I think he felt like the botched and the weak stood in the way of humankind's evolution. And literally felt it would benefit humankind to do them in.

Monstrous. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I think it’s monstrous to want the weak and botched to thrive at the expense of everyone else.

He’s talking about values, and is usually figurative. If you read this as “kill all the disabled people” or something— no I don’t think that’s accurate. Nietzsche himself was sick most of his life.

He’s often deliberately provocative. Plenty of interesting things to say about pity.

Also, I agree with him. If you read this as “kill off all the Jews” or something to that affect, that’s your preference. That’s not how I read it.

He's a monster. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Come on. You can’t be serious.

Any political party suggesting we should infuse our society with deadly weapons to make it safer would be considered morons and immediately lose power. — Baden

And anyone suggesting our government might try to kill us would honestly raise mental health alarm bells. — Baden

The United States corporatocracy is very skilled at getting a large percentage of its citizens to believe anything. The gun manufacturers and their lobbying firm, the NRA, also own their Republicans and the followers. It also fits in nicely with their “Government is the problem” mantra.

We’re also a very frightened country. Abnormally so. Also a product of the corporate media.

In defense of my countrymen, however, the majority of the population nevertheless wants gun control.

Paranoia, delusion, and mythology find a way to continue on. Don’t look for logic.

You're avoiding any type of discussion. — Tzeentch

Lol. Yes and what a discussion it was. “You put all your faith in government.” :yawn:

Perhaps provide some good reasons why you put all your faith in the United States government. — Tzeentch

:yawn:

No, it’s just that we don’t use persecutory delusions to justify the status quo.

(The status quo being the killing of children because of the abundance of guns.)

America has long been a country of guns. It has not long been a country of school shootings. — Moses

It has been both. They increase with an increase in guns and deregulation. As has been shown.

But feel free to ignore all of that and cherrypick data. This way we can all stay baffled by why the US has so many mass shootings compared to other counties. It can’t possibly be the guns. And if it is, there’s nothing we can do about it. All so we can pretend we’re safe from the boogeyman.

Just put a little bandaid over it and trust that your government won't do it again, eh? — Tzeentch

Sorry to hear that others don't succumb to your persecutory delusions.

The government could come for us, so lets make sure we have a glut of guns, make billions of profits for gun manufacturers (who definitely aren't involved in setting the debate or influencing government), and cling to the fantasy that we'd heroically fend off the military.

Makes perfect sense.

There's always been a high supply of guns in the US, gun ownership levels are consistent since at least the 1970s; the number of school shootings has increased drastically since the 2010s. Numbers have been very high in recent years. Peak levels. I suspect a mental health crises. — Moses

The supply of guns has increased substantially in this last decade, as I've shown in a previous chart.

Guns sold in the last two years went from an average of 1 million a month to 2 million a month. 2021 was the second highest year since 2000 for gun sales.



This has also been studied. The evidence is clear: it's guns. This is why the US is an outlier compared to other developed countries. Your gut feelings about "suspecting" a mental health crisis notwithstanding.

You bore me. — I like sushi

Says the guy who, after a tragedy caused by the sickening amount of guns in this country, wants to "rationally" inquire about literally everything else.

Be bored somewhere else.

We can talk about how likely it is for a government to misbehave to where a large part of the citizenry is willing to take up arms against it, but if that were to happen the army isn't going to stop it. — Tzeentch

There have been plenty of government overthrows in countries that don’t have close to the amount of guns the US does. Besides, guns weren’t needed to take over the Capitol building last year. Just a few thousand imbeciles whipped up into a frenzy.

Bottom line: Control the gun supply and harshly regulate accessibility. 400 + million guns is grotesque.

Well … no. When it comes to homocides the US is WAY ahead. I have actually looked at the stats too you know ;)

True, around 80% of those are gun related — I like sushi

So maybe it’s not guns, because we’re more violent than other countries for some cultural reason — and definitely not because of guns.

I have no clue as to why you’d want to come to this thread with hypotheticals when this problem is cut and dry. If you’re not a gun fetishist, what’s your point? “Maybe it’s not the guns”? Or “let’s talk about mental health”?

Come on.

It addresses all that. The US is no more violent, has no more mental illnesses, and has no more crime than other developed countries. And even excluding the US, the same pattern emerges; the more guns there are the more mass shootings there are. Which is fucking obvious. — Michael

Absolutely.

Take the US out of the picture and ask the same question: is country X exceptional? Why are there so many people who want to kill? Must be video games or culture or …

We should treat people with mental illness. We should have better healthcare. We should improve our culture and conditions. In the meantime: control the gun supply and the availability of guns.

Flood any country on earth with guns and you’ll get more deaths by guns, more mass shootings, etc.

Simple and obvious to any rational observer who hasn’t been sucked into this false “debate.”

This is a philosophy forum so it might be worth considering that the US has a different culture to other cultures around the world.

I am being rational. — I like sushi

No, you’re being incredibly irrational.

It has been considered, and studied in fact. What you’re asking me to do is ignore the glaringly obvious for the hypothetical. Maybe the US is an outlier for some completely mysterious reason— sure. Maybe that’s it. Maybe God hates us more— who knows?

Anything to avoid the rationality we employ on any other issue that hasn’t been engineered to be controversial by powerful interests.

It’s incredible. In any rational society, it’s obvious what the problem is. Here, it’s “perplexing.” “What is causing this?!”

It definitely has NOTHING to with the 400 million guns.

it is. — Moses

It isn’t. Stop the gun supply, and you lower mass shootings.

blaming it all on gun culture is not accurate. — Moses

he showed many red flags. — Moses

The United States, like every other country, has people with mental health issues. They are often a product of bad conditions and show warning signs.

The difference is the amount of guns. I’ll repeat this as many times as necessary. Michael posted at length an article that cites research on this issue.

The issue is the supply of guns. Government can very easily control and regulate this— as many other countries have done.

Mental health.

Second amendment as holy writ.

Arming teachers (i.e., MORE guns).

Viet Cong.

Protecting ourselves from big government.

“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
_____


Just off the top of my head. Expect all of the above from the gun fetishists. :yawn:

Meanwhile, a lot more kids will have to die.

we all want these shootings to stop but the enforcement aspect is very very difficult. — Moses

No it isn’t. It’s only difficult in this country because of the fetishizing of the 2nd amendment and cultivation of gun culture. The NRA has had enormous political power for decades. They’ve done such a good job brainwashing the population that even if they disappeared, the gun obsession would continue.

Like I said, what if guns were taken out of circulation yet the degree of violence continued with cases of stabbings that effectively made little difference to the kill count? — I like sushi

Is this supposed to be serious?

“What if”? We know the answer. Look around the world. Less guns, less mass shootings. Same rates of mental illness.

Making this obvious problem about mentally illness is an NRA talking point. Stop imitating Ted Cruz.

My point is why everyone is obsessed with this debate rather than focusing more carefully on what drives someone to kill in the manner they do in the US whilst in other countries this kind of thing is rare. — I like sushi

The reason for these deaths is the gun supply. You have mental health issues around the world. The US is an outlier on deaths and mass shootings because of the amount of guns combined with the ease of access/ownership to guns.

Speculation about what drives people to do what they do — who knows. Upbringing, culture, material conditions, lack of healthcare, poor education, abuse/neglect, etc. True, the US is awful in many respects — without guns. Add hundreds of millions of guns, including assault weapons, into the mix — with very few regulations — and you have a recipe for exactly what we see.

All enabled by those who have been brainwashed by the weapons manufacturing industry to fetishize guns and the 2nd amendment. We can be real men if we own one. We can defend ourselves — like the Vietnamese — when Big Government comes for us one day. Etc. You see them crawling out from under their rocks right here on the forum.

It is exactly what would stop it. — Tzeentch

No, it would do nothing to stop it.

What you’re doing is repeating propaganda. You’ve been sold an idea, and a silly one. It’s a fantasy created to justify the grotesque amount of guns in the United States.

All people like you do is enable the continued killing of children. That’s all.

Given the actions of governments world-wide over the past few years I would beg to differ. — Tzeentch

And owning an assault weapon will do nothing to stop it anyway. This is just another bullshit excuse for the grotesque amount of guns in the US.

Stop repeating gun manufacturer propaganda.

We have more shootings because we have more guns. The manufactured “debate” about this is over. Guns should be heavily regulated. Bringing back the assault weapons ban would be a start.

All proletarians are wage-laborers, but not all wage-laborers are proletarians. — Moliere

I include anyone who makes a wage and isn’t an owner part of the proletariat. There can be gradations, but it’s on par with white and blue collar, upper middle and middle class, etc.

Nothing will change. That was obvious 10 years ago. So don’t look for it.

It was then that our elected “leaders” decided gun manufacturing sales were more important than childrens’ lives.

So like everything else in this stupid country, we’ll have to keep waiting for things to get so bad that to do nothing will trigger a mass revolt. I’m thinking something like a Sandy Hook every week. That may work. A few months/years is apparently too long an interim. But who knows? Maybe every day is needed.

Same with climate change, incidentally. Evidently once-in-a-generation storms, floods, wildfires, droughts, and temperatures isn’t quite “rock bottom” enough.

You have to be in awe of the power of ruling class propaganda.

This war seems to be dying down a bit. I’m hopeful for a ceasefire within a few months.

The consequences of this war will be felt for years to come. That’s the only certainty I can see.

In the end, one has to be dumbfounded by the stupid, stupid move on Putin’s part. To say nothing about the immorality.

Also great to see bipartisan support for the US government actively contributing to, and benefiting from, this atrocity. Comforting to know some things never change.

In unrelated news: Lockheed stock has surged nearly 13% since mid February. Chevron about 30%. Thankfully neither industry has much pull in Washington.

Woah, a pro war puff piece in The Atlantic. What a surprise! — Isaac

It’s a pity— I’ve been impressed with the Atlantic in recent years.

bourgeoisie/proletariat and specifically *not* employer/worker. — Moliere

The proletariat are thems who are paid just enough to live and make sure their kids live long enough to become workers themselves and start the process all over again. If you have more than that then even if you have nothing to sell but your labor you're a worker -- but not a proletarian. — Moliere

The proletariat are wage-laborers. I'm not sure why you're restricting the usage to those who are "paid enough to live and make sure their kids live long enough."

From CM, footnotes by Engels:

1. By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour.

By proletariat, the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live.

Emphasis mine.

A better argument might be what some call the managerial class, a class below the owners, being somewhat separate from your average worker despite also being an employee of the owner class. There's a case to be made for that, and I think Michael Albert has written about this. Otherwise I don't see much merit in your re-defining the terms.

"Guns flow in this country like water, and that's why we have mass shooting after mass shooting, and, you know, spare me the bullshit about mental illness. We don't have any more mental illness than any other country in the world. You cannot explain this through a prism of mental illness because we're not an outlier on mental illness, we're an outlier when it comes to access to firearms and the ability of criminals and very sick people to get their hands on firearms. That's what makes America different."

Chris Murphy

If you are going to use historical precedence to justify your argument you ought to look at actual examples of US militia fighting against and being defeated by superior federal forces. US militia uprising are not the Viet Cong. They are not the Taliban. Otherwise, the argument that 2A is a viable bulwark against some sort of abstract military takeover remains a vague hypothetical in contradistinction to the tangible and on-going problem of gun violence and mass shootings that currently plague the country. We are sacrificing tens of thousands of lives to firearms each year in order to shelter an adult fantasy. — Maw

Hear hear.

I didn’t mention you NOS. I’d get more out of talking to a fork. Carry on railing against big government — you’re doing noble work.

Must be nice latching onto slogans, cult-like, all of your life. "Government is the problem." Easy, safe, and designed as to be impossible to falsify.

Except when Trump is in office. Then government isn't the problem. Then it's the deep state.

I have no idea what you’re talking about at this point. I’m not asking you to waver in anything, nor did I follow your conversation with Streetlight, nor am I avoiding anyone with a Ph.D. You’re the one who seems to want to argue what was initially a complimentary response. I was brainstorming possible reasons for the “lack of understanding of capitalism.” My mistake for assuming you were sincere, I guess.

In case you’ve forgotten:

Edit 2: I think it exposes my lack of understanding of capitalism. This is the only sane explanation I can come up with.
— L'éléphant

It's commendable that you admit this rather than pretend the opposite. I think our way of life (including economic way of life) often gets overlooked precisely because it's taken for granted -- like gravity. "Just how things are." When challenged or questioned, it takes some getting used to. — Xtrix

Odd that you want to pick a fight with me for no reason.

Could you tell me why that is surprising to you? — L'éléphant

It’s not surprising. That’s my point.

I brought up Marx because he is a well known observer of capitalism, which is what this thread is about. You said you were struggling with understanding this thread. I think one reason could be that you’re unfamiliar with certain analyses of capitalism which much of this thread takes for granted.

Frankly I’m not interested in discussing this further. If it doesn’t apply to you, fair enough. I don’t care.

I'm afraid it's not clear to me then what you're proposing. Could you expound on it? Thanks. — Benkei

Sure. I’m only proposing democratizing the workplace. Two points on this:

1) I eschew “stakeholder capitalism” because of the connotations, as mentioned above to Isaac.

2) more importantly, I don’t consider worker ownership or community ownership to be a form of capitalism. While it will still involve private property, profit, and markets— it will be run democratically, rather than oligarchically (which is our current business governance model).

If by stakeholder capitalism you mean democracy at work, the entire community being involved in business, etc., that’s fine — then it’s just a matter of usage and personal preference. I’m thinking this is probably the case based on what you’ve written in the past.

This question is an important one. It was also handled thoroughly about 2,500 years ago by Aristotle.

Better to start a thread about his Ethics than attempt to reinvent the wheel.

I think there’s simply not enough time in life to waste rehashing long-refuted nonsense.

Anyone who wants to engage with it just hasn’t read enough yet.

Seems that there are four greens in the House of Reps, along with a block of environmentally-minded independents whom the Labor Party will need on side; and a surge towards Green representation in the Senate. The stupidity of the previous ten years will be reversed. — Banno

Music to my ears.

Capitalism is something that rarely gets challenged, even today. You have to really seek it out. Marx's name gets thrown around a lot, of course, but much like other classics -- highly praised and rarely read. This could be a reason for the difficulty or lack of understanding?
— Xtrix
Thank god I wasn't thinking of Marxism. — L'éléphant

The fact that you weren't thinking of it was my point, really.

And I don't know if this is even relevant to say, but I took economics in graduate level and political economic system in the undergraduate level, so I'm pretty sure my confusion did not come from that. — L'éléphant

What does "that" refer to? Not reading Marx?

I would say this comment isn't relevant though, yes. You could have a Ph.D. in economics and not been assigned a word of the critics of capitalism. If anything an education in this matter, on average, would make it harder to understand this thread.

It won't be profit over everything sure. For those part of that specific corporation. But they will continue to externalise costs where they can and there's also the nimby-principle. Don't get me wrong, I think stakeholder capitalism is already an improvement but I don't think it's enough. An additional step I would include is a dynamic equity system. That way every employee becomes a capitalist. — Benkei

I'm not really talking about stakeholder capitalism though.

I don't think I'd say I'd want to make every employee a capitalist either, really. But that's a tricky one. I think I wouldn't want to because the worker, by owning the factory he works in, has now taken control over his workplace. The capitalist is simply the owner/employer who doesn't have to set foot in the factory.

The problem is that it when both sides are out of steam for an offensive, it can just become static as before (in 2015-2022). — ssu

Perhaps then peace negotiations can start again and we can get a ceasefire, at the very least.

first, that employer-employee relations predated capitalism: contractual obligations between workers and employers can be found all through antiquity and the middle ages, even if not the predominant form of labour — Streetlight

Couldn’t feudal arrangements then be counted as a form of employment between lord and vassal? This relationship was a kind of contract too.

Like I said, this is a matter of definition. Perhaps it's all just a matter of scale, in the end. I think the word predominant there is important. Once that relationship rises to the degree that it does -- to the point where it's central to the socioeconomic system -- then we can call it a new system. It's no longer feudalism, even if feudal relationships still exist.

while I agree that the predominance of capitalist-worker relations do track with the advent of capitalism, they, again, follow from the dispossession of the means of production (farms, looms, equipment, institutions of learning and apprenticeship), and only once they are taken possession of by capitalists who turn it all into pure capital: means of profit making. Again, the market-dependence comes first. — Streetlight

As you rightly point out in the title of this thread, markets aren't capitalism and in fact pre-date capitalism. It's market-dependence that you highlight. But market-dependence follows from the existence of markets in the first place. Yet this fact doesn't negate your point that there's something sui generis about the emergence of this dependence.

I think I'm making a similar point about the employer/employee relationship that emerged. True, dispossession of the means of production comes first -- as does the idea of property, ownership, profit, etc. -- but the fact that it is a necessary condition doesn't make it a sufficient condition to define capitalism by. (After all, we can imagine a worker-owned company being market-dependent too.) I would only say that I think it's imprecise to say an enterprise is still a capitalist one without the capitalists.

As with forms of government, I think the classification comes down to who has the power -- viz., who gets to make the decisions in a state or in an economy. In the case of the latter, the current world economy is dominated by the corporations. Corporations are controlled by their owners, and are governed undemocratically, as essentially an oligarchy. The owners are capitalists. Let's get rid of the capitalists. No capitalists, no capitalism.

No doubt there will still be the question of production, markets, profit-making, private property, and so on. But that's another discussion, in my view.

These distinctions are primarily analytic before they are strategic. — Streetlight

Agreed.

how mitigate market-dependency? — Streetlight

enable and institute a robust thriving baseline from which people can participate in their communities: this means housing for all (and if this means abolishing housing rent, then so be it), deep and well oiled healthcare systems not subject to profit, expansive and accessible public transport systems (which means eliminating car dependency and vastly mitigating oil dependency!), the absolute commitment to food and water security, which would in turn mean agricultural production that itself is not dictated by market imperatives and so on. — Streetlight

I'm in favor of all of the above, wholeheartedly. So regardless of how we define matters, we can agree on the goals. Any steps leading towards these ends would be beneficial, no matter how we taxonomize things.

I see what you mean, though what you'd need here is stakeholder ownership, rather than just worker ownership... but I suppose if you define capitalism that way, then yes, eliminating the owning class would eliminate capitalism. I'm just not sure capitalism is sensibly defined that way. — Isaac

Sure. Worker ownership is just one logical step towards a more inclusive system. There should be community involvement on every level, ultimately.

I try to avoid "stakeholder" because of the recent rise of "stakeholder capitalism," endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable. But your point is taken.

private property can exist in a non-capitalist system as well...as can markets...as can profit-making.
— Xtrix

Well... with limits. It's not the mere existence of private property that's a problem, but the effect of private property in constraining the decisions people make to those dictated by a market. One only need remove that private property which is effecting that constraint. — Isaac

Sure, but removing private property is not necessary to eliminate capitalism, in my view. It certainly would, but there are other ways you can do so as well. If workers own a business, that's a form of private property too. But that takes away the power dynamic central to corporate governance that (again, in my mind) basically defines capitalism. From workers you can go to a community, like a town. One can go to town hall meetings across the United States and give input/talk to representatives, etc. No reason this cannot extend to things like utilities (and often do) or supermarkets or drugstores or factories. There are all kinds of ways to organize business -- I'm not even particularly knowledgeable about it, but it happens.

while worker control doesn't solve the problem of private property, it would be tending in that direction.
— Xtrix

Interesting. I kind of see the two as quite separate (although I agree that worker control is a great thing). How do you see them as linked? — Isaac

For the reasons above. I think of it much like a form of government. Easier to get to, say, direct democracy from a republican form of government than it would be from an absolute monarchy. Right now the economy, as a system, is governed as a plutocracy. If we chip away at that by giving workers control, while we're not eliminating private property, we can see that it's not as big a jump to make towards a system run by the community as a whole.