On Saturday, October 31, 2020 at 8:25:34 PM UTC-5 Brent wrote: > > > On 10/31/2020 4:21 PM, Lawrence Crowell wrote: > > I guess I have to respond to this nonsense. The American middle class was > at its apex in the 1950-80 period when the New Deal programs were at their > most robust, the WWII was over and the American economy hummed along > soundly with high taxation rates on the wealthy and corporations. I has > been since the time of Reaganomics and the onward march into the right > winged reality that things have become more uncertain and income gaps have > yawned. CEOs of corporations have had a 3500% income growth while those in > the middle class have seen a modest 10% growth and those at the bottom have > fallen off into negative territory. The class warfare did not start because > of some lurch into the far left and Marxism. > > BTW, what is being called radical socialism by the GOP is really just > plain centrist stuff a few decades ago. > > Very few people are talking about Marxism. Even Sanders' socialism is far > removed from Eugene Debs socialism of 100 to 110 years ago. Sanders really > fits somewhere in the average leftist political party in Europe. The > Democratic Party is really a very centrist party, even a bit center right. > > I wish before people invoked Karl Marx that they would actually take the > time to read something of his. The Communist Manifesto is an interesting > read, and curiously you might find yourself shaking your head in some > agreement. Marx wrote about the fetishization of money or capital, and Wall > Street with its myriad gimmicks from computerized microtrades to short > selling and pre-trading are perfect cases of this. Marx wrote about how > more of life is becoming a market sector, and today so much of life is a > market activity. We have lost so many skill people had. Even with > computers, people write programs less and less. It goes on. Marx's solution > to things is a social metaphysics based on Hegel's dialectics. The > dialectic of capital and labor was seen by him as producing a synthesis. > This part, mostly in Das Kapital, is dubious. Also Das Kapital is > complicated and confusing thing. I only got 50 pages into the first volume. > You can skip this. > > I am not a Marxist, nor am I a believer in capitalism. In my minor in > philosophy I found the worldly philosophers the least interesting, which > includes both Marx and Smith. These ideologies are a matter of opinion, not > logic. I refrain from delving into silly things that ultimately involve > opinion, which to a degree is politics. > > Physics suggests that we should be prudent with the use of energy. Does > this prove that we must conserve energy? David Hume argued that saying some > state of affairs that “IS” does not logically imply an “OUGHT.” This is the > “is-ought” fallacy. It is not hard to prove this within the context of > modal logic, but I will skip that for now. > > > It's not so fallacious as Hume thought in the real world though. If your > "oughts" are inconsistent with what "is" you're likely to go extinct (e.g. > consider any cult whose "oughts" include drinking Kool-aid). > > It is still not a matter of deductive logic. There can be an inductive thinking. Hume showed that causality is not something derived as a matter of logic, but is an inductive assessment of observations. Some oughts are similar. I can understand the physics of collisions and momentum transfer. I can make the inference that crossing a street is something to be done with caution. Caution is not something that is derived from Newton's laws. With more complex issues, such as global warming, it may be debatable whether reducing carbon emissions will render our situation more tolerable. I think, and data appears to support that, the heating of the environment is making situation less acceptable. Whether or not doing something about this will render our situation more acceptable is less certain.
> > So, principles of physics offer up the second law of thermodynamics, which > tells us that given thermal energy we wish to convert to mechanical energy, > we can only do so with some fraction of that. Some of this goes into > internal energy that is a bounded or unavailable form of energy. This does > suggest that maybe some care is needed in using energy and resources. It > does not prove this. Much the same can be said of global warming or other > things. It may be wise to behave in some accord with what we learn, but > there is no proof of this. Whether to do so or not is about opinion, and > this where we get into the muddy field of politics. > > For this reason I do not become particularly angry if someone tells me > they accept global warming as real science, but think we really do not need > to do anything about it. At least that is an opinion honestly expressed. If > on the other hand people try to say it is fake-science and all a hoax and > so forth, that gets my anger level up. The reason is because it is a lie, > and this lie is being expressed to convince other people of it. My general > sense of opinions of this form is based on what I see according to empathy > and a sense of my connectedness to others. For that reason I have liberal > proclivities. For those who dismiss these things and think everything > should be economic, well that is an opinion and I can accept that. > > > But purely transactional, economic relations are inconsistent with the > fact that humans are social animals and live and die by social organization. > > Brent > "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the > continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe > is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy > friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am > involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell > tolls; it tolls for thee." > --- John Donne, 1623 Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris > > Then again, the libertarian types might argue that all social interactions are in the end transactional and economic. These political types are good at coming up with infuriating come-back arguments. LC > I might disagree with it and they disagree with me, but at least these can > be expressed without overt lying. > > LC > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/c4ef7412-0f0c-4566-b1a4-08467ec9193dn%40googlegroups.com.
