Do you think 100 billion dollars in assets can be morally accumulated? I do not. — Bitter Crank
First, we, as a society, need to distinguish between true capitalism and the faux shit spouted by today's self-identified capitalists who are quick to socialize their costs, hide behind big government's skirts, and refuse to take personal responsibility for their own actions.
Once we understand that difference, then the only objection a socialist might have to capitalism is how the capitalist came into possession of "his" personal property in the first place.
18 hours ago — James Riley
If it were not for government contracts there would not be so much wealth. This is one of the biggest problems with big government! There is virtually no control of the money. — Athena
Corporate personhood should NOT exist legally because a corporation is not a person.
All human beings should have the right to unionize just as capitalists have a right to form corporations. — Athena
↪Athena Let me clarify a point: There is a great deal of difference in quantity and quality between a low level of inequality and an extremely high level of inequality. Perfect equality is unobtainable, but a low level of inequality can be obtained. A low level of inequality might be where the average high pay, average large asset holdings, is only 10 times the average low pay, average low asset holding. So, a 25,000 a year wage earner would be on the low end, 250,000 would be on the high end. A low level of inequality also means that most of the people would hold most of the assets. There would not be room for Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. — Bitter Crank
Same guy. But he was not alone. Most men of the Enlightenment were headed down a liberal, if not radical road. — James Riley
P.S. People do have the right to unionize. Unfortunately, they don't have a right to prevent scabs or other efforts by the Plutocracy to increase the labor supply, thus reducing demand and value of labor. They just run over seas to the billions of people getting 30 cents an hour. The Plutocracy's rising tide lifts Chinese boats. — James Riley
“Right to work” is the name for a policy designed to take away rights from working people. Backers of right to work laws claim that these laws protect workers against being forced to join a union. The reality is that federal law already makes it illegal to force someone to join a union.
Right to Work | AFL-CIO — AFL-CIO
“Right to work” — AFL-CIO
That was not within the power of a plutocracy. — Athena
Everything except time and nature is within the power of the Plutocracy. And they are fighting those, too. — James Riley
I don't believe those explanations and think things are more complex than those simple beliefs of evil powers. — Athena
Of course nobody wishes...to fall into severe addiction or substance abuse... — Outlander
NO ONE WANTS TO BE JUST A HOUSEWIFE!
— Athena
Just a housewife? Oh.. oh wow. My dear lady, with all due respect have you gone mad? What greater role is there in human development than the role of a constantly present and nurturing mother? — Outlander
NO ONE WANTS TO BE JUST A HOUSEWIFE! How well I remember the "New Woman" magazine and the destruction of the value of a full-time homemaker. — Athena
and as Hitler and Neitzche, the cry is to be superior and crush the weak. — Athena
Loyalty to the family has gone to hell and dependence on the state has increased. — Athena
Personally, I believe family is more important than individuals. Love of state over love of family is reminiscent of Hitler's fascism. — Athena
I might agree with James Riley about the importance of community within a tribalistic or small communistic context, but within the context of "the state", the word "community" loses all of it's meaning, since the state makes all of the claims upon the individual that the community once did. This claiming obscures the fact that there is no true community within the context of the state. In the end, all who buy into the state's remonstration about "community" are left as no more than isolated individuals dependent upon and utilizing the state's willingness to mediate all traditional community functions in the creation of a type of "community by proxy", which leaves the state as the intermediary and arbiter of all function. — Michael Zwingli
Sure, it's not been fully realized, but we can yet draw some conclusions about the relationship (or the lack thereof) between state brokerage of social function and it's effects on "community" from the tendencies that we have experienced as a society, can we not? From the height of the Industrial Revolution, say roughly 1840, until the present time, we have experienced the government, the "state", gradually increase it's role as the intermediary of social function. This has been absolutely necessary, especially in countering the effects of industrialists' creation of a situation which ignored the humanity of it's human resoure, and of industrialization's causing a static social milieu devoid of any mechanism for social mobility, and of a wealth gap which had the working class living in squalor. The.part played by the state in remedying that economic situation has been necessary and good, and was well executed by the government. However, as the government has picked up more and more function over the years, we have experienced an increasing personal isolation in American society. The individual American seems more isolated now than he was before industrialization, with each of us occupying, both actually and metaphorically, our own little boxes.That makes a lot of sense. I just think it's never been tried here, and where it has been tried (almost every first world ally we have) it beats the hell out of what we have now. — James Riley
To have a larger population without a larger government would be an interesting trick...The point being, if people want small government they should work toward a small population. If they want responsive government, they need to wrest control back to themselves. — James Riley
I don't have any good answers for this, but it seems like a bit of a problem. — Michael Zwingli
↪Outlander I think you might have misread Athena's use of this expression. Rather, I think she(?) used it as exemplary of the social thinking against which she is railing with this thread, the fact of which becomes clear from her following sentence:
NO ONE WANTS TO BE JUST A HOUSEWIFE! How well I remember the "New Woman" magazine and the destruction of the value of a full-time homemaker.
— Athena
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and as Hitler and Neitzche, the cry is to be superior and crush the weak.
— Athena
As did Adolf Hitler, Athena, you completely...utterly misunderstand Neitzsche, which is easy enough to do as he often wrote in allegory, but I enjoin you to read him a bit more deeply, and with some guidance if that is found necessary. You cheapen he who was a profound thinker when you place him in category alongside someone like Hitler. In a nutshell, Neitzsche's "will to power" did not describe the striving to be superior over others, it described the striving to self-mastery, and the "Ubermensch" is he who has perfected self-mastery. Joshs renders a clear though succinct exposition of this in my current "will" thread. Wait...am I still on the "Philosophy Forum" site??
Loyalty to the family has gone to hell and dependence on the state has increased.
— Athena
Personally, I believe family is more important than individuals. Love of state over love of family is reminiscent of Hitler's fascism.
— Athena
Your thesis in brief. I agree with your observations for the most part, but I disagree with your conception of the mechanism at work. I don't think that the percieved "decline of the family" is caused by an increased dependence upon the state. Rather, I think that the erosion of the concept of family, and particularly of "lineage", attended the revolutionary genesis of the American nation. This country was formed as a reaction against aristocracy, and by extension thereof, as a reaction against the concept of "lineage". This anti-lineage stance was early on codified within American law within such principles as "the Rule Against Perpetuities". The results of this today are that the concept if "lineage" has been so weakened in the American mind, that the expression of that concept is usually met with reactions of incredulity.
When you do away with the "lineage", all you are left with for a concept of "the family", is the impotent "nuclear family", which is not a strong enough conception to withstand the onslaught of society's claims upon the individual person, and the claims of the nationalistic spirit for the affections of the individual. Why do you think we have the national anthem, the "pledge of allegiance" to the flag, various allegorical stories about the "founding fathers" of the country (many of which are utterly fabricated, like the G. Washington "cherry tree" fable, or embellished to the point of unrecognizability, like the "Paul Revere's Ride" nonsense), and other similar nationalistic devices? These are simply items of propaganda meant to secure the affections of a people left rootless by the destruction of the concept of "lineage", to a giant abstraction called "the state". This, of course, supported by more recent types of propaganda emanating from socialist thought (oddly placing nationalism and socialism in bed together), has been wildly successful in America, and are the reason for the diminishment of the weak "nuclear family". I might agree with @James Riley about the importance of community within a tribalistic or small communistic context, but within the context of "the state", the word "community" loses all of it's meaning, since the state makes all of the claims upon the individual that the community once did. This claiming obscures the fact that there is no true community within the context of the state. In the end, all who buy into the state's remonstration about "community" are left as no more than isolated individuals dependent upon and utilizing the state's willingness to mediate all traditional community functions in the creation of a type of "community by proxy", which leaves the state as the intermediary and arbiter of all function. — Michael Zwingli
Nepotism is a form of favoritism which is granted to relatives and friends in various fields, including business, politics, entertainment, sports, fitness, religion, and other activities. The term originated with the assignment of nephews to important positions by Catholic popes and bishops.
Nepotism - Wikipedia — wikipedia
To each his own. Nothing is more simple or lacking in complexity than pointing a finger at "big government" with no understanding of how governments can and should work. How the Plutocracy prevents that understanding is anything but simple, and they even have people thinking big government is evil. But yeah, you can keep following their lead if you want. — James Riley
I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest—his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is close to them, but he sees them not—he touches them, but he feels them not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country. Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances—what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things: it has predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as benefits. — Tocqueville
Did you say I do not understand how government works? — Athena
Yeah, two thumbs up for that one. :up: :up:We need to progress, forward, and grow smarter and wiser, not bigger. — James Riley
Alas, we are not.I don't see that happening but if we were all we crack ourselves up to be, then we could figure it out. — James Riley
Alas, we are not. — Michael Zwingli
... I thought we have a national anthem because we go to war and when we are in a state of war we need to be strongly united and working together. — Athena
Read what I said again: "can and should."
If you keep blaming big government instead of those who use it as their personal tool, then you clearly don't know how it can or should work. Did they teach you about how money buys government? Or did they just teach you that we live in a democracy/republic/federal system and all the good little citizens are in charge and actually slitting their own throats with their own government?
You keep raising 1958, the German model, bureaucracy, etc., as if government is this thinking individual evil person who pulled all that out of thin air as a way to better manage the serfs. I keep telling you to quit doing what the Plutocracy has trained you to do: blame big government, so you don't focus on what they are up to. It's like taking a gun and throwing it in jail while letting the shooter walk. It's like the shooter saying "Don't blame me, blame the gun!" And then you are like "Well, let's render the gun inoperable and all will be fine. It makes no sense.
Thanks for the education on Alexis, et al. I digested all that forty years ago. I'm looking at what is happening in the U.S. today. — James Riley
The weakening of the concept of "perpetuity" both in general and in particular: familial, social, environmental, etc., has definitely weakened the concept of "family", and nearly destroyed the concept of "lineage". Genealogical research has today become no more than an exercise in curiosity. The weakening of perpetuity has also resulted in modern cultures having become "rootless", and in the citizens of modern societies having become absorbed in their "selves" (self-absorbed), as that rootlessness has increased and the importance of place and of extended family have diminished.never knew of "the Rule Against Perpetuities". or even imagined a dead person had any power after death. That is an interesting subject. I noticed a failure of leaving behind estates and no longer thinking in terms of a man's home being his castle, did play into a weakening the family. — Athena
National anthems are symbols, just like national flags and any other type of nationalist symbolic device. Their purpose, whether there is war or there is peace and prosperity, they have in common with all similar devices: the psychological, and especially emotional, binding of the individual and his affections to the state. — Michael Zwingli
The weakening of the concept of "perpetuity" both in general and in particular: familial, social, environmental, etc., has definitely weakened the concept of "family", and nearly destroyed the concept of "lineage". Genealogical research has today become no more than an exercise in curiosity. The weakening of perpetuity has also resulted in modern cultures having become "rootless", and in the citizens of modern societies having become absorbed in their "selves" (self-absorbed), as that rootlessness has increased and the importance of place and of extended family have diminished. — Michael Zwingli
It does not matter if I miss understand Nietzsche. It matters how his philosophy encouraged Nazi behavior in the past and present...His effect has gone far, far beyond those who read his books. — Athena
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