The problem of Capitalism

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by stan1990, Mar 13, 2019.

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Do you agree that the main problem of Capitalism is of moral nature?

Poll closed Apr 12, 2019.
  1. Yes

    33.3%
  2. No

    50.0%
  3. Maybe

    16.7%
  1. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    The landowner qua landowner does not pay the electric bill, and his privilege of charging the land user for what government, the community and nature provide does not pay the electric bill. The land user's agreement to pay for his use of electric power does. So your answer to The Question fails.
     
  2. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    But that is not a natural right, it is a monopoly privilege issued and enforced by government, like a land patent. Ownership of ideas, like ownership of land, is unknown -- even inconceivable -- without a government-issued and -enforced privilege.
    Strawman fallacy. That is not the argument. Landownership and IP monopoly privileges are immoral and invalid because they forcibly remove other people's rights to liberty and make them into the private property of the owners of those privileges. When some people own other people's rights to liberty, that is equivalent to chattel slavery. The only difference between privilege and chattel slavery is that chattel slavery removes people's rights to liberty and makes them into other people's property one person at a time, privilege does it one right at a time.
    The first copy is his creation. Any copies made by others are self-evidently and indisputably not his creation. You are destroyed.
    Land is no one's creation, and its value is created by the community, not the owner. You know this.
    Oxymoron. There is no way to acquire land but by forcibly dispossessing everyone else of their liberty rights to use it. That is inherently and immutably immoral.
    The use is irrelevant. The immorality is in depriving others of what they would otherwise have without making just compensation. That is inherently and immutably immoral.
     
  3. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    What a gracious concession that you cannot refute anything I wrote.
     
  4. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Earning what you receive. Which the privileged, such as landowners, do not do.
    Hold that thought.
    Ideally. In practice, laws say whatever some gang of toadies, megalomaniacs, crooks, liars and sociopaths sitting in a legislature somewhere decided they could get away with.

    "Two things you will lose regard for if you see them being made: sausages and laws." -- Bismarck

    Why don't you try elucidating the moral principles you claim justify property in land and other natural resources, and knowledge and ideas that would otherwise be in the public domain?
    Your "arguments" make it clear that you are relying on the law to justify the law, as you have made no attempt to justify it based on anything more fundamental. That is classic question begging.
     
  5. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    1) Yes. Progressives should be deeply concerned (and ashamed) that they 'own' the most wealth disparity in the Western World. After all, they're the ones claiming to be all about redistribution and equality etc. Seems they're not only just as bad as the average 'grasping capitalist', they're actually worse. Stepping over the man sleeping in the street to access their $7 soy lattes, etc (and make no mistake .. those men sleeping in the street are there because Progressives want dissolution .. so they make it easy for otherwise productive citizens to drop out and fail).

    2) That set of values is conservative. Progressives aren't interested in OPPORTUNITY. If they were, they wouldn't be talking about redistribution.

    3) Bernie may be on the Left, but he's a capitalist player. Anyone with an eye to the massive profits of capitalism (how he wants to spend it isn't even slightly relelvant) is patently not a socialist/communist.

    4) Opportunity to escape poverty already exists in the First World. And eradicating poverty requires totalitarianism. I thought you were liberal?

    5) See above. You're openly seeking totalitarianism. Further, Progressives are the least tolerant political group in existence. They're about as illiberal as it gets.

    6) Bernie is a fake. You need to find a better hero.
     
  6. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Oh, garbage. They are there because landowners stripped them of their rights to liberty.
    Right. But landowners own everyone else's rights to access that opportunity, and charge them full market value just for permission to do so. That's why land costs so much, and landowners get rich without lifting a productive finger while working people toil their lives away but stay poor. Landowners own working people's liberty rights to access opportunity. I'm not sure there is any clearer or simpler way to explain that to you.
     
  7. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    That's plain wrong, as Gary17 has explained.
    Morality is notional and agreed by custom over time. ie Jehovah says this, or Allah says that...and Rand says something else (being ignorant of the violence of her greed, she proposes that Man is "rational"...in truth, humans are somewhere on a continuum of the rational and irrational.
     
  8. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Morality is objective, not subjective.

    Again, the justification of property is the law causality.

    Ayn Rand: “Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.”— http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/property_rights.html
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2019
  9. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    That's obviously wrong.

    Reality is objective, whereas morality is notional (agreed over time and/or by custom)

    Bringiton wins hands down against you everytime (though unlike him I don't think Rights exist in nature (ie, outside of human conception; I recall Gary17 disagreeing with him on that point).

    Anyone for an international rules based system?

    Then we might bring some order - and universal prosperity - to the planet.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2019
  10. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Correction, the final word in the final sentence in the paragraph is a typo. The sentence was meant to say: If your improvement is superficially cosmetic and the jurors, rational, then you’ll lose.”

    A creator can not copyright the idea of manned flight, what is copyrighted is the creator’s design of that specific application of the idea of manned flight, and what is owned as property is the usage and disposal of the plane or planes manufactured according to that design.
     
  11. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Completely backwards. In an nation where altruism and tribalism are the moral premises, you get a Nazi Germany with laws based on mysticism, race and genetics. In a nation where reason and liberty are the moral premises, you get an America with objective laws and individual rights. The results are illuminating.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2019
  12. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Whoever owns it, me, you, the city, the county, the state, God almighty, Gryffindor, or Albus Dumbledore, if rent is collected, it pays the bills, with hopefully enough left over to go on a South Pacific Cruise with your soul mate.

    It’s not a privilege to charge rent, it’s a right, as is not choosing to rent because the price is not right.

    That’s free trade among free men.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2019
  13. gottzilla

    gottzilla Banned

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    So when slaves were legally property those so-called property "rights" of their owners to them were justified.

    If morality determined the law, as you claimed, then changing the law is never justified. But if it was done anyways, the moral principles would have to be changed retrospectively somehow before the law could be changed, but then again the law wouldn't need to be changed because it wouldn't deviate from those principles in the first place...:alcoholic:

    Silly nonsense.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2019
  14. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    gotzilla writes:"in a world where the law morally justifies the law..."

    Starjet follows with a non-sequitur: "In a nation where altruism and tribalism are the moral premises"",

    1. Altruism? ...a positive behaviour/ideal (even if "moral")
    2. "tribalism"? ...a non-rational, stone-age instinct (also manifesting as jingoism, paranoid nationalism driving the 'spooks' agencies.

    Why relate the two?

    3. "Reason"..….according to whom?
    (just watching a TV drama re 9/11; the CIA didn't want to share intel with the FBI ....reminds me of a union demarcation dispute...ah, poor "reason".

    4. "Liberty"? Not as an abstract ideal, but as a 'reality'?
    But Man has had incomplete awareness of reality from the beginning.

    qui tollis peccata mundi, misere nobis.

    Unfortunately, our sins are seemingly paid for by the few who are (arbitrarily) suddenly thrust into hell (as on 9/11).

    Anyone for an international rules-based system?
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2019
  15. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Case in point, once upon a time, slavery was justified morally under the principle of "divine right". Then John Locke introduced the Law of Natural Rights which offered a moral foundation for individualism. Morally, slavery was done as a virtuous practice. It soon became a revulsion to the reasoning mind and remains so today.

    And yes, you are correct, to change the purpose of law from--"to serve the common good", "to protect the tribe", "to defend the throne", to "obey the bureaucrats", "to save the race"--to the purpose of protecting "the Rights of Man", you need to change the morality from "Altruistic Self-Sacrifice" to "Rational Self-Interest", i.e., from the "collective good" to the "inviolable sovereignty of the individual". Ayn Rand has accomplished this task, objectively, rationally, and monumentally.

    Ayn Rand: "Individualism regards man—every man—as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights—and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members."--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/individualism.html
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2019
  16. jdog

    jdog Banned

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    Never argue with a delusional person, they are beyond reasoning.
     
  17. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Question: In the movie Shane, who is morally right, the cattle ranchers and their demand for free-range, or the homesteaders and their claim for property rights?
     
  18. gottzilla

    gottzilla Banned

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    If I bought a car I would have a right to it. If I leased a car I would then under the agreed upon conditions have a right to it for the length of the lease. If I then was reqcuired to pay the purchase price for the car again or had to pay a second time for the same leasing period in order to have or it would be taken away from me, would the rights I ALREADY HAVE then not be violated?

    You see, when you ALREADY HAVE a right, whether you obtained a right to it through consensual transaction (car) or have it naturally (liberty), then having to pay for exercising it would be a violation thereof.

    We claim that we ALREADY HAVE a right to liberty. Making land, sunlight, or atmospheric air private property is a violation thereof.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2019
  19. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Nobody has a right to life until they're born. Nobody has a right to land until they've obtained it. Nobody has a right to a car until it's purchased. Nobody has a right to sunlight until they're in it, nobody has the right to anything until they've earned it, then it is theirs to do with as they wish. It's not the thing you have a right to, it's the action to acquire it.

    The root of property rights is the right to action, the Law of Causality. The cause, "earn"; the effect, "yours". (I'm using earn in a very broad sense. It could mean winning, paying for, inheriting, gift-receiving, etc.; or if you prefer--being good and lucky, having terrific relatives who love you, having loves that value you, or just plain dumb luck, like Forrest Gump. Doesn't matter. Once that action is taken that makes whatever yours, whatever is yours to do with as you wish. )
     
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  20. jdog

    jdog Banned

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    Look your personal views on property rights are nonsensical and inconsistent with reality.
    In the real world everyone has a right to own Real Estate, provided they can pay for it, or obtain it through legal means.
    Now, you may be butt hurt because you cannot achieve the level of success to participate in this market, and wish to change that reality, but the facts are what they are. The world is not going to change to accommodate your delusional concepts of reality.
     
  21. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    1) sure, sure. nothing at all to do with drug addiction, gambling, sociopathy, laziness, irresponsibility, etc etc. it's all someone else's fault.

    2) no they don't. I was born poor and landless. now I'm not poor and landless. all under my own steam, exploiting the incredible opportunities we have in the First World.
     
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  22. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Not entirely. Morals are simply survival behaviours, evolved into a set of 'socially acceptable' habits over many thousands of years. Women and children first, don't kill your own, don't steal from your own, etc. In that sense morals are objective.

    International rules? Will you also make us all exactly the same (coffee coloured, grey uniformed lemmings)? Remove all cultural differences and replace with that of your preferred totalitarian dictate? Erase all nuance, flavour, sponteneity, and wildness? Sounds awesome :/
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2019
  23. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    A very important point, bluntly brushed over in the hopes no one will spot the difference.
     
  24. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    That would be because you CHOSE to LEASE .. knowing full well the limits and benefits of that arrangement. You CHOSE to 'violate' your own rights by not simply buying the car in the first place. You want to make us responsible for your choice?
     
  25. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Correct. But it is difficult to determine, because the action that will work best to ensure the survival and prosperity of one's community in the indefinitely long run is often not obvious.
    Correct: the producer CAUSES his property to exist rather than not exist. That is the only valid basis of property rights. As land is not caused to exist by any human being, it can never be rightful property.
    Rand is more or less right. But labor only earns its product. As land is not a product of labor, it can never rightly have become property in the first place. If I build a boat and sail it on a lake where I catch fish, I own the boat and the fish, not the lake.
     

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