We as members of the far left are asking: How did we lose? What did we do wrong? — John Doe

You'd need a party to represent you to be able to have done anything wrong and you live in the wrong country for that. If you're under the illusion the US has a leftist party, then you need to travel abroad more.

So, the Trump administration is pissed off at Trudeau but after reading 5 articles trying to divine what it was Trudeau said, I'm still non the wiser. Did anybody find out why?

that's a definition, which I disagreed with above. Stating it's nonsense isn't an argument. If I take 5 years longer to become better at chess than you, people will think I'm more intelligent than you irrespective of the speed at which you initially developed. An IQ test tests results not learning ability any way so I'm not even certain you base this on. The ability to learn is a type of intelligence but learning languages is totally different than learning football and cannot be caught in a single measurement.

If IQ test measure any type of intelligence, it is only abstract thinking. There are quite obviously different types of intelligence. People that are bad at studying (language, mathematics, abstract thinking) might be excellent sportsman or craftsman. The idea that the latter do not require "intelligence" is, I think, unnecessarily restricting its defintion. I see intelligence as the application of a person's ability (whether innate or acquired) to accomplish a task in a manner exceeding the average person's ability to accomplish said task. If you're average at a particular task, that doesn't make you unintelligent as a whole.

The societal problem with IQ tests results in judging people as being intelligent/unintelligent as a whole, which is unwarranted and cruel as it suggests intelligence is mostly innate. I strongly disagree with that and would suggest that the limit to someone's abilities are innate in many circumstances, the extent to which you can reach those limits depends on practice. And I dislike the English "practice makes perfect" because I don't believe in perfection but if you'd take the Dutch version, it would translate to "practice bears art". Art in the sense of craftmanship and mastery.

Keep watching. You'll see. — Dalai Dahmer

Ah, so you admit that what you claim hasn't yet been borne out by the facts. I guess that's something.

He is fumbling all about the place because he knows he is caught. The whole investigation is falling apart and has been for some time. — Dalai Dahmer

No, he's not fumbling. You just refuse to take his initial statement at face value as only pertaining to the report. And then when he tells you "that's not what I said nor meant" you come out claiming you know better than Clapper himself what he meant, whereas for a casual reader like myself it's pretty clear what he means.

Ii has been a case of investigating a person rather than investigating a crime. — Dalai Dahmer

The remit of the Müller investigation is quite clear and broader than an investigation in a specific crime. appointment of special counsel

No crime has been identified.

Crime is what is supposed to be investigated which goes for every individual. — Dalai Dahmer

Right. So suspicious behaviour should be ignored because we cannot link a specific crime with it? I really hope you never get into law enforcement with that idea of what investigations are supposed to accomplish.

This whole farce, remember, is an "insurance policy" in case Hillary lost the election. — Dalai Dahmer

Müller's investigation has so far resulted in 22 plea deals and indictments. Hardly a farce.

As I said, you continue to be a prime example of an American whose brain shuts off when somebody on his team gets attacked. You're confusing loyalty with stupidity.

It wouldn't be a safe bet, but that's irrelevant.

If I offer you one free lottery ticket if you correctly guess heads and two free lottery tickets if you correctly guess tails then tails is the better bet even though equally likely. — Michael

Ok, I can see that but that seems a meta-position. I thought this was about what credence Beauty gives to the question. That makes the difference to me. Even if she knows there's a 50% chance of either, the fact that it could already be Tuesday would change my assessment if I were in her shoes.

Ok, let's look at what Clapper said:

Clapper: "We did not include any evidence in our report, and I say, ‘our,’ that's NSA, FBI and CIA, with my office, the Director of National Intelligence, that had anything, that had any reflection of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. There was no evidence of that included in our report." - emphasis mine

Todd: "I understand that. But does it exist?"

Clapper: "Not to my knowledge."

So evidence could exist outside of Clapper's knowledge as he also explains in the below video, which from a later date than Clapper's statements you're basing yourself off but are interpreting totally incorrectly.

Clapper explains that he would not necessarilybe aware of FBI evidence. About the collusion probe:

"So it’s not surprising or abnormal that I would not have known about the investigation, or even more importantly, the content of that investigation."

"So I don’t know if there was collusion or no,"

Clapper is also asked if he agrees with Trump that the Russian investigation is a "witch hunt," to which he replies, "I don’t believe it is."

https://www.msnbc.com/andrea-mitchell-reports/watch/clapper-on-fbi-probe-i-don-t-know-if-there-was-collusion-942514243871

So, yes, you're just peddling partisan bullshit and seem to insist on a reading of Clapper's words he himself cleary didn't mean.

I don't feel that this changes the situation, because although there are two events at which saying Heads can get Beauty killed, if she decides to say Heads, she will never make it to the second event, so the event of being killed at the second waking has a zero probability of occurring. — andrewk

She knows it's either Monday or Tuesday but not which day it is. I understand from previous posts you cannot apply a probability to which day it is. Nevertheless, if it's Tuesday only tails will save her. If it's Monday there's a 50% chance saying tails will save her.

I don't see how answering heads would be an equally safe bet... Also, I sucked at probabilities in high school so don't expect me to understand your answer. :razz: :rofl:

No, you claiming that statement entails there is no such evidence is baseless assertion. Clapper has later clarified he does not know if such evidence exists, merely that the report did not contain it.

I liked the solution I read on the physics forum from PeroK. Let's change the story shall we?

Sleeping Beauty volunteers to undergo the following experiment and is told all of the following details: On Sunday she will be put to sleep. Once or twice during the experiment, Beauty will be awakened, interviewed, and put back to sleep with an amnesia-inducing drug that makes her forget that awakening.

A fair coin will be tossed to determine which experimental procedure to undertake: if the coin comes up heads, Beauty will be awakened and interviewed on Monday only. If the coin comes up tails, she will be awakened and interviewed on Monday and Tuesday. The interview consists of her being asked whether the coin toss was heads or tails, if she guesses wrong, she'll be executed. If she still lives, she will be awakened on Wednesday without interview and the experiment ends.

Given these facts, what answer will Sleeping Beauty give?

If the toss is heads, she will awaken Monday. If she'd then say heads, she lives. If she'd say tails she'd be dead.

If the toss is tails, she will awaken first on Monday. If she then says heads, she dies. If she says tails, she'll live.

If she said tails, she will awaken again on Tuesday. If she then says heads, she dies. If she says tails, she'll live.

In the above we see there's only one event where saying tails gets you killed and two events where saying heads gets you killed. Sleeping Beauty would be smartest to state tails.

what? I couldn't care less about it. It's like watching a soap opera and a decent amount of Schadenfreude to me.

You're an excellent example of what I mean. You come into this thread with a baseless assertion and then try to make fun of people with a different opinion. Newsflash: reasonable people can reasonably disagree but requires everybody involved to respect each other instead of thinking ridicule and sarcasm are appropriate.

That's a misrepresentation of Clapper's statement. The report did not contain any evidence of collusion, which didn't mean no such evidence was with the FBI at the time. Clapper would not be aware of all FBI investigations especially if they did not meet a certain evidentiary level.

As a European it never ceases to amaze me how the brains of Democrats and Republicans switch off any time it concerns one of their "team".

Which people are those exactly?

I also don't care if the side I have aligned myself with is right; I hate it when everyone agrees with one another, it is the most unproductive form of discussion. — Jeremiah

What's unproductive is taking sides and not accepting valid counterarguments.

I understand that some feel the axiom schema of specification resolves the paradox, I was speaking generally to the notion that if it is nonsense we can ignore it. As that argument seems to repeat itself in each of my threads. Mainly I just wanted a thoughtful reply instead of just a brush off and a straw-man. We can't just dismiss mathematical paradoxes as nonsense, that is not a valid solution. — Jeremiah

It's nonsense that you cannot seem to accept the very clear arguments in favour of dismissing some of your purported paradoxes. Just because you're able to state an inherently contradictory sentence, does not mean that expression is a paradox.

Srap was clear:

In the analysis given above, R was not the Russell set, but the set of all Russell sets, and it has been shown to be empty. It does not contain any set that contains all and only sets that do not contain themselves, because there can be no such set.

Therefore if you present the paradox by beginning, "Let S be the set of all sets that do not contain themselves as members," then I will deny the premise. No set can be formed in this way, which is exactly Russell's point. — Srap Tasmaner

"A married bachelor drew a round square" is as meaningful as "the set of all sets that do not contain themselves as members". E.g. nonsense that we can and should dismiss.

How does triage deal with an adult and a child with the same illness and equal likelihood to survive? Or two adults one of which is a man the other a woman? Or two adults, one of which is a KKK-member and the other President Trump?

A lot of you are missing the point when they start applying Zeno's paradox to real world circumstances. It was an allegory for a mathematical argument he was having with other Greek philosophers. It isn't intended as a theory of motion but as argument against the then prevailing ideas that a mathematical line is build up of points (atoms) and a finite number could not be divided infinitely (again, atoms!). It's an argument against there existing an indivisible mathematical quanta that they thought existed at the time.

As a mathematical argument it's quite good and easily imagined but the allegory is just an aid for understanding the mathematical argument not intended as to say anything sensible about the real world. So once you realise it isn't about physical reality, the paradox disappears.

Mathematically, Zeno showed a finite number can be divided infinitely and there's no mathematical "atom" or Planck distance. That's fine. He showed that a line is not a collection of points (a popular view back in ancient Greece). Fine too.

Where it goes wrong, is to translate this mathematical argument into one about physical reality. Zeno wasn't arguing for a physical theory of motion or distance but was making points about mathematics by using an allegory, which shouldn't be taken literally. There isn't a paradox because mathematically he's correct.

For physical motion it's s = d/t and Zeno's formulas are simply the wrong ones to use.

Only in America.

That's the phrase that comes to mind when thinking about the US. The US is a country of extremes, both the good and the bad and that seems to be related to a principle of the "winner takes all". And although I'm not very familiar with Eastern Europe, my experience with West, North Europe, Italy, Spain, is a higher preparedness for consensus building - even if you have 51% of the votes you still take aboard the opinion on the other side. That's probably because majorities are more fragile in multi-party systems.

Europeans also tend to be a bit more reserved on the surface than Americans (US citizens) who in turn have a friendly facade that you need to pierce before you can get to know them. I suppose that's the US way of civility but at least to the Dutch it comes across as fake as the friendliness is always there but doesn't necessarily match behaviour.

Europeans depend on their governments more than Americans do. As a result I think Europeans are less charitable and socially active than Americans are (we're already paying taxes for the government to fix [insert social problem]).

Finally, Europeans have a shit load more free time than Americans do. Better work hours, more vacation, basic social life. Also paid for with aforementioned taxes.

I quit Facebook in 2012 or 2013 or something right about when there were issues with my adblocker. I use Instagram since two years and have a private account, mostly for pics of my daughter (and now son) to share with some friends and my wife.

Recently I wanted a Facebook account to be able to sell some things I don't use anymore. Instead I asked someone else to post on my behalf.

I have Twitter but don't use it and can't seem to delete the account for some stupid technical reason.

That leaves Google. For which I perform this once a year:

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/google-history-search-tracking-data-how-to-delete

I think Meghan got scammed. She kissed a prince but he's still turning into a bald frog.

Israel is a racist state? False. — LD Saunders

Uhuh. Except that it makes a distinction between Israeli citizens based on being Jewish or not and gives more rights to Jewish Israeli citizens than non-Jewish Israeli citizens. Israel discriminates based on religion as the High Court concluded you could lose those benefits if you converted to another religion.

now you're reminding me of philosophical authenticity.

I'm not an economist but a lawyer but here goes.

If you extend that logic a little further, you might ask, “Well, don’t we pay taxes and buy bonds so that the government can spend?” Well, you first have to ask yourself the question, “Where do you get the money to pay taxes and buy bonds?” And the answer is that we can’t get our hands on the currency until the national government spends it. Spending is the prior act in a fiat monetary system; taxing and borrowing are following acts. In effect, the government is only taxing what it has already spent, and it’s only borrowing back money that it has already spent. Once you start pursuing this logic, you realize that most of the propositions that are occupying the current debate around the world are based upon false premises.

This is false. Money is often brought into circulation by banks through fractional reserve banking (but he deals with this later, so baffled he states it like this). This is why fiddling with the interest rate is considered to have an effect on the rate of inflation. The lower the rate, the more banks lend out, the more money they inject in the economy.

Additionally, a government can tax historic wealth, which doesn't require it to first spend either. Finally, a government can (and does!) spend and can create a by and large profit for society. Large-data review suggests the optimum balance between debt-to-GDP ratio is somewhere between 50% and 60%, where government borrowing and expenditure lead to economic positives - e.g. it's leveraging its investment paid for with borrowed money. It turns south quickly above 90%.

If you extend that logic a little further, you might ask, “Well, don’t we pay taxes and buy bonds so that the government can spend?” Well, you first have to ask yourself the question, “Where do you get the money to pay taxes and buy bonds?” And the answer is that we can’t get our hands on the currency until the national government spends it. Spending is the prior act in a fiat monetary system; taxing and borrowing are following acts. In effect, the government is only taxing what it has already spent, and it’s only borrowing back money that it has already spent. Once you start pursuing this logic, you realize that most of the propositions that are occupying the current debate around the world are based upon false premises.

This is worded a bit strangely. Yes, if I introduce an imbalance due to government action currency exchange rates will find a new equilibrium. So I can pursue a low interest rate domestically, curbing possible inflation, which probably strengthens my currency versus other countries, making imports cheaper and your exports for your foreign buyers more expensive, causing capital to flow out of the country (it's spend abroad), lowering circulation of your currency in your own country ultimately causing inflation. So yes, you can pursue "pure" domestic policy but that would be stupid as these "foreign" effects have domestic effects - they're not separate systems.

If you extend that logic a little further, you might ask, “Well, don’t we pay taxes and buy bonds so that the government can spend?” Well, you first have to ask yourself the question, “Where do you get the money to pay taxes and buy bonds?” And the answer is that we can’t get our hands on the currency until the national government spends it. Spending is the prior act in a fiat monetary system; taxing and borrowing are following acts. In effect, the government is only taxing what it has already spent, and it’s only borrowing back money that it has already spent. Once you start pursuing this logic, you realize that most of the propositions that are occupying the current debate around the world are based upon false premises.

Rating agencies are concerned with credit risk. Is a given sovereign capable of paying off its debt? If a country doesn't have revenue through taxes it won't be able to pay its debt so any bonds it issues will be rated as junk. In other words, nobody is going to buy your shitty bonds especially if you've shown a willingness in the past to create (severe) inflation to diminish your debt thereby screwing over investors and the general population at the same time.

The mainstream believes that taxation distorts individual incentives, that government borrowing pushes interest rates up and thereby undermines private sector investment, and that ultimately the danger of government spending is hyperinflation.

Hmmm... Taxation might make certain business with small margins unprofitable to continue, this might be true in a small number of cases but it isn't true across the board. So, mostly false. Government borrowing can push interest rates up but only if it crowds out other market participants. I refer to my earlier percentages as to "healthy" ratios. Hyperinflation is again, only an issue when dealing with excessive debt.

Well, there is certainly a mischaracterization among mainstream economists about how the modern monetary system operates. In mainstream textbooks you’ll find a chapter about the role of the central bank, and that chapter will describe how the central bank’s main function is to control the supply of money through open market operations—that is, buying and selling government bonds to regulate the demand of money relative to the supply. Through this process, the story goes, the central bank is able to target interest rates.

That textbook explanation is quite wrong. Central banks cannot control the money supply. And not many central banks past the mid-1980s gave any credibility to monetary targeting. They realized that central banks can control only interest rates, not the money supply. After this realization, monetary policy became expressed through setting a short-term interest rate by managing the liquidity in the overnight cash markets.

Central banks' influence on the money supply by just increasing base money is very limited. Due to the fractional reserve banking system, short-term interest rate changes are much more effective. The textbook explanation is still correct, it's just that broadening the money base isn't the preferred method any more. Even so, a large increase in the money supply without circulation, regardless of whether its caused by an increase in base money or through changes in the interest rate, will be ineffective. In other words, "money supply" is the wrong thing to look at from the start.

In the US and Japan, for example, there has historically been zero return on those reserves. So banks will try to lend out excess reserves to other banks that may be deficient in reserves. The competition in this market, called the interbank market, starts to drive interest rates down, because the banks will take any return instead of zero. If the central bank allows that process to continue, it loses control of monetary policy.

The way the central bank can maintain control of its target interest rate is to manage that liquidity that’s embodied in these reserves. So if the central bank perceives that the banks consider their reserves to be excessive on any particular day, it drains those reserves out of the system by offering an interest-bearing asset in the form of a government bond. The role of government bonds, then, is to provide the central bank with the capacity to ensure that there is no competitive pressure on the target interest rate. So you can see that the function of government bonds is something quite other than to lend the government money.

Yeah... but no. This will only result in a substitution on the balance sheet of the banks. Cash is exchanged for bonds. Bonds can still be used as a basis for their fractional reserve banking. So the reserves aren't drained because the cash they used for it is the cash that is part of their capital requirements and not what they actually lend out to their customers or on the interbank market. This will have no effect on the interest rates (but crowding out, which he rejected earlier, can!).

The only issues a progressive person might have with public debt would be the equity considerations of who owns the debt and whether there an equitable provision of private wealth coming from the deficits. There is a debate to be had about that, but there is no reason to obsess over the level of outstanding public debt. The government can always honor its debt; it can never go bankrupt. There’s no question that the debt obligations will be met. There’s no risk. What’s more, this debt provides firms, households, and others in the private sector a vehicle to park their saved wealth in a risk-free form.

There is plenty of reason to obsess over the level of outstanding public debt. At certain levels it is unsustainable and becomes a drag on economic activity. Plenty of data in that respect. And no, governments do not always honour their debt, we've had plenty of restructurings triggered because countries could not or were about to be unable to meet their payment obligations. So there's plenty of risk because you could be confronted with a serious haircut on your bond leading to an effective loss for bond holders.

I don't have time for more unfortunately. It might be the format of the article that causes a lot of inaccuracies/mistakes but it doesn't seem very convincing to me.

Influencing skills

I used this often. Takes a lot of practise though.

Most people who describe themselves as conservatives these days are not conservative at all, but reactionary. Conservatism is about when in doubt, sticking with the status quo, not about trying to roll back to an era of decades ago. — andrewk

I have to agree with this. Conservatism has mostly become a catch-all for people resisting some kind of social change. They're all reacting to various things: gay marriage, universal healthcare, emancipation of minorities, other cultures and countries etc. etc. Most self-styled conservatists are fundamentally afraid of losing autonomy or of being left behind. I think that the underlying reality is that for many people times are economically uncertain for most, especially in countries with low social safety nets.

In a sense, modern conservatism has become a fragmented whole and in the perception of others conversatism has become tainted with the worst aspects of the alt-right, race realists or outright racists, mysogynists et. al.

To answer the OP; nobody has a clue anymore what conservatism means nowadays. For most self-identified conversatists this is not informed by deep reflection on political philosophy. There are a few philosophical conservatists out there but they're being outshouted by angry people who don't want change or want to go back to when they were more or less guaranteed of a job.

Ok, I'll try to do that although I kind of don't like posting something without the context of what it is arguing with nearby. — dclements

You can do that too.

Well, make your Ts more prominent if you want a meaningful response. — Hanover

Get glasses, old man.

This confuses me a bit. The right to eminent domain exists in the most capitalist of countries and the taking of the property must be accompanied by just compensation. Taxation is another method of transfer of wealth from the private to the public. Neither of these are antithetical to capitalism, at least not how it's practiced. Even the staunchest libertarian would acknowledge some role for the state and therefore some need for taxation and sharing of wealth. Again, this turns into a matter of degree as opposed to to type. I just don't really know how your Marxist society will be structured and how it can adhere to extreme forms of non-ownership. Even should there be no private right to own land, I'd suspect that the government must provide some possessory right to land (you've got to be somewhere) that cannot be removed without some legal basis. — Hanover

I think taxation and other types of enforced transfer to the State do not result from capital ethical rules and are defendable on other grounds, so in that sense they're out of scope for this thread.

As to the confusion, I'm merely pointing out that if capitalism is private ownership of trade/commerce/production and if private ownership means I can do whatever I want, I can certainly willingly transfer my ownership to the State. But if everybody would be willing to do so, I don't have capitalism any more. So the rules allow for it but the basic ideology of capitalism seems at odds with such an outcome (theoretical as it may be).

Does that contradiction need to be resolved? Since I like consistency I would answer yes so we'd either have to fix the rules, add a rule or amend the ideology. Some options:

1. Add a rule: You're not allowed to transfer ownership to the State. That in itself is a limitation to property rights so seems a bad choice given the framework.
2. Add a rule: A duty on the State to minimise public ownership. That could work (and raises practical issues but let's leave that for now).
3. Amend the ideology: it's not about private ownership but about respect of ownership in itself regardless of whether this is public or private. This could work too.

c) accept pressure and stress as part of the game.
— Benkei
Can you expand more on what you mean here please? — Agustino

The abusive manager, the bad company culture, the 12 hour workday. It's all part of the game so we accept a lot of shit that has an effect on our happiness because everyone around us expects us to just suck it up.

This question overly tips your hand, not that it was hard to decipher the bias, but it detracts from the objectivity of the conversation. The question assumes corporations are immoral. — Hanover

Immortality. Not immorality! :rofl: I'll reply more in depth when I'm behind a computer but thanks so far.

Shooting from the hip: it's adaptability and making your own rules. You can hold on to what you want or what you had. Or you can redefine or postpone goals when confronted with adversity. Unfortunately, a lot of social pressure and nurture leads to perfectionist drives. Instead of defining our own goals a lot of people are led by a) making money as a measure of success, b) hard on themselves to realise that success and c) accept pressure and stress as part of the game. But also being good-looking, having awesome facebook profile pictures of rave parties and whatnot. The drive to perfection is omnipresent for a lot of (young) people.

I work at the ministry of finance and we have a pamphlet for schools:

When are you rich?
- money
- things
- family
- friends

50% is about owning things for a pamphlet trying to emphasise money isn't everything. Well done communications departments.

Meanwhile, a man that works three days a week to be with his family is frowned upon. For a woman it's more-or-less ok although much less so than it used to (why did you have a fancy education to be a stay at home mom?!).

I hope the business stress passes.

I think (or recall?) that the Nozicks of the world would argue that the person who originally produced the wealth has a moral right to it, and thereby to bequeath it to whomsoever they wish. — andrewk

Nozick seems quite a logical place to start.

I suspect the capitalist would also like to retain rights to property not so transformed (hunting estates, for example) and would like some means of resolution over conflicts of ownership from a state of nature (tribal land claims, for example). — Pseudonym

How does a capitalist acquire land as property? Is this really possible within a capital system? Is all the effort I have to make to originally acquire unowned land the planting of a flag? It requires a register to really work but capitalism doesn't prescribe the necessity for such registers.

Lucy Allais wrote a good piece about the problems of extending deontological ethics into the future and the past. Essentially, the person whose rights are being respected doesn't exist, either way. If we can give rights to non-existent entities, then we can give rights to fictitious entities, theoretical entities... — Pseudonym

Interesting. How does she deal with any duty of care for later generations? They don't have rights so we just screw the planet and let them deal with the fallout?

Yes, reading your response to Descartes, I think I see where you are going now, something like "for a capitalist, what should capitalism look like morally?". Is that close? — Pseudonym

Yes, it is. It stems from the fact that Adam Smith was first and foremost a moral philosopher and it seems "economic theory" has been divorced from moral theory and is living a life on its own with all sorts of consequences that are not capitalism "proper". So by rediscovering the moral basis/assumptions of capitalism I suspect quite a lot of critique can be leveled against current political and economic systems. That would be the purpose of this thread.

Tangentially (and out of scope for this thread), I even suspect, based on Marx' attempt to continue Smith's and Ricardo's work on a labour theory of value, that Marx' economic ideas are in many respects not conflicting with capitalism. I also suspect capitalism has a lot of holes by remaining silent on a variety of questions or answers them in ways that are impractical to an extent that they are impossible (legal proceedings, general utilities, the costs of holding principles, army, police and fire departments). Meaning that at a minimum its central position in policy might cause fundamental problems for society as a whole if it focuses too much on its economy.

The son of an oil tycoon might be an absolutely reprehensible monster, but he would still rightly 'own' what used to be his father's capital. — Pseudonym

I would say; provided his father transferred it to him by last will. Filial relations aren't grounds for transfer unless the law prescribes them and that's unnecessary for capitalism to work. What happens to his property if he dies unexpectedly without leaving a will. Who owns what in that case? The highest bidder? But paying who?

It's also not that such acquisitions must be approved of by democratic society (as you said, state acquisitions would be avoided, regardless of their democratic approval). — Pseudonym

I think we might even stay away from "democratic". In a rights-based liberal approach, rights can be owned so I can transfer my vote to another as well. We could all transfer them to Xin Jiping.

So, I think this is the first question, what might be the rules capitalism implies about the acquisition of property? — Pseudonym

Yes, I think that's a good start and we'd need to delve into what property means as well.

OK, what part? How about this analogy: you can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies based on newtonian mechanics or Einstein's theories. The answers they give are wrong in the paradigms of the other theories but within their own paradigms they are correct. So assuming capitalism is the working paradigm let's "predict" what the facts on the ground should be. So taking the basic rules of capitalism, what should a correct social implementation look like. I know you're a Marxist and any result is wrong based on a Marxist paradigm but I explicitly want to stay away from those judgements.

I'm not sure yet where I'm going. An intuition that's too unrefined to share at this stage. Would you agree that your if-then statement is what I'd call "ideologically dependent"? Or is it different?

But that's not the purpose of this thread. For now, let's accept the capitalist ideology as the only possible ideology and see where that gets us and what we can say, based on the ideology, of the reality on the ground and what is correct and what is not.

Ok, fair enough. How about we rephrase for now and just say "there are things available for ownership" otherwise "respect of ownership" becomes nonsensical. Does that work for you?