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On February 03 2016 14:31 IgnE wrote:
Trump is also "not bought out already".
G.K. Chesterton, writing a little over a century ago:
"For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which is not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
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All Trump did, his whole live, was selling out... And not even really succesfull one might add.
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The rich are necessary but bribed. Ok.
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That quote is quite applicable here. And I see no contradiction.
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How are the rich necessary?
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Define rich.
There allways will be business owners or plain community/tribe/village/whatever-leaders and they are necessary and will most likely own more than your average Joe (hasn't to be money, could also be plain trust or another form of power) and there is absolutely nothing harmfull in that.
Ultrarichsupermoguls, that earn hundreds of times more than the people working for them and their offsprings that didn't do shit all except not being total retards and therefore didn't lose the entire inheritance (Trump), are an entirely diffrent story tho.
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On February 03 2016 18:32 IgnE wrote:
How are the rich necessary?
The same way the poor are necessary. Equality is some utopian pipe dream.
Edit: What velr said
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You'll always have people who make less and people who make more, it's the scale of inequality that's so perverse. When 62 people have the same as the lower 3,5 Billion, something is terribly wrong. Meaning on average, one of the richest people has the same amount of money than 56 Million of the poorest. Whoever makes apologies for that must have had American education inflicted upon them.
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On February 03 2016 19:29 Acrofales wrote:The same way the poor are necessary. Equality is some utopian pipe dream. Edit: What velr said
Basically humans are selfish shitheads at heart is what your trying to say. The fact that it is a pipe dream means there is a deficiency in our species.
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On February 03 2016 20:02 Slaughter wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2016 19:29 Acrofales wrote:On February 03 2016 18:32 IgnE wrote:
How are the rich necessary? The same way the poor are necessary. Equality is some utopian pipe dream. Edit: What velr said Basically humans are selfish shitheads at heart is what your trying to say. The fact that it is a pipe dream means there is a deficiency in our species.
Are you saying that humans are not greedy in nature?
The way in which it manifests and the degree changes from person to person but I would very much argue that we all are greedy by nature.
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On February 03 2016 20:07 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2016 20:02 Slaughter wrote:On February 03 2016 19:29 Acrofales wrote:On February 03 2016 18:32 IgnE wrote:
How are the rich necessary? The same way the poor are necessary. Equality is some utopian pipe dream. Edit: What velr said Basically humans are selfish shitheads at heart is what your trying to say. The fact that it is a pipe dream means there is a deficiency in our species. Are you saying that humans are not greedy in nature? The way in which it manifests and the degree changes from person to person but I would very much argue that we all are greedy by nature.
I feel like "greed" is more like a survival instinct like wanting sugar and fat. It's part of us, but it's our "choice" to let it rule us. I sense it getting too philosophical though lol.
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On February 03 2016 20:29 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2016 20:07 Gorsameth wrote:On February 03 2016 20:02 Slaughter wrote:On February 03 2016 19:29 Acrofales wrote:On February 03 2016 18:32 IgnE wrote:
How are the rich necessary? The same way the poor are necessary. Equality is some utopian pipe dream. Edit: What velr said Basically humans are selfish shitheads at heart is what your trying to say. The fact that it is a pipe dream means there is a deficiency in our species. Are you saying that humans are not greedy in nature? The way in which it manifests and the degree changes from person to person but I would very much argue that we all are greedy by nature. I feel like "greed" is more like a survival instinct like wanting sugar and fat. It's part of us, but it's our "choice" to let it rule us. I sense it getting too philosophical though lol.
It gets philosophical yeah but even at its basic it is enough for the point. A significant amount of people always want more then their fellows and so true equality is by our nature (nigh) impossible.
And you can call that a deficiency in our species, we're far from perfect.
But to get back to the point. True equality is not going to happen, there will always be rich and poor.
It is the degree of inequality that is important and at some point society can deem that the gap has become to large.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
ownership makes people work hard, especially at the top. there are irreplaceable centralized org structures. that is about it.
in other words, capitalists make capital work, even idle ones, if they have managers. then there is also emtrepreneurship which is very critical as wellp
figure out the incentive for top level management and you can get rid of owners.
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And people would suddenly stop working/investing/doing shit if they owend "just" 100 Mio instead of 1 Bio++? I highly doubt that.
The BIIIG majority, even among very left leaning people, aren't against capitalism, they are against the perversions the system has created.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
concentration and monopoly in capitalism is another matter tho, also does not mean u cant take idle rich's stuff without huge efficiency penalty. but you need to look at the efficiency effect and so on
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US veteran’s children taken away over his use of medical marijuana
When Raymond Schwab talks about his case, his voice teeters between anger and sadness.
“People who don’t understand the medical value of cannabis are tearing my family apart,” says the Kansas father and US veteran, who has a prescription for marijuana in neighboring Colorado, where it is legal.
Nine months ago, Schwab tried to move to Colorado to grow medical marijuana for fellow veterans. While he and his wife were there preparing for the move, the state of Kansas took five of their children, ages 5 to 16, into custody on suspicion of child endangerment, ensnaring his family in interstate marijuana politics.
Cases like the Schwabs’ have become a lightning rod for marijuana activists and have left courts, family attorneys and Child Protective Services (CPS) unsure of where the lines are drawn in this brave new world of legalized cannabis.
“There’s still a stigma against parents who use medical marijuana,” says Jennifer Ani, a family law attorney who says she sees around five similar cases a month – in 95% of which she believes the child was in no reasonable danger. “As much as marijuana is a moving target throughout the nation, with Child Protective Services it’s even more so.”
I've heard veterans tell me this is something that scares the shit out of them so they take stuff they desperately don't want to.
Even I was skeptical, but sure enough. Our cannabis laws are should be considered criminally negligent at this point.
Rand Paul is out of the race too. Where do his supporters go? Probably everywhere except Clinton eh?
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On February 03 2016 19:44 DickMcFanny wrote:
You'll always have people who make less and people who make more, it's the scale of inequality that's so perverse. When 62 people have the same as the lower 3,5 Billion, something is terribly wrong. Meaning on average, one of the richest people has the same amount of money than 56 Million of the poorest. Whoever makes apologies for that must have had American education inflicted upon them.
Statistics like that are so dumb and just for headlines. Someone who gradated from Havard and has student debt + a mortgage has a lot of negative equity. That person would be considered one of the poorest in the world.
edit: Basically anyone who has more than 1$ is richer than X million people in the world.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On February 03 2016 20:47 Velr wrote:
And people would suddenly stop working/investing/doing shit if they owend "just" 100 Mio instead of 1 Bio++? I highly doubt that.
The BIIIG majority, even among very left leaning people, aren't against capitalism, they are against the perversions the system has created.
in that section of the post i was not talking about the working of the capitalist owner herself(though i did address that later), just the capital being owned. without an ownership interest at least active in shopping for managers of the capital it won't be working as hard or smart. agency interests of the managerial class(or commissars in the communist system) will dominate.
i've talked about this calcifying economy previously and the basic big ideas are slowing production technology advances and the increasing power of economy of scale and connectedness from globalization and IT stuff. to a large extent this concentration is legal in our current regulatory framework and it is pretty hard to budge as a broad phenomenon. there is both lack of the effective political institutional tools to effect the change and also the type of effective change that may work on this.
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On February 03 2016 13:33 ticklishmusic wrote:
But she's not a lying bitch. The entire cold, awkward, calculating thing is like Jeb's low energy tag-- completely made up. I've heard story after story about how Hillary has been a pretty solid retail politician and has connected well with small (50-100) groups of voters. She doesn't look great in the huge rally/speech situations which are the ones that get really covered.
And my impression is that a lot of Bernie supporters haven't taken a good look at her record or her platform. Krugman actually had a great piece about some of them buying into the entire rightwing smear campaign against her, hilariously a couple of the top links in r/politics and r/bernieforpresident are from The Blaze right now.
Hillary has three problems with voters on the progressive side in my estimation.
One is that she is a centrist who has a record of supporting things progressives despise, particularly with matters regarding the power of the state such as the Iraq War resolution and a tacit acceptance of the Patriot act and domestic spying.
Two is that, though she has proposed reasonable measures intended rein in Wall Street and bank excesses, her close ties to it both personally and financially through donations from that industry call into question her willingness to vigorously pursue real change there. In fact her proposals, almost none of which have passed or even gotten co-sponsors, seem almost as though they are smokescreens that provide the appearance of attempts to reform, but with no real chance and no true effort/political capital expended. To the skeptical person you can imagine her telling the Goldman-Sachs directors that she defuse political crisis Y by proposing banking regulation X in congress, but never to worry as it will never pass.
Third, about a quarter to a third of the population has been convinced by the right-wing media that she is guilty of all kinds of shit that has never actually been proven and for which she has been investigated and exonerated multiple times by her political opponents. My best friend from middle-school and his entire family literally believe she murdered or had murdered around 12 or so people. I suspect my Mother-in-law believes this too. Oh, and BENGHAZI!!! Hillary famously talked of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" and it was true. Media forces on the right have been consistent for 25 some years now in skewing their coverage of the Clintons so as to tarnish them in any way possible, to always cast aspersions and call into doubt, to use innuendo or outright misrepresentation. It has been effective. Which then leads to the practical consideration of whether you want to support a candidate who in the general election is going to be running against a machine well-oiled and prepared to hammer away at her with innuendo and insinuations that have been developed and honed over 25 years and for which there is a huge base of suggestible voters who have been prepared to receive this message.
ALL THAT SAID, every time I hear her speak on a subject, whether it is through campaigning or ffs in congressional testimony, I find myself thinking that she is a remarkably smart and knowledgeable person who in spite of her downsides would be a superb and highly-capable choice for president. By far the best qualified and most competent out of all the candidates, Dem and Repub.
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On February 03 2016 23:50 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2016 19:44 DickMcFanny wrote:
You'll always have people who make less and people who make more, it's the scale of inequality that's so perverse. When 62 people have the same as the lower 3,5 Billion, something is terribly wrong. Meaning on average, one of the richest people has the same amount of money than 56 Million of the poorest. Whoever makes apologies for that must have had American education inflicted upon them. Statistics like that are so dumb and just for headlines. Someone who gradated from Havard and has student debt + a mortgage has a lot of negative equity. That person would be considered one of the poorest in the world.edit: Basically anyone who has more than 1$ is richer than X million people in the world.
not it's not just dumb. your example is. capitalism 101 teaches us that it's not a zero sum game. money was transferred in exchange for a value. that value is education, and not just any, but harvard education.
and I would even argue that 300k in debt is fine, strictly economically speaking (yes that's kind of perverted on many other levels), as long as you are a graduate from harvard and not a complete muck up that does nothing with the opportunities this education gives you.
so no, in your example those people are NOT poorer. quite the opposite.
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EPT
