136 karma · joined October 9, 2018
We don't have a baseline understanding of consciousness or intuition to a degree that we could even begin to replicate it.
Which modern, high quality of life, non capitalist countries are less harmful to the environment?
>You have no scruples at all do you? "No insight into" then you go on avoiding the point and just falsely suggesting that I said something I didn't say (treating all historical North American societies as one, which is ridiculous), what a deeply dishonest thing to write, shame on you.
What was your point then? You were leveraging some native American sentiments and factually incorrect popular myths on their beliefs about property ownership to contend falsely that they had better economic systems devoid of profit motive or property.
>I won't be wasting energy on replies that have zero prospect of breaking through that dogma. I can see others have tried with no success.
The irony coming from someone with entirely unsourced, repeatedly demonstrably false assertions, while I have provided endless examples and sources.
Sorry, not sorry for sticking to my well researched and verbosely sources principles and reasoning because random strangers on the internet regurgitate easily countered dogma from ideologues and propagandists.
I can tell you exactly what evidence would look like that would change my mind about any topic I hold strong beliefs about. Meanwhile you can't even stick to one topic.
There's no such thing as capitalism to me. The things I listed are demonstrably not capitalism
>So either it existed before society or it didn't? Pick one, you can't have both
Pick one of what? Rights exist independent of society. Society and government trampled on them for most of history. Some guys that led a revolution wrote a lot about this and the self evident nature.
As for your last request, I've done that repeatedly and you've repeatedly resorted to attempts to change the topic.
Capitalism and its principles, capitalist societies, and capitalist philosophers have consistently demonstrated the most rapid and prolific advances in ethics and morality in human history.
Prove it
> the USSR had lots of progress as well, but it doesn't make Stalinism a good system
Not morally or ethically, which I'll remind you, yet again is what we're talking about. Stay on topic
>Slavery? Racism? Colonialism? Property requirements to vote? Women suffrage? Supporting brutal regimes in the name of corporate profit? Famine while still exporting? Exploitation fueled by Capitalism's profit and growth motive? Climate and ecological disaster? People dying in the US due to lack of healthcare access?
Prove the causative relationship between these things and capitalism, and that they make up 80% of capitalism's history, your original assertion. Why did they exist before capitalism?
Why did many of these good things fail to happen before capitalism? Why do they happen virtually everywhere afterwards?
Capitalist countries are the most ecologically and climate efficient per capita and quality of life.
Exploitative compared to what and where?
Examine severe illness outcomes, pharmaceutical research, medical innovation, and general health of the US (meaning, US citizens have bad health habits) vs elsewhere before you make such ignorant comments.
>Come on, you're the one preaching, it's your duty to prove your extraordinary claim against history. Capitalism is like 400 years old.
Which is why it's remarkable how much progress has occurred under it in such a short period of time, literally my point
>Native American's societies for example thought of people being forced to wage labour their entire life for someones else's enrichment to be not much better than being a slave. Certainly not "freedom" in any case. Not to even mention their thoughts about the concept of private ownership of the commons, as in private property.
You continually speak authoritatively about subjects you clearly do not have any insight into. Native Americans practiced slavery & conquest. Native Americans had private property. They also hadn't invented the wheel and sacrificed hundreds of thousands of people a year on top of pyramids. You're regurgitating well known popular myths. Stop deviating off topic
>What explicit examples?
China under Pooh's new crackdown on private property and capitalist tendencies vs it when it opened and extended private property rights. Estonia post-USSR. Zimbabwe vs Botswana. Just a few, modern ones, if we want to go back to the 18th and 19th century the trend was nearly universal in the west.
Both of these are explicit examples of regulatory capture.
The FAA is heavily dependent on aircraft manufacturers to self certify. EU members met in Brussels to discuss the exact metrics VW was spoofing, but failed to implement a measurement strategy that would have easily detected this manipulation due to pressure from companies regarding the expense and time of tests.
>They certainly wouldn't have been avoided by laissez-faire capitalism.
You cannot substantiate this assertion. If the state did not have easily captured, monopolistic, and absolute authority over the certification and other confidence-instilling industries, then it's highly likely trustworthy, neutral third parties would exist and compete to assess and verify the safety and other metrics of various industry. In the restaurant industry, ServSafe and its competitors are a great example. There's also tons of nongovernmental safety and quality certifications in plenty of other fields with the potential for catastrophic failure and loss of human life.
>Please elaborate on these.
I've already cited Smith's books. Derivative and subsequent works regarding the rise and proliferation of the economic philosophy of capitalism are consistent in their message.
>Without "bad human" problems, any economic system ever tested in history would work fine, including the ones you don't like.
No they wouldn't, but that's completely unrelated to what's being discussed. The entire point I'm making is that capitalism's economic and moral foundations minimize the impact and scale of individual bad actors, to a degree unseen by any other system, while simultaneously enabling the common man to participate in innovation. It's an an objective fact consistently observable across time and space.
>The only reason modern "capitalist states" work is because they have a functioning state enforcing the playing field so game is fair.
That's a bold and completely unsubstantiated assertion.
Please actually read some of the foundational literature. Pretty much everything you've said is explicitly addressed.
It's consistent across time and the globe for the overwhelming majority of nations transitioning to and from capitalism to any other system. It's not just some singular event that happened once in the 18th century, it's observable right now. I provided examples in another comment.
>You'll have to surgically remove at least 80% of Capitalism's history for it to be even close to true.
Prove it. What is this 80%?
>Even then, you have many societies in "human history" that certainly would argue that their "ethical and moral" progression was significantly better than today's.
Name them and describe how and why.
Why is it always those that insist on ignoring objective historical facts can never substantiate their assertions and rather make axiomatic statements?
I provided explicit examples and illustrated consistency across time and geography. Hand wavy dismissals aren't doing your argument any favors.
Regurgitating Marx isn't going to be effective against someone who has a more holistic understanding of capitalism and its roots. Funny given your accusations of "Americans and children" considering Marx was a literal man child.
The point is that this behavior is a bad human problem, not a capitalism problem. And historically, capitalism has lead to a massive reduction in bad human behavior on an unprecedented scale, largely due to the economic and moral foundations upon which it is built. Bad human problems reappear in countries as they reduce their participation in capitalism and reduce private property rights (see this in real-time in China literally right now, Cuba, N Korea, etc). They also magically disappear when former non capitalist states adopt capitalist economic policies and extend private property rights (Estonia & other former socialist states, capitalist African states vs socialist ones, etc.)
Adam Smith and other prominent economic philosophers that examined and supported what is now the capitalist system didn't just sit down and say "Well people ought to be able to maximize profit". There's a whole lot of exposition on how (via private property) and why (because every individual has a moral and economic right to bodily autonomy and the results of its labor).
No, they did it because they viewed "others" as less than human, or less deserving of dignity and respect, no different than a beast of burden. Slavery predates capitalism by millennia, so viewing others this way clearly doesn't share a causative relationship with capitalism. To contend that capitalism caused slavery is absurd. It's the only economic system in history that resulted in the enduring abolition of slavery. Modern, alternative economic systems still devolve into utilizing slavery to this very day.
You should read Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and The Wealth of Nations, which, in great detail, illustrate the economic inefficiency and moral repugnance of slavery in what we now call capitalism. Slavery was definitely not capitalistic, using your definition, purely from a profit motive perspective. It was horrible at maximizing profits.
The economic philosophy of private property, the quintessential foundation of capitalism, is on the basis that everyone has a right to individual liberty and autonomy (again, Adam Smith).
You should also read George Fitzhugh, the most prominent representative of anti abolitionist plantation owners. He was a staunch anti-capitalist specifically because the moral framework it is built on humanized black people and this sentiment was a primary driver in the abolitionist movement. Capitalists and abolitionists were extremely closely associated during the abolitionist movement.
>Maximizing rights and freedoms on the macro scale means limiting some people's edge freedoms on the micro scale.
No it doesn't. It means preventing others from stepping on universal freedoms of others, which is exactly the philosophical foundations of private property. This is categorically different than limiting freedoms. Preserving individual freedoms doesn't mean limiting them for some selectively.
The overwhelming majority of ethical and moral progression in human history coincided with the extension of private property rights to more and more of the general population, and retracted when those rights were rescinded.
This occurred both because of the recognition of humanity that goes along with granting these rights, and the technological progressions enabled by allowing opportunity and innovation to occur in larger swaths of the population rather than an aristocratic hyperminority.
You don't know what primary evidence means. I've linked several sources that include indisputable, concrete evidence, including verified CCP documents, as well as eye witness, first party testimony that maintains consistency across accounts from entirely different people.
Describe evidence sufficient to your standards and provide rebuttals to the evidence provided. I know you can't and won't do either of these things, I'm just explicitly demonstrating the intellectual dishonesty you're employing to minimize the horrors of the CCP.
Your contentions don't hold up to even the most basic scrutiny or challenge.
https://eagle.bchigh.edu/features/2021/04/26/the-uyghur-geno...
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/04/china/xinjiang-detective-tort...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071
https://scholarship.law.uc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...
"If it saves just one life, it's worth it."
Statements like this are humorous to me. While it's undoubtedly true that reddit was used by some disgusting far-right ideologues, it's still a hotbed for misandrists (TwoX and FemaleDatingStrategy), anti-white racists (BlackPeopleTwitter, many others), violent, radical left-wing ideologues (riot strategies discussed and planned in the open in summer 2020), blatant child grooming, and many other subgroups that are easily categorized as belonging to the "dark underbelly". As long as they're not right wing, they're not worth mentioning explicitly I guess.
The dichotomy of political concern, as well as the fact that reddit has an increasingly large and dominant population of literal children is why I'm awaiting this IPO with massive expectations that I'll be thoroughly entertained by how it turns out in the next few years. Community content curation by left wing ideologically homogeneous children seems like a very winning strategy for a businesses and advertisers.
Every time a major org claims to be open to OSS it rapidly reverts to old tools and ecosystems. The new CIO can claim all he wants, it's not going to happen. DoD is run by entrenched civil servants. I've seen it happen time and time again in MDA, Army, and Navy work.
"At 3.5% of 2009 GDP it is a cost that is big enough to raise serious questions about whether taxpayers could have been better protected."
You're just plain wrong mate. Taxpayers don't need to be protected from profitable ventures. I dunno what the hell definition for profit you're making up, but it's literally defined on the basis of cost in accounting and finance.
I said that they have not been profitable to the taxpayer. I pointed out that the conclusion that they've been profitable to the tax payer is based on flawed cost accounting methods and cited the paper.
In the paper, the author very explicitly stated it was not profitable to the tax payer, directly calls out the misleading nature of the ProPublica tracker, explains why it's misleading, verbosely explains and justifies a more accurate cost accounting methodology, describes the results of using this methodology, and commentates on how these results and the methodologies that produce them may be used in the future to make more accurate and less misleading cost assessments of bailouts in the future.
I've directly quoted the paper numerous times in which the author clearly states that the bailouts were not profitable to the taxpayer, flaws in methodologies that indicate they were profitable to the taxpayer, and why different methodologies are needed that more accurately reflect whether the true cost of a bailout results in a situation that is profitable to the taxpayer.
In conclusion, and to reiterate my original point. The bailouts were not profitable to the taxpayer except when using deeply flawed cost accounting methodologies such as ex post cash flow analysis, which the author, in great detail, explains is a woefully inadequate for measuring the cost to the taxpayer of a bailout.
She regularly lies by omission, and also leads the New Israel Fund, one of Adalah's chief financial supporters.
https://www.camera.org/article/yehudit-karp-erases-history-o...
Adalah also defends known Hamas leadership and has absurd amounts of documentation regarding its true, more nefarious purposes. That's why it's met with suspicion and not seen as a champion of civil rights.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-court-nixes-rec...
https://israelbehindthenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/I...
Again I'll ask, do you dismiss black BLM supporters on the basis that because they're unabashedly pro-black, they can't present objective, unbiased evidence and arguments for their support?
"At 3.5% of 2009 GDP it is a cost that is big enough to raise serious questions about whether taxpayers could have been better protected."
It even directly states that citing the propublica bailout tracker, which the root comment does, as evidence of "profit to the taxpayer" is deeply flawed and one of the reasons the paper is addressing the issue. This is the entire reason I cited it
"The press typically reports bailout costs on an ex post cash basis despite the problems with that approach. For example, ProPublica, a highly regarded non-partisan news organization, created a 'Bailout Tracker' that has been keeping a running tally of government asset purchases and cash receipts under TARP and from the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In their most recent update dated September 27, 2018, they report a total net government 'profit' of $97 billion. Policymakers also tend to cite ex post cash results. For example, in 2012 former president Barack Obama claimed that, 'We got back every dime used to rescue the banks.' Other media outlets report skepticism about such claims,7 but news organizations generally lack the financial acumen or resources to produce credible cost estimates of their own."
You're not going to force your flawed interpretation onto me and convince me the author is not stating exactly what she's stating plain as day, and has reinforced with subsequent work and commentary. That's called gaslighting