Re: Humanism in 2006

Roger Johansson wrote:

So your answer is yes, you want to keep an economic system which causes
enormous problems, suffering and death. You want to be pushed around.
Or do you think you would be one of the people who push others around?


Your error is in thinking that it is the "capitalist" economic system which causes the enormous problems. Please list "the problems". It is easy to make the case that our problems are caused by over-population, subcultures that reject the work ethic, envy, a belief that other people are the cause of your problems, religion, nationalism, etc. If you don't agree, perhaps YOU are part of the problem. Governmental systems that allow limited capitalism, such as the US, also have built-in favors for the wealthy and powerful, but these are NOT capitalism and they need to be done away with. Until you can distinguish between free trade and governmental artifice in support of special interests, you are barking up the wrong tree. Perhaps you need a label, an "ism", for this form of government in order to be able to recognize it?


You apparently want
to give non-productive, lazy, and dishonest people a bigger whip.



I want to take the whips out of the hands of the rich, nobody should
have a whip.
My system doesn't involve any whips, it gives all individuals a maximum
of freedom.
I take the power tools away from the creationist idiots who ruin our
world.


A maximum of freedom means that if I take common raw materials and produce a widgetX that people love, I should be able to trade freely with other people for the other widgets that I need. I should have property rights to all of my widgets. That is capitalism. That is also freedom. Freedom implies disparity of wealth and accumulation of wealth. Freedom implies favoritism, as you are free to distribute your wealth to the ones you choose. Capitalism is freedom. Self-proclaimed
"designers" of supposed idyllic social systems like you and Karl Marx have some basic misunderstandings of human nature. Try reading Pinker's book, or any book on evolutionary psychology.


Don't you realize that we should not force people to do stuff?


You should not force people to pay for what they take? 


That is the basic principles of capitalism, and the results of the
exchange principle are  detrimental to mankind in many ways, it makes
slaves out of most people, wage slaves. The money system is just a more
modern type of slavery.
The exchange principle is a hopeless basis for a society, a lot of
people have nothing to exchange.


If they have nothing to exchange, then they must either live on the charity of others or take what they need by force. They have no other choice, no matter what governmental system they live under. Under capitalism, in a world where resources have already been claimed, charity would be the option of people with wealth. Under any other system, wealth distribution is decided, to some greater degree, by needy people. This is a dangerous system: Giving the people who need something the power to take it without compensation.


Consumers should not compensate the producers? 


If you write a computer program you want people to pay you for it.
But a lot of people helped you to write your program, some people made
clothes for you, others made food and transported it for you, millions
of people have cooperated to create the machine you are working with.

Yes, and I compensated them for these things, you idiot! I traded something! If there is unfair exploitation of workers at the other end of the chain, then address that: There is nothing wrong with my trades. Western civilization has disrupted primitive cultures extensively, exploited their resources, installed puppet governments, provided despots with modern weapons. There are children working in sweatshops because they did not die of disease, because their cultures were unprepared for the temptations of western ways, because their parents are unscrupulous, because soldiers and police are protecting the interests of those who pay them, etc! There are problems that are intrinsic in human nature and the human condition, and can undermine ANY governmental system.

The program you think you are the owner of has actually been produced
by millions of people, the program belongs to the world. You should be
happy that you live in such a rich part of the world that you can sit
there and write programs. Why aren't you in the mines in Borneo,
working really hard? You were born lucky, and now you want to become
rich and get a big whip too? The more money you have the more power
over other people do you have.


Yes, I was born lucky. If the people in the mines in Borneo were in my position, they would be even more jealous of their wealth than I, would recklessly squander it on short term pleasure, or would lose it to crooks tempting them with get-rich schemes. One rather obvious principle in life is that you should not entrust your wealth to irresponsible people. I trust no one but myself to guard my own wealth, and this is borne out by eons of experience with human nature. You would put the control of wealth into the hands of people who do not comprehend or appreciate the labor that went into producing that wealth. The ones who can best appreciate it are the ones who produce the wealth in the first place, and there is no better guardian.


Did you really buy the "noble savage"
paradigm?  Do you really think, contrary to history and historians, that
human nature can be changed?  Have you no concept of evolutionary
psychology?  I can recommend a book:  "The Blank Slate" by Steven
Pinker.  From Pinker:



Incredible amounts of capitalist propaganda in your brain detected.


"The brains behind the American Revolution (which is sometimes labeled
with the oxymoron "conservative revolution") inherited the tragic vision



The american constitution and the american society are two completely
different things. Today we can easily see that USA is the most
dysfunctional and dangerous society on this planet. And they had to
fool their own citizens before they could start ruling the whole
planet. But things are changing. The era of american power is coming to
its end, the world will become more peaceful.


Contrary to what one would expect from all of human history?


of thinkers like Hobbes and Hume....  The legal scholar John McGinnis
has argued that their theory of human nature could have come right out



What americans call nature is the creationist system. There is nothing
natural at all in that system. It takes a lot of training and a
constant consumption of violence to keep it running.

the use of reciprocity, which leads to gains in trade that make everyone
better off....



Today, after capitalism has ruled for hundreds or thousands of years,
is everyone in the world better off? No, not even the citizens of USA
themselves are all better off.
The poor in USA have less than most people in other parts of the world.


The USA incorporates SOME capitalism, but also has fallen prey to the usual temptations of power: To use the tools of government to protect special interests. Once again, you fail to distinguish between capitalism and the American form of government. The fundamental principles of capitalism, free trade and property rights, must be the STARTING POINT of any viable system. Some massaging may be done around this core, but these principles are vital. You begin by rejecting the very essentials of freedom.


Capitalism accumulates the money and the power to a few hands. It is
like playing Monopoly, the game ends when one person has all the money.
Capitalism needs a lot of state intervention to work, to compensate for
the inherent faults of the capitalist system.


We should not let a few rich dudes take the important decisions in our
society, we should do it ourselves, through democracy.
Individual freedom and capitalism don't work together.


Capitalism is a close to individual freedom as you can get. 


Have you even tried to design a society?
Or are you simply defending the one that already exists because they
told you all your life that capitalism is the best possible system?
The one they have in USA was not created by modern day people, it is a
stone age system with a few nice modern words on top of it.


A prudent man would not design a society by throwing out the baby with the bathwater, by ignoring the history of thousands of years of struggle, or the wisdom of many conscientious and brilliant men. The problems are intractible, and a wholesale redesign by a mediocre intellect who cannot comprehend the lessons of history or human nature is about as likely to succeed as the failed attempt of Karl Marx.


--
Philosophy is a stage in intellectual development, and is not compatible with mental maturity. -- Bertrand Russell

Philosophy, as opposed to science, springs from a kind of self-assertion: a belief that our purposes have an important relation to the purposes of the universe, and that, in the long run, the course of events is bound to be, on the whole, such as we should wish. -- Bertrand Russell

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein in Albert Einstein: The Human Side , edited by Helen Dukas (Einstein's secretary) and Banesh Hoffman, and published by Princeton University Press.

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despiceable an ignoreable war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." [Albert Einstein]

"I am the entire human race compacted together. I have found that there is no ingredient of the race which I do not possess in either a small way or a large way." -- Mark Twain

"If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Indian's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, 'How about the tortoise?' the Indian said, 'Suppose we change the subject.' The argument is really no better than that." -- Russell

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt






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