Whereas in "civilized" countries, a woman needs to live up to a certain standard — baker

Well no, she doesn't. Or, when she does, that is wrong. You can't have a society in which a woman can wear a nun's habit or a microskirt and stilettos and at the same time insist that women are forced to wear a microskirt and stilettos. That makes no sense.

I get that there are pressures to conform to fashion, peer groups, etc. But one has the freedom to not opt into that.

How about the situation in "civilized" countries, where a woman who doesn't wear make-up and who doesn't wear high heels and a suffficiently short skirt or tight pants, has fewer chances of getting a job in comparison to the woman who is dressed that way (both competing for the same position, and not as a dancer in an adult bar)?
Women are "free" not to wear make-up etc. at their risk. — baker

Unequally bad, yes. I'm not sure it's a thing these days, but it was in my lifetime. However even that is about how one dresses for work, not how one dresses when out and about generally. It was wrong, but qualitatively different from the need to wear a chador outdoors at all times for fear of violent attack.

Not a clue. — Kenosha Kid

Actually, I do have a clue, and this is quite general and unpopular: don't do business with dictatorial countries that believe rights depend on demographic. We prop up regimes that oppress women, homosexuals, and ethnic minorities then complain that other countries follow suit.

Why don't you care? — baker

I've never cared what people choose to wear. Clothes just aren't that interesting to me.

And how do you propose to do that?? — baker

Not a clue. But that doesn't mean we should perpetuate the myth that it's a question of choice when the choice is often a chador or a face full of acid. If and when the same women are at no risk whatever they wear, then we can ask what their free choices symbolise, if we care (which I don't).

There is too much socialism in this system now. Add more and it will become even more inefficient. This system desperately needs to cleans itself by going through a massive recession (depression) which will allow it to at least work the best it can. Right now it's a complete farce, a combination of mafia politics and corporatism. — synthesis

Such as..? Actually, this is derailing ssu's thread. It would be welcome on mine though if you want to grind it out, old man :p

What I'm concerned about though is how women are in a wardrobe dilemma. Dress in a burqa and it's a sign of oppression at the hands of men, dress in a mini-skirt and it's again that. So, are we supposed to look for the Aristotelian golden mean here? A knee-length skirt and mutatis mutandis other clothing items? — TheMadFool

There's a difference, though, between advocating against wearing the chador for symbolic reasons and advocating against forcing it upon women for political reasons. Other than monocultural misfits (e.g. your Brexit-baiting crowd), I don't know that anyone objects to the chador itself. It's knowing that chances are the woman is wearing it out of fear of violence that is objectionable.

By contrast, the fear of being judged as unfashionable is of little concern. It's voluntary as to whether you care about that stuff and hang out with other people who judge you on that stuff. It's comparable to a fear of being judged as not knowing enough Tolkien lore. Who gives a rat? :D

Anyway, coming to the main issue the OP is about, why aren't Christian nuns allowed to dress in miniskirts? In other words, why are mini-skirts and bikinis inappropriate for nuns? — TheMadFool

Well, I think they should! You're right, in both cases there's an element of chastity and discretion. But for nuns it's something they want to do. And if a Muslim woman wants to wear a chador, they absolutely should feel free to. As I said, remove the fear of violence for not wearing it and see what happens.

What can I do, there's still a smidgen of a romantic in me, thinking that politics ought to be about, you know, getting things done. Silly me! — baker

Oh, I don't object to the sentiment :)

How does this refer to anything I said? — baker

By contradicting:

My point is that if one doesn't believe in objective morality, then how can one hope to get along with others in the pursuit of some common goal (which is, presumably, what politics is about — baker

Politics does not proceed on the basis of a common morality.

"For the most part, people pursue their own interests rather than a common good."
Dismissing politics right off the bat! Yay! — baker

It's becoming increasingly clear that you have an idiosyncratic idea of what politics is.

My point is that if one doesn't believe in objective morality, then how can one hope to get along with others in the pursuit of some common goal (which is, presumably, what politics is about, ie. the pursuit of some common goal)? — baker

You don't need to believe that any differences between yourself and others must inevitably be their moral failures in order to negotiate with them. Diplomacy is itself a policy. For the most part, people pursue their own interests rather than a common good.

Can you have a look at my reply to baker above? — TheMadFool

Honestly, I think the idea that bikinis and miniskirts are one pole and burqas another is overstated. Fashion is not the opposite of oppression. Demand for fashion is manufactured. Bikinis are a product of manufacturers needing to sell wares with less material. Miniskirts are likewise a manifestation of the focus on selling cheap, disposable product to the working classes. It's still people wearing what they're told to wear, it's just a different group telling them, one of which has the option to say no without fear of violence.

If you're talking about index funds here like ssu was, then this collapse doesn't happen, at least not overall. — Pfhorrest

I was talking particular stocks rather than entire portfolios. ssu was questioning the sanity of self-inflating stocks within a portfolio, not of moving investment within it, e.g. how a company like Tesla can become so overvalued.

You need to widen your perspective a little bit. Most young people act as if the ten years they can remember the the entirety of human history.

We happen to be in a low point, no doubt, but these things are cyclical. You need to study up on your economic cycles and history, in general. And believe me, socialism is not going to save anybody more than the time it takes to destroy whatever generated the wealth it absconds. — synthesis

Thanks for the uplifting (if somewhat simultaneously condescending) presumption of youth, I'll take it. :)

I'm well aware that the capitalist clergy take all the credit for progression in technology, medicine, worker's rights, and social investment while championing parties that have to prop up a capitalism that, even in its Moore-esque law of exponentially increasing dubiousness of conduct, cannot support itself. I guess capitalism in the west can take credit for bringing people in the east out of poverty, as ssu frequently points out, but that's no more sustainable than anything else capitalism comes up with. Ultimately it's fortunate that, for now, debt is a lucrative industry, since right now it is debt that keeps that poverty line low.

Is being French a disability? — Baden

I'm glad I'm not the only one wondering this.

Well, it isn't clear to me that we're here to learn whether homosexuality, or being Black, or being Jewish, or being disabled, etc. is or is not a defect. — Ciceronianus the White

:heart: Gotta lotta love to give tonight.

As opposed to a basis in the supernatural? — Michael

:heart:

Kid, it's a miracle that large groups of people are able to do anything besides beat the crap out of each other 24/7. Capitalism is what it is (and has many contradictions), but look at what it has done to lift billions of poor souls out of abject poverty.

You have a better idea? — synthesis

We are already at the point where, for many countries, the benefits of capitalism are waning. My generation is effectively poorer than my parents'. The number of unemployed people and people in poverty is rapidly growing. Life expectancy is starting to fall, and not because of Covid. It is little comfort that the Chinese are doing so well, though more power to them.

It is only promising that there are fewer people in poverty if that is sustainable, and capitalism does not know the meaning of the word 'sustainable'. A better sentiment might be, "Yeah, but it was fun while it lasted" ;)

As for a better idea, yes, a capitalism tempered and augmented by long-termist social policy.

So you're actually saying that if infinite regress is impossible so has to be a necessary existent — BARAA

No, that is not equivalent to what I said. What I said was that a necessary existent is no more impossible than infinite regress. "impossible" oughtn't to be defined as the thing we wish to exclude. It is as reasonable that the universe is eternal as it is that it is necessary. And there are other options to boot (e.g. randomness).

In fact, Avicenna's point of this proof was to prove that one or more necessary beings have to exist so yes I agree with you,this proof alone doesn't prove the uniqueness (oneness) of that being.... — BARAA

:up:

I get that you're after a particular conclusion but there are multiple to this line of reasoning. Infinite regress is one. A cyclic but non-repeating chain is another (e.g. big bounce). A truly periodic chain is a third. Regress to a stationary state a fourth (some inflaton models). A necessary first cause a fifth. An unnecessary but non-contingent first cause a sixth (e.g. quantum shizzle). All possible first causes is a variation of necessary first cause that eliminates the need for a particular cause to be chosen (multiverse). And let's not forget that time is a continuous variable: even a finite history has an infinite number of events (consider the solution to Zeno's paradox). And then there's relativity, which allows for a finite history in our reference frame but a potentially infinite proper history of anything in it.

All of the above are consistent with causality.

You have to keep in mind that all markets are horribly corrupt at present. — synthesis

Horribly being the key word here, not "corrupt". The idea of the free market is that the interests of the business are the same as the interests of the human being who happens to run it. They are meant to be tied. Any divergence of those two by people who espouse the ideal is a corruption. The problem is far more fundamental.

we'll have an infinite regress which is impossible or there will be a first event — BARAA

Infinite regress isn't obviously any more counterintuitive than an uncaused thing.

Either way, that had nothing to do with my criticism.

therefore its cause is a thing not an event — BARAA

That way round it's a circular argument. The issue I took was with how you arrived at a linear chain of things back to an initial thing. Here your explanation is that the initial cause must have been one initial thing.

My point was that how you originally arrived at this is logically invalid. Any given thing may be caused by any number of things, each of which may be the partial cause of any number of other things. There's no path from this to a single initial thing that causes everything else. In fact, quite the opposite.

Taking your conception once again, the things involved were twofold. The things that caused them were each twofold, so fourfold. The things that caused them were each twofold, so eightfold. And so on and so forth.

I'm saying that left wing politically correct positions are adopted for the purposes of causing disruption — counterpunch

Ah. Yeah, I didn't get that at all from what you smoked, I mean wrote.

The problem with politically correct lefty keyboard warriors; apart from their overwhelming ignorance, is their overwhelming ignorance of the implications for society - of their supposed moral goods. — counterpunch

Unexpected conclusion. It's pretty clear you started that whingefest with me misrepresenting JP entirely. Then it ended with me apparently representing him correctly and just being wrong for disagreeing. If you'd written any more, you might have ended up reprimanding me for not being sufficiently opposed to his misogynistic bullshit, who knows.

This appears to conflate objects and events. 'cause' is used synonymously with 'thing', but the cause of a thing isn't another thing: it is an event. The cause of you -- a contingent thing -- is not your mother, but your mother and father getting down to it exactly when they did (your mother's existence being a necessary but insufficient factor in your existence) You don't have a simple, linear chain of things from you back to the creation of the universe, rather an exponentially increasing number of causes involving a finite number of objects.

The idea of a single contingent event being responsible for everything is unshown and unassumed, since there isn't a one-to-one mapping of a thing to its effects. A single non-contingent thing might have had any number of non-contingent effects that where the causes of other, contingent things. Likewise a pluralism of non-contingent things might be reached based on your assumptions.

Really. Where did you come up with that pearl? — synthesis

If the aim is simply to make money, it doesn't matter much what it is you make, if anything. Production is much more abstract than it is for, say, a farmer.

The most reasonable explanation why some stocks are not attached to any normal pricing model of future growth (as with Tesla) is index investing: people invest passively in an fund trying to copy the index, which then means that the most risen stocks are bought...because they have risen in the first place, which then makes the stocks rise in price even more. Which actually doesn't make sense. — ssu

It's much like a pyramid scheme. Each person is willing to pay more than the last because the next will pay yet more, until they don't, then the pyramid collapses. The last tier lose but everyone before them wins.

As such, the value of the stocks is independent of the trading value of the company. And yet it is the former value that dictates executive decisions, not the latter.

Communists may be happy. — ssu

Doesn't seem something they'd be happy about. The above is basically a divorcement of profit from production. It is quintessentially capitalist that production itself becomes a dummy variable.

In order to understand capitalism, you need to put aside your socialist sensitivities.
In capitalism, people are expendable. It's about living for an idea, even if the person living for that idea dies in the process. — baker

The purpose of the thread is not to convert people to capitalism, but to discuss the benefits of pluralism in keeping capitalism sustainable.

In both pictures, women are covered from head to toe. Yet, one is considered the epitome of virtue and the other is seen as the very definition of oppression. — TheMadFool

The punishment for not wearing a nun's habit is not being a nun anymore. The punishment for not wearing the chador ranges from having acid thrown in your face to being beaten to death.

Another difference is that if the nun, whether she is wearing the habit or not, is raped, it is the rapist's fault. If a Muslim woman wearing a chador is raped, it is the rapist's fault. But if a Muslim woman not wearing a chador is raped, it is invariably the woman's fault. She might even be arrested for being raped. Some have described raping women who are not sufficiently covered as a man's duty.

In that context, whether there are women who would choose to wear the chador anyway is rather irrelevant, essentially what-iffing about alternate realities.

:100:

Another, more recent example of the failure of capitalism to protect its own long-term interest is the UK response to the Coronavirus.

In the first wave, the response was late not because government is too sluggish to respond to change, but because it was loathe to do anything that hurt short-term profit. Eventually, it almost did the right thing, even shutting down schools and takeaways, and the infection rate was heading in the right direction. This course had worked for many other countries which eradicated or minimised the virus by similar means.

The government took three bizarre decisions. First, they allowed people in and out of the country, even though they knew the crisis was global. There were occasional quarantine rules and travel bans to and from particular countries, but for the most part, international travel was unregulated. As a result, it didn't import the virus once or twice, but over a thousand times over (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/212093/covid-19-transmission-chains-uk-traced-back/). The Home Office's explanation? It "helped businesses to maintain international connections" and "boosted the economy". The result was a second wave from the Spanish variant that necessitated the tier system before the the UK variant evolved and spread. (Likewise the government was ambivalent about national travel, viz. Dominic Cummings.) That commerce trumped safety and sanity means that that variant is now spreading across the world.

Second, despite the infection rate still being higher than that which necessitated lockdown in the first place, the government ended the lockdown and replaced it with instructions to businesses to manage the virus with no oversight of either the businesses or its customers as to whether they adhered to guidelines.

Third, no matter what happened afterwards, they insisted on keeping schools open rather than investing in remote teaching, eventually making school-age the fastest-rising demographic for infection. Because every time a classmate got a sniffle the whole class had to quarantine (because the government also refused to invest in testing), these children have had no education to speak of for a year. The important thing for the government was not that children got their lessons, but that parents could drop their kids off and go back to work during a pandemic. Schools that did not provide this child-sitting function or local authorities who tried to switch to safer, more useful remote methods were threatened (e.g. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/schools-open-covid-london-tier-3-b1773359.html). The government were clear: parents had to get back to work today, no matter the consequences weeks and months down the line.

By making the short-term interests of corporations paramount, the UK has protracted the harm of the pandemic, leading to a huge number of collapsed businesses (e.g. https://www.business-live.co.uk/retail-consumer/list-shops-fallen-administration-2020-18177619 is just the big name shops). The long-term effects of not handling the pandemic on commerce were easy to appraise. Did they appraise them? Probably not or, if they did, the short-term needs were overriding. Businesses, including airlines, failed anyway despite the short-term expenditure on keeping them going.

The UK's Covid response was another clear case where the short-term concerns of business were diametrically opposed to the long-term concerns of commerce, and where caving to the former created exactly the latter. The pandemic has shown that there is never a good time to have a purely capitalist party in power, and the need for a state that is more interested in the sustainable health of its business than the fastest way to make a buck.

Without parties we get the single-party politics of fascism and communism. In democratic countries, at least one can choose to assemble with others of like mind and influence politics. He can also, like myself, remain independent of any single party. — NOS4A2

This is the real problem: extremists think in extremes. The options you see are: single-party authoritarianism or everyone in the country picking one of two sides. But those are not the only options available. One could still have political parties without people acting like mindless idiots with no ability to consider their position on a case-by-case basis.

I have never once denounced partisanship, a fundamental feature of democracy — NOS4A2

Partisanship is not a fundamental feature of democracy; it is the fundamental corruption of democracy: suspending your own right to vote in your interest by instead subscribing wholesale to the views of someone else.

Everybody is always arguing for and against something. There are no absolutes in thinking.

You want as much freedom as is possible. Don't you? — synthesis

Yes, which is more freedom than we have now.

The Czech Republic is not socialist either. They replaced the word “socialist” in the name Czechoslovak Socialist Republic with the word “federal” back in 1990, shortly before the country dissolved. — NOS4A2

That was my point.

I kind of agree with this, but I think that's down to how the OP frames the problem.

As Khaled and others have said, the way this is cast looks like the difference between 1 & 5 is whether you agree with it. That's not very satisfactory.

I think it's better to consider it in terms of mode of discussion.
1. Does the speaker have respect for facts?
2. Is the speaker consistent in their view?
3. If their assumptions are biased (which isn't necessarily bad in itself), does the speaker identify those biases?
4. Is the speaker looking to start a dialogue?

I'd then suggest that the scale runs from answering Yes to all four, to answering No to all 4. Not sure of the order. Not sure it matters. Someone for whom it's No across the board is likely a bad faith propagandist looking to recruit naive fence-sitters. Doesn't much matter whether they're a raving fascist or a raving communist, they're beyond engagement.

It will just so happen that your 5s will be mostly No (I think).

One million Polish immigrant workers coming to the UK alongside other EU immigrant do have an effect and building new homes likely hasn't kept pace with the demand. — ssu

It certainly hasn't. However when this got too much, the UK got an exemption from immigration from new countries joining the E.U., such as Romania. Immigration has been used to prop up an aging population for some time, more an accident of the baby boom.

This doesn't necessarily lead to an increase in house prices, however, since for the most part these aren't people with a lot of capital. House prices had already tripled recently when I bought my first house, prior to Brexit-baiting influx of eastern Europeans. It undoubtedly increases rent prices some, which in turn drives up house prices, and that first housing bubble was driven entirely by housing developers and the buy-to-let scheme. My experience based on my Lithuanian friends was that this influx was mostly young people who house-shared.

What actually happened was that my parents' generation was the one fixated on home ownership. Their wealth, plus the higher salaries during the "golden age" (Blair and Brown), plus Labour's social mobility initiatives, plus deregulation of the banks all led to a massive snap-up of property. The number of housing developers shot up as people realised they could by one, two, three houses, wait a while, and sell them at huge profit as others raced to do the same. I was part of that bubble: it put me through my degree, PhD and allowed me to travel around the world.

Those who had the most capital invested the most in the housing market. The number of homes for sale plummeted and the number of landlords and the sizes of their portfolios shot up. Higher house prices pushed up rent; higher rents pushed up house prices. Home builders became more speculative and bullying: the number of unfinished developments is incredible. Any deal they made with local authorities they could just tear up, down tools until those authorities caved to new demands. They demanded protected green field sites from government, refusing to invest in brownfield. They demanded deregulation, and got a lot of it, hence the number of box houses on flood plains in desirable city locations.

Successive governments kept promising an investment in housing, but the private sector made it hard to progress. Instead, houses were converted into poor quality apartment buildings and now a one-bedroom flat in my hometown costs more than twice the end-terrace three-bedroom house I bought: shrinkflation and inflation in tandem. Developers switched from houses to poor quality apartment buildings to exploit this new market.

The die was cast long before the influx of Poles and Lithuanians: the housing market, which didn't really exist a few years prior as an investment market, was already on its typical capitalist pyramid scheme course. A study by the University of Nottingham actually suggests that immigration has a negative effect on house prices. Since it is capital that drives up house-prices, an influx of low-capital residents actually has the opposite effect. The places where housing is still cheap is where you'll find large immigrant communities.

Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything. — synthesis

You seem to be in an odd admixture of simultaneously arguing for and against choice. Total freedom is great, as long as it's exactly the amount of freedom people currently have now.

Perhaps we have different conceptions of “socialism”. I’m speaking of countries, past and present, that explicitly or actively seek to achieve socialism, like Venezuela or Cuba or North Korea. When you say “socialism” do you mean state intervention? — NOS4A2

So "socialist" means "officially socialist at some point in its history irrespective of what it is now" sort of thing? Well then the aforementioned eastern European countries aren't socialist either. There has, for instance, never been an officially socialist country called the Czech Republic. Czechoslovakia, yes.

What do you think about the nationalisation of land and lending of land like what exists in Singapore? — Judaka

My instinct was no but thinking about the UK, few corporations own their own buildings now: they were sold off in the 80s for a fast buck. Is, say, a city council a better landlord than private interests? I'd say probably, since they have a wider purview. Then again, funnily enough, my home town has just purchased its two main shopping malls... just as people have stopped using shopping malls, which just goes to show how stupid you have to be to work for the council. But this wouldn't be an issue if it administered all land already.

Or advocating for a smart tax system and economic redistribution system which allows the many to benefit from our increasingly efficient productivity capacity? — Judaka

Yes, this is what the OP is arguing for, that while capitalists should trust the market to make smart short-term decisions, they need to trust the state to make advised long-term ones. The evidence suggests to me that the market is not equipped to handle its own long-term challenges, and should not stand in the way of state decisions that will. Smart redistribution of wealth is part of that.

People say Socialism exists in Canada and the Scandinavian countries and it does but what actually exists is a mixed economy. Instead of saying "Capitalism is the problem and Socialism is the solution", which leads one to the conclusion that for example, Canada might be trying to abolish Capitalism and replace it with Socialism. It'd be better to talk about what industries or services are mixed and basically, where Capitalism is screwing the average citizen and it might be better for the government to provide an alternative. — Judaka

Exactly where I'm at.

Singapore has a declining birth rate too, yet boasts a 90% homeownership rate ... Hungary and Romania have the highest rates of homeownership in Europe, at 91% and 95% but have birth rates of 1.55 and 1.76 respectively. — Judaka

Sure, and as with Japan, cost of housing and education doesn't seem to be the chief factor. The UK pays pretty decent wages by contrast too. I don't mean that the precise manner in which short-termism manifests itself is generalisable, nor does is it necessarily the sole factor. As ssu pointed out, an inability to afford it is rivalled by a disinclination to compromise one's lifestyle when it comes to people not having children at all (although this is not the same as having fewer children), but then what's driving the adoption of these lifestyles?

Culturally speaking, millennials need to use their 20s at university, building up their career, the average age of having a first child has increased in the majority of developed countries and by five years or more since the 1960s. If your first child is later then the expectation of it being likely to have fewer children is logical. — Judaka

Agreed, but then the minimum educational qualification to get a job is also increasing as corporations move further and further away from in-house training.

While I think economic security could dissuade individuals from starting families, across the board, it does not appear to be the cause or a solution for low birth rates because if it was, why would the US and Sweden have similar birth rates? — Judaka

Also agreed. The issues in the UK and their potential solutions are just an example. In the comments, we've largely been focused on the 2008 economic crisis which is a different example with a completely different solution. The thing in common is an attitude: since the market cannot take care of its long-term interests, social policy, be it redistribution of wealth to key demographics or state underwriting of state-regulated banks, should fill that gap. This shouldn't be seen as an infringement on capitalism but a measure to keep it going without post hoc state intervention. More capitalism, just not in isolation.

There were Victorians producing what we can confidently label "pornography" for sale. It was an up-market trade. Some of it was soft -- from gauzy soft to harder material. What Dodgson was doing might make later observers nervous and squeamish, but it wasn't porn.

The Victorians also liked to make headless photographs. Victorian snuff? More likely they did it because they discovered they could. — Bitter Crank

I feel like no one needs to point out the difference between special effects and making a child strip nude, but if the case need be made, I can get into it.

What would be an interesting consequence of this hypothetical is that unless all the industry leaders got together at some big s.p.e.c.t.r.e-style conference to set this year's stupidity targets, then the process, as an organic one, would eventually undermine their own intentions. — Isaac

I laughed hard. Stupidity targets sounds so official.

Millgram (of obedience study fame) had a really interesting way of looking at issues like these (the system undermining its own existence). He posited that our economic society has become sufficiently complex that no individual can clearly see the bigger picture of what success in their particular job is actually for. The consequence being that each individual can quite vociferously pursue a take which actually undermines their own position simply because their task (and more importantly their reward structure) is couched in small-picture terms, yet the consequences of their success at it affects the big picture. — Isaac

Describes subprime mortgages exactly. Big risks, big rewards, no short-term consequences.

Do you think everybody should succeed? — synthesis

No, that's what I'm arguing for: the ability to let casino banks fail, while giving customers the option of security. My suspicion is that most would tell capitalism to go swivel and stick with lower risk, lower short term return, higher security, state-underwritten banks and building societies. People cast capitalism as freedom of choice, but it depends on a lack of good options, ignorance, and misinformation. Pluralism is real choice.

That's just the way people are. No system is going to root that out [and as it turns out, the people who chose themselves to be the saviors always end up being more corrupt than the original thieves]. — synthesis

That seems like a terrible argument for backing the worst actors with consistency.

The best chance we seem to have is in allowing people the opportunity to do the best they can for themselves and their families. — synthesis

Which necessitates allowing people to choose security over short-term profit. Removing their ability to choose by limiting their choices to the worst possible does not chime with the above sentiment.

What I said was think more people try to escape from socialist states than move to them. — NOS4A2

Are there numbers for people trying to leave? Canada is pretty socialist. Is there a mass exodus or are Canadians restrained?

But that's what I mean, if they're already doing it, there's no headway for the future. The short-termism of capitalism demands that, if further profit can be made, it be made now. I don't think backup plans are a thing.

I suppose an obvious possibility, likelihood even, is that if and when the market contracts, the corporate sector will lobby for reduction in tax, including income and capital gains for high earners and windfalls, increased taxpayer investment in the private sector, and a hacking away at regulations. This in fact seems inevitable now I'm saying it. Advertising could be more effective by being unregulated. Smoking might become healthy again \o/

Looking at Japan, the decline in birthrate appears to have a number of causes, chief among them that, perhaps for cultural reasons, it didn't weather the postwar flood of women into the workforce as well as it might have. Japan appears not to have had much in the way of a postwar baby boom, so has had a declining birthrate for a long time. The female recruitment pool was obviously helpful for employers in this respect, but their exploitation of that seems to be scuppering their own futures.

People are increasingly on low wages in temporary jobs, making orthodox family planning less attractive. The problematic short-termism is again evident: corporations exploiting an increased working pool react in a way that in the short term increases profit but in the long term destroys that pool and part of its consumer base. The latter might not be so terrible except that this downward trend in consumer numbers is global. The private sector seems reluctant to to implement parenting-friendly incentives which is no surprise if they're also unwilling to offer decent wages and job security.

It seems like this has hit Japan particularly hard for cultural reasons. Men have not adapted at all to modern living, and expect women to be full-time workers, full-time mothers, and full-time homemakers. Since this is unfeasible (and grossly unfair), family planning is likewise unfeasible.

https://www.eastwestcenter.org/publications/low-fertility-in-japan%E2%80%94no-end-in-sight

So basically softcore child porn is fine: it's just the hard stuff that's wrong? What if drugs are used so that the child doesn't remember being molested? What if the photographed child becomes traumatised at a later age? Does it suddenly become immoral, say, 12 years after the event?

Imagine if one of those girls that Carroll photographed was, say, 3 months under the age of consent - 16, say. Then photographing her would certainly be suggestive of paedophilia, — Wayfarer

Just to clarify, this is not paedophilia (which is sexual arousal by prepubescent children).

Will Brooker, who also authored Alice’s Adventures: Lewis Carroll in Popular Culture, “Lewis Carroll is treated [by his critics] like a man you wouldn’t want your kids to meet, yet his stories are still presented as classics of pure, innocent literature … Compared to some of our celebrities—the sportsmen, film directors and singers who commit real crimes like assault and abuse and are still welcomed back by fans—Lewis Carroll was a regular saint.” — FrankGSterleJr

"Real" crimes is very loaded, isn't it. I'm so used to my male heroes in the arts turning out to be assholes and monsters that it would shock me if anyone I admired artistically turned out to be a decent man.

A boring, unsexy thing called social liberalism, where the state tries to guarantee a reasonable standard of life for all citizens but still allows for personal initiatives. But maybe not the paradise for young offspring of lawyers, artists or capitalist, seeing saving the world as a possible meaning of life, daytime work working hours unthinkable. — Ansiktsburk

:up:

We used to have that in the country where I live, considered leftist by most US people. But academical family born leftist have spoiled it all with dreams. Now racism is worse than ever and our political system is in chaos. A bit anarchistic, maybe. People shoot each other. They did not use to do that here. — Ansiktsburk

Where are you?

As mentioned above, I bet the people in Reykjavík are a little more careful these days when doing their banking. This is a wonderful thing. I know that people in the U.S. could seem to care less who they bank with...not such a good thing. — synthesis

Well, giving people a choice between caution and recklessness is what I'm arguing for. There's no point people being careful if they don't have much choice. Either way, Iceland is an example of how bad things can get when the system is left to its own devices, not how robust the system is.

It is the government interfering in the markets that makes capitalism inefficient. If nothing else, and despite the fact that is human beings at the controls, it is a very efficient system. — synthesis

That ideology was presumably what your Iceland example was supposed to demonstrate. That didn't work.

The alternative is to make the remaining population so stupid that they'll keep buying the same shit over and over again with the increased wages they're getting form a better employment market...

...I wonder if we can muster any evidence of that happening... — Isaac

Same thought occurred, yeah, but as you say that's already happening. I would have thought if they could do it more, they would. How many iPhones can you release in a year before idiots stop queueing around the block the day before release day? :rofl: