Philosophy Now Forum

bobevenson wrote:Maybe I just need to write a book about my struggle communicating with fools. The AEP has an ideology, a modus operandi, a goal, a logo and a flag. I guess the only thing missing is a book.

Someone already beat you to it, Bob. The title is "Mein Kampf". It was written by a person who thought he had all the radical answers to the ills of society too. Like you, he didn't seem to think compassion had much place in society either.

Gary Childress wrote:

bobevenson wrote:Maybe I just need to write a book about my struggle communicating with fools. The AEP has an ideology, a modus operandi, a goal, a logo and a flag. I guess the only thing missing is a book.

Someone already beat you to it, Bob. The title is "Mein Kampf". It was written by a person who thought he had all the radical answers to the ills of society too. Like you, he didn't seem to think compassion had much place in society either.

You're mistaken, Gary, thinking government should be compassionate. That's simply not its function, and if it were, would be fraught with danger. However, there is plenty of compassion in society. For instance, Americans voluntarily give billions of dollars every year to charity.

bobevenson wrote:

Gary Childress wrote:

bobevenson wrote:Maybe I just need to write a book about my struggle communicating with fools. The AEP has an ideology, a modus operandi, a goal, a logo and a flag. I guess the only thing missing is a book.

Someone already beat you to it, Bob. The title is "Mein Kampf". It was written by a person who thought he had all the radical answers to the ills of society too. Like you, he didn't seem to think compassion had much place in society either.

You're mistaken, Gary, thinking government should be compassionate. That's simply not its function, and if it were, would be fraught with danger. However, there is plenty of compassion in society. For instance, Americans voluntarily give billions of dollars every year to charity.

Most of those billions of dollars are donated to offset the ravages of capitalism, Bob. You know, that wonderful quest for profit and personal gain that the government should tap into.

"Mein Kampf"

And 'The Communist Manifesto', and 'The Little Red Book'.

Gary Childress wrote:Most of those billions of dollars are donated to offset the ravages of capitalism.

Is that your socialist fantasy? It has nothing to do with reality.

bobevenson wrote:

Gary Childress wrote:Most of those billions of dollars are donated to offset the ravages of capitalism.

Is that your socialist fantasy? It has nothing to do with reality.

Maybe it is my "socialist fantasy". Sort of like your "capitalist fantasy".

Bob,

A suggestion: go write your book.

All the energy you dump into this back and forth with folks who don't respect you or your notions, and who will not be moved by anything you say, is a big waste of your time.

Write your book...use any of the reputable Print On Demand services out there...get the book out and about...if you offer a coherent plan, it will be noticed and sumthin' will come of it (despite, and, to spite) all the anti-Bob folks layin' about here (kvetchin' about poverty and injustice and whatnot but not actually *doin' anything about any of it).

As my long-dead Grandpop used to say 'shit, or get offa the pot'.









*sorry, folks, but twittering and facebooking and forum posting and writing letters to the editor and wallowing in the political process and all that other shit is just that, shit...you make noise the powers that be can't even hear, you stew, doin’ nuthin’...my Grandpop's advice applies to you too...far more likely Bob will write his book than any of you actually 'do' anything

Sounds like good advice.

Gary Childress wrote:

bobevenson wrote:

Gary Childress wrote:Most of those billions of dollars are donated to offset the ravages of capitalism.

Is that your socialist fantasy? It has nothing to do with reality.

Maybe it is my "socialist fantasy". Sort of like your "capitalist fantasy".

The benefits of free-market capitalism have been proven over and over again. That's why Hong Kong economics today is more like the United States than China.

bobevenson wrote: The benefits of free-market capitalism have been proven over and over again. That's why Hong Kong economics today is more like the United States than China.

You mean the same Hong Kong where roughly 50% of the population lives in public housing provided by their government because they couldn't afford to live there otherwise? Would the AEP provide them housing too?

bobevenson wrote: I guess the only thing missing is a book.

And a uniform, Bob. We're going to need a fetching ensemble for the armed brigades we'll need to deploy to enforce the new laws.

Working from the ground up I rather fancy the knee-length black leather boot with a four inch spiked heel and chrome studs. Obviously above this we'll go for black fishnet stockings with perhaps a cheeky hint of garter peeking from under the lederhosen.

What do you reckon so far?

bobevenson wrote:

Scott Mayers wrote:Your proposal makes your owners become the government...

I'm afraid I don't understand how you can possibly come to that preposterous conclusion.

"Government" is just a type of management system just as private companies have management. In corporations, such management represents its governing body but is exclusively elected by their boards of directors representing the owners of the company. Since such 'ownership' only has the prime goal to profit, [Profit means to draw income over and above what is actually 'earned' in a tit-for-tat trade arrangement], by your political philosophy, you only transfer which management groups get to rule. And since these are only owners AND specifically to those who only have the goal to profit (as the definition I emphasize above), it aims to act to favor the kinds of people who believe in commanding. AND that they believe intrinsically in "profit", this is a belief in finding any means to get something for nothing. I don't know how you think such an ideal would be favorable to all people. It is non-democratic AND favors those indistinguishable from those who believe in a right to steal legally (ie, via "profit").

You're against the socialist aspects of management in government precisely because you seem to believe that the masses are unjustified 'thieves' yet do not recognize that while this may have a kind of truth to it, only the ones who legitimize "profit" and "ownership" without limits are the actual winners in such thefts in reality. By contrast, the impoverished thief at the bottom usually gets caught as their kinds of acts are obvious whereas the ones at the top are hidden by the virtue of their power to legitimize it through their 'ownership'. And since they would be the arbiters of how your government would operate, these 'owners' become our government without the people's consent or power to alter.

Scott Mayers wrote: And since they would be the arbiters of how your government would operate, these 'owners' become our government without the people's consent or power to alter.

I was following you just fine, Scott, until you got to this bit. I thought you were offering a critique of the hypothetical economic system which Bob was advocating but all along you were talking about the one we've already got.

Scott Mayers wrote:"profit", this is a belief in finding any means to get something for nothing.

Making money out of making money is an ancient American tradition, mate, and when you accumulate too much foreign debt you can simply print more dollars and thus make all the poor countries pick up your tab. Are you suggesting that this might not be very fair?

bobevenson wrote:You seem to believe that profit is remuneration for no economic contribution when it is actually a return on capital investment, and without capital investment, most of us would still be subsistence farmers.

In science, there are conservation laws which trade things equivalently such that any energy (or matter) exchanges trade off in a one-to-one basis. "profit" is getting something for nothing because it is the revenue - expenses. Note that 'expenses' includes all that is needed to provide the return on capital investment. That is, "profit" is NOT the 'fair' return but the expected 'free' extra moneys over and above the fair actual trade between products and services.

Economics begins with teaching us that its aim is to try to resolve the problem of human's unexhausted eternal demands for properties in a limited world (scarcity) of them. "Profit" is a false 'right' to gain by one's power to trick others into giving more value of themselves for something with actual less value. This is a type of agreement to steal from others if you can cleverly do it in a way that doesn't 'appear' as direct theft even though it is still the same indirectly. Each monetary value, like a dollar, acts as an I.O.U. based on real effort and is thus always debt. Somebody somewhere has to cancel this 'debt' by expending energy in the form of either labor or products that get consumed. All of this 'energy' is derived from nature in some way and nature obeys the principles of conservation such that for anything taken, an EQUAL amount must be given. But for those who believe in "profit", they rely on taking more out of nature in an unfair expectation to get more energy out of others than they give.