It's all about oppurtunity...

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Odin


If a person followed Christ he/she would be a communist.

The thing is that when these religions were created communism was not an ideology yet.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Kidicious
To me communism isn't anti-religion either.

Then you my friend don't have the first clue about what a good communist is supposed to believe. Shouldn't you know the tenents of your professed ideology before you sign up?

[Al B. Sure!]

If a person followed Christ he/she would be a communist.

what happened to that evil religion?

and no Jesus would never have approved of any communist state in the 20th century

[Maniac]

Velocyrix:

Wanna know how to succeed economically? How to better yourself financially?

Follow these steps:

1) Spend less than you earn

Even if all your money disappears in rent for your appartment and food? What do you suggest? That people sleep in the gutters and stop eating in order to get up?

Ming:

Yes, you can lose your shirt starting a business, and you can also succeed beyond your wildest dreams... it's a risk. It's a matter of CHOICE... and that was the point being made. He was claiming they didn't have a choice... yet there was a choice, just one they aren't willing to risk or take.

Ok, so everyone has a choice. But do you deny that people starting high on the social ladder have a higher chance that their choices will lead to succes instead of failure? Being a meritocrat, I find it "unfair" a more talented but poorer born person will end up lower than a less talented but richer born person.

[Ben Kenobi]

If a person followed Christ he/she would be a communist.

Most communists deny the existence of a spiritual realm, so that's one big conflict.

Another would be this slight problem of Jesus being the Son of God. That's the only part that Albert and monkspider seem to miss.

There have been a great number of moral teachers, but Jesus did not claim to be a good moral teacher, but to be God. This is the only reason to follow him because he justified his claims through the resurrection.

Indeed, Albert, you are right that Christians are supposed to emulate Christ, but I'm not sure you fully understand why.

Ming


So why then do you vote republican?

[Velociryx]

Maniac: If all your money is disappearing in rent and food, the problem is obvious.

All of my money would disappear in rent and food too, if I insisted in living in a place that cost me $2500 a month, and ate like a King every day. If your rent/food is costing you more than you make, then the solution is three-fold:

a) make more (either take on a part time job in addition to, or a better paying full time job)

b) join economic forces with someone (a wife, a room mate, live-in girl friend, something)

c) find ways of cutting your expenses (don't live in a $1200 a month apartment, stop eating out four nights a week, stop burning money up by smoking, etc)

Collectively these three things WILL, not can, but WILL re-draw your financial landscape. You are making it out that if you find yourself in the situation you outlined above, then you simply have no choice but to continue being IN that situation. Absolutely untrue.

-=Vel=-

[The Templar]

Ming, Ming, Ming. Advertising is all about creating a desire for a product - i.e. selling crap you don't need. Take Fast Food or beverage advertising. WHen is the last time you saw a Micky D's commercial that concentrated on the health benefits or high quality of Micky D's food? You don't. You usually see friggin' clowns, or you see parents or grandparents connecting with their kids over a McFatty sandwich and teeth-rotting soft drink. Micky D's doesn't sell its food in its advertising, it sells a lifestyle image.

Likewise, the malt beverage Skyy Vodka produces advertises with scantily clad beautiful people lounging on a boat. WHat does this have to do with a lame citrus drink? Nothing! Rather, it is an attempt to associate a beverage with other things (good looks and money) that confer status in our society.

So tell me another one.

Berz, of course libertarians would have us believe that commercials perform merely in the role of providing information about what products are available. And to an extent, they do this. But if libertarians would adopt a more contemporary theory of the mind than the mind as some sort of completely free-willed Cartesian thing, libertarians would be better off.

Obiwan, where in the Bible does Jesus claim to be the son of God/ God Itself? Give me a Jesus quote, none of that Paul crap.

[Velociryx]

As a form of brainwashing, Templar, advertising does a very, very poor job, but that's what you're implying, right?

We poor, downtrodden sods just don't know any better than to believe that all we need to do is take our kids to Micky D's and we'll have a happy homelife, right?

All we need to do is buy that spiffy citrus drink and we'll be good looking and affluent.

Show me the person who believes this tripe! The hypothetical person you mention would have to be impossibly weak minded and weak willed to ever buy into that. IF such a person exists at all, I can assure you they're not the majority....not even close. I've never once met anyone like that, and having travelled through the better part of the USA, you'd think I would have run across at least one, if what you are saying has any merit or basis in reality.

Haven't found 'em yet tho.

-=Vel=-

[The Templar]

Originally posted by Velociryx
As a form of brainwashing, Templar, advertising does a very, very poor job, but that's what you're implying, right?

"Brainwashing" is your word, not mine. Think of it as more of a powerful nudge. You want to do something nice for your kids - the advertisement associated Micky D's with this activity. So now you have Micky D's in your mind. You are more likely to go there now.

We poor, downtrodden sods just don't know any better than to believe that all we need to do is take our kids to Micky D's and we'll have a happy homelife, right?

All we need to do is buy that spiffy citrus drink and we'll be good looking and affluent.

This works on a subconscious level. If we reflect on it, yes, it seems silly. But the goal is to nudge by tying certain products and brands to unrelated things. So you want to get some drinks, you see Skyy malt on the shelf. You now have a nudge, under the threshold of consciousness that Skyy=status. Now if you don't drink, this won't affect you. If you love Sam Adams, this won't really affect you (unless you are in the mood to try something new).

Toddlers and other kids are not as reflective as mature adults, nor have they developed their tastes and value preferences yet. So the nudges work all that much better.

In your travels, have you ever met anyone who seriously believes Bud tastes better than Sam? Probably not. Yet Bud is the best selling beer in the nation. So something other than taste is pushing sales.

Are you arguing that emotion and subconscious influence does nothing to shape our tastes and value preferences? Just where do you think value preference comes from? Do you really think we rationalize our optimal value preferences and develop them through pure reason? "optimal value preference' itself is a value-laiden concept given that 'optimal' denotates an value judgement. This sort of Cartesian thinking died among serious people in the early 20th century.

But this discussion would better be served in a separate thread about the nature, limits, and meaning of free will (or even a thread about the nature of the mind).

[Velociryx]

Nope....just pointing out that there's no proof that I have ever seen that advertisement works on a subconscious level to "nudge" (brainwash) as you describe. Believe me, advertisers would be chomping at the bit if it did, but having studied advertising extensively in school, having seen the results of the "subliminal suggestion" idea, the data is just not there to support what you're saying.

Marketing DOES have an impact, sure. Undeniably, and that's one of the reasons we're all (well, most of us) are using Wintel machines today, rather than Apples.

But marketing is not the only, nor even the major, component of selling. Availability. Using your beer example, Bud has more shelf space than Sam Adams. Bud is more widely seen in the grocery store. Bud is cheaper, and probably has higher gross production. Thus, Bud is purchased more often. None of these things has anything to do with some subconscious nudge.....rather, it has to do with the fact that people in this country like beer, and Bud is readily available.

-=Vel=-

[Ming]

The Templar is just proving again how little he knows about the effects and objectives of advertising.
But then again, he seems to know ALL ABOUT it even though the closest he comes to any experience is a few of friends... Like most things I guess, he just repeats stuff that fits his limited agenda...

If advertising could sell people things they don't want, things would really be different. Advertising helps make people make decisions betweens brands... and inform them of products that they might need but were unaware of... but that's about it.

MD's commercial may get somebody to choose them over BK or Wendys... but it won't make somebody who hates crappy food to go there.

Yeah... there are probably a few stupid people who might end up buying something they didn't want, but that's not the norm, and never a serious objective for an ad campaign. Weak minds like that are usually targeted only by people with outdated political agendas, or wacko religious cults

[Japher]

I think the problem with most people is that they won't or don't play the 'game' that they are in. They would rather debate the 'rules' than figure out how to make the 'rules' work for them.

As in money. The reason a lot of people don't have money is because they don't really know what it is... A lot of people couldn't even define a yeild or it's relation to a P/E... It's this kind of ignorance to the rules that gets people smashed. Granted, they don't need to play the stock market, but they need to pick a 'game' and play it. Learn the language, learn the loop-holes, learn the discipline. Demanding the 'rules' to change is worthless, especially when the greater 'game' requires money in order to change the 'rules'...

Perhaps if schools taught kids about money, and not just economics (which is worthless, IMO, when it comes to personal finance), the world would be different, I don't know... At least it might teach fiscal discipline, and prevent a lot of problems families have concerning money...

Money IS the root of all evil, yet it is also the deliver from it.

[The Templar]

Originally posted by Ming
The Templar is just proving again how little he knows about the effects and objectives of advertising.
But then again, he seems to know ALL ABOUT it even though the closest he comes to any experience is a few of friends... Like most things I guess, he just repeats stuff that fits his limited agenda...

You're 0-2 on the ad hominem Ming. I don't know alot about advertising, but I do know quite a bit about evolutionary psychology and cognitive science (cog sci was an important area of my dissertation work, and give a month or so to prepare, I could probably teach a grad level seminar on the subject). Yes, what I know about psychology in the ad business comes from a "few friends". A few friends who do psychological research in the ad business.

What was your degree in again, Ming?

If advertising could sell people things they don't want, things would really be different. Advertising helps make people make decisions betweens brands... and inform them of products that they might need but were unaware of... but that's about it.

Much of this decision-making process you refer to is sub-reflective. Yes advertising serves an informative function. But, the primary goal is preference formation. When is the last time you saw a "tombstone" ad that just anounced the introduction of a new product in blacktext on a white background? (And even if you did, the subtext would be "see our product is so good, no need for advertising".)

Oh, and reread my last post. It is impossible to seel people things they don't want - so the goal is to create the desire and nudge them towards your brand.

Vel

I'm not talking about cheesy subliminal tracks hidden in the audio. I'm talking about the association of products with impulses and needs (like status and sex) that are biologically rooted. Before we discuss this further answer the following questions:

(1) Do you believe that people have the free will to do whatever they would like in a situation?

(2) Do you believe that reason functions without respect to pre-existing second order value preferences?

(3) Do you doubt that second order value preferences are developed in a non-rational process?

(4) Do you believe that the mind is a unified whole?

(5) Do you believe consciousness or "the will" has each of these processes under its control?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then we simply have nothing to talk about because we do not share enough intellectual space to engage each other. I.e. you are living in the 15th century and I am not.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
and no Jesus would never have approved of any communist state in the 20th century

He certainly wouldn't have approved of any capitalist state.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Then you my friend don't have the first clue about what a good communist is supposed to believe. Shouldn't you know the tenents of your professed ideology before you sign up?

Now you decide what a 'good' communist is? I can decide that for myself.