Hi Craig Weinberg I should have said "capitalism is similar to Darwinism". But as you point out, they are are not literally the same. Consider these points:
Valuations in market economics are not fitness, but what you're willing to pay for what I have to sell. Natural selection is buying stocks or goods or not. Fitness is non-bankruptcy. Social Darwinism is too personal, and easily racial, and anyway not as usefulor powerful as what is called Demographics: " relating to the dynamic balance of a population especially with regard to density and capacity for expansion or decline." It's useful for marketing and for any kind of planning, such as probability of war and political dynamics. Roger Clough, [email protected] 9/15/2012 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: 2012-09-14, 13:50:22 Subject: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. 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. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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.
