but even then we are still very much just a commodity. — MikeL

NO.

We might get treated like commodities, but that is an abomination.

We are all (or most of us) more or less replaceable. — 0af

Of course we are not replaceable. "You are all replaceable" is management talk for restless workers who might be thinking about organizing a union. We are all individually unique in not just one or two ways, but many ways.

Someone else can perform the boring tasks I do at work. That doesn't make me replaceable. Or you, either.

But aren't bird's nest and beaver's dams technology? — 0af

I have problems with calling beaver dams and birds nests 'technology'. Neither birds nor beavers wield their behavior deliberately or consciously. Beavers, for instance, bring branches and mud to locations where there is the sound of running water. That's how they keep their dams ingot repair. Put a speaker on a perfectly fine beaver dam, play the sound of running water, and the speaker will get patched.

A bird that uses grass to make it's nest can not switch to mud, and visa versa. Bees must make 6 sided cells in their honey combs -- it can't be 3 or 4.

I don't want to diminish in any way animal lives. Beavers, birds, bees, and beetles all perform wonderfully at their live-maintaining tasks. Neither do I want to diminish our animal lives. Most animals are part of natural systems. Wetland biology depends on beavers, and pollination depends on insects like bees. Humans don't seem to belong to natural systems. That's one of the problems we grapple with. (We can certainly fit harmoniously in natural systems, but it generally means living a much different kind of life than we normally aspire to.)

Hewlett-Packard offices... Engineer to Product Manager: "Of course the printers are ready to work when we put them in the box. It's just that customer satisfaction is so much greater after they hear the machine do this phony diagnostic song and dance."

Buzz, buzz, snick snick snick; hum, click; hum click; merp meep ...

Welcome to the built environment, all human all the time. Press the red button to start.

Could it be that technology is actually one of the many ways the universe ends up organizing itself? — darthbarracuda

Probably not. Somehow the universe managed to get along without our technology for what... 13.8 billion years? It's actually the other way around. We are just obeying the rules the universe laid down.

We began living in the built environment a long time ago. We liked it. It offered a bit more reliability, predictability, and comfort, compared to huddling under a rock ledge in the cold. We covered ourselves with clothing; we cooked our food over fire; we grew food instead of waiting for food to happen. Cool.

So, this alienation from raw nature has a long history, starting on the day we moved indoors, however humble the roof, walls, and door were.

Technology isn't an aberration, isn't a mutation, isn't artificial, isn't unnatural. It is just ours, and no, it doesn't belong in nature. We, however, are part of nature. Maybe that's where it gets confusing. We are as natural as lions, tigers, and bears. When we walk naked out on the veldt, or across the great plains, or in the mountains, or along the beech we belong as much as all other animals belong there. (Careful, you might get arrested for indecent exposure.) But we have to leave our technology behind in order to belong.

Just that 'why I am getting out of existentialism' would be as good a response generating title as 'what... existentialism'.

I keep reading the title as "Why I'm getting out of existentialism" which is as good as "What I'm getting out of existentialism".

Breakfast food is a good example of superfluous production. There are really very few ways one breakfast food can be more than trivially different than another, and those differences were discovered in the first 15 minutes of breakfast food history.

Your comments on socialism indicate you did not understand the kind of socialism I was talking about.

The example of socialism that you are referencing is the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. Everyone except hard core soviet communists have repudiated--or never accepted--the USSR/PRC/Cuban model of socialism.

Worker ownership and management of the economy -- replacing government altogether -- wouldn't result in a dictatorial system of socialist wage slavery. The whole business of wages and prices would largely be eliminated. "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" might not work out well (it hasn't been tried in a secular setting) but there is no reason to presume that it would result in dictatorship or wage slavery.

The American socialist alternative model (developed towards the end of Marx's life) is democratic self-management, self-ownership of industry, where the workers for example of the Malt-O-Meal breakfast cereal plant would own and operate the now-privately-owned plant. The Malt-O-Meal workers would negotiate with distribution coops to determine what kinds, and how much, cereal to make. There is a difference in producing for human need and producing for profit. If there are orders for 100 tons of cereal, that's all they would make. They wouldn't make 200 tons and try to under cut Post or Kellogg workers; there wouldn't be any rationale to compete that way.

Distributism and worker-owned socialist industry are models with little concrete experience behind them. The details will have to be worked out as experience is gained, just as there were no pre-existing models for capitalism, the industrial revolution, and lots of other things.

Send a PM to one of the moderators. Personally, I don't get the whole "view answer" and "accepted" feature. I don't think it adds anything to discussions.

I think "malcontent" would probably be a more accurate word for many Americans; not happy with the system and yet also unwilling to do what it takes to change the system. — John Days

I am certainly a malcontent. I've been very unhappy with the system, and I've been willing to do what needs to be done. Changing our (or any established) system requires a change of consciousness and thinking in the population (the real revolution) before concrete changes can be instituted. Personally, I don't think we can engineer that change, and I am in the dark about what sort serendipitous events would bring about a revolutionary change of thinking and consciousness.

The principle of subsidiarity which is central to distributism would require matters to be settled locally and among the people directly involved - not by some central committee of "the people". So that basically means that what me and my family produce isn't dictated by anyone else, but it's something we decide upon as a family. And similarly for you and for all other groups of people. Things that are the benefit of everyone in a community - I suppose public utilities would fit here - would obviously be decided at the local community level by such a thing as "cooperation" as you call it — Agustino

Didn't you say you liked the Shire from Lord of the Rings? Was that you or somebody else?

The shire -- a very low-population rural area--is ideal for distributism. It seems to look back to the English village of the 17th century and earlier, a time when many products were produced at home. There are two critical problems: First, very few people live in self-sufficient villages, these days. Most people don't produce many products at home. They still could, but it seems wildly inefficient. I could, for instance, make several kinds of bar soap--one for laundry and heavy cleaning, one for bathing, and possibly one for hair. But small batch soap making doesn't yield the kind of soap people like to use.

There are far too many people living without much (if any) connection to raw materials that can be turned into useful products. For instance, where would the several million residents of London obtain fiber to make so much as shoe strings for each other? Animal skin for leather? Vegetable or animal fat for soap making? Raw wool or raw cotton to clean, card, spin into yarn, and then weave into cloth? Hides to tan into leather? Food?

Distributism seems more difficult than socialism to implement.

Some people could live in a distributist economy. Most people would have to have died off to make it work (just in terms of the amount of raw material that could be turned into finished products" by highly decentralized household manufacturing. \

pubic property
— Bitter Crank
:-O What's this type of property?! I never heard of it before. — Agustino

Actually, a good share of the United States is public property (28% of the total acreage is government owned forest land for instance). Public Property is held as a public trust by a governmental entity (federal, state, county, municipal, township). It consists of all natural waterways, land owned and managed by a government (like Central Park in New York City), 99.9% of all roads, streets, sidewalks, and highways are owned by a government, from the Federal level down to the township level. This doesn't include military bases.

Anyone may walk down any public sidewalk, drive on any public road, walk on any public park land, and so on. In the west, some public lands are open for use by grazing herds (cattle).

Comprende?

There are bitter Americans, that is true. Whether many are bitter as a result of the several factors you list is doubtful.

What is the source of bitterness? Disappointment? Failure? Betrayal? Crushing experiences? Bad parenting? Exclusion from one's peer groups? Overbearing siblings? I don't think people become bitter because of taxation, distribution of wealth, and the like. Personal experiences that expand the gap between aspirations and achievements might be strong factors.

Politicians have always [figuratively] built drainage systems to bring people's feelings of disappoint and failure to stagnant collection ponds where it can putrefy and then be used to further spoil the public mood and perception of reality. Hillary Clinton was slimed by the effluent of the pond, for example. I wasn't enthusiastic about a Clinton administration, but I also resented her being made into a devil.

'The People' really ought to be outraged by the performance of both political parties in their general failures; they should be enraged by their continuing exploitation by the rich. They should focus their wrath on the practice of the ruling class to manage the country for the benefit of themselves. Will they? Probably not -- and not because they are stupid, duped, or ignorant. It's just that real human characters like Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump make much more compelling targets.

Okay. What do you think about distributism then? I'm trying to gauge how your position is different from mine. — Agustino

I don't know a great deal about 'distributism'. There are some aspects of it that are interesting and attractive. How do we get there? Dorothy Day and Peter Marin who founded the Catholic Workers (pretty much an American group) were distributists. One of their earliest moves was buying a small farm on Staten Island in New York City (this was about 85 years ago) as part of their program. The Catholic Worker Movement was much like the IWW, or Socialist Party, New Union Party, and other such groups: Their thinking is that their ideas are good and that their ideas will spread. "The people" will organize around their good ideas, and society will change. And, you know, it would be a fine thing if even 1/4 of their good ideas were implemented.

But the trouble with these social idealists is that almost everything about the societies in which they operate is pretty much hostile to their ideals, and if it threatens the dominant paradigm, hostility is expressed concretely. As somebody put it, "The labor movement in the United States didn't die from indifference, it was murdered."

Okay so what if I am a mechanic and I have my own tools and garage where I fix cars? Does that count as personal or private property? What if I design my own car and then start getting some factories to build it - do I get to keep rights to my invention? What if I go to India and bring good Cashmere Indian quality from there which I sell in a shop I setup? Do I get to own the store? — Agustino

Technically, the mechanics tools are income producing property, not personal domestic property -- unless working on cars is a hobby. (This isn't socialist -- this is the way the US Tax Code looks at things. A mechanic can depreciate the value of his tools; a hobbyist can't.)

As I said, production would be coordinated by producers and consumers, collectively. Maybe cars will have been retired to the dustbin of history. You could design your car, but whether it got built or not would be a collective decision. If you were a car designer, you would need to be part of a product design group. The abolition of private property (factors, stores, railroads, etc.) also means the abolition of private income, and private entrepreneurship.

Own the store where you sell imported cashmere sweaters? Are you out of your mind? Hell, no!

To your average capitalist, this sounds about as perverted as bestiality with under-age animals.

I would disagree with some of those being "private property". Railroads and such are public property. — Agustino

They should be pubic property, even under capitalism, but in the United States they are (and have always been) privately owned. I don't think many miles of railroad were ever built on land which the rail companies actually bought from owners. Usually, the government granted the land to railroads as part of the drive for internal development. The survivor railroads (like Burlington Northern Santa Fe) which have been around more than a century, are still profiting from the land they were given, which is often forested or has coal, oil, or minerals. The railroads also sold off the land they were given in farm-sized lots to immigrants, so they would have customers along the road to ship from, and to.

I don't think entrepreneurship can only exist in capitalism. Do you? I think many more people would be entrepreneurs under distributism for example. — Agustino

Inventiveness is a human trait. Entrepreneurship is too, but it requires more learned economic skill. In a distributist economy entrepreneurship (within limits) would make sense. A society run by and for the benefit of the workers would certainly need plenty of inventive thinking, but socialist organization is collectivist, not individualist. Too much entrepreneurship would work against a distributist organized society too, I would think.

Entrepreneurship is the trait par excellent of capitalism. Capitalist economies are organized around facilitating entrepreneurship (including small entrepreneurs being crushed by bigger entrepreneurs).

About 50%.

Our system only nominally works on the honor system, is only nominally voluntary, and for large corporations, is subject to various methods of screwing around with the tax code such that a lot of corporations can avoid income taxes altogether.

Are not taxes a reasonable price for not having anarchy or living in a failed state?

you are chosen because YOU ARE THE BEST OF THE BEST OF THE BEST — szardosszemagad

Or because somebody wants to get rid of you.

But some people argue that they have never consented to any act of any government and that everything, from contributing to national defense to sending one's children to school, is coerced. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Yes, this argument has been made a number of times here and on the other PF. In reality, the "voluntary" tax honor system we have is not all that voluntary. For one thing, most citizens need not confess that they earned this or that amount of money. The government already knows how much they earned on the job. They won't show up at your door on April 16, demanding a return. They might not show up for a year, or several years. Eventually, however, they will show up and the settlement won't be voluntary. You will be coerced to pay.

And it makes no sense to say "By living here you are consenting to the responsibilities of citizenship here". People don't choose where they are born. Governments regulate migration, so nobody is free to travel and/or reside wherever he/she wants to.

It's not realistic to categorically say that anybody tacitly or directly consents to anything by being in a particular location. Even when people have the freedom to relocate, such as within the U.S., it doesn't necessarily mean that they consent to anything by being in a location. A person located in San Francisco, CA isn't necessarily consenting to any legal responsibility under San Francisco city/county law or California law. It could be that he/she does not have the resources to move to any other location. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

This argument (against the implicit social contract) has also been made here and in the PF.

Those who find truthfulness in "Taxation is theft" almost certainly will not not see the truth in "Property is theft."

Personal question: Do you see yourself as a citizen of the country in which you reside and therefore are obligated to accept the social contract that applies AS IF you had formally signed it?

I see myself as a citizen by birth of the U.S., and an unofficial signee of the social contract which seems to bind citizens of a given nation together. I may even be a literal signer of an oath in which I said I would support the government of the United States and would abide by its lows. I can't remember for sure, but if I did sign the oath, signing hasn't prevented me from obeying most laws but flouting a few others, or engaging in political speech that was extremely critical of the United States Government.

Whether I like the government or not, I believe that there is an inchoate, implicit social contract which we learn about and sign on to as we are gradually socialized from childhood into responsible adulthood. It sort of works the same way that baptism does: the baptized become a part of the mystical body of Christ whether they jolly well like it or not. By staying in one jurisdiction long enough to become a resident, one becomes a signatory to the social contract--like it or not.

If this country, state, county, city, or township is the place where you live, then you are part of the social contract. (It protects you to some degree; it isn't all coercive demands.)

Are you now, or have you ever been, a libertarian?

Unless you live in an absolute dictatorship, you have implicitly assumed the responsibilities of citizenship, one of which is supporting the government. You have probably never voted for candidates who promised to eliminate taxes altogether, or to make taxes a purely voluntary act.

You, and everyone else in whatever nation you live in, have similarly consented to be governed by the laws of the nation.

Because you voluntarily live in a society where governments collect taxes, then no one is stealing anything from you when you pay taxes.

Just remember what the dormouse said: Feed your head.

Does this decentralized system involve any bureaucratic state apparatus — Agustino

No. However, 'no state' presents a problem if a need for external defense or recovery from a cataclysmic event was necessary. Some kind of responsive structure would be needed for such purposes.

Private property is extremely important — Agustino

If you are defining "private property" as clothing, a dog, a house... that's called personal property. For most people, personal property is, indeed, important because it has to do directly with their existence. "Private property" meaning railroads, factories, warehouses, stores, etc. is anathema in a socialist economy because that kind of private property is the substance of the exploitative system of capitalism.

What makes you call most entrepreneurs "petite boureoisie"? And why do you identify the bourgeoisie with the super rich? I think middle-upper class lawyers for example are more bourgeois than Steve Jobs was for example. — Agustino

Because that is the way Marx referenced the class of people who are capitalists. Most people do not have a clue about how to use "class" properly.

Working class means "people who are dependent on a wage or a salary for their sustenance. Most people in any economy are "workers" -- wage earners.

Middle class properly refers to the "Petite bourgeoisie" - owners of a small factory, a store, land-owning operator farmers, professionals with private practices (lawyers, doctors, architects -- IF they are in fact private practices). Lawyers who work for Thompson Reuters Legal Reference Systems are just highly educated workers. College professors, tenured or not, are employees of universities and are not middle class.

"Bourgeoisie" refers to the wealthiest class. The bourgeoisie own large businesses (thousands of employees, millions of dollars in profit--not just revenue) or large shares in very large businesses like DuPont, Bayer, Hilton Hotels, Target, Walmart, 3M, Apple, Maersk, Exxon, etc. The Bourgeoisie are sometimes very large landowners, or in urban settings, rentiers (apartment buildings, office buildings). Bourgeoisie also hold large amounts of securities, cash, person property, etc.

In Marx's time there was still a significant class of royalty (emperors, kings, czars, princes, etc.) who were sometimes economically significant. Like the Hapsburgs or Romanovs. Except maybe for the Windsors, (QEII and some of her disreputable off spring), most of this class has been extinguished.

If you feel shabby because you fall into the class of either worker or petite bourgeoisie, please remember it's not personal. Marx wasn't thinking of you at the time.

What about "the middle class" that everybody wants to be part of? It's a highly nebulous term. It may mean that someone lives in a nice apartment, earns a good wage, has a bachelors degree, has a large TV, a good sound system, an up-market car. It may be someone who owns their own business, has 75 employees, and is retiring early. It may be someone who lives in a shabby room, reads a lot of literary books, aspires to high culture, but is basically a welfare dependent. Donald Trump could claim to be "middle class". Bill Gates could call himself middle class. It's a meaningless term. For the most part, "middle class" is a term of positive self appraisal, and doesn't have anything to do with class structure.

Who said this? When the French peasant paints the devil, he paints him in the guise of a tax collector

My guess is that you know this already, but it is Uncle Karl.

Who said they looked forward to the last monarch being strangled with the intestines of the last priest?

The state is the problem BC, not the solution. — Agustino

The variety of socialism that I follow holds that the state is, indeed, a problem, along with the bourgeoisie (which for Marx meant large capitalists). Most entrepreneurs are "petite bourgeoisie" -- small fry in the business world -- making a try for their "original accumulation". Shop keepers, web developers, etc.

The revolution consists of liquidating the wealth of the bourgeoisie (not the persons who are bourgeoisie) and dismantling the state. In it's place? A decentralized system of coordinated production and distribution under the management of workers managing their production facility. Citizens, in their roles of consumers and producers would, together, establish markets.

This revolution would be preceded by a probably lengthy period of social and intellectual change among the 90% of the population which has no share in the wealth of the 10%. When the organization of the working class reaches a sufficient level, and they have gained sufficient leverage, then the plug can be pulled on the current system.

No one has worked out the details of how this would come about. It is neither feasible nor proper to prescribe the steps. (This American version of Marxism was developed in the late 19th, early 20th century by groups like the IWW, Socialist Labor Party, New Union Movement, et al.) Workers have to organize themselves and establish themselves how to conduct the transition.

I was being quite serious. — Agustino

So am I. Point is, Go Reds, Smash State, Crush the Bourgeois Class!

The state is the problem BC, not the solution. — Agustino

Go Reds - Smash State.

PS: I am being called right now to high tea, so I shall have to ask you to wait — John Gould

I believe this is the first incidence of the term "high tea" on this forum.

rump's budget is the equivalent of inviting them to piss down that body's neck. — Baden

You were being polite. More like down our throats.

Good. We'll send you an invitation to their hanging. Should be quite a gala affair.

To be more clear, I am not pro rich as a social class, if you thought that, then that would be wrong. I am pro the possibility of getting rich. I think people who do outstanding work that impacts a lot of other people positively should get rich. — Agustino

Of course you are pro-rich. It would be absurd for you to want to become rich if you were not pro-rich.

Tell us, what is the outstanding work you do that benefits a lot of other people so positively that you should be entitled to riches? >:)

Capitalists, even those speculators that Piketty was talking about, have an intimate relationship with the state--more intimate than most of the population. As Uncle Karl observed many years ago, The state is a committee for organizing the affairs of the bourgeoisie--meaning capitalists.

The state sets up the terms of capitalist operations--registering corporate entities, managing competition, building or facilitating infrastructure (ports, canals, railroads, highways, airports, etc.), protecting the national and international interests, and controlling popular resistance to capitalist exploitation (through brutality or benefit programs).

The military budget was legitimately astronomical during WWII, when the entire economy was oriented toward war production. (Capital did not operate as non-profit patriots, by the way, while making bombs, planes, tanks, and bullets.) It took the US from 1945 to the mid-1960s to pay off the WWII debt. By the late 1950s, it had become apparent that the military and capital, who had enjoyed their wartime romance, planned on a long-term relationship. President (and former Allied Commander) Eisenhower understood this, and in a speech at the end of his presidency, warned the country about the burgeoning "Military-Industrial Complex"

He understood that the Military-Industrial Complex would want to continue the relationship of military buying and corporate production, whether it was needed or not. We have seen 70 years of post-WWII military spending that was largely useless. Take nuclear/thermonuclear bomb production: Over the course of its operation, the nuclear contractors received orders for, and built, something like 18,000 nuclear/thermonuclear bombs. This was a huge operation, of course, very profitable. But to what end? 18,000 nuclear bombs grossly exceeds any reasonable estimation of how many bombs it would take to wreck the Soviet Union and China both.

How many billions of dollars went into the research and development of advanced fighters that turned out to not work very well (too complicated, too unwieldy, big but not robust, etc.) How many billions were spent on the aborted Star Wars Initiative which was supposed to produce death rays, laser substitutes for missile interceptors, and satellite killers? (Estimated to be about a trillion dollars). How many billions were spent on Iraq and Afghanistan? Roughly a trillion dollars each?

You no doubt heard about military orders for ordinary items (toilet seats, screw drivers, etc.) where the unit cost was priced, like, $700? Were the military procurement officers stupid? Were the supply-side corporations hoodwinking the buyers? No. It was just a cozy relationship where grossly maximized profits at government expense was de rigueur.

By comparison, social security is an extremely efficient operation, with a very low overhead. (By the way, Social Security wouldn't be in financial difficulties if earlier administrations had not raided the Social Security Trust Fund to balance the Federal Budget.) Medicare and Medicaid of course interact with the medical industry, but both have well established price ceilings. Medicare has had fixed rates of reimbursement since the late 1970s (not the same rates, of course, but fixed, none the less). Practitioners who can afford it don't take Medicare or Medicaid patients, because of those fixed rates.

All government expenditures, whether for hydrogen bomb parts or for school buildings, end up back in the economy somewhere, but much of it ends up in the top 5% owing to their ownership and profit taking in government contracts. Social Security and welfare programs, by contrast, plow funds into the rank and file which purchase food, clothing and shelter -- benefitting far more individuals (and small businesses) than military-oriented plants do.

I would agree with such high taxes (80%+) out of non-productive endeavours such as income from financial speculation. If it was after me I'd tax all of Wall Street like that. — Agustino

Just to be clear, you are saying that you agree with a tax rate of 80% or higher on non-productive stuff like financial speculation? Well, as the French economists Piketty shows, that's precisely where a good share of the rich folks are making their money -- financial speculation, currency manipulation, and so on.

You can't do anything about a fanatic base who view the government as an evil entity that needs to be drained. — Posty McPostface

Swamps get drained, evil entities get exorcized. I don't think there are any priests up to the task, these days.

But there is something that can be done: Just wait for the logic of Trump's policies to totally screw the working and unemployed lumpen proles to the point where they finally see the light.

And they will.

Eventually.

We hope.

Let us pray.

Here's a quote you'll like:

As Will Rogers said: “The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.”

Now, during WWII, the highest tax rate on the wealth was 94%. Admirable, but it didn't last.

For the 30 years of the post war boom, the tax rate on wealthy individuals never fell below 70%.

In the 1980s (the country led by the rotting brain of Ronald Reagan) the tax rate was around 50%. Then they cut the top rate to 28%. After 3 years of that, the tax system was in bad shape. After that, the rate went up to 39%

In this century it was at 39%, 35%, 43%, and 39%.

I disagree that those services you mention require the kind of overly controlling, big bureacratic state we have today. — Agustino

It does. Building a rapid transit line (not a whole system) is likely to cost 1 or 2 billion dollars--a level of expense that counties and cities can not usually come up with. Generally the federal government funds at least half of such necessary infrastructure costs. where does the money come from? It comes from states that generate more income in federal taxes than they receive back. So, if Minnesota gets a billion bucks from those evil feds, well... it was sent to Washington from us in the first place

Now, if you live in the really anti-government states, like much of the south, you are a net dependent on the federal government. Those federal government hating states get more from the Feds than they send to Washington.

People are supposed to take care of each other, not governments. — Agustino

It should be apparent that people need the government as a vehicle to execute their desires to care for one another. Government is a critical institution in the complex business of a society as a whole caring for itself. State, county, and municipal governments carry much of the load and the cost is largely locally raised. But only the Federal Government is in a position to capture revenue across the wide horizon of the economy, and funnel it back to the states.

I have no problem with "the government" providing Medicare and Social Security, for example. What's your problem with it?

I was hoping the political pendulum would swing pretty hard to the left after Trump, but his base cannot be persuaded that big government isn't always a bad thing. — Posty McPostface

Trump has only been in office 8 months; give him time. With any luck, he'll take the Republicans down with him.

America needs a budget cut. It seems to me that only someone financially illiterate can suggest otherwise. — Agustino

Yes he does cut out budgets for several state programs that were meant for the disadvantaged — Agustino

Cutting 31% of the Environmental Protection Agency helps which state program for the disadvantaged?

You understand, don't you, that cutting 100% of the EPA and adding 10% to the Defense budget doesn't even remotely balance out--$18 billion (+/-) budget for EPA, $600 billion (+/-) for defense? Which state benefits from the 29% cut in the $37 billion State Department Budget?

The problem with budget cuts, is that much of the budget are mandatory expenses, like interest on the debt and entitlement programs such as Social Security. If we don't cut the military budget, then the cuts come out of programs that provide long term benefits to the population as a whole. The military budget especially benefits communities with bases near by, and the complex of manufacturers that make up the other half of the "military industrial complex" that President Eisenhower warned about in 1960.

Who knows what one is capable of when it comes to real life, but still, I think the examination of hypotheticals like this makes for good practice. — John Days

I agree. One of the things that makes it possible for the tough to get going when the going gets rough is rehearsal of hypotheticals. Of course, fire-rescue requires more than a little hypothetical rehearsal; I don't think about it very often. My neighbors had better install a sprinkler system.

A house is on fire. You are a rescuer whose goal is to save the beings stuck inside. There is one human, one animal (say a dog), one plant, and one object (with no monetary value but destroyable). All else is equal. You can only rescue one at a time. Who would/should you rescue first, second, third, and fourth? — Samuel Lacrampe

I understand your forced-choice set up here, but we are not in forced-choice situations. In our ordinary unforced choice situations people don't rigorously honor the great chain of being. Our emotional commitment to the GCB (and the ethics of who ought to be saved first) is pretty heavily affected by physical distance, how much affinity we feel, how pressing the various (frequently trivial) demands on our attention are, and so on.

People may not be literally thrown under the bus very often, but by intent, neglect, indifference, and so on we are throwing lots of people under the bus all the time. If my neighbor's house was on fire, I would call the fire department. I would attempt at a reasonably safe distance to assess the environment inside. I would not just rush in to save these people, let alone a plant or their cat.

I haven't donated a dime to save refugees or migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean (and often drowning) or the US-Mexico border (dying in the process often enough) and I probably won't.

Up close and personal, however, the hungry and homeless will get a donation. Again, it's a question of proximity. I don't think I am unique in this. Absent proximity and felt urgency, The GCB fades into an abstraction with no motive power.

Me? Ironic?

Being immaterial beings, angels wouldn't need -- and wouldn't have -- any organs at all. They would be no-brainers. No liver, no spleen, no teeth, no anus, no mouth, no skin, no bone. No DNA, no chromosomes, xx or xy, or anything else.

I haven't made any of this up — szardosszemagad

I didn't think you had made it up, I just wondered where the information came from. I don't recollect there being that much about it in the Bible.