We can certainly agree on that.

Maybe not. But perhaps the climate crisis will precipitate* change. Or perhaps the inequalities and unfairness that are the natural outcome of capitalism will leave a sufficiently sizeable proportion of voters feeling disenfranchised that they'll vote for change. Coincidentally, I read this article this morning.





* pun not intentional, but left in anyway

This is a new one. So why are they so desperate to recount everything, if there wasn't actually a vote in the first place? Why did Trump leave the White House if there wasn't an election? Is he a fool?

Are you sure you don't have it the wrong way around? Maybe there was an election, and it was legitimate, but the Republicans didn't like the result, and so are now trying to claim fraud. Just an idea...

Yeah, they've picked the few places Trump won, and are declaring that it's all fake there, too, because he didn't win by as much as they wanted him to win by enough.

They won't ever admit defeat, no matter how ridiculous they look. I've mentioned it before as a joke, but I wouldn't be hugely surprised if they did continue this thing until 5th November 2024, at which point they'd declare victory because they'd forced a new election.

It's the UK. We don't really have a viable left, since the "Labour" party have reinvented themselves once again. The Green party is probably our main left-wing party, but they only tend to gather a few percentage points of the vote. Our future prime minsters are generally drawn from a small subset of children. But I won't expand on all of this here, or it will turn into an essay.


Yes, but centuries of evidence show that the invisible hand either doesn't exist or, if it does, then its effect is almost nothing.


Yes, agreed.


If pure capitalism leads to excess and abuse, and there needs to be some mechanism to reduce this effect, as you seem to agree in your point above, then why should we not tax the rich? If a corporation exploits the system to the detriment of others by making its own rules, then why should the CEO and directors of that company be perceived as having acquired their wealth by fair and legitimate means? If there are people who exploit the system, then why would it be disappointing if we sought to prevent this exploitation? Is it okay that Jeff Bezos has $200 billion, but his employees have to sh*t in plastic bags in their vans because they'd lose their job if they took a toilet break?

Previously I have compared these two facts:

1. This $5 billion yacht exists.
https://www.atlasmarinesystems.com/most-expensive-yachts/

2. 1 in 3 people globally do not have access to safe drinking water.
https://www.who.int/news/item/18-06-2019-1-in-3-people-globally-do-not-have-access-to-safe-drinking-water-unicef-who

Whilst, as I say, I am in favour of equality of opportunity, and against absolute equality of outcome, I do believe in progressive taxation. And income tax alone is insufficient when the elite draw most of their wealth from returns on existing capital. (Yes, I am a fan of Thomas Piketty, and read Capital in the Twenty-First Century when it was first published.)

I believe that existing inequality of outcome is obscene. I am not talking about someone who is talented and worked hard and made themselves say $10 million. Numbers become difficult to fully comprehend once we move past the scale for which the human brain evolved. I am fond of the visualisation below. Scroll through this and tell me that existing tax on the wealthy is sufficient (there is plenty of additional information if you scroll far enough).

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

And would be considerably higher if people weren't vaccinated. The vaccine confers protection* against the delta variant, as the data show.


Nope. That that's not what the data tell us at all. If you have inferred that, then your logic is flawed.




https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-unvaccinated-booster-65-serious-covid-19-cases-death-delta-1.10208784




* Not 100%, but some is better than none, right?

I think the difference is that I understand what is meant by comorbidity.

Take the following scenario (and I appreciate that for you it is simply a thought experiment, rather than what's actually happening):

A new, deadly respiratory virus appears. If everyone contracts it, then some will survive and some won't.

Now ask yourself what sorts of people are most likely to die from this virus. It will be the old and infirm, and those with existing underlying health conditions. You would agree with this, right?
Consider someone with a chronic lung disease. If they catch the new virus, they will be more likely to die than someone who has no lung problems who catches it, right?

The person with chronic lung disease catches this new virus, and dies. Their existing lung disease is considered a comorbidity. The thing that killed them is the new virus. Their existing condition made them more likely to die when they caught the new virus. If they hadn't caught the new virus, they would have continued to live with their existing condition. It is the new virus that killed them.

I think this is quite straightforward.

It was certainly a big deal when Andy Murray won his first slam (also US Open), and then an even bigger deal when he won Wimbledon the following year. There will be a huge amount of expectation on Raducanu next Wimbledon, but given how she coped with the pressures of the US Open I think she'll be fine. But I think not just the fact of her US Open win, but also - and mainly - the nature of it, will already be a huge catalyst for the women's game here.

I'm not convinced by Brentford. I think they are over-performing this season, and the reason is momentum. You do see it sometimes with promoted teams. They spent all last season winning their matches, which breeds confidence and a winning mentality. They carry this belief over to the start of the new season, and for a while the good results may keep coming. But I think a couple of bad results in a row, or a couple of injuries to key players, will see Brentford slide back down the table. It is always nice to see a promoted side do well, but I don't think there's any chance they'll finish in the top half.

Again forgive my ignorance, as I'm not an expert on this topic... but if you are saying that the 'invisible hand' argument should be interpreted as meaning that capitalism does not self-regulate by itself, or through any human endeavour, but needs something external (i.e., God) to do this, then I suppose we're in agreement. I've said in many discussions in P&S that although my politics are considerably left-of-centre, I believe that the oxymoron of 'capitalist democracy' is the best system of government we can have... so long as the government works to rein in the excesses of capitalism, and the capitalism works to prevent forced absolute equality of outcome. We need two opposing forces to keep each other in check. I think this is self-evident, and extremist ideologies such as communism or, on the other side, anarcho-capitalism, are doomed to failure.

I am in favour of equality of opportunity, and the only way I see this arising is in a capitalist democracy where the government is left-leaning. A right-wing government, one which more or less is in alignment with laissez-faire capitalism, doesn't provide the required balance.



As a parting comment then, I'd ask you once again to consider my argument above, and also my contention that capitalism is a process rather than an end-state. A process has a direction of travel. It may not start out that way, but pure, unfettered capitalism works to reduce competition. This is its direction of travel. If governments did not restrain it, the outcome would be monopolies and cartels. The question of whether these are state-run or privately-run then becomes irrelevant.

I don't think it's that strange. The teams they play will obviously vary in ability, so some matches will be easier than others. But the opposition teams will also vary in approach. If a weak team plays City, they will often play very defensively. They may get a 0-0, or City may get frustrated and push too many many forward, and the opposition might even hope to sneak a goal on the break or from a set piece, and win 1-0. But if a defensive team concedes early, they then have to change their strategy and be more open, in which case often City will score more.

I don't think it's inconsistency, it's just that football can be a complex game with many variables.

The match at Villa Park is quite amusing... a boring 0-0, then on comes Leon Bailey on 60 minutes, scores one goal and assists another, Villa suddenly rampant and 3-0 up... then he goes off injured on 80 minutes.
20 minutes on the pitch, job done!

I will concede the point, I didn't mean to say that . What I mean is, it's a starting position, and in terms of the modern world it's more a prediction than an analysis. It doesn't describe the modern world through observation, more through prediction... it's more of an idealised understanding, and the modern world I would say has not developed exactly as anticipated. What I mean is that there are nuances which of course could not have been anticipated. I'm certainly not denying it's important, but it's flawed.


I appreciate we are coming at this from different angles, but to me, trickle-down is another discredited theory, another imaginary prop used as a moral support to justify selfishness and rapacity.

The book was written when the US was still a colony of England. It was written before we knew how to produce electricity. I don't think it can say a huge amount about the advanced market economies of the modern world.

I tend to view capitalism as a process rather than an end state. I don't see how it can have an equilibrium position. I am not educated in this either, so forgive my ignorance, but if the contention is that a system based on the pursual of self-interest and profit at the expense of others (because capitalism is a competition, isn't it?) contains within itself some invisible mechanism that pulls society towards economic stability and equilibrium... then it just sounds like wishful thinking. I mean, the 2008 crisis couldn't have arisen unless the excesses of capitalism had increased instability to such a point that everything was ready to collapse. Perhaps the answer is that I misunderstand the concept, but it perplexes me that some people still believe that an invisible hand exists, and my only conclusion when I compare this belief to the utter absence of evidence for its existence, is that it is simply a psychological prop used to support an idea that is outdated and incorrect.


This is one of those threads that opens up many avenues of discussion, and I may be veering off-topic.

TBH if their route became Facebook/Twitter -> bitcointalk, although they'd still be posting stupid links, it would probably be an improvement on the current route of Bitchute/NaturalNews -> bitcointalk.

But relocation to Siberia will of course remain the dream.

Your link has a disclaimer, which includes:


Nevertheless, the reported total is 14,506 deaths where the CV19 vaccine was involved. There have been ~383,000,000 vaccine doses administered in the US. Which puts the death rate close to 0%.


I don't trust the government in my country, and I don't believe they have my best interests at heart. I certainly don't do whatever they tell me to do. What I do instead, is to look at the data, and base my actions on that.

I don't know. Moving a swamp sounds like quite a logistical challenge. Might it not be easier the other way around?


Think about this for a second, though. If the elite kill everyone who isn't the elite... then they are no longer the elite, are they? If we are exploited by the elite (and I will agree that we certainly are), then we are their assets. A slave owner has no incentive to kill all of his slaves. Likewise the elite have no incentive to damage a system that works perfectly well for them by implementing lockdowns, etc. They don't want lockdowns or anything else that impedes the flow of wealth from us to them.

It didn't need any help though, surely? It mangled itself. It's an outdated and discredited concept, more wishful thinking than anything else.


I always come out as that, too. I'd imagine we're quite over-represented on the Politics and Society board of a bitcoin forum.


To some people (although not myself), communism as a theoretical concept is appealing. Its crucial failure in practice is that it is so easy to corrupt. But isn't this true of any extremist ideology? An ancap society in practice would surely go the same way (albeit via a different route).
What do you imagine a forum run by a socialist might look like? Red background, hammer and sickle everywhere? Forum rules only altered in accordance with the current five-year plan? Trolls sent to Siberia for "re-education"?

Yes, this is the most important thing here. The halo has proven its worth quite a few times now. It may not look great, but it's absolutely the best new introduction to F1 in recent years.
And yes there was quite a lot of controversy about it when it was first brought in, but it has really proven its importance since then. I don't think anyone can argue against it having been a huge success.

Of course not.



I often wonder how much of the stuff you post you actually believe, and how much is to just generate a reaction. You can't really believe this one, surely? Do you really think the argument is compelling?
You live in a very strange world.

Whoever has the biggest guns. But whatever happened to Proudhon's 'property is theft'?

But making the huge assumption that such a society could actually persist in some form of stability without degenerating into a bloodbath, everything would be controlled by monopolies and cartels.