Hi Craig Weinberg
Lord of the Flies is basically the conservative view put forth by Hobbes (and
Paul).
At root we are criminals.
Welfare is essentially the leftist view put forth by Rousseau.
At root we are saints.
Roger Clough, [email protected]
9/5/2012
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him
so that everything could function."
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Craig Weinberg
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-05, 00:40:00
Subject: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 11:14:17 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:
On 9/4/2012 9:07 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 8:49:45 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:
On 9/4/2012 4:23 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote:
> What struck me is that the "the USERS of wealth in directing the life
> of the country."
> seem to be exporting jobs overseas and hiding their money there as well.
> Richard
OK, let us confiscate all capital and distribute it evenly to every
one. Then what?
then we have democracy?
No, because people always congregate into groups, it is their nature. And
from there it is "Lord of the Flies" all over. It has happened many times
before. Why do we never learn?
I think that's why Jefferson was keen on periodic revolutions. If inequality is
inevitable though, it makes sense to mediate that tendency to some extent if we
can, rather than giving carte blanche to the winning savages. It's like saying
we should learn that there is always crime so why bother with police. Isn't
civilization based upon the effort to tame our innate tendencies toward self
interest? Or at least to agree to conspire against the barbarians outside of
the walls.
wouldn't even need to confiscate all capital, and I don't think that anyone is
suggesting that. Just make hoarding wealth more expensive.
Sure! A tax credit for investing. Oh way, that already exists! It is why
the investment tax is so low as it is!
Investing in guaranteed payouts is what makes hoarding of wealth possible. Why
would we want to give tax breaks for the wealthy to find ways of taking more
money out of the economy faster? At the plutocrat level, you should be rewarded
only for investing in non-profit enterprises that lose money. Being able to
invest huge amounts of money, especially unearned money from a dynastic
fortune, is a privilege that should be taxed, not rewarded.
Maybe follow the Scandinavian model on a trial basis for 20 years in a handful
of cities.
Scandinavia is a bad place to build a model because it has a homogeneous
population. Such populations behave, on average, very different from highly
diverse populations. Segregation into polarized groups happens much slower in
homogenous populations. You might check out the meme flow in such conditions,
its amazing.
If by homogeneous you mean financially homogeneous, then a plan which tilts the
economy in favor of the middle class should by definition make any place into a
more homogeneous society - in which case the Scandinavian model would be
expected to perform as it does for them now. If you are talking about anything
else, then I suspect it's just a coded racism. This country was built in large
part by slaves. We exploit poor migrant workers. There may not be a choice
ultimately for us but to choose whether to become slaves and disposable workers
ourselves (assuming we are not already) in a feudal plantation-prison society
or to settle the score and go after those who continue to benefit the most from
the system as it is.
In any case, there is no reason to think that experimenting with a Scandinavian
type system, or even Canadian, British, etc, when it comes to health care would
not be better than what we have now. The biggest problem is that our political
assumptions are unfalsifiable. No matter how far our standard of living
plummets and how the far-too-rich get richer at everyone else's expense, it can
always be suggested that it could be worse had we not done what we did. Only
through experimentation in a scientific way will we ever learn anything.
Craig
Craig
--
--
Onward!
Stephen
http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html
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