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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: Is Christianity the same as socialism
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Marvin - I don't see life as being a competition.
But it is. At every level, from the simplest single cell to the most complex organisms, it's competition. For resources, for territory, for the best mates. If anything the human race, by defining the chief resource to be competed for as small pieces of paper, has improved the lot of each individual no end.
But even if we distributed everything exactly equally to each individual, there would be competition. Families could compete by having more children than others, in order to gain access to proportionally more of the world's resources than their rivals. You'd have changed the scoring system, as you put it, but not the basic rules.
Without the drive to succeed, to become better than others, there would be no progress. Why develop tools if they don't improve your lot? Why become educated if there is no advantage gained thereby?
Competition is what drives progress. If you somehow could remove it, you would remove progress, development, and everything humans have become because of them.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
I still don't think it is a competition. I can want to improve myself without wanting others to lose or grind others down. People become doctors, sometimes, because they want to help others, not because they want to disadvantage them.
Grandfather once told me that life is all about competition, and that is when I realised how differently he sees the world to me. Mind you, he *is* a Tory. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
I guess I just don't find it a helpful analogy, even though I get what you are saying.
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Infinite Penguins.
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Posts: 12176 | From: a zoo in England. | Registered: Mar 2003
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I wouldn't see sport as an analogy for life at all. Besides anything else, no-one can agree on the scoring mechanism.
Completely agree. Life isn't a game of cricket. It's far, far, far more than that. And all the players matter.
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Infinite Penguins.
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Posts: 12176 | From: a zoo in England. | Registered: Mar 2003
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
You don’t have to turn them into wealth, they are wealth, but you may wish to exchange them for other wealth and people may be able to make this more efficient for you and so they will, of course, want to be paid to do so.
If you define wealth as `stuff that is made' then of course there is an almost unlimited supply of wealth in the world. I can make sandcastles all day for the rest of my life and not run out of sand.
But, as you correctly point out, the baskets only become wealth if I am able to exchange them for something which has a greater value to me than the cost of materials and production.
The baskets are wealth if you or somebody else wants them
quote:
But there is very rarely an unlimited supply of the raw materials needed to construct things of value. If I have the raw materials to make baskets, someone else has less. Even if I grow my own raw materials, I will be using land that then becomes unavailable to other people.
Don’t think of ‘raw materials’, that concept is ambiguous; ‘raw materials’ can mean sheet steel or paper, which both can be produced. Instead, go further down the production chain to the base, natural things that unambiguously cannot be produced by anyone. In economics, this kind of stuff is called ‘land’ and it is finite in extent, which means that access to it can be monopolised and held away from others. In our basket example the land is not the grass wicker stuff because this can be produced, it is the land area / location that is needed to grow wicker and on which to labour, which can’t.
The model I presented deliberately excluded land as a factor, because I wanted to illustrate its importance in this argument dramatically. Socialists claim that the injustice in the market is in the nature of trade itself, or that capital (tools) forms a cartel which traps labour. None of this is true, the actual problem is that labour cannot make access to the nature on which it needs to labour, it can only buy it off an owner and this forms a real and unavoidable cartel ownership, held over the heads of labour, of the very right of labour to even engage in labour.
If you include land, you can see that the access to the opportunity to create wicker baskets (or indeed anything else) can be taken as private property and so others can be physically excluded, by ownership, from that opportunity. Land cannot be produced and so when people are excluded they cannot replace it with their efforts. This means those without land will, in aggregate, be theoretically forced to pay nearly all surpluses in their wages to those that hold land, just for the legal right to work at all. This is, unfortunately, more or less, the actual system we live in. This is why wages, though often high, never seem to be enough and many people don’t seem to be able to get work despite other people demanding services. This is why government appears to have to intervene to help whole sections of the population who appear helpless. The problem is not caused by a lack of government intervention; it is actually that government HAS intervened and created a cartel situation in land ownership by instituting it in a particular way.
Another way to put it is that my model presumed everyone held liberty to go collect whatever is needed to make wicker baskets out of nature. Under those circumstances, the economy would be as fair as I inferred. That situation is what I would call a ‘frontier economy’; an economy where land ownership is patchy, incomplete and light. This kind of economy can be very powerful and fair, because the market, under these circumstances tends to reward people with what they actually produce and they don’t have to pay some intermediary for mere access to the world itself; so economic opportunity is everywhere and fre for the taking for everyone. It’s my belief that the American dream came out of its people’s experience of a frontier, free market economy. Of course, most people, presently, have no such liberty at all and so must pay another person in order to access some part of nature, and so the present economy does not run in the same way and does not reward people in the same way for their efforts.
quote:
Your argument only holds for things that have high value once constructed, and are made from raw materials of which there is an unlimited supply. I doubt this is even true of baskets, and it's certainly not true of most of what people produce these days.
The value of the goods is really irrelevant, what is relevant though. is that I have assumed free access to nature, which is an unreal assumption.
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
But there is very rarely an unlimited supply of the raw materials needed to construct things of value. If I have the raw materials to make baskets, someone else has less. Even if I grow my own raw materials, I will be using land that then becomes unavailable to other people.
Well then, clearly nobody should ever produce anything - even food - because by doing so they deprive others of the raw materials used.
Hell, maybe we should all stop breathing. After all, by doing so we're depriving others of access to the oxygen we just used...
But, imagine if the atmosphere were privatised, say enclosed into private ownerships teritorialy
Now people no longer have the natural right to breath
Is this new market in air, trade or coercion?
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
If you raise an income from the production of food, then it seems self-evident to me that you are depriving somebody else of the opportunity to make that same income. There is only a limited amount of land to grow food, and only a limited demand for food. [/QB]
The demand part of this argument is a red herring. It's clear that demand for everything hasn't been satisfied because somebody in the scenario is considering producing for his own needs and can't. To put it another way, if all demand had indeed been satisfied then there is no problem anyway. The land side of the argument is entirely unarguably correct, though.
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
If you raise an income from the production of food, then it seems self-evident to me that you are depriving somebody else of the opportunity to make that same income. There is only a limited amount of land to grow food, and only a limited demand for food. So the wealth-creating potential of food is limited.
No, not really. Food is a smaller part of the wealth-creating potential of rich economies than of poor economies because people make wealth by selling other things.
Also an increasing proportion of the value of the food they sell is derived from the labour that goes into it - the processing rather than the raw materials.
Also with increasing wealth an increasing proportion of that labour is the intellectual labour - the design or arrangement of the thiogns sold.
And with increasing wealth an increasing proportion of trade goes to services, not to material goods at all. Though the things are hard to distingusish sometimes. A car is not "worth" ten thousand dollars because of the steel and plastic in it - it is the design and arrangement of those things.
quote:
But if your political system relies on the existence of unlimited wealth-creating opportunities, it will fail, because there are not, in fact, unlimited wealth-creating opportunities.
There are unlimited wealth-creting opportunties, or rather the limit to wealth-creating is the amount of labour, especially intellectual labour, that is put into goods and services that can be sold. The value of a book is the words written on it. I can store hundreds of books on the little memory chip in my pocket.
A higher and higher proportion of the value of all traded goods is derived from brainwork.
Because the output of intellectual labour - ideas, texts, designs, "software" in the most general sense - is reproducible for a negligible marginal cost, its price will fall continually almost for ever until it is cheaper to give it away than sell it.
So the future, short of a terrible war which destorys the economy, is one of continually increasing wealth without limit, in which almost all trade is in software and services rather than physical goods, and most things are free, and all cash value is obviously seen to be the result of intellectual labour of the workers.
Capitalism is merely the attempt of the powers that be of the old order to hang on to stuff. Ir will become irrelevant when people realise stuff is only a tiny proportion of the value of things. A short and nasty chapter in the history fo the world.
Paradoxially stuff will them become more valuable
The irreducible floor is personal services. Money is in effect a token of power to get someone else to do work for you. As there are the same number of people as there are people (IYSWIM) n a world in which all traded goods were free the average income would pay for one person's services.
Sometime in the future effectively all our income will go on personal services - probably mostly healthcare, & quite a lot on entertainment A little bit will go on stuff. Software in the widest sense will be free, except for the latest and flashiest which will be very expensive.
But yes, there can be economic growth without limit, because limited material resources are a decreasingly important part of the total economy.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
But yes, there can be economic growth without limit, because limited material resources are a decreasingly important part of the total economy.
Oh yes, production can theoretically increase without limit, but the access to the opportunity to produce, in a way, can not and importantly this access can be monopolised or taken privately.
Think about it like this; all that intellectual work has to end up in the production of actual cars in an actual factory, sitting on actual land. So access to the intellectual work, you describe, can be or is limited in precisely the same way and for the same reasons as access to farm work.
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
But, imagine if the atmosphere were privatised, say enclosed into private ownerships teritorialy
Already the case, in so far as the atmosphere can be defined territorially. Basically put, trespass is trespass, and as such I can be prosecuted even for breathing while on someone else's property.
The bugger with atmosphere is that, as a gas, it tends to diffuse across any lines we care to draw on a map. So I can stand on the edge of someone's property and still breathe the air that earlier was "theirs".
The alternative to anyone wanting to control access to their air is, of course, to wall it in. And that's an option - no-one has the right to just stroll into anyone else's house even if it's only to taste the air therein.
quote:
Now people no longer have the natural right to breath
Is this new market in air, trade or coercion?
In the only terms that it's possible to define access to air in, we already have such a "market". Maybe one day when we all live in hermetically sealed units (pace Total Recall) it will be an issue, but right now it's just not.
...
Besides, the kind of free access to land you seem to advocate just wouldn't work. What would stop me from farming the land you are on in such a scenario, or better still what would stop me from just harvesting the fruits of your labours for myself?
If all land is free then everything that grows thereon is by definition free as well. If not then you have land ownership by default...
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
But, imagine if the atmosphere were privatised, say enclosed into private ownerships teritorialy
Already the case, in so far as the atmosphere can be defined territorially. Basically put, trespass is trespass, and as such I can be prosecuted even for breathing while on someone else's property.
That’s absolutely correct, but my question was, is this trade or coercion?
Some of the other things landowners incidentally own through their exclusion are - sunlight, gravity, rainfall, the magnetic field at the surface of the earth, starlight. Some of these things have a high value to humanity, some not as high. But all of them have a commonality in that no person actually ever provided them to anyone.
One way to check for coercion in a system is to ask if the person being charged would have access to what he is paying for, if the person he is paying never existed. If he would, then coercion is the only logical possibility, because the paid person must be both removing the possibility and charging for its implementation; clearly this is a one way trade, like both breaking windows and charging to replace them.
As an example: If a highwayman stands in from of your car demanding payment to travel on, it’s clear you could continue on your journey if he never even existed, and so, this is coercion rather than trade. If I try to charge you for a licence to facing east, that is also coercion. If the government attempts to charge you for engaging in trade, that also is coercion. All of these ‘actions’ are possible without the charger’s existence and so the ability to engage in them is not the result of any service provided by him. This is a very powerful model because it cuts through the bullshit and asks if the paid is indeed actually supplying the payer with anything or simply charging for a restriction on his liberty to be lifted.
quote:
The bugger with atmosphere is that, as a gas, it tends to diffuse across any lines we care to draw on a map. So I can stand on the edge of someone's property and still breathe the air that earlier was "theirs".
Yeah agreed
Atmosphere is a rather slippery example; though, I think, it can illustrate the principle
To truly enclose the atmosphere in an analogous way to the way land was enclosed one would need to pull the entire atmosphere into tanks, so that access was completely exclusivized. In reality this would be a rather large project, involving a lot of energy and the complete annihilation of the ecosystem and so there are other objections to it that ignore the economic point regarding the supply of air. An interesting question, though, is does anyone have the right to exclude others from the earth’s atmosphere, no matter what technique or excuse they use to justify it, or how much incidental damage is done or not done in the process? After all, aren’t people using the atmosphere even though they have staked no claim? Don’t they have that right by dint of their humanity? Imagine, for instance, the above were, in fact feasible, and ignoring the moral question about the annihilation of nearly all non-human life, would it be moral to entrap or enclose the earth’s atmosphere and sell access to those deprived by the enclosure? Could it ever be entirely trade?
quote:
Besides, the kind of free access to land you seem to advocate just wouldn't work. What would stop me from farming the land you are on in such a scenario, or better still what would stop me from just harvesting the fruits of your labours for myself?
If all land is free then everything that grows thereon is by definition free as well. If not then you have land ownership by default...
From what has been said it really would be reasonable to assume I advocate totally free access to all land for everyone, but I don’t. What we have in land ownership is a pragmatic institution that arose from the benefits of the exclusive use of land. The problem is, not much attention was being paid to justice when land ownership was instituted and so we have an institution that is somewhat pragmatic but almost entirely and completely unjust (as it is instituted). These culturally inherited and systemic injustices are now at the root of most of the major misunderstandings and problems within our communities.
I advocate that land is held by individual owners, who have a right to exclude others and use the land (more or less) how they see fit, just as they do now. But that this special, and pragmatically inspired, societal arrangement reflect the natural rights of all those excluded as well as the pragamatic neccesity for exclusion. The excluded (everyone else apart from the owner) should be compensated for their lost liberties, by the owner of nature. In other words, the owners of land and all natural resources should pay the market value of the nature they take away, back to everyone else (in sum). The result would be a free market rather than the presently instituted carnival of thievery, and, so, would actually be far more efficient as well as being more just.
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
no-one deserves to have hundreds of millions of dollars. The end. Full stop...
...And, as far as I am concerned, it is that simple. It really is.
I was going to post something about Christians wanting to lift people out of absolute poverty as an act of compassion for the suffering individual, while socialists want to abolish relative wealth because it offends their idea of how things should be.
But I think you've just told us what your bottom line is without me needing to say anything of the sort.
This is clearly not an attitude that anyone's going to be able to talk you out of, but it will never bring you peace of mind.
Best wishes,
Russ
PS: don't let me interrupt the economics debate - it's fascinating.
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Telepath
Ship's Steamer Trunk
# 3534
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Posted
Originally posted by Stars:
quote:
I advocate that land is held by individual owners, who have a right to exclude others and use the land (more or less) how they see fit, just as they do now. But that this special, and pragmatically inspired, societal arrangement reflect the natural rights of all those excluded as well as the pragamatic neccesity for exclusion. The excluded (everyone else apart from the owner) should be compensated for their lost liberties, by the owner of nature. In other words, the owners of land and all natural resources should pay the market value of the nature they take away, back to everyone else (in sum). The result would be a free market rather than the presently instituted carnival of thievery, and, so, would actually be far more efficient as well as being more just.
In other words: having landowners pay rent to the community in exchange for the landowners' exclusive access to that land.
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Take emptiness and lying speech far from me, and do not give me poverty or wealth. Give me a living sufficient for me.
Posts: 3509 | From: East Anglia | Registered: Nov 2002
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
I was going to post something about Christians wanting to lift people out of absolute poverty as an act of compassion for the suffering individual, while socialists want to abolish relative wealth because it offends their idea of how things should be.
I have no idea if Trump, Gates, Branson, Sugar, The Royal family, the guy who owns Harrods or Warren Buffet, the Sultan of Brunai etc are evil people. Quite possibly not.
But for them to have the wealth they do? That's evil, and nothing anyone can say will make it not so or otherwise. Even if they give away what to them is spare change, that still doesn't lessen the evil by a single iota. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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Infinite Penguins.
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Posts: 12176 | From: a zoo in England. | Registered: Mar 2003
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Basically put, trespass is trespass, and as such I can be prosecuted even for breathing while on someone else's property.
And that sucks.
When I lived in Scotland, there was no law of trespass. It didn't result in peopl;e camping on our front lawn, or standing next to our front door all day, or throwing parties in our back garden. It just made life a hell of a lot simpler.
If I were ruler of the world, trespass would be the first law to go. Then the idea that property is always right.
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Infinite Penguins.
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
I was going to post something about Christians wanting to lift people out of absolute poverty as an act of compassion for the suffering individual, while socialists want to abolish relative wealth because it offends their idea of how things should be.
I have no idea if Trump, Gates, Branson, Sugar, The Royal family, the guy who owns Harrods or Warren Buffet, the Sultan of Brunai etc are evil people. Quite possibly not.
But for them to have the wealth they do? That's evil, and nothing anyone can say will make it not so or otherwise. Even if they give away what to them is spare change, that still doesn't lessen the evil by a single iota.
Nice.
Even I acknowledge that socialism is not evil in and of itself, only how it is used. And I despise it more than even you can fathom.
Have you considered how taking a position so completely devoid of the ability to debate it reasonably makes you appear to others?
And think about who just said that to you....
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Diax's Rake - "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"
Posts: 11730 | From: People's Republic of SoCal | Registered: Jun 2002
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
Interesting. So much for discussion with you then, right? I mean that is why we are ostensibly here right?
Or are we just here to hear the Master's unsubstantiated opinion?
Inquiring minds want to know.....
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Diax's Rake - "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"
Posts: 11730 | From: People's Republic of SoCal | Registered: Jun 2002
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:
Interesting. So much for discussion with you then, right? I mean that is why we are ostensibly here right?
Sure, and there are plenty of things I am happy to discuss. There are a few things on which I have made up my mind already. Vast wealth is one of them, and whether or not I ought to listen to heavy metal music is another.
That said, most people here have absolutes. Would you, seriously, be open to the view that America should become communist? I'm not advocating that, but I'd like to know.
This is what human beings so interesting. We are all different. I don't have to share or agree with your absolutes and vice versa, and the same goes for any shipmate. It's the bits in the middle that we can fruitfully discuss.
(spelnig)
[ 17. May 2007, 02:48: Message edited by: Papio ]
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Infinite Penguins.
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
Yes, if we were discussing Communism I would support my beliefs with rational thought, powerful argument, and rigorous debate. I can pretty much gaurantee I would do my damndest to argue my point with reason and logic. Not "Communism is Evil, period" or at least not until after I had put forth teh argument, FIRST.
I doubt anyone here can deny that I won't support my arguments with rational thought and reason, or at least die trying.
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Diax's Rake - "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"
Posts: 11730 | From: People's Republic of SoCal | Registered: Jun 2002
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Alfred E. Neuman
What? Me worry?
# 6855
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
I don't care, Geo. Immense wealth is evil. Period.
No, Papio, immense wealth is not evil. People are evil and their demonic state has nothing to do with massive disposable income. How many multimillionaires have been reported running through the streets in a drug-induced rage mowing down innocent people with an assault rifle?
Wealth is simply numbers on a balance sheet. It's how those numbers are used that implies good or bad. I suggest immense poverty is far more evil than its opposite.
Sometimes you sound like someone who hates skiing but has never seen snow.
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gort:
I suggest immense poverty is far more evil than its opposite.
Well, that at least is true.
quote:
Sometimes you sound like someone who hates skiing but has never seen snow.
I hate immense wealth but don't understand it, don't understand what it can do, have no familarity with it and have misunderstood economics? Is that your basic point?
I'll concede that that may be true.
Mad Geo - I have tried to show what I mean on other threads.
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Infinite Penguins.
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Posts: 12176 | From: a zoo in England. | Registered: Mar 2003
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
If you are not justifying it on THIS thread, then why are you even here?
I am NOT saying that to be mean, I am saying it because you are standing in the Sahara with skis on your feet and we all know it because your are not attmepting HERE to support the posts you make with any facts whatsoever. And that you admit you have no experience with snow.
Welcome to Purgatory.
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Diax's Rake - "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"
Posts: 11730 | From: People's Republic of SoCal | Registered: Jun 2002
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
Immense wealth is evil. Period.
I disagree. I think envy is evil. I think that seeing the fruits of someone else's success or good fortune and immediately wanting to take it away from them is the sin against the tenth commandment.
But I'd be interested to hear you flesh out your theory a little more. If my house is worth £100,000 am I immensely wealthy ? £1m ? £10m ? £100m ? Where's the boundary beyond which each additional increment of wealth, each extra penny owned is an instrument of the devil ?
I assume you do mean capital rather than income ?
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
I presume the bar is set high enough to exclude Papio from the realms of the Evil One, though he is almost certainly immensely rich by the standards of Chinese sweatshop-workers.
I have said several times on this thread that we are all bourgeois, and the real proletariat is found in the developing world. I suspect that a major cause of the decline of the traditional far-left in the UK is that the middle-classes who would once have supported the miners and the dockers have largely realised this.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
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Telepath
Ship's Steamer Trunk
# 3534
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Posted
quote:
I have said several times on this thread that we are all bourgeois
Speak for yourself.
quote:
and the real proletariat is found in the developing world. I suspect that a major cause of the decline of the traditional far-left in the UK is that the middle-classes who would once have supported the miners and the dockers have largely realised this.
Or have largely been fooled and/or guilt-tripped into accepting Chinese sweatshop workers as a basis for comparison, and thereby distracted away from perceiving the reality of their situation.
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Take emptiness and lying speech far from me, and do not give me poverty or wealth. Give me a living sufficient for me.
Posts: 3509 | From: East Anglia | Registered: Nov 2002
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sharkshooter
Not your average shark
# 1589
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Posted
The easy answer to the OP is that since there are socialist who aren't Christians and Christians who aren't socialists then, no, Christianity is not the same as socialism. I not sure why it has taken 8 pages of discussion.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer. [Psalm 19:14]
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by sharkshooter:
The easy answer to the OP is that since there are socialist who aren't Christians and Christians who aren't socialists then, no, Christianity is not the same as socialism. I not sure why it has taken 8 pages of discussion.
Unless the socialist who aren't Christians and the Christians who aren't socialists are all deluded, of course.
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
I presume the bar is set high enough to exclude Papio from the realms of the Evil One, though he is almost certainly immensely rich by the standards of Chinese sweatshop-workers.
Actually, it is set high enough to exclude most Europeans and, I assume, Americans and other "first-worlders" from the Evil One and I have never earned, or come close to earning, the average wage in the UK. I am talking exclusively about the mega-rich. If they give money to the poor then that's great, but I still think it should have been given straight to the poor to start off with although i am not suggesting making anyone penniless.
The main problem with your argument, for me, is that it assumes that the "standards of the Chinese sweatshop-workers" ought to be treated as normative. I disagree there because I think they their economic situation, not through any fault of their own, should be for ease of use and understanding and to withstand the constraints of conscience be treated as being very much below normative. To treat absolute poverty as normative is to legitimise it, which can hinder the impetetus to do something about it.
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by sharkshooter:
The easy answer to the OP is that since there are socialist who aren't Christians and Christians who aren't socialists then, no, Christianity is not the same as socialism. I not sure why it has taken 8 pages of discussion.
Well, we may have been led astray by Acts 2:44-45 . OliviaG
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
Actually, by nearly any historical standard or as viewed by someone really bad off in the third world, Papio, you are mega-rich. It's one of the ironies of your evil declaration that you abitrarily exclude your lifestyle as "normal" or whatever, when in fact you are rich enough to have access to something that the bulk of the third world have never even touched. A computer.
And that doens't even include your NHS healthcare, decent water, a roof over your head, and so on.
So how does it feel to be evil rich?
I know I enjoy it..... ![[Snigger]](graemlins/snigger.gif)
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:
as viewed by someone really bad off in the third world, Papio, you are mega-rich.
You keep pointing this out as though it were somehow relavent per se. I don't think it is. It only would be were it the case that I made no effort for charity, which isn't the case. I couldn't live as they do in this society. Well, ok, I could, but I would be homeless. I don't think anyone has a duty to be homeless. Can you really not see the difference between some guy on £15, 000 p.a (more than I'm on)and Donald Trump? I'm sure you can. You must be able to.
You are, again, treating absolute poverty as normative and I have already explained my objections to that.
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Alfred E. Neuman
What? Me worry?
# 6855
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Posted
And so it goes: Modern western civilization so accustomed to common conveniences that even the extremely poor enjoy the luxury of idle intellectual pursuits.
Bill Gates' obscenely wealthy status (for example) has been completely redeemed by his charitable acts. Any difference between what he has been doing in third world countries and your charitable acts, Papio, are only a matter of degree. Splitting hairs over numbers and the relative merits of degree is a western luxury.
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
So, let's say, in theory I try to change my attitude to the uber-rich. What then? Am I then obliged to accept the entirety of the staus quo without wanting to improve things?
I guess not.
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Alfred E. Neuman
What? Me worry?
# 6855
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Posted
What status quo?
That any individual has the most opportunity to accumulate wealth under capitalism as opposed to other systems? That the wealthy are, by nature, selfish because they are ambitious? That accumulated wealth somehow implies a total disregard for the welfare of others? That somehow economic improvement for all can be achieved without ambitious individuals providing jobs for those who haven't their organizational skills?
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
Cross posted
Papio:
No. But you might be more cautious about throwing words around like "evil" when it comes to the super-rich or anyones else for that matter.
I see a difference between someone that makes 15k and Donald Trump alright. The Donald has more options for creating solutions than the guy with 15k. Bill Gates has enough money to create solutions that baffle entire countries economic systems. In short, he could be seen from that narrow perspective as equal to a god in goodness. Because only god and Bill Gates have enough money to perform certain miracles like solving the malaria problem.
But again, it is all relative. Absolute poverty IS normative in some areas. Just because you have been elevated above that doesn't mean you do not look evil (using your term) to the super poor as you think you are to the super rich. To a super poor person the 15k person and The Donald look the same. We are merely trying to point out the weakness of your "Evil" Assumption.
[ 18. May 2007, 01:15: Message edited by: Mad Geo ]
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
Do you not feel any revulsion at all when you compare the richest guy in the world with the poorest communities in the world?
I don't understand how you couldn't. But since hate isn't a great thing, I am willing to try and change my attitude.
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Alfred E. Neuman
What? Me worry?
# 6855
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Posted
My revulsion is that modern westerns have become so accustomed to their comfortable status and the ease of survival that they are completely oblivious to real physical suffering in third worlds.
Your hatred would be more constructively directed towards the mind-numbing media barrage that insures our myopia.
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Sir Pellinore
Quester Emeritus
# 12163
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gort:
My revulsion is that modern westerns have become so accustomed to their comfortable status and the ease of survival that they are completely oblivious to real physical suffering in third worlds.
Your hatred would be more constructively directed towards the mind-numbing media barrage that insures our myopia.
Surely a lot of Westerner's aren't and haven't?
What about the genuine good work Oxfam &c do? ![[Cool]](cool.gif)
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Well...
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
Do you not feel any revulsion at all when you compare the richest guy in the world with the poorest communities in the world?
I don't understand how you couldn't. But since hate isn't a great thing, I am willing to try and change my attitude.
I might have had the rich guy held onto his money, but he is not. If he keeps this up he may outdo Mother Theresa before he dies. At least in sheer bang for the buck at least. That he invests his money and his energy is quite impressive.
This is not about liking or disliking, revulsion or adoration, its about how things get done. In order for "Evil" to apply he would have to look like Scrooge and less like Mother Theresa. It doesn't matter if there are people richer than god, or people poorer than mice. I swear it really doesn't. It's what Jesus meant when he said "The poor will always be with us" IMHO. I think he hit one out of the park with that statement. He was basically admitting that we can move the poor to the middle and the middle to the rich, and there will simply always be some poor somewhere. We have to fight for them! But a thousand more will appear. Meanwhile the rich employ the middle and the poor, and the middle provide the labor and the small businesses.
That rich exist is not a crime. It is simply a fact. And no amount of hatred will change that. Just like no amount of sympathy will help all the poor. Both ends of the spectrum are only as immoral as their behavior. I'm sure there are MegaRich Angels and Poor Devils. And vice versa.
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
Just goes to show that somewhere in the world, every minute, right now, a village idiot is being quoted.
P.S. Half of the quotes originate from GW at the moment, but I digress.
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Diax's Rake - "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
So the early fathers of the Church are village idiots?
Does that mean that Ss. Peter and Paul were also village idiots?
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
And how about Thomas Aquinas: ""If there is an urgent and clear need, so urgent
and clear that it is evident that an immediate response must be made on the
basis of what is available . . . then a person may legitimately supply his
need from the property of someone else, whether openly or secretly.
Strictly speaking, such a case is not theft or robbery."
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
LOL,
Works for me.
Look just because someone was the "Father of Anything" doesn't mean that they knew dick all about property rights or modern economic systems.
I wouldn't go to Newton for advice on Quantum Mechanics.
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Diax's Rake - "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Basil the Great:
"The private appropriation of the common, such as land, is robbery. Hence, the continued excessive landownership is but fresh and continued theft. Indeed, the hoarding of other things, too, which one does not need, but which others do need, is itself a form of theft."
So any land ownership is theft? Does that include the land on which we live? Would Basil the Great like to have us unable to keep anyone else out of our houses should we wish to do so, or indeed even to lock our doors?
And the idea of landowners paying everyone else rent for their land is ludicrous. It would make not owning land more profitable, and hence no-one would want to have any. And then what would get done? Nothing, that's what.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Basil the Great:
"The private appropriation of the common, such as land, is robbery. Hence, the continued excessive landownership is but fresh and continued theft. Indeed, the hoarding of other things, too, which one does not need, but which others do need, is itself a form of theft."
So any land ownership is theft? Does that include the land on which we live?
What if we all just claimed ownership of the land we live on now, is that theft?
You make a rough appeal to a notion of justice; ‘of course we should own where we live’ but you ignore the fact that the system of land ownership (as we institute it) doesn’t say “you own where you live’. It’s a false appeal to a notion of a justice which is not inferred by what you are defending.
quote:
Would Basil the Great like to have us unable to keep anyone else out of our houses should we wish to do so, or indeed even to lock our doors?
Yep, we need the ability (privilege) of excluding others from bits of the world for human life to be, at all, bearable. Now, does one man have a greater or smaller right to exclude others from the world, than another? If he does, from whom did he earn that extra privilege and how? The argument is at rock bottom pretty simple; nobody created the world itself, so our rights to it are equal.
quote:
And the idea of landowners paying everyone else rent for their land is ludicrous. It would make not owning land more profitable, and hence no-one would want to have any. And then what would get done? Nothing, that's what.
People would want land in order to use it to create wealth. If you are arguing that nobody would pay for this, then you are arguing counterfactually because they do it now, privately. The exchange price of real estate would be very much lower though.
So we would have a lowered price of real estate and additionally, a source of government revenue so that taxes on wages etc can be reduced or even eliminated.
Sounds like a win-win to me
Consider if we instituted the above and then removed the taxes / rents. The price of real estate would rise commensurately. So we haven’t watched production costs fall as a result of lowered land taxes, we have instead watched real estate prices rise, which makes the costs to production higher.
Taxes on pure land value don’t increase the cost of production, because they simply come out of the price of land which is already a cost on production
In one distant respect you are right though, incentives would be changed. You would, not be able to make a profit simply and only by holding (monopolising) available land so someone else has to pay you in order to use it productively; or so you can capture the value of surrounding infrastructure improvements without contributing to them particularly.
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