... it seems pretty clear who the state is protecting, and it's in lexical ordering, and in that lexical ordering is a heavily weighted racial adjuster yielding: more protection for whites and antagonism towards non-whites.

We both know what would have happened if 150 brown people went to some federal building armed with assault rifles and occupied it by force. There's a hypocrisy here that's part of a greater narrative, which, constrained by the racial aspect itself, is this: the American state is afraid of white people. Seriously, the American state rarely ever does anything against white people that organize politically if they are right-wingers. They let you walk around with assault rifles anywhere you go, they arrest your activists instead of just executing them on the spot (e.g. Dylan Storm Roof), they give into most of your demands (e.g. Tea Party)... being white, right-wing and politically active in America is a dream come true for any politically minded person! It's a pity that the organized ones in America are bible thumping constitutionalists, otherwise everyone would be living in some communist utopia dreamland by now instead of trying to extend the rights of some millionaire ranchers.

Gotta hand it to them though: they've got some balls even though, let's face it, they weren't really at risk anyways. At least for the time being. Let's see what these Yeehawists will actually do when the state decides to remove you them from the premises. Will they actually fight? Will the state gun down 150 white people? What would happen if they do that?

You betcha

Did you just Sarah Palin him?

If we want to get even deeper than 'what there is', we should just read some Heidegger after this Quine: 'on what is is'. :B

I would like to switch my vote from the Anscombe to the Marion Young, since there is a tie here.

The 'it gets better' movement has encouraged more and more people to come out. This would have been a great time for you to be 30 years younger again!

Bitter Crank, according to Agustino, you are a deviation from heterosexuality and should screw that Excalibur Cock on the right way and find yourself the right woman-sheath so that you may become one with nature. Remember, righty tighty, lefty loosy.

Agustino, 10% of all humans are estimated to be homosexual, and that's a very low ball estimate. Historically, people have fucked both men and women, and there are many, many examples of this not being an issue whatsoever. What you don't understand is that, even if you don't believe there is a God, all your views basically correspond to Victorian era Christian norms and values. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it's a duck. I'm gonna have to break it to you: you're probably gay.

You might want to re-read what I said about history. I said that the rulers who set these sexual norms and rules, the ones you hold dear (no, they weren't hammered into through a million years of evolutionary struggle), all fucked multiple people, none of them had just one spouse. But the hypocrisy is that they enforced this whole notion of monogamous ethics and morality which you are spewing now.

If you are hurt from someone else having sex with people other than yourself, maybe it's time to re-think why it's painful and why you added unnecessary conditions to your being in a relationship with said person in the first place.

No you can't reject it. Fact of the matter is that MOST people do not agree with such things. — Agustino

Clearly not, since there are millions of users on Ashley Madison, and millions more on other websites that are meant for the same or similar purposes. The best you can do is claim that most people think they do not agree with such things. You can try to find a poll that supports your claim, but it would be entirely flawed since there's the pressure of not being honest in answering said polls. A site with millions of paying customers engaging in consensual sex with people that aren't their partner is a much more reliable measure of people's opinions here.

I find it interesting you decided to remove the part about homosexuals from my comment about the fact of human life. Oh, here's another fact: homosexuality is natural, people are usually born homosexuals, it isn't a derivation. Finally, last fact: your knight in shining armor Excalibur cock fantasies is so Victorian era, your views on sex originate from attempts by rulers to create a family unit and control women sexual reproduction and this is pretty well documented. Almost none of the rulers themselves actually had one spouse, but politically they aligned with religious sectors (morality police) to try to corral everyone else into this nonsensical and completely unnatural sexual arrangement. Really, the problem with people that would never forgive their partners for sleeping with other people is that they have some sort of sexual repression that they haven't yet resolved. Best way to resolve it currently? Sign up for an account on AshleyMadison.com.

Who cares what nature thinks? You're a human. Humans do things that aren't a direct byproduct of the function of human cyclical desires all the time. For example: having sex without intending to reproduce. Your theory has to be able to explain the instances where humans wish to have sex but not reproduce. It currently cannot. For the record, your theory is almost certainly wrong.

Don't you find it interesting that you have this senseless impulse that allegedly was strengthened over millions of years, yet I, also a human, don't care whatsoever if my girlfriend fucks whomever? Plenty of societies historically weren't monogamous, or were monogamous but not limiting in the amount of sexual partners someone can have. In fact, when I was younger, I didn't care whatsoever how many people someone had sex with. I was conditioned to care when the soap operas and music and social symbols started entering my life and my social circle operated under such assumptions.

This is a fact of human life: heterosexual girls tend to like cock, heterosexual men tend to like pussy, homosexual men tend to like cock, and homosexual women tend to like both, and on and on. Except for the unusual few asexual beings, this is an observable phenomenon that neither of us can deny. But I can reject your claim that humans have this strengthened impulse to consider another person as property because... well, Ashley Madison exists, and that's millions of data points to support the contrary to your claim.

No matter how you try to rationalize your fascist views here, it doesn't fit empirical reality. The only thing you can say without a doubt about humans and sex is that they like to have sex. None of that overly abstruse justification of your secret desire to have a women as your personal property, your Excalibur Cock being the one true cock that you and only you may pull out from her vaginal sheath, is really justifiable empirically, whether historically or presently.

Well, I agree with pretty much everything you said, as far as realistically. However, since the question was what would the most ethical policy be, I also agree with swstephe that ethical questions no longer apply here, realistically. But since ethics deals primarily with fantasies, the answer I gave is based entirely on what a fantastical situation would look like. All of the other major parties involved in Syria and Eastern Turkey and Iraq are all undesirable: Assad and his allies are weak and/or intolerable dictator, ISIS and Al-Qaeda are Islamo-Fascists, the Western nations faction are a bunch of pigs and (if, fantastically, they desired so much) would want to be there and in control for all the wrong reasons. The only group that is not only the least undesirable, but actually desirable for any ethical human would be the Rojava alliance. So, the correct answer, ethically, is to let support the Rojava and give them complete control over all of Syria and the autonomous areas of Iraq. Realistically, this will never happen.

What will probably happen is some sort of alliance between the Assad faction, whether directly or indirectly, and the West and Russia, which will win out in the end.

Very Marxist - but - factually wrong. These theories are first of all speculations. There is no empirical, undeniable proof. But - if we start from first principles - I think we can develop a plausible theory. Nature's overarching interest (a metaphor for what will statistically happen over the long term) is to develop the strongest species possible. Nature puts the following constraints: man can fertilise as many females as he wants, a female can only be fertilised once afterwhich for 9 months she must be protected to give birth (a very painful experience, which was very probable to cause the death of the female as well in the past), and then the baby must be protected. Nature's interest is that the alpha male fertilises as many females as possible - hence showing us that it is man's nature to be polygamous. However - given the biological constraints put on the female body - Nature's interest is also that males stay with females, and protect them and their babies after birth. Hence showing us that females must by nature be monogamous (of course there are exceptions, but those are only deviations). Not only is it female nature to be monogamous - but men also want their women to be monogamous. Why? When the alpha male saw other males lurking around his women, if he wasn't careful and annihilated them as soon as possible, they would mate with his women. Then the women would be unable to mate for the next 9 months, and would also risk dying through child birth. Hence Nature had to make the alpha male stop this from happening, so that he would be the one spreading his genes. How? Enter jealousy. Nature must also have given women the arsenal necessary to keep hold of the alpha male - beauty, charm, and - in case of conflict with other females - deceit. Hence Nature made it such that women desire the alpha male to reproduce only with them - in other words that the alpha male was also monogamous. Herein lies the birth of conflict, as the alpha male is desired to be something other than he is. — Agustino

Why are you assuming heterosexual men here? Also, people feel sexually aroused even when they don't personally consciously want a child. You know, sex is fun and feels good for the majority of people. People like to have it a lot.

Also, you know, your account of why women are naturally monogamous is actually pretty fascist. Women like to have sex too, and not only for bearing children, and you do know that women can still have sex while pregnant, right?

The only ethical solution here would be full support for the Rojavas and no support for anyone else. At the end, have the Rojava leadership assume regional leadership position, and support them in peace and stability efforts. Will it happen? Not a chance in hell. But it's definitely the only ethical solution here.

I find Ashley Madison to be an incredibly moral thing. Your relationship is almost certainly a vacuous sham, you are most likely biologically predisposed to want to fuck as much as possible but aren't doing so for a variety of nonsensical reasons, you're probably unhappy in your relationship, listening to Katy Perry Taylor Swift definitely won't help you but their constantly being spammed on the radio makes you believe certain things are more important than they should be, society frowns upon your thoughts and ideas when it comes to sex, society essentially corralled you into a family unit so as to ensure you reproduce the next generation of labor, you teach your children the same bullshit about love and marriage as you were taught, which, let's not forget, is a huge reason why you are incredibly unhappy in the first place, and you give too much value to what is simply the act of coitus.

Ashley Madison is just a reaction to all this, providing a temporary way out for you and your genitalia.

Sayonara Mars Man.

I think the general characterization of Stoics in this thread is too non-complexly algorithmic. It makes no sense to say that Stoics have no concern over their family dying or their wife leaving them as a matter of principle--in fact, it is quite impossible, since humans are evolutionary trial-and-error creatures, and brooding over tragedy is a natural human response, about as natural as not putting your hand on the Bunsen burner after that last time you burnt it. Rather, I see Stoicism as an attempt to streamline this trial-and-error process. Say you came up with a code of ethics, then Stoicism would simply be the engine you use as you approach the world accordingly, in the most efficient and effective way. Really, Stoicism isn't really a philosophical theory at all, it is more like a philosophical device.

Anyways, historically, after Zeno of Citium started popularizing it, it became the device of choice for many rich aristrocrats in Greece and Rome, and then codified into Roman law and culture as a means to ensure some sort of cultural obedience. Really, it became this tool for them Roman fascists (hey, I know using that word is ahistorical in this situation, but to be fair, the word fascist came from the Roman word fasces after all) to retain power and justify their despicable actions under the guise of 'honor'. So, as a philosophical device, there really isn't a problem with it if you're into building codes of ethics through lifelong contemplation and creating a sort of theory to help you abide by them, but when Stoicism became a political movement, then it's ugliness manifests itself.

Typo. Fixed.

British-Turkish citizen arrested by Universal Good Superior Western Values Police for trying to join anti-ISIS group PKK that happens to be the progressive, forward thinking organization Universal Good Superior Western Values Police don't like. Oh yeah, sentenced to 21 months in prison. She was trying to join to fight ISIS. But Western values are so much more superior than ISIS' guys.

Welp, I guess what's left to say is: all heil the White masters and their historically verifiable beyond any doubt, albeit of course entirely necessary, systematic genocide for our freedom and liberty.

Did the American founding fathers not commit systematic genocide? No murder? No rape? No forcing Christianity down the throats of detractors? Has America not been part of a genocidal project since then? Against the modern Mexicans, the Sumatrans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, against an endless list of people? They rarely even snuck in, the same way ISIS did. They just brought their entire army and efficiently and effectively did the job of destruction, plundered, installed their own servants, and left their mark. I don't know who is living in the fantasy world here but everything I've written is historically verified and no serious historian doubts this.

See, the problem with your analysis is that you are more than willing to treat decision making by White Europeans in a rational manner but you then chalk up anyone else into simply "fundamentalist" camps, crazies, irrational monsters, their goal is only murder. But any study of how states are formed, how hegemony is created over huge regions and populations, you will find the exact same behavior exhibited by ISIS.

Can we agree, at the very least, that the process of creating a state from scratch is necessarily murderous and genocidal, and that ISIS exhibits these exact behaviors?

You can't control any area in the long run without creating legal checks and balances, becoming softer, and so on. You simply lose control of the region and you're back at war again. This is basic politics, jamalrob. Remember when the United States, in its infancy, had the policy of complete genocide of the natives? Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson's Indian Removal Act, George Washington's policy of killing off all natives, nevermind listing them, everyone, including Ben Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, they were all murderous scum, even worse than ISIS in many cases. Remember slavery in America, constitutions claiming people are 3/5ths of a human? Never mind that, you can keep tracing the policy of the American empire year after year up until the present and you will be hardpressed to find a year that some sort of manifestation of these murderous values didn't come to be. That's how states are formed, but you can't sustain it forever, but you first codify into law what your supporters want, then slowly gain support of detractors by loosening up the laws. That's how states are formed: first through murder to show who is boss, then liberal appeasement to make people think they are the boss when you are actually the boss.

If only such well thought out distinctions were employed in actual practice by everyone, then we'd remove "ISIS". Unfortunately, some people in this thread are spouting "Western values" nonsense.

For the record: personally, I'd like to see them both go.