Most/Least Favorite Philosopher and Why?

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Ecthelion
I do Kant but I don't do philosphy cause it's pointless.

Just explain me this: what is "utilitarianism"?

Utilitarianism is basically the philosophy that a decision should be made based on what is best for the majority of the group (society, social club, whatever). The pros to this philosophy is that it should benefit a larger percentage of the population because the decision has been made for the majority. The drawback is that the minority will suffer, sometimes horribly.

My philosophy professor in college always hit upon the story of the lynching mob. The majority of the group wanted to lynch someone because they didn't like him or because he did something they considered wrong. Under utilitarianism this would be ok as the majority will benefit from having this thorn in their side removed as per their want. The downside is that the lynchee is about to be hanged. It's a flawed philosophy, mainly brought up to prove a moral point. It's a "everyones doing it so it must be ok" deal.

[chequita guevara]

Ned, do you think I should write a simlarly pedantic parable?

[Agathon]

PARABLE OF THE FIELD - PART FOUR

The Communists stood over Ned's twitching body as they smoked cigars that Fidel Castro had provided.

"He really shouldn't have gone on and on like that" said Che Guevara.

"Yes, it was really boring and took ages to read", said Trotsky.

"He deserved to die", said Stalin.

"Oh shut up Stalin, you say that about everybody," said Adam Smith.

"What the **** are you doing here anyway," said Guevara to Smith.

"Shut the **** up you Argie Jesus wannabe, or my secret will get out!", replied Smith, "in any case, we've done the people a service by saving them from having to read Parts five thru two-hundred-and-seventy-nine of Ned's sorry tale".

"It was a just slaying", said Lenin.

"Indeed it was", boomed a voice from a break in the clouds.

"Is that you God, you reactionary old bastard?" said Trotsky.

"Yes it is", replied God, "and I'll have less of the 'reactionary' stuff from you, or else. Anyway, I have to go now, that George W Bush is in serious need of a good smiting."

Smiling, our revolutionaries returned to their macabre task.

[Ned]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Ned, do you think I should write a simlarly pedantic parable?

Please, Che. Show us how communism benefits the workers and is not unfair in the slightest.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

For a philosophy thread this has to be one of themost entertaining.

All we need now are the strippers and midgets.

By the by Ned, I love pedantics.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Berzerker

I read your post, you didn't explain why communism can't transform a poor country into a wealthy one. You said that according to Marx, communism needs an already wealthy nation so there aren't shortages. If there are shortages, then everyone is shorted equally, that shouldn't prevent communism from producing the wealth to achieve the communist state. That doesn't explain why communism can't produce the needed wealth, only that there will be shortages until it does produce greater wealth. Hence my question: why can't communism produce the needed wealth?

Communism can create wealth- but not as much-that is the point, that capitalism is the most productive system; Any state that tries to cut in will take longer to reach the stage at which they are rich enough for Marxs; vision.

Think about the command economies of Russia and China- under the command stte economies these states saw immense ecomic growth. Russia in 1970 was vastly richer than semi-capitalist Russia of 1914 and certainly richer than a capitalist state such as Guatemala- the point is not that a command economy made Russia poor, but that Russia was not as ruch as it could have been, becuase even in 1980 Russians were far better of economically than vast portions of the world's peoples, including many is western back-anti communist regimes.

But if communism can't produce enough wealth to drag a country out of poverty, how can it sustain enough wealth to maintain an already wealthy country? The result would be a reduction in wealth with poverty somewhere down the line.

How would wealth be lost? Wealth accumulates worldwide, and can only be transferred around. This is a question of, once the real revolution starts,would other capitalist systems remian, or would they follow suit, thus preventing a mass flux of wealth from one system to the other.

But if communism can't create the wealth to provide all this in a poor country, how long before it wrecks a wealthy country that can? If Marx believes capitalist systems are the most productive, why does he believe communism can sustain the production to keep them wealthy? If you needed a 400 hp motor to go 180 mph, how would replacing the motor with a 250 hp motor maintain that speed? There would be a drop off in production followed by shortages.

You miss the point- while in,ate stages of capitalism there is lots of wealth, it is in the hands of very very few,so that the masses see very little, at least relatively. Marx does not mind if the era of superrich ends utterly, as long as everyone who was poorer comes up significantly.

Who wants to clean toilets?

So why does you dream capitalist system need people cleaning toilets? Or picking fruit?

[Ned]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
For a philosophy thread this has to be one of themost entertaining.

All we need now are the strippers and midgets.

By the by Ned, I love pedantics.

Long live the Communist Party!

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Agathon
PARABLE OF THE FIELD - PART FOUR

The Communists stood over Ned's twitching body as they smoked cigars that Fidel Castro had provided.

"He really shouldn't have gone on and on like that" said Che Guevara.

"Yes, it was really boring and took ages to read", said Trotsky.

"He deserved to die", said Stalin.

"Oh shut up Stalin, you say that about everybody," said Adam Smith.

"What the **** are you doing here anyway," said Guevara to Smith.

"Shut the **** up you Argie Jesus wannabe, or my secret will get out!", replied Smith, "in any case, we've done the people a service by saving them from having to read Parts five thru two-hundred-and-seventy-nine of Ned's sorry tale".

"It was a just slaying", said Lenin.

"Indeed it was", boomed a voice from a break in the clouds.

"Is that you God, you reactionary old bastard?" said Trotsky.

"Yes it is", replied God, "and I'll have less of the 'reactionary' stuff from you, or else. Anyway, I have to go now, that George W Bush is in serious need of a good smiting."

Smiling, our revolutionaries returned to their macabre task.

[BeBMan]

yeah, that´s a good one

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Agathon


Nope. I have a healthy scepticism of Hegelianism and all its offshoots. The development of economic organisation is something to be studied empirically, rather than metaphysically.

Hegel's conception of logic was destroyed by the development of the propositional calculus. The general consensus among analytic philosophers is that this destroys any credibility his system might have had.

Well, we could get started on this one, and you'd beat me, but the idea of Marx' dialectics as a structuralist/semiologic ideology makes sense.

And BTW, nice story about Ned.

[Fake Boris]

All right, Berzerker.

If there was no law, you just couldn't own a field larger than what you can plow yourself, unless you were using brute force to keep it.

Let's say you had a field ten times as large as what is needed for you. You hire 9 workers to do the job. You tell them: since the field is mine, you're only getting 50% of the harvest from your work. The other 50% is for me.

Then they'd say: The field's yours, eh? How is it?

Berzerker: I built a fence around it.

Them: Who cares? you're only plowing 10% of it anyway. What you're not plowing can't be yours. Too bad for the fence.

Then, the strongest of the 10 guys would probably end up controlling the field after a fist fight. The winner thought: "now that I've won, I want to secure my field, because that fight was hard. I could well lose it next time."
So the winner said: OK guys, you'll be getting 60% of the harvest, and you'll be giving me the rest. In exchange, you'll recognize that the field is mine. Then the idea spread up; one of the neighboring landlords became the king, and it was decided he would collect 2% of the fields' harvest to pay for guards that would enforce the new 'contract'.
This the disappearance of possession and the birth of property. Property is a possession legitimated with a 'contract'.

The rest is history: the landlords using their wealth to increase their hold on the 'means of production', using their oligopoly to impose detrimental conditions on the workers.

If you can prove that the first guy who claimed some land as his own did it without holding a power of some sort (muscles, shrewdness, or a super-productive new harvesting tool on which he owned the 'patent'), then I might start listening to you.