Philosophy Now Forum

Wyman wrote:

Like I've already alluded, that which the comfort of your easy chair, backed by the pen, backed by the sword, doesn't afford.

Typical, answering a straightforward question with a negative:

Are you tall?
Ambiguous; quantify tall.

Well, I'm not short.
Same here; quantify short.

So you're short? I didn't say that, don't put words in my mouth.
Understandable with respect to ambiguous terms of relativity. Relative to whom or what?


Out with it sob. What is it? What is your 'real competition?'

I'm sorry, but I've answered your question, as easy and as briefly as I'm capable. They're concepts dealing with mankind's history. You're familiar with history correct; man's civilization construct. To be verbose would take far too much time, be too long, and no one would read it.

"Easy chair:" That which modern day civilization affords any particular human.
"The pen:" In this case, mans rules and laws.
"The sword:" Militia, violence, death dealers.

That you, a human, supposedly the most advanced species on earth, speaks of competition, something dating back to the origins of life, a means to survive against extreme adversity, in the context of today, after the species has created a land of plenty, reducing adversity so as to be insignificant in terms of life threatening, as if then and now it's one in the same thing, is laughable. How's your manicure looking?

It would surly seem that the mind set of your kind is in fact responsible for global warming, the depleted oceans, foul air and water, etc, and shall eventually be the undoing of mankind. It's just around the corner.

The need for competition has ceased long ago, but for the selfishness of those of insane nature, that can't get enough, even wasting what they have, as if the grass is in fact greener with the next conquest, an insatiable crazed need of more, more, more. It's a defect in the psyche of modern man, lest he in fact be a throwback.

SpheresOfBalance wrote: That you, a human, supposedly the most advanced species on earth, speaks of competition, something dating back to the origins of life, a means to survive against extreme adversity, in the context of today, after the species has created a land of plenty, reducing adversity so as to be insignificant in terms of life threatening, as if then and now it's one in the same thing, is laughable. How's your manicure looking?

We seem to agree on so few things that even establishing a dialog would be difficult but this point needs to be addressed. "Civilization" is merely a veneer that will slough off after the first missed meal or when the lights go out.

The "plenty" to which you refer was produced through the efforts of many and the genius of the few. But it is only this plenty that separates us from mayhem and it is dependent on the good will of most of the participants in civilization. It is dependent on a system which appears to be severely undermined by greed. It has become a system where it doesn't matter how one makes money, merely that he makes it. It is a system that rewards destruction and abuse.

You can't fix a broken system with it's own broken tools and capitalism quickly "owns" any system that allows it's presence.

[quote=cladking post_id=173628 time=1404535511 user_id=9729]
Capitalism can't be repaired because it no longer exists.

It no longer exists because the wealthy found that the most effective use of their money was to buy government and they use it to erect barriers to competition.
[/quote]

It no longer exists in it's llarval form. This is what juvenile capitalism looks like. When it's mature there will be a price tag on every molecule of air.

>The central idea of capitalism is growth (getting out more than we put in; essentially, a pyramid scheme) and indefinite growth is impossible.

This is also why capitalists are bad people who can't be trusted. If they don't understand the system then they're just cogs in an evil interference machine with no moral worth or importance of their own. If they do, they're taking undue advantage of the system to benefit themselves over others (and yes, if everyone does it, it's still fucking evil).

>A couple of years ago, I read a book written by - if I recall correctly - a theologian, in the 19th century, explaining with practical examples carried through their logical devolution, exactly what's wrong with the concept and why it's unsustainable. I wish I'd kept that book.

Not taking ideas to their logical extreme is why most philosophical ideas are wrong.

>Capitalism can't be fixed and shouldn't be saved. It's a bad idea raised to the second power. The invention of money was a bad idea; turning money from medium of exchange to investment capital compounded the mistake; giving venture capital access to world at the speed of light compounded a compound mistake.

Raised to the infinite power.. because they believe in infinite growth on a physically finite planet. When you say "money", what do you mean? Currency as an intermediate value system is necessary for even the most basic advantages of technology to take root. I think you're mixing a bunch of districtive concepts there.

>Having consumed all the nutrients of its habitat and that of its neighbours, and then the habitat itself, and then its offspring, and needing yet more to keep growing, it will eat its own tail and die.....
....horribly..... thrashing, screaming and convulsing...... for years..... decades... all over the peoples of the world.....

Not all the people! >:(

[quote="cladking"]There are ways out. It's getting late in the game for people to wake up but at least in theory we can quit voting for republocrats. Government goes so cheap that the 99% could still easily outbid the 1% if we had a taxpayers union or something of the sort. There's still an outside shot at reforming the system from within as Indiana's push for a "constitutional convention" is attempting. The problem isn't so much with capitalism per se as it is with the fact that it has been usurped and we now have a cronyocracy or as some pundits have suggested an idiocracy.[/quote]

That is a significant misunderstanding of what capital is. Capital is people being paid for risk. They are only able to take those risks because they already have more than everyone else, without regard for how they got it. Meanwhile, those with more are also setting the rules, meaning their risk continually goes down and their reward continually goes up, again with complete disregard for whether it's deserved in any sense related to reality. And let's not even get started on how they can easily create imaginary but perceived value, and the inadequacies of a never-actually-free market system.

[quote]dictatorships like that simply become corrupt at a faster rate, because there is no way to challenge authority, [/quote]
>There isn't now. The supreme court has caved and no other recourse is available.

>That has never been a real option for ordinary people, however existential and obvious their problems. Democracy is a placebo for agency.

>The military may be the least corrupt and most loyal to the constitution.

Granted, but are they least corrupt Enough? I sincerely doubt it. The military is still full of people, not moral geniuses, and most of them are particularly compliant ones.

[quote=Blaggard post_id=173699 time=1404598549 user_id=9695]
Can you name any country that has overthrown power and installed a military junta and then going forward kept it's military basis of government, that has succeeded though? You expect a system with ultimate authority that is not corrupt now, when it has it, to remain so? Seems naïve to me...
[/quote]

Military coups always give way to a civilian government. Military types don't want to be in the government business.

>We can work on some short-term and mid-term goals to help us set up the conditions for a progressive change in human society:

I prefer fiddling with my innuendo while someone else rearranges burning dick chairs in Rome. It's a titanic task but someone's got to beat a dead horse while i flog my bishop (mentally of course).

2) Fight for secularism and humanism.

That's basically the same as fighting for recognition of the value of intelligence, but with more words.

3) Breaking the ties of economic and cultural dependency of peripheral countries from the central hegemonic powers, without going to the opposite extreme of right wing nationalisms. National independence should work only for acquiring enough autonomy to form strategic coalitions and protect common interests related to universal human progress. Independence and autonomy does not mean closed, self-centered cultural systems with relativistic values, as postmodernists will advocate. There may be a lot of good things peripheral countries can assimilate from hegemonic countries and viceversa.

I read this as support for my own notion of a thousand points of light - semi-autonomous city-states being the primary organisational unit of society, with a libertarian facist over-state governing necessary issues at scale, such as basic human rights and freedom of movement between city-states.

>I think it all comes down to rescuing the project of Enlightenment.

They're it is. Yes. We live in a pre-truth society because enlightenment values never stuck and/or were quickly subverted..

cladking wrote: ↑Sat Jul 05, 2014 5:45 am Capitalism can't be repaired because it no longer exists.

It no longer exists because the wealthy found that the most effective use of their money was to buy government and they use it to erect barriers to competition.

Most wealthy don't. See, "The Privileged."

Those that do couldn't do it if there were not an agency of force called government.

Blaggard wrote: ↑Fri Jul 04, 2014 10:48 pm Now don't get me wrong I am not going to post a communist manifesto demanding those who should be first against the wall.

But clearly capitalism is broken, we go through these endless cycles of boom and bust, when it seems to me they are unnecessary, we keep the developing world in chains, to our trade, we keep our own subjects seemingly in a sort of non mobility cycle. Ie we don't let people move up the ladder any more, we seem to have kept the elite at the top, who have then presevred the elites sanctity. What's worse is we see fair trade as a dirty word. So I ask how can we fix this broken system, it clearly would be better if everyone was allowed equal means to trade, freely and without institutionalised rape of others. To let if you will an actually free market reign (and no I don't mean that libertarian bullshit where wolves are allowed to run free amongst the kine, because those idiots would tear them and their own so called system apart in weeks, because of human nature), we are clearly not ready to be that free, hell I wouldn't trust us to hold up a goal post without moving it to let more goals in when we felt the need.

What I mean is how do we actually go about fixing it. How do we make it so there is fairness without subjugation, without unequal trading laws, without a dim idea that one country growing rich is great because you live in it and then leaving other countries poor, because of an overwhelming greed that creates inequity is somehow by magic going to make everyone play ball? Any ideas, because frankly I am all out of them.

I think the only suggestion I have is to first admit we have a problem. I think the rest may well follow from there, I think no one will listen who is in a position to do so, because power is awfully enticing.

It's not about me though, what are your views on this failed experiment?

Capitalism is not a political system. There is no form of government called, "capitalism."

In the entire history of the world there has never been a capitalist country or society. There have been less regulated and more regulated economies but never a totally unregulated economy. If what you mean by capitalism is an unregulated economy, it has never been tried, so no one knows how well it would work. Probably wouldn't, since most people are terrified of individual freedom.