Re: Re: Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.
Hi Craig Weinberg I would trust what 1,000,000 people in a free market pick over what one socialist political chosen bureaucrat would pick. That's not just finding honesty in numbers, it's local vs remote desires and knowledge. Local wins every time. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/17/2012 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: 2012-09-16, 09:58:45 Subject: Re: Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. On Sunday, September 16, 2012 7:48:16 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg Yes, such chicanery goes on, because men are no angels. But it has to be even worse is a socialist economy, where market forces (which tend to keep men more honest) Market forces do whatever the owners of the markets want them to do. Honesty has nothing to do with it. Socialism (as we have seen to the extent that it exists in Scandinavia) can be quite nice, and as we see from many places all over the world, there doesn't seem to be any particular correlation with the type of economy that a country has with how much of a hellhole it is. To me, capitalism is the essence of dishonesty. It is about selling something to others for more than you paid for it, which tends to involve keeping what you paid a secret from your customers. That doesn't mean it's not the best system, but I don't see why we should pretend that there is something good about it. Being a living thing depends on being able to exploit, kill and eat other living things. Capitalism is an extension of that. So is socialism. Craig are replaced by the biased wills of bureaucrats and politicians. I'd choose the market economy myself. Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 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: 2012-09-15, 20:32:34 Subject: Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. It's doubtful that there has ever been such a pristine market. The basic exchange between free agents is in all real cases weighted by those interests which control and manipulate the market. Look at how Microsoft created their monopoly. It made crappy imitations of all of their potential competitors software and gave it away for free to drive them out of business - which they did. They knew that as long as their deal with IBM to distribute Windows with PCs, all they had to do was starve everyone else out. Look at how CEOs sit on the each others board of directors and vote each other gigantic salary increases despite poor performance and blatant conflicts of interest. At best, price always equals cost plus rent plus tax plus interest, so even if there were free agents who somehow had fair access to the market, their profit is still influenced by banks, government, and property owners. As soon as a new market is born however, all real opportunity to compete shakes out rapidly as business relations are consolidated and become entrenched. Innovators tend to be ripped off, bought, or shut out of the market. The assumption of a free market is no less of a fantasy than the assumption of a communist utopia. They are two sides of the same coin. Craig On Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:37:04 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Alberto G. Corona At the heart of a market economy (which has existed since the cave man), there is a fundamental freedom, you can buy or sell if the price is right, where price = value = what you are willing to pay or sell for. So the market is basically psychological and free and is as old as man. Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net 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: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 07:37:44 Subject: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. Hi Roger, But neither Darwin nor Spencer discovered darwinism. a selection between alternatives is at the heart of every creative process (that creates order). It is a form of creative destruction. The market and the war are examples of such process. But it is also running now in this discussion. It is in our mind, that select and discard ideas depending on their consequences. It is in the political organization of the society etc. One of the first things that a darwinian process develops is a way to protect the created order from its own destructive nature. Capitalism in a democracy with the rule of law is a very sophisticated organization that run above a human nature that is deeply social. And this human nature is naturally selected. Probably the highest
Re: Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.
Hi Craig Weinberg Yes, such chicanery goes on, because men are no angels. But it has to be even worse is a socialist economy, where market forces (which tend to keep men more honest) are replaced by the biased wills of bureaucrats and politicians. I'd choose the market economy myself. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 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: 2012-09-15, 20:32:34 Subject: Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. It's doubtful that there has ever been such a pristine market. The basic exchange between free agents is in all real cases weighted by those interests which control and manipulate the market. Look at how Microsoft created their monopoly. It made crappy imitations of all of their potential competitors software and gave it away for free to drive them out of business - which they did. They knew that as long as their deal with IBM to distribute Windows with PCs, all they had to do was starve everyone else out. Look at how CEOs sit on the each others board of directors and vote each other gigantic salary increases despite poor performance and blatant conflicts of interest. At best, price always equals cost plus rent plus tax plus interest, so even if there were free agents who somehow had fair access to the market, their profit is still influenced by banks, government, and property owners. As soon as a new market is born however, all real opportunity to compete shakes out rapidly as business relations are consolidated and become entrenched. Innovators tend to be ripped off, bought, or shut out of the market. The assumption of a free market is no less of a fantasy than the assumption of a communist utopia. They are two sides of the same coin. Craig On Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:37:04 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Alberto G. Corona At the heart of a market economy (which has existed since the cave man), there is a fundamental freedom, you can buy or sell if the price is right, where price = value = what you are willing to pay or sell for. So the market is basically psychological and free and is as old as man. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 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: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 07:37:44 Subject: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. Hi Roger, But neither Darwin nor Spencer discovered darwinism. a selection between alternatives is at the heart of every creative process (that creates order). It is a form of creative destruction. The market and the war are examples of such process. But it is also running now in this discussion. It is in our mind, that select and discard ideas depending on their consequences. It is in the political organization of the society etc. One of the first things that a darwinian process develops is a way to protect the created order from its own destructive nature. Capitalism in a democracy with the rule of law is a very sophisticated organization that run above a human nature that is deeply social. And this human nature is naturally selected. Probably the highest satisfaction that a man may have, abobe money, is to be helpful to others. Probably the natural human instincts of compassion would be enough without the inefficient artificial state-run welfare systems. A simple traditional religious commandments would suffice to remember our personal responsibilities with the others and would make these corrupt structures innecessary. This has been that way until few centuries ago. It would be more that enough in a society with so much resources like this. The problem in the actual situation is that the narrow selfishness that is being promoted in the modern society is not only dysfunctional at the social level, because it also makes necessary the externalization of the compassion away from the individual, because it is incompatible with the narrow selfish concept of freedom as absence of obligations. Not only that, because it is also dysfunctional at the individual level, because we as humans need to help others . We need to feel useful to others to be happy. 2012/9/14 Roger Clough : 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, rcl...@verizon.net 9/14/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function
Re: Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.
On Sunday, September 16, 2012 7:48:16 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg Yes, such chicanery goes on, because men are no angels. But it has to be even worse is a socialist economy, where market forces (which tend to keep men more honest) Market forces do whatever the owners of the markets want them to do. Honesty has nothing to do with it. Socialism (as we have seen to the extent that it exists in Scandinavia) can be quite nice, and as we see from many places all over the world, there doesn't seem to be any particular correlation with the type of economy that a country has with how much of a hellhole it is. To me, capitalism is the essence of dishonesty. It is about selling something to others for more than you paid for it, which tends to involve keeping what you paid a secret from your customers. That doesn't mean it's not the best system, but I don't see why we should pretend that there is something good about it. Being a living thing depends on being able to exploit, kill and eat other living things. Capitalism is an extension of that. So is socialism. Craig are replaced by the biased wills of bureaucrats and politicians. I'd choose the market economy myself. Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net javascript: 9/16/2012 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: 2012-09-15, 20:32:34 Subject: Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. It's doubtful that there has ever been such a pristine market. The basic exchange between free agents is in all real cases weighted by those interests which control and manipulate the market. Look at how Microsoft created their monopoly. It made crappy imitations of all of their potential competitors software and gave it away for free to drive them out of business - which they did. They knew that as long as their deal with IBM to distribute Windows with PCs, all they had to do was starve everyone else out. Look at how CEOs sit on the each others board of directors and vote each other gigantic salary increases despite poor performance and blatant conflicts of interest. At best, price always equals cost plus rent plus tax plus interest, so even if there were free agents who somehow had fair access to the market, their profit is still influenced by banks, government, and property owners. As soon as a new market is born however, all real opportunity to compete shakes out rapidly as business relations are consolidated and become entrenched. Innovators tend to be ripped off, bought, or shut out of the market. The assumption of a free market is no less of a fantasy than the assumption of a communist utopia. They are two sides of the same coin. Craig On Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:37:04 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Alberto G. Corona At the heart of a market economy (which has existed since the cave man), there is a fundamental freedom, you can buy or sell if the price is right, where price = value = what you are willing to pay or sell for. So the market is basically psychological and free and is as old as man. Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net javascript: 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: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 07:37:44 Subject: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. Hi Roger, But neither Darwin nor Spencer discovered darwinism. a selection between alternatives is at the heart of every creative process (that creates order). It is a form of creative destruction. The market and the war are examples of such process. But it is also running now in this discussion. It is in our mind, that select and discard ideas depending on their consequences. It is in the political organization of the society etc. One of the first things that a darwinian process develops is a way to protect the created order from its own destructive nature. Capitalism in a democracy with the rule of law is a very sophisticated organization that run above a human nature that is deeply social. And this human nature is naturally selected. Probably the highest satisfaction that a man may have, abobe money, is to be helpful to others. Probably the natural human instincts of compassion would be enough without the inefficient artificial state-run welfare systems. A simple traditional religious commandments would suffice to remember our personal responsibilities with the others and would make these corrupt structures innecessary. This has been that way until few centuries ago. It would be more that enough in a society with so much resources like this. The problem in the actual situation
Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.
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, rclo...@verizon.net 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, rclo...@verizon.net 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 everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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 everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.
Hi Alberto G. Corona At the heart of a market economy (which has existed since the cave man), there is a fundamental freedom, you can buy or sell if the price is right, where price = value = what you are willing to pay or sell for. So the market is basically psychological and free and is as old as man. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 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: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 07:37:44 Subject: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. Hi Roger, But neither Darwin nor Spencer discovered darwinism. a selection between alternatives is at the heart of every creative process (that creates order). It is a form of creative destruction. The market and the war are examples of such process. But it is also running now in this discussion. It is in our mind, that select and discard ideas depending on their consequences. It is in the political organization of the society etc. One of the first things that a darwinian process develops is a way to protect the created order from its own destructive nature. Capitalism in a democracy with the rule of law is a very sophisticated organization that run above a human nature that is deeply social. And this human nature is naturally selected. Probably the highest satisfaction that a man may have, abobe money, is to be helpful to others. Probably the natural human instincts of compassion would be enough without the inefficient artificial state-run welfare systems. A simple traditional religious commandments would suffice to remember our personal responsibilities with the others and would make these corrupt structures innecessary. This has been that way until few centuries ago. It would be more that enough in a society with so much resources like this. The problem in the actual situation is that the narrow selfishness that is being promoted in the modern society is not only dysfunctional at the social level, because it also makes necessary the externalization of the compassion away from the individual, because it is incompatible with the narrow selfish concept of freedom as absence of obligations. Not only that, because it is also dysfunctional at the individual level, because we as humans need to help others . We need to feel useful to others to be happy. 2012/9/14 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net: 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, rclo...@verizon.net 9/14/2012 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: 2012-09-13, 12:28:09 Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Racism ? How's that implied ? On Thursday, September 13, 2012 8:33:47 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg The fact is that the only incentive businesses look to is profit. So demonizing profit doesn't do any good. And urging them to hire workers doesn't work. Sounds exactly like cancer. The only incentive cancer looks to is growth. As long as any institution partitions itself off from responsibility to the full spectrum of human experience I think it is doomed to be a force for oppression. You can tell when this happens because the effect of the institution is inverted to its cause. Businesses perpetuate financial bondage rather than freedom. Hospitals perpetuate sickness and misery rather than health. Schools neutralize intellectual curiosity. Religions foment intolerance and the abuse of the innocent. It's inevitable since by definition the first order of business for an institution is to ensure its own growth and survival at all costs...which becomes the sole purpose forever. Craig Clough, rcl...@verizon.net 9/13/2012 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: 2012-09-12, 20:03:27 Subject: Re: Re: Re: Racism ? How's that implied ? On Tuesday, September 11, 2012 8:32:21 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg I am intolerant of stupidity and deception, particularly when the idea of carbon credits pops up. This suggests that Global warming is just a method of raising taxes, diminishing coal and oil, and even globally sharing the wealth. Thankfully china won't go along with this stupidity. It all seems to be politics rather than science. I don't know enough about it to say too much about it. I think that the point is to make it political
Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.
It's doubtful that there has ever been such a pristine market. The basic exchange between free agents is in all real cases weighted by those interests which control and manipulate the market. Look at how Microsoft created their monopoly. It made crappy imitations of all of their potential competitors software and gave it away for free to drive them out of business - which they did. They knew that as long as their deal with IBM to distribute Windows with PCs, all they had to do was starve everyone else out. Look at how CEOs sit on the each others board of directors and vote each other gigantic salary increases despite poor performance and blatant conflicts of interest. At best, price always equals cost plus rent plus tax plus interest, so even if there were free agents who somehow had fair access to the market, their profit is still influenced by banks, government, and property owners. As soon as a new market is born however, all real opportunity to compete shakes out rapidly as business relations are consolidated and become entrenched. Innovators tend to be ripped off, bought, or shut out of the market. The assumption of a free market is no less of a fantasy than the assumption of a communist utopia. They are two sides of the same coin. Craig On Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:37:04 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Alberto G. Corona At the heart of a market economy (which has existed since the cave man), there is a fundamental freedom, you can buy or sell if the price is right, where price = value = what you are willing to pay or sell for. So the market is basically psychological and free and is as old as man. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net javascript: 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:* Alberto G. Corona javascript: *Receiver:* everything-list javascript: *Time:* 2012-09-15, 07:37:44 *Subject:* Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. Hi Roger, But neither Darwin nor Spencer discovered darwinism. a selection between alternatives is at the heart of every creative process (that creates order). It is a form of creative destruction. The market and the war are examples of such process. But it is also running now in this discussion. It is in our mind, that select and discard ideas depending on their consequences. It is in the political organization of the society etc. One of the first things that a darwinian process develops is a way to protect the created order from its own destructive nature. Capitalism in a democracy with the rule of law is a very sophisticated organization that run above a human nature that is deeply social. And this human nature is naturally selected. Probably the highest satisfaction that a man may have, abobe money, is to be helpful to others. Probably the natural human instincts of compassion would be enough without the inefficient artificial state-run welfare systems. A simple traditional religious commandments would suffice to remember our personal responsibilities with the others and would make these corrupt structures innecessary. This has been that way until few centuries ago. It would be more that enough in a society with so much resources like this. The problem in the actual situation is that the narrow selfishness that is being promoted in the modern society is not only dysfunctional at the social level, because it also makes necessary the externalization of the compassion away from the individual, because it is incompatible with the narrow selfish concept of freedom as absence of obligations. Not only that, because it is also dysfunctional at the individual level, because we as humans need to help others . We need to feel useful to others to be happy. 2012/9/14 Roger Clough rcl...@verizon.net javascript:: 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, rcl...@verizon.net javascript: 9/14/2012 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: 2012-09-13, 12:28:09 Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Racism ? How's that implied ? On Thursday, September 13, 2012 8:33:47 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg The fact is that the only incentive businesses look to is profit. So demonizing profit doesn't do any good. And urging them to hire workers doesn't work. Sounds exactly like cancer. The only incentive cancer looks to is growth. As long as any
