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gdw Inner circle 4884 Posts |
Yes, absolutely. I agree. The problem is the system incentivizes them. The problem is the system.
"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
I won't forget you Robert. |
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acesover Special user I believe I have 821 Posts |
Quote:
On 2011-02-25 15:22, gdw wrote: Please stop posting things like this. You are making to much sense it is not like you. You know we hardly ever disagree.
If I were to agree with you. Then we would both be wrong. As of Apr 5, 2015 10:26 pm I have 880 posts. Used to have over 1,000
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gdw Inner circle 4884 Posts |
Quote:
On 2011-02-25 17:53, acesover wrote: I think people agree with me more than they realize.
"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
I won't forget you Robert. |
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MagicSanta Inner circle Northern Nevada 5841 Posts |
I think people may agree with some aspects but it has nothing to do with you. Your problem is you are single minded to the point of having tunel vision, and that inflexible position will cost you at the end.
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acesover Special user I believe I have 821 Posts |
Quote:
On 2011-02-25 18:27, gdw wrote: That last post I definitely disagree with.
If I were to agree with you. Then we would both be wrong. As of Apr 5, 2015 10:26 pm I have 880 posts. Used to have over 1,000
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Magnus Eisengrim Inner circle Sulla placed heads on 1053 Posts |
You see GDW when you make blanket statements, everybody will agree with you in some circumstances. But it's hardly a sign of the depth of your ideas.
John
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.--Yeats |
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gdw Inner circle 4884 Posts |
Any who, I thought it was clear I was being facetious.
"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
I won't forget you Robert. |
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tommy Eternal Order Devil's Island 16544 Posts |
Stefan Molyneux has obviously won the argument. The only question that remains is are you going to stay a slave. To bee or not to bee that is the question. The big Bee.
If there is a single truth about Magic, it is that nothing on earth so efficiently evades it.
Tommy |
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MagicSanta Inner circle Northern Nevada 5841 Posts |
What was the video about? I couldn't get past the first ten seconds so in general what is the gest?
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gdw Inner circle 4884 Posts |
It's about the story of your enslavement.
Actually, that's really all you need know. Eventually leads up to how governments now fund themselves through debt. Essentially selling off debt, relying on the taxes you will pay in the future. The point of the video being that they have such a sense of entitlement to you, and what you earn, that they finance themselves, essentially using that as collateral. YOU are the collateral.
"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
I won't forget you Robert. |
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gdw Inner circle 4884 Posts |
At least that's how I remembered it. Haven't seen it in a while.
"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
I won't forget you Robert. |
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MagicSanta Inner circle Northern Nevada 5841 Posts |
Oh...I don't feel enslaved, if I do though I demand payment!
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tommy Eternal Order Devil's Island 16544 Posts |
Somehow I don't think Santa gets slavery.
If there is a single truth about Magic, it is that nothing on earth so efficiently evades it.
Tommy |
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stoneunhinged Inner circle 3067 Posts |
Quote:
On 2011-02-25 23:35, gdw wrote: Glenn, you really made me laugh on this one. No wonder you missed the Marxist elements--you only paid attention to the last couple of minutes! Perhaps my memory is also faulty (but then, I watched it only a few days ago), but here's the basic argument: 1. Human beings differ from animals in being motivated by fear of death. 2. Fear of death led to a willingness to be exploited. 3. This exploitation can be understood in terms of farming: the farmers are those in power (unfortunately understood as the "government"), the exploited are the product being farmed. 4. History has proceeded through four phases of exploitation: despotism (ancient Egypt), the semi-freedom of the classical era (Greece and Rome), feudalism, and modern democracy/capitalism. The last of these, being the most productive economically speaking, is the most exploitive. 5. At some point along this timeline the division of labor was understood as a tool to increase productivity. I can't remember whether he put it into the feudal era or the capitalistic era; no matter--the division of labor is obviously as old as human society.) 6. The key to being free is to see your cage. Now, as a brief cross-reference, one might consider the following: 1. The philosophy of Hobbes, the first modern "materialist", especially chapter 8 of Leviathan. 2. On exploitation for economic gain, Karl Marx. See just about anything he ever wrote. 3. Dare I say the words "bourgesoise" and "proletariat"? 4. The following isn't deep, but it isn't bad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_history Notice there is a direct correspondence of slave society, feudalism, and capitalism. 5. On the division of labor, the guy (what's his name again? Maraux or something like that? As in "Island of Dr."?) is right in line with...Von Mises? Hayek, maybe? No. You guessed it! Karl Marx. 6. From "The Communist Manifesto": "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win." Hm. Maybe you could also say, they just need to see their cage. Now, we won't push the comparison too hard: Moreau would most certainly object to the socialism that brings us to communism. But communism itself? A communism in which the state has withered away--along with class distinctions, all forms of economic and social exploitation, racial and gender discrimination, hunger, poverty, and the division of labor? With only this video in mind, I think he'd be likely to agree. My point is that conclusions are usually reached by a series of steps in an argument. If there is something faulty about those steps--and I would argue, though not here and not now, that those steps are indeed quite faulty--then the conclusion is suspicious. Not wrong, mind you. Just questionable. One would have to make the attempt to reach the same conclusion with a different set of arguments. Here and now I will only say this: my biggest problem with virtually everything modern libertarians say (and my biggest problem with the Austrian school as well, BTW), is that they seem to have a weak, uncritical, even naive definition of "government". It is much more useful to speak of "the state", I believe, because they really mean something like what Hobbes called the "sovereign". Unlike Hobbes, they confuse the "sovereign" with the "commonwealth". In a democratic society--whether it be direct democracy or representative republican democracy--the people have control over the "government"; it can hardly be true that the people are exploiting themselves. What is meant (I suppose; I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt) is that the state--the sovereign power which exists interdependently of elections and elected officials--exploits the people. But for economic gain? Hooey! The state exists as a power structure rather than an economic structure. The Austrians, I'm afraid, are simply dead dead dead wrong on this point. But enough for now. No one is reading this anyway, I don't think. Only three days to go! |
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HerbLarry Special user Poof! 731 Posts |
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In a democratic society--whether it be direct democracy or representative republican democracy--the people have control over the "government"; it can hardly be true that the people are exploiting themselves. The people in the U.S.A. are exploiting themselves. It can hardly be true, softly be true and any other texture you wish to use. It's an absolute fact. I can not count the times I've heard or read about "getting my government check". Americans in general think the Governments money is endless and care not where it comes from. Those that do know where it comes from are contented thinking they are only on the receiving end. The officials they elected put this poison in place and the people have not chosen to alter the situation nor has any group of elected officials since. Quite the contrary, the "help" gets larger and larger with each set elected.
You know why don't act naive.
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stoneunhinged Inner circle 3067 Posts |
Herb, you are right, but that's not what Marx meant by "exploitation" (and remember I was trying to explain the Marxist theory present in the video in the OP.) Exploitation has the very specific meaning of the capitalist making his money by taking the surplus value of the workers. In that very specific sense, the people living in a "democracy" (sorry for the quotation marks, but they seem justifiable in this instance) are not living off the surplus value of their own labor. As for Mr Morio, I think that he would come pretty close to accepting Marx's definition, too. His point in the film is that people taking these handouts suffer from the illusion that they are not being "farmed" because they get their own tiny pieces of the pie.
What you are talking about is not exploitation, but greed, pure and simple, and at best such behavior only proves Marx's point. |
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Magnus Eisengrim Inner circle Sulla placed heads on 1053 Posts |
Quote:
On 2011-02-26 05:52, stoneunhinged wrote: Succinct and worth reading. Thanks for taking the time to be our pedagogus. (It's Molyneux by the way.) John
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.--Yeats |
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HerbLarry Special user Poof! 731 Posts |
Stone we're not speaking the same language and I'll plead guilty to that. I say exploitation and do not mean greed. I'm just a simple man and try to mean what I say. My Government does exploit me, in the sense of selfishness of power. Greed in my mind would be the want of more of something of value. The paper in my pocket has no real value, because of that I see no surplus anywhere. I see debt and lots of it. Mindboggling debt.
You know why don't act naive.
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stoneunhinged Inner circle 3067 Posts |
Herb, I hear ya, and as I said, you're right. I was just trying to clear up something entirely different about why I said the video had Marxist elements in it.
Remember that the foundation of classical Marxim is the assertion that people are being brutally, unfairly, and hopelessly exploited by those who have power and money. That observation is not necessarily wrong. But in order to find our way out, we need to properly assess how we got into such a big mess in the first place. So certain concepts--take the division of labor, just to pick an example off the top of my head--need to be reduced to a more fundamental understanding before moving on. To be as simple as possible, we might ask the question: "is the division of labor a good thing or a bad thing?" Marx thinks it's a bad thing. Mr Molyneux (thanks, John!) thinks it's a bad thing. Others--like Von Mises or Hayek, mentioned above--think it's a good thing. So, which is it? And how can we truly understand our predicament (if there is one) without answering the question? But that's just one example. We could throw out dozens from that video alone. One assertion leads to another assertion which leads to another, and the whole sounds strangely appealing and logical. Yet those assertions remain assertions, and must be logically tested. I remain thoroughly unimpressed with Mr Molyneux, for he is guilty of stringing together unproved assertions. If I were to critique him (and I'm not going to bother; who would listen, anyway?), I would begin with the very first assertion that fear of death is what separates humans from animals. Really? Make an argument. Rule out other possibilites. Gather evidence from philosophy, biology, psychology, sociology. Get that evidence rigorously tested by thoughtful, educated people. Then see where that evidence leads. Mr Molyneux--his own claims to the contrary--hardly appears to be "rigorous" in this video. But maybe that's unfair of me to say; perhaps it's all in his books. |
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HerbLarry Special user Poof! 731 Posts |
Stone, thanks for the food for thought. I'm beginning to see what you did concerning Marxism.
I cringed at his (Molyneux) assertion about the difference between humans and animals. I'm only now learning how to think and appreciate the stimulation you provide. I could go either way on the division of labor, that is I don't think it's a black & white proposal, but then I approach most things that way.
You know why don't act naive.
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