It's like you have the memory retention of a goldfish. You're outraged anew every time you learn this stuff.

I just like the implication that displaying a literal other country's flag implies American support. — Streetlight

Good. Because it does. :lol:

No one is flying a Somali flag — Isaac

Because doing so is pro-American. :lol:

I just discovered that people all over the world know about Sesame St.

Mind blown.

Even If it doesn't mean that, for sure it presupposes that. I guess "Depth" is always where the real treasure is found. — dimosthenis9

I agree. :grin:

Truly’ experiencing anything is in the direction of a richer flow of change, not the accessing of a deeper inner dimension. — Joshs

Maybe so.

Kierkegaard said there are two ways to experience an event:

1. As if the world is new in this moment. There's an edge to events from this perspective. Anxiety and excitement are part of anticipation.

2. As if this is a repetition, another day, another Spring, another person doing x again. This perspective is characterized by melancholy (per SK). Success is less important (in a way). Defeat stings less because it's just another defeat in a long line of them.

One way isn't better than the other, except the second eayymay ease things when there is too much anxiety.

Noah's grandfather! Interesting.

I'm not interested in some archeological discussion on how the war in Ukraine goes back to Mathusalem. — Olivier5

I am, though. I need to understand the Mathusalem angle. Like who is he?

Nukes might have been the solution. — ssu

:up:

The more depth you discover, the closer you get to happiness and freedom etc. It's a never ending procedure. — dimosthenis9

I think that's true. Authenticity means leaving superficial rules behind?

One might argue that the feeling of depth is a function of the richness , intricacy and anticipative continuity of the surface movement or flow of our experience of events — Joshs

This is mainly in the realm of sensation? Depth as in truly tasting an apple instead of just chomping and swallowing?

concerning how effectively we are able to transform ourselves — Joshs

The move toward transformation is the topic of Sickness Unto Death.

For me, depth comes from awareness. To the extent that thinking and writing increases our awareness of ourselves, the world, and other people is the extent to which it has depth. In philosophy, I think the focus is on awareness of how we think, how we understand the world, how we know things.

I don't think my way of seeing things is all that different from yours. — T Clark

:up:

Russia: We like Ukrainians. Let's not bother them.

Putin: Let's invade.

*Putin shows how inept the Russian military actually is.*

NATO: moves East.

Real depth can be proven by certain criteria:
- connection with important concepts — Angelo Cannata

Like what?

Hmm. Are we arriving at the reason they banned you?

I mean, you can read what he said. Some of it is engraved on the wall behind that big statue of him in Washington.

Mobility by what process other than the fruits of one's labor? — ASmallTalentForWar

The vision of the free society is about social roles. No one is locked into a particular role.

How did Lincoln get into the position so that the split vote gave him the advantage? — ASmallTalentForWar

The Whig Party fell apart after the Dred Scott decision. Lincoln was instrumental in gathering all the anti-slavery groups together into the Republican Party. It was said that the more experienced politicians chose him as the presidential candidate because he was politically naive and they thought they would be able to control him.

The free society to Lincoln essentially meant free labor. — ASmallTalentForWar

That's incorrect. It meant social mobility.

This is what gave him the advantage in his pursuit of the presidency. — ASmallTalentForWar

No, the Southern Democrats walked out of the 1859 Democratic National Convention and subsequently ran their own candidate, splitting pro-slavery vote. That's how Lincoln won.

The abolition of slavery was essentially an economic necessity — ASmallTalentForWar

No, the Dred Scott decision promised to nationalize slavery, and the wisdom of the time was that once this happened slavery would never be uprooted from the USA.

Lincoln was a moderate in this sense and his principles aligned with theirs — ASmallTalentForWar

Lincoln made his principles known. He believed that slavery was a threat to the vision of the free society. Once people get used to someone else doing their work for them, they lose sight of the meaning of freedom.

Nevertheless, the free soil and free labor movement are what put him in power and eventually what won the civil war. — ASmallTalentForWar

This isn't true, but it's off topic to pursue it. :wink:

And where does he condemn slavery specifically because free laborers have to compete with slaves?

The argument against slavery that Lincoln typified was not essentially moral but based in capitalism. — ASmallTalentForWar

Do you have an example of Lincoln expressing this perspective? Specifically the free labor angle.

Merely pointing out, as Frank does, the preponderance of finance is meaningless if it not recognized that the financial house of cards is built upon the ever more thinning foundation of an economy that still needs people to eat and not be dead. — Streetlight

I didn't say capitalism should be understood as being all about finance. Neoliberalism put finance at the center of the global economy.

This is probably wrong, but it's the best I can do right now:

1. Embedded liberalism exists post WW2.
2. This, along with active labor unions results in high wages.
3. This leads to a problem with capital accumulation. For some reason, the point is reached where banks can't make a profit and credit starts to disappear.
4. Stagflation arrives due to an oil supply shock, and this opens the door for the "manufacture of consent" for an economic overhaul that ultimately destroys the power of unions.
5. Eventually America has reduced industrialization, a much more timid workforce, a new elite, and a new middle class that fully embraces neoliberal principles.

6. 2008 arrives, and we've been in limbo ever since. Real wages, which were already low, are even lower post 2008, and this is supposed to have caused Trump's election.

7. High inflation is now setting in and real wages are dropping even further.

I think neoliberalism was supposed to create social stratification for the sake of capital accumulation. The stratification didn't end up being linear over time. It's accelerating?

Therefore, to add efficiency to the progress of economic prosperity, create a system where anyone with a good idea can obtain the capital (in practical terms funding, but in conceptual terms, the legitimate ability to take action) to manifest that idea and then let the freedom of his fellow individuals (in the market in practical terms) either take advantage of the idea to their benefit - thus, success and profit - or determine that it is not in their benefit - thus failure, but without bloodshed. — ASmallTalentForWar

In the depths of feudalism, the lord is a warrior. He feeds his army on the spoils of war. The clergy is holed up in monastic fortresses. Everyone else is a serf: bound to the land and restricted by custom and religion to a life of slavery.

The crusades injected change. The influx of goods from the middle east woke Europeans up to their low level of civilization. The feet that beat down those trade routes belonged to the ancestors of the European merchant class.

They found freedom from servitude in profit-making. Their markets became cities. They tore down Christianity and built back a version that accepted them as being just as human as the nobility.

It wasn't about efficiency. It was about becoming human.

Essentially, capitalism is the attempt to separate economic power from aristocratic power. — ASmallTalentForWar

True again. But this is Eurocentric, isn't it? Or should we think of capitalism as an entirely European invention?

Can we add more? — Streetlight

Yes. You can add "why things are made."

Again, this is another thing that is straightforwardly wrong and ahistorical. Money is yet another thing that has been around long before capitalism.

So that's three things we can now say capitalism is not: markets, interest, and money. — Streetlight

What's with the preoccupation with hitting capitalism with one dart?

It's about profit. There are all sorts of activities that can result in profit.

To understand finance, you need to focus on the fairy dust, as the guy put it.

Dollars, at heart, are just a measurement system like inches. However, I can design a building with limitations inherent to the actual construction materials. I can design a million mile high skyscraper for example, but no one could ever build it. — ASmallTalentForWar

Bingo. Money is an abstraction, divorced from anything real. Banks create virtual money.

A capitalist economic boom is a gambling casino. None of it is tied to anything real.

but the OP's focus was to distinguish markets from capitalism above all — Streetlight

That's true. They aren't the same thing.

The current problem, which some see as a crisis, for capitalism seems to be that the upward spiraling generation of mega-debt, which is acceptable only based on the premise that the future can be relied upon to be more prosperous than the past, seems to be sailing dangerously close to the wind, given overpopulation, resource depletion, habitat destruction, global warming and so on. — Janus

Historically, mega-debts just disappear during large scale economic contractions. Capitalism magnifies natural cycles of growth and decline. During booms, capitalists seem undefeatable. During busts we wonder why we ever thought living this way was intelligent.

I think a new religion will eventually emerge and absorb concerns like environmental exploitation and global warming.

Programmatic or revolutionary thinking is doomed to failure in my view, and the only hope can come from full acknowledgement that the future cannot be predicted and controlled. — Janus

Why do you see this as paramount?

And I should have added: usury has been around for a very long time. — Janus

:up:

Interest, or the realization of profit, or increase in capital. without having to produce anything, seems to be the essence of capitalism. Of course this notion of interest or, what is essentially the same thing, rent, is intimately connected with the concept of ownership. If you are deemed to own something, then you can legitimately lend it, rent it or simply hang onto it and hope to sell it for profit. — Janus

Yes! :up:

You keep cracking me up, Frank. — Tom Storm

Ok. What presuppositions do you think I have?

You presuppositions are showing... — Tom Storm

Which is what? Just curious.

I'd hold the view that any discussion of capitalism, all the terms used and their relationships to each other and how they are understood systemically involve presuppositions. There is no free world of 'terminology' without perspectival relationships. — Tom Storm

I agree. As you may have noticed, a discussion of capitalism becomes a discussion of history.

History is a dangerous topic because we take it to be an unbiased look at the facts. A little philosophy says that as much as we may long to have that unbiased view, it's probably not really available. For us English speakers, that usually means Eurocentrism, as if nothing important ever happened beyond European dominion.

On the one hand, there's never been a culture more pervasively influencial than Europe. But the problem with being Eurocentric is that we miss out on valuable perspectives.

So yes, there will be some bias in any discussion of history. We can still put politics aside and agree on something as basic as the definition of capitalism, though. The only thing standing in our way is ego: the one thing that has always screwed leftists.

Ugh. I gave you a soft pitch and that's all you came up with? You must be back on your bipolar meds. :joke:

Sure, once you say anything whatsoever of substance — Xtrix

Stay tuned. I might just say something AMAZING!

Did you want to discuss something?

can't see how one can construct observations on economics without the perspectives and values from political discourse — Tom Storm

While discussing the definition of capitalism, it's preferable in my opinion to put political debates to the side. First start with common terminology unless all you wanted was useless verbal spew.

But I'll leave this to people who care more about political debate than me. — Tom Storm

There's no political debate here. I'm not sure why you think there is.

:up:

It's debating Bible verse time, Frank — Tom Storm

So, you don't really have any thoughts about the prevailing economic structure of your times?

It's Bible verses to you? That's seems a little alien to me, but Ok.