they're arguably what started the Christian church — JustSomeGuy

The life Jesus Christ was the event that started the Christian church. The nascent church preceded the New Testament.

There was Jesus, the disciples, and the Jewish community in which they were situated. Then there was Paul. There were groups of followers situated in synagogues, some of whom were not Jewish. There were 'house churches', which were groups of early believers who gathered together.

It was by the efforts of the early church that the New Testament was created. The collected writings in the New Testament eventually came to be seen as "the founding texts" but it was, actually, the other way around.

There are people who are terminally ill but who remain mentally acute. The last stage of life (between the diagnosis of hopeless disease and death) can last several months, or in some case, a few years. Ask them what they want as they lay dying.

What many terminally ill people want, apparently (and quite reasonably) is assurance that they will be given relief from pain (opiates et al), sensitive and responsive care, whether they are at home, in a hospital, or in a hospice, and regular contact with their friends and families.

Myself? I probably would not opt for suicide, as long as there was good pain control, good care, and I wasn't forgotten. But, it might happen that when I die, my friends and family will have also died, and there will be few visits. Isolation alone would make suicide a much more attractive option. Lots of care facilities do not provide that one thing they are there to do -- provide sensitive and responsive care. And even pain relief isn't always adequate. Those last two deficiencies would also make an assisted death more attractive.

I have heard that a carefully phrased request (at the right time and in the right place) may prompt one's doctor to prescribe drugs for a terminal condition which IF TAKEN ABOVE THE PRESCRIBED DOSE will result in a quite speedy death.

According to some, borders are "the vanity of nations"; we should be citizens of the world.

Fine and dandy, except we are not yet.

People are driven out of their homelands by war, drought, tyranny, poverty, corruption, rising sea levels, multiple crop failures, and other ills. Their survival is, of course, paramount to the migrants. Civilized people recognize survival as a critical tipping point between optional and necessary migration.

There are, however, no empty and suitable lands into which migrants can go. All the good lands are already occupied. Do people "in place" have a right to maintain and defend their culture, economy, resources, etc. against any wave of migration, or do migrants have priority over the culture in place?

One gut feeling (or emotional response) is that I would not want my small world to become the destination of thousands of people who bear a much different culture, set of values, religion, and so forth. On the other hand, a weaker emotional response leads me to feel suffering people should be helped.

The problems which uproot people and put them on the road are going to get much worse, and there will be many more refugees, migrants, immigrants, displaced persons, vagrants, and so forth, pressing up against borders and personal and community boundaries.

Proactive intervention could stop some of the problems that send people onto the roads elsewhere, but certainly not all of them.

I suppose the only effective thing that people "in place" can do to preserve their status quo is make sure their borders are fenced and guarded, and waves of migration are sent somewhere else.

Maybe we should take all comers, but supposing that everyone will welcome all migrants to an orgy of diversity celebration seems pretty unlikely.

A compromise position might be, "Yes, come –– temporarily. We will help you settle for now, but don't get too comfortable. When your homeland is more or less stable again, back you go.

There are many, many ways of saying the same thing. — Noble Dust

Or nothing at all.

You have some ambitious items on your list, of which blood sugar, self-awareness, and cheap shots are the least.

Very long sentences of paragraph length used to be as de regueur as French phrases.

That is not my complaint. — RepThatMerch22

It's close enough to your complaint that the difference doesn't matter. You asked, you say. Big fucking deal. You are 1 of 16,039,370 registered voters in Australia. If 1%, (160,400) or even 1/2 of 1% had asked, you would have a case. Have as few of 1/2 of 1% of Australian citizens (let alone voters) held public events requesting polygamous marriage? Have a dozen people met to request that polygamous marriage be allowed?

Socialism is my pet cause. In a city of 2.5 million people, one can get together a couple dozen people who are interested enough to show up at a meeting. If 50 people showed up, it wouldn't show that large numbers of people were interested ins socialism. It would only show that small numbers are interested. There may be larger numbers, but we don't know of them.

I can't argue that socialism is a live political issue without seeing evidence. IF 5% of the population voted for a candidate belonging to the Socialist Workers Party, I could make that argument. (Bernie Sanders is not a member of the Socialist Workers Party.) If 5% of the electorate voted for a Socialist Democratic candidate, or a candidate from the Communist Party USA, I could say that there was interest.

You are claiming that because you asked, there is interest. Sorry, not enough. Not enough by a long shot.

Many people strive to maintain their health, from young adulthood to old age. Then, fit as a fiddle and 90 years old, they develop the inevitable chronic illness, and they can't die as quickly as they would like.

One thing people can do to insure a swifter death and avoid the need for assisted or unassisted sucice is to stop obsessive health-oriented practices. If you want to die quickly, then

smoke heavily, and if you live in your own house alone, smoke in bed
drink as much as you can
use lots of recreational drugs
eat as much of whatever you like
don't exercise
don't see a doctor about the odd lump, sore, numbness, malfunction, etc.
don't use seat belts
disable the airbags in your car
text, talk, and game while driving at excessively fast speeds
encourage any suicidal thoughts you might have
engage all dangers that you find
pretend that you are Superman whom nothing can harm

With any luck, you will be in such bad shape that when you do get sick (much sooner rather than later) you will be a corpse in no time at all.

I did say that someone who banged on forever about something that most folk are not interested in would be a dick — Banno

Sometimes you have to strike when the iron is hot; other times you have to strike until the iron is hot. Many of my pet topics (like socialism) are either of little interest to most people, or they are anathema.



My main complaint about you, Repthatmerch22, is that you don't seem to get it that IF there had been no drive for polygamous marriage, THEN no one was a fault for it not happening.

Sometimes people lose: People against fluoridation of water lost. They tried to ban it; they failed. People in favor of good schools have voted for levies that raise taxes to support school. They won, at least some of the time. Sometimes they lose. NOBODY has asked for a law guaranteeing burial on the moon. Since nobody has asked, there can't (yet) be a complaint about the lack of such a law.

I don't know why you care, but apparently, nobody in Australia has asked for this law allowing polygamous marriage, so there are no good grounds (no grounds at all, really) for complaint that such a law hasn't been passed.

I think it was a lot of things, including freedom and fairness. — RepThatMerch22

Yes.

I've been out since 1971. Immediately after Stonewall, and in the years following for... maybe 20 years, at least in Fly Over Land where I live, marriage was not a pressing issue. By the early 90s, the whole gay movement had achieved a lot of its goals. For activists, this is a significant problem: Nobody really tries to work themselves out of a job (or a cause) and when you run out of cause, it's time to expand the franchise.

Marriage was the obvious next place to go. So that is where the leadership of political activism took it. They took it that way along with a generally assimilationist program: "Gay people are just like straights", with the possible exception of what they do in bed. AIDS had somewhat narrowed the options for the well-informed, so what we all were doing in bed may or may not have been much different than your average tired heterosexuals were doing.

Why, then, should there not be at least a right to suicide? — RepThatMerch22

Who needs the right when anyone can bring about their own death?

The individual himself never chooses to be born. He is simply born, and he has no say over what his upbringing is, what his environment is and what to make of his life. He is a consciousness that has entered into existence, through no action of his own.

Why should he not be entitled to put that life to an end if he is of sound mind?

The individual has an instinct for survival, and finds the thought of suicide repulsive. He cannot think of any means by which to commit suicide efficiently, painlessly, quickly and humanely. — RepThatMerch22

I'm not sure that someone who wants to kill themselves because they didn't ask to be born, or weren't consulted about life first really is of sound mind, but...

What's stopping this person from killing themselves? You say "he cannot think of any means by which to commit suicide efficiently, painlessly, quickly, and """humanely""" whatever that means.

I would guess he just isn't trying very hard.

Men generally shoot themselves. It's efficient, quick, painless when done properly, and as humane as any other method, whatever that means. If you can't get ahold of a gun, there are other possibilities. Women often use less effective methods. Sometimes "less effective" is much worse than nothing at all. One might wake up quite damaged, on top of everything else. Are there no bridges to jump off of? Are there no bridge abutments to drive into? Has all the rope been confiscated? Are there no poisons left? Are there no opiates to OD on? Come on -- there are a variety of unsafe and effective methods of ending a life. You would think people who are so dissatisfied with life would be better at coming up with methods for getting the hell out.

You can only help people so far.

We evolved or were designed for a certain kind of environment; a hunter gatherer lifestyle, and for sake of argument, I say that is how we ought to be as it means to be more "human", "one with nature". (not going to try back that up, just an idea) — ehnicma

The way we play this game, you can't just make a claim and then say you are not going to back it up.

Ok, so we evolved into hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherers are modern humans. The hunter-gatherers are the ones who developed the new technology of agriculture, city-building (Jericho, for example), domestication of animals, and so on. They are us. We are as one with nature as they were--which is to say, they, like us, operated ON nature, and operated WITHIN nature.

it's a sort of process which alters society fundamentally and allows for progress; technological or otherwise. — ehnicma

Very true. The kinds of machinery, methods, power, and all that technology which a society has (or doesn't have) determines not only how people will live, but it determines to a large degree what kind of culture they will have.

ought we to have knowledge or ought we to be ignorant as to be more "human", primal, and so on. — ehnicma

Ignorance is not more 'human' than knowledge. It has been a very very long time since we (homo sapiens) were at a point in our evolution that we could choose between the innocence of ignorance and the fallen state of having knowledge. We chose knowledge, and it is very fortunate that we did.

Innocence and ignorance is an over-rated state.

The history of our evolution as a species, and the history of our species as it very slowly accumulated technology, knowledge, culture, language, art, and all that, might be the story you want to read. We became "modern people" many thousands of years ago, and it took us a long time to work our way up to agriculture, domestication of traction animals like horses, wheeled vehicles (like the chariot), writing, building techniques, and so on and so forth.

There are a lot of very good books about all this.

For instance, Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond explains how geography benefitted some people more than others, and led to some groups (like Europeans) having more advanced technology than Aztecs, for instance. There is a PBS program on the book, too.

There are good books about hunter-gatherers. Look under ANTHROPOLOGY

There are good books about early civilization, Greek civilization, Chinese/Roman/Amerindian/European/African... Look under HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION.

There are interesting books about the history of technology.

I can't give you a nice list of books because I have been reading about this stuff for 50 years, now and there isn't any 2 or 3 books into which all of this is condensed. You will just have to do what other people do (it's really quite pleasant) read and study history.

I disagree, people in my experience are either 9-5 zombies on a treadmill that's increasingly delivering less real prosperity for the average person, or they're retreating into fantasy worlds of various sorts (sucking the teat of various kinds of consumerism).

We are tremendously advanced in terms of technology, and that's keeping our heads above water, but the morale situation is pretty dire - consider suicide rates (particularly among men). — gurugeorge

You make some valid observations here.

I don't know how old you are, but age makes a difference. I'm over 70 and a lot of the people I interact with are also. Somewhere along the line, age tends to change the way one looks at things. It isn't a choice, it's a given. Going into old age with a really negative attitude is likely to lead to one dying sooner, rather than later.

I know that for many younger people, the satisfactions obtainable in whatever jobs are available are likely to be few and far between. A lot of the jobs I had were shit holes, and working in them did not contribute to a positive disposition.

Excessive technology is not helping anyone. The fact is, smart phones, smart tablets, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest, quickly train people to expect frequent stimulation and satisfaction. People thus get sort of addicted to their media and gadgets, and end up interacting with the real world through virtual contact. Bad idea.

I'm not against good gadgets and nice sites, but we need to realize that these things are benefitting Apple, Samsung, FaceBook, Twitter, et al far more than you and me.

I am afraid you are right -- a lot of people are escaping into fantasies, or (in the case of middle-aged men in the rust belt, killing themselves). A lot of male farmers in India are killing themselves too for similar reasons -- they just don't see a future for themselves or their families.

without the idea of suicide, I'd have killed myself right away — darthbarracuda

A nice paradox.

If you stop feeding people, they stop shitting in their pants.

Just joking.

BTW, it has been found in states where assisted suicide is legal, that terminal patients who are approved for suicide assistance experience an easier unassisted death. That is, the relief knowing that they could end their suffering at any time makes the suffering much more bearable. That doesn't mean that no one goes forward with the assisted death, of course.

the case for a right to State-assisted suicide — RepThatMerch22

I don't think this is an entirely serious proposal, but for a provocative post it's reasonably well thought out.

I have two objections right away:

First, the grounds on which you consider suicide permissible are extremely broad. The gate is "wide open." There are cases where suicide may be appropriate, but I would prefer to limit it to cases of painful and/or severely debilitating illness, coupled with some counseling, and requiring more than one physician's approval (and maybe an ethicist's approval too).

Is there a screening process at the door of the suicide facilities, or is it first come first served? If there is a screening process, on how many grounds can a potential suicide be rejected (or accepted)? Are staff going to be in a position to argue with, cajole, encourage, discourage... suicide cases on the grounds that they think the person should or should not keep living?

IF the grounds for suicide are too inclusive ("life is a drag, I think I'll kill myself), the screening is minimal or suicide affirmative, then "state assisted suicide" gets closer to "state encouraged suicide". State encouraged suicide is a step towards state-sponsored murder.

There is a slippery slope. I don't think a tightly controlled program greases the skids to mass murder, but a very liberal approach might.

In your example, you seem to be giving and edge in favor of poor people committing suicide. Maybe if something were done about their poverty, they would feel less like killing themselves.

True enough, nobody asked to be born, and the circumstances into which one was born may be unwholesome and unpleasant in myriad ways. I am against antinatalism, nihilism, and (to add another one) a generously defined right to state assisted suicide.

I am not against abortion, I am not against the earliest possible abortion of a child with severe biologica/mental defects, I am not altogether in favor of heroic efforts to save very premature babies, and I am not against assisted suicide -- though I prefer the state be NOT involved. Indeed, I don't know that there need to be facilities and lots of staff. It seems to me that there are sedatives, poisons, paralytics, and so forth that can be taken by the individual at home (or somewhere else) and bring about their death. On the other hand, of course some people would need help.

It doesn't NEED to be expanded to more people. — schopenhauer1

Of course, it doesn't NEED to be expanded to more people. I thought we agreed on that. Is our main difference that I think more people get added the same way more squirrels keep getting added, and you think people are going out of their way to reproduce for some sort of reason?

The reproductive urge operates whether anybody (squirrel or human) wants it to operate or not. It just does.

I say no, it doesn't matter what the philosopher intended to say or how he felt about something, what matters is what meaning is derived from his work by the consumer. In literary studies there is this idea called the Death of Author, which essentially says that the intent of the author, and the context in which he wrote isn't relevant to interpreting his work, that whoever wrote a text isn't an author as much as he is a scribe, who came into existence with the text, does not exist outside of writing the text, and ceases to exist with the completion of the text and it's subsequent dissemination — who and what he is doesn't matter, he was nothing more than a vehicle for the transcription of the text, which should be interpreted in isolation, as if we don't know who wrote it or anything about him. — Bacchus

This takes me back a ways. I remember this idea from college days back in the late 1960s.

It is possible to put too much emphasis on the author, his or her particulars, his or her motivation, his or her intention, and so on. The author's biography may not explain anything about the author's work. Or it may explain a great deal.

Divorcing the author from the text, on the other hand, strikes me as... what, stupid? Ill advised? Out of touch with reality? An act of "consumer" hubris to suppose that the reader can know more about the author's book than the author? It is one thing to read a book and say to one's self, "I don't care when, where, what, why, or how about the author--this was a great book" or "This book is just trash". Quite often we don't know anything about the author (usually because we didn't look for any information) and quite often it doesn't matter. It's a different thing to pick up a given book and say, "Hell, I don't need to know anything about the author. He was just the typist. Whatever he thought he was saying, he was deluded anyway, so... screw it. I'll just decide what this means, and it will be right as rain.

So, let me bring the average elevation of this discussion down to earth. The typical pulp porn title (like the "In Hand" series of cheap paperbacks from the 1950s) actually works in the manner that Barthes proposes. The text has no significant relationship to the author. Indeed, there may not even be an "author". The text may have been written by a series of temporary typists who were following formulas such as Use words "Levis", "zipper", "cock", "bulging basket", "throbbing", "hot" ... 3 times per page, and so forth.

The series of gay novels by Phil Andros, on the other hand, were not written by temporary typists. They were written in the 1970s-1980s by Samuel Steward, a gay professor of English in Chicago, aficionado of extremely rough S&M sex (he the slave), and a famous tattoo artist and tattoo innovator who became the "official" tattoo artist of the Hells Angels in Oakland--their choice, not his.

Had one graduated from one-handed reading matter or text (you can guess what the other hand was doing) to Phil Andros, it would have added depth and perspective to know something about the author. Same thing with John Rechy who wrote of gay hustlers in Los Angeles.

Back to the mountain top:

We don't know anything about the authors of Gilgamesh or Genesis, and that's the way it's going to stay, for better or worse. Some people are pretty sure Shakespeare was not the author of the plays ascribed to William Shakespeare, and maybe it just doesn't matter who the author was. There was a definite author, however, and the author of Shakespeare's plays had intentions that shaped his work, especially the historical plays. Was Richard III a villain, or not? Shakespeare had reasons for the role he was given in his namesake play. There was authorial intent and understanding the text requires some background.

This poem can be enjoyed without knowing who the author was, or what his concerns were. It isn't necessary to know what literary references are contained in the lines (like, "I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had with drawen himself") but it helps IF one understand the author's intent, and his method.

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guiltie of dust and sinne.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack’d any thing.

A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkinde, ungratefull? Ah my deare,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame?
My deare, then I will serve.
You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.

If philosophy is not quite the same as pornographic texts or 16th and 17th century poets, it isn't entirely different. Antecedents and relationships need to be considered, especially if you think of philosophy as a long conversation. Who is the author talking to? Himself? Probably not.

The Marshall McLuhan scene from Woody Allen's Annie Hall in which pontificating poops are punctured...

So yeah, I'm all butt hurt and I'm leaving. Laterz. — Wosret

Wait a few hours, see how you feel. Then wait another day or two, see you feel. I would much prefer that you stay on with the rest of us. On the other hand, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. I've walked out of some organization on a couple of occasions. It felt good. It didn't make any difference to THEM, just me.

"I run away and hide the shame
I render you weak and lame
Numb your hands, numb your face
Insensitive to my disgrace

Poison you with every breath
worship falsity, worship death
Paranoia, distrust
Fear lust, and disgust.

Perhaps uncreated, but it can still be destroyed. — Baden

Philosophy can be packaged in poetic form. It's an accessible statement. I don't see a problem.

So, you agree. — TheMadFool

No. I just cited the doctrine of original sin. Our alleged affliction with original sin removes the element of choice, which is convenient. All the bad things that people do is explainable under that doctrine.

We could assert that man is good, doesn't have the cancer of evil, and everything is for the best. That's way too saccharine.

What I like better is to say that we are a conflicted animal. We have both selfish and altruistic urges, both of which we encourage in ourselves and each other: different urges at different times, depending... Which is ascendent?

We could say that:
1. Even in the presence of encouragement to do good and the law not barring such activities we find so few good people.
2. Even in the presence of laws preventing bad actions and the discouraging of evil we find so many bad people. — TheMadFool

We could say that, or not. Which of these we would say depends on preference, not evidence, because the evidence will always be overwhelmingly mixed, and one can pick out the pattern that one likes.

But we still haven't gotten to rock bottom yet: What determines our preference for thinking that people are either evil, good, or merely severely conflicted? Probably genes. NO, there isn't an "original sin" gene, a "basically good" gene, or a "severely conflicted animal" gene. What there is are genes that orient us towards a more or less sanguine view of life, and then there is personal experience (which includes education, reading, sermons, human interactions, and so on).

There isn't anything "wrong" with the three preferences, but they do produce different "affect" in people. People inclined towards a more pessimistic view will frequently align themselves with the original sin view. Those who have a more optimistic view will head for the basically good camp. Chronic fence sitters like myself will head for the conflicted animal corral. And these preferences aren't unchanging or unchangeable.

No matter what one thinks about human behavior, we throw up conflicting evidence. We continually do good, bad, and indifferent acts.

So, doesn't that mean that people are inherently bad? — TheMadFool

That is the general idea behind Original Sin -- man is prone to sin.

Doing good is not attractive; it's not flashy and it doesn't grab attention, generally. — Noble Dust

Borne out in the biography and letters of Dorothy Day. Helping homeless and destitute people, especially through close enough contact to effectively affirm their human value, is very low profile work. People don't like looking at the really poor. We look away.

I rent, but I am sure that the landlord's property taxes are passed on to me in my monthly rent. I don't have any children, let alone any children in public schools. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Yes, they absolutely are passing property taxes on. Does the state where you live offer property tax relief to renters?

How is it good economics? — WISDOMfromPO-MO

When the chattering classes are on camera talking about good economics, they aren't thinking of people like you or me. they are thinking of people more like themselves, people who have made it well enough to be in the chattering lasses. Professional people, people who have good jobs, nice solid incomes that allow for travel, meals at better restaurants, a nicer car, better clothing--you know, up market stuff. The lives of us riff raff are not interesting, unless we fit into the preferred class of Victims Du Jour (fill in your preferred VDJ here).

I am supposed to believe that it is all just, fair, part of "progress", etc. Prove that it is! — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Au contraire, mon bon ami. Life was not fair in the past, is not fair now, and in all probability, won't be fair in the future. I don't like that, but that's the way it is. Oh, I see below this text box that Noble Dust just scooped me. Unfair, Dust Nob. The nerve!

I have made the statement several times here in the last few weeks that wages, economic security, purchasing power, etc. of the working class has been declining since 1975. Still, on the surface it doesn't look like people are 50% poorer now than they were 40 years ago. That's because both spouses are working at least 1 job, and if they have them, older children also work part time, quite often. Credit card debt, not thrift, is covering the gaps. Does the credit card get paid off every month? No, of course not. Another method people who own a home are using to cover over gaps is home equity loans--they're borrowing against their one major asset, quite often reducing the value of the house to zero.

Your perspective just isn't part of the official narrative. Sorry, you're just not quite pathetic enough. Plus, you are a gay white male (just guessing) and everybody knows that GWMs are a privileged group again, especially now that we aren't dying of AIDS, left and right.

I've been in the workforce since 1971. I have been both professionally employed, and have worked at temporary jobs or short term, white collar jobs. The most I made per hour was about 14.5, and that for only a year. Otherwise, I've made ends meet through frugality. I've seem the value of wages decline slowly, but pretty much continuously. I didn't have children, I didn't support my partner (we both worked, until he had to go on disability). I've never made enough in 40 years to raise my 'standard of living' more than a notch or two.

Is this fair? No. People who have done much better than me (education, experience, etc. being equal) were not necessarily more intelligent, more creative, or harder working than I was, but they were much more focused on the methods by which one advances. They had much, much more social intelligence than me. (I'm kind of a moron in that department, plus my aspirations didn't start out very high.)

Life is not fair, but at least it isn't singling you out for special treatment. A lot of people are getting crapped on.

Strange that we haven't heard of any philosophers chiming in on why there were so many fires in California, just recently, or why there are sun spots.

Popper has been upgraded from "useless" to "not useless".

Scientists get paid more and are, in general, more useful than most philosophers. There are more people calling themselves "philosopher" now than in all the previous centuries of philosophical activity. Hey, I'm a philosopher! Someone working on new antibiotics for Pfizer is NOT more useful than Heraclitus or Aristotle or Hume or ,,,take your pick. But the scientist investigating bacterial genes Bayer is more useful than the slew of recently decanted philosophers running around university hallways.

Aside from that, why do you want to know?

From the New York Times 12 28 17:

Do Australians Need a Sugar Intervention?

Since 1990, the number of obese adults in Australia has tripled. Can a region built on the sugar industry turn down the sweets? Our documentary explores that question. — NYT

Rats! All those great looking svelte guys on the beach in their minimal Speedos are now lard asses, and have switched to gawd-awful looking floppy swim pants. Quelled horreurs! Cancel the beach vacation in Oz.

Assume that the person I had taken it from has died and it can't be returned to its original owner. — czahar

Possibly your act of taking their stereo killed them. After all, how will they survive without the soundtrack of their life playing in the background?

Just joking. I agree. We don't want people carrying out DIY justice. I should not break into your house and reclaim my stereo--though if I knew it was in there and you were definitely not going to be back soon, I would be sorely tempted. And what else have you got? Maybe some other good stuff, even better than my old stereo you stole. (Somebody once stole an old vacuum cleaner from my basement during a break in. WTF?)

You didn't mention the social contract theory which says that as a member of a society receiving social benefits of various kinds, we have an obligation to pay taxes, as part of the 'social contract'.

The rich do get richer but the cake also gets bigger over time. — BlueBanana

Unfortunately, the cake does not get bigger for everyone, and the share of the cake that the rich get increases faster than the expansion of the cake. See Piketty (économiste français).

One of Marx's quotes from the Manifesto is that "The state is a committee to organize the affairs of the bourgeoisie." In other words, the state is the servant of the capitalists, or bourgeoisie. It serves their interests. This is more and less true at various times, but right now it is much more true.

The state can be good, even now--defining the state as any level of government above the village level: county, metropolitan, state, federal government, international quasi-governmental organizations like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, or UN. Big states, like the Federal Government, can do a lot of good, or a lot of bad, just because of their size.

if you look at the condition of the public schools in poor neighborhoods, you see that it's not working. — fishfry

Indeed. Since you have a hard-on for the US Government, you will enjoy reading the book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of how our Government Segregated America -- published 2017. I was shocked to find that de jure (by law) segregation of housing and cities was Federal policy from at least 1935 when the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was established, and earlier, in other agencies. The rules were explicit: blacks and whites are not to live in the same communities (defined in detail to all white blocks, mixed blocks, and all black blocks).

The FHA rules were struck down in the 1960s by courts and Johnson's housing initiative, but it wasn't until the 1980s that things were really changed, Unfortunately for blacks, it was too late to benefit from the changes. Housing priced had risen out of reach of blacks. They were, to use the technical term, totally screwed,

The effect was enduring impoverishment of blacks, enduring advantages for whites. One of the latter day consequences of this now-abandoned, unconstitutional policy is that blacks and whites remain pretty rigidly segregated, and poverty is concentrated in black communities. Because schools are ultimately organized around housing patterns, the poorest schools receive the poorest children with the most disadvantages, and no surprise, they don't do well.

There isn't any easy or inexpensive way to undo the damage long-term segregation caused. I'm not sure we even know what to do that would be effective. At any rate, it was our government that did it. Was it Roosevelt's idea? Roosevelt was liberal, but the congress was controlled by southern segregationists who were very committed to maintaining segregation. The only way a housing program could be legislated and funded was by excluding blacks. (It wasn't just helping blacks and whites separately, it was more like not helping blacks at all.)

Similarly, most blacks in the south (domestic workers and agricultural workers--about 75-80% of the black workforce in the south) were excluded from Social Security until after WWII.

Anyway, the Color of Law is good -- punchy, well written, good documentation, well edited.

...are you a classical Marxist? — fishfry

This sounds a bit like the line of questioning in the House Unamerican Activities Committee..."Are you now, or were you ever a member of the Communist Party?"

I suppose so. I think Marx was right when he described the method by which wealth is extracted from workers -- surplus value. (Workers produce more value than they receive in wages. The difference between the wages they are paid and the value of the goods they produce is expropriated by the bourgeoisie owners. [Reality is more elaborate than that, but that's close enough for our purposes here.]

Marx died 30+ years before the Russian Revolution. What happened in Russia depended far more on Lenin and Stalin than it did on Marx. I suppose it depended on 300 years of Romanov despotism, too.

I have been a member of a Marxist political party. Our program was based on the work of Daniel DeLeon (1852 – 1914) and his American interpretation of Marxism. That is, in countries with a strong democratic tradition, workers should (must) use the tools of democracy to achieve a radical restructuring of society. This can be accomplished through industrial union organizing (not trade unionism), intensive political education, extensive political action, and elections. Revolution can be carried out peacefully within a democratic society.

Theoretically, DeLeon was right, but it turned out that the State, Capitol, and Corporations were quite capable of frustrating unions with radical social change in mind. The labor movement faced more concerted and continuous opposition in the United States than in most countries, maybe with the exception of Nazi Germany. The USSR and PRC just banned unionism outright.

The various American Marxist political parties -- from the Communist Party USA, Socialist Workers, Socialist Labor, on to the New Union Party and a few others -- have pretty much subsided. Unionism isn't at an all-time low but it is not far from it. Capitol is triumphant. Working people -- the vast majority of Americans (80% at least) -- have experienced a continual slide in wages and purchasing power since the mid 1970s. Automation, globalism, deskilling jobs, etc. have reshaped the world's workforce including us Americans. There are some winners, a lot of losers in all of the change.

Nothing that has happened, or is happening, invalidates Karl Marx's basic understanding of capitalism. Marx didn't claim that the victory of the working class was inevitable, only that extreme conflict was certain.

What do you, or I, or anyone want to see in a future society? What I'd like to see looks much more like Europe than China; more like Cuba than Central America; more like Vietnam than North Korea...

I'd like to see democratic socialism around the world, and the demise of capitalism. Does that mean the end of creative labor, entrepreneurial type work, a drab, gray world with flat cultures? Hell, no. It does mean that most people come much closer to having there basic+ needs met. Not "middle class" but more than enough to survive on.

First you say that the law is only as good as the people behind it, then you say a tyrannical law is worse than tyrannical dictator, and that law legitimizes tyranny,,,

There never was a golden age of good law, good people, good rulers, good outcomes, of course. But still, most civilized countries manage to have fairly good law, reasonably good people, adequate rulers, and more or less satisfactory outcomes. The Nazi period in Germany was an extreme breakdown in the area of good law, good people... Other countries have had far less extreme breakdowns, but periodically just plain bad people get the upper hand, until they can be beaten back.

Good law represents a consensus by good people of what a good society should be like. The consensus of good law is important.

Will that justice be enforced? At least with a despot you have an enemy, you can go after him. But with the law, who can you go after? That's why the law was invented - nobody is responsible anymore - the law is blamed. The law orders the Nazi officer to yank the Jews out of their homes and to the gas chambers they go... So he knocks on the door "Sorry ma'am. It's the law, I'm forced to now yank you from your home and put you on this train. My apologies, I'm just obeying the law. If you want, you can file a complaint on the train later". — Agustino

What, exactly, are you intending to be for and against here? Why would you counterpose the Holocaust against law? The nazis made a sham of the law, replacing it with the rule of persons like Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, et al.

It's impossible for a sceptical, materialist-minded person to go back to a religious point of view, and yet it's also psychologically impossible to face nihilism naked and unadorned. — gurugeorge

It isn't necessary to face nihilism stark naked and "unadorned". (Did you mistype "unarmored" but auto-correction decided it liked "unadorned" better?)

First, it isn't impossible for a skeptical materialist-minded person to go back to a religious point of view. I'm not suggesting that a skeptical materialist should, but it clearly isn't impossible. Difficult yes -- very conflictual, for sure.

All you need is the willingness to affirm some basic humanist principles, like #8 of the Humanist Manifesto:

EIGHTH: Religious Humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man’s life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now. This is the explanation of the humanist’s social passion.

The Humanists strive to be "good without god". ADVOCATING PROGRESSIVE VALUES AND EQUALITY FOR HUMANISTS, ATHEISTS, AND FREETHINKERS is their motto.

Secular Humanist has the same kind of chilly quality that Unitarianism has, as far as I am concerned, but that's just me. It could do with a little smoke and bells. Check it out.

last fading tatter of Christian morality in the West — gurugeorge

egalitarianism über alles that characterizes modern liberalism — gurugeorge

Everything is devolving to "might makes right," — gurugeorge

Christian morality is intact (it's a system; it's based on certain documents and models; these sorts of things, whether it be Christian or Égalité über allies (to mix language and slogans) isn't that tied to Christian morality. There is a connection, sure. "Might makes right" is hardly a new idea.

Adherence to Christian morality, or Confucianism, or Sufism or socialism or democracy--pick an ism, any ism--is what makes it vital, Neglect it, and it is the practitioners morality that is in tatters. Practice it, and it is as solid as ever.

There is a lot about any moral system to which one can object, certainly, but billions--not just millions--of people, including people in the West--are practicing workable moral systems that serve them well. There is, most likely, a strata of people within the 7.3 billion humans, who have lapsed into nihilistic, dead-end a-morality. My guess is that a lot of them are occupying corporate suites and high government positions and social elites. These people's influence is outsized. They have real power, but they also have symbolic power, and it is possible to get confused and suppose that everybody is like them.

The ordinary folk that I rub shoulders with every day don't seem to have lapsed into a nihilistic funk (not that they are all happy, robustly and athletically moral, or anything like that).

That seems like an improbably positive interpretation to apply to the Africa, S. Asia, SE Asia, and south America all at once.

universal basic income — Purple Pond

Even Milton Friedman though a universal basic income was a good idea. How expensive would it be? Maybe not as much as one would think. Those who receive, and really need a basic income are going to spend all the money they get. It will flow back into the economy very rapidly. One of the purposes of the UBI is to enable ordinary people to afford taking risks which they might otherwise not take, to get a better job, earn a better income, get more training, etc.

Yes, some people will use the money to stay at home and spend all day on The Philosophy Forum. That's OK, because they will still have to buy food, clothing, shelter, etc. and that stimulates the economy.

Besides spending, other benefit programs would no longer continue--like unemployment, disability, and the like. The critical factor would be setting the UBI at the appropriate level. It can't be too high or too low. If it's too low, it won't allow people to benefit; if it's too high, the cost-benefit ratio would probably become unfavorable.

Marx? Perhaps we'd have to agree to disagree. Marxism has been a disaster everywhere it's been tried. Seen Venezuela lately? — fishfry

Venezuela is a basket case because of grossly bad management. Bad management doesn't work well in any economic system.

Just the regular rich. The silicon valley CEO married to the Palo Alto physician. Their kids go to good schools and learn to start businesses in their teens. Those are the people I'm talking about. — fishfry

"Entrepreneurs don’t have a special gene for risk—they come from families with money" -- Quartz

I don't know any of these people. I have some information (various reading over the years) on what makes the children of Silicon Valley productive entrepreneurs. The matter has been studied: Parents with lots of money have the means to facilitate their children's success.

Inc. and Fortune cited a study in Quartz to the effect...

What really sets entrepreneurs apart from everyone else? It's not their resourcefulness, imagination, ability to foresee trends, or their belief in their own ideas, according to a recent piece on Quartz. It's the mouthful of silver spoon they were born with. "The most common trait among entrepreneurs is access to financial capital," the piece notes, citing a wide range of research.

Cash parentage is the critical factor: parents who have, for good reasons or not, succeeded and accumulated a lot of wealth (rich, but not super-rich, by any means) are in possession of certain characteristics:

1. They have a lot of connections
2. They have a lot of cash
3. They themselves received, and can afford excellent educational experiences for their children
4. They model how financial success operates.

It isn't that Silicon Valley clones are all brilliant people who can hardly fail at whatever they set their minds to. They got in on the ground floor of a new industry and most of them went to colleges and universities (like Stanford) that prepared them to succeed in this kind of industry.

The point is, if you take your average kid from anywhere USA, give him an excellent education, show him how the world works, provide cash to experiment with (a grant, not a loan), and help him accumulate the contacts that privileged people have, HE TOO will be a great success.

Why doesn't Any Kid, USA succeed? People who don't have extra money tend not to take risks. They don't know people with loads of money (especially on equal terms) so they do not learn how to hobnob among this layer of society. They don't have the money to send their children to community colleges, let alone Princeton or Stanford.

It boils down to silver spoons, not gold plated talent.

You know this is true. — fishfry

No, I do not know that that is true. There was a time within my memory (maybe yours too) when college tuition at major universities was quite affordable. In 1980 a mid-level course in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota was $80. Fees were a little extra--not much. Now they are several hundred dollars. Why? Because state and federal support of University education was cut by legislators and congress. Government support of higher education dropped from around 75% in the early 70s to 25%. Why? To redirect more revenue to the rich. remember, the 1980s was the reign of Ronald Reagan and dubious supply-side economics.