Topic: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion - page 28880. (Read 26610065 times)

And yes, that's very much what I did mean:  A rationally self-interested sort and degree of egalitarianism which anyone with adaptive cognitive traits adequate to survival can find some way to rationalize within their ideology.   Certainly equalizers which involve lifting all boats are much more in the vein of win-win than are equalizers which involve sinking all boats.

I might even go further personally, although I won't ask anyone else to do so:   I too try to give my daughter every reasonable advantage which will not corrupt her or rob someone else.  One of those advantages is the advantage of an example of -- dare I say it?  will the spectre of ayn rand come and suck all the green ink from my veins? -- altruistic behaviour, and its rewards in life.  By altruistic behaviour I do not mean pathological monomania. 

That's the reductio argument implicit in the Vonnegut story we all know and love from high school.  The alternative is of course to not do anything terribly stupid because of pathological monomania.  I like the alternative better.

I think I understand what you are saying, but I believe it is my duty as a father to giver my daughter every advantage possible, which is the opposite of equality of opportunity. But it's also my duty to ensure that she doesn't end up in the position of Anastasia Romanov.

The biggest inequity between girls is that some are beautiful and some are ugly. The happy few can marry billionaires, while their hapless systers don't have a slightest chance. Some small and painless surgery can easy remove this inequity. Cut her nose off and the former beauty will not be a subject of envy and anger of less privileged girls anymore.

A lot of such inequalities can be fixed just as easy. Say, some guys are too smart for the common good. They can become billionaires by 30. And if even they won't, they will still be subject of envy and frustration. A lot of guys will feel miserable after quick conversation with some smart snappy genius. Again, little brain surgery and another source of social tension is removed. Why not?

of coarse Nelson Mandela was anti capitalistic, look how it ruined the country. 'The roads of the british empire are paved with the gold from Africa.'

"all the productive people" includes only rich white boys such as myself. I cant say that I was nearly as productive as those people on the street who have to break any number of laws and endure terrible fighting to gather those natural resources. they wouldn't call it capitalism them selves.

The reason why SA is very unproductive is because when the capitalists in America (that own most of the mining shares) hear complaints about wages in the coal and gold mines, they dont mind if the workers get shot when they protest. and that is the biggest export of SA.

those miners earn something like $1 per hour, and the mining debree is killing them.

Not really. Market, by definition, is based on voluntary exchange. If you broad it's definition to include involuntary exchanges, it will include all human activity and therefore will lose any useful meaning. What you can say about "thing" if everything is a "thing"?

Perfect equality of opportunity can never exist, but it is very much in everyone's interest to seek to achieve a condition in which most gross inequities are removed, where possible, because this means fewer people want to cut your throat badly enough to actually do something about it.

Killing and stealing only works until the productive people stop producing, and then everybody starves. The productive people started leaving South Africa in droves when the anti-capitalist Nelson Mendela took over. There's no place on earth with more natural resources per acre than South Africa. If people are starving there, then it's because the government killers and thieves created an environment hostile to peaceful trade.

 

Brilliant point.  Very reality based.

work is energy.

technology is supposed to save a persons energy, nobody is that concerned about efficiency these days at the rate we burn coal.

I dont do fallacies. let us not ad hominem now.

A natural monopoly is anything which is much less efficiently done by competing interests.  Building and operating a dam on the Colorado River would be a fair example.  Tje use of the term "natural monopoly" is reasonably justified, and descriptive, in such a case.  If an ideology were to cripple my ability to understand or deal reasonably with such simple facts, I would adapt my ideology.

I do think enterprise sizes tend to follow a Zipf distribution.  When an enterprise reaches a certain size while its competitors are much smaller, it enjoys efficiencies of scale which  they cannot then achieve, because their margins are tighter and some resources are less available.  That's not a perfect monopoly, but it is a practical monopoly when adequate capital formation to create a viable competitor is no longer feasible.  During the gilded age, various titans of industry achieved levels of power and wealth which are difficult to parallel.  Carnegie in steel, Rockefeller in oil, Morgan in banking.  The wealth disparity was severe enough to result in revolutionary movements, and resulted in much violence.  Many would argue that the violence of the labor side was self-defense against the greed of the titans which commanded the resources which could have fed their malnourished children, provided adequate medical care to save their lives, and provided human standards of workplace operation, which saved them from maiming.  One democratic action taken to remedy the gross social ills which resulted was the Sherman Anti-trust Act.  Laws were enacted to protect the right to collectively bargain, laws which managed labor relations in order to prevent continued violence.  Today multinational corporations have achieved similar or greater scale, but manage the social costs more wisely, so as to avoid retributive interference by the state.  The social contract is focussed on the grand bargain whereby social welfare is provided to the rabble, who are kept lazy and stupid, fat and happy, while productive classes enjoy peace and quiet within which to pursue their competition for the remainder of the gross product.

These are bargains reached by social groups in the context of prevailing institutions.  They are bargains which are not made by individuals consciously or intentionally, for the most part, although they are created as a result of the decisions made by individuals.  They are bargains enforced by institutions which compel individuals to comply with their terms.

In pragmatic terms, I don't think it is immediately feasible to abolish all such impositions of groups and institutions on individuals.  Nor can I make an honest case that they should be abolished or reorganized.

In moral terms, I regard human freedom as the highest value, and think no one should be compelled to perform according to an agreement to which they are not party.

The only way to reconcile these conditions harmoniously is to exit the domain in which an insufferable compulsion is enforced.

Anyone who attempts to remove my option to exit an insufferable condition is doing gross violence upon me, and I will respond in kind as necessary.

To avoid such necessities, I will take all reasonable and prudent steps in my power to protect and secure my option to exit.

TERA, can I ask, if you are happy to accept inequality (which to a large degree we all must be) then why are you complaining about the current system? everything is going just dandy right? in your favour?

all that can be said, nothing is perfect. if you want to live you have to fight just like always, you win you lose.

Close. Technology's sole purpose is to save energy. That computer you are typing on saves you the trouble of coming to my house and arguing your fallacies in person.

Please, don't pollute the thread with off-topic.  

Explanation

Thank Kurt Vonnegut.  All I did was copy and paste.

Originally, yes. Then, since the robots give better margin, all his competitors will start using them too. The competition will drive prices down till the margin return to the old one. So, the rewards go to the the boss for a short time only, from the moment of innovation to the moment when competitors catch up. After this moment all rewards go to the consumers, in the form of reduced prices. So the major and permanent beneficiary of the technical progress is the society in a whole, including the poor replaced guys. (Yes, provided they will find new job. But during the last 200 years productivity went up several orders of magnitude. If a replaced guy can't usually find a job, 99% of people would be unemployed by now. Which is not happening. Therefore he usually can).

..... technologies sole purpose is to destroy work.

Im from South Africa, I know if try and tell a guy on the street that, he will kill you take your every belonging to buy food and survive another day. there is no money there, there is no work, they are all slaves to capitalism. and I love those people, they are good people.

and killing and stealing is another free market system that really works.....

Technology doesn't destroy work! Displaced autoworkers become robot builders and technicians and the pool boys at the gated communities of the wealthier GM executives and stockholders! That extra margin that automakers gain by automation is spent back into the economy. That provides jobs for service industry workers, etc. Would you rather be an assembly line worker with repetitive stress injuries or a golf caddy? I honestly don't think that you've thought this through.