To spell out my position in the most literal manner for your convenience: there are people who get paid less than they should be paid, and what I'd change in your formula -- in answer to "what more do you want?" -- is that if you work you can make a decent living, regardless of what you do.
5 hours ago — Moliere

Now I became spellbound. ----

I agree with the "what more do you want" part, in a socially just society nobody would feel they are pulling more than their weight for less wages.

I don't agree with the "people should be paid" part. I mean, it's noble, it's humane, but if you live in a market economy, people only should feel that they INDIVIDUALLY should be paid more. And that is how everyone feels, I am not kidding you.

So... who should decide who should be paid how much? In a market economy, it's not WHO but WHAT decides. At least it's a dependable, reliable way of dishing out wages. If everyone feels it's unfair, that's a fair game then.

Silly me! How did I fail to notice these splendid features? — Bitter Crank

That was my attempt at sarcastic humour.

I'd cut out "and have a decent job" -- that's clearly saying there are jobs for people who count, and jobs for people who don't count. So if you don't have a decent job, you work hard, and yet don't see anything from your work. — Moliere

You're jumping into extremes. "you work hard, and yet don't see anything from your work." That is not true. You see something from your work.

"that's clearly saying there are jobs for people who count, and jobs for people who don't count." This is illogical. Nobody is ranked for jobs whether they count or don't. The job market works on the basis of elasticity of demand versus supply. "Decent" does not mean virtuous or with valor; it means "not extravagant, but not introvagant, either." People whom you mistook for those who don't count still count; but they perform jobs due to any number of reasons which are not coveted by the employer with respect to the available pool of people willing and able to do that job.

I feel you are extrapolating in illegal (logically illegal, not criminally illegal) fashion because maybe your social conscience pushes you over to the other side of reason. Meaning, I am afraid you can't accept that America, the most capitalist of all industrialized nations, pays very good wages.

American workers get good pay because of the competition among employers to get hired help. I believe that if for every IT position there would be ten unemployed IT professionals, then they would settle to work for half the state-decreed minimum wage.

You are mistaken in believing that everything that subjugates your will has to be human-like. — god must be atheist
— Yohan
Lets take an example of being thrown in prison. Then all the people that work at the prison leave with the keys. There is just me and the prison. Assuming I want leave the prison, and can't, is the prison "subjugating my will"? — Yohan

This is a good scenario, because it taxes the reason.

Is the prison subjugating your will? Not at all.

Are the people who locked you up subjugating your will? Not even they.

Is the freedom that you seek as opposed to being in prison subjugating your will? You bet.

I think it is important to identify what the will wills, before doing anything else. Your will is to be free at that moment that you are alone in the prison. Nobody is subjugating it. Your will is predetermined by the facts that 1. prison is an unpleasant place 2. being locked and no food in the foreseeable future is scary 3. you know that outside the prison you have a better chance at fulfilling your needs.

Being locked up has no impact on your will. You'd always want to be in the open, eat healthily and as much as you want/need, and not be a prisoner in a prison.

It's you who is in the prison, not your will. Your will's function is to motivate you to get out of there.

Edit: For example, if everything is predetermined, you can't say "You crashed the car because you were drunk", because crashing was already predetermined before I got drunk. Even if there is a "first cause", what this first cause will cause is, according to predeterminsm, predetermined. — Yohan

thanks for so thoroughly answering my questions, and explaining your answers. Knowing that some can't be explained in a single paragraph, if they can be explained at all.

I quoted this because I agree with most of your first response, except this quote.

In a way everything being caused and therefore predictable and knowable is indistinguishable from fatalism, that is, knowing ahead of time, without knowing the causational processes that precipitate in an action. Furthermore, it is also true, like you said, that knowing ahead of time may be due to not following the causational links, but, instead, due to some other knowledge. And in essence, if you push it to the limit of Hume's argument, which states that random, from each other independent events can be explained by sheer happenstance as much as they can be explained by rigorous and exacting following the causational route.

This really is undecidable.

What I find impossible, though, is the half-and-half, or both causation and free will occurring concurrently. If a thing is caused, it happens. If it is not caused, then it does not happen. If a desire is causing your will to swing into action, it will. If nothing is enticing your will to perform an action, then it won't.

cause and an effect are separate phenomena? — Yohan

they are separate from what? Each other? or from everything else? You need to say to make sense.

They are not separate things subjugating my will. — Yohan

So.. preferences are not separate from what? Your will? You did not say what they are separate from. You need to state that to make sense.

You are anthropomorphizing preferences. They are not separate things subjugating my will. — Yohan

You are mistaken in believing that everything that subjugates your will has to be human-like.

You are also mistaken by thinking that preferences are part of your will.

This of course opens up the can of worms for us, if we must define what will is.

I am free to follow my preferences. I am not free to choose what my preferences are.

The first part is free will. The second part is destiny. We are all destined to freely choose to follow our predetermined preferences. — Yohan

This is where my warning of "what is something free of" comes in. You are not free to follow your preferences. It is your preferences that dictate your behaviour. You can't act against your preferences, unless, of course, you have an overriding preference, also your own, that compels you to act against your preference.

Just because you know what someone will choose doesnt make the choice predetermined. — DingoJones

That is wrong. If you know, it is predetermined. If it is predetermined, you won't necessarily know.

And people know dick all. That's why future is uncertain. But only for us, because we don't know all the causes and the state of things as they are, therefore our predictions are only guesstimates.

If we knew, we could tell what the future holds, precisely because it's predetermined.
----------

Free will? you think that your will is something that is the ONLY thing in existence that can defy the cause-effect rule between events that happen to things?

The only argument I ever heard to support free will is the appeal that the Creator God made us this way. This a very strong argument. For the faithful in a God. However, if you don't believe in a God-Creator, then the argument falls down.

Question: in this scenario, do you have free will? Or are you predestined to create the specific path? Or both?? — Art48

One thing you have not considered, and many others also haven't: Freedom is relative term. Both in magnitude and in amount.

And there is another thing people don't consider, or rather, mix up. They mix up what they or humans can possibly know, and what can possibly be known by a know-it-all. To be possibly known does not require a knower, that's a third thing people don't consider.

Go from here.

Just one more thing to consider: nothing is free of anything else, but our knowledge does not encompass all minute details of relationships between all events and all things.

The question is: If it is KNOWN WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that you will have bacon and eggs tomorrow for breakfast, then tomorrow are you nonetheless free to choose corn flakes? — Art48

Question is whether "you" will know if others are knowing that you will have bacon and eggs for breakfast. If you are a contrarian then you will have corn flakes, just to be able to say you defeated determined course of the universe. But then you did not, but proved that the people who had purported to have had that knowledge did not actually have that knowledge.

That's all.

93
As proven by history that all communist systems have been enforced by dictators I see no further adaptation or advancement of his theory that could save it. — Deus

Benevolent tyrants is your answer.

He thought that they were available in the last quarter of the 19th, first quarter of the 20th centuries. The key piece is wide-spread organizing of industrial unions plus public education, political activity, and elections. — Bitter Crank

I don't undrstand why you say that DeLeon's plan was unsuccessful.

America has a prosperous working class. Public education is mandatory. There are elections. Politically it is a slanted country, compared to other industrialized countries, but hey, maybe the other countries are slanted and America is straight.

If you work, and have a decent job, you can make decent living. What more can a human want? Work in peace, have a family with a bright future, and worship to his heart's desire. He can drink beer any time he wants, shoot the neighbours if they walk onto his lawn, set up a gun-nest and take out a few dozen people. Randomly or to a pattern. -- You can't find this much happiness in other countries.

I don't know; some (too many) individuals are just congenitally miserable. I also don't think much of Maslow's conjecture. — 180 Proof

You did not give reasons; only personal views. I can't argue with your personal opinions not expressed as philosophical assertions.

I have reasons that can be supported, but since you guys on this thread with so much personal gusto and with so much curious intensity have shown your utter lack of interest in what I have to say that I'll keep them to myself.

Why would people be unable to make themselves happy, 180? If Maslow's Hierarchy holds, people will simply achieve the state of need of self-actualization.

(I have an answer to this question, but I wonder if you have the same one.)

Maslow hierarchy of needs has clearly demonstrated this — Deus

True.

An aside, economics, wealth and prosperity should be guided by the human compass of providing the basic needs of every soul that is bore of it. — Deus

I agree and I don't. Yes, the wealth should be redistributed in a way to make humans live humane lives. That I agree with.

I would like to improve on that by saying that satisfying basic needs is not going to make anyone happy. People need education, entertainment, sex, hobbies, pastimes, and a feeling that their existence is meaningful.

These are tall orders, and I don't know that in an infinitely affluent society they can be achieved. The very fact that people don't have everything they want give meaning to their lives: "Let's get that which is missing." To some it's getting published, to some it's winning the Oscars, to some it's finding love in life, to some it's having children and raising them, and to some it's finding food from day to day, so they don't perish.

Once everything gets fulfilled, the meaning and purpose of one's existence is gone.

One need (not basic) is greed. It can never be fulfilled. Those billionaires are indeed lucky fellers, because they always can thrive for something.

For those who have fulfilled their lives' goals, and for those who have given up on that, there is always the Crack Cocaine.

Please don't curse in mixed company, it unsettles the horses. — Tom Storm

:sweat:

I was referring to historical capitalism and not Randian-fantasy capitalism. — 180 Proof

So was I. In America this has been the case since the second half of the nineteenth century.

Randian-fantasy capitalism does away with systematic exploitation (SE). SE is necessarily a part of capitalism, and necessarily not a part of Randianist libertarianism (RL). RL praises the individual effort, and independence from others individually and societally. Those independencisisms are not compatible with the capitalism i described, because exploitation is heavily dependent on non-individual-freedomism.

"Free" of what?
"Free" for whom?
Anthropogenic climate change (at least) since the mid-1800s demonstrates one catastrophic way the "market economy" has not been "free". — 180 Proof

1. free of governmental restrictions.
2. free of conscientious decision making.
3. free of overlords and their capricious demands.
4. free of insane rulers, free of laws that impede healthy and easy changes that favour trade.
3. not free of its own environmental impact.

At its root capitalism is economic anarchy. — Yohan

I agree. The big fish eat the little fish. Except for the Sherman Anti-Combines act in the USA, and similar laws elsewhere.

Perish or thrive. Freedom. No control other than protection for personal safety, private and public property, and freedom of religion and freedom of assembly.

This is the reason China historically, and the USA recently have become political and economic giants. If you don't apply yourself, you rot and die. You want to make it? Work hard, even as a beggar or as an industrial mogul.

The perfect system for evolutionary forces favouring the survival of the strongest and the best. The bottom 3% gets left to rot.

Other places have similar controls, and got nowhere, like Haiti, Bangla Desh, The Tchad, (if it's still called that... maybe it's Upper Volta now?) etc. This is due to the lack of their background in heavy industrialization.

Original poster: Noble and brave thought. Especially on this site. Because although we are not political, and there is no money at stake, nor lives, nor oxen, nor cows; we still hold grudges and we build vendettas on this site if we feel our honour is threatened or if we feel we should know what's going on, but don't.

What I am trying to say is that your request is admirable, but it does not work on a site where reason should be totally the rule; that is here, on a philosophy site. I say you can't reasonably expect reason to prevail on other venues of disagreement.

Capitalism is akin to previous economic systems inasmuch as it exploits the workers. In economic terms it is called "screw the crew."

Then there is the free market, which is also held up by the forced non-allowance by government decree of monopolies. They call this, in economic terms, "Pace the race", and also, "share the flair".

There is non aristocracy in a Capitalist society; people have unequal opportunities, but anyone can strike it rich. They call this, in economic terms, "the buck of luck".

The ruling class, opposed to what many believe, is diverse; there is the upper echelon, who direct the company's future by having the majority of voting shares, but basically anyone can own dividend-bearing shares, and voting shares, in as many companies as they want, and as long as their money can be stretched. They call this, in economic terms, "The wretched stretch".

Capitalism suffers, from time to time, of an over-production crisis. This is when the people have too many goods that don't need replacement, and therefore nobody buys anything for a while; workers can't earn, they get laid off, and they can't spend; by the time they need to spend, because the goods wore out finally, they can't buy because they hadn't had an income for a long time. In economic terms it is called "poverty ain't novelty".

On the other hand, when people are buying like crazy, because they have jobs that provide them with a good income, and there are plenty of well-presented gimmicks to buy, then money changes hands quickly; everyone becomes well off; they buy shit, they spend money, and the more money they spend, the more the unit price of shit goes up, because of the other trend: the elasticity of demand over supply. This is called in Economic terms "Where's the money, Honey?"

I don't mind admitting I'm wrong when I am. I wish more people would act on their similar sentiments when appropriate.

You're right. I was wrong. I stand corrected.

Can you elaborate on what you've written here? As it stands, it doesn't make any sense in the context of what I wrote. — ThinkOfOne

What's there to elaborate? You said that the gospels are pauline. There are no other gospels. So where does one get Jesus's teaching? Not from the bible, because that is PAULINE. You said that.

I really don't understand what you don't understand. There is one bible. It is pauline. So where is the Jesu gospel? it is not available to us, because, as you said, only the pauline gospel is what we can get.

Where is the point where I lost you?

Only because the gospel preached by Jesus is not the foundation for Christianity. The gospel that Christianity is spreading is the Pauline gospel. I suspect that you responded before I edited my previous post and added another paragraph. — ThinkOfOne

so... we have no clue whatsoever what the real gospel is, the gospel written by those who witnessed Jesus. We have the Pauline gospel, and nothing else.

This is rather very peculiar.

I read somewhere by a great thinker, whose name I did not memorize, who said,

"Philosophy does not need answers. It needs a cure."

Maybe it said "Philosophers", not "Philosophy".

I agree with the proposition of the OP. We are addicted to thought. Everyone gets addicted to what gives them pleasure.

Heard someone say, ever, of another person, "He (or she) is only happy when s/he is miserable."

Philosophers, on the whole, are not miserable; only when they fail to convince someone else of their own argument. Which is, by and large, 100 percent of the time.

I think you're right. Also, some countries (very few, maybe just one) has zero or negative growth rate, due to economic reasons. Hungary. There is a trickle lost to emigration, but it's almost negligible, because the only place to go is the West, and they don't allow Hungarians in as readily as during the political divide.

Hungary has negative growth rate because it takes the salaries or incomes of two adults to sustain three souls.

In some other countries this is also true, but the other countries have high growth rates. (Egypt, Zimbabwe, etc.) They create more humans not because they can afford them, but because society's expectations, and of individual's, of what constitutes "afford" or "sustain" a human, are set much lower than in Hungary.

Much growth is attributable to religious indoctrination and expectations-- like Christian countries used to be, now the Muslim world is propagandizing, very successfully, the idea that a man is only a man if he has more children than his neighbour. Or some other spiritual incentive, I don't know the Koran.

:cheer: :100: :fire: :up: :clap: :ok:

Ok, but so what? How does that impact the way we address the issue? — Tate

That is the million dollar question.

Well, there are two ways that we can address that issue:
1. Declare that Xtrix was wrong in his or her assessment in this debate.
2. Reduce population size.
2.1. Population size can't be reduced without drastic measures.
2.2. Drastic measures are opposed by democratic, humanitarian societies.

Woody Allen gave a speech to graduating Harvard students some time ago. He said, roughly, not verbatim:

"Humanity faces a choice between self-annihilation and utter misery. I hope we have the wisdom to choose the right one."

In other words: the question "How does that impact the way we address the issue?" is unanswerable without having something to give:
- our good, humanitarian feelings,
- the utter comfort of our lives, or
- accepting complete or near-complete self-annihilation as a species.

Yes. People are real, and their numbers are increasing. The concept of “overpopulation,” however, is a myth and an abstraction. This isn’t hard. — Xtrix

No, it is not hard. Inasmuch as an idiotic opinion, as wrong as it can be, is not hard to understand, either.

A myth and an abstraction are a fantasm and a thing not pertaining to the real world, respectively;

Decisions by a handful of people in government and business. — Xtrix

whereas people, their numbers, and their numbers increasing are real things, not fantasms, and they pertain to the real world. To understand that you call overpopulation a myth and an abstraction, is easy, as it is also easy to see how you err in your judgment.

You blame the shortage of water, arable land and natural resources on the decisions by a few people in government and business. Yes, they make the decisions, but they make the decisions as the extended power of the people. If the people really did not like those decisions, then they would vote a government that reversed those decisions. But the people did not vote their representatives out because of these decisions. So stop saying that the cause of the world's problems are resting on the decisions of a few people. That is a short-sighted, biassed opinion by you, as I see it.

I didn’t once say that. — Xtrix

Yes, you did. Not by verbatim quote, but by implication, when you said:

"A small percentage of the world is responsible for carbon emissions."

I appreciate that you did not mean to say this, but then don't blame me for your inaccuracy of composition.

It is one thing to read more, it's another thing to read and write with care. You win on the first account (you read more) I win on the second account.

I appreciate that you read more than I do. While that is most likely true, that is not an acceptable argument.

7% of the global population are responsible for 50% of carbon emissions — Xtrix

It’s not overpopulation. When 7% of the global population are responsible for 50% of carbon emissions— I don’t think “overpopulation” is the problem.
— Xtrix

You're right. There's a certain kind of lifestyle that's putting out CO2 way out of proportion to other forms. — Tate

Tate, please consider this argument which I have already presented, in so many other words, as a response to Xtrix's well-thought out argument.

If the world's population was 10,000 people in total, then the emission problem would not be there, regardless what currently used lifestyle those 10,000 people pursued.

If the world's population was double the size of today's population, the emission problem would be present, even if the entire world population used the same, low amount of emission as Xtrix established, which was 50% of today's emission by 93% of the population. (If 7% uses 50%, which Xtrix claims, then by Xtrix's own admission 93 percent of the world's population produces the other 50% of carbon emissions.) So even if in today's world we'd create only 50% of the presently created carbon emission, then in sixty years, assuming the same rate of population growth, we'd be creating the same PROBLEMATIC amount of carbon emissions.

So while you are right that a certain kind of lifestyle causes the putting out a lot of CO2, even if you eliminated that lifestyle, the problem would still be with us the same way in 60 years.

This is why I insist that it is the overpopulation that is the root cause of many, many problems and the major cause of problems we face today as a species.

Overpopulation is an abstraction. Blaming the worlds problem on this abstraction is a useful ploy to divert from the reality — which is that the behavior of a small percentage of the world population is responsible for most problems. — Xtrix

Excuse me? How is overpopulation an abstraction? People are real. Their numbers are real. Their increasing number is a fact. Then you say that it's a... what? An abstraction?

This is not sound reasoning, in my opinion. Please explain how overpopulation is not a real happening in the real world as we know them.

You come out with outrageously wrong opinions: facts are abstractions in your view, historical numbers change at your whimsy to support your (false) arguments, and you are caught on contradicting yourself.

A small percentage of the world is responsible for carbon emissions — Xtrix

you yourself said that 7% of the population is responsible for 50% of carbon emissions. Now you say that the 7% is responsible for 100% of carbon emissions.

Why do you think anyone should take your statements seriously, when you contradict yourself in the span of a few posts?

“Overpopulation” doesn’t cause any of those things. — Xtrix

"Those things" are lack of enough arable land, water use, natural resources.

So... tell me, if overpopulation does not cause the shortages of water, arable land and natural resources that humanity uses... then what causes them. This is important that you state the reason, because I think you are patently wrong on this issue.

Except that’s a myth.

It’s not overpopulation. When 7% of the global population are responsible for 50% of carbon emissions— I don’t think “overpopulation” is the problem. — Xtrix

Then wait a bit, and it will become the biggest problem, if population growth continues. It is not only the carbon emissions that the overpopulation causes... arable land use, water use, depleting natural resources.

That's A. B. is that 100% of the population is responsible for 100% of human-caused carbon emissions.

Going back to the first point, what you called a myth: Let's imagine that the 7% of people who cause 50 percent of all carbon emission, somehow revert to very small carbon footsteps. The total of carbon emission today would be reduced to 53.5% of yesterday's value. That's great.

However, please consider, that the global population grew since I followed the statistics first, because they taught this in school to us, from 3.5 to 4 billion 62 years ago to 7 usque 8 billion people today. That means that give it another 60 years, having the population behaving in an exemplary way with regard to carbon emission, you will be in the same position as today.

I understand that harnessing the energy coming from the sun will reduce the carbon emissions. Fine. But the greenery on Earth uses the same sunlight energy as the man-made contraptions - be the contraptions wind-harnessing turbines, or solar panels - and I am not sure there will be enough sunlight left to feed the population via raising vegetables and livestock, and to create forests. There is only so much to go around. Right now the Earth is losing the battle of reducing carbon emission-based regeneration of greenery. In the future, with double the population in 60 years, I fear that the problem won't be gone.

Therefore I say, QED, that the biggest problem mankind faces is the trend of humans to propagate their numbers unchecked.

What is true in the case of Xenophon is not true in general. His writing is deceptively simple. There is much more there than meets the eye. — Fooloso4

So it's tricky reading in a simple form. I get it now. It is not REALLY simple...only the form. Right on.

I know plenty of people who recoil in absolute horror when even a mention of "inner awareness" is uttered. — Bret Bernhoft

Absolutely!! Absolutely!! I couldn't agree more.

But it's not due to the lack of their own inner awareness. It is due to their abhorrence over the apparent pretension associated to things that people say who talk about "Inner awareness".