Why Capitalists are Capitalists...

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by GePap
Societies that have enforced conformity have lasted a great deal longer than those that did not. When the history of the US is as long as that of say, the Pharaonic age of Egyt, then you can go aorund saying that a society that allows its citizens a great deal of choice in determinig what their own outcome is.

Well then, let's get all those darkies back in the back of the bus and put 'em back on the land pickin' cotton.

To compare ancient Egypt with the US for longevity as a means of evaluating the benefit of enforced conformity is silly. What was the state of human rights? How much did technology evolve? How widespread was communication? How much evolution of society and social norms took place? How many people, in and out of the respective civilizations, have been enslaved or killed to enforce "conformity" for the rulers' benefit? What were the respective populations?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
If you don't follow the recipe, you don't get a cake.

I'm not going to stand over this person's shoulder and MAKE them follow the directions, but if they do, marked improvement WILL result (and if the system is broke, then it shouldn't).

-=Vel=-

Your comparing making a cake to making someone rich? What point is it that you are trying to make with that? Are you saying that everyone can become rich? Because I'm sure that everyone can make a cake.

[Velociryx]

You have already agreed that a plan CAN be made. If that's true, then the plan can be followed (just like the directions for baking a cake can be followed). Follow the plan....get results. Continue following the plan....continue getting results.

No big mystery, and I do not believe that it needs further clarification.

"Rich" is a relative term. If you bring me someone who's in a minimum wage job, living in state-funded housing, and we can get them into a better job, no debts, and on their way to owning their own house, that'd be "rich" to that person. If that person continued following the plan laid out, then yes, in time, they'd get even "richer." Not overnight, and not by sitting on their duffs, but by USING THE CURRENT SYSTEM that you swear up and down is broken.

I'm gonna log off for a while, but when I return, I DO hope you've brought someone....

-=Vel=-

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
You have already agreed that a plan CAN be made. If that's true, then the plan can be followed (just like the directions for baking a cake can be followed). Follow the plan....get results. Continue following the plan....continue getting results.

No big mystery, and I do not believe that it needs further clarification.

Vel's old absurd rhetoric.

Originally posted by Velociryx
"Rich" is a relative term. If you bring me someone who's in a minimum wage job, living in state-funded housing, and we can get them into a better job, no debts, and on their way to owning their own house, that'd be "rich" to that person. If that person continued following the plan laid out, then yes, in time, they'd get even "richer." Not overnight, and not by sitting on their duffs, but by USING THE CURRENT SYSTEM that you swear up and down is broken.

I'm gonna log off for a while, but when I return, I DO hope you've brought someone....

-=Vel=-

Vel's new more realistic rhetoric. Still needs improvement though.

It's not enough to do the work. The opportunities also have to exist for the economy to produce higher incomes and wealth. It's the same as producing goods. If too many goods are produced in the economy the surplus is not sold. You can't have a surplus of millionaires but you can have a bunch of people trying to become millionaires who fail.

[GePap]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


Well then, let's get all those darkies back in the back of the bus and put 'em back on the land pickin' cotton.

To compare ancient Egypt with the US for longevity as a means of evaluating the benefit of enforced conformity is silly. What was the state of human rights? How much did technology evolve? How widespread was communication? How much evolution of society and social norms took place? How many people, in and out of the respective civilizations, have been enslaved or killed to enforce "conformity" for the rulers' benefit? What were the respective populations?

I also see several misconceptions. Rulers come and go. The fact is that societies built up values, and rulers worked wihin those frameworks just as much as anyone else. And look at so many of your other questions: human rights? No one spoke about something like Human rights until about 300 years ago, at the most. Slavery? An institution as old as marriage.

Seeing value in HR's, technological advancement, seeing slavery as an evil, so forth and so on: these are all modern inventions, as artificial as any system of human values that has existed for millenia. And that is my point: people speak as if "the free market" were some basic aspect of the universe. It isn;t, it is a system, a mean created by human beings o reach a certain goal. Just as slavery, and all the things we now consider bad were themselves methods to reach other goals. The men who invented the notion of democracy lived in city state filled with slaves: to them there was no contradiction. To us today there are contradictions. This is not based on some great revalation about humanity, but a change in our values.

[Velociryx]

If it's nothing but hot air, Kid, then "put up or shut up", as the saying goes.

Bring me someone and let's put it to a REAL test, rather than just talking about it.....

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

....but of course you're not going to do that....and why not?

Because you can't afford for me to be right.

The basis for the whole whiney communist argument is that the current system is exploitive, that all the opportunities are there only for the rich, and "the man" is out to get the po' folks.

If YOU pick someone who's not well off, and I draw them a roadmap that'll dramatically improve where they are at the start, then the whole argument you put forth sinks away to nothing.

That's why you're waffling now, and that's why you won't bring me someone....and I'm right here! I'm ready! I believe in "my" system, but apparently, you don't fully believe what you're saying (that the system is broken, no opportunities for the poor, etc., etc., ad nausium), cos if you did, you'd jump ALL OVER the chance to watch me get proved wrong. I'll check back later to see if there's any new developments, but I'll not hold my breath....

-=Vel=-

[MichaeltheGreat]

My point was that 2,000 years of stagnant, rigid society in a period with no technological advancement (meaning no fundamental challenges to social notions of how things should be, a la the industrial revolution and globalization issues), and no competitition among political models (only a rigid hierarchy of ruler, privileged enforcers of the social order, and everyone else) is not comparable to two hundred odd years of survival of a society with a much wider range of competing models and internal and external stresses.

Modern societies such as the US have survived much greater stresses, with much higher total populations over their lifetime, in the presence of many competing social models, compared with relatively static societies such as ancient Egypt. We don't need to wait around 1800 more years to say that this model of society is superior. The argument of longevity is moot if you add in "modern" ideas of human rights - because those static, brutal, despotic ancient societies suited the needs of those who ran them and their thugs. Nobody else counted. Luckily, we're a bit beyond that.

In Egypt, "society" didn't build values that rulers conformed to, it worked the other way around (counting rulers and enforcers as an extended unit), with a goal of preserving the status quo for the privileged class. My point about human rights, etc., was simply that without these things in even their most rudimentary forms (human rights, or at least those of the citizenry, were well developed in Roman law and in the earlier Greek city-states, so it's not just a phenomenon of the last 300 years.), there was no basis for social evolution or upheaval. You were either part of a rigid, virtually monolithic power structure responsive only to it's existing internal rules, or you lived and died at the whim of that power structure. If there hadn't been external threats, there's no reason such a society couldn't last 10,000 years.

In it's most raw form, the free market is nothing more than one Neanderthal bargaining his tool-making or other skills for food that he can't aquire. (There's antropological evidence for this at some finds in Iran, as the earliest evidence of any social organization). Two individuals agreeing on the values of goods and services without external interference is the minimum requirement of a free market.

Of course, we don't have free markets now, and never will, except in localized rural and underground economies. What we have now is varying degrees of structure in the marketplace, and that structure is a little more free, or a little less free. (Or a lot, in the case of Soviet style centrally planned hierarchies).

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
The basis for the whole whiney communist argument is that the current system is exploitive, that all the opportunities are there only for the rich, and "the man" is out to get the po' folks.

I'm not saying that the rich have all the opportunities, just that they have more.

[Worthingtons]

What a classic thread, How i missed, Seems vel kicked ass here.

Kid, when you realise that 'common sense' will show one argument to be better than the other, you're doing the classic of arguing what is, and what isnt proof - very poor. You cant play vel at a game for a while, go 3-0 down and then argue the rules.

At least rise to the challenge Vel has set you.

Even my own parents, a poor example compared to many have shown how capitalism has helped thier lives, since my dad was from a very poor family and had little education and my mum the same, yet 25 years on they live in the most prosperous area of town and have well paying Jobs - all down to a bit of hard work and ambition to suceed.

The idea behind vel's plan is to show how the system CAN work! the reason why it doesnt work for some people is plain human lazyness and/or a lack of ambition.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Worthingtons
The idea behind vel's plan is to show how the system CAN work! the reason why it doesnt work for some people is plain human lazyness and/or a lack of ambition.

Are you saying that every poor person is lazy? Are they making a rational decision. That is, are they saying becoming rich is just too hard, so I'll just dig more ditches. Do you see what's wrong with that? Isn't digging ditches harder than becoming rich, assuming that becoming rich is so easy? Poor people aren't lazy. They work very hard. You're argument is very weak. I would like to know if you think poor people are rational or irrational.

[Worthingtons]

I used the work Some kid, not all poor people are lazy or lack ambition, but a lot fall into one of the two catagories.

For many it's the latter - they dont have a particular desire to become rich, they will settle just to get by... and therefore the problem is ambition.

You can put a perfect in front of many people, and it'll be rejected many times, because the person just cant find the motivation see follow it through

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Worthingtons
For many it's the latter - they dont have a particular desire to become rich, they will settle just to get by... and therefore the problem is ambition.

Are they rational or irrational?

[MichaeltheGreat]

People don't necessarily fit into one or another simplistic label 100% of the time. Generally rational people do irrational things, and rationality doesn't in the least address ignorance.

I've known poor people who smoked two packs a day, and went out for a couple drinks and dancing on weekends (with cover charge), who *****ed about never having money or being unable to save a dime.

They didn't like it when I pointed out they always had five-six dollars a day to spend on smoking, and 10-15 every weekend, which added up to over $2,500.00 a year in non-necessary expenditures.

[Velociryx]

Good point, MtG...and one of the first I bring up as well (which tends to not make you very popular, I agree!)

No, Kid, opportunities are not equal for everyone. Nor should they be.

A person who puts himself through med school, works four jobs to survive and finally become a doctor has busted his a$$ to get where he is, and when he becomes a doctor, guess what? He has more opportunitities than the person who didn't bother or wasn't interested.

No surprise there.

Everybody HAS opportunities, but the fervor with which you persue them determines your results.

If you choose not to make opportunities for yourself, expecting a million dollars to fall into your lap and whining about how the man is exploiting you and out to get you....no, you won't get very far that way. That is true.

But if you look around in your current situation and FIND ways to improve it....:: shakes head:: You just don't get it, huh?

And, still not taking me up on the challenge, I see....

-=Vel=-