On January 07 2019 23:57 Baalim wrote: capitalism is just the system that holds against these shortcomings the best
Couldn't have been said better.
Actually, it was said pretty badly. Capitalism is not "a system". It's a mode of production. There are numerous kinds of capitalist models, so it can lead to systems of different quality. An an-cap one (if it could exist, which it can't) would be the absolute worst model in terms of public health and sustainability, it would have so much friction it would basically do this. The second worst is the one we currently have -- neoliberalism. It's also ridiculous to make that statement, as if you or Baal were aware of all other possible systems so that you can claim that capitalism works best. You guys don't know shit, you play poker for a living, let's be serious here. The only reason you make such a statement is because you still live in a simplistic duality of centrally planned socialist economies versus a capitalist economy, with all of your personal and cultural biases thrown into them. This is just a false duality, there's no nuance to it, no point in it. If you guys are so sure of yourselves, why don't you begin by giving me your critique of participatory economics? Tell me exactly why the current system is better. Actually, I have to remember that Baal isn't sure of himself half the time, he says it himself, "there could be something better, I just haven't found it", so he's just contradicting himself in the quote you were responding to.
Anyway, I'll post some videos for you Baal, I know that you don't read much. It has already been mentioned to you by Stroggoz before, who said that you should take your opponents seriously, but you ignored it. Maybe you could actually learn something from them once your cortisol levels have gone down from trying to dominate me. I am done arguing, thread can go back to politics and nonsense now.
On a completely different note, Trump is thinking about delcaring a state of emergency in the country, to enforce the government to build its Mexico wall.... I didn't think the guy would get assasinated, but its statements like this that really make me wonder if he just wants to.... And to be honest if that happens which is very very unlikely ( declaring state of emergency that is ), it will be so he could enter in a war with Iran
It's a tragicomedy. "I'm for the wall, but goddamnit I can't afford to skip a paycheck! I have to degrade myself to drive other people around now."
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Last edit: 08/01/2019 18:07
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Liquid`Drone Norway. Jan 08 2019 18:34. Posts 3093
while I don't care too much for your overall discussion (I think neither of you really argue in good faith with each other and it's a bit disheartening)
- political intervention was necessary
- Norway is in a privileged position to afford more high quality/ethical products (this is due to geographical determinism -- and speaking of ethics, they're also one of the leading arms exporters)
- consumer purchase power is not sufficient on its own
is indeed a much better summary of my post than 'Drone comes and says that consumer action did change Norway and you thinks he supports you lol.' is.
Consumer action has changed Norway, but not by itself, and in a way that is not possible to replicate for most of the rest of the world - even the west. Average salary is pretty meaningless - 'percentage of people who have or lack the economical freedom to make ethical consumer choices' is what is relevant. The US is a country where 40% of the adult population can't cover a $400 emergency expense. That means there's a huge market for food/other consumption where ethics is disregarded in the production. It's also a country where the population has a kneejerk negative response to government regulation (which I described as completely essential - more so than consumer choices) in changing the Norwegian market.
But yes, consumer choices can make a positive difference. Loco himself stated that several posts before I did. It's just never going to be sufficient on its own, aside from in very privileged smaller regions, which doesn't really make too big of a difference on a global scale.
Loco im actually making a point that capitalism fails on many different levels ... did you read my post?
Capitalism is indeed the best system to hold good short term results and create extremely bad issues in the long term.
I do have a problem with social democracies as well, cause they usually keep dead companies afloat with taxpayers money as well, but at least the standard of life seems to be better
On January 07 2019 23:57 Baalim wrote: capitalism is just the system that holds against these shortcomings the best
Couldn't have been said better. The only problem is, in the long run, everything gets too centralized in all the places where it shouldn't and every next financial crisis or war gets exponentially worse. The thing is I don't believe its capitalism itself that causes the problem but it allowed for it to exist.
It's a bit of a touchy subject since capitalism actually helped the economy by a great deal when it comes to businesses, creating long queues for practically every industry but the ones that matter the most. The power of corporations seems to be a bit overexaggerated as competition keeps them in check, but the power of banks has become so strong due to capitalism that I don't see how countries like the USA would ever free themselves without some sort of a revolution. There is no competition for the banks, and if they fail they get bailed out, essentially giving them the freedom to do whatever they'd like, however they like, whenever they like.
People could say "eeh but look at what happened to Bear Sterns" - which is they got all their assets ceased by another big bank, the people that caused the crisis didn't really get any penalty and we are running into another crash very soon.
I still don't understand your solution of everything through the power of purchase of every individual on too many levels.
First of all, your "will" is being influenced by a hundred different things on a daily basis constantly, whether you understand it or not. You would either spend hours thinking about each and every purchase you make before you make it, to accomplish your goal, or you would simply fail it. E.g. what Loco said about purchasing some quality product from Nestle, but that still leads to Nestle's growth and overall pollution.
Obviously, spending hours on every single purchase is impossible, so are we to ban marketing and advertisement? That seems like a bad idea and an unrealistic idea. The issue is that even if we educate people on a high enough level, they would still be influenced regardless of their knowledge.
Also what are the people that have no option going to do? Interventionalism and establishing capitalism there ? But wait, capitalism needs poor people, to begin with, so that doesn't work either.
You will now come out with statistics of how capitalism has saved the most people from poverty than anything else before. And that's is true, except if you look at stats the purchasing power of the average American has actually fallen down in the past 40-50 years. Now that might be due to the salaries not being able to catch up to the technical advancement and the newly founded necessities we have, but still... Capitalism is a system whose nature is to try to drive the production costs as low as possible, meaning it needs uneducated, undemanding people. Thats why countries like the USA thrive, but don't produce anything in-house, rather have all of their production done by people who'd do it for pennies.
This is honestly the best lazy solution system which humanity could've found and it works for a great amount of people in the short term, but quite unsustainable in the long run, unless we don't wanna grow as species, in which case it's kind of whatever isn't it ?
You dont need to spend hours in every purchase, you can buy certain brands or there can be private auditing labels like ISO, products are verified by companies and they are rated as cruelty free or whatever other category people want.
the free market does not require poverty, the US manufactures overseas because of expensive unskilled labor and one big factor for that is minimum wage, but more importantly it doesnt need cheap labor, if there is none available the price of the product will raise to adjust the higher production cost, there is no issue with that at all.
Also your stat is plain wrong, the average purchase power in the US in the last 50 years has increased even when taking inflation into account, I just looked it up in many sources.
On January 08 2019 17:34 Liquid`Drone wrote:
while I don't care too much for your overall discussion (I think neither of you really argue in good faith with each other and it's a bit disheartening)
How do you expect me to have a good faith discussion with somebody who types shit like this:
"ll this because, by all evidence, you stand on the shoulders of small, simple-minded men, in a mental prison that you cannot see because you were never given the tools to see it."
nothing but pretentious adhominems coming from Loco he who has trascended ego itself lol.
Average salary is pretty meaningless - 'percentage of people who have or lack the economical freedom to make ethical consumer choices' is what is relevant. The US is a country where 40% of the adult population can't cover a $400 emergency expense.
How do you explain that with virtually the same median salary they dont have $400 free bucks and you do?
Spending habits which is what I've been saying for a few posts now, for example the US has the highest car ownership ratio in the entire world, their entire economy is built upon personal debt so there is no "freee money" for anything there is swiping a card and paying it later.
But yes, consumer choices can make a positive difference. Loco himself stated that several posts before I did. It's just never going to be sufficient on its own, aside from in very privileged smaller regions, which doesn't really make too big of a difference on a global scale.
I understand that regulatin is neccesary in our current society but what I'm purposing is a shift of responsibilities of the state
cohercion is nont necessary to change consumer choice, straws sales took a massive hit, countless manufacturers going bankrupt because the video of one turtle, this is what we need, not the state fining thousands of dollars to establishments for selling a piece of plastic.
On January 08 2019 16:32 Loco wrote:
[I am done arguing, thread can go back to politics and nonsense now.
I was going to say the same thing, there is no point in arguing this anymore for a while.
Just one thing, you acused me of being brainwashed and adoctrinated but lets have a quick look at you, you are:
- Vegan
- Social Justice Warrior
- anti capitalist
- anti free speech
- call yourself a deviant (are you a furry or something? I'm curious about what is your deviation)
- pro choice
- pro gay marriage/adoption
- anti nationalism/borders
- anti natalist
- pro gun control
Those are the beliefs of a true free thinker, a visionary beyond group think... totally not the beliefs of a generic leftist right?
Imagine if I were a pro-life, gun owning christian against gay marriage and a capitalist and then I had the audacity to call you adoctrinated.
Posted this in the podcast thread but I want to direct your attention to 1h34:00 in the video where an example of structuralism is given. It really highlights the main point of difference in our worldviews, where you stress individual morality in a vacuum, and I think in terms of what determinisms are created by the structures themselves.
This is another video that I thought of posting when we had the supernaturalism blog, and k2o4 was saying that he learned to be more trusting and less cynical about the world -- a major mistake in our world. It's a really well done video, everyone should watch it. But when you think about it, it also demonstrates the difference between the way the left and the right views the world too. A person on the right would say, "it's the people's fault if they are getting scammed, they have the freedom to inform themselves, and no one is coercing them to play". A person like me thinks that's an archaic way of looking at things and would be in favor of regulations for these games not to be total scams, and in fact this carnival thing is a good analogy to the kind of the world we live in, where we are constantly preyed upon and sold the idea that we are free and we live in a meritocracy, but because we are social animals and we depend on social inclusion for our survival and well-being, we "have to play the game" -- there is no where to go but another carnival; it's basically just micro-carnivals everywhere unless you remove yourself from society. And again, someone on the right will say "but you have the freedom to leave society, you're not oppressed" completely brushing aside the fact that we are social animals and our health suffers massively in isolation. But perhaps the most damning part of it all is that, even if you're like the Mets guy in the video, in real life, you are really successful, at the top of your hierarchy, that doesn't mean that you will be happy. The mass suicide of celebrities who seemingly had it all and the amount of mental illness in those circles is astounding.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
On January 08 2019 17:34 Liquid`Drone wrote:
while I don't care too much for your overall discussion (I think neither of you really argue in good faith with each other and it's a bit disheartening)
- political intervention was necessary
- Norway is in a privileged position to afford more high quality/ethical products (this is due to geographical determinism -- and speaking of ethics, they're also one of the leading arms exporters)
- consumer purchase power is not sufficient on its own
is indeed a much better summary of my post than 'Drone comes and says that consumer action did change Norway and you thinks he supports you lol.' is.
Consumer action has changed Norway, but not by itself, and in a way that is not possible to replicate for most of the rest of the world - even the west. Average salary is pretty meaningless - 'percentage of people who have or lack the economical freedom to make ethical consumer choices' is what is relevant. The US is a country where 40% of the adult population can't cover a $400 emergency expense. That means there's a huge market for food/other consumption where ethics is disregarded in the production. It's also a country where the population has a kneejerk negative response to government regulation (which I described as completely essential - more so than consumer choices) in changing the Norwegian market.
But yes, consumer choices can make a positive difference. Loco himself stated that several posts before I did. It's just never going to be sufficient on its own, aside from in very privileged smaller regions, which doesn't really make too big of a difference on a global scale.
If you had spent hours upon hours of putting 10 times more effort into your posts than your interlocutor, you would eventually come off as someone of bad faith. The amount of factual debunking that I have done with regards to his views over time, and the fact that almost nothing, and I really mean nothing, has changed in his views, and he makes the same misrepresentations of my views over and over, and the same evasions as represented by your post, should tell you that this isn't just about something related to mutual bad faith.
His views are informed by rich Austrian/Chicago economists and American politicians/ideologues. Not intellectuals with diverse backgrounds who have contributed something significant to the "human heritage", not activists or journalists who have seen how the world actually works from up close. Just a bunch of elitist white dudes who were only good in a specific type of abstraction and who are committed to a simplistic principle of negative liberty above all. At best he will refer to a pop science writer like Pinker who is also a defender of the elites. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but what are the chances that you are very knowledgeable about the world when those are the people whose shoulders you are standing on? What are the chances that with such a background you will engage others with a radically different perspective in good faith? I really can't blame him when those are the individuals who have a hold on his mind.
On January 08 2019 21:34 Spitfiree wrote:
Loco im actually making a point that capitalism fails on many different levels ... did you read my post?
Capitalism is indeed the best system to hold good short term results and create extremely bad issues in the long term.
I do have a problem with social democracies as well, cause they usually keep dead companies afloat with taxpayers money as well, but at least the standard of life seems to be better
I did. I know you do, but I still thought it made no sense to say "couldn't put it any better". The neoliberal system we live under currently is the most murderous one in all of human history, but most of it is "hidden" in structural violence. It is not the best system we could have come up with with our intelligence and knowledge if it had been put to that use instead of merely to the use of producing goods and a ton of waste strictly for the purpose of profit and expansion.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
On January 08 2019 16:32 Loco wrote:
[I am done arguing, thread can go back to politics and nonsense now.
I was going to say the same thing, there is no point in arguing this anymore for a while.
Just one thing, you acused me of being brainwashed and adoctrinated but lets have a quick look at you, you are:
- Vegan
- Social Justice Warrior
- anti capitalist
- anti free speech
- call yourself a deviant (are you a furry or something? I'm curious about what is your deviation)
- pro choice
- pro gay marriage/adoption
- anti nationalism/borders
- anti natalist
- pro gun control
Those are the beliefs of a true free thinker, a visionary beyond group think... totally not the beliefs of a generic leftist right?
Hmm, let's see.
- Vegan. I've explicitly stated that I am a bivalvegan. A so-called "generic leftist vegan" doesn't subscribe to or care about bivalveganism, at least I've never seen it brought up. Fun fact: the term was coined by someone who is not a leftist, Diana Fleschman, an evolutionary psychologist. You haven't said how being a vegan is bad though. You also haven't said that veganism is popular on the right as well, in fact it's popular with white nationalists too.
- SJW. Social justice is something that people do. It's a form of activism. The only "social justice" issue I have participated in was an anti-fur protest because it's very fashionable to kill animals for a coat here these days. Pretty far from your favorite blue-haired feminist SJW activities, I would think.
- anticapitalist. Yep, guilty there. Except this is quite a meaningless label as I would choose some capitalist models over some socialist models, something you've probably never even considered. Obviously I don't think that the USSR was better than Norway is now. Anticapitalism is a direction that relates to a particular predicament, it's not an absolute position. And of course, you're not going to mention that my entrance into anticapitalism was science -- ethology (behavioral biology) and cybernetics/systems thinking -- admittedly, this is very uncommon. I've posted this very dangerous and very ideological leftist video before, would you please refute it with your economism?
- anti free speech. Okay, we'll have to stop there, it's gotten ridiculous enough. The only free speech issue we disagreed about was related to hate speech protections in the form of Bill C16. You were proven to be wrong on this topic. No one's speech has been compelled, there is no "mandating speech" by the government, no force of the law behind using specific pronouns. No one was arrested since the bill passed in June 2017 -- not a single one. Enough said.
"deviant" is used to mean that I didn't undergo the typical cultural programming because I dropped out of society early.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
What a weak comeback. I didn't need to prove that my views were totally different. Any subtle difference is enough to refute your "argument" that I am "generic". Generic means that you don't stand out at all. Nevermind that you also haven't explained how veganism is a "generic leftist position". The most popular vegan YouTuber is radical centrist anti-SJW, and I showed to you that veganism is popular with the alt-right. You might as well say that cycling is a generic leftist position because it's eco-friendly. So petty. Also I have to point this out again to people like Drone: I write 9 paragraphs and share sources to defend my arguments and the "good faith" response I get are three short lines that are glib, unsubstantial and mocking. There's no equal investment here and no equal amount of bad faith. It's always been like this and at some point you should be able to sympathize with my frustration.
"libertarian free speech" refers to free speech absolutism, since it is the position held by right-libertarians . It's another way of saying that hate speech should be acceptable in a civilized society and of course it had to do with C-16 because that was exactly your claim: trans people did not need to be protected by a hate speech law like everyone else in Canada or that it's counter-productive because the government can't ever do anything right as it exists now. You think I'm anti-freedom If I don't think that Holocaust denialism is a productive thing to allow in society or that it should be legal to yell "Fire!" in a movie theater, and apparently you don't think there's any nuance here, it's the same thing as wanting to censor people from using the word 'cunt'.
How do you expect me to have a good faith discussion with somebody who types shit like this:
"ll this because, by all evidence, you stand on the shoulders of small, simple-minded men, in a mental prison that you cannot see because you were never given the tools to see it."
The difference is that I'm not using this to replace arguments, I'm just adding that in out of frustration. I address everything you write, I do my research, I provide my sources; you don't, and you usually don't take the things I write seriously, you've already made up your mind about all these subjects several years ago. I used that line as part of a post where I explain that, by contrast, I haven't made my mind up several years ago, I discovered the works of intellectual giants who have changed the way I think about things over the years. I have updated my operating system, and by all evidence, you have not. If I am wrong about this contrast you can set me straight.
We are all in a mental prison, we all have biases and we were shaped by forces that we had no control over. There is nothing outlandish about that claim. We don't have ideas, ideas have us. The thing that gets you riled up is that I am confident I have found the tools to widen my mental prison and that as such I can see the narrowness of yours. You think that this has to do with my ego, that I find some kind of perverse joy in being more knowledgeable than you. It's true that I grew up in a competitive world and I can never totally exorcise this from myself, but I usually don't feel any satisfaction writing these things. It's extremely frustrating to see things that others don't because they were not given the tools to see them, especially when you're trying to get them to realize that we're all in this together and what we pay attention to matters a lot more than our immediacy-conditioned minds think.
We are in charge of our evolution now, we have decades of neurobiological and evolutionary research to know how we got here and what is possible for us now that we can connect it with the rest of our knowledge, and it is clear that it is not set in stone -- the only thing that makes us made of stones are dogmas and certainties, most of which are the result of indoctrination and information deficit. The way out of indoctrination is to become acquainted with the full range of human knowledge, and a method of thinking that connects that knowledge and makes it pertinent to us while minimizing the risks of errors and illusions. It's not by putting 95% of your focus on one discipline, let alone a small subset of that discipline like you do with economics. That maximizes the chances that you are oversimplying and mutilating a complex reality.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
btw it took an anormous amount of self control to let you have the last word, I demand an standing ovation
About my glilb one liners:
I assure you it is not sloth, quite the contrary, I usually have to delete longer repliles.
Its the same reason why I use that quote/reply quote/reply to almost each sentence, that shit takes time and I have to go back and edit the UBB tag, (I literally just deleted an entire paragraph to be more brief), I think if we both write esays to each other we lose focus and we drift to each other's weaker points and ignore the most salient ones.
So believe me I was fucking dying to respond to your free spech part where you put hate speech and yelling fire in a theater in the same box, but I chose not to, because I didn't want to dilute my point
I put it in the same box to demonstrate that this notion that speech is not free unless it is absolutely free is absurd, not in order to draw a perfect equivalence between that example and hate speech. The point is that anyone who thinks about this issue seriously realizes eventually that you need rules in a society, even an anarchistic one, and it becomes a matter of where you draw the line. In saying that I'm anti-free speech the implication was that it is a completely black and white issue.
It might not be worth much to say this now but I would have given you the last word today, it had already been decided in my mind not to respond, which is why I posted a non-response post first to close up where I took a fairly neutral angle of how we look at the world differently. But then I had to respond to Drone who was nice enough to chime in, and I saw your post underneath and it was too tempting to bite, though it really had no value at all. I don't think that I'm a visionary, I am constantly citing the people whose ideas I've come to accept. Nothing I present is original and the last thing I care about is to slap my name on something, or else I would be trying to make a name for myself in academia or elsewhere instead of posting things on the internet under a nickname.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Trump came up with a bunch of made up stats in his oval office speech today saying that "we can resolve the wall issue in 45 minutes tomorrow if only those silly Democrats listened to reason". He didn't look human to me, he was resetting his face constantly. Another waste of time, that one.
Btw, that song, and the few others like it, are to me the only good arguments against Utopia. There is no way something of this magnificence could be produced in a world that is not deeply oppressive. Tragic music would still exist, since there would be natural death, and some level of unsatisfied want and crime, but nothing of this type, this world-weariness that comes from a tortured soul that has definitely decided to leave the world behind.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
On January 09 2019 02:00 Baalim wrote:
Also your stat is plain wrong, the average purchase power in the US in the last 50 years has increased even when taking inflation into account, I just looked it up in many sources.
oh yes this is some real growth we're seeing, 8% in 10 years and keep in mind those 10 years are the ones after recession where the economy is booming and we generally see an insane increase of real wages
I've seen some other graphs where this line is practically flat over the past 50 years
It's also quite important how the stats are made, cause if they take into account the wages per individual or the total of wages per total of people, then sure there is growth, except that growth goes into the top % of the population, rather than the majority of the work force, thus it only means the rich get richer, while the rest either get poorer or tank on the same spot
edit: that song though..
Also Loco Its all a matter of perspective when it comes to Utopia no? Utopia s mostly black and white type of world, with everything being white, thus free speech being absolute with people having the option of hate speech but not using it due to higher consciousness no?
On January 09 2019 02:00 Baalim wrote:
Also your stat is plain wrong, the average purchase power in the US in the last 50 years has increased even when taking inflation into account, I just looked it up in many sources.
oh yes this is some real growth we're seeing, 8% in 10 years and keep in mind those 10 years are the ones after recession where the economy is booming and we generally see an insane increase of real wages
I've seen some other graphs where this line is practically flat over the past 50 years
It's also quite important how the stats are made, cause if they take into account the wages per individual or the total of wages per total of people, then sure there is growth, except that growth goes into the top % of the population, rather than the majority of the work force, thus it only means the rich get richer, while the rest either get poorer or tank on the same spot
edit: that song though..
Also Loco Its all a matter of perspective when it comes to Utopia no? Utopia s mostly black and white type of world, with everything being white, thus free speech being absolute with people having the option of hate speech but not using it due to higher consciousness no?
yeah I didn't mean there has been significant growth, lets just call it stable, but what is very important is to know that the average price of virtually every good and service has been going down dramaticaly mainly due to technology so while the median wage has been stable when adjusted to inflation, in reality everything is more affordable, the only 2 big exeptions to this rule is healthcare and higher education, that have the common denominator of the government.
I know I sound like a broken record when I keep blaming the government but its just astounding how inefficient it is at most of the things it does.
I am done arguing, thread can go back to politics and nonsense now.
