bitcoin changing my ideology from socialism to libertarianism! What about you?

[jonald_fyookball]

without profit there can exist no business. duh.

[1715030186]

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[1715030186]

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[Beliathon]

without profit there can exist no business. duh.

I guess that sinks my arguments about the inevitability of human social evolution toward greater empathy and compassion then, eh?

[cuddaloreappu]

without profit there can exist no business. duh.

I guess that sinks my arguments about the inevitability of human social evolution toward greater empathy and compassion then, eh?

why should human social evolution be towards greater empathy and compassion?

why not 95% tend to evolve into selfish entities and  5% tend to be those who put compassion and empathy before their selfish desires?

 this is the natural order which is destined..and nothing can change that

[jonald_fyookball]

without profit there can exist no business. duh.

I guess that sinks my arguments about the inevitability of human social evolution toward greater empathy and compassion then, eh?

One thing has little to do with the other.  Business is business.  Compassion is compassion.  Both are valuable.

So are you anti-business?  Or just ignorant of the fact that businesses neccisitate profits?

[Beliathon]

without profit there can exist no business. duh.

I guess that sinks my arguments about the inevitability of human social evolution toward greater empathy and compassion then, eh?

why should human social evolution be towards greater empathy and compassion?

why not 95% tend to evolve into selfish entities and  5% tend to be those who put compassion and empathy before their selfish desires?

 this is the natural order which is destined..and nothing can change that

I beg to differ. Reason, you see, compels humanity forward toward a more compassionate, more empathetic, more kind, more cooperative global society.

You can't win a battle against reason when your battlefield is time.

So are you anti-business?

I am a post-capitalist. I possess radical imagination - I define this as the ability to imagine a better, more just, more reasonable, less violent future - and so I naturally regard modern capitalism as a dead thing walking.

[forevernoob]

Profit = human exploitation = wage slavery = ethically awful

In a free market system the market would control what companies are popular and successful.
There would be no cases of people being forced to work at a company.
If a company treats their workers like shit chances are the employees would try to leave the company ASAP.
So if there is a option to leave how can it be slavery?

Although it doesn't really matter how many times or ways I spell this shit out for you. You have been indoctrinated to believe in the sanctity of the system since your formative years. Old lies die hard. Look at religion.

It's been 300 years of this shit. Humanity can do better than capitalism. But nothing will change until we accept that it doesn't have to be this way. Remember, the entire history of human civilization is a series of revolutions. Change is the only constant, just as it always was.

I wonder how many times I have to repeat that you should be criticizing social liberalism and Keynesian economics. Not capitalism.
Capitalism is a economic system it cannot be blamed for the wrong doings of market interference from Governments.

[jonald_fyookball]

Bernakee?  bailouts are the antithesis of capitalism.

[jbreher]

which of your cut'n'paste graphics panels was supposed to illustrate the dynamic between the looters and the Korean shopkeepers?

This one:

Invalid depiction. What that graphic fails to capture is the blue guy trying to forcibly take the red guy's stuff.

The Korean shopkeeper with the glasses ended up going full postal after the minimall with his store was completely overrun by looters. The LAPD ending up executing him because he wouldn't stop firing on the crowd.

What Korean shopkeeper with the glasses? The one in your youtube link? Yeah, whatever. Looked like deliberately aimed shots taken at specific people. There were certainly other people that he could have been shooting at, but refrained from. I'd certainly not characterize that as full postal. Extreme, yes. But not full postal. I repeat: You've got to be a pretty stupid looter to see a gun in your face, and continue to ransack the shop of the person holding the gun. May just have been Darwinism in action. Where's the footage of the LAPD executing him?

Further, you have evaded the question. Please tell me - how many looters were actually killed by these armed Korean shopkeepers? Statistics please. With links to source documents, if such be at hand.

So tell me - if someone walked up to you -- right now -- and took the computer upon which you are reading these words - what would be your response?

[Beliathon]

bailouts are the antithesis of capitalism.

And yet if you listen to the High Priests of capitalism, the US economy would have imploded without the bank bailouts. Saying "bailouts are the antithesis of capitalism", while also ignoring the fact that capitalism has become more and more self-destructive over the past few decades strikes me as rather convenient.

Witness, dear reader, the cognitive dissonance of an economic fundamentalist.

So tell me - if someone walked up to you -- right now -- and took the computer upon which you are reading these words - what would be your response?

I suppose I'd inform the librarian that people are stealing computers, and then move to the unoccupied machine to the right of me.

[jbreher]

I beg to differ. Reason, you see, compels humanity forward toward a more compassionate, more empathetic, more kind, more cooperative global society.

That is not a reasoned conclusion. From what I have seen, that is merely one of the axioms you start with in order to argue against capitalism. Flawed axioms lead to flawed conclusions regardless of how sound the reasoning is.

From your rants, you seem to believe that the world is currently in the very antithesis of 'a more compassionate, more empathetic, more kind, more cooperative global society'. If indeed reason 'compels humanity forward toward a more compassionate, more empathetic, more kind, more cooperative global society', why are we not yet at your anarcho-commie utopia? If there is some comparatively recent change in the nature of things, which has newly led reason to compel humanity thusly, then what is that change? Or, has there not yet been enough time in all of recorded history to bring about this inevitable state? And if not, why would you expect this blissful utopia in your own meager lifetime?

I think your axiom is flawed.

[TheRandomGuy]

uhm bitcoin is compatible with many forms of socialism

like syndicalism and mutualism lmao

socialism literally just means democratic workers ownership of the means of production

[TheRandomGuy]

Since kid, instinctively I have always felt the right to private property and  there is nothing wrong in amassing wealth.

But somewhere down the line, I was fooled by pseudo altruistic politicians into buying their ideologies which included socialism.. there were days  I believed wealth is evil...



Ever since I got involved with bitcoins... my ideology is slowly changing back from being  pro Socialism to pro Libertarianism...



regretting every minute with tears...

But feel happy and Liberated when I think about the pleasures of Personal wealth..Going to amass wealth.

Its like returning  back to your instincts and that truly feels liberated.

Are you having such changes?

also check out libertarian socialism

actual libertarianism not this classical liberal bs crap

[jbreher]

And yet if you listen to the High Priests of cronyism, the US economy would have imploded without the bank bailouts.

FTFY

So tell me - if someone walked up to you -- right now -- and took the computer upon which you are reading these words - what would be your response?

I suppose I'd inform the librarian that people are stealing computers, and then move to the unoccupied machine to the right of me.

Haha! Touche'! Parry... Feint... Thrust!

Just stop. You, I, and everyone reading this knows what the question was about. The dodge cheapens you.

Fine - allow me to rephrase. If someone took your next meal from you as you were starting to eat it, what would be your response?

[Beliathon]

From your rants, you seem to believe that the world is currently in the very antithesis of 'a more compassionate, more empathetic, more kind, more cooperative global society'.

No, not the antithesis, not even close. The antithesis would be total fascism and/or slavery conditions. Nazi Germany is the antithesis. Actually, the world has been getting more empathetic and less violent with every passing decade.

Social evolution continues and will continue long after you and I are dust. Long after capitalism is little more than another chapter in the book of human history.

If indeed reason 'compels humanity forward toward a more compassionate, more empathetic, more kind, more cooperative global society', why are we not yet at your anarcho-commie utopia?

You could pose this same question at any time throughout history, "why is human society not already a perfect utopia?" and it would always be absurd and moronic. Human society is always approaching - but never fully reaching - utopia. It's a slow, meandering, iterative process.

Very slow at first. Slavery lasted for thousands of years. Then as momentum builds, the pace picks up. Society has socially evolved more in the past one hundred years than it had in the previous 300.

[Soros Shorts]

I am a post-capitalist.

My understanding of post-capitalism is that it could be any one of a dozen different things. Whichever it is that you are subscribing to you are not doing a good job selling it with all your hateful posts.

[Beliathon]

Whichever it is that you are subscribing to you are not doing a good job selling it with all your hateful posts.

Cool story. You're still getting unplugged.



Unfortunately, sometimes humanity must be dragged kicking and screaming bloody murder into a new reality. Such was the case with the end of feudalism, such will be the case with the end of capitalism.


And I've already explained the reasons why:

"Before capitalism, there were other ways. Feudalism was what existed in Europe for a thousand years before we had modern capitalism. And before that, slavery - yet another system - another way of organizing who does the work and who gets the profits and so on. And the interesting thing is that every other system that we have a record of in the human race, was born, evolved over time, and eventually passed away. What always has intrigued me, is the need for those people living in capitalism today, to think it's going to be the great exception. It was born, basically in England 300 years ago, it has evolved over the last three centuries. But when you say, "yes, but that means it will also pass away and give rise to another system", people get all kinds of strange worries because they don't want to think about that.

And so they begin to imagine that this system will be forever, in a way no other system in history has proved itself to be."
-Dr. Wolff

"And our resistance to any challenge to capitalism is ferocious in the United States. I mean the essence of the Cold War in our lifetimes is not the Soviets were intrinsically evil, it was that the Soviets practice an economic system called Communism, and that represents an existential threat to the United States, to our way of life, and to everything that we hold dear and believe to be true. And so it was really a battle over an economic system."
-Thom Hartmann

"Absolutely, I think the important things to remember are these. Before World War II, that is before the cold war that started after '45 got going, Americans were able to discuss capitalism as a system, socialism and communism as some of the various alternatives and so on. It didn't seem to threaten our society at least for large numbers of our people, to have a conversation, to assess the strengths and weaknesses of different systems. To be kind of rational adults talking about this question. And even after 1945 in places like France or Germany or Italy or many other countries that we are close to, socialist parties thrived. The French government today is a socialist government. Socialists are part of governments in many European countries, didn't seem to fall apart in Europe. It was something rational people could talk about.

But here in the United States, it became a taboo. Since 1945, what you did is you shut down the debate. You made it no longer a question of discussing systems, trying to see if we could do better than capitalism in part - all of that became impossible. To question capitalism, let alone to explore the alternatives took on the aura of an act of disloyalty. It was wonderful for the capitalists, because it basically proscribed any kind of debate or discussion or criticism as beyond the pale. We are only NOW, fifty years into the taboo, finally coming out of the kind of funk that we were in as a nation. Now that we see how poorly the capitalist system serves the majority of people in the US, slowly we are emerging back to the place we should never have left - which is an open honest debate and discussion about the alternatives systems  past, present, and future - that will shape how we live as a people."
-Dr. Wolff

------------------------

This is precisely what I mean when I use the term "economic fundamentalism". You can see the logical leaps a person must make to believe capitalism is the be-all end-all of economics. This is what makes it a close cousin to religious fundamentalism.

Conversations with Great Minds part 1 - Dr. Richard Wolff with Thom Hartmann

Conversations with Great Minds part 2

[cuddaloreappu]

Tell me beli, among 7 billion world population

How many you think will be selfish and how many will act in the interest of the collective or society?

[Beliathon]

Tell me beli, among 7 billion world population

How many you think will be selfish and how many will act in the interest of the collective or society?

7 billion will act selfish and 7 billion will act in the interests of the collective, at different times, for different reasons, in different ways. Sometimes self-interest aligns with collective interest.

Other times people go to extremes and rational self-interest falls completely away, replaced by pure rage and righteous indignation.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Bouazizi

It must be nice to live in a surreal bubble wherein all thought is hyper-simplified; wherein every argument can be diluted down to a simple on/off, good/bad, yes/no scenario. Tell me, is willful ignorance truly bliss?

Back here on reality ranch, witness capitalism in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP7L8bw5QF4

[bbit]

Back here on reality ranch, witness capitalism in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP7L8bw5QF4

And that video is reality?  capitalism would exists without the "petro dollar" fabrication argument.

[cuddaloreappu]

Tell me beli, among 7 billion world population

How many you think will be selfish and how many will act in the interest of the collective or society?

7 billion will act selfish and 7 billion will act in the interests of the collective, at different times, for different reasons, in different ways. Sometimes self-interest aligns with collective interest.

Other times people go to extremes and rational self-interest falls completely away, replaced by pure rage and righteous indignation.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Bouazizi

It must be nice to live in a surreal bubble wherein all thought is hyper-simplified; wherein every argument can be diluted down to a simple on/off, good/bad, yes/no scenario. Tell me, is willful ignorance truly bliss?

Back here on reality ranch, witness capitalism in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP7L8bw5QF4

No way all the 7 billion will act in the interest of the collective and now way all 7 billion will act selfish..about 5% should be altruistic which is the best outcome for survival of the genes..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_%28biology%29#Biological_market_theory