Merely" the Creator of the universe, i.e. one that having done so, does not intervene, is not influenced by worship or prayer--is the First Mover and nothing more; — Ciceronianus

Is that not deism?

Theism is significant because too many damn theists proselytize and/or inject magical thinking – superstitions – into their explanations or arguments, even in nonreligious contexts (e.g. politics, commerce, science, ethics). Mostly, atheism is an intrinsic threat to theism because it is always a live option for (thinking) theists like potential defectors from a blinkered, totalitarian regime. — 180 Proof

My response to this is as it always is, and that is the Christian theology you reject isn't the only form of theism. That is, there are plenty of theists who don't proselytize, reject science, or care at all about atheism's potential threats.

If I told my rabbi I were an atheist, he truly would not care.

The idea that theists must convert others, save souls, trust blindly in certain items of literature, reject reason over doctrine, or hold firm to the faith to escape any sort of punishment is something held by a particular religion, but not theism per se.

When I was single, I found it very stressful. I used to feel this anxiety of having nothing to do, so I kept compulsively busy, like I couldn't sit still. But then I'd get into a relationship and if I didn't like where it was going, it was worse, and I would feel this huge calm once I broke up, but then the anxiety would start up again as the lonliness prolonged and the cycle would repeat.

But then I found someone, and so am no longer alone and no longer anxious, although prolly not super chill either. In any event, lonliness does give you a chance to really learn about yourself. What I learned was that I was not designed to be alone. Some people are though, but I sometimes wonder if that's just because they never spent a long time attached, so they haven't created that dependence.

I'll play you. PM me however you want to set it up.

I'd propose a far more serious failure, if what you say is true, and that is that people are seeking meaning and virtue from the political theory or leader du jour.

The assembly line began long ago, making the artisan no longer needed and leaving the systemitizing to the managers. There will always be boxes to carry, buttons to push, cartons to fill, or whatever. Unemployment is at historic lows where we're unable to find people to bring the food from the kitchen out to the table.

Labor has always been expensive, so the trick has always been how to dumb down the tasks to increase the supply of those who can do it in order to decrease the costs of getting it done.

I've got nothing good to say about Trump, but placing on his shoulders the despair of the common worker gives him too much credit. Workers have been talking about uniting and overthrowing since the great manifesto. Unfortunately, many of those attempts didn't work out so well.

Whatever increase in despair there is, and I've not conceded it without first seeing the data, is probably quite complex and doesn't fit neatly into wherever our biases might lie (the economic system, civil rights violations, guns, drugs, single parent homes, poverty, bullying, etc), but is many of those for some, different from others, and who knows what else.

This isn't to say there aren't some standing on the ledge right now due to feelings of despondency created by skill obselesence and worker alienation, but there are probably more there due to a bad breakup or rejection by family or friends or those very specific things that leave us feeling helpless.

One of my favorites is the kind that Abraham Lincoln grew up with. It dictated that every person is born for some reason. — frank

And more broadly, everything occurs for a reason.

If you were open to it, I could show you why hard determinism is also indubitable (I'd stick to Schopenhauer). — frank

Why do you ask if I'm open to it unless you think I have a choice in the matter?

Say whatever you will, as you must, and speak of Schopenhauer.

While determinism might demand that there be just one possible world, I don't see why it must demand that that one world consist only of that that who don't doubt determinism.

The determinist would say that though the judge may sway back and forth, giving each account a fair hearing, being devoted to rendering judgement with no prior bias, he can ultimately only make one choice. — frank

Assuming determinism is true, the determinist will say whatever the determinist says, and he might say the judge exercised a completely free will, but he'll say that because he had to, and there's a good chance he'll even believe it because most do believe in free will, or at least that's what I'm led to think.

The point here is that free will is a necessary prerequesite for the organization of our thoughts and our understanding of the world, without which nothing makes sense. So, it's not as if we all act as if we have free will although are otherwise determined, but it is that we have free will or else we're all just barking things thinking we're meaning something but are instead just doing whatever we have to do.

Why couldn't you know what you did and why you did it? Determinism just means there was always a 100% chance you would do x, realize y, etc. — frank

If you you say that you know you're going to work because you're in the car, my response would be that you know what it's in your head and you're barking at me whatever sounds you might be, but the idea that you think you can judge how you know things doesn't exist in a predetermined world.

Taking this to an actual judge. Let's say you go before the court and argue your case and provide all the reasons why the judge should find you not guilty, but he then finds you guilty. You then ask the clerk why that happened, and she tells you, "Oh, his decisions are predetermined."

How does determinism make it meaningless to learn? It just means that you were always going to learn x at time y. — frank

It means you were going to do X. You have know way of knowing what you did, why you did it, or whether it was learned or always known.

The impossibility of knowledge under determinism: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3327972

But Hanover had some point that life is not necessarily a zero sum game of winners and losers in terms of the possibility of making a living. However, it is setup a certain way that is basically intractable. You were born, in this world you have to survive, and history has its contingent ever present constraint along with the cultural artifacts of what came from it. — schopenhauer1

Sure, and you were forced to say that by these constraints and me to say otherwise, which is the meaninglessness of determinism and which is even more meaningless to suggest we've figured it out, considering whatever we figured out was what we had to think regardless.

Or, we have free will and despite these contraints can make our lives better or worse based upon how we decide.

I think you may be right about adversity being a good motivator. I am concerned that Christianity has hindered us in the need to learn of virtues and intentionally act on them until doing so becomes a habit, because Christianity is about being saved by the Savior, instead of being saved by our will to develop virtual habits. — Athena

I do wonder about this sometimes. I have been struck by the number of Christians on this board who have expressed similar sentiments, and it was foreign to me as a non-Christian to hear. That is, the virtue of humility rooted in the idea of being born into failure and requiring self-abandoment to a savior to pull you from damnation I would think could engender a feeling a meekness and helplessness.

Counter this with a view of being born into perfection and holiness with a charge to seek justice and I think you end up with a very different psychology.

My background is the latter, and the things people say in the religion threads regarding religious fear and whatever else isn't something I was used to hearing.

Life is competitive to the extent you have to compete for the things you need, some having to compete harder, some having had things provided more easily.

But it's not like it's a hard dichotomy, where either you get to be a success or you fail, as if you either get accepted into Harvard or you work a menial labor job. There are a thousand points between, and sometimes success is obtaining your GED or getting the small promotion at work. Competition need not be a contest of keeping up with the Joneses, but an internal competition of trying to acheive whatever it is you aim for. You do have a choice in those matters, and you can do what you can to try to fulfill that goal and to interpret your succes.

I also don't agree that for every winner there is a loser, and we should just accept that some of us will lose so others can win. There aren't a limited number of winning tickets that you just have to hope you will land, but it's possible that all can win but there is a significant component up to you.

Ad hominem means 'attacking the man not the argument'. I'm criticising the metaphysic which can overlook or endorse such activities. It's not an ad hominem argument. — Wayfarer

How does the additional fact of now knowing of Descartes' predilection for dog hammering affect your previous understanding of the Meditations?

This just seems such an aside held out for outrage.

And yet, many scientists of the 16th through 20th centuries were able to get through quite productive careers without nailing any living bodies to boards or sticking their fingers into any beating hearts. Even some philosophers lived their whole lives without demonstrating their convictions in such graphic fashion. — Vera Mont

It seems the question was whether Descartes' position regarding animals was consistent with the times, and an article from the National Institute of Health says it was, so that settles it, despite your general observation that maybe some folks were ahead of their times on the matter.

It is not as if he was hammering dogs' feet in the last year, which, if you don't admit would be worse, would only be to further deny the obvious, which is that his behavior then is measurably different than now.

, it's just wrong. There is no straight line from here back through European post-colonial, pre-colonial, christian, and pre-christian history, including other continents and cultures, through tribal social organizations of the Americas, Oceania, and Asian steppes. There have been many and various belief systems, moral and legal codes, religions, attitudes and practices. The time-line is by no means from the abyss to the pinnacle of human sensibility. — Vera Mont

Let's explore this then. Was Descartes a product of his time or was he fucked up even for someone living in the 17th century?

This article indicates that the animal rights movement, especially as it pertains to anti-vivisection sentiments, seems to have sprung forth in the 19th century. The article links the lack of concern for animals on the same thing Descartes did: that animals lacked souls.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK513717/

If you hit a dog with a stick, you would hear a painful scream and probably tears in his eyes. Whenever someone (who at least his mind works correctly) sees this terrible action, — javi2541997

So dogs eyes don't tear up when they cry, but aside from that, animal welfare in developing countries is far worse than in developed countries. That's just part of the evolution of humanity, to start to see animals as those of a different degree of creature and not a wholly different type of creature.

The 1600s were not a time of great human rights, and I'd suspect the opinions of those during that time wouldn't at all sit well here. That a Martian might find it hard to figure out appropriate conduct on Earth probably arises at least in part in that he's never been to Earth before. The same holds true for 1600s man, who can't be held to today's standards, nor neither can I be held to the standard of 500 years from now, that I don't even know.

We read the Bible and hear of tales of young daughters having had their heads dashed against rocks. I'd submit that book is far more foundational to our society than is the Meditations. We needn't jettison either book, or whoever their authors might have been for that matter, but just realize it was from another time and place, far worse than where we live today.

In any event, if this is the path you wish to take, provide me the name of any of your heroes who lived 200 or more years ago, and I'll do the research to show you why you need to despise him.

Sure I can! He repeatedly demonstrated the exact opposite of his claim. He committed deliberate cruelties to show that he didn't believe animals have souls. Well, who doubted it in the first place? And if animals really don't count, and their screams are the mere screeching of drooling, shitting, steaming, bleeding machines, which bear no imaginable resemblance to mechanical constructs, you still have to discount the harm to his wife and whatever human children had loved his other victims. — Vera Mont

Descartes held to a view that human beings alone were able to reason and that reason arose from their immortal soul, distinguishing humans from animals, that were purely corporeal machines. That was integral to his philosophy and he could not depart into a theory that offered immortal souls to animals, as that would be contrary to Christian teachings.

From this he was led to the necessary conclusion that animals didn't feel pain, but were simply machines responding to stimuli and reacting, as noted, like a squeeky wheel.

See:

https://www.friesian.com/jowers.htm#:~:text=According%20to%20Descartes%2C%20if%20animals,prove%20that%20they%20have%20souls.

https://webs.wofford.edu/williamsnm/back%20up%20jan%204/hum%20101/animals%20are%20machines%20descartes.pdf

To the extent we consider bloodletting primtive medicine (the releasing of bad humors), we should similarly consider Descartes primitive philosophy (even referring to the pineal gland as the seat of the soul). He tried to hammer out the physical world in a way consistent with his philosophy and it led to an unacceptable result by today's standards.

What evidence that Neanderthals engaged in brutality toward other people? — Vera Mont

I note the evolving moral sensibilities that have occurred in my lifetime and I extrapolate backwards to draw the conclusion that today's ethical adherence is higher than yesterday's. Is that controversial?

As L'éléphant has pointed out, I am no longer a "fan" or "follower" of Descartes philosophical theories. I will not discredit his works and contributions to modern philosophy, but in my own view there should be limits towards "scientific researchs", specially when they are dangerous to innocent animals. — javi2541997

Whether Descartes liked to harm animals and created an argument that they didn't feel pain so as to justify his sadism is possible, but that's not consistent at least with what he said.

I wouldn't want many ancient scientific research conducted today, like bloodletting that was practiced for over 2000 years and helped no one and killed many. If we're looking at outcomes, the bloodletters were far worse. If we're looking at intent, then we have to try to figure out what they really thought, and unless you can show Descartes knew the dogs felt pain, you can't condemn him for that harm in the same way as someone who didn't know.

It's not that it was okay to harm animals years prior, but the fact is people weren't aware of its immorality as they are today, so imposing that level of condemnation seems inappropriate. This decontextualizing behavior and imposing future standards on people retroactively will condemn all of humankind for one thing or another. I guess it's possible, for example, that a Neanderthal fully appreciated the 2023 concept of human rights and looked on in horror as his cave-mates engaged in prehistoric barbarity, but I don't think we can hold everyone in that time period to such an enlightened standard.

Descartes' contribution to the world remains unimpacted by whatever cruelties he brought about. It's all ad hom.

And really, to the extent you're trying to dissect him, he is quite different from someone who knowingly injured an animal. From what is written, he thought he wasn't causing any harm. There are different levels of intent here from the person who knowingly versus who unknowingly causes suffering.

And of course how I might fare should you impose the ethical standards of 2523 instead of 2023 I couldn't say, but doubtfully very well.

They say a movie can depict human suffering and death to no end, but showing a dog getting its head blown off cannot happen. I think that's what we're seeing here.

In conclusion, the Rene photo on my nightstand will stay.

Anyone say Taxi Driver yet?

, in one society, you have children told to dress properly and that they have souls and that they're free, proud, righteous citizens of a great civilization, under the rule of law, where human beings are considered priceless. At the same time, they're shown that people's bodies can be bought or rented for sexual practices, not necessarily of the reproductive kind, and displayed as a consumer item. — Vera Mont

Your attempt to draw a nexus between the rule of law, freedom, and the sanctity of life on the one hand with an adherence to traditional sexual mores on the other skips too many steps to logically follow. That is, it's entirely possibly to place a great value on human life and still treat sex as a commodity. Individual autonomy is more associated with freedom than are sexual prohibitions.

It's also false to suggest sexual behavior is for the purpose of procreation, as the vast majority of sexual behavior is not for that purpose.

the other
Nudity is commonplace. Sexuality is strictly regulated by taboos. Commodification and objectification are unknown. The young are taught by word and example to obey the laws of their tribe.
Which child will grow up saner? — Vera Mont

Your term "saner" has no decipherable meaning here. Are we evaluating each society's children for mental illness?

The statement he made that seemed factual was that a teenager in 15 minutes can see more naked or pornographic women than the richest or most powerful king in ancient days. — Shawn

That statement reveals an interesting perspective, which is that the availability of women for sexual arousal purposes is a commodity and it historically was only affordable by the wealthy. From a capitalistic perspective, it should therefore be no surprise that someone has figured out how to bring this to the regular masses, which then begs the question of whether it's worse now that the vices of yesterday's kings are available to today's pauper.

There is the polar opposite model as well, where access to nudity and sexuality is readily available to all, as in certain underdeveloped tribal societies.

We can never know if the Athenian youth made it through their lives uncorrupted or whether the act of censorship served well to protect them—frankly, who cares?—but we can intuit what was lost, or rather, stolen from posterity. One can be confident that the loss of Socrates and his art is greater than whatever trappings had been gained by his silencing. — NOS4A2

This is just circular ideology. You argue that free speech is holy and it's therefore necessarily sinful to censor, so it's unnecessary that we calculate the positives and negatives of a particular act of censorship, but we can also just presume (or whatever "intuit" means here) the censorship would be harmful had we actually deciphered the harms and benefits.

Stepping outside this intuition based system, and turning toward an actual empirical analysis, it would seem that (1) there are in fact instances where the world would have been a better place without the spread of misinformation, and (2) we can't absolve ourselves of the obligation to find those instances and censor if necessary, even if it means we might violate some right we have declared as untouchable.

A lot of great movies listed here. Instead of repeating any, I thought I'd add these that weren't mentioned yet, with my one sentence review:

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (The evil of authority generally, but perfectly personified by Nurse Ratchett).
Being There (We walk blindly among miracles)
The Shining (The face of insanity)
A Beautiful Mind (Awareness of confusion)
American Beauty (Suburban existentialism)
The Matrix (Not overrated and stupid Cartesianism, but but it made the point well)
The Secretary (a sideways love story of true devotion)
Blue Velvet (fuckupedness on steroids)
Bananas (a potpourri of 1960s quirky ridiculousness)
Airplane (cartoonish characters who evoke no sense of humanity in an absurd reality)

Thus airbrakes are designed so that the pressurised air is required to keep the brakes off, rather than put the brakes on. If When the brake lines fail, the lorry stops. — unenlightened

I just watched a number of videos to better understand pneumatic brake systems, and if I have this right, the air pressure exerts pressure on the drums which causes the braking, so it's not the release of air that causes the friction.

I did see that the parking brake is spring activated and the air pressure counters the spring pressure, resulting in the wheels coming unlocked. Without adequate air pressure, you would never move the vehicle because the parking brake would be engaged. What this means is that in air failure, the springs will lock back down and engage the parking brake as a fail safe if there's compression failure.

But as i understood it, the parking brake and driving brake were separate units, so it's not the pressing of the brake pedal that reduces the air pressure counteracting the spring and causing the spring to exert friction to slow the vehicle.

I just got interested because I've done a lot of hydraulic brake repairs, and it was interesting to me if pneumatic brakes worked off negative air pressure countered by a spring. That would force a heavy load on the spring with a lot of wear I'd think along with heat problems, so it makes more sense to me that the parking brake engagement upon compressor failure would be an emergency and rare failsafe, but not part of normal function.

But yeah, the emergency protections on air brake systems make them almost bulletproof from what I saw. If the truck compressor fails or a line bursts, the truck is coming to a screaming stop it looks like.

If I can achieve the modest task of convincing readers there might be something to look at and there might be productive ways to look at it they haven't thought of before, I'll be more than satisfied. Recalling my brief convo with Hanover, I'm less in the pessimism/angst producing business than the art of encouraging critical thought and engagement. — Baden

This makes you an unrealistic optimist, which hopefully causes you angst, in which case I'll be satisfied.

Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Natural Rule (I made up): Do unto others as you actually do unto yourself. — James Riley

I think the Golden Rule states it more clearly and I think it overcomes the problems of the masochist who enjoys pain, as if that person ought impose pain on others because that's what he likes being done unto him. The Natural Rule can be interpreted this way as well.

As long as either rule evokes a sense of empathy, where you are to place yourself in the shoes of the other and ask whether what you're about to do is what they want done to them, then you're within the Golden Rule. So, what the masochist does not do is bring pain to those who don't want it because that's not what the masochist wants. The masochist likes pain only to be brought upon those who desire it. His analysis of the question of whether he should bring pain to Bob would be determined not by asking himself if he liked pain, but whether Bob is the sort that likes pain, and then he'd decide whether to administer pain.

To analyze this in an other way would lead to absurd results. For example, I might like to read philosophy books, but the Golden Rule doesn't suggest that I should therefore buy everyone philosophy books or to impose upon them all my quirks. The Golden Rule would leave me asking what sort of thing would that person like, and I would be asked to place myself in their shoes.

The problem is that workers of all stripes are shut out of decisions and in fact have zero input whatsoever on how the profits which they helped generate are divided up. — Mikie

The amount the workers are paid is no more determined by fairness than is the amount the owners are paid nor is a fairness standard used to determine the cost of the good or service.

It's all supply and demand. The pie maker gets paid what he can get paid based upon the supply of other pie makers and the demand for pie makers. The only way to increase that value beyond market forces is to unionize, which is the equivalent of collaborative price fixing on the part of owners, which would be a similar way for owners to increase their profits.

This is to say it's not a decision making process that relies upon fairness that determines the price of goods, the price workers will make, and the profits the owners will take, but it's a business decision that will determine the viability of the business and whether it will be able to survive based upon the way all earnings are distributed.

The person you want making that decision is the most qualified, not some democratic process where everyone gets to weigh in on what they think, regardless of their business knowledge, what to charge for goods and what to pay labor. A pie baker should not be asked to review a market study to determine how salaries are going to be paid. He can, of course, use whatever knowledge he has of the market to negotiate a better salary though.

The penalty for not properly paying workers is a labor shortage, high turnover, and poorly performing and underqualified workers. If a business can pay a very low wage and create a high quality product and be profitable, that means the workers are getting paid reasonably based upon market forces. The same holds true for the business owner who makes very low profits. He is getting paid reasonably for whatever efforts he's putting in, and the market is responding by offering him little reward.

A business owner who finds that his labor offers little profit would need to change his market plan, as would a worker who earns a low salary would need to respond by pursuing other career paths. That is, people do have a choice as to what they can earn, and if they truly do not because of limitations beyond their control, the solution is to provide them assistance, not to restructure the entire system just so the underperforming can have a higher salary paid by the employer.

The part you're not liking is when I say the United States has done enough evil shit that it's a sad and stupid game to pick a side on. — Moliere

That's not actually what I said. I'll acknowledge the US has done things it shouldn't have. My point is that there is a way to compare the two, and it does boil in part down to the murder of citizens, but it's also things like gulags, purges of people from the party as a form of ostracism, starvation, and a whole host of other horrible events. These things are not ancient history. It's like saying we can't condemn Nazi Germany (which is closely wrapped up in all of this) as Americans because Americans are also bad. Of course we can.

And at the end of the day I suspect you'd disagree with the things which the United States does, so why is it we're talking about a now defunct state? — Moliere

A few reasons we care. The first is that it does serve as an example of what Marxist thought can cause, and that should offer pause when using Marxism as a philosophical basis for social change. The fact that it's not just a theoretical danger but an actually realized one matters. The other is that it's hardly a defunct state, with an actual war taking place right now between a former Soviet state and Russia in an effort to re-establish its former perceived greatness.

Marxism is a living, breathing philosophy and tradition of both thought and action. Marx doesn't need to be salvaged -- the concrete conditions of our life are what makes Marx relevant. His critique of political economy fits even if Stalin is a worse leader than any US leader. — Moliere

It's largely an intellectual movement that holds sway among those who wish to view politics as an academic subject without concern for the fact that had the world never heard of Marx the world would have been a better place. Scientific theories begin with a theoretically valid hypothesis, but their final proof rests with the empirical evidence. That Marxism offers you great insight into the inequities of capitalist society means just that, but it doesn't mean anyone ought try again to implement those policies. We don't need another lesson in failure in that regard.

I'm saying I've considered the evidence, and my conclusion is that both nations are prone to doing all kinds of evil things to the extent that, after looking at it, it's not really a worthy goal to say which somehow eeks out a slightly better score. — Moliere

It's not slight. It just seems like a simple acknowledgment that Stalin has secured a place in history far worse than any US leader would be a simple thing to do, with the understanding that that doesn't mean the US hasn't done bad things as well.

If you want to salvage Marx from this by describing his writing as academic and simply fodder for debate without regard to the real world consequences of how his views were used, that's fine, but it seems pretty uncontroversial to recognize the particular evil of Stalin without trying to draw a moral equivalence to the US.

h, it's a sad line of conversation I've already had the displeasure of going down. Wracking up the sins of each nation is a good way to feel sad the rest of the day, and at the end of it you really wonder why you're obsessing over such macabre things. — Moliere

You say this, but then you say:

Just like us. — Moliere

You can't say "just like us" unless you're willing to engage in the analysis you just said you wouldn't do. You can't refuse to consider the evidence and then answer the question.

And at the end of the day, it doesn't even matter to me -- the analysis makes sense of the patterns between the classes in the United States, and my advice to become organized remains the same. After all, the owners are organized. — Moliere

The past has to matter to you if you're trying to come to a solution for the future to at least know what you're fighting for and to be sure you're not recreating something we know doesn't work.

To the extent you want to organize labor to fight for more rights, that seems appropriate, but that is a far way from communism. That's just being an advocate of labor unions.

Principles cost money; if we only pursue economic effectivity we will end up morally bankrupt with injustice the norm. — Benkei

The most ideologically consistent nations would probably be theocracies, which means the cost of adhering to principle isn't just measurable in dollars and cents, but in loss of human rights.

I'm just pointing out that your attempt to create a moral society isn't something that probably anyone disagrees with, but it will ultimately center on the dispute on what is moral. That is, if the US believes communism is evil, it has cast a moral judgment on it, and it is as much for that reason it is rejected as it is as you suggest, which is that it will cost too much money.

There are those, believe it or not, who think the current capitalistic system is just. It's not as if they all know deep down there are unjustifiable inequities, but they pretend there are not for pragmatic reasons.

The only thing I'm noting is -- it's not that different under capitalism. — Moliere

Well, you said that, and I was inclined to actually look that up, to see what the total deaths (both domestic and foreign) at the hands of the US government versus those of the Soviet Union and Russia. I would have to think that it wouldn't be close, considering the brutality of Stalin. That analysis would also assume a moral equivalence, suggesting that the deaths at the hands of the US were as unjustified as those of the Soviet Union.

I do understand that Marxism does not equal Stalinism, but I'm not sure what Marxism does equal in reality. I can accept that injustices exist in either system, but I don't think it's a sustainable argument that capitalism and communism are equally bad but just for different reasons. The US built a wall to keep people from coming in, where the communists built a wall to keep people from leaving, which I think at its height was thousands of East Germans fleeing daily. That does speak loudly to the question of which condition is preferable.

I do think things are very different under capitalism. They aren't comparable really. This isn't me waving an American flag offended by the suggestion that the US isn't perfect, but there is not a moral equivalence here.

Are they unprofitable or are they forced to price their goods lower than they would because of competition from counties that don't have all sorts of EHS and labour standards and you want to ensure a critical industry continues to exist in your county? — Benkei

I doubt that's a primary driver, but I'll look at whatever data there is. What you probably see on American farms is a large migrant labor force that receives low pay.

I don't doubt labor costs probably aren't higher here, but I don't know if that is the primary reason for subsidies.

Maybe read Marx instead of relying on the caricature US society has made of him? — Benkei

Since the US can't understand him and I suspect you'll say the same of Stalin, which county do I look to to see how his views are properly understood? You can see why I might thing think his views have been completely defeated based upon how its been applied, but we seem to always have this same "if it were applied correctly" or "if it were just better understand" argument that tries to rehabilitate it.

I think it's that rich farmers know how to lobby. I don't think the average American knows how much they're actually getting. In some cases they're being paid to withhold planting. It's state sponsored price fixing.

All of that started as an attempt to help small farmers, but the wealthy quickly turned it to their own advantage. That's happened over and over, which is one reason to let the poor starve: if the state tries to help them, it just ends up making the rich more powerful. — frank

Whether the government programs work to help anyone in need of help, I don't know. I don't equate any and every government regulation upon the economy with communism, and I'm in favor of plenty of regulation as I think the government can do good. This is just to say I'm not an anarchist and I do believe in democratic rule. That the workers haven't been given more power over the owners isn't all the result of powerful owners subjugating workers. That's Marxist talk. The reason owners get to be owners and maintain a higher percentage of profits is because it works better that way and people want it that way.

It will happen eventually. — frank

So last Great Depression it didn't happen here, but it did happen in Russian and millions died. So, sure, this time it will happen in the right way, or whatever Marxist thought says.

There is no free market. At this point in development it's simply stupid to think that there is. There is an environment set up some degrees away from what economic actors do through the relationships between states and other economic actors.

As ↪frank notes -- them chicken owners are plenty organized with how much state funding they get. — Moliere

Of course there is regulation. Such does not implicate Marxism though. Marxism becomes implicated when you speak of the great worker revolt and the reorganization of labor where the workers unite and control.

That the government pays milk farmers not to produce milk so as to reduce supply and increase price to increase profits means the government is trying to protect the industry, which includes workers, owners, and the economies of rural regions.

That's not Marxism. That's just democracy in action without concern for protecting a pure form a capitalism, and not something I find terribly offensive, and maybe a good idea for a while, although at some point the government won't continue to prop it up..

American farms are pretty heavily subsidized, and we haven't starved. It actually doesn't make sense to pay CEO's the bizarre reimbursements they get. — frank

The subsidization of farming is to protect a dysfunctional industry that society isn't willing to allow to adjust to true economic forces. The net result of ending subsidies would be the loss of many unprofitable farms, but that wouldn't result in a lack of food.

In any event, subsidies bear no resemblance to the forced collectivization of farming, which did in fact lead to starvation of 10s of millions of people.

That will change in the next big economic adjustment. We always lurch toward the left when the whole system starts breaking down, as during the Great Depression. — frank

I know. The revolution is at hand.