Uh, sounds like someone mistaking a giant conglomerate of people for an organization with unified views. Or are all Republicans against gay marriage (abortion, tax increases, etc.) just because that happens to be a common Republican talking point?
Wall Street funds everyone. Why not? They're the people with all the money. Spending a small portion to ensure that politicians are favorably inclined towards them is a no-brainer. The purpose of Occupy Wall Street is to point out that just because someone doesn't have enough money to meaningfully contribute to a campaign's finances doesn't mean their opinion doesn't matter. I would think that kind of attitude wouldn't be affiliated with any one party.
Also, MoveOn.org isn't so much an Obama campaign organization as they are a liberal organization. Of course this means that they tend to side with Democrats, who are marginally more liberal than Republicans.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Hey Warp, I'm going to assume you're talking about United States in your post since that seems to make sense in the context of this topic.
>>discriminating workers and depriving them of basic rights
What do you mean here by discriminating? I know what the word means, but don't really see how it fits here. What basic rights are US workers being deprived of?
>>there are some states where labor unions are illegal;
Which states are these? Google couldn't answer me.
>>employers can fire employees at a whim... and there's nothing the employee can do about it
Perhaps this varies state by state, but I was under the impression that this was only true for small businesses, and that large corporations had better have a damn good reason to fire you or good luck to them if the fired person files a lawsuit (iow: if the employee does something about it).
Oh, uh, hey, I forgot I made this topic.
I don't know all the answers, but personally I'm fed up with a world where children die from malnutrition while others live in extreme luxury.
Those who are with me, keep spreading the word, and those against me, I don't care what your "argument" is, this is disgusting.
Kisses,
Alden
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, and communism is the other way around.
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
The problem with that, alden, is not capitalism, it is human nature.
Actually not so much. Humans individually are pretty decent people on average. It's when you glom them together into large organizations and remove the connection between actions and consequences that they become sociopathic.
Not at all coincidentally, the nominal goal of most governmental regulation is to artificially recreate the costs to being a sociopath in a manner that large organizations can understand.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Which is why I think we'll eventually have to establish something resembling a one world government of the people. Just so that it becomes impossible to forget there's some really poor regions in this world and people are suffering because of that. So that we become aware again that we're all brothers and sisters. And that all of us are ultimately sitting in the same boat, so we'd better be careful not burn away too many of its planks just to make it go faster, but at the same time we're also making it more and more fragile in the end. And think of ways for us to occupy less space on it, instead of kicking over board the crew members we like the least.
I'm confident that once there's a decent educational system and affordable internet access in the poorer regions, a lot of things will change. People will feel more connected, it'll become impossible to demonize minorities and it'll become easier to empathize with the problems of said minorities. The difficult and most challenging part about establishing a one world government to accompany that is that it'd have to take some form where there aren't too high levels of concentrated power, which may sound like a contradiction, but I hope we'll be able to find a solution for that within the next decades, or rather centuries.
Of course, before we can focus on the rest of the world, we'll also have to focus on our own problems. It's hard to perform a precise surgical operation while your inner organs are bleeding and your body might collapse at any time. I get the feeling that the US has lots of inner lesions atm, some smaller ones, and so do most states in Europe, but also some alarmingly big ones. It's just slowly gotten out of control during the past decades. These protests may just be a sign that the American immune system is reactivating, so it can hopefully correctly identify and remove its problems and start the healing process.
Egoism is just one part of human nature, empathy is another, and I'd like to think it's the predominant one. We just get caught up into primeval thinking patterns along the lines of "This is us, and we care a lot about ourselves. Those there are the others though, and we can't really understand them. We can't really care as much about them, they hate us, they scare us, they're crazy, we can't really trust them. They might even become a problem for us at some point." It just won't work like that in the long run. We're all deeply connected, we're all one. If you hurt them, then you'll eventually find out that you were hurting yourselves as well in the process. I have a feeling we have yet to learn to understand that. As MLK Jr. has put it so aptly, "We've learned to fly the air like birds, we've learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we haven't learned to walk the earth as brothers and sisters". May God rest his soul.
Edit:
Link to video
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
In the "first world" people are educated. That's why when disaster struck Japan everyone helped each other, even in a desperate situation.
In Africa you don't think of others, you think of yourself. Yourself first.
So what is human nature? The problem doesn't seem to be the system in the first world countries, but the wealth of the countries living in misery. If there's misery, human nature shows its fangs.
Of course I'm speaking generally, there are exceptions.
The problem with that, alden, is not capitalism, it is human nature.
Where did I say I had a problem with capitalism :)
And while I am well aware that greed and laziness etc present a problem, I'm not satisfied by shrugging and saying "oh well it is what it is"
Anyway, I would encourage all concerned to talk to your neighbors. That's what I'm doing.
In the "first world" people are educated. That's why when disaster struck Japan everyone helped each other, even in a desperate situation.
In Africa you don't think of others, you think of yourself. Yourself first.
You do realize just how terrible this sounds, right? Perhaps not intentionally, but it really is horribly racist. "Yeah, us smart people know how to work together, but those backwards barbarians are too greedy to pull themselves out of the mud."
Not to mention that the "first world" is the reason so much of Africa is in such a bad state. Colonialism really wreaked havoc there.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I think what he's saying is that as long as people are poor their greediness (for money and power) will have to be their more prevalent quality. I don't know if that's entirely true though, as f.e. it seems that people in poorer countries are more hospitable on average.
I think that when it happens it's because they lack perspective and I couldn't blame them for that. I've taken part in the [URL=http://www.stonesintoschools.com/]Stones into Schools[/URL] project, and I think projects such as this one are exactly what this world needs. Dramatically improve their level of education (and make it relatively free) and they're going to eventually bring money back into their home villages. The big difference between general charity organizations and projects such as this one is that the former can often actually do more harm than they help. Let's say you decided to ship free clothing into poorer countries, as an example. Of course they'd help at a first glance, but at the same time it will also hurt the local textile industry a lot, thereby making the country more dependant on further donations. It can become a vicious circle.
Improving their educational system will not instantly turn over a country; it takes much more time till the changes becomes visible, but I'm a strong believer that when they finally do they'll be more significant and prevailing. Some degree of [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism]protectionism[/URL] and forming of [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union#Role_of_Regional_Economic_Communities]regional economic communities[/URL] might also be necessary to complement that though, as markets flooded with cheap imports (besides the [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_money]carry trade[/URL] and other forms of speculation) can really shut down any country's economic growth.
A one world government of the people could make free education a basic human right, it could provide regulations that protect developing countries from cheap imports and speculations, it could help us develop less short-sighted solutions to our problems (Competition between countries hugely encourages short-term gain mentalities) and it could do many more things than that. It won't be possible before there's a somewhat of a general consensus between the people of this planet and I hope an improved educational system and the internet can help us achieve that somewhen.
I think everyone (to a certain extent) is responsible for the ecomonic crisis not just the bankers or polititions who are most easy to blame. You have housing that was greatly overvalued (estate agents/home owners) and many people taking loans and credit they knew they couldn't repay, then banks being too willing to give out loans and extending credit to people who could ill afford to repay. Followed by polititions who were encouraging all this, not realising the long term implications.
Your credibility went just down the toilet with that comment.
Your ad hominem is a valid argument.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
A one world government of the people could make free education a basic human right, it could provide regulations that protect developing countries from cheap imports and speculations,
A one world government, are you crazy, the Bible has warned us that it's the beast system, God purposely separated our languages in Babel and thus created countries for our own good... just kidding :P it's a good idea, countries should not exist, they are abstractions that separate people. We are all part of the same earth.
Food, education, clothing and a home should all be human rights. As long as we're going to use money and taxes, those are the places where our taxes should go. When people don't have free access to the things they need to survive, they often need to become criminal and destructive to survive and we have an unstable society/world. Barbaric and superstitious beliefs and laws would also disappear when people have a good education.
Mitjitsu wrote:
I think everyone (to a certain extent) is responsible for the ecomonic crisis not just the bankers or polititions who are most easy to blame.
It's possible that because bankers have so much money they can create an economic crisis and destroy entire countries (like Greece) for profit because they control the flow of money, which is tool that controls our world. In any case, problems like this exist because we use money, so that is the main problem and the one to blame.
Warp's comments are somewhat inflammatory exaggerations of the truth, but still based in reality.
jimsfriend wrote:
>>there are some states where labor unions are illegal;
Which states are these? Google couldn't answer me.
Wisconsin recently put in limitations on collective bargaining rights. This includes preventing Unions from directly collecting dues. This not outlawing unions, it simply makes it more difficult for public-employee unions to exist.
jimsfriend wrote:
>>employers can fire employees at a whim... and there's nothing the employee can do about it
Perhaps this varies state by state, but I was under the impression that this was only true for small businesses, and that large corporations had better have a damn good reason to fire you or good luck to them if the fired person files a lawsuit (iow: if the employee does something about it).
Many states have at-will employment. Generally speaking, lawsuits can only win if the firing violates a contract, or there is clear discrimination. Larger companies tend to shy away from firing without cause, mainly because anyone can claim they are being discriminated against.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
It's possible that because bankers have so much money they can create an economic crisis and destroy entire countries (like Greece) for profit because they control the flow of money, which is tool that controls our world. In any case, problems like this exist because we use money, so that is the main problem and the one to blame.
The Greek Crisis wasn't caused by the banks. It was caused by government overspending and excessive borrowing. Such as having too many people working in the public sector and paying them too much, then you tax evasion that was commited on an epic scale. Infact, tax collectors themselves were helping people to avoid paying tax. Money is not the main problem, its people attidudes around it.
The Greek Crisis wasn't caused by the banks. It was caused by government overspending and excessive borrowing.
The government had a hand in the crisis but you can't pretend that the banks had no fault here either. Hundreds of billions of dollars of financial "product" that was rated at AAA and was actually completely junk? That's gonna have serious repercussions when it comes home to roost.
Of course the places that were on shaky footing already are going to be hardest hit when the world economy tanks, but that doesn't mean that it's their fault the economy tanked. It's just their fault that they weren't as ready for it to do so.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Your credibility went just down the toilet with that comment.
Your ad hominem is a valid argument.
ad ho·mi·nem [ad hom-uh-nuhm ‐nem, ahd-]
adjective
1.
appealing to one's prejudices, emotions, or special interests rather than to one's intellect or reason.
2.
attacking an opponent's character rather than answering his argument.
He tried to discredit the point Alex Jones made by saying that Alex Jones is not credible. It's a logical fallacy, and although we are all guilty of using it from time to time, I won't just let responses like that go without an answer.
In the "first world" people are educated. That's why when disaster struck Japan everyone helped each other, even in a desperate situation.
In Africa you don't think of others, you think of yourself. Yourself first.
You do realize just how terrible this sounds, right? Perhaps not intentionally, but it really is horribly racist. "Yeah, us smart people know how to work together, but those backwards barbarians are too greedy to pull themselves out of the mud."
*sigh* I don't know if I should laugh or cry every time someone pulls out the racism card. If something can be interpreted as racist, then it automatically is racism.
Where do you draw the line? If someone says "African countries are in average much poorer than European countries", is that racist (for the simple reason that the average skin color of African population is darker than the European population)? If not, then where exactly do you draw the line when making claims about large populations becomes "racist"?
Not to mention that the "first world" is the reason so much of Africa is in such a bad state. Colonialism really wreaked havoc there.
And why is that not a racist comment? After all, these colonialists had all a certain skin tone.
(Yes, this could be interpreted as a racist comment according to your standards. Not a single living person today is responsible for colonialism, and even back then not every person was responsible for that either. In fact, only a minority of Europeans engaged in colonialism. Yet you are putting them all together under the same category and assigning global responsibility to them all based solely on where they lived.)
And this even assuming that your claim is true.
*sigh* I don't know if I should laugh or cry every time someone pulls out the racism card. If something can be interpreted as racist, then it automatically is racism.
Racism has similar problems as the "political correctness" movement, yes. In any event my original point wasn't necessarily that FODA was being racist as that he sounded racist -- it was an invitation for him to clarify what he meant in a clearly non-offensive manner (or to reinforce that he really did mean what he seemed to be saying...).
Where do you draw the line? If someone says "African countries are in average much poorer than European countries", is that racist (for the simple reason that the average skin color of African population is darker than the European population)? If not, then where exactly do you draw the line when making claims about large populations becomes "racist"?
This is tricky to define cleanly; I'm not going to say I have a sufficiently legalistic definition to pass the infamously pedantic bar we set around here. But I'd say that a racist comment, at least as far as I'm concerned, is one that makes a negative and subjective value judgement based on race. So saying that Africans are generally poor is not racist because it's not subjective. Saying that Africans are generally greedy is subjective, and greed is usually a negative quality.
Not to mention that the "first world" is the reason so much of Africa is in such a bad state. Colonialism really wreaked havoc there.
And why is that not a racist comment? After all, these colonialists had all a certain skin tone.
Because it's objective, though I admit I didn't cite sources. European colonialism really messed up African politics, in large part through making arbitrary border distinctions that ignored the existing tribal framework. You try telling two tribes who hate each other "Okay, you're a nation now, play nice," and then handing power to the leader of one of those tribes when you leave. And don't forget about the slave trade; sure it was an existing institution when the Europeans arrived, but they increased demand massively.
(Yes, this could be interpreted as a racist comment according to your standards. Not a single living person today is responsible for colonialism, and even back then not every person was responsible for that either. In fact, only a minority of Europeans engaged in colonialism. Yet you are putting them all together under the same category and assigning global responsibility to them all based solely on where they lived.)
I'm not saying that Europeans living today have any responsibility for what happened in Africa; just saying that Africans living today aren't wholly responsible either. Of course they aren't all entirely free of blame (those perpetuating the bad system are performing bad actions) and they get the responsibility of fixing the mess.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
