On 21 Sep 2015, at 22:49, John Mikes wrote:
Bruno wrote.
That is capitalism, or equivalent. I don't use capitalism is the
Marxist sense, but in the sense of european liberalism (liberal =
right, in europa). The idea is that the state is limited in power as
much as possible. Ideally, it might even disappear, or become itself
competitive by allowing any human to choose the state, real or
virtual, to live in (= to pay tax for).
Capitalism (in Adam Smith's sense?) means FOr Profit, Growth,
competition, etc.
That is what I would call life.
Liberalism comes from your langiage (Liberte' - freedom).
Liberalism means "right" in Europa. It means that adults can sign
(job) contracts to do things and are free to sell them to any adults,
or kids if it is legal, without any or very few intervention of the
state. This leads necessarily to grow, profit, competition. It is
opposed to economy planned by a state, like it was in China and the ex-
URSS where all companies were owned by the state. Today we have mafia,
which is like an unregulated liberal economy, except that violence is
used between the competitors for the market attribution.
Democracy allows, in principle, to vote for the left when the country
go too much on the right, and to vote for the right when the country
go too much on the left. But this works only if the system is
regulated by different powers which are kept well separated, which is
not really the case today (the Press is rarely really independent, nor
is Justice; even some academies are under the influence of non
academical powers, usually of the type religious).
Bruno
JM
On Sun, Sep 20, 2015 at 12:22 PM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
On 19 Sep 2015, at 21:16, John Mikes wrote:
Bruno,
even before (your?) prohibition-S there was some capitalistic
system in the US,
leading to inequality and injustice in the economical status of the
population.
I am not talking Marxism.
The diverse prohibition-S (and other installments) just made it
worse.
The basic question is "FREEDOM" - in my terms: no restrictions of
one's acting decisions AS LONG as it doesnot hurt the 'freedom' of
others.
That is capitalism, or equivalent. I don't use capitalism is the
Marxist sense, but in the sense of european liberalism (liberal =
right, in europa). The idea is that the state is limited in power as
much as possible. Ideally, it might even disappear, or become itself
competitive by allowing any human to choose the state, real or
virtual, to live in (= to pay tax for).
Within such all subchapters are viable.
We might agree, and have only vocabulary problem. If you defend
freedom, we are on the same political side.
(About 'offer/demand': how local would you go with it? the
neighbor's demand may be high and drives up prices, while a local
overproduction is not even paying for
susistence of the workers. Global is not practical.)
Global is new, and we have to adapt and revise many things. But that
cannot be enforced: it needs good education and less lies.
Prohibition must be stopped, like any violent crimes, but as you
say, it is not the deeper culprit, which is 1500 years of
authoritative argument in the most fundamental human science, itself
supprted in part by billions years of nature's brainwashing. We are
too much mammals, we can learn from the invertebrates.
Let each of us do what is possible. The necessary will care of itself.
Bruno
JM
On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 3:33 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
On 18 Sep 2015, at 21:37, John Mikes wrote:
Bruno:
could you please define "free market" (system?) into YOUR terms?
Free, but not free indeed, as you wrote:
"only with a regulating system making it not breaking some
laws,... "
Basically that was the state in the US before prohibition.
Free market means free contract between adults, and laws must
ensure the respect of the contracts, not the content of the contract.
where could you STOP the list of those 'laws'?
Laws must evolve, jurisprudence, etc. I am OK with punishing people
doing false advertisement in the matter of health.
I would like we avoid making something illegal because it cures
some important disease, and of course is a threat for those doing
money on that disease, like today with cannabis and cancer to take
a notorious example. I think that the illegality of cannabis is a
crime against humanity, given that the danger have been debunked,
and the benefits have been proved (in the sense of having been able
to be repeated in all laboratories which are not dependent of a big
lucrative organization.
Is a 'regulating system a power?
Like the immune system in biological organism. It is a sort of
power, OK.
(I had a similar problem with identifying "free speech"- not only
by the Supremes'
"MONEY"definition). If market is free, it has a goal: P RO F I T
Imaking. It would
undergo the rules of offer and demand, leading to inequality.
That is why a regulating system is very important: it verifies if
the law of offer and demand is respected. It prevents as much as
possible genuine competition.
The word "free"is ambigious and hard to control. Free travel? we
see it in EU.
And so on.
I agree with you. "free" designates often plausible "protagorean
virtue", which in machine theology can be shown to be destroyed
when asserted on people. That is the case with free-thinking, which
leads to more hidden dogma, or free-exam, etc.
But I am not sure for free-market, which just means that the state
does not intervene in the content of what is sold, with few
exceptions (perhaps) like radioactive material, or anything which
is known to be problematic (meaning the proof of the problem exist
and are not political propaganda). If you study the case of
cannabis, all statements on its danger comes from paper which have
not been made available to the public, and was contradicted by all
papers available to the public. The cannabis set-up was gross,
immense, obvious, and nobody was failed, except the general public
and the physicians. Many doctor, askd to vote for the inegality of
marijuana, said that they were not aware that marijuana was
cannabis, at that time, and took some time to realize the maneuver.
We had to wait 10 years before the paper by Nahas gave the
protocols used to prove that cannabis demolish brain cells, and
indeed, now we have them, and it is just ridiculous (the rabbit
were smoking ten joints simultaneously for seven days 24/24, and
the neurons have been shown since dying from asphyxia, just to give
one example among many).
Bruno
John Mikes
On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 12:41 PM, Bruno Marchal
<marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 10 Sep 2015, at 23:17, John Mikes wrote:
Excellent historical analysis, Smitra. Thanks. I was a
contemporary witness
during my adult years (40s to 70s) and vouch for your ideas.
Bruno, however, picked prohibitionism as the main (sole?) culprit
what does not match my conclusions. It was part of it, for sure.
I think I agree with all what Saibal said, but I believe that
nothing can progress in any direction as long as prohibitionism
exist. It might be that stopping prohibition is not enough, but it
is a necessary step. It is not that difficult, as the lies exists
only since 75 years. It is another matter about theology (1500
years of lies), and matter (billions years of lies).
I found as main culprit the dissatisfaction of the overwhelming
majority of people with their lives as slaves in a capitalistic
system to work for less than what they may have produced.
Well, the term "capitalism" is ambiguous. I am all for the free
market, but only with a regulating system making it not breaking
some laws, like defamation of products and misinformation of the
public. We must avoid mafia-like merchandising of fears, diseases
and wars. Only a few minority makes big benefits, but it go with a
lot of suffering.
Also the 'ownership' claim of Nature, including her products,
beyond the effort the claimant has put into getting them, plus an
ownership of the so called law-enforcement forces to suppress any
opposition - making the advanced society an economical inequality
of haves and have-nots, the latter being forced to work FOR the
former for their mere survival.
Free-market is a win-win strategy. The "capitalism" of today is
everything but free-market. The rich get enrieced by stealing the
money of the less rich. It is not free-market, it is organized
banditism.
Governments are exponents of the rich and powerful and force the
have-nots into their armies to die in wars for the interest of
the wealthy. It is called patriotism. The exploited slaves (dead,
injured casualties of wars) of the system are called heros.
Just to vent off
I agree with you, but I think that it is not the system which is
faulty, but a well prepared perversion of the system, that the
founders of America were quite aware of the possibility.
They did not find a way to solve the problem, except by the US
Constitution, which has been indeed eroded more and more (and is
virtually dead with the NDAA 2012, actually).
It is not a question of politics: it is a question of good and bad
people. The liars, the lied which parrots, and the lied which
lives the lies.
The applied human science, except for laws and democracy (in
principle) is still governed by the "the boss is right" principle.
People are still discouraged to make the thinking and take the
responsibility. Only in movies.
Bruno
John Mikes
On Mon, Sep 7, 2015 at 1:36 PM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
On 31 Aug 2015, at 16:52, smitra wrote:
The real problem i.m.o. is that big powers tend to have a big
inertia, it takes them a long time to see that the World has
changed and that they need to focus on other issues than they
currently are engaged with. In some cases that can lead to
escalation of a pointless conflict that has its roots in past
issues that are no longer relevant, as is the case with the war
on drugs. And that then can cause a lot of harm.
But I think the general issue is this huge inertia. So, when
Gorbachov was in power and he was ready to deal seriously with
the West, it took us a very long time to engage with him. A point
on which we never engaged with the Soviets in a constructive way
was Afghanistan.
The Soviets were willing to withdraw from Afghanistan, even
before Gorbachov came to power, but on certain conditions like
leaving behind a stable government. We never wanted to engage
with the Soviets on that, because of pur mondset that the root of
all evil was communism, and the Soviets were just talking
bullshit about our allies there, the Jihadists.
Them posing a threat to the World? that to us was just
ridiculous. We knew for sure that with the Soviets gone out of
Afghanistan, their communist puppet government dismantled, the
Afghan population would be able to form a democratic state. We
were so sure about this that we never critically analyzed all the
hidden assumptions made here.
It later turned out that we were wrong and that the Soviets were
right, not in their general approach but about seeing the threat
of Jihadism that we helped to fuel. Also they were right about
the dangers of having failed states. Our ideology at the time was
that a failed state would quickly get itself organized into a
flourishing democracy if you could only keep the evil communists
out.
Another fallout of this was that Gorbachov's political position
was weakened in the Soviet Union, which made his nationalist
opposition who were critical of the West politically stronger.
When Yeltsin took over he had to deal with an economically weak
Russia while in the background there were forces lurking who were
extremely critical of the West. In any country you'll have the
opposition that tends to question the government's policy
especially if things are not going well economically and
especially when there has been a recent radical change. In the
years after the collapse of communism that move was
democratization, liberalization of the economy etc. etc.
It's easy for us to say that the Russians who were critical at
the time were stupid, just look at the opposition in the US
against a universal health care system. Now, if we could turn
back the clock and had dealt with Afghanistan differently, then
the outcome of that might not just have prevented the rise of
international Jihadism, you would also have had the pro-Western
reformists in Russia to be in a politically far stronger
position. Likely you would not have had Putin in power today, or
Putin may not have become that anti-Western (he wasn't when came
into power).
Another thing is that we would have improved the UN Security
Council System to deal with complex problems. As it currently
functions, the UNSC is a panel of prosecutors who are the World's
policemen, prosecutor, jury and judge at the same time without a
requirement for members to recuse themselves when they are
involved.
The system works fine in emergency situations, like when Iraq
invaded Kuwait, just like a police can intervene effectively when
there is a bank robbery going on. But when the emergency
situation is dealt with, we all know that you need a proper
justice system to deal with the problem on the longer term. We
know that what cannot work is a system where the local police can
have a caucus with other police officers from neighboring areas
to deal with that. Even if you assume that police officers can be
100% objective, you would still not have much faith in a system
where the police officers could be the prosecutors juries,
judges, appeals judges and Supreme Court judges all at the same
time.
This i.m.o. is the reason why Iraq was invaded. Iraq under Saddam
Hussein (supported by both superpowers in the 1980s) could never
prove that it had no WMD within the current system once some
prosecutors decided to throw the book at him.
Had instead the Western powers thought critically about how to
improve the international institutions instead of seeing the
collapse of the Soviet Union as a big gain in their power within
the current system, the UNSC could have been reformed. You can
think of a system where the UNSC continues to exist in its
present form but that it creates a new institution where judges
rule on contentious fundings of facts. The UNSC could then have
referred difficult dossiers like the Iraq WMD case, Iran's
nuclear program etc. to such an institution where decisions are
made on the basis of real evidence instead of political rhetoric.
I think I agree with your analysis, but I think there is much
more, which is the disparition/erosion of the separation of
power, which is part of the making of the rhetoric.
So, I put most of the blame of the current situation on the
West's failures to just think about the long term during the late
stages of the Cold War.
As long as prohibitionist are not all in jail, or amnestied
perhaps, some corporatism will will continue to make huge profits
in diseases and war selling.
The war on terror is fake, because if that was genuine, the most
urgent thing which would have been done is to stop prohibition,
which is the fuel, even the main engine of international crimes
and terrorism, and it is know today that whatever drug is
prohibited, the consumption of it is multiplied by a large factor
(which is normal as you offer the market to the criminals).
I mean that it is not just our incompetence, there is a part of
unwillingness. We tolerate the lies on important things, like on
cancers, indeed we tolerate that people think for us about what
is good or bad to us, but that's contradict already the intent of
most of the founders of America.
As long as prohibitionism is not abolished, I think we must
remain skeptical about any *official* theory by default. Liars
lie rarely only once. Prohibition rotten everything.
International prohibition can only lead to international chaos,
mafia wars, well disguised.
Bruno
Saibal
On 30-08-2015 22:34, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/30/2015 10:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
- the governments know that prohibition is the main fuel of
criminality and terrorism.
So Muslims flew planes into buildings government (which one?)
prohibited something (what?).
Brent
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