Most people prefer working to looking for work. On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Friday, September 14, 2012 12:33:45 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: >> >> On 9/14/2012 8:07 AM, Roger Clough wrote: >> >> Hi Craig Weinberg >> >> Fortunately or unfortunately, capitalism is Darwinism, pure and simple. >> So it can prepare for a better future, although it can be painful >> at present. My own take on this is that there needs to be >> a calculus of pleasure and pain. Jeremy Bentham suggested >> perhaps an impfect one. >> >> In lieu of that, I am all for food stamps and safety >> nets. >> >> >> Roger Clough, [email protected] >> >> Dear Roger, >> >> I completely disagree. Darwinism does not consider valuations beyond >> the concept of relative fitness. Capitalism is a theory of valuation and >> exchange between entities. It does include concept that are analogous to >> those in darwinism, just as the "fitness" of a trader to make multiple >> trades, and so I can see some analogy between them, but to claim equivalence >> is simply false. > > > Yes! People conflate Social Darwinism > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism) with Darwin's evolution. The > idea of 'survival of the fittest' is also (see the Wiki) a > misinterpretation. Evolution is just a blind statistical filtering of > organisms which happen to survive in any given niche. Being fit has nothing > whatsoever with being aggressive, greedy, or selfish, and indeed most > species on Earth seem much more relaxed and gentle than human beings most of > the time. > >> >> IMHO, Food stamps and safety nets encourage risky behavior that is >> better if suppressed for the general welfare of the population, thus I am >> against them in principle. Why work to sustain my physical existence with my >> own toil if I can depend on the coercive taxation on others to sustain me? > > > Eh, I would rather increase that stuff by 10 times than five one more dollar > to subsidize corporations. The amount of money set aside for that stuff is > tiny compared to everything else. It can certainly be a disincentive for > people to look for work, but I think we need to confront the reality that > the US doesn't really need very many people to work anymore. Most of what > the US does is own things. That doesn't require a large workforce. Without > manufacturing or a growing middle class, there really isn't much demand for > more undereducated, unhealthy, unrealistically ambitious American workers. > > Craig > >> >> >> -- >> Onward! >> >> Stephen >> >> http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/fXX6Zmxk7_MJ. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
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