Rational Politics.
Posted on: August 14, 2008 - 12:18pm
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Rational Politics.
I've come to the conclusion that the current atheist movement is full of so many socialists, neo-Marxists with far left wing political ideals, that there is no way the movement could be considered ‘rational’. It operates just like religions, based on how one wishes the universe operates not on how it actually works. Devotion to dogma is more important than facts. I don't want to have anything to do with this because it's pretty much the same kind of irrational dogma as religion.
I understand the thinking that if government could eliminate poverty and human need that people would need to turn to religion as their only hope. But this is a false idea first that governments could ever do this without going bankrupt. The key to eliminating religion is not making people dependent on government through a welfare state but enabling every citizen to become self-sufficient through an effective education/rehabilitation system.
If there is not a general consensus among rational thinking people in this self-sufficiency principle, I see no point in having anything to do with the so-called rational atheism movement. I think this web site is just going to turn into a haven for irrational neo-Marxist dogma, just as irrational as any right wing religious group. Ignoring how economics and human nature actually work. It’s just changing one form of irrationality for another. It’s just replacing a celestial sugar-daddy (God) for an earthly one (Government). How about no sugar-daddies?
In many ways socialist political values are similar to irrational Theism:
1. Based on wish thinking. The thinking/decision and opinion making is based upon how one wishes the world works, not on how it actually works. Theists and socialists both wish there could be an all-powerful entity with unlimited resouces that could eliminate all problems just by asking it to do so. The only way humans can eliminate problems is with effective education and hard work. Government, the rich and corporations can not be or sugar daddy.
2. Devotion to a dogma and practices that have been proven not to work. Prayer never works for the Theist. Yet they persist. Why it makes them feel good. They feel like they are doing something to help the situation when they are actually doing nothing. They convince themselves that they care as some kind of drug to feel good about themselves.
Socialist liberals do the same thing. They use other people's money to give to benefit someone, they believe they've helped when they've done nothing but make the problem worse. But feeling that they care is they way they make themselves feel good. You point out to socialist the failures of the system. They will ignore the facts. Devotion to the dogma of wealth redistribution/welfare can solve all problems is of supreme value.
3. Demonization of anyone that disagrees with them. Anyone that does not agree with them is labeled as uncaring and cold-hearted. They do this to avoid defending the rationality of their position. The fact is that socialist values are so irrational and destructive that many people are driven towards right wing Christian fundamentalism.
These should be the political goals of every rational thinking person:
1. The main political goal of every rational person should be to have an effective education system that enables every person to become self-sufficient. This includes worker retraining and effective rehabilitation of criminals. Technology and scientific principles must be applied to effectively and efficiently educated and retrain people. Publicly education must be centered first and foremost on enabling people to become self-sufficient. Students can’t be allowed to study whatever they want if it does not enable them to be self-sufficient. Schools and teachers that do not train people to be self-sufficient should be cut off from public financing. Education is the only effective tool to eliminate poverty and human over-population.
2. Welfare can only be a temporary solution while citizens are being educated or rehabilitated. Society needs to make a social contract with its citizens. When one is in a difficult spot, a social worker should evaluate their situation then come up with a plan of action to put the individual/family on a path to self-sufficiency. The help cannot be interminable and only citizens that cooperate with the rehabilitation program can receive benefits.
Socialist seem to be content with a failed education/rehabilitation system. They seem to believe it is impossible to educate a large portion at a level to make them self-sufficient so we then need to pay even more for welfare. How about not accepting failure as an option? Then they want people and businesses with some money to give even more to governments that are failing to properly educate our poor dependent citizens in the first place. This cycle of government failure must not be tolerated.
3. Government mandates for private businesses should be avoided. If businesses are forced to pay high wages and provide services that don't make economic sense, they overall effect will be negative. If businesses are forced by mandate to do these things, they will either pass the costs on to consumer in the form of higher prices or they will go out of business. Either way the poor will be the ones most hurt by these mandates. Government regulation of businesses should be aimed only at preventing fraud and environmental destruction. Businesses will not pay high wages for large numbers of unskilled workers. They will either go out of business or use automation to eliminate jobs.
4. Income and sales taxes should be eliminated or kept very low. Society should move toward being a pay as you go system where self-sufficient people pay for the government services they use. Income tax discourages hard work and investment. If the rich are heavily taxed, they will simply stop investing in job creating enterprises and take their money to places where they can avoid the tax man.
5. Protection of the environment is a high priority. Human activates that pollute the environment or use a large amount of natural recourses should be eliminated or heavily taxed. This will encourage the development of technologies that have a low impact on the environment.
6. Leveling the playing field for all citizens. The way to make the economy fairer for the poor is to eliminate corporate welfare. The exploitation of the environment and natural recourses should not be a protected means of generating wealth. Wealth should be generated though work, investment, and entrepreneurship that solves real problems and meets the real needs of society.
[FORMATTING CORRECTED BY SAPIENT]
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
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Must be true, then. Sorry for disagreeing with you.
Show me where I advocate welfare without strings.
Really, exc? Really? You don't know the answer to this?
No, exc. The government builds roads, subsidizes hospitals, gives grants for research, funds schools, public libraries, police stations, fire stations, the EPA, the U.S. treasury, provides social security to retirees, gives subsidized loans to first time homebuyers, etc, etc, etc, etc. EXC, without knowing one thing about your life, I guarantee that you have made use of government money this week in some way or another. I guarantee it. When somebody doesn't pony up their end of the collective bill, and still makes use of the benefits, that pisses the government off. I can't say I blame them.
Fucking hell, EXC... because of GAME THEORY. Remember that thing? It's math, dude. When you get a large number of people together in reciprocal altruism, you necessarily lower the value of reputation and accountability. As growth continues, it eventually reaches a point where cheating becomes more profitable than playing by the rules, and the system breaks down. You want to live in family tribes? Fine. You don't have to have a forceful government. Otherwise, it's simple math.
Sometimes.
You're nuts. Would you please read a fucking book by a scientist?
NO. Evolution describes reproduction and variation. GAME THEORY describes interactions of large groups in reciprocally altruistic cultures. The two work together, but please get your facts straight. There is no such thing as social darwinism. It's bullshit.
How clear can I make this? HELPING THOSE WHO CANNOT HELP THEMSELVES IS NOT REWARDING LOW PRODUCTIVITY. Think through this, please. Welfare is NOT SEXY. You can't afford a mercedes or a bmw. You can't take your girl to the nicest restaurants. You only get to go out with other poor people. Your children get made fun of at school. It's NOT SEXY. People want to get off of welfare, and the only way to do that is to have a chance. When you're making less than you're spending, YOU DON"T HAVE A CHANCE. Welfare works best when it makes it EASY for people to get better jobs.
Have you, by chance, noticed that most minimum wage jobs today are worse than welfare? I bet you think that means welfare pays too high, don't you? Well, guess what? It doesn't mean that. The economy is out of balance right now because there's a HUGE gap between the rich and the poor. The middle class is disappearing. Haven't you read any history? When this starts happening, and you continue to concentrate money upwards, the whole fucking thing collapes.
A start towards what? I'll be happy to tell you that I understand bell curves. It's pretty easy stuff. Do you?
Give the man a fucking cigar.
Do you read what I write? I've said this over and over and over in many threads. Increasing welfare will only work in conjunction with modifications in the tax structure, effective regulations controlling the runaway power of business success, and effective control over the value of the dollar.
If you keep increasing welfare while allowing huge income gaps, you're not helping. Let me put it simply. Suppose you have a company that nets twenty million dollars a year and has a thousand employees. If the CEO makes two million dollars, the VP makes one million dollars, and each of the four regional executives makes a quarter of a million dollars, that leaves sixteen million dollars for a thousand employees. That's an average of 16,000 per year for each employee. If you want to skip the math, that's a thousand part time employees at $10/hr for 30 hours a week. At 30 hours, you don't have to pay benefits, so that means each employee has to live completely on $320 a week.
Sound far fetched? Have you ever looked over the corporate numbers for a Waffle House? I have. It's not far from that at all.
Now, suppose there are ten companies just like this. That means that there are 10,000 people who make 16,000 per year. Suppose that the cost of keeping one person alive, fed, and sheltered in this area is 14,000 per year. Suppose 5,000 of these people have one child. Your total income for the community is 1.6 million, but 5,000 of them actually need $28,000 because they have a dependent. That means that the homes with children take up 1.4 million, leaving only .2 million for 5000 people, or $40 apiece. Yeah, I know that's probably exaggerated. Let's see how it works if we assume a kid is only half the expense of an adult. (They aren't, but that's another point... they're definitely more.)
In any case, in our new scenario, accounting for saving money on kids, the 5000 people with one child take up 1.05M, leaving .55m, or $110 a year.
You see how it works? Money starts disappearing really fast when you pay people just enough to live on. These are absurdly simple examples, but the reality is not that different. So, now, mister governor, what are you going to do? If you raise minimum wage to $15/hr, the company now has to pay 225M in wages instead of 160M, or an increase of 39%. That leaves 40M to be divided between the ten companies, each of which is paying 6 high level execs. That leaves an average of .66M per exec, although, remember, four out of every six were only making .25M per year to begin with. So, you still have plenty of wiggle room.
Now, let's check on the poor. 15/hr x 30hrs x 50 weeks = 22,500 per year. Not bad, except that one person plus one child = 21,000 per year. That means that if taxes on 22,500 are 20%, that means the net is only 18k per year, and we're right back where we started. So, we have a choice. We can raise minimum wage, or we can adjust the tax structure. If everybody was paying 20% a year, that means that our execs at $250,000 were netting $200,000 per year, or enough to raise almost nine children. (Alternatively, they could buy a boat.) Twenty percent of $22,500 = 4500. Twenty percent of $250,000 is $50,000. That means that if we raise taxes on the upper crust and lower them on the bottom, we'll get a really nice payoff for the poor while not inconveniencing the rich too terribly much:
Poor @ 10% = 20,250/year after taxes, Net tax revenue = 10,000 x 2250 = 2,250,000
Rich @ 30% = $175,000/year after taxes, Net tax revenue = 75000 x 40 = 3,000,000
For a net tax revenue of 5,250,000.
Now, the way we had it before, it was this:
Poor @ 20% = 18000/year after taxes, Net tax revenue = 10,000 x 4500 = 4,500,000
Rich @ 20% = 200000/year after taxes, Net tax revenue = 50,000 x 40 = 2,000,000
So, after changing our tax rate to put the poor right at about living wage, we raised 5,250,000. While 5,000 parents were coming up $3,000 short, we raised 6,000,000 in taxes. The thing is, somebody's got to pay for those kids, and guess who has to pay for it... the government. So, even though it's got an extra .75M in revenue, it's got to fund a lot of bureaucracy to take care of the kids, and that takes paying... SALARIES!!! People on salaries pay taxes and have kids, so the whole process whittles itself down again.
Consider the difference: 40 employees who still net 170k per year, versus 10,000 employees who enjoy substantially higher standards of living, and don't have to go on welfare when they have kids. See how it works? You have to tweak both wages and taxes in order to find the peak of the bell curve where everybody gets as much as possible and nobody starves.
That's how you do it, EXC. I just pulled those numbers out of my ass to show you the process. I know mine is not the optimal point, but gee, there are mathematicians who could easily crunch the numbers I've given you and trot out the optimum tax rates and salaries for rich and poor.
Now, please notice, EXC, that in my scenario, the MID LEVEL EXECS are still making over 10X as much as the workers. You think there isn't still some incentive to become an exec? That's what I've been trying to tell you.
Obviously, this is an overly simplistic model, but it's only simple in the number of variables -- NOT in the methodology.
You keep saying this. Are you going to start mandating abortions for poor people, or would it maybe be better to TRY TO FUCKING REDUCE THE NUMBER OF POOR PEOPLE BY LETTING THEM MAKE AND KEEP MORE MONEY WHEN THE EXECS HAVE PLENTY TO FUCKING SPARE?
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
While I'm at it, the system I just demonstrated used YOUR ideas. I didn't socialize anything. I didn't put a cap on salaries. People can get whatever job they want, and when they do, they'll get what it pays, without a salary cap. The only cap I put on it was ensuring a minimum living standard for everybody. I did this through taxation and minimum wage laws.
On paper, this ought to work across the board, but it doesn't. For one thing, the government can't analyze every job and set tax rates separately for the value of each job. Remember the fisherman and the deliveryboy?
If Fishing allows an unregulated businessman to gross $50,000 per year by himself, and $200,000 a year with two helpers, there's nothing to stop the fisherman from paying his employees $25,000 each, and keeping $150,000 a year. It's hardly fair, but everybody gets enough to live on. So let's set the tax rate at 10% and 30%, like we did above. Each employee will net 22,500 per year, and the fisherman will net 135,000 per year. Everybody's happy, right?
Ok. Suppose a man can build houses by himself, and makes $25,000 by himself. With two employees, he can make 60,000 in a year. If he keeps 30,000 and pays each of his employees 15,000, we've got a problem. He's only making a small increase in profit -- 5k, as opposed to the 150k increase the fisherman had. Businessses work different... some are higher margin, some are lower margin. Anyway, each of his employees, at 15k, will turn up below the poverty level after paying 10% taxes. They won't be able to have any kids without going on welfare. So, do we change the tax rate? If we lower the tax rate to 8% for the poor and raise it to 32% for the rich, that's not going to help anything.
What if we raise minimum wage? We say that regardless of the business, you have to pay all your employees at least 20k per year. That way, two people's wage together can support one baby after taxes. That's all fine, except that the house builder just TOOK A LOSS to gross more money. The thing is, houses need to be built, but it's just not profitable enough to do on a large scale.
So, do you want growth or do you want fairness? If you want more houses built than one man can build, you're going to have to do one of several things -- you can subsidize housing supplies so that the cost of supplies lowers and the builder makes more profit. You can socialize it, so the government absorbs the cost of building houses. You can give house-sellers a subsidy so they'll make more profit, meaning the house builder can sell higher to the house seller.
You see what happens? Because of the natural inequity in a market, some people will always suffer. Many times, the suffering is a direct result of the lifestyles of the well to do. Hell, it isn't even that complicated. Everybody who eats at McDonalds is contributing to it. You want a meal for $5? Somebody's got to make minimum wage for you to have it.
Geez, EXC. Really, you would do the rest of the world a lot of good if you took an introductory course in economics.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
If you don't contribute to society usually via taxes as far as I am concerned you have zero rights
You don't have a right to work
You don't have a right to own property
In fact as far as I'm concerned you don't even have the right to live in a country.
A human being not part of any society has ZERO rights, not even to live which is why in non-functioning societies babies don't tend to make their 5th birthday.
So lets turn around the question extremist right wingers tend to ask 'why should the government be allowed to take my money?' to 'why should you be allowed to live in a country without paying for it'.
You are part of the web of society from the moment you are born to the day you die and the only way to escape that is to find another web.
You know what, Jonno, you're basically right, but I think it would be fun to let a few people like EXC try to live without the government. We could stick them in a nice city with lots of jobs.. Seattle maybe. No driver's license. No social security number. Might not seem so bad at first, right? After all, lots of Mexicans do it. The thing is, you can't have a kid unless you do natural birth at home. You can't go to the doctor, or the hospital, because the government pays for all those freebies. You can't mail a letter because the Post Office is run by government money. You can't sign a lease. You can't sign any contracts. You can't get a credit card.
That's why there's such a big fight over illegal immigrants. Even as far off the radar as most of them are, they use government benefits all the time.
Anyway, the first accident you have while you're doing manual labor for asshole contractors, you're fucked. That's it. Broken leg, no more work.
Oh... I forgot to add, you can't buy produce at regular prices, either. You have to pay what it would really cost without government subsidies. That's gonna be fun.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Now that I'm thinking about it... guess what? The government runs the mass transit systems in my city. I bet it's pretty much the same everywhere.
Sorry... can't get to work without walking. Good luck.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Hambydammit, I somehow doubt you'll get through. EXC just wrote:
EXC, you are not in touch with reality and are otherwise so far off base that I find it difficult to believe that anyone has bothered to argue with you. It's rather infuriating to read your posts when you simply assert things that are blatantly untrue. Have you considered how the system works in countries where people don't have to pay for their educations?
I can image: What incentive is there to work hard at getting an education when it's free? What a crazy concept! I would never get an education unless I had to pay 10,000$ a year for it... no, 50,000$ a year! (I really want it to be good!)
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
ROFL!
I dunno. It's obvious that I can't use any big words from real economics textbooks in talking to EXC. I guess I have this bizarre idea that one day, it will dawn on him that he actually doesn't know anything about economics. He just knows about what people who don't know much about economics have said on the radio and TV. I keep hoping that maybe one day he'll read a book by a scientist. (Then again, in another thread, he assured me that he would never do any such thing because scientists are pushing their own biased agenda, and he can't be bothered with it because they disagree with him.)
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
While I agree with what you say Hambydammit that basically an individual can't survive without a functioning society/government I actually would go further than that and say that an individual doesnt actually have the right to survive even if they could.
I'm not saying we should shoot all tax evaders as that would damage society (ie if you shoot them what do you with child murderers some of who are also tax evaders) but it is definitely a serious crime and rightly so is treated as one
You're paying for an uneducated, inefficient workforce. Businesses will get rid of them to cut their costs. The babies will starve because the parents won't have any job.
The ocean will be overfished because few are trained in the science of managing natural resources. No one bothered to get an education because they made enough on minimum wage to get by.
Oh, I understand it quite well thank you. You don't seem to get that there are secondary effects to every action. You have this very simplistic view that if the business owners are going to take it out of their own pocket. You also fail to understand how the rich operate, how the rich get and hold their wealth. They don't pay high or moderate wages for unskilled labor, they just won't do it. I don't need a class in economics, you need to get to know some rich families to understand how they operate.
The fisherman is mandated to pay his employees a higher wage, he will not take it out of his salary, this is where your assumption is completely wrong. Since all the fishing enterprises are mandated to pay higher wages, they will first try to pass along this additional cost the the consumer. Many consumers will balk at this and switch to cheaper foods to get by.
The fisherman is faced with higher costs and a smaller market for his product. He can lay off employees go back to catching less fish. Less fish on the market means even higher prices. He owns a boat that he can sell and use the money for other investments or enterprises. It's pretty risky being a fisherman, the boat could be sunk or lost at any time. It may make more sense to put the money into safer investments if the return on a risky investments is so small. Or he can try to hire illegal labor. He can move his fish business to a country that doesn't mandate minimum wage, the foreign governments would welcome the influx of capital and jobs. He can just retire and sell everything he has and try to hide his money from the government.
In any case all of these scenarios are bad for consumers, business owners, employees and the government treasury.
The fisherman that is making the high salary is also risking a great deal of capital. There must be a high reward for people to invest in a risky enterprise like fish. He has no guaranteed salary, some years there is few fish and he loses money but is still must pay employees the same. He's not allowed to adjust his salaries based upon fishing conditions. No one is going to go into this business unless the price they can charge for fish is sky high.
The other problem is you're scenario is operating in a pre-industrial era scenario. Technology has changed things since the stone age. Let me tell you how things are in the 21st century.
Technology has turned fishing into a very high tech enterprise. The need for unskilled untrained manual labor has greatly diminished and will soon disappear. Boats are outfitted high tech electronics, motor and other equipment to make to primate manual labor operations obsolete. Science now understands how to manage the resources of fishing in oceans and lakes but it takes trained environmental scientists to make sure the resources are managed efficiently and sustainable. Hi-tech fish farms can be run that don't impact the environment greatly if they have a highly trained work force to build and manage the farms. The effect of minimum wage on unskilled labor is just to accelerate this process by making going high tech a more cost effective solution.
So in our century, what is the best solution for the fishing industry? Educate people on how to do fishing in a high tech methods that does not adversely affect the environment. Where does the money come from? You tax the use of natural resources. Heavily tax fishing operations that pollute or are not sustainable. This will force the industry to come up with efficient environmentally effective fishing methods. The rich business owners will pay good salaries to trained scientists and technicians if they see the positive impact on the bottom line. Business owners need to compete for employees not the other way around as in your scenario.
Since you are into screaming let me make this point:
THE RICH DID NOT GET RICH BY PAYING HIGH WAGES FOR UNSKILLED LABOR. THEY WILL NOT PAY HIGH WAGES OR TAXES. THEY WILL NOT RISK THEIR CAPITAL IN ENTERPRISES OR COUNTRIES THAT FORCE THEM TO PAY HIGH WAGES AND TAXES. THEY WILL SHUT THEIR BUSINESSES AND HIRE NO ONE. THE MORE YOU TRY TO FORCE THIS, THEY MORE THEY WILL HIDE THEIR MONEY.
So unless you have a plan to invade Liechtenstein and find gold bars hidden in the ground. You can't get the wealthy to pay high wages for tons of unskilled labor. Since you understand economics so well, why doesn't your model take this into account? How the rich and corporations with capital actually operate?
Look at what's happened with the tomato prices. The government cut of the supply of low wage illegals that could work on tomato farms. The farmers didn't go out and pay minimum wage, they switched to lower labor crops like corn. The price of tomatoes skyrocketed. The poor workers now have no job and the consumer is hit with high food prices.
In short, they only real way to help workers is to make such that businesses compete for worker instead of workers competing for jobs. The only way to do this is through effective education. That why all resources and action of the government must be geared toward this goal. Not toward making welfare and minimum wage a permanent solution for anyone.
Will you please ask a rich person/family what they will do with their business/money/capital if the government tries to force them to pay much higher wages and taxes? So you will stop living in dreamland that the rich will somehow permanently support the lower uneducated classes. We've had minimum wage and welfare for a long time now, look at the economica mess were in. Your answer even more of the same.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
Since it's obvious that we're not having a conversation, I'm going to stop. You're not even trying to process anything I'm saying. You're just saying the same things over and over without actually addressing my points. In the same way that I don't debate people who don't understand evolution, I'm not going to debate economics with you when it's clear that you don't even have a rudimentary understanding of it.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
I just wanted to highlight this just in case anyone got the idea that maybe you know what you're talking about.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Fishing and all forms of farming in the Western World (and yes that includes the US) have about as much to do with capitalism as the North Korean Stock Exchange.
The entire industry is basically one massive state subsidy , 90% of farmers/fisherman would disappear overnight if these subsidies were removed which probably to be honest wouldnt be a bad thing.
Any one who includes the words farming/fishing and capitalism in the same sentence really doesnt have a clue about either of them. The subsidies are partly a hang over from when food was relatively scare and national independence for food was a political requirement. It has also stayed due to the political lobbying of farmers who strangely enough like the state funding their lifestyle.
France (and the rest of Europe) and American farming pure socialism (50 years ago I would have supported it now it just leads to inefficient farming and lots of starving Africans)
Thomathy, please look up sarcasm in an encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
I have studied econmics. But there is somethings you learn in the classroom, somethings you learn in life. And all of our econimcs experts, why didn't they predict this Wall Street crisis?
And I just want to highlght that you ignore this fact in your 'expert' economics model:
THE RICH DID NOT GET RICH BY PAYING HIGH WAGES FOR UNSKILLED LABOR. THEY WILL NOT PAY HIGH WAGES OR TAXES. THEY WILL NOT RISK THEIR CAPITAL IN ENTERPRISES OR COUNTRIES THAT FORCE THEM TO PAY HIGH WAGES AND TAXES. THEY WILL SHUT THEIR BUSINESSES AND HIRE NO ONE. THE MORE YOU TRY TO FORCE THIS, THEY MORE THEY WILL HIDE THEIR MONEY.
We'll all just all pretend you're a "rational responder" even though you ignore this undeniable fact in your model.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
Have you actually read a word I said? Or are you simply being an ignorent swine? Just because you constantly repeat something doesn't make it true. As I said before, socialists look at the world, not with rose-tinted spectacles but with a critical eye, we analyse what is happening. The money made by the CEO of Nike or McDonalds isn't fairly made, it is these people who reap as much wealth out of the world as possible, force the people who make their capital into a meagre living dependent upon the crappy wage they are given in return. And then, they dodge as much tax as they can, so any redistribution of the money they gained through exploitation is minimal. Do you really think these people contribute to society? They're self-sufficient for sure, but to say they contribute to society is a gross overstatement. The child sowing together the Nike trainer (I think Americans call them sneakers) in a factory in China gets shit all of what the trainer makes for his indirect employers in America. Let's say for a days work the child earns the equivalent of 50 pence, in that time he makes 10 pairs of trainers, each pair of trainers when it reaches the shops will sell for £60, making a total of £600 for the labour of the child, £599.50 of which doesn't go to the child.
I can see your point when you say it is impossible for large numbers of human beings to exist without some law of survival to come into effect. It is a valid point, especially where there are too many human beings chasing too few resources. But what you misunderstand is that human beings are perhaps the best equipped animal to survive in the world, the natural day to day perils of predators or disease do not apply to many of our species. Natural selection as the driving force of the biological evolution, does not justfiy the deliberate application of it to a political system. Human beings, are as much naturally altruistic as they are naturally selfish. Human nature itself is not a constant, it is to a large extent a product of our environment, where selfishness is emphasised, i.e. in a capitalist system, human beings become more selfish, where altruism is emphasised (no matter how misguided), i.e. where moral values are important. For the record, I don't believe in objective morality, or any such thing as moral law, such fallacies are as ridiculous as God, but I do believe that a) human beings are in part altruistic and b) altruism leads to greater happiness and is thus simply necessary for our well-being. Also, for the record, if my empirical observations on human beings had revealed that humans are all only out for themselves, and I'd only seen acts of cruelty, then I would accept that and move on, and would most likely go and hide somewhere, but it quite simply isn't entirely the case, I've seen as much kindness as I have cruelty.
Also with regard to the comments I made about freedom of thought, your system of education "students would not be allowed to study what they want, but what makes them self-sufficient" being only for the sole purpose of self-sufficiency naturally leads to a scenario where science and discovery become purely economic, and thus limited, philosophy would become obsolete and your society would become devoid of any intellectual stimulation.
Atheist Books
Oh I agree with you 100% that it is unfair that CEOs and Nike make tons of money and pay very little. I also agree that Santa Claus was unfair last Christmas because he didn't bring presents to all the good little boys and girls that believed in him. But the world doesn't operate with a real Santa Clause in it. The world also doesn't operate where rich capitalist and corporate shareholders will risk their money if they can't reap big profits.
The world also doesn't operate in a mode where people can study whatever they want and work in any intellectually stimulating profession they want and we can get paid the same.
Seems like your image of the world is half the people would work 2 shifts a day in a difficult mundane job like auto mechanic, plumber or farmer. One job is to support themselves, the other is to support the other half of society's interesting intellectual pursuits. So the elites just study music, art, theoretic sciences on the public dole. Then be guaranteed a job that pays enough for them to live comfortable. Who selects who gets to be the elites? So if you're an auto mechanic, you can't enjoy the pleasures of music and art because you just work your ass off all the time supporting 2 families instead of 1. Your system seems like even more of class division than free market capitalism because it's cultural division, not just economic.
The fact is we need a class of rich and super rich. The modern economy requires that money be put into risky ventures like alternative energy solutions, space exploration even modern shoe factories. We also need a rich class to support charities, environment preservation and artistic endeavors. Which many of them do. The rich also make entry level jobs possible. When you have minimum wage, the young can't get experience because no one will hire them at high wages, they can't get experience because no one will hire them.
The fact is the CEO of Nike and I are not the ones who is ruthless and unfair, nature is. It was also unfair of Hurricane Ike to have torn up Galviston. And you know what? Nature doesn't care because nature is not a rational, caring being. It is what it is. So our economics policies must reflect the real world that we happen to live in.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
But you're problem is that you assume that every rational human ought to support a system where wealth is based upon exploitation just because that's "how the world works". One might argue that every rational person ought to just accept it and move on, if that is you could prove that human beings aren't capable of working in co-operatives, I've worked in a co-operative albeit as a casual worker rather than a member and it actually works, people are more focussed on working together than in your average private company, people are happier because they get more say over their working conditions since they are partly their own boss. This isn't wishful thinking, it is a real alternative that could theoretically be put into practice, still at the whims of the same market system, still at the whims of power hungry people, but where the wealth gap is evened out, and where people are happier with their jobs.
I think conversely that no rational person ought to support your proposed system. Even if it's "how the world works" such a sentence should not suddenly mean it gets my support. Maybe you might argue that humanity can never get to a perfect state of affairs, I agree with you 100% on that, it isn't what I'm after. I don't believe in heaven, and I certainly don't believe that perfection is worth striving for. I do not think that it is possible to suppress human selfishness, and that any attempts to do so lead to totalitarianism. But what I do think is that we ought to minimise human suffering, and that doing so is not beyond the realm of possibility. Charity does fuck all, and since there is no way to justify the ill gotten earnings of corporations, there should be no problem with redistributing it into building the economies of the third world.
Atheist Books
Just a quick thanks Jacob, as I've been enjoying your recent uplifting reality posts.
me too, jacob. fuckin' A, man.
The way the world works is a completely meaningless statement. 10 people can't change the way gravity works (yet anyway) but they can change the way they interact with each other (even if only 9 want to) which is the very basis of democracy and even before that civilization
It's not a matter of supporting "my system" it's just accepting the reality of a world where people are not going to risk their money unless the can reap big rewards if they happen to succeed. We can't come up with alternative energy solution unless rich people risk their wealth. Just saying "can't we all just get along" and cooperate just won't work. Government is too broke to do it.
When we argue with Theists, what do they say "I can't support a world without God", "I can't accept that when I die, that's it", "Life would have no meaning in your atheist system".
Atheism is not something you believe in or support, it's an obvious fact you just accept. Same thing with a rational view of politics and economics.
Maybe a system where cooperation can be achieved but it's not going to happen, under the current system of high taxes and business/personal mandates. All that will do is make everyone equal in poverty, misery and ignorance. I think it is noble to want to have such a system, but find a way to get people to go along with it voluntary. You system of confiscating wealth redistribution by force will not work.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
But caring EXC, "wealth redistribution by force", by law, is a needed force. "Eat the Rich" ... who needs and why allow such huge vacuum cleaners?
Equal is the air .... who would be allowed to own the air ?
Atheism Books.
Having read over the last page of this thread I can only add one thing:
EXC, you are a disgrace to free-market supporters everywhere. The statists and socialists don't need a straw man of minarchy or free market supporters when you are around. No one could present these ideas worse than you. Please, please, stop making our side look so bad. Now some people who read this will think of free market supporters as being people who are like you. You couldn't turn people away from supporting the free market anymore than you are now. This kind of frothing at the mouth form of arguing your points makes us all look like nuts. We need to shake that stereotype, but you seem to live it.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
Dream on. I notice you don't dispute any of the points I made. So I'll assume you can't. Are you going to come out and say rich capitalists will still risk their money in an environment of high taxes and mandates?
All you do is join the others in making a person attack. I should just go along with irrationality just to get along a be popular with the majority. A kind of mass hypnosis. Where have I heard that tune before? When you look at the number of personal attacks instead of disputing what I said would happen, we know who is frothing at the mouth when their irrational view of the world is exposed.
Hamby gave a brilliant explaination and rational for having minimum wage. It would work great if we lived in Alice in Wonderland. He says abosolutly nothing about it causing inflation or lay-offs of people who's labor cost are too high. And I'm the one who's insane?
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
I'll say it. Yes they will.
They do in Scandinavia.
The free market isn't dead over here you know. Our high taxes hasn't killed it.
You make predictions about what will inevitably happen if the "poverty pimps" come into power, that is demonstrably wrong if you look at Scandinavia.
Now, I'll be the first to say that applying the Scandinavian model to the US overnight might well cause irreporable damage, so I'm not saying that you should just do exactly like us and everything will be hunky-dory.
But you cannot make predictions that only extreme liberalism is viable, and the free market can never survive high taxes, when this is demonstrably not the case when you look at Scandinavia.
Well I was born an original sinner
I was spawned from original sin
And if I had a dollar bill for all the things I've done
There'd be a mountain of money piled up to my chin
Yes in Scandinavia they have done some things right. Education is the great equalizer. But even there, the system can't sustain itself unless it's reformed. I think this is a pretty fair article on the situation there:
http://www.pierretristam.com/Bobst/07/wf010507.htm
I am not a libertarian, complete free market person. Investment in education and worker retrain can be justified if it's effective and short term. Corporations still invest there because they have a highly trained workforce and they say in the article, taxes on corporate profits are kept at a moderate level.
Since education has created a middle class with high productivity, it wouldn't mater if the government got rid of universal health coverage. People would just buy insurance with the money they save on taxes. There is also no reason why every service such as roads couldn't be made pay as you go if everyone is educated to be at least middle class.
The other thing is that you don't really have is a minimum wage. Just as in the USA, Denmark tolerates an underground economy for cheap unskilled labor.
What's going to kill the system in Denmark is immigration and emmigration. You have a brewing crisis of immigrants that take advantage of the system, they don't bother assimilating or getting an education. They have large families that they pass on these values. They can just use their Islamic religion drug to deaden the pain of poverty and ignorance. So expect more of this.
Then you have highly educated professionals that will be lured to live in contries where their income taxes will be lower. They will get tired of long waits and denied service in socialist medicine. So eventually, if these problems are not fixed your system and country will collapse.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
A very interesting read. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
As I understood the article, it is precisely the fact that it is more long term, and broader in scope, than any private economy would pursue, that it has been so advantagous for Denmark in the present.
And as it also said in the article, we Danes still gladly pay our high income tax, because we know we are getting our moneys worth.
Thanks for warning me. It's so nice to be set straight on how the Muslims here in Denmark are like, with a simplistic, black and white soundbite like that, by someone thousands of miles away. I mean, I only live on Nørrebro, the part of Copenhagen, and thus, the part of Denmark with the most muslim immigrants.
Because of course the situation with integration (one of the biggest political issues in Denmark today) is something that we poor Danes have absolutely no understanding of whatsoever. We've only spent the last 10 - 15 years discussing this issue, making sociological studies and proposing, and implementing various political models, some one way, some the other, so of course we don't have any idea of the nuances of this problem...
I suspect I don't have to write /sarcasm...
Like the article said, Denmark has been since the vikings, a very homogenious (and rather small) group of people, with the same ethnic and cultural background. It's hardly surprising that a clash of cultures is even more upsetting to the status quo than it would be for France or England or other places that, through colonialism, has had much more experience with multicultural societies.
But I'll still trust more in the nuanced political debate, as it goes on in Danish politics, than I'll trust in black-and-white alarmist paranoia from across the pond that basically amounts to: "Beware the Muslim menace. They breed like rats, and will sacrifice Danish babies to their false God, all while sucking the life blood out of the poor unsuspecting Danes."
I get enough of that from the Danish People's Party thank you. Yearh, and don't worry, your opinion has a voice in Danish politics, because the Danish People's party is not a fringe organisation at all. They have 25 votes in the Folketing, our parliament.
Yearh, we'll cross that brigde when we get to it...
Until then, don't suspect that Danes are so immensely stupid that they just sit and watch as things colapse around them, over a period of decades. We do actually have politicians you know, and they do actually take steps to adress both short term and long term problems that the country faces. We aren't locked into one dogmatic way of thinking that is completely immutable you know. That's what you call dogma, and we aren't religious here remember?
Well I was born an original sinner
I was spawned from original sin
And if I had a dollar bill for all the things I've done
There'd be a mountain of money piled up to my chin
you, sir, are a credit to europe.
every american should come live in europe for a good four years or so. settling down in slovakia has really opened my eyes. scandinavia actually has a lot of money invested here, especially sweden.
i thought EXC was fed up with all us kooky "neo-marxists" and was going to leave us in disgust. yet here he is, not only arguing for free market and reform in america, but also diagnosing problems in countries he's probably never even visited and certainly never lived in.
as an american expatriate, i'm proud to be a part of the european union, and i'm very happy my children will be brought up here. i think it's a shining example of how socialist principles--applied with a concern for human dignity, free (non-hateful) expression, and the environment--can turn a continent which was once rife with slavery, colonialism, antisemitism, and endless religious wars into one of the safest, most secular, and prosperous places in the world. not all the countries are in step yet, and slovakia often lags behind, especially in the area of homelessness, but as long as countries continue to liberalize more, religion and fascism will continue to disappear and people will live better.
speaking of fascism, your danish people's party sounds a lot like our slovak national party, which unfortunately is part of the coalition government. no matter how far we progress, regression is always possible. i personally think it should be part of the european constitution that fascist and nationalist parties are outlawed.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
But I see recent European history, and the microcosmos that is Denmark, as a two steps forward, one step back, kinda thing. Hardly any young people vote for DF, for one, so while racism among young people is proliferent, Nationalism is not. People under 30 quite simply don't have the same cultural identity. They don't consider themselves Danes as much as they consider themselves Europeans.
Cultural integration of our Muslim immigrants is going to be a long and difficult process for all of Europe, because of racism, and the general, and very natural tendensy for humans to think in tribalistic terms: "Us and Them". Both the Muslims, and we Europeans are doing this, but one thing that is contributing enormously to this is nationalism, and nationalism in Europe (or at least in Denmark) is dying out, as the next generations are replacing the former ones.
So I know there's alot of hard work ahead, but things are looking up.
A powerful Nationalist party is, by the way, something I am hearing from all over Europe in recent years. I hear from Holland, France and Austria that they have one, and in all the news stories I see, it appears to be very much like DF in Denmark.
I both hope, and expect that this will peak at some point. As much as Nationalism has been gaining support here in Denmark, the general opposition among young people to DF is increasing equaly. Once they were just a party that you hadn't voted for, but more and more, they are becoming a party that people arrange demonstrations agaisnt, and talk about not just as someone with the "wrong" political ideas, but with very counterproductive political ideas.
There is a general concensus among "young" people (including people up to around the age of my brothers: 37 and 39), that the DF itself is part of what has caused our integration problems because of their paranoid and hateful rethoric.
That's not to say criticism of Muslim culture isn't varanted (we've had honour killings here for example, and the whole Mohammed Cartoon debacle caused many of us to feel we needed to speak our mind).
But criticism needs to be directed where criticism is due, and not serve to alienate the entire muslim community. I know many muslims by now, all of whom have been "sucked in" to Danish Secularism because of Danish friends, and a general exposure to a culture that they want to be a part of. Now, this only happens when they are made to feel welcome, and accepted, even before they have "assimilated".
One good friend of mine from university: A young serbian muslim girl with no headscarf, a boyfriend, and at least 75% Danish friends, could never had ended up like that, had her farther not gotten a job, and felt welcome in Denmark. She has told me that he was not very happy with her dropping the headscarf, and mingling with Danes in the beginning, but now, he has even accepted her boyfriend, which is only a result of him feeling at ease here in Denmark. Had every Danish person he met (instead of maybe just every 10th person) treated him like shit, just imagine how quickly he would have pulled his daughter home to live (instead of in a dorm, where she lives now) if he had felt alienated and scorned in Denmark.
His daughter has grown up to be a Danish girl, with a serbian background, rather than a serbian girl, living in Denmark.
*edit* : Oh, and also, thanks for this: "you, sir, are a credit to europe." You humble me. Thank you
Well I was born an original sinner
I was spawned from original sin
And if I had a dollar bill for all the things I've done
There'd be a mountain of money piled up to my chin
i agree 100% about letting integration happen naturally through tolerance both at the individual and the political level. here in slovakia i would say things look bleaker than in denmark. the whole coalition is really a bunch of fucking assholes right now. our pm, robert fico, is nothing but a populist who knows how to play on the fears of the elderly, the unemployed, and the racist. he hasn't accomplished dick, except getting us on the euro, which was already gonna happen because of the last government (and i'm not so sure i'm happy about anyway). the other coalition partner, the movement for a democratic slovakia, is still led by mr. vladimir meciar, whom you might remember, sinced he pushed slovakia to the brink of international isolation when he was pm in the '90s. our president, meanwhile, is a fucking retard who can't even speak english and makes awkward jokes to the media.
our nationalist problem is different, and i definitely call it fascism, since it has roots in the first independent slovak state, which was a nazi puppet in wwii. unlike denmark and the muslim immigration, slovakia's nationalism has very old roots, since it's directed towards ethnic hungarians and gypsies (there are almost no muslims here). the leader of the slovak national party, jan slota, has been drunk in public many times and was arrested for auto theft back in the '70s or '80s. he made a drunken rant on the radio a couple years ago in which he said he and his cronies were gonna "get in tanks and go level budapest." he also introduced a bill into parliament this year to declare andre hlinka the father of the country and to make it a crime to criticize him publicly. hlinka was a priest who founded the hlinka guard, a fascist organization, back in the '30s and referred to himself (seriously) as "the slovak hitler." his protegee, josef tiso, another priest, was the president of the wartime fascist slovak state, and responsible for pretty much deporting the entire slovak jewish community, which was once one of the largest in europe, to nazi death camps. the slovak national party holds both these guys up as national heroes and the bishop of trnava recently held a public mass in honor of tiso. it's really a bunch of crazy shit.
worse yet, it's catching on with the slovak youth, who are also often xenophobic against hungarians and gypsies. there's a pretty thriving skinhead movement among the youth here, especially in western slovakia, and you often see hate crimes in the newspaper. of course, now that we have a fucking fascist party in the government, they're getting bolder. actually, one hungarian girl who went to the police after being attacked by skinheads was publicly belittled in the media by jan slota and, of all people, our prime minister. what the fuck. admittedly, the girl did have kind of a paranoid story and obviously wasn't all there mentally, but anybody could see she had been attacked, and there were witnesses. needless to say, nobody's been charged yet.
still, i would say most of the youth here hate fico, meciar, and slota, but the problem is, slovaks as a whole tend to be pretty passive people, so they just let this shit happen.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
Where's the tolerance for people who work hard to save some money, that want to have their own business? No, they need to be lynched and have all their property stolen by 'tolerant' communist gangs. Where's the tolerance for people that don't want 100% of their earnings to go to the government communist thugs? Where's the tolerance for the hardworking programmer that doesn't want all his software stolen?
Face it, you just want to part of gang that intimidates and uses violent threats against anyone that is successful. You want to just have a society of losers where the government rewards people for being losers. Birds of a feather.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
Geezz, EXC, there is no such thing as "your" money or an individual.
Great then why not make income tax volutary? Or at least go to a pay as you go system? Or privitize the business, so the people who are happy can just pay for the service, the one's that aren't don't pay(and don't get the service).
If people are so happy to help the poor and indigent. Why not make health care for the poor a charity?
So in Denmark, the government will spend tons of money educating a world class doctor for many years. Then this doctor has to clean his house, mow his yard, shine his shoes, etc..., instead of working on patients. You don't see a big inefficiency in this system? You're getting a lower return on your investment because of this mininmum wage dogma.
It sounds like what you have in fact is a kind of a reverse communism. The individuals pay high income taxes to pay for the capitalist's "means of production". Your taxes create an educated workforce and good infrastucture for business to locate there. The businesses pay a moderate tax rate, but the government is picking up their costs of infrastructure and education. So effectively they have a low tax rate.
Because you have education that is adequate, for now you can compete against welfare state countries. But to stay competitive in a global economy Denmark will have to move to pay as you go.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
I don't get your plan EXC, but I try. I think we need to enrich the the poor, and eat the rich, for a better world. Love and heal the enemy kind of thing .... as to eradicate division and war, rich and poor, too equal the field. "Eat the Rich", no more poor, as to never throw no one over board ..... yeah sure, call me a dreamer.
Umm, why not outlaw excessive greed, mega personal wealth? Wouldn't more equalization of personal wealth make for a more happy and productive society, and lend to less crime, frustration and apathy ? Heck, and how many non productive laws are there?
Fuck the BROKE magical system , as what is today, as you imply .... WHY is there big DEBT ? WTF? ..... MASSIVE debt to what ??? who and why ???
Socialize banks etc etc etc .... Power to the simple lazy dumb simple People. Why the radical tread mill ???
Atheism Books.
wow. you know what, back in my christian days i used to haunt some christian internet forums. on one, there was a hardcore fundy who talked exactly like you. and i don't just mean he shared your opinions about commies, muslims taking over europe, etc., which he did. no, i mean you write almost exactly like him. the way you turn a phrase, your increasing hostility, your dogged repetition of the same points against any argument, and spouting cliches like "birds of a feather." in fact, i'm almost certain he used that same cliche.
if by "part of a gang that intimdates, etc." you mean violent revolution, yes, i'd gladly do my part. i only wish i'd be lucky enough to see the day.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
evidently they don't, exc, get the fuck over it. if the danes are happy with their country, what the fuck do you care? afraid their philosophy might spread to your country? that's not their fuckin' problem.
as someone who lives in europe and stays pretty abreast of european affairs, let me assure you denmark, as well as the rest of scandinavia, is pretty damn competitive. they certainly haven't come to the point where they need advice from strangers on the internet. then again, it's hardly fair for me to speak for nikolaj. he's already pwned you.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
I'd love to see that day too. Be great to see the rich fucks that have been exploting working people for so long paraded down the street to the place of execution while we throw garbage at them.
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
You don't fucking work, that's why you can't overcome your disabilities. All you do is whine. You don't really want to have a society where people with disabilities like you are trained to overcome them. Then you couldn't whine, blame others and make violent threats. That's your religion.
That is why you never learn to be successful, you don't work at it. You just want to be a bum that blames everyone else then make violent threats against people who often work there ass off to get some financial success in life.
So much for the RRS being committed to non-violent revolution. They tolerate the iwbeck and Shizzle and their violent threats against anyone that is more successful because they aren't bums like them. They give rational atheism a real good name.
So why does the RRS core members tolerate people who want to have a violent revolution? Doesn't their violent rage contradict the mission statement of being to non-violent irradication of religion and irrationality?
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
EXC... If I may just point something out. First you reply to Jormungander:
And then you go on to write this:
So now I will just say a little something:
Fuck you you sanctimonious, selfrightious, bile-spewing, irrational wanker.
You are so busy feeling so self-important about your amazing realisation that the communist hordes, and their illuminati henchmen, and their alien overlords, and their army of hippies, are destroying the world that you haven't stopped for one minute to see how obnoxiously selfimportant and certain and hypocritical and dogmatic and irrational you sound!
No I don't think life is too short for personal attacks. Sometimes calling a spade a spade can be okay for my own sake, and for the sake of calling out a hypocrite for others to see (as if there's still someone out there who hasn't allready noticed what a sorry excuse for a human being you are).
So now that that's out of the way, let's by all means return to the civil discussion in this thread, but I couldn't go on without telling you just how I feel: you sir, are a selfrightious hypocrite!
And for the record, my father is a doctor, and he shines his own shoes, and vacuums his house. Never did his patients any harm...
Well I was born an original sinner
I was spawned from original sin
And if I had a dollar bill for all the things I've done
There'd be a mountain of money piled up to my chin
i don't recall the rrs being committed to any revolution. they would like to see the end of religion but it takes more than that to make a revolution. as for me, my desire for revolution is not primarily motivated by atheism, so it has nothing to do with the rrs.
I'M a bum??? i'm married, i work a 40-hour week teaching kids, mostly underprivileged, in a vocational school (and i do that on a trade license, so legally i'm self-employed), and when i'm not doing that i'm either proofreading english translations or building my own house with my own fucking hands. the only weekend i get is sunday, but then there's housework to do. the only reason i'm writing this now is because i have the flu. exactly how am i a bum, you fucktard? because i wouldn't mind seeing my taxes feed a junkie?
judging from your popularity in this thread, it seems you're the one being tolerated. seriously, though, who's getting repressive now? you want to silence guys like me? i don't want to silence guys like you. you help us out.
"violent rage"? when have i become enraged? you're the one who just bitched out a disabled guy for speaking his mind. it seems rrs allows just about anyone to speak here; even trolls have their own spot. there are lots of theists here. and libertarians. and socialists. and at least one communist. i like the diversity. that's why i come here. if you don't like it, don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out, pumpkin.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
LOL "peace" ambassador iwbiek.
I say more fire, and to revolution as is the fuel of change and progress are the really pissed off .... as the blessed are the innocent gentle meek, poor in spirit, sad, and opposed to the greedy driven proud and ambitious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatitudes
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=blessed+are+the+meek&spell=1
Atheism Books.
btw...
when have i made violent threats against anyone specific? i've only made violent threats against the existing capitalist world order, and they weren't even real threats because i don't expect to be able to carry them out in my lifetime.
by my definition of successful, i'm pretty well off. i have a wife whom i love and who loves me. i'm healthy. i get to read for at least a couple hours every day. i like my job. i play in an excellent band and we actually make a little money at it. i'm building a house while getting in the least possible amount of debt because i spend next to nothing on labor. i'm not a slave to a car. i live in a quaint village. we have garden produce right out of the backyard. for myself, i have no cause to complain. for others, i have plenty.
by what i suspect is your definition of successful, i also have no cause to complain. in slovakia, i'm comfortably in the middle class. i'm also, as i said, self-employed, and, as a native english speaker with teaching experience, i get plenty of job offers, most of which i have to turn down.
as for "bums," i've already addressed that, kitten.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
Al Qaeda with a hammer and sickle instead of a crescent moon. Thanks for demonstrating my point.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
EXC is an asshat. Why don't you leave here and go to some dickhead right-wing site?
yours wasn't the only point that just got demonstrated, mr. o'reilly.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
By the way, dillhole, I'm not a "bum. " I worked for nearly 10 years at the same place until it closed. Trying to get a job through OVR and have had no luck so far. I hope someday you find out what it's like to be poor, or even on the streets. Maybe you'll change your tune then. Look back - only been since late March I was out of work and I felt the exact same way before then.
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
I think you might need to seek help. You're becoming irrational.
Edit: As for making violent attacks and threats, it seems you're the one with the problem at the moment. Seriously dude, sort yourself out, stop with the violent insulting remarks and continued straw-manning even after we've explained our positions.
Atheist Books
Congratulations, you've reached the summit of hypocrisy now.
You go to a poor country because it's still recovering from the last communist revolution. You bash America. Yet you do OK in Slovakia for one and only one reason, you speak the language of business(English). Or as you might say the language of the capitalist imperialist pigs. What an ungrateful hypocrite!
Why the hell do you think people want to learn English and do business in English? So they can make money from the capitalist system, cause they know your communist shit is crap. You prove that anyone can do OK that grows up in a capitalist society, no matter how irrational and deluded they are.
I'm sure though investors are going to avoid Slovakia when they hear there are bloodthirsty Communists ready to steal and kill anyone that owns a business.
One thing to think about, when the 'proletariat' mobs are incited to murderous rampages, who do you think they'll come looking for? How are they going to know who the imperialist 'bousious' to that they need to lynch? Wouldn't they just decide it's the people who speak, teach promote and make money from the language of the capitalist/imperialist(English)? What will you do then comrade?
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
Now you're just making shit up. I'm only angry because these leftist want to kill and steal from every hardworking person that has honestly gained their wealth. I have never done such a thing. Why don't you show the post if your going to make such a claim. I'm only calling people losers that feel the need to use violence to get what they want. Quite the opposite of violent attacks. But you are living in a leftist fantasy world, so I'm the devil.
Iwbeck wants to be part of a revolution to kill anyone that owns a business. Shizzle is about ready to kill anyone that has money he can steal. If these are the 'rational' people you choose to align yourself with go ahead.
I know I annoy the fuck out of you but so does an atheist on a christian web site. You want to be left to live in your leftist fantasy world go ahead.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
EXC is just another example of how stupid the average American is and how bad our political/economic thinking in general is. Can you imagine someone from a better, more sane country spewing such extreme capitalist garbage? There does need to be some kind of punishment for people that profit on the backs of others. And, no, they didn't work for it. They inherited it or had others make money for them from money they already had for the most part. Stop living in your dreamworld where anyone can be succesful without help given the right education.
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team